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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The History of Pendennis, by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The History of Pendennis
+       His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2003 [eBook #7265]
+[Most recently updated: September 24, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Tapio Riikonen and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS ***
+
+
+
+
+THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS
+
+His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy
+
+By William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+
+Contents
+
+ PREFACE
+ CHAPTER I. Shows how First Love may interrupt Breakfast
+ CHAPTER II. A Pedigree and other Family Matters
+ CHAPTER III. In which Pendennis appears as a very young Man indeed
+ CHAPTER IV. Mrs. Haller
+ CHAPTER V. Mrs. Haller at Home
+ CHAPTER VI. Contains both Love and War
+ CHAPTER VII. In which the Major makes his Appearance
+ CHAPTER VIII. In which Pen is kept waiting at the Door, while the Reader is informed who little Laura was.
+ CHAPTER IX. In which the Major opens the Campaign
+ CHAPTER X. Facing the Enemy
+ CHAPTER XI. Negotiation
+ CHAPTER XII. In which a Shooting Match is proposed
+ CHAPTER XIII. A Crisis
+ CHAPTER XIV. In which Miss Fotheringay makes a new Engagement
+ CHAPTER XV. The happy Village
+ CHAPTER XVI. More Storms in the Puddle
+ CHAPTER XVII. Which concludes the first Part of this History
+ CHAPTER XVIII. Alma Mater
+ CHAPTER XIX. Pendennis of Boniface
+ CHAPTER XX. Rake’s Progress
+ CHAPTER XXI. Flight after Defeat
+ CHAPTER XXII. Prodigal’s Return
+ CHAPTER XXIII. New Faces
+ CHAPTER XXIV. A Little Innocent
+ CHAPTER XXV. Contains both Love and Jealousy
+ CHAPTER XXVI. A House full of Visitors
+ CHAPTER XXVII. Contains some Ball-practising
+ CHAPTER XXVIII. Which is both Quarrelsome and Sentimental
+ CHAPTER XXIX. Babylon
+ CHAPTER XXX. The Knights of the Temple
+ CHAPTER XXXI. Old and new Acquaintances
+ CHAPTER XXXII. In which the Printer’s Devil comes to the Door
+ CHAPTER XXXIII. Which is passed in the Neighbourhood of Ludgate Hill
+ CHAPTER XXXIV. In which the History still hovers about Fleet Street
+ CHAPTER XXXV. Dinner in the Row
+ CHAPTER XXXVI. The Pall Mall Gazette
+ CHAPTER XXXVII. Where Pen appears in Town and Country
+ CHAPTER XXXVIII. In which the Sylph reappears
+ CHAPTER XXXIX. In which Colonel Altamont appears and disappears
+ CHAPTER XL. Relates to Mr. Harry Foker’s Affairs
+ CHAPTER XLI. Carries the Reader both to Richmond and Greenwich
+ CHAPTER XLII. Contains a novel Incident
+ CHAPTER XLIII. Alsatia
+ CHAPTER XLIV. In which the Colonel narrates some of his Adventures
+ CHAPTER XLV. A Chapter of Conversations
+ CHAPTER XLVI. Miss Amory’s Partners
+ CHAPTER XLVII. Monseigneur s’amuse
+ CHAPTER XLVIII. A Visit of Politeness
+ CHAPTER XLIX. In Shepherd’s Inn
+ CHAPTER L. In or near the Temple Garden
+ CHAPTER LI. The happy Village again
+ CHAPTER LII. Which had very nearly been the last of the Story
+ CHAPTER LIII. A critical Chapter
+ CHAPTER LIV. Convalescence
+ CHAPTER LV. Fanny’s Occupation’s gone
+ CHAPTER LVI. In which Fanny engages a new Medical Man
+ CHAPTER LVII. Foreign Ground
+ CHAPTER LVIII. “Fairoaks to let”
+ CHAPTER LIX. Old Friends
+ CHAPTER LX. Explanations
+ CHAPTER LXI. Conversations
+ CHAPTER LXII. The Way of the World
+ CHAPTER LXIII. Which accounts perhaps for Chapter LXI.
+ CHAPTER LXIV. Phyllis and Corydon
+ CHAPTER LXV. Temptation
+ CHAPTER LXVI. In which Pen begins his Canvass
+ CHAPTER LXVII. In which Pen begins to doubt about his Election
+ CHAPTER LXVIII. In which the Major is bidden to Stand and Deliver
+ CHAPTER LXIX. In which the Major neither yields his Money nor his Life
+ CHAPTER LXX. In which Pendennis counts his Eggs
+ CHAPTER LXXI. Fiat Justitia
+ CHAPTER LXXII. In which the Decks begin to clear
+ CHAPTER LXXIII. Mr. and Mrs. Sam Huxter
+ CHAPTER LXXIV. Shows how Arthur had better have taken a Return-ticket
+ CHAPTER LXXV. A Chapter of Match-making
+ CHAPTER LXXVI. Exeunt Omnes
+
+
+
+
+TO DR. JOHN ELLIOTSON
+
+My Dear Doctor,
+
+Thirteen months ago, when it seemed likely that this story had come to
+a close, a kind friend brought you to my bedside, whence, in all
+probability, I never should have risen but for your constant
+watchfulness and skill. I like to recall your great goodness and
+kindness (as well as many acts of others, showing quite a surprising
+friendship and sympathy) at that time, when kindness and friendship
+were most needed and welcome.
+
+And as you would take no other fee but thanks, let me record them here
+in behalf of me and mine, and subscribe myself
+
+Yours most sincerely and gratefully,
+
+W. M. THACKERAY.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+If this kind of composition, of which the two years’ product is now
+laid before the public, fail in art, as it constantly does and must, it
+at least has the advantage of a certain truth and honesty, which a work
+more elaborate might lose. In his constant communication with the
+reader, the writer is forced into frankness of expression, and to speak
+out his own mind and feelings as they urge him. Many a slip of the pen
+and the printer, many a word spoken in haste, he sees and would recall
+as he looks over his volume. It is a sort of confidential talk between
+writer and reader, which must often be dull, must often flag. In the
+course of his volubility, the perpetual speaker must of necessity lay
+bare his own weaknesses, vanities, peculiarities. And as we judge of a
+man’s character, after long frequenting his society, not by one speech,
+or by one mood or opinion, or by one day’s talk, but by the tenor of
+his general bearing and conversation; so of a writer, who delivers
+himself up to you perforce unreservedly, you say, Is he honest? Does he
+tell the truth in the main? Does he seem actuated by a desire to find
+out and speak it? Is he a quack, who shams sentiment, or mouths for
+effect? Does he seek popularity by claptraps or other arts? I can no
+more ignore good fortune than any other chance which has befallen me. I
+have found many thousands more readers than I ever looked for. I have
+no right to say to these, You shall not find fault with my art, or fall
+asleep over my pages; but I ask you to believe that this person writing
+strives to tell the truth. If there is not that, there is nothing.
+
+Perhaps the lovers of ‘excitement’ may care to know, that this book
+began with a very precise plan, which was entirely put aside. Ladies
+and gentlemen, you were to have been treated, and the writer’s and the
+publisher’s pocket benefited, by the recital of the most active
+horrors. What more exciting than a ruffian (with many admirable
+virtues) in St. Giles’s, visited constantly by a young lady from
+Belgravia? What more stirring than the contrasts of society? the
+mixture of slang and fashionable language? the escapes, the battles,
+the murders? Nay, up to nine o’clock this very morning, my poor friend,
+Colonel Altamont, was doomed to execution, and the author only relented
+when his victim was actually at the window.
+
+The ‘exciting’ plan was laid aside (with a very honourable forbearance
+on the part of the publishers), because, on attempting it, I found that
+I failed from want of experience of my subject; and never having been
+intimate with any convict in my life, and the manners of ruffians and
+gaol-birds being quite unfamiliar to me, the idea of entering into
+competition with M. Eugène Sue was abandoned. To describe a real
+rascal, you must make him so horrible that he would be too hideous to
+show; and unless the painter paints him fairly, I hold he has no right
+to show him at all.
+
+Even the gentlemen of our age—this is an attempt to describe one of
+them, no better nor worse than most educated men—even these we cannot
+show as they are, with the notorious foibles and selfishness of their
+lives and their education. Since the author of Tom Jones was buried, no
+writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost
+power a MAN. We must drape him, and give him a certain conventional
+simper. Society will not tolerate the Natural in our Art. Many ladies
+have remonstrated and subscribers left me, because, in the course of
+the story, I described a young man resisting and affected by
+temptation.
+
+My object was to say, that he had the passions to feel, and the
+manliness and generosity to overcome them. You will not hear—it is best
+to know it—what moves in the real world, what passes in society, in the
+clubs, colleges, mess-rooms,—what is the life and talk of your sons. A
+little more frankness than is customary has been attempted in this
+story; with no bad desire on the writer’s part, it is hoped, and with
+no ill consequence to any reader. If truth is not always pleasant, at
+any rate truth is best, from whatever chair—from those whence graver
+writers or thinkers argue, as from that at which the story-teller sits
+as he concludes his labour, and bids his kind reader farewell.
+
+KENSINGTON, Nov. 26th, 1850.
+
+
+
+
+PENDENNIS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+Shows how First Love may interrupt Breakfast
+
+
+One fine morning in the full London season, Major Arthur Pendennis came
+over from his lodgings, according to his custom, to breakfast at a
+certain Club in Pall Mall, of which he was a chief ornament. As he was
+one of the finest judges of wine in England, and a man of active,
+dominating, and inquiring spirit, he had been very properly chosen to
+be a member of the Committee of this Club, and indeed was almost the
+manager of the institution; and the stewards and waiters bowed before
+him as reverentially as to a Duke or a Field-Marshal.
+
+At a quarter past ten the Major invariably made his appearance in the
+best blacked boots in all London, with a checked morning cravat that
+never was rumpled until dinner time, a buff waistcoat which bore the
+crown of his sovereign on the buttons, and linen so spotless that Mr.
+Brummel himself asked the name of his laundress, and would probably
+have employed her had not misfortunes compelled that great man to fly
+the country. Pendennis’s coat, his white gloves, his whiskers, his very
+cane, were perfect of their kind as specimens of the costume of a
+military man _en retraite_. At a distance, or seeing his back merely,
+you would have taken him to be not more than thirty years old: it was
+only by a nearer inspection that you saw the factitious nature of his
+rich brown hair, and that there were a few crow’s-feet round about the
+somewhat faded eyes of his handsome mottled face. His nose was of the
+Wellington pattern. His hands and wristbands were beautifully long and
+white. On the latter he wore handsome gold buttons given to him by his
+Royal Highness the Duke of York, and on the others more than one
+elegant ring, the chief and largest of them being emblazoned with the
+famous arms of Pendennis.
+
+He always took possession of the same table in the same corner of the
+room, from which nobody ever now thought of ousting him. One or two mad
+wags and wild fellows had in former days, and in freak or bravado,
+endeavoured twice or thrice to deprive him of this place; but there was
+a quiet dignity in the Major’s manner as he took his seat at the next
+table, and surveyed the interlopers, which rendered it impossible for
+any man to sit and breakfast under his eye; and that table—by the fire,
+and yet near the window—became his own. His letters were laid out there
+in expectation of his arrival, and many was the young fellow about town
+who looked with wonder at the number of those notes, and at the seals
+and franks which they bore. If there was any question about etiquette,
+society, who was married to whom, of what age such and such a duke was,
+Pendennis was the man to whom every one appealed. Marchionesses used to
+drive up to the Club, and leave notes for him, or fetch him out. He was
+perfectly affable. The young men liked to walk with him in the Park or
+down Pall Mall; for he touched his hat to everybody, and every other
+man he met was a lord.
+
+The Major sate down at his accustomed table then, and while the waiters
+went to bring him his toast and his hot newspaper, he surveyed his
+letters through his gold double eye-glass. He carried it so gaily, you
+would hardly have known it was spectacles in disguise, and examined one
+pretty note after another, and laid them by in order. There were large
+solemn dinner cards, suggestive of three courses and heavy
+conversation; there were neat little confidential notes, conveying
+female entreaties; there was a note on thick official paper from the
+Marquis of Steyne, telling him to come to Richmond to a little party at
+the Star and Garter, and speak French, which language the Major
+possessed very perfectly; and another from the Bishop of Ealing and
+Mrs. Trail, requesting the honour of Major Pendennis’s company at
+Ealing House, all of which letters Pendennis read gracefully, and with
+the more satisfaction, because Glowry, the Scotch surgeon, breakfasting
+opposite to him, was looking on, and hating him for having so many
+invitations, which nobody ever sent to Glowry.
+
+These perused, the Major took out his pocket-book to see on what days
+he was disengaged, and which of these many hospitable calls he could
+afford to accept or decline.
+
+He threw over Cutler, the East India Director, in Baker Street, in
+order to dine with Lord Steyne and the little French party at the Star
+and Garter—the Bishop he accepted, because, though the dinner was slow,
+he liked to dine with bishops—and so went through his list and disposed
+of them according to his fancy or interest. Then he took his breakfast
+and looked over the paper, the gazette, the births and deaths, and the
+fashionable intelligence, to see that his name was down among the
+guests at my Lord So-and-so’s fête, and in the intervals of these
+occupations carried on cheerful conversation with his acquaintances
+about the room.
+
+Among the letters which formed Major Pendennis’s budget for that
+morning there was only one unread, and which lay solitary and apart
+from all the fashionable London letters, with a country postmark and a
+homely seal. The superscription was in a pretty delicate female hand,
+and though marked ‘Immediate’ by the fair writer, with a strong dash of
+anxiety under the word, yet the Major had, for reasons of his own,
+neglected up to the present moment his humble rural petitioner, who to
+be sure could hardly hope to get a hearing among so many grand folks
+who attended his levee. The fact was, this was a letter from a female
+relative of Pendennis, and while the grandees of her brother’s
+acquaintance were received and got their interview, and drove off, as
+it were, the patient country letter remained for a long time waiting
+for an audience in the ante-chamber under the slop-bason.
+
+At last it came to be this letter’s turn, and the Major broke a seal
+with ‘Fairoaks’ engraved upon it, and ‘Clavering St. Mary’s’ for a
+postmark. It was a double letter, and the Major commenced perusing the
+envelope before he attacked the inner epistle.
+
+“Is it a letter from another _Jook_,” growled Mr. Glowry, inwardly,
+“Pendennis would not be leaving that to the last, I’m thinking.”
+
+“My dear Major Pendennis,” the letter ran, “I beg and implore you to
+come to me _immediately_”—very likely, thought Pendennis, and Steyne’s
+dinner to-day—“I am in the very greatest grief and perplexity. My
+dearest boy, who has been hitherto everything the fondest mother could
+wish, is grieving me _dreadfully_. He has formed—I can hardly write
+it—a passion, an infatuation,”—the Major grinned—“for an actress who
+has been performing here. She is at least twelve years older than
+Arthur—who will not be eighteen till next February—and the wretched boy
+insists upon marrying her.”
+
+“Hay! What’s making Pendennis swear now?”—Mr. Glowry asked of himself,
+for rage and wonder were concentrated in the Major’s open mouth, as he
+read this astounding announcement.
+
+“Do, my dear friend,” the grief-stricken lady went on, “come to me
+instantly on the receipt of this; and, as Arthur’s guardian, entreat,
+command, the wretched child to give up this most deplorable
+resolution.” And, after more entreaties to the above effect, the writer
+concluded by signing herself the Major’s ‘unhappy affectionate sister,
+Helen Pendennis.’
+
+“Fairoaks, Tuesday”—the Major concluded, reading the last words of the
+letter—“A d——d pretty business at Fairoaks, Tuesday; now let us see
+what the boy has to say;” and he took the other letter, which was
+written in a great floundering boy’s hand, and sealed with the large
+signet of the Pendennises, even larger than the Major’s own, and with
+supplementary wax sputtered all round the seal, in token of the
+writer’s tremulousness and agitation.
+
+The epistle ran thus:
+
+“FAIROAKS, _Monday, Midnight_.
+
+
+“MY DEAR UNCLE,
+
+
+In informing you of my engagement with Miss Costigan, daughter of J.
+Chesterfield Costigan, Esq., of Costiganstown, but, perhaps, better
+known to you under her professional name of Miss Fotheringay, of the
+Theatres Royal Drury Lane and Crow Street, and of the Norwich and Welsh
+Circuit, I am aware that I make an announcement which cannot, according
+to the present prejudices of society at least, be welcome to my family.
+My dearest mother, on whom, God knows, I would wish to inflict no
+needless pain, is deeply moved and grieved, I am sorry to say, by the
+intelligence which I have this night conveyed to her. I beseech you, my
+dear Sir, to come down and reason with her and console her. Although
+obliged by poverty to earn an honourable maintenance by the exercise of
+her splendid talents, Miss Costigan’s family is as ancient and noble as
+our own. When our ancestor, Ralph Pendennis, landed with Richard II. in
+Ireland, my Emily’s forefathers were kings of that country. I have the
+information from Mr. Costigan, who, like yourself, is a military man.
+
+“It is in vain I have attempted to argue with my dear mother, and prove
+to her that a young lady of irreproachable character and lineage,
+endowed with the most splendid gifts of beauty and genius, who devotes
+herself to the exercise of one of the noblest professions, for the
+sacred purpose of maintaining her family, is a being whom we should all
+love and reverence, rather than avoid;—my poor mother has prejudices
+which it is impossible for my logic to overcome, and refuses to welcome
+to her arms one who is disposed to be her most affectionate daughter
+through life.
+
+“Although Miss Costigan is some years older than myself, that
+circumstance does not operate as a barrier to my affection, and I am
+sure will not influence its duration. A love like mine, Sir, I feel, is
+contracted once and for ever. As I never had dreamed of love until I
+saw her—I feel now that I shall die without ever knowing another
+passion. It is the fate of my life. It was Miss C.’s own delicacy which
+suggested that the difference of age, which I never felt, might operate
+as a bar to our union. But having loved once, I should despise myself,
+and be unworthy of my name as a gentleman, if I hesitated to abide by
+my passion: if I did not give all where I felt all, and endow the woman
+who loves me fondly with my whole heart and my whole fortune.
+
+“I press for a speedy marriage with my Emily—for why, in truth, should
+it be delayed? A delay implies a doubt, which I cast from me as
+unworthy. It is impossible that my sentiments can change towards
+Emily—that at any age she can be anything but the sole object of my
+love. Why, then, wait? I entreat you, my dear Uncle, to come down and
+reconcile my dear mother to our union, and I address you as a man of
+the world, _qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes_, who will not
+feel any of the weak scruples and fears which agitate a lady who has
+scarcely ever left her village.
+
+“Pray, come down to us immediately. I am quite confident that—apart
+from considerations of fortune—you will admire and approve of my Emily.
+
+“Your affectionate Nephew,
+“ARTHUR PENDENNIS, JR.”
+
+
+When the Major had concluded the perusal of this letter, his
+countenance assumed an expression of such rage and horror that Glowry,
+the surgeon-official, felt in his pocket for his lancet, which he
+always carried in his card-case, and thought his respected friend was
+going into a fit. The intelligence was indeed sufficient to agitate
+Pendennis. The head of the Pendennises going to marry an actress ten
+years his senior,—a headstrong boy going to plunge into matrimony. “The
+mother has spoiled the young rascal,” groaned the Major inwardly, “with
+her cursed sentimentality and romantic rubbish. My nephew marry a
+tragedy queen! Gracious mercy, people will laugh at me so that I shall
+not dare show my head!” And he thought with an inexpressible pang that
+he must give up Lord Steyne’s dinner at Richmond, and must lose his
+rest and pass the night in an abominable tight mail-coach, instead of
+taking pleasure, as he had promised himself, in some of the most
+agreeable and select society in England.
+
+And he must not only give up this but all other engagements for some
+time to come. Who knows how long the business might detain him. He
+quitted his breakfast table for the adjoining writing-room, and there
+ruefully wrote off refusals to the Marquis, the Earl, the Bishop, and
+all his entertainers; and he ordered his servant to take places in the
+mail-coach for that evening, of course charging the sum which he
+disbursed for the seats to the account of the widow and the young
+scapegrace of whom he was guardian.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+A Pedigree and other Family Matters
+
+
+Early in the Regency of George the Magnificent, there lived in a small
+town in the west of England, called Clavering, a gentleman whose name
+was Pendennis. There were those alive who remembered having seen his
+name painted on a board, which was surmounted by a gilt pestle and
+mortar over the door of a very humble little shop in the city of Bath,
+where Mr. Pendennis exercised the profession of apothecary and surgeon;
+and where he not only attended gentlemen in their sick-rooms, and
+ladies at the most interesting periods of their lives, but would
+condescend to sell a brown-paper plaster to a farmer’s wife across the
+counter,—or to vend tooth-brushes, hair-powder, and London perfumery.
+For these facts a few folks at Clavering could vouch, where people’s
+memories were more tenacious, perhaps, than they are in a great
+bustling metropolis.
+
+And yet that little apothecary who sold a stray customer a pennyworth
+of salts, or a more fragrant cake of Windsor soap, was a gentleman of
+good education, and of as old a family as any in the whole county of
+Somerset. He had a Cornish pedigree which carried the Pendennises up to
+the time of the Druids, and who knows how much farther back? They had
+intermarried with the Normans at a very late period of their family
+existence, and they were related to all the great families of Wales and
+Brittany. Pendennis had had a piece of University education too, and
+might have pursued that career with great honour, but that in his
+second year at Cambridge his father died insolvent, and poor Pen was
+obliged to betake himself to the pestle and apron. He always detested
+the trade, and it was only necessity, and the offer of his mother’s
+brother, a London apothecary of low family, into which Pendennis’s
+father had demeaned himself by marrying, that forced John Pendennis
+into so odious a calling.
+
+He quickly after his apprenticeship parted from the coarse-minded
+practitioner his relative, and set up for himself at Bath with his
+modest medical ensign. He had for some time a hard struggle with
+poverty; and it was all he could do to keep the shop and its gilt
+ornaments in decent repair, and his bed-ridden mother in comfort: but
+Lady Ribstone happening to be passing to the Rooms with an intoxicated
+Irish chairman who bumped her ladyship up against Pen’s very door-post,
+and drove his chair-pole through the handsomest pink bottle in the
+surgeon’s window, alighted screaming from her vehicle, and was
+accommodated with a chair in Mr. Pendennis’s shop, where she was
+brought round with cinnamon and sal-volatile.
+
+Mr. Pendennis’s manners were so uncommonly gentlemanlike and soothing,
+that her ladyship, the wife of Sir Pepin Ribstone, of Codlingbury, in
+the county of Somerset, Bart., appointed her preserver, as she called
+him, apothecary to her person and family, which was very large. Master
+Ribstone coming home for the Christmas holidays from Eton, over-ate
+himself and had a fever, in which Mr. Pendennis treated him with the
+greatest skill and tenderness. In a word, he got the good graces of the
+Codlingbury family, and from that day began to prosper. The good
+company of Bath patronised him, and amongst the ladies especially he
+was beloved and admired. First his humble little shop became a smart
+one: then he discarded the selling of tooth-brushes and perfumery, as
+unworthy of a gentleman of an ancient lineage: then he shut up the shop
+altogether, and only had a little surgery attended by a genteel young
+man: then he had a gig with a man to drive him; and, before her exit
+from this world, his poor old mother had the happiness of seeing from
+her bedroom window to which her chair was rolled, her beloved John step
+into a close carriage of his own, a one-horse carriage it is true, but
+with the arms of the family of Pendennis handsomely emblazoned on the
+panels. “What would Arthur say now?” she asked, speaking of a younger
+son of hers—“who never so much as once came to see my dearest Johnny
+through all the time of his poverty and struggles!”
+
+“Captain Pendennis is with his regiment in India, mother,” Mr.
+Pendennis remarked, “and, if you please, I wish you would not call me
+Johnny before the young man—before Mr. Parkins.”
+
+Presently the day came when she ceased to call her son by the name of
+Johnny, or by any other title of endearment or affection; and his house
+was very lonely without that kind though querulous voice. He had his
+night-bell altered and placed in the room in which the good old lady
+had grumbled for many a long year, and he slept in the great large bed
+there. He was upwards of forty years old when these events befell;
+before the war was over; before George the Magnificent came to the
+throne; before this history indeed: but what is a gentleman without his
+pedigree? Pendennis, by this time, had his handsomely framed and
+glazed, and hanging up in his drawing-room between the pictures of
+Codlingbury House in Somersetshire, and St. Boniface’s College,
+Cambridge, where he had passed the brief and happy days of his early
+manhood. As for the pedigree he had taken it out of a trunk, as
+Sterne’s officer called for his sword, now that he was a gentleman and
+could show it.
+
+About the time of Mrs. Pendennis’s demise, another of her son’s
+patients likewise died at Bath; that virtuous woman, old Lady
+Pontypool, daughter of Reginald twelfth Earl of Bareacres, and by
+consequence great-grand-aunt to the present Earl, and widow of John
+second Lord Pontypool, and likewise of the Reverend Jonas Wales, of the
+Armageddon Chapel, Clifton. For the last five years of her life her
+ladyship had been attended by Miss Helen Thistlewood, a very distant
+relative of the noble house of Bareacres, before mentioned, and
+daughter of Lieutenant R. Thistlewood, R.N., killed at the battle of
+Copenhagen. Under Lady Pontypool’s roof Miss Thistlewood found a
+comfortable shelter, as far as boarding and lodging went, but suffered
+under such an infernal tyranny as only women can inflict on, or bear
+from, one another: the Doctor, who paid his visits to my Lady Pontypool
+at least twice a day, could not but remark the angelical sweetness and
+kindness with which the young lady bore her elderly relative’s insults;
+and it was, as they were going in the fourth mourning coach to attend
+her ladyship’s venerated remains to Bath Abbey, where they now repose,
+that he looked at her sweet pale face and resolved upon putting a
+certain question to her, the very nature of which made his pulse beat
+ninety, at least.
+
+He was older than she by more than twenty years, and at no time the
+most ardent of men. Perhaps he had had a love affair in early life
+which he had to strangle—perhaps all early love affairs ought to be
+strangled or drowned, like so many blind kittens: well, at
+three-and-forty he was a collected quiet little gentleman in black
+stockings with a bald head, and a few days after the ceremony he called
+to see her, and, as he felt her pulse, he kept hold of her hand in his,
+and asked her where she was going to live now that the Pontypool family
+had come down upon the property, which was being nailed into boxes, and
+packed into hampers, and swaddled up with haybands, and buried in
+straw, and locked under three keys in green baize plate-chests, and
+carted away under the eyes of poor Miss Helen,—he asked her where she
+was going to live finally.
+
+Her eyes filled with tears, and she said she did not know. She had a
+little money. The old lady had left her a thousand pounds, indeed; and
+she would go into a boarding-house or into a school: in fine, she did
+not know where.
+
+Then Pendennis, looking into her pale face, and keeping hold of her
+cold little hand, asked her if she would come and live with him? He was
+old compared to—to so blooming a young lady as Miss Thistlewood
+(Pendennis was of the grave old complimentary school of gentlemen and
+apothecaries), but he was of good birth, and, he flattered himself, of
+good principles and temper. His prospects were good, and daily mending.
+He was alone in the world, and had need of a kind and constant
+companion, whom it would be the study of his life to make happy; in a
+word, he recited to her a little speech, which he had composed that
+morning in bed, and rehearsed and perfected in his carriage, as he was
+coming to wait upon the young lady.
+
+Perhaps if he had had an early love-passage, she too had one day hoped
+for a different lot than to be wedded to a little gentleman who rapped
+his teeth and smiled artificially, who was laboriously polite to the
+butler as he slid upstairs into the drawing-room, and profusely civil
+to the lady’s-maid, who waited at the bed-room door; for whom her old
+patroness used to ring as for a servant, and who came with even more
+eagerness; who got up stories, as he sent in draughts, for his
+patient’s amusement and his own profit: perhaps she would have chosen a
+different man—but she knew, on the other hand, how worthy Pendennis
+was, how prudent, how honourable; how good he had been to his mother,
+and constant in his care of her; and the upshot of this interview was,
+that she, blushing very much, made Pendennis an extremely low curtsey,
+and asked leave to—to consider his very kind proposal.
+
+They were married in the dull Bath season, which was the height of the
+season in London. And Pendennis having previously, through a
+professional friend, M.R.C.S., secured lodgings in Holles Street,
+Cavendish Square, took his wife thither in a chaise and pair; conducted
+her to the theatres, the Parks, and the Chapel Royal; showed her the
+folks going to a drawing-room, and, in a word, gave her all the
+pleasures of the town. He likewise left cards upon Lord Pontypool, upon
+the Right Honourable the Earl of Bareacres, and upon Sir Pepin and Lady
+Ribstone, his earliest and kindest patrons. Bareacres took no notice of
+the cards. Pontypool called, admired Mrs. Pendennis, and said Lady
+Pontypool would come and see her, which her ladyship did, per proxy of
+John her footman, who brought her card, and an invitation to a concert
+five weeks off. Pendennis was back in his little one-horse carriage,
+dispensing draughts and pills at that time: but the Ribstones asked him
+and Mrs. Pendennis to an entertainment, of which Mr. Pendennis bragged
+to the last day of his life.
+
+The secret ambition of Mr. Pendennis had always been to be a gentleman.
+It takes much time and careful saving for a provincial doctor, whose
+gains are not very large, to lay by enough money wherewith to purchase
+a house and land: but besides our friend’s own frugality and prudence,
+fortune aided him considerably in his endeavour, and brought him to the
+point which he so panted to attain. He laid out some money very
+advantageously in the purchase of a house and small estate close upon
+the village of Clavering before mentioned. Words cannot describe, nor
+did he himself ever care to confess to any one, his pride when he found
+himself a real landed proprietor, and could walk over acres of which he
+was the master. A lucky purchase which he had made of shares in a
+copper-mine added very considerably to his wealth, and he realised with
+great prudence while this mine was still at its full vogue. Finally, he
+sold his business at Bath, to Mr. Parkins, for a handsome sum of ready
+money, and for an annuity to be paid to him during a certain number of
+years after he had for ever retired from the handling of the mortar and
+pestle.
+
+Arthur Pendennis, his son, was eight years old at the time of this
+event, so that it is no wonder that the latter, who left Bath and the
+surgery so young, should forget the existence of such a place almost
+entirely, and that his father’s hands had ever been dirtied by the
+compounding of odious pills, or the preparation of filthy plasters. The
+old man never spoke about the shop himself, never alluded to it; called
+in the medical practitioner of Clavering to attend his family when
+occasion arrived; sunk the black breeches and stockings altogether;
+attended market and sessions, and wore a bottle-green coat and brass
+buttons with drab gaiters, just as if he had been an English gentleman
+all his life. He used to stand at his lodge-gate, and see the coaches
+come in, and bow gravely to the guards and coachmen as they touched
+their hats and drove by. It was he who founded the Clavering Book Club:
+and set up the Samaritan Soup and Blanket Society. It was he who
+brought the mail, which used to run through Cacklefield before, away
+from that village and through Clavering. At church he was equally
+active as a vestryman and a worshipper. At market every Thursday, he
+went from pen to stall, looked at samples of oats, and munched corn,
+felt beasts, punched geese in the breast, and weighed them with a
+knowing air, and did business with the farmers at the Clavering Arms,
+as well as the oldest frequenter of that house of call. It was now his
+shame, as it formerly was his pride, to be called Doctor, and those who
+wished to please him always gave him the title of Squire.
+
+Heaven knows where they came from, but a whole range of Pendennis
+portraits presently hung round the Doctor’s oak dining-room; Lelys and
+Vandykes he vowed all the portraits to be, and when questioned as to
+the history of the originals, would vaguely say they were ‘ancestors of
+his.’ You could see by his wife’s looks that she disbelieved in these
+genealogical legends, for she generally endeavoured to turn the
+conversation when he commenced them. But his little boy believed them
+to their fullest extent, and Roger Pendennis of Agincourt, Arthur
+Pendennis of Crecy, General Pendennis of Blenheim and Oudenarde, were
+as real and actual beings for this young gentleman as—whom shall we
+say?—as Robinson Crusoe, or Peter Wilkins, or the Seven Champions of
+Christendom, whose histories were in his library.
+
+Pendennis’s fortune, which, at the best, was not above eight hundred
+pounds a year, did not, with the best economy and management, permit of
+his living with the great folks of the county; but he had a decent
+comfortable society of the second-best sort. If they were not the
+roses, they lived near the roses, as it were, and had a good deal of
+the odour of genteel life. They had out their plate, and dined each
+other round in the moonlight nights twice a year, coming a dozen miles
+to these festivals; and besides the county, the Pendennises had the
+society of the town of Clavering, as much as, nay, more than they
+liked: for Mrs. Pybus was always poking about Helen’s conservatories,
+and intercepting the operation of her soup-tickets and coal-clubs.
+Captain Glanders (H. P., 50th Dragoon Guards) was for ever swaggering
+about the Squire’s stables and gardens, and endeavouring to enlist him
+in his quarrels with the Vicar, with the Postmaster, with the Reverend
+F. Wapshot of Clavering Grammar School, for overflogging his son,
+Anglesea Glanders,—with all the village in fine. And Pendennis and his
+wife often blessed themselves, that their house of Fairoaks was nearly
+a mile out of Clavering, or their premises would never have been free
+from the prying eyes and prattle of one or other of the male and female
+inhabitants there.
+
+Fairoaks lawn comes down to the little river Brawl, and on the other
+side were the plantations and woods (as much as were left of them) of
+Clavering Park, Sir Francis Clavering, Bart. The park was let out in
+pasture and fed down by sheep and cattle, when the Pendennises came
+first to live at Fairoaks. Shutters were up in the house; a splendid
+freestone palace, with great stairs, statues, and porticos, whereof you
+may see a picture in the ‘Beauties of England and Wales.’ Sir Richard
+Clavering, Sir Francis’s grandfather, had commenced the ruin of the
+family by the building of this palace: his successor had achieved the
+ruin by living in it. The present Sir Francis was abroad somewhere; nor
+could anybody be found rich enough to rent that enormous mansion,
+through the deserted rooms, mouldy clanking halls, and dismal galleries
+of which, Arthur Pendennis many a time walked trembling when he was a
+boy. At sunset, from the lawn of Fairoaks, there was a pretty sight: it
+and the opposite park of Clavering were in the habit of putting on a
+rich golden tinge, which became them both wonderfully. The upper
+windows of the great house flamed so as to make your eyes wink; the
+little river ran off noisily westward, and was lost in a sombre wood,
+behind which the towers of the old abbey church of Clavering (whereby
+that town is called Clavering St. Mary’s to the present day) rose up in
+purple splendour. Little Arthur’s figure and his mother’s, cast long
+blue shadows over the grass; and he would repeat in a low voice (for a
+scene of great natural beauty always moved the boy, who inherited this
+sensibility from his mother) certain lines beginning, “These are thy
+glorious works, Parent of Good; Almighty! thine this universal frame,”
+greatly to Mrs. Pendennis’s delight. Such walks and conversation
+generally ended in a profusion of filial and maternal embraces; for to
+love and to pray were the main occupations of this dear woman’s life;
+and I have often heard Pendennis say in his wild way, that he felt that
+he was sure of going to heaven, for his mother never could be happy
+there without him.
+
+As for John Pendennis, as the father of the family, and that sort of
+thing, everybody had the greatest respect for him: and his orders were
+obeyed like those of the Medes and Persians. His hat was as well
+brushed, perhaps, as that of any man in this empire. His meals were
+served at the same minute every day, and woe to those who came late, as
+little Pen, a disorderly little rascal, sometimes did. Prayers were
+recited, his letters were read, his business dispatched, his stables
+and garden inspected, his hen-houses and kennel, his barn and pigstye
+visited, always at regular hours. After dinner he always had a nap with
+the Globe newspaper on his knee, and his yellow bandanna handkerchief
+on his face (Major Pendennis sent the yellow handkerchiefs from India,
+and his brother had helped in the purchase of his majority, so that
+they were good friends now). And so, as his dinner took place at six
+o’clock to a minute, and the sunset business alluded to may be supposed
+to have occurred at about half-past seven, it is probable that he did
+not much care for the view in front of his lawn windows or take any
+share in the poetry and caresses which were taking place there.
+
+They seldom occurred in his presence. However frisky they were before,
+mother and child were hushed and quiet when Mr. Pendennis walked into
+the drawing-room, his newspaper under his arm. And here, while little
+Pen, buried in a great chair, read all the books of which he could lay
+hold, the Squire perused his own articles in the ‘Gardener’s Gazette,’
+or took a solemn hand at picquet with Mrs. Pendennis, or an occasional
+friend from the village.
+
+Pendennis usually took care that at least one of his grand dinners
+should take place when his brother, the Major, who, on the return of
+his regiment from India and New South Wales, had sold out and gone upon
+half-pay, came to pay his biennial visit to Fairoaks. “My brother,
+Major Pendennis,” was a constant theme of the retired Doctor’s
+conversation. All the family delighted in my brother the Major. He was
+the link which bound them to the great world of London, and the
+fashion. He always brought down the last news of the nobility, and was
+in the constant habit of dining with lords and great folks. He spoke of
+such with soldierlike respect and decorum. He would say, “My Lord
+Bareacres has been good enough to invite me to Bareacres for the
+pheasant shooting,” or, “My Lord Steyne is so kind as to wish for my
+presence at Stillbrook for the Easter holidays;” and you may be sure
+the whereabouts of my brother the Major was carefully made known by
+worthy Mr. Pendennis to his friends at the Clavering Reading room, at
+Justice-meetings, or at the County-town. Their carriages would come
+from ten miles round to call upon Major Pendennis in his visits to
+Fairoaks; the fame of his fashion as a man about town was established
+throughout the county. There was a talk of his marrying Miss Hunkle, of
+Lilybank, old Hunkle the Attorney’s daughter, with at least fifteen
+hundred a-year to her fortune: but my brother the Major refused this
+negotiation, advantageous as it might seem to most persons. “As a
+bachelor,” he said, “nobody cares how poor I am. I have the happiness
+to live with people who are so highly placed in the world, that a few
+hundreds or thousands a year more or less can make no difference in the
+estimation in which they are pleased to hold me. Miss Hunkle, though a
+most respectable lady, is not in possession of either the birth or the
+manners, which would entitle her to be received into the sphere in
+which I have the honour to move. I shall live and die an old bachelor,
+John: and your worthy friend, Miss Hunkle, I have no doubt, will find
+some more worthy object of her affection, than a worn-out old soldier
+on half-pay.” Time showed the correctness of the surmise of the old man
+of the world; Miss Hunkle married a young French nobleman, and is now
+at this moment living at Lilybank, under the title of Baroness de
+Carambole, having been separated from her wild young scapegrace of a
+Baron very shortly after their union.
+
+The Major was a great favourite with almost all the little
+establishment of Fairoaks. He was as good-natured as he was well bred,
+and had a sincere liking and regard for his sister-in-law, whom he
+pronounced, and with perfect truth, to be as fine a lady as any in
+England, and an honour to the family. Indeed, Mrs. Pendennis’s tranquil
+beauty, her natural sweetness and kindness, and that simplicity and
+dignity which a perfect purity and innocence are sure to bestow upon a
+handsome woman, rendered her quite worthy of her brother’s praises. I
+think it is not national prejudice which makes me believe that a
+high-bred English lady is the most complete of all Heaven’s subjects in
+this world. In whom else do you see so much grace, and so much virtue;
+so much faith, and so much tenderness; with such a perfect refinement
+and chastity? And by high-bred ladies I don’t mean duchesses and
+countesses. Be they ever so high in station, they can be but ladies,
+and no more. But almost every man who lives in the world has the
+happiness, let us hope, of counting a few such persons amongst his
+circle of acquaintance—women, in whose angelical natures, there is
+something awful, as well as beautiful, to contemplate; at whose feet
+the wildest and fiercest of us must fall down and humble ourselves;—in
+admiration of that adorable purity which never seems to do or to think
+wrong.
+
+Arthur Pendennis had the good fortune to have a mother endowed with
+these happy qualities. During his childhood and youth, the boy thought
+of her as little less than an angel,—as a supernatural being, all
+wisdom, love, and beauty. When her husband drove her into the county
+town, or to the assize balls or concerts there, he would step into the
+assembly with his wife on his arm, and look the great folks in the
+face, as much as to say, “Look at that, my lord; can any of you show me
+a woman like that?” She enraged some country ladies with three times
+her money, by a sort of desperate perfection which they found in her.
+Miss Pybus said she was cold and haughty; Miss Pierce, that she was too
+proud for her station; Mrs. Wapshot, as a doctor of divinity’s lady,
+would have the pas of her, who was only the wife of a medical
+practitioner. In the meanwhile, this lady moved through the world quite
+regardless of all the comments that were made in her praise or
+disfavour. She did not seem to know that she was admired or hated for
+being so perfect: but carried on calmly through life, saying her
+prayers, loving her family, helping her neighbours, and doing her duty.
+
+That even a woman should be faultless, however, is an arrangement not
+permitted by nature, which assigns to us mental defects, as it awards
+to us headaches, illnesses, or death; without which the scheme of the
+world could not be carried on,—nay, some of the best qualities of
+mankind could not be brought into exercise. As pain produces or elicits
+fortitude and endurance; difficulty, perseverance; poverty, industry
+and ingenuity; danger, courage and what not; so the very virtues, on
+the other hand, will generate some vices: and, in fine, Mrs. Pendennis
+had that vice which Miss Pybus and Miss Pierce discovered in her,
+namely, that of pride; which did not vest itself so much in her own
+person, as in that of her family. She spoke about Mr. Pendennis (a
+worthy little gentleman enough, but there are others as good as he)
+with an awful reverence, as if he had been the Pope of Rome on his
+throne, and she a cardinal kneeling at his feet, and giving him
+incense. The Major she held to be a sort of Bayard among Majors: and as
+for her son Arthur she worshipped that youth with an ardour which the
+young scapegrace accepted almost as coolly as the statue of the Saint
+in Saint Peter’s receives the rapturous osculations which the faithful
+deliver on his toe.
+
+This unfortunate superstition and idol-worship of this good woman was
+the cause of a great deal of the misfortune which befell the young
+gentleman who is the hero of this history, and deserves therefore to be
+mentioned at the outset of his story.
+
+Arthur Pendennis’s schoolfellows at the Greyfriars School state that,
+as a boy, he was in no ways remarkable either as a dunce or as a
+scholar. He did, in fact, just as much as was required of him, and no
+more. If he was distinguished for anything it was for verse-writing:
+but was his enthusiasm ever so great, it stopped when he had composed
+the number of lines demanded by the regulations (unlike young
+Swettenham, for instance, who, with no more of poetry in his
+composition than Mr. Wakley, yet would bring up a hundred dreary
+hexameters to the master after a half-holiday; or young Fluxmore, who
+not only did his own verses, but all the fifth form’s besides). He
+never read to improve himself out of school-hours, but, on the
+contrary, devoured all the novels, plays, and poetry, on which he could
+lay his hands. He never was flogged, but it was a wonder how he escaped
+the whipping-post. When he had money he spent it royally in tarts for
+himself and his friends; he has been known to disburse nine and
+sixpence out of ten shillings awarded to him in a single day. When he
+had no funds he went on tick. When he could get no credit he went
+without, and was almost as happy. He has been known to take a thrashing
+for a crony without saying a word; but a blow, ever so slight from a
+friend, would make him roar. To fighting he was averse from his
+earliest youth, as indeed to physic, the Greek Grammar, or any other
+exertion, and would engage in none of them, except at the last
+extremity. He seldom if ever told lies, and never bullied little boys.
+Those masters or seniors who were kind to him, he loved with boyish
+ardour. And though the Doctor, when he did not know his Horace, or
+could not construe his Greek play, said that that boy Pendennis was a
+disgrace to the school, a candidate for ruin in this world, and
+perdition in the next; a profligate who would most likely bring his
+venerable father to ruin and his mother to a dishonoured grave, and the
+like—yet as the Doctor made use of these compliments to most of the
+boys in the place (which has not turned out an unusual number of felons
+and pickpockets), little Pen, at first uneasy and terrified by these
+charges, became gradually accustomed to hear them; and he has not, in
+fact, either murdered his parents, or committed any act worthy of
+transportation or hanging up to the present day.
+
+There were many of the upper boys, among the Cistercians with whom
+Pendennis was educated, who assumed all the privileges of men long
+before they quitted that seminary. Many of them, for example, smoked
+cigars—and some had already begun the practice of inebriation. One had
+fought a duel with an Ensign in a marching regiment, in consequence of
+a row at the theatre—another actually kept a buggy and horse at a
+livery stable in Covent Garden, and might be seen driving any Sunday in
+Hyde Park with a groom with squared arms and armorial buttons by his
+side. Many of the seniors were in love, and showed each other in
+confidence poems addressed to, or letters and locks of hair received
+from, young ladies—but Pen, a modest and timid youth, rather envied
+these than imitated them as yet. He had not got beyond the theory as
+yet—the practice of life was all to come. And by the way, ye tender
+mothers and sober fathers of Christian families, a prodigious thing
+that theory of life is as orally learned at a great public school. Why,
+if you could hear those boys of fourteen who blush before mothers and
+sneak off in silence in the presence of their daughters, talking among
+each other—it would be the women’s turn to blush then. Before he was
+twelve years old and if while his mother fancied him an angel of
+candour, little Pen had heard talk enough to make him quite awfully
+wise upon certain points—and so, Madam, has your pretty little
+rosy-cheeked son, who is coming home from school for the ensuing
+Christmas holidays. I don’t say that the boy is lost, or that the
+innocence has left him which he had from ‘Heaven, which is our home,’
+but that the shades of the prison-house are closing very fast over him,
+and that we are helping as much as possible to corrupt him.
+
+Well—Pen had just made his public appearance in a coat with a tail, or
+cauda virilis, and was looking most anxiously in his little study-glass
+to see if his whiskers were growing, like those of more fortunate
+youths his companions; and, instead of the treble voice with which he
+used to speak and sing (for his singing voice was a very sweet one, and
+he used when little to be made to perform ‘Home, sweet Home,’ ‘My
+pretty Page,’ and a French song or two which his mother had taught him,
+and other ballads for the delectation of the senior boys), had suddenly
+plunged into a deep bass diversified by a squeak, which when he was
+called upon to construe in school set the master and scholars
+laughing—he was about sixteen years old, in a word, when he was
+suddenly called away from his academic studies.
+
+It was at the close of the forenoon school, and Pen had been unnoticed
+all the previous part of the morning till now, when the Doctor put him
+on to construe in a Greek play. He did not know a word of it, though
+little Timmins, his form-fellow, was prompting him with all his might.
+Pen had made a sad blunder or two when the awful Chief broke out upon
+him.
+
+“Pendennis, sir,” he said, “your idleness is incorrigible and your
+stupidity beyond example. You are a disgrace to your school, and to
+your family, and I have no doubt will prove so in after-life to your
+country. If that vice, sir, which is described to us as the root of all
+evil, be really what moralists have represented (and I have no doubt of
+the correctness of their opinion), for what a prodigious quantity of
+future crime and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed!
+Miserable trifler! A boy who construes δε _and_, instead of δε _but_,
+at sixteen years of age is guilty not merely of folly, and ignorance,
+and dulness inconceivable, but of crime, of deadly crime, of filial
+ingratitude, which I tremble to contemplate. A boy, sir, who does not
+learn his Greek play cheats the parent who spends money for his
+education. A boy who cheats his parent is not very far from robbing or
+forging upon his neighbour. A man who forges on his neighbour pays the
+penalty of his crime at the gallows. And it is not such a one that I
+pity (for he will be deservedly cut off), but his maddened and
+heart-broken parents, who are driven to a premature grave by his
+crimes, or, if they live, drag on a wretched and dishonoured old age.
+Go on, sir, and I warn you that the very next mistake that you make
+shall subject you to the punishment of the rod. Who’s that laughing?
+What ill-conditioned boy is there that dares to laugh?” shouted the
+Doctor.
+
+Indeed, while the master was making this oration, there was a general
+titter behind him in the schoolroom. The orator had his back to the
+door of this ancient apartment, which was open, and a gentleman who was
+quite familiar with the place, for both Major Arthur and Mr. John
+Pendennis had been at the school, was asking the fifth-form boy who
+sate by the door for Pendennis. The lad grinning pointed to the culprit
+against whom the Doctor was pouring out the thunders of his just
+wrath—Major Pendennis could not help laughing. He remembered having
+stood under that very pillar where Pen the younger now stood, and
+having been assaulted by the Doctor’s predecessor years and years ago.
+The intelligence was ‘passed round’ that it was Pendennis’s uncle in an
+instant, and a hundred young faces wondering and giggling, between
+terror and laughter, turned now to the new-comer and then to the awful
+Doctor.
+
+The Major asked the fifth-form boy to carry his card up to the Doctor,
+which the lad did with an arch look. Major Pendennis had written on the
+card, “I must take A. P. home; his father is very ill.”
+
+As the Doctor received the card, and stopped his harangue with rather a
+scared look, the laughter of the boys, half constrained until then,
+burst out in a general shout. “Silence!” roared out the Doctor stamping
+with his foot. Pen looked up and saw who was his deliverer; the Major
+beckoned to him gravely with one of his white gloves, and tumbling down
+his books, Pen went across.
+
+The Doctor took out his watch. It was two minutes to one. “We will take
+the Juvenal at afternoon school,” he said, nodding to the Captain, and
+all the boys understanding the signal gathered up their books and
+poured out of the hall.
+
+Young Pen saw by his uncle’s face that something had happened at home.
+“Is there anything the matter with my mother?” he said. He could hardly
+speak, though, for emotion, and the tears which were ready to start.
+
+“No,” said the Major, “but your father’s very ill. Go and pack your
+trunk directly; I have got a postchaise at the gate.”
+
+Pen went off quickly to his boarding-house to do as his uncle bade him;
+and the Doctor, now left alone in the schoolroom, came out to shake
+hands with his old schoolfellow. You would not have thought it was the
+same man. As Cinderella at a particular hour became, from a blazing and
+magnificent Princess, quite an ordinary little maid in a grey
+petticoat, so, as the clock struck one, all the thundering majesty and
+awful wrath of the schoolmaster disappeared.
+
+“There is nothing serious, I hope,” said the Doctor. “It is a pity to
+take the boy away unless there is. He is a very good boy, rather idle
+and unenergetic, but he is a very honest gentlemanlike little fellow,
+though I can’t get him to construe as I wish. Won’t you come in and
+have some luncheon? My wife will be very happy to see you.”
+
+But Major Pendennis declined the luncheon. He said his brother was very
+ill, had had a fit the day before, and it was a great question if they
+should see him alive.
+
+“There’s no other son, is there?” said the Doctor. The Major answered
+“No.”
+
+“And there’s a good eh—a good eh—property I believe?” asked the other
+in an off-hand way.
+
+“H’m—so so,” said the Major. Whereupon this colloquy came to an end.
+And Arthur Pendennis got into the postchaise with his uncle never to
+come back to school any more.
+
+As the chaise drove through Clavering, the hostler standing whistling
+under the archway of the Clavering Arms, winked the postilion
+ominously, as much as to say all was over. The gardener’s wife came and
+opened the lodge-gates, and let the travellers through with a silent
+shake of the head. All the blinds were down at Fairoaks—the face of the
+old footman was as blank when he let them in. Arthur’s face was white
+too, with terror more than with grief. Whatever of warmth and love the
+deceased man might have had, and he adored his wife and loved and
+admired his son with all his heart, he had shut them up within himself;
+nor had the boy been ever able to penetrate that frigid outward
+barrier. But Arthur had been his father’s pride and glory through life,
+and his name the last which John Pendennis had tried to articulate
+whilst he lay with his wife’s hand clasping his own cold and clammy
+palm, as the flickering spirit went out into the darkness of death, and
+life and the world passed away from him.
+
+The little girl, whose face had peered for a moment under the blinds as
+the chaise came up, opened the door from the stairs into the hall, and
+taking Arthur’s hand silently as he stooped down to kiss her, led him
+upstairs to his mother. Old John opened the dining-room door for the
+Major. The room was darkened with the blinds down, and surrounded by
+all the gloomy pictures of the Pendennises. He drank a glass of wine.
+The bottle had been opened for the Squire four days before. His hat was
+brushed, and laid on the hall table: his newspapers, and his
+letter-bag, with John Pendennis, Esquire, Fairoaks, engraved upon the
+brass plate, were there in waiting. The doctor and the lawyer from
+Clavering, who had seen the chaise pass through, came up in a gig half
+an hour after the Major’s arrival, and entered by the back door. The
+former gave a detailed account of the seizure and demise of Mr.
+Pendennis, enlarged on his virtues and the estimation in which the
+neighbourhood held him; on what a loss he would be to the magistrates’
+bench, the County Hospital, etc. Mrs. Pendennis bore up wonderfully, he
+said, especially since Master Arthur’s arrival. The lawyer stayed and
+dined with Major Pendennis, and they talked business all the evening.
+The Major was his brother’s executor, and joint guardian to the boy
+with Mrs. Pendennis. Everything was left unreservedly to her, except in
+case of a second marriage,—an occasion which might offer itself in the
+case of so young and handsome a woman, Mr. Tatham gallantly said, when
+different provisions were enacted by the deceased. The Major would of
+course take entire superintendence of everything under this most
+impressive and melancholy occasion. Aware of this authority, old John
+the footman, when he brought Major Pendennis the candle to go to bed,
+followed afterwards with the plate-basket; and the next morning brought
+him the key of the hall clock—the Squire always used to wind it up of a
+Thursday, John said. Mrs. Pendennis’s maid brought him messages from
+her mistress. She confirmed the doctor’s report, of the comfort which
+Master Arthur’s arrival had caused to his mother.
+
+What passed between that lady and the boy is not of import. A veil
+should be thrown over those sacred emotions of love and grief. The
+maternal passion is a sacred mystery to me. What one sees symbolised in
+the Roman churches in the image of the Virgin Mother with a bosom
+bleeding with love, I think one may witness (and admire the Almighty
+bounty for) every day. I saw a Jewish lady, only yesterday, with a
+child at her knee, and from whose face towards the child there shone a
+sweetness so angelical, that it seemed to form a sort of glory round
+both. I protest I could have knelt before her too, and adored in her
+the Divine beneficence in endowing us with the maternal storge, which
+began with our race and sanctifies the history of mankind.
+
+So it was with this, in a word, that Mrs. Pendennis comforted herself
+on the death of her husband, whom, however, she always reverenced as
+the best, the most upright, wise, high-minded, accomplished, and awful
+of men. If the women did not make idols of us, and if they saw us as we
+see each other, would life be bearable, or could society go on? Let a
+man pray that none of his womankind should form a just estimation of
+him. If your wife knew you as you are, neighbour, she would not grieve
+much about being your widow, and would let your grave-lamp go out very
+soon, or perhaps not even take the trouble to light it. Whereas Helen
+Pendennis put up the handsomest of memorials to her husband, and
+constantly renewed it with the most precious oil.
+
+As for Arthur Pendennis, after that awful shock which the sight of his
+dead father must have produced on him, and the pity and feeling which
+such an event no doubt occasioned, I am not sure that in the very
+moment of the grief, and as he embraced his mother and tenderly
+consoled her, and promised to love her for ever, there was not
+springing up in his breast a feeling of secret triumph and exultation.
+He was the chief now and lord. He was Pendennis; and all round about
+him were his servants and handmaids. “You’ll never send me away,”
+little Laura said, tripping by him, and holding his hand. “You won’t
+send me to school, will you, Arthur?”
+
+Arthur kissed her and patted her head. No, she shouldn’t go to school.
+As for going himself, that was quite out of the question. He had
+determined that that part of his life should not be renewed. In the
+midst of the general grief, and the corpse still lying above, he had
+leisure to conclude that he would have it all holidays for the future,
+that he wouldn’t get up till he liked, or stand the bullying of the
+Doctor any more, and had made a hundred of such day-dreams and resolves
+for the future. How one’s thoughts will travel! and how quickly our
+wishes beget them! When he with Laura in his hand went into the kitchen
+on his way to the dog-kennel, the fowl-houses, and other his favourite
+haunts, all the servants there assembled in great silence with their
+friends, and the labouring men and their wives, and Sally Potter who
+went with the post-bag to Clavering, and the baker’s man from
+Clavering—all there assembled and drinking beer on the melancholy
+occasion—rose up on his entrance and bowed or curtseyed to him. They
+never used to do so last holidays, he felt at once and with
+indescribable pleasure. The cook cried out, “O Lord,” and whispered,
+“How Master Arthur do grow!” Thomas, the groom, in the act of drinking,
+put down the jug alarmed before his master. Thomas’s master felt the
+honour keenly. He went through and looked at the pointers. As Flora put
+her nose up to his waistcoat, and Ponto, yelling with pleasure, hurtled
+at his chain, Pen patronised the dogs, and said, “Poo Ponto, poo
+Flora,” in his most condescending manner. And then he went and looked
+at Laura’s hens, and at the pigs, and at the orchard, and at the dairy;
+perhaps he blushed to think that it was only last holidays he had in a
+manner robbed the great apple-tree, and been scolded by the dairymaid
+for taking cream.
+
+They buried John Pendennis, Esquire, “formerly an eminent medical
+practitioner at Bath, and subsequently an able magistrate, a benevolent
+landlord, and a benefactor to many charities and public institutions in
+this neighbourhood and county,” with one of the most handsome funerals
+that had been seen since Sir Roger Clavering was buried here, the clerk
+said, in the abbey church of Clavering St. Mary’s. A fair marble slab,
+from which the above inscription is copied, was erected over the
+Fairoaks’ pew in the church. On it you may see the Pendennis coat of
+arms, and crest, an eagle looking towards the sun, with the motto ‘nec
+tenui penna,’ to the present day. Doctor Portman alluded to the
+deceased most handsomely and affectingly, as “our dear departed
+friend,” in his sermon next Sunday; and Arthur Pendennis reigned in his
+stead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+In which Pendennis appears as a very young Man indeed
+
+
+Arthur was about sixteen years old, we have said, when he began to
+reign; in person (for I see that the artist who is to illustrate this
+book, and who makes sad work of the likeness, will never be able to
+take my friend off) he had what his friends would call a dumpy, but his
+mamma styled a neat little figure. His hair was of a healthy brown
+colour, which looks like gold in the sunshine, his face was round,
+rosy, freckled, and good-humoured, his whiskers (when those facial
+ornaments for which he sighed so ardently were awarded to him by
+nature) were decidedly of a reddish hue; in fact, without being a
+beauty, he had such a frank, good-natured kind face, and laughed so
+merrily at you out of his honest blue eyes, that no wonder Mrs.
+Pendennis thought him the pride of the whole county. Between the ages
+of sixteen and eighteen he rose from five feet six to five feet eight
+inches in height, at which altitude he paused. But his mother wondered
+at it. He was three inches taller than his father. Was it possible that
+any man could grow to be three inches taller than Mr. Pendennis?
+
+You may be certain he never went back to school; the discipline of the
+establishment did not suit him, and he liked being at home much better.
+The question of his return was debated, and his uncle was for his going
+back. The Doctor wrote his opinion that it was most important for
+Arthur’s success in after-life that he should know a Greek play
+thoroughly, but Pen adroitly managed to hint to his mother what a
+dangerous place Greyfriars was, and what sad wild fellows some of the
+chaps there were, and the timid soul, taking alarm at once, acceded to
+his desire to stay at home.
+
+Then Pen’s uncle offered to use his influence with His Royal Highness
+the Commander-in-Chief, who was pleased to be very kind to him, and
+proposed to get Pen a commission in the Foot Guards. Pen’s heart leaped
+at this: he had been to hear the band at St. James’s play on a Sunday,
+when he went out to his uncle. He had seen Tom Ricketts, of the fourth
+form, who used to wear a jacket and trousers so ludicrously tight, that
+the elder boys could not forbear using him in the quality of a butt or
+‘cockshy’—he had seen this very Ricketts arrayed in crimson and gold,
+with an immense bear-skin cap on his head, staggering under the colours
+of the regiment. Tom had recognised him and gave him a patronising nod.
+Tom, a little wretch whom he had cut over the back with a hockey-stick
+last quarter—and there he was in the centre of the square, rallying
+round the flag of his country, surrounded by bayonets, crossbelts, and
+scarlet, the band blowing trumpets and banging cymbals—talking
+familiarly to immense warriors with tufts to their chins and Waterloo
+medals. What would not Pen have given to wear such epaulettes and enter
+such a service?
+
+But Helen Pendennis, when this point was proposed to her by her son,
+put on a face full of terror and alarm. She said she “did not quarrel
+with others who thought differently, but that in her opinion a
+Christian had no right to make the army a profession. Mr. Pendennis
+never, never would have permitted his son to be a soldier. Finally, she
+should be very unhappy if he thought of it.” Now Pen would have as soon
+cut off his nose and ears as deliberately, and of aforethought malice,
+made his mother unhappy; and, as he was of such a generous disposition
+that he would give away anything to any one, he instantly made a
+present of his visionary red coat and epaulettes and his ardour for
+military glory to his mother.
+
+She thought him the noblest creature in the world. But Major Pendennis,
+when the offer of the commission was acknowledged and refused, wrote
+back a curt and somewhat angry letter to the widow, and thought his
+nephew was rather a spooney.
+
+He was contented, however, when he saw the boy’s performances out
+hunting at Christmas, when the Major came down as usual to Fairoaks.
+Pen had a very good mare, and rode her with uncommon pluck and grace.
+He took his fences with great coolness, and yet with judgment, and
+without bravado. He wrote to the chaps at school about his top-boots,
+and his feats across country. He began to think seriously of a scarlet
+coat: and his mother must own that she thought it would become him
+remarkably well; though, of course, she passed hours of anguish during
+his absence, and daily expected to see him brought home on a shutter.
+
+With these amusements, in rather too great plenty, it must not be
+assumed that Pen neglected his studies altogether. He had a natural
+taste for reading every possible kind of book which did not fall into
+his school-course. It was only when they forced his head into the
+waters of knowledge, that he refused to drink. He devoured all the
+books at home from Inchbald’s Theatre to White’s Farriery; he ransacked
+the neighbouring book-cases. He found at Clavering an old cargo of
+French novels, which he read with all his might; and he would sit for
+hours perched upon the topmost bar of Doctor Portman’s library steps
+with a folio on his knees, whether it were Hakluyt’s Travels, Hobbes’s
+Leviathan, Augustini Opera, or Chaucer’s Poems. He and the Vicar were
+very good friends, and from his Reverence, Pen learned that honest
+taste for port wine which distinguished him through life. And as for
+that dear good woman, Mrs. Portman, who was not in the least jealous,
+though her Doctor avowed himself in love with Mrs. Pendennis, whom he
+pronounced to be by far the finest lady in the county—all her grief
+was, as she looked up fondly at Pen perched on the book-ladder, that
+her daughter, Minny, was too old for him—as indeed she was—Miss Myra
+Portman being at that period only two years younger than Pen’s mother,
+and weighing as much as Pen and Mrs. Pendennis together.
+
+Are these details insipid? Look back, good friend, at your own youth,
+and ask how was that? I like to think of a well-nurtured boy, brave and
+gentle, warm-hearted and loving, and looking the world in the face with
+kind honest eyes. What bright colours it wore then, and how you enjoyed
+it! A man has not many years of such time. He does not know them whilst
+they are with him. It is only when they are passed long away that he
+remembers how dear and happy they were.
+
+In order to keep Mr. Pen from indulging in that idleness of which his
+friend the Doctor of the Cistercians had prophesied such awful
+consequences, Mr. Smirke, Dr. Portman’s curate, was engaged at a
+liberal salary, to walk or ride over from Clavering and pass several
+hours daily with the young gentleman. Smirke was a man perfectly
+faultless at a tea-table, wore a curl on his fair forehead, and tied
+his neck-cloth with a melancholy grace. He was a decent scholar and
+mathematician, and taught Pen as much as the lad was ever disposed to
+learn, which was not much. For Pen had soon taken the measure of his
+tutor, who, when he came riding into the court-yard at Fairoaks on his
+pony, turned out his toes so absurdly, and left such a gap between his
+knees and the saddle, that it was impossible for any lad endowed with a
+sense of humour to respect such an equestrian. He nearly killed Smirke
+with terror by putting him on his mare, and taking him a ride over a
+common, where the county fox-hounds (then hunted by that staunch old
+sportsman, Mr. Hardhead, of Dumplingbeare) happened to meet. Mr.
+Smirke, on Pen’s mare, Rebecca (she was named after Pen’s favourite
+heroine, the daughter of Isaac of York), astounded the hounds as much
+as he disgusted the huntsman, laming one of the former by persisting in
+riding amongst the pack, and receiving a speech from the latter, more
+remarkable for energy of language, than any oration he had ever heard
+since he left the bargemen on the banks of Isis.
+
+Smirke confided to his pupil his poems both Latin and English; and
+presented to Mrs. Pendennis a volume of the latter, printed at Clapham,
+his native place. The two read the ancient poets together, and rattled
+through them at a pleasant rate, very different from that steady
+grubbing pace with which the Cistercians used to go over the classic
+ground, scenting out each word as they went, and digging up every root
+in the way. Pen never liked to halt, but made his tutor construe when
+he was at fault, and thus galloped through the Iliad and the Odyssey,
+the tragic playwriters, writers, and the charming wicked Aristophanes
+(whom he vowed to be the greatest poet of all). But he went at such a
+pace that, though he certainly galloped through a considerable extent
+of the ancient country, he clean forgot it in after-life, and had only
+such a vague remembrance of his early classic course as a man has in
+the House of Commons, let us say, who still keeps up two or three
+quotations; or a reviewer who, just for decency’s sake, hints at a
+little Greek. Our people are the most prosaic in the world, but the
+most faithful; and with curious reverence we keep up and transmit, from
+generation to generation, the superstition of what we call the
+education of a gentleman.
+
+Besides the ancient poets, you may be sure Pen read the English with
+great gusto. Smirke sighed and shook his head sadly both about Byron
+and Moore. But Pen was a sworn fire-worshipper and a Corsair; he had
+them by heart, and used to take little Laura into the window and say,
+“Zuleika, I am not thy brother,” in tones so tragic that they caused
+the solemn little maid to open her great eyes still wider. She sat,
+until the proper hour for retirement, sewing at Mrs. Pendennis’s knee,
+and listening to Pen reading out to her of nights without comprehending
+one word of what he read.
+
+He read Shakspeare to his mother (which she said she liked, but
+didn’t), and Byron, and Pope, and his favourite Lalla Rookh, which
+pleased her indifferently. But as for Bishop Heber, and Mrs. Hemans
+above all, this lady used to melt right away, and be absorbed into her
+pocket-handkerchief, when Pen read those authors to her in his kind
+boyish voice. The ‘Christian Year’ was a book which appeared about that
+time. The son and the mother whispered it to each other with awe—faint,
+very faint, and seldom in after-life Pendennis heard that solemn
+church-music: but he always loved the remembrance of it, and of the
+times when it struck on his heart, and he walked over the fields full
+of hope and void of doubt, as the church-bells rang on Sunday morning.
+
+It was at this period of his existence, that Pen broke out in the
+Poets’ Corner of the County Chronicle, with some verses with which he
+was perfectly well satisfied. His are the verses signed ‘NEP.,’
+addressed ‘To a Tear;’ ‘On the Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo;’
+‘To Madame Caradori singing at the Assize Meetings;’ ‘On Saint
+Bartholomew’s Day’ (a tremendous denunciation of Popery, and a solemn
+warning to the people of England to rally against emancipating the
+Roman Catholics), etc., etc.—all which masterpieces, Mrs. Pendennis no
+doubt keeps to this day, along with his first socks, the first cutting
+of his hair, his bottle, and other interesting relics of his infancy.
+He used to gallop Rebecca over the neighbouring Dumpling Downs, or into
+the county town, which, if you please, we shall call Chatteris,
+spouting his own poems, and filled with quite a Byronic afflatus as he
+thought.
+
+His genius at this time was of a decidedly gloomy cast. He brought his
+mother a tragedy, in which, though he killed sixteen people before the
+second act, it made her laugh so, that he thrust the masterpiece into
+the fire in a pet. He projected an epic poem in blank verse, ‘Cortez,
+or the Conqueror of Mexico, and the Inca’s Daughter.’ He wrote part of
+‘Seneca, or the Fatal Bath,’ and ‘Ariadne in Naxos;’ classical pieces,
+with choruses and strophes and antistrophes, which sadly puzzled poor
+Mrs. Pendennis; and began a ‘History of the Jesuits,’ in which he
+lashed that Order with tremendous severity, and warned his Protestant
+fellow-countrymen of their machinations. His loyalty did his mother’s
+heart good to witness. He was a staunch, unflinching Church-and-King
+man in those days; and at the election, when Sir Giles Beanfield stood
+on the Blue interest, against Lord Trehawk, Lord Eyrie’s son, a Whig
+and a friend of Popery, Arthur Pendennis, with an immense bow for
+himself, which his mother made, and with a blue ribbon for Rebecca,
+rode alongside of the Reverend Doctor Portman, on his grey mare Dowdy,
+and at the head of the Clavering voters, whom the Doctor brought up to
+plump for the Protestant Champion.
+
+On that day Pen made his first speech at the Blue Hotel: and also, it
+appears, for the first time in his life—took a little more wine than
+was good for him. Mercy! what a scene it was at Fairoaks, when he rode
+back at ever so much o’clock at night. What moving about of lanterns in
+the court-yard and stables, though the moon was shining out; what a
+gathering of servants, as Pen came home, clattering over the bridge and
+up the stableyard, with half a score of the Clavering voters yelling
+after him the Blue song of the election.
+
+He wanted them all to come in and have some wine—some very good
+Madeira—some capital Madeira—John, go and get some Madeira,—and there
+is no knowing what the farmers would have done, had not Madam Pendennis
+made her appearance in a white wrapper, with a candle—and scared those
+zealous Blues so by the sight of her pale handsome face, that they
+touched their hats and rode off.
+
+Besides these amusements and occupations in which Mr. Pen indulged,
+there was one which forms the main business and pleasure of youth, if
+the poets tell us aright, whom Pen was always studying; and this young
+fellow’s heart was so ardent, and his imagination so eager, that it is
+not to be expected he should long escape the passion to which we
+allude, and which, ladies, you have rightly guessed to be that of Love.
+Pen sighed for it first in secret, and, like the love-sick swain in
+Ovid, opened his breast and said, “Aura, veni.” What generous youth is
+there that has not courted some such windy mistress in his time?
+
+Yes, Pen began to feel the necessity of a first love—of a consuming
+passion—of an object on which he could concentrate all those vague
+floating fancies under which he sweetly suffered—of a young lady to
+whom he could really make verses, and whom he could set up and adore,
+in place of those unsubstantial Ianthes and Zuleikas to whom he
+addressed the outpourings of his gushing muse. He read his favourite
+poems over and over again, he called upon Alma Venus the delight of
+gods and men, he translated Anacreon’s odes, and picked out passages
+suitable to his complaint from Waller, Dryden, Prior, and the like.
+Smirke and he were never weary, in their interviews, of discoursing
+about love. The faithless tutor entertained him with sentimental
+conversations in place of lectures on algebra and Greek; for Smirke was
+in love too. Who could help it, being in daily intercourse with such a
+woman? Smirke was madly in love (as far as such a mild flame as Mr.
+Smirke’s may be called madness) with Mrs. Pendennis. That honest lady,
+sitting down below stairs teaching little Laura to play the piano, or
+devising flannel petticoats for the poor round about her, or otherwise
+busied with the calm routine of her modest and spotless Christian life,
+was little aware what storms were brewing in two bosoms upstairs in the
+study—in Pen’s, as he sate in his shooting jacket, with his elbows on
+the green study-table, and his hands clutching his curly brown hair,
+Homer under his nose,—and in worthy Mr. Smirke’s, with whom he was
+reading. Here they would talk about Helen and Andromache. “Andromache’s
+like my mother,” Pen used to avouch; “but I say, Smirke, by Jove I’d
+cut off my nose to see Helen;” and he would spout certain favourite
+lines which the reader will find in their proper place in the third
+book. He drew portraits of her—they are extant still—with straight
+noses and enormous eyes, and ‘Arthur Pendennis delineavit et pinxit’
+gallantly written underneath.
+
+As for Mr. Smirke he naturally preferred Andromache. And in consequence
+he was uncommonly kind to Pen. He gave him his Elzevir Horace, of which
+the boy was fond, and his little Greek Testament which his own mamma at
+Clapham had purchased and presented to him. He bought him a silver
+pencil-case; and in the matter of learning let him do just as much or
+as little as ever he pleased. He always seemed to be on the point of
+unbosoming himself to Pen: nay, he confessed to the latter that he had
+a—an attachment, an ardently cherished attachment, about which
+Pendennis longed to hear, and said, “Tell us, old chap, is she
+handsome? has she got blue eyes or black?” But Doctor Portman’s curate,
+heaving a gentle sigh, cast up his eyes to the ceiling, and begged Pen
+faintly to change the conversation. Poor Smirke! He invited Pen to dine
+at his lodgings over Madame Fribsby’s, the milliner’s, in Clavering;
+and once when it was raining, and Mrs. Pendennis, who had driven in her
+pony-chaise into Clavering with respect to some arrangements, about
+leaving off mourning probably, was prevailed upon to enter the curate’s
+apartments, he sent out for pound-cakes instantly. The sofa on which
+she sate became sacred to him from that day: and he kept flowers in the
+glass which she drank from ever after.
+
+As Mrs. Pendennis was never tired of hearing the praises of her son, we
+may be certain that this rogue of a tutor neglected no opportunity of
+conversing with her upon that subject. It might be a little tedious to
+him to hear the stories about Pen’s generosity, about his bravery in
+fighting the big naughty boy, about his fun and jokes, about his
+prodigious skill in Latin, music, riding, etc., but what price would he
+not pay to be in her company? and the widow, after these conversations,
+thought Mr. Smirke a very pleasing and well-informed man. As for her
+son, she had not settled in her mind whether he was to be Senior
+Wrangler and Archbishop of Canterbury, or Double First Class at Oxford,
+and Lord Chancellor. That all England did not possess his peer, was a
+fact about which there was, in her mind, no manner of question.
+
+A simple person, of inexpensive habits, she began forthwith to save,
+and, perhaps, to be a little parsimonious, in favour of her boy. There
+were no entertainments, of course, at Fairoaks, during the year of her
+weeds. Nor, indeed, did the Doctor’s silver dish-covers, of which he
+was so proud, and which were flourished all over with the arms of the
+Pendennises, and surmounted with their crest, come out of the
+plate-chests again for long, long years. The household was diminished,
+and its expenses curtailed. There was a very blank anchorite repast
+when Pen dined from home: and he himself headed the remonstrance from
+the kitchen regarding the deteriorated quality of the Fairoaks beer.
+She was becoming miserly for Pen. Indeed, who ever accused women of
+being just? They are always sacrificing themselves or somebody for
+somebody else’s sake.
+
+There happened to be no young woman in the small circle of friends who
+were in the widow’s intimacy whom Pendennis could by any possibility
+gratify by endowing her with the inestimable treasure of a heart which
+he was longing to give away. Some young fellows in this predicament
+bestow their young affections upon Dolly, the dairymaid, or cast the
+eyes of tenderness upon Molly, the blacksmith’s daughter. Pen thought a
+Pendennis much too grand a personage to stoop so low. He was too
+high-minded for a vulgar intrigue, and, at the idea of an intrigue or a
+seduction, had he ever entertained it, his heart would have revolted as
+from the notion of any act of baseness or dishonour. Miss Minny Portman
+was too old, too large, and too fond of reading ‘Rollin’s Ancient
+History.’ The Miss Boardbacks, Admiral Boardback’s daughters (of St.
+Vincent’s, or Fourth of June House, as it was called), disgusted Pen
+with the London airs which they brought into the country, from
+Gloucester Place, where they passed the season, and looked down upon
+Pen as a chit. Captain Glanders’s (H.P., 50th Dragoon Guards) three
+girls were in brown-holland pinafores as yet, with the ends of their
+hair-plaits tied up in dirty pink ribbon. Not having acquired the art
+of dancing, the youth avoided such chances as he might have had of
+meeting with the fair sex at the Chatteris’ Assemblies; in fine, he was
+not in love, because there was nobody at hand to fall in love with. And
+the young monkey used to ride out, day after day, in quest, of
+Dulcinea; and peep into the pony-chaises and gentlefolks’ carriages, as
+they drove along the broad turnpike roads, with a heart beating within
+him, and a secret tremor and hope that she might be in that yellow
+postchaise coming swinging up the hill, or one of those three girls in
+beaver bonnets in the back seat of the double gig, which the fat old
+gentleman in black was driving, at four miles an hour. The postchaise
+contained a snuffy old dowager of seventy, with a maid, her
+contemporary. The three girls in the beaver bonnets were no handsomer
+than the turnips that skirted the roadside. Do as he might, and ride
+where he would, the fairy princess that he was to rescue and win, had
+not yet appeared to honest Pen.
+
+Upon these points he did not discourse to his mother. He had a world of
+his own. What generous, ardent, imaginative soul has not a secret
+pleasure-place in which it disports? Let no clumsy prying or dull
+meddling of ours try to disturb it in our children. Actaeon was a brute
+for wanting to push in where Diana was bathing. Leave him occasionally
+alone, my good madam, if you have a poet for a child. Even your
+admirable advice may be a bore sometimes. You are faultless; but it
+does not follow that everybody in your family is to think exactly like
+yourself. Yonder little child may have thoughts too deep even for your
+great mind, and fancies so coy and timid that they will not bare
+themselves when your ladyship sits by.
+
+Helen Pendennis by the force of sheer love divined a great number of
+her son’s secrets. But she kept these things in her heart (if we may so
+speak), and did not speak of them. Besides, she had made up her mind
+that he was to marry little Laura, who would be eighteen when Pen was
+six-and-twenty: and had finished his college career, and had made his
+grand tour, and was settled either in London, astonishing all the
+metropolis by his learning and eloquence at the bar, or better still in
+a sweet country parsonage surrounded with hollyhocks and roses, close
+to a delightful romantic ivy-covered church, from the pulpit of which
+Pen would utter the most beautiful sermons ever preached.
+
+While these natural sentiments were waging war and trouble in honest
+Pen’s bosom, it chanced one day that he rode into Chatteris, for the
+purpose of carrying to the County Chronicle a tremendous and thrilling
+poem for the next week’s paper; and putting up his horse according to
+custom, at the stables of the George Hotel there, he fell in with an
+old acquaintance. A grand black tandem, with scarlet wheels, came
+rattling into the inn yard, as Pen stood there in converse with the
+hostler about Rebecca; and the voice of the driver called out, “Hallo,
+Pendennis, is that you?” in a loud patronising manner. Pen had some
+difficulty in recognising under the broad-brimmed hat and the vast
+great-coats and neckcloths, with which the new-comer was habited, the
+person and figure of his quondam schoolfellow, Mr. Foker.
+
+A year’s absence had made no small difference in that gentleman. A
+youth who had been deservedly whipped a few months previously, and who
+spent his pocket-money on tarts and hardbake, now appeared before Pen
+in one of those costumes to which the public consent, that I take to be
+quite as influential in this respect as ‘Johnson’s Dictionary,’ has
+awarded the title of “Swell.’ He had a bull-dog between his legs, and
+in his scarlet shawl neckcloth was a pin representing another bull-dog
+in gold: he wore a fur waistcoat laced over with gold chains; a green
+cutaway coat with basket-buttons, and a white upper-coat ornamented
+with cheese-plate buttons, on each of which was engraved some stirring
+incident of the road or the chase; all which ornaments set off this
+young fellow’s figure to such advantage, that you would hesitate to say
+which character in life he most resembled, and whether he was a boxer
+en goguette, or a coachman in his gala suit.
+
+“Left that place for good, Pendennis?” Mr. Foker said, descending from
+his landau and giving Pendennis a finger.
+
+“Yes, this year—or more,” Pen said.
+
+“Beastly old hole,” Mr. Foker remarked. “Hate it. Hate the Doctor: hate
+Towzer, the second master; hate everybody there. Not a fit place for a
+gentleman.”
+
+“Not at all,” said Pen, with an air of the utmost consequence.
+
+“By gad, sir, I sometimes dream, now, that the Doctor’s walking into
+me,” Foker continued (and Pen smiled as he thought that he himself had
+likewise fearful dreams of this nature). “When I think of the diet
+there, by gad, sir, I wonder how I stood it. Mangy mutton, brutal beef;
+pudding on Thursdays and Sundays, and that fit to poison you. Just look
+at my leader—did you ever see a prettier animal? Drove over from
+Baymouth. Came the nine mile in two-and-forty minutes. Not bad going,
+sir.”
+
+“Are you stopping at Baymouth, Foker?” Pendennis asked.
+
+“I’m coaching there,” said the other, with a nod.
+
+“What?” asked Pen, and in a tone of such wonder, that Foker burst out
+laughing, and said, “He was blowed if he didn’t think Pen was such a
+flat as not to know what coaching meant.”
+
+“I’m come down with a coach from Oxford. A tutor, don’t you see, old
+boy? He’s coaching me, and some other men, for the little go. Me and
+Spavin have the drag between us. And I thought I’d just tool over and
+go to the play. Did you ever see Rowkins do the hornpipe?” and Mr.
+Foker began to perform some steps of that popular dance in the inn
+yard, looking round for the sympathy of his groom and the stable-men.
+
+Pen thought he would like to go to the play too: and could ride home
+afterwards, as there was a moonlight. So he accepted Foker’s invitation
+to dinner, and the young men entered the inn together, where Mr. Foker
+stopped at the bar, and called upon Miss Rincer, the landlady’s fair
+daughter, who presided there, to give him a glass of ‘his mixture.’
+
+Pen and his family had been known at the George ever since they came
+into the country; and Mr. Pendennis’s carriages and horses always put
+up there when he paid a visit to the county town. The landlady dropped
+the heir of Fairoaks a very respectful curtsey, and complimented him
+upon his growth and manly appearance, and asked news of the family at
+Fairoaks, and of Doctor Portman and the Clavering people, to all of
+which questions the young gentleman answered with much affability. But
+he spoke to Mr. and Mrs. Rincer with that sort of good nature with
+which a young Prince addresses his father’s subjects; never dreaming
+that those bonnes gens were his equals in life.
+
+Mr. Foker’s behaviour was quite different. He inquired for Rincer and
+the cold in his nose, told Mrs. Rincer a riddle, asked Miss Rincer when
+she would be ready to marry him, and paid his compliments to Miss
+Brett, the other young lady in the bar, all in a minute of time, and
+with a liveliness and facetiousness which set all these ladies in a
+giggle; and he gave a cluck, expressive of great satisfaction, as he
+tossed off his mixture which Miss Rincer prepared and handed to him.
+
+“Have a drop,” said he to Pen, “it’s recommended to me by the faculty
+as a what-do-you-call-’em—a stomatic, old boy. Give the young one a
+glass, R., and score it up to yours truly.”
+
+Poor Pen took a glass, and everybody laughed at the face which he made
+as he put it down—gin, bitters, and some other cordial was the compound
+with which Mr. Foker was so delighted as to call it by the name of
+Foker’s own. As Pen choked, sputtered, and made faces, the other took
+occasion to remark to Mr. Rincer that the young fellow was green, very
+green, but that he would soon form him; and then they proceeded to
+order dinner—which Mr. Foker determined should consist of turtle and
+venison; cautioning the landlady to be very particular about icing the
+wine.
+
+Then Messrs. Foker and Pen strolled down the High Street together—the
+former having a cigar in his mouth, which he had drawn out of a case
+almost as big as a portmanteau. He went in to replenish it at Mr.
+Lewis’s, and talked to that gentleman for a while, sitting down on the
+counter: he then looked in at the fruiterer’s, to see the pretty girl
+there, to whom he paid compliments similar to those before addressed to
+the bar at the George; then they passed the County Chronicle office,
+for which Pen had his packet ready, in the shape of ‘Lines to Thyrza,’
+but poor Pen did not like to put the letter into the editor’s box while
+walking in company with such a fine gentleman as Mr. Foker. They met
+heavy dragoons of the regiment always quartered at Chatteris; and
+stopped and talked about the Baymouth balls, and what a pretty girl was
+Miss Brown, and what a dem fine woman Mrs. Jones was. It was in vain
+that Pen recalled to his own mind what a stupid ass Foker used to be at
+school—how he could scarcely read, how he was not cleanly in his
+person, and notorious for his blunders and dulness. Mr. Foker was no
+more like a gentleman now than in his school days: and yet Pen felt a
+secret pride in strutting down High Street with a young fellow who
+owned tandems, talked to officers, and ordered turtle and champagne for
+dinner. He listened, and with respect too, to Mr. Foker’s accounts of
+what the men did at the University of which Mr. F. was an ornament, and
+encountered a long series of stories about boat-racing, bumping,
+College grass-plats, and milk-punch—and began to wish to go up himself
+to College to a place where there were such manly pleasures and
+enjoyments. Farmer Gurnett, who lives close by Fairoaks, riding by at
+this minute and touching his hat to Pen, the latter stopped him, and
+sent a message to his mother to say that he had met with an old
+schoolfellow, and should dine in Chatteris.
+
+The two young gentlemen continued their walk, and were passing round
+the Cathedral Yard, where they could hear the music of the afternoon
+service (a music which always exceedingly impressed and affected Pen),
+but whither Mr. Foker came for the purpose of inspecting the
+nursery-maids who frequent the Elms Walk there, and who are uncommonly
+pretty at Chatteris, and here they strolled until with a final burst of
+music the small congregation was played out.
+
+Old Doctor Portman was one of the few who came from the venerable gate.
+Spying Pen, he came and shook him by the hand, and eyed with wonder
+Pen’s friend, from whose mouth and cigar clouds of fragrance issued,
+which curled round the Doctor’s honest face and shovel hat.
+
+“An old schoolfellow of mine, Mr. Foker,” said Pen. The Doctor said
+“H’m”: and scowled at the cigar. He did not mind a pipe in his study,
+but the cigar was an abomination to the worthy gentleman.
+
+“I came up on Bishop’s business,” the Doctor said. “We’ll ride home,
+Arthur, if you like?”
+
+“I—I’m engaged to my friend here,” Pen answered.
+
+“You had better come home with me,” said the Doctor.
+
+“His mother knows he’s out, sir,” Mr. Foker remarked; “don’t she,
+Pendennis?”
+
+“But that does not prove that he had not better come home with me,” the
+Doctor growled, and he walked off with great dignity.
+
+“Old boy don’t like the weed, I suppose,” Foker said. “Ha! who’s
+here?—here’s the General, and Bingley, the manager. How do, Cos? How
+do, Bingley?”
+
+“How does my worthy and gallant young Foker?” said the gentleman
+addressed as the General; and who wore a shabby military cape with a
+mangy collar, and a hat cocked very much over one eye.
+
+“Trust you are very well, my very dear sir,” said the other gentleman,
+“and that the Theatre Royal will have the honour of your patronage
+to-night. We perform ‘The Stranger,’ in which your humble servant
+will—-”
+
+“Can’t stand you in tights and Hessians, Bingley,” young Mr. Foker
+said. On which the General, with the Irish accent, said, “But I think
+ye’ll like Miss Fotheringay, in Mrs. Haller, or me name’s not Jack
+Costigan.”
+
+Pen looked at these individuals with the greatest interest. He had
+never seen an actor before; and he saw Dr. Portman’s red face looking
+over the Doctor’s shoulder, as he retreated from the Cathedral Yard,
+evidently quite dissatisfied with the acquaintances into whose hands
+Pen had fallen.
+
+Perhaps it would have been much better for him had he taken the
+parson’s advice and company home. But which of us knows his fate?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+Mrs. Haller
+
+
+Having returned to the George, Mr. Foker and his guest sate down to a
+handsome repast in the coffee-room; where Mr. Rincer brought in the
+first dish, and bowed as gravely as if he was waiting upon the
+Lord-Lieutenant of the county. Mr. Foker attacked the turtle and
+venison with as much gusto as he had shown the year before, when he
+used to make feasts off ginger-beer and smuggled polonies. Pen could
+not but respect his connoisseurship as he pronounced the champagne to
+be condemned gooseberry, and winked at the port with one eye. The
+latter he declared to be of the right sort; and told the waiters there
+was no way of humbugging him. All these attendants he knew by their
+Christian names, and showed a great interest in their families; and as
+the London coaches drove up, which in those early days used to set off
+from the George, Mr. Foker flung the coffee-room window open, and
+called the guards and coachmen by their Christian names, too, asking
+about their respective families, and imitating with great liveliness
+and accuracy the tooting of the horns as Jem the ostler whipped the
+horses’ cloths off, and the carriages drove gaily away.
+
+“A bottle of sherry, a bottle of sham, a bottle of port and a shass
+caffy, it ain’t so bad, hay, Pen?” Foker said, and pronounced, after
+all these delicacies and a quantity of nuts and fruit had been
+dispatched, that it was time to “toddle.” Pen sprang up with very
+bright eyes, and a flushed face; and they moved off towards the
+theatre, where they paid their money to the wheezy old lady slumbering
+in the money-taker’s box. “Mrs. Dropsicum, Bingley’s mother-in-law,
+great in Lady Macbeth,” Foker said to his companion. Foker knew her,
+too.
+
+They had almost their choice of places in the boxes of the theatre,
+which was no better filled than country theatres usually are in spite
+of the “universal burst of attraction and galvanic thrills of delight”
+advertised by Bingley in the play-bills. A score or so of people dotted
+the pit-benches, a few more kept a kicking and whistling in the
+galleries, and a dozen others, who came in with free admissions, were
+in the boxes where our young gentlemen sate. Lieutenants Rodgers and
+Podgers, and young Cornet Tidmus, of the Dragoons, occupied a private
+box. The performers acted to them, and these gentlemen seemed to hold
+conversations with the players when not engaged in the dialogue, and
+applauded them by name loudly.
+
+Bingley the manager, who assumed all the chief tragic and comic parts
+except when he modestly retreated to make way for the London stars, who
+came down occasionally to Chatteris, was great in the character of the
+‘Stranger.’ He was attired in the tight pantaloons and Hessian boots
+which the stage legend has given to that injured man, with a large
+cloak and beaver and a hearse feather in it drooping over his raddled
+old face, and only partially concealing his great buckled brown wig. He
+had the stage jewellery on too, of which he selected the largest and
+most shiny rings for himself, and allowed his little finger to quiver
+out of his cloak with a sham diamond ring covering the first joint of
+the finger and twiddling in the faces of the pit. Bingley made it a
+favour to the young men of his company to go on in light comedy parts
+with that ring. They flattered him by asking its history. The stage has
+its traditional jewels as the Crown and all great families have. This
+had belonged to George Frederick Cooke, who had had it from Mr. Quin,
+who may have bought it for a shilling. Bingley fancied the world was
+fascinated with its glitter.
+
+He was reading out of the stage-book—that wonderful stage-book which is
+not bound like any other book in the world, but is rouged and tawdry
+like the hero or heroine who holds it; and who holds it as people never
+do hold books: and points with his finger to a passage, and wags his
+head ominously at the audience, and then lifts up eyes and finger to
+the ceiling professing to derive some intense consolation from the work
+between which and heaven there is a strong affinity. Anybody who has
+ever seen one of our great light comedians, X., in a chintz
+dressing-gown, such as nobody ever wore, and representing himself to
+the public as a young nobleman in his apartments, and whiling away the
+time with light literature until his friend Sir Harry shall arrive, or
+his father shall come down to breakfast—anybody, I say, who has seen
+the great X. over a sham book has indeed had a great pleasure and an
+abiding matter for thought.
+
+Directly the Stranger saw the young men, he acted at them; eyeing them
+solemnly over his gilt volume as he lay on the stage-bank showing his
+hand, his ring, and his Hessians. He calculated the effect that every
+one of these ornaments would produce upon his victims: he was
+determined to fascinate them, for he knew they had paid their money;
+and he saw their families coming in from the country and filling the
+cane chairs in his boxes.
+
+As he lay on the bank reading, his servant, Francis, made remarks upon
+his master.
+
+“Again reading,” said Francis, “thus it is, from morn to night. To him
+nature has no beauty—life no charm. For three years I have never seen
+him smile” (the gloom of Bingley’s face was fearful to witness during
+these comments of the faithful domestic). “Nothing diverts him. O, if
+he would but attach himself to any living thing, were it an animal—for
+something man must love.”
+
+[Enter Tobias (Goll) from the hut.] He cries, “O, how refreshing, after
+seven long weeks, to feel these warm sunbeams once again. Thanks,
+bounteous heaven, for the joy I taste!” He presses his cap between his
+hands, looks up and prays. The Stranger eyes him attentively.
+
+Francis to the Stranger. “This old man’s share of earthly happiness can
+be but little. Yet mark how grateful he is for his portion of it.”
+
+Bingley. “Because though old, he is but a child in the leading-string
+of hope.” (He looks steadily at Foker, who, however, continues to suck
+the top of his stick in an unconcerned manner.)
+
+Francis. “Hope is the nurse of life.”
+
+Bingley. “And her cradle—is the grave.”
+
+The Stranger uttered this with the moan of a bassoon in agony, and
+fixed his eyes on Pendennis so steadily, that the poor lad was quite
+put out of countenance. He thought the whole house must be looking at
+him; and cast his eyes down. As soon as ever he raised them Bingley’s
+were at him again. All through the scene the manager played at him.
+When he was about to do a good action, and sent off Francis with his
+book, so that that domestic should not witness the deed of benevolence
+which he meditated, Bingley marked the page carefully, so that he might
+continue the perusal of the volume off the stage if he liked. But all
+was done in the direct face of Pendennis, whom the manager was bent
+upon subjugating. How relieved the lad was when the scene ended, and
+Foker, tapping with his cane, cried out “Bravo, Bingley!”
+
+“Give him a hand, Pendennis; you know every chap likes a hand,” Mr.
+Foker said; and the good-natured young gentleman, and Pendennis
+laughing, and the dragoons in the opposite box, began clapping hands to
+the best of their power.
+
+A chamber in Wintersen Castle closed over Tobias’s hut and the Stranger
+and his boots; and servants appeared bustling about with chairs and
+tables—“That’s Hicks and Miss Thackthwaite,” whispered Foker. “Pretty
+girl, ain’t she, Pendennis? But stop—hurray—bravo! here’s the
+Fotheringay.”
+
+The pit thrilled and thumped its umbrellas; a volley of applause was
+fired from the gallery: the Dragoon officers and Foker clapped their
+hands furiously: you would have thought the house was full, so loud
+were their plaudits. The red face and ragged whiskers of Mr. Costigan
+were seen peering from the side-scene. Pen’s eyes opened wide and
+bright as Mrs. Haller entered with a downcast look, then rallying at
+the sound of the applause, swept the house with a grateful glance, and,
+folding her hands across her breast, sank down in a magnificent
+curtsey. More applause, more umbrellas; Pen this time, flaming with
+wine and enthusiasm, clapped hands and sang “bravo” louder than all.
+Mrs. Haller saw him, and everybody else, and old Mr. Bows, the little
+first fiddler of the orchestra (which was this night increased by a
+detachment of the band of the Dragoons, by the kind permission of
+Colonel Swallowtail), looked up from the desk where he was perched,
+with his crutch beside him, and smiled at the enthusiasm of the lad.
+
+Those who have only seen Miss Fotheringay in later days, since her
+marriage and introduction into London life, have little idea how
+beautiful a creature she was at the time when our friend Pen first set
+eyes on her: and I warn my reader, as beforehand, that the pencil which
+illustrates this work (and can draw an ugly face tolerably well, but is
+sadly put out when it tries to delineate a beauty) can give no sort of
+notion of her. She was of the tallest of women, and at her then age of
+six-and-twenty—for six-and-twenty she was, though she vows she was only
+nineteen—in the prime and fulness of her beauty. Her forehead was vast,
+and her black hair waved over it with a natural ripple (that beauties
+of late days have tried to imitate with the help of the
+crimping-irons), and was confined in shining and voluminous braids at
+the back of a neck such as you see on the shoulders of the Louvre
+Venus—that delight of gods and men. Her eyes, when she lifted them up
+to gaze on you, and ere she dropped their purple deep-fringed lids,
+shone with tenderness and mystery unfathomable. Love and Genius seemed
+to look out from them and then retire coyly, as if ashamed to have been
+seen at the lattice. Who could have had such a commanding brow but a
+woman of high intellect? She never laughed (indeed her teeth were not
+good), but a smile of endless tenderness and sweetness played round her
+beautiful lips, and in the dimples of her cheeks and her lovely chin.
+Her nose defied description in those days. Her ears were like two
+little pearl shells, which the earrings she wore (though the handsomest
+properties in the theatre) only insulted. She was dressed in long
+flowing robes of black, which she managed and swept to and fro with
+wonderful grace, and out of the folds of which you only saw her sandals
+occasionally; they were of rather a large size; but Pen thought them as
+ravishing as the slippers of Cinderella. But it was her hand and arm
+that this magnificent creature most excelled in, and somehow you could
+never see her but through them. They surrounded her. When she folded
+them over her bosom in resignation; when she dropped them in mute
+agony, or raised them in superb command; when in sportive gaiety her
+hands fluttered and waved before her, like what shall we say?—like the
+snowy doves before the chariot of Venus—it was with these arms and
+hands that she beckoned, repelled, entreated, embraced, her admirers—no
+single one, for she was armed with her own virtue, and with her
+father’s valour, whose sword would have leapt from its scabbard at any
+insult offered to his child—but the whole house; which rose to her, as
+the phrase was, as she curtseyed and bowed, and charmed it.
+
+Thus she stood for a minute—complete and beautiful—as Pen stared at
+her. “I say, Pen, isn’t she a stunner?” asked Mr. Foker.
+
+“Hush!” Pen said, “she’s speaking.”
+
+She began her business in a deep sweet voice. Those who know the play
+of the ‘Stranger,’ are aware that the remarks made by the various
+characters are not valuable in themselves, either for their sound
+sense, their novelty of observation, or their poetic fancy. In fact, if
+a man were to say it was a stupid play, he would not be far wrong.
+Nobody ever talked so. If we meet idiots in life, as will happen, it is
+a great mercy that they do not use such absurdly fine words. The
+Stranger’s talk is sham, like the book he reads and the hair he wears,
+and the bank he sits on, and the diamond ring he makes play with—but,
+in the midst of the balderdash, there runs that reality of love,
+children, and forgiveness of wrong, which will be listened to wherever
+it is preached, and sets all the world sympathising.
+
+With what smothered sorrow, with what gushing pathos, Mrs. Haller
+delivered her part! At first, when as Count Wintersen’s housekeeper,
+and preparing for his Excellency’s arrival, she has to give orders
+about the beds and furniture, and the dinner, etc., to be got ready,
+she did so with the calm agony of despair. But when she could get rid
+of the stupid servants and give vent to her feelings to the pit and the
+house, she overflowed to each individual as if he were her particular
+confidant, and she was crying out her griefs on his shoulder: the
+little fiddler in the orchestra (whom she did not seem to watch, though
+he followed her ceaselessly) twitched, twisted, nodded, pointed about,
+and when she came to the favourite passage, “I have a William too, if
+he be still alive—Ah, yes, if he be still alive. His little sisters,
+too! Why, Fancy, dost thou rack me so? Why dost thou image my poor
+children fainting in sickness, and crying to—to—their mum—um—other,”
+when she came to this passage little Bows buried his face in his blue
+cotton handkerchief, after crying out “Bravo.”
+
+All the house was affected. Foker, for his part, taking out a large
+yellow bandanna, wept piteously. As for Pen, he was gone too far for
+that. He followed the woman about and about—when she was off the stage,
+it and the house were blank; the lights and the red officers, reeled
+wildly before his sight. He watched her at the side-scene—where she
+stood waiting to come on the stage, and where her father took off her
+shawl: when the reconciliation arrived, and she flung herself down on
+Mr. Bingley’s shoulders, whilst the children clung to their knees, and
+the Countess (Mrs. Bingley) and Baron Steinforth (performed with great
+liveliness and spirit by Garbetts)—while the rest of the characters
+formed a group round them, Pen’s hot eyes only saw Fotheringay,
+Fotheringay. The curtain fell upon him like a pall. He did not hear a
+word of what Bingley said, who came forward to announce the play for
+the next evening, and who took the tumultuous applause, as usual, for
+himself. Pen was not even distinctly aware that the house was calling
+for Miss Fotheringay, nor did the manager seem to comprehend that
+anybody else but himself had caused the success of the play. At last he
+understood it—stepped back with a grin, and presently appeared with
+Mrs. Haller on his arm. How beautiful she looked! Her hair had fallen
+down, the officers threw her flowers. She clutched them to her heart.
+She put back her hair, and smiled all round. Her eyes met Pen’s. Down
+went the curtain again: and she was gone. Not one note could he hear of
+the overture which the brass band of the dragoons blew by kind
+permission of Colonel Swallowtail.
+
+“She is a crusher, ain’t she now!” Mr. Foker asked of his companion.
+
+Pen did not know exactly what Foker said, and answered vaguely. He
+could not tell the other what he felt; he could not have spoken, just
+then, to any mortal. Besides, Pendennis did not quite know what he felt
+yet; it was something overwhelming, maddening, delicious; a fever of
+wild joy and undefined longing.
+
+And now Rowkins and Miss Thackthwaite came on to dance the favourite
+double hornpipe, and Foker abandoned himself to the delights of this
+ballet, just as he had to the tears of the tragedy, a few minutes
+before. Pen did not care for it, or indeed think about the dance,
+except to remember that that woman was acting with her in the scene
+where she first came in. It was a mist before his eyes. At the end of
+the dance he looked at his watch and said it was time for him to go.
+
+“Hang it, stay to see The Bravo of the Battle-Axe,” Foker said,
+“Bingley’s splendid in it; he wears red tights, and has to carry Mrs.
+B. over the Pine-bridge of the Cataract, only she’s too heavy. It’s
+great fun, do stop.”
+
+Pen looked at the bill with one lingering fond hope that Miss
+Fotheringay’s name might be hidden, somewhere, in the list of the
+actors of the after-piece, but there was no such name. Go he must. He
+had a long ride home. He squeezed Foker’s hand. He was choking to
+speak, but he couldn’t. He quitted the theatre and walked frantically
+about the town, he knew not how long; then he mounted at the George and
+rode homewards, and Clavering clock sang out one as he came into the
+yard at Fairoaks. The lady of the house might have been awake, but she
+only heard him from the passage outside his room as he dashed into bed
+and pulled the clothes over his head.
+
+Pen had not been in the habit of passing wakeful nights, so he at once
+fell off into a sound sleep. Even in later days and with a great deal
+of care and other thoughtful matter to keep him awake, a man from long
+practice or fatigue or resolution begins by going to sleep as usual:
+and gets a nap in advance of Anxiety. But she soon comes up with him
+and jogs his shoulder, and says, “Come, my man, no more of this
+laziness, you must wake up and have a talk with me.” Then they fall to
+together in the midnight. Well, whatever might afterwards happen to
+him, poor little Pen was not come to this state yet; he tumbled into a
+sound sleep—did not wake until an early hour in the morning, when the
+rooks began to caw from the little wood beyond his bedroom windows;
+and—at that very instant and as his eyes started open, the beloved
+image was in his mind. “My dear boy,” he heard her say, “you were in a
+sound sleep and I would not disturb you: but I have been close by your
+pillow all this while: and I don’t intend that you shall leave me. I am
+Love! I bring with me fever and passion: wild longing, maddening
+desire; restless craving and seeking. Many a long day ere this I heard
+you calling out for me; and behold now I am come.”
+
+Was Pen frightened at the summons? Not he. He did not know what was
+coming: it was all wild pleasure and delight as yet. And as, when three
+years previously, and on entering the fifth form at the Cistercians,
+his father had made him a present of a gold watch which the boy took
+from under his pillow and examined on the instant of waking: for ever
+rubbing and polishing it up in private and retiring into corners to
+listen to its ticking: so the young man exulted over his new delight;
+felt in his waistcoat pocket to see that it was safe; wound it up at
+nights, and at the very first moment of waking hugged it and looked at
+it.—By the way, that first watch of Pen’s was a showy ill-manufactured
+piece: it never went well from the beginning, and was always getting
+out of order. And after putting it aside into a drawer and forgetting
+it for some time, he swapped it finally away for a more useful
+time-keeper.
+
+Pen felt himself to be ever so many years older since yesterday. There
+was no mistake about it now. He was as much in love as the best hero in
+the best romance he ever read. He told John to bring his shaving water
+with the utmost confidence. He dressed himself in some of his finest
+clothes that morning: and came splendidly down to breakfast,
+patronising his mother and little Laura, who had been strumming her
+music lesson for hours before; and who after he had read the prayers
+(of which he did not heed one single syllable) wondered at his grand
+appearance, and asked him to tell her what the play was about?
+
+Pen laughed and declined to tell Laura what the play was about. In fact
+it was quite as well that she should not know. Then she asked him why
+he had got on his fine pin and beautiful new waistcoat?
+
+Pen blushed and told his mother that the old schoolfellow with whom he
+had dined at Chatteris was reading with a tutor at Baymouth, a very
+learned man; and as he was himself to go to College, and as there were
+several young men pursuing their studies at Baymouth—he was anxious to
+ride over—and—and just see what the course of their reading was.
+
+Laura made a long face. Helen Pendennis looked hard at her son,
+troubled more than ever with the vague doubt and terror which had been
+haunting her ever since the last night, when Farmer Gurnett brought
+back the news that Pen would not return home to dinner. Arthur’s eyes
+defied her. She tried to console herself, and drive off her fears. The
+boy had never told her an untruth. Pen conducted himself during
+breakfast in a very haughty and supercilious manner; and, taking leave
+of the elder and younger lady, was presently heard riding out of the
+stablecourt. He went gently at first, but galloped like a madman as
+soon as he thought that he was out of hearing.
+
+Smirke, thinking of his own affairs, and softly riding with his toes
+out, to give Pen his three hours’ reading at Fairoaks, met his pupil,
+who shot by him like the wind. Smirke’s pony shied, as the other
+thundered past him; the gentle curate went over his head among the
+stinging-nettles in the hedge. Pen laughed as they met, pointed towards
+the Baymouth road, and was gone half a mile in that direction before
+poor Smirke had picked himself up.
+
+Pen had resolved in his mind that he must see Foker that morning; he
+must hear about her; know about her; be with somebody who knew her; and
+honest Smirke, for his part, sitting up among the stinging-nettles, as
+his pony cropped quietly in the hedge, thought dismally to himself,
+ought he to go to Fairoaks now that his pupil was evidently gone away
+for the day. Yes, he thought he might go, too. He might go and ask Mrs.
+Pendennis when Arthur would be back; and hear Miss Laura her Watts’s
+Catechism. He got up on the little pony—both were used to his slipping
+off—and advanced upon the house from which his scholar had just rushed
+away in a whirlwind.
+
+Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little; and the curate had
+tumbled over head and heels in pursuit of it, and Pen had started in
+the first heat of the mad race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+Mrs. Haller at Home
+
+
+Without slackening her pace, Rebecca the mare galloped on to Baymouth,
+where Pen put her up at the inn stables, and ran straightway to Mr.
+Foker’s lodgings, which he knew from the direction given to him by that
+gentleman on the previous day. On reaching these apartments, which were
+over a chemist’s shop whose stock of cigars and sodawater went off
+rapidly by the kind patronage of his young inmates, Pen only found Mr.
+Spavin, Foker’s friend, and part owner of the tandem which the latter
+had driven into Chatteris, who was smoking, and teaching a little dog,
+a friend of his, tricks with a bit of biscuit.
+
+Pen’s healthy red face, fresh from the gallop, compared oddly with the
+waxy debauched little features of Foker’s chum; the latter remarked it.
+“Who’s that man?” he thought, “he looks as fresh as a bean. His hand
+don’t shake of a morning, I’d bet five to one.”
+
+Foker had not come home at all. Here was a disappointment!—Mr. Spavin
+could not say when his friend would return. Sometimes he stopped a day,
+sometimes a week. Of what college was Pen? Would he have anything?
+There was a very fair tap of ale. Mr. Spavin was enabled to know
+Pendennis’s name, on the card which the latter took out and laid down
+(perhaps Pen in these days was rather proud of having a card)—and so
+the young men took leave.
+
+Then Pen went down the rock, and walked about on the sand, biting his
+nails by the shore of the much-sounding sea. It stretched before him
+bright and immeasurable. The blue waters came rolling into the bay,
+foaming and roaring hoarsely: Pen looked them in the face with blank
+eyes, hardly regarding them. What a tide there was pouring into the
+lad’s own mind at the time, and what a little power had he to check it!
+Pen flung stones into the sea, but it still kept coming on. He was in a
+rage at not seeing Foker. He wanted to see Foker. He must see Foker.
+“Suppose I go on—on the Chatteris road, just to see if I can meet him,”
+Pen thought. Rebecca was saddled in another half hour, and galloping on
+the grass by the Chatteris road. About four miles from Baymouth, the
+Clavering road branches off, as everybody knows, and the mare naturally
+was for taking that turn, but, cutting her over the shoulder, Pen
+passed the turning, and rode on to the turnpike without seeing any sign
+of the black tandem and red wheels.
+
+As he was at the turnpike he might as well go on: that was quite clear.
+So Pen rode to the George, and the hostler told him that Mr. Foker was
+there sure enough, and that “he’d been a makin a tremendous row the
+night afore, a drinkin and a singin, and wanting to fight Tom the
+postboy: which I’m thinking he’d have had the worst of it,” the man
+added, with a grin. “Have you carried up your master’s ’ot water to
+shave with?” he added, in a very satirical manner, to Mr. Foker’s
+domestic, who here came down the yard bearing his master’s clothes,
+most beautifully brushed and arranged. “Show Mr. Pendennis up to ’un,”
+and Pen followed the man at last to the apartment, where, in the midst
+of an immense bed, Mr. Harry Foker lay reposing.
+
+The feather bed and bolsters swelled up all round Mr. Foker, so that
+you could hardly see his little sallow face and red silk nightcap.
+
+“Hullo!” said Pen.
+
+“Who goes there? brother, quickly tell!” sang out the voice from the
+bed. “What! Pendennis again? Is your Mamma acquainted with your
+absence? Did you sup with us last night? No stop—who supped with us
+last night, Stoopid?”
+
+“There was the three officers, sir, and Mr. Bingley, sir, and Mr.
+Costigan, sir,” the man answered, who received all Mr. Foker’s remarks
+with perfect gravity.
+
+“Ah yes: the cup and merry jest went round. We chanted and I remember I
+wanted to fight a postboy. Did I thrash him, Stoopid?”
+
+“No, sir. Fight didn’t come off, sir,” said Stoopid, still with perfect
+gravity. He was arranging Mr. Foker’s dressing-case—a trunk, the gift
+of a fond mother, without which the young fellow never travelled. It
+contained a prodigious apparatus in plate; a silver dish, a silver mug,
+silver boxes and bottles for all sorts of essences, and a choice of
+razors ready against the time when Mr. Foker’s beard should come.
+
+“Do it some other day,” said the young fellow, yawning and throwing up
+his little lean arms over his head. “No, there was no fight; but there
+was chanting. Bingley chanted, I chanted, the General chanted—Costigan
+I mean.—Did you ever hear him sing ‘The Little Pig under the Bed,’
+Pen?”
+
+“The man we met yesterday,” said Pen, all in a tremor, “the father
+of—-”
+
+“Of the Fotheringay,—the very man. Ain’t she a Venus, Pen?”
+
+“Please sir, Mr. Costigan’s in the sittin-room, sir, and says, sir, you
+asked him to breakfast, sir. Called five times, sir; but wouldn’t wake
+you on no account; and has been here since eleven o’clock, sir—-”
+
+“How much is it now?”
+
+“One, sir.”
+
+“What would the best of mothers say,” cried the little sluggard, “if
+she saw me in bed at this hour? She sent me down here with a grinder.
+She wants me to cultivate my neglected genus—He, be! I say, Pen, this
+isn’t quite like seven o’clock school,—is it, old boy?”—and the young
+fellow burst out into a boyish laugh of enjoyment. Then he added—“Go in
+and talk to the General whilst I dress. And I say, Pendennis, ask him
+to sing you ‘The Little Pig under the Bed;’ it’s capital.” Pen went off
+in great perturbation, to meet Mr. Costigan, and Mr. Foker commenced
+his toilet.
+
+Of Mr. Foker’s two grandfathers, the one from whom he inherited a
+fortune was a brewer; the other was an earl, who endowed him with the
+most doting mother in the world. The Fokers had been at the Cistercian
+school from father to son; at which place, our friend, whose name could
+be seen over the playground wall, on a public-house sign, under which
+‘Foker’s Entire’ was painted, had been dreadfully bullied on account of
+his trade, his uncomely countenance, his inaptitude for learning and
+cleanliness, his gluttony and other weak points. But those who know how
+a susceptible youth, under the tyranny of his schoolfellows, becomes
+silent and a sneak, may understand how in a very few months after his
+liberation from bondage, he developed himself as he had done; and
+became the humorous, the sarcastic, the brilliant Foker, with whom we
+have made acquaintance. A dunce he always was, it is true; for learning
+cannot be acquired by leaving school and entering at college as a
+fellow-commoner; but he was now (in his own peculiar manner) as great a
+dandy as he before had been a slattern, and when he entered his
+sitting-room to join his two guests, arrived scented and arrayed in
+fine linen, and perfectly splendid in appearance.
+
+General or Captain Costigan—for the latter was the rank which he
+preferred to assume—was seated in the window with the newspaper held
+before him at arm’s length. The Captain’s eyes were somewhat dim; and
+he was spelling the paper, with the help of his lips, as well as of
+those bloodshot eyes of his, as you see gentlemen do to whom reading is
+a rare and difficult occupation. His hat was cocked very much on one
+ear; and as one of his feet lay up in the window-seat, the observer of
+such matters might remark, by the size and shabbiness of the boots
+which the Captain wore, that times did not go very well with him.
+Poverty seems as if it were disposed, before it takes possession of a
+man entirely, to attack his extremities first: the coverings of his
+head, feet, and hands are its first prey. All these parts of the
+Captain’s person were particularly rakish and shabby. As soon as he saw
+Pen he descended from the window-seat and saluted the new-comer, first
+in a military manner, by conveying a couple of his fingers (covered
+with a broken black glove) to his hat, and then removing that ornament
+altogether. The Captain was inclined to be bald, but he brought a
+quantity of lank iron-grey hair over his pate, and had a couple of
+whisps of the same falling down on each side of his face. Much whisky
+had spoiled what complexion Mr. Costigan may have possessed in his
+youth. His once handsome face had now a copper tinge. He wore a very
+high stock, scarred and stained in many places; and a dress-coat
+tightly buttoned up in those parts where the buttons had not parted
+company from the garment.
+
+“The young gentleman to whom I had the honour to be introjuiced
+yesterday in the Cathadral Yard,” said the Captain, with a splendid bow
+and wave of his hat. “I hope I see you well, sir. I marked ye in the
+thayatre last night during me daughter’s perfawrumance; and missed ye
+on my return. I did but conduct her home, sir, for Jack Costigan,
+though poor, is a gentleman; and when I reintered the house to pay me
+respects to me joyous young friend, Mr. Foker—ye were gone. We had a
+jolly night of ut, sir—Mr. Foker, the three gallant young dragoons, and
+your ’umble servant. Gad, sir, it put me in mind of one of our old
+nights when I bore His Majesty’s commission in the Foighting Hundtherd
+and Third.” And he pulled out an old snuff box, which he presented with
+a stately air to his new acquaintance.
+
+Arthur was a great deal too much flurried to speak. This shabby-looking
+buck was—was her father. The Captain was perfumed with the
+recollections of the last night’s cigars, and pulled and twisted the
+tuft on his chin as jauntily as any young dandy.
+
+“I hope, Miss F—, Miss Costigan is well, sir,” Pen said, flushing up.
+“She—she gave me greater pleasure, than—than I—I—I ever enjoyed at a
+play. I think, sir—I think she’s the finest actress in the world,” he
+gasped out.
+
+“Your hand, young man! for ye speak from your heart,” cried the
+Captain. “Thank ye, sir, an old soldier and a fond father thanks ye.
+She is the finest actress in the world. I’ve seen the Siddons, sir, and
+the O’Nale—they were great, but what were they compared to Miss
+Fotheringay? I do not wish she should ashume her own name while on the
+stage. Me family, sir, are proud people; and the Costigans of
+Costiganstown think that an honest man, who has borne Her Majesty’s
+colours in the Hundred and Third, would demean himself, by permitting
+his daughter to earn her old father’s bread.”
+
+“There cannot be a more honourable duty, surely,” Pen said.
+
+“Honourable! Bedad, sir, I’d like to see the man who said Jack Costigan
+would consent to anything dishonourable. I have a heart, sir, though I
+am poor; I like a man who has a heart. You have: I read it in your
+honest face and steady eye. And would you believe it”? he added, after
+a pause, and with a pathetic whisper, “that that Bingley who has made
+his fortune by me child, gives her but two guineas a week: out of which
+she finds herself in dresses, and which, added to me own small means,
+makes our all?”
+
+Now the Captain’s means were so small as to be, it may be said, quite
+invisible. But nobody knows how the wind is tempered to shorn Irish
+lambs, and in what marvellous places they find pasture. If Captain
+Costigan, whom I had the honour to know, would but have told his
+history, it would have been a great moral story. But he neither would
+have told it if he could, nor could if he would; for the Captain was
+not only unaccustomed to tell the truth,—he was unable even to think
+it—and fact and fiction reeled together in his muzzy, whiskified brain.
+
+He began life rather brilliantly with a pair of colours, a fine person
+and legs, and one of the most beautiful voices in the world. To his
+latest day he sang with admirable pathos and humour those wonderful
+Irish ballads which are so mirthful and so melancholy: and was always
+the first himself to cry at their pathos. Poor Cos! he was at once
+brave and maudlin, humorous and an idiot; always good-natured, and
+sometimes almost trustworthy. Up to the last day of his life he would
+drink with any man, and back any man’s bill: and his end was in a
+spunging-house, where the sheriff’s officer, who took him, was fond of
+him.
+
+In his brief morning of life, Cos formed the delight of regimental
+messes, and had the honour of singing his songs, bacchanalian and
+sentimental, at the tables of the most illustrious generals and
+commanders-in-chief, in the course of which period he drank three times
+as much claret as was good for him, and spent his doubtful patrimony.
+What became of him subsequently to his retirement from the army, is no
+affair of ours. I take it, no foreigner understands the life of an
+Irish gentleman without money, the way in which he manages to keep
+afloat—the wind-raising conspiracies, in which he engages with heroes
+as unfortunate as himself—the means by which he contrives, during most
+days of the week, to get his portion of whisky-and-water: all these are
+mysteries to us inconceivable: but suffice it to say, that through all
+the storms of life Jack had floated somehow, and the lamp of his nose
+had never gone out.
+
+Before he and Pen had had a half-hour’s conversation, the Captain
+managed to extract a couple of sovereigns from the young gentleman for
+tickets for his daughter’s benefit, which was to take place speedily;
+and was not a bona fide transaction such as that of the last year, when
+poor Miss Fotheringay had lost fifteen shillings by her venture; but
+was an arrangement with the manager, by which the lady was to have the
+sale of a certain number of tickets, keeping for herself a large
+portion of the sum for which they were sold.
+
+Pen had but two pounds in his purse, and he handed them over to the
+Captain for the tickets; he would have been afraid to offer more lest
+he should offend the latter’s delicacy. Costigan scrawled him an order
+for a box, lightly slipped the sovereigns into his waistcoat, and
+slapped his hand over the place where they lay. They seemed to warm his
+old sides.
+
+“Faith, sir,” said he, “the bullion’s scarcer with me than it used to
+be, as is the case with many a good fellow. I won six hundthred of ’em
+in a single night, sir, when me kind friend, His Royal Highness the
+Duke of Kent, was in Gibralther.” And he straightway poured out to Pen
+a series of stories regarding the claret drunk, the bets made, the
+races ridden by the garrison there, with which he kept the young
+gentleman amused until the arrival of their host and his breakfast.
+
+Then it was good to see the Captain’s behaviour before the devilled
+turkey and the mutton chops! His stories poured forth unceasingly, and
+his spirits rose as he chatted to the young men. When he got a bit of
+sunshine, the old lazzarone basked in it; he prated about his own
+affairs and past splendour, and all the lords, generals, and
+Lord-Lieutenants he had ever known. He described the death of his
+darling Bessie, the late Mrs. Costigan, and the challenge he had sent
+to Captain Shanty Clancy, of the Slashers, for looking rude at Miss
+Fotheringay as she was on her kyar in the Phaynix; and then he
+described how the Captain apologised, gave a dinner at the Kildare
+Street, where six of them drank twinty-one bottles of claret, etc. He
+announced that to sit with two such noble and generous young fellows
+was the happiness and pride of an old soldier’s existence; and having
+had a second glass of Curacoa, was so happy that he began to cry.
+Altogether we should say that the Captain was not a man of much
+strength of mind, or a very eligible companion for youth; but there are
+worse men, holding much better places in life, and more dishonest, who
+have never committed half so many rogueries as he. They walked out, the
+Captain holding an arm of each of his dear young friends, and in a
+maudlin state of contentment. He winked at one or two tradesmen’s shops
+where, possibly, he owed a bill, as much as to say, “See the company
+I’m in—sure I’ll pay you, my boy,”—and they parted finally with Mr.
+Foker at a billiard-room, where the latter had a particular engagement
+with some gentlemen of Colonel Swallowtail’s regiment.
+
+Pen and the shabby Captain still walked the street together; the
+Captain, in his sly way, making inquiries about Mr. Foker’s fortune and
+station in life. Pen told him how Foker’s father was a celebrated
+brewer, and his mother was Lady Agnes Milton, Lord Rosherville’s
+daughter. The Captain broke out into a strain of exaggerated compliment
+and panegyric about Mr. Foker, whose “native aristocracie,” he said,
+“could be seen with the twinkling of an oi—and only served to adawrun
+other qualities which he possessed, a foin intellect and a generous
+heart,”—in not one word of which speech did the Captain accurately
+believe.
+
+Pen walked on, listening to his companion’s prate, wondering, amused,
+and puzzled. It had not as yet entered into the boy’s head to
+disbelieve any statement that was made to him; and being of a candid
+nature himself, he took naturally for truth what other people told him.
+Costigan had never had a better listener, and was highly flattered by
+the attentiveness and modest bearing of the young man.
+
+So much pleased was he with the young gentleman, so artless, honest,
+and cheerful did Pen seem to be, that the Captain finally made him an
+invitation, which he very seldom accorded to young men, and asked Pen
+if he would do him the fever to enter his humble abode, which was near
+at hand, where the Captain would have the honour of inthrojuicing his
+young friend to his daughther, Miss Fotheringay?
+
+Pen was so delightfully shocked at this invitation, and was so stricken
+down by the happiness thus suddenly offered to him, that he thought he
+should have dropped from the Captain’s arm at first, and trembled lest
+the other should discover his emotion. He gasped out a few incoherent
+words, indicative of the high gratification he should have in being
+presented to the lady for whose—for whose talents he had conceived such
+an admiration—such an extreme admiration; and followed the Captain,
+scarcely knowing whither that gentleman led him. He was going to see
+her! He was going to see her! In her was the centre of the universe.
+She was the kernel of the world for Pen. Yesterday, before he knew her,
+seemed a period ever so long ago—a revolution was between him and that
+time, and a new world about to begin.
+
+The Captain conducted his young friend to that quiet little street in
+Chatteris, which is called Prior’s Lane, which lies in the
+ecclesiastical quarter of the town, close by Dean’s Green and the
+canons’ houses, and is overlooked by the enormous towers of the
+cathedral; there the Captain dwelt modestly in the first floor of a low
+gabled house, on the door of which was the brass plate of ‘Creed,
+Tailor and Robe-maker.’ Creed was dead, however. His widow was a
+pew-opener in the cathedral hard by; his eldest son was a little scamp
+of a choir-boy, who played toss-halfpenny, led his little brothers into
+mischief, and had a voice as sweet as an angel. A couple of the latter
+were sitting on the door-step, down which you went into the passage of
+the house; and they jumped up with great alacrity to meet their lodger,
+and plunged wildly, and rather to Pen’s surprise, at the swallow-tails
+of the Captain’s dress-coat; for the truth is, that the good-natured
+gentleman, when he was in cash, generally brought home an apple or a
+piece of gingerbread for these children. “Whereby the widdy never
+pressed me for rint when not convanient,” as he remarked afterwards to
+Pen, winking knowingly, and laying a finger on his nose.
+
+Pen tumbled down the step, and as he followed his companion up the
+creaking old stair, his knees trembled under him. He could hardly see
+when he entered, following the Captain, and stood in the room—in her
+room. He saw something black before him, and waving as if making a
+curtsey, and heard, but quite indistinctly, Costigan making a speech
+over him, in which the Captain, with his usual magniloquence, expressed
+to “me child” his wish to make her known to “his dear and admirable
+young friend, Mr. Awther Pindinnis, a young gentleman of property in
+the neighbourhood, a person of refoined moind, and enviable manners, a
+sincare lover of poethry, and a man possest of a feeling and
+affectionate heart.”
+
+“It is very fine weather,” Miss Fotheringay said, in an Irish accent,
+and with a deep rich melancholy voice.
+
+“Very,” said Mr. Pendennis. In this romantic way their conversation
+began; and he found himself seated on a chair, and having leisure to
+look at the young lady.
+
+She looked still handsomer off the stage, than before the lamps. All
+her attitudes were naturally grand and majestical. If she went and
+stood up against the mantelpiece her robe draped itself classically
+round her; her chin supported itself on her hand, the other lines of
+her form arranged themselves in full harmonious undulations—she looked
+like a Muse in contemplation. If she sate down on a cane-bottomed
+chair, her arm rounded itself over the back of the seat, her hand
+seemed as if it ought to have a sceptre put into it, the folds of her
+dress fell naturally round her in order, like ladies of honour round a
+throne, and she looked like an empress. All her movements were graceful
+and imperial. In the morning you could see her hair was blue-black, her
+complexion of dazzling fairness, with the faintest possible blush
+flickering, as it were, in her cheek. Her eyes were grey, with
+prodigious long lashes; and as for her mouth, Mr. Pendennis has given
+me subsequently to understand, that it was of a staring red colour,
+with which the most brilliant geranium, sealing-wax, or Guardsman’s
+coat, could not vie.
+
+“And very warm,” continued this empress and Queen of Sheba.
+
+Mr. Pen again assented, and the conversation rolled on in this manner.
+She asked Costigan whether he had had a pleasant evening at the George,
+and he recounted the supper and the tumblers of punch. Then the father
+asked her how she had been employing the morning.
+
+“Bows came,” said she, “at ten, and we studied Ophalia. It’s for the
+twenty-fourth, when I hope, sir, we shall have the honour of seeing
+ye.”
+
+“Indeed, indeed, you will,” Mr. Pendennis cried; wondering that she
+should say ‘Ophalia,’ and speak with an Irish inflection of voice
+naturally, who had not the least Hibernian accent on the stage.
+
+“I’ve secured ’um for your benefit, dear,” said the Captain, tapping
+his waistcoat pocket, wherein lay Pen’s sovereigns, and winking at Pen,
+with one eye, at which the boy blushed.
+
+“Mr—-the gentleman’s very obleging,” said Mrs. Haller.
+
+“My name is Pendennis,” said Pen, blushing. “I—I—hope you’ll—you’ll
+remember it.” His heart thumped so as he made this audacious
+declaration, that he almost choked in uttering it.
+
+“Pendennis”—she answered slowly, and looking him full in the eyes, with
+a glance, so straight, so clear, so bright, so killing, with a voice so
+sweet, so round, so low, that the word and the glance shot Pen through
+and through, and perfectly transfixed him with pleasure.
+
+“I never knew the name was so pretty before,” Pen said.
+
+“’Tis a very pretty name,” Ophelia said. “Pentweazle’s not a pretty
+name. Remember, papa, when we were on the Norwich Circuit, Young
+Pentweazle, who used to play second old men, and married Miss Rancy,
+the Columbine; they’re both engaged in London now, at the Queen’s, and
+get five pounds a week. Pentweazle wasn’t his real name. ’Twas Judkin
+gave it him, I don’t know why. His name was Harrington; that is, his
+real name was Potts; fawther a clergyman, very respectable. Harrington
+was in London, and got in debt. Ye remember; he came out in Falkland,
+to Mrs. Bunce’s Julia.”
+
+“And a pretty Julia she was,” the Captain interposed; “a woman of
+fifty, and a mother of ten children. ’Tis you ought to have been Julia,
+or my name’s not Jack Costigan.”
+
+“I didn’t take the leading business then,” Miss Fotheringay said
+modestly; “I wasn’t fit for’t till Bows taught me.”
+
+“True for you, my dear,” said the Captain: and bending to Pendennis, he
+added, “Rejuiced in circumstances, sir, I was for some time a
+fencing-master in Dublin (there’s only three men in the empire could
+touch me with the foil once, but Jack Costigan’s getting old and stiff
+now, sir), and my daughter had an engagement at the thayater there; and
+’twas there that my friend, Mr. Bows, who saw her capabilities, and is
+an uncommon ’cute man, gave her lessons in the dramatic art, and made
+her what ye see. What have ye done since Bows went, Emily?”
+
+“Sure, I’ve made a pie,” Emily said, with perfect simplicity. She
+pronounced it “Poy.”
+
+“If ye’ll try it at four o’clock, sir, say the word,” said Costigan
+gallantly. “That girl, sir, makes the best veal and ham pie in England,
+and I think I can promise ye a glass of punch of the right flavour.”
+
+Pen had promised to be at home to dinner at six o’clock, but the rascal
+thought he could accommodate pleasure and duty in this point, and was
+only too eager to accept this invitation. He looked on with delight and
+wonder whilst Ophelia busied herself about the room, and prepared for
+the dinner. She arranged the glasses, and laid and smoothed the little
+cloth, all which duties she performed with a quiet grace and good
+humour, which enchanted her guest more and more. The “poy” arrived from
+the baker’s in the hands of one of the little choir-boy’s brothers at
+the proper hour: and at four o’clock Pen found himself at
+dinner—actually at dinner with the greatest tragic actress in the
+world, and her father—with the handsomest woman in all creation—with
+his first and only love, whom he had adored ever since when?—ever since
+yesterday, ever since for ever. He ate a crust of her making, he poured
+her out a glass of beer, he saw her drink a glass of punch—just one
+wine-glass full—out of the tumbler which she mixed for her papa. She
+was perfectly good-natured, and offered to mix one for Pendennis too.
+It was prodigiously strong; Pen had never in his life drunk so much
+spirits and water. Was it the punch, or the punch-maker who intoxicated
+him?
+
+During dinner, when the Captain, whom his daughter treated most
+respectfully, ceased prattling about himself and his adventures, Pen
+tried to engage the Fotheringay in conversation about poetry and about
+her profession. He asked her what she thought of Ophelia’s madness, and
+whether she was in love with Hamlet or not? “In love with such a little
+ojous wretch as that stunted manager of a Bingley?” She bristled with
+indignation at the thought. Pen explained it was not of her he spoke,
+but of Ophelia of the play. “Oh, indeed; if no offence was meant, none
+was taken: but as for Bingley, indeed, she did not value him—not that
+glass of punch.” Pen next tried her on Kotzebue. “Kotzebue? who was
+he?”—“The author of the play in which she had been performing so
+admirably.” “She did not know that—the man’s name at the beginning of
+the book was Thompson,” she said. Pen laughed at her adorable
+simplicity. He told her of the melancholy fate of the author of the
+play, and how Sand had killed him. It was for the first time in her
+life that Miss Costigan had ever heard of Mr. Kotzebue’s existence, but
+she looked as if she was very much interested, and her sympathy
+sufficed for honest Pen.
+
+And in the midst of this simple conversation, the hour and a quarter
+which poor Pen could afford to allow himself, passed away only too
+quickly; and he had taken leave, he was gone, and away on his rapid
+road homewards on the back of Rebecca. She was called upon to show her
+mettle in the three journeys which she made that day.
+
+“What was that he was talking about, the madness of Hamlet, and the
+theory of the great German critic on the subject?” Emily asked of her
+father.
+
+“’Deed then I don’t know, Milly dear,” answered the Captain. “We’ll ask
+Bows when he comes.”
+
+“Anyhow, he’s a nice, fair-spoken pretty young man,” the lady said:
+“how many tickets did he take of you?”
+
+“Faith, then, he took six, and gev me two guineas, Milly,” the Captain
+said. “I suppose them young chaps is not too flush of coin.”
+
+“He’s full of book-learning,” Miss Fotheringay continued. “Kotzebue!
+He, he, what a droll name indeed, now; and the poor fellow killed by
+Sand, too! Did ye ever hear such a thing? I’ll ask Bows about it, papa,
+dear.”
+
+“A queer death, sure enough,” ejaculated the Captain, and changed the
+painful theme. “’Tis an elegant mare the young gentleman rides,”
+Costigan went on to say; “and a grand breakfast, intirely, that young
+Mister Foker gave us.”
+
+“He’s good for two private boxes, and at leest twenty tickets, I should
+say,” cried the daughter, a prudent lass, who always kept her fine eyes
+on the main chance.
+
+“I’ll go bail of that,” answered the papa, and so their conversation
+continued awhile, until the tumbler of punch was finished; and their
+hour of departure soon came, too; for at half-past six Miss Fotheringay
+was to appear at the theatre again, whither her father always
+accompanied her; and stood, as we have seen, in the side-scene watching
+her, and drank spirits-and-water in the green-room with the company
+there.
+
+“How beautiful she is,” thought Pen, cantering homewards. “How simple
+and how tender! How charming it is to see a woman of her commanding
+genius busying herself with the delightful, though humble, offices of
+domestic life, cooking dishes to make her old father comfortable, and
+brewing drink for him with her delicate fingers! How rude it was of me
+to begin to talk about professional matters, and how well she turned
+the conversation! By the way, she talked about professional matters
+herself; but then with what fun and humour she told the story of her
+comrade, Pentweazle, as he was called! There is no humour like Irish
+humour. Her father is rather tedious, but thoroughly amiable; and how
+fine of him, giving lessons in fencing after he quitted the army, where
+he was the pet of the Duke of Kent! Fencing! I should like to continue
+my fencing, or I shall forget what Angelo taught me. Uncle Arthur
+always liked me to fence—he says it is the exercise of a gentleman.
+Hang it. I’ll take some lessons of Captain Costigan. Go along,
+Rebecca—up the hill, old lady. Pendennis, Pendennis—how she spoke the
+word! Emily, Emily! how good, how noble, how beautiful, how perfect,
+she is!”
+
+Now the reader, who has had the benefit of overhearing the entire
+conversation which Pen had with Miss Fotheringay, can judge for himself
+about the powers of her mind, and may perhaps be disposed to think that
+she has not said anything astonishingly humorous or intellectual in the
+course of the above interview. She has married, and taken her position
+in the world as the most spotless and irreproachable lady since, and I
+have had the pleasure of making her acquaintance: and must certainly
+own, against my friend Pen’s opinion, that his adored Emily is not a
+clever woman. The truth is, she had not only never heard of Kotzebue,
+but she had never heard of Farquhar, or Congreve, or any dramatist in
+whose plays she had not a part: and of these dramas she only knew the
+part which concerned herself. A wag once told her that Dante was born
+at Algiers: and asked her,—which Dr. Johnson wrote first, ‘Irene,’ or
+‘Every Man in his Humour.’ But she had the best of the joke, for she
+had never heard of Irene or Every Man in his Humour, or Dante, or
+perhaps Algiers. It was all one to her. She acted what little Bows told
+her—where he told her to sob, she sobbed—where he told her to laugh,
+she laughed. She gave the tirade or the repartee without the slightest
+notion of its meaning. She went to church and goes every Sunday, with a
+reputation perfectly intact, and was (and is) as guiltless of sense as
+of any other crime.
+
+But what did our Pen know of these things? He saw a pair of bright
+eyes, and he believed in them—a beautiful image, and he fell down and
+worshipped it. He supplied the meaning which her words wanted; and
+created the divinity which he loved. Was Titania the first who fell in
+love with an ass, or Pygmalion the only artist who has gone crazy about
+a stone? He had found her; he had found what his soul thirsted after.
+He flung himself into the stream and drank with all his might. Let
+those say who have been thirsty once how delicious that first draught
+is. As he rode down the avenue towards home—Pen shrieked with laughter
+as he saw the Reverend Mr. Smirke once more coming demurely away from
+Fairoaks on his pony. Smirke had dawdled and stayed at the cottages on
+the way, and then dawdled with Laura over her lessons—and then looked
+at Mrs. Pendennis’s gardens and improvements until he had perfectly
+bored out that lady: and he had taken his leave at the very last minute
+without that invitation to dinner which he fondly expected.
+
+Pen was full of kindness and triumph. “What, picked up and sound?” he
+cried out laughing. “Come along back, old fellow, and eat my dinner—I
+have had mine: but we will have a bottle of the old wine and drink her
+health, Smirke.”
+
+Poor Smirke turned the pony’s head round, and jogged along with Arthur.
+His mother was charmed to see him in such high spirits, and welcomed
+Mr. Smirke for his sake, when Arthur said he had forced the curate back
+to dine. He gave a most ludicrous account of the play of the night
+before, and of the acting of Bingley the Manager, in his rickety
+Hessians, and the enormous Mrs. Bingley as the Countess, in rumpled
+green satin and a Polish cap; he mimicked them, and delighted his
+mother and little Laura, who clapped her hands with pleasure.
+
+“And Mrs. Haller?” said Mrs. Pendennis.
+
+“She’s a stunner, ma’am,” Pen said, laughing, and using the words of
+his revered friend, Mr. Foker.
+
+“A what, Arthur?” asked the lady.
+
+“What is a stunner, Arthur?” cried Laura, in the same voice.
+
+So he gave them a queer account of Mr. Foker, and how he used to be
+called Vats and Grains, and by other contumelious names at school: and
+how he was now exceedingly rich, and a Fellow Commoner at St. Boniface.
+But gay and communicative as he was, Mr. Pen did not say one syllable
+about his ride to Chatteris that day, or about the new friends whom he
+had made there.
+
+When the two ladies retired, Pen, with flashing eyes, filled up two
+great bumpers of Madeira, and looking Smirke full in the face said,
+“Here’s to her!”
+
+“Here’s to her,” said the curate with a sigh, lifting the glass and
+emptying it, so that his face was a little pink when he put it down.
+
+Pen had even less sleep that night than on the night before. In the
+morning, and almost before dawn, he went out and saddled that
+unfortunate Rebecca himself, and rode her on the Downs like mad. Again
+Love had roused him—and said, “Awake, Pendennis, I am here.” That
+charming fever—that delicious longing—and fire, and uncertainty; he
+hugged them to him—he would not have lost them for all the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+Contains both Love and War
+
+
+Cicero and Euripides did not occupy Mr. Pen much for some time after
+this, and honest Mr. Smirke had a very easy time with his pupil.
+Rebecca was the animal who suffered most in the present state of Pen’s
+mind, for, besides those days when he could publicly announce his
+intention of going to Chatteris to take a fencing-lesson, and went
+thither with the knowledge of his mother, whenever he saw three hours
+clear before him, the young rascal made a rush for the city, and found
+his way to Prior’s Lane. He was as frantic with vexation when Rebecca
+went lame, as Richard at Bosworth, when his horse was killed under him:
+and got deeply into the books of the man who kept the hunting-stables
+at Chatteris for the doctoring of his own, and the hire of another
+animal.
+
+Then, and perhaps once in a week, under pretence of going to read a
+Greek play with Smirke, this young reprobate set off so as to be in
+time for the Competitor down coach, stayed a couple of hours in
+Chatteris, and returned on the Rival which left for London at ten at
+night. Once his secret was nearly lost by Smirke’s simplicity, of whom
+Mrs. Pendennis asked whether they had read a great deal the night
+before, or a question to that effect. Smirke was about to tell the
+truth, that he had never seen Mr. Pen at all, when the latter’s
+boot-heel came grinding down on Mr. Smirke’s toe under the table, and
+warned the curate not to betray him.
+
+They had had conversations on the tender subject, of course. It is good
+sport (if you are not yourself engaged in the conversation) to hear two
+men in love talk. There must be a confidant and depositary somewhere.
+When informed, under the most solemn vows of secrecy, of Pen’s
+condition of mind, the curate said, with no small tremor, “that he
+hoped it was no unworthy object—no unlawful attachment, which Pen had
+formed”—for if so, the poor fellow felt it would be his duty to break
+his vow and inform Pen’s mother, and then there would be a quarrel, he
+felt, with sickening apprehension, and he would never again have a
+chance of seeing what he most liked in the world.
+
+“Unlawful, unworthy!” Pen bounced out at the curate’s question. “She is
+as pure as she is beautiful; I would give my heart to no other woman. I
+keep the matter a secret in my family, because—because—there are
+reasons of a weighty nature which I am not at liberty to disclose. But
+any man who breathes a word against her purity insults both her honour
+and mine, and—and dammy, I won’t stand it.”
+
+Smirke, with a faint laugh, only said, “Well, well, don’t call me out,
+Arthur, for you know I can’t fight;” but by this compromise the
+wretched curate was put more than ever into the power of his pupil, and
+the Greek and mathematics suffered correspondingly.
+
+If the reverend gentleman had had much discernment, and looked into the
+Poet’s Corner of the County Chronicle, as it arrived in the Wednesday’s
+bag, he might have seen ‘Mrs. Haller,’ ‘Passion and Genius,’ ‘Lines to
+Miss Fotheringay, of the Theatre Royal,’ appearing every week; and
+other verses of the most gloomy, thrilling, and passionate cast. But as
+these poems were no longer signed NEP by their artful composer, but
+subscribed EROS, neither the tutor nor Helen, the good soul, who cut
+all her son’s verses out of the paper, knew that Nep was no other than
+that flaming Eros, who sang so vehemently the character of the new
+actress.
+
+“Who is the lady,” at last asked Mrs. Pendennis, “whom your rival is
+always singing in the County Chronicle? He writes something like you,
+dear Pen, but yours is much the best. Have you seen Miss Fotheringay?”
+
+Pen said yes, he had; that night he went to see the “Stranger,” she
+acted Mrs. Haller. By the way, she was going to have a benefit, and was
+to appear in Ophelia—suppose we were to go—Shakspeare, you know,
+mother—we can get horses from the Clavering Arms. Little Laura sprang
+up with delight, she longed for a play.
+
+Pen introduced “Shakspeare, you know,” because the deceased Pendennis,
+as became a man of his character, professed an uncommon respect for the
+bard of Avon, in whose works he safely said there was more poetry than
+in all ‘Johnson’s Poets’ put together. And though Mr. Pendennis did not
+much read the works in question, yet he enjoined Pen to peruse them,
+and often said what pleasure he should have, when the boy was of a
+proper age, in taking him and mother to see some good plays of the
+immortal poet.
+
+The ready tears welled up in the kind mother’s eyes as she remembered
+these speeches of the man who was gone. She kissed her son fondly, and
+said she would go. Laura jumped for joy. Was Pen happy?—was he ashamed?
+As he held his mother to him, he longed to tell her all, but he kept
+his counsel. He would see how his mother liked her; the play should be
+the thing, and he would try his mother like Hamlet’s.
+
+Helen, in her good humour, asked Mr. Smirke to be of the party. That
+ecclesiastic had been bred up by a fond parent at Clapham, who had an
+objection to dramatic entertainments, and he had never yet seen a play.
+But, Shakspeare!—but to go with Mrs. Pendennis in her carriage, and sit
+a whole night by her side!—he could not resist the idea of so much
+pleasure, and made a feeble speech, in which he spoke of temptation and
+gratitude, and finally accepted Mrs. Pendennis’s most kind offer. As he
+spoke he gave her a look, which made her exceedingly uncomfortable. She
+had seen that look more than once, of late, pursuing her. He became
+more positively odious every day in the widow’s eyes.
+
+We are not going to say a great deal about Pen’s courtship of Miss
+Fotheringay, for the reader has already had a specimen of her
+conversation, much of which need surely not be reported. Pen sate with
+her hour after hour, and poured forth all his honest boyish soul to
+her. Everything he knew, or hoped, or felt, or had read, or fancied, he
+told to her. He never tired of talking and longing. One after another,
+as his thoughts rose in his hot eager brain, he clothed them in words,
+and told them to her. Her part of the tete-a-tete was not to talk, but
+to appear as if she understood what Pen talked (a difficult matter, for
+the young fellow blurted out no small quantity of nonsense), and to
+look exceedingly handsome and sympathising. The fact is, whilst he was
+making one of his tirades—and delighted, perhaps, and wondering at his
+own eloquence, the lad would go on for twenty minutes at a time—the
+lovely Emily, who could not comprehend a tenth part of his talk, had
+leisure to think about her own affairs, and would arrange in her own
+mind how they should dress the cold mutton, or how she would turn the
+black satin, or make herself out of her scarf a bonnet like Miss
+Thackthwaite’s new one, and so forth. Pen spouted Byron and Moore;
+passion and poetry: her business was to throw up her eyes, or fixing
+them for a moment on his face, to cry, “Oh, ’tis beautiful! Ah, how
+exquisite! Repeat those lines again.” And off the boy went, and she
+returned to her own simple thoughts about the turned gown, or the
+hashed mutton.
+
+In fact Pen’s passion was not long a secret from the lovely Emily or
+her father. Upon his second visit, his admiration was quite evident to
+both of them, and on his departure the old gentleman said to his
+daughter, as he winked at her over his glass of grog, “Faith, Milly
+darling, I think ye’ve hooked that chap.”
+
+“Pooh, ’tis only a boy, papa dear,” Milly remarked. “Sure he’s but a
+child.” Pen would have been very much pleased if he had heard that
+phrase—he was galloping home wild with pleasure, and shouting out her
+name as he rode.
+
+“Ye’ve hooked ’um any how,” said the Captain, “and let me tell ye he’s
+not a bad fish. I asked Tom at the George, and Flint, the grocer, where
+his mother dales—fine fortune—drives in her chariot—splendid park and
+grounds—Fairoaks Park—only son—property all his own at twenty-one—ye
+might go further and not fare so well, Miss Fotheringay.”
+
+“Them boys are mostly talk,” said Milly, seriously. “Ye know at Dublin
+how ye went on about young Poldoody, and I’ve a whole desk full of
+verses he wrote me when he was in Trinity College; but he went abroad,
+and his mother married him to an Englishwoman.”
+
+“Lord Poldoody was a young nobleman; and in them it’s natural: and ye
+weren’t in the position in which ye are now, Milly dear. But ye mustn’t
+encourage this young chap too much, for, bedad, Jack Costigan won’t
+have any thrifling with his daughter.”
+
+“No more will his daughter, papa, you may be sure of that,” Milly said.
+“A little sip more of the punch,—sure, ’tis beautiful. Ye needn’t be
+afraid about the young chap—I think I’m old enough to take care of
+myself, Captain Costigan.”
+
+So Pen used to come day after day, rushing in and galloping away, and
+growing more wild about the girl with every visit. Sometimes the
+Captain was present at their meetings; but having a perfect confidence
+in his daughter, he was more often inclined to leave the young couple
+to themselves, and cocked his hat over his eye, and strutted off on
+some errand when Pen entered. How delightful those interviews were! The
+Captain’s drawing-room was a low wainscoted room, with a large window
+looking into the Dean’s garden. There Pen sate and talked—and
+talked—Emily, looking beautiful as she sate at her work—looking
+beautiful and calm, and the sunshine came streaming in at the great
+windows, and lighted up her superb face and form. In the midst of the
+conversation, the great bell would begin to boom, and he would pause
+smiling, and be silent until the sound of the vast music died away—or
+the rooks in the cathedral elms would make a great noise towards
+sunset—or the sound of the organ and the choristers would come over the
+quiet air, and gently hush Pen’s talking.
+
+By the way, it must be said that Miss Fotheringay, in a plain shawl and
+a close bonnet and veil, went to church every Sunday of her life,
+accompanied by her indefatigable father, who gave the responses in a
+very rich and fine brogue, joined in the psalms and chanting, and
+behaved in the most exemplary manner.
+
+Little Bows, the house-friend of the family, was exceedingly wroth at
+the notion of Miss Fotheringay’s marriage with a stripling seven or
+eight years her junior. Bows, who was a cripple, and owned that he was
+a little more deformed even than Bingley the manager, so that he could
+not appear on the stage, was a singular wild man of no small talents
+and humour. Attracted first by Miss Fotheringay’s beauty, he began to
+teach her how to act. He shrieked out in his cracked voice the parts,
+and his pupil learned them from his lips by rote, and repeated them in
+her full rich tones. He indicated the attitudes, and set and moved
+those beautiful arms of hers. Those who remember this grand actress on
+the stage can recall how she used always precisely the same gestures,
+looks, and tones; how she stood on the same plank of the stage in the
+same position, rolled her eyes at the same instant and to the same
+degree, and wept with precisely the same heart-rending pathos and over
+the same pathetic syllable. And after she had come out trembling with
+emotion before the audience, and looking so exhausted and tearful that
+you fancied she would faint with sensibility, she would gather up her
+hair the instant she was behind the curtain, and go home to a
+mutton-chop and a glass of brown stout; and the harrowing labours of
+the day over, she went to bed and snored as resolutely and as regularly
+as a porter.
+
+Bows then was indignant at the notion that his pupil should throw her
+chances away in life by bestowing her hand upon a little country
+squire. As soon as a London manager saw her he prophesied that she
+would get a London engagement, and a great success. The misfortune was
+that the London managers had seen her. She had played in London three
+years before, and failed from utter stupidity. Since then it was that
+Bows had taken her in hand and taught her part after part. How he
+worked and screamed, and twisted, and repeated lines over and over
+again, and with what indomitable patience and dulness she followed him!
+She knew that he made her: and let herself be made. She was not
+grateful, or ungrateful, or unkind, or ill-humoured. She was only
+stupid; and Pen was madly in love with her.
+
+The post-horses from the Clavering Arms arrived in due time, and
+carried the party to the theatre at Chatteris, where Pen was gratified
+in perceiving that a tolerably large audience was assembled. The young
+gentlemen from Baymouth had a box, in the front of which sate Mr. Foker
+and his friend Mr. Spavin, splendidly attired in the most full-blown
+evening costume. They saluted Pen in a cordial manner, and examined his
+party, of which they approved, for little Laura was a pretty little
+red-cheeked girl with a quantity of shining brown ringlets, and Mrs.
+Pendennis, dressed in black velvet with the diamond cross which she
+sported on great occasions, looked uncommonly handsome and majestic.
+Behind these sate Mr. Arthur, and the gentle Smirke with the curl
+reposing on his fair forehead, and his white tie in perfect order. He
+blushed to find himself in such a place—but how happy was he to be
+there! He and Mrs. Pendennis brought books of ‘Hamlet’ with them to
+follow the tragedy, as is the custom of honest countryfolks who go to a
+play in state. Samuel, coachman, groom, and gardener to Mr. Pendennis,
+took his place in the pit, where Mr. Foker’s man was also visible. It
+was dotted with non-commissioned officers of the Dragoons, whose band,
+by kind permission of Colonel Swallowtail, were, as usual, in the
+orchestra; and that corpulent and distinguished warrior himself, with
+his Waterloo medal and a number of his young men, made a handsome show
+in the boxes.
+
+“Who is that odd-looking person bowing to you, Arthur?” Mrs. Pendennis
+asked of her son.
+
+Pen blushed a great deal. “His name is Captain Costigan, ma’am,” he
+said—“a Peninsular officer.” In fact it was the Captain in a new shoot
+of clothes, as he called them, and with a large pair of white kid
+gloves, one of which he waved to Pendennis, whilst he laid the other
+sprawling over his heart and coat-buttons. Pen did not say any more.
+And how was Mrs. Pendennis to know that Mr. Costigan was the father of
+Miss Fotheringay?
+
+Mr. Hornbull, from London, was the Hamlet of the night, Mr. Bingley
+modestly contenting himself with the part of Horatio, and reserving his
+chief strength for William in ‘Black-Eyed Susan,’ which was the second
+piece.
+
+We have nothing to do with the play: except to say that Ophelia looked
+lovely, and performed with admirable wild pathos laughing, weeping,
+gazing wildly, waving her beautiful white arms, and flinging about her
+snatches of flowers and songs with the most charming madness. What an
+opportunity her splendid black hair had of tossing over her shoulders!
+She made the most charming corpse ever seen; and while Hamlet and
+Laertes were battling in her grave, she was looking out from the back
+scenes with some curiosity towards Pen’s box, and the family party
+assembled in it.
+
+There was but one voice in her praise there. Mrs. Pendennis was in
+ecstasies with her beauty. Little Laura was bewildered by the piece,
+and the Ghost, and the play within the play (during which, as Hamlet
+lay at Ophelia’s knee, Pen felt that he would have liked to strangle
+Mr. Hornbull), but cried out great praises of that beautiful young
+creature. Pen was charmed with the effect which she produced on his
+mother—and the clergyman, for his part, was exceedingly enthusiastic.
+
+When the curtain fell upon that group of slaughtered personages, who
+are despatched so suddenly at the end of ‘Hamlet,’ and whose demise
+astonished poor little Laura not a little, there was an immense
+shouting and applause from all quarters of the house; the intrepid
+Smirke, violently excited, clapped his hands, and cried out “Bravo,
+Bravo,” as loud as the Dragoon officers themselves. These were greatly
+moved,—ils s’agitaient sur leurs bancs,—to borrow a phrase from our
+neighbours. They were led cheering into action by the portly
+Swallowtail, who waved his cap—the non-commissioned officers in the
+pit, of course, gallantly following their chiefs. There was a roar of
+bravos rang through the house; Pen bellowing with the loudest,
+“Fotheringay! Fotheringay!” and Messrs. Spavin and Foker giving the
+view-halloo from their box. Even Mrs. Pendennis began to wave about her
+pocket-handkerchief, and little Laura danced, laughed, clapped, and
+looked up at Pen with wonder.
+
+Hornbull led the beneficiaire forward, amidst bursts of enthusiasm—and
+she looked so handsome and radiant, with her hair still over her
+shoulders, that Pen hardly could contain himself for rapture: and he
+leaned over his mother’s chair, and shouted, and hurrayed, and waved
+his hat. It was all he could do to keep his secret from Helen, and not
+say, “Look! That’s the woman! Isn’t she peerless? I tell you I love
+her.” But he disguised these feelings under an enormous bellowing and
+hurraying.
+
+As for Miss Fotheringay and her behaviour, the reader is referred to a
+former page for an account of that. She went through precisely the same
+business. She surveyed the house all round with glances of gratitude;
+and trembled, and almost sank with emotion, over her favourite
+trap-door. She seized the flowers (Foker discharged a prodigious
+bouquet at her, and even Smirke made a feeble shy with a rose, and
+blushed dreadfully when it fell into the pit). She seized the flowers
+and pressed them to her swelling heart—etc., etc.—in a word—we refer
+the reader to earlier pages. Twinkling in her breast poor old Pen saw a
+locket which he had bought of Mr. Nathan in High Street, with the last
+shilling he was worth, and a sovereign borrowed from Smirke.
+
+‘Black-Eyed Susan’ followed, at which sweet story our gentle-hearted
+friends were exceedingly charmed and affected: and in which Susan, with
+a russet gown and a pink ribbon in her cap, looked to the full as
+lovely as Ophelia. Bingley was great in William. Goll, as the Admiral,
+looked like the figure-head of a seventy-four; and Garbetts, as Captain
+Boldweather, a miscreant who forms a plan for carrying off Black-eyed
+Susan, and waving an immense cocked hat says, “Come what may, he will
+be the ruin of her”—all these performed their parts with their
+accustomed talent; and it was with a sincere regret that all our
+friends saw the curtain drop down and end that pretty and tender story.
+
+If Pen had been alone with his mother in the carriage as they went
+home, he would have told her all, that night; but he sate on the box in
+the moonshine smoking a cigar by the side of Smirke, who warmed himself
+with a comforter. Mr. Foker’s tandem and lamps whirled by the sober old
+Clavering posters as they were a couple of miles on their road home,
+and Mr. Spavin saluted Mrs. Pendennis’s carriage with some considerable
+variations of Rule Britannia on the key-bugle.
+
+It happened two days after the above gaieties that Mr. Dean of
+Chatteris entertained a few select clerical friends at dinner at his
+Deanery Home. That they drank uncommonly good port wine, and abused the
+Bishop over their dessert, are very likely matters: but with such we
+have nothing at present to do. Our friend Doctor Portman, of Clavering,
+was one of the Dean’s guests, and being a gallant man, and seeing from
+his place at the mahogany the Dean’s lady walking up and down the
+grass, with her children sporting around her, and her pink parasol over
+her lovely head—the Doctor stept out of the French windows of the
+dining-room into the lawn, which skirts that apartment, and left the
+other white neckcloths to gird at my lord Bishop. Then the Doctor went
+up and offered Mrs. Dean his arm, and they sauntered over the ancient
+velvet lawn, which had been mowed and rolled for immemorial Deans, in
+that easy, quiet, comfortable manner, in which people of middle age and
+good temper walk after a good dinner, in a calm golden summer evening,
+when the sun has but just sunk behind the enormous cathedral-towers,
+and the sickle-shaped moon is growing every instant brighter in the
+heavens.
+
+Now at the end of the Dean’s garden there is, as we have stated, Mrs.
+Creed’s house, and the windows of the first-floor room were open to
+admit the pleasant summer air. A young lady of six-and-twenty, whose
+eyes were perfectly wide open, and a luckless boy of eighteen, blind
+with love and infatuation, were in that chamber together; in which
+persons, as we have before seen them in the same place, the reader will
+have no difficulty in recognising Mr. Arthur Pendennis and Miss
+Costigan.
+
+The poor boy had taken the plunge. Trembling with passionate emotion,
+his heart beating and throbbing fiercely, tears rushing forth in spite
+of him, his voice almost choking with feeling, poor Pen had said those
+words which he could withhold no more, and flung himself and his whole
+store of love, and admiration, and ardour at the feet of this mature
+beauty. Is he the first who has done so? Have none before or after him
+staked all their treasure of life, as a savage does his land and
+possessions against a draught of the fair-skins’ fire-water, or a
+couple of bauble eyes?
+
+“Does your mother know of this, Arthur?” said Miss Fotheringay, slowly.
+He seized her hand madly and kissed it a thousand times. She did not
+withdraw it. “Does the old lady know it?” Miss Costigan thought to
+herself, “well, perhaps she may,” and then she remembered what a
+handsome diamond cross Mrs. Pendennis had on the night of the play, and
+thought, “Sure ’twill go in the family.”
+
+“Calm yourself, dear Arthur,” she said, in her low rich voice, and
+sniffled sweetly and gravely upon him. Then, with her disengaged hand,
+she put the hair lightly off his throbbing forehead. He was in such a
+rapture and whirl of happiness that he could hardly speak. At last he
+gasped out, “My mother has seen you, and admires you beyond measure.
+She will learn to love you soon: who can do otherwise? She will love
+you because I do.”
+
+“’Deed then, I think you do,” said Miss Costigan, perhaps with a sort
+of pity for Pen.
+
+Think she did! Of course here Mr. Pen went off into a rhapsody through
+which, as we have perfect command over our own feelings, we have no
+reason to follow the lad. Of course, love, truth, and eternity were
+produced: and words were tried but found impossible to plumb the
+tremendous depth of his affection. This speech, we say, is no business
+of ours. It was most likely not very wise, but what right have we to
+overhear? Let the poor boy fling out his simple heart at the woman’s
+feet, and deal gently with him. It is best to love wisely, no doubt:
+but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.
+Some of us can’t: and are proud of our impotence too.
+
+At the end of his speech Pen again kissed the imperial hand with
+rapture—and I believe it was at this very moment, and while Mrs. Dean
+and Doctor Portman were engaged in conversation, that young Master
+Ridley Roset, her son, pulled his mother by the back of her capacious
+dress and said—
+
+“I say, ma! look up there”—and he waggled his innocent head.
+
+That was, indeed, a view from the Dean’s garden such as seldom is seen
+by Deans—or is written in Chapters. There was poor Pen performing a
+salute upon the rosy fingers of his charmer, who received the embrace
+with perfect calmness and good humour. Master Ridley looked up and
+grinned, little Miss Rosa looked at her brother, and opened the mouth
+of astonishment. Mrs. Dean’s countenance defied expression, and as for
+Dr. Portman, when he beheld the scene, and saw his prime favourite and
+dear pupil Pen, he stood mute with rage and wonder.
+
+Mrs. Haller spied the party below at the same moment, and gave a start
+and a laugh. “Sure there’s somebody in the Dean’s garden,” she cried
+out; and withdrew with perfect calmness, whilst Pen darted away with
+his face glowing like coals. The garden party had re-entered the house
+when he ventured to look out again. The sickle moon was blazing bright
+in the heavens then, the stars were glittering, the bell of the
+cathedral tolling nine, the Dean’s guests (all save one, who had called
+for his horse Dumpling, and ridden off early) were partaking of tea and
+buttered cakes in Mrs. Dean’s drawing-room—when Pen took leave of Miss
+Costigan.
+
+Pen arrived at home in due time afterwards, and was going to slip off
+to bed, for the poor lad was greatly worn and agitated, and his
+high-strung nerves had been at almost a maddening pitch when a summons
+came to him by John the old footman, whose countenance bore a very
+ominous look, that his mother must see him below.
+
+On this he tied on his neckcloth again, and went downstairs to the
+drawing-room. There sate not only his mother, but her friend, the
+Reverend Doctor Portman. Helen’s face looked very pale by the light of
+the lamp—the Doctor’s was flushed, on the contrary, and quivering with
+anger and emotion.
+
+Pen saw at once that there was a crisis, and that there had been a
+discovery. “Now for it,” he thought.
+
+“Where have you been, Arthur?” Helen said in a trembling voice.
+
+“How can you look that—that dear lady, and a Christian clergyman in the
+face, sir?” bounced out the Doctor, in spite of Helen’s pale, appealing
+looks. “Where has he been? Where his mother’s son should have been
+ashamed to go. For your mother’s an angel, sir, an angel. How dare you
+bring pollution into her house, and make that spotless creature
+wretched with the thoughts of your crime?”
+
+“Sir!” said Pen.
+
+“Don’t deny it, sir,” roared the Doctor. “Don’t add lies, sir, to your
+other infamy. I saw you myself, sir. I saw you from the Dean’s garden.
+I saw you kissing the hand of that infernal painted—-”
+
+“Stop,” Pen said, clapping his fist on the table, till the lamp
+flickered up and shook, “I am a very young man, but you will please to
+remember that I am a gentleman—I will hear no abuse of that lady.”
+
+“Lady, sir,” cried the Doctor, “that a lady—you—you—you stand in your
+mother’s presence and call that—that woman a lady!—-”
+
+“In anybody’s presence,” shouted out Pen. “She is worthy of any place.
+She is as pure as any woman. She is as good as she is beautiful. If any
+man but you insulted her, I would tell him what I thought; but as you
+are my oldest friend, I suppose you have the privilege to doubt of my
+honour.”
+
+“No, no, Pen, dearest Pen,” cried out Helen in an excess of joy. “I
+told, I told you, Doctor, he was not—not what you thought:” and the
+tender creature coming trembling forward flung herself on Pen’s
+shoulder.
+
+Pen felt himself a man, and a match for all the Doctors in Doctordom.
+He was glad this explanation had come. “You saw how beautiful she was,”
+he said to his mother, with a soothing, protecting air, like Hamlet
+with Gertrude in the play. “I tell you, dear mother, she is as good.
+When you know her you will say so. She is of all, except you, the
+simplest, the kindest, the most affectionate of women. Why should she
+not be on the stage?—She maintains her father by her labour.”
+
+“Drunken old reprobate,” growled the Doctor, but Pen did not hear or
+heed.
+
+“If you could see, as I have, how orderly her life is, how pure and
+pious her whole conduct, you would—as I do—yes, as I do”—(with a savage
+look at the Doctor)—“spurn the slanderer who dared to do her wrong. Her
+father was an officer, and distinguished himself in Spain. He was a
+friend of His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, and is intimately known
+to the Duke of Wellington, and some of the first officers of our army.
+He has met my uncle Arthur at Lord Hill’s, he thinks. His own family is
+one of the most ancient and respectable in Ireland, and indeed is as
+good as our own. The Costigans were kings of Ireland.”
+
+“Why, God bless my soul,” shrieked out the Doctor, hardly knowing
+whether to burst with rage or laughter, “you don’t mean to say you want
+to marry her?”
+
+Pen put on his most princely air. “What else, Dr. Portman,” he said,
+“do you suppose would be my desire?”
+
+Utterly foiled in his attack, and knocked down by this sudden lunge of
+Pen’s, the Doctor could only gasp out, “Mrs. Pendennis, ma’am, send for
+the Major.”
+
+“Send for the Major? with all my heart,” said Arthur Prince of
+Pendennis and Grand Duke of Fairoaks, with a most superb wave of the
+hand. And the colloquy terminated by the writing of those two letters
+which were laid on Major Pendennis’s breakfast-table, in London, at the
+commencement of Prince Arthur’s most veracious history.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+In which the Major makes his Appearance
+
+
+Our acquaintance, Major Arthur Pendennis, arrived in due time at
+Fairoaks, after a dreary night passed in the mail-coach, where a stout
+fellow-passenger, swelling preternaturally with great-coats, had
+crowded him into a corner, and kept him awake by snoring indecently;
+where a widow lady, opposite, had not only shut out the fresh air by
+closing all the windows of the vehicle, but had filled the interior
+with fumes of Jamaica rum and water, which she sucked perpetually from
+a bottle in her reticule; where, whenever he caught a brief moment of
+sleep, the twanging of the horn at the turnpike-gates, or the scuffling
+of his huge neighbour wedging him closer and closer, or the play of the
+widow’s feet on his own tender toes, speedily woke up the poor
+gentleman to the horrors and realities of life—a life which has passed
+away now and become impossible, and only lives in fond memories. Eight
+miles an hour, for twenty or five-and-twenty hours, a tight mail-coach,
+a hard seat, a gouty tendency, a perpetual change of coachmen grumbling
+because you did not fee them enough, a fellow-passenger partial to
+spirits-and-water,—who has not borne with these evils in the jolly old
+times? and how could people travel under such difficulties? And yet
+they did, and were merry too. Next the widow, and by the side of the
+Major’s servant on the roof, were a couple of school-boys going home
+for the midsummer holidays, and Major Pendennis wondered to see them
+sup at the inn at Bagshot, where they took in a cargo of ham, eggs,
+pie, pickles, tea, coffee, and boiled beef, which surprised the poor
+Major, sipping a cup of very feeble tea, and thinking with a tender
+dejection that Lord Steyne’s dinner was coming off at that very moment.
+The ingenuous ardour of the boys, however, amused the Major, who was
+very good-natured, and he became the more interested when he found that
+the one who travelled inside with him was a lord’s son, whose noble
+father Pendennis, of course, had met in the world of fashion which he
+frequented. The little lord slept all night through, in spite of the
+squeezing, and the horn-blowing, and the widow; and he looked as fresh
+as paint (and, indeed; pronounced himself to be so) when the Major,
+with a yellow face, a bristly beard, a wig out of curl, and strong
+rheumatic griefs shooting through various limbs of his uneasy body,
+descended at the little lodge-gate at Fairoaks, where the porteress and
+gardener’s wife reverentially greeted him, and, still more
+respectfully, Mr. Morgan, his man.
+
+Helen was on the look-out for this expected guest, and saw him from her
+window. But she did not come forward immediately to greet him. She knew
+the Major did not like to be seen at a surprise, and required a little
+preparation before he cared to be visible. Pen, when a boy, had
+incurred sad disgrace by carrying off from the Major’s dressing-table a
+little morocco box, which it must be confessed contained the Major’s
+back teeth, which he naturally would leave out of his jaws in a jolting
+mail-coach, and without which he would not choose to appear. Morgan,
+his man, made a mystery of mystery of his wigs: curling them in private
+places: introducing them mysteriously to his master’s room;—nor without
+his head of hair would the Major care to show himself to any member of
+his family, or any acquaintance. He went to his apartment then and
+supplied these deficiencies; he groaned, and moaned, and wheezed, and
+cursed Morgan through his toilet, as an old buck will, who has been up
+all night with a rheumatism, and has a long duty to perform. And
+finally being belted, curled, and set straight, he descended upon the
+drawing-room, with a grave majestic air, such as befitted one who was
+at once a man of business and a man of fashion.
+
+Pen was not there, however; only Helen, and little Laura sewing at her
+knees; and to whom he never presented more than a forefinger, as he did
+on this occasion after saluting his sister-in-law. Laura took the
+finger trembling and dropped it—and then fled out of the room. Major
+Pendennis did not want to keep her, or indeed to have her in the house
+at all, and had his private reason for disapproving of her: which we
+may mention on some future occasion. Meanwhile Laura disappeared and
+wandered about the premises seeking for Pen: whom she presently found
+in the orchard, pacing up and down a walk there in earnest conversation
+with Mr. Smirke. He was so occupied that he did not hear Laura’s clear
+voice singing out, until Smirke pulled him by the coat and pointed
+towards her as she came running.
+
+She ran up and put her hand into his. “Come in, Pen,” she said,
+“there’s somebody come; uncle Arthur’s come.”
+
+“He is, is he?” said Pen, and she felt him grasp her little hand. He
+looked round at Smirke with uncommon fierceness, as much as to say, I
+am ready for him or any man.—Mr. Smirke cast up his eyes as usual and
+heaved a gentle sigh.
+
+“Lead on, Laura,” Pen said, with a half fierce, half comic air—“Lead
+on, and say I wait upon my uncle.” But he was laughing in order to hide
+a great anxiety: and was screwing his courage inwardly to face the
+ordeal which he knew was now before him.
+
+Pen had taken Smirke into his confidence in the last two days, and
+after the outbreak attendant on the discovery of Doctor Portman, and
+during every one of those forty-eight hours which he had passed in Mr.
+Smirke’s society, had done nothing but talk to his tutor about Miss
+Fotheringay—Miss Emily Fotheringay—Emily, etc., to all which talk
+Smirke listened without difficulty, for he was in love himself, most
+anxious in all things to propitiate Pen, and indeed very much himself
+enraptured by the personal charms of this goddess, whose like, never
+having been before at a theatrical representation, he had not beheld
+until now. Pen’s fire and volubility, his hot eloquence and rich
+poetical tropes and figures, his manly heart, kind, ardent, and
+hopeful, refusing to see any defects in the person he loved, any
+difficulties in their position that he might not overcome, had half
+convinced Mr. Smirke that the arrangement proposed by Mr. Pen was a
+very feasible and prudent one, and that it would be a great comfort to
+have Emily settled at Fairoaks, Captain Costigan in the yellow room,
+established for life there, and Pen married at eighteen.
+
+And it is a fact that in these two days the boy had almost talked over
+his mother, too; had parried all her objections one after another with
+that indignant good sense which is often the perfection of absurdity;
+and had brought her almost to acquiesce in the belief that if the
+marriage was doomed in heaven, why doomed it was—that if the young
+woman was a good person, it was all that she for her part had to ask;
+and rather to dread the arrival of the guardian uncle who she foresaw
+would regard Mr. Pen’s marriage in a manner very different to that
+simple, romantic, honest, and utterly absurd way in which the widow was
+already disposed to look at questions of this sort.
+
+For as in the old allegory of the gold and silver shield, about which
+the two knights quarrelled, each is right according to the point from
+which he looks: so about marriage; the question whether it is foolish
+or good, wise or otherwise, depends upon the point of view from which
+you regard it. If it means a snug house in Belgravia, and pretty little
+dinner-parties, and a pretty little brougham to drive in the Park, and
+a decent provision not only for the young people, but for the little
+Belgravians to come; and if these are the necessaries of life (and they
+are with many honest people), to talk of any other arrangement is an
+absurdity: of love in lodgings—a babyish folly of affection: that can’t
+pay coach-hire or afford a decent milliner—as mere wicked balderdash
+and childish romance. If on the other hand your opinion is that people,
+not with an assured subsistence, but with a fair chance to obtain it,
+and with the stimulus of hope, health, and strong affection, may take
+the chance of Fortune for better or worse, and share its good or its
+evil together, the polite theory then becomes an absurdity in its turn:
+worse than an absurdity, a blasphemy almost, and doubt of Providence;
+and a man who waits to make his chosen woman happy, until he can drive
+her to church in a neat little carriage with a pair of horses, is no
+better than a coward or a trifler, who is neither worthy of love nor of
+fortune.
+
+I don’t say that the town folks are not right, but Helen Pendennis was
+a country-bred woman, and the book of life, as she interpreted it, told
+her a different story to that page which is read in cities. Like most
+soft and sentimental women, matchmaking, in general, formed a great
+part of her thoughts, and I daresay she had begun to speculate about
+her son’s falling in love and marrying long before the subject had ever
+entered into the brains of the young gentleman. It pleased her (with
+that dismal pleasure which the idea of sacrificing themselves gives to
+certain women) to think of the day when she would give up all to Pen,
+and he should bring his wife home, and she would surrender the keys and
+the best bedroom, and go and sit at the side of the table, and see him
+happy. What did she want in life, but to see the lad prosper? As an
+empress certainly was not too good for him, and would be honoured by
+becoming Mrs. Pen; so if he selected humble Esther instead of Queen
+Vashti, she would be content with his lordship’s choice. Never mind how
+lowly or poor the person might be who was to enjoy that prodigious
+honour, Mrs. Pendennis was willing to bow before her and welcome her,
+and yield her up the first place. But an actress—a mature woman, who
+had long ceased blushing except with rouge, as she stood under the
+eager glances of thousands of eyes—an illiterate and ill-bred person,
+very likely, who must have lived with light associates, and have heard
+doubtful conversation—Oh! it was hard that such a one should be chosen,
+and that the matron should be deposed to give place to such a Sultana.
+
+All these doubts the widow laid before Pen during the two days which
+had of necessity to elapse ere the uncle came down; but he met them
+with that happy frankness and ease which a young gentleman exhibits at
+his time of life, and routed his mother’s objections with infinite
+satisfaction to himself. Miss Costigan was a paragon of virtue and
+delicacy; she was as sensitive as the most timid maiden; she was as
+pure as the unsullied snow; she had the finest manners, the most
+graceful wit and genius, the most charming refinement and justness of
+appreciation in all matters of taste; she had the most admirable temper
+and devotion to her father, a good old gentleman of high family and
+fallen fortunes, who had lived, however, with the best society in
+Europe: he was in no hurry, and could afford to wait any time,—till he
+was one-and-twenty. But he felt (and here his face assumed an awful and
+harrowing solemnity) that he was engaged in the one only passion of his
+life, and that DEATH alone could close it.
+
+Helen told him, with a sad smile and shake of the head, that people
+survived these passions, and as for long engagements contracted between
+very young men and old women—she knew an instance in her own
+family—Laura’s poor father was an instance—how fatal they were.
+
+Mr. Pen, however, was resolved that death must be his doom in case of
+disappointment, and rather than this—rather than baulk him, in
+fact—this lady would have submitted to any sacrifice or personal pain,
+and would have gone down on her knees and have kissed the feet of a
+Hottentot daughter-in-law.
+
+Arthur knew his power over the widow, and the young tyrant was touched
+whilst he exercised it. In those two days he brought her almost into
+submission, and patronised her very kindly; and he passed one evening
+with the lovely pie-maker at Chatteris, in which he bragged of his
+influence over his mother; and he spent the other night in composing a
+most flaming and conceited copy of verses to his divinity, in which he
+vowed, like Montrose, that he would make her famous with his sword and
+glorious by his pen, and that he would love her as no mortal woman had
+been adored since the creation of womankind.
+
+It was on that night, long after midnight, that wakeful Helen, passing
+stealthily by her son’s door, saw a light streaming through the chink
+of the door into the dark passage, and heard Pen tossing and tumbling,
+and mumbling verses in his bed. She waited outside for a while,
+anxiously listening to him. In infantile fevers and early boyish
+illnesses, many a night before, the kind soul had so kept watch. She
+turned the lock very softly now, and went in so gently, that Pen for a
+moment did not see her. His face was turned from her. His papers on his
+desk were scattered about, and more were lying on the bed round him. He
+was biting a pencil and thinking of rhymes and all sorts of follies and
+passions. He was Hamlet jumping into Ophelia’s grave: he was the
+Stranger taking Mrs. Haller to his arms, beautiful Mrs. Haller, with
+the raven ringlets falling over her shoulders. Despair and Byron,
+Thomas Moore and all the Loves of the Angels, Waller and Herrick,
+Beranger and all the love-songs he had ever read, were working and
+seething in this young gentleman’s mind, and he was at the very height
+and paroxysm of the imaginative frenzy when his mother found him.
+
+“Arthur,” said the mother’s soft silver voice: and he started up and
+turned round. He clutched some of the papers and pushed them under the
+pillow.
+
+“Why don’t you go to sleep, my dear?” she said, with a sweet tender
+smile, and sate down on the bed and took one of his hot hands.
+
+Pen looked at her wildly for an instant—“I couldn’t sleep,” he
+said—“I—I was—I was writing.”—And hereupon he flung his arms round her
+neck and said, “O mother! I love her, I love her!”—How could such a
+kind soul as that help soothing and pitying him? The gentle creature
+did her best: and thought with a strange wonderment and tenderness that
+it was only yesterday that he was a child in that bed; and how she used
+to come and say her prayers over it before he woke upon holiday
+mornings.
+
+They were very grand verses, no doubt, although Miss Fotheringay did
+not understand them; but old Cos, with a wink and a knowing finger on
+his nose, said, “Put them up with th’ other letthers, Milly darling.
+Poldoody’s pomes was nothing to this.” So Milly locked up the
+manuscripts.
+
+When then, the Major being dressed and presentable, presented himself
+to Mrs. Pendennis, he found in the course of ten minutes’ colloquy that
+the poor widow was not merely distressed at the idea of the marriage
+contemplated by Pen, but actually more distressed at thinking that the
+boy himself was unhappy about it, and that his uncle and he should have
+any violent altercation on the subject. She besought Major Pendennis to
+be very gentle with Arthur: “He has a very high spirit, and will not
+brook unkind words,” she hinted. “Dr. Portman spoke to him rather
+roughly—and I must own unjustly, the other night—for my dearest boy’s
+honour is as high as any mother can desire—but Pen’s answer quite
+frightened me, it was so indignant. Recollect he is a man now; and be
+very—very cautious,” said the widow, laying a fair long hand on the
+Major’s sleeve.
+
+He took it up, kissed it gallantly and looked in her alarmed face with
+wonder, and a scorn which he was too polite to show. “Bon Dieu!”
+thought the old negotiator, “the boy has actually talked the woman
+round, and she’d get him a wife as she would a toy if Master cried for
+it. Why are there no such things as lettres-de-cachet—and a Bastille
+for young fellows of family?” The Major lived in such good company that
+he might be excused for feeling like an Earl.—He kissed the widow’s
+timid hand, pressed it in both his, and laid it down on the table with
+one of his own over it, as he smiled and looked her in the face.
+
+“Confess,” said he, “now, that you are thinking how you possibly can
+make it up to your conscience to let the boy have his own way.”
+
+She blushed and was moved in the usual manner of females. “I am
+thinking that he is very unhappy—and I am too——”
+
+“To contradict him or to let him have his own wish?” asked the other;
+and added, with great comfort to his inward self, “I’m d——d if he
+shall.”
+
+“To think that he should have formed so foolish and cruel and fatal an
+attachment,” the widow said, “which can but end in pain whatever be the
+issue.”
+
+“The issue shan’t be marriage, my dear sister,” the Major said
+resolutely. “We’re not going to have a Pendennis, the head of the
+house, marry a strolling mountebank from a booth. No, no, we won’t
+marry into Greenwich Fair, ma’am.”
+
+“If the match is broken suddenly off,” the widow interposed, “I don’t
+know what may be the consequence. I know Arthur’s ardent temper, the
+intensity of his affections, the agony of his pleasures and
+disappointments, and I tremble at this one if it must be. Indeed,
+indeed, it must not come on him too suddenly.”
+
+“My dear madam,” the Major said, with an air of the deepest
+commiseration “I’ve no doubt Arthur will have to suffer confoundedly
+before he gets over the little disappointment. But is he, think you,
+the only person who has been so rendered miserable?”
+
+“No, indeed,” said Helen, holding down her eyes. She was thinking of
+her own case, and was at that moment seventeen again—and most
+miserable.
+
+“I, myself,” whispered her brother-in-law, “have undergone a
+disappointment in early life. A young woman with fifteen thousand
+pounds, niece to an Earl—most accomplished creature—a third of her
+money would have run up my promotion in no time, and I should have been
+a lieutenant—colonel at thirty: but it might not be. I was but a
+penniless lieutenant: her parents interfered: and I embarked for India,
+where I had the honour of being secretary to Lord Buckley, when
+commander-in-Chief—without her. What happened? We returned our letters,
+sent back our locks of hair (the Major here passed his fingers through
+his wig), we suffered—but we recovered. She is now a baronet’s wife
+with thirteen grown-up children; altered, it is true, in person; but
+her daughters remind me of what she was, and the third is to be
+presented early next week.”
+
+Helen did not answer. She was still thinking of old times. I suppose if
+one lives to be a hundred: there are certain passages of one’s early
+life whereof the recollection will always carry us back to youth again,
+and that Helen was thinking of one of these.
+
+“Look at my own brother, my dear creature,” the Major continued
+gallantly: “he himself, you know, had a little disappointment when he
+started in the—the medical profession—an eligible opportunity presented
+itself. Miss Balls, I remember the name, was daughter of an apoth—a
+practitioner in very large practice; my brother had very nearly
+succeeded in his suit.—But difficulties arose: disappointments
+supervened, and—and I am sure he had no reason to regret the
+disappointment, which gave him this hand,” said the Major, and he once
+more politely pressed Helen’s fingers.
+
+“Those marriages between people of such different rank and age,” said
+Helen, “are sad things. I have known them produce a great deal of
+unhappiness.—Laura’s father, my cousin, who—who was brought up with
+me”—she added, in a low voice, “was an instance of that.”
+
+“Most injudicious,” cut in the Major. “I don’t know anything more
+painful than for a man to marry his superior in age or his inferior in
+station. Fancy marrying a woman of low rank of life, and having your
+house filled with her confounded tag-rag-and-bobtail of relations!
+Fancy your wife attached to a mother who dropped her h’s, or called
+Maria Marire! How are you to introduce her into society? My dear Mrs.
+Pendennis, I will name no names, but in the very best circles of London
+society I have seen men suffering the most excruciating agony, I have
+known them to be cut, to be lost utterly, from the vulgarity of their
+wives’ connections. What did Lady Snapperton do last year at her
+dejeune dansant after the Bohemian Ball? She told Lord Brouncker that
+he might bring his daughters or send them with a proper chaperon, but
+that she would not receive Lady Brouncker who was a druggist’s
+daughter, or some such thing, and as Tom Wagg remarked of her, never
+wanted medicine certainly, for she never had an h in her life. Good
+Ged, what would have been the trifling pang of a separation in the
+first instance to the enduring infliction of a constant misalliance and
+intercourse with low people?”
+
+“What, indeed!” said Helen, dimly disposed towards laughter, but yet
+checking the inclination, because she remembered in what prodigious
+respect her deceased husband held Major Pendennis and his stories of
+the great world.
+
+“Then this fatal woman is ten years older than that silly young
+scapegrace of an Arthur. What happens in such cases, my dear creature?
+I don’t mind telling you, now we are alone that in the highest state of
+society, misery, undeviating misery, is the result. Look at Lord
+Clodworthy come into a room with his wife—why, good Ged, she looks like
+Clodworthy’s mother. What’s the case between Lord and Lady Willowbank,
+whose love match was notorious? He has already cut her down twice when
+she has hanged herself out of jealousy for Mademoiselle de Sainte
+Cunegonde, the dancer; and mark my words, good Ged, one day he’ll not
+cut the old woman down. No, my dear madam, you are not in the world,
+but I am: you are a little romantic and sentimental (you know you
+are—women with those large beautiful eyes always are); you must leave
+this matter to my experience. Marry this woman! Marry at eighteen an
+actress of thirty—bah bah!—I would as soon he sent into the kitchen and
+married the cook.”
+
+“I know the evils of premature engagements,” sighed out Helen: and as
+she has made this allusion no less than thrice in the course of the
+above conversation, and seems to be so oppressed with the notion of
+long engagements and unequal marriages, and as the circumstance we have
+to relate will explain what perhaps some persons are anxious to know,
+namely who little Laura is, who has appeared more than once before us,
+it will be as well to clear up these points in another chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+In which Pen is kept waiting at the Door, while the Reader is informed
+who little Laura was.
+
+
+Once upon a time, then, there was a young gentleman of Cambridge
+University who came to pass the long vacation at the village where
+young Helen Thistlewood was living with her mother, the widow of the
+lieutenant slain at Copenhagen. This gentleman, whose name was the
+Reverend Francis Bell, was nephew to Mrs. Thistlewood, and by
+consequence, own cousin to Miss Helen, so that it was very right that
+he should take lodgings in his aunt’s house, who lived in a very small
+way; and there he passed the long vacation, reading with three or four
+pupils who accompanied him to the village. Mr. Bell was fellow of a
+college, and famous in the University for his learning and skill as a
+tutor.
+
+His two kinswomen understood pretty early that the reverend gentleman
+was engaged to be married, and was only waiting for a college living to
+enable him to fulfil his engagement. His intended bride was the
+daughter of another parson, who had acted as Mr. Bell’s own private
+tutor in Bell’s early life, and it was whilst under Mr. Coacher’s roof,
+indeed, and when only a boy of seventeen or eighteen years of age, that
+the impetuous young Bell had flung himself at the feet of Miss Martha
+Coacher, whom he was helping to pick peas in the garden. On his knees,
+before those peas and her, he pledged himself to an endless affection.
+
+Miss Coacher was by many years the young fellow’s senior and her own
+heart had been lacerated by many previous disappointments in the
+matrimonial line. No less than three pupils of her father had trifled
+with those young affections. The apothecary of the village had
+despicably jilted her. The dragoon officer, with whom she had danced so
+many many times during that happy season which she passed at Bath with
+her gouty grandmamma, one day gaily shook his bridle-rein and galloped
+away never to return. Wounded by the shafts of repeated ingratitude,
+can it be wondered at that the heart of Martha Coacher should pant to
+find rest somewhere? She listened to the proposals of the gawky gallant
+honest boy, with great kindness and good-humour; at the end of his
+speech she said, “Law, Bell, I’m sure you are too young to think of
+such things;” but intimated that she too would revolve them in her own
+virgin bosom. She could not refer Mr. Bell to her mamma, for Mr.
+Coacher was a widower, and being immersed in his books, was of course
+unable to take the direction of so frail and wondrous an article as a
+lady’s heart, which Miss Martha had to manage for herself.
+
+A lock of her hair, tied up in a piece of blue ribbon, conveyed to the
+happy Bell the result of the Vestal’s conference with herself. Thrice
+before had she snipt off one of her auburn ringlets, and given them
+away. The possessors were faithless, but the hair had grown again: and
+Martha had indeed occasion to say that men were deceivers when she
+handed over this token of love to the simple boy.
+
+Number 6, however, was an exception to former passions—Francis Bell was
+the most faithful of lovers. When his time arrived to go to college,
+and it became necessary to acquaint Mr. Coacher of the arrangements
+that had been made, the latter cried, “God bless my soul, I hadn’t the
+least idea what was going on;” as was indeed very likely, for he had
+been taken in three times before in precisely a similar manner; and
+Francis went to the University resolved to conquer honours, so as to be
+able to lay them at the feet of his beloved Martha.
+
+This prize in view made him labour prodigiously. News came, term after
+term, of the honours he won. He sent the prize-books for his college
+essays to old Coacher, and his silver declamation cup to Miss Martha.
+In due season he was high among the Wranglers, and a fellow of his
+college; and during all the time of these transactions a constant
+tender correspondence was kept up with Miss Coacher, to whose
+influence, and perhaps with justice, he attributed the successes which
+he had won.
+
+By the time, however, when the Rev. Francis Bell, M.A., and Fellow and
+Tutor of his College, was twenty-six years of age, it happened that
+Miss Coacher was thirty-four, nor had her charms, her manners, or her
+temper improved since that sunny day in the springtime of life when he
+found her picking peas in the garden. Having achieved his honours he
+relaxed in the ardour of his studies, and his judgment and tastes also
+perhaps became cooler. The sunshine of the pea-garden faded away from
+Miss Martha, and poor Bell found himself engaged—and his hand pledged
+to that bond in a thousand letters—to a coarse, ill-tempered,
+ill-favoured, ill-mannered, middle-aged woman.
+
+It was in consequence of one of many altercations (in which Martha’s
+eloquence shone, and in which therefore she was frequently pleased to
+indulge) that Francis refused to take his pupils to Bearleader’s Green,
+where Mr. Coacher’s living was, and where Bell was in the habit of
+spending the summer: and he bethought him that he would pass the
+vacation at his aunt’s village, which he had not seen for many
+years—not since little Helen was a girl and used to sit on his knee.
+Down then he came and lived with them. Helen was grown a beautiful
+young woman now. The cousins were nearly four months together, from
+June to October. They walked in the summer evenings: they met in the
+early morn. They read out of the same book when the old lady dozed at
+night over the candles. What little Helen knew, Frank taught her. She
+sang to him: she gave her artless heart to him. She was aware of all
+his story. Had he made any secret?—had he not shown the picture of the
+woman to whom he was engaged, and with a blush,—her letters, hard,
+eager, and cruel?—The days went on and on, happier and closer, with
+more kindness, more confidence, and more pity. At last one morning in
+October came, when Francis went back to college, and the poor girl felt
+that her tender heart was gone with him.
+
+Frank too wakened up from the delightful midsummer dream to the
+horrible reality of his own pain. He gnashed and tore at the chain
+which bound him. He was frantic to break it and be free. Should he
+confess?—give his savings to the woman to whom he was bound, and beg
+his release?—there was time yet—he temporised. No living might fall in
+for years to come. The cousins went on corresponding sadly and fondly:
+the betrothed woman, hard, jealous, and dissatisfied, complaining
+bitterly, and with reason, of her Francis’s altered tone.
+
+At last things came to a crisis, and the new attachment was discovered.
+Francis owned it, cared not to disguise it, rebuked Martha with her
+violent temper and angry imperiousness, and, worst of all, with her
+inferiority and her age.
+
+Her reply was, that if he did not keep his promise she would carry his
+letters into every court in the kingdom—letters in which his love was
+pledged to her ten thousand times; and, after exposing him to the world
+as the perjurer and traitor he was, she would kill herself.
+
+Frank had one more interview with Helen, whose mother was dead then,
+and who was living companion with old Lady Pontypool,—one more
+interview, where it was resolved that he was to do his duty; that is,
+to redeem his vow; that is, to pay a debt cozened from him by a
+sharper; that is, to make two honest people miserable. So the two
+judged their duty to be, and they parted.
+
+The living fell in only too soon; but yet Frank Bell was quite a grey
+and worn-out man when he was inducted into it. Helen wrote him a letter
+on his marriage, beginning “My dear Cousin,” and ending “always truly
+yours.” She sent him back the other letters, and the lock of his
+hair—all but a small piece. She had it in her desk when she was talking
+to the Major.
+
+Bell lived for three or four years in his living, at the end of which
+time, the Chaplainship of Coventry Island falling vacant, Frank applied
+for it privately, and having procured it, announced the appointment to
+his wife. She objected, as she did to everything. He told her bitterly
+that he did not want her to come: so she went. Bell went out in
+Governor Crawley’s time, and was very intimate with that gentleman in
+his later years. And it was in Coventry Island, years after his own
+marriage, and five years after he had heard of the birth of Helen’s
+boy, that his own daughter was born.
+
+She was not the daughter of the first Mrs. Bell, who died of island
+fever very soon after Helen Pendennis and her husband, to whom Helen
+had told everything, wrote to inform Bell of the birth of their child.
+“I was old, was I?” said Mrs. Bell the first; “I was old, and her
+inferior, was I? but I married you, Mr. Bell, and kept you from
+marrying her?” and hereupon she died. Bell married a colonial lady,
+whom he loved fondly. But he was not doomed to prosper in love; and,
+this lady dying in childbirth, Bell gave up too: sending his little
+girl home to Helen Pendennis and her husband, with a parting prayer
+that they would befriend her.
+
+The little thing came to Fairoaks from Bristol, which is not very far
+off, dressed in black, and in company of a soldier’s wife, her nurse,
+at parting from whom she wept bitterly. But she soon dried up her grief
+under Helen’s motherly care.
+
+Round her neck she had a locket with hair, which Helen had given, ah
+how many years ago! to poor Francis, dead and buried. This child was
+all that was left of him, and she cherished, as so tender a creature
+would, the legacy which he had bequeathed to her. The girl’s name, as
+his dying letter stated, was Helen Laura. But John Pendennis, though he
+accepted the trust, was always rather jealous of the orphan; and
+gloomily ordered that she should be called by her own mother’s name;
+and not by that first one which her father had given her. She was
+afraid of Mr. Pendennis, to the last moment of his life. And it was
+only when her husband was gone that Helen dared openly to indulge in
+the tenderness which she felt for the little girl.
+
+Thus it was that Laura Bell became Mrs. Pendennis’s daughter. Neither
+her husband nor that gentleman’s brother, the Major, viewed her with
+very favourable eyes. She reminded the first of circumstances in his
+wife’s life which he was forced to accept, but would have forgotten
+much more willingly and as for the second, how could he regard her? She
+was neither related to his own family of Pendennis, nor to any nobleman
+in this empire, and she had but a couple of thousand pounds for her
+fortune.
+
+And now let Mr. Pen come in, who has been waiting all this while.
+
+Having strung up his nerves, and prepared himself, without at the door,
+for the meeting, he came to it, determined to face the awful uncle. He
+had settled in his mind that the encounter was to be a fierce one, and
+was resolved on bearing it through with all the courage and dignity of
+the famous family which he represented. And he flung open the door and
+entered with the most severe and warlike expression, armed cap-a-pie as
+it were, with lance couched and plumes displayed, and glancing at his
+adversary, as if to say, “Come on, I’m ready.”
+
+The old man of the world, as he surveyed the boy’s demeanour, could
+hardly help a grin at his admirable pompous simplicity. Major Pendennis
+too had examined his ground; and finding that the widow was already
+half won over to the enemy, and having a shrewd notion that threats and
+tragic exhortations would have no effect upon the boy, who was inclined
+to be perfectly stubborn and awfully serious, the Major laid aside the
+authoritative manner at once, and with the most good-humoured natural
+smile in the world, held out his hands to Pen, shook the lad’s passive
+fingers gaily, and said, “Well, Pen, my boy, tell us all about it.”
+
+Helen was delighted with the generosity of the Major’s good-humour. On
+the contrary, it quite took aback and disappointed poor Pen, whose
+nerves were strung up for a tragedy, and who felt that his grand entree
+was altogether baulked and ludicrous. He blushed and winced with
+mortified vanity and bewilderment. He felt immensely inclined to begin
+to cry—“I—I—I didn’t know that you were come till just now,” he said:
+“is—is—town very full, I suppose?”
+
+If Pen could hardly gulp his tears down, it was all the Major could do
+to keep from laughter. He turned round and shot a comical glance at
+Mrs. Pendennis, who too felt that the scene was at once ridiculous and
+sentimental. And so, having nothing to say, she went up and kissed Mr.
+Pen: as he thought of her tenderness and soft obedience to his wishes,
+it is very possible too the boy was melted.
+
+“What a couple of fools they are,” thought the old guardian. “If I
+hadn’t come down, she would have driven over in state to pay a visit
+and give her blessing to the young lady’s family.”
+
+“Come, come,” said he, still grinning at the couple, “let us have as
+little sentiment as possible, and, Pen, my good fellow, tell us the
+whole story.”
+
+Pen got back at once to his tragic and heroical air. “The story is,
+sir,” said he, “as I have written it to you before. I have made the
+acquaintance of a most beautiful and most virtuous lady; of a high
+family, although in reduced circumstances: I have found the woman in
+whom I know that the happiness of my life is centred; I feel that I
+never, never can think about any woman but her. I am aware of the
+difference of our ages and other difficulties in my way. But my
+affection was so great that I felt I could surmount all these; that we
+both could: and she has consented to unite her lot with mine, and to
+accept my heart and my fortune.”
+
+“How much is that, my boy?” said the Major. “Has anybody left you some
+money? I don’t know that you are worth a shilling in the world.”
+
+“You know what I have is his,” cried out Mrs. Pendennis.
+
+“Good heavens, madam, hold your tongue!” was what the guardian was
+disposed to say; but he kept his temper, not without a struggle. “No
+doubt, no doubt,” he said. “You would sacrifice anything for him.
+Everybody knows that. But it is, after all then, your fortune which Pen
+is offering to the young lady; and of which he wishes to take
+possession at eighteen.”
+
+“I know my mother will give me anything,” Pen said, looking rather
+disturbed.
+
+“Yes, my good fellow, but there is reason in all things. If your mother
+keeps the house, it is but fair that she should select her company.
+When you give her house over her head, and transfer her banker’s
+account to yourself for the benefit of Miss What-d’-you-call-’em—Miss
+Costigan—don’t you think you should at least have consulted my sister
+as one of the principal parties in the transaction? I am speaking to
+you, you see, without the least anger or assumption of authority, such
+as the law and your father’s will give me over you for three years to
+come—but as one man of the world to another,—and I ask you, if you
+think that, because you can do what you like with your mother,
+therefore you have a right to do so? As you are her dependent, would it
+not have been more generous to wait before you took this step, and at
+least to have paid her the courtesy to ask her leave?”
+
+Pen held down his head, and began dimly to perceive that the action on
+which he had prided himself as a most romantic, generous instance of
+disinterested affection, was perhaps a very selfish and headstrong
+piece of folly.
+
+“I did it in a moment of passion,” said Pen, floundering; “I was not
+aware what I was going to say or to do” (and in this he spoke with
+perfect sincerity) “But now it is said, and I stand to it. No; I
+neither can nor will recall it. I’ll die rather than do so. And I—I
+don’t want to burthen my mother,” he continued. “I’ll work for myself.
+I’ll go on the stage, and act with her. She—she says I should do well
+there.”
+
+“But will she take you on those terms?” the Major interposed. “Mind, I
+do not say that Miss Costigan is not the most disinterested of women:
+but, don’t you suppose now, fairly, that your position as a young
+gentleman of ancient birth and decent expectations forms a part of the
+cause why she finds your addresses welcome?”
+
+“I’ll die, I say, rather than forfeit my pledge to her,” said Pen,
+doubling his fists and turning red.
+
+“Who asks you, my dear friend?” answered the imperturbable guardian.
+“No gentleman breaks his word, of course, when it has been given
+freely. But after all, you can wait. You owe something to your mother,
+something to your family—something to me as your father’s
+representative.”
+
+“Oh, of course,” Pen said, feeling rather relieved.
+
+“Well, as you have pledged your word to her, give us another, will you
+Arthur?”
+
+“What is it?” Arthur asked.
+
+“That you will make no private marriage—that you won’t be taking a trip
+to Scotland, you understand.”
+
+“That would be a falsehood. Pen never told his mother a falsehood,”
+Helen said.
+
+Pen hung down his head again, and his eyes filled with tears of shame.
+Had not this whole intrigue been a falsehood to that tender and
+confiding creature who was ready to give up all for his sake? He gave
+his uncle his hand.
+
+“No, sir—on my word of honour, as a gentleman,” he said, “I will never
+marry without my mother’s consent!” and giving Helen a bright parting
+look of confidence and affection unchangeable, the boy went out of the
+drawing-room into his own study.
+
+“He’s an angel—he’s an angel,” the mother cried out in one of her usual
+raptures.
+
+“He comes of a good stock, ma’am,” said her brother-in-law—“of a good
+stock on both sides.” The Major was greatly pleased with the result of
+his diplomacy—so much so, that he once more saluted the tips of Mrs.
+Pendennis’s glove, and dropping the curt, manly, and straightforward
+tone in which he had conducted the conversation with the lad, assumed a
+certain drawl which he always adopted when he was most conceited and
+fine.
+
+“My dear creature,” said he, in that his politest tone, “I think it
+certainly as well that I came down, and I flatter myself that last
+botte was a successful one. I tell you how I came to think of it. Three
+years ago my kind friend Lady Ferrybridge sent for me in the greatest
+state of alarm about her son Gretna, whose affair you remember, and
+implored me to use my influence with the young gentleman, who was
+engaged in an affaire de coeur with a Scotch clergyman’s daughter, Miss
+MacToddy. I implored, I entreated gentle measures. But Lord Ferrybridge
+was furious, and tried the high hand. Gretna was sulky and silent, and
+his parents thought they had conquered. But what was the fact, my dear
+creature? The young people had been married for three months before
+Lord Ferrybridge knew anything about it. And that was why I extracted
+the promise from Master Pen.”
+
+“Arthur would never have done so,” Mrs. Pendennis said.
+
+“He hasn’t,—that is one comfort,” answered the brother-in-law.
+
+Like a wary and patient man of the world, Major Pendennis did not press
+poor Pen any farther for the moment, but hoped the best from time, and
+that the young fellow’s eyes would be opened before long to see the
+absurdity of which he was guilty. And having found out how keen the
+boy’s point of honour was, he worked kindly upon that kindly feeling
+with great skill, discoursing him over their wine after dinner, and
+pointing out to Pen the necessity of a perfect uprightness and openness
+in all his dealings, and entreating that his communications with his
+interesting young friend (as the Major politely called Miss
+Fotheringay) should be carried on with the knowledge, if not
+approbation, of Mrs. Pendennis. “After all, Pen,” the Major said, with
+a convenient frankness that did not displease the boy, whilst it
+advanced the interests of the negotiator, “you must bear in mind that
+you are throwing yourself away. Your mother may submit to your marriage
+as she would to anything else you desired, if you did but cry long
+enough for it: but be sure of this, that it can never please her. You
+take a young woman off the boards of a country theatre and prefer her,
+for such is the case, to one of the finest ladies in England. And your
+mother will submit to your choice, but you can’t suppose that she will
+be happy under it. I have often fancied, entre nous, that my sister had
+it in her eye to make a marriage between you and that little ward of
+hers—Flora, Laura—what’s her name? And I always determined to do my
+small endeavour to prevent any such match. The child has but two
+thousand pounds, I am given to understand. It is only with the utmost
+economy and care that my sister can provide for the decent maintenance
+of her house, and for your appearance and education as a gentleman; and
+I don’t care to own to you that I had other and much higher views for
+you. With your name and birth, sir—with your talents, which I suppose
+are respectable, with the friends whom I have the honour to possess, I
+could have placed you in an excellent position—a remarkable position
+for a young man of such exceeding small means, and had hoped to see
+you, at least, try to restore the honours of our name. Your mother’s
+softness stopped one prospect, or you might have been a general, like
+our gallant ancestor who fought at Ramillies and Malplaquet. I had
+another plan in view: my excellent and kind friend, Lord Bagwig, who is
+very well disposed towards me, would, I have little doubt, have
+attached you to his mission at Pumpernickel, and you might have
+advanced in the diplomatic service. But, pardon me for recurring to the
+subject; how is a man to serve a young gentleman of eighteen, who
+proposes to marry a lady of thirty, whom he has selected from a booth
+in a fair?—well, not a fair,—a barn. That profession at once is closed
+to you. The public service is closed to you. Society is closed to you.
+You see, my good friend, to what you bring yourself. You may get on at
+the bar to be sure, where I am given to understand that gentlemen of
+merit occasionally marry out of their kitchens; but in no other
+profession. Or you may come and live down here—down here, mon Dieu! for
+ever” (said the Major, with a dreary shrug, as he thought with
+inexpressible fondness of Pall Mall), “where your mother will receive
+the Mrs. Arthur that is to be, with perfect kindness; where the good
+people of the county won’t visit you; and where, by Gad, sir, I shall
+be shy of visiting you myself, for I’m a plain-spoken man, and I own to
+you that I like to live with gentlemen for my companions; where you
+will have to live, with rum-and-water—drinking gentlemen—farmers, and
+drag through your life the young husband of an old woman, who, if she
+doesn’t quarrel with your mother, will at least cost that lady her
+position in society, and drag her down into that dubious caste into
+which you must inevitably fall. It is no affair of mine, my good sir. I
+am not angry. Your downfall will not hurt me farther than that it will
+extinguish the hopes I had of seeing my family once more taking its
+place in the world. It is only your mother and yourself that will be
+ruined. And I pity you both from my soul. Pass the claret: it is some I
+sent to your poor father; I remember I bought it at poor Lord Levant’s
+sale. But of course,” added the Major, smacking the wine, “having
+engaged yourself, you will do what becomes you as a man of honour,
+however fatal your promise may be. However, promise us on our side, my
+boy, what I set out by entreating you to grant,—that there shall be
+nothing clandestine, that you will pursue your studies, that you will
+only visit your interesting friend at proper intervals. Do you write to
+her much?”
+
+Pen blushed and said, “Why, yes, he had written.”
+
+“I suppose verses, eh! as well as prose? I was a dab at verses myself.
+I recollect when I first joined, I used to write verses for the fellows
+in the regiment; and did some pretty things in that way. I was talking
+to my old friend General Hobbler about some lines I dashed off for him
+in the year 1806, when we were at the Cape, and, Gad, he remembered
+every line of them still; for he’d used ’em so often, the old rogue,
+and had actually tried ’em on Mrs. Hobbler, sir—who brought him sixty
+thousand pounds. I suppose you’ve tried verses, eh, Pen?”
+
+Pen blushed again, and said, “Why, yes, he had written verses.”
+
+“And does the fair one respond in poetry or prose?” asked the Major,
+eyeing his nephew with the queerest expression, as much as to say, “O
+Moses and Green Spectacles! what a fool the boy is.”
+
+Pen blushed again. She had written, but not in verse, the young lover
+owned, and he gave his breast-pocket the benefit of a squeeze with his
+left arm, which the Major remarked, according to his wont.
+
+“You have got the letters there, I see,” said the old campaigner,
+nodding at Pen and pointing to his own chest (which was manfully wadded
+with cotton by Mr. Stultz). “You know you have. I would give twopence
+to see ’em.”
+
+“Why,” said Pen, twiddling the stalks of the strawberries, “I—I,” but
+this sentence never finished; for Pen’s face was so comical and
+embarrassed, as the Major watched it, that the elder could contain his
+gravity no longer, and burst into a fit of laughter, in which chorus
+Pen himself was obliged to join after a minute: when he broke out
+fairly into a guffaw.
+
+It sent them with great good-humour into Mrs. Pendennis’s drawing-room.
+She was pleased to hear them laughing in the hall as they crossed it.
+
+“You sly rascal!” said the Major, putting his arm gaily on Pen’s
+shoulder, and giving a playful push at the boy’s breast-pocket. He felt
+the papers crackling there sure enough. The young fellow was
+delighted—conceited—triumphant—and in one word, a spoony.
+
+The pair came to the tea-table in the highest spirits. The Major’s
+politeness was beyond expression. He had never tasted such good tea,
+and such bread was only to be had in the country. He asked Mrs.
+Pendennis for one of her charming songs. He then made Pen sing, and was
+delighted and astonished at the beauty of the boy’s voice: he made his
+nephew fetch his maps and drawings, and praised them as really
+remarkable works of talent in a young fellow: he complimented him on
+his French pronunciation: he flattered the simple boy as adroitly as
+ever lover flattered a mistress: and when bedtime came, mother and son
+went to their several rooms perfectly enchanted with the kind Major.
+
+When they had reached those apartments, I suppose Helen took to her
+knees as usual: and Pen read over his letters before going to bed: just
+as if he didn’t know every word of them by heart already. In truth
+there were but three of those documents and to learn their contents
+required no great effort of memory.
+
+In No. 1, Miss Fotheringay presents grateful compliments to Mr.
+Pendennis, and in her papa’s name and her own begs to thank him for his
+most beautiful presents. They will always be kept carefully; and Miss
+F. and Captain C. will never forget the delightful evening which they
+passed on Tuesday last.
+
+No. 2 said—Dear Sir, we shall have a small quiet party of social
+friends at our humble board, next Tuesday evening, at an early tea,
+when I shall wear the beautiful scarf which, with its accompanying
+delightful verses, I shall ever, ever cherish: and papa bids me say how
+happy he will be if you will join ‘the feast of reason and the flow of
+soul’ in our festive little party, as I am sure will be your truly
+grateful Emily Fotheringay.
+
+No. 3 was somewhat more confidential, and showed that matters had
+proceeded rather far. You were odious yesterday night, the letter said.
+Why did you not come to the stage-door? Papa could not escort me on
+account of his eye; he had an accident, and fell down over a loose
+carpet on the stair on Sunday night. I saw you looking at Miss Diggle
+all night; and you were so enchanted with Lydia Languish you scarcely
+once looked at Julia. I could have crushed Bingley, I was so angry. I
+play Ella Rosenberg on Friday: will you come then? Miss Diggle
+performs—ever your E. F.
+
+These three letters Mr. Pen used to read at intervals, during the day
+and night, and embrace with that delight and fervour which such
+beautiful compositions surely warranted. A thousand times at least he
+had kissed fondly the musky satin paper, made sacred to him by the hand
+of Emily Fotheringay. This was all he had in return for his passion and
+flames, his vows and protests, his rhymes and similes, his wakeful
+nights and endless thoughts, his fondness, fears and folly. The young
+wiseacre had pledged away his all for this: signed his name to endless
+promissory notes, conferring his heart upon the bearer: bound himself
+for life, and got back twopence as an equivalent. For Miss Costigan was
+a young lady of such perfect good-conduct and self-command, that she
+never would have thought of giving more, and reserved the treasures of
+her affection until she could transfer them lawfully at church.
+
+Howbeit, Mr. Pen was content with what tokens of regard he had got, and
+mumbled over his three letters in a rapture of high spirits, and went
+to sleep delighted with his kind old uncle from London, who must
+evidently yield to his wishes in time; and, in a word, in a
+preposterous state of contentment with himself and all the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+In which the Major opens the Campaign
+
+
+Let those who have a real and heartfelt relish for London society and
+the privilege of an entree into its most select circles, admit that
+Major Pendennis was a man of no ordinary generosity and affection, in
+the sacrifice which he now made. He gave up London in May,—his
+newspapers and his mornings—his afternoons from club to club, his
+little confidential visits to my Ladies, his rides in Rotten Row, his
+dinners, and his stall at the Opera, his rapid escapades to Fulham or
+Richmond on Saturdays and Sundays, his bow from my Lord Duke or my Lord
+Marquis at the great London entertainments, and his name in the Morning
+Post of the succeeding day,—his quieter little festivals, more select,
+secret, and delightful—all these he resigned to lock himself into a
+lone little country house, with a simple widow and a greenhorn of a
+son, a mawkish curate, and a little girl of ten years of age.
+
+He made the sacrifice, and it was the greater that few knew the extent
+of it. His letters came down franked from town, and he showed the
+invitations to Helen with a sigh. It was beautiful and tragical to see
+him refuse one party after another—at least to those who could
+understand, as Helen didn’t, the melancholy grandeur of his
+self-denial. Helen did not, or only smiled at the awful pathos with
+which the Major spoke of the Court Guide in general: but young Pen
+looked with great respect at the great names upon the superscriptions
+of his uncle’s letters, and listened to the Major’s stories about the
+fashionable world with constant interest and sympathy.
+
+The elder Pendennis’s rich memory was stored with thousands of these
+delightful tales, and he poured them into Pen’s willing ear with
+unfailing eloquence. He knew the name and pedigree of everybody in the
+Peerage, and everybody’s relations. “My dear boy,” he would say, with a
+mournful earnestness and veracity, “you cannot begin your genealogical
+studies too early; I wish to Heavens you would read in Debrett every
+day. Not so much the historical part (for the pedigrees, between
+ourselves, are many of them very fabulous, and there are few families
+that can show such a clear descent as our own) as the account of family
+alliances, and who is related to whom. I have known a man’s career in
+life blasted by ignorance on this important, this all-important
+subject. Why, only last month, at dinner at my Lord Hobanob’s, a young
+man, who has lately been received among us, young Mr. Suckling (author
+of a work, I believe), began to speak lightly of Admiral Bowser’s
+conduct for ratting to Ministers, in what I must own is the most
+audacious manner. But who do you think sate next and opposite to this
+Mr. Suckling? Why—why, next to him was Lady Grampound Bowser’s
+daughter, and opposite to him was Lord Grampound Bowser’s son-in-law.
+The infatuated young man went on cutting his jokes at the Admiral’s
+expense, fancying that all the world was laughing with him, and I leave
+you to imagine Lady Hobanob’s feelings—Hobanob’s!—those of every
+well-bred man, as the wretched intru was so exposing himself. He will
+never dine again in South Street. I promise you that.”
+
+With such discourses the Major entertained his nephew, as he paced the
+terrace in front of the house for his two hours’ constitutional walk,
+or as they sate together after dinner over their wine. He grieved that
+Sir Francis Clavering had not come down to the park, to live in it
+since his marriage, and to make a society for the neighbourhood. He
+mourned that Lord Eyrie was not in the country, that he might take Pen
+and present him to his lordship. “He has daughters,” the Major said.
+“Who knows? you might have married Lady Emily or Lady Barbara Trehawk;
+but all those dreams are over; my poor fellow, you must lie on the bed
+which you have made for yourself.”
+
+These things to hear did young Pendennis seriously incline. They are
+not so interesting in print as when delivered orally; but the Major’s
+anecdotes of the great George, of the Royal Dukes, of the statesmen,
+beauties, and fashionable ladies of the day, filled young Pen’s soul
+with longing and wonder; and he found the conversations with his
+guardian, which sadly bored and perplexed poor Mrs. Pendennis, for his
+own part never tedious.
+
+It can’t be said that Mr. Pen’s new guide, philosopher, and friend
+discoursed him on the most elevated subjects, or treated the subjects
+which he chose in the most elevated manner. But his morality, such as
+it was, was consistent. It might not, perhaps, tend to a man’s progress
+in another world, but it was pretty well calculated to advance his
+interests in this; and then it must be remembered that the Major never
+for one instant doubted that his views were the only views practicable,
+and that his conduct was perfectly virtuous and respectable. He was a
+man of honour, in a word: and had his eyes, what he called, open. He
+took pity on this young greenhorn of a nephew, and wanted to open his
+eyes too.
+
+No man, for instance, went more regularly to church when in the country
+than the old bachelor. “It don’t matter so much in town, Pen,” he said,
+“for there the women go and the men are not missed. But when a
+gentleman is sur ses terres, he must give an example to the country
+people: and if I could turn a tune, I even think I should sing. The
+Duke of Saint David’s, whom I have the honour of knowing, always sings
+in the country, and let me tell you, it has a doosed fine effect from
+the family pew. And you are somebody down here. As long as the
+Claverings are away you are the first man in the parish: and as good as
+any. You might represent the town if you played your cards well. Your
+poor dear father would have done so had he lived; so might you.—Not if
+you marry a lady, however amiable, whom the country people won’t
+meet.—Well, well: it’s a painful subject. Let us change it, my boy.”
+But if Major Pendennis changed the subject once he recurred to it a
+score of times in the day: and the moral of his discourse always was,
+that Pen was throwing himself away. Now it does not require much
+coaxing or wheedling to make a simple boy believe that he is a very
+fine fellow.
+
+Pen took his uncle’s counsels to heart. He was glad enough, we have
+said, to listen to his elder’s talk. The conversation of Captain
+Costigan became by no means pleasant to him, and the idea of that tipsy
+old father-in-law haunted him with terror. He couldn’t bring that man,
+unshaven and reeking of punch, to associate with his mother. Even about
+Emily—he faltered when the pitiless guardian began to question him.
+“Was she accomplished?” He was obliged to own, no. “Was she clever?”
+Well, she had a very good average intellect: but he could not
+absolutely say she was clever. “Come, let us see some of her letters.”
+So Pen confessed that he had but those three of which we have made
+mention—and that they were but trivial invitations or answers.
+
+“She is cautious enough,” the Major said, drily. “She is older than
+you, my poor boy;” and then he apologised with the utmost frankness and
+humility, and flung himself upon Pen’s good feelings, begging the lad
+to excuse a fond old uncle, who had only his family’s honour in
+view—for Arthur was ready to flame up in indignation whenever Miss
+Costigan’s honesty was doubted, and swore that he would never have her
+name mentioned lightly, and never, never would part from her.
+
+He repeated this to his uncle and his friends at home, and also, it
+must be confessed, to Miss Fotheringay and the amiable family, at
+Chatteris, with whom he still continued to spend some portion of his
+time. Miss Emily was alarmed when she heard of the arrival of Pen’s
+guardian, and rightly conceived that the Major came down with hostile
+intentions to herself. “I suppose ye intend to leave me, now your grand
+relation has come down from town. He’ll carry ye off, and you’ll forget
+your poor Emily, Mr. Arthur!”
+
+Forget her! In her presence, in that of Miss Rouncy, the Columbine and
+Milly’s confidential friend of the Company, in the presence of the
+Captain himself, Pen swore he never could think of any other woman but
+his beloved Miss Fotheringay; and the Captain, looking up at his foils
+which were hung as a trophy on the wall of the room where Pen and he
+used to fence, grimly said, he would not advoise any man to meddle
+rashly with the affections of his darling child; and would never
+believe his gallant young Arthur, whom he treated as his son, whom he
+called his son, would ever be guilty of conduct so revolting to every
+idaya of honour and humanity.
+
+He went up and embraced Pen after speaking. He cried, and wiped his eye
+with one large dirty hand as he clasped Pen with the other. Arthur
+shuddered in that grasp, and thought of his uncle at home. His
+father-in-law looked unusually dirty and shabby; the odour of
+whisky-and-water was even more decided than in common. How was he to
+bring that man and his mother together? He trembled when he thought
+that he had absolutely written to Costigan (enclosing to him a
+sovereign, the loan of which the worthy gentleman had need), and saying
+that one day he hoped to sign himself his affectionate son, Arthur
+Pendennis. He was glad to get away from Chatteris that day; from Miss
+Rouncy the confidante; from the old toping father-in-law; from the
+divine Emily herself. “O, Emily, Emily,” he cried inwardly, as he
+rattled homewards on Rebecca, “you little know what sacrifices I am
+making for you!—for you who are always so cold, so cautious, so
+mistrustful;” and he thought of a character in Pope to whom he had
+often involuntarily compared her.
+
+Pen never rode over to Chatteris upon a certain errand, but the Major
+found out on what errand the boy had been. Faithful to his plan, Major
+Pendennis gave his nephew no let or hindrance; but somehow the constant
+feeling that the senior’s eye was upon him, an uneasy shame attendant
+upon that inevitable confession which the evening’s conversation would
+be sure to elicit in the most natural simple manner, made Pen go less
+frequently to sigh away his soul at the feet of his charmer than he had
+been wont to do previous to his uncle’s arrival. There was no use
+trying to deceive him; there was no pretext of dining with Smirke, or
+reading Greek plays with Foker; Pen felt, when he returned from one of
+his flying visits, that everybody knew whence he came, and appeared
+quite guilty before his mother and guardian, over their books or their
+game at picquet.
+
+Once having walked out half a mile, to the Fairoaks Inn, beyond the
+Lodge gates, to be in readiness for the Competitor coach, which changed
+horses there, to take a run for Chatteris, a man on the roof touched
+his hat to the young gentleman: it was his uncle’s man, Mr. Morgan, who
+was going on a message for his master, and had been took up at the
+Lodge, as he said. And Mr. Morgan came back by the Rival, too; so that
+Pen had the pleasure of that domestic’s company both ways. Nothing was
+said at home. The lad seemed to have every decent liberty; and yet he
+felt himself dimly watched and guarded, and that there were eyes upon
+him even in the presence of his Dulcinea.
+
+In fact, Pen’s suspicions were not unfounded, and his guardian had sent
+forth to gather all possible information regarding the lad and his
+interesting young friend. The discreet and ingenious Mr. Morgan, a
+London confidential valet, whose fidelity could be trusted, had been to
+Chatteris more than once, and made every inquiry regarding the past
+history and present habits of the Captain and his daughter. He
+delicately cross-examined the waiters, the ostlers, and all the inmates
+of the bar at the George, and got from them what little they knew
+respecting the worthy Captain. He was not held in very great regard
+there, as it appeared. The waiters never saw the colour of his money,
+and were warned not to furnish the poor gentleman with any liquor for
+which some other party was not responsible. He swaggered sadly about
+the coffee-room there, consumed a toothpick, and looked over the paper,
+and if any friend asked him to dinner he stayed. Morgan heard at the
+George of Pen’s acquaintance with Mr. Foker, and he went over to
+Baymouth to enter into relations with that gentleman’s man; but the
+young student was gone to a Coast Regatta, and his servant, of course,
+travelled in charge of the dressing-case.
+
+From the servants of the officers at the barracks Mr. Morgan found that
+the Captain had so frequently and outrageously inebriated himself
+there, that Colonel Swallowtail had forbidden him the messroom. The
+indefatigable Morgan then put himself in communication with some of the
+inferior actors at the theatre, and pumped them over their cigars and
+punch, and all agreed that Costigan was poor, shabby, and given to debt
+and to drink. But there was not a breath upon the reputation of Miss
+Fotheringay: her father’s courage was reported to have displayed itself
+on more than one occasion towards persons disposed to treat his
+daughter with freedom. She never came to the theatre but with her
+father: in his most inebriated moments, that gentleman kept a watch
+over her; finally Mr. Morgan, from his own experience added that he had
+been to see her act, and was uncommon delighted with the performance,
+besides thinking her a most splendid woman.
+
+Mrs. Creed, the pew-opener, confirmed these statements to Doctor
+Portman, who examined her personally, and threatened her with the
+terrors of the Church one day after afternoon service. Mrs. Creed had
+nothing unfavourable to her lodger to divulge. She saw nobody; only one
+or two ladies of the theatre. The Captain did intoxicate himself
+sometimes, and did not always pay his rent regularly, but he did when
+he had money, or rather Miss Fotheringay did. Since the young gentleman
+from Clavering had been and took lessons in fencing, one or two more
+had come from the barracks; Sir Derby Oaks, and his young friend, Mr.
+Foker, which was often together; and which was always driving over from
+Baymouth in the tandem. But on the occasions of the lessons, Miss F.
+was very seldom present, and generally came downstairs to Mrs. Creed’s
+own room.
+
+The Doctor and the Major consulting together as they often did, groaned
+in spirit over that information. Major Pendennis openly expressed his
+disappointment; and, I believe, the Divine himself was ill pleased at
+not being able to jack a hole in poor Miss Fotheringay’s reputation.
+
+Even about Pen himself, Mrs. Creed’s reports were desperately
+favourable. “Whenever he come,” Mrs. Creed said, “She always have me or
+one of the children with her. And Mrs. Creed, marm, says she, if you
+please, marm, you’ll on no account leave the room when that young
+gentleman’s here. And many’s the time I’ve seen him a lookin’ as if he
+wished I was away, poor young man: and he took to coming in
+service-time, when I wasn’t at home, of course: but she always had one
+of the boys up if her Pa wasn’t at home, or old Mr. Bowser with her a
+teaching of her her lesson, or one of the young ladies of the
+theayter.”
+
+It was all true: whatever encouragements might have been given him
+before he avowed his passion, the prudence of Miss Emily was prodigious
+after Pen had declared himself: and the poor fellow chafed against her
+hopeless reserve, which maintained his ardour as it excited his anger.
+
+The Major surveyed the state of things with a sigh. “If it were but a
+temporary liaison,” the excellent man said, “one could bear it. A young
+fellow must sow his wild oats, and that sort of thing. But a virtuous
+attachment is the deuce. It comes of the d——d romantic notions boys get
+from being brought up by women.”
+
+“Allow me to say, Major, that you speak a little too like a man of the
+world,” replied the Doctor. “Nothing can be more desirable for Pen than
+a virtuous attachment for a young lady of his own rank and with a
+corresponding fortune—this present infatuation, of course, I must
+deplore as sincerely as you do. If I were his guardian I should command
+him to give it up.”
+
+“The very means, I tell you, to make him marry to-morrow. We have got
+time from him, that is all, and we must do our best with that.
+
+“I say, Major,” said the Doctor, at the end of the conversation in
+which the above subject was discussed—“I am not, of course, a
+play-going man—but suppose, I say, we go and see her.”
+
+The Major laughed—he had been a fortnight at Fairoaks, and strange to
+say, had not thought of that. “Well,” he said, “why not? After all, it
+is not my niece, but Miss Fotheringay the actress, and we have as good
+a right as any other of the public to see her if we pay our money.” So
+upon a day when it was arranged that Pen was to dine at home, and pass
+the evening with his mother, the two elderly gentlemen drove over to
+Chatteris in the Doctor’s chaise, and there, like a couple of jolly
+bachelors, dined at the George Inn, before proceeding to the play.
+
+Only two other guests were in the room,—an officer of the regiment
+quartered at Chatteris, and a young gentleman whom the Doctor thought
+he had somewhere seen. They left them at their meal, however, and
+hastened to the theatre. It was Hamlet over again. Shakspeare was
+Article XL. of stout old Doctor Portman’s creed, to which he always
+made a point of testifying publicly at least once in a year.
+
+We have described the play before, and how those who saw Miss
+Fotheringay perform in Ophelia saw precisely the same thing on one
+night as on another. Both the elderly gentlemen looked at her with
+extraordinary interest, thinking how very much young Pen was charmed
+with her.
+
+“Gad,” said the Major, between his teeth, as he surveyed her when she
+was called forward as usual, and swept her curtsies to the scanty
+audience, “the young rascal has not made a bad choice.”
+
+The Doctor applauded her loudly and loyally. “Upon my word,” said he,
+“She is a very clever actress; and I must say, Major, she is endowed
+with very considerable personal attractions.”
+
+“So that young officer thinks in the stage-box,” Major Pendennis
+answered, and he pointed out to Doctor Portman’s attention the young
+dragoon of the George Coffee-room, who sate in the box in question, and
+applauded with immense enthusiasm. She looked extremely sweet upon him
+too, thought the Major: but that’s their way—and he shut up his natty
+opera-glass and pocketed it, as if he wished to see no more that night.
+Nor did the Doctor, of course, propose to stay for the after-piece, so
+they rose and left the theatre; the Doctor returning to Mrs. Portman,
+who was on a visit at the Deanery, and the Major walking home full of
+thought towards the George, where he had bespoken a bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+Facing the Enemy
+
+
+Sauntering slowly homewards, Major Pendennis reached the George
+presently, and found Mr. Morgan, his faithful valet, awaiting him at
+the door of the George Inn, who stopped his master as he was about to
+take a candle to go to bed, and said, with his usual air of knowing
+deference, “I think, sir, if you would go into the coffee-room, there’s
+a young gentleman there as you would like to see.”
+
+“What, is Mr. Arthur here?” the Major said, in great anger.
+
+“No, sir—but his great friend, Mr. Foker, sir. Lady Hagnes Foker’s son
+is here, sir. He’s been asleep in the coffee-room since he took his
+dinner, and has just rung for his coffee, sir. And I think, p’raps, you
+might like to git into conversation with him,” the valet said, opening
+the coffee-room door.
+
+The Major entered; and there indeed was Mr. Foker, the only occupant of
+the place. He was rubbing his eyes, and sate before a table decorated
+with empty decanters and relics of dessert. He had intended to go to
+the play too, but sleep had overtaken him after a copious meal, and he
+had flung up his legs on the bench, and indulged in a nap instead of
+the dramatic amusement. The Major was meditating how to address the
+young man, but the latter prevented him that trouble.
+
+“Like to look at the evening paper, sir?” said Mr. Foker, who was
+always communicative and affable; and he took up the Globe from his
+table, and offered it to the new-comer.
+
+“I am very much obliged to you,” said the Major, with a grateful bow
+and smile. “If I don’t mistake the family likeness, I have the pleasure
+of speaking to Mr. Henry Foker, Lady Agnes Foker’s son. I have the
+happiness to name her ladyship among my acquaintances—and you bear,
+sir, a Rosherville face.”
+
+“Hullo! I beg your pardon,” Mr. Foker said, “I took you,”—he was going
+to say—“I took you for a commercial gent.” But he stopped that phrase.
+“To whom have I the pleasure of speaking?” he added.
+
+“To a relative of a friend and schoolfellow of yours—Arthur Pendennis,
+my nephew, who has often spoken to me about you in terms of great
+regard. I am Major Pendennis, of whom you may have heard him speak. May
+I take my soda-water at your table? I have had the pleasure of sitting
+at your grandfather’s.”
+
+“Sir, you do me proud,” said Mr. Foker, with much courtesy. “And so you
+are Arthur Pendennis’s uncle, are you?”
+
+“And guardian,” added the Major.
+
+“He’s as good a fellow as ever stepped, sir,” said Mr. Foker.
+
+“I am glad you think so.”
+
+“And clever, too—I was always a stupid chap, I was—but you see, sir, I
+know ’em when they are clever, and like ’em of that sort.”
+
+“You show your taste and your modesty, too,” said the Major. “I have
+heard Arthur repeatedly speak of you, and he said your talents were
+very good.”
+
+“I’m not good at the books,” Mr. Foker said, wagging his head—“never
+could manage that—Pendennis could—he used to do half the chaps’
+verses—and yet”—the young gentleman broke out, “you are his guardian;
+and I hope you will pardon me for saying that I think he’s what we call
+flat,” the candid young gentleman said.
+
+The Major found himself on the instant in the midst of a most
+interesting and confidential conversation. “And how is Arthur a flat?”
+he asked, with a smile.
+
+“You know,” Foker answered, winking at him—he would have winked at the
+Duke of Wellington with just as little scruple, for he was in that
+state of absence, candour, and fearlessness which a man sometimes
+possesses after drinking a couple of bottles of wine—“You know Arthur’s
+a flat,—about women I mean.”
+
+“He is not the first of us, my dear Mr. Harry,” answered the Major. “I
+have heard something of this—but pray tell me more.”
+
+“Why, sir, you see—it’s partly my fault. He went to the play one
+night—for you see I’m down here readin’ for my little go during the
+Long, only I come over from Baymouth pretty often in my drag—well, sir,
+we went to the play, and Pen was struck all of a heap with Miss
+Fotheringay—Costigan her real name is—an uncommon fine gal she is too;
+and the next morning I introduced him to the General, as we call her
+father—a regular old scamp and such a boy for the whisky-and-water!—and
+he’s gone on being intimate there. And he’s fallen in love with her—and
+I’m blessed if he hasn’t proposed to her,” Foker said, slapping his
+hand on the table, until all the dessert began to jingle.
+
+“What! you know it too?” asked the Major.
+
+“Know it! don’t I? and many more too. We were talking about it at mess,
+yesterday, and chaffing Derby Oaks—until he was as mad as a hatter.
+Know Sir Derby Oaks? We dined together, and he went to the play: we
+were standing at the door smoking, I remember, when you passed in to
+dinner.”
+
+“I remember Sir Thomas Oaks, his father, before he was a Baronet or a
+Knight; he lived in Cavendish-square, and was physician to Queen
+Charlotte.”
+
+“The young one is making the money spin, I can tell you,” Mr. Foker
+said.
+
+“And is Sir Derby Oaks,” the Major said, with great delight and
+anxiety, “another soupirant?”
+
+“Another what?” inquired Mr. Foker.
+
+“Another admirer of Miss Fotheringay?”
+
+“Lord bless you! we call him Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Pen
+Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. But mind you, nothing wrong! No,
+no! Miss F. is a deal too wide-awake for that, Major Pendennis. She
+plays one off against the other. What you call two strings to her bow.”
+
+“I think you seem tolerably wide-awake, too, Mr. Foker, Pendennis said,
+laughing.
+
+“Pretty well, thank you, sir—how are you?” Foker replied,
+imperturbably. “I’m not clever, p’raps: but I am rather downy; and
+partial friends say I know what’s o’clock tolerably well. Can I tell
+you the time of day in any way?”
+
+“Upon my word,” the Major answered, quite delighted, “I think you may
+be of very great service to me. You are a young man of the world, and
+with such one likes to deal. And as such I need not inform you that our
+family is by no means delighted at this absurd intrigue in which Arthur
+is engaged.”
+
+“I should rather think not,” said Mr. Foker. “Connexion not eligible.
+Too much beer drunk on the premises. No Irish need apply. That I take
+to be your meaning.”
+
+The Major said it was, exactly; though in truth he did not quite
+understand what Mr. Foker’s meaning was: and he proceeded to examine
+his new acquaintance regarding the amiable family into which his nephew
+proposed to enter, and soon got from the candid witness a number of
+particulars regarding the House of Costigan.
+
+We must do Mr. Foker the justice to say that he spoke most favourably
+of Mr. and Miss Costigan’s moral character. “You see,” said he, “I
+think the General is fond of the jovial bowl, and if I wanted to be
+very certain of my money, it isn’t in his pocket I’d invest it—but he
+has always kept a watchful eye on his daughter, and neither he nor she
+will stand anything but what’s honourable. Pen’s attentions to her are
+talked about in the whole Company, and I hear all about them from a
+young lady who used to be very intimate with her, and with whose family
+I sometimes take tea in a friendly way. Miss Rouncy says, Sir Derby
+Oaks has been hanging about Miss Fotheringay ever since his regiment
+has been down here; but Pen has come in and cut him out lately, which
+has made the Baronet so mad, that he has been very near on the point of
+proposing too. Wish he would; and you’d see which of the two Miss
+Fotheringay would jump at.”
+
+“I thought as much,” the Major said. “You give me a great deal of
+pleasure, Mr. Foker. I wish I could have seen you before.”
+
+“Didn’t like to put in my oar,” replied the other. “Don’t speak till
+I’m asked, when, if there’s no objections, I speak pretty freely. Heard
+your man had been hankering about my servant—didn’t know myself what
+was going on until Miss Fotheringay and Miss Rouncy had the row about
+the ostrich feathers, when Miss R. told me everything.”
+
+“Miss Rouncy, I gather, was the confidante of the other.”
+
+“Confidant? I believe you. Why, she’s twice as clever a girl as
+Fotheringay, and literary and that, while Miss Foth can’t do much more
+than read.”
+
+“She can write,” said the Major, remembering Pen’s breast-pocket.
+
+Foker broke out into a sardonic “He, he! Rouncy writes her letters,” he
+said; “every one of ’em; and since they’ve quarrelled, she don’t know
+how the deuce to get on. Miss Rouncy is an uncommon pretty hand,
+whereas the old one makes dreadful work of the writing and spelling
+when Bows ain’t by. Rouncy’s been settin’ her copies lately—she writes
+a beautiful hand, Rouncy does.”
+
+“I suppose you know it pretty well,” said the Major archly upon which
+Mr. Foker winked at him again.
+
+“I would give a great deal to have a specimen of her hand-writing,”
+continued Major Pendennis, “I dare say you could give me one.”
+
+“No, no, that would be too bad,” Foker replied. “Perhaps I oughtn’t to
+have said as much as I have. Miss F.’s writin’ ain’t so very bad, I
+dare say; only she got Miss R. to write the first letter, and has gone
+on ever since. But you mark my word, that till they are friends again
+the letters will stop.”
+
+“I hope they will never be reconciled,” the Major said with great
+sincerity; “and I can’t tell you how delighted I am to have had the
+good fortune of making your acquaintance. You must feel, my dear sir,
+as a man of the world, how fatal to my nephew’s prospects in life is
+this step which he contemplates, and how eager we all must be to free
+him from this absurd engagement.”
+
+“He has come out uncommon strong,” said Mr. Foker; “I have seen his
+verses; Rouncy copied ’em. And I said to myself when I saw ’em, ‘Catch
+me writin’ verses to a woman,—that’s all.’”
+
+“He has made a fool of himself, as many a good fellow has before him.
+How can we make him see his folly, and cure it? I am sure you will give
+us what aid you can in extricating a generous young man from such a
+pair of schemers as this father and daughter seem to be. Love on the
+lady’s side is out of the question.”
+
+“Love, indeed!” Foker said. “If Pen hadn’t two thousand a year when he
+came of age——”
+
+“If Pen hadn’t what?” cried out the Major in astonishment.
+
+“Two thousand a year: hasn’t he got two thousand a year?—the General
+says he has.”
+
+“My dear friend,” shrieked out the Major, with an eagerness which this
+gentleman rarely showed, “thank you!—thank you!—I begin to see now.—Two
+thousand a year! Why, his mother has but five hundred a year in the
+world.—She is likely to live to eighty, and Arthur has not a shilling
+but what she can allow him.”
+
+“What! he ain’t rich then?” Foker asked.
+
+“Upon my honour he has no more than what I say.”
+
+“And you ain’t going to leave him anything?”
+
+The Major had sunk every shilling he could scrape together on an
+annuity, and of course was going to leave Pen nothing; but he did not
+tell Foker this. “How much do you think a Major on half-pay can save?”
+he asked. “If these people have been looking at him as a fortune, they
+are utterly mistaken—and—and you have made me the happiest man in the
+world.”
+
+“Sir to you,” said Mr. Foker, politely, and when they parted for the
+night they shook hands with the greatest cordiality; the younger
+gentleman promising the elder not to leave Chatteris without a further
+conversation in the morning. And as the Major went up to his room, and
+Mr. Foker smoked his cigar against the door pillars of the George, Pen,
+very likely, ten miles off; was lying in bed kissing the letter from
+his Emily.
+
+The next morning, before Mr. Foker drove off in his drag, the
+insinuating Major had actually got a letter of Miss Rouncy’s in his own
+pocket-book. Let it be a lesson to women how they write. And in very
+high spirits Major Pendennis went to call upon Doctor Portman at the
+Deanery, and told him what happy discoveries he had made on the
+previous night. As they sate in confidential conversation in the Dean’s
+oak breakfast-parlour they could look across the lawn and see Captain
+Costigan’s window, at which poor Pen had been only too visible some
+three weeks since. The Doctor was most indignant against Mrs. Creed,
+the landlady, for her duplicity, in concealing Sir Derby Oaks’s
+constant visits to her lodgers, and threatened to excommunicate her out
+of the Cathedral. But the wary Major thought that all things were for
+the best; and, having taken counsel with himself over night, felt
+himself quite strong enough to go and face Captain Costigan.
+
+“I’m going to fight the dragon,” he said, with a laugh, to Doctor
+Portman.
+
+“And I shrive you, sir, and bid good fortune go with you,” answered the
+Doctor. Perhaps he and Mrs. Portman and Miss Myra, as they sate with
+their friend, the Dean’s lady, in her drawing-room, looked up more than
+once at the enemy’s window to see if they could perceive any signs of
+the combat.
+
+The Major walked round, according to the directions given him, and soon
+found Mrs. Creed’s little door. He passed it, and as he ascended to
+Captain Costigan’s apartment, he could hear a stamping of feet, and a
+great shouting of “Ha, ha!” within.
+
+“It’s Sir Derby Oaks taking his fencing lesson,” said the child, who
+piloted Major Pendennis. “He takes it Mondays, Wednesdays, and
+Fridays.”
+
+The Major knocked, and at length a tall gentleman came forth, with a
+foil and mask in one hand, and a fencing glove on the other.
+
+Pendennis made him a deferential bow. “I believe I have the honour of
+speaking to Captain Costigan—My name is Major Pendennis.”
+
+The Captain brought his weapon up to the salute, and said, “Major, the
+honer is moine; I’m deloighted to see ye.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+Negotiation
+
+
+The Major and Captain Costigan were old soldiers and accustomed to face
+the enemy, so we may presume that they retained their presence of mind
+perfectly; but the rest of the party assembled in Cos’s sitting-room
+were, perhaps, a little flurried at Pendennis’s apparition. Miss
+Fotheringay’s slow heart began to beat no doubt, for her cheek flushed
+up with a great healthy blush, as Lieutenant Sir Derby Oaks looked at
+her with a scowl. The little crooked old man in the window-seat, who
+had been witnessing the fencing-match between the two gentlemen (whose
+stamping and jumping had been such as to cause him to give up all
+attempts to continue writing the theatre music, in the copying of which
+he had been engaged) looked up eagerly towards the new-comer as the
+Major of the well-blacked boots entered the apartment distributing the
+most graceful bows to everybody present.
+
+“Me daughter—me friend, Mr. Bows—me gallant young pupil and friend, I
+may call ’um, Sir Derby Oaks,” said Costigan, splendidly waving his
+hand, and pointing each of these individuals to the Major’s attention.
+“In one moment, Meejor, I’m your humble servant,” and to dash into the
+little adjoining chamber where he slept, to give a twist to his lank
+hair with his hair-brush (a wonderful and ancient piece), to tear off
+his old stock and put on a new one which Emily had constructed for him,
+and to assume a handsome clean collar, and the new coat which had been
+ordered upon the occasion of Miss Fotheringay’s benefit, was with the
+still active Costigan the work of a minute.
+
+After him Sir Derby entered, and presently emerged from the same
+apartment, where he also cased himself in his little shell-jacket,
+which fitted tightly upon the young officer’s big person; and which he,
+and Miss Fotheringay, and poor Pen too, perhaps, admired prodigiously.
+
+Meanwhile conversation was engaged between the actress and the
+new-comer; and the usual remarks about the weather had been
+interchanged before Costigan re-entered in his new ‘Shoot,’ as he
+called it.
+
+“I needn’t apologoise to ye, Meejor,” he said, in his richest and most
+courteous manner, “for receiving ye in me shirt-sleeves.”
+
+“An old soldier can’t be better employed than in teaching a young one
+the use of his sword,” answered the Major, gallantly. “I remember in
+old times hearing that you could use yours pretty well, Captain
+Costigan.”
+
+“What, ye’ve heard of Jack Costigan, Major,” said the other, greatly.
+
+The Major had, indeed; he had pumped his nephew concerning his new
+friend, the Irish officer; and whether he had no other knowledge of the
+Captain than what he had thus gained, or whether he actually remembered
+him, we cannot say. But Major Pendennis was a person of honour and
+undoubted veracity, and said that he perfectly well recollected meeting
+Mr. Costigan, and hearing him sing at Sir Richard Strachan’s table at
+Walcheren.
+
+At this information, and the bland and cordial manner in which it was
+conveyed, Bows looked up, entirely puzzled. “But we will talk of these
+matters another time,” the Major continued, perhaps not wishing to
+commit himself; “it is to Miss Fotheringay that I came to pay my
+respects to-day;” and he performed another bow for her, so courtly and
+gracious, that if she had been a duchess he could not have made it more
+handsome.
+
+“I had heard of your performances from my nephew, madam,” the Major
+said, “who raves about you, as I believe you know pretty well. But
+Arthur is but a boy, and a wild enthusiastic young fellow, whose
+opinions one must not take au pied de la lettre; and I confess I was
+anxious to judge for myself. Permit me to say your performance
+delighted and astonished me. I have seen our best actresses, and, on my
+word, I think you surpass them all. You are as majestic as Mrs.
+Siddons.”
+
+“Faith, I always said so,” Costigan said, winking at his daughter;
+“Major, take a chair.” Milly rose at this hint, took an unripped satin
+garment off the only vacant seat, and brought the latter to Major
+Pendennis with one of her finest curtseys.
+
+“You are as pathetic as Miss O’Neill,” he continued, bowing and seating
+himself; “your snatches of song reminded me of Mrs. Jordan in her best
+time, when we were young men, Captain Costigan; and your manner
+reminded me of Mars. Did you ever see the Mars, Miss Fotheringay?”
+
+“There was two Mahers in Crow Street,” remarked Miss Emily; “Fanny was
+well enough, but Biddy was no great things.”
+
+“Sure, the Major means the god of war, Milly, my dear,” interposed the
+parent.
+
+“It is not that Mars I meant, though Venus, I suppose, may be pardoned
+for thinking about him,” the Major replied with a smile directed in
+full to Sir Derby Oaks, who now re-entered in his shell-jacket; but the
+lady did not understand the words of which he made use, nor did the
+compliment at all pacify Sir Derby, who, probably, did not understand
+it either, and at any rate received it with great sulkiness and
+stiffness, scowling uneasily at Miss Fotheringay, with an expression
+which seemed to ask what the deuce does this man here?
+
+Major Pendennis was not in the least annoyed by the gentleman’s
+ill-humour. On the contrary, it delighted him. “So,” thought he, “a
+rival is in the field;” and he offered up vows that Sir Derby might be,
+not only a rival, but a winner too, in this love-match in which he and
+Pen were engaged.
+
+“I fear I interrupted your fencing lesson; but my stay in Chatteris is
+very short, and I was anxious to make myself known to my old
+fellow-campaigner Captain Costigan, and to see a lady nearer who had
+charmed me so much from the stage. I was not the only man epris last
+night, Miss Fotheringay (if I must call you so, though your own family
+name is a very ancient and noble one). There was a reverend friend of
+mine, who went home in raptures with Ophelia; and I saw Sir Derby Oaks
+fling a bouquet which no actress ever merited better. I should have
+brought one myself, had I known what I was going to see. Are not those
+the very flowers in a glass of water on the mantelpiece yonder?”
+
+“I am very fond of flowers,” said Miss Fotheringay, with a languishing
+ogle at Sir Derby Oaks—but the Baronet still scowled sulkily.
+
+“Sweets to the sweet—isn’t that the expression of the play?” Mr.
+Pendennis asked, bent upon being good-humoured.
+
+“’Pon my life, I don’t know. Very likely it is. I ain’t much of a
+literary man,” answered Sir Derby.
+
+“Is it possible?” the Major continued, with an air of surprise. You
+don’t inherit your father’s love of letters, then, Sir Derby? He was a
+remarkably fine scholar, and I had the honour of knowing him very
+well.”
+
+“Indeed,” said the other, and gave a sulky wag of his head.
+
+“He saved my life,” continued Pendennis.
+
+“Did he now?” cried Miss Fotheringay, rolling her eyes first upon the
+Major with surprise, then towards Sir Derby with gratitude—but the
+latter was proof against those glances: and far from appearing to be
+pleased that the Apothecary, his father, should have saved Major
+Pendennis’s life, the young man actually looked as if he wished the
+event had turned the other way.
+
+“My father, I believe, was a very good doctor,” the young gentleman
+said by way of reply. “I’m not in that line myself. I wish you good
+morning, sir. I’ve got an appointment—Cos, bye-bye—Miss Fotheringay,
+good morning.” And, in spite of the young lady’s imploring looks and
+appealing smiles, the Dragoon bowed stiffly out of the room, and the
+clatter of his sabre was heard as he strode down the creaking stair;
+and the angry tones of his voice as he cursed little Tom Creed, who was
+disporting in the passage, and whose peg-top Sir Derby kicked away with
+an oath into the street.
+
+The Major did not smile in the least, though he had every reason to be
+amused. “Monstrous handsome young man that—as fine a looking soldier as
+ever I saw,” he said to Costigan.
+
+“A credit to the army and to human nature in general,” answered
+Costigan. “A young man of refoined manners, polite affabilitee, and
+princely fortune. His table is sumptuous: he’s adawr’d in the regiment:
+and he rides sixteen stone.”
+
+“A perfect champion,” said the Major, laughing. “I have no doubt all
+the ladies admire him.”
+
+“He’s very well, in spite of his weight, now he’s young,” said Milly;
+“but he’s no conversation.”
+
+“He’s best on horseback,” Mr. Bows said; on which Milly replied, that
+the Baronet had ridden third in the steeple-chase on his horse
+Tareaways, and the Major began to comprehend that the young lady
+herself was not of a particular genius, and to wonder how she should be
+so stupid and act so well.
+
+Costigan, with Irish hospitality, of course pressed refreshment upon
+his guest: and the Major, who was no more hungry than you are after a
+Lord Mayor’s dinner, declared that he should like a biscuit and a glass
+of wine above all things, as he felt quite faint from long fasting—but
+he knew that to receive small kindnesses flatters the donors very much,
+and that people must needs grow well disposed towards you as they give
+you their hospitality.
+
+“Some of the old Madara, Milly, love,” Costigan said, winking to his
+child—and that lady, turning to her father a glance of intelligence,
+went out of the room, and down the stair, where she softly summoned her
+little emissary Master Tommy Creed: and giving him a piece of money,
+ordered him to go buy a pint of Madara wine at the Grapes, and
+sixpennyworth of sorted biscuits at the baker’s, and to return in a
+hurry, when he might have two biscuits for himself.
+
+Whilst Tommy Creed was gone on this errand, Miss Costigan sate below
+with Mrs. Creed, telling her landlady how Mr. Arthur Pendennis’s uncle,
+the Major, was above-stairs; a nice, soft-spoken old gentleman; that
+butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth: and how Sir Derby had gone out of
+the room in a rage of jealousy, and thinking what must be done to
+pacify both of them.
+
+“She keeps the keys of the cellar, Major,” said Mr. Costigan, as the
+girl left the room.
+
+“Upon my word you have a very beautiful butler,” answered Pendennis,
+gallantly, “and I don’t wonder at the young fellows raving about her.
+When we were of their age, Captain Costigan, I think plainer women
+would have done our business.”
+
+“Faith, and ye may say that, sir—and lucky is the man who gets her. Ask
+me friend Bob Bows here whether Miss Fotheringay’s moind is not even
+shuparior to her person, and whether she does not possess a cultiveated
+intellect, a refoined understanding, and an emiable disposition?”
+
+“O of course,” said Mr. Bows, rather drily. “Here comes Hebe blushing
+from the cellar. Don’t you think it is time to go to rehearsal, Miss
+Hebe? You will be fined if you are later”—and he gave the young lady a
+look, which intimated that they had much better leave the room and the
+two elders together.
+
+At this order Miss Hebe took up her bonnet and shawl, looking
+uncommonly pretty, good-humoured, and smiling: and Bows gathered up his
+roll of papers, and hobbled across the room for his hat and cane.
+
+“Must you go?” said the Major. “Can’t you give us a few minutes more,
+Miss Fotheringay? Before you leave us, permit an old fellow to shake
+you by the hand, and believe that I am proud to have had the honour of
+making your acquaintance, and am most sincerely anxious to be your
+friend.”
+
+Miss Fotheringay made a low curtsey at the conclusion of this gallant
+speech, and the Major followed her retreating steps to the door, where
+he squeezed her hand with the kindest and most paternal pressure. Bows
+was puzzled with this exhibition of cordiality: “The lad’s relatives
+can’t be really wanting to marry him to her,” he thought—and so they
+departed.
+
+“Now for it,” thought Major Pendennis; and as for Mr. Costigan he
+profited instantaneously by his daughter’s absence to drink up the rest
+of the wine; and tossed off one bumper after another of the Madeira
+from the Grapes, with an eager shaking hand. The Major came up to the
+table, and took up his glass and drained it with a jovial smack. If it
+had been Lord Steyne’s particular, and not public-house Cape, he could
+not have appeared to relish it more.
+
+“Capital Madeira, Captain Costigan,” he said. “Where do you get it? I
+drink the health of that charming creature in a bumper. Faith, Captain,
+I don’t wonder that the men are wild about her. I never saw such eyes
+in my life, or such a grand manner. I am sure she is as intellectual as
+she is beautiful; and I have no doubt she’s as good as she is clever.”
+
+“A good girl, sir,—a good girl, sir,” said the delighted father; “and I
+pledge a toast to her with all my heart. Shall I send to the—to the
+cellar for another pint? It’s handy by. No? Well, indeed sir, ye may
+say she is a good girl, and the pride and glory of her father—honest
+old Jack Costigan. The man who gets her will have a jew’l to a wife,
+sir; and I drink his health, sir, and ye know who I mean, Major.”
+
+“I am not surprised at young or old falling in love with her,” said the
+Major, “and frankly must tell you, that though I was very angry with my
+poor nephew Arthur, when I heard of the boy’s passion—now I have seen
+the lady I can pardon him any extent of it. By George, I should like to
+enter for the race myself, if I weren’t an old fellow and a poor one.”
+
+“And no better man, Major, I’m sure,” cried Jack enraptured.
+
+“Your friendship, sir, delights me. Your admiration for my girl brings
+tears to me eyes—tears, sir—manlee tears—and when she leaves me humble
+home for your own more splendid mansion, I hope she’ll keep a place for
+her poor old father, poor old Jack Costigan.”—The Captain suited the
+action to the word, and his bloodshot eyes were suffused with water, as
+he addressed the Major.
+
+“Your sentiments do you honour,” the other said. “But, Captain
+Costigan, I can’t help smiling at one thing you have just said.”
+
+“And what’s that, sir?” asked Jack, who was at a too heroic and
+sentimental pitch to descend from it.
+
+“You were speaking about our splendid mansion—my sister’s house, I
+mean.”
+
+“I mane the park and mansion of Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, of Fairoaks
+Park, whom I hope to see a Mimber of Parliament for his native town of
+Clavering, when he is of ege to take that responsible stetion,” cried
+the Captain with much dignity.
+
+The Major smiled as he recognised a shaft of his own bow. It was he who
+had set Pen upon the idea of sitting in Parliament for the neighbouring
+borough—and the poor lad had evidently been bragging on the subject to
+Costigan and the lady of his affections. “Fairoaks Park, my dear sir,”
+he said. “Do you know our history? We are of excessively ancient family
+certainly, but I began life with scarce enough money to purchase my
+commission, and my eldest brother was a country apothecary: who made
+every shilling he died possessed of out of his pestle and mortar.”
+
+“I have consented to waive that objection, sir,” said Costigan
+majestically, “in consideration of the known respectability of your
+family.”
+
+“Curse your impudence,” thought the Major; but he only smiled and
+bowed.
+
+“The Costigans, too, have met with misfortunes; and our house of Castle
+Costigan is by no manes what it was. I have known very honest men
+apothecaries, sir, and there’s some in Dublin that has had the honour
+of dining at the Lord Leftenant’s teeble.”
+
+“You are very kind to give us the benefit of your charity,” the Major
+continued: “but permit me to say that is not the question. You spoke
+just now of my little nephew as heir of Fairoaks Park and I don’t know
+what besides.”
+
+“Funded property, I’ve no doubt, Meejor, and something handsome
+eventually from yourself.”
+
+“My good sir, I tell you the boy is the son of a country apothecary,”
+cried out Major Pendennis; “and that when he comes of age he won’t have
+a shilling.”
+
+“Pooh, Major, you’re laughing at me,” said Mr. Costigan, “me young
+friend, I make no doubt, is heir to two thousand pounds a year.”
+
+“Two thousand fiddlesticks! I beg your pardon, my dear sir; but has the
+boy been humbugging you?—it is not his habit. Upon my word and honour,
+as a gentleman and an executor to my brother’s will too, he left little
+more than five hundred a year behind him.”
+
+“And with aconomy, a handsome sum of money too, sir,” the Captain
+answered. “Faith, I’ve known a man drink his clar’t, and drive his
+coach-and-four on five hundred a year and strict aconomy, in Ireland,
+sir. We’ll manage on it, sir—trust Jack Costigan for that.”
+
+“My dear Captain Costigan—I give you my word that my brother did not
+leave a shilling to his son Arthur.”
+
+“Are ye joking with me, Meejor Pendennis?” cried Jack Costigan. “Are ye
+thrifling with the feelings of a father and a gentleman?”
+
+“I am telling you the honest truth,” said Major Pendennis. “Every
+shilling my brother had, he left to his widow: with a partial
+reversion, it is true, to the boy. But she is a young woman, and may
+marry if he offends her—or she may outlive him, for she comes of an
+uncommonly long-lived family. And I ask you, as a gentleman and a man
+of the world, what allowance can my sister, Mrs. Pendennis, make to her
+son out of five hundred a year, which is all her fortune,—that shall
+enable him to maintain himself and your daughter in the rank befitting
+such an accomplished young lady?”
+
+“Am I to understand, sir, that the young gentleman, your nephew, and
+whom I have fosthered and cherished as the son of me bosom, is an
+imposther who has been thrifling with the affections of me beloved
+child?” exclaimed the General, with an outbreak of wrath.—“Have you
+yourself been working upon the feelings of the young man’s susceptible
+nature to injuice him to break off an engagement, and with it me adored
+Emily’s heart? Have a care, sir, how you thrifle with the honour of
+John Costigan. If I thought any mortal man meant to do so, be heavens
+I’d have his blood, sir—were he old or young.”
+
+“Mr. Costigan!” cried out the Major.
+
+“Mr. Costigan can protect his own and his daughter’s honour, and will,
+sir,” said the other. “Look at that chest of dthrawers, it contains
+heaps of letthers that that viper has addressed to that innocent child.
+There’s promises there, sir, enough to fill a bandbox with; and when I
+have dragged the scoundthrel before the Courts of Law, and shown up his
+perjury and his dishonour, I have another remedy in yondther mahogany
+case, sir, which shall set me right, sir, with any individual—ye mark
+me words, Major Pendennis—with any individual who has counselled your
+nephew to insult a soldier and a gentleman. What? Me daughter to be
+jilted, and me grey hairs dishonoured by an apothecary’s son. By the
+laws of Heaven, Sir, I should like to see the man that shall do it.”
+
+“I am to understand then that you threaten in the first place to
+publish the letters of a boy of eighteen to a woman of
+eight-and-twenty: and afterwards to do me the honour of calling me
+out,” the Major said, still with perfect coolness.
+
+“You have described my intentions with perfect accuracy, Meejor
+Pendennis,” answered the Captain, as he pulled his ragged whiskers over
+his chin.
+
+“Well, well; these shall be the subjects of future arrangements, but
+before we come to powder and ball, my good sir,—do have the kindness to
+think with yourself in what earthly way I have injured you? I have told
+you that my nephew is dependent upon his mother, who has scarcely more
+than five hundred a year.”
+
+“I have my own opinion of the correctness of that assertion,” said the
+Captain.
+
+“Will you go to my sister’s lawyers, Messrs. Tatham here, and satisfy
+yourself?”
+
+“I decline to meet those gentlemen,” said the Captain, with rather a
+disturbed air. “If it be as you say, I have been athrociously deceived
+by some one, and on that person I’ll be revenged.”
+
+“Is it my nephew?” cried the Major, starting up and putting on his hat.
+“Did he ever tell you that his property was two thousand a year? If he
+did, I’m mistaken in the boy. To tell lies has not been a habit in our
+family, Mr. Costigan, and I don’t think my brother’s son has learned it
+as yet. Try and consider whether you have not deceived yourself; or
+adopted extravagant reports from hearsay—As for me, sir, you are at
+liberty to understand that I am not afraid of all the Costigans in
+Ireland, and know quite well how to defend myself against any threats
+from any quarter. I come here as the boy’s guardian to protest against
+a marriage, most absurd and unequal, that cannot but bring poverty and
+misery with it: and in preventing it I conceive I am quite as much your
+daughter’s friend (who I have no doubt is an honourable young lady) as
+the friend of my own family: and prevent the marriage I will, sir, by
+every means in my power. There, I have said my say, sir.”
+
+“But I have not said mine, Major Pendennis—and ye shall hear more from
+me,” Mr. Costigan said, with a look of tremendous severity.
+
+“’Sdeath, sir, what do you mean?” the Major asked, turning round on the
+threshold of the door, and looking the intrepid Costigan in the face.
+
+“Ye said, in the coorse of conversation, that ye were at the George
+Hotel, I think,” Mr. Costigan said in a stately manner. “A friend shall
+wait upon ye there before ye leave town, sir.”
+
+“Let him make haste, Mr. Costigan,” cried out the Major, almost beside
+himself with rage. “I wish you a good morning, sir.” And Captain
+Costigan bowed a magnificent bow of defiance to Major Pendennis over
+the landing-place as the latter retreated down the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+In which a Shooting Match is proposed
+
+
+Early mention has been made in this history of Mr. Garbetts, Principal
+Tragedian, a promising and athletic young actor, of jovial habits and
+irregular inclinations, between whom and Mr. Costigan there was a
+considerable intimacy. They were the chief ornaments of the convivial
+club held at the Magpie Hotel; they helped each other in various bill
+transactions in which they had been engaged, with the mutual loan of
+each other’s valuable signatures. They were friends, in fine: although
+Mr. Garbetts seldom called at Costigan’s house, being disliked by Miss
+Fotheringay, of whom in her turn Mrs. Garbetts was considerably
+jealous. The truth is, that Garbetts had paid his court to Miss
+Fotheringay and been refused by her, before he offered his hand to Mrs.
+G. Their history, however, forms no part of our present scheme—suffice
+it, Mr. Garbetts was called in by Captain Costigan immediately after
+his daughter and Mr. Bows had quitted the house, as a friend proper to
+be consulted at the actual juncture. He was a large man, with a loud
+voice and fierce aspect, who had the finest legs of the whole company,
+and could break a poker in mere sport across his stalwart arm.
+
+“Run, Tommy,” said Mr. Costigan to the little messenger, “and fetch Mr.
+Garbetts from his lodgings over the tripe shop, ye know, and tell ’em
+to send two glasses of whisky-and-water, hot, from the Grapes.” So
+Tommy went his way; and presently Mr. Garbetts and the whisky came.
+
+Captain Costigan did not disclose to him the whole of the previous
+events, of which the reader is in possession; but, with the aid of the
+spirits-and-water, he composed a letter of a threatening nature to
+Major Pendennis’s address, in which he called upon that gentleman to
+offer no hindrance to the marriage projected between Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis and his daughter, Miss Fotheringay, and to fix an early day
+for its celebration: or, in any other case, to give him the
+satisfaction which was usual between gentlemen of honour. And should
+Major Pendennis be disinclined to this alternative, the Captain hinted,
+that he would force him to accept by the use of a horsewhip, which he
+should employ upon the Major’s person. The precise terms of this letter
+we cannot give, for reasons which shall be specified presently; but it
+was, no doubt, couched in the Captain’s finest style, and sealed
+elaborately with the great silver seal of the Costigans—the only bit of
+the family plate which the Captain possessed.
+
+Garbetts was despatched then with this message and letter; and bidding
+Heaven bless ’um the General squeezed his ambassador’s hand, and saw
+him depart. Then he took down his venerable and murderous
+duelling-pistols, with flint locks, that had done the business of many
+a pretty fellow in Dublin: and having examined these, and seen that
+they were in a satisfactory condition, he brought from the drawer all
+Pen’s letters and poems which he kept there, and which he always read
+before he permitted his Emily to enjoy their perusal.
+
+In a score of minutes Garbetts came back with an anxious and
+crestfallen countenance.
+
+“Ye’ve seen ’um?” the Captain said.
+
+“Why, yes,” said Garbetts.
+
+“And when is it for?” asked Costigan, trying the lock of one of the
+ancient pistols, and bringing it to a level with his oi—as he called
+that bloodshot orb.
+
+“When is what for?” asked Mr. Garbetts.
+
+“The meeting, my dear fellow?”
+
+“You don’t mean to say, you mean mortal combat, Captain,” Garbetts
+said, aghast.
+
+“What the devil else do I mean, Garbetts?—I want to shoot that man that
+has trajuiced me honor, or meself dthrop a victim on the sod.”
+
+“D—— if I carry challenges,” Mr. Garbetts replied. “I’m a family man,
+Captain, and will have nothing to do with pistols—take back your
+letter;” and, to the surprise and indignation of Captain Costigan, his
+emissary flung the letter down, with its great sprawling superscription
+and blotched seal.
+
+“Ye don’t mean to say ye saw ’um and didn’t give ’um the letter?” cried
+out the Captain in a fury.
+
+“I saw him, but I could not have speech with him, Captain,” said Mr.
+Garbetts.
+
+“And why the devil not?” asked the other.
+
+“There was one there I cared not to meet, nor would you,” the tragedian
+answered in a sepulchral voice. “The minion Tatham was there, Captain.”
+
+“The cowardly scoundthrel!” roared Costigan. “He’s frightened, and
+already going to swear the peace against me.”
+
+“I’ll have nothing to do with the fighting, mark that,” the tragedian
+doggedly said, “and I wish I’d not seen Tatham neither, nor that bit
+of——”
+
+“Hold your tongue, Bob Acres. It’s my belief ye’re no better than a
+coward,” said Captain Costigan, quoting Sir Lucius O’Trigger, which
+character he had performed with credit, both off and on the stage, and
+after some more parley between the couple they separated in not very
+good humour.
+
+Their colloquy has been here condensed, as the reader knows the main
+point upon which it turned. But the latter will now see how it is
+impossible to give a correct account of the letter which the Captain
+wrote to Major Pendennis, as it was never opened at all by that
+gentleman.
+
+When Miss Costigan came home from rehearsal, which she did in the
+company of the faithful Mr. Bows, she found her father pacing up and
+down their apartment in a great state of agitation, and in the midst of
+a powerful odour of spirits-and-water, which, as it appeared, had not
+succeeded in pacifying his disordered mind. The Pendennis papers were
+on the table surrounding the empty goblets and now useless teaspoon
+which had served to hold and mix the Captain’s liquor and his friend’s.
+As Emily entered he seized her in his arms, and cried out, “Prepare
+yourself, me child, me blessed child,” in a voice of agony, and with
+eyes brimful of tears.
+
+“Ye’re tipsy again, Papa,” Miss Fotheringay said, pushing back her
+sire. “Ye promised me ye wouldn’t take spirits before dinner.”
+
+“It’s to forget me sorrows, me poor girl, that I’ve taken just a drop,”
+cried the bereaved father—“it’s to drown me care that I drain the
+bowl.”
+
+“Your care takes a deal of drowning, Captain dear,” said Bows,
+mimicking his friend’s accent; “what has happened? Has that soft-spoken
+gentleman in the wig been vexing you?”
+
+“The oily miscreant! I’ll have his blood!” roared Cos. Miss Milly, it
+must be premised, had fled to her room out of his embrace, and was
+taking off her bonnet and shawl there.
+
+“I thought he meant mischief. He was so uncommon civil,” the other
+said. “What has he come to say?”
+
+“O Bows! He has overwhellum’d me,” the Captain said. “There’s a hellish
+conspiracy on foot against me poor girl; and it’s me opinion that both
+them Pendennises, nephew and uncle, is two infernal thrators and
+scoundthrels, who should be conshumed from off the face of the earth.”
+
+“What is it? What has happened?” said Mr. Bows, growing rather excited.
+
+Costigan then told him the Major’s statement that the young Pendennis
+had not two thousand, nor two hundred pounds a year; and expressed his
+fury that he should have permitted such an impostor to coax and wheedle
+his innocent girl, and that he should have nourished such a viper in
+his own personal bosom. “I have shaken the reptile from me, however,”
+said Costigan; “and as for his uncle, I’ll have such a revenge on that
+old man, as shall make ’um rue the day he ever insulted a Costigan.”
+
+“What do you mean, General?” said Bows.
+
+“I mean to have his life, Bows—his villanous, skulking life, my boy;”
+and he rapped upon the battered old pistol-case in an ominous and
+savage manner. Bows had often heard him appeal to that box of death,
+with which he proposed to sacrifice his enemies; but the Captain did
+not tell him that he had actually written and sent a challenge to Major
+Pendennis, and Mr. Bows therefore rather disregarded the pistols in the
+present instance.
+
+At this juncture Miss Fotheringay returned to the common sitting-room
+from her private apartment, looking perfectly healthy, happy, and
+unconcerned, a striking and wholesome contrast to her father, who was
+in a delirious tremor of grief, anger, and other agitation. She brought
+in a pair of ex-white satin shoes with her, which she proposed to rub
+as clean as might be with bread-crumb: intending to go mad with them
+upon next Tuesday evening in Ophelia, in which character she was to
+reappear on that night.
+
+She looked at the papers on the table; stopped as if she was going to
+ask a question, but thought better of it, and going to the cupboard,
+selected an eligible piece of bread wherewith she might operate on the
+satin slippers: and afterwards coming back to the table, seated herself
+there commodiously with the shoes, and then asked her father, in her
+honest, Irish brogue, “What have ye got them letthers, and pothry, and
+stuff, of Master Arthur’s out for, Pa? Sure ye don’t want to be reading
+over that nonsense.”
+
+“O Emilee!” cried the Captain, “that boy whom I loved as the boy of mee
+bosom is only a scoundthrel, and a deceiver, mee poor girl:” and he
+looked in the most tragical way at Mr. Bows, opposite; who, in his
+turn, gazed somewhat anxiously at Miss Costigan.
+
+“He! pooh! Sure the poor lad’s as simple as a schoolboy,” she said.
+“All them children write verses and nonsense.”
+
+“He’s been acting the part of a viper to this fireside, and a traitor
+in this familee,” cried the Captain. “I tell ye he’s no better than an
+impostor.”
+
+“What has the poor fellow done, Papa?” asked Emily.
+
+“Done? He has deceived us in the most athrocious manner,” Miss Emily’s
+papa said. “He has thrifled with your affections, and outraged my own
+fine feelings. He has represented himself as a man of property, and it
+turruns out that he is no betther than a beggar. Haven’t I often told
+ye he had two thousand a year? He’s a pauper, I tell ye, Miss Costigan;
+a depindent upon the bountee of his mother; a good woman, who may marry
+again, who’s likely to live for ever, and who has but five hundred a
+year. How dar he ask ye to marry into a family which has not the means
+of providing for ye? Ye’ve been grossly deceived and put upon, Milly,
+and it’s my belief his old ruffian of an uncle in a wig is in the plot
+against us.”
+
+“That soft old gentleman? What has he been doing, Papa?” continued
+Emily, still imperturbable.
+
+Costigan informed Milly, that when she was gone, Major Pendennis told
+him in his double-faced Pall Mall polite manner, that young Arthur had
+no fortune at all, that the Major had asked him (Costigan) to go to the
+lawyers (“wherein he knew the scoundthrels have a bill of mine, and I
+can’t meet them,” the Captain parenthetically remarked), and see the
+lad’s father’s will and finally, that an infernal swindle had been
+practised upon him by the pair, and that he was resolved either on a
+marriage, or on the blood of both of them.
+
+Milly looked very grave and thoughtful, rubbing the white satin shoes.
+“Sure, if he’s no money, there’s no use marrying him, Papa,” she said
+sententiously.
+
+“Why did the villain say he was a man of prawpertee?” asked Costigan.
+
+“The poor fellow always said he was poor,” answered the girl. “’Twas
+you would have it he was rich, Papa—and made me agree to take him.”
+
+“He should have been explicit and told us his income, Milly,” answered
+the father. “A young fellow who rides a blood mare, and makes presents
+of shawls and bracelets, is an impostor if he has no money;—and as for
+his uncle, bedad I’ll pull off his wig whenever I see ’um. Bows, here,
+shall take a message to him and tell him so. Either it’s a marriage, or
+he meets me in the field like a man, or I tweak ’um on the nose in
+front of his hotel or in the gravel walks of Fairoaks Park before all
+the county, bedad.”
+
+“Bedad, you may send somebody else with the message,” said Bows,
+laughing. “I’m a fiddler, not a fighting man, Captain.”
+
+“Pooh, you’ve no spirit, sir,” roared the General. “I’ll be my own
+second, if no one will stand by and see me injured. And I’ll take my
+case of pistols and shoot ’um in the Coffee-room of the George.”
+
+“And so poor Arthur has no money?” sighed out Miss Costigan, rather
+plaintively. “Poor lad, he was a good lad too: wild and talking
+nonsense, with his verses and pothry and that, but a brave, generous
+boy, and indeed I liked him—and he liked me too,” she added, rather
+softly, and rubbing away at the shoe.
+
+“Why don’t you marry him if you like him so?” Mr. Bows said, rather
+savagely. “He is not more than ten years younger than you are. His
+mother may relent, and you might go and live and have enough at
+Fairoaks Park. Why not go and be a lady? I could go on with the fiddle,
+and the General live on his half-pay. Why don’t you marry him? You know
+he likes you.”
+
+“There’s others that likes me as well, Bows, that has no money and
+that’s old enough,” Miss Milly said sententiously.
+
+“Yes, d—— it,” said Bows, with a bitter curse—“that are old enough and
+poor enough and fools enough for anything.”
+
+“There’s old fools, and young fools too. You’ve often said so you silly
+man,” the imperious beauty said, with a conscious glance at the old
+gentleman. “If Pendennis has not enough money to live upon, it’s folly
+to talk about marrying him: and that’s the long and short of it.”
+
+“And the boy?” said Mr. Bows. “By Jove! you throw a man away like an
+old glove, Miss Costigan.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean, Bows,” said Miss Fotheringay, placidly,
+rubbing the second shoe. “If he had had half of the two thousand a year
+that Papa gave him, or the half of that, I would marry him. But what is
+the good of taking on with a beggar? We’re poor enough already. There’s
+no use in my going to live with an old lady that’s testy and cross,
+maybe, and would grudge me every morsel of meat.” (Sure, it’s near
+dinner time, and Suky not laid the cloth yet.) “And then,” added Miss
+Costigan quite simply, “suppose there was a family?—why, Papa, we
+shouldn’t be as well off as we are now.”
+
+“’Deed, then, you would not, Milly dear,” answered the father.
+
+“And there’s an end to all the fine talk about Mrs. Arthur Pendennis of
+Fairoaks Park—the member of Parliament’s lady,” said Milly, with a
+laugh. “Pretty carriages and horses we should have to ride!—that you
+were always talking about, Papa! But it’s always the same. If a man
+looked at me, you fancied he was going to marry me; and if he had a
+good coat, you fancied he was as rich as Crazes.”
+
+“—As Croesus,” said Mr. Bows.
+
+“Well, call ’um what ye like. But it’s a fact now that Papa has married
+me these eight years a score of times. Wasn’t I to be my Lady Poldoody
+of Oystherstown Castle? Then there was the Navy Captain at Portsmouth,
+and the old surgeon at Norwich, and the Methodist preacher here last
+year, and who knows how many more? Well, I bet a penny, with all your
+scheming, I shall die Milly Costigan at last. So poor little Arthur has
+no money? Stop and take dinner, Bows; we’ve a beautiful beef-steak
+pudding.”
+
+“I wonder whether she is on with Sir Derby Oaks,” thought Bows, whose
+eyes and thoughts were always watching her. “The dodges of women beat
+all comprehension; and I am sure she wouldn’t let the lad off so
+easily, if she had not some other scheme on hand.”
+
+It will have been perceived that Miss Fotheringay, though silent in
+general, and by no means brilliant as a conversationist, where poetry,
+literature, or the fine arts were concerned, could talk freely, and
+with good sense, too, in her own family circle. She cannot justly be
+called a romantic person: nor were her literary acquirement great: she
+never opened a Shakspeare from the day she left the stage, nor, indeed,
+understood it during all the time she adorned the boards: but about a
+pudding, a piece of needle-work, or her own domestic affairs, she was
+as good a judge as could be found; and not being misled by a strong
+imagination or a passionate temper, was better enabled to keep her
+judgment cool. When, over their dinner, Costigan tried to convince
+himself and the company, that the Major’s statement regarding Pen’s
+finances was unworthy of credit, and a mere ruse upon the old
+hypocrite’s part so as to induce them, on their side, to break off the
+match, Miss Milly would not, for a moment, admit the possibility of
+deceit on the side of the adversary: and pointed out clearly that it
+was her father who had deceived himself, and not poor little Pen who
+had tried to take them in. As for that poor lad, she said she pitied
+him with all her heart. And she ate an exceedingly good dinner; to the
+admiration of Mr. Bows, who had a remarkable regard and contempt for
+this woman, during and after which repast, the party devised upon the
+best means of bringing this love-matter to a close. As for Costigan,
+his idea of tweaking the Major’s nose vanished with his supply of
+after-dinner whisky-and-water; and he was submissive to his daughter,
+and ready for any plan on which she might decide, in order to meet the
+crisis which she saw was at hand.
+
+The Captain, who, as long as he had a notion that he was wronged, was
+eager to face and demolish both Pen and his uncle, perhaps shrank from
+the idea of meeting the former, and asked “what the juice they were to
+say to the lad if he remained steady to his engagement, and they broke
+from theirs?” “What? don’t you know how to throw a man over?” said
+Bows; “ask a woman to tell you?” and Miss Fotheringay showed how this
+feat was to be done simply enough—nothing was more easy. “Papa writes
+to Arthur to know what settlements he proposes to make in event of a
+marriage; and asks what his means are. Arthur writes back and says what
+he’s got, and you’ll find it’s as the Major says, I’ll go bail. Then
+papa writes, and says it’s not enough, and the match had best be at an
+end.”
+
+“And, of course, you enclose a parting line, in which you say you will
+always regard him as a brother,” said Mr. Bows, eyeing her in his
+scornful way.
+
+“Of course, and so I shall,” answered Miss Fotheringay. “He’s a most
+worthy young man, I’m sure. I’ll thank ye hand me the salt. Them
+filberts is beautiful.”
+
+“And there will be no noses pulled, Cos, my boy? I’m sorry you’re
+baulked,” said Mr. Bows.
+
+“Dad, I suppose not,” said Cos, rubbing his own.—“What’ll ye do about
+them letters, and verses, and pomes, Milly, darling?—Ye must send ’em
+back.”
+
+“Wigsby would give a hundred pound for ’em,” Bows said, with a sneer.
+
+“’Deed, then, he would,” said Captain Costigan, who was easily led.
+
+“Papa!” said Miss Milly.—“Ye wouldn’t be for not sending the poor boy
+his letters back? Them letters and pomes is mine. They were very long,
+and full of all sorts of nonsense, and Latin, and things I couldn’t
+understand the half of; indeed I’ve not read ’em all; but we’ll send
+’em back to him when the proper time comes.” And going to a drawer,
+Miss Fotheringay took out from it a number of the County Chronicle and
+Chatteris Champion, in which Pen had written a copy of flaming verses
+celebrating her appearance in the character of Imogen, and putting by
+the leaf upon which the poem appeared (for, like ladies of her
+profession, she kept the favourable printed notices of her
+performances), she wrapped up Pen’s letters, poems, passions, and
+fancies, and tied them with a piece of string neatly, as she would a
+parcel of sugar.
+
+Nor was she in the least moved while performing this act. What hours
+the boy had passed over those papers! What love and longing: what
+generous faith and manly devotion—what watchful nights and lonely
+fevers might they tell of! She tied them up like so much grocery, and
+sate down and made tea afterwards with a perfectly placid and contented
+heart: while Pen was yearning after her ten miles off: and hugging her
+image to his soul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+A Crisis
+
+
+Meanwhile they were wondering at Fairoaks that the Major had not
+returned. Dr. Portman and his lady, on their way home to Clavering,
+stopped at Helen’s lodge-gate, with a brief note for her from Major
+Pendennis, in which he said he should remain at Chatteris another day,
+being anxious to have some talk with Messrs. Tatham, the lawyers, whom
+he would meet that afternoon; but no mention was made of the
+transaction in which the writer had been engaged during the morning.
+Indeed the note was written at the pause after the first part of the
+engagement, and when the Major had decidedly had the worst of the
+battle.
+
+Pen did not care somehow to go into the town whilst his uncle was
+there. He did not like to have to fancy that his guardian might be
+spying at him from that abominable Dean’s grass-plat, whilst he was
+making love in Miss Costigan’s drawing-room; and the pleasures of a
+walk (a delight which he was very rarely permitted to enjoy) would have
+been spoiled if he had met the man of the polished boots on that
+occasion. His modest love could not show in public by any outward
+signs, except the eyes (with which the poor fellow ogled and gazed
+violently to be sure), but it was dumb in the presence of third
+parties; and so much the better, for of all the talk which takes place
+in this world, that of love-makers is surely, to the uninitiated, the
+most silly. It is the vocabulary without the key; it is the lamp
+without the flame. Let the respected reader look or think over some old
+love-letters that he (or she) has had and forgotten, and try them over
+again. How blank and meaningless they seem! What glamour of infatuation
+was it which made that nonsense beautiful? One wonders that such puling
+and trash could ever have made one happy. And yet there were dates when
+you kissed those silly letters with rapture—lived upon six absurd lines
+for a week, and until the reactionary period came, when you were
+restless and miserable until you got a fresh supply of folly.
+
+That is why we decline to publish any of the letters and verses which
+Mr. Pen wrote at this period of his life, out of mere regard for the
+young fellow’s character. They are too spooney and wild. Young ladies
+ought not to be called upon to read them in cold blood. Bide your time,
+young women; perhaps you will get and write them on your own account
+soon. Meanwhile we will respect Mr. Pen’s first outpourings, and keep
+them tied up in the newspapers with Miss Fotheringay’s string, and
+sealed with Captain Costigan’s great silver seal.
+
+The Major came away from his interview with Captain Costigan in a state
+of such concentrated fury as rendered him terrible to approach! “The
+impudent bog-trotting scamp,” he thought, “dare to threaten me! Dare to
+talk of permitting his damned Costigans to marry with the Pendennises!
+Send me a challenge! If the fellow can get anything in the shape of a
+gentleman to carry it, I have the greatest mind in life not to baulk
+him.—Psha! what would people say if I were to go out with a tipsy
+mountebank, about a row with an actress in a barn!” So when the Major
+saw Dr. Portman, who asked anxiously regarding the issue of his battle
+with the dragon, Mr. Pendennis did not care to inform the divine of the
+General’s insolent behaviour, but stated that the affair was a very
+ugly and disagreeable one, and that it was by no means over yet.
+
+He enjoined Doctor and Mrs. Portman to say nothing about the business
+at Fairoaks; whither he contented himself with despatching the note we
+have before mentioned. And then he returned to his hotel, where he
+vented his wrath upon Mr. Morgan his valet, “dammin and cussin upstairs
+and downstairs,” as that gentleman observed to Mr. Foker’s man, in
+whose company he partook of dinner in the servants’ room of the George.
+
+The servant carried the news to his master; and Mr. Foker having
+finished his breakfast about this time, it being two o’clock in the
+afternoon, remembered that he was anxious to know the result of the
+interview between his two friends, and having inquired the number of
+the Major’s sitting-room, went over in his brocade dressing-gown, and
+knocked for admission.
+
+Major Pendennis had some business, as he had stated, respecting a lease
+of the widow’s, about which he was desirous of consulting old Mr.
+Tatham, the lawyer, who had been his brother’s man of business, and who
+had a branch-office at Clavering, where he and his son attended market
+and other days three or four in the week. This gentleman and his client
+were now in consultation when Mr. Foker showed his grand dressing-gown
+and embroidered skull-cap at Major Pendennis’s door.
+
+Seeing the Major engaged with papers and red-tape, and an old man with
+a white head, the modest youth was for drawing back—and said, “O,
+you’re busy—call again another time.” But Mr. Pendennis wanted to see
+him, and begged him, with a smile, to enter: whereupon Mr. Foker took
+off the embroidered tarboosh or fez (it had been worked by the fondest
+of mothers) and advanced, bowing to the gentlemen and smiling on them
+graciously. Mr. Tatham had never seen so splendid an apparition before
+as this brocaded youth, who seated himself in an arm-chair, spreading
+out his crimson skirts, and looking with exceeding kindness and
+frankness on the other two tenants of the room. “You seem to like my
+dressing-gown, sir,” he said to Mr. Tatham. “A pretty thing, isn’t it?
+Neat, but not in the least gaudy. And how do you do, Major Pendennis,
+sir, and how does the world treat you?”
+
+There was that in Foker’s manner and appearance which would have put an
+Inquisitor into good humour, and it smoothed the wrinkles under
+Pendennis’s head of hair.
+
+“I have had an interview with that Irishman (you may speak before my
+friend, Mr. Tatham here, who knows all the affairs of the family), and
+it has not, I own, been very satisfactory. He won’t believe that my
+nephew is poor: he says we are both liars: he did me the honour to hint
+that I was a coward, as I took leave. And I thought when you knocked at
+the door, that you might be the gentleman whom I expect with a
+challenge from Mr. Costigan—that is how the world treats me, Mr.
+Foker.”
+
+“You don’t mean that Irishman, the actress’s father?” cried Mr. Tatham,
+who was a dissenter himself, and did not patronise the drama.
+
+“That Irishman, the actress’s father—the very man. Have not you heard
+what a fool my nephew has made of himself about the girl?”—Mr. Tatham,
+who never entered the walls of a theatre, had heard nothing: and Major
+Pendennis had to recount the story of his nephew’s loves to the lawyer,
+Mr. Foker coming in with appropriate comments in his usual familiar
+language.
+
+Tatham was lost in wonder at the narrative. Why had not Mrs. Pendennis
+married a serious man, he thought—Mr. Tatham was a widower—and kept
+this unfortunate boy from perdition? As for Mr. Costigan’s daughter, he
+would say nothing: her profession was sufficient to characterise her.
+Mr. Foker here interposed to say he had known some uncommon good people
+in the booths, as he called the Temple of the Muses. Well, it might be
+so, Mr. Tatham hoped so—but the father, Tatham knew personally—a man of
+the worst character, a wine-bibber and an idler in taverns and
+billiard-rooms, and a notorious insolvent. “I can understand the
+reason, Major,” he said, “why the fellow would not come to my office to
+ascertain the truth of the statements which you made him.—We have a
+writ out against him and another disreputable fellow, one of the
+play-actors, for a bill given to Mr. Skinner of this city, a most
+respectable Grocer and Wine and Spirit Merchant, and a Member of the
+Society of Friends. This Costigan came crying to Mr. Skinner,—crying in
+the shop, sir,—and we have not proceeded against him or the other, as
+neither were worth powder and shot.”
+
+It was whilst Mr. Tatham was engaged in telling this story that a third
+knock came to the door, and there entered an athletic gentleman in a
+shabby braided frock, bearing in his hand a letter with a large
+blotched red seal.
+
+“Can I have the honour of speaking with Major Pendennis in private?” he
+began—“I have a few words for your ear, sir. I am the bearer of a
+mission from my friend Captain Costigan,”—but here the man with the
+bass voice paused, faltered, and turned pale—he caught sight of the red
+and well-remembered face of Mr. Tatham.
+
+“Hullo, Garbetts, speak up!” cried Mr. Foker, delighted.
+
+“Why, bless my soul, it is the other party to the bill!” said Mr.
+Tatham. “I say, sir; stop I say.” But Garbetts, with a face as blank as
+Macbeth’s when Banquo’s ghost appears upon him, gasped some
+inarticulate words, and fled out of the room.
+
+The Major’s gravity was also entirely upset, and he burst out laughing.
+So did Mr. Foker, who said, “By Jove, it was a good ’un.” So did the
+attorney, although by profession a serious man.
+
+“I don’t think there’ll be any fight, Major,” young Foker said; and
+began mimicking the tragedian. “If there is, the old gentleman—your
+name Tatham?—very happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Tatham—may send
+the bailiffs to separate the men;” and Mr. Tatham promised to do so.
+The Major was by no means sorry at the ludicrous issue of the quarrel.
+“It seems to me, sir,” he said to Mr. Foker, “that you always arrive to
+put me into good-humour.”
+
+Nor was this the only occasion on which Mr. Foker this day was destined
+to be of service to the Pendennis family. We have said that he had the
+entree of Captain Costigan’s lodgings, and in the course of the
+afternoon he thought he would pay the General a visit, and hear from
+his own lips what had occurred in the conversation, in the morning,
+with Mr. Pendennis. Captain Costigan was not at home. He had received
+permission, nay, encouragement from his daughter, to go to the
+convivial club at the Magpie Hotel, where no doubt he was bragging at
+that moment of his desire to murder a certain ruffian; for he was not
+only brave, but he knew it too, and liked to take out his courage, and,
+as it were, give it an airing in company.
+
+Costigan then was absent, but Miss Fotheringay was at home washing the
+tea-cups whilst Mr. Bows sate opposite to her.
+
+“Just done breakfast I see—how do?” said Mr. Foker, popping in his
+little funny head.
+
+“Get out, you funny little man,” cried Miss Fotheringay.
+
+“You mean come in, answered the other.—Here we are!” and entering the
+room he folded his arms and began twirling his head round and round
+with immense rapidity, like Harlequin in the Pantomime when he first
+issues from his cocoon or envelope. Miss Fotheringay laughed with all
+her heart: a wink of Foker’s would set her off laughing, when the
+bitterest joke Bows ever made could not get a smile from her, or the
+finest of poor Pen’s speeches would only puzzle her. At the end of the
+harlequinade he sank down on one knee and kissed her hand. “You’re the
+drollest little man,” she said, and gave him a great good-humoured
+slap. Pen used to tremble as he kissed her hand. Pen would have died of
+a slap.
+
+These preliminaries over, the three began to talk; Mr. Foker amused his
+companions by recounting to them the scene which he had just witnessed
+of the discomfiture of Mr. Garbetts, by which they learned, for the
+first time, how far the General had carried his wrath against Major
+Pendennis. Foker spoke strongly in favour of the Major’s character for
+veracity and honour, and described him as a tip-top swell, moving in
+the upper-circle of society, who would never submit to any deceit—much
+more to deceive such a charming young woman as Miss Foth.
+
+He touched delicately upon the delicate marriage question, though he
+couldn’t help showing that he held Pen rather cheap. In fact, he had a
+perhaps just contempt for Mr. Pen’s high-flown sentimentality; his own
+weakness, as he thought, not lying that way. “I knew it wouldn’t do,
+Miss Foth,” said he, nodding his little head. “Couldn’t do. Didn’t like
+to put my hand into the bag, but knew it couldn’t do. He’s too young
+for you: too green: a deal too green: and he turns out to be poor as
+Job. Can’t have him at no price, can she, Mr. Bo?”
+
+“Indeed he’s a nice poor boy,” said the Fotheringay rather sadly.
+
+“Poor little beggar,” said Bows, with his hands in his pockets, and
+stealing up a queer look at Miss Fotheringay. Perhaps he thought and
+wondered at the way in which women play with men, and coax them and win
+them and drop them.
+
+But Mr. Bows had not the least objection to acknowledge that he thought
+Miss Fotheringay was perfectly right in giving up Mr. Arthur Pendennis,
+and that in his idea the match was always an absurd one: and Miss
+Costigan owned that she thought so herself, only she couldn’t send away
+two thousand a year. “It all comes of believing Papa’s silly stories,”
+she said; “faith I’ll choose for meself another time”—and very likely
+the large image of Lieutenant Sir Derby Oaks entered into her mind at
+that instant.
+
+After praising Major Pendennis, whom Miss Costigan declared to be a
+proper gentleman entirely, smelling of lavender, and as neat as a
+pin,—and who was pronounced by Mr. Bows to be the right sort of fellow,
+though rather too much of an old buck, Mr. Foker suddenly bethought him
+to ask the pair to come and meet the Major that very evening at dinner
+at his apartment at the George. “He agreed to dine with me, and I think
+after the—after the little shindy this morning, in which I must say the
+General was wrong, it would look kind, you know.—I know the Major fell
+in love with you, Miss Foth: he said so.”
+
+“So she may be Mrs. Pendennis still,” Bows said with a sneer—“No, thank
+you, Mr. F.—I’ve dined.”
+
+“Sure, that was at three o’clock,” said Miss Costigan, who had an
+honest appetite, “and I can’t go without you.”
+
+“We’ll have lobster-salad and champagne,” said the little monster, who
+could not construe a line of Latin, or do a sum beyond the Rule of
+Three. Now, for lobster-salad and champagne in an honourable manner,
+Miss Costigan would have gone anywhere—and Major Pendennis actually
+found himself at seven o’clock seated at a dinner-table in company with
+Mr. Bows, a professional fiddler, and Miss Costigan, whose father had
+wanted to blow his brains out a few hours before.
+
+To make the happy meeting complete, Mr. Foker, who knew Costigan’s
+haunts, despatched Stoopid to the club at the Magpie, where the General
+was in the act of singing a pathetic song, and brought him off to
+supper. To find his daughter and Bows seated at the board was a
+surprise indeed—Major Pendennis laughed, and cordially held out his
+hand, which the General Officer grasped avec effusion as the French
+say. In fact he was considerably inebriated, and had already been
+crying over his own song before he joined the little party at the
+George. He burst into tears more than once, during the entertainment,
+and called the Major his dearest friend. Stoopid and Mr. Foker walked
+home with him: the Major gallantly giving his arm to Miss Costigan. He
+was received with great friendliness when he called the next day, when
+many civilities passed between the gentlemen. On taking leave he
+expressed his anxious desire to serve Miss Costigan on any occasion in
+which he could be useful to her, and he shook hands with Mr. Foker most
+cordially and gratefully, and said that gentleman had done him the very
+greatest service.
+
+“All right,” said Mr. Foker: and they parted with mutual esteem.
+
+On his return to Fairoaks the next day, Major Pendennis did not say
+what had happened to him on the previous night, or allude to the
+company in which he had passed it. But he engaged Mr. Smirke to stop to
+dinner; and any person accustomed to watch his manner might have
+remarked that there was something constrained in his hilarity and
+talkativeness, and that he was unusually gracious and watchful in his
+communications with his nephew. He gave Pen an emphatic God-bless-you
+when the lad went to bed; and as they were about to part for the night,
+he seemed as if he was going to say something to Mrs. Pendennis, but he
+bethought him that if he spoke he might spoil her night’s rest, and
+allowed her to sleep in peace.
+
+The next morning he was down in the breakfast-room earlier than was his
+custom, and saluted everybody there with great cordiality. The post
+used to arrive commonly about the end of this meal. When John, the old
+servant, entered, and discharged the bag of its letters and papers, the
+Major looked hard at Pen as the lad got his—Arthur blushed, and put his
+letter down. He knew the hand, it was that of old Costigan, and he did
+not care to read it in public. Major Pendennis knew the letter, too. He
+had put it into the post himself in Chatteris the day before.
+
+He told little Laura to go away, which the child did, having a thorough
+dislike to him; and as the door closed on her, he took Mrs. Pendennis’s
+hand, and giving her a look full of meaning, pointed to the letter
+under the newspaper which Pen was pretending to read. “Will you come
+into the drawing-room?” he said. “I want to speak to you.” And she
+followed him, wondering, into the hall.
+
+“What is it?” she said nervously.
+
+“The affair is at an end,” Major Pendennis said. “He has a letter there
+giving him his dismissal. I dictated it myself yesterday. There are a
+few lines from the lady, too, bidding him farewell. It is all over.”
+
+Helen ran back to the dining-room, her brother following. Pen had
+jumped at his letter the instant they were gone. He was reading it with
+a stupefied face. It stated what the Major had said, that Mr. Costigan
+was most gratified for the kindness with which Arthur had treated his
+daughter, but that he was only now made aware of Mr. Pendennis’s
+peecupiary circumstances. They were such that marriage was at present
+out of the question, and considering the great disparity in the age of
+the two, a future union was impossible. Under these circumstances, and
+with the deepest regret and esteem for him, Mr. Costigan bade Arthur
+farewell, and suggested that he should cease visiting, for some time at
+least, at his house.
+
+A few lines from Miss Costigan were enclosed. She acquiesced in the
+decision of her Papa. She pointed out that she was many years older
+than Arthur, and that an engagement was not to be thought of. She would
+always be grateful for his kindness to her, and hoped to keep his
+friendship. But at present, and until the pain of the separation should
+be over, she entreated they should not meet.
+
+Pen read Costigan’s letter and its enclosure mechanically, hardly
+knowing what was before his eyes. He looked up wildly, and saw his
+mother and uncle regarding him with sad faces. Helen’s, indeed, was
+full of tender maternal anxiety.
+
+“What—what is this?” Pen said. “It’s some joke. This is not her
+writing. This is some servant’s writing. Who’s playing these tricks
+upon me?”
+
+“It comes under her father’s envelope,” the Major said. “Those letters
+you had before were not in her hand: that is hers.”
+
+“How do you know?” said Pen very fiercely.
+
+“I saw her write it,” the uncle answered, as the boy started up; and
+his mother, coming forward, took his hand. He put her away.
+
+“How came you to see her? How came you between me and her? What have I
+ever done to you that you should—Oh, it’s not true! it’s not true!”—Pen
+broke out with a wild execration. “She can’t have done it of her own
+accord. She can’t mean it. She’s pledged to me. Who has told her lies
+to break her from me?”
+
+“Lies are not told in the family, Arthur,” Major Pendennis replied. “I
+told her the truth, which was, that you had no money to maintain her,
+for her foolish father had represented you to be rich. And when she
+knew how poor you were, she withdrew at once, and without any
+persuasion of mine. She was quite right. She is ten years older than
+you are. She is perfectly unfitted to be your wife, and knows it. Look
+at that handwriting, and ask yourself, is such a woman fitted to be the
+companion of your mother?”
+
+“I will know from herself if it is true,” Arthur said, crumpling up the
+paper.
+
+“Won’t you take my word of honour? Her letters were written by a
+confidant of hers, who writes better than she can—look here. Here’s one
+from the lady to your friend, Mr. Foker. You have seen her with Miss
+Costigan, as whose amanuensis she acted”—the Major said, with ever so
+little of a sneer, and laid down a certain billet which Mr. Foker had
+given to him.
+
+“It’s not that,” said Pen, burning with shame and rage. “I suppose what
+you say is true, sir, but I’ll hear it from herself.”
+
+“Arthur!” appealed his mother.
+
+“I will see her,” said Arthur. “I’ll ask her to marry me, once more. I
+will. No one shall prevent me.”
+
+“What, a woman who spells affection with one f? Nonsense, sir. Be a
+man, and remember that your mother is a lady. She was never made to
+associate with that tipsy old swindler or his daughter. Be a man and
+forget her, as she does you.”
+
+“Be a man and comfort your mother, my Arthur,” Helen said, going and
+embracing him: and seeing that the pair were greatly moved, Major
+Pendennis went out of the room and shut the door upon them, wisely
+judging that they were best alone.
+
+He had won a complete victory. He actually had brought away Pen’s
+letters in his portmanteau from Chatteris: having complimented Mr.
+Costigan, when he returned them, by giving him the little promissory
+note which had disquieted himself and Mr. Garbetts; and for which the
+Major settled with Mr. Tatham.
+
+Pen rushed wildly off to Chatteris that day, but in vain attempted to
+see Miss Fotheringay, for whom he left a letter, enclosed to her
+father. The enclosure was returned by Mr. Costigan, who begged that all
+correspondence might end; and after one or two further attempts of the
+lad’s, the indignant General desired that their acquaintance might
+cease. He cut Pen in the street. As Arthur and Foker were pacing the
+Castle walk, one day, they came upon Emily on her father’s arm. She
+passed without any nod of recognition. Foker felt poor Pen trembling on
+his arm.
+
+His uncle wanted him to travel, to quit the country for a while, and
+his mother urged him too: for he was growing very ill, and suffered
+severely. But he refused, and said point-blank he would not go. He
+would not obey in this instance: and his mother was too fond, and his
+uncle too wise to force him. Whenever Miss Fotheringay acted, he rode
+over to the Chatteris Theatre and saw her. One night there were so few
+people in the house that the Manager returned the money. Pen came home
+and went to bed at eight o’clock, and had a fever. If this continues,
+his mother will be going over and fetching the girl, the Major thought,
+in despair. As for Pen, he thought he should die. We are not going to
+describe his feelings, or give a dreary journal of his despair and
+passion. Have not other gentlemen been baulked in love besides Mr. Pen?
+Yes, indeed: but few die of the malady.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+In which Miss Fotheringay makes a new Engagement
+
+
+Within a short period of the events above narrated, Mr. Manager Bingley
+was performing his famous character of ‘Rolla,’ in ‘Pizarro,’ to a
+house so exceedingly thin, that it would appear as if the part of Rolla
+was by no means such a favourite with the people of Chatteris as it was
+with the accomplished actor himself. Scarce anybody was in the theatre.
+Poor Pen had the boxes almost all to himself, and sate there lonely,
+with bloodshot eyes, leaning over the ledge, and gazing haggardly
+towards the scene, when Cora came in. When she was not on the stage he
+saw nothing. Spaniards and Peruvians, processions and battles, priests
+and virgins of the sun, went in and out, and had their talk, but Arthur
+took no note of any of them; and only saw Cora whom his soul longed
+after. He said afterwards that he wondered he had not taken a pistol to
+shoot her, so mad was he with love, and rage, and despair; and had it
+not been for his mother at home, to whom he did not speak about his
+luckless condition, but whose silent sympathy and watchfulness greatly
+comforted the simple half heart-broken fellow, who knows but he might
+have done something desperate, and have ended his days prematurely in
+front of Chatteris gaol? There he sate then, miserable, and gazing at
+her. And she took no more notice of him than he did of the rest of the
+house.
+
+The Fotheringay was uncommonly handsome, in a white raiment and leopard
+skin, with a sun upon her breast, and fine tawdry bracelets on her
+beautiful glancing arms. She spouted to admiration the few words of her
+part, and looked it still better. The eyes, which had overthrown Pen’s
+soul, rolled and gleamed as lustrous as ever; but it was not to him
+that they were directed that night. He did not know to whom, or remark
+a couple of gentlemen, in the box next to him, upon whom Miss
+Fotheringay’s glances were perpetually shining.
+
+Nor had Pen noticed the extraordinary change which had taken place on
+the stage a short time after the entry of these two gentlemen into the
+theatre. There were so few people in the house, that the first act of
+the play languished entirely, and there had been some question of
+returning the money, as upon that other unfortunate night when poor Pen
+had been driven away. The actors were perfectly careless about their
+parts, and yawned through the dialogue, and talked loud to each other
+in the intervals. Even Bingley was listless, and Mrs. B. in Elvira
+spoke under her breath.
+
+How came it that all of a sudden Mrs. Bingley began to raise her voice
+and bellow like a bull of Bashan? Whence was it that Bingley, flinging
+off his apathy, darted about the stage and yelled like Dean? Why did
+Garbetts and Rowkins and Miss Rouncy try, each of them, the force of
+their charms or graces, and act and swagger and scowl and spout their
+very loudest at the two gentlemen in box No. 3?
+
+One was a quiet little man in black, with a grey head and a jolly
+shrewd face—the other was in all respects a splendid and remarkable
+individual. He was a tall and portly gentleman with a hooked nose and a
+profusion of curling brown hair and whiskers; his coat was covered with
+the richest frogs-braiding and velvet. He had under-waistcoats, many
+splendid rings, jewelled pins and neck-chains. When he took out his
+yellow pocket-handkerchief with his hand that was cased in white kids,
+a delightful odour of musk and bergamot was shaken through the house.
+He was evidently a personage of rank, and it was at him that the little
+Chatteris company was acting.
+
+He was, in a word, no other than Mr. Dolphin, the great manager from
+London, accompanied by his faithful friend and secretary Mr. William
+Minns: without whom he never travelled. He had not been ten minutes in
+the theatre before his august presence there was perceived by Bingley
+and the rest: and they all began to act their best and try to engage
+his attention. Even Miss Fotheringay’s dull heart, which was disturbed
+at nothing, felt perhaps a flutter, when she came in presence of the
+famous London Impresario. She had not much to do in her part, but to
+look handsome, and stand in picturesque attitudes encircling her child
+and she did this work to admiration. In vain the various actors tried
+to win the favour of the great stage Sultan. Pizarro never got a hand
+from him. Bingley yelled, and Mrs. Bingley bellowed, and the Manager
+only took snuff out of his great gold box. It was only in the last
+scene, when Rolla comes in staggering with the infant (Bingley is not
+so strong as he was and his fourth son Master Talma Bingley is a
+monstrous large child for his age)—when Rolla comes staggering with the
+child to Cora, who rushes forward with a shriek, and says—“O God,
+there’s blood upon him!”—that the London manager clapped his hands, and
+broke out with an enthusiastic bravo.
+
+Then having concluded his applause, Mr. Dolphin gave his secretary a
+slap on the shoulder, and said, “By Jove, Billy, she’ll do!”
+
+“Who taught her that dodge?” said old Billy, who was a sardonic old
+gentleman. “I remember her at the Olympic, and hang me if she could say
+Bo to a goose.”
+
+It was little Mr. Bows in the orchestra who had taught her the ‘dodge’
+in question. All the company heard the applause, and, as the curtain
+went down, came round her and congratulated and hated Miss Fotheringay.
+
+Now Mr. Dolphin’s appearance in the remote little Chatteris theatre may
+be accounted for in this manner. In spite of all his exertions, and the
+perpetual blazes of triumph, coruscations of talent, victories of good
+old English comedy, which his play-bills advertised, his theatre
+(which, if you please, and to injure no present susceptibilities and
+vested interests, we shall call the Museum Theatre) by no means
+prospered, and the famous Impresario found himself on the verge of
+ruin. The great Hubbard had acted legitimate drama for twenty nights,
+and failed to remunerate anybody but himself: the celebrated Mr. and
+Mrs. Cawdor had come out in Mr. Rawhead’s tragedy, and in their
+favourite round of pieces, and had not attracted the public. Herr
+Garbage’s lions and tigers had drawn for a little time, until one of
+the animals had bitten a piece out of the Herr’s shoulder; when the
+Lord Chamberlain interfered, and put a stop to this species of
+performance: and the grand Lyrical Drama, though brought out with
+unexampled splendour and success, with Monsieur Poumons as first tenor,
+and an enormous orchestra, had almost crushed poor Dolphin in its
+triumphant progress: so that great as his genius and resources were,
+they seemed to be at an end. He was dragging on his season wretchedly
+with half salaries, small operas, feeble old comedies, and his ballet
+company; and everybody was looking out for the day when he should
+appear in the Gazette.
+
+One of the illustrious patrons of the Museum Theatre, and occupant of
+the great proscenium-box, was a gentleman whose name has been mentioned
+in a previous history; that refined patron of the arts, and enlightened
+lover of music and the drama, the Most Noble the Marquis of Steyne. His
+lordship’s avocations as a statesman prevented him from attending the
+playhouse very often, or coming very early. But he occasionally
+appeared at the theatre in time for the ballet, and was always received
+with the greatest respect by the Manager, from whom he sometimes
+condescended to receive a visit in his box. It communicated with the
+stage, and when anything occurred there which particularly pleased him,
+when a new face made its appearance among the coryphees, or a fair
+dancer executed a pas with especial grace or agility, Mr. Wenham, Mr.
+Wagg, or some other aide-de-camp of the noble Marquis, would be
+commissioned to go behind the scenes, and express the great man’s
+approbation, or make the inquiries which were prompted by his
+lordship’s curiosity, or his interest in the dramatic art. He could not
+be seen by the audience, for Lord Steyne sate modestly behind a
+curtain, and looked only towards the stage—but you could know he was in
+the house, by the glances which all the corps-de-ballet, and all the
+principal dancers, cast towards his box. I have seen many scores of
+pairs of eyes (as in the Palm Dance in the ballet of Cook at Otaheite,
+where no less than a hundred-and-twenty lovely female savages in palm
+leaves and feather aprons, were made to dance round Floridor as Captain
+Cook) ogling that box as they performed before it, and have often
+wondered to remark the presence of mind of Mademoiselle Sauterelle, or
+Mademoiselle de Bondi (known as la petite Caoutchoue), who, when
+actually up in the air quivering like so many shuttlecocks, always kept
+their lovely eyes winking at that box in which the great Steyne sate.
+Now and then you would hear a harsh voice from behind the curtain cry,
+“Brava, Brava,” or a pair of white gloves wave from it, and begin to
+applaud. Bondi, or Sauterelle, when they came down to earth, curtsied
+and smiled, especially to those hands, before they walked up the stage
+again, panting and happy.
+
+One night this great Prince surrounded by a few choice friends was in
+his box at the Museum, and they were making such a noise and laughter
+that the pit was scandalised, and many indignant voices were bawling
+out silence so loudly, that Wagg wondered the police did not interfere
+to take the rascals out. Wenham was amusing the party in the box with
+extracts from a private letter which he had received from Major
+Pendennis, whose absence in the country at the full London season had
+been remarked, and of course deplored by his friends.
+
+“The secret is out,” said Mr. Wenham, “there’s a woman in the case.”
+
+“Why, d—— it, Wenham, he’s your age,” said the gentleman behind the
+curtain.
+
+“Pour les ames bien nees, l’amour ne compte pas le nombre des annees,”
+said Mr. Wenham, with a gallant air. “For my part, I hope to be a
+victim till I die, and to break my heart every year of my life.” The
+meaning of which sentence was, “My lord, you need not talk; I’m three
+years younger than you, and twice as well conserve.”
+
+“Wenham, you affect me,” said the great man, with one of his usual
+oaths. “By —— you do. I like to see a fellow preserving all the
+illusions of youth up to our time of life—and keeping his heart warm as
+yours is. Hang it, sir, it’s a comfort to meet with such a generous,
+candid creature.—Who’s that gal in the second row, with blue ribbons,
+third from the stage—fine gal. Yes, you and I are sentimentalists. Wagg
+I don’t think so much cares—it’s the stomach rather more than the heart
+with you, eh, Wagg, my boy?”
+
+“I like everything that’s good,” said Mr. Wagg, generously. “Beauty and
+Burgundy, Venus and Venison. I don’t say that Venus’s turtles are to be
+despised, because they don’t cook them at the London Tavern: but—but
+tell us about old Pendennis, Mr. Wenham,” he abruptly concluded—for his
+joke flagged just then, as he saw that his patron was not listening. In
+fact, Steyne’s glasses were up, and he was examining some object on the
+stage.
+
+“Yes, I’ve heard that joke about Venus’s turtle and the London Tavern
+before—you begin to fail, my poor Wagg. If you don’t mind I shall be
+obliged to have a new Jester,” Lord Steyne said, laying down his glass.
+“Go on, Wenham, about old Pendennis.”
+
+“Dear Wenham,”—he begins, Mr. Wenham read,—“as you have had my
+character in your hands for the last three weeks, and no doubt have
+torn me to shreds, according to your custom, I think you can afford to
+be good-humoured by way of variety, and to do me a service. It is a
+delicate matter, entre nous, une affaire de coeur. There is a young
+friend of mine who is gone wild about a certain Miss Fotheringay, an
+actress at the theatre here, and I must own to you, as handsome a
+woman, and, as it appears to me, as good an actress as ever put on
+rouge. She does Ophelia, Lady Teazle, Mrs. Haller—that sort of thing.
+Upon my word, she is as splendid as Georges in her best days, and as
+far as I know, utterly superior to anything we have on our scene. I
+want a London engagement for her. Can’t you get your friend Dolphin to
+come and see her—to engage her—to take her out of this place? A word
+from a noble friend of ours (you understand) would be invaluable, and
+if you could get the Gaunt House interest for me—I will promise
+anything I can in return for your service—which I shall consider one of
+the greatest that can be done to me. Do, do this now as a good fellow,
+which I always said you were: and in return, command yours truly, A.
+Pendennis.”
+
+“It’s a clear case,” said Mr. Wenham, having read this letter; “old
+Pendennis is in love.”
+
+“And wants to get the woman up to London—evidently,” continued Mr.
+Wagg.
+
+“I should like to see Pendennis on his knees, with the rheumatism,”
+said Mr. Wenham.
+
+“Or accommodating the beloved object with a lock of his hair,” said
+Wagg.
+
+“Stuff.” said the great man. “He has relations in the country, hasn’t
+he? He said something about a nephew, whose interest could return a
+member. It is the nephew’s affair, depend on it. The young one is in a
+scrape. I was myself—when I was in the fifth form at Eton—a
+market-gardener’s daughter—and swore I’d marry her. I was mad about
+her—poor Polly!”—here he made a pause, and perhaps the past rose up to
+Lord Steyne, and George Gaunt was a boy again not altogether lost.—“But
+I say, she must be a fine woman from Pendennis’s account. Have in
+Dolphin, and let us hear if he knows anything of her.”
+
+At this Wenham sprang out of the box, passed the servitor who waited at
+the door communicating with the stage, and who saluted Mr. Wenham with
+profound respect; and the latter emissary, pushing on and familiar with
+the place, had no difficulty in finding out the manager, who was
+employed, as he not unfrequently was, in swearing and cursing the
+ladies of the corps-de-ballet for not doing their duty.
+
+The oaths died away on Mr. Dolphin’s lips, as soon as he saw Mr.
+Wenham; and he drew off the hand which was clenched in the face of one
+of the offending coryphees, to grasp that of the new-comer. “How do,
+Mr. Wenham? How’s his lordship to-night? Looks uncommonly well,” said
+the manager smiling, as if he had never been out of temper in his life;
+and he was only too delighted to follow Lord Steyne’s ambassador, and
+pay his personal respects to that great man.
+
+The visit to Chatteris was the result of their conversation: and Mr.
+Dolphin wrote to his lordship from that place, and did himself the
+honour to inform the Marquess of Steyne, that he had seen the lady
+about whom his lordship had spoken, that he was as much struck by her
+talents as he was by her personal appearance, and that he had made an
+engagement with Miss Fotheringay, who would soon have the honour of
+appearing before a London audience, and his noble and enlightened
+patron the Marquess of Steyne.
+
+Pen read the announcement of Miss Fotheringay’s engagement in the
+Chatteris paper, where he had so often praised her charms. The Editor
+made very handsome mention of her talent and beauty, and prophesied her
+success in the metropolis. Bingley, the manager, began to advertise
+“The last night of Miss Fotheringay’s engagement.” Poor Pen and Sir
+Derby Oaks were very constant at the play: Sir Derby in the stage-box,
+throwing bouquets and getting glances.—Pen in the almost deserted
+boxes, haggard, wretched and lonely. Nobody cared whether Miss
+Fotheringay was going or staying except those two—and perhaps one more,
+which was Mr. Bows of the orchestra.
+
+He came out of his place one night, and went into the house to the box
+where Pen was; and he held out his hand to him, and asked him to come
+and walk. They walked down the street together; and went and sate upon
+Chatteris bridge in the moonlight, and talked about Her. “We may sit on
+the same bridge,” said he; “we have been in the same boat for a long
+time. You are not the only man who has made a fool of himself about
+that woman. And I have less excuse than you, because I am older and
+know her better. She has no more heart than the stone you are leaning
+on; and it or you or I might fall into the water, and never come up
+again, and she wouldn’t care. Yes—she would care for me, because she
+wants me to teach her: and she won’t be able to get on without me, and
+will be forced to send for me from London. But she wouldn’t if she
+didn’t want me. She has no heart and no head, and no sense, and no
+feelings, and no griefs or cares, whatever. I was going to say no
+pleasures—but the fact is, she does like her dinner, and she is pleased
+when people admire her.”
+
+“And you do?” said Pen, interested out of himself, and wondering at the
+crabbed homely little old man.
+
+“It’s a habit, like taking snuff, or drinking drams,” said the other.
+“I’ve been taking her these five years, and can’t do without her. It
+was I made her. If she doesn’t send for me, I shall follow her: but I
+know she’ll send for me. She wants me. Some day she’ll marry, and fling
+me over, as I do the end of this cigar.”
+
+The little flaming spark dropped into the water below, and disappeared;
+and Pen, as he rode home that night, actually thought about somebody
+but himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+The happy Village
+
+
+Until the enemy had retired altogether from before the place, Major
+Pendennis was resolved to keep his garrison in Fairoaks. He did not
+appear to watch Pen’s behaviour or to put any restraint on his nephew’s
+actions, but he managed nevertheless to keep the lad constantly under
+his eye or those of his agents, and young Arthur’s comings and goings
+were quite well known to his vigilant guardian.
+
+I suppose there is scarcely any man who reads this or any other novel
+but has been baulked in love some time or the other, by fate and
+circumstance, by falsehood of women, or his own fault. Let that worthy
+friend recall his own sensations under the circumstances, and apply
+them as illustrative of Mr. Pen’s anguish. Ah! what weary nights and
+sickening fevers! Ah! what mad desires dashing up against some rock of
+obstruction or indifference, and flung back again from the
+unimpressionable granite! If a list could be made this very night in
+London of the groans, thoughts, imprecations of tossing lovers, what a
+catalogue it would be! I wonder what a percentage of the male
+population of the metropolis will be lying awake at two or three
+o’clock to-morrow morning, counting the hours as they go by knelling
+drearily, and rolling from left to right, restless, yearning and
+heart-sick? What a pang it is! I never knew a man die of love
+certainly, but I have known a twelve-stone man go down to nine-stone
+five under a disappointed passion, so that pretty nearly quarter of him
+may be said to have perished: and that is no small portion. He has come
+back to his old size subsequently; perhaps is bigger than ever: very
+likely some new affection has closed round his heart and ribs and made
+them comfortable, and young Pen is a man who will console himself like
+the rest of us. We say this lest the ladies should be disposed to
+deplore him prematurely, or be seriously uneasy with regard to his
+complaint. His mother was, but what will not a maternal fondness fear
+or invent? “Depend on it, my dear creature,” Major Pendennis would say
+gallantly to her, “the boy will recover. As soon as we get her out of
+the country we will take him somewhere, and show him a little life.
+Meantime make yourself easy about him. Half a fellow’s pangs at losing
+a woman result from vanity more than affection. To be left by a woman
+is the deuce and all, to be sure; but look how easily we leave ’em.”
+
+Mrs. Pendennis did not know. This sort of knowledge had by no means
+come within the simple lady’s scope. Indeed she did not like the
+subject or to talk of it: her heart had had its own little private
+misadventure and she had borne up against it and cured it: and perhaps
+she had not much patience with other folk’s passions, except, of
+course, Arthur’s, whose sufferings she made her own, feeling indeed
+very likely in many of the boy’s illnesses and pains a great deal more
+than Pen himself endured. And she watched him through this present
+grief with a jealous silent sympathy; although, as we have said, he did
+not talk to her of his unfortunate condition.
+
+The Major must be allowed to have had not a little merit and
+forbearance, and to have exhibited a highly creditable degree of family
+affection. The life at Fairoaks was uncommonly dull to a man who had
+the entree of half the houses in London, and was in the habit of making
+his bow in three or four drawing-rooms of a night. A dinner with Doctor
+Portman or a neighbouring Squire now and then; a dreary rubber at
+backgammon with the widow, who did her utmost to amuse him; these were
+the chief of his pleasures. He used to long for the arrival of the bag
+with the letters, and he read every word of the evening paper. He
+doctored himself too, assiduously,—a course of quiet living would suit
+him well, he thought, after the London banquets. He dressed himself
+laboriously every morning and afternoon: he took regular exercise up
+and down the terrace walk. Thus with his cane, his toilet, his
+medicine-chest, his backgammon-box, and his newspaper, this worthy and
+worldly philosopher fenced himself against ennui; and if he did not
+improve each shining hour, like the bees by the widow’s garden wall,
+Major Pendennis made one hour after another pass as he could, and
+rendered his captivity just tolerable. After this period it was
+remarked that he was fond of bringing round the conversation to the
+American war, the massacre of Wyoming and the brilliant actions of
+Saint Lucie, the fact being that he had a couple of volumes of the
+‘Annual Register’ in his bedroom, which he sedulously studied. It is
+thus a well-regulated man will accommodate himself to circumstances,
+and show himself calmly superior to fortune.
+
+Pen sometimes took the box at backgammon of a night, or would listen to
+his mother’s simple music of summer evenings—but he was very restless
+and wretched in spite of all: and has been known to be up before the
+early daylight even; and down at a carp-pond in Clavering Park, a
+dreary pool with innumerable whispering rushes and green alders, where
+a milkmaid drowned herself in the Baronet’s grandfather’s time, and her
+ghost was said to walk still. But Pen did not drown himself, as perhaps
+his mother fancied might be his intention. He liked to go and fish
+there, and think and think at leisure, as the float quivered in the
+little eddies of the pond, and the fish flapped about him. If he got a
+bite he was excited enough: and in this way occasionally brought home
+carps, tenches, and eels, which the Major cooked in the Continental
+fashion.
+
+By this pond, and under a tree, which was his favourite resort, Pen
+composed a number of poems suitable to his circumstances over which
+verses he blushed in after days, wondering how he could ever have
+invented such rubbish. And as for the tree, why it is in a hollow of
+this very tree, where he used to put his tin-box of ground-bait, and
+other fishing commodities, that he afterwards—but we are advancing
+matters. Suffice it to say, he wrote poems and relieved himself very
+much. When a man’s grief or passion is at this point, it may be loud,
+but it is not very severe. When a gentleman is cudgelling his brain to
+find any rhyme for sorrow, besides borrow and to-morrow, his woes are
+nearer at an end than he thinks for. So were Pen’s. He had his hot and
+cold fits, his days of sullenness and peevishness, and of blank
+resignation and despondency, and occasional mad paroxysms of rage and
+longing, in which fits Rebecca would be saddled and galloped fiercely
+about the country, or into Chatteris, her rider gesticulating wildly on
+her back, and astonishing carters and turnpikemen as he passed, crying
+out the name of the false one.
+
+Mr. Foker became a very frequent and welcome visitor at Fairoaks during
+this period, where his good spirits and oddities always amused the
+Major and Pendennis, while they astonished the widow and little Laura
+not a little. His tandem made a great sensation in Clavering
+market-place; where he upset a market stall, and cut Mrs. Pybus’s
+poodle over the shaven quarters, and drank a glass of raspberry bitters
+at the Clavering Arms. All the society in the little place heard who he
+was, and looked out his name in their Peerages. He was so young, and
+their books so old, that his name did not appear in many of their
+volumes; and his mamma, now quite an antiquated lady, figured amongst
+the progeny of the Earl of Rosherville, as Lady Agnes Milton still. But
+his name, wealth, and honourable lineage were speedily known about
+Clavering, where you may be sure that poor Pen’s little transaction
+with the Chatteris actress was also pretty freely discussed.
+
+Looking at the little old town of Clavering St. Mary from the London
+road as it runs by the lodge at Fairoaks, and seeing the rapid and
+shining Brawl winding down from the town and skirting the woods of
+Clavering Park, and the ancient church tower and peaked roofs of the
+houses rising up amongst trees and old walls, behind which swells a
+fair background of sunshiny hills that stretch from Clavering westwards
+towards the sea—the place looks so cheery and comfortable that many a
+traveller’s heart must have yearned towards it from the coach-top, and
+he must have thought that it was in such a calm friendly nook he would
+like to shelter at the end of life’s struggle. Tom Smith, who used to
+drive the Alacrity coach, would often point to a tree near the river,
+from which a fine view of the church and town was commanded, and inform
+his companion on the box that “Artises come and take hoff the Church
+from that there tree—It was a Habby once, sir:”—and indeed a pretty
+view it is, which I recommend to Mr. Stanfield or Mr. Roberts, for
+their next tour.
+
+Like Constantinople seen from the Bosphorus; like Mrs. Rougemont viewed
+in her box from the opposite side of the house; like many an object
+which we pursue in life, and admire before we have attained it;
+Clavering is rather prettier at a distance than it is on a closer
+acquaintance. The town so cheerful of aspect a few furlongs off, looks
+very blank and dreary. Except on market days there is nobody in the
+streets. The clack of a pair of pattens echoes through half the place,
+and you may hear the creaking of the rusty old ensign at the Clavering
+Arms, without being disturbed by any other noise. There has not been a
+ball in the Assembly Rooms since the Clavering volunteers gave one to
+their Colonel, the old Sir Francis Clavering; and the stables which
+once held a great part of that brilliant, but defunct regiment, are now
+cheerless and empty, except on Thursdays, when the farmers put up
+there, and their tilted carts and gigs make a feeble show of liveliness
+in the place, or on Petty Sessions, when the magistrates attend in what
+used to be the old card-room.
+
+On the south side of the market rises up the church, with its great
+grey towers, of which the sun illuminates the delicate carving;
+deepening the shadows of the huge buttresses, and gilding the
+glittering windows and flaming vanes. The image of the Patroness of the
+Church was wrenched out of the porch centuries ago: such of the statues
+of saints as were within reach of stones and hammer at that period of
+pious demolition, are maimed and headless, and of those who were out of
+fire, only Doctor Portman knows the names and history, for his curate,
+Smirke, is not much of an antiquarian, and Mr. Simcoe (husband of the
+Honourable Mrs. Simcoe), incumbent and architect of the Chapel of Ease
+in the lower town, thinks them the abomination of desolation.
+
+The Rectory is a stout broad-shouldered brick house, of the reign of
+Anne. It communicates with the church and market by different gates,
+and stands at the opening of Yew-tree Lane, where the Grammar School
+(Rev. —— Wapshot) is; Yew-tree Cottage (Miss Flather); the butchers’
+slaughtering-house, an old barn or brew-house of the Abbey times, and
+the Misses Finucane’s establishment for young ladies. The two schools
+had their pews in the loft on each side of the organ, until the Abbey
+Church getting rather empty, through the falling-off of the
+congregation, who were inveigled to the Heresy-shop in the lower town,
+the Doctor induced the Misses Finucane to bring their pretty little
+flock downstairs; and the young ladies’ bonnets make a tolerable show
+in the rather vacant aisles. Nobody is in the great pew of the
+Clavering family, except the statues of defunct baronets and their
+ladies: there is Sir Poyntz Clavering, Knight and Baronet, kneeling in
+a square beard opposite his wife in a ruff: a very fat lady, the Dame
+Rebecca Clavering, in alto-relievo, is borne up to Heaven by two little
+blue-veined angels, who seem to have a severe task—and so forth. How
+well in after life Pen remembered those effigies, and how often in
+youth he scanned them as the Doctor was grumbling the sermon from the
+pulpit, and Smirke’s mild head and forehead curl peered over the great
+prayer-book in the desk!
+
+The Fairoaks folks were constant at the old church; their servants had
+a pew, so had the Doctor’s, so had Wapshot’s, and those of Misses
+Finucane’s establishment, three maids and a very nice-looking young man
+in a livery. The Wapshot Family were numerous and faithful. Glanders
+and his children regularly came to church: so did one of the
+apothecaries. Mrs. Pybus went, turn and turn about, to the Low Town
+church, and to the Abbey: the Charity School and their families of
+course came; Wapshot’s boys made a good cheerful noise, scuffling with
+their feet as they marched into church and up the organ-loft stair, and
+blowing their noses a good deal during the service. To be brief, the
+congregation looked as decent as might be in these bad times. The Abbey
+Church was furnished with a magnificent screen, and many hatchments and
+heraldic tombstones. The Doctor spent a great part of his income in
+beautifying his darling place; he had endowed it with a superb painted
+window, bought in the Netherlands, and an organ grand enough for a
+cathedral.
+
+But in spite of organ and window, in consequence of the latter very
+likely, which had come out of a Papistical place of worship and was
+blazoned all over with idolatry, Clavering New Church prospered
+scandalously in the teeth of Orthodoxy; and many of the Doctor’s
+congregation deserted to Mr. Simcoe and the honourable woman his wife.
+Their efforts had thinned the very Ebenezer hard by them, which
+building before Simcoe’s advent used to be so full, that you could see
+the backs of the congregation squeezing out of the arched windows
+thereof. Mr. Simcoe’s tracts fluttered into the doors of all the
+Doctor’s cottages, and were taken as greedily as honest Mrs. Portman’s
+soup, with the quality of which the graceless people found fault. With
+the folks at the Ribbon Factory situated by the weir on the Brawl side,
+and round which the Low Town had grown, Orthodoxy could make no way at
+all. Quiet Miss Myra was put out of court by impetuous Mrs. Simcoe and
+her female aides-de-camp. Ah, it was a hard burthen for the Doctor’s
+lady to bear, to behold her husband’s congregation dwindling away; to
+give the precedence on the few occasions when they met to a notorious
+low-churchman’s wife who was the daughter of an Irish Peer; to know
+that there was a party in Clavering, their own town of Clavering, on
+which her Doctor spent a great deal more than his professional income,
+who held him up to odium because he played a rubber at whist; and
+pronounced him to be a Heathen because he went to the play. In her
+grief she besought him to give up the play and the rubber,—indeed they
+could scarcely get a table now, so dreadful was the outcry against the
+sport,—but the Doctor declared that he would do what he thought right,
+and what the great and good George the Third did (whose Chaplain he had
+been): and as for giving up whist because those silly folks cried out
+against it, he would play dummy to the end of his days with his wife
+and Myra, rather than yield to their despicable persecutions.
+
+Of the two families, owners of the Factory (which had spoiled the Brawl
+as a trout-stream and brought all the mischief into the town), the
+senior partner, Mr. Rolt, went to Ebenezer; the junior, Mr. Barker, to
+the New Church. In a word, people quarrelled in this little place a
+great deal more than neighbours do in London; and in the Book Club,
+which the prudent and conciliating Pendennis had set up, and which
+ought to have been a neutral territory, they bickered so much that
+nobody scarcely was ever seen in the reading-room, except Smirke, who,
+though he kept up a faint amity with the Simcoe faction, had still a
+taste for magazines and light worldly literature; and old Glanders,
+whose white head and grizzly moustache might be seen at the window; and
+of course, little Mrs. Pybus, who looked at everybody’s letters as the
+Post brought them (for the Clavering Reading-room, as every one knows,
+used to be held at Baker’s Library, London Street, formerly Hog Lane),
+and read every advertisement in the paper.
+
+It may be imagined how great a sensation was created in this amiable
+little community when the news reached it of Mr. Pen’s love-passages at
+Chatteris. It was carried from house to house, and formed the subject
+of talk at high-church, low-church, and no-church tables; it was
+canvassed by the Misses Finucane and their teachers, and very likely
+debated by the young ladies in the dormitories for what we know;
+Wapshot’s big boys had their version of the story, and eyed Pen
+curiously as he sate in his pew at church, or raised the finger of
+scorn at him as he passed through Chatteris. They always hated him and
+called him Lord Pendennis, because he did not wear corduroys as they
+did, and rode a horse, and gave himself the airs of a buck.
+
+And if the truth must be told, it was Mrs. Portman herself who was the
+chief narrator of the story of Pen’s loves. Whatever tales this candid
+woman heard, she was sure to impart them to her neighbours; and after
+she had been put into possession of Pen’s secret by the little scandal
+at Chatteris, poor Doctor Portman knew that it would next day be about
+the parish of which he was the Rector. And so indeed it was; the whole
+society there had the legend—at the news-room, at the milliner’s, at
+the shoe-shop, and the general warehouse at the corner of the market;
+at Mrs. Pybus’s, at the Glanders’s, at the Honourable Mrs. Simcoe’s
+soiree, at the Factory; nay, through the mill itself the tale was
+current in a few hours, and young Arthur Pendennis’s madness was in
+every mouth.
+
+All Dr. Portman’s acquaintances barked out upon him when he walked the
+street the next day. The poor divine knew that his Betsy was the author
+of the rumour, and groaned in spirit. Well, well,—it must have come in
+a day or two, and it was as well that the town should have the real
+story. What the Clavering folks thought of Mrs. Pendennis for spoiling
+her son, and of that precocious young rascal of an Arthur for daring to
+propose to a play-actress, need not be told here. If pride exists
+amongst any folks in our country, and assuredly we have enough of it,
+there is no pride more deep-seated than that of twopenny old
+gentlewomen in small towns. “Gracious goodness,” the cry was, “how
+infatuated the mother is about that pert and headstrong boy who gives
+himself the airs of a lord on his blood-horse, and for whom our society
+is not good enough, and who would marry an odious painted actress off a
+booth, where very likely he wants to rant himself. If dear good Mr.
+Pendennis had been alive this scandal would never have happened.”
+
+No more it would, very likely, nor should we have been occupied in
+narrating Pen’s history. It was true that he gave himself airs to the
+Clavering folks. Naturally haughty and frank, their cackle and small
+talk and small dignities bored him, and he showed a contempt which he
+could not conceal. The Doctor and the Curate were the only people Pen
+cared for in the place—even Mrs. Portman shared in the general distrust
+of him, and of his mother, the widow, who kept herself aloof from the
+village society, and was sneered at accordingly, because she tried,
+forsooth, to keep her head up with the great County families. She,
+indeed! Mrs. Barker at the Factory has four times the butcher’s meat
+that goes up to Fairoaks, with all their fine airs.
+
+Etc. etc. etc.: let the reader fill up these details according to his
+liking and experience of village scandal. They will suffice to show how
+it was that a good woman occupied solely in doing her duty to her
+neighbour and her children, and an honest, brave lad, impetuous, and
+full of good, and wishing well to every mortal alive found enemies and
+detractors amongst people to whom they were superior, and to whom they
+had never done anything like harm. The Clavering curs were yelping all
+round the house of Fairoaks, and delighted to pull Pen down.
+
+Doctor Portman and Smirke were both cautious of informing the widow of
+the constant outbreak of calumny which was pursuing poor Pen, though
+Glanders, who was a friend of the house, kept him au courant. It may be
+imagined what his indignation was: was there any man in the village
+whom he could call to account? Presently some wags began to chalk up
+‘Fotheringay for ever!’ and other sarcastic allusions to late
+transactions, at Fairoaks’ gate. Another brought a large playbill from
+Chatteris, and wafered it there one night. On one occasion Pen, riding
+through the Lower Town, fancied he heard the Factory boys jeer him; and
+finally going through the Doctor’s gate into the churchyard, where some
+of Wapshot’s boys were lounging, the biggest of them, a young gentleman
+about twenty years of age, son of a neighbouring small Squire, who
+lived in the doubtful capacity of parlour-boarder with Mr. Wapshot,
+flung himself into a theatrical attitude near a newly-made grave, and
+began repeating Hamlet’s verses over Ophelia, with a hideous leer at
+Pen. The young fellow was so enraged that he rushed at Hobnell Major
+with a shriek very much resembling an oath, cut him furiously across
+the face with the riding-whip which he carried, flung it away, calling
+upon the cowardly villain to defend himself, and in another minute
+knocked the bewildered young ruffian into the grave which was just
+waiting for a different lodger.
+
+Then with his fists clenched, and his face quivering with passion and
+indignation, he roared out to Mr. Hobnell’s gaping companions, to know
+if any of the blackguards would come on? But they held back with a
+growl, and retreated as Doctor Portman came up to his wicket, and Mr.
+Hobnell, with his nose and lip bleeding piteously, emerged from the
+grave.
+
+Pen, looking death and defiance at the lads, who retreated toward their
+side of the churchyard, walked back again through the Doctor’s wicket,
+and was interrogated by that gentleman. The young fellow was so
+agitated he could scarcely speak. His voice broke into a sob as he
+answered. “The ——— coward insulted me, sir,” he said; and the Doctor
+passed over the oath, and respected the emotion of the honest suffering
+young heart.
+
+Pendennis the elder, who like a real man of the world had a proper and
+constant dread of the opinion of his neighbour, was prodigiously
+annoyed by the absurd little tempest which was blowing in Chatteris,
+and tossing about Master Pen’s reputation. Doctor Portman and Captain
+Glanders had to support the charges of the whole Chatteris society
+against the young reprobate, who was looked upon as a monster of crime.
+Pen did not say anything about the churchyard scuffle at home; but went
+over to Baymouth, and took counsel with his friend Harry Foker, Esq.,
+who drove over his drag presently to the Clavering Arms, whence he sent
+Stoopid with a note to Thomas Hobnell, Esq., at the Rev. J. Wapshot’s,
+and a civil message to ask when he should wait upon that gentleman.
+
+Stoopid brought back word that the note had been opened by Mr. Hobnell,
+and read to half a dozen of the big boys, on whom it seemed to make a
+great impression; and that after consulting together, and laughing, Mr.
+Hobnell said he would send an answer “arter arternoon school, which the
+bell was a-ringing: and Mr. Wapshot he came out in his Master’s gownd.”
+Stoopid was learned in academical costume, having attended Mr. Foker at
+St. Boniface.
+
+Mr. Foker went out to see the curiosities of Clavering meanwhile; but
+not having a taste for architecture, Doctor Portman’s fine church did
+not engage his attention much and he pronounced the tower to be as
+mouldy as an old Stilton cheese. He walked down the street and looked
+at the few shops there; he saw Captain Glanders at the window of the
+Reading-room, and having taken a good stare at that gentleman, he
+wagged his head at him in token of satisfaction; he inquired the price
+of meat at the butcher’s with an air of the greatest interest, and
+asked “when was next killing day?” he flattened his little nose against
+Madame Fribsby’s window to see if haply there was a pretty workwoman in
+her premises; but there was no face more comely than the doll’s or
+dummy’s wearing the French cap in the window, only that of Madame
+Fribsby herself, dimly visible in the parlour, reading a novel. That
+object was not of sufficient interest to keep Mr. Foker very long in
+contemplation, and so having exhausted the town and the inn stables, in
+which there were no cattle, save the single old pair of posters that
+earned a scanty livelihood by transporting the gentry round about to
+the county dinners, Mr. Foker was giving himself up to ennui entirely,
+when a messenger from Mr. Hobnell was at length announced.
+
+It was no other than Mr. Wapshot himself, who came with an air of great
+indignation, and holding Pen’s missive in his hand, asked Mr. Foker
+“how dared he bring such an unchristian message as a challenge to a boy
+of his school?”
+
+In fact Pen had written a note to his adversary of the day before,
+telling him that if after the chastisement which his insolence richly
+deserved, he felt inclined to ask the reparation which was usually
+given amongst gentlemen, Mr. Arthur Pendennis’s friend, Mr. Henry
+Foker, was empowered to make any arrangements for the satisfaction of
+Mr. Hobnell.
+
+“And so he sent you with the answer—did he, sir?” Mr. Foker said,
+surveying the Schoolmaster in his black coat and clerical costume.
+
+“If he had accepted this wicked challenge, I should have flogged him,”
+Mr. Wapshot said, and gave Mr. Foker a glance which seemed to say, “and
+I should like very much to flog you too.”
+
+“Uncommon kind of you, sir, I’m sure,” said Pen’s emissary. “I told my
+principal that I didn’t think the other man would fight,” he continued
+with a great air of dignity. “He prefers being flogged to fighting,
+sir, I dare say. May I offer you any refreshment, Mr.? I haven’t the
+advantage of your name.”
+
+“My name is Wapshot, sir, and I am Master of the Grammar School of this
+town, sir,” cried the other: “and I want no refreshment, sir, I thank
+you, and have no desire to make your acquaintance, sir.”
+
+“I didn’t seek yours, sir, I’m sure,” replied Mr. Foker. “In affairs of
+this sort, you see, I think it is a pity that the clergy should be
+called in, but there’s no accounting for tastes, sir.”
+
+“I think it’s a pity that boys should talk about committing murder,
+sir, as lightly as you do,” roared the Schoolmaster; “and if I had you
+in my school——”
+
+“I dare say you would teach me better, sir,” Mr. Foker said, with a
+bow. “Thank you, sir. I’ve finished my education, sir, and ain’t
+a-going back to school, sir—when I do, I’ll remember your kind offer,
+sir. John, show this gentleman downstairs—and, of course, as Mr.
+Hobnell likes being thrashed, we can have no objection, sir, and we
+shall be very happy to accommodate him, whenever he comes our way.”
+
+And with this, the young fellow bowed the elder gentleman out of the
+room, and sate down and wrote a note off to Pen, in which he informed
+the latter that Mr. Hobnell was not disposed to fight, and proposed to
+put up with the caning which Pen had administered to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+More Storms in the Puddle
+
+
+Pen’s conduct in this business of course was soon made public, and
+angered his friend Doctor Portman not a little: while it only amused
+Major Pendennis. As for the good Mrs. Pendennis, she was almost
+distracted when she heard of the squabble, and of Pen’s unchristian
+behaviour. All sorts of wretchedness, discomfort, crime, annoyance,
+seemed to come out of this transaction in which the luckless boy had
+engaged; and she longed more than ever to see him out of Chatteris for
+a while,—anywhere removed from the woman who had brought him into so
+much trouble.
+
+Pen, when remonstrated with by this fond parent, and angrily rebuked by
+the Doctor for his violence and ferocious intentions, took the matter
+au grand serieux, with the happy conceit and gravity of youth: said
+that he himself was very sorry for the affair, that the insult had come
+upon him without the slightest provocation on his part; that he would
+permit no man to insult him upon this head without vindicating his own
+honour, and appealing with great dignity to his uncle, asked whether he
+could have acted otherwise as a gentleman, than as he did in resenting
+the outrage offered to him, and in offering satisfaction to the person
+chastised?
+
+“Vous allez trop vite, my good sir,” said the uncle, rather puzzled,
+for he had been indoctrinating his nephew with some of his own notions
+upon the point of honour—old-world notions savouring of the camp and
+pistol a great deal more than our soberer opinions of the present
+day—“between men of the world I don’t say; but between two schoolboys,
+this sort of thing is ridiculous, my dear boy—perfectly ridiculous.”
+
+“It is extremely wicked, and unlike my son,” said Mrs. Pendennis, with
+tears in her eyes, and bewildered with the obstinacy of the boy.
+
+Pen kissed her, and said with great pomposity, “Women, dear mother,
+don’t understand these matters—I put myself into Foker’s hands—I had no
+other course to pursue.”
+
+Major Pendennis grinned and shrugged his shoulders. The young ones were
+certainly making great progress, he thought. Mrs. Pendennis declared
+that that Foker was a wicked horrid little wretch, and was sure that he
+would lead her dear boy into mischief, if Pen went to the same College
+with him. “I have a great mind not to let him go at all,” she said: and
+only that she remembered that the lad’s father had always destined him
+for the College in which he had had his own brief education, very
+likely the fond mother would have put a veto upon his going to the
+University.
+
+That he was to go, and at the next October term, had been arranged
+between all the authorities who presided over the lad’s welfare. Foker
+had promised to introduce him to the right set; and Major Pendennis
+laid great store upon Pen’s introduction into College life and society
+by this admirable young gentleman. “Mr. Foker knows the very best young
+men now at the University,” the Major said, “and Pen will form
+acquaintances there who will be of the greatest advantage through life
+to him. The young Marquis of Plinlimmon is there, eldest son of the
+Duke of Saint David’s—Lord Magnus Charters is there, Lord Runnymede’s
+son, and a first cousin of Mr. Foker (Lady Runnymede, my dear, was Lady
+Agatha Milton, you of course remember); Lady Agnes will certainly
+invite him to Logwood; and far from being alarmed at his intimacy with
+her son, who is a singular and humorous, but most prudent and amiable
+young man, to whom, I am sure, we are under every obligation for his
+admirable conduct in the affair of the Fotheringay marriage, I look
+upon it as one of the very luckiest things which could have happened to
+Pen, that he should have formed an intimacy with this most amusing
+young gentleman.”
+
+Helen sighed, she supposed the Major knew best. Mr. Foker had been very
+kind in the wretched business with Miss Costigan, certainly, and she
+was grateful to him. But she could not feel otherwise than a dim
+presentiment of evil; and all these quarrels, and riots, and
+worldliness, scared her about the fate of her boy.
+
+Doctor Portman was decidedly of opinion that Pen should go to College.
+He hoped the lad would read, and have a moderate indulgence of the best
+society too. He was of opinion that Pen would distinguish himself:
+Smirke spoke very highly of his proficiency: the Doctor himself had
+heard him construe, and thought he acquitted himself remarkably well.
+That he should go out of Chatteris was a great point at any rate; and
+Pen, who was distracted from his private grief by the various rows and
+troubles which had risen round about him, gloomily said he would obey.
+
+There were assizes, races, and the entertainments and the flux of
+company consequent upon them, at Chatteris, during a part of the months
+of August and September, and Miss Fotheringay still continued to act,
+and take farewell of the audiences at the Chatteris Theatre during that
+time. Nobody seemed to be particularly affected by her presence, or her
+announced departure, except those persons whom we have named; nor could
+the polite county folks, who had houses in London, and very likely
+admired the Fotheringay prodigiously in the capital, when they had been
+taught to do so by the Fashion which set in in her favour, find
+anything remarkable in the actress performing on the little Chatteris
+boards. Many genius and many a quack, for that matter, has met with a
+similar fate before and since Miss Costigan’s time. This honest woman
+meanwhile bore up against the public neglect, and any other crosses or
+vexations which she might have in life, with her usual equanimity; and
+ate, drank, acted, slept, with that regularity and comfort which
+belongs to people of her temperament. What a deal of grief, care, and
+other harmful excitement does a healthy dulness and cheerful
+insensibility avoid! Nor do I mean to say that Virtue is not Virtue
+because it is never tempted to go astray; only that dulness is a much
+finer gift than we give it credit for being; and that some people are
+very lucky whom Nature has endowed with a good store of that great
+anodyne.
+
+Pen used to go drearily in and out from the play at Chatteris during
+this season, and pretty much according to his fancy. His proceedings
+tortured his mother not a little, and her anxiety would have led her
+often to interfere, had not the Major constantly checked, and at the
+same time encouraged her; for the wily man of the world fancied he saw
+that a favourable turn had occurred in Pen’s malady. It was the violent
+efflux of versification, among other symptoms, which gave Pen’s
+guardian and physician satisfaction. He might be heard spouting verses
+in the shrubbery walks, or muttering them between his teeth as he sat
+with the home party of evenings. One day prowling about the house in
+Pen’s absence, the Major found a great book full of verses in the lad’s
+study. They were in English, and in Latin; quotations from the classic
+authors were given in the scholastic manner in the foot-notes. He can’t
+be very bad, wisely thought the Pall-Mall Philosopher: and he made
+Pen’s mother remark (not, perhaps, without a secret feeling of
+disappointment, for she loved romance like other soft women), that the
+young gentleman during the last fortnight came home quite hungry to
+dinner at night, and also showed a very decent appetite at the
+breakfast-table in the morning. “Gad, I wish I could,” said the Major,
+thinking ruefully of his dinner pills. “The boy begins to sleep well,
+depend upon that.” It was cruel, but it was true.
+
+Having no other soul to confide in—for he could not speak to his mother
+of his loves and disappointments—his uncle treated them in a scornful
+and worldly tone, which, though carefully guarded and polite, yet
+jarred greatly on the feelings of Mr. Pen—and Foker was much too coarse
+to appreciate those refined sentimental secrets—the lad’s friendship
+for the Curate redoubled, or rather, he was never tired of having
+Smirke for a listener on that one subject. What is a lovee without a
+confidant? Pen employed Mr. Smirke, as Corydon does the elm-tree, to
+cut out his mistress’s name upon. He made him echo with the name of the
+beautiful Amaryllis. When men have left off playing the tune, they do
+not care much for the pipe: but Pen thought he had a great friendship
+for Smirke, because he could sigh out his loves and griefs into his
+tutor’s ears; and Smirke had his own reasons for always being ready at
+the lad’s call.
+
+Pen’s affection gushed out in a multitude of sonnets to the friend of
+his heart, as he styled the Curate, which the other received with great
+sympathy. He plied Smirke with Latin Sapphics and Alcaics. The
+love-songs multiplied under his fluent pen; and Smirke declared and
+believed that they were beautiful. On the other hand, Pen expressed a
+boundless gratitude to think that Heaven should have sent him such a
+friend at such a moment. He presented his tutor with his best-bound
+books, and his gold guard-chain, and wanted him to take his
+double-barrelled gun. He went into Chatteris and got a gold pencil-case
+on credit (for he had no money, and indeed was still in debt to Smirke
+for some of the Fotheringay presents), which he presented to Smirke,
+with an inscription indicative of his unalterable and eternal regard
+for the Curate; who of course was pleased with every mark of the boy’s
+attachment.
+
+The poor Curate was naturally very much dismayed at the contemplated
+departure of his pupil. When Arthur should go, Smirke’s occupation and
+delight would go too. What pretext could he find for a daily visit to
+Fairoaks and that kind word or glance from the lady there, which was as
+necessary to the Curate as the frugal dinner which Madame Fribsby
+served him? Arthur gone, he would only be allowed to make visits like
+any other acquaintance: little Laura could not accommodate him by
+learning the Catechism more than once a week: he had curled himself
+like ivy round Fairoaks: he pined at the thought that he must lose his
+hold of the place. Should he speak his mind and go down on his knees to
+the widow? He thought over any indications in her behaviour which
+flattered his hopes. She had praised his sermons three weeks before:
+she had thanked him exceedingly for his present of a melon, for a small
+dinner-party which Mrs. Pendennis gave: she said she should always be
+grateful to him for his kindness to Arthur, and when he declared that
+there were no bounds to his love and affection for that dear boy, she
+had certainly replied in a romantic manner, indicating her own strong
+gratitude and regard to all her son’s friends. Should he speak out?—or
+should he delay? If he spoke and she refused him, it was awful to think
+that the gate of Fairoaks might be shut upon him for ever—and within
+that door lay all the world for Mr. Smirke.
+
+Thus, oh friendly readers, we see how every man in the world has his
+own private griefs and business, by which he is more cast down or
+occupied than by the affairs or sorrows of any other person. While Mrs.
+Pendennis is disquieting herself about losing her son, and that anxious
+hold she has had of him, as long as he has remained in the mother’s
+nest, whence he is about to take flight into the great world
+beyond—while the Major’s great soul chafes and frets, inwardly vexed as
+he thinks what great parties are going on in London, and that he might
+be sunning himself in the glances of Dukes and Duchesses, but for those
+cursed affairs which keep him in a wretched little country hole—while
+Pen is tossing between his passion and a more agreeable sensation,
+unacknowledged yet, but swaying him considerably, namely, his longing
+to see the world—Mr. Smirke has a private care watching at his bedside,
+and sitting behind him on his pony; and is no more satisfied than the
+rest of us. How lonely we are in the world; how selfish and secret,
+everybody! You and your wife have pressed the same pillow for forty
+years and fancy yourselves united. Psha, does she cry out when you have
+the gout, or do you lie awake when she has the toothache? Your artless
+daughter, seemingly all innocence and devoted to her mamma and her
+piano-lesson, is thinking of neither, but of the young Lieutenant with
+whom she danced at the last ball—the honest frank boy just returned
+from school is secretly speculating upon the money you will give him,
+and the debts he owes the tart-man. The old grandmother crooning in the
+corner and bound to another world within a few months, has some
+business or cares which are quite private and her own—very likely she
+is thinking of fifty years back, and that night when she made such an
+impression, and danced a cotillon with the Captain before your father
+proposed for her: or, what a silly little overrated creature your wife
+is, and how absurdly you are infatuated about her—and, as for your
+wife—O philosophic reader, answer and say,—Do you tell her all? Ah,
+sir—a distinct universe walks about under your hat and under mine—all
+things in nature are different to each—the woman we look at has not the
+same features, the dish we eat from has not the same taste to the one
+and the other—you and I are but a pair of infinite isolations, with
+some fellow-islands a little more or less near to us. Let us return,
+however, to the solitary Smirke.
+
+Smirke had one confidante for his passion—that most injudicious woman,
+Madame Fribsby. How she became Madame Fribsby, nobody knows: she had
+left Clavering to go to a milliner’s in London as Miss Fribsby—she
+pretended that she had got the rank in Paris during her residence in
+that city. But how could the French king, were he ever so much
+disposed, give her any such title? We shall not inquire into this
+mystery, however. Suffice to say, she went away from home a bouncing
+young lass; she returned a rather elderly character, with a Madonna
+front and a melancholy countenance—bought the late Mrs. Harbottle’s
+business for a song—took her elderly mother to live with her; was very
+good to the poor, was constant at church, and had the best of
+characters. But there was no one in all Clavering, not Mrs. Portman
+herself, who read so many novels as Madame Fribsby. She had plenty of
+time for this amusement, for, in truth, very few people besides the
+folks at the Rectory and Fairoaks employed her; and by a perpetual
+perusal of such works (which were by no means so moral or edifying in
+the days of which we write, as they are at present) she had got to be
+so absurdly sentimental, that in her eyes life was nothing but an
+immense love-match; and she never could see two people together, but
+she fancied they were dying for one another.
+
+On the day after Mrs. Pendennis’s visit to the Curate, which we have
+recorded many pages back, Madame Fribsby settled in her mind that Mr.
+Smirke must be in love with the widow, and did everything in her power
+to encourage this passion on both sides. Mrs. Pendennis she very seldom
+saw, indeed, except in public, and in her pew at church. That lady had
+very little need of millinery, or made most of her own dresses and
+caps; but on the rare occasions when Madame Fribsby received visits
+from Mrs. Pendennis or paid her respects at Fairoaks, she never failed
+to entertain the widow with praises of the Curate, pointing out what an
+angelical man he was, how gentle, how studious, how lonely; and she
+would wonder that no lady would take pity upon him.
+
+Helen laughed at these sentimental remarks, and wondered that Madame
+herself did not compassionate her lodger, and console him. Madame
+Fribsby shook her Madonna front, “Mong cure a boco souffare,” she said,
+laying her hand on the part she designated as her cure. “It est more en
+Espang, Madame,” she said with a sigh. She was proud of her intimacy
+with the French language, and spoke it with more volubility than
+correctness. Mrs. Pendennis did not care to penetrate the secrets of
+this wounded heart: except to her few intimates she was a reserved and
+it may be a very proud woman; she looked upon her son’s tutor merely as
+an attendant on that young Prince, to be treated with respect as a
+clergyman certainly, but with proper dignity as a dependant on the
+house of Pendennis. Nor were Madame’s constant allusions to the Curate
+particularly agreeable to her. It required a very ingenious sentimental
+turn indeed to find out that the widow had a secret regard for Mr.
+Smirke, to which pernicious error however Madame Fribsby persisted in
+holding.
+
+Her lodger was very much more willing to talk on this subject with his
+soft-hearted landlady. Every time after that she praised the Curate to
+Mrs. Pendennis, she came away from the latter with the notion that the
+widow herself had been praising him. “Etre soul au monde est bien
+ouneeyoung,” she would say, glancing up at a print of a French
+carbineer in a green coat and brass cuirass which decorated her
+apartment—“Depend upon it when Master Pendennis goes to College, his Ma
+will find herself very lonely. She is quite young yet.—You wouldn’t
+suppose her to be five-and-twenty. Monsieur le Cury, song cure est
+touchy—j’ang suis sure—Je conny cela biang—Ally Monsieur Smirke.”
+
+He softly blushed; he sighed; he hoped; he feared; he doubted; he
+sometimes yielded to the delightful idea—his pleasure was to sit in
+Madame Fribsby’s apartment, and talk upon the subject, where, as the
+greater part of the conversation was carried on in French by the
+Milliner, and her old mother was deaf, that retired old individual (who
+had once been a housekeeper, wife and widow of a butler in the
+Clavering family) could understand scarce one syllable of their talk.
+
+Thus it was, that when Major Pendennis announced to his nephew’s tutor
+that the young fellow would go to College in October, and that Mr.
+Smirke’s valuable services would no longer be needful to his pupil, for
+which services the Major, who spoke as grandly as a lord, professed
+himself exceedingly grateful, and besought Mr. Smirke to command his
+interests in any way—thus it was, that the Curate felt that the
+critical moment was come for him, and was racked and tortured by those
+severe pangs which the occasion warranted.
+
+Madame Fribsby had, of course, taken the strongest interest in the
+progress of Mr. Pen’s love affair with Miss Fotheringay. She had been
+over to Chatteris, and having seen that actress perform, had pronounced
+that she was old and overrated: and had talked over Master Pen’s
+passion in her shop many and many a time to the half-dozen old maids,
+and old women in male clothes, who are to be found in little country
+towns, and who formed the genteel population of Clavering. Captain
+Glanders, H.P., had pronounced that Pen was going to be a devil of a
+fellow, and had begun early: Mrs. Glanders had told him to check his
+horrid observations, and to respect his own wife, if he pleased. She
+said it would be a lesson to Helen for her pride and absurd infatuation
+about that boy. Mrs. Pybus said many people were proud of very small
+things, and for her part, she didn’t know why an apothecary’s wife
+should give herself such airs. Mrs. Wapshot called her daughters away
+from that side of the street, one day when Pen, on Rebecca, was
+stopping at the saddler’s, to get a new lash to his whip—one and all of
+these people had made visits of curiosity to Fairoaks, and had tried to
+condole with the widow, or bring the subject of the Fotheringay affair
+on the tapis, and had been severally checked by the haughty reserve of
+Mrs. Pendennis, supported by the frigid politeness of the Major her
+brother.
+
+These rebuffs, however, did not put an end to the gossip, and slander
+went on increasing about the unlucky Fairoaks’ family. Glanders (H.P.),
+a retired cavalry officer, whose half-pay and large family compelled
+him to fuddle himself with brandy-and-water instead of claret after he
+quitted the Dragoons, had the occasional entree at Fairoaks, and kept
+his friend the Major there informed of all the stories which were
+current at Clavering. Mrs. Pybus had taken an inside place by the coach
+to Chatteris, and gone to the George on purpose to get the particulars.
+Mrs. Speers’s man, had treated Mr. Foker’s servant to drink at Baymouth
+for a similar purpose. It was said that Pen had hanged himself for
+despair in the orchard, and that his uncle had cut him down; that, on
+the contrary, it was Miss Costigan who was jilted, and not young
+Arthur; and that the affair had only been hushed up by the payment of a
+large sum of money, the exact amount of which there were several people
+in Clavering could testify—the sum of course varying according to the
+calculation of the individual narrator of the story.
+
+Pen shook his mane and raged like a furious lion when these scandals,
+affecting Miss Costigan’s honour and his own, came to his ears. Why was
+not Pybus a man (she had whiskers enough), that he might call her out
+and shoot her? Seeing Simcoe pass by, Pen glared at him so from his
+saddle on Rebecca, and clutched his whip in a manner so menacing, that
+that clergyman went home and wrote a sermon, or thought over a sermon
+(for he delivered oral testimony at great length), in which he spoke of
+Jezebel, theatrical entertainments (a double cut this—for Doctor
+Portman, the Rector of the old church, was known to frequent such), and
+of youth going to perdition, in a manner which made it clear to every
+capacity that Pen was the individual meant, and on the road alluded to.
+What stories more were there not against young Pendennis, whilst he
+sate sulking, Achilles-like in his tent, for the loss of his ravished
+Briseis?
+
+After the affair with Hobnell, Pen was pronounced to be a murderer as
+well as a profligate, and his name became a name of terror and a byword
+in Clavering. But this was not all; he was not the only one of the
+family about whom the village began to chatter, and his unlucky mother
+was the next to become a victim to their gossip.
+
+“It is all settled,” said Mrs. Pybus to Mrs. Speers, “the boy is to go
+to College, and then the widow is to console herself.”
+
+“He’s been there every day, in the most open manner, my dear,”
+continued Mrs. Speers.
+
+“Enough to make poor Mr. Pendennis turn in his grave,” said Mrs.
+Wapshot.
+
+“She never liked him, that we know,” says No. 1.
+
+“Married him for his money. Everybody knows that: was a penniless
+hanger-on of Lady Pontypool’s,” says No. 2.
+
+“It’s rather too open, though, to encourage a lover under pretence of
+having a tutor for your son,” cried No. 3.
+
+“Hush! here comes Mrs. Portman,” some one said, as the good Rector’s
+wife entered Madame Fribsby’s shop, to inspect her monthly book of
+fashions just arrived from London. And the fact is that Madame Fribsby
+had been able to hold out no longer; and one day, after she and her
+lodger had been talking of Pen’s approaching departure, and the Curate
+had gone off to give one of his last lessons to that gentleman, Madame
+Fribsby had communicated to Mrs. Pybus, who happened to step in with
+Mrs. Speers, her strong suspicion, her certainty almost, that there was
+an attachment between a certain clerical gentleman and a certain lady,
+whose naughty son was growing quite unmanageable, and that a certain
+marriage would take place pretty soon.
+
+Mrs. Portman saw it all, of course, when the matter was mentioned. What
+a sly fox that Curate was! He was low-church, and she never liked him.
+And to think of Mrs. Pendennis taking a fancy to him after she had been
+married to such a man as Mr. Pendennis! She could hardly stay five
+minutes at Madame Fribsby’s, so eager was she to run to the Rectory and
+give Doctor Portman the news.
+
+When Doctor Portman heard this piece of intelligence, he was in such a
+rage with his curate, that his first movement was to break with Mr.
+Smirke, and to beg him to transfer his services to some other parish.
+“That milksop of a creature pretend to be worthy of such a woman as
+Mrs. Pendennis,” broke out the Doctor: “where will impudence stop
+next!”
+
+“She is much too old for Mr. Smirke,” Mrs. Portman remarked: “why, poor
+dear Mrs. Pendennis might be his mother almost.”
+
+“You always choose the most charitable reason, Betsy,” cried the
+Rector. “A matron with a son grown up—she would never think of marrying
+again.”
+
+“You only think men should marry again, Doctor Portman,” answered his
+lady, bridling up.
+
+“You stupid old woman,” said the Doctor, “when I am gone, you shall
+marry whomsoever you like. I will leave orders in my will, my dear, to
+that effect: and I’ll bequeath a ring to my successor, and my Ghost
+shall come and dance at your wedding.”
+
+“It is cruel for a clergyman to talk so,” the lady answered, with a
+ready whimper: but these little breezes used to pass very rapidly over
+the surface of the Doctor’s domestic bliss; and were followed by a
+great calm and sunshine. The Doctor adopted a plan for soothing Mrs.
+Portman’s ruffled countenance, which has a great effect when it is
+tried between a worthy couple who are sincerely fond of one another;
+and which, I think, becomes ‘John Anderson’ at three-score, just as
+much as it used to do when he was a black-haired young Jo of
+five-and-twenty.
+
+“Hadn’t you better speak to Mr. Smirke, John?” Mrs Portman asked.
+
+“When Pen goes to College, cadit quaestio,” replied the Rector,
+“Smirke’s visits at Fairoaks will cease of themselves, and there will
+be no need to bother the widow. She has trouble enough on her hands,
+with the affairs of that silly young scapegrace, without being pestered
+by the tittle-tattle of this place. It is all an invention of that
+fool, Fribsby.”
+
+“Against whom I always warned you,—you know I did, my dear John,”
+interposed Mrs. Portman.
+
+“That you did; you very often do, my love,” the Doctor answered with a
+laugh. “It is not for want of warning on your part, I am sure, that I
+have formed my opinion of most women with whom we are acquainted.
+Madame Fribsby is a fool, and fond of gossip, and so are some other
+folks. But she is good to the poor: she takes care of her mother, and
+she comes to church twice every Sunday. And as for Smirke, my dear——”
+here the Doctor’s face assumed for one moment a comical expression,
+which Mrs. Portman did not perceive (for she was looking out of the
+drawing-room window, and wondering what Mrs. Pybus could want
+cheapening fowls again in the market, when she had bad poultry from
+Livermore’s two days before)—“and as for Mr. Smirke, my dear Betsy,
+will you promise me that you will never breathe to any mortal what I am
+going to tell you as a profound secret?”
+
+“What is it, my dear John!—of course I won’t,” answered the Rector’s
+lady.
+
+“Well, then—I cannot say it is a fact, mind—but if you find that Smirke
+is at this moment—ay, and has been for years—engaged to a young lady, a
+Miss—a Miss Thompson, if you will have the name, who lives on Clapham
+Common—yes, on Clapham Common, not far from Mrs. Smirke’s house, what
+becomes of your story then about Smirke and Mrs. Pendennis?”
+
+“Why did you not tell me this before?” asked the Doctor’s wife.—“How
+long have you known it?—How we all of us have been deceived in that
+man!”
+
+“Why should I meddle in other folks’ business, my dear?” the Doctor
+answered. “I know how to keep a secret—and perhaps this is only an
+invention like that other absurd story; at least, Madame Portman, I
+should never have told you this but for the other, which I beg you to
+contradict whenever you hear it.” And so saying the Doctor went away to
+his study, and Mrs. Portman seeing that the day was a remarkably fine
+one, thought she would take advantage of the weather and pay a few
+visits.
+
+The Doctor looking out of his study window saw the wife of his bosom
+presently issue forth, attired in her best. She crossed the
+Market-place, saluting the market-women right and left, and giving a
+glance at the grocery and general emporium at the corner: then entering
+London Street (formerly Hog Lane), she stopped for a minute at Madame
+Fribsby’s window, and looking at the fashions which hung up
+there,—seemed hesitating whether she should enter; but she passed on
+and never stopped again until she came to Mrs. Pybus’s little green
+gate and garden, through which she went to that lady’s cottage.
+
+There, of course, her husband lost sight of Mrs. Portman. “Oh, what a
+long bow I have pulled,” he said inwardly—“Goodness forgive me! and
+shot my own flesh and blood. There must be no more tattling and scandal
+about that house. I must stop it, and speak to Smirke. I’ll ask him to
+dinner this very day.”
+
+Having a sermon to compose, the Doctor sat down to that work, and was
+so engaged in the composition, that he had not concluded it until near
+five o’clock in the afternoon: when he stepped over to Mr. Smirke’s
+lodgings, to put his hospitable intentions, regarding that gentleman,
+into effect. He reached Madame Fribsby’s door, just as the Curate
+issued from it.
+
+Mr. Smirke was magnificently dressed, and as he turned out his toes, he
+showed a pair of elegant open-worked silk stockings and glossy pumps.
+His white cravat was arranged in a splendid stiff tie, and his gold
+shirt studs shone on his spotless linen. His hair was curled round his
+fair temples. Had he borrowed Madame Fribsby’s irons to give that curly
+grace? His white cambric pocket-handkerchief was scented with the most
+delicious eau-de-Cologne.
+
+“O gracilis puer,”—cried the Doctor.—“Whither are you bound? I wanted
+you to come home to dinner.”
+
+“I am engaged to dine at—at Fairoaks,” said Mr. Smirke, blushing
+faintly and whisking the scented pocket-handkerchief, and his pony
+being in waiting, he mounted and rode away simpering down the street.
+No accident befell him that day, and he arrived with his tie in the
+very best order at Mrs. Pendennis’s house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+Which concludes the first Part of this History
+
+
+The Curate had gone on his daily errand to Fairoaks, and was upstairs
+in Pen’s study pretending to read with his pupil, in the early part of
+that very afternoon when Mrs. Portman, after transacting business with
+Mrs. Pybus, had found the weather so exceedingly fine that she pursued
+her walk as far as Fairoaks, in order to pay a visit to her dear friend
+there. In the course of their conversation, the Rector’s lady told Mrs.
+Pendennis and the Major a very great secret about the Curate, Mr.
+Smirke, which was no less than that he had an attachment, a very old
+attachment, which he had long kept quite private.
+
+“And on whom is it that Mr. Smirke has bestowed his heart?” asked Mrs.
+Pendennis, with a superb air but rather an inward alarm.
+
+“Why, my dear,” the other lady answered, “when he first came and used
+to dine at the Rectory, people said we wanted him for Myra, and we were
+forced to give up asking him. Then they used to say he was smitten in
+another quarter; but I always contradicted it for my part, and said
+that you——”
+
+“That I,” cried Mrs. Pendennis; “people are very impertinent, I am
+sure. Mr. Smirke came here as Arthur’s tutor, and I am surprised that
+anybody should dare to speak so——”
+
+“’Pon my soul, it is a little too much,” the Major said, laying down
+the newspaper and the double eye-glass.
+
+“I’ve no patience with that Mrs. Pybus,” Helen continued indignantly.
+
+“I told her there was no truth in it,” Mrs. Portman said. “I always
+said so, my dear: and now it comes out that my demure gentleman has
+been engaged to a young lady—Miss Thompson, of Clapham Common, ever so
+long: and I am delighted for my part, and on Myra’s account, too, for
+an unmarried curate is always objectionable about one’s house: and of
+course it is strictly private, but I thought I would tell you, as it
+might remove unpleasantnesses. But mind: not one word, if you please,
+about the story.”
+
+Mrs. Pendennis said, with perfect sincerity, that she was exceedingly
+glad to hear the news: and hoped Mr. Smirke, who was a very kind and
+amiable man, would have a deserving wife: and when her visitor went
+away, Helen and her brother talked of the matter with great
+satisfaction, the kind lady rebuking herself for her haughty behaviour
+to Mr. Smirke, whom she had avoided of late, instead of being grateful
+to him for his constant attention to Arthur.
+
+“Gratitude to this kind of people,” the Major said, “is very well; but
+familiarity is out of the question. This gentleman gives his lessons
+and receives his money like any other master. You are too humble, my
+good soul. There must be distinctions in ranks, and that sort of thing.
+I told you before, you were too kind to Mr. Smirke.”
+
+But Helen did not think so: and now that Arthur was going away, and she
+bethought her how very polite Mr. Smirke had been; how he had gone on
+messages for her; how he had brought books and copied music; how he had
+taught Laura so many things, and given her so many kind presents, her
+heart smote her on account of her ingratitude towards the Curate;—so
+much so, that when he came down from study with Pen, and was hankering
+about the hall previous to his departure, she went out and shook hands
+with him with rather a blushing face, and begged him to come into her
+drawing-room, where she said they now never saw him. And as there was
+to be rather a good dinner that day, she invited Mr. Smirke to partake
+of it; and we may be sure that he was too happy to accept such a
+delightful summons.
+
+Eased, by the above report, of all her former doubts and misgivings
+regarding the Curate, Helen was exceedingly kind and gracious to Mr.
+Smirke during dinner, redoubling her attentions, perhaps, because Major
+Pendennis was very high and reserved with his nephew’s tutor. When
+Pendennis asked Smirke to drink wine, he addressed him as if he was a
+Sovereign speaking to a petty retainer, in a manner so condescending,
+that even Pen laughed at it, although quite ready, for his part, to be
+as conceited as most young men are.
+
+But Smirke did not care for the impertinences of the Major so long as
+he had his hostess’s kind behaviour; and he passed a delightful time by
+her side at table, exerting all his powers of conversation to please
+her, talking in a manner both clerical and worldly, about the Fancy
+Bazaar, and the Great Missionary Meeting, about the last new novel, and
+the Bishop’s excellent sermon about the fashionable parties in London,
+an account of which he read in the newspapers—in fine, he neglected no
+art, by which a College divine who has both sprightly and serious
+talents, a taste for the genteel, an irreproachable conduct, and a
+susceptible heart, will try and make himself agreeable to the person on
+whom he has fixed his affections.
+
+Major Pendennis came yawning out of the dining-room very soon after his
+sister and little Laura had left the apartment. “What an unsufferable
+bore that man is, and how he did talk!” the Major said.
+
+“He has been very good to Arthur, who is very fond of him,” Mrs.
+Pendennis said,—“I wonder who the Miss Thompson is whom he is going to
+marry?”
+
+“I always thought the fellow was looking in another direction,” said
+the Major.
+
+“And in what?” asked Mrs. Pendennis quite innocently,—“towards Myra
+Portman?”
+
+“Towards Helen Pendennis, if you must know,” answered her
+brother-in-law.
+
+“Towards me! impossible!” Helen said, who knew perfectly well that such
+had been the case. “His marriage will be a very happy thing. I hope
+Arthur will not take too much wine.”
+
+Now Arthur, flushed with a good deal of pride at the privilege of
+having the keys of the cellar, and remembering that a very few more
+dinners would probably take place which he and his dear friend Smirke
+could share, had brought up a liberal supply of claret for the
+company’s drinking, and when the elders with little Laura left him, he
+and the Curate began to pass the wine very freely.
+
+One bottle speedily yielded up the ghost, another shed more than half
+its blood, before the two topers had been much more than half an hour
+together—Pen, with a hollow laugh and voice, had drunk off one bumper
+to the falsehood of women, and had said sardonically, that wine at any
+rate was a mistress who never deceived, and was sure to give a man a
+welcome.
+
+Smirke gently said that he knew for his part some women who were all
+truth and tenderness; and casting up his eyes towards the ceiling, and
+heaving a sigh as if evoking some being dear and unmentionable, he took
+up his glass and drained it, and the rosy liquor began to suffuse his
+face.
+
+Pen trolled over some verses he had been making that morning, in which
+he informed himself that the woman who had slighted his passion could
+not be worthy to win it: that he was awaking from love’s mad fever,
+and, of course, under these circumstances, proceeded to leave her, and
+to quit a heartless deceiver: that a name which had one day been famous
+in the land, might again be heard in it: and, that though he never
+should be the happy and careless boy he was but a few months since, or
+his heart be what it had been ere passion had filled it and grief had
+well-nigh killed it; that though to him personally death was as welcome
+as life, and that he would not hesitate to part with the latter, but
+for the love of one kind being whose happiness depended on his own,—yet
+he hoped to show he was a man worthy of his race, and that one day the
+false one should be brought to know how great was the treasure and
+noble the heart which she had flung away.
+
+Pen, we say, who was a very excitable person, rolled out these verses
+in his rich sweet voice, which trembled with emotion whilst our young
+poet spoke. He had a trick of blushing when in this excited state, and
+his large and honest grey eyes also exhibited proofs of a sensibility
+so genuine, hearty, and manly, that Miss Costigan, if she had a heart,
+must needs have softened towards him; and very likely she was, as he
+said, altogether unworthy of the affection which he lavished upon her.
+
+The sentimental Smirke was caught by the emotion which agitated his
+young friend. He grasped Pen’s hand over the dessert dishes and
+wine-glasses. He said the verses were beautiful: that Pen was a poet, a
+great poet, and likely by Heaven’s permission to run a great career in
+the world. “Go on and prosper, dear Arthur,” he cried; “the wounds
+under which at present you suffer are only temporary, and the very
+grief you endure will cleanse and strengthen your heart. I have always
+prophesied the greatest and brightest things of you, as soon as you
+have corrected some failings and weaknesses of character, which at
+present belong to you. But you will get over these, my boy; you will
+get over these; and when you are famous and celebrated, as I know you
+will be, will you remember your old tutor and the happy early days of
+your youth?”
+
+Pen swore he would: with another shake of the hand across the glasses
+and apricots. “I shall never forget how kind you have been to me,
+Smirke,” he said. “I don’t know what I should have done without you.
+You are my best friend.”
+
+“Am I, really, Arthur?” said Smirke, looking through his spectacles;
+and his heart began to beat so that he thought Pen must almost hear it
+throbbing.
+
+“My best friend, my friend for ever,” Pen said. “God bless you, old
+boy,” and he drank up the last glass of the second bottle of the famous
+wine which his father had laid in, which his uncle had bought, which
+Lord Levant had imported, and which now, like a slave indifferent, was
+ministering pleasure to its present owner, and giving its young master
+delectation.
+
+“We’ll have another bottle, old boy,” Pen said, “by Jove we will.
+Hurray!—claret goes for nothing. My uncle was telling me that he saw
+Sheridan drink five bottles at Brookes’s, besides a bottle of
+Maraschino. This is some of the finest wine in England, he says. So it
+is, by Jove. There’s nothing like it. Nunc vino pellite curas—cras
+ingens iterabimus aeq,—fill your glass, Old Smirke, a hogshead of it
+won’t do you any harm.” And Mr. Pen began to sing the drinking song out
+of Der Freischuetz. The dining-room windows were open, and his mother
+was softly pacing on the lawn outside, while little Laura was looking
+at the sunset. The sweet fresh notes of the boy’s voice came to the
+widow. It cheered her kind heart to hear him sing.
+
+“You—you are taking too much wine, Arthur,” Mr. Smirke said softly—“you
+are exciting yourself.”
+
+“No,” said Pen, “women give headaches, but this don’t. Fill your glass,
+old fellow, and let’s drink—I say, Smirke, my boy—let’s drink to
+her—your her, I mean, not mine, for whom I swear I’ll care no more—no,
+not a penny—no, not a fig—no, not a glass of wine. Tell us about the
+lady, Smirke; I’ve often seen you sighing about her.”
+
+“Oh!” said Smirke—and his beautiful cambric shirt front and glistening
+studs heaved with the emotion which agitated his gentle and suffering
+bosom.
+
+“Oh—what a sigh!” Pen cried, growing very hilarious; “fill, my boy, and
+drink the toast, you can’t refuse a toast, no gentleman refuses a
+toast. Here’s her health, and good luck to you, and may she soon be
+Mrs. Smirke.”
+
+“Do you say so?” Smirke said, all of a tremble. “Do you really say so,
+Arthur?”
+
+“Say so; of course, I say so. Down with it. Here’s Mrs. Smirke’s good
+health: Hip, hip, hurray!”
+
+Smirke convulsively gulped down his glass of wine, and Pen waved his
+over his head, cheering so as to make his mother and Laura wonder on
+the lawn, and his uncle, who was dozing over the paper in the
+drawing-room, start, and say to himself, “That boy’s drinking too
+much.” Smirke put down the glass.
+
+“I accept the omen,” gasped out the blushing Curate. “Oh my dear
+Arthur, you—you know her——”
+
+“What—Myra Portman? I wish you joy; she’s got a dev’lish large waist;
+but I wish you joy, old fellow.”
+
+“Oh, Arthur!” groaned the Curate again, and nodded his head,
+speechless.
+
+“Beg your pardon—sorry I offended you—but she has got a large waist,
+you know—devilish large waist,” Pen continued—the third bottle
+evidently beginning to act upon the young gentleman.
+
+“It’s not Miss Portman,” the other said, in a voice of agony.
+
+“Is it anybody at Chatteris or at Clapham? Somebody here? No—it ain’t
+old Pybus? it can’t be Miss Rolt at the Factory—she’s only fourteen.”
+
+“It’s somebody rather older than I am, Pen,” the Curate cried, looking
+up at his friend, and then guiltily casting his eyes down into his
+plate.
+
+Pen burst out laughing. “It’s Madame Fribsby; by Jove, it’s Madame
+Fribsby. Madame Frib. by the immortal Gods!”
+
+The Curate could contain no more. “O Pen,” he cried, “how can you
+suppose that any of those—of those more than ordinary beings you have
+named could have an influence upon this heart, when I have been daily
+in the habit of contemplating perfection! I may be insane, I may be
+madly ambitious, I may be presumptuous—but for two years my heart has
+been filled by one image, and has known no other idol. Haven’t I loved
+you as a son, Arthur?—say, hasn’t Charles Smirke loved you as a son?”
+
+“Yes, old boy, you’ve been very good to me,” Pen said, whose liking,
+however, for his tutor was not by any means of the filial kind.
+
+“My means,” rushed on Smirke, “are at present limited, I own, and my
+mother is not so liberal as might be desired; but what she has will be
+mine at her death. Were she to hear of my marrying a lady of rank and
+good fortune, my mother would be liberal, I am sure she would be
+liberal. Whatever I have or subsequently inherit—and it’s five hundred
+a year at the very least—would be settled upon her and—and—and you at
+my death—that is.”
+
+“What the deuce do you mean?—and what have I to do with your money?”
+cried out Pen, in a puzzle.
+
+“Arthur, Arthur!” exclaimed the other wildly; “you say I am your
+dearest friend—Let me be more. Oh, can’t you see that the angelic being
+I love—the purest, the best of women—is no other than your dear, dear
+angel of a—mother.”
+
+“My mother!” cried out Arthur, jumping up and sober in a minute. “Pooh!
+damn it, Smirke, you must be mad—she’s seven or eight years older than
+you are.”
+
+“Did you find that any objection?” cried Smirke piteously, and
+alluding, of course, to the elderly subject of Pen’s own passion.
+
+The lad felt the hint, and blushed quite red. “The cases are not
+similar, Smirke,” he said, “and the allusion might have been spared. A
+man may forget his own rank and elevate any woman to it: but allow me
+to say our positions are very different.”
+
+“How do you mean, dear Arthur?” the Curate interposed sadly, cowering
+as he felt that his sentence was about to be read.
+
+“Mean?” said Arthur. “I mean what I say. My tutor, I say my tutor, has
+no right to ask a lady of my mother’s rank of life to marry him. It’s a
+breach of confidence. I say it’s a liberty you take, Smirke—it’s a
+liberty. Mean, indeed!”
+
+“O Arthur!” the Curate began to cry with clasped hands, and a scared
+face, but Arthur gave another stamp with his foot and began to pull at
+the bell. “Don’t let’s have any more of this. We’ll have some coffee,
+if you please,” he said with a majestic air; and the old butler
+entering at the summons, Arthur bade him to serve that refreshment.
+
+John said he had just carried coffee into the drawing-room, where his
+uncle was asking for Master Arthur, and the old man gave a glance of
+wonder at the three empty claret-bottles. Smirke said he thought
+he’d—he’d rather not go into the drawing-room, on which Arthur
+haughtily said, “As you please,” and called for Mr. Smirke’s horse to
+be brought round. The poor fellow said he knew the way to the stable
+and would get his pony himself, and he went into the hall and sadly put
+on his coat and hat.
+
+Pen followed him out uncovered. Helen was still walking up and down the
+soft lawn as the sun was setting, and the Curate took off his hat and
+bowed by way of farewell, and passed on to the door leading to the
+stable court, by which the pair disappeared. Smirke knew the way to the
+stable, as he said, well enough. He fumbled at the girths of the
+saddle, which Pen fastened for him, and put on the bridle and led the
+pony into the yard. The boy was touched by the grief which appeared in
+the other’s face as he mounted. Pen held out his hand, and Smirke wrung
+it silently.
+
+“I say, Smirke,” he said in an agitated voice, “forgive me if I have
+said anything harsh—for you have always been very, very kind to me. But
+it can’t be, old fellow, it can’t be. Be a man. God bless you.”
+
+Smirke nodded his head silently, and rode out of the lodge-gate: and
+Pen looked after him for a couple of minutes, until he disappeared down
+the road, and the clatter of the pony’s hoofs died away. Helen was
+still lingering on the lawn waiting until the boy came back—she put his
+hair off his forehead and kissed it fondly. She was afraid he had been
+drinking too much wine. Why had Mr. Smirke gone away without any tea?
+
+He looked at her with a kind humour beaming in his eyes “Smirke is
+unwell,” he said with a laugh. For a long while Helen had not seen the
+boy looking so cheerful. He put his arm round her waist, and walked her
+up and down the walk in front of the house. Laura began to drub on the
+drawing-room window and nod and laugh from it. “Come along, you two
+people,” cried on Major Pendennis, “your coffee is getting quite cold.”
+
+When Laura was gone to bed, Pen, who was big with his secret, burst out
+with it, and described the dismal but ludicrous scene which had
+occurred. Helen heard of it with many blushes, which became her pale
+face very well, and a perplexity which Arthur roguishly enjoyed.
+
+“Confound the fellow’s impudence,” Major Pendennis said as he took his
+candle, “where will the assurance of these people stop?” Pen and his
+mother had a long talk that night, full of love, confidence, and
+laughter, and the boy somehow slept more soundly and woke up more
+easily than he had done for many months before.
+
+Before the great Mr. Dolphin quitted Chatteris, he not only made an
+advantageous engagement with Miss Fotheringay, but he liberally left
+with her a sum of money to pay off any debts which the little family
+might have contracted during their stay in the place, and which, mainly
+through the lady’s own economy and management, were not considerable.
+The small account with the spirit merchant, which Major Pendennis had
+settled, was the chief of Captain Costigan’s debts, and though the
+Captain at one time talked about repaying every farthing of the money,
+it never appears that he executed his menace, nor did the laws of
+honour in the least call upon him to accomplish that threat.
+
+When Miss Costigan had seen all the outstanding bills paid to the
+uttermost shilling, she handed over the balance to her father, who
+broke out into hospitalities to all his friends, gave the little Creeds
+more apples and gingerbread than he had ever bestowed upon them, so
+that the widow Creed ever after held the memory of her lodger in
+veneration, and the young ones wept bitterly when he went away; and in
+a word managed the money so cleverly that it was entirely expended
+before many days, and that he was compelled to draw upon Mr. Dolphin
+for a sum to pay for travelling expenses when the time of their
+departure arrived.
+
+There was held at an inn in that county town a weekly meeting of a
+festive, almost a riotous character, of a society of gentlemen who
+called themselves the Buccaneers. Some of the choice spirits of
+Chatteris belonged to this cheerful club. Graves, the apothecary (than
+whom a better fellow never put a pipe in his mouth and smoked it),
+Smart, the talented and humorous portrait-painter of High Street,
+Croker, an excellent auctioneer, and the uncompromising Hicks, the able
+Editor for twenty-three years of the County Chronicle and Chatteris
+Champion, were amongst the crew of the Buccaneers, whom also Bingley,
+the manager, liked to join of a Saturday evening, whenever he received
+permission from his lady.
+
+Costigan had been also an occasional Buccaneer. But a want of
+punctuality of payments had of late somewhat excluded him from the
+Society, where he was subject to disagreeable remarks from the
+landlord, who said that a Buccaneer who didn’t pay his shot was utterly
+unworthy to be a Marine Bandit. But when it became known to the ‘Ears,
+as the Clubbists called themselves familiarly, that Miss Fotheringay
+had made a splendid engagement, a great revolution of feeling took
+place in the Club regarding Captain Costigan. Solly, mine host of the
+Grapes (and I need not say, as worthy a fellow as ever stood behind a
+bar), told the gents in the Buccaneers’ room one night how noble the
+Captain had behaved; having been round and paid off all his ticks in
+Chatteris, including his score of three pound fourteen here—and
+pronounced that Cos was a good feller, a gentleman at bottom, and he,
+Solly, had always said so, and finally worked upon the feelings of the
+Buccaneers to give the Captain a dinner.
+
+The banquet took place on the last night of Costigan’s stay at
+Chatteris, and was served in Solly’s accustomed manner. As good a plain
+dinner of old English fare as ever smoked on a table was prepared by
+Mrs. Solly; and about eighteen gentlemen sate down to the festive
+board. Mr. Jubber (the eminent draper of High Street) was in the Chair,
+having the distinguished guest of the Club on his right. The able and
+consistent Hicks officiated as croupier on the occasion; most of the
+gentlemen of the Club were present, and H. Foker, Esq., and Spavin,
+Esq., friends of Captain Costigan, were also participators in the
+entertainment. The cloth having been drawn, the Chairman said,
+“Costigan, there is wine, if you like,” but the Captain preferring
+punch, that liquor was voted by acclamation: and ‘Non Nobis’ having
+been sung in admirable style by Messrs. Bingley, Hicks, and Bullby (of
+the Cathedral choir, than whom a more jovial spirit “ne’er tossed off a
+bumper or emptied a bowl”), the Chairman gave the health of the ‘King!’
+which was drunk with the loyalty of Chatteris men, and then without
+further circumlocution proposed their friend ‘Captain Costigan.’
+
+After the enthusiastic cheering which rang through old Chatteris had
+subsided, Captain Costigan rose in reply, and made a speech of twenty
+minutes, in which he was repeatedly overcome by his emotions.
+
+The gallant Captain said he must be pardoned for incoherence, if his
+heart was too full to speak. He was quitting a city celebrated for its
+antiquitee, its hospitalitee, the beautee of its women, the manly
+fidelitee, generositee, and jovialitee of its men. (Cheers.) He was
+going from that ancient and venerable city, of which while Mimoree held
+her sayt, he should never think without the fondest emotion, to a
+methrawpolis where the talents of his daughther were about to have full
+play, and where he would watch over her like a guardian angel. He
+should never forget that it was at Chatteris she had acquired the skill
+which she was about to exercise in another sphere, and in her name and
+his own Jack Costigan thanked and blessed them. The gallant officer’s
+speech was received with tremendous cheers.
+
+Mr. Hicks, Croupier, in a brilliant and energetic manner, proposed Miss
+Fotheringay’s health.
+
+Captain Costigan returned thanks in a speech full of feeling and
+eloquence.
+
+Mr. Jubber proposed the Drama and the Chatteris Theatre, and Mr.
+Bingley was about to rise but was prevented by Captain Costigan, who,
+as long connected with the Chatteris Theatre and on behalf of his
+daughter, thanked the company. He informed them that he had been in
+garrison, at Gibraltar, and at Malta, and had been at the taking of
+Flushing. The Duke of York was a patron of the Drama; he had the honour
+of dining with His Royal Highness and the Duke of Kent many times; and
+the former had justly been named the friend of the soldier. (Cheers.)
+
+The Army was then proposed, and Captain Costigan returned thanks. In
+the course of the night he sang his well-known songs, ‘The Deserter,’
+‘The Shan Van Voght,’ ‘The Little Pig under the Bed,’ and ‘The Vale of
+Avoca.’ The evening was a great triumph for him—it ended. All triumphs
+and all evenings end. And the next day, Miss Costigan having taken
+leave of all her friends, having been reconciled to Miss Rouncy, to
+whom she left a necklace and a white satin gown—the next day, he and
+Miss Costigan had places in the Competitor coach rolling by the gates
+of Fairoaks Lodge—and Pendennis never saw them.
+
+Tom Smith, the coachman, pointed out Fairoaks to Mr. Costigan, who sate
+on the box smelling of rum-and-water—and the Captain said it was a poor
+place—and added, “Ye should see Castle Costigan, County Mayo, me
+boy,”—which Tom said he should like very much to see.
+
+They were gone and Pen had never seen them! He only knew of their
+departure by its announcement in the county paper the next day: and
+straight galloped over to Chatteris to hear the truth of this news.
+They were gone indeed. A card of ‘Lodgings to let’ was placed in the
+dear little familiar window. He rushed up into the room and viewed it
+over. He sate ever so long in the old window-seat looking into the
+Dean’s garden: whence he and Emily had so often looked out together. He
+walked, with a sort of terror, into her little empty bedroom. It was
+swept out and prepared for new-comers. The glass which had reflected
+her fair face was shining ready for her successor. The curtains lay
+square folded on the little bed: he flung himself down and buried his
+head on the vacant pillow.
+
+Laura had netted a purse into which his mother had put some sovereigns,
+and Pen had found it on his dressing-table that very morning. He gave
+one to the little servant who had been used to wait upon the Costigans,
+and another to the children, because they said they were very fond of
+her. It was but a few months back, yet what years ago it seemed since
+he had first entered that room! He felt that it was all done. The very
+missing her at the coach had something fatal in it. Blank, weary,
+utterly wretched and lonely the poor lad felt.
+
+His mother saw She was gone by his look when he came home. He was eager
+to fly too now, as were other folks round about Chatteris. Poor Smirke
+wanted to go away from the sight of the syren widow. Foker began to
+think he had had enough of Baymouth, and that a few supper-parties at
+Saint Boniface would not be unpleasant. And Major Pendennis longed to
+be off, and have a little pheasant-shooting at Stillbrook, and get rid
+of all annoyances and tracasseries of the village. The widow and Laura
+nervously set about the preparation for Pen’s kit, and filled trunks
+with his books and linen. Helen wrote cards with the name of Arthur
+Pendennis, Esq., which were duly nailed on the boxes; and at which both
+she and Laura looked with tearful wistful eyes. It was not until long,
+long after he was gone, that Pen remembered how constant and tender the
+affection of these women had been, and how selfish his own conduct was.
+
+A night soon comes, when the mail, with echoing horn and blazing lamps,
+stops at the lodge-gate of Fairoaks, and Pen’s trunks and his uncle’s
+are placed on the roof of the carriage, into which the pair presently
+afterwards enter. Helen and Laura are standing by the evergreens of the
+shrubbery, their figures lighted up by the coach lamps; the guard cries
+all right: in another instant the carriage whirls onward; the lights
+disappear, and Helen’s heart and prayers go with them. Her sainted
+benedictions follow the departing boy. He has left the home-nest in
+which he has been chafing, and whither, after his very first flight, he
+returned bleeding and wounded; he is eager to go forth again, and try
+his restless wings.
+
+How lonely the house looks without him! The corded trunks and
+book-boxes are there in his empty study. Laura asks leave to come and
+sleep in Helen’s room: and when she has cried herself to sleep there,
+the mother goes softly into Pen’s vacant chamber, and kneels down by
+the bed on which the moon is shining, and there prays for her boy, as
+mothers only know how to plead. He knows that her pure blessings are
+following him, as he is carried miles away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+Alma Mater
+
+
+Every man, however brief or inglorious may have been his academical
+career, must remember with kindness and tenderness the old university
+comrades and days. The young man’s life is just beginning: the boy’s
+leading-strings are cut, and he has all the novel delights and
+dignities of freedom. He has no idea of cares yet, or of bad health, or
+of roguery, or poverty, or to-morrow’s disappointment. The play has not
+been acted so often as to make him tired. Though the after drink, as we
+mechanically go on repeating it, is stale and bitter, how pure and
+brilliant was that first sparkling draught of pleasure!—How the boy
+rushes at the cup, and with what a wild eagerness he drains it! But old
+epicures who are cut off from the delights of the table, and are
+restricted to a poached egg and a glass of water, like to see people
+with good appetites; and, as the next best thing to being amused at a
+pantomime one’s-self is to see one’s children enjoy it, I hope there
+may be no degree of age or experience to which mortal may attain, when
+he shall become such a glum philosopher as not to be pleased by the
+sight of happy youth. Coming back a few weeks since from a brief visit
+to the old University of Oxbridge, where my friend Mr. Arthur Pendennis
+passed some period of his life, I made the journey in the railroad by
+the side of a young fellow at present a student of Saint Boniface. He
+had got an exeat somehow, and was bent on a day’s lark in London: he
+never stopped rattling and talking from the commencement of the journey
+until its close (which was a great deal too soon for me, for I never
+was tired of listening to the honest young fellow’s jokes and cheery
+laughter); and when we arrived at the terminus nothing would satisfy
+him but a hansom cab, so that he might get into town the quicker, and
+plunge into the pleasures awaiting him there. Away the young lad went
+whirling, with joy lighting up his honest face; and as for the reader’s
+humble servant, having but a small carpet-bag, I got up on the outside
+of the omnibus, and sate there very contentedly between a Jew-pedlar
+smoking bad cigars, and a gentleman’s servant taking care of a
+poodle-dog, until we got our fated complement of passengers and boxes,
+when the coachman drove leisurely away. We weren’t in a hurry to get to
+town. Neither one of us was particularly eager about rushing into that
+near smoking Babylon, or thought of dining at the Club that night, or
+dancing at the Casino. Yet a few years more, and my young friend of the
+railroad will be not a whit more eager.
+
+There were no railroads made when Arthur Pendennis went to the famous
+University of Oxbridge; but he drove thither in a well-appointed coach,
+filled inside and out with dons, gownsmen, young freshmen about to
+enter, and their guardians, who were conducting them to the university.
+A fat old gentleman, in grey stockings, from the City, who sate by
+Major Pendennis inside the coach, having his pale-faced son opposite,
+was frightened beyond measure when he heard that the coach had been
+driven for a couple of stages by young Mr. Foker, of Saint Boniface
+College, who was the friend of all men, including coachmen, and could
+drive as well as Tom Hicks himself. Pen sate on the roof, examining
+coach, passengers, and country with great delight and curiosity. His
+heart jumped with pleasure as the famous university came in view, and
+the magnificent prospect of venerable towers and pinnacles, tall elms
+and shining river, spread before him.
+
+Pen had passed a few days with his uncle at the Major’s lodgings, in
+Bury Street, before they set out for Oxbridge. Major Pendennis thought
+that the lad’s wardrobe wanted renewal; and Arthur was by no means
+averse to any plan which was to bring him new coats and waistcoats.
+There was no end to the sacrifices which the self-denying uncle made in
+the youth’s behalf. London was awfully lonely. The Pall Mall pavement
+was deserted; the very red jackets had gone out of town. There was
+scarce a face to be seen in the bow-windows of the clubs. The Major
+conducted his nephew into one or two of those desert mansions, and
+wrote down the lad’s name on the candidate-list of one of them; and
+Arthur’s pleasure at this compliment on his guardian’s part was
+excessive. He read in the parchment volume his name and titles, as
+‘Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, of Fairoaks Lodge, ——shire and Saint
+Boniface College, Oxbridge; proposed by Major Pendennis, and seconded
+by Viscount Colchicum,’ with a thrill of intense gratification. “You
+will come in for ballot in about three years, by which time you will
+have taken your degree,” the guardian said. Pen longed for the three
+years to be over, and surveyed the stucco-halls, and vast libraries,
+and drawing-rooms as already his own property. The Major laughed slyly
+to see the pompous airs of the simple young fellow as he strutted out
+of the building. He and Foker drove down in the latter’s cab one day to
+the Grey Friars, and renewed acquaintance with some of their old
+comrades there. The boys came crowding up to the cab as it stood by the
+Grey Friars gates, where they were entering, and admired the chestnut
+horse, and the tights and livery and gravity of Stoopid, the tiger. The
+bell for afternoon-school rang as they were swaggering about the
+play-ground talking to their old cronies. The awful Doctor passed into
+school with his grammar in his hand. Foker slunk away uneasily at his
+presence, but Pen went up blushing, and shook the dignitary by the
+hand. He laughed as he thought that well-remembered Latin Grammar had
+boxed his ears many a time. He was generous, good-natured, and, in a
+word, perfectly conceited and satisfied with himself.
+
+Then they drove to the parental brew-house. Foker’s Entire is composed
+in an enormous pile of buildings, not far from the Grey Friars, and the
+name of that well-known firm is gilded upon innumerable public-house
+signs, tenanted by its vassals in the neighbourhood; and the venerable
+junior partner and manager did honour to the young lord of the vats and
+his friend, and served them with silver flagons of brown-stout, so
+strong, that you would have thought, not only the young men, but the
+very horse Mr. Harry Foker drove, was affected by the potency of the
+drink, for he rushed home to the west-end of the town at a rapid pace,
+which endangered the pie-stalls and the women on the crossings, and
+brought the cab-steps into collision with the posts at the street
+corners, and caused Stoopid to swing fearfully on his board behind.
+
+The Major was quite pleased when Pen was with his young acquaintance;
+listened to Mr. Foker’s artless stories with the greatest interest;
+gave the two boys a fine dinner at a Covent Garden Coffee-house, whence
+they proceeded to the play; but was above all happy when Mr. and Lady
+Agnes Foker, who happened to be in London, requested the pleasure of
+Major Pendennis and Mr. Arthur Pendennis’s company at dinner in
+Grosvenor Street. “Having obtained the entree into Lady Agnes Foker’s
+house,” he said to Pen with an affectionate solemnity which befitted
+the importance of the occasion, “it behoves you, my dear boy, to keep
+it. You must mind and never neglect to call in Grosvenor Street when
+you come to London. I recommend you to read up carefully, in Debrett,
+the alliances and genealogy of the Earls of Rosherville, and if you
+can, to make some trifling allusions to the family, something
+historical, neat, and complimentary, and that sort of thing, which you,
+who have a poetic fancy, can do pretty well. Mr. Foker himself is a
+worthy man, though not of high extraction or indeed much education. He
+always makes a point of having some of the family porter served round
+after dinner, which you will on no account refuse, and which I shall
+drink myself, though all beer disagrees with me confoundedly.” And the
+heroic martyr did actually sacrifice himself, as he said he would, on
+the day when the dinner took place, and old Mr. Foker, at the head of
+his table, made his usual joke about Foker’s Entire. We should all of
+us, I am sure, have liked to see the Major’s grin, when the worthy old
+gentleman made his time-honoured joke.
+
+Lady Agnes, who, wrapped up in Harry, was the fondest of mothers, and
+one of the most good-natured though not the wisest of women, received
+her son’s friend with great cordiality: and astonished Pen by accounts
+of the severe course of studies which her darling boy was pursuing, and
+which she feared might injure his dear health. Foker the elder burst
+into a horse-laugh at some of these speeches, and the heir of the house
+winked his eye very knowingly at his friend. And Lady Agnes then going
+through her son’s history from the earliest time, and recounting his
+miraculous sufferings in the measles and hooping-cough, his escape from
+drowning, the shocking tyrannies practised upon him at that horrid
+school, whither Mr. Foker would send him because he had been brought up
+there himself, and she never would forgive that disagreeable Doctor, no
+never—Lady Agnes, we say, having prattled away for an hour incessantly
+about her son, voted the two Messieurs Pendennis most agreeable men;
+and when pheasants came with the second course, which the Major praised
+as the very finest birds he ever saw, her ladyship said they came from
+Logwood (as the Major knew perfectly well), and hoped that they would
+both pay her a visit there—at Christmas, or when dear Harry was at home
+for the vacations.
+
+“God bless you, my dear boy,” Pendennis said to Arthur, as they were
+lighting their candles in Bury Street afterwards to go to bed. “You
+made that little allusion to Agincourt, where one of the Roshervilles
+distinguished himself, very neatly and well, although Lady Agnes did
+not quite understand it: but it was exceedingly well for a
+beginner—though you oughtn’t to blush so, by the way—and I beseech you,
+my dear Arthur, to remember through life, that with an entree—with a
+good entree, mind—it is just as easy for you to have good society as
+bad, and that it costs a man, when properly introduced, no more trouble
+or soins to keep a good footing in the best houses in London than to
+dine with a lawyer in Bedford Square. Mind this when you are at
+Oxbridge pursuing your studies, and for Heaven’s sake be very
+particular in the acquaintances which you make. The premier pas in life
+is the most important of all—did you write to your mother
+to-day?—No?—well, do, before you go, and call and ask Mr. Foker for a
+frank—They like it—Good night. God bless you.”
+
+Pen wrote a droll account of his doings in London, and the play, and
+the visit to the old Friars, and the brewery, and the party at Mr.
+Foker’s, to his dearest mother, who was saying her prayers at home in
+the lonely house at Fairoaks, her heart full of love and tenderness
+unutterable for the boy: and she and Laura read that letter and those
+which followed, many, many times, and brooded over them as women do. It
+was the first step in life that Pen was making—Ah! what a dangerous
+journey it is, and how the bravest may stumble and the strongest fail.
+Brother wayfarer! may you have a kind arm to support yours on the path,
+and a friendly hand to succour those who fall beside you. May truth
+guide, mercy forgive at the end, and love accompany always. Without
+that lamp how blind the traveller would be, and how black and cheerless
+the journey!
+
+So the coach drove up to that ancient and comfortable inn the Trencher,
+which stands in Main Street, Oxbridge, and Pen with delight and
+eagerness remarked, for the first time, gownsmen going about, chapel
+bells clinking (bells in Oxbridge are ringing from morning-tide till
+even-song)—towers and pinnacles rising calm and stately over the gables
+and antique house-roofs of the homely busy city. Previous
+communications had taken place between Dr. Portman on Pen’s part, and
+Mr. Buck, Tutor of Boniface, on whose side Pen was entered; and as soon
+as Major Pendennis had arranged his personal appearance, so that it
+should make a satisfactory impression upon Pen’s tutor, the pair walked
+down Main Street, and passed the great gate and belfry-tower of Saint
+George’s College, and so came, as they were directed, to Saint
+Boniface: where again Pen’s heart began to beat as they entered at the
+wicket of the venerable ivy-mantled gate of the College. It is
+surmounted with an ancient dome almost covered with creepers, and
+adorned with the effigy of the Saint from whom the House takes its
+name, and many coats-of-arms of its royal and noble benefactors.
+
+The porter pointed out a queer old tower at the corner of the
+quadrangle, by which Mr. Buck’s rooms were approached, and the two
+gentlemen walked across the square, the main features of which were at
+once and for ever stamped in Pen’s mind—the pretty fountain playing in
+the centre of the fair grass plats; the tall chapel windows and
+buttresses rising to the right; the hall with its tapering lantern and
+oriel window; the lodge, from the doors of which the Master issued with
+rustling silks; the lines of the surrounding rooms pleasantly broken by
+carved chimneys, grey turrets, and quaint gables—all these Mr. Pen’s
+eyes drank in with an eagerness which belongs to first impressions; and
+Major Pendennis surveyed with that calmness which belongs to a
+gentleman who does not care for the picturesque, and whose eyes have
+been somewhat dimmed by the constant glare of the pavement of Pall
+Mall.
+
+Saint George’s is the great College of the University of Oxbridge, with
+its four vast quadrangles, and its beautiful hall and gardens, and the
+Georgians, as the men are called wear gowns of a peculiar cut, and give
+themselves no small airs of superiority over all other young men.
+Little Saint Boniface is but a petty hermitage in comparison of the
+huge consecrated pile alongside of which it lies. But considering its
+size it has always kept an excellent name in the university. Its ton is
+very good: the best families of certain counties have time out of mind
+sent up their young men to Saint Boniface: the college livings are
+remarkably good: the fellowships easy; the Boniface men had had more
+than their fair share of university honours; their boat was third upon
+the river; their chapel-choir is not inferior to Saint George’s itself;
+and the Boniface ale the best in Oxbridge. In the comfortable old
+wainscoted College-Hall, and round about Roubilliac’s statue of Saint
+Boniface (who stands in an attitude of seraphic benediction over the
+uncommonly good cheer of the fellows’ table) there are portraits of
+many most eminent Bonifacians. There is the learned Doctor Griddle, who
+suffered in Henry VIII.’s time, and Archbishop Bush who roasted
+him—there is Lord Chief Justice Hicks—the Duke of St. David’s, K.G.,
+Chancellor of the University and Member of this College—Sprott the
+Poet, of whose fame the college is justly proud—Doctor Blogg, the late
+master, and friend of Doctor Johnson, who visited him at Saint
+Boniface—and other lawyers, scholars, and divines, whose portraitures
+look from the walls, or whose coats-of-arms shine in emerald and ruby,
+gold and azure, in the tall windows of the refectory. The venerable
+cook of the college is one of the best artists in Oxbridge (his son
+took the highest honours in the other University of Camford), and the
+wine in the fellows’ room has long been famed for its excellence and
+abundance.
+
+Into this certainly not the least snugly sheltered arbour amongst the
+groves of Academe, Pen now found his way, leaning on his uncle’s arm,
+and they speedily reached Mr. Buck’s rooms, and were conducted into the
+apartment of that courteous gentleman.
+
+He had received previous information from Dr. Portman regarding Pen,
+with respect to whose family, fortune, and personal merits the honest
+Doctor had spoken with no small enthusiasm. Indeed Portman had
+described Arthur to the tutor as “a young gentleman of some fortune and
+landed estate, of one of the most ancient families in the kingdom, and
+possessing such a character and genius as were sure, under the proper
+guidance, to make him a credit to the college and the university.”
+Under such recommendations the tutor was, of course, most cordial to
+the young freshman and his guardian, invited the latter to dine in
+hall, where he would have the satisfaction of seeing his nephew wear
+his gown and eat his dinner for the first time, and requested the pair
+to take wine at his rooms after hall, and in consequence of the highly
+favourable report he had received of Mr. Arthur Pendennis, said, he
+should be happy to give him the best set of rooms to be had in
+college—a gentleman-pensioner’s set, indeed, which were just luckily
+vacant. So they parted until dinner-time, which was very near at hand,
+and Major Pendennis pronounced Mr. Buck to be uncommonly civil indeed.
+Indeed when a College Magnate takes the trouble to be polite, there is
+no man more splendidly courteous. Immersed in their books and excluded
+from the world by the gravity of their occupations, these reverend men
+assume a solemn magnificence of compliment in which they rustle and
+swell as in their grand robes of state. Those silks and brocades are
+not put on for all comers or every day.
+
+When the two gentlemen had taken leave of the tutor in his study, and
+had returned to Mr. Buck’s ante-room, or lecture-room, a very handsome
+apartment, turkey-carpeted, and hung with excellent prints and richly
+framed pictures, they found the tutor’s servant already in waiting
+there, accompanied by a man with a bag full of caps and a number of
+gowns, from which Pen might select a cap and gown for himself, and the
+servant, no doubt, would get a commission proportionable to the service
+done by him. Mr. Pen was all in a tremor of pleasure as the bustling
+tailor tried on a gown and pronounced that it was an excellent fit; and
+then he put the pretty college cap on, in rather a dandified manner and
+somewhat on one side, as he had seen Fiddicombe, the youngest master at
+Grey Friars, wear it. And he inspected the entire costume with a great
+deal of satisfaction in one of the great gilt mirrors which ornamented
+Mr. Buck’s lecture-room: for some of these college divines are no more
+above looking-glasses than a lady is, and look to the set of their
+gowns and caps quite as anxiously as folks do of the lovelier sex. The
+Major smiled as he saw the boy dandifying himself in the glass: the old
+gentleman was not displeased with the appearance of the comely lad.
+
+Then Davis, the skip or attendant, led the way, keys in hand, across
+the quadrangle, the Major and Pen following him, the latter blushing,
+and pleased with his new academical habiliments, across the quadrangle
+to the rooms which were destined for the freshman; and which were
+vacated by the retreat of the gentleman-pensioner, Mr. Spicer. The
+rooms were very comfortable, with large cross beams, high wainscots,
+and small windows in deep embrasures. Mr. Spicer’s furniture was there,
+and to be sold at a valuation, and Major Pendennis agreed on his
+nephew’s behalf to take the available part of it, laughingly however
+declining (as, indeed, Pen did for his own part) six sporting prints,
+and four groups of opera-dancers with gauze draperies, which formed the
+late occupant’s pictorial collection.
+
+Then they went to hall, where Pen sate down and ate his commons with
+his brother freshmen, and the Major took his place at the high-table
+along with the college dignitaries and other fathers or guardians of
+youth, who had come up with their sons to Oxbridge; and after hall they
+went to Mr. Buck’s to take wine; and after wine to chapel, where the
+Major sate with great gravity in the upper place, having a fine view of
+the Master in his carved throne or stall under the organ-loft, where
+that gentleman, the learned Doctor Donne, sate magnificent, with his
+great prayer-book before him, an image of statuesque piety and rigid
+devotion. All the young freshmen behaved with gravity and decorum, but
+Pen was shocked to see that atrocious little Foker, who came in very
+late, and half a dozen of his comrades in the gentlemen-pensioners’
+seats, giggling and talking as if they had been in so many stalls at
+the Opera. But these circumstances, it must be remembered, took place
+some years back, when William the Fourth was king. Young men are much
+better behaved now, and besides, Saint Boniface was rather a fast
+college.
+
+Pen could hardly sleep at night in his bedroom at the Trencher: so
+anxious was he to begin his college life, and to get into his own
+apartments. What did he think about, as he lay tossing and awake? Was
+it about his mother at home; the pious soul whose life was bound up in
+his? Yes, let us hope he thought of her a little. Was it about Miss
+Fotheringay, and his eternal passion, which had kept him awake so many
+nights, and created such wretchedness and such longing? He had a trick
+of blushing, and if you had been in the room, and the candle had not
+been out, you might have seen the youth’s countenance redden more than
+once, as he broke out into passionate incoherent exclamations regarding
+that luckless event of his life. His uncle’s lessons had not been
+thrown away upon him; the mist of passion had passed from his eyes now,
+and he saw her as she was. To think that he, Pendennis, had been
+enslaved by such a woman, and then jilted by her! that he should have
+stooped so low, to be trampled on the mire! that there was a time in
+his life, and that but a few months back, when he was willing to take
+Costigan for his father-in-law!
+
+“Poor old Smirke!” Pen presently laughed out—“well, I’ll write and try
+and console the poor old boy. He won’t die of his passion, ha, ha!” The
+Major, had he been awake, might have heard a score of such ejaculations
+uttered by Pen as he lay awake and restless through the first night of
+his residence at Oxbridge.
+
+It would, perhaps, have been better for a youth, the battle of whose
+life was going to begin on the morrow, to have passed the eve in a
+different sort of vigil: but the world had got hold of Pen in the shape
+of his selfish old Mentor: and those who have any interest in his
+character must have perceived ere now, that this lad was very weak as
+well as very impetuous, very vain as well as very frank, and if of a
+generous disposition, not a little selfish in the midst of his
+profuseness, and also rather fickle, as all eager pursuers of
+self-gratification are.
+
+The six months’ passion had aged him very considerably. There was an
+immense gulf between Pen the victim of love, and Pen the innocent boy
+of eighteen, sighing after it: and so Arthur Pendennis had all the
+experience and superiority, besides that command which afterwards
+conceit and imperiousness of disposition gave him over the young men
+with whom he now began to live.
+
+He and his uncle passed the morning with great satisfaction in making
+purchases for the better comfort of the apartments which the lad was
+about to occupy. Mr. Spicer’s china and glass was in a dreadfully
+dismantled condition, his lamps smashed, and his bookcases by no means
+so spacious as those shelves which would be requisite to receive the
+contents of the boxes which were lying in the hall at Fairoaks, and
+which were addressed to Arthur in the hand of poor Helen.
+
+The boxes arrived in a few days, that his mother had packed with so
+much care. Pen was touched as he read the superscriptions in the dear
+well-known hand, and he arranged in their proper places all the books,
+his old friends, and all the linen and table-cloths which Helen had
+selected from the family stock, and all the jam-pots which little Laura
+had bound in straw, and the hundred simple gifts of home. Pen had
+another Alma Mater now. But it is not all children who take to her
+kindly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+Pendennis of Boniface
+
+
+Our friend Pen was not sorry when his Mentor took leave of the young
+gentleman on the second day after the arrival of the pair in Oxbridge,
+and we may be sure that the Major on his part was very glad to have
+discharged his duty, and to have the duty over. More than three months
+of precious time had that martyr of a Major given up to his nephew—Was
+ever selfish man called upon to make a greater sacrifice? Do you know
+many men or Majors who would do as much? A man will lay down his head,
+or peril his life for his honour, but let us be shy how we ask him to
+give up his ease or his heart’s desire. Very few of us can bear that
+trial. Say, worthy reader, if thou hast peradventure a beard, wouldst
+thou do as much? I will not say that a woman will not. They are used to
+it: we take care to accustom them to sacrifices but, my good sir, the
+amount of self-denial which you have probably exerted through life,
+when put down to your account elsewhere, will not probably swell the
+balance on the credit side much. Well, well, there is no use in
+speaking of such ugly matters, and you are too polite to use a vulgar
+to quoque. But I wish to state once for all that I greatly admire the
+Major for his conduct during the past quarter, and think that he has
+quite a right to be pleased at getting a holiday. Foker and Pen saw him
+off in the coach, and the former young gentleman gave particular orders
+to the coachman to take care of that gentleman inside. It pleased the
+elder Pendennis to have his nephew in the company of a young fellow who
+would introduce him to the best set of the university. The Major rushed
+off to London and thence to Cheltenham, from which Watering-place he
+descended upon some neighbouring great houses, whereof the families
+were not gone abroad, and where good shooting and company was to be
+had.
+
+A quarter of the space which custom has awarded to works styled the
+Serial Nature, has been assigned to the account of one passage in Pen’s
+career, and it is manifest that the whole of his adventures cannot be
+treated at a similar length, unless some descendant of the chronicler
+of Pen’s history should take up the pen at his decease, and continue
+the narrative for the successors of the present generation of readers.
+We are not about to go through the young fellow’s academical career
+with, by any means, a similar minuteness. Alas, the life of such boys
+does not bear telling altogether. I wish it did. I ask you, does yours?
+As long as what we call our honour is clear, I suppose your mind is
+pretty easy. Women are pure, but not men. Women are unselfish, but not
+men. And I would not wish to say of poor Arthur Pendennis that he was
+worse than his neighbours, only that his neighbours are bad for the
+most part. Let us have the candour to own as much at least. Can you
+point out ten spotless men of your acquaintance? Mine is pretty large,
+but I can’t find ten saints in the list.
+
+During the first term of Mr. Pen’s academical life, he attended
+classical and mathematical lectures with tolerable assiduity; but
+discovering before very long time that he had little taste or genius
+for the pursuing of the exact sciences, and being perhaps rather
+annoyed that one or two very vulgar young men, who did not even use
+straps to their trousers so as to cover the abominably thick and coarse
+shoes and stockings which they wore, beat him completely in the
+lecture-room, he gave up his attendance at that course, and announced
+to his fond parent that he proposed to devote himself exclusively to
+the cultivation of Greek and Roman Literature.
+
+Mrs. Pendennis was, for her part, quite satisfied that her darling boy
+should pursue that branch of learning for which he had the greatest
+inclination; and only besought him not to ruin his health by too much
+study, for she had heard the most melancholy stories of young students
+who, by over-fatigue, had brought on brain-fevers and perished untimely
+in the midst of their university career. And Pen’s health, which was
+always delicate, was to be regarded, as she justly said, beyond all
+considerations or vain honours. Pen, although not aware of any lurking
+disease which was likely to end his life, yet kindly promised his mamma
+not to sit up reading too late of nights, and stuck to his word in this
+respect with a great deal more tenacity of resolution than he exhibited
+upon some other occasions, when perhaps he was a little remiss.
+
+Presently he began too to find that he learned little good in the
+classical lecture. His fellow-students there were too dull, as in
+mathematics they were too learned for him. Mr. Buck, the tutor, was no
+better a scholar than many a fifth-form boy at Grey Friars; might have
+some stupid humdrum notions about the metre and grammatical
+construction of a passage of Aeschylus or Aristophanes, but had no more
+notion of the poetry than Mrs. Binge, his bed-maker; and Pen grew weary
+of hearing the dull students and tutor blunder through a few lines of a
+play, which he could read in a tenth part of the time which they gave
+to it. After all, private reading, as he began to perceive, was the
+only study which was really profitable to a man; and he announced to
+his mamma that he should read by himself a great deal more, and in
+public a great deal less. That excellent woman knew no more about Homer
+than she did about Algebra, but she was quite contented with Pen’s
+arrangements regarding his course of studies, and felt perfectly
+confident that her dear boy would get the place which he merited.
+
+Pen did not come home until after Christmas, a little to the fond
+mother’s disappointment, and Laura’s, who was longing for him to make a
+fine snow fortification, such as he had made three winters before. But
+he was invited to Logwood, Lady Agnes Foker’s, where there were private
+theatricals, and a gay Christmas party of very fine folks, some of them
+whom Major Pendennis would on no account have his nephew neglect.
+However, he stayed at home for the last three weeks of the vacation,
+and Laura had the opportunity of remarking what a quantity of fine new
+clothes he brought with him, and his mother admired his improved
+appearance and manly and decided tone.
+
+He did not come home at Easter; but when he arrived for the long
+vacation, he brought more smart clothes; appearing in the morning in
+wonderful shooting jackets, with remarkable buttons; and in the evening
+in gorgeous velvet waistcoats, with richly-embroidered cravats, and
+curious linen. And as she pried about his room, she saw, oh, such a
+beautiful dressing-case, with silver mountings, and a quantity of
+lovely rings and jewellery. And he had a new French watch and gold
+chain, in place of the big old chronometer, with its bunch of jingling
+seals, which had hung from the fob of John Pendennis, and by the
+second-hand of which the defunct doctor had felt many a patient’s pulse
+in his time. It was but a few months back Pen had longed for this
+watch, which he thought the most splendid and august timepiece in the
+world; and just before he went to college, Helen had taken it out of
+her trinket-box (where it had remained unwound since the death of her
+husband) and given it to Pen with a solemn and appropriate little
+speech respecting his father’s virtues and the proper use of time. This
+portly and valuable chronometer Pen now pronounced to be out of date,
+and, indeed, made some comparisons between it and a warming-pan, which
+Laura thought disrespectful, and he left the watch in a drawer, in the
+company of soiled primrose gloves, cravats which had gone out of
+favour, and of that other school watch which has once before been
+mentioned in this history. Our old friend, Rebecca, Pen pronounced to
+be no long up to his weight, and swapped her away for another and more
+powerful horse, for which he had to pay rather a heavy figure. Mr.
+Pendennis gave the boy the money for the new horse; and Laura cried
+when Rebecca was fetched away.
+
+Also Pen brought a large box of cigars branded Colorados, Afrancesados,
+Telescopios, Fudson Oxford Street, or by some such strange titles, and
+began to consume these not only about the stables and green-houses,
+where they were very good for Helen’s plants, but in his own study, of
+which practice his mother did not at first approve. But he was at work
+upon a prize-poem, he said, and could not compose without his cigar,
+and quoted the late lamented Lord Byron’s lines in favour of the custom
+of smoking. As he was smoking to such good purpose, his mother could
+not of course refuse permission: in fact, the good soul coming into the
+room one day in the midst of Pen’s labours (he was consulting a novel
+which had recently appeared, for the cultivation of the light
+literature of his own country as well as of foreign nations became
+every student)—Helen, we say, coming into the room and finding Pen on
+the sofa at this work, rather than disturb him went for a light-box and
+his cigar-case to his bedroom which was adjacent, and actually put the
+cigar into his mouth and lighted the match at which he kindled it. Pen
+laughed, and kissed his mother’s hand as it hung fondly over the back
+of the sofa. “Dear old mother,” he said, “if I were to tell you to burn
+the house down, I think you would do it.” And it is very likely that
+Mr. Pen was right, and that the foolish woman would have done almost as
+much for him as he said.
+
+Besides the works of English “light literature” which this diligent
+student devoured, he brought down boxes of the light literature of the
+neighbouring country of France: into the leaves of which when Helen
+dipped, she read such things as caused her to open her eyes with
+wonder. But Pen showed her that it was not he who made the books,
+though it was absolutely necessary that he should keep up his French by
+an acquaintance with the most celebrated writers of the day, and that
+it was as clearly his duty to read the eminent Paul de Kock, as to
+study Swift or Moliere. And Mrs. Pendennis yielded with a sigh of
+perplexity. But Miss Laura was warned off the books, both by his
+anxious mother, and that rigid moralist Mr. Arthur Pendennis himself,
+who, however he might be called upon to study every branch of
+literature in order to form his mind and to perfect his style, would by
+no means prescribe such a course of reading to a young lady whose
+business in life was very different.
+
+In the course of this long vacation Mr. Pen drank up the bin of claret
+which his father had laid in, and of which we have heard the son remark
+that there was not a headache in a hogshead; and this wine being
+exhausted, he wrote for a further supply to “his wine merchants,”
+Messrs. Binney and Latham of Mark Lane, London: from whom, indeed, old
+Doctor Portman had recommended Pen to get a supply of port and sherry
+on going to college. “You will have, no doubt, to entertain your young
+friends at Boniface with wine-parties,” the honest rector had remarked
+to the lad. “They used to be customary at college in my time, and I
+would advise you to employ an honest and respectable house in London
+for your small stock of wine, rather than to have recourse to the
+Oxbridge tradesmen, whose liquor, if I remember rightly, was both
+deleterious in quality and exorbitant in price.” And the obedient young
+gentleman took the Doctor’s advice, and patronised Messrs. Binney and
+Latham at the rector’s suggestion.
+
+So when he wrote orders for a stock of wine to be sent down to the
+cellars at Fairoaks, he hinted that Messrs. B. and L. might send in his
+university account for wine at the same time with the Fairoaks bill.
+The poor widow was frightened at the amount. But Pen laughed at her
+old-fashioned views, said that the bill was moderate, that everybody
+drank claret and champagne now, and, finally, the widow paid, feeling
+dimly that the expenses of her household were increasing considerably,
+and that her narrow income would scarce suffice to meet them. But they
+were only occasional. Pen merely came home for a few weeks at the
+vacation. Laura and she might pinch when he was gone. In the brief time
+he was with them, ought they not to make him happy?
+
+Arthur’s own allowances were liberal all this time; indeed, much more
+so than those of the sons of far more wealthy men. Years before, the
+thrifty and affectionate John Pendennis, whose darling project it had
+ever been to give his son a university education, and those advantages
+of which his own father’s extravagance had deprived him, had begun
+laying by a store of money which he called Arthur’s Education Fund.
+Year after year in his book his executors found entries of sums vested
+as A. E. F., and during the period subsequent to her husband’s decease,
+and before Pen’s entry at college, the widow had added sundry sums to
+this fund, so that when Arthur went up to Oxbridge it reached no
+inconsiderable amount. Let him be liberally allowanced, was Major
+Pendennis’s maxim. Let him make his first entree into the world as a
+gentleman, and take his place with men of good rank and station: after
+giving it to him, it will be his own duty to hold it. There is no such
+bad policy as stinting a boy—or putting him on a lower allowance than
+his fellows. Arthur will have to face the world and fight for himself
+presently. Meanwhile we shall have procured for him good friends,
+gentlemanly habits, and have him well backed and well trained against
+the time when the real struggle comes. And these liberal opinions the
+Major probably advanced both because they were just, and because he was
+not dealing with his own money.
+
+Thus young Pen, the only son of an estated country gentleman, with a
+good allowance, and a gentlemanlike bearing and person, looked to be a
+lad of much more consequence than he was really; and was held by the
+Oxbridge authorities, tradesmen, and undergraduates, as quite a young
+buck and member of the aristocracy. His manner was frank, brave, and
+perhaps a little impertinent, as becomes a high-spirited youth. He was
+perfectly generous and free-handed with his money, which seemed pretty
+plentiful. He loved joviality, and had a good voice for a song.
+Boat-racing had not risen in Pen’s time to the fureur which, as we are
+given to understand, it has since attained in the university; and
+riding and tandem-driving were the fashions of the ingenuous youth. Pen
+rode well to hounds, appeared in pink, as became a young buck, and, not
+particularly extravagant in equestrian or any other amusement, yet
+managed to run up a fine bill at Nile’s, the livery-stable keeper, and
+in a number of other quarters. In fact, this lucky young gentleman had
+almost every taste to a considerable degree. He was very fond of books
+of all sorts: Doctor Portman had taught him to like rare editions, and
+his own taste led him to like beautiful bindings. It was marvellous
+what tall copies, and gilding, and marbling, and blind-tooling, the
+booksellers and binders put upon Pen’s bookshelves. He had a very fair
+taste in matters of art, and a keen relish for prints of a high
+school—none of your French Opera Dancers, or tawdry Racing Prints, such
+as had delighted the simple eyes of Mr. Spicer, his predecessor—but
+your Stranges, and Rembrandt etchings, and Wilkies before the letter,
+with which his apartments were furnished presently in the most perfect
+good taste, as was allowed in the university, where this young fellow
+got no small reputation. We have mentioned that he exhibited a certain
+partiality for rings, jewellery, and fine raiment of all sorts; and it
+must be owned that Mr. Pen, during his time at the university, was
+rather a dressy man, and loved to array himself in splendour. He and
+his polite friends would dress themselves out with as much care in
+order to go and dine at each other’s rooms, as other folks would who
+were going to enslave a mistress. They said he used to wear rings over
+his kid gloves, which he always denies; but what follies will not youth
+perpetrate with its own admirable gravity and simplicity? That he took
+perfumed baths is a truth; and he used to say that he took them after
+meeting certain men of a very low set in hall.
+
+In Pen’s second year, when Miss Fotheringay made her chief hit in
+London, and scores of prints were published of her, Pen had one of
+these hung in his bedroom, and confided to the men of his set how
+awfully, how wildly, how madly, how passionately, he had loved that
+woman. He showed them in confidence the verses that he had written to
+her, and his brow would darken, his eyes roll, his chest heave with
+emotion as he recalled that fatal period of his life, and described the
+woes and agonies which he had suffered. The verses were copied out,
+handed about, sneered at, admired, passed from coterie to coterie.
+There are few things which elevate a lad in the estimation of his
+brother boys, more than to have a character for a great and romantic
+passion. Perhaps there is something noble in it at all times—among very
+young men it is considered heroic—Pen was pronounced a tremendous
+fellow. They said he had almost committed suicide: that he had fought a
+duel with a baronet about her. Freshmen pointed him out to each other.
+As at the promenade time at two o’clock he swaggered out of college,
+surrounded by his cronies, he was famous to behold. He was elaborately
+attired. He would ogle the ladies who came to lionise the university,
+and passed before him on the arms of happy gownsmen, and give his
+opinion upon their personal charms, or their toilettes, with the
+gravity of a critic whose experience entitled him to speak with
+authority. Men used to say that they had been walking with Pendennis,
+and were as pleased to be seen in his company as some of us would be if
+we walked with a duke down Pall Mall. He and the Proctor capped each
+other as they met, as if they were rival powers, and the men hardly
+knew which was the greater.
+
+In fact, in the course of his second year, Arthur Pendennis had become
+one of the men of fashion in the university. It is curious to watch
+that facile admiration, and simple fidelity of youth. They hang round a
+leader; and wonder at him, and love him, and imitate him. No generous
+boy ever lived, I suppose, that has not had some wonderment of
+admiration for another boy; and Monsieur Pen at Oxbridge had his
+school, his faithful band of friends and his rivals. When the young men
+heard at the haberdashers’ shops that Mr. Pendennis, of Boniface, had
+just ordered a crimson satin-cravat, you would see a couple of dozen
+crimson satin cravats in Main Street in the course of the week—and
+Simon, the Jeweller, was known to sell no less than two gross of
+Pendennis pins, from a pattern which the young gentleman had selected
+in his shop.
+
+Now if any person with an arithmetical turn of mind will take the
+trouble to calculate what a sum of money it would cost a young man to
+indulge freely in all the above propensities which we have said Mr. Pen
+possessed, it will be seen that a young fellow, with such liberal
+tastes and amusements, must needs in the course of two or three years
+spend or owe a very handsome sum of money. We have said our friend Pen
+had not a calculating turn. No one propensity of his was outrageously
+extravagant; and it is certain that Paddington’s tailor’s account;
+Guttlebury’s cook’s bill for dinners; Dillon Tandy’s bill with Finn,
+the print seller, for Raphael-Morgheus and Landseer proofs, and
+Wormall’s dealings with Parkton, the great bookseller, for Aldine
+editions, black-letter folios, and richly illuminated Missals of the
+XVI. Century; and Snaffle’s or Foker’s score with Nile the horsedealer,
+were, each and all of them, incomparably greater than any little bills
+which Mr. Pen might run up with the above-mentioned tradesmen. But
+Pendennis of Boniface had the advantage over all these young gentlemen,
+his friends and associates, of a universality of taste: and whereas
+young Lord Paddington did not care twopence for the most beautiful
+print, or to look into any gilt frame that had not a mirror within it;
+and Guttlebury did not mind in the least how he was dressed, and had an
+aversion for horse exercise, nay a terror of it; and Snaffle never read
+any printed works but the ‘Racing Calendar’ or ‘Bell’s Life,’ or cared
+for any manuscript except his greasy little scrawl of a
+betting-book:—our Catholic-minded young friend occupied himself in
+every one of the branches of science or pleasure above-mentioned, and
+distinguished himself tolerably in each.
+
+Hence young Pen got a prodigious reputation in the university, and was
+hailed as a sort of Crichton; and as for the English verse prize, in
+competition for which we have seen him busily engaged at Fairoaks,
+Jones of Jesus carried it that year certainly, but the undergraduates
+thought Pen’s a much finer poem, and he had his verses printed at his
+own expense, and distributed in gilt morocco covers amongst his
+acquaintance. I found a copy of it lately in a dusty corner of Mr.
+Pen’s bookcases, and have it before me this minute, bound up in a
+collection of old Oxbridge tracts, university statutes, prize-poems by
+successful and unsuccessful candidates, declamations recited in the
+college chapel, speeches delivered at the Union Debating Society, and
+inscribed by Arthur with his name and college, Pendennis—Boniface; or
+presented to him by his affectionate friend Thompson or Jackson, the
+author. How strange the epigraphs look in those half-boyish hands, and
+what a thrill the sight of the documents gives one after the lapse of a
+few lustres! How fate, since that time, has removed some, estranged
+others, dealt awfully with all! Many a hand is cold that wrote those
+kindly memorials, and that we pressed in the confident and generous
+grasp of youthful friendship. What passions our friendships were in
+those old days, how artless and void of doubt! How the arm you were
+never tired of having linked in yours under the fair college avenues or
+by the river side, where it washes Magdalen Gardens, or Christ Church
+Meadows, or winds by Trinity and King’s, was withdrawn of necessity,
+when you entered presently the world, and each parted to push and
+struggle for himself through the great mob on the way through life! Are
+we the same men now that wrote those inscriptions—that read those
+poems? that delivered or heard those essays and speeches so simple, so
+pompous, so ludicrously solemn; parodied so artlessly from books, and
+spoken with smug chubby faces, and such an admirable aping of wisdom
+and gravity? Here is the book before me: it is scarcely fifteen years
+old. Here is Jack moaning with despair and Byronic misanthropy, whose
+career at the university was one of unmixed milk-punch. Here is Tom’s
+daring Essay in defence of suicide and of republicanism in general,
+apropos of the death of Roland and the Girondins—Tom’s, who wears the
+starchest tie in all the diocese, and would go to Smithfield rather
+than eat a beefsteak on a Friday in Lent. Here is Bob of the ——
+Circuit, who has made a fortune in Railroad Committees, and whose
+dinners are so good—bellowing out with Tancred and Godfrey, “On to the
+breach, ye soldiers of the cross, Scale the red wall and swim the
+choking foss. Ye dauntless archers, twang your cross-bows well; On,
+bill and battle-axe and mangonel! Ply battering-ram and hurtling
+catapult, Jerusalem is ours—id Deus vult.” After which comes a
+mellifluous description of the gardens of Sharon and the maids of
+Salem, and a prophecy that roses shall deck the entire country of
+Syria, and a speedy reign of peace be established—all in undeniably
+decasyllabic lines, and the queerest aping of sense and sentiment and
+poetry. And there are Essays and Poems along with these grave parodies,
+and boyish exercises (which are at once so frank and false and
+mirthful, yet, somehow, so mournful) by youthful hands, that shall
+never write more. Fate has interposed darkly, and the young voices are
+silent, and the eager brains have ceased to work. This one had genius
+and a great descent, and seemed to be destined for honours which now
+are of little worth to him: that had virtue, learning, genius—every
+faculty and endowment which might secure love, admiration, and worldly
+fame: an obscure and solitary churchyard contains the grave of many
+fond hopes, and the pathetic stone which bids them farewell—I saw the
+sun shining on it in the fall of last year, and heard the sweet village
+choir raising anthems round about. What boots whether it be Westminster
+or a little country spire which covers your ashes, or if, a few days
+sooner or later, the world forgets you?
+
+Amidst these friends, then, and a host more, Pen passed more than two
+brilliant and happy years of his life. He had his fill of pleasure and
+popularity. No dinner- or supper-party was complete without him; and
+Pen’s jovial wit, and Pen’s songs, and dashing courage and frank and
+manly bearing, charmed all the undergraduates, and even disarmed the
+tutors who cried out at his idleness, and murmured about his
+extravagant way of life. Though he became the favourite and leader of
+young men who were much his superiors in wealth and station, he was
+much too generous to endeavour to propitiate them by any meanness or
+cringing on his own part, and would not neglect the humblest man of his
+acquaintance in order to curry favour with the richest young grandee in
+the university. His name is still remembered at the Union Debating
+Club, as one of the brilliant orators of his day. By the way, from
+having been an ardent Tory in his freshman’s year, his principles took
+a sudden turn afterwards, and he became a liberal of the most violent
+order. He avowed himself a Dantonist, and asserted that Louis the
+Sixteenth was served right. And as for Charles the First, he vowed that
+he would chop off that monarch’s head with his own right hand were he
+then in the room at the Union Debating Club, and had Cromwell no other
+executioner for the traitor. He and Lord Magnus Charters, the Marquis
+of Runnymede’s son, before-mentioned, were the most truculent
+republicans of their day.
+
+There are reputations of this sort made, quite independent of the
+collegiate hierarchy, in the republic of gownsmen. A man may be famous
+in the Honour-lists and entirely unknown to the undergraduates: who
+elect kings and chieftains of their own, whom they admire and obey, as
+negro-gangs have private black sovereigns in their own body, to whom
+they pay an occult obedience, besides that which they publicly profess
+for their owners and drivers. Among the young ones Pen became famous
+and popular: not that he did much, but there was a general
+determination that he could do a great deal if he chose. “Ah, if
+Pendennis of Boniface would but try,” the men said, “he might do
+anything.” He was backed for the Greek Ode won by Smith of Trinity;
+everybody was sure he would have the Latin hexameter prize which Brown
+of St. John’s, however, carried off, and in this way one university
+honour after another was lost by him, until, after two or three
+failures, Mr. Pen ceased to compete. But he got a declamation prize in
+his own college, and brought home to his mother and Laura at Fairoaks a
+set of prize-books begilt with the college arms, and so big,
+well-bound, and magnificent, that these ladies thought there had been
+no such prize ever given in a college before as this of Pen’s, and that
+he had won the very largest honour which Oxbridge was capable of
+awarding.
+
+As vacation after vacation and term after term passed away without the
+desired news that Pen had sate for any scholarship or won any honour,
+Doctor Portman grew mightily gloomy in his behaviour towards Arthur,
+and adopted a sulky grandeur of deportment towards him, which the lad
+returned by a similar haughtiness. One vacation he did not call upon
+the Doctor at all, much to his mother’s annoyance, who thought that it
+was a privilege to enter the Rectory-house at Clavering, and listened
+to Dr. Portman’s antique jokes and stories, though ever so often
+repeated, with unfailing veneration. “I cannot stand the Doctor’s
+patronising air”, Pen said. “He’s too kind to me, a great deal
+fatherly. I have seen in the world better men than him, and am not
+going to bore myself by listening to his dull old stories and drinking
+his stupid old port wine.” The tacit feud between Pen and the Doctor
+made the widow nervous, so that she too avoided Portman, and was afraid
+to go to the Rectory when Arthur was at home.
+
+One Sunday in the last long vacation, the wretched boy pushed his
+rebellious spirit so far as not to go to church, and he was seen at the
+gate of the Clavering Arms smoking a cigar, in the face of the
+congregation as it issued from St. Mary’s. There was an awful sensation
+in the village society, Portman prophesied Pen’s ruin after that, and
+groaned in spirit over the rebellious young prodigal.
+
+So did Helen tremble in her heart, and little Laura—Laura had grown to
+be a fine young stripling by this time, graceful and fair, clinging
+round Helen and worshipping her, with a passionate affection. Both of
+these women felt that their boy was changed. He was no longer the
+artless Pen of old days, so brave, so artless, so impetuous, and
+tender. His face looked careworn and haggard, his voice had a deeper
+sound, and tones more sarcastic. Care seemed to be pursuing him; but he
+only laughed when his mother questioned him, and parried her anxious
+queries with some scornful jest. Nor did he spend much of his vacations
+at home; he went on visits to one great friend or another, and scared
+the quiet pair at Fairoaks by stories of great houses whither he had
+been invited; and by talking of lords without their titles.
+
+Honest Harry Foker, who had been the means of introducing Arthur
+Pendennis to that set of young men at the university, from whose
+society and connexions Arthur’s uncle expected that the lad would get
+so much benefit; who had called for Arthur’s first song at his first
+supper-party; and who had presented him at the Barmecide Club, where
+none but the very best men of Oxbridge were admitted (it consisted in
+Pen’s time of six noblemen, eight gentlemen-pensioners, and twelve of
+the most select commoners of the university), soon found himself left
+far behind by the young freshman in the fashionable world of Oxbridge,
+and being a generous and worthy fellow, without a spark of envy in his
+composition, was exceedingly pleased at the success of his young
+protege, and admired Pen quite as much as any of the other youth did.
+It was he who followed Pen now, and quoted his sayings; learned his
+songs, and retailed them at minor supper-parties, and was never weary
+of hearing them from the gifted young poet’s own mouth—for a good deal
+of the time which Mr. Pen might have employed much more advantageously
+in the pursuit of the regular scholastic studies, was given up to the
+composition of secular ballads, which he sang about at parties
+according to university wont.
+
+It had been as well for Arthur if the honest Foker had remained for
+some time at college, for, with all his vivacity, he was a prudent
+young man, and often curbed Pen’s propensity to extravagance: but
+Foker’s collegiate career did not last very long after Arthur’s
+entrance at Boniface. Repeated differences with the university
+authorities caused Mr. Foker to quit Oxbridge in an untimely manner. He
+would persist in attending races on the neighbouring Hungerford Heath,
+in spite of the injunctions of his academic superiors. He never could
+be got to frequent the chapel of the college with that regularity of
+piety which Alma Mater demands from her children; tandems, which are
+abominations in the eyes of the heads and tutors, were Foker’s greatest
+delight, and so reckless was his driving and frequent the accidents and
+upsets out of his drag, that Pen called taking a drive with him taking
+the “Diversions of Purley;” finally, having a dinner-party at his rooms
+to entertain some friends from London, nothing would satisfy Mr. Foker
+but painting Mr. Buck’s door vermilion, in which freak he was caught by
+the proctors; and although young Black Strap, the celebrated negro
+fighter, who was one of Mr. Foker’s distinguished guests, and was
+holding the can of paint while the young artist operated on the door,
+knocked down two of the proctor’s attendants and performed prodigies of
+valour, yet these feats rather injured than served Foker, whom the
+proctor knew very well and who was taken with the brush in his hand,
+and who was summarily convened and sent down from the university.
+
+The tutor wrote a very kind and feeling letter to Lady Agnes on the
+subject, stating that everybody was fond of the youth; that he never
+meant harm to any mortal creature; that he for his own part would have
+been delighted to pardon the harmless little boyish frolic, had not its
+unhappy publicity rendered it impossible to look the freak over, and
+breathing the most fervent wishes for the young fellow’s welfare—wishes
+no doubt sincere, for Foker, as we know, came of a noble family on his
+mother’s side, and on the other was heir to a great number of thousand
+pounds a year.
+
+“It don’t matter,” said Foker, talking over the matter with Pen,—“a
+little sooner or a little later, what is the odds? I should have been
+plucked for my little-go again, I know I should—that Latin I cannot
+screw into my head, and my mamma’s anguish would have broke out next
+term. The Governor will blow like an old grampus, I know he will,—well,
+we must stop till he gets his wind again. I shall probably go abroad
+and improve my mind with foreign travel. Yes, parly-voo’s the ticket.
+It’ly, and that sort of thing. I’ll go to Paris and learn to dance and
+complete my education. But it’s not me I’m anxious about, Pen. As long
+as people drink beer I don’t care,—it’s about you I’m doubtful, my boy.
+You’re going too fast, and can’t keep up the pace, I tell you. It’s not
+the fifty you owe me,—pay it or not when you like,—but it’s the
+every-day pace, and I tell you it will kill you. You’re livin’ as if
+there was no end to the money in the stockin’ at home. You oughtn’t to
+give dinners, you ought to eat ’em. Fellows are glad to have you. You
+oughtn’t to owe horse bills, you ought to ride other chaps’ nags. You
+know no more about betting than I do about Algebra: the chaps will win
+your money as sure as you sport it. Hang me if you are not trying
+everything. I saw you sit down to ecarte last week at Trumpington’s,
+and taking your turn with the bones after Ringwood’s supper. They’ll
+beat you at it, Pen, my boy, even if they play on the square, which I
+don’t say they don’t, nor which I don’t say they do, mind. But I won’t
+play with ’em. You’re no match for ’em. You ain’t up to their weight.
+It’s like little Black Strap standing up to Tom Spring,—the Black’s a
+pretty fighter but, Law bless you, his arm ain’t long enough to touch
+Tom,—and I tell you, you’re going it with fellers beyond your weight.
+Look here—If you’ll promise me never to bet nor touch a box nor a card,
+I’ll let you off the two ponies.”
+
+But Pen, laughingly, said, “that though it wasn’t convenient to him to
+pay the two ponies at that moment, he by no means wished to be let off
+any just debts he owed;” and he and Foker parted, not without many dark
+forebodings on the latter’s part with regard to his friend, who Harry
+thought was travelling speedily on the road to ruin.
+
+“One must do at Rome as Rome does,” Pen said, in a dandified manner,
+jingling some sovereigns in his waistcoat-pocket. “A little quiet play
+at ecarte can’t hurt a man who plays pretty well—I came away fourteen
+sovereigns richer from Ringwood’s supper, and, gad! I wanted the
+money.”—And he walked off, after having taken leave of poor Foker, who
+went away without any beat of drum, or offer to drive the coach out of
+Oxbridge, to superintend a little dinner which he was going to give at
+his own rooms in Boniface, about which dinners, the cook of the
+college, who had a great respect for Mr. Pendennis, always took
+especial pains for his young favourite.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+Rake’s Progress
+
+
+Some short time before Mr. Foker’s departure from Oxbridge, there had
+come up to Boniface a gentleman who had once, as it turned out,
+belonged to the other University of Camford, which he had quitted on
+account of some differences with the tutors and authorities there. This
+gentleman, whose name was Horace Bloundell, was of the ancient Suffolk
+family of Bloundell-Bloundell, of Bloundell-Bloundell Hall,
+Bloundell-Bloundellshire, as the young wags used to call it; and no
+doubt it was on account of his descent, and because Dr. Donne, the
+Master of Boniface, was a Suffolk man, and related perhaps to the
+family, that Mr. Horace Bloundell was taken in at Boniface, after St.
+George’s and one or two other Colleges had refused to receive him.
+There was a living in the family, which it was important for Mr.
+Bloundell to hold; and, being in a dragoon regiment at the time when
+his third brother, for whom the living was originally intended,
+sickened and died, Mr. Bloundell determined upon quitting crimson
+pantaloons and sable shakos, for the black coat and white neckcloth of
+the English divine. The misfortunes which occurred at Camford,
+occasioned some slight disturbance to Mr. Bloundell’s plans; but
+although defeated upon one occasion, the resolute ex-dragoon was not
+dismayed, and set to work to win a victory elsewhere.
+
+In Pen’s second year Major Pendennis paid a brief visit to his nephew,
+and was introduced to several of Pen’s university friends—the gentle
+and polite Lord Plinlimmon, the gallant and open-hearted Magnus
+Charters, the sly and witty Harland; the intrepid Ringwood, who was
+called Rupert in the Union Debating Club, from his opinions and the
+bravery of his blunders; Broadbent, styled Barebones Broadbent from the
+republican nature of his opinions (he was of a dissenting family from
+Bristol and a perfect Boanerges of debate); Mr. Bloundell-Bloundell
+finally, who had at once taken his place among the select of the
+university.
+
+Major Pendennis, though he did not understand Harland’s Greek
+quotations, or quite appreciate Broadbent’s thick shoes and dingy
+hands, was nevertheless delighted with the company assembled round his
+nephew, and highly approved of all the young men with the exception of
+that one who gave himself the greatest airs in the society, and
+affected most to have the manners of a man of the world.
+
+As he and Pen sate at breakfast on the morning after the party in the
+rooms of the latter, the Major gave his opinions regarding the young
+men, with whom he was in the greatest good-humour. He had regaled them
+with some of his stories, which, though not quite so fresh in London
+(where people have a diseased appetite for novelty in the way of
+anecdotes), were entirely new at Oxbridge, and the lads heard them with
+that honest sympathy, that eager pleasure, that boisterous laughter, or
+that profound respect, so rare in the metropolis, and which must be so
+delightful to the professed raconteur. Only once or twice during the
+telling of the anecdote Mr. Bloundell’s face wore a look of scorn, or
+betrayed by its expression that he was acquainted with the tales
+narrated. Once he had the audacity to question the accuracy of one of
+the particulars of a tale as given by Major Pendennis, and gave his own
+version of the anecdote, about which he knew he was right, for he heard
+it openly talked of at the Club by So-and-so and T’other who were
+present at the business. The youngsters present looked up with wonder
+at their associate, who dared to interrupt the Major—few of them could
+appreciate that melancholy grace and politeness with which Major
+Pendennis at once acceded to Mr. Bloundell’s version of the story, and
+thanked him for correcting his own error. They stared on the next
+occasion of meeting, when Bloundell spoke in contemptuous terms of old
+Pen; said everybody knew old Pen, regular old trencherman at Gaunt
+House, notorious old bore, regular old fogy.
+
+Major Pendennis on his side liked Mr. Bloundell not a whit. These
+sympathies are pretty sure to be mutual amongst men and women, and if,
+for my part, some kind friend tells me that such and such a man has
+been abusing me, I am almost sure, on my own side, that I have a
+misliking to such and such a man. We like or dislike each other, as
+folks like or dislike the odour of certain flowers, or the taste of
+certain dishes or wines, or certain books. We can’t tell why—but as a
+general rule, all the reasons in the world will not make us love Dr.
+Fell, and as sure as we dislike him, we may be sure that he dislikes
+us.
+
+So the Major said, “Pen, my boy, your dinner went off a merveille; you
+did the honours very nicely—you carved well—I am glad you learned to
+carve—it is done on the sideboard now in most good houses, but is still
+an important point, and may aid you in middle-life—young Lord
+Plinlimmon is a very amiable young man, quite the image of his dear
+mother (whom I knew as Lady Aquila Brownbill); and Lord Magnus’s
+republicanism will wear off—it sits prettily enough on a young
+patrician in early life, though nothing is so loathsome among persons
+of our rank—Mr. Broadbent seems to have much eloquence and considerable
+reading—your friend Foker is always delightful: but your acquaintance,
+Mr. Bloundell, struck me as in all respects a most ineligible young
+man.”
+
+“Bless my soul, sir, Bloundell-Bloundell!” cried Pen, laughing; “why,
+sir, he’s the most popular man of the university. We elected him of the
+Barmecides the first week he came up—had a special meeting on
+purpose—he’s of an excellent family—Suffolk Bloundells, descended from
+Richard’s Blondel, bear a harp in chief—and motto O Mong Roy.”
+
+“A man may have a very good coat-of-arms, and be a tiger, my boy,” the
+Major said, chipping his egg; “that man is a tiger, mark my word—a low
+man. I will lay a wager that he left his regiment, which was a good one
+(for a more respectable man than my friend Lord Martingale never sate
+in a saddle), in bad odour. There is the unmistakable look of slang and
+bad habits about this Mr. Bloundell. He frequents low gambling-houses
+and billiard-hells, sir—he haunts third-rate clubs—I know he does. I
+know by his style. I never was mistaken in my man yet. Did you remark
+the quantity of rings and jewellery he wore? That person has Scamp
+written on his countenance, if any man ever had. Mark my words and
+avoid him. Let us turn the conversation. The dinner was a leetle too
+fine, but I don’t object to your making a few extra frais when you
+receive friends. Of course, you don’t do it often, and only those whom
+it is your interest to fêter. The cutlets were excellent, and the
+souffle uncommonly light and good. The third bottle of champagne was
+not necessary; but you have a good income, and as long as you keep
+within it, I shall not quarrel with you, my dear boy.”
+
+Poor Pen! the worthy uncle little knew how often those dinners took
+place, while the reckless young Amphitryon delighted to show his
+hospitality and skill in gourmandise. There is no art than that (so
+long to learn, so difficult to acquire, so impossible and beyond the
+means of many unhappy people!) about which boys are more anxious to
+have an air of knowingness. A taste and knowledge of wines and cookery
+appears to them to be the sign of an accomplished roue and manly
+gentleman. I like to see them wink at a glass of claret, as if they had
+an intimate acquaintance with it, and discuss a salmi—poor boys—it is
+only when they grow old that they know they know nothing of the
+science, when perhaps their conscience whispers them that the science
+is in itself little worth, and that a leg of mutton and content is as
+good as the dinners of pontiffs. But little Pen, in his character of
+Admirable Crichton, thought it necessary to be a great judge and
+practitioner of dinners; we have just said how the college cook
+respected him, and shall soon have to deplore that that worthy man so
+blindly trusted our Pen. In the third year of the lad’s residence at
+Oxbridge, his staircase was by no means encumbered with dish-covers and
+desserts, and waiters carrying in dishes, and skips opening iced
+champagne; crowds of different sorts of attendants, with faces sulky or
+piteous, hung about the outer oak, and assailed the unfortunate lad as
+he issued out of his den.
+
+Nor did his guardian’s advice take any effect, or induce Mr. Pen to
+avoid the society of the disreputable Mr. Bloundell. What young men
+like in their companions is, what had got Pen a great part of his own
+repute and popularity, a real or supposed knowledge of life. A man who
+has seen the world, or can speak of it with a knowing air—a roue, or
+Lovelace, who has his adventures to relate, is sure of an admiring
+audience among boys. It is hard to confess, but so it is. We respect
+that sort of prowess. From our school-days we have been taught to
+admire it. Are there five in the hundred, out of the hundreds and
+hundreds of English school-boys, brought up at our great schools and
+colleges, that must not own at one time of their lives to having read
+and liked Don Juan? Awful propagation of evil!—The idea of it should
+make the man tremble who holds the pen, lest untruth, or impurity, or
+unjust anger, or unjust praise escape it.
+
+One such diseased creature as this is enough to infect a whole colony,
+and the tutors of Boniface began to find the moral tone of their
+college lowered and their young men growing unruly, and almost
+ungentleman-like, soon after Mr. Bloundell’s arrival at Oxbridge. The
+young magnates of the neighbouring great College of St. George’s, who
+regarded Pen, and in whose society he lived, were not taken in by
+Bloundell’s flashy graces, and rakish airs of fashion. Broadbent called
+him Captain Macheath, and said he would live to be hanged. Foker,
+during his brief stay at the university with Macheath, with
+characteristic caution declined to say anything in the Captain’s
+disfavour, but hinted to Pen that he had better have him for a partner
+at whist than play against him, and better back him at ecarte than bet
+on the other side. “You see, he plays better than you do, Pen,” was the
+astute young gentleman’s remark: “he plays uncommon well, the Captain
+does;—and Pen, I wouldn’t take the odds too freely from him, if I was
+you. I don’t think he’s too flush of money, the Captain ain’t.” But
+beyond these dark suggestions and generalities, the cautious Foker
+could not be got to speak.
+
+Not that his advice would have had more weight with a headstrong young
+man, than advice commonly has with a lad who is determined on pursuing
+his own way. Pen’s appetite for pleasure was insatiable, and he rushed
+at it wherever it presented itself, with an eagerness which bespoke his
+fiery constitution and youthful health. He called taking pleasure
+“Seeing life,” and quoted well-known maxims from Terence, from Horace,
+from Shakspeare, to show that one should do all that might become a
+man. He bade fair to be utterly used up and a roue, in a few years, if
+he were to continue at the pace at which he was going.
+
+One night after a supper-party in college, at which Pen and Macheath
+had been present, and at which a little quiet vingt-et-un had been
+played (an amusement much pleasanter to men in their second and third
+year than the boisterous custom of singing songs, which bring the
+proctors about the rooms, and which have grown quite stale by this
+time, every man having expended his budget)—as the men had taken their
+caps and were going away, after no great losses or winnings on any
+side, Mr. Bloundell playfully took up a green wine-glass from the
+supper-table, which had been destined to contain iced cup, but into
+which he inserted something still more pernicious, namely a pair of
+dice, which the gentleman took out of his waistcoat-pocket, and put
+into the glass. Then giving the glass a graceful wave which showed that
+his hand was quite experienced in the throwing of dice, he called
+sevens the main, and whisking the ivory cubes gently on the table,
+swept them up lightly again from the cloth, and repeated this process
+two or three times. The other men looked on, Pen, of course, among the
+number, who had never used the dice as yet, except to play a humdrum
+game of backgammon at home.
+
+Mr. Bloundell, who had a good voice, began to troll out the chorus from
+Robert the Devil, an Opera then in great vogue, in which chorus many of
+the men joined, especially Pen, who was in very high spirits, having
+won a good number of shillings and half-crowns at the vingt-et-un—and
+presently, instead of going home, most of the party were seated round
+the table playing at dice, the green glass going round from hand to
+hand until Pen finally shivered it, after throwing six mains.
+
+From that night Pen plunged into the delights of the game of hazard, as
+eagerly as it was his custom to pursue any new pleasure. Dice can be
+played of mornings as well as after dinner or supper. Bloundell would
+come into Pen’s rooms after breakfast, and it was astonishing how quick
+the time passed as the bones were rattling. They had little quiet
+parties with closed doors, and Bloundell devised a box lined with felt,
+so that the dice should make no noise, and their tell-tale rattle not
+bring the sharp-eared tutors up to the rooms. Bloundell, Ringwood, and
+Pen were once very nearly caught by Mr. Buck, who, passing in the
+Quadrangle, thought he heard the words “Two to one on the caster,”
+through Pen’s open window; but when the tutor got into Arthur’s rooms
+he found the lads with three Homers before them, and Pen said he was
+trying to coach the two other men, and asked Mr. Buck with great
+gravity what was the present condition of the River Scamander, and
+whether it was navigable or no?
+
+Mr. Arthur Pendennis did not win much money in these transactions with
+Mr. Bloundell, or indeed gain good of any kind except a knowledge of
+the odds at hazard, which he might have learned out of books.
+
+Captain Macheath had other accomplishments which he exercised for Pen’s
+benefit. The Captain’s stories had a great and unfortunate charm for
+Arthur, who was never tired of hearing Bloundell’s histories of
+garrison conquests, and of his feats in country-quarters.—He had been
+at Paris, and had plenty of legends about the Palais Royal, and the
+Salon, and Frascati’s. He had gone to the Salon one night, after a
+dinner at the Cafe de Paris, “when we were all devilishly cut, by Jove;
+and on waking in the morning in my own rooms, I found myself with
+twelve thousand francs under my pillow, and a hundred and forty-nine
+Napoleons in one of my boots. Wasn’t that a coup, hay?” the Captain
+said. Pen’s eyes glistened with excitement as he heard this story. He
+respected the man who could win such a sum of money. He sighed, and
+said it would set him all right. Macheath laughed, and told him to
+drink another drop of Maraschino. “I could tell you stories much more
+wonderful than that,” he added; and so indeed the Captain could have
+done, without any further trouble than that of invention, with which
+portion of the poetic faculty Nature had copiously endowed him.
+
+He laughed to scorn Pen’s love for Miss Fotheringay, when he came to
+hear of that amour from Arthur, as he pretty soon did, for, we have
+said, Pen was not averse to telling the story now to his confidential
+friends, and he and they were rather proud of the transaction. But
+Macheath took away all Pen’s conceit on this head, not by demonstrating
+the folly of the lad’s passion for an uneducated woman much his senior
+in years, but by exposing his absurd desire of gratifying his passion
+in a legitimate way. “Marry her,” said he, “you might as well marry
+——,” and he named one of the most notorious actresses on the stage.
+
+“She hadn’t a shred of a character.” He knew twenty men who were openly
+admirers of her, and named them, and the sums each had spent upon her.
+I know no kind of calumny more frightful or frequent than this which
+takes away the character of women, no men more reckless and mischievous
+than those who lightly use it, and no kind of cowards more despicable
+than the people who invent these slanders.
+
+Is it, or not, a misfortune that a man, himself of a candid
+disposition, and disposed, like our friend Pen, to blurt out the truth
+on all occasions, begins life by believing all that is said to him?
+Would it be better for a lad to be less trustful, and so less honest?
+It requires no small experience of the world to know that a man, who
+has no especial reason thereto, is telling you lies. I am not sure
+whether it is not best to go on being duped for a certain time. At all
+events, our honest Pen had a natural credulity, which enabled him to
+accept all statements which were made to him, and he took every one of
+Captain Macheath’s figments as if they had been the most unquestioned
+facts of history.
+
+So Bloundell’s account about Miss Fotheringay pained and mortified Pen
+exceedingly. If he had been ashamed of his passion before,—what were
+his feelings regarding it now, when the object of so much pure flame
+and adoration turned out to be only a worthless impostor, an impostor
+detected by all but him? It never occurred to Pen to doubt the fact, or
+to question whether the stories of a man who, like his new friend,
+never spoke well of any woman, were likely to be true.
+
+One Easter vacation, when Pen had announced to his mother and uncle his
+intention not to go down, but stay at Oxbridge and read, Mr. Pen was
+nevertheless induced to take a brief visit to London in company with
+his friend Mr. Bloundell. They put up at a hotel in Covent Garden,
+where Bloundell had a tick, as he called it, and took the pleasures of
+the town very freely after the wont of young university men. Bloundell
+still belonged to a military club, whither he took Pen to dine once or
+twice (the young men would drive thither in a cab, trembling lest they
+should meet Major Pendennis on his beat in Pall Mall), and here Pen was
+introduced to a number of gallant young fellows with spurs and
+mustachios, with whom he drank pale-ale of mornings and beat the town
+of a night. Here he saw a deal of life, indeed: nor in his career about
+the theatres and singing-houses which these roaring young blades
+frequented, was he very likely to meet his guardian. One night,
+nevertheless, they were very near to each other: a plank only
+separating Pen, who was in the boxes of the Museum Theatre, from the
+Major, who was in Lord Steyne’s box, along with that venerated
+nobleman. The Fotheringay was in the pride of her glory. She had made a
+hit: that is, she had drawn very good houses for nearly a year, had
+starred the provinces with great eclat, had come back to shine in
+London with somewhat diminished lustre, and now was acting with “ever
+increasing attraction; etc.,” “triumph of the good old British drama,”
+as the play-bills avowed, to houses in which there was plenty of room
+for anybody who wanted to see her.
+
+It was not the first time Pen had seen her, since that memorable day
+when the two had parted in Chatteris. In the previous year, when the
+town was making much of her, and the press lauded her beauty, Pen had
+found a pretext for coming to London in term-time, and had rushed off
+to the theatre to see his old flame. He recollected it rather than
+renewed it. He remembered how ardently he used to be on the look-out at
+Chatteris, when the speech before Ophelia’s or Mrs. Haller’s entrance
+on the stage was made by the proper actor. Now, as the actor spoke, he
+had a sort of feeble thrill: as the house began to thunder with
+applause, and Ophelia entered with her old bow and sweeping curtsey,
+Pen felt a slight shock and blushed very much as he looked at her, and
+could not help thinking that all the house was regarding him. He hardly
+heard her for the first part of the play: and he thought with such rage
+of the humiliation to which she had subjected him, that he began to
+fancy he was jealous and in love with her still. But that illusion did
+not last very long. He ran round to the stage-door of the theatre to
+see her if possible, but he did not succeed. She passed indeed under
+his nose with a female companion, but he did not know her,—nor did she
+recognise him. The next night he came in late, and stayed very quietly
+for the afterpiece, and on the third and last night of his stay in
+London—why, Taglioni was going to dance at the Opera,—Taglioni! and
+there was to be Don Giovanni, which he admired of all things in the
+world: so Mr. Pen went to Don Giovanni and Taglioni.
+
+This time the illusion about her was quite gone. She was not less
+handsome, but she was not the same, somehow. The light was gone out of
+her eyes which used to flash there, or Pen’s no longer were dazzled by
+it. The rich voice spoke as of old, yet it did not make Pen’s bosom
+thrill as formerly. He thought he could recognise the brogue
+underneath: the accents seemed to him coarse and false. It annoyed him
+to hear the same emphasis on the same words, only uttered a little
+louder: worse than this, it annoyed him to think that he should ever
+have mistaken that loud imitation for genius, or melted at those
+mechanical sobs and sighs. He felt that it was in another life almost,
+that it was another man who had so madly loved her. He was ashamed and
+bitterly humiliated, and very lonely. Ah, poor Pen! the delusion is
+better than the truth sometimes, and fine dreams than dismal waking.
+
+They went and had an uproarious supper that night, and Mr. Pen had a
+fine headache the next morning, with which he went back to Oxbridge,
+having spent all his ready money.
+
+As all this narrative is taken from Pen’s own confessions, so that the
+reader may be assured of the truth of every word of it, and as Pen
+himself never had any accurate notion of the manner in which he spent
+his money, and plunged himself in much deeper pecuniary difficulties,
+during his luckless residence at Oxbridge University, it is, of course,
+impossible for me to give any accurate account of his involvements,
+beyond that general notion of his way of life, which has been sketched
+a few pages back. He does not speak too hardly of the roguery of the
+university tradesmen, or of those in London whom he honoured with his
+patronage at the outset of his career. Even Finch, the money-lender, to
+whom Bloundell introduced him, and with whom he had various
+transactions, in which the young rascal’s signature appeared upon
+stamped paper, treated him, according to Pen’s own account, with
+forbearance, and never mulcted him of more than a hundred per cent. The
+old college-cook, his fervent admirer, made him a private bill, offered
+to send him in dinners up to the very last, and never would have
+pressed his account to his dying day. There was that kindness and
+frankness about Arthur Pendennis, which won most people who came in
+contact with him, and which, if it rendered him an easy prey to rogues,
+got him, perhaps, more goodwill than he merited from many honest men.
+It was impossible to resist his good-nature, or, in his worst moments,
+not to hope for his rescue from utter ruin.
+
+At the time of his full career of university pleasure, he would leave
+the gayest party to go and sit with a sick friend. He never knew the
+difference between small and great in the treatment of his
+acquaintances, however much the unlucky lad’s tastes, which were of the
+sumptuous order, led him to prefer good society; he was only too ready
+to share his guinea with a poor friend, and when he got money had an
+irresistible propensity for paying, which he never could conquer
+through life.
+
+In his third year at college, the duns began to gather awfully round
+about him, and there was a levee at his oak which scandalised the
+tutors, and would have scared many a stouter heart. With some of these
+he used to battle, some he would bully (under Mr. Bloundell’s
+directions, who was a master in this art, though he took a degree in no
+other), and some deprecate. And it is reported of him that little Mary
+Frodsham, the daughter of a certain poor gilder and frame-maker, whom
+Mr. Pen had thought fit to employ, and who had made a number of
+beautiful frames for his fine prints, coming to Pendennis with a
+piteous tale that her father was ill with ague, and that there was an
+execution in their house, Pen in an anguish of remorse rushed away,
+pawned his grand watch and every single article of jewellery except two
+old gold sleeve-buttons, which had belonged to his father, and rushed
+with the proceeds to Frodsham’s shop, where, with tears in his eyes,
+and the deepest repentance and humility, he asked the poor tradesman’s
+pardon.
+
+This, young gentlemen, is not told as an instance of Pen’s virtue, but
+rather of his weakness. It would have been much more virtuous to have
+had no prints at all. He still stood for the baubles which he sold in
+order to pay Frodsham’s bill, and his mother had cruelly to pinch
+herself in order to discharge the jeweller’s account, so that she was
+in the end the sufferer by the lad’s impertinent fancies and follies.
+We are not presenting Pen to you as a hero or a model, only as a lad,
+who, in the midst of a thousand vanities and weaknesses, has as yet
+some generous impulses, and is not altogether dishonest.
+
+We have said it was to the scandal of Mr. Buck the tutor that Pen’s
+extravagances became known: from the manner in which he entered
+college, the associates he kept, and the introductions of Doctor
+Portman and the Major, Buck for a long time thought that his pupil was
+a man of large property, and wondered rather that he only wore a plain
+gown. Once on going up to London to the levee with an address from his
+Majesty’s Loyal University of Oxbridge, Buck had seen Major Pendennis
+at St. James’s in conversation with two knights of the garter, in the
+carriage of one of whom the dazzled tutor saw the Major whisked away
+after the levee. He asked Pen to wine the instant he came back, let him
+off from chapels and lectures more than ever, and felt perfectly sure
+that he was a young gentleman of large estate.
+
+Thus, he was thunderstruck when he heard the truth, and received a
+dismal confession from Pen. His university debts were large, and the
+tutor had nothing to do, and of course Pen did not acquaint him, with
+his London debts. What man ever does tell all when pressed by his
+friends about his liabilities? The tutor learned enough to know that
+Pen was poor, that he had spent a handsome, almost a magnificent
+allowance, and had raised around him such a fine crop of debts, as it
+would be very hard work for any man to mow down; for there is no plant
+that grows so rapidly when once it has taken root.
+
+Perhaps it was because she was so tender and good that Pen was
+terrified lest his mother should know of his sins. “I can’t bear to
+break it to her,” he said to the tutor in an agony of grief. “O! sir,
+I’ve been a villain to her”—and he repented, and he wished he had the
+time to come over again, and he asked himself, “Why, why did his uncle
+insist upon the necessity of living with great people, and in how much
+did all his grand acquaintance profit him?”
+
+They were not shy, but Pen thought they were, and slunk from them
+during his last terms at college. He was as gloomy as a death’s-head at
+parties, which he avoided of his own part, or to which his young
+friends soon ceased to invite him. Everybody knew that Pendennis was
+“hard up.” That man Bloundell, who could pay nobody, and who was
+obliged to go down after three terms, was his ruin, the men said. His
+melancholy figure might be seen shirking about the lonely quadrangles
+in his battered old cap and torn gown, and he who had been the pride of
+the university but a year before, the man whom all the young ones loved
+to look at, was now the object of conversation at freshmen’s
+wine-parties, and they spoke of him with wonder and awe.
+
+At last came the Degree Examinations. Many a young man of his year
+whose hob-nailed shoes Pen had derided, and whose face or coat he had
+caricatured—many a man whom he had treated with scorn in the
+lecture-room or crushed with his eloquence in the debating-club—many of
+his own set who had not half his brains, but a little regularity and
+constancy of occupation, took high places in the honours or passed with
+decent credit. And where in the list was Pen the superb, Pen the wit
+and dandy, Pen the poet and orator? Ah, where was Pen the widow’s
+darling and sole pride? Let us hide our heads, and shut up the page.
+The lists came out; and a dreadful rumour rushed through the
+university, that Pendennis of Boniface was plucked.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+Flight after Defeat
+
+
+Everybody who has the least knowledge of Heraldry and the Peerage must
+be aware that the noble family of which, as we know, Helen Pendennis
+was a member, bears for a crest, a nest full of little pelicans pecking
+at the ensanguined bosom of a big maternal bird, which plentifully
+supplies the little wretches with the nutriment on which, according to
+the heraldic legend, they are supposed to be brought up. Very likely
+female pelicans like so to bleed under the selfish little beaks of
+their young ones: it is certain that women do. There must be some sort
+of pleasure, which we men don’t understand, which accompanies the pain
+of being scarified, and indeed I believe some women would rather
+actually so suffer than not. They like sacrificing themselves in behalf
+of the object which their instinct teaches them to love. Be it for a
+reckless husband, a dissipated son, a darling scapegrace of a brother,
+how ready their hearts are to pour out their best treasures for the
+benefit of the cherished person; and what a deal of this sort of
+enjoyment are we, on one side, ready to give the soft creatures! There
+is scarce a man that reads this, but has administered pleasure in this
+fashion to his womankind, and has treated them to the luxury of
+forgiving him. They don’t mind how they live themselves; but when the
+prodigal comes home they make a rejoicing, and kill the fatted calf for
+him: and at the very first hint that the sinner is returning, the kind
+angels prepare their festival, and Mercy and Forgiveness go smiling out
+to welcome him. I hope it may be so always for all: if we have only
+Justice to look to, Heaven help us!
+
+During the latter part of Pen’s residence at the University of
+Oxbridge, his uncle’s partiality had greatly increased for the lad. The
+Major was proud of Arthur, who had high spirits, frank manners, a good
+person, and high gentleman-like bearing. It pleased the old London
+bachelor to see Pen walking with the young patricians of his
+university, and he (who was never known to entertain his friends, and
+whose stinginess had passed into a sort of byword among some wags at
+the Club, who envied his many engagements, and did not choose to
+consider his poverty) was charmed to give his nephew and the young
+lords snug little dinners at his lodgings, and to regale them with good
+claret, and his very best bons mots and stories: some of which would be
+injured by the repetition, for the Major’s manner of telling them was
+incomparably neat and careful; and others, whereof the repetition would
+do good to nobody. He paid his court to their parents through the young
+men, and to himself as it were by their company. He made more than one
+visit to Oxbridge, where the young fellows were amused by entertaining
+the old gentleman, and gave parties and breakfasts and fêtes, partly to
+joke him and partly to do him honour. He plied them with his stories.
+He made himself juvenile and hilarious in the company of the young
+lords. He went to hear Pen at a grand debate at the Union, crowed and
+cheered, and rapped his stick in chorus with the cheers of the men, and
+was astounded at the boy’s eloquence and fire. He thought he had got a
+young Pitt for a nephew. He had an almost paternal fondness for Pen. He
+wrote to the lad letters with playful advice and the news of the town.
+He bragged about Arthur at his Clubs, and introduced him with pleasure
+into his conversation; saying, that, Egad, the young fellows were
+putting the old ones to the wall; that the lads who were coming up,
+young Lord Plinlimmon, a friend of my boy, young Lord Magnus Charters,
+a chum of my scapegrace, etc., would make a greater figure in the world
+than even their fathers had done before them. He asked permission to
+bring Arthur to a grand fête at Gaunt House; saw him with ineffable
+satisfaction dancing with the sisters of the young noblemen before
+mentioned; and gave himself as much trouble to procure cards of
+invitation for the lad to some good houses, as if he had been a mamma
+with a daughter to marry, and not an old half-pay officer in a wig. And
+he boasted everywhere of the boy’s great talents, and remarkable
+oratorical powers; and of the brilliant degree he was going to take.
+Lord Runnymede would take him on his embassy, or the Duke would bring
+him in for one of his boroughs, he wrote over and over again to Helen;
+who, for her part, was too ready to believe anything that anybody chose
+to say in favour of her son.
+
+And all this pride and affection of uncle and mother had been trampled
+down by Pen’s wicked extravagance and idleness! I don’t envy Pen’s
+feelings (as the phrase is), as he thought of what he had done. He had
+slept, and the tortoise had won the race. He had marred at its outset
+what might have been a brilliant career. He had dipped ungenerously
+into a generous mother’s purse; basely and recklessly spilt her little
+cruse. O! it was a coward hand that could strike and rob a creature so
+tender. And if Pen felt the wrong which he had done to others, are we
+to suppose that a young gentleman of his vanity did not feel still more
+keenly the shame he had brought upon himself? Let us be assured that
+there is no more cruel remorse than that; and no groans more piteous
+than those of wounded self-love. Like Joel Miller’s friend, the Senior
+Wrangler, who bowed to the audience from his box at the play, because
+he and the king happened to enter the theatre at the same time, only
+with a fatuity by no means so agreeable to himself, poor Arthur
+Pendennis felt perfectly convinced that all England would remark the
+absence of his name from the examination-lists, and talk about his
+misfortune. His wounded tutor, his many duns, the skip and bed-maker
+who waited upon him, the undergraduates of his own time and the years
+below him, whom he had patronised or scorned—how could he bear to look
+any of them in the face now? He rushed to his rooms, into which he shut
+himself, and there he penned a letter to his tutor, full of thanks,
+regards, remorse, and despair, requesting that his name might be taken
+off the college books, and intimating a wish and expectation that death
+would speedily end the woes of the disgraced Arthur Pendennis.
+
+Then he slunk out, scarcely knowing whither he went, but mechanically
+taking the unfrequented little lanes by the backs of the colleges,
+until he cleared the university precincts, and got down to the banks of
+the Camisis river, now deserted, but so often alive with the
+boat-races, and the crowds of cheering gownsmen, he wandered on and on,
+until he found himself at some miles’ distance from Oxbridge, or rather
+was found by some acquaintances leaving that city.
+
+As Pen went up a hill, a drizzling January rain beating in his face,
+and his ragged gown flying behind him—for he had not divested himself
+of his academical garments since the morning—a postchaise came rattling
+up the road, on the box of which a servant was seated, whilst within,
+or rather half out of the carriage window, sate a young gentleman
+smoking a cigar, and loudly encouraging the postboy. It was our young
+acquaintance of Baymouth Mr. Spavin, who had got his degree, and was
+driving homewards in triumph in his yellow postchaise. He caught a
+sight of the figure, madly gesticulating as he worked up the hill, and
+of poor Pen’s pale and ghastly face as the chaise whirled by him.
+
+“Wo!” roared Mr. Spavin to the postboy, and the horses stopped in their
+mad career, and the carriage pulled up some fifty yards before Pen. He
+presently heard his own name shouted, and beheld the upper half of the
+body of Mr. Spavin thrust out of the side-window of the vehicle, and
+beckoning Pen vehemently towards it.
+
+Pen stopped, hesitated—nodded his head fiercely, and pointed onwards,
+as if desirous that the postillion should proceed. He did not speak:
+but his countenance must have looked very desperate, for young Spavin,
+having stared at him with an expression of blank alarm, jumped out of
+the carriage presently, ran towards Pen holding out his hand, and
+grasping Pen’s, said, “I say—hullo, old boy, where are you going, and
+what’s the row now?”
+
+“I’m going where I deserve to go,” said Pen, with an imprecation.
+
+“This ain’t the way,” said Mr. Spavin, smiling. “This is the Fenbury
+road. I say, Pen, don’t take on because you are plucked. It’s nothing
+when you are used to it. I’ve been plucked three times, old boy—and
+after the first time I didn’t care. Glad it’s over, though. You’ll have
+better luck next time.”
+
+Pen looked at his early acquaintance,—who had been plucked, who had
+been rusticated, who had only, after repeated failures, learned to read
+and write correctly, and who, in spite of all these drawbacks, had
+attained the honour of a degree. “This man has passed,” he thought,
+“and I have failed!” It was almost too much for him to bear.
+
+“Good-bye, Spavin,” said he; “I’m very glad you are through. Don’t let
+me keep you; I’m in a hurry—I’m going to town to-night.”
+
+“Gammon,” said Mr. Spavin. “This ain’t the way to town; this is the
+Fenbury road, I tell you.”
+
+“I was just going to turn back,” Pen said.
+
+“All the coaches are full with the men going down,” Spavin said. Pen
+winced. “You’d not get a place for a ten-pound note. Get into my
+yellow; I’ll drop you at Mudford, where you have a chance of the
+Fenbury mail. I’ll lend you a hat and a coat; I’ve got lots. Come
+along; jump in, old boy—go it, leathers!”—and in this way Pen found
+himself in Mr. Spavin’s postchaise, and rode with that gentleman as far
+as the Ram Inn at Mudford, fifteen miles from Oxbridge; where the
+Fenbury mail changed horses, and where Pen got a place on to London.
+
+The next day there was an immense excitement in Boniface College,
+Oxbridge, where, for some time, a rumour prevailed, to the terror of
+Pen’s tutor and tradesmen, that Pendennis, maddened at losing his
+degree, had made away with himself—a battered cap, in which his name
+was almost discernible, together with a seal bearing his crest of an
+eagle looking at a now extinct sun, had been found three miles on the
+Fenbury road, near a mill-stream, and, for four-and-twenty hours, it
+was supposed that poor Pen had flung himself into the stream, until
+letters arrived from him, bearing the London post-mark.
+
+The mail reached London at the dreary hour of five; and he hastened to
+the inn at Covent Garden, at which he was accustomed to put up, where
+the ever-wakeful porter admitted him, and showed him to a bed. Pen
+looked hard at the man, and wondered whether Boots knew he was plucked?
+When in bed he could not sleep there. He tossed about until the
+appearance of the dismal London daylight, when he sprang up
+desperately, and walked off to his uncle’s lodgings in Bury Street;
+where the maid, who was scouring the steps, looked up suspiciously at
+him, as he came with an unshaven face, and yesterday’s linen. He
+thought she knew of his mishap, too.
+
+“Good ’evens! Mr. Harthur, what as ’appened, sir?” Mr. Morgan, the
+valet, asked, who had just arranged the well-brushed clothes and shiny
+boots at the door of his master’s bedroom, and was carrying in his wig
+to the Major.
+
+“I want to see my uncle,” he cried, in a ghastly voice, and flung
+himself down on a chair.
+
+Morgan backed before the pale and desperate-looking young man, with
+terrified and wondering glances, and disappeared in his master’s
+apartment.
+
+The Major put his head out of the bedroom door, as soon as he had his
+wig on.
+
+“What? examination over? Senior Wrangler, double First Class, hay? said
+the old gentleman—I’ll come directly;” and the head disappeared.
+
+“They don’t know what has happened,” groaned Pen; “what will they say
+when they know all?”
+
+Pen had been standing with his back to the window, and to such a
+dubious light as Bury Street enjoys of a foggy January morning, so that
+his uncle could not see the expression of the young man’s countenance,
+or the looks of gloom and despair which even Mr. Morgan had remarked.
+
+But when the Major came out of his dressing-room neat and radiant, and
+preceded by faint odours from Delcroix’s shop, from which emporium
+Major Pendennis’s wig and his pocket-handkerchief got their perfume, he
+held out one of his hands to Pen, and was about addressing him in his
+cheery high-toned voice, when he caught sight of the boy’s face at
+length, and dropping his hand, said, “Good God! Pen, what’s the
+matter?”
+
+“You’ll see it in the papers at breakfast, sir,” Pen said.
+
+“See what?”
+
+“My name isn’t there, sir.”
+
+“Hang it, why should it be?” asked the Major, more perplexed.
+
+“I have lost everything, sir,” Pen groaned out; “my honour’s gone; I’m
+ruined irretrievably; I can’t go back to Oxbridge.”
+
+“Lost your honour?” screamed out the Major. “Heaven alive! you don’t
+mean to say you have shown the white feather?”
+
+Pen laughed bitterly at the word feather, and repeated it. “No, it
+isn’t that, sir. I’m not afraid of being shot; I wish to God anybody
+would. I have not got my degree. I—I’m plucked, sir.”
+
+The Major had heard of plucking, but in a very vague and cursory way,
+and concluded that it was some ceremony performed corporally upon
+rebellious university youth. “I wonder you can look me in the face
+after such a disgrace, sir,” he said; “I wonder you submitted to it as
+a gentleman.”
+
+“I couldn’t help it, sir. I did my classical papers well enough: it was
+those infernal mathematics, which I have always neglected.”
+
+“Was it—was it done in public, sir?” the Major said.
+
+“What?”
+
+“The—the plucking?” asked the guardian, looking Pen anxiously in the
+face.
+
+Pen perceived the error under which his guardian was labouring, and in
+the midst of his misery the blunder caused the poor wretch a faint
+smile, and served to bring down the conversation from the tragedy-key,
+in which Pen had been disposed to carry it on. He explained to his
+uncle that he had gone in to pass his examination, and failed. On which
+the Major said, that though he had expected far better things of his
+nephew, there was no great misfortune in this, and no dishonour as far
+as he saw, and that Pen must try again.
+
+“Me again at Oxbridge,” Pen thought, “after such a humiliation as
+that!” He felt that, except he went down to burn the place, he could
+not enter it.
+
+But it was when he came to tell his uncle of his debts that the other
+felt surprise and anger most keenly, and broke out in speeches most
+severe upon Pen, which the lad bore, as best might, without flinching.
+He had determined to make a clean breast, and had formed a full, true,
+and complete list of all his bills and liabilities at the university,
+and in London. They consisted of various items, such as:
+
+London Tailor.	Oxbridge do. Oxbridge do. 	Bill for horses.
+Haberdasher, for shirts and gloves.	Printseller. Jeweller.	Books.
+College Cook.	Binding. Grump, for desserts.	Hairdresser and
+Perfumery. Bootmaker.	Hotel bill in London. Wine Merchant in
+London.	Sundries.
+
+All which items the reader may fill in at his pleasure—such accounts
+have been inspected by the parents of many university youth,—and it
+appeared that Mr. Pen’s bills in all amounted to about seven hundred
+pounds; and, furthermore, it was calculated that he had had more than
+twice that sum of ready money during his stay at Oxbridge. This sum he
+had spent, and for it had to show—what?
+
+“You need not press a man who is down, sir,” Pen said to his uncle,
+gloomily. “I know very well, sir, how wicked and idle I have been. My
+mother won’t like to see me dishonoured, sir,” he continued, with his
+voice failing; “and I know she will pay these accounts. But I shall ask
+her for no more money.”
+
+“As you like, sir,” the Major said. “You are of age, and my hands are
+washed of your affairs. But you can’t live without money, and have no
+means of making it that I see, though you have a fine talent in
+spending it, and it is my belief that you will proceed as you have
+begun, and ruin your mother before you are five years older.—Good
+morning; it is time for me to go to breakfast. My engagements won’t
+permit me to see you much during the time that you stay in London. I
+presume that you will acquaint your mother with the news which you have
+just conveyed to me.”
+
+And pulling on his hat, and trembling in his limbs somewhat, Major
+Pendennis walked out of his lodgings before his nephew, and went
+ruefully off to take his accustomed corner at the Club. He saw the
+Oxbridge examination-lists in the morning papers, and read over the
+names, not understanding the business, with mournful accuracy. He
+consulted various old fogies of his acquaintance, in the course of the
+day, at his Clubs; Wenham, a Dean, various Civilians; and, as it is
+called, “took their opinion,” showing to some of them the amount of his
+nephew’s debts, which he had dotted down on the back of a card, and
+asking what was to be done, and whether such debts were not monstrous,
+preposterous? What was to be done?—There was nothing for it but to pay.
+Wenham and the others told the Major of young men who owed twice as
+much—five times as much—as Arthur, and with no means at all to pay. The
+consultations, and calculations, and opinions, comforted the Major
+somewhat. After all, he was not to pay.
+
+But he thought bitterly of the many plans he had formed to make a man
+of his nephew, of the sacrifices which he had made, and of the manner
+in which he was disappointed. And he wrote off a letter to Doctor
+Portman, informing him of the direful events which had taken place, and
+begging the Doctor to break them to Helen. For the orthodox old
+gentleman preserved the regular routine in all things, and was of
+opinion that it was more correct to “break” a piece of bad news to a
+person by means of a (possibly maladroit and unfeeling) messenger, than
+to convey it simply to its destination by a note. So the Major wrote to
+Doctor Portman, and then went out to dinner, one of the saddest men in
+any London dining-room that day.
+
+Pen, too, wrote his letter, and skulked about London streets for the
+rest of the day, fancying that everybody was looking at him and
+whispering to his neighbour, “That is Pendennis of Boniface, who was
+plucked yesterday.” His letter to his mother was full of tenderness and
+remorse: he wept the bitterest tears over it—and the repentance and
+passion soothed him to some degree.
+
+He saw a party of roaring young blades from Oxbridge in the coffee-room
+of his hotel, and slunk away from them, and paced the streets. He
+remembers, he says, the prints which he saw hanging up at Ackermann’s
+window in the rain, and a book which he read at a stall near the
+Temple: at night he went to the pit of the play, and saw Miss
+Fotheringay, but he doesn’t in the least recollect in what piece.
+
+On the second day there came a kind letter from his tutor, containing
+many grave and appropriate remarks upon the event which had befallen
+him, but strongly urging Pen not to take his name off the university
+books, and to retrieve a disaster which, everybody knew, was owing to
+his own carelessness alone, and which he might repair by a month’s
+application. He said he had ordered Pen’s skip to pack up some trunks
+of the young gentleman’s wardrobe, which duly arrived with fresh copies
+of all Pen’s bills laid on the top.
+
+On the third day there arrived a letter from home; which Pen read in
+his bedroom, and the result of which was that he fell down on his knees
+with his head in the bedclothes, and then prayed out his heart and
+humbled himself; and having gone downstairs and eaten an immense
+breakfast he sallied forth and took his place at the Bull and Mouth,
+Piccadilly, by the Chatteris coach for that evening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+Prodigal’s Return
+
+
+Such a letter as the Major wrote of course, sent Doctor Portman to
+Fairoaks, and he went off with that alacrity which a good man shows
+when he has disagreeable news to communicate. He wishes the deed were
+done, and done quickly. He is sorry, but que voulez-vous? the tooth
+must be taken out, and he has you in the chair, and it is surprising
+with what courage and vigour of wrist he applies the forceps. Perhaps
+he would not be quite so active or eager if it were his tooth; but, in
+fine, it is your duty to have it out. So the doctor, having read the
+epistle out to Myra and Mrs. Portman, with many damnatory comments upon
+the young scapegrace who was going deeper and deeper into perdition,
+left those ladies to spread the news through the Clavering society,
+which they did with their accustomed accuracy and despatch, and strode
+over to Fairoaks to break the intelligence to the widow.
+
+She had the news already. She had read Pen’s letter, and it had
+relieved her somehow. A gloomy presentiment of evil had been hanging
+over her for many, many months past. She knew the worst now, and her
+darling boy was come back to her repentant and tender-hearted. Did she
+want more? All that the Rector could say (and his remarks were both
+dictated by common-sense, and made respectable by antiquity) could not
+bring Helen to feel any indignation or particular unhappiness, except
+that the boy should be unhappy. What was this degree that they made
+such an outcry about, and what good would it do Pen? Why did Doctor
+Portman and his uncle insist upon sending the boy to a place where
+there was so much temptation to be risked, and so little good to be
+won? Why didn’t they leave him at home with his mother? As for his
+debts, of course they must be paid;—his debts!—wasn’t his father’s
+money all his, and hadn’t he a right to spend it? In this way the widow
+met the virtuous Doctor, and all the arrows of his indignation somehow
+took no effect upon her gentle bosom.
+
+For some time past, an agreeable practice, known since times ever so
+ancient, by which brothers and sisters are wont to exhibit their
+affection towards one another, and in which Pen and his little sister
+Laura had been accustomed to indulge pretty frequently in their
+childish days, had been given up by the mutual consent of those two
+individuals. Coming back from college after an absence from home of
+some months, in place of the simple girl whom he had left behind him,
+Mr. Arthur found a tall, slim, handsome young lady, to whom he could
+not somehow proffer the kiss which he had been in the habit of
+administering previously, and who received him with a gracious curtsey
+and a proffered hand, and with a great blush which rose up to the
+cheek, just upon the very spot which young Pen had been used to salute.
+
+I am not good at descriptions of female beauty; and, indeed, do not
+care for it in the least (thinking that goodness and virtue are, of
+course, far more advantageous to a young lady than any mere fleeting
+charms of person and face), and so shall not attempt any particular
+delineation of Miss Laura Bell at the age of sixteen years. At that age
+she had attained her present altitude of five feet four inches, so that
+she was called tall and gawky by some, and a Maypole by others, of her
+own sex, who prefer littler women. But if she was a Maypole, she had
+beautiful roses about her head, and it is a fact that many swains were
+disposed to dance round her. She was ordinarily pale, with a faint rose
+tinge in her cheeks; but they flushed up in a minute when occasion
+called, and continued so blushing ever so long, the roses remaining
+after the emotion had passed away which had summoned those pretty
+flowers into existence. Her eyes have been described as very large from
+her earliest childhood, and retained that characteristic in later life.
+Good-natured critics (always females) said that she was in the habit of
+making play with those eyes, and ogling the gentlemen and ladies in her
+company; but the fact is, that Nature had made them so to shine and to
+look, and they could no more help so looking and shining than one star
+can help being brighter than another. It was doubtless to mitigate
+their brightness that Miss Laura’s eyes were provided with two pairs of
+veils in the shape of the longest and finest black eyelashes, so that,
+when she closed her eyes, the same people who found fault with those
+orbs, said that she wanted to show her eyelashes off; and, indeed, I
+daresay that to see her asleep would have been a pretty sight.
+
+As for her complexion, that was nearly as brilliant as Lady Mantrap’s,
+and without the powder which her ladyship uses. Her nose must be left
+to the reader’s imaginaton: if her mouth was rather large (as Miss
+Piminy avers, who, but for her known appetite, one would think could
+not swallow anything larger than a button) everybody allowed that her
+smile was charming, and showed off a set of pearly teeth, whilst her
+voice was so low and sweet, that to hear it was like listening to sweet
+music. Because she is in the habit of wearing very long dresses, people
+of course say that her feet are not small: but it may be that they are
+of the size becoming her figure, and it does not follow, because Mrs.
+Pincher is always putting her foot out, that all other ladies should be
+perpetually bringing theirs on the tapis. In fine, Miss Laura Bell at
+the age of sixteen, was a sweet young lady. Many thousands of such are
+to be found, let us hope, in this country where there is no lack of
+goodness, and modesty, and purity, and beauty.
+
+Now Miss Laura, since she had learned to think for herself (and in the
+past two years her mind and her person had both developed themselves
+considerably) had only been half pleased with Pen’s general conduct and
+bearing. His letters to his mother at home had become of late very rare
+and short. It was in vain that the fond widow urged how constant
+Arthur’s occupations and studies were and how many his engagements. “It
+is better that he should lose a prize” Laura said “than forget his
+mother; and indeed, mamma, I don’t see that he gets many prizes. Why
+doesn’t he come home and stay with you, instead of passing his
+vacations at his great friends’ fine houses? There is nobody there will
+love him half so much as—as you do.” “As I do only, Laura?” sighed out
+Mrs. Pendennis. Laura declared stoutly that she did not love Pen a bit,
+when he did not do his duty to his mother nor would she be convinced by
+any of Helen’s fond arguments, that the boy must make his way in the
+world; that his uncle was most desirous that Pen should cultivate the
+acquaintance of persons who were likely to befriend him in life; that
+men had a thousand ties and calls which women could not understand, and
+so forth. Perhaps Helen no more believed in these excuses than her
+adopted daughter did; but she tried to believe that she believed them,
+and comforted herself with the maternal infatuation. And that is a
+point whereon I suppose many a gentleman has reflected, that, do what
+we will, we are pretty sure of the woman’s love that once has been
+ours; and that that untiring tenderness and forgiveness never fail us.
+
+Also, there had been that freedom, not to say audacity, in Arthur’s
+latter talk and ways, which had shocked and displeased Laura. Not that
+he ever offended her by rudeness, or addressed to her a word which she
+ought not to hear, for Mr. Pen was a gentleman, and by nature and
+education polite to every woman high and low; but he spoke lightly and
+laxly of women in general; was less courteous in his actions than in
+his words—neglectful in sundry ways, and in many of the little offices
+of life. It offended Miss Laura that he should smoke his horrid pipes
+in the house; that he should refuse to go to church with his mother, or
+on walks or visits with her, and be found yawning over his novel in his
+dressing-gown, when the gentle widow returned from those duties. The
+hero of Laura’s early infancy, about whom she had passed so many, many
+nights talking with Helen (who recited endless stories of the boy’s
+virtues, and love, and bravery, when he was away at school), was a very
+different person from the young man whom now she knew; bold and
+brilliant, sarcastic and defiant, seeming to scorn the simple
+occupations or pleasures, or even devotions, of the women with whom he
+lived, and whom he quitted on such light pretexts.
+
+The Fotheringay affair, too, when Laura came to hear of it (which she
+did first by some sarcastic allusions of Major Pendennis, when on a
+visit to Fairoaks, and then from their neighbours at Clavering, who had
+plenty of information to give her on this head), vastly shocked and
+outraged Miss Laura. A Pendennis fling himself away on such a woman as
+that! Helen’s boy galloping away from home, day after day, to fall on
+his knees to an actress, and drink with her horrid father! A good son
+want to bring such a man and such a woman into his house, and set her
+over his mother! “I would have run away, mamma; I would, if I had had
+to walk barefoot through the snow,” Laura said.
+
+“And you would have left me too, then?” Helen answered; on which, of
+course, Laura withdrew her previous observation, and the two women
+rushed into each other’s embraces with that warmth which belonged to
+both their natures, and which characterises not a few of their sex.
+Whence came all the indignation of Miss Laura about Arthur’s passion?
+Perhaps she did not know, that, if men throw themselves away upon
+women, women throw themselves away upon men, too; and that there is no
+more accounting for love, than for any other physical liking or
+antipathy: perhaps she had been misinformed by the Clavering people and
+old Mrs. Portman, who was vastly bitter against Pen, especially since
+his impertinent behaviour to the Doctor and since the wretch had smoked
+cigars in church-time: perhaps, finally, she was jealous; but this is a
+vice in which it is said the ladies very seldom indulge.
+
+Albeit she was angry with Pen, against his mother she had no such
+feeling; but devoted herself to Helen with the utmost force of her
+girlish affection—such affection as women, whose hearts are disengaged,
+are apt to bestow upon the near female friend. It was devotion—it was
+passion—it was all sorts of fondness and folly; it was a profusion of
+caresses, tender epithets and endearments, such as it does not become
+sober historians with beards to narrate. Do not let us men despise
+these instincts because we cannot feel them. These women were made for
+our comfort and delectation, gentlemen,—with all the rest of the minor
+animals.
+
+But as soon as Miss Laura heard that Pen was unfortunate and unhappy,
+all her wrath against him straightway vanished, and gave place to the
+most tender and unreasonable compassion. He was the Pen of old days
+once more restored to her, the frank and affectionate, the generous and
+tender-hearted. She at once took side with Helen against Doctor
+Portman, when he outcried at the enormity of Pen’s transgressions.
+Debts? what were his debts? they were a trifle; he had been thrown into
+expensive society by his uncle’s order, and of course was obliged to
+live in the same manner as the young gentlemen whose company he
+frequented. Disgraced by not getting his degree? the poor boy was ill
+when he went in for the examinations: he couldn’t think of his
+mathematics and stuff on account of those very debts which oppressed
+him; very likely some of the odious tutors and masters were jealous of
+him, and had favourites of their own whom they wanted to put over his
+head. Other people disliked him, and were cruel to him, and were unfair
+to him, she was very sure. And so, with flushing cheeks and eyes bright
+with anger, this young creature reasoned; and she went up and seized
+Helen’s hand, and kissed her in the Doctor’s presence, and her looks
+braved the Doctor, and seemed to ask how he dared to say a word against
+her darling mother’s Pen?
+
+When that divine took his leave, not a little discomfited and amazed at
+the pertinacious obstinacy of the women, Laura repeated her embraces
+and arguments with tenfold fervour to Helen, who felt that there was a
+great deal of cogency in most of the latter. There must be some
+jealousy against Pen. She felt quite sure that he had offended some of
+the examiners, who had taken a mean revenge of him—nothing more likely.
+Altogether, the announcement of the misfortune vexed these two ladies
+very little indeed. Pen, who was plunged in his shame and grief in
+London, and torn with great remorse for thinking of his mother’s
+sorrow, would have wondered, had he seen how easily she bore the
+calamity. Indeed, calamity is welcome to women if they think it will
+bring truant affection home again: and if you have reduced your
+mistress to a crust, depend upon it that she won’t repine, and only
+take a very little bit of it for herself, provided you will eat the
+remainder in her company.
+
+And directly the Doctor was gone, Laura ordered fires to be lighted in
+Mr. Arthur’s rooms, and his bedding to be aired; and had these
+preparations completed by the time Helen had finished a most tender and
+affectionate letter to Pen: when the girl, smiling fondly, took her
+mamma by the hand, and led her into those apartments where the fires
+were blazing so cheerfully, and there the two kind creatures sate down
+on the bed, and talked about Pen ever so long. Laura added a postscript
+to Helen’s letter, in which she called him her dearest Pen, and bade
+him come home instantly, with two of the handsomest dashes under the
+word, and be happy with his mother and his affectionate sister Laura.
+
+In the middle of the night—as these two ladies, after reading their
+bibles a great deal during the evening, and after taking just a look
+into Pen’s room as they passed to their own—in the middle of the night,
+I say, Laura, whose head not unfrequently chose to occupy that pillow
+which the nightcap of the late Pendennis had been accustomed to press,
+cried out suddenly, “Mamma, are you awake?”
+
+Helen stirred and said, “Yes, I’m awake.” The truth is, though she had
+been lying quite still and silent, she had not been asleep one instant,
+but had been looking at the night-lamp in the chimney, and had been
+thinking of Pen for hours and hours.
+
+Then Miss Laura (who had been acting with similar hypocrisy, and lying,
+occupied with her own thoughts, as motionless as Helen’s brooch, with
+Pen’s and Laura’s hair in it, on the frilled white pincushion on the
+dressing-table) began to tell Mrs. Pendennis of a notable plan which
+she had been forming in her busy little brains; and by which all Pen’s
+embarrassments would be made to vanish in a moment, and without the
+least trouble to anybody.
+
+“You know, mamma,” this young lady said, “that I have been living with
+you for ten years, during which time you have never taken any of my
+money, and have been treating me just as if I was a charity girl. Now,
+this obligation has offended me very much, because I am proud and do
+not like to be beholden to people. And as, if I had gone to school—only
+I wouldn’t—it must have cost me at least fifty pounds a year, it is
+clear that I owe you fifty times ten pounds, which I know you have put
+in the bank at Chatteris for me, and which doesn’t belong to me a bit.
+Now, to-morrow we will go to Chatteris, and see that nice old Mr.
+Rowdy, with the bald head, and ask him for it,—not for his head, but
+for the five hundred pounds: and I dare say he will send you two more,
+which we will save and pay back; and we will send the money to Pen, who
+can pay all his debts without hurting anybody and then we will live
+happy ever after.”
+
+What Helen replied to this speech need not be repeated, as the widow’s
+answer was made up of a great number of incoherent ejaculations,
+embraces, and other irrelative matter. But the two women slept well
+after that talk; and when the night-lamp went out with a splutter, and
+the sun rose gloriously over the purple hills, and the birds began to
+sing and pipe cheerfully amidst the leafless trees and glistening
+evergreens on Fairoaks lawn, Helen woke too, and as she looked at the
+sweet face of the girl sleeping beside her, her lips parted with a
+smile, blushes on her cheeks, her spotless bosom heaving and falling
+with gentle undulations, as if happy dreams were sweeping over it—Pen’s
+mother felt happy and grateful beyond all power of words, save such as
+pious women offer up to the Beneficent Dispenser of love and mercy—in
+Whose honour a chorus of such praises is constantly rising up all round
+the world.
+
+Although it was January and rather cold weather, so sincere was Mr.
+Pen’s remorse, and so determined his plans of economy, that he would
+not take an inside place in the coach, but sate up behind with his
+friend the Guard, who remembered his former liberality, and lent him
+plenty of great-coats. Perhaps it was the cold that made his knees
+tremble as he got down at the lodge-gate, or it may be that he was
+agitated at the notion of seeing the kind creature for whose love he
+had made so selfish a return. Old John was in waiting to receive his
+master’s baggage, but he appeared in a fustian jacket, and no longer
+wore his livery of drab and blue. “I’se garner and stable man, and
+lives in the ladge now,” this worthy man remarked, with a grin of
+welcome to Pen, and something of a blush; but instantly as Pen turned
+the corner of the shrubbery and was out of eye-shot of the coach, Helen
+made her appearance, her face beaming with love and forgiveness—for
+forgiving is what some women love best of all.
+
+We may be sure that the widow, having a certain other object in view,
+had lost no time in writing off to Pen an account of the noble, the
+magnanimous, the magnificent offer of Laura, filling up her letter with
+a profusion of benedictions upon both her children. It was probably the
+knowledge of this money-obligation which caused Pen to blush very much
+when he saw Laura, who was in waiting in the hall, and who this time,
+and for this time only, broke through the little arrangement of which
+we have spoken, as having subsisted between her and Arthur for the last
+few years; but the truth is, there has been a great deal too much said
+about kissing in the present chapter.
+
+So the Prodigal came home, and the fatted calf was killed for him, and
+he was made as happy as two simple women could make him. No allusions
+were made to the Oxbridge mishap, or questions asked as to his farther
+proceedings, for some time. But Pen debated these anxiously in his own
+mind, and up in his own room, where he passed much time in cogitation.
+
+A few days after he came home, he rode to Chatteris on his horse, and
+came back on the top of the coach. He then informed his mother that he
+had left the horse to be sold; and when that operation was effected, he
+handed her over the cheque, which she, and possibly Pen himself,
+thought was an act of uncommon virtue and self-denial, but which Laura
+pronounced to be only strict justice.
+
+He rarely mentioned the loan which she had made, and which, indeed, had
+been accepted by the widow with certain modifications; but once or
+twice, and with great hesitation and stammering, he alluded to it, and
+thanked her; but it evidently pained his vanity to be beholden to the
+orphan for succour. He was wild to find some means of repaying her.
+
+He left off drinking wine, and betook himself, but with great
+moderation, to the refreshment of whisky-and-water. He gave up
+cigar-smoking; but it must be confessed that of late years he had liked
+pipes and tobacco as well or even better, so that this sacrifice was
+not a very severe one.
+
+He fell asleep a great deal after dinner when he joined the ladies in
+the drawing-room, and was certainly very moody and melancholy. He
+watched the coaches with great interest, walked in to read the papers
+at Clavering assiduously, dined with anybody who would ask him (and the
+widow was glad that he should have any entertainment in their solitary
+place), and played a good deal at cribbage with Captain Glanders.
+
+He avoided Dr. Portman, who, in his turn, whenever Pen passed, gave him
+very severe looks from under his shovel-hat. He went to church with his
+mother, however, very regularly, and read prayers for her at home to
+the little household. Always humble, it was greatly diminished now: a
+couple of maids did the work of the house of Fairoaks: the silver
+dish-covers never saw the light at all.
+
+John put on his livery to go to church, and assert his dignity on
+Sundays, but it was only for form’s sake. He was gardener and out-door
+man, vice Upton, resigned. There was but little fire in Fairoaks
+kitchen, and John and the maids drank their evening beer there by the
+light, of a single candle. All this was Mr. Pen’s doing, and the state
+of things did not increase his cheerfulness.
+
+For some time Pen said no power on earth could induce him to go back to
+Oxbridge again, after his failure there; but one day Laura said to him,
+with many blushes, that she thought, as some sort of reparation, of
+punishment on himself for his—for his idleness, he ought to go back and
+get his degree, if he could fetch it by doing so; and so back Mr. Pen
+went.
+
+A plucked man is a dismal being in a university; belonging to no set of
+men there, and owned by no one. Pen felt himself plucked indeed of all
+the fine feathers which he had won during his brilliant years, and
+rarely appeared out of his college; regularly going to morning chapel,
+and shutting himself up in his rooms of nights, away from the noise and
+suppers of the undergraduates. There were no duns about his door, they
+were all paid—scarcely any cards were left there. The men of his year
+had taken their degrees, and were gone. He went into a second
+examination, and passed with perfect ease. He was somewhat more easy in
+his mind when he appeared in his bachelor’s gown.
+
+On his way back from Oxbridge he paid a visit to his uncle in London;
+but the old gentleman received him with very cold looks, and would
+scarcely give him his forefinger to shake. He called a second time, but
+Morgan, the valet, said his master was from home.
+
+Pen came back to Fairoaks, and to his books and to his idleness, and
+loneliness and despair. He commenced several tragedies, and wrote many
+copies of verses of a gloomy cast. He formed plans of reading and broke
+them. He thought about enlisting—about the Spanish legion—about a
+profession. He chafed against his captivity, and cursed the idleness
+which had caused it. Helen said he was breaking his heart, and was sad
+to see his prostration. As soon as they could afford it, he should go
+abroad—he should go to London—he should be freed from the dull society
+of two poor women. It was dull—very, certainly. The tender widow’s
+habitual melancholy seemed to deepen into a sadder gloom; and Laura saw
+with alarm that the dear friend became every year more languid and
+weary, and that her pale cheek grew more wan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+New Faces
+
+
+The inmates of Fairoaks were drowsily pursuing this humdrum existence,
+while the great house upon the hill, on the other side of the River
+Brawl, was shaking off the slumber in which it had lain during the
+lives of two generations of masters, and giving extraordinary signs of
+renewed liveliness.
+
+Just about the time of Pen’s little mishap, and when he was so absorbed
+in the grief occasioned by that calamity as to take no notice of events
+which befell persons less interesting to himself than Arthur Pendennis,
+an announcement appeared in the provincial journals which caused no
+small sensation in the county at least, and in all the towns, villages,
+halls and mansions, and parsonages for many miles round Clavering Park.
+At Clavering Market; at Cackleby Fair; at Chatteris Sessions; on
+Gooseberry Green, as the squire’s carriage met the vicar’s one-horse
+contrivance, and the inmates of both vehicles stopped on the road to
+talk; at Tinkleton Church gate, as the bell was tolling in the
+sunshine, and the white smocks and scarlet cloaks came trooping over
+the green common, to Sunday worship; in a hundred societies round
+about—the word was, that Clavering Park was to be inhabited again.
+
+Some five years before, the county papers had advertised the marriage
+at Florence, at the British Legation, of Francis Clavering, Esq., only
+son of Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., of Clavering Park, with Jemima
+Augusta, daughter of Samuel Snell, of Calcutta, Esq., and widow of the
+late J. Amory, Esq. At that time the legend in the county was that
+Clavering, who had been ruined for many a year, had married a widow
+from India with some money. Some of the county folks caught a sight of
+the newly-married pair. The Kickleburys, travelling in Italy, had seen
+them. Clavering occupied the Poggi Palace at Florence, gave parties,
+and lived comfortably—but could never come to England. Another
+year—young Peregrine, of Cackleby, making a Long Vacation tour, had
+fallen in with the Claverings occupying Schloss Schinkenstein, on the
+Mummel See. At Rome, at Lucca, at Nice, at the baths and gambling
+places of the Rhine and Belgium, this worthy couple might occasionally
+be heard of by the curious, and rumours of them came, as it were by
+gusts, to Clavering’s ancestral place.
+
+Their last place of abode was Paris, where they appear to have lived in
+great fashion and splendour after the news of the death of Samuel
+Snell, Esq., of Calcutta, reached his orphan daughter in Europe.
+
+Of Sir Francis Clavering’s antecedents little can be said that would be
+advantageous to that respected baronet. The son of an outlaw, living in
+a dismal old chateau near Bruges, this gentleman had made a feeble
+attempt to start in life with a commission in a dragoon regiment, and
+had broken down almost at the outset. Transactions at the
+gambling-table had speedily effected his ruin; after a couple of years
+in the army he had been forced to sell out, had passed some time in Her
+Majesty’s prison of the Fleet, and had then shipped over to Ostend to
+join the gouty exile, his father. And in Belgium, France and Germany,
+for some years, this decayed and abortive prodigal might be seen
+lurking about billiard-rooms and watering-places, punting at
+gambling-houses, dancing at boarding-house balls, and riding
+steeple-chases on other folks’ horses.
+
+It was at a boarding-house at Lausanne that Francis Clavering made what
+he called the lucky coup of marrying the widow Amory, very lately
+returned from Calcutta. His father died soon after, by consequence of
+whose demise his wife became Lady Clavering. The title so delighted Mr.
+Snell of Calcutta, that he doubled his daughter’s allowance; and dying
+himself soon after, left a fortune to her and her children the amount
+of which was, if not magnified by rumour, something very splendid
+indeed.
+
+Before this time there had been, not rumours unfavourable to Lady
+Clavering’s reputation, but unpleasant impressions regarding her
+ladyship. The best English people abroad were shy of making her
+acquaintance; her manners were not the most refined; her origin was
+lamentably low and doubtful. The retired East Indians, who are to be
+found in considerable force in most of the continental towns frequented
+by English, spoke with much scorn of the disreputable old lawyer and
+indigo-smuggler her father, and of Amory, her first husband, who had
+been mate of the Indiaman in which Miss Snell came out to join her
+father at Calcutta. Neither father nor daughter were in society at
+Calcutta, or had ever been heard of at Government House. Old Sir Jasper
+Rogers, who had been Chief Justice of Calcutta, had once said to his
+wife, that he could tell a queer story about Lady Clavering’s first
+husband; but greatly to Lady Rogers’s disappointment, and that of the
+young ladies his daughters, the old Judge could never be got to reveal
+that mystery.
+
+They were all, however, glad enough to go to Lady Clavering’s parties,
+when her ladyship took the Hotel Bouilli in the Rue Grenelle at Paris,
+and blazed out in the polite world there in the winter of 183—. The
+Faubourg St. Germain took her up. Viscount Bagwig, our excellent
+ambassador, paid her marked attention. The princes of the family
+frequented her salons. The most rigid and noted of the English ladies
+resident in the French capital acknowledged and countenanced her; the
+virtuous Lady Elderbury, the severe Lady Rockminster, the venerable
+Countess of Southdown—people, in a word, renowned for austerity, and of
+quite a dazzling moral purity:—so great and beneficent an influence had
+the possession of ten (some said twenty) thousand a year exercised upon
+Lady Clavering’s character and reputation. And her munificence and
+good-will were unbounded. Anybody (in society) who had a scheme of
+charity was sure to find her purse open. The French ladies of piety got
+money from her to support their schools and convents; she subscribed
+indifferently for the Armenian patriarch; for Father Barbarossa, who
+came to Europe to collect funds for his monastery on Mount Athos; for
+the Baptist Mission to Quashyboo, and the Orthodox Settlement in
+Feefawfoo, the largest and most savage of the Cannibal Islands. And it
+is on record of her, that, on the same day on which Madame de Cricri
+got five Napoleons from her in support of the poor persecuted Jesuits,
+who were at that time in very bad odour in France, Lady Budelight put
+her down in her subscription-list for the Rev. J. Ramshorn, who had had
+a vision which ordered him to convert the Pope of Rome. And more than
+this, and for the benefit of the worldly, her ladyship gave the best
+dinners, and the grandest balls and suppers, which were known at Paris
+during that season.
+
+And it was during this time, that the good-natured lady must have
+arranged matters with her husband’s creditors in England, for Sir
+Francis reappeared in his native country, without fear of arrest; was
+announced in the Morning Post, and the county paper, as having taken up
+his residence at Mivart’s Hotel; and one day the anxious old
+housekeeper at Clavering House beheld a carriage and four horses drive
+up the long avenue, and stop before the moss-grown steps in front of
+the vast melancholy portico.
+
+Three gentlemen were in the carriage—an open one. On the back seat was
+our old acquaintance, Mr. Tatham of Chatteris, whilst in the places of
+honour sate a handsome and portly gentleman enveloped in mustachios,
+whiskers, fur collars, and braiding, and by him a pale languid man who
+descended feebly from the carriage, when the little lawyer, and the
+gentleman in fur, nimbly jumped out of it.
+
+They walked up the great moss-grown steps to the hall-door, and a
+foreign attendant, with earrings and a gold-laced cap, pulled
+strenuously at the great bell-handle at the cracked and sculptured
+gate. The bell was heard clanging loudly through the vast gloomy
+mansion. Steps resounded presently upon the marble pavement of the hall
+within; and the doors opened, and finally Mrs. Blenkinsop, the
+housekeeper, Polly, her aide-de-camp, and Smart, the keeper, appeared
+bowing humbly.
+
+Smart, the keeper, pulled the wisp of hay-coloured hair which adorned
+his sunburnt forehead, kicked out his left heel as if there were a dog
+biting at his calves, and brought down his head to a bow. Old Mrs.
+Blenkinsop dropped a curtsey. Little Polly, her aide-de-camp, made a
+curtsey and several rapid bows likewise; and Mrs. Blenkinsop, with a
+great deal of emotion, quavered out, “Welcome to Clavering, Sir
+Francis. It du my poor eyes good to see one of the family once more.”
+
+The speech and the greetings were all addressed to the grand gentleman
+in fur and braiding, who wore his hat so magnificently on one side, and
+twirled his mustachios so royally. But he burst out laughing, and said,
+“You’ve saddled the wrong horse, old lady—I’m not Sir Francis Clavering
+what’s come to revisit the halls of my ancestors. Friends and vassals!
+behold your rightful lord!”
+
+And he pointed his hand towards the pale, languid gentleman who said,
+“Don’t be an ass, Ned.”
+
+“Yes, Mrs. Blenkinsop, I’m Sir Francis Clavering; I recollect you quite
+well. Forgot me, I suppose?—How dy do?” and he took the old lady’s
+trembling hand; and nodded in her astonished face, in a not unkind
+manner.
+
+Mrs. Blenkinsop declared upon her conscience that she would have known
+Sir Francis anywhere, that he was the very image of Sir Francis, his
+father, and of Sir John who had gone before.
+
+“O yes—thanky—of course—very much obliged—and that sort of thing,” Sir
+Francis said, looking vacantly about the hall “Dismal old place, ain’t
+it, Ned? Never saw it but once, when my governor quarrelled with
+gwandfather in the year twenty-thwee.
+
+“Dismal?—beautiful!—the Castle of Otranto!—the Mysteries of Udolpho, by
+Jove!” said the individual addressed as Ned. “What a fireplace! You
+might roast an elephant in it. Splendid carved gallery! Inigo Jones, by
+Jove! I’d lay five to two it’s Inigo Jones.”
+
+“The upper part by Inigo Jones; the lower was altered by the eminent
+Dutch architect, Vanderputty, in George the First his time, by Sir
+Richard, fourth baronet,” said the housekeeper.
+
+“O indeed,” said the Baronet “Gad, Ned, you know everything.”
+
+“I know a few things, Frank,” Ned answered. “I know that’s not a
+Snyders over the mantelpiece—bet you three to one it’s a copy. We’ll
+restore it, my boy. A lick of varnish, and it will come out
+wonderfully, sir. That old fellow in the red gown, I suppose, is Sir
+Richard.”
+
+“Sheriff of the county, and sate in parliament in the reign of Queen
+Anne,” said the housekeeper, wondering at the stranger’s knowledge;
+“that on the right is Theodosia, wife of Harbottle, second baronet, by
+Lely, represented in the character of Venus, the Goddess of Beauty,—her
+son Gregory, the third baronet, by her side, as Cupid, God of Love,
+with a bow and arrows; that on the next panel is Sir Rupert, made a
+knight banneret by Charles the First, and whose property was
+confuscated by Oliver Cromwell.”
+
+“Thank you—needn’t go on, Mrs. Blenkinsop,” said the Baronet, “We’ll
+walk about the place ourselves. Frosch, give me a cigar. Have a cigar,
+Mr. Tatham?”
+
+Little Mr. Tatham tried a cigar which Sir Francis’s courier handed to
+him, and over which the lawyer spluttered fearfully. “Needn’t come with
+us, Mrs. Blenkinsop. What’s—his—name—you—Smart—feed the horses and wash
+their mouths. Shan’t stay long. Come along, Strong,—I know the way: I
+was here in twenty-thwee, at the end of my gwandfather’s time.” And Sir
+Francis and Captain Strong, for such was the style and title of Sir
+Francis’s friend, passed out of the hall into the reception-rooms,
+leaving the discomfited Mrs. Blenkinsop to disappear by a side-door
+which led to her apartments, now the only habitable rooms in the
+long-uninhabited mansion.
+
+It was a place so big that no tenant could afford to live in it; and
+Sir Francis and his friend walked through room after room, admiring
+their vastness and dreary and deserted grandeur. On the right of the
+hall-door were the saloons and drawing-rooms, and on the other side the
+oak room, the parlour, the grand dining-room, the library, where Pen
+had found books in old days. Round three sides of the hall ran a
+gallery, by which, and corresponding passages, the chief bedrooms were
+approached, and of which many were of stately proportions and exhibited
+marks of splendour. On the second story was a labyrinth of little
+discomfortable garrets, destined for the attendants of the great folks
+who inhabited the mansion in the days when it was first built: and I do
+not know any more cheering mark of the increased philanthropy of our
+own times, than to contrast our domestic architecture with that of our
+ancestors, and to see how much better servants and poor are cared for
+now, than in times when my lord and my lady slept under gold canopies,
+and their servants lay above them in quarters not so airy or so clean
+as stables are now.
+
+Up and down the house the two gentlemen wandered, the owner of the
+mansion being very silent and resigned about the pleasure of possessing
+it; whereas the Captain, his friend, examined the premises with so much
+interest and eagerness that you would have thought he was the master,
+and the other the indifferent spectator of the place. “I see
+capabilities in it—capabilities in it, sir,” cried the Captain. “Gad,
+sir, leave it to me, and I’ll make it the pride of the country, at a
+small expense. What a theatre we can have in the library here, the
+curtains between the columns which divide the room! What a famous room
+for a galop!—it will hold the whole shire. We’ll hang the morning
+parlour with the tapestry in your second salon in the Rue de Grenelle,
+and furnish the oak room with the Moyen-age cabinets and the armour.
+Armour looks splendid against black oak, and there’s a Venice glass in
+the Quai Voltaire, which will suit that high mantelpiece to an inch,
+sir. The long saloon, white and crimson of course; the drawing-room
+yellow satin; and the little drawing-room light blue, with lace
+over—hay?”
+
+“I recollect my old governor caning me in that little room,” Sir
+Francis said sententiously; “he always hated me, my old governor.”
+
+“Chintz is the dodge, I suppose, for my lady’s rooms—the suite in the
+landing, to the south, the bedroom, the sitting-room, and the
+dressing-room. We’ll throw a conservatory out, over the balcony. Where
+will you have your rooms?”
+
+“Put mine in the north wing,” said the Baronet, with a yawn, “and out
+of the reach of Miss Amory’s confounded piano. I can’t bear it. She’s
+scweeching from morning till night.”
+
+The Captain burst out laughing. He settled the whole further
+arrangements of the house in the course of their walk through it; and,
+the promenade ended, they went into the steward’s room, now inhabited
+by Mrs. Blenkinsop, and where Mr. Tatham was sitting poring over a plan
+of the estate, and the old housekeeper had prepared a collation in
+honour of her lord and master.
+
+Then they inspected the kitchen and stables, about both of which Sir
+Francis was rather interested, and Captain Strong was for examining the
+gardens; but the Baronet said, “D—— the gardens, and that sort of
+thing!” and finally he drove away from the house as unconcernedly as he
+had entered it; and that night the people of Clavering learned that Sir
+Francis Clavering had paid a visit to the Park, and was coming to live
+in the county.
+
+When this fact came to be known at Chatteris, all the folks in the
+place were set in commotion: High Church and Low Church, half-pay
+captains and old maids and dowagers, sporting squireens of the
+viciniage, farmers, tradesmen, and factory people—all the population in
+and round about the little place. The news was brought to Fairoaks, and
+received by the ladies there, and by Mr. Pen, with some excitement.
+“Mrs. Pybus says there is a very pretty girl in the family, Arthur,”
+Laura said, who was as kind and thoughtful upon this point as women
+generally are: “a Miss Amory, Lady Clavering’s daughter by her first
+marriage. Of course, you will fall in love with her as soon as she
+arrives.”
+
+Helen cried out, “Don’t talk nonsense, Laura.” Pen laughed, and said,
+“Well, there is the young Sir Francis for you.”
+
+“He is but four years old,” Miss Laura replied. “But I shall console
+myself with that handsome officer, Sir Francis’s friend. He was at
+church last Sunday, in the Clavering pew, and his mustachios were
+beautiful.”
+
+Indeed the number of Sir Francis’s family (whereof the members have all
+been mentioned in the above paragraphs) was pretty soon known in his
+town, and everything else, as nearly as human industry and ingenuity
+could calculate, regarding his household. The Park avenue and grounds
+were dotted now with town folks of the summer evenings, who made their
+way up to the great house, peered about the premises, and criticised
+the improvements which were taking place there. Loads upon loads of
+furniture arrived in numberless vans from Chatteris and London; and
+numerous as the vans are, there was not one but Captain Glanders knew
+what it contained, and escorted the baggage up to the Park House.
+
+He and Captain Edward Strong had formed an intimate acquaintance by
+this time. The younger Captain occupied those very lodgings at
+Clavering, which the peaceful Smirke had previously tenanted, and was
+deep in the good graces of Madame Fribsby, his landlady; and of the
+whole town, indeed. The Captain was splendid in person and raiment;
+fresh-coloured, blue-eyed, black-whiskered, broad-chested, athletic—a
+slight tendency to fulness did not take away from the comeliness of his
+jolly figure—a braver soldier never presented a broader chest to the
+enemy. As he strode down Clavering High Street, his hat on one side,
+his cane clanking on the pavement, or waving round him in the execution
+of military cuts and soldatesque manoeuvres—his jolly laughter ringing
+through the otherwise silent street—he was as welcome as sunshine to
+the place, and a comfort to every inhabitant in it.
+
+On the first market-day he knew every pretty girl in the market: he
+joked with all the women; had a word with the farmers about their
+stock, and dined at the Agricultural Ordinary at the Clavering Arms,
+where he set them all dying with laughing by his fun and jokes. “Tu be
+sure he be a vine veller, tu be sure that he be,” was the universal
+opinion of the gentlemen in top-boots. He shook hands with a score of
+them, as they rode out of the inn-yard on their old nags, waving his
+hat to them splendidly as he smoked his cigar in the inn-gate. In the
+course of the evening he was free of the landlady’s bar, knew what rent
+the landlord paid, how many acres he farmed, how much malt he put in
+his strong beer; and whether he ever ran in a little brandy unexcised
+by kings from Baymouth, or the fishing villages along the coast.
+
+He had tried to live at the great house first; but it was so dull he
+couldn’t stand it. “I am a creature born for society,” he told Captain
+Glanders. “I’m down here to see Clavering’s house set in order; for
+between ourselves, Frank has no energy, sir, no energy; he’s not the
+chest for it, sir (and he threw out his own trunk as he spoke); but I
+must have social intercourse. Old Mrs. Blenkinsop goes to bed at seven,
+and takes Polly with her. There was nobody but me and the Ghost for the
+first two nights at the great house, and I own it, sir, I like company.
+Most old soldiers do.”
+
+Glanders asked Strong where he had served? Captain Strong curled his
+mustache, and said with a laugh, that the other might almost ask where
+he had not served. “I began, sir, as cadet of Hungarian Uhlans, and
+when the war of Greek independence broke out, quitted that service in
+consequence of a quarrel with my governor, and was one of seven who
+escaped from Missolonghi, and was blown up in one of Botzaris’s
+fireships, at the age of seventeen. I’ll show you my Cross of the
+Redeemer, if you’ll come over to my lodgings and take a glass of grog
+with me, Captain, this evening. I’ve a few of those baubles in my desk.
+I’ve the White Eagle of Poland; Skrzynecki gave it me” (he pronounced
+Skrzynecki’s name with wonderful accuracy and gusto) “upon the field of
+Ostrolenka. I was a lieutenant of the fourth regiment, sir, and we
+marched through Diebitsch’s lines—bang thro’ ’em into Prussia, sir,
+without firing a shot. Ah, Captain, that was a mismanaged business. I
+received this wound by the side of the King before Oporto,—where he
+would have pounded the stock-jobbing Pedroites, had Bourmont followed
+my advice; and I served in Spain with the King’s troops, until the
+death of my dear friend, Zumalacarreguy, when I saw the game was over,
+and hung up my toasting iron, Captain. Alava offered me a regiment, the
+Queen’s Muleteros; but I couldn’t—damme, I couldn’t—and now, sir, you
+know Ned Strong—the Chevalier Strong they call me abroad—as well as he
+knows himself.”
+
+In this way almost everybody in Clavering came to know Ned Strong. He
+told Madame Fribsby, he told the landlord of the George, he told Baker
+at the reading-rooms, he told Mrs. Glanders, and the young ones, at
+dinner: and, finally, he told Mr. Arthur Pendennis, who, yawning into
+Clavering one day, found the Chevalier Strong in company with Captain
+Glanders; and who was delighted with his new acquaintance.
+
+Before many days were over, Captain Strong was as much at home in
+Helen’s drawing-room as he was in Madame Fribsby’s first floor; and
+made the lonely house very gay with his good-humour and ceaseless flow
+of talk. The two women had never before seen such a man. He had a
+thousand stories about battles and dangers to interest them—about Greek
+captives, Polish beauties, and Spanish nuns. He could sing scores of
+songs, in half a dozen languages, and would sit down to the piano and
+troll them off in a rich manly voice. Both the ladies pronounced him to
+be delightful—and so he was; though, indeed, they had not had much
+choice of man’s society as yet, having seen in the course of their
+lives but few persons, except old Portman and the Major, and Mr. Pen,
+who was a genius, to be sure; but then your geniuses are somewhat flat
+and moody at home.
+
+And Captain Strong acquainted his new friends at Fairoaks, not only
+with his own biography, but with the whole history of the family now
+coming to Clavering. It was he who had made the marriage between his
+friend Frank and the widow Amory. She wanted rank, and he wanted money.
+What match could be more suitable? He organised it; he made those two
+people happy. There was no particular romantic attachment between them;
+the widow was not of an age or a person for romance, and Sir Francis,
+if he had his game at billiards, and his dinner, cared for little
+besides. But they were as happy as people could be. Clavering would
+return to his native place and country, his wife’s fortune would pay
+his encumbrances off, and his son and heir would be one of the first
+men in the county.
+
+“And Miss Amory?” Laura asked. Laura was uncommonly curious about Miss
+Amory.
+
+Strong laughed. “Oh, Miss Amory is a muse—Miss Amory is a mystery—Miss
+Amory is a femme incomprise.” “What is that?” asked simple Mrs.
+Pendennis—but the Chevalier gave her no answer: perhaps could not give
+her one. “Miss Amory paints, Miss Amory writes poems, Miss Amory
+composes music, Miss Amory rides like Diana Vernon. Miss Amory is a
+paragon, in a word.”
+
+“I hate clever women,” said Pen.
+
+“Thank you,” said Laura. For her part she was sure she should be
+charmed with Miss Amory, and quite longed to have such a friend. And
+with this she looked Pen full in the face, as if every word the little
+hypocrite said was Gospel truth.
+
+Thus, an intimacy was arranged and prepared beforehand between the
+Fairoaks family and their wealthy neighbours at the Park; and Pen and
+Laura were to the full as eager for their arrival, as even the most
+curious of the Clavering folks. A Londoner, who sees fresh faces and
+yawns at them every day may smile at the eagerness with which country
+people expect a visitor. A cockney comes amongst them, and is
+remembered by his rural entertainers for years after he has left them,
+and forgotten them very likely—floated far away from them on the vast
+London sea. But the islanders remember long after the mariner has
+sailed away, and can tell you what he said and what he wore, and how he
+looked and how he laughed. In fine, a new arrival is an event in the
+country not to be understood by us, who don’t, and had rather not, know
+who lives next door.
+
+When the painters and upholsterers had done their work in the house,
+and so beautified it, under Captain Strong’s superintendence, that he
+might well be proud of his taste, that gentleman announced that he
+should go to London, where the whole family had arrived by this time,
+and should speedily return to establish them in their renovated
+mansion.
+
+Detachments of domestics preceded them. Carriages came down by sea, and
+were brought over from Baymouth by horses which had previously arrived
+under the care of grooms and coachmen. One day the ‘Alacrity’ coach
+brought down on its roof two large and melancholy men, who were dropped
+at the Park lodge with their trunks, and who were Messieurs Frederic
+and James, metropolitan footmen, who had no objection to the country,
+and brought with them state and other suits of the Clavering uniform.
+
+On another day, the mail deposited at the gate a foreign gentleman,
+adorned with many ringlets and chains. He made a great riot at the
+lodge-gate to the keeper’s wife (who, being a West-country woman, did
+not understand his English or his Gascon French), because there was no
+carriage in waiting to drive him to the house, a mile off, and because
+he could not walk entire leagues in his fatigued state and varnished
+boots. This was Monsieur Alcide Mirobolant, formerly Chef of his
+Highness the Duc de Borodino, of his Eminence Cardinal Beccafico, and
+at present Chef of the bouche of Sir Clavering, Baronet:—Monsieur
+Mirobolant’s library, pictures, and piano had arrived previously in
+charge of the intelligent young Englishman, his aide-de-camp. He was,
+moreover, aided by a professed female cook, likewise from London, who
+had inferior females under her orders.
+
+He did not dine in the steward’s room, but took his nutriment in
+solitude in his own apartments, where a female servant was affected to
+his private use. It was a grand sight to behold him in his
+dressing-gown composing a menu. He always sate down and played the
+piano for some time before that. If interrupted, he remonstrated
+pathetically with his little maid. Every great artist, he said, had
+need of solitude to perfectionate his works.
+
+But we are advancing matters in the fulness of our love and respect for
+Monsieur Mirobolant, and bringing him prematurely on the stage.
+
+The Chevalier Strong had a hand in the engagement of all the London
+domestics, and, indeed, seemed to be the master of the house. There
+were those among them who said he was the house-steward, only he dined
+with the family. Howbeit, he knew how to make himself respected, and
+two of by no means the least comfortable rooms of the house were
+assigned to his particular use.
+
+He was walking upon the terrace finally upon the eventful day when,
+amidst an immense jangling of bells from Clavering Church, where the
+flag was flying, an open carriage and one of those travelling chariots
+or family arks, which only English philoprogenitiveness could invent,
+drove rapidly with foaming horses through the Park gates, and up to the
+steps of the Hall. The two battans of the sculptured door flew open.
+The superior officers in black, the large and melancholy gentlemen, now
+in livery with their hair in powder, the country menials engaged to aid
+them, were in waiting in the hall, and bowed like elms when autumn
+winds wail in the park. Through this avenue passed Sir Francis
+Clavering with a most unmoved face: Lady Clavering, with a pair of
+bright black eyes, and a good-humoured countenance, which waggled and
+nodded very graciously: Master Francis Clavering, who was holding his
+mamma’s skirt (and who stopped the procession to look at the largest
+footman, whose appearance seemed to strike the young gentleman), and
+Miss Blandy, governess to Master Francis, and Miss Amory, her
+ladyship’s daughter, giving her arm to Captain Strong. It was summer,
+but fires of welcome were crackling in the great hall chimney, and in
+the rooms which the family were to occupy.
+
+Monsieur Mirobolant had looked at the procession from one of the
+lime-trees in the avenue. “Elle est la,” he said, laying his jewelled
+hand on his richly-embroidered velvet glass buttons, “Je t’ai vue, je
+te benis, O ma sylphide, O mon ange!” and he dived into the thicket,
+and made his way back to his furnaces and saucepans.
+
+The next Sunday the same party which had just made its appearance at
+Clavering Park, came and publicly took possession of the ancient pew in
+the church, where so many of the Baronet’s ancestors had prayed, and
+were now kneeling in effigy. There was such a run to see the new folks,
+that the Low Church was deserted, to the disgust of its pastor; and as
+the state barouche, with the greys and coachman in silver wig, and
+solemn footmen, drew up at the old churchyard-gate, there was such a
+crowd assembled there as had not been seen for many a long day. Captain
+Strong knew everybody, and saluted for all the company—the country
+people vowed my lady was not handsome, to be sure, but pronounced her
+to be uncommon fine dressed, as indeed she was—with the finest of
+shawls, the finest of pelisses, the brilliantest of bonnets and
+wreaths, and a power of rings, cameos, brooches, chains, bangles, and
+other nameless gimcracks; and ribbons of every breadth and colour of
+the rainbow flaming on her person. Miss Amory appeared meek in
+dove-colour, like a vestal virgin—while Master Francis was in the
+costume, then prevalent, of Rob Roy Macgregor, a celebrated Highland
+outlaw. The Baronet was not more animated than ordinarily—there was a
+happy vacuity about him which enabled him to face a dinner, a death, a
+church, a marriage, with the same indifferent ease.
+
+A pew for the Clavering servants was filled by these domestics, and the
+enraptured congregation saw the gentlemen from London with “vlower on
+their heeds,” and the miraculous coachman with his silver wig, take
+their places in that pew so soon as his horses were put up at the
+Clavering Arms.
+
+In the course of the service, Master Francis began to make such a
+yelling in the pew, that Frederic, the tallest of the footmen, was
+beckoned by his master, and rose and went and carried out Master
+Francis, who roared and beat him on the head, so that the powder flew
+round about, like clouds of incense. Nor was he pacified until placed
+on the box of the carriage, where he played at horses with John’s whip.
+
+“You see the little beggar’s never been to church before, Miss Bell,”
+the Baronet drawled out to a young lady who was visiting him; “no
+wonder he should make a row: I don’t go in town neither, but I think
+it’s right in the country to give a good example—and that sort of
+thing.”
+
+Miss Bell laughed and said, “The little boy had not given a
+particularly good example.”
+
+“Gad, I don’t know, and that sort of thing,” said the Baronet. “It
+ain’t so bad neither. Whenever he wants a thing, Frank always cwies,
+and whenever he cwies he gets it.”
+
+Here the child in question began to howl for a dish of sweetmeats on
+the luncheon-table, and making a lunge across the table-cloth, upset a
+glass of wine over the best waistcoat of one of the guests present, Mr.
+Arthur Pendennis, who was greatly annoyed at being made to look
+foolish, and at having his spotless cambric shirt front blotched with
+wine.
+
+“We do spoil him so,” said Lady Clavering to Mrs. Pendennis, finally
+gazing at the cherub, whose hands and face were now frothed over with
+the species of lather which is inserted in the confection called
+meringues a la creme.
+
+“It is very wrong,” said Mrs. Pendennis, as if she had never done such
+a thing herself as spoil a child.
+
+“Mamma says she spoils my brother,—do you think anything could, Miss
+Bell? Look at him,—isn’t he like a little angel?”
+
+“Gad, I was quite wight,” said the Baronet. “He has cwied, and he has
+got it, you see. Go it, Fwank, old boy.”
+
+“Sir Francis is a very judicious parent,” Miss Amory whispered. Don’t
+you think so, Miss Bell? I shan’t call you Miss Bell—I shall call you
+Laura. I admired you so at church. Your robe was not well made, nor
+your bonnet very fresh. But you have such beautiful grey eyes, and such
+a lovely tint.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Miss Bell, laughing.
+
+“Your cousin is handsome, and thinks so. He is uneasy de sa personne.
+He has not seen the world yet. Has he genius? Has he suffered? A lady,
+a little woman in a rumpled satin and velvet shoes—a Miss Pybus—came
+here, and said he has suffered. I, too, have suffered,—and you, Laura,
+has your heart ever been touched?”
+
+Laura said “No!” but perhaps blushed a little at the idea or the
+question, so that the other said,—
+
+“Ah Laura! I see it all. It is the beau cousin. Tell me everything. I
+already love you as a sister.”
+
+“You are very kind,” said Miss Bell, smiling, “and—and it must be owned
+that it is a very sudden attachment.”
+
+“All attachments are so. It is electricity—spontaneity. It is
+instantaneous. I knew I should love you from the moment I saw you. Do
+you not feel it yourself?”
+
+“Not yet,” said Laura; “but—I daresay I shall if I try.”
+
+“Call me by my name, then.”
+
+“But I don’t know it,” Laura cried out.
+
+“My name is Blanche—isn’t it a pretty name? Call me by it.”
+
+“Blanche—it is very pretty, indeed.”
+
+“And while mamma talks with that kind-looking lady—what relation is she
+to you? She must have been pretty once, but is rather passee; she is
+not well gantee, but she has a pretty hand—and while mamma talks to
+her, come with me to my own room,—my own, own room. It’s a darling
+room, though that horrid creature, Captain Strong, did arrange it. Are
+you eprise of him? He says you are, but I know better; it is the beau
+cousin. Yes—il a de beaux yeux. Je n’aime pas les blonds,
+ordinairement. Car je suis blonde moi—je suis Blanche et blonde,”—and
+she looked at her face and made a moue in the glass; and never stopped
+for Laura’s answer to the questions which she had put.
+
+Blanche was fair, and like a sylph. She had fair hair, with green
+reflections in it. But she had dark eyebrows. She had long black
+eyelashes, which veiled beautiful brown eyes. She had such a slim
+waist, that it was a wonder to behold; and such a slim little feet,
+that you would have thought the grass would hardly bend under them. Her
+lips were of the colour of faint rosebuds, and her voice warbled
+limpidly over a set of the sweetest little pearly teeth ever seen. She
+showed them very often, for they were very pretty. She was very
+good-natured, and a smile not only showed her teeth wonderfully, but
+likewise exhibited two lovely little pink dimples, that nestled in
+either cheek.
+
+She showed Laura her drawings, which the other thought charming. She
+played her some of her waltzes, with a rapid and brilliant finger, and
+Laura was still more charmed. And she then read her some poems, in
+French and English, likewise of her own composition, and which she kept
+locked in her own book—her own dear little book; it was bound in blue
+velvet, with a gilt lock, and on it was printed in gold the title of
+‘Mes Larmes.’
+
+“Mes Larmes!—isn’t it a pretty name?” the young lady continued, who was
+pleased with everything that she did, and did everything very well.
+Laura owned that it was. She had never seen anything like it before;
+anything so lovely, so accomplished, so fragile and pretty; warbling so
+prettily, and tripping about such a pretty room, with such a number of
+pretty books, pictures, flowers, round about her. The honest and
+generous country girl forgot even jealousy in her admiration. “Indeed,
+Blanche,” she said, “everything in the room is pretty; and you are the
+prettiest of all.” The other smiled, looked in the glass, went up and
+took both of Laura’s hands, and kissed them, and sat down to the piano,
+and shook out a little song, as if she had been a nightingale.
+
+This was the first visit paid by Fairoaks to Clavering Park, in return
+for Clavering Park’s visit to Fairoaks, in reply to Fairoaks’s cards
+left a few days after the arrival of Sir Francis’s family. The intimacy
+between the young ladies sprang up like Jack’s Bean-stalk to the skies
+in a single night. The large footmen were perpetually walking with
+little rose-coloured pink notes to Fairoaks; where there was a pretty
+house-maid in the kitchen, who might possibly tempt those gentlemen to
+so humble a place. Miss Amory sent music, or Miss Amory sent a new
+novel, or a picture from the ‘Journal des Modes,’ to Laura; or my
+lady’s compliments arrived with flowers and fruit; or Miss Amory begged
+and prayed Miss Bell to come to dinner; and dear Mrs. Pendennis, if she
+was strong enough; and Mr. Arthur, if a humdrum party were not too
+stupid for him; and would send a pony-carriage for Mrs. Pendennis; and
+would take no denial.
+
+Neither Arthur nor Laura wished to refuse. And Helen, who was, indeed,
+somewhat ailing, was glad that the two should have their pleasure; and
+would look at them fondly as they set forth, and ask in her heart that
+she might not be called away until those two beings whom she loved best
+in the world should be joined together. As they went out and crossed
+over the bridge, she remembered summer evenings five-and-twenty years
+ago, when she, too, had bloomed in her brief prime of love and
+happiness. It was all over now. The moon was looking from the purpling
+sky, and the stars glittering there, just as they used in the early,
+well-remembered evenings. He was lying dead far away, with the billows
+rolling between them. Good God! how well she remembered the last look
+of his face as they parted. It looked out at her through the vista of
+long years, as sad and as clear as then.
+
+So Mr. Pen and Miss Laura found the society at Clavering Park an
+uncommonly agreeable resort of summer evenings. Blanche vowed that she
+raffoled of Laura; and, very likely, Mr. Pen was pleased with Blanche.
+His spirits came back: he laughed and rattled till Laura wondered to
+hear him. It was not the same Pen, yawning in a shooting jacket, in the
+Fairoaks parlour, who appeared alert and brisk, and smiling and well
+dressed, in Lady Clavering’s drawing-room. Sometimes they had music.
+Laura had a sweet contralto voice, and sang with Blanche, who had had
+the best continental instruction, and was charmed to be her friend’s
+mistress. Sometimes Mr. Pen joined in these concerts, or oftener looked
+sweet upon Miss Blanche as she sang. Sometimes they had glees, when
+Captain Strong’s chest was of vast service, and he boomed out in a
+prodigious bass, of which he was not a little proud.
+
+“Good fellow, Strong—ain’t he, Miss Bell?” Sir Francis would say to
+her. “Plays at ecarte with Lady Clavering—plays anything,
+pitch-and-toss, pianoforty, cwibbage if you like. How long do you think
+he’s been staying with me? He came for a week with a carpet-bag, and
+Gad, he’s been staying here thwee years. Good fellow, ain’t he? Don’t
+know how he gets a shillin’ though, begad I don’t, Miss Lauwa.”
+
+And yet the Chevalier, if he lost his money to Lady Clavering, always
+paid it; and if he lived with his friend for three years, paid for that
+too—in good-humour, in kindness and joviality, in a thousand little
+services by which he made himself agreeable. What gentleman could want
+a better friend than a man who was always in spirits, never in the way
+or out of it, and was ready to execute any commission for his patron,
+whether it was to sing a song or meet a lawyer, to fight a duel or to
+carve a capon?
+
+Although Laura and Pen commonly went to Clavering Park together, yet
+sometimes Mr. Pen took walks there unattended by her, and about which
+he did not tell her. He took to fishing the Brawl, which runs through
+the Park, and passes not very far from the garden-wall. And by the
+oddest coincidence, Miss Amory would walk out (having been to look at
+her flowers), and would be quite surprised to see Mr. Pendennis
+fishing.
+
+I wonder what trout Pen caught while the young lady was looking on? or
+whether Miss Blanche was the pretty little fish which played round his
+fly, and which Mr. Pen was endeavouring to hook? It must be owned, he
+became very fond of that healthful and invigorating pursuit of angling,
+and was whipping the Brawl continually with his fly.
+
+As for Miss Blanche she had a kind heart; and having, as she owned,
+herself “suffered” a good deal in the course of her brief life and
+experience—why, she could compassionate other susceptible beings like
+Pen, who had suffered too. Her love for Laura and that dear Mrs.
+Pendennis redoubled: if they were not at the Park, she was not easy
+unless she herself was at Fairoaks. She played with Laura; she read
+French and German with Laura; and Mr. Pen read French and German along
+with them. He turned sentimental ballads of Schiller and Goethe into
+English verse for the ladies, and Blanche unlocked ‘Mes Larmes’ for
+him, and imparted to him some of the plaintive outpourings of her own
+tender Muse.
+
+It appeared from these poems that this young creature had indeed
+suffered prodigiously. She was familiar with the idea of suicide. Death
+she repeatedly longed for. A faded rose inspired her with such grief
+that you would have thought she must die in pain of it. It was a wonder
+how a young creature (who had had a snug home or been at a comfortable
+boarding-school, and had no outward grief or hardship to complain of)
+should have suffered so much—should have found the means of getting at
+such an ocean of despair and passion (as a runaway boy who will get to
+sea), and having embarked on it should survive it. What a talent she
+must have had for weeping to be able to pour out so many of Mes Larmes!
+
+They were not particularly briny, Miss Blanche’s tears, that is the
+truth; but Pen, who read her verses, thought them very well for a
+lady—and wrote some verses himself for her. His were very violent and
+passionate, very hot, sweet and strong: and he not only wrote verses;
+but—O the villain! O, the deceiver! he altered and adapted former poems
+in his possession, and which had been composed for a certain Emily
+Fotheringay, for the use and to the Christian name of Miss Blanche
+Amory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+A Little Innocent
+
+
+Every house has its skeleton in it somewhere, and it may be a comfort
+to some unhappy folks to think that the luckier and most wealthy of
+their neighbours have their miseries and causes of disquiet. Our little
+innocent Muse of Blanche, who sang so nicely and talked so sweetly, you
+would have thought she must have made sunshine where ever she went, was
+the skeleton, or the misery, or the bore, or the Nemesis of Clavering
+House, and of most of the inhabitants thereof. As one little stone in
+your own shoe or your horse’s, suffices to put either to torture and to
+make your journey miserable, so in life a little obstacle is sufficient
+to obstruct your entire progress, and subject you to endless annoyance
+and disquiet. Who would have guessed that such a smiling little fairy
+as Blanche Amory could be the cause of discord in any family?
+
+“I say, Strong,” one day the Baronet said, as the pair were conversing
+after dinner over the billiard-table, and that great unbosomer of
+secrets, a cigar; “I say, Strong, I wish to the doose your wife was
+dead.”
+
+“So do I. That’s a cannon, by Jove. But she won’t; she’ll live for
+ever—you see if she don’t. Why do you wish her off the hooks, Frank, my
+boy?” asked Captain Strong.
+
+“Because then you might marry Missy. She ain’t bad-looking. She’ll have
+ten thousand, and that’s a good bit of money for such a poor old devil
+as you,” drawled out the other gentleman.
+
+“And gad, Strong, I hate her worse and worse every day. I can’t stand
+her, Strong, by gad, I can’t.”
+
+“I wouldn’t take her at twice the figure,” Captain Strong said,
+laughing. “I never saw such a little devil in my life.”
+
+“I should like to poison her,” said the sententious Baronet; “by Jove I
+should.”
+
+“Why, what has she been at now?” asked his friend.
+
+“Nothing particular,” answered Sir Francis; “only her old tricks. That
+girl has such a knack of making everybody miserable that, hang me, it’s
+quite surprising. Last night she sent the governess crying away from
+the dinner-table. Afterwards, as I was passing Frank’s room, I heard
+the poor little beggar howling in the dark, and found his sister had
+been frightening his soul out of his body, by telling him stories about
+the ghost that’s in the house. At lunch she gave my lady a turn; and
+though my wife’s a fool, she’s a good soul—I’m hanged if she ain’t.”
+
+“What did Missy do to her?” Strong asked.
+
+“Why, hang me, if she didn’t begin talking about the late Amory, my
+predecessor,” the Baronet said, with a grin. “She got some picture out
+of the Keepsake, and said she was sure it was like her dear father, She
+wanted to know where her father’s grave was. Hang her father! Whenever
+Miss Amory talks about him, Lady Clavering always bursts out crying:
+and the little devil will talk about him in order to spite her mother.
+Today when she began, I got in a confounded rage; said I was her
+father; and—and that sort of thing, and then, sir, she took a shy at
+me.”
+
+“And what did she say about you, Frank?” Mr. Strong, still laughing,
+inquired of his friend and patron.
+
+“Gad, she said I wasn’t her father; that I wasn’t fit to comprehend
+her; that her father must have been a man of genius, and fine feelings,
+and that sort of thing: whereas I had married her mother for money.”
+
+“Well, didn’t you?” asked Strong.
+
+“It don’t make it any the pleasanter to hear because it’s true, don’t
+you know,” Sir Francis Clavering answered. “I ain’t a literary man and
+that; but I ain’t such a fool as she makes me out. I don’t know how it
+is, but she always manages to put me in the hole, don’t you understand.
+She turns all the house round her in her quiet way, and with her
+confounded sentimental airs. I wish she was dead, Ned.”
+
+“It was my wife whom you wanted dead just now,” Strong said, always in
+perfect good-humour; upon which the Baron with his accustomed candour,
+said, “Well; when people bore my life out, I do wish they were dead,
+and I wish Missy were down a well, with all my heart.”
+
+Thus it will be seen from the above report of this candid conversation
+that our accomplished little friend had some peculiarities or defects
+of character which rendered her not very popular. She was a young lady
+of some genius, exquisite sympathies and considerable literary
+attainments, living, like many another genius, with relatives who could
+not comprehend her. Neither her mother nor her stepfather were persons
+of a literary turn. Bell’s Life and the Racing Calendar were the extent
+of the Baronet’s reading, and Lady Clavering still wrote like a
+schoolgirl of thirteen, and with an extraordinary disregard to grammar
+and spelling. And as Miss Amory felt very keenly that she was not
+appreciated, and that she lived with persons who were not her equals in
+intellect or conversational power, she lost no opportunity to acquaint
+her family circle with their inferiority to herself, and not only was a
+martyr, but took care to let everybody know that she was so. If she
+suffered, as she said and thought she did, severely, are we to wonder
+that a young creature of such delicate sensibilities should shriek and
+cry out a good deal? Without sympathy life is nothing; and would it not
+have been a want of candour on her part to affect a cheerfulness which
+she did not feel, or pretend a respect for those towards whom it was
+quite impossible she should entertain any reverence? If a poetess may
+not bemoan her lot, of what earthly use is her lyre? Blanche struck
+hers only to the saddest of tunes; and sang elegies over her dead
+hopes, dirges over her early frost-nipt buds of affection, as became
+such a melancholy fate and Muse.
+
+Her actual distresses, as we have said, had not been up to the present
+time very considerable: but her griefs lay; like those of most of us,
+in her own soul—that being sad and habitually dissatisfied, what wonder
+that she should weep? So Mes Larmes dribbled out of her eyes any day at
+command: she could furnish an unlimited supply of tears, and her
+faculty of shedding them increased by practice. For sentiment is like
+another complaint mentioned by Horace, as increasing by self-indulgence
+(I am sorry to say, ladies, that the complaint in question is called
+the dropsy), and the more you cry, the more you will be able and
+desirous to do so.
+
+Missy had begun to gush at a very early age. Lamartine was her
+favourite bard from the period when she first could feel: and she had
+subsequently improved her mind by a sedulous study of novels of the
+great modern authors of the French language. There was not a romance of
+Balzac and George Sand which the indefatigable little creature had not
+devoured—by the time she was sixteen: and, however little she
+sympathised with her relatives at home, she had friends, as she said,
+in the spirit-world, meaning the tender Indiana, the passionate and
+poetic Lelia, the amiable Trenmor, that high-souled convict, that angel
+of the galleys,—the fiery Stenio,—and the other numberless heroes of
+the French romances. She had been in love with Prince Rodolph and
+Prince Djalma while she was yet at school, and had settled the divorce
+question, and the rights of woman, with Indiana, before she had left
+off pinafores. The impetuous little lady played at love with these
+imaginary worthies as a little while before she had played at maternity
+with her doll. Pretty little poetical spirits! It is curious to watch
+them with those playthings. To-day the blue-eyed one is the favourite,
+and the black-eyed one is pushed behind the drawers. To-morrow
+blue-eyes may take its turn of neglect and it may be an odious little
+wretch with a burnt nose, or torn bead of hair, and no eyes at all,
+that takes the first place in Miss’s affection, and is dandled and
+caressed in her arms.
+
+As novelists are supposed to know everything, even the secrets of
+female hearts, which the owners themselves do not perhaps know, we may
+state that at eleven years of age Mademoiselle Betsi, as Miss Amory was
+then called, had felt tender emotions towards a young Savoyard
+organ-grinder at Paris, whom she persisted in believing to be a prince
+carried off from his parents; that at twelve an old and hideous
+drawing-master (but, ah, what age or personal defects are proof against
+woman’s love?) had agitated her young heart; and that, at thirteen,
+being at Madame de Caramel’s boarding-school, in the Champs Elysees,
+which, as everybody knows, is next door to Monsieur Rogron’s (Chevalier
+of the Legion of Honour) pension for young gentlemen, a correspondence
+by letter took place between the seduisante Miss Betsi and two young
+gentlemen of the College of Charlemagne, who were pensioners of the
+Chevalier Rogron.
+
+In the above paragraph our young friend has been called by a Christian
+name different to that under which we were lately presented to her. The
+fact is, that Miss Amory, called Missy at home, had really at the first
+been christened Betsy—but assumed the name of Blanche of her own will
+and fantasy, and crowned herself with it; and the weapon which the
+Baronet, her stepfather, held in terror over her, was the threat to
+call her publicly by her name of Betsy, by which menace he sometimes
+managed to keep the young rebel in order.
+
+We have spoken just now of children’s dolls, and of the manner in which
+those little people take up and neglect their darling toys, and very
+likely this history will show that Miss Blanche assumed and put away
+her live dolls with a similar girlish inconstancy. She had had hosts of
+dear, dear, darling, friends ere now, and had quite a little museum of
+locks of hair in her treasure-chest, which she had gathered in the
+course of her sentimental progress. Some dear friends had married: some
+had gone to other schools: one beloved sister she had lost from the
+pension, and found again, O, horror! her darling, her Leocadie keeping
+the books in her father’s shop, a grocer in the Rue du Bac: in fact,
+she had met with a number of disappointments, estrangements,
+disillusionments, as she called them in her pretty French jargon, and
+had seen and suffered a great deal for so young a woman. But it is the
+lot of sensibility to suffer, and of confiding tenderness to be
+deceived, and she felt that she was only undergoing the penalties of
+genius in these pangs and disappointments of her young career.
+
+Meanwhile, she managed to make the honest lady, her mother, as
+uncomfortable as circumstances would permit; and caused her worthy
+stepfather to wish she was dead. With the exception of Captain Strong,
+whose invincible good-humour was proof against her sarcasms, the little
+lady ruled the whole house with her tongue. If Lady Clavering talked
+about Sparrowgrass instead of Asparagus, or called an object a hobject,
+as this unfortunate lady would sometimes do, Missy calmly corrected
+her, and frightened the good soul, her mother, into errors only the
+more frequent as she grew more nervous under her daughter’s eye.
+
+It is not to be supposed, considering the vast interest which the
+arrival of the family at Clavering Park inspired in the inhabitants of
+the little town, that Madame Fribsby alone, of all the folks in
+Clavering, should have remained unmoved and incurious. At the first
+appearance of the Park family in church, Madame noted every article of
+toilette which the ladies wore, from their bonnets to their brodequins,
+and took a survey of the attire of the ladies’ maids in the pew
+allotted to them. We fear that Doctor Portman’s sermon, though it was
+one of his oldest and most valued compositions, had little effect upon
+Madame Fribsby on that day.
+
+In a very few days afterwards, she had managed for herself an interview
+with Lady Clavering’s confidential attendant in the housekeeper’s room
+at the Park; and her cards in French and English, stating that she
+received the newest fashions from Paris from her correspondent Madame
+Victorine, and that she was in the custom of making court and ball
+dresses for the nobility and gentry of the shire, were in the
+possession of Lady Clavering and Miss Amory, and favourably received,
+as she was happy to hear, by those ladies.
+
+Mrs. Bonner, Lady Clavering’s lady, became soon a great frequenter of
+Madame Fribsby’s drawing-room, and partook of many entertainments at
+the milliner’s expense. A meal of green tea, scandal, hot Sally-Lunn
+cakes, and a little novel reading, were always at the service of Mrs.
+Bonner, whenever she was free to pass an evening in the town. And she
+found much more time for these pleasures than her junior officer, Miss
+Amory’s maid, who seldom could be spared for a holiday, and was worked
+as hard as any factory-girl by that inexorable little Muse, her
+mistress.
+
+The Muse loved to be dressed becomingly, and, having a lively fancy and
+a poetic desire for change, was for altering her attire every day. Her
+maid having a taste in dressmaking—to which art she had been an
+apprentice at Paris, before she entered into Miss Blanche’s service
+there—was kept from morning till night altering and remodelling Miss
+Amory’s habiliments; and rose very early and went to bed very late, in
+obedience to the untiring caprices of her little taskmistress. The girl
+was of respectable English parents. There are many of our people,
+colonists of Paris, who have seen better days, who are not quite
+ruined, who do not quite live upon charity, and yet cannot get on
+without it; and as her father was a cripple incapable of work, and her
+return home would only increase the burthen and add to the misery of
+the family, poor Pincott was fain to stay where she could maintain
+herself, and spare a little relief to her parents.
+
+Our Muse, with the candour which distinguished her, never failed to
+remind her attendant of the real state of matters. “I should send you
+away, Pincott, for you are a great deal too weak, and your eyes are
+failing you, and you are always crying and snivelling and wanting the
+doctor; but I wish that your parents at home should be supported, and I
+go on enduring you for their sake, mind,” the dear Blanche would say to
+her timid little attendant. Or, “Pincott, your wretched appearance and
+slavish manner, and red eyes, positively give me the migraine; and I
+think I shall make you wear rouge, so that you may look a little
+cheerful;” or, “Pincott, I can’t bear, even for the sake of your
+starving parents, that you should tear my hair out of my head in that
+manner; and I will thank you to write to them and say that I dispense
+with your services.” After which sort of speeches, and after keeping
+her for an hour trembling over her hair, which the young lady loved to
+have combed, as she perused one of her favourite French novels, she
+would go to bed at one o’clock, and say, “Pincott, you may kiss me.
+Good night. I should like you to have the pink dress ready for the
+morning.” And so with blessing upon her attendant, she would turn round
+and go to sleep.
+
+The Muse might lie in bed as long as she chose of a morning, and
+availed herself of that privilege; but Pincott had to rise very early
+indeed to get her mistress’s task done; and had to appear next day with
+the same red eyes and the same wan face, which displeased Miss Amory by
+their want of gaiety, and caused the mistress to be so angry, because
+the servant persisted in being and looking unwell and unhappy. Not that
+Blanche ever thought she was a hard mistress. Indeed, she made quite a
+friend of Pincott, at times, and wrote some very pretty verses about
+the lonely little tiring-maid, whose heart was far away. Our beloved
+Blanche was a superior being, and expected to be waited upon as such.
+And I do not know whether there are any other ladies in this world who
+treat their servants or dependants so, but it may be that there are
+such, and that the tyranny which they exercise over their subordinates,
+and the pangs which they can manage to inflict with a soft voice, and a
+well-bred simper, are as cruel as those which a slave-driver
+administers with an oath and a whip.
+
+But Blanche was a Muse—a delicate little creature, quite tremulous with
+excitability, whose eyes filled with tears at the smallest emotion; and
+who knows, but that it was the very fineness of her feelings which
+caused them to be froissed so easily? You crush a butterfly by merely
+touching it. Vulgar people have no idea of the sensibility of a Muse.
+
+So little Pincott being occupied all day and night in stitching,
+hemming, ripping, combing, ironing, crimping, for her mistress; reading
+to her when in bed,—for the girl was mistress of the two languages, and
+had a sweet voice and manner—could take no share in Madame Fribsby’s
+soirees, nor indeed was she much missed, or considered of sufficient
+consequence to appear at their entertainments.
+
+But there was another person connected with the Clavering
+establishment, who became a constant guest of our friend, the milliner.
+This was the chief of the kitchen, Monsieur Mirobolant, with whom
+Madame Fribsby soon formed an intimacy.
+
+Not having been accustomed to the appearance or society of persons of
+the French nation, the rustic inhabitants of Clavering were not so
+favourably impressed by Monsieur Alcide’s manners and appearance, as
+that gentleman might have desired that they should be. He walked among
+them quite unsuspiciously upon the afternoon of a summer day, when his
+services were not required at the House, in his usual favourite
+costume, namely, his light green frock or paletot, his crimson velvet
+waistcoat, with blue glass buttons, his pantalon Ecossais, of a very
+large and decided check pattern, his orange satin neckcloth, and his
+jean-boots, with tips of shiny leather,—these, with a gold-embroidered
+cap, and a richly gilt cane, or other varieties of ornament of a
+similar tendency, formed his usual holiday costume, in which he
+flattered himself there was nothing remarkable (unless, indeed, the
+beauty of his person should attract observation), and in which he
+considered that he exhibited the appearance of a gentleman of good
+Parisian ton.
+
+He walked then down the street, grinning and ogling every woman he met
+with glances, which he meant should kill them outright, and peered over
+the railings, and in at the windows, where females were, in the
+tranquil summer evening. But Betsy, Mrs. Pybus’s maid, shrank back with
+a Lor bless us, as Alcide ogled her over the laurel-bush; the Miss
+Bakers, and their mamma, stared with wonder; and presently a crowd
+began to follow the interesting foreigner, of ragged urchins and
+children, who left their dirt-pies in the street to pursue him.
+
+For some time he thought that admiration was the cause which led these
+persons in his wake, and walked on, pleased himself that he could so
+easily confer on others so much harmless pleasure. But the little
+children and dirt-pie manufacturers were presently succeeded by
+followers of a larger growth, and a number of lads and girls from the
+factory being let loose at this hour, joined the mob, and began
+laughing, jeering, hooting, and calling opprobrious names at the
+Frenchman. Some cried out “Frenchy! Frenchy!” some exclaimed “Frogs!”
+one asked for a lock of his hair, which was long and in richly-flowing
+ringlets; and at length the poor artist began to perceive that he was
+an object of derision rather than of respect to the rude grinning mob.
+
+It was at this juncture that Madame Fribsby spied the unlucky gentleman
+with the train at his heels, and heard the scornful shouts with which
+they assailed him. She ran out of her room, and across the street to
+the persecuted foreigner; she held out her hand, and, addressing him in
+his own language, invited him into her abode; and when she had housed
+him fairly within her door, she stood bravely at the threshold before
+the gibing factory girls and boys, and said they were a pack of cowards
+to insult a poor man who could not speak their language, and was alone
+and without protection. The little crowd, with some ironical cheers and
+hootings, nevertheless felt the force of Madame Fribsby’s vigorous
+allocution, and retreated before her; for the old lady was rather
+respected in the place, and her oddity and her kindness had made her
+many friends there.
+
+Poor Mirobolant was grateful indeed to hear the language of his country
+ever so ill spoken. Frenchmen pardon our faults in their language much
+more readily than we excuse their bad English; and will face our
+blunders throughout a long conversation, without the least propensity
+to grin. The rescued artist vowed that Madame Fribsby was his guardian
+angel, and that he had not as yet met with such suavity and politeness
+among les Anglaises. He was as courteous and complimentary to her as if
+it was the fairest and noblest of ladies whom he was addressing: for
+Alcide Mirobolant paid homage after his fashion to all womankind, and
+never dreamed of a distinction of ranks in the realms of beauty, as his
+phrase was.
+
+A cream, flavoured with pineapple—a mayonnaise of lobster, which he
+flattered himself was not unworthy of his hand, or of her to whom he
+had the honour to offer it as an homage, and a box of preserved fruits
+of Provence, were brought by one of the chef’s aides-de-camp, in a
+basket, the next day to the milliner’s, and were accompanied with a
+gallant note to the amiable Madame Fribsbi. “Her kindness,” Alcide
+said, “had made a green place in the desert of his existence,—her
+suavity would ever contrast in memory with the grossierete of the
+rustic population, who were not worthy to possess such a jewel.” An
+intimacy of the most confidential nature thus sprang up between the
+milliner and the chief of the kitchen; but I do not know whether it was
+with pleasure or mortification that Madame received the declarations of
+friendship which the young Alcides proffered to her, for he persisted
+in calling her “La respectable Fribsbi,” “La vertueuse Fribsbi,”—and in
+stating that he should consider her as his mother, while he hoped she
+would regard him as her son. Ah! it was not very long ago, Fribsby
+thought, that words had been addressed to her in that dear French
+language, indicating a different sort of attachment. And she sighed as
+she looked up at the picture of her Carabineer. For it is surprising
+how young some people’s hearts remain when their heads have need of a
+front or a little hair-dye,—and, at this moment, Madame Fribsby, as she
+told young Alcide, felt as romantic as a girl of eighteen.
+
+When the conversation took this turn—and at their first intimacy Madame
+Fribsby was rather inclined so to lead it—Alcide always politely
+diverged to another subject: it was as his mother that he persisted in
+considering the good milliner. He would recognise her in no other
+capacity, and with that relationship the gentle lady was forced to
+content herself, when she found how deeply the artist’s heart was
+engaged elsewhere.
+
+He was not long before he described to her the subject and origin of
+his passion.
+
+“I declared myself to her,” said Alcide, laying his hand on his heart,
+“in a manner which was as novel as I am charmed to think it was
+agreeable. Where cannot Love penetrate, respectable Madame Fribsbi?
+Cupid is the father of invention!—I inquired of the domestics what were
+the plats of which Mademoiselle partook with most pleasure; and built
+up my little battery accordingly. On a day when her parents had gone to
+dine in the world (and I am grieved to say that a grossier dinner at a
+restaurateur, in the Boulevard, or in the Palais Royal seemed to form
+the delights of these unrefined persons), the charming Miss entertained
+some comrades of the pension; and I advised myself to send up a little
+repast suitable to so delicate young palates. Her lovely name is
+Blanche. The name of the maiden is white; the wreath of roses which she
+wears is white. I determined that my dinner should be as spotless as
+the snow. At her accustomed hour, and instead of the rude gigot a
+l’eau, which was ordinarily served at her too simple table, I sent her
+up a little potage a la Reine—a la Reine Blanche I called it,—as white
+as her own tint—and confectioned with the most fragrant cream and
+almonds. I then offered up at her shrine a filet de merlan à l’Agnes,
+and a delicate plat which I designated as Eperlan a la Sainte-Therese,
+and of which my charming Miss partook with pleasure. I followed this by
+two little entrees of sweetbread and chicken; and the only brown thing
+which I permitted myself in the entertainment was a little roast of
+lamb, which I lay in a meadow of spinaches, surrounded with
+croustillons, representing sheep, and ornamented with daisies and other
+savage flowers. After this came my second service: a pudding a la Reine
+Elizabeth (who, Madame Fribsbi knows, was a maiden princess); a dish of
+opal-coloured plover’s eggs which I called Nid de tourtereaux a la
+Roucoule; placing in the midst of them two of those tender volatiles,
+billing each other, and confectioned with butter; a basket containing
+little gateaux of apricots, which, I know, all young ladies adore; and
+a jelly of marasquin, bland insinuating, intoxicating as the glance of
+beauty. This I designated Ambroisie de Calypso a la Souveraine de mon
+Coeur. And when the ice was brought in—an ice of plombiere and
+cherries—how do you think I had shaped them, Madame Fribsbi? In the
+form of two hearts united with an arrow, on which I had laid, before it
+entered, a bridal veil in cut-paper, surmounted by a wreath of virginal
+orange-flowers. I stood at the door to watch the effect of this entry.
+It was but one cry of admiration. The three young ladies filled their
+glasses with the sparkling Ay, and carried me in a toast. I heard it—I
+heard Miss speak of me—I heard her say, ‘Tell Monsieur Mirobolant that
+we thank him—we admire him—we love him!’ My feet almost failed me as
+she spoke.
+
+“Since that, can I have any reason to doubt that the young artist has
+made some progress in the heart of the English Miss? I am modest, but
+my glass informs me that I am not ill-looking. Other victories have
+convinced me of the fact.”
+
+“Dangerous man!” cried the milliner.
+
+“The blond misses of Albion see nothing in the dull inhabitants of
+their brumous isle, which can compare with the ardour and vivacity of
+the children of the South. We bring our sunshine with us; we are
+Frenchmen, and accustomed to conquer. Were it not for this affair of
+the heart, and my determination to marry an Anglaise, do you think I
+would stop in this island (which is not altogether ungrateful, since I
+have found here a tender mother in the respectable Madame Fribsbi), in
+this island, in this family? My genius would use itself in the company
+of these rustics—the poesy of my art cannot be understood by these
+carnivorous insularies. No—the men are odious, but the women—the women!
+I own, dear Fribsbi, are seducing! I have vowed to marry one; and as I
+cannot go into your markets and purchase, according to the custom of
+the country, I am resolved to adopt another custom, and fly with one to
+Gretna Grin. The blonde Miss will go. She is fascinated. Her eyes have
+told me so. The white dove wants but the signal to fly.”
+
+“Have you any correspondence with her?” asked Fribsby, in amazement,
+and not knowing whether the young lady or the lover might be labouring
+under a romantic delusion.
+
+“I correspond with her by means of my art. She partakes of dishes which
+I make expressly for her. I insinuate to her thus a thousand hints
+which as she is perfectly spiritual, she receives. But I want other
+intelligences near her.”
+
+“There is Pincott, her maid,” said Madame Fribsby, who, by aptitude or
+education, seemed to have some knowledge of affairs of the heart, but
+the great artist’s brow darkened at this suggestion.
+
+“Madame,” he said, “there are points upon which a gallant man ought to
+silence himself; though, if he break the secret, he may do so with the
+least impropriety to his best friend—his adopted mother. Know then,
+that there is a cause why Miss Pincott should be hostile to me—a cause
+not uncommon with your sex—jealousy.”
+
+“Perfidious monster!” said the confidante.
+
+“Ah, no,” said the artist, with a deep bass voice, and a tragic accent
+worthy of the Port St Martin and his favourite melodrames, “not
+perfidious, but fatal. Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To
+inspire hopeless passion is my destiny. I cannot help it that women
+love me. Is it my fault that that young woman deperishes and languishes
+to the view of the eye, consumed by a flame which I cannot return?
+Listen! There are others in this family who are similarly unhappy. The
+governess of the young Milor has encountered me in my walks, and looked
+at me in a way which can bear but one interpretation. And Milady
+herself, who is of mature age, but who has oriental blood, has once or
+twice addressed compliments to the lonely artist which can admit of no
+mistake. I avoid the household, I seek solitude, I undergo my destiny.
+I can marry but one, and am resolved it shall be to a lady of your
+nation. And, if her fortune is sufficient I think Miss would be the
+person who would be most suitable. I wish to ascertain what her means
+are before I lead her to Gretna Grin.”
+
+Whether Alcides was as irresistible a conqueror as his namesake, or
+whether he was simply crazy, is a point which must be left to the
+reader’s judgment. But the latter if he had had the benefit of much
+French acquaintance, has perhaps met with men amongst them who fancied
+themselves almost as invincible; and who, if you credit them, have made
+equal havoc in the hearts of les Anglaises.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+Contains both Love and Jealousy
+
+
+Our readers have already heard Sir Francis Clavering’s candid opinion
+of the lady who had given him her fortune and restored him to his
+native country and home, and it must be owned that the Baronet was not
+far wrong in his estimate of his wife, and that Lady Clavering was not
+the wisest or the best educated of women. She had had a couple of
+years’ education in Europe, in a suburb of London, which she persisted
+in calling Ackney to her dying day, whence she had been summoned to
+join her father at Calcutta at the age of fifteen. And it was on her
+voyage thither, on board the Ramchunder East Indiaman, Captain Bragg,
+in which ship she had two years previously made her journey to Europe,
+that she formed the acquaintance of her first husband, Mr. Amory, who
+was third mate of the vessel in question.
+
+We are not going to enter into the early part of Lady Clavering’s
+history, but Captain Bragg, under whose charge Miss Snell went out to
+her father, who was one of the Captain’s consignees, and part owner of
+the Ramchunder and many other vessels, found reason to put the
+rebellious rascal of a mate in irons, until they reached the Cape,
+where the Captain left his officer behind; and finally delivered his
+ward to her father at Calcutta, after a stormy and perilous voyage in
+which the Ramchunder and the cargo and passengers incurred no small
+danger and damage.
+
+Some months afterwards Amory made his appearance at Calcutta, having
+worked his way out before the mast from the Cape—married the rich
+Attorney’s daughter in spite of that old speculator—set up as
+indigo-planter and failed—set up as agent and failed again—set up as
+editor of the Sunderbund Pilot and failed again—quarrelling ceaselessly
+with his father-in-law and his wife during the progress of all these
+mercantile transactions and disasters, and ending his career finally
+with a crash which compelled him to leave Calcutta and go to New South
+Wales. It was in the course of these luckless proceedings, that Mr.
+Amory probably made the acquaintance of Sir Jasper Rogers, the
+respected Judge of the Supreme Court of Calcutta, who has been
+mentioned before: and, as the truth must out, it was by making an
+improper use of his father-in-law’s name, who could write perfectly
+well, and had no need of an amanuensis, that fortune finally forsook
+Mr. Amory and caused him to abandon all further struggles with her.
+
+Not being in the habit of reading the Calcutta law-reports very
+assiduously, the European public did not know of these facts as well as
+people did in Bengal, and Mrs. Amory and her father finding her
+residence in India not a comfortable one, it was agreed that the lady
+should return to Europe, whither she came with her little daughter
+Betsy or Blanche, then four years old. They were accompanied by Betsy’s
+nurse, who has been presented to the reader in the last chapter as the
+confidential maid of Lady Clavering, Mrs. Bonner: and Captain Bragg
+took a house for them in the near neighbourhood of his residence in
+Pocklington Street.
+
+It was a very hard bitter summer, and the rain it rained every day for
+some time after Mrs. Amory’s arrival. Bragg was very pompous and
+disagreeable, perhaps ashamed, perhaps anxious, to get rid of the
+Indian lady. She believed that all the world in London was talking
+about her husband’s disaster, and that the King and Queen and the Court
+of Directors were aware of her unlucky history. She had a good
+allowance from her father; she had no call to live in England; and she
+determined to go abroad. Away she went, then, glad to escape the gloomy
+surveillance of the odious bully, Captain Bragg. People had no
+objection to receive her at the continental towns where she stopped,
+and at the various boarding-houses, where she royally paid her way. She
+called Hackney Ackney, to be sure (though otherwise she spoke English
+with a little foreign twang, very curious and not unpleasant); she
+dressed amazingly; she was conspicuous for her love of eating and
+drinking, and prepared curries and pillaws at every boarding-house
+which she frequented; but her singularities of language and behaviour
+only gave a zest to her society, and Mrs. Amory was deservedly popular.
+She was the most good-natured, jovial, and generous of women. She was
+up to any party of pleasure by whomsoever proposed. She brought three
+times more champagne and fowl and ham to the picnics than anyone else.
+She took endless boxes for the play, and tickets for the masked balls,
+and gave them away to everybody. She paid the boarding-house people
+months beforehand; she helped poor shabby mustachiod bucks and dowagers
+whose remittances had not arrived, with constant supplies from her
+purse; and in this way she tramped through Europe, and appeared at
+Brussels, at Paris, at Milan, at Naples, at Rome, as her fancy led her.
+News of Amory’s death reached her at the latter place, where Captain
+Clavering was then staying, unable to pay his hotel bill, as, indeed,
+was his friend, the Chevalier Strong; and the good-natured widow
+married the descendant of the ancient house of Clavering—professing,
+indeed, no particular grief for the scapegrace of a husband whom she
+had lost. We have brought her thus up to the present time when she was
+mistress of Clavering Park, in the midst of which Mr. Pinckney, the
+celebrated painter, pourtrayed her with her little boy by her side.
+
+Missy followed her mamma in most of her peregrinations, and so learned
+a deal of life. She had a governess for some time; and after her
+mother’s second marriage, the benefit of Madame de Caramel’s select
+pension in the Champs Elysees. When the Claverings came to England, she
+of course came with them. It was only within a few years, after the
+death of her grandfather, and the birth of her little brother, that she
+began to understand that her position in life was altered, and that
+Miss Amory, nobody’s daughter, was a very small personage in a house
+compared with Master Francis Clavering, heir to an ancient baronetcy
+and a noble estate. But for little Frank, she would have been an
+heiress, in spite of her father: and though she knew, and cared not
+much about money, of which she never had any stint, and though she was
+a romantic little Muse, as we have seen, yet she could not reasonably
+be grateful to the persons who had so contributed to change her
+condition: nor, indeed, did she understand what the latter really was,
+until she had made some further progress, and acquired more accurate
+knowledge in the world.
+
+But this was clear, that her stepfather was dull and weak: that mamma
+dropped her H’s, and was not refined in manners or appearance; and that
+little Frank was a spoiled quarrelsome urchin, always having his way,
+always treading upon her feet, always upsetting his dinner on her
+dresses, and keeping her out of her inheritance. None of these, as she
+felt, could comprehend her: and her solitary heart naturally pined for
+other attachments, and she sought around her where to bestow the
+precious boon of her unoccupied affection.
+
+This dear girl, then, from want of sympathy, or other cause, made
+herself so disagreeable at home, and frightened her mother and bored
+her stepfather so much, that they were quite as anxious as she could be
+that she should settle for herself in life; and hence Sir Francis
+Clavering’s desire expressed to his friend, in the last chapter, that
+Mrs. Strong should die, and that he would take Blanche to himself as a
+second Mrs. Strong.
+
+But as this could not be, any other person was welcome to win her: and
+a smart young fellow, well-looking and well educated like our friend
+Arthur Pendennis, was quite free to propose for her if he had a mind,
+and would have been received with open arms by Lady Clavering as a
+son-in-law, had he had the courage to come forward as a competitor for
+Miss Amory’s hand.
+
+Mr. Pen, however, besides other drawbacks, chose to entertain an
+extreme diffidence about himself. He was ashamed of his late failures,
+of his idle and nameless condition, of the poverty which he had brought
+on his mother by his folly, and there was as much of vanity as remorse
+in his present state of doubt and distrust. How could he ever hope for
+such a prize as this brilliant Blanche Amory, who lived in a fine park
+and mansion, and was waited on by a score of grand domestics, whilst a
+maid-servant brought in their meagre meal at Fairoaks, and his mother
+was obliged to pinch and manage to make both ends meet? Obstacles
+seemed for him insurmountable, which would have vanished had he marched
+manfully upon them: and he preferred despairing, or dallying with his
+wishes,—or perhaps he had not positively shaped them as yet,—to
+attempting to win gallantly the object of his desire. Many a young man
+fails by that species of vanity called shyness, who might, for the
+asking have his will.
+
+But we do not pretend to say that Pen had, as yet, ascertained his: or
+that he was doing much more than thinking about falling in love. Miss
+Amory was charming and lively. She fascinated and cajoled him by a
+thousand arts or natural graces or flatteries. But there were lurking
+reasons and doubts, besides shyness and vanity, withholding him. In
+spite of her cleverness, and her protestations, and her fascinations,
+Pen’s mother had divined the girl, and did not trust her. Mrs.
+Pendennis saw Blanche light-minded and frivolous, detected many wants
+in her which offended the pure and pious-minded lady; a want of
+reverence for her parents, and for things more sacred, Helen thought:
+worldliness and selfishness couched under pretty words and tender
+expressions. Laura and Pen battled these points strongly at first with
+the widow—Laura being as yet enthusiastic about her new friend, and Pen
+not far-gone enough in love to attempt any concealment of his feelings.
+He would laugh at these objections of Helen’s, and say, “Psha, mother!
+you are jealous about Laura—all women are jealous.”
+
+But when, in the course of a month or two, and by watching the pair
+with that anxiety with which brooding women watch over their sons’
+affections—and in acknowledging which, I have no doubt there is a
+sexual jealousy on the mother’s part, and a secret pang—when Helen saw
+that the intimacy appeared to make progress, that the two young people
+were perpetually finding pretexts to meet, and that Miss Blanche was at
+Fairoaks or Mr. Pen at the Park every day, the poor widow’s heart began
+to fail her—her darling project seemed to vanish before her; and,
+giving way to her weakness, she fairly told Pen one day what her views
+and longings were; that she felt herself breaking, and not long for
+this world, and that she hoped and prayed before she went, that she
+might see her two children one. The late events, Pen’s life and career
+and former passion for the actress, had broken the spirit of this
+tender lady. She felt that he had escaped her, and was in the maternal
+nest no more; and she clung with a sickening fondness to Laura, Laura
+who had been left to her by Francis in Heaven.
+
+Pen kissed and soothed her in his grand patronising way. He had seen
+something of this, he had long thought his mother wanted to make this
+marriage—did Laura know anything of it? (Not she,—Mrs. Pendennis
+said—not for worlds would she have breathed a word of it to
+Laura)—“Well, well, there was time enough, his mother wouldn’t die,”
+Pen said, laughingly: “he wouldn’t hear of any such thing, and as for
+the Muse, she is too grand a lady to think about poor little me—and as
+for Laura, who knows that she would have me? She would do anything you
+told her, to be sure. But am I worthy of her?”
+
+“O, Pen, you might be,” was the widow’s reply; not that Mr. Pen ever
+doubted that he was; and a feeling of indefinable pleasure and
+self-complacency came over him as he thought over this proposal, and
+imaged Laura to himself, as his memory remembered her for years past,
+always fair and open, kindly and pious, cheerful, tender and true. He
+looked at her with brightening eyes as she came in from the garden at
+the end of this talk, her cheeks rather flushed, her looks frank and
+smiling—a basket of roses in her hand.
+
+She took the finest of them and brought it to Mrs. Pendennis, who was
+refreshed by the odour and colour of these flowers; and hung over her
+fondly and gave it to her.
+
+“And I might have this prize for the asking!” Pen thought with a thrill
+of triumph, as he looked at the kindly girl. “Why, she is as beautiful
+and as generous as her roses.” The image of the two women remained for
+ever after in his mind, and he never recalled it but the tears came
+into his eyes.
+
+Before very many weeks’ intimacy with her new acquaintance, however,
+Miss Laura was obliged to give in to Helen’s opinion, and own that the
+Muse was selfish, unkind, and inconstant. Of course Blanche confided to
+her bosom friend all the little griefs and domestic annoyances; how the
+family could not comprehend her and she moved among them an isolated
+being; how her poor mamma’s education had been neglected, and she was
+forced to blush for her blunders; how Sir Francis was a weak person
+deplorably unintellectual, and only happy when smoking his odious
+cigars; how, since the birth of her little brother, she had seen her
+mother’s precious affection, which she valued more than anything in
+life, estranged from her once darling daughter; how she was alone,
+alone, alone in the world.
+
+But these griefs, real and heart-rending though they might be to a
+young lady of exquisite sensibility, did not convince Laura of the
+propriety of Blanche’s conduct in many small incidents of life. Little
+Frank, for instance, might be very provoking, and might have deprived
+Blanche of her mamma’s affection, but this was no reason why Blanche
+should box the child’s ears because he upset a glass of water over her
+drawing, and why she should call him many opprobrious names in the
+English and French language; and the preference accorded to little
+Frank was certainly no reason why Blanche should give herself imperial
+airs of command towards the boy’s governess, and send that young lady
+upon messages through the house to bring her book or to fetch her
+pocket-handkerchief. When a domestic performed an errand for honest
+Laura, she was always thankful and pleased; whereas she could not but
+perceive that the little Muse had not the slightest scruple in giving
+her commands to all the world round about her, and in disturbing
+anybody’s ease or comfort, in order to administer to her own. It was
+Laura’s first experience in friendship; and it pained the kind
+creature’s heart to be obliged to give up as delusions, one by one,
+those charms and brilliant qualities in which her fancy had dressed her
+new friend, and to find that the fascinating little fairy was but a
+mortal, and not a very amiable mortal after all. What generous person
+is there that has not been so deceived in his time?—what person,
+perhaps, that has not so disappointed others in his turn?
+
+After the scene with little Frank, in which that refractory son and
+heir of the house of Clavering had received the compliments in French
+and English, and the accompanying box on the ear from his sister, Miss
+Laura who had plenty of humour, could not help calling to mind some
+very touching and tender verses which the Muse had read to her out of
+Mes Larmes, and which began, “My pretty baby brother, may angels guard
+thy rest,” in which the Muse, after complimenting the baby upon the
+station in life which it was about to occupy, and contrasting it with
+her own lonely condition, vowed nevertheless that the angel boy would
+never enjoy such affection as hers was, or find in the false world
+before him anything so constant and tender as a sister’s heart. “It may
+be,” the forlorn one said, “it may be, you will slight it, my pretty
+baby sweet, You will spurn me from your bosom, I’ll cling around your
+feet! O let me, let me, love you! the world will prove to you As false
+as ’tis to others, but I am ever true.” And behold the Muse was boxing
+the darling brother’s ears instead of kneeling at his feet, and giving
+Miss Laura her first lesson in the Cynical philosophy—not quite her
+first, however,—something like this selfishness and waywardness,
+something like this contrast between practice and poetry, between grand
+versified aspirations and everyday life, she had witnessed at home in
+the person of our young friend Mr. Pen.
+
+But then Pen was different. Pen was a man. It seemed natural somehow
+that he should be self-willed and should have his own way. And under
+his waywardness and selfishness, indeed there was a kind and generous
+heart. O it was hard that such a diamond should be changed away against
+such a false stone as this. In a word, Laura began to be tired of her
+admired Blanche. She had assayed her and found her not true; and her
+former admiration and delight, which she had expressed with her
+accustomed generous artlessness, gave way to a feeling, which we shall
+not call contempt, but which was very near it; and which caused Laura
+to adopt towards Miss Amory a grave and tranquil tone of superiority,
+which was at first by no means to the Muse’s liking. Nobody likes to be
+found out, or, having held a high place, to submit to step down.
+
+The consciousness that this event was impending did not serve to
+increase Miss Blanche’s good-humour, and as it made her peevish and
+dissatisfied with herself, it probably rendered her even less agreeable
+to the persons round about her. So there arose, one fatal day, a
+battle-royal between dearest Blanche and dearest Laura, in which the
+friendship between them was all but slain outright. Dearest Blanche had
+been unusually capricious and wicked on this day. She had been insolent
+to her mother; savage with little Frank; odiously impertinent in her
+behaviour to the boy’s governess; and intolerably cruel to Pincott, her
+attendant. Not venturing to attack her friend (for the little tyrant
+was of a timid feline nature, and only used her claws upon those who
+were weaker than herself), she maltreated all these, and especially
+poor Pincott, who was menial, confidante, companion (slave always),
+according to the caprice of her young mistress.
+
+This girl, who had been sitting in the room with the young ladies,
+being driven thence in tears, occasioned by the cruelty of her
+mistress, and raked with a parting sarcasm as she went sobbing from the
+door, Laura fairly broke out into a loud and indignant
+invective—wondered how one so young could forget the deference owing to
+her elders as well as to her inferiors in station; and professing so
+much sensibility of her own, could torture the feelings of others so
+wantonly. Laura told her friend that her conduct was absolutely wicked,
+and that she ought to ask pardon of Heaven on her knees for it. And
+having delivered herself of a hot and voluble speech whereof the
+delivery astonished the speaker as much almost as her auditor, she ran
+to her bonnet and shawl, and went home across the park in a great
+flurry and perturbation, and to the surprise of Mrs. Pendennis, who had
+not expected her until night.
+
+Alone with Helen, Laura gave an account of the scene, and gave up her
+friend henceforth. “O Mamma,” she said, “you were right; Blanche, who
+seems so soft and so kind, is, as you have said, selfish and cruel. She
+who is always speaking of her affections can have no heart. No honest
+girl would afflict a mother so, or torture a dependant; and—and, I give
+her up from this day, and I will have no other friend but you.”
+
+On this the two ladies went through the osculatory ceremony which they
+were in the habit of performing, and Mrs. Pendennis got a great secret
+comfort from the little quarrel—for Laura’s confession seemed to say,
+“That girl can never be a wife for Pen, for she is light-minded and
+heartless, and quite unworthy of our noble hero. He will be sure to
+find out her unworthiness for his own part, and then he will be saved
+from this flighty creature, and awake out of his delusion.”
+
+But Miss Laura did not tell Mrs. Pendennis, perhaps did not acknowledge
+to herself, what had been the real cause of the day’s quarrel. Being in
+a very wicked mood, and bent upon mischief everywhere, the little
+wicked Muse of a Blanche had very soon begun her tricks. Her darling
+Laura had come to pass a long day; and as they were sitting in her own
+room together, had chosen to bring the conversation round to the
+subject of Mr. Pen.
+
+“I am afraid he is sadly fickle,” Miss Blanche observed; “Mrs. Pybus,
+and many more Clavering people, have told us all about the actress.”
+
+“I was quite a child when it happened, and I don’t know anything about
+it,” Laura answered, blushing very much.
+
+“He used her very ill,” Blanche said, wagging her little head. “He was
+false to her.”
+
+“I am sure he was not,” Laura cried out; “he acted most generously by
+her; he wanted to give up everything to marry her. It was she that was
+false to him. He nearly broke his heart about it: he——”
+
+“I thought you didn’t know anything about the story, dearest,”
+interposed Miss Blanche.
+
+“Mamma has said so,” said Laura.
+
+“Well, he is very clever,” continued the other little dear, “What a
+sweet poet he is! Have you ever read his poems?”
+
+“Only the ‘Fisherman and the Diver,’ which he translated for us, and
+his Prize Poem, which didn’t get the prize; and, indeed, I thought it
+very pompous and prosy,” Laura said, laughing.
+
+“Has he never written you any poems, then, love?” asked Miss Amory.
+
+“No, my dear,” said Miss Bell.
+
+Blanche ran up to her friend, kissed her fondly, called her my dearest
+Laura at least three times, looked her archly in the face, nodded her
+head, and said, “Promise to tell no-o-body, and I will show you
+something.”
+
+And tripping across the room daintily to a little mother-of-pearl
+inlaid desk, she opened it with a silver key, and took out two or three
+papers crumpled and rather stained with green, which she submitted to
+her friend. Laura took them and read them. They were love-verses sure
+enough—something about Undine—about a Naiad—about a river. She looked
+at them for a long time; but in truth the lines were not very distinct
+before her eyes.
+
+“And you have answered them, Blanche?” she asked, putting them back.
+
+“O no! not for worlds, dearest,” the other said: and when her dearest
+Laura had quite done with the verses, she tripped back and popped them
+again into the pretty desk.
+
+Then she went to her piano, and sang two or three songs of Rossini,
+whose flourishes of music her flexible little voice could execute to
+perfection, and Laura sate by, vaguely listening as she performed these
+pieces. What was Miss Bell thinking about the while? She hardly knew;
+but sate there silent as the songs rolled by. After this concert the
+young ladies were summoned to the room where luncheon was served; and
+whither they of course went with their arms round each other’s waists.
+
+And it could not have been jealousy or anger on Laura’s part which had
+made her silent; for, after they had tripped along the corridor and
+descended the steps, and were about to open the door which leads into
+the hall, Laura paused, and looking her friend kindly and frankly in
+the face, kissed her with a sisterly warmth.
+
+Something occurred after this—Master Frank’s manner of eating,
+probably, or mamma’s blunders, or Sir Francis smelling of cigars—which
+vexed Miss Blanche, and she gave way to that series of naughtinesses
+whereof we have spoken, and which ended in the above little quarrel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+A House full of Visitors
+
+
+The difference between the girls did not last long. Laura was always
+too eager to forgive and be forgiven, and as for Miss Blanche, her
+hostilities, never very long or durable, had not been provoked by the
+above scene. Nobody cares about being accused of wickedness. No vanity
+is hurt by that sort of charge: Blanche was rather pleased than
+provoked by her friend’s indignation, which never would have been
+raised but for a cause which both knew, though neither spoke of.
+
+And so Laura, with a sigh, was obliged to confess that the romantic
+part of her first friendship was at an end, and that the object of it
+was only worthy of a very ordinary sort of regard.
+
+As for Blanche, she instantly composed a copy of touching verses,
+setting forth her desertion and disenchantment. It was only the old
+story, she wrote, of love meeting with coldness, and fidelity returned
+by neglect; and some new neighbours arriving from London about this
+time, in whose family there were daughters, Miss Amory had the
+advantage of selecting an eternal friend from one of these young
+ladies, and imparting her sorrows and disappointments to this new
+sister. The tall footmen came but seldom now with notes to the sweet
+Laura; the pony-carriage was but rarely despatched to Fairoaks to be at
+the orders of the ladies there. Blanche adopted a sweet look of
+suffering martyrdom when Laura came to see her. The other laughed at
+her friend’s sentimental mood, and treated it with a good-humour that
+was by no means respectful.
+
+But if Miss Blanche found new female friends to console her, the
+faithful historian is also bound to say, that she discovered some
+acquaintances of the other sex who seemed to give her consolation too.
+If ever this artless young creature met a young man, and had ten
+minutes’ conversation with him in a garden walk, in a drawing-room
+window, or in the intervals of a waltz, she confided in him, so to
+speak—made play with her beautiful eyes—spoke in a tone of tender
+interest, and simple and touching appeal, and left him, to perform the
+same pretty little drama in behalf of his successor.
+
+When the Claverings first came down to the Park, there were very few
+audiences before whom Miss Blanche could perform: hence Pen had all the
+benefits of her glances and confidences, and the drawing-room window or
+the garden walk all to himself. In the town of Clavering, it has been
+said, there were actually no young men: in the near surrounding
+country, only a curate or two or a rustic young squire, with large feet
+and ill-made clothes. To the dragoons quartered at Chatteris the
+Baronet made no overtures: it was unluckily his own regiment: he had
+left it on bad terms with some officers of the corps—an ugly business
+about a horse bargain—a disputed play account—blind-Hookey—a white
+feather—who need ask?—it is not our business to inquire too closely
+into the bygones of our characters, except in so far as their previous
+history appertains to the development of this present story.
+
+But the autumn, and the end of the Parliamentary Session and the London
+season, brought one or two county families down to their houses, and
+filled tolerably the neighbouring little watering-place of Baymouth,
+and opened our friend Mr. Bingley’s Theatre Royal at Chatteris, and
+collected the usual company at the Assizes and Race-balls there. Up to
+this time, the old county families had been rather shy of our friends
+of Clavering Park. The Fogeys of Drummington; the Squares of Tozely
+Park; the Welbores of The Barrow, etc.: all sorts of stories were
+current among these folks regarding the family at Clavering;—indeed,
+nobody ought to say that people in the country have no imagination who
+heard them talk about new neighbours. About Sir Francis and his Lady,
+and her birth and parentage, about Miss Amory, about Captain Strong,
+there had been endless histories which need not be recapitulated; and
+the family of the Park had been three months in the county before the
+great people around began to call.
+
+But at the end of the season, the Earl of Trehawk, Lord Lieutenant of
+the County, coming to Eyrie Castle, and the Countess Dowager of
+Rockminster, whose son was also a magnate of the land, to occupy a
+mansion on the Marine Parade at Baymouth—these great folks came
+publicly, immediately, and in state, to call upon the family of
+Clavering Park; and the carriages of the county families speedily
+followed in the track which had been left in the avenue by their lordly
+wheels.
+
+It was then that Mirobolant began to have an opportunity of exercising
+that skill which he possessed, and of forgetting, in the occupations of
+his art, the pangs of love. It was then that the large footmen were too
+much employed at Clavering Park to be able to bring messages, or dally
+over the cup of small beer with the poor little maids at Fairoaks. It
+was then that Blanche found other dear friends than Laura, and other
+places to walk in besides the river-side, where Pen was fishing. He
+came day after day, and whipped the stream, but the “fish, fish!”
+wouldn’t do their duty, nor the Peri appear. And here, though in strict
+confidence, and with a request that the matter go no further, we may as
+well allude to a delicate business, of which previous hint has been
+given. Mention has been made, in a former page, of a certain hollow
+tree, at which Pen used to take his station when engaged in his passion
+for Miss Fotheringay, and the cavity of which he afterwards used for
+other purposes than to insert his baits and fishing-cans in. The truth
+is, he converted this tree into a post-office. Under a piece of moss
+and a stone, he used to put little poems, or letters equally poetical,
+which were addressed to a certain Undine, or Naiad who frequented the
+stream, and which, once or twice, were replaced by a receipt in the
+shape of a flower, or by a modest little word or two of acknowledgment,
+written in a delicate hand, in French or English, and on pink scented
+paper. Certainly, Miss Amory used to walk by this stream, as we have
+seen; and it is a fact that she used pink scented paper for her
+correspondence. But after the great folks had invaded Clavering Park,
+and the family coach passed out of the lodge-gates, evening after
+evening, on their way to the other great country houses, nobody came to
+fetch Pen’s letters at the post-office; the white paper was not
+exchanged for the pink, but lay undisturbed under its stone and its
+moss, whilst the tree was reflected into the stream, and the Brawl went
+rolling by. There was not much in the letters certainly; in the pink
+notes scarcely anything—merely a little word or two, half jocular, half
+sympathetic, such as might be written by any young lady. But oh, you
+silly Pendennis, if you wanted this one, why did you not speak? Perhaps
+neither party was in earnest. You were only playing at being in love,
+and the sportive little Undine was humouring you at the same play.
+
+But if a man is baulked at this game, he not unfrequently loses his
+temper; and when nobody came any more for Pen’s poems, he began to look
+upon those compositions in a very serious light. He felt almost
+tragical and romantic again, as in his first affair of the heart:—at
+any rate he was bent upon having an explanation. One day he went to the
+Hall and there was a roomful of visitors: on another, Miss Amory was
+not to be seen; she was going to a ball that night, and was lying down
+to take a little sleep. Pen cursed balls, and the narrowness of his
+means, and the humility of his position in the country that caused him
+to be passed over by the givers of these entertainments. On a third
+occasion, Miss Amory was in the garden, and he ran thither; she was
+walking there in state with no less personages than the Bishop and
+Bishopess of Chatteris and the episcopal family, who scowled at him,
+and drew up in great dignity when he was presented to them, and they
+heard his name. The Right Reverend Prelate had heard it before, and
+also of the little transaction in the Dean’s garden.
+
+“The Bishop says you’re a sad young man,” good-natured Lady Clavering
+whispered to him. “What have you been a doing of? Nothink, I hope, to
+vex such a dear Mar as yours? How is your dear Mar? Why don’t she come
+and me? We an’t seen her this ever such a time. We’re a goin about a
+gaddin, so that we don’t see no neighbours now. Give my love to her and
+Laurar, and come all to dinner to-morrow.”
+
+Mrs. Pendennis was too unwell to come out but Laura and Pen came, and
+there was a great party, and Pen only got an opportunity of a hurried
+word with Miss Amory. “You never come to the river now,” he said.
+
+“I can’t,” said Blanche, “the house is full of people.”
+
+“Undine has left the stream,” Mr. Pen went on, choosing to be poetical.
+
+“She never ought to have gone there,” Miss Amory answered. “She won’t
+go again. It was very foolish: very wrong: it was only play. Besides,
+you have other consolations at home,” she added, looking him full in
+the face an instant, and dropping her eyes.
+
+If he wanted her, why did he not speak then? She might have said “Yes”
+even then. But as she spoke of other consolations at home, he thought
+of Laura, so affectionate and so pure, and of his mother at home, who
+had bent her fond heart upon uniting him with her adopted daughter.
+“Blanche!” he began, in a vexed tone,—“Miss Amory!”
+
+“Laura is looking at us, Mr. Pendennis,” the young lady said. “I must
+go back to the company,” and she ran off, leaving Mr. Pendennis to bite
+his nails in perplexity, and to look out into the moonlight in the
+garden.
+
+Laura indeed was looking at Pen. She was talking with, or appearing to
+listen to the talk of, Mr. Pynsent, Lord Rockminster’s son, and
+grandson of the Dowager Lady, who was seated in state in the place of
+honour, gravely receiving Lady Clavering’s bad grammar, and patronising
+the vacuous Sir Francis, whose interest in the county she was desirous
+to secure. Pynsent and Pen had been at Oxbridge together, where the
+latter, during his heyday of good fortune and fashion, had been the
+superior of the young patrician, and perhaps rather supercilious
+towards him. They had met for the first time, since they parted at the
+University, at the table to-day, and given each other that exceedingly
+impertinent and amusing demi-nod of recognition which is practised in
+England only, and only to perfection by University men,—and which seems
+to say, “Confound you—what do you do here?”
+
+“I knew that man at Oxbridge,” Mr. Pynsent said to Miss Bell—“a Mr.
+Pendennis, I think.”
+
+“Yes,” said Miss Bell.
+
+“He seems rather sweet upon Miss Amory,” the gentleman went on. Laura
+looked at them, and perhaps thought so too, but said nothing.
+
+“A man of large property in the county, ain’t he? He used to talk about
+representing it. He used to speak at the Union. Whereabouts do his
+estates lie?”
+
+Laura smiled. “His estates lie on the other side of the river, near the
+lodge-gate. He is my cousin, and I live there.”
+
+“Where?” asked Mr. Pynsent, with a laugh.
+
+“Why, on the other side of the river, at Fairoaks,” answered Miss Bell.
+
+“Many pheasants there? Cover looks rather good,” said the simple
+gentleman.
+
+Laura smiled again. “We have nine hens and a cock, a pig, and an old
+pointer.”
+
+“Pendennis don’t preserve, then?” continued Mr. Pynsent.
+
+“You should come and see him,” the girl said, laughing, and greatly
+amused at the notion that her Pen was a great county gentleman, and
+perhaps had given himself out to be such.
+
+“Indeed, I quite long to renew our acquaintance,” Mr. Pynsent said,
+gallantly, and with a look which fairly said, “It is you that I would
+like to come and see”—to which look and speech Miss Laura vouchsafed a
+smile, and made a little bow.
+
+Here Blanche came stepping up with her most fascinating smile and ogle,
+and begged dear Laura to come and take the second in a song. Laura was
+ready to do anything good-natured, and went to the piano; by which Mr.
+Pynsent listened as long as the duet lasted, and until Miss Amory began
+for herself, when he strode away.
+
+“What a nice, frank, amiable, well-bred girl that is, Wagg,” said Mr.
+Pynsent to a gentleman who had come over with him from Baymouth—“the
+tall one, I mean, with the ringlets and red lips—monstrous red, ain’t
+they?”
+
+“What do you think of the girl of the house?” asked Wagg.
+
+“I think she’s a lean, scraggy humbug,” said Mr. Pynsent, with great
+candour. “She drags her shoulders out of her dress, she never lets her
+eyes alone: and she goes simpering and ogling about like a French
+waiting-maid.
+
+“Pynsent, be civil,” cried the other, “somebody can hear.”
+
+“Oh, it’s Pendennis of Boniface,” Mr. Pynsent said. “Fine evening, Mr.
+Pendennis; we were just talking of your charming cousin.”
+
+“Any relation to my old friend, Major Pendennis?” asked Mr. Wagg.
+
+“His nephew. Had the pleasure of meeting you at Gaunt House,” Mr. Pen
+said with his very best air—the acquaintance between the gentlemen was
+made in an instant.
+
+In the afternoon of the next day, the two gentlemen who were staying at
+Clavering Park were found by Mr. Pen on his return from a fishing
+excursion, in which he had no sport, seated in his mother’s
+drawing-room in comfortable conversation with the widow and her ward.
+Mr. Pynsent, tall and gaunt, with large red whiskers and an imposing
+tuft to his chin, was striding over a chair in the intimate
+neighbourhood of Miss Laura. She was amused by his talk, which was
+simple, straightforward, rather humorous and keen, and interspersed
+with homely expressions of a style which is sometimes called slang. It
+was the first specimen of a young London dandy that Laura had seen or
+heard: for she had been but a chit at the time of Mr. Foker’s
+introduction at Fairoaks, nor indeed was that ingenuous gentleman much
+more than a boy, and his refinement was only that of a school and
+college.
+
+Mr. Wagg, as he entered the Fairoaks premises with his companion, eyed
+and noted everything. “Old gardener,” he said, seeing Mr. John at the
+lodge—“old red livery waistcoat—clothes hanging out to dry on the
+gooseberry-bushes—blue aprons, white ducks—gad, they must be young
+Pendennis’s white ducks—nobody else wears ’em in the family. Rather a
+shy place for a sucking county member, ay, Pynsent?”
+
+“Snug little crib,” said Mr. Pynsent, “pretty cosy little lawn.”
+
+“Mr. Pendennis at home, old gentleman?” Mr. Wagg said to the old
+domestic. John answered, “No, Master Pendennis was agone out.”
+
+“Are the ladies at home?” asked the younger visitor. Mr. John answered,
+“Yes, they be;” and as the pair walked over the trim gravel, and by the
+neat shrubberies, up the steps to the hall-door, which old John opened,
+Mr. Wagg noted everything that he saw; the barometer and the
+letter-bag, the umbrellas and the ladies’ clogs, Pen’s hats and tartan
+wrapper, and old John opening the drawing-room door, to introduce the
+new-comers. Such minutiae attracted Wagg instinctively; he seized them
+in spite of himself.
+
+“Old fellow does all the work,” he whispered to Pynsent. “Caleb
+Balderstone. Shouldn’t wonder if he’s the housemaid.” The next minute
+the pair were in the presence of the Fairoaks ladies; in whom Pynsent
+could not help recognising two perfectly well-bred ladies, and to whom
+Mr. Wagg made his obeisance, with florid bows, and extra courtesy,
+accompanied with an occasional knowing leer at his companion. Mr.
+Pynsent did not choose to acknowledge these signals, except by extreme
+haughtiness towards Mr. Wagg, and particular deference to the ladies.
+If there was one thing laughable in Mr. Wagg’s eyes, it was poverty. He
+had the soul of a butler who had been brought from his pantry to make
+fun in the drawing-room. His jokes were plenty, and his good-nature
+thoroughly genuine, but he did not seem to understand that a gentleman
+could wear an old coat, or that a lady could be respectable unless she
+had her carriage, or employed a French milliner.
+
+“Charming place, ma’am,” said he, bowing to the widow; “noble
+prospect—delightful to us Cocknies, who seldom see anything but Pall
+Mall.” The widow said simply, she had never been in London but once in
+her life—before her son was born.
+
+“Fine village, ma’am, fine village,” said Mr. Wagg, “and increasing
+every day. It’ll be quite a large town soon. It’s not a bad place to
+live in for those who can’t get the country, and will repay a visit
+when you honour it.”
+
+“My brother, Major Pendennis, has often mentioned your name to us,” the
+widow said, “and we have been very much amused by some of your droll
+books, sir,” Helen continued, who never could be brought to like Mr.
+Wagg’s books, and detested their tone most thoroughly.
+
+“He is my very good friend,” Mr. Wagg said, with a low bow, “and one of
+the best known men about town, and where known, ma’am, appreciated—I
+assure you appreciated. He is with our friend Steyne, at
+Aix-la-Chapelle. Steyne has a touch of the gout and so, between
+ourselves, has your brother. I am going to Stillbrook for the
+pheasant-shooting, and afterwards to Bareacres, where Pendennis and I
+shall probably meet;” and he poured out a flood of fashionable talk,
+introducing the names of a score of peers, and rattling on with
+breathless spirits, whilst the simple widow listened in silent wonder.
+What a man, she thought; are all the men of fashion in London like
+this? I am sure Pen will never like him.
+
+Mr. Pynsent was in the meanwhile engaged with Miss Laura. He named some
+of the houses in the neighbourhood whither he was going, and hoped very
+much that he should see Miss Bell at some of them. He hoped that her
+aunt would give her a season in London. He said, that in the next
+parliament it was probable that he should canvass the county, and he
+hoped to get Pendennis’s interest here. He spoke of Pen’s triumph as an
+orator at Oxbridge, and asked was he coming into parliament too? He
+talked on very pleasantly, and greatly to Laura’s satisfaction, until
+Pen himself appeared, and, as has been said, found these gentlemen.
+
+Pen behaved very courteously to the pair, now that they have found
+their way into his quarters; and though he recollected with some
+twinges a conversation at Oxbridge, when Pynsent was present, and in
+which after a great debate at the Union, and in the midst of
+considerable excitement produced by a supper and champagne-cup,—he had
+announced his intention of coming in for his native county, and had
+absolutely returned thanks in a fine speech as the future member; yet
+Mr. Pynsent’s manner was so frank and cordial, that Pen hoped Pynsent
+might have forgotten his little fanfaronnade, and any other braggadocio
+speeches or actions which he might have made. He suited himself to the
+tone of the visitors, then, and talked about Plinlimmon and Magnus
+Charters, and the old set at Oxbridge, with careless familiarity and
+high-bred ease, as if he lived with marquises every day, and a duke was
+no more to him than a village curate.
+
+But at this juncture, and it being then six o’clock in the evening,
+Betsy, the maid, who did not know of the advent of strangers, walked
+into the room without any preliminary but that of flinging the door
+wide open before her, and bearing in her arms a tray, containing three
+tea-cups, a tea-pot, and a plate of thick bread-and-butter. All Pen’s
+splendour and magnificence vanished away at this—and he faltered and
+became quite abashed. “What will they think of us?” he thought: and,
+indeed, Wagg thrust his tongue in his cheek, thought the tea infinitely
+contemptible, and leered and winked at Pynsent to that effect.
+
+But to Mr. Pynsent the transaction appeared perfectly simple—there was
+no reason present to his mind why people should not drink tea at six if
+they were minded, as well as at any other hour; and he asked of Mr.
+Wagg, when they went away, “What the devil he was grinning and winking
+at, and what amused him?”
+
+“Didn’t you see how the cub was ashamed of the thick bread-and-butter?
+I dare say they’re going to have treacle if they are good. I’ll take an
+opportunity of telling old Pendennis when we get back to town,” Mr.
+Wagg chuckled out.
+
+“Don’t see the fun,” said Mr. Pynsent.
+
+“Never thought you did,” growled Wagg between his teeth; they walked
+home rather sulkily.
+
+Wagg told the story at dinner very smartly, with wonderful accuracy of
+observation. He described old John, the clothes that were drying, the
+clogs in the hall, the drawing-room, and its furniture and
+pictures;—“Old man with a beak and bald head—feu Pendennis I bet two to
+one; sticking-plaster full-length of a youth in a cap and gown—the
+present Marquis of Fairoaks, of course; the widow when young in a
+miniature, Mrs. Mee; she had the gown on when we came, or a dress made
+the year after, and the tips cut off the fingers of her gloves which
+she stitches her son’s collars with; and then the sarving maid came in
+with their teas so we left the Earl and the Countess to their
+bread-and-butter.”
+
+Blanche, near whom he sate as he told this story, and who adored les
+hommes desprit, burst out laughing, and called him such an odd, droll
+creature. But Pynsent, who began to be utterly disgusted with him,
+broke out in a loud voice, and said, “I don’t know, Mr. Wagg, what sort
+of ladies you are accustomed to meet in your own family, but by gad, as
+far as a first acquaintance can show, I never met two better-bred women
+in my life, and I hope, ma’am, you’ll call upon ’em,” he added,
+addressing Lady Rockminster, who was seated at Sir Francis Clavering’s
+right hand.
+
+Sir Francis turned to the guest on his left, and whispered. “That’s
+what I call a sticker for Wagg.” And Lady Clavering, giving the young
+gentleman a delighted tap with her fan, winked her black eyes at him,
+and said, “Mr. Pynsent, you’re a good feller.”
+
+After the affair with Blanche, a difference ever so slight, a tone of
+melancholy, perhaps a little bitter, might be perceived in Laura’s
+converse with her cousin. She seemed to weigh him and find him wanting
+too; the widow saw the girl’s clear and honest eyes watching the young
+man at times, and a look of almost scorn pass over her face, as he
+lounged in the room with the women, or lazily sauntered smoking upon
+the lawn, or lolled under a tree there over a book which he was too
+listless to read.
+
+“What has happened between you?” eager-sighted Helen asked of the girl.
+“Something has happened. Has that wicked little Blanche been making
+mischief? Tell me, Laura.”
+
+“Nothing has happened at all,” Laura said.
+
+“Then why do you look at Pen so?” asked his mother quickly.
+
+“Look at him, dear mother!” said the girl. “We two women are no society
+for him: we don’t interest him; we are not clever enough for such a
+genius as Pen. He wastes his life and energies away among us, tied to
+our apron-strings. He interests himself in nothing: he scarcely cares
+to go beyond the garden-gate. Even Captain Glanders and Captain Strong
+pall upon him,” she added with a bitter laugh; “and they are men, you
+know, and our superiors. He will never be happy while he is here. Why,
+is he not facing the world, and without a profession?”
+
+“We have got enough, with great economy,” said the widow, her heart
+beginning to beat violently. “Pen has spent nothing for months. I’m
+sure he is very good. I am sure he might be very happy with us.”
+
+“Don’t agitate yourself so, dear mother,” the girl answered. “I don’t
+like to see you so. You should not be sad because Pen is unhappy here.
+All men are so. They must work. They must make themselves names and a
+place in the world. Look, the two captains have fought and seen
+battles; that Mr. Pynsent, who came here, and who will be very rich, is
+in a public office; he works very hard, he aspires to a name and a
+reputation. He says Pen was one of the best speakers at Oxbridge, and
+had as great a character for talent as any of the young gentlemen
+there. Pen himself laughs at Mr. Wagg’s celebrity (and indeed he is a
+horrid person), and says he is a dunce, and that anybody could write
+his books.”
+
+“I am sure they are odious and vulgar,” interposed the widow.
+
+“Yet he has a reputation.—You see the County Chronicle says, ‘The
+celebrated Mr. Wagg has been sojourning at Baymouth—let our
+fashionables and eccentrics look out for something from his caustic
+pen.’ If Pen can write better than this gentleman, and speak better
+than Mr. Pynsent, why doesn’t he? Mamma, he can’t make speeches to us;
+or distinguish himself here. He ought to go away, indeed he ought.”
+
+“Dear Laura,” said Helen, taking the girl’s hand. “Is it kind of you to
+hurry him so? I have been waiting. I have been saving up money these
+many months—to—to pay back your advance to us.”
+
+“Hush, mother!” Laura cried, embracing her friend hastily. “It was your
+money, not mine. Never speak about that again. How much money have you
+saved?”
+
+Helen said there were more than two hundred pounds at the bank, and
+that she would be enabled to pay off all Laura’s money by the end of
+the next year.
+
+“Give it him—let him have the two hundred pounds. Let him go to London
+and be a lawyer: be something, be worthy of his mother—and of mine,
+dearest mamma,” said the good girl; upon which, and with her usual
+tenderness and emotion, the fond widow declared that Laura was a
+blessing to her and the best of girls—and I hope no one in this
+instance will be disposed to contradict her.
+
+The widow and her daughter had more than one conversation on this
+subject; and the elder gave way to the superior reason of the honest
+and stronger-minded girl; and indeed, whenever there was a sacrifice to
+be made on her part, this kind lady was only too eager to make it. But
+she took her own way, and did not lose sight of the end she had in
+view, in imparting these new plans to Pen. One day she told him of
+these projects, and who it was that had formed them; how it was Laura
+who insisted upon his going to London and studying; how it was Laura
+who would not hear of the—the money arrangements when he came back from
+Oxbridge—being settled just then: how it was Laura whom he had to
+thank, if indeed he thought that he had to go.
+
+At that news Pen’s countenance blazed up with pleasure, and he hugged
+his mother to his heart with an ardour that I fear disappointed the
+fond lady; but she rallied when he said, “By Heaven! she is a noble
+girl, and may God Almighty bless her mother! I have been wearing myself
+away for months here, longing to work, and not knowing how. I’ve been
+fretting over the thoughts of my shame, and my debts, and my past
+cursed extravagance and follies. I’ve suffered infernally. My heart has
+been half broken—never mind about that. If I can get a chance to redeem
+the past, and to do my duty to myself and the best mother in the world,
+indeed, indeed, I will. I’ll be worthy of you yet. Heaven bless you!
+God bless Laura! Why isn’t she here, that I may go and thank her?” Pen
+went on with more incoherent phrases; paced up and down the room, drank
+glasses of water, jumped about his mother with a thousand
+embraces—began to laugh—began to sing—was happier than she had seen him
+since he was a boy—since he had tasted of the fruit of that awful Tree
+of Life, which, from the beginning, has tempted all mankind.
+
+Laura was not at home. Laura was on a visit to the stately Lady
+Rockminster, daughter to my Lord Bareacres, sister to the late Lady
+Pontypool, and by consequence a distant kinswoman of Helen’s, as her
+ladyship, who was deeply versed in genealogy, was graciously to point
+out to the modest country lady. Mr. Pen was greatly delighted at the
+relationship being acknowledged; though perhaps not over well pleased
+that Lady Rockminster took Miss Bell home with her for a couple of days
+to Baymouth, and did not make the slightest invitation to Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis. There was to be a ball at Baymouth, and it was to be Miss
+Laura’s first appearance. The dowager came to fetch her in her
+carriage, and she went off with a white dress in her box, happy and
+blushing, like the rose to which Pen compared her.
+
+This was the night of the ball—a public entertainment at the Baymouth
+Hotel. “By Jove!” said Pen, “I’ll ride over—No, I won’t ride, but I’ll
+go too.” His mother was charmed that he should do so; and, as he was
+debating about the conveyance in which he should start for Baymouth,
+Captain Strong called opportunely, said he was going himself, and that
+he would put his horse, The Butcher Boy, into the gig, and drive Pen
+over.
+
+When the grand company began to fill the house at Clavering Park, the
+Chevalier Strong, who, as his patron said, was never in the way or out
+of it, seldom intruded himself upon its society, but went elsewhere to
+seek his relaxation. “I’ve seen plenty of grand dinners in my time,” he
+said, “and dined, by Jove, in a company where there was a king and
+royal duke at top and bottom, and every man along the table had six
+stars on his coat; but dammy, Glanders, this finery don’t suit me; and
+the English ladies with their confounded buckram airs, and the squires
+with their politics after dinner, send me to sleep—sink me dead if they
+don’t. I like a place where I can blow my cigar when the cloth is
+removed, and when I’m thirsty, have my beer in its native pewter.” So
+on a gala-day at Clavering Park, the Chevalier would content himself
+with superintending the arrangements of the table, and drilling the
+major-domo and servants; and having looked over the bill-of-fare with
+Monsieur Mirobolant, would not care to take the least part in the
+banquet. “Send me up a cutlet and a bottle of claret to my room,” this
+philosopher would say, and from the windows of that apartment, which
+commanded the terrace and avenue, he would survey the company as they
+arrived in their carriages, or take a peep at the ladies in the hall
+through an oeil-de-boeuf which commanded it from his corridor. And the
+guests being seated, Strong would cross the park to Captain Glanders’s
+cottage at Clavering, or to pay the landlady a visit at the Clavering
+Arms, or to drop in upon Madame Fribsby over her novel and tea.
+Wherever the Chevalier went he was welcome, and whenever he came away a
+smell of hot brandy-and-water lingered behind him.
+
+The Butcher Boy—not the worst horse in Sir Francis’s stable—was
+appropriated to Captain Strong’s express use; and the old Campaigner
+saddled him or brought him home at all hours of the day or night, and
+drove or rode him up and down the country. Where there was a
+public-house with a good tap of beer—where there was a tenant with a
+pretty daughter who played on the piano—to Chatteris, to the play, or
+the barracks—to Baymouth, if any fun was on foot there; to the rural
+fairs or races, the Chevalier and his brown horse made their way
+continually; and this worthy gentleman lived at free quarters in a
+friendly country. The Butcher Boy soon took Pen and the Chevalier to
+Baymouth. The latter was as familiar with the hotel and landlord there
+as with every other inn round about; and having been accommodated with
+a bedroom to dress, they entered the ballroom. The Chevalier was
+splendid. He wore three little gold crosses in a brochette on the
+portly breast of his blue coat, and looked like a foreign
+field-marshal.
+
+The ball was public and all sorts of persons were admitted and
+encouraged to come, young Pynsent having views upon the county and Lady
+Rockminster being patroness of the ball. There was a quadrille for the
+aristocracy at one end, and select benches for the people of fashion.
+Towards this end the Chevalier did not care to penetrate far (as he
+said he did not care for the nobs); but in the other part of the room
+he knew everybody—the wine-merchants’, innkeepers’, tradesmen’s,
+solicitors’, squire-farmers’ daughters, their sires and brothers, and
+plunged about shaking hands.
+
+“Who is that man with the blue ribbon and the three-pointed star?”
+asked Pen. A gentleman in black with ringlets and a tuft stood gazing
+fiercely about him, with one hand in the arm-hole of his waistcoat and
+the other holding his claque.
+
+“By Jupiter, it’s Mirobolant!” cried Strong, bursting out laughing.
+“Bon jour, Chef!—Bon jour, Chevalier!”
+
+“De la croix de Juillet, Chevalier!” said the Chef, laying his hand on
+his decoration.
+
+“By Jove, here’s some more ribbon!” said Pen, amused.
+
+A man with very black hair and whiskers, dyed evidently with the purple
+of Tyre, with twinkling eyes and white eyelashes, and a thousand
+wrinkles in his face, which was of a strange red colour, with two
+under-vests, and large gloves and hands, and a profusion of diamonds
+and jewels in his waistcoat and stock, with coarse feet crumpled into
+immense shiny boots, and a piece of parti-coloured ribbon in his
+button-hole, here came up and nodded familiarly to the Chevalier.
+
+The Chevalier shook hands. “My friend Mr. Pendennis,” Strong said.
+“Colonel Altamont, of the bodyguard of his Highness the Nawaub of
+Lucknow.” That officer bowed to the salute of Pen; who was now looking
+out eagerly to see if the person wanted had entered the room.
+
+Not yet. But the band began presently performing ‘See the Conquering
+Hero comes,’ and a host of fashionables—Dowager Countess of
+Rockminster, Mr. Pynsent and Miss Bell, Sir Francis Clavering, Bart.,
+of Clavering Park, Lady Clavering and Miss Amory, Sir Horace Fogey,
+Bart., Lady Fogey, Colonel and Mrs. Higgs Wagg,—Esq. (as the county
+paper afterwards described them), entered the room.
+
+Pen rushed by Blanche, ran up to Laura, and seized her hand. “God bless
+you!” he said, “I want to speak to you—I must speak to you—Let me dance
+with you.” “Not for three dances, dear Pen,” she said, smiling: and he
+fell back, biting his nails with vexation, and forgetting to salute
+Pynsent.
+
+After Lady Rockminster’s party, Lady Clavering’s followed in the
+procession.
+
+Colonel Altamont eyed it hard, holding a most musky pocket-handkerchief
+up to his face, and bursting with laughter behind it.
+
+“Who’s the gal in green along with ’em, Cap’n?” he asked of Strong.
+
+“That’s Miss Amory, Lady Clavering’s daughter,” replied the Chevalier.
+
+The Colonel could hardly contain himself for laughing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+Contains some Ball-practising
+
+
+Under some calico draperies in the shady embrasure of a window, Arthur
+Pendennis chose to assume a very gloomy and frowning countenance, and
+to watch Miss Bell dance her first quadrille with Mr. Pynsent for a
+partner. That gentleman was as solemn and severe as Englishmen are upon
+such occasions, and walked through the dance as he would have walked up
+to his pew in church, without a smile upon his face, or allowing any
+outward circumstance to interfere with his attention to the grave duty
+in which he was engaged. But Miss Laura’s face was beaming with
+pleasure and good-nature. The lights and the crowd and music excited
+her. As she spread out her white robes, and performed her part of the
+dance, smiling and happy, her brown ringlets flowing back over her fair
+shoulders from her honest rosy face, more than one gentleman in the
+room admired and looked after her; and Lady Fogey, who had a house in
+London and gave herself no small airs of fashion when in the country,
+asked of Lady Rockminster who the young person was, mentioned a
+reigning beauty in London whom, in her ladyship’s opinion, Laura was
+rather like, and pronounced that she would “do.”
+
+Lady Rockminster would have been very much surprised if any protegee of
+hers would not “do,” and wondered at Lady Fogey’s impudence in judging
+upon the point at all. She surveyed Laura with majestic glances through
+her eyeglass. She was pleased with the girl’s artless looks, and gay
+innocent manner. Her manner is very good, her ladyship thought. Her
+arms are rather red, but that is a defect of her youth. Her tone is far
+better than that of the little pert Miss Amory, who is dancing opposite
+to her.
+
+Miss Blanche was, indeed, the vis-a-vis of Miss Laura, and smiled most
+killingly upon her dearest friend, and nodded to her and talked to her,
+when they met during the quadrille evolutions, and patronised her a
+great deal. Her shoulders were the whitest in the whole room: and they
+were never easy in her frock for one single instant: nor were her eyes,
+which rolled about incessantly: nor was her little figure:—it seemed to
+say to all the people, “Come and look at me—not at that pink, healthy,
+bouncing country lass, Miss Bell, who scarcely knew how to dance till I
+taught her. This is the true Parisian manner—this is the prettiest
+little foot in the room, and the prettiest little chaussure too. Look
+at it, Mr. Pynsent. Look at it, Mr. Pendennis, you who are scowling
+behind the curtain—I know you are longing to dance with me.”
+
+Laura went on dancing, and keeping an attentive eye upon Mr. Pen in the
+embrasure of the window. He did not quit that retirement during the
+first quadrille, nor until the second, when the good-natured Lady
+Clavering beckoned to him to come up to her to the dais or place of
+honour where the dowagers were,—and whither Pen went blushing and
+exceedingly awkward, as most conceited young fellows are. He performed
+a haughty salutation to Lady Rockminster, who hardly acknowledged his
+bow, and then went and paid his respects to the widow of the late
+Amory, who was splendid in diamonds, velvet, lace, feathers, and all
+sorts of millinery and goldsmith’s ware.
+
+Young Mr. Fogey, then in the fifth form at Eton, and ardently expecting
+his beard and his commission in a dragoon regiment, was the second
+partner who was honoured with Miss Bell’s hand. He was rapt in
+admiration of that young lady. He thought he had never seen so charming
+a creature. “I like you much better than the French girl” (for this
+young gentleman had been dancing with Miss Amory before), he candidly
+said to her. Laura laughed, and looked more good-humoured than ever;
+and in the midst of her laughter caught a sight of Pen, and continued
+to laugh as he, on his side, continued to look absurdly pompous and
+sulky. The next dance was a waltz, and young Fogey thought, with a
+sigh, that he did not know how to waltz, and vowed he would have a
+master the next holidays.
+
+Mr. Pynsent again claimed Miss Bell’s hand for this dance; and Pen
+beheld her, in a fury, twirling round the room, her waist encircled by
+the arm of that gentleman. He never used to be angry before when, on
+summer evenings, the chairs and tables being removed, and the governess
+called downstairs to play the piano, he and the Chevalier Strong (who
+was a splendid performer, and could dance a British hornpipe, a German
+waltz, or a Spanish fandango, if need were), and the two young ladies,
+Blanche and Laura, improvised little balls at Clavering Park. Laura
+enjoyed this dancing so much, and was so animated, that she even
+animated Mr. Pynsent. Blanche, who could dance beautifully, had an
+unlucky partner, Captain Broadfoot, of the Dragoons, then stationed at
+Chatteris. For Captain Broadfoot, though devoting himself with great
+energy to the object in view, could not get round in time: and, not
+having the least ear for music, was unaware that his movements were too
+slow.
+
+So, in the waltz as in the quadrille, Miss Blanche saw that her dear
+friend Laura had the honours of the dance, and was by no means pleased
+with the latter’s success. After a couple of turns with the heavy
+dragoon, she pleaded fatigue, and requested to be led back to her
+place, near her mamma, to whom Pen was talking; and she asked him why
+he had not asked her to waltz, and had left her for the mercies of that
+great odious man in spurs and a red coat?
+
+“I thought spurs and scarlet were the most fascinating objects in the
+world to young ladies,” Pen answered. “I never should have dared to put
+my black coat in competition with that splendid red jacket.”
+
+“You are very unkind and cruel and sulky and naughty,” said Miss Amory,
+with another shrug of the shoulders. “You had better go away. Your
+cousin is looking at us over Mr. Pynsent’s shoulder.”
+
+“Will you waltz with me?” said Pen.
+
+“Not this waltz. I can’t, having just sent away that good Captain
+Broadfoot. Look at Mr. Pynsent, did you ever see such a creature? But I
+will dance the next waltz with you, and the quadrille too. I am
+promised, but I will tell Mr. Poole that I had forgotten my engagement
+to you.”
+
+“Women forget very readily,” Pendennis said.
+
+“But they always come back, and are very repentant and sorry for what
+they’ve done,” Blanche said. “See, here comes the Poker, and dear Laura
+leaning on him. How pretty she looks!”
+
+Laura came up, and put out her hand to Pen, to whom Pynsent made a sort
+of bow, appearing to be not much more graceful than that domestic
+instrument to which Miss Amory compared him.
+
+But Laura’s face was full of kindness. “I am so glad to have come, dear
+Pen,” she said. “I can speak to you now. How is mamma? The three dances
+are over, and I am engaged to you for the next, Pen.”
+
+“I have just engaged myself to Miss Amory,” said Pen; and Miss Amory
+nodded her head, and made her usual little curtsey. “I don’t intend to
+give him up, dearest Laura,” she said.
+
+“Well, then, he’ll waltz with me, dear Blanche,” said the other. “Won’t
+you, Pen?”
+
+“I promised to waltz with Miss Amory.”
+
+“Provoking!” said Laura, and making a curtsey in her turn she went and
+placed herself under the ample wing of Lady Rockminster.
+
+Pen was delighted with his mischief. The two prettiest girls in the
+room were quarrelling about him. He flattered himself he had punished
+Miss Laura. He leaned in a dandified air, with his elbow over the wall,
+and talked to Blanche: he quizzed unmercifully all the men in the
+room—the heavy dragoons in their tight jackets—the country dandies in
+their queer attire—the strange toilettes of the ladies. One seemed to
+have a bird’s nest in her head; another had six pounds of grapes in her
+hair, besides her false pearls. “It’s a coiffure of almonds and
+raisins,” said Pen “and might be served up for dessert.” In a word, he
+was exceedingly satirical and amusing.
+
+During the quadrille he carried on this kind of conversation with
+unflinching bitterness and vivacity, and kept Blanche continually
+laughing, both at his wickedness and jokes, which were good, and also
+because Laura was again their vis-a-vis, and could see and hear how
+merry and confidential they were.
+
+“Arthur is charming to-night,” she whispered to Laura, across Cornet
+Perch’s shell-jacket, as Pen was performing cavalier seul before them,
+drawling through that figure with a thumb in the pocket of each
+waistcoat.
+
+“Who?” said Laura.
+
+“Arthur,” answered Blanche, in French. “Oh, it’s such a pretty name!”
+And now the young ladies went over to Pen’s side, and Cornet Perch
+performed a pas seul in his turn. He had no waistcoat pocket to put his
+hands into, and they looked large and swollen as they hung before him
+depending from the tight arms in the jacket.
+
+During the interval between the quadrille and the succeeding waltz, Pen
+did not take any notice of Laura, except to ask her whether her
+partner, Cornet Perch, was an amusing youth, and whether she liked him
+so well as her other partner, Mr. Pynsent. Having planted which two
+daggers in Laura’s gentle bosom, Mr. Pendennis proceeded to rattle on
+with Blanche Amory, and to make jokes good or bad, but which were
+always loud. Laura was at a loss to account for her cousin’s sulky
+behaviour, and ignorant in what she had offended him; however, she was
+not angry in her turn at Pen’s splenetic mood, for she was the most
+good-natured and forgiving of women, and besides, an exhibition of
+jealousy on a man’s part is not always disagreeable to a lady.
+
+As Pen would not dance with her, she was glad to take up with the
+active Chevalier Strong, who was a still better performer than Pen; and
+being very fond of dancing, as every brisk and innocent young girl
+should be, when the waltz music began she set off, and chose to enjoy
+herself with all her heart. Captain Broadfoot on this occasion occupied
+the floor in conjunction with a lady of proportions scarcely inferior
+to his own; Miss Roundle, a large young woman in a strawberry-ice
+coloured crape dress, the daughter of the lady with the grapes in her
+head, whose bunches Pen had admired.
+
+And now taking his time, and with his fair partner Blanche hanging
+lovingly on the arm which encircled her, Mr. Arthur Pendennis set out
+upon his waltzing career, and felt, as he whirled round to the music,
+that he and Blanche were performing very brilliantly indeed. Very
+likely he looked to see if Miss Bell thought so too; but she did not or
+would not see him, and was always engaged with her partner Captain
+Strong. But Pen’s triumph was not destined to last long; and it was
+doomed that poor Blanche was to have yet another discomfiture on that
+unfortunate night. While she and Pen were whirling round as light and
+brisk as a couple of opera-dancers, honest Captain Broadfoot and the
+lady round whose large waist he was clinging, were twisting round very
+leisurely according to their natures, and indeed were in everybody’s
+way. But they were more in Pendennis’s way than in anybody’s else, for
+he and Blanche, whilst executing their rapid gyrations, came bolt up
+against the heavy dragoon and his lady, and with such force that the
+centre of gravity was lost by all four of the circumvolving bodies;
+Captain Broadfoot and Miss Roundle were fairly upset, as was Pen
+himself, who was less lucky than his partner Miss Amory, who was only
+thrown upon a bench against a wall.
+
+But Pendennis came fairly down upon the floor, sprawling in the general
+ruin with Broadfoot and Miss Roundle. The Captain, though heavy, was
+good-natured, and was the first to burst out into a loud laugh at his
+own misfortune, which nobody therefore heeded. But Miss Amory was
+savage at her mishap; Miss Roundle placed on her seant, and looking
+pitifully round, presented an object which very few people could see
+without laughing; and Pen was furious when he heard the people giggling
+about him. He was one of those sarcastic young fellows that did not
+bear a laugh at his own expense, and of all things in the world feared
+ridicule most.
+
+As he got up Laura and Strong were laughing at him; everybody was
+laughing; Pynsent and his partner were laughing; and Pen boiled with
+wrath against the pair, and could have stabbed them both on the spot.
+He turned away in a fury from them, and began blundering out apologies
+to Miss Amory. It was the other couple’s fault—the woman in pink had
+done it—Pen hoped Miss Amory was not hurt—would she not have the
+courage to take another turn?
+
+Miss Amory in a pet said she was very much hurt indeed, and she would
+not take another turn; and she accepted with great thanks a glass of
+water which a cavalier, who wore a blue ribbon and a three-pointed
+star, rushed to fetch for her when he had seen the deplorable accident.
+She drank the water, smiled upon the bringer gracefully, and turning
+her white shoulder at Mr. Pen in the most marked and haughty manner,
+besought the gentleman with the star to conduct her to her mamma; and
+she held out her hand in order to take his arm.
+
+The man with the star trembled with delight at this mark of her favour;
+he bowed over her hand, pressed it to his coat fervidly, and looked
+round him with triumph.
+
+It was no other than the happy Mirobolant whom Blanche had selected as
+an escort. But the truth is, that the young lady had never fairly
+looked in the artist’s face since he had been employed in her mother’s
+family, and had no idea but it was a foreign nobleman on whose arm she
+was leaning. As she went off, Pen forgot his humiliation in his
+surprise, and cried out, “By Jove, it’s the cook!”
+
+The instant he had uttered the words, he was sorry for having spoken
+them—for it was Blanche who had herself invited Mirobolant to escort
+her, nor could the artist do otherwise than comply with a lady’s
+command. Blanche in her flutter did not hear what Arthur said; but
+Mirobolant heard him, and cast a furious glance at him over his
+shoulder, which rather amused Mr. Pen. He was in a mischievous and
+sulky humour; wanting perhaps to pick a quarrel with somebody; but the
+idea of having insulted a cook, or that such an individual should have
+any feeling of honour at all, did not much enter into the mind of this
+lofty young aristocrat, the apothecary’s son.
+
+It had never entered that poor artist’s head, that he as a man was not
+equal to any other mortal, or that there was anything in his position
+so degrading as to prevent him from giving his arm to a lady who asked
+for it. He had seen in the fêtes in his own country fine ladies, not
+certainly demoiselles (but the demoiselle Anglaise he knew was a great
+deal more free than the spinster in France), join in the dance with
+Blaise or Pierre; and he would have taken Blanche up to Lady Clavering,
+and possibly have asked her to dance too, but he heard Pen’s
+exclamation, which struck him as if it had shot him, and cruelly
+humiliated and angered him. She did not know what caused him to start,
+and to grind a Gascon oath between his teeth.
+
+But Strong, who was acquainted with the poor fellow’s state of mind,
+having had the interesting information from our friend Madame Fribsby,
+was luckily in the way when wanted, and saying something rapidly in
+Spanish, which the other understood, the Chevalier begged Miss Amory to
+come and take an ice before she went back to Lady Clavering. Upon which
+the unhappy Mirobolant relinquished the arm which he had held for a
+minute, and with a most profound and piteous bow, fell back. “Don’t you
+know who it is?” Strong asked of Miss Amory, as he led her away. “It is
+the chef Mirobolant.”
+
+“How should I know?” asked Blanche. “He has a croix; he is very
+distingue; he has beautiful eyes.”
+
+“The poor fellow is mad for your beaux yeux, I believe,” Strong said.
+“He is a very good cook, but he is not quite right in the head.”
+
+“What did you say to him in the unknown tongue?” asked Miss Blanche.
+
+“He is a Gascon, and comes from the borders of Spain,” Strong answered.
+“I told him he would lose his place if he walked with you.”
+
+“Poor Monsieur Mirobolant!” said Blanche.
+
+“Did you see the look he gave Pendennis?”—Strong asked, enjoying the
+idea of the mischief—“I think he would like to run little Pen through
+with one of his spits.”
+
+“He is an odious, conceited, clumsy creature, that Mr. Pen,” said
+Blanche.
+
+“Broadfoot looked as if he would like to kill him too, so did Pynsent,”
+Strong said. “What ice will you have—water ice or cream ice?”
+
+“Water ice. Who is that odd man staring at me—he is decore too.”
+
+“That is my friend Colonel Altamont, a very queer character, in the
+service of the Nawaub of Lucknow. Hallo! what’s that noise? I’ll be
+back in an instant,” said the Chevalier, and sprang out of the room to
+the ballroom, where a scuffle and a noise of high voices was heard.
+
+The refreshment-room, in which Miss Amory now found herself, was a room
+set apart for the purposes of supper, which Mr. Rincer the landlord had
+provided for those who chose to partake, at the rate of five shillings
+per head. Also, refreshments of a superior class were here ready for
+the ladies and gentlemen of the county families who came to the ball;
+but the commoner sort of persons were kept out of the room by a waiter
+who stood at the portal, and who said that was a select room for Lady
+Clavering and Lady Rockminster’s parties, and not to be opened to the
+public till supper-time, which was not to be until past midnight.
+Pynsent, who danced with his constituents’ daughters, took them and
+their mammas in for their refreshment there. Strong, who was manager
+and master of the revels wherever he went, had of course the entree—and
+the only person who was now occupying the room was the gentleman with
+the black wig and the orders in his button-hole; the officer in the
+service of his Highness the Nawaub of Lucknow.
+
+This gentleman had established himself very early in the evening in
+this apartment, where, saying he was confoundedly thirsty, he called
+for a bottle of champagne. At this order the waiter instantly supposed
+that he had to do with a grandee, and the Colonel sate down and began
+to eat his supper and absorb his drink, and enter affably into
+conversation with anybody who entered the room.
+
+Sir Francis Clavering and Mr. Wagg found him there, when they left the
+ballroom, which they did pretty early—Sir Francis to go and smoke a
+cigar, and look at the people gathered outside the ballroom on the
+shore, which he declared was much better fun than to remain within; Mr.
+Wagg to hang on to a Baronet’s arm, as he was always pleased to do on
+the arm of the greatest man in the company. Colonel Altamont had stared
+at these gentlemen in so odd a manner, as they passed through the
+‘Select’ room, that Clavering made inquiries of the landlord who he
+was, and hinted a strong opinion that the officer of the Nawaub’s
+service was drunk.
+
+Mr. Pynsent, too, had had the honour of a conversation with the servant
+of the Indian potentate. It was Pynsent’s cue to speak to everybody
+(which he did, to do him justice, in the most ungracious manner); and
+he took the gentleman in the black wig for some constituent, some
+merchant captain, or other outlandish man of the place. Mr. Pynsent,
+then, coming into the refreshment-room with a lady, the wife of a
+constituent, on his arm, the Colonel asked him if he would try a glass
+of Sham? Pynsent took it with great gravity, bowed, tasted the wine,
+and pronounced it excellent, and with the utmost politeness retreated
+before Colonel Altamont. This gravity and decorum routed and surprised
+the Colonel more than any other kind of behaviour probably would: he
+stared after Pynsent stupidly, and pronounced to the landlord over the
+counter that he was a rum one. Mr. Rincer blushed, and hardly knew what
+to say. Mr. Pynsent was a county Earl’s grandson, going to set up as a
+Parliament man. Colonel Altamont on the other hand, wore orders and
+diamonds, jingled sovereigns constantly in his pocket, and paid his way
+like a man; so not knowing what to say, Mr. Rincer said, “Yes,
+Colonel—yes, ma’am, did you say tea? Cup a tea for Mr. Jones, Mrs. R.,”
+and so got off that discussion regarding Mr. Pynsent’s qualities, into
+which the Nizam’s officer appeared inclined to enter.
+
+In fact, if the truth must be told, Mr. Altamont, having remained at
+the buffet almost all night, and employed himself very actively whilst
+there, had considerably flushed his brain by drinking, and he was still
+going on drinking, when Mr. Strong and Miss Amory entered the room.
+
+When the Chevalier ran out of the apartment, attracted by the noise in
+the dancing-room, the Colonel rose from his chair with his little red
+eyes glowing like coals, and, with rather an unsteady gait advanced
+towards Blanche, who was sipping her ice. She was absorbed in absorbing
+it, for it was very fresh and good; or she was not curious to know what
+was going on in the adjoining room, although the waiters were, who ran
+after Chevalier Strong. So that when she looked up from her glass, she
+beheld this strange man staring at her out of his little red eyes. “Who
+was he? It was quite exciting.”
+
+“And so you’re Betsy Amory,” said he, after gazing at her. “Betsy
+Amory, by Jove!”
+
+“Who—who speaks to me?” said Betsy, alias Blanche.
+
+But the noise in the ballroom is really becoming so loud, that we must
+rush back thither, and see what is the cause of the disturbance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+Which is both Quarrelsome and Sentimental
+
+
+Civil war was raging, high words passing, people pushing and squeezing
+together in an unseemly manner, round a window in the corner of the
+ballroom, close by the door through which the Chevalier Strong
+shouldered his way. Through the opened window, the crowd in the street
+below was sending up sarcastic remarks, such as “Pitch into him!”
+“Where’s the police?” and the like; and a ring of individuals, amongst
+whom Madame Fribsby was conspicuous, was gathered round Monsieur Alcide
+Mirobolant on the one side; whilst several gentlemen and ladies
+surrounded our friend Arthur Pendennis on the other. Strong penetrated
+into this assembly, elbowing by Madame Fribsby, who was charmed at the
+Chevalier’s appearance, and cried, “Save him, save him!” in frantic and
+pathetic accents.
+
+The cause of the disturbance, it appeared, was the angry little chef of
+Sir Francis Clavering’s culinary establishment. Shortly after Strong
+had quitted the room, and whilst Mr. Pen, greatly irate at his downfall
+in the waltz, which had made him look ridiculous in the eyes of the
+nation, and by Miss Amory’s behaviour to him, which had still further
+insulted his dignity, was endeavouring to get some coolness of body and
+temper, by looking out of window towards the sea, which was sparkling
+in the distance, and murmuring in a wonderful calm—whilst he was really
+trying to compose himself, and owning to himself, perhaps, that he had
+acted in a very absurd and peevish manner during the night—he felt a
+hand upon his shoulder; and, on looking round, beheld, to his utter
+surprise and horror, that the hand in question belonged to Monsieur
+Mirobolant, whose eyes were glaring out of his pale face and ringlets
+at Mr. Pen. To be tapped on the shoulder by a French cook was a piece
+of familiarity which made the blood of the Pendennises to boil up in
+the veins of their descendant, and he was astounded, almost more than
+enraged, at such an indignity.
+
+“You speak French?” Mirobolant said in his own language to Pen.
+
+“What is that to you, pray?” said Pen, in English.
+
+“At any rate, you understand it?” continued the other, with a bow.
+
+“Yes, sir,” said Pen, with a stamp of his foot; “I understand it pretty
+well.”
+
+“Vous me comprendrez alors, Monsieur Pendennis,” replied the other,
+rolling out his r with Gascon force, “quand je vous dis que vous etes
+un lache. Monsieur Pendennis—un lache, entendez-vous?”
+
+“What?” said Pen, starting round on him.
+
+“You understand the meaning of the word and its consequences among men
+of honour?” the artist said, putting his hand on his hip, and staring
+at Pen.
+
+“The consequences are, that I will fling you out of window, you
+impudent scoundrel,” bawled out Mr. Pen; and darting upon the
+Frenchman, he would very likely have put his threat into execution, for
+the window was at hand, and the artist by no means a match for the
+young gentleman—had not Captain Broadfoot and another heavy officer
+flung themselves between the combatants,—had not the ladies begun to
+scream,—had not the fiddles stopped, had not the crowd of people come
+running in that direction,—had not Laura, with a face of great alarm,
+looked over their heads and asked for Heaven’s sake what was wrong,—had
+not the opportune Strong made his appearance from the refreshment-room,
+and found Alcides grinding his teeth and jabbering oaths in his Galleon
+French, and Pen looking uncommonly wicked, although trying to appear as
+calm as possible, when the ladies and the crowd came up.
+
+“What has happened?” Strong asked of the chef, in Spanish.
+
+“I am Chevalier de Juillet,” said the other, slapping his breast, “and
+he has insulted me.”
+
+“What has he said to you?” asked Strong.
+
+“Il m’a appele—Cuisinier,” hissed out the little Frenchman.
+
+Strong could hardly help laughing. “Come away with me, poor Chevalier,”
+he said. “We must not quarrel before ladies. Come away; I will carry
+your message to Mr. Pendennis.—The poor fellow is not right in his
+head,” he whispered to one or two people about him;—and others, and
+anxious Laura’s face visible amongst these, gathered round Pen and
+asked the cause of the disturbance.
+
+Pen did not know. “The man was going to give his arm to a young lady,
+on which I said that he was a cook, and the man called me a coward and
+challenged me to fight. I own I was so surprised and indignant, that if
+you gentlemen had not stopped me, I should have thrown him out of
+window,” Pen said.
+
+“D—— him, serve him right, too,—the impudent foreign scoundrel,” the
+gentlemen said.
+
+“I—I’m very sorry if I hurt his feelings, though,” Pen added and Laura
+was glad to hear him say that; although some of the young bucks said,
+“No, hang the fellow,—hang those impudent foreigners—little thrashing
+would do them good.”
+
+“You will go and shake hands with him before you go to sleep—won’t you,
+Pen?” said Laura, coming up to him. “Foreigners may be more susceptible
+than we are, and have different manners. If you hurt a poor man’s
+feelings, I am sure you would be the first to ask his pardon. Wouldn’t
+you, dear Pen?”
+
+She looked all forgiveness and gentleness, like an angel, as she spoke;
+and Pen took both her hands, and looked into her kind face, and said
+indeed he would.
+
+“How fond that girl is of me!” he thought, as she stood gazing at him.
+“Shall I speak to her now? No—not now. I must have this absurd business
+with the Frenchman over.”
+
+Laura asked—Wouldn’t he stop and dance with her? She was as anxious to
+keep him in the room, as he to quit it. “Won’t you stop and waltz with
+me, Pen? I’m not afraid to waltz with you.”
+
+This was an affectionate, but an unlucky speech. Pen saw himself
+prostrate on the ground, having tumbled over Miss Roundle and the
+dragoon, and flung Blanche up against the wall—saw himself on the
+ground, and all the people laughing at him, Laura and Pynsent amongst
+them.
+
+“I shall never dance again,” he replied, with a dark and determined
+face. “Never. I’m surprised you should ask me.”
+
+“Is it because you can’t get Blanche for a partner?” asked Laura, with
+a wicked, unlucky captiousness.
+
+“Because I don’t wish to make a fool of myself, for other people to
+laugh at me,” Pen answered—“for you to laugh at me, Laura. I saw you
+and Pynsent. By Jove! no man shall laugh at me.”
+
+“Pen, Pen, don’t be so wicked!” cried out the poor girl, hurt at the
+morbid perverseness and savage vanity of Pen. He was glaring round in
+the direction of Mr. Pynsent as if he would have liked to engage that
+gentleman as he had done the cook. “Who thinks the worse of you for
+stumbling in a waltz?” If Laura does, we don’t. “Why are you so
+sensitive, and ready to think evil?”
+
+Here again, by ill luck, Mr. Pynsent came up to Laura, and said “I have
+it in command from Lady Rockminster to ask whether I may take you in to
+supper?”
+
+“I—I was going in with my cousin,” Laura said.
+
+“O—pray, no!” said Pen. “You are in such good hands, that I can’t do
+better than leave you: and I’m going home.”
+
+“Good-night, Mr. Pendennis,” Pynsent said, drily—to which speech
+(which, in fact, meant, “Go to the deuce for an insolent, jealous,
+impertinent jackanapes, whose ears I should like to box”) Mr. Pendennis
+did not vouchsafe any reply, except a bow: and in spite of Laura’s
+imploring looks, he left the room.
+
+“How beautifully calm and bright the night outside is!” said Mr.
+Pynsent; “and what a murmur the sea is making! It would be pleasanter
+to be walking on the beach, than in this hot room.”
+
+“Very,” said Laura.
+
+“What a strange congregation of people,” continued Pynsent. “I have had
+to go up and perform the agreeable to most of them—the attorney’s
+daughters—the apothecary’s wife—I scarcely know whom. There was a man
+in the refreshment-room, who insisted upon treating me to champagne—a
+seafaring-looking man—extraordinarily dressed, and seeming half tipsy.
+As a public man one is bound to conciliate all these people, but it is
+a hard task—especially when one would so very much like to be
+elsewhere”—and he blushed rather as he spoke.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Laura—“I—I was not listening. Indeed—I was
+frightened about that quarrel between my cousin and that—that—French
+person.”
+
+“Your cousin has been rather unlucky to-night,” Pynsent said. “There
+are three or four persons whom he has not succeeded in pleasing—captain
+Broadwood; what is his name—the officer—and the young lady in red with
+whom he danced—and Miss Blanche—and the poor chef—and I don’t think he
+seemed to be particularly pleased with me.”
+
+“Didn’t he leave me in charge to you?” Laura said, looking up into Mr.
+Pynsent’s face, and dropping her eyes instantly, like a guilty little
+story-telling coquette.
+
+“Indeed, I can forgive him a good deal for that,” Pynsent eagerly cried
+out, and she took his arm, and he led off his little prize in the
+direction of the supper-room.
+
+She had no great desire for that repast, though it was served in
+Rincer’s well-known style, as the county paper said, giving an account
+of the entertainment afterwards; indeed, she was very distraite; and
+exceedingly pained and unhappy about Pen. Captious and quarrelsome;
+jealous and selfish; fickle and violent and unjust when his anger led
+him astray; how could her mother (as indeed Helen had by a thousand
+words and hints) ask her to give her heart to such a man? and suppose
+she were to do so, would it make him happy?
+
+But she got some relief at length, when, at the end of half an hour—a
+long half-hour it had seemed to her—a waiter brought her a little note
+in pencil from Pen, who said, “I met Cooky below ready to fight me; and
+I asked his pardon. I’m glad I did it. I wanted to speak to you
+to-night, but will keep what I had to say till you come home. God bless
+you. Dance away all night with Pynsent, and be very happy.—PEN.” Laura
+was very thankful for this letter, and to think that there was goodness
+and forgiveness still in her mother’s boy.
+
+Pen went downstairs, his heart reproaching him for his absurd behaviour
+to Laura, whose gentle and imploring looks followed and rebuked him;
+and he was scarcely out of the ballroom door but he longed to turn back
+and ask her pardon. But he remembered that he had left her with that
+confounded Pynsent. He could not apologise before him. He would
+compromise and forget his wrath, and make his peace with the Frenchman.
+
+The Chevalier was pacing down below in the hall of the inn when Pen
+descended from the ballroom; and he came up to Pen, with all sorts of
+fun and mischief lighting up his jolly face.
+
+“I have got him in the coffee-room,” he said, “with a brace of pistols
+and a candle. Or would you like swords on the beach? Mirobolant is a
+dead hand with the foils, and killed four gardes-du-corps with his own
+point in the barricades of July.”
+
+“Confound it,” said Pen, in a fury, “I can’t fight a cook!”
+
+“He is a Chevalier of July,” replied the other. “They present arms to
+him in his own country.”
+
+“And do you ask me, Captain Strong, to go out with a servant?” Pen
+asked fiercely; “I’ll call a policeman him but—but——”
+
+“You’ll invite me to hair triggers?” cried Strong, with a laugh. “Thank
+you for nothing; I was but joking. I came to settle quarrels, not to
+fight them. I have been soothing down Mirobolant; I have told him that
+you did not apply the word ‘Cook’ to him in an offensive sense: that it
+was contrary to all the customs of the country that a hired officer of
+a household, as I called it, should give his arm to the daughter of the
+house.” And then he told Pen the grand secret which he had had from
+Madame Fribsby of the violent passion under which the poor artist was
+labouring.
+
+When Arthur heard this tale, he broke out into a hearty laugh, in which
+Strong joined, and his rage against the poor cook vanished at once. He
+had been absurdly jealous himself all the evening, and had longed for a
+pretext to insult Pynsent. He remembered how jealous he had been of
+Oaks in his first affair; he was ready to pardon anything to a man
+under a passion like that: and he went into the coffee-room where
+Mirobolant was waiting, with an outstretched hand, and made him a
+speech in French, in which he declared that he was “sincerement fache
+d’avoir use une expression qui avoit pu blesser Monsieur Mirobolant, et
+qu’il donnoit sa parole comme un gentilhomme qu’il ne l’avoit jamais,
+jamais—intende,” said Pen, who made a shot at a French word for
+“intended,” and was secretly much pleased with his own fluency and
+correctness in speaking that language.
+
+“Bravo, bravo!” cried Strong, as much amused with Pen’s speech as
+pleased by his kind manner. And the Chevalier Mirobolant of course
+withdraws, and sincerely regrets the expression of which he made use.
+
+“Monsieur Pendennis has disproved my words himself,” said Alcide with
+great politeness; “he has shown that he is a galant homme.”
+
+And so they shook hands and parted, Arthur in the first place
+despatching his note to Laura before he and Strong committed themselves
+to the Butcher Boy.
+
+As they drove along, Strong complimented Pen upon his behaviour, as
+well as upon his skill in French. “You’re a good fellow, Pendennis, and
+you speak French like Chateaubriand, by Jove.”
+
+“I’ve been accustomed to it from my youth upwards,” said Pen; and
+Strong had the grace not to laugh for five minutes, when he exploded
+into fits of hilarity which Pendennis has never perhaps understood up
+to this day.
+
+It was daybreak when they got to the Brawl, where they separated. By
+that time the ball at Baymouth was over too. Madame Fribsby and
+Mirobolant were on their way home in the Clavering fly; Laura was in
+bed with an easy heart and asleep at Lady Rockminster’s; and the
+Claverings at rest at the inn at Baymouth, where they had quarters for
+the night. A short time after the disturbance between Pen and the chef,
+Blanche had come out of the refreshment-room, looking as pale as a
+lemon-ice. She told her maid, having no other confidante at hand, that
+she had met with the most romantic adventure—the most singular man—one
+who had known the author of her being—her persecuted—her unhappy—her
+heroic—her murdered father; and she began a sonnet to his manes before
+she went to sleep.
+
+So Pen returned to Fairoaks, in company with his friend the Chevalier,
+without having uttered a word of the message which he had been so
+anxious to deliver to Laura at Baymouth. He could wait, however, until
+her return home, which was to take place on the succeeding day. He was
+not seriously jealous of the progress made by Mr. Pynsent in her
+favour; and he felt pretty certain that in this, as in any other family
+arrangement, he had but to ask and have, and Laura, like his mother,
+could refuse him nothing.
+
+When Helen’s anxious looks inquired of him what had happened at
+Baymouth, and whether her darling project was fulfilled, Pen, in a gay
+tone, told of the calamity which had befallen; laughingly said, that no
+man could think about declarations under such a mishap, and made light
+of the matter. “There will be plenty of time for sentiment, dear
+mother, when Laura comes back,” he said, and he looked in the glass
+with a killing air, and his mother put his hair off his forehead and
+kissed him, and of course thought, for her part, that no woman could
+resist him: and was exceedingly happy that day.
+
+When he was not with her, Mr. Pen occupied himself in packing books and
+portmanteaus, burning and arranging papers, cleaning his gun and
+putting it into its case: in fact, in making dispositions for
+departure. For though he was ready to marry, this gentleman was eager
+to go to London too, rightly considering that at three-and-twenty it
+was quite time for him to begin upon the serious business of life, and
+to set about making a fortune as quickly as possible.
+
+The means to this end he had already shaped out for himself. “I shall
+take chambers,” he said, “and enter myself at an Inn of Court. With a
+couple of hundred pounds I shall be able to carry through the first
+year very well; after that I have little doubt my pen will support me,
+as it is doing with several Oxbridge men now in town. I have a tragedy,
+a comedy, and a novel, all nearly finished, and for which I can’t fail
+to get a price. And so I shall be able to live pretty well, without
+drawing upon my poor mother, until I have made my way at the bar. Then,
+some day I will come back and make her dear soul happy by marrying
+Laura. She is as good and as sweet-tempered a girl as ever lived,
+besides being really very good-looking, and the engagement will serve
+to steady me,—won’t it, Ponto?” Thus, smoking his pipe, and talking to
+his dog as he sauntered through the gardens and orchards of the little
+domain of Fairoaks, this young day-dreamer built castles in the air for
+himself: “Yes, she’ll steady me, won’t she? And you’ll miss me when
+I’ve gone, won’t you, old boy?” he asked of Ponto, who quivered his
+tail and thrust his brown nose into his master’s fist. Ponto licked his
+hand and shoe, as they all did in that house, and Mr. Pen received
+their homage as other folks do the flattery which they get.
+
+Laura came home rather late in the evening of the second day; and Mr.
+Pynsent, as ill luck would have it, drove her from Clavering. The poor
+girl could not refuse his offer, but his appearance brought a dark
+cloud upon the brow of Arthur Pendennis. Laura saw this, and was pained
+by it: the eager widow, however, was aware of nothing, and being
+anxious, doubtless, that the delicate question should be asked at once,
+was for going to bed very soon after Laura’s arrival, and rose for that
+purpose to leave the sofa where she now generally lay, and where Laura
+would come and sit and work or read by her. But when Helen rose, Laura
+said, with a blush and rather an alarmed voice, that she was also very
+tired and wanted to go to bed: so that the widow was disappointed in
+her scheme for that night at least, and Mr. Pen was left another day in
+suspense regarding his fate.
+
+His dignity was offended at being thus obliged to remain in the
+ante-chamber when he wanted an audience. Such a sultan as he, could not
+afford to be kept waiting. However, he went to bed and slept upon his
+disappointment pretty comfortably, and did not wake until the early
+morning, when he looked up and saw his mother standing in his room.
+
+“Dear Pen, rouse up,” said this lady. “Do not be lazy. It is the most
+beautiful morning in the world. I have not been able to sleep since
+daybreak; and Laura has been out for an hour. She is in the garden.
+Everybody ought to be in the garden and out on such a morning as this.”
+
+Pen laughed. He saw what thoughts were uppermost in the simple woman’s
+heart. His good-natured laughter cheered the widow. “Oh you profound
+dissembler,” he said, kissing his mother. “Oh you artful creature! Can
+nobody escape from your wicked tricks? and will you make your only son
+your victim?” Helen too laughed, she blushed, she fluttered, and was
+agitated. She was as happy as she could be—a good tender, matchmaking
+woman, the dearest project of whose heart was about to be accomplished.
+
+So, after exchanging some knowing looks and hasty words, Helen left
+Arthur; and this young hero, rising from his bed, proceeded to decorate
+his beautiful person, and shave his ambrosial chin; and in half an hour
+he issued out from his apartment into the garden in quest of Laura. His
+reflections as he made his toilette were rather dismal. “I am going to
+tie myself for life,” he thought, “to please my mother. Laura is the
+best of women, and—and she has given me her money. I wish to Heaven I
+had not received it; I wish I had not this duty to perform just yet.
+But as both the women have set their hearts on the match, why I suppose
+I must satisfy them—and now for it. A man may do worse than make happy
+two of the best creatures in the world.” So Pen, now he was actually
+come to the point, felt very grave, and by no means elated, and,
+indeed, thought it was a great sacrifice he was going to perform.
+
+It was Miss Laura’s custom, upon her garden excursions, to wear a sort
+of uniform, which, though homely, was thought by many people to be not
+unbecoming. She had a large straw hat, with a streamer of broad ribbon,
+which was useless probably, but the hat sufficiently protected the
+owner’s pretty face from the sun. Over her accustomed gown she wore a
+blouse or pinafore, which, being fastened round her little waist by a
+smart belt, looked extremely well, and her hands were guaranteed from
+the thorns of her favourite rose-bushes by a pair of gauntlets, which
+gave this young lady a military and resolute air.
+
+Somehow she had the very same smile with which she had laughed at him
+on the night previous, and the recollection of his disaster again
+offended Pen. But Laura, though she saw him coming down the walk
+looking so gloomy and full of care, accorded to him a smile of the most
+perfect and provoking good-humour, and went to meet him, holding one of
+the gauntlets to him, so that he might shake it if he liked—and Mr. Pen
+condescended to do so. His face, however, did not lose its tragic
+expression in consequence of this favour, and he continued to regard
+her with a dismal and solemn air.
+
+“Excuse my glove,” said Laura, with a laugh, pressing Pen’s hand kindly
+with it. “We are not angry again, are we, Pen?”
+
+“Why do you laugh at me?” said Pen. “You did the other night, and made
+a fool of me to the people at Baymouth.”
+
+“My dear Arthur, I meant you no wrong,” the girl answered. “You and
+Miss Roundle looked so droll as you—as you met with your little
+accident, that I could not make a tragedy of it. Dear Pen, it wasn’t a
+serious fall. And, besides, it was Miss Roundle who was the most
+unfortunate.”
+
+“Confound Miss Roundle,” bellowed out Pen.
+
+“I’m sure she looked so,” said Laura, archly. “You were up in an
+instant; but that poor lady sitting on the ground in her red crape
+dress, and looking about her with that piteous face—can I ever forget
+her?”—and Laura began to make a face in imitation of Miss Roundle’s
+under the disaster, but she checked herself repentantly, saying, “Well,
+we must not laugh at her, but I am sure we ought to laugh at you, Pen,
+if you were angry about such a trifle.”
+
+“You should not laugh at me, Laura,” said Pen, with some bitterness;
+“not you, of all people.”
+
+“And why not? Are you such a great man?” asked Laura.
+
+“Ah no, Laura, I’m such a poor one,” Pen answered. “Haven’t you baited
+me enough already?”
+
+“My dear Pen, and how?” cried Laura. “Indeed, indeed, I didn’t think to
+vex you by such a trifle. I thought such a clever man as you could bear
+a harmless little joke from his sister,” she said, holding her hand out
+again. “Dear Arthur, if I have hurt you, I beg your pardon.”
+
+“It is your kindness that humiliates me more even than your laughter,
+Laura,” Pen said. “You are always my superior.”
+
+“What! superior to the great Arthur Pendennis? How can it be possible?”
+said Miss Laura, who may have had a little wickedness as well as a
+great deal of kindness in her composition. “You can’t mean that any
+woman is your equal?”
+
+“Those who confer benefits should not sneer,” said Pen. “I don’t like
+my benefactor to laugh at me, Laura; it makes the obligation very hard
+to bear. You scorn me because I have taken your money, and I am worthy
+to be scorned; but the blow is hard coming from you.”
+
+“Money! Obligation! For shame, Pen; this is ungenerous,” Laura said,
+flushing red. “May not our mother claim everything that belongs to us?
+Don’t I owe her all my happiness in this world, Arthur? What matters
+about a few paltry guineas, if we can set her tender heart at rest, and
+ease her mind regarding you? I would dig in the fields, I would go out
+and be a servant—I would die for her. You know I would,” said Miss
+Laura, kindling up; “and you call this paltry money an obligation? Oh,
+Pen, it’s cruel—it’s unworthy of you to take it so! If my brother may
+not share with me my superfluity, who may?—Mine?—I tell you it was not
+mine; it was all mamma’s to do with as she chose, and so is everything
+I have,” said Laura; “my life is hers.” And the enthusiastic girl
+looked towards the windows of the widow’s room, and blessed in her
+heart the kind creature within.
+
+Helen was looking, unseen, out of that window towards which Laura’s
+eyes and heart were turned as she spoke, and was watching her two
+children with the deepest interest and emotion, longing and hoping that
+the prayer of her life might be fulfilled; and if Laura had spoken as
+Helen hoped, who knows what temptations Arthur Pendennis might have
+been spared, or what different trials he would have had to undergo? He
+might have remained at Fairoaks all his days, and died a country
+gentleman. But would he have escaped then? Temptation is an obsequious
+servant that has no objection to the country, and we know that it takes
+up its lodging in hermitages as well as in cities; and that in the most
+remote and inaccessible desert it keeps company with the fugitive
+solitary.
+
+“Is your life my mother’s?” said Pen, beginning to tremble, and speak
+in a very agitated manner. “You know, Laura, what the great object of
+hers is?” And he took her hand once more.
+
+“What, Arthur?” she said, dropping it, and looking at him, at the
+window again, and then dropping her eyes to the ground, so that they
+avoided Pen’s gaze. She, too, trembled, for she felt that the crisis
+for which she had been secretly preparing was come.
+
+“Our mother has one wish above all others in the world, Laura,” Pen
+said; “and I think you know it. I own to you that she has spoken to me
+of it; and if you will fulfil it, dear sister, I am ready. I am but
+very young as yet; but I have had so many pains and disappointments,
+that I am old and weary. I think I have hardly got a heart to offer.
+Before I have almost begun the race in life, I am a tired man. My
+career has been a failure; I have been protected by those whom I by
+right should have protected. I own that your nobleness and generosity,
+dear Laura, shame me, whilst they render me grateful. When I heard from
+our mother what you had done for me; that it was you who armed me and
+bade me go out for one struggle more; I longed to go and throw myself
+at your feet, and say, ‘Laura, will you come and share the contest with
+me?’ Your sympathy will cheer me while it lasts. I shall have one of
+the tenderest and most generous creatures under heaven to aid and bear
+me company. Will you take me, dear Laura, and make our mother happy?”
+
+“Do you think mamma would be happy if you were otherwise, Arthur?”
+Laura said in a low sad voice.
+
+“And why should I not be,” asked Pen eagerly, “with so dear a creature
+as you by my side? I have not my first love to give you. I am a broken
+man. But indeed I would love you fondly and truly. I have lost many an
+illusion and ambition, but I am not without hope still. Talents I know
+I have, wretchedly as I have misapplied them: they may serve me yet:
+they would, had I a motive for action. Let me go away and think that I
+am pledged to return to you. Let me go and work, and hope, that you
+will share my success if I gain it. You have given me so much, Laura
+dear, will you take from me nothing?”
+
+“What have you got to give, Arthur?” Laura said, with a grave sadness
+of tone, which made Pen start, and see that his words had committed
+him. Indeed, his declaration had not been such as he would have made it
+two days earlier, when, full of hope and gratitude, he had run over to
+Laura, his liberatress, to thank her for his recovered freedom. Had he
+been permitted to speak then, he had spoken, and she, perhaps, had
+listened differently. It would have been a grateful heart asking for
+hers; not a weary one offered to her, to take or to leave. Laura was
+offended with the terms in which Pen offered himself to her. He had, in
+fact, said that he had no love, and yet would take no denial. “I give
+myself to you to please my mother,” he had said: “take me, as she
+wishes that I should make this sacrifice.” The girl’s spirit would
+brook a husband under no such conditions: she was not minded to run
+forward because Pen chose to hold out the handkerchief, and her tone,
+in reply to Arthur, showed her determination to be independent.
+
+“No, Arthur,” she said, “our marriage would not make mamma happy, as
+she fancies; for it would not content you very long. I, too, have known
+what her wishes were; for she is too open to conceal anything she has
+at heart: and once, perhaps, I thought—but that is over now—that I
+could have made you—that it might have been as she wished.”
+
+“You have seen somebody else,” said Pen, angry at her tone, and
+recalling the incidents of the past days.
+
+“That allusion might have been spared,” Laura replied, flinging up her
+head. “A heart which has worn out love at three-and-twenty, as yours
+has, you say, should have survived jealousy too. I do not condescend to
+say whether I have seen or encouraged any other person. I shall neither
+admit the charge, nor deny it: and beg you also to allude to it no
+more.”
+
+“I ask your pardon, Laura, if I have offended you: but if I am jealous,
+does it not prove that I have a heart?”
+
+“Not for me, Arthur. Perhaps you think you love me now but it is only
+for an instant, and because you are foiled. Were there no obstacle, you
+would feel no ardour to overcome it. No, Arthur, you don’t love me. You
+would weary of me in three months, as—as you do of most things; and
+mamma, seeing you tired of me, would be more unhappy than at my refusal
+to be yours. Let us be brother and sister, Arthur, as heretofore—but no
+more. You will get over this little disappointment.”
+
+“I will try,” said Arthur, in a great indignation.
+
+“Have you not tried before?” Laura said, with some anger, for she had
+been angry with Arthur for a very long time, and was now determined, I
+suppose, to speak her mind. “And the next time, Arthur, when you offer
+yourself to a woman, do not say as you have done to me, ‘I have no
+heart—I do not love you; but I am ready to marry you because my mother
+wishes for the match.’ We require more than this in return for our
+love—that is, I think so. I have had no experience hitherto, and have
+not had the—the practice which you supposed me to have, when you spoke
+but now of my having seen somebody else. Did you tell your first love
+that you had no heart, Arthur? or your second that you did not love
+her, but that she might have you if she liked?”
+
+“What—what do you mean?” asked Arthur, blushing, and still in great
+wrath.
+
+“I mean Blanche Amory, Arthur Pendennis,” Laura said, proudly. “It is
+but two months since you were sighing at her feet—making poems to
+her—placing them in hollow trees by the river-side. I knew all. I
+watched you—that is, she showed them to me. Neither one nor the other
+were in earnest perhaps; but it is too soon now, Arthur, to begin a new
+attachment. Go through the time of your—your widowhood at least, and do
+not think of marrying until you are out of mourning”—(Here the girl’s
+eyes filled with tears, and she passed her hand across them.) “I am
+angry and hurt, and I have no right to be so, and I ask your pardon in
+my turn now, dear Arthur. You had a right to love Blanche. She was a
+thousand times prettier and more accomplished than—than any girl near
+us here; and you not could know that she had no heart; and so you were
+right to leave her too. I ought not to rebuke you about Blanche Amory,
+and because she deceived you. Pardon me, Pen,”—and she held the kind
+hand out to Pen once more.
+
+“We were both jealous,” said Pen. “Dear Laura, let us both forgive”—and
+he seized her hand and would have drawn her towards him. He thought
+that she was relenting, and already assumed the airs of a victor.
+
+But she shrank back, and her tears passed away; and she fixed on him a
+look so melancholy and severe, that the young man in his turn shrank
+before it. “Do not mistake me, Arthur,” she said, “it cannot be. You do
+not know what you ask, and do not be too angry with me for saying that
+I think you do not deserve it. What do you offer in exchange to a woman
+for her love, honour, and obedience? If ever I say these words, dear
+Pen, I hope to say them in earnest, and by the blessing of God to keep
+my vow. But you—what tie binds you? You do not care about many things
+which we poor women hold sacred, I do not like to think or ask how far
+your incredulity leads you. You offer to marry to please our mother,
+and own that you have no heart to give away. Oh, Arthur, what is it you
+offer me? What a rash compact would you enter into so lightly? A month
+ago, and you would have given yourself to another. I pray you do not
+trifle with your own or others’ hearts so recklessly. Go and work; go
+and mend, dear Arthur, for I see your faults, and dare speak of them
+now: go and get fame, as you say that you can, and I will pray for my
+brother, and watch our dearest mother at home.”
+
+“Is that your final decision, Laura?” Arthur cried.
+
+“Yes,” said Laura, bowing her head; and once more giving him her hand,
+she went away. He saw her pass under the creepers of the little porch,
+and disappear into the house. The curtains of his mother’s window fell
+at the same minute, but he did not mark that, or suspect that Helen had
+been witnessing the scene.
+
+Was he pleased, or was he angry at its termination? He had asked her,
+and a secret triumph filled his heart to think that he was still free.
+She had refused him, but did she not love him? That avowal of jealousy
+made him still think that her heart was his own, whatever her lips
+might utter.
+
+And now we ought, perhaps, to describe another scene which took place
+at Fairoaks, between the widow and Laura, when the latter had to tell
+Helen that she had refused Arthur Pendennis. Perhaps it was the hardest
+task of all which Laura had to go through in this matter: and the one
+which gave her the most pain. But as we do not like to see a good woman
+unjust, we shall not say a word more of the quarrel which now befell
+between Helen and her adopted daughter, or of the bitter tears which
+the poor girl was made to shed. It was the only difference which she
+and the widow had ever had as yet, and the more cruel from this cause.
+Pen left home whilst it was as yet pending—and Helen, who could pardon
+almost everything, could not pardon an act of justice in Laura.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+Babylon
+
+
+Our reader must now please to quit the woods and sea-shore of the west,
+and the gossip of Clavering, and the humdrum life of poor little
+Fairoaks, and transport himself with Arthur Pendennis, on the
+‘Alacrity’ coach, to London, whither he goes once for all to face the
+world and to make his fortune. As the coach whirls through the night
+away from the friendly gates of home, many a plan does the young man
+cast in his mind of future life and conduct, prudence, and peradventure
+success and fame. He knows he is a better man than many who have
+hitherto been ahead of him in the race: his first failure has caused
+him remorse, and brought with it reflection; it has not taken away his
+courage, or, let us add, his good opinion of himself. A hundred eager
+fancies and busy hopes keep him awake. How much older his mishaps and a
+year’s thought and self-communion have made him, than when, twelve
+months since, he passed on this road on his way to and from Oxbridge!
+His thoughts turn in the night with inexpressible fondness and
+tenderness towards the fond mother who blessed him when parting, and
+who, in spite of all his past faults and follies, trusts him and loves
+him still. Blessings be on her! he prays, as he looks up to the stars
+overhead. O Heaven! give him strength to work, to endure, to be honest,
+to avoid temptation, to be worthy of the loving soul who loves him so
+entirely! Very likely she is awake, too, at that moment, and sending up
+to the same Father purer prayers than his for the welfare of her boy.
+That woman’s love is a talisman by which he holds and hopes to get his
+safety. And Laura’s—he would have fain carried her affection with him
+too, but she has denied it, as he is not worthy of it. He owns as much
+with shame and remorse; confesses how much better and loftier her
+nature is than his own—confesses it, and yet is glad to be free. “I am
+not good enough for such a creature,” he owns to himself. He draws back
+before her spotless beauty and innocence, as from something that scares
+him. He feels he is not fit for such a mate as that; as many a wild
+prodigal who has been pious and guiltless in early days, keeps away
+from a church which he used to frequent once—shunning it, but not
+hostile to it—only feeling that he has no right in that pure place.
+
+With these thoughts to occupy him, Pen did not fall asleep until the
+nipping dawn of an October morning, and woke considerably refreshed
+when the coach stopped at the old breakfasting place at B——, where he
+had had a score of merry meals on his way to and from school and
+college many times since he was a boy. As they left that place, the sun
+broke out brightly, the pace was rapid, the horn blew, the milestones
+flew by, Pen smoked and joked with guard and fellow-passengers and
+people along the familiar road; it grew more busy and animated at every
+instant; the last team of greys came out at H——, and the coach drove
+into London. What young fellow has not felt a thrill as he entered the
+vast place? Hundreds of other carriages, crowded with their thousands
+of men, were hastening to the great city. “Here is my place,” thought
+Pen; “here is my battle beginning, in which I must fight and conquer,
+or fall. I have been a boy and a dawdler as yet. Oh, I long, I long to
+show that I can be a man.” And from his place on the coach-roof the
+eager young fellow looked down upon the city, with the sort of longing
+desire which young soldiers feel on the eve of a campaign.
+
+As they came along the road, Pen had formed acquaintance with a cheery
+fellow-passenger in a shabby cloak, who talked a great deal about men
+of letters with whom he was very familiar, and who was, in fact, the
+reporter of a London newspaper, as whose representative he had been to
+attend a great wrestling-match in the west. This gentleman knew
+intimately, as it appeared, all the leading men of letters of his day,
+and talked about Tom Campbell, and Tom Hood, and Sydney Smith, and this
+and the other, as if he had been their most intimate friend. As they
+passed by Brompton, this gentleman pointed out to Pen Mr. Hurtle, the
+reviewer, walking with his umbrella. Pen craned over the coach to have
+a long look at the great Hurtle. He was a Boniface man, said Pen. And
+Mr. Doolan, of the Star newspaper (for such was the gentleman’s name
+and address upon the card which he handed to Pen), said “Faith he was,
+and he knew him very well.” Pen thought it was quite an honour to have
+seen the great Mr. Hurtle, whose works he admired. He believed fondly,
+as yet, in authors, reviewers, and editors of newspapers. Even Wagg,
+whose books did not appear to him to be masterpieces of human
+intellect, he yet secretly revered as a successful writer. He mentioned
+that he had met Wagg in the country, and Doolan told him how that
+famous novelist received three hundred pounds a volume for every one of
+his novels. Pen began to calculate instantly whether he might not make
+five thousand a year.
+
+The very first acquaintance of his own whom Arthur met, as the coach
+pulled up at the Gloster Coffee-house, was his old friend Harry Foker,
+who came prancing down Arlington Street behind an enormous cab-horse.
+He had white kid gloves and white reins, and nature had by this time
+decorated him with a considerable tuft on the chin. A very small
+cab-boy, vice Stoopid retired, swung on behind Foker’s vehicle;
+knock-kneed and in the tightest leather breeches. Foker looked at the
+dusty coach, and the smoking horses of the ‘Alacrity’ by which he had
+made journeys in former times. “What, Foker!” cried out
+Pendennis—“Hullo! Pen, my boy!” said the other, and he waved his whip
+by way of amity and salute to Arthur, who was very glad to see his
+queer friend’s kind old face. Mr. Doolan had a great respect for Pen
+who had an acquaintance in such a grand cab; and Pen was greatly
+excited and pleased to be at liberty and in London. He asked Doolan to
+come and dine with him at the Covent Garden Coffee-house, where he put
+up: he called a cab and rattled away thither in the highest spirits. He
+was glad to see the bustling waiter and polite bowing landlord again;
+and asked for the landlady, and missed the old Boots and would have
+liked to shake hands with everybody. He had a hundred pounds in his
+pocket. He dressed himself in his very best; dined in the coffee-room
+with a modest pint of sherry (for he was determined to be very
+economical), and went to the theatre adjoining.
+
+The lights and the music, the crowd and the gaiety, charmed and
+exhilarated Pen, as those sights will do young fellows from college and
+the country, to whom they are tolerably new. He laughed at the jokes;
+he applauded the songs, to the delight of some of the dreary old
+habitues of the boxes, who had ceased long ago to find the least
+excitement in their place of nightly resort, and were pleased to see
+any one so fresh, and so much amused. At the end of the first piece, he
+went and strutted about the lobbies of the theatre, as if he was in a
+resort of the highest fashion. What tired frequenter of the London pave
+is there that cannot remember having had similar early delusions, and
+would not call them back again? Here was young Foker again, like an
+ardent votary of pleasure as he was. He was walking with Grandy
+Tiptoff, of the Household Brigade, Lord Tiptoff’s brother, and Lord
+Colchicum, Captain Tiptoff’s uncle, a venerable peer, who had been a
+man of pleasure since the first French Revolution. Foker rushed upon
+Pen with eagerness, and insisted that the latter should come into his
+private box, where a lady with the longest ringlets and the fairest
+shoulders, was seated. This was Miss Blenkinsop, the eminent actress of
+high comedy; and in the back of the box snoozing in a wig, sate old
+Blenkinsop, her papa. He was described in the theatrical prints as the
+“veteran Blenkinsop”—“the useful Blenkinsop”—“that old favourite of the
+public, Blenkinsop”—those parts in the drama, which are called the
+heavy fathers, were usually assigned to this veteran, who, indeed,
+acted the heavy father in public, as in private life.
+
+At this time, it being about eleven o’clock, Mrs. Pendennis was gone to
+bed at Fairoaks, and wondering whether her dearest Arthur was at rest
+after his journey. At this time Laura, too, was awake. And at this time
+yesterday night, as the coach rolled over silent commons, where cottage
+windows twinkled, and by darkling woods under calm starlit skies, Pen
+was vowing to reform and to resist temptation, and his heart was at
+home. Meanwhile the farce was going on very successfully, and Mrs.
+Leary, in a hussar jacket and braided pantaloons, was enchanting the
+audience with her archness, her lovely figure, and her delightful
+ballads.
+
+Pen, being new to the town, would have liked to listen to Mrs. Leary;
+but the other people in the box did not care about her song or her
+pantaloons, and kept up an incessant chattering. Tiptoff knew where her
+maillots came from. Colchicum saw her when she came out in ’14. Miss
+Blenkinsop said she sang out of all tune, to the pain and astonishment
+of Pen, who thought that she was as beautiful as an angel, and that she
+sang like a nightingale; and when Hoppus came on as Sir Harcourt
+Featherby, the young man of the piece, the gentlemen in the box
+declared that Hoppus was getting too stale, and Tiptoff was for
+flinging Miss Blenkinsop’s bouquet to him.
+
+“Not for the world,” cried the daughter of the veteran Blenkinsop;
+“Lord Colchicum gave it to me.”
+
+Pen remembered that nobleman’s name, and with a bow and a blush said he
+believed he had to thank Lord Colchicum for having proposed him at the
+Megatherium Club, at the request of his uncle, Major Pendennis.
+
+“What, you’re Wigsby’s nephew, are you?” said the peer. “I beg your
+pardon, we always call him Wigsby.” Pen blushed to hear his venerable
+uncle called by such a familiar name. “We balloted you in last week,
+didn’t we? Yes, last Wednesday night. Your uncle wasn’t there.”
+
+Here was delightful news for Pen! He professed himself very much
+obliged indeed to Lord Colchicum, and made him a handsome speech of
+thanks, to which the other listened with his double opera-glass up to
+his eyes. Pen was full of excitement at the idea of being a member of
+this polite Club.
+
+“Don’t be always looking at that box, you naughty creature,” cried Miss
+Blenkinsop.
+
+“She’s a dev’lish fine woman, that Mirabel,” said Tiptoff; “though
+Mirabel was a d——d fool to marry her.”
+
+“A stupid old spooney,” said the peer.
+
+“Mirabel!” cried out Pendennis.
+
+“Ha! ha!” laughed out Harry Foker. “We’ve heard of her before, haven’t
+we, Pen?”
+
+It was Pen’s first love. It was Miss Fotheringay. The year before she
+had been led to the altar by Sir Charles Mirabel, G.C.B., and formerly
+envoy to the Court of Pumpernickel, who had taken so active a part in
+the negotiations before the Congress of Swammerdam, and signed, on
+behalf of H.B.M., the Peace of Pultusk.
+
+“Emily was always as stupid as an owl,” said Miss Blenkinsop.
+
+“Eh! Eh! pas si bete,” the old Peer said.
+
+“Oh, for shame!” cried the actress, who did not in the least know what
+he meant.
+
+And Pen looked out and beheld his first love once again—and wondered
+how he ever could have loved her.
+
+Thus on the very first night of his arrival in London, Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis found himself introduced to a Club, to an actress of genteel
+comedy and a heavy father of the Stage, and to a dashing society of
+jovial blades, old and young; for my Lord Colchicum, though stricken in
+years, bald of head and enfeebled in person, was still indefatigable in
+the pursuit of enjoyment, and it was the venerable Viscount’s boast
+that he could drink as much claret as the youngest member of the
+society which he frequented. He lived with the youth about town: he
+gave them countless dinners at Richmond and Greenwich: an enlightened
+patron of the drama in all languages and of the Terpsichorean art, he
+received dramatic professors of all nations at his banquets—English
+from the Covent Garden and Strand houses, Italians from the Haymarket,
+French from their own pretty little theatre, or the boards of the Opera
+where they danced. And at his villa on the Thames, this pillar of the
+State gave sumptuous entertainments to scores of young men of fashion,
+who very affably consorted with the ladies and gentlemen of the
+greenroom—with the former chiefly, for Viscount Colchicum preferred
+their society as more polished and gay than that of their male
+brethren.
+
+Pen went the next day and paid his entrance-money at the Club, which
+operation carried off exactly one-third of his hundred pounds; and took
+possession of the edifice, and ate his luncheon there with immense
+satisfaction. He plunged into an easy-chair in the library, and tried
+to read all the magazines. He wondered whether the members were looking
+at him, and that they could dare to keep on their hats in such fine
+rooms. He sate down and wrote a letter to Fairoaks on the Club paper,
+and said, what a comfort this place would be to him after his day’s
+work was over. He went over to his uncle’s lodgings in Bury Street with
+some considerable tremor, and in compliance with his mother’s earnest
+desire, that he should instantly call on Major Pendennis; and was not a
+little relieved to find that the Major had not yet returned to town.
+His apartments were blank. Brown hollands covered his library-table,
+and bills and letters lay on the mantelpiece, grimly awaiting the
+return of their owner. The Major was on the Continent, the landlady of
+the house said, at Badnbadn, with the Marcus of Steyne. Pen left his
+card upon the shelf with the rest. Fairoaks was written on it still.
+
+When the Major returned to London, which he did in time for the fogs of
+November, after enjoying which he proposed to spend Christmas with some
+friends in the country, he found another card of Arthur’s, on which
+Lamb Court, Temple, was engraved, and a note from that young gentleman
+and from his mother, stating that he was come to town, was entered a
+member of the Upper Temple, and was reading hard for the bar.
+
+Lamb Court, Temple:—where was it? Major Pendennis remembered that some
+ladies of fashion used to talk of dining with Mr. Ayliffe, the
+barrister, who was “in society,” and who lived there in the King’s
+Bench, of which prison there was probably a branch in the Temple, and
+Ayliffe was very likely an officer. Mr. Deuceace, Lord Crabs’s son, had
+also lived there, he recollected. He despatched Morgan to find out
+where Lamb Court was, and to report upon the lodging selected by Mr.
+Arthur. That alert messenger had little difficulty in discovering Mr.
+Pen’s abode. Discreet Morgan had in his time traced people far more
+difficult to find than Arthur.
+
+“What sort of a place is it, Morgan?” asked the Major, out of the
+bed-curtains in Bury Street the next morning, as the valet was
+arranging his toilette in the deep yellow London fog.
+
+“I should say rayther a shy place,” said Mr. Morgan. “The lawyers lives
+there, and has their names on the doors. Mr. Harthur lives three pair
+high, sir. Mr. Warrington lives there too, sir.”
+
+“Suffolk Warringtons! I shouldn’t wonder: a good family,” thought the
+Major. “The cadets of many of our good families follow the robe as a
+profession. Comfortable rooms, eh?”
+
+“Honly saw the outside of the door, sir, with Mr. Warrington’s name and
+Mr. Arthur’s painted up, and a piece of paper with ‘Back at 6;’ but I
+couldn’t see no servant, sir.”
+
+“Economical at any rate,” said the Major.
+
+“Very, sir. Three pair, sir. Nasty black staircase as ever I see.
+Wonder how a gentleman can live in such a place.”
+
+“Pray, who taught you where gentlemen should or should not live,
+Morgan? Mr. Arthur, sir, is going to study for the bar, sir,” the Major
+said with much dignity; and closed the conversation and began to array
+himself in the yellow fog.
+
+“Boys will be boys,” the mollified uncle thought to himself. “He has
+written to me a devilish good letter. Colchicum says he has had him to
+dine, and thinks him a gentlemanlike lad. His mother is one of the best
+creatures in the world. If he has sown his wild oats, and will stick to
+his business, he may do well yet. Think of Charley Mirabel, the old
+fool, marrying that flame of his! that Fotheringay! He doesn’t like to
+come here until I give him leave, and puts it in a very manly nice way.
+I was deuced angry with him, after his Oxbridge escapades—and showed it
+too when he was here before—Gad, I’ll go and see him, hang me if I
+don’t.”
+
+And having ascertained from Morgan that he could reach the Temple
+without much difficulty, and that a city omnibus would put him down at
+the gate, the Major one day after breakfast at his Club—not the
+Polyanthus, whereof Mr. Pen was just elected a member, but another
+Club: for the Major was too wise to have a nephew as a constant inmate
+of any house where he was in the habit of passing his time—the Major
+one day entered one of those public vehicles, and bade the conductor to
+put him down at the gate of the Upper Temple.
+
+When Major Pendennis reached that dingy portal it was about twelve
+o’clock in the day; and he was directed by a civil personage with a
+badge and a white apron, through some dark alleys, and under various
+melancholy archways into courts each more dismal than the other, until
+finally he reached Lamb Court. If it was dark in Pall Mail, what was it
+in Lamb Court? Candles were burning in many of the rooms there—in the
+pupil-room of Mr. Hodgeman, the special pleader, where six pupils were
+scribbling declarations under the tallow; in Sir Hokey Walker’s clerk’s
+room, where the clerk, a person far more gentlemanlike and cheerful in
+appearance than the celebrated counsel, his master, was conversing in a
+patronising manner with the managing clerk of an attorney at the door;
+and in Curling the wigmaker’s melancholy shop, where, from behind the
+feeble glimmer of a couple of lights, large serpents’ and judges’ wigs
+were looming drearily, with the blank blocks looking at the lamp-post
+in the court. Two little clerks were playing at toss-halfpenny under
+that lamp. A laundress in pattens passed in at one door, a newspaper
+boy issued from another. A porter, whose white apron was faintly
+visible, paced up and down. It would be impossible to conceive a place
+more dismal, and the Major shuddered to think that any one should
+select such a residence. “Good Ged!” he said, “the poor boy mustn’t
+live on here.”
+
+The feeble and filthy oil-lamps, with which the staircases of the Upper
+Temple are lighted of nights, were of course not illuminating the
+stairs by day, and Major Pendennis, having read with difficulty his
+nephew’s name under Mr. Warrington’s on the wall of No. 6, found still
+greater difficulty in climbing the abominable black stairs, up the
+banisters of which, which contributed their damp exudations to his
+gloves, he groped painfully until he came to the third story. A candle
+was in the passage of one of the two sets of rooms; the doors were
+open, and the names of Mr. Warrington and Mr. A. Pendennis were very
+clearly visible to the Major as he went in. An Irish charwoman, with a
+pail and broom, opened the door for the Major.
+
+“Is that the beer?” cried out a great voice: “give us hold of it.”
+
+The gentleman who was speaking was seated on a table, unshorn and
+smoking a short pipe; in a farther chair sate Pen, with a cigar, and
+his legs near the fire. A little boy, who acted as the clerk of these
+gentlemen, was grinning in the Major’s face, at the idea of his being
+mistaken for beer. Here, upon the third floor, the rooms were somewhat
+lighter, and the Major could see place.
+
+“Pen, my boy, it’s I—it’s your uncle,” he said, choking with the smoke.
+But as most young men of fashion used the weed, he pardoned the
+practice easily enough.
+
+Mr. Warrington got up from the table, and Pen, in a very perturbed
+manner, from his chair. “Beg your pardon for mistaking you,” said
+Warrington, in a frank, loud voice. “Will you take a cigar, sir? Clear
+those things off the chair, Pidgeon, and pull it round to the fire.”
+
+Pen flung his cigar into the grate; and was pleased with the cordiality
+with which his uncle shook him by the hand. As soon as he could speak
+for the stairs and the smoke, the Major began to ask Pen very kindly
+about himself and about his mother; for blood is blood, and he was
+pleased once more to see the boy.
+
+Pen gave his news, and then introduced Mr. Warrington—an old Boniface
+man—whose chambers he shared.
+
+The Major was quite satisfied when he heard that Mr. Warrington was a
+younger son of Sir Miles Warrington of Suffolk. He had served with an
+uncle of his in India and in New South Wales, years ago.
+
+“Took a sheep-farm there, sir, made a fortune—better thing than law or
+soldiering,” Warrington said. “Think I shall go there too.” And here
+the expected beer coming in, in a tankard with a glass bottom, Mr.
+Warrington, with a laugh, said he supposed the Major would not have
+any, and took a long, deep draught himself, after which he wiped his
+wrist across his beard with great satisfaction. The young man was
+perfectly easy and unembarrassed. He was dressed in a ragged old
+shooting jacket, and had a bristly blue beard. He was drinking beer
+like a coalheaver, and yet you couldn’t but perceive that he was a
+gentleman.
+
+When he had sate for a minute or two after his draught he went out of
+the room, leaving it to Pen and his uncle, that they might talk over
+family affairs were they so inclined.
+
+“Rough and ready, your chum seems,” the Major said. “Somewhat different
+from your dandy friends at Oxbridge.”
+
+“Times are altered,” Arthur replied, with a blush. “Warrington is only
+just called, and has no business, but he knows law pretty well; and
+until I can afford to read with a pleader, I use his books, and get his
+help.”
+
+“Is that one of the books?” the Major asked, with a smile. A French
+novel was lying at the foot of Pen’s chair.
+
+“This is not a working day, sir,” the lad said. “We were out very late
+at a party last night—at Lady Whiston’s,” Pen added, knowing his
+uncle’s weakness. “Everybody in town was there except you, sir; Counts,
+Ambassadors, Turks, Stars and Garters—I don’t know who—it’s all in the
+paper—and my name, too,” said Pen, with great glee. “I met an old flame
+of mine there, sir,” he added, with a laugh. “You know whom I mean,
+sir,—Lady Mirabel—to whom I was introduced over again. She shook hands,
+and was gracious enough. I may thank you for being out of that scrape,
+sir. She presented me to the husband, too—an old beau in a star and a
+blonde wig. He does not seem very wise. She has asked me to call on
+her, sir: and I may go now without any fear of losing my heart.”
+
+“What, we have had some new loves, have we?” the Major asked in high
+good-humour.
+
+“Some two or three,” Mr. Pen said, laughing. “But I don’t put on my
+grand serieux any more, sir. That goes off after the first flame.”
+
+“Very right, my dear boy. Flames and darts and passion, and that sort
+of thing, do very well for a lad: and you were but a lad when that
+affair with the Fotheringill—Fotheringay—(what’s her name?) came off.
+But a man of the world gives up those follies. You still may do very
+well. You have been bit, but you may recover. You are heir to a little
+independence; which everybody fancies is a doosid deal more. You have a
+good name, good wits, good manners, and a good person—and, begad! I
+don’t see why you shouldn’t marry a woman with money—get into
+Parliament—distinguish yourself, and—and, in fact, that sort of thing.
+Remember, it’s as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman: and a
+devilish deal pleasanter to sit down to a good dinner, than to a scrag
+of mutton in lodgings. Make up your mind to that. A woman with a good
+jointure is a doosid deal easier a profession than the law, let me tell
+you that. Look out; I shall be on the watch for you: and I shall die
+content, my boy, if I can see you with a good ladylike wife, and a good
+carriage, and a good pair of horses, living in society, and seeing your
+friends, like a gentleman. Would you like to vegetate like your dear
+good mother at Fairoaks? Dammy, sir! life, without money and the best
+society isn’t worth having.” It was thus this affectionate uncle spoke,
+and expounded to Pen his simple philosophy.
+
+“What would my mother and Laura say to this, I wonder?” thought the
+lad. Indeed old Pendennis’s morals were not their morals, nor was his
+wisdom theirs.
+
+This affecting conversation between uncle and nephew had scarcely
+concluded, when Warrington came out of his bedroom, no longer in rags,
+but dressed like a gentleman, straight and tall and perfectly frank and
+good-humoured. He did the honours of his ragged sitting-room with as
+much ease as if it had been the finest apartment in London. And queer
+rooms they were in which the Major found his nephew. The carpet was
+full of holes—the table stained with many circles of Warrington’s
+previous ale-pots. There was a small library of law-books, books of
+poetry, and of mathematics, of which he was very fond. (He had been one
+of the hardest livers and hardest readers of his time at Oxbridge,
+where the name of Stunning Warrington was yet famous for beating
+bargemen, pulling matches, winning prizes, and drinking milk-punch.) A
+print of the old college hung up over the mantelpiece, and some
+battered volumes of Plato, bearing its well-known arms, were on the
+book-shelves. There were two easy-chairs; a standing reading-desk piled
+with bills; a couple of very meagre briefs on a broken-legged
+study-table. Indeed, there was scarcely any article of furniture that
+had not been in the wars, and was not wounded. “Look here, sir, here is
+Pen’s room. He is a dandy, and has got curtains to his bed, and wears
+shiny boots, and a silver dressing-case.” Indeed, Pen’s room was rather
+coquettishly arranged, and a couple of neat prints of opera-dancers,
+besides a drawing of Fairoaks, hung on the walls. In Warrington’s room
+there was scarcely any article of furniture, save a great shower-bath,
+and a heap of books by the bedside: where he lay upon straw like
+Margery Daw, and smoked his pipe, and read half through the night his
+favourite poetry or mathematics.
+
+When he had completed his simple toilette, Mr. Warrington came out of
+this room, and proceeded to the cupboard to search for his breakfast.
+
+“Might I offer you a mutton-chop, sir? We cook ’em ourselves hot and
+hot: and I am teaching Pen the first principles of law, cooking, and
+morality at the same time. He’s a lazy beggar, sir, and too much of a
+dandy.”
+
+And so saying, Mr. Warrington wiped a gridiron with a piece of paper,
+put it on the fire, and on it two mutton-chops, and took from the
+cupboard a couple of plates and some knives and silver forks, and
+castors.
+
+“Say but a word, Major Pendennis,” he said; “there’s another chop in
+the cupboard, or Pidgeon shall go out and get you anything you like.”
+
+Major Pendennis sate in wonder and amusement, but he said he had just
+breakfasted, and wouldn’t have any lunch. So Warrington cooked the
+chops, and popped them hissing hot upon the plates.
+
+Pen fell to at his chop with a good appetite, after looking up at his
+uncle, and seeing that gentleman was still in good-humour.
+
+“You see, sir,” Warrington said, “Mrs. Flanagan isn’t here to do ’em,
+and we can’t employ the boy, for the little beggar is all day occupied
+cleaning Pen’s boots. And now for another swig at the beer. Pen drinks
+tea; it’s only fit for old women.”
+
+“And so you were at Lady Whiston’s last night,” the Major said, not in
+truth knowing what observation to make to this rough diamond.
+
+“I at Lady Whiston’s! not such a flat, sir. I don’t care for female
+society. In fact it bores me. I spent my evening philosophically at the
+Back Kitchen.”
+
+“The Back Kitchen? indeed!” said the Major.
+
+“I see you don’t know what it means,” Warrington said. “Ask Pen. He was
+there after Lady Whiston’s. Tell Major Pendennis about the Back
+Kitchen, Pen—don’t be ashamed of yourself.”
+
+So Pen said it was a little eccentric society of men of letters and men
+about town, to which he had been presented; and the Major began to
+think that the young fellow had seen a good deal of the world since his
+arrival in London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+The Knights of the Temple
+
+
+Colleges, schools, and inns of courts still have some respect for
+antiquity, and maintain a great number of the customs and institutions
+of our ancestors, with which those persons who do not particularly
+regard their forefathers, or perhaps are not very well acquainted with
+them, have long since done away. A well-ordained workhouse or prison is
+much better provided with the appliances of health, comfort, and
+cleanliness, than a respectable Foundation School a venerable College,
+or a learned Inn. In the latter place of residence men are contented to
+sleep in dingy closets, and to pay for the sitting-room and the
+cupboard which is their dormitory, the price of a good villa and garden
+in the suburbs, or of a roomy house in the neglected squares of the
+town. The poorest mechanic in Spitalfields has a cistern and an
+unbounded suppy of water at his command; but the gentlemen of the inns
+of court, and the gentlemen of the universities, have their supply of
+this cosmetic fetched in jugs by laundresses and bedmakers, and live in
+abodes which were erected long before the custom of cleanliness and
+decency obtained among us. There are individuals still alive who sneer
+at the people and speak of them with epithets of scorn. Gentlemen,
+there can be but little doubt that your ancestors were the Great
+Unwashed: and in the Temple especially, it is pretty certain, that only
+under the greatest difficulties and restrictions the virtue which has
+been pronounced to be next to godliness could have been practised at
+all.
+
+Old Grump, of the Norfolk Circuit, who had lived for more than thirty
+years in the chambers under those occupied by Warrington and Pendennis,
+and who used to be awakened by the roaring of the shower-baths which
+those gentlemen had erected in their apartments—a part of the contents
+of which occasionally trickled through the roof into Mr. Grump’s
+room,—declared that the practice was an absurd, newfangled, dandified
+folly, and daily cursed the laundress who slopped the staircase by
+which he had to pass. Grump, now much more than half a century old, had
+indeed never used the luxury in question. He had done without water
+very well, and so had our fathers before him. Of all those knights and
+baronets, lords and gentlemen, bearing arms, whose escutcheons are
+painted upon the walls of the famous hall of the Upper Temple, was
+there no philanthropist good-natured enough to devise a set of Hummums
+for the benefit of the lawyers, his fellows and successors? The Temple
+historian makes no mention of such a scheme. There is Pump Court and
+Fountain Court, with their hydraulic apparatus, but one never heard of
+a bencher disporting in the fountain; and can’t but think how many a
+counsel learned in the law of old days might have benefited by the
+pump.
+
+Nevertheless, those venerable Inns which have the Lamb and Flag and the
+Winged Horse for their ensigns, have attractions for persons who
+inhabit them, and a share of rough comforts and freedom which men
+always remember with pleasure. I don’t know whether the student of law
+permits himself the refreshment of enthusiasm, or indulges in poetical
+reminiscences as he passes by historical chambers, and says, “Yonder
+Eldon lived—upon this site Coke mused upon Littleton—here Chitty
+toiled—here Barnewall and Alderson joined in their famous labours—here
+Byles composed his great work upon bills, and Smith compiled his
+immortal leading cases—here Gustavus still toils, with Solomon to aid
+him:” but the man of letters can’t but love the place which has been
+inhabited by so many of his brethren, or peopled by their creations as
+real to us at this day as the authors whose children they were—and Sir
+Roger de Coverley walking in the Temple Garden, and discoursing with
+Mr. Spectator about the beauties in hoops and patches who are
+sauntering over the grass, is just as lively a figure to me as old
+Samuel Johnson rolling through the fog with the Scotch gentleman at his
+heels on their way to Dr. Goldsmith’s chambers in Brick Court; or Harry
+Fielding, with inked ruffles and a wet towel round his head, dashing
+off articles at midnight for the Covent Garden Journal, while the
+printer’s boy is asleep in the passage.
+
+If we could but get the history of a single day as it passed in any one
+of those four-storied houses in the dingy court where our friends Pen
+and Warrington dwelt, some Temple Asmodeus might furnish us with a
+queer volume. There may be a great parliamentary counsel on the ground
+floor, who drives off to Belgravia at dinner-time, when his clerk, too,
+becomes a gentleman, and goes away to entertain his friends, and to
+take his pleasure. But a short time since he was hungry and briefless
+in some garret of the Inn; lived by stealthy literature; hoped, and
+waited, and sickened, and no clients came; exhausted his own means and
+his friends’ kindness; had to remonstrate humbly with duns, and to
+implore the patience of poor creditors. Ruin seemed to be staring him
+in the face, when, behold, a turn of the wheel of fortune, and the
+lucky wretch in possession of one of those prodigious prizes which are
+sometimes drawn in the great lottery of the Bar. Many a better lawyer
+than himself does not make a fifth part of the income of his clerk,
+who, a few months since, could scarcely get credit for blacking for his
+master’s unpaid boots. On the first floor, perhaps, you will have a
+venerable man whose name is famous, who has lived for half a century in
+the Inn, whose brains are full of books, and whose shelves are stored
+with classical and legal lore. He has lived alone all these fifty
+years, alone and for himself, amassing learning, and compiling a
+fortune. He comes home now at night alone from the club, where he has
+been dining freely, to the lonely chambers where he lives a godless old
+recluse. When he dies, his Inn will erect a tablet to his honour, and
+his heirs burn a part of his library. Would you like to have such a
+prospect for your old age, to store up learning and money, and end so?
+But we must not linger too long by Mr. Doomsday’s door. Worthy Mr.
+Grump lives over him, who is also an ancient inhabitant of the Inn, and
+who, when Doomsday comes home to read Catullus, is sitting down with
+three steady seniors of his standing, to a steady rubber at whist,
+after a dinner at which they have consumed their three steady bottles
+of Port. You may see the old boys asleep at the Temple Church of a
+Sunday. Attorneys seldom trouble them, and they have small fortunes of
+their own. On the other side of the third landing, where Pen and
+Warrington live, till long after midnight, sits Mr. Paley, who took the
+highest honours, and who is a fellow of his college, who will sit and
+read and note cases until two o’clock in the morning; who will rise at
+seven and be at the pleader’s chambers as soon as they are open, where
+he will work until an hour before dinner-time; who will come home from
+Hall and read and note cases again until dawn next day, when perhaps
+Mr. Arthur Pendennis and his friend Mr. Warrington are returning from
+some of their wild expeditions. How differently employed Mr. Paley has
+been! He has not been throwing himself away: he has only been bringing
+a great intellect laboriously down to the comprehension of a mean
+subject, and in his fierce grasp of that, resolutely excluding from his
+mind all higher thoughts, all better things, all the wisdom of
+philosophers and historians, all the thoughts of poets; all wit, fancy,
+reflection, art, love, truth altogether—so that he may master that
+enormous legend of the law, which he proposes to gain his livelihood by
+expounding. Warrington and Paley had been competitors for university
+honours in former days, and had run each other hard; and everybody said
+now that the former was wasting his time and energies, whilst all
+people praised Paley for his industry. There may be doubts, however, as
+to which was using his time best. The one could afford time to think,
+and the other never could. The one could have sympathies and do
+kindnesses; and the other must needs be always selfish. He could not
+cultivate a friendship or do a charity, or admire a work of genius, or
+kindle at the sight of beauty or the sound of a sweet song—he had no
+time, and no eyes for anything but his law-books. All was dark outside
+his reading-lamp. Love, and Nature, and Art (which is the expression of
+our praise and sense of the beautiful world of God) were shut out from
+him. And as he turned off his lonely lamp at night, he never thought
+but that he had spent the day profitably, and went to sleep alike
+thankless and remorseless. But he shuddered when he met his old
+companion Warrington on the stairs, and shunned him as one that was
+doomed to perdition.
+
+It may have been the sight of that cadaverous ambition and
+self-complacent meanness, which showed itself in Paley’s yellow face,
+and twinkled in his narrow eyes, or it may have been a natural appetite
+for pleasure and joviality, of which it must be confessed Mr. Pen was
+exceedingly fond, which deterred that luckless youth from pursuing his
+designs upon the Bench or the Woolsack with the ardour, or rather
+steadiness, which is requisite in gentlemen who would climb to those
+seats of honour. He enjoyed the Temple life with a great deal of
+relish: his worthy relatives thought he was reading as became a regular
+student; and his uncle wrote home congratulatory letters to the kind
+widow at Fairoaks, announcing that the lad had sown his wild oats, and
+was becoming quite steady. The truth is, that it was a new sort of
+excitement to Pen, the life in which he was now engaged, and having
+given up some of the dandified pretensions, and fine-gentleman airs
+which he had contracted among his aristocratic college acquaintances,
+of whom he now saw but little, the rough pleasures and amusements of a
+London bachelor were very novel and agreeable to him, and he enjoyed
+them all. Time was he would have envied the dandies their fine horses
+in Rotten Row, but he was contented now to walk in the Park and look at
+them. He was too young to succeed in London society without a better
+name and a larger fortune than he had, and too lazy to get on without
+these adjuncts. Old Pendennis fondly thought he was busied with law
+because he neglected the social advantages presented to him, and,
+having been at half a dozen balls and evening parties, retreated before
+their dulness and sameness; and whenever anybody made inquiries of the
+worthy Major about his nephew the old gentleman said the young rascal
+was reformed, and could not be got away from his books. But the Major
+would have been almost as much horrified as Mr. Paley was, had he known
+what was Mr. Pen’s real course of life, and how much pleasure entered
+into his law studies.
+
+A long morning’s reading, a walk in the park, a pull on the river, a
+stretch up the hill to Hampstead, and a modest tavern dinner; a
+bachelor night passed here or there, in joviality, not vice (for Arthur
+Pendennis admired women so heartily that he never could bear the
+society of any of them that were not, in his fancy at least, good and
+pure); a quiet evening at home, alone with a friend and a pipe or two,
+and a humble potation of British spirits, whereof Mrs. Flanagan, the
+laundress, invariably tested the quality;—these were our young
+gentleman’s pursuits, and it must be owned that his life was not
+unpleasant. In term-time, Mr. Pen showed a most praiseworthy regularity
+in performing one part of the law-student’s course of duty, and eating
+his dinners in Hall. Indeed, that Hall of the Upper Temple is a sight
+not uninteresting, and with the exception of some trifling improvements
+and anachronisms which have been introduced into the practice there, a
+man may sit down and fancy that he joins in a meal of the seventeenth
+century. The bar have their messes, the students their tables apart;
+the benchers sit at the high table on the raised platform surrounded by
+pictures of judges of the law and portraits of royal personages who
+have honoured its festivities with their presence and patronage. Pen
+looked about, on his first introduction, not a little amused with the
+scene which he witnessed. Among his comrades of the student class there
+were gentlemen of all ages, from sixty to seventeen; stout grey-headed
+attorneys who were proceeding to take the superior dignity,—dandies and
+men about town who wished for some reason to be barristers of seven
+years’ standing,—swarthy, black-eyed natives of the Colonies, who came
+to be called here before they practised in their own islands,—and many
+gentlemen of the Irish nation, who make a sojourn in Middle Temple Lane
+before they return to the green country of their birth. There were
+little squads of reading students who talked law all dinner-time; there
+were rowing men, whose discourse was of sculling matches, the Red
+House, Vauxhall and the Opera; there were others great in politics, and
+orators of the students’ debating clubs; with all of which sets, except
+the first, whose talk was an almost unknown and a quite uninteresting
+language to him, Mr. Pen made a gradual acquaintance, and had many
+points of sympathy.
+
+The ancient and liberal Inn of the Upper Temple provides in its Hall,
+and for a most moderate price, an excellent wholesome dinner of soup,
+meat, tarts, and port wine or sherry, for the barristers and students
+who attend that place of refection. The parties are arranged in messes
+of four, each of which quartets has its piece of beef or leg of mutton,
+its sufficient apple-pie and its bottle of wine. But the honest
+habitues of the hall, amongst the lower rank of students, who have a
+taste for good living, have many harmless arts by which they improve
+their banquet, and innocent ‘dodges’ (if we may be permitted to use an
+excellent phrase that has become vernacular since the appearance of the
+last dictionaries) by which they strive to attain for themselves more
+delicate food than the common every-day roast meat of the students’
+tables.
+
+“Wait a bit,” said Mr. Lowton, one of these Temple gourmands. “Wait a
+bit,” said Mr. Lowton, tugging at Pen’s gown—“the side-tables are very
+full, and there’s only three benchers to eat ten dishes—if we wait,
+perhaps we shall get something from their table.” And Pen looked with
+some amusement, as did Mr. Lowton with eyes of fond desire, towards the
+benchers’ high table, where three old gentlemen were standing up before
+a dozen silver dish-covers, while the clerk was quavering out a grace.
+
+Lowton was great in the conduct of the dinner. His aim was to manage so
+as to be the first, a captain of the mess, and to secure for himself
+the thirteenth glass of the bottle of port wine. Thus he would have the
+command of the joint on which he operated his favourite cuts, and made
+rapid dexterous appropriations of gravy, which amused Pen infinitely.
+Poor Jack Lowton! thy pleasures in life were very harmless; an eager
+epicure, thy desires did not go beyond eighteen pence.
+
+Pen was somewhat older than many of his fellow-students, and there was
+that about his style and appearance, which, as we have said, was rather
+haughty and impertinent, that stamped him as a man of ton—very unlike
+those pale students who were talking law to one another, and those
+ferocious dandies, in rowing shirts and astonishing pins and
+waistcoats, who represented the idle part of the little community. The
+humble and good-natured Lowton had felt attracted by Pen’s superior
+looks and presence—and had made acquaintance with him at the mess by
+opening the conversation.
+
+“This is boiled-beef day, I believe, sir,” said Lowton to Pen.
+
+“Upon my word, sir, I’m not aware,” said Pen, hardly able to contain
+his laughter, but added, “I’m a stranger; this is my first term;” on
+which Lowton began to point out to him the notabilities in the Hall.
+
+“That’s Boosey the bencher, the bald one sitting under the picture and
+aving soup; I wonder whether it’s turtle? They often ave turtle. Next
+is Balls, the King’s Counsel, and Swettenham—Hodge and Swettenham, you
+know. That’s old Grump, the senior of the bar; they say he’s dined here
+forty years. They often send ’em down their fish from the benchers to
+the senior table. Do you see those four fellows seated opposite us?
+Those are regular swells—tip-top fellows, I can tell you—Mr. Trail, the
+Bishop of Ealing’s son, Honourable Fred Ringwood, Lord Cinqbar’s
+brother, you know. He’ll have a good place, I bet any money; and Bob
+Suckling, who’s always with him—a high fellow too. Ha! ha!” Here Lowton
+burst into a laugh.
+
+“What is it?” said Pen, still amused.
+
+“I say, I like to mess with those chaps,” Lowton said, winking his eye
+knowingly, and pouring out his glass of wine.
+
+“And why?” asked Pen.
+
+“Why! they don’t come down here to dine, you know, they only make
+believe to dine. They dine here, Law bless you! They go to some of the
+swell clubs, or else to some grand dinner-party. You see their names in
+the Morning Post at all the fine parties in London. Why, I bet anything
+that Ringwood has his cab, or Trail his Brougham (he’s a devil of a
+fellow, and makes the bishop’s money spin, I can tell you) at the
+corner of Essex Street at this minute. They dine! They won’t dine these
+two hours, I dare say.”
+
+“But why should you like to mess with them, if they don’t eat any
+dinner?” Pen asked, still puzzled. “There’s plenty, isn’t there?”
+
+“How green you are,” said Lowton. “Excuse me, but you are green. They
+don’t drink any wine, don’t you see, and a fellow gets the bottle to
+himself if he likes it when he messes with those three chaps. That’s
+why Corkoran got in with ’em.”
+
+“Ah, Mr. Lowton, I see you are a sly fellow,” Pen said, delighted with
+his acquaintance: on which the other modestly replied, that he had
+lived in London the better part of his life, and of course had his eyes
+about him; and went on with his catalogue to Pen.
+
+“There’s a lot of Irish here,” he said; “that Corkoran’s one, and I
+can’t say I like him. You see that handsome chap with the blue
+neck-cloth, and pink shirt, and yellow waistcoat, that’s another;
+that’s Molloy Maloney of Ballymaloney, and nephew to Major-General Sir
+Hector O’Dowd, he, he,” Lowton said, trying to imitate the Hibernian
+accent. “He’s always bragging about his uncle; and came into Hall in
+silver-striped trousers the day he had been presented. That other near
+him, with the long black hair, is a tremendous rebel. By Jove, sir, to
+hear him at the Forum it makes your blood freeze; and the next is an
+Irishman, too, Jack Finucane, reporter of a newspaper. They all stick
+together, those Irish. It’s your turn to fill your glass. What? you
+won’t have any port? Don’t like port with your dinner? Here’s your
+health.” And this worthy man found himself not the less attached to
+Pendennis because the latter disliked port wine at dinner.
+
+It was while Pen was taking his share of one of these dinners with his
+acquaintance Lowton as the captain of his mess, that there came to join
+them a gentleman in a barrister’s gown, who could not find a seat, as
+it appeared, amongst the persons of his own degree, and who strode over
+the table and took his place on the bench where Pen sate. He was
+dressed in old clothes and a faded gown, which hung behind him, and he
+wore a shirt which, though clean, was extremely ragged, and very
+different to the magnificent pink raiment of Mr. Molloy Maloney, who
+occupied a commanding position in the next mess. In order to notify
+their appearance at dinner, it is the custom of the gentlemen who eat
+in the Upper Temple Hall to write down their names upon slips of paper,
+which are provided for that purpose, with a pencil for each mess.
+Lowton wrote his name first, then came Arthur Pendennis, and the next
+was that of the gentleman in the old clothes. He smiled when he saw
+Pen’s name, and looked at him. “We ought to know each other,” he said.
+“We’re both Boniface men; my name’s Warrington.”
+
+“Are you St—— Warrington?” Pen said, delighted to see this hero.
+
+Warrington laughed—“Stunning Warrington—yes,” he said, “I recollect you
+in your freshman’s term. But you appear to have quite cut me out.”
+
+“The college talks about you still,” said Pen, who had a generous
+admiration for talent and pluck. “The bargeman you thrashed, Bill
+Simes, don’t you remember, wants you up again at Oxbridge. The Miss
+Notleys, the haberdashers——”
+
+“Hush!” said Warrington—“glad to make your acquaintance, Pendennis.
+Heard a good deal about you.”
+
+The young men were friends immediately, and at once deep in
+college-talk. And Pen, who had been acting rather the fine gentleman on
+a previous day, when he pretended to Lowton that he could not drink
+port wine at dinner, seeing Warrington take his share with a great deal
+of gusto, did not scruple about helping himself any more, rather to the
+disappointment of honest Lowton. When the dinner was over, Warrington
+asked Arthur where he was going.
+
+“I thought of going home to dress, and hear Grisi in Norma,” Pen said.
+
+“Are you going to meet anybody there?” he asked.
+
+Pen said, “No—only to hear the music,” of which he was fond.
+
+“You had much better come home and smoke a pipe with me,” said
+Warrington,—“a very short one. Come, I live close by in Lamb Court, and
+we’ll talk over Boniface and old times.”
+
+They went away; Lowton sighed after them. He knew Warrington was a
+baronet’s son, and he looked up with simple reverence to all the
+aristocracy. Pen and Warrington became sworn friends from that night.
+Warrington’s cheerfulness and jovial temper, his good sense, his rough
+welcome, and his never-failing pipe of tobacco, charmed Pen, who found
+it more pleasant to dive into shilling taverns with him, than to dine
+in solitary state amongst the silent and polite frequenters of the
+Polyanthus.
+
+Ere long Pen gave up the lodgings in St. James’s, to which he had
+migrated on quitting his hotel, and found it was much more economical
+to take up his abode with Warrington in Lamb Court, and furnish and
+occupy his friend’s vacant room there. For it must be said of Pen, that
+no man was more easily led than he to do a thing, when it was a
+novelty, or when he had a mind to it. And Pidgeon, the youth, and
+Flanagan, the laundress, divided their allegiance now between
+Warrington and Pen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+Old and new Acquaintances
+
+
+Elated with the idea of seeing life, Pen went into a hundred queer
+London haunts. He liked to think he was consorting with all sorts of
+men—so he beheld coalheavers in their tap-rooms; boxers in their
+inn-parlours; honest citizens disporting in the suburbs or on the
+river; and he would have liked to hob and nob with celebrated
+pickpockets, or drink a pot of ale with a company of burglars and
+cracksmen, had chance afforded him an opportunity of making the
+acquaintance of this class of society. It was good to see the gravity
+with which Warrington listened to the Tutbury Pet or the Brighton
+Stunner at the Champion’s Arms, and behold the interest which he took
+in the coalheaving company assembled at the Fox-under-the-Hill. His
+acquaintance with the public-houses of the metropolis and its
+neighbourhood, and with the frequenters of their various parlours, was
+prodigious. He was the personal friend of the landlord and landlady,
+and welcome to the bar as to the clubroom. He liked their society, he
+said, better than that of his own class, whose manners annoyed him, and
+whose conversation bored him. “In society,” he used to say, “everybody
+is the same, wears the same dress, eats and drinks, and says the same
+things; one young dandy at the club talks and looks just like another,
+one Miss at a ball exactly resembles another, whereas there’s character
+here. I like to talk with the strongest man in England, or the man who
+can drink the most beer in England, or with that tremendous republican
+of a hatter, who thinks Thistlewood was the greatest character in
+history. I like better gin-and-water than claret. I like a sanded floor
+in Carnaby Market better than a chalked one in Mayfair. I prefer Snobs,
+I own it.” Indeed, this gentleman was a social republican; and it never
+entered his head while conversing with Jack and Tom that he was in any
+respect their better; although, perhaps, the deference which they paid
+him might secretly please him.
+
+Pen followed him then to these various resorts of men with great glee
+and assiduity. But he was considerably younger, and therefore much more
+pompous and stately than Warrington, in fact a young prince in
+disguise, visiting the poor of his father’s kingdom. They respected him
+as a high chap, a fine fellow, a regular young swell. He had somehow
+about him an air of imperious good-humour, and a royal frankness and
+majesty, although he was only heir-apparent to twopence-halfpenny, and
+but one in descent from a gallypot. If these positions are made for us,
+we acquiesce in them very easily; and are always pretty ready to assume
+a superiority over those who are as good as ourselves. Pen’s
+condescension at this time of his life was a fine thing to witness.
+Amongst men of ability this assumption and impertinence passes off with
+extreme youth: but it is curious to watch the conceit of a generous and
+clever lad—there is something almost touching in that early exhibition
+of simplicity and folly.
+
+So, after reading pretty hard of a morning, and, I fear, not law
+merely, but politics and general history and literature, which were as
+necessary for the advancement and instruction of a young man as mere
+dry law, after applying with tolerable assiduity to letters, to
+reviews, to elemental books of law, and, above all, to the newspaper,
+until the hour of dinner was drawing nigh, these young gentlemen would
+sally out upon the town with great spirits and appetite, and bent upon
+enjoying a merry night as they had passed a pleasant forenoon. It was a
+jovial time, that of four-and-twenty, when every muscle of mind and
+body was in healthy action, when the world was new as yet, and one
+moved over it spurred onwards by good spirits and the delightful
+capability to enjoy. If ever we feel young afterwards, it is with the
+comrades of that time: the tunes we hum in our old age, are those we
+learned then. Sometimes, perhaps, the festivity of that period revives
+in our memory; but how dingy the pleasure-garden has grown, how
+tattered the garlands look, how scant and old the company, and what a
+number of the lights have gone out since that day! Grey hairs have come
+on like daylight streaming in—daylight and a headache with it. Pleasure
+has gone to bed with the rouge on her cheeks. Well, friend, let us walk
+through the day, sober and sad, but friendly.
+
+I wonder what Laura and Helen would have said, could they have seen, as
+they might not unfrequently have done had they been up and in London,
+in the very early morning when the bridges began to blush in the
+sunrise, and the tranquil streets of the city to shine in the dawn, Mr.
+Pen and Mr. Warrington rattling over the echoing flags towards the
+Temple, after one of their wild nights of carouse—nights wild, but not
+so wicked as such nights sometimes are, for Warrington was a
+woman-hater; and Pen, as we have said, too lofty to stoop to a vulgar
+intrigue. Our young Prince of Fairoaks never could speak to one of the
+sex but with respectful courtesy, and shrank from a coarse word or
+gesture with instinctive delicacy—for though we have seen him fall in
+love with a fool, as his betters and inferiors have done, and as it is
+probable that he did more than once in his life, yet for the time of
+the delusion it was always as a Goddess that he considered her, and
+chose to wait upon her. Men serve women kneeling—when they get on their
+feet, they go away.
+
+That was what an acquaintance of Pen’s said to him in his hard homely
+way;—an old friend with whom he had fallen in again in London—no other
+than honest Mr. Bows of the Chatteris Theatre, who was now employed as
+pianoforte player, to accompany the eminent lyrical talent which
+nightly delighted the public at the Fielding’s Head in Covent Garden:
+and where was held the little club called the Back Kitchen.
+
+Numbers of Pen’s friends frequented this very merry meeting. The
+Fielding’s Head had been a house of entertainment, almost since the
+time when the famous author of ‘Tom Jones’ presided as magistrate in
+the neighbouring Bow Street; his place was pointed out, and the chair
+said to have been his, still occupied by the president of the night’s
+entertainment. The worthy Cutts, the landlord of the Fielding’s Head,
+generally occupied this post when not disabled by gout or other
+illness. His jolly appearance and fine voice may be remembered by some
+of my male readers: he used to sing profusely in the course of the
+harmonic meeting, and his songs were of what may be called the British
+Brandy-and-Water School of Song—such as ‘The Good Old English
+Gentleman,’ ‘Dear Tom, this Brown Jug,’ and so forth—songs in which
+pathos and hospitality are blended, and the praises of good liquor and
+the social affections are chanted in a baritone voice. The charms of
+our women, the heroic deeds of our naval and military commanders, are
+often sung in the ballads of this school; and many a time in my youth
+have I admired how Cutts the singer, after he had worked us all up to
+patriotic enthusiasm, by describing the way in which the brave
+Abercrombie received his death-wound, or made us join him in tears,
+which he shed liberally himself, as in faltering accents he told how
+autumn’s falling leaf “proclaimed the old man he must die”—how Cutts
+the singer became at once Cutts the landlord, and, before the applause
+which we were making with our fists on his table, in compliment to his
+heart-stirring melody, had died away,—was calling, “Now, gentlemen,
+give your orders, the waiter’s in the room—John, a champagne cup for
+Mr. Green. I think, sir, you said sausages and mashed potatoes? John,
+attend on the gentleman.”
+
+“And I’ll thank ye give me a glass of punch too, John, and take care
+the wather boils,” a voice would cry not unfrequently, a well-known
+voice to Pen, which made the lad blush and start when he heard it
+first—that of the venerable Captain Costigan; who was now established
+in London, and one of the great pillars of the harmonic meetings at the
+Fielding’s Head.
+
+The Captain’s manners and conversation brought very many young men to
+the place. He was a character, and his fame had begun to spread soon
+after his arrival in the metropolis, and especially after his
+daughter’s marriage. He was great in his conversation to the friend for
+the time being (who was the neighbour drinking by his side), about “me
+daughther.” He told of her marriage, and of the events previous and
+subsequent to that ceremony; of the carriages she kept; of Mirabel’s
+adoration for her and for him; of the hundther pounds which he was at
+perfect liberty to draw from his son-in-law, whenever necessity urged
+him. And having stated that it was his firm intention to “dthraw next
+Sathurday, I give ye me secred word and honour next Sathurday, the
+fourteenth, when ye’ll see the money will be handed over to me at
+Coutts’s, the very instant I present the cheque,” the Captain would not
+unfrequently propose to borrow a half-crown of his friend until the
+arrival of that day of Greek Calends, when, on the honour of an officer
+and gentleman, he would repee the thrifling obligetion.
+
+Sir Charles Mirabel had not that enthusiastic attachment to his
+father-in-law, of which the latter sometimes boasted (although in other
+stages of emotion Cos would inveigh, with tears in his eyes, against
+the ingratitude of the child of his bosom, and the stinginess of the
+wealthy old man who had married her); but the pair had acted not
+unkindly towards Costigan; had settled a small pension on him, which
+was paid regularly, and forestalled with even more regularity by poor
+Cos; and the period of the payments was always well known by his friend
+at the Fielding’s Head, whither the honest Captain took care to repair,
+bank-notes in hand, calling loudly for change in the midst of the full
+harmonic meeting. “I think ye’ll find that note won’t be refused at the
+Bank of England, Cutts, my boy,” Captain Costigan would say. “Bows,
+have a glass? Ye needn’t stint yourself to-night, anyhow; and a glass
+of punch will make ye play con spirito.” For he was lavishly free with
+his money when it came to him, and was scarcely known to button his
+breeches pocket, except when the coin was gone, or sometimes, indeed,
+when a creditor came by.
+
+It was in one of these moments of exultation that Pen found his old
+friend swaggering at the singers’ table at the Back Kitchen of the
+Fielding’s Head, and ordering glasses of brandy-and-water for any of
+his acquaintances who made their appearance in the apartment.
+Warrington, who was on confidential terms with the bass singer, made
+his way up to this quarter of the room, and Pen walked at his friend’s
+heels.
+
+Pen started and blushed to see Costigan. He had just come from Lady
+Whiston’s party, where he had met and spoken with the Captain’s
+daughter again for the first time after very old old days. He came up
+with outstretched hand, very kindly and warmly to greet the old man;
+still retaining a strong remembrance of the time when Costigan’s
+daughter had been everything in the world to him. For though this young
+gentleman may have been somewhat capricious in his attachments, and
+occasionally have transferred his affections from one woman to another,
+yet he always respected the place where Love had dwelt, and, like the
+Sultan of Turkey, desired that honours should be paid to the lady
+towards whom he had once thrown the royal pocket-handkerchief. The
+tipsy Captain returning the clasp of Pen’s hand with all the strength
+of a palm which had become very shaky by the constant lifting up of
+weights of brandy-and-water, looked hard in Pen’s face, and said,
+“Grecious Heavens, is it possible? Me dear boy, me dear fellow, me dear
+friend;” and then with a look of muddled curiosity, fairly broke down
+with, “I know your face, me dear dear friend, but, bedad, I’ve forgot
+your name.” Five years of constant punch had passed since Pen and
+Costigan met. Arthur was a good deal changed, and the Captain may surly
+be excused for forgetting him; when a man at the actual moment sees
+things double, we may expect that his view of the past will be rather
+muzzy.
+
+Pen saw his condition and laughed, although, perhaps, he was somewhat
+mortified. “Don’t you remember me, Captain?” he said. “I am
+Pendennis—Arthur Pendennis, of Chatteris.”
+
+The sound of the young man’s friendly voice recalled and steadied Cos’s
+tipsy remembrance, and he saluted Arthur, as soon as he knew him, with
+a loud volley of friendly greetings. Pen was his dearest boy, his
+gallant young friend, his noble collagian, whom he had held in his
+inmost heart ever since they had parted—how was his fawther, no, his
+mother, and his guardian, the General, the Major? “I preshoom, from
+your apparance, you’ve come into your prawpertee; and, bedad, yee’ll
+spend it like a man of spirit—I’ll go bail for that. No? not yet come
+into your estete? If ye want any thrifle, heark ye, there’s poor old
+Jack Costigan has got a guinea or two in his pocket—and, be heavens!
+you shall never want, Awthur, me dear boy. What’ll ye have? John, come
+hither, and look aloive; give this gentleman a glass of punch, and I’ll
+pay for’t.—Your friend? I’ve seen him before. Permit me to have the
+honour of making meself known to ye, sir, and requesting ye’ll take a
+glass of punch.”
+
+“I don’t envy Sir Charles Mirabel his father-in-law,” thought
+Pendennis. “And how is my old friend, Mr. Bows, Captain? Have you any
+news of him, and do you see him still?”
+
+“No doubt he’s very well,” said the Captain, jingling his money, and
+whistling the air of a song—‘The Little Doodeen’—for the singing of
+which he was celebrated at the Fielding’s Head. “Me dear boy—I’ve
+forgot your name again—but my name’s Costigan, Jack Costigan, and I’d
+loike ye to take as many tumblers of punch in my name as ever ye loike.
+Ye know my name; I’m not ashamed of it.” And so the captain went
+maundering on.
+
+“It’s pay-day with the General,” said Mr. Hodgen, the bass singer, with
+whom Warrington was in deep conversation: “and he’s a precious deal
+more than half seas over. He has already tried that ‘Little Doodeen’ of
+his, and broke it, too, just before I sang ‘King Death.’ Have you heard
+my new song, ‘The Body Snatcher,’ Mr. Warrington?—angcored at Saint
+Bartholomew’s the other night—composed expressly for me. Per’aps you or
+your friend would like a copy of the song, sir? John, just ’ave the
+kyndness to ’and over a ‘Body Snatcher’ ’ere, will yer?—There’s a
+portrait of me, sir, as I sing it—as the Snatcher—considered rather
+like.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Warrington; “heard it nine times—know it by heart,
+Hodgen.”
+
+Here the gentleman who presided at the pianoforte began to play upon
+his instrument, and Pen, looking in the direction of the music, beheld
+that very Mr. Bows, for whom he had been asking but now, and whose
+existence Costigan had momentarily forgotten. The little old man sate
+before the battered piano (which had injured its constitution wofully
+by sitting up so many nights, and spoke with a voice, as it were, at
+once hoarse and faint), and accompanied the singers, or played with
+taste and grace in the intervals of the songs.
+
+Bows had seen and recollected Pen at once when the latter came into the
+room, and had remarked the eager warmth of the young man’s recognition
+of Costigan. He now began to play an air, which Pen instantly
+remembered as one which used to be sung by the chorus of villagers in
+‘The Stranger,’ just before Mrs. Haller came in. It shook Pen as he
+heard it. He remembered how his heart used to beat as that air was
+played, and before the divine Emily made her entry. Nobody, save
+Arthur, took any notice of old Bows’s playing: it was scarcely heard
+amidst the clatter of knives and forks, the calls for poached eggs and
+kidneys, and the tramp of guests and waiters.
+
+Pen went up and kindly shook the player by the hand at the end of his
+performance; and Bows greeted Arthur with great respect and cordiality.
+“What, you haven’t forgot the old tune, Mr. Pendennis?” he said; “I
+thought you’d remember it. I take it, it was the first tune of that
+sort you ever heard played—wasn’t it, sir? You were quite a young chap
+then. I fear the Captain’s very bad to-night. He breaks out on a
+pay-day; and I shall have the deuce’s own trouble in getting home. We
+live together. We still hang on, sir, in partnership, though Miss
+Em—though my lady Mirabel has left the firm.—And so you remember old
+times, do you? Wasn’t she a beauty, sir?—Your health and my service to
+you,”—and he took a sip at the pewter measure of porter which stood by
+his side as he played.
+
+Pen had many opportunities of seeing his early acquaintance afterwards,
+and of renewing his relations with Costigan and the old musician.
+
+As they sate thus in friendly colloquy, men of all sorts and conditions
+entered and quitted the house of entertainment; and Pen had the
+pleasure of seeing as many different persons of his race, as the most
+eager observer need desire to inspect. Healthy country tradesmen and
+farmers, in London for their business, came and recreated themselves
+with the jolly singing and suppers of the Back Kitchen,—squads of young
+apprentices and assistants, the shutters being closed over the scene of
+their labours, came hither for fresh air doubtless,—rakish young
+medical students, gallant, dashing, what is called “loudly” dressed,
+and (must it be owned?) somewhat dirty,—were here smoking and drinking,
+and vociferously applauding the songs; young university bucks were to
+be found here, too, with that indescribable genteel simper which is
+only learned at the knees of Alma Mater;—and handsome young guardsmen,
+and florid bucks from the St. James’s Street Clubs—nay, senators
+English and Irish; and even members of the House of Peers.
+
+The bass singer had made an immense hit with his song of ‘The Body
+Snatcher,’ and the town rushed to listen to it. The curtain drew aside,
+and Mr. Hodgen appeared in the character of the Snatcher, sitting on a
+coffin, with a flask of gin before him, with a spade, and a candle
+stuck in a skull. The song was sung with a really admirable terrific
+humour. The singer’s voice went down so low, that its grumbles rumbled
+into the hearer’s awe-stricken soul; and in the chorus he clamped with
+his spade, and gave a demoniac “Ha! ha!” which caused the very glasses
+to quiver on the table, as with terror. None of the other singers, not
+even Cutts himself, as that high-minded man owned, could stand up
+before the Snatcher, and he commonly used to retire to Mrs. Cutts’s
+private apartments, or into the bar, before that fatal song
+extinguished him. Poor Cos’s ditty, ‘The Little Doodeen,’ which Bows
+accompanied charmingly on the piano, was sung but to a few admirers,
+who might choose to remain after the tremendous resurrectionist chant.
+The room was commonly emptied after that, or only left in possession of
+a very few and persevering votaries of pleasure.
+
+Whilst Pen and his friend were sitting here together one night, or
+rather morning, two habitues of the house entered almost together. “Mr.
+Hoolan and Mr. Doolan,” whispered Warrington to Pen, saluting these
+gentlemen, and in the latter Pen recognised his friend of the Alacrity
+coach, who could not dine with Pen on the day on which the latter had
+invited him, being compelled by his professional duties to decline
+dinner-engagements on Fridays, he had stated, with his compliments to
+Mr. Pendennis.
+
+Doolan’s paper, the Dawn, was lying on the table much bestained by
+porter, and cheek-by-jowl with Hoolan’s paper, which we shall call the
+Day; the Dawn was Liberal—the Day was ultra-Conservative. Many of our
+journals are officered by Irish gentlemen, and their gallant brigade
+does the penning among us, as their ancestors used to transact the
+fighting in Europe; and engage under many a flag, to be good friends
+when the battle is over.
+
+“Kidneys, John, and a glass of stout,” says Hoolan. “How are you,
+Morgan? how’s Mrs. Doolan?”
+
+“Doing pretty well, thank ye, Mick, my boy—faith she’s accustomed to
+it,” said Doolan. “How’s the lady that owns ye? Maybe I’ll step down
+Sunday, and have a glass of punch, Kilburn way.”
+
+“Don’t bring Patsey with you, Mick, for our Georgy’s got the measles,”
+said the friendly Morgan, and they straightway fell to talk about
+matters connected with their trade—about the foreign mails—about who
+was correspondent at Paris, and who wrote from Madrid—about the expense
+the Morning Journal was at in sending couriers, about the circulation
+of the Evening Star, and so forth.
+
+Warrington, laughing, took the Dawn which was lying before him, and
+pointed to one of the leading articles in that journal, which commenced
+thus—
+
+“As rogues of note in former days who had some wicked work to
+perform,—an enemy to be put out of the way, a quantity of false coin to
+be passed, a lie to be told or a murder to be done—employed a
+professional perjurer or assassin to do the work, which they were
+themselves too notorious or too cowardly to execute: our notorious
+contemporary, the Day, engages smashers out of doors to utter forgeries
+against individuals, and calls in auxiliary cut-throats to murder the
+reputation of those who offend him. A black-vizarded ruffian (whom we
+will unmask), who signs the forged name of Trefoil, is at present one
+of the chief bravoes and bullies in our contemporary’s establishment.
+He is the eunuch who brings the bowstring, and strangles at the order
+of the Day. We can convict this cowardly slave, and propose to do so.
+The charge which he has brought against Lord Bangbanagher, because he
+is a Liberal Irish peer, and against the Board of Poor Law Guardians of
+the Bangbanagher Union, is,” etc.
+
+“How did they like the article at your place, Mick?” asked Morgan;
+“when the Captain puts his hand to it he’s a tremendous hand at a
+smasher. He wrote the article in two hours—in—whew—you know where,
+while the boy was waiting.”
+
+“Our governor thinks the public don’t mind a straw about these
+newspaper rows, and has told the Docthor to stop answering,” said the
+other. “Them two talked it out together in my room. The Docthor would
+have liked a turn, for he says it’s such easy writing, and requires no
+reading up of a subject: but the governor put a stopper on him.”
+
+“The taste for eloquence is going out, Mick,” said Morgan.
+
+“’Deed then it is, Morgan,” said Mick. “That was fine writing when the
+Docthor wrote in the Phaynix, and he and Condy Roony blazed away at
+each other day after day.”
+
+“And with powder and shot, too, as well as paper,” says Morgan, “Faith,
+the Docthor was out twice, and Condy Roony winged his man.”
+
+“They are talking about Doctor Boyne and Captain Shandon,” Warrington
+said, “who are the two Irish controversialists of the Dawn and the Day,
+Dr. Boyne being the Protestant champion and Captain Shandon the Liberal
+orator. They are the best friends in the world, I believe, in spite of
+their newspaper controversies; and though they cry out against the
+English for abusing their country, by Jove they abuse it themselves
+more in a single article than we should take the pains to do in a dozen
+volumes. How are you, Doolan?”
+
+“Your servant, Mr. Warrington—Mr. Pendennis, I am delighted to have the
+honour of seeing ye again. The night’s journey on the top of the
+Alacrity was one of the most agreeable I ever enjoyed in my life, and
+it was your liveliness and urbanity that made the trip so charming. I
+have often thought over that happy night, sir, and talked over it to
+Mrs. Doolan. I have seen your elegant young friend, Mr. Foker, too,
+here, sir, not unfrequently. He is an occasional frequenter of this
+hostelry, and a right good one it is. Mr. Pendennis, when I saw you I
+was on the Tom and Jerry Weekly Paper; I have now the honour to be
+sub-editor of the Dawn, one of the best-written papers of the
+empire”—and he bowed very slightly to Mr. Warrington. His speech was
+unctuous and measured, his courtesy oriental, his tone, when talking
+with the two Englishmen, quite different to that with which he spoke to
+his comrade.
+
+“Why the devil will the fellow compliment so?” growled Warrington, with
+a sneer which he hardly took the pains to suppress. “Psha—who comes
+here?—all Parnassus is abroad to-night: here’s Archer. We shall have
+some fun. Well, Archer, House up?”
+
+“Haven’t been there. I have been,” said Archer, with an air of mystery,
+“where I was wanted. Get me some supper, John—something substantial. I
+hate your grandees who give you nothing to eat. If it had been at
+Apsley House, it would have been quite different. The Duke knows what I
+like, and says to the Groom of the Chambers, ‘Martin, you will have
+some cold beef, not too much done, and a pint bottle of pale ale, and
+some brown sherry, ready in my study as usual;—Archer is coming here
+this evening.’ The Duke doesn’t eat supper himself, but he likes to see
+a man enjoy a hearty meal, and he knows that I dine early. A man can’t
+live upon air, be hanged to him.”
+
+“Let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Pendennis,” Warrington said,
+with great gravity. “Pen, this is Mr Archer, whom you have heard me
+talk about. You must know Pen’s uncle, the Major, Archer, you who know
+everybody?”
+
+“Dined with him the day before yesterday at Gaunt House,” Archer said.
+“We were four—the French Ambassador, Steyne, and we two commoners.”
+
+“Why, my uncle is in Scot——” Pen was going to break out, but Warrington
+pressed his foot under the table as a signal for him to be quiet.
+
+“It was about the same business that I have been to the palace
+to-night,” Archer went on simply, “and where I’ve been kept four hours,
+in an anteroom, with nothing but yesterday’s Times, which I knew by
+heart, as I wrote three of the leading articles myself; and though the
+Lord Chamberlain came in four times, and once holding the royal teacup
+and saucer in his hand, he did not so much as say to me, ‘Archer, will
+you have a cup of tea?’”
+
+“Indeed! what is in the wind now?” asked Warrington—and turning to Pen,
+added, “You know, I suppose, that when there is anything wrong at Court
+they always send for Archer.”
+
+“There is something wrong,” said Mr. Archer, “and as the story will be
+all over the town in a day or two I don’t mind telling it. At the last
+Chantilly races, where I rode Brian Boru for my old friend the Duke de
+Saint Cloud—the old King said to me, Archer, I’m uneasy about Saint
+Cloud. I have arranged his marriage with the Princess Marie Cunegonde;
+the peace of Europe depends upon it—for Russia will declare war if the
+marriage does not take place, and the young fool is so mad about Madame
+Massena, Marshal Massena’s wife, that he actually refuses to be a party
+to the marriage. Well, Sir, I spoke to Saint Cloud, and having got him
+into pretty good humour by winning the race, and a good bit of money
+into the bargain, he said to me, ‘Archer, tell the Governor I’ll think
+of it.’”
+
+“How do you say Governor in French?” asked Pen, who piqued himself on
+knowing that language.
+
+“Oh, we speak in English—I taught him when we were boys, and I saved
+his life at Twickenham, when he fell out of a punt,” Archer said. “I
+shall never forget the Queen’s looks as I brought him out of the water.
+She gave me this diamond ring, and always calls me Charles to this
+day.”
+
+“Madame Massena must be rather an old woman, Archer,” Warrington said.
+
+“Dev’lish old—old enough to be his grandmother; I told him so,” Archer
+answered at once. “But those attachments for old women are the deuce
+and all. That’s what the King feels: that’s what shocks the poor Queen
+so much. They went away from Paris last Tuesday night, and are living
+at this present moment at Jaunay’s Hotel.”
+
+“Has there been a private marriage, Archer?” asked Warrington.
+
+“Whether there has or not I don’t know,” Mr. Archer replied, “all I
+know is that I was kept waiting for four hours at the palace; that I
+never saw a man in such a state of agitation as the King of Belgium
+when he came out to speak to me, and that I’m devilish hungry—and here
+comes some supper.”
+
+“He has been pretty well to-night,” said Warrington, as the pair went
+home together: “but I have known him in much greater force, and keeping
+a whole room in a state of wonder. Put aside his archery practice, that
+man is both able and honest—a good man of business, an excellent
+friend, admirable to his family as husband, father, and son.”
+
+“What is it makes him pull the long bow in that wonderful manner?”
+
+“An amiable insanity,” answered Warrington. “He never did anybody harm
+by his talk, or said evil of anybody. He is a stout politician too, and
+would never write a word or do an act against his party, as many of us
+do.”
+
+“Of us! Who are we?” asked Pen. “Of what profession is Mr. Archer?”
+
+“Of the Corporation of the Goosequill—of the Press, my boy,” said
+Warrington; “of the fourth estate.”
+
+“Are you, too, of the craft, then?” Pendennis said.
+
+“We will talk about that another time,” answered the other. They were
+passing through the Strand as they talked, and by a newspaper office,
+which was all lighted up and bright. Reporters were coming out of the
+place, or rushing up to it in cabs; there were lamps burning in the
+editors’ rooms, and above where the compositors were at work: the
+windows of the building were in a blaze of gas.
+
+“Look at that, Pen,” Warrington said. “There she is—the great
+engine—she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of
+the world—her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with
+armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen’s cabinets. They are
+ubiquitous. Yonder journal has an agent, at this minute, giving bribes
+at Madrid; and another inspecting the price of potatoes in Covent
+Garden. Look! here comes the Foreign Express galloping in. They will be
+able to give news to Downing Street to-morrow: funds will rise or fall,
+fortunes be made or lost; Lord B. will get up, and, holding the paper
+in his hand, and seeing the noble marquis in his place, will make a
+great speech; and—and Mr. Doolan will be called away from his supper at
+the Back Kitchen; for he is foreign sub-editor, and sees the mail on
+the newspaper sheet before he goes to his own.”
+
+And so talking, the friends turned into their chambers, as the dawn was
+beginning to peep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+In which the Printer’s Devil comes to the Door
+
+
+Pen, in the midst of his revels and enjoyments, humble as they were,
+and moderate in cost if not in kind, saw an awful sword hanging over
+him which must drop down before long and put an end to his frolics and
+feasting. His money was very nearly spent. His club subscription had
+carried away a third part of it. He had paid for the chief articles of
+furniture with which he had supplied his little bedroom: in fine, he
+was come to the last five-pound note in his pocket-book, and could
+think of no method of providing a successor: for our friend had been
+bred up like a young prince as yet, or as a child in arms whom his
+mother feeds when it cries out.
+
+Warrington did not know what his comrade’s means were. An only child,
+with a mother at her country house, and an old dandy of an uncle who
+dined with a great man every day, Pen might have a large bank at his
+command for anything that the other knew. He had gold chains and a
+dressing-case fit for a lord. His habits were those of an
+aristocrat,—not that he was expensive upon any particular point, for he
+dined and laughed over the pint of porter and the plate of beef from
+the cook’s shop with perfect content and good appetite,—but he could
+not adopt the penny-wise precautions of life. He could not give
+twopence to a waiter; he could not refrain from taking a cab if he had
+a mind to do so, or if it rained, and as surely as he took the cab he
+overpaid the driver. He had a scorn for cleaned gloves and minor
+economies. Had he been bred to ten thousand a year he could scarcely
+have been more free-handed; and for a beggar, with a sad story, or a
+couple of pretty piteous-faced children, he never could resist putting
+his hand into his pocket. It was a sumptuous nature, perhaps, that
+could not be brought to regard money; a natural generosity and
+kindness; and possibly a petty vanity that was pleased with praise,
+even with the praise of waiters and cabmen. I doubt whether the wisest
+of us know what our own motives are, and whether some of the actions of
+which we are the very proudest will not surprise us when we trace them,
+as we shall one day, to their source.
+
+Warrington then did not know, and Pen had not thought proper to confide
+to his friend, his pecuniary history. That Pen had been wild and
+wickedly extravagant at college, the other was aware; everybody at
+college was extravagant and wild; but how great the son’s expenses had
+been, and how small the mother’s means, were points which had not been
+as yet submitted to Mr. Warrington’s examination.
+
+At last the story came out, while Pen was grimly surveying the change
+for the last five-pound note, as it lay upon the tray from the
+public-house by Mr. Warrington’s pot of ale.
+
+“It is the last rose of summer,” said Pen; “its blooming companions
+have gone long ago; and behold the last one of the garland has shed its
+leaves;” and he told Warrington the whole story which we know of his
+mother’s means, of his own follies, of Laura’s generosity; during which
+time Warrington smoked his pipe and listened intent.
+
+“Impecuniosity will do you good,” Pen’s friend said, knocking out the
+ashes at the end of the narration; “I don’t know anything more
+wholesome for a man—for an honest man, mind you—for another, the
+medicine loses its effect—than a state of tick. It is an alterative and
+a tonic; it keeps your moral man in a perpetual state of excitement: as
+a man who is riding at a fence, or has his opponent’s single-stick
+before him, is forced to look his obstacle steadily in the face, and
+braces himself to repulse or overcome it; a little necessity brings out
+your pluck if you have any, and nerves you to grapple with fortune. You
+will discover what a number of things you can do without when you have
+no money to buy them. You won’t want new gloves and varnished boots,
+eau de Cologne and cabs to ride in. You have been bred up as a
+molly-coddle, Pen, and spoilt by the women. A single man who has health
+and brains, and can’t find a livelihood in the world, doesn’t deserve
+to stay there. Let him pay his last halfpenny and jump over Waterloo
+Bridge. Let him steal a leg of mutton and be transported and get out of
+the country—he is not fit to live in it. Dixi; I have spoken. Give us
+another pull at the pale ale.”
+
+“You have certainly spoken; but how is one to live?” said Pen. “There
+is beef and bread in plenty in England, but you must pay for it with
+work or money. And who will take my work? and what work can I do?”
+
+Warrington burst out laughing. “Suppose we advertise in the Times,” he
+said, “for an usher’s place at a classical and commercial academy—A
+gentleman, B.A. of St. Boniface College, and who was plucked for his
+degree—”
+
+“Confound you,” cried Pen.
+
+“—Wishes to give lessons in classics and mathematics, and the rudiments
+of the French language; he can cut hair, attend to the younger pupils,
+and play a second on the piano with the daughters of the principal.
+Address A. P., Lamb Court, Temple.”
+
+“Go on,” said Pen, growling.
+
+“Men take to all sorts of professions. Why, there is your friend
+Bloundell-Bloundell is a professional blackleg, and travels the
+Continent, where he picks up young gentlemen of fashion and fleeces
+them. There is Bob O’Toole, with whom I was at school, who drives the
+Ballynafad mail now, and carries honest Jack Finucane’s own
+correspondence to that city. I know a man, sir, a doctor’s son,
+like—well, don’t be angry, I meant nothing offensive—a doctor’s son, I
+say, who was walking the hospitals here, and quarrelled with his
+governor on questions of finance, and what did he do when he came to
+his last five-pound note? he let his mustachios grow, went into a
+provincial town, where he announced himself as Professor Spineto,
+chiropodist to the Emperor of All the Russians, and by a happy
+operation on the editor of the country newspaper, established himself
+in practice, and lived reputably for three years. He has been
+reconciled to his family, and has succeeded to his father’s gallypots.”
+
+“Hang gallypots,” cried Pen. “I can’t drive a coach, cut corns, or
+cheat at cards. There’s nothing else you propose.”
+
+“Yes; there’s our own correspondent,” Warrington said. “Every man has
+his secrets, look you. Before you told me the story of your
+money-matters, I had no idea but that you were a gentleman of fortune,
+for, with your confounded airs and appearance, anybody would suppose
+you to be so. From what you tell me about your mother’s income, it is
+clear that you must not lay any more hands on it. You can’t go on
+spunging upon the women. You must pay off that trump of a girl. Laura
+is her name?—here is your health, Laura!—and carry a hod rather than
+ask for a shilling from home.”
+
+“But how earn one?” asked Pen.
+
+“How do I live, think you?” said the other. “On my younger brother’s
+allowance, Pendennis? I have secrets of my own, my boy;” and here
+Warrington’s countenance fell. “I made away with that allowance five
+years ago: if I had made away with myself a little time before, it
+would have been better. I have played off my own bat, ever since. I
+don’t want much money. When my purse is out, I go to work and fill it,
+and then lie idle like a serpent or an Indian, until I have digested
+the mass. Look, I begin to feel empty,” Warrington said, and showed Pen
+a long lean purse, with but a few sovereigns at one end of it.
+
+“But how do you fill it?” said Pen.
+
+“I write,” said Warrington. “I don’t tell the world that I do so,” he
+added, with a blush. “I do not choose that questions should be asked:
+or, perhaps, I am an ass, and don’t wish it to be said that George
+Warrington writes for bread. But I write in the Law Reviews: look here,
+these articles are mine.” And he turned over some sheets. “I write in a
+newspaper now and then, of which a friend of mine is editor.” And
+Warrington, going with Pendennis to the club one day, called for a file
+of the Dawn, and pointed with his finger silently to one or two
+articles, which Pen read with delight. He had no difficulty in
+recognising the style afterwards—the strong thoughts and curt periods,
+the sense, the satire, and the scholarship.
+
+“I am not up to this,” said Pen, with a genuine admiration of his
+friend’s powers. “I know very little about politics or history,
+Warrington; and have but a smattering of letters. I can’t fly upon such
+a wing as yours.”
+
+“But you can on your own, my boy, which is lighter, and soars higher,
+perhaps,” the other said, good-naturedly. “Those little scraps and
+verses which I have seen of yours show me, what is rare in these days,
+a natural gift, sir. You needn’t blush, you conceited young jackanapes.
+You have thought so yourself any time these ten years. You have got the
+sacred flame—a little of the real poetical fire, sir, I think; and all
+our oil-lamps are nothing compared to that, though ever so well
+trimmed. You are a poet, Pen, my boy,” and so speaking, Warrington
+stretched out his broad hand, and clapped Pen on the shoulder.
+
+Arthur was so delighted that the tears came into his eyes. “How kind
+you are to me, Warrington!” he said.
+
+“I like you, old boy,” said the other. “I was dev’lish lonely in
+chambers, and wanted somebody, and the sight of your honest face
+somehow pleased me. I liked the way you laughed at Lowton—that poor
+good little snob. And, in fine, the reason why I cannot tell—but so it
+is, young ’un. I’m alone in the world, sir; and I wanted some one to
+keep me company;” and a glance of extreme kindness and melancholy
+passed out of Warrington’s dark eyes.
+
+Pen was too much pleased with his own thoughts to perceive the sadness
+of the friend who was complimenting him. “Thank you, Warrington,” he
+said, “thank you for your friendship to me, and—and what you say about
+me. I have often thought I was a poet. I will be one—I think I am one,
+as you say so, though the world mayn’t. Is it—is it the Ariadne in
+Naxos which you liked (I was only eighteen when I wrote it), or the
+Prize Poem?”
+
+Warrington burst into a roar of laughter. “Why, young goose,” he yelled
+out—“of all the miserable weak rubbish I ever tried, Ariadne in Naxos
+is the most mawkish and disgusting. The Prize Poem is so pompous and
+feeble, that I’m positively surprised, sir, it didn’t get the medal.
+You don’t suppose that you are a serious poet, do you, and are going to
+cut out Milton and Aeschylus? Are you setting up to be a Pindar, you
+absurd little tom-tit, and fancy you have the strength and pinion which
+the Theban eagle bear, sailing with supreme dominion through the azure
+fields of air? No, my boy, I think you can write a magazine article,
+and turn a pretty copy of verses; that’s what I think of you.”
+
+“By Jove!” said Pen, bouncing up and stamping his foot, “I’ll show you
+that I am a better man than you think for.”
+
+Warrington only laughed the more, and blew twenty-four puffs rapidly
+out of his pipe by way of reply to Pen.
+
+An opportunity for showing his skill presented itself before very long.
+That eminent publisher, Mr. Bacon (formerly Bacon and Bungay) of
+Paternoster Row, besides being the proprietor of the legal Review, in
+which Mr. Warrington wrote, and of other periodicals of note and
+gravity, used to present to the world every year a beautiful gilt
+volume called the Spring Annual, edited by the Lady Violet Lebas, and
+numbering amongst its contributors not only the most eminent, but the
+most fashionable, poets of our time. Young Lord Dodo’s poems first
+appeared in this miscellany—the Honourable Percy Popjoy, whose
+chivalrous ballads have obtained him such a reputation—Bedwin Sands’s
+Eastern Ghazuls, and many more of the works of our young nobles, were
+fast given to the world in the Spring Annual, which has since shared
+the fate of other vernal blossoms, and perished out of the world. The
+book was daintily illustrated with pictures of reigning beauties, or
+other prints of a tender and voluptuous character; and, as these plates
+were prepared long beforehand, requiring much time in engraving, it was
+the eminent poets who had to write to the plates, and not the painters
+who illustrated the poems.
+
+One day, just when this volume was on the eve of publication, it
+chanced that Mr. Warrington called in Paternoster Row to talk with Mr.
+Hack, Mr. Bacon’s reader and general manager of publications—for Mr.
+Bacon, not having the least taste in poetry or in literature of any
+kind, wisely employed the services of a professional gentleman.
+Warrington, then, going into Mr. Hack’s room on business of his own,
+found that gentleman with a bundle of proof plates and sheets of the
+Spring Annual before him, and glanced at some of them.
+
+Percy Popjoy had written some verses to illustrate one of the pictures,
+which was called The Church Porch. A Spanish damsel was hastening to
+church with a large prayer-book; a youth in a cloak was hidden in a
+niche watching this young woman. The picture was pretty: but the great
+genius of Percy Popjoy had deserted him, for he had made the most
+execrable verses which ever were perpetrated by a young nobleman.
+
+Warrington burst out laughing as he read the poem: and Mr. Hack laughed
+too but with rather a rueful face.—“It won’t do,” he said, “the public
+won’t stand it. Bungay’s people are going to bring out a very good
+book, and have set up Miss Bunyan against Lady Violet. We have most
+titles to be sure—but the verses are too bad. Lady Violet herself owns
+it; she’s busy with her own poem; what’s to be done? We can’t lose the
+plate. The governor gave sixty pounds for it.”
+
+“I know a fellow who would do some verses, I think,” said Warrington.
+“Let me take the plate home in my pocket: and send to my chambers in
+the morning for the verses. You’ll pay well, of course.”
+
+“Of course,” said Mr. Hack; and Warrington, having despatched his own
+business, went home to Mr. Pen, plate in hand.
+
+“Now, boy, here’s a chance for you. Turn me off a copy of verses to
+this.”
+
+“What’s this? A Church Porch—A lady entering it, and a youth out of a
+wine-shop window ogling her.—What the deuce am I to do with it?”
+
+“Try,” said Warrington. “Earn your livelihood for once, you who long so
+to do it.”
+
+“Well, I will try,” said Pen.
+
+“And I’ll go out to dinner,” said Warrington, and left Mr. Pen in a
+brown study.
+
+When Warrington came home that night, at a very late hour, the verses
+were done. “There they are,” said Pen. “I’ve screwed ’em out at last. I
+think they’ll do.”
+
+“I think, they will,” said Warrington, after reading them; they ran as
+follows:—
+
+    The Church Porch
+
+Although I enter not,
+Yet round about the spot
+    Sometimes I hover,
+And at the sacred gate,
+With longing eyes I wait,
+    Expectant of her.
+
+The Minster bell tolls out
+Above the city’s rout
+    And noise and humming
+They’ve stopp’d the chiming bell,
+I hear the organ’s swell
+    She’s coming, she’s coming!
+
+My lady comes at last,
+Timid and stepping fast,
+    And hastening hither,
+With modest eyes downcast.
+She comes—she’s here—she’s past.
+    May Heaven go with her!
+
+Kneel undisturb’d, fair saint,
+Pour out your praise or plaint
+    Meekly and duly.
+I will not enter there,
+To sully your pure prayer
+    With thoughts unruly.
+
+But suffer me to pace
+Round the forbidden place,
+    Lingering a minute,
+Like outcast spirits, who wait
+And see through Heaven’s gate
+    Angels within it.
+
+
+“Have you got any more, young fellow?” asked Warrington. “We must make
+them give you a couple of guineas a page; and if the verses are liked,
+why, you’ll get an entree into Bacon’s magazines, and may turn a decent
+penny.”
+
+Pen examined his portfolio and found another ballad which he thought
+might figure with advantage in the Spring Annual, and consigning these
+two precious documents to Warrington, the pair walked from the Temple
+to the famous haunt of the Muses and their masters, Paternoster Row.
+Bacon’s shop was an ancient low-browed building, with a few of the
+books published by the firm displayed in the windows, under a bust of
+my Lord of Verulam, and the name of Mr. Bacon in brass on the private
+door. Exactly opposite to Bacon’s house was that of Mr. Bungay, which
+was newly painted and elaborately decorated in the style of the
+seventeenth century, so that you might have fancied stately Mr. Evelyn
+passing over the threshold, or curious Mr. Pepys examining the books in
+the window. Warrington went into the shop of Mr. Bacon, but Pen stayed
+without. It was agreed that his ambassador should act for him entirely;
+and the young fellow paced up and down the street in a very nervous
+condition, until he should learn the result of the negotiation. Many a
+poor devil before him has trodden those flags, with similar cares and
+anxieties at his heels, his bread and his fame dependent upon the
+sentence of his magnanimous patrons of the Row. Pen looked at all the
+wonders of all the shops, and the strange variety of literature which
+they exhibit. In this were displayed black-letter volumes and books in
+the clear pale types of Aldus and Elzevir: in the next, you might see
+the Penny Horrific Register; the Halfpenny Annals of Crime and History
+of the most celebrated murderers of all countries, The Raff’s Magazine,
+The Larky Swell, and other publications of the penny press; whilst at
+the next window, portraits of ill-favoured individuals, with
+fac-similes of the venerated signatures of the Reverend Grimes Wapshot,
+the Reverend Elias Howle, and the works written and the sermons
+preached by them, showed the British Dissenter where he could find
+mental pabulum. Hard by would be a little casement hung with emblems,
+with medals and rosaries with little paltry prints of saints gilt and
+painted, and books of controversial theology, by which the faithful of
+the Roman opinion might learn a short way to deal with Protestants, at
+a penny apiece, or ninepence the dozen for distribution; whilst in the
+very next window you might see ‘Come out of Rome,’ a sermon preached at
+the opening of the Shepherd’s Bush College, by John Thomas Lord Bishop
+of Ealing. Scarce an opinion but has its expositor and its place of
+exhibition in this peaceful old Paternoster Row, under the toll of the
+bells of Saint Paul.
+
+Pen looked in at all the windows and shops, as a gentleman who is going
+to have an interview with the dentist examines the books on the
+waiting-room table. He remembered them afterwards. It seemed to him
+that Warrington would never come out; and indeed the latter was engaged
+for some time in pleading his friend’s cause.
+
+Pen’s natural conceit would have swollen immensely if he could but have
+heard the report which Warrington gave of him. It happened that Mr.
+Bacon himself had occasion to descend to Mr. Hack’s room whilst
+Warrington was talking there, and Warrington, knowing Bacon’s
+weaknesses, acted upon them with great adroitness in his friend’s
+behalf. In the first place, he put on his hat to speak to Bacon, and
+addressed him from the table on which he seated himself. Bacon liked to
+be treated with rudeness by a gentleman, and used to pass it on to his
+inferiors as boys pass the mark. “What! not know Mr. Pendennis, Mr.
+Bacon?” Warrington said. “You can’t live much in the world, or you
+would know him. A man of property in the West, of one of the most
+ancient families in England, related to half the nobility in the
+empire—he’s cousin to Lord Pontypool—he was one of the most
+distinguished men at Oxbridge; he dines at Gaunt House every week.”
+
+“Law bless me, you don’t say so, sir. Well—really—Law bless me now,”
+said Mr. Bacon.
+
+“I have just been showing Mr. Hack some of his verses, which he sat up
+last night, at my request, to write; and Hack talks about giving him a
+copy of the book—the what-d’-you-call-’em.”
+
+“Law bless me now, does he? The what-d’-you-call-’em. Indeed!”
+
+“‘The Spring Annual’ is its name,—as payment for those verses. You
+don’t suppose that such a man as Mr. Arthur Pendennis gives up a dinner
+at Gaunt House for nothing? You know as well as anybody, that the men
+of fashion want to be paid.”
+
+“That they do, Mr. Warrington, sir,” said the publisher.
+
+“I tell you he’s a star; he’ll make a name, sir. He’s a new man, sir.”
+
+“They’ve said that of so many of those young swells, Mr. Warrington,”
+the publisher interposed, with a sigh. “There was Lord Viscount Dodo,
+now; I gave his Lordship a good bit of money for his poems, and only
+sold eighty copies. Mr. Popjoy’s Hadgincourt, sir, fell dead.”
+
+“Well, then, I’ll take my man over to Bungay,” Warrington said, and
+rose from the table. This threat was too much for Mr. Bacon, who was
+instantly ready to accede to any reasonable proposal of Mr.
+Warrington’s, and finally asked his manager what those proposals were?
+When he heard that the negotiation only related as yet to a couple of
+ballads, which Mr. Warrington offered for the Spring Annual, Mr. Bacon
+said, “Law bless you, give him a check directly;” and with this paper
+Warrington went out to his friend, and placed it, grinning, in Pen’s
+hands. Pen was as elated as if somebody had left him a fortune. He
+offered Warrington a dinner at Richmond instantly. “What should he go
+and buy for Laura and his mother? He must buy something for them.”
+
+“They’ll like the book better than anything else,” said Warrington,
+“with the young one’s name to the verses, printed among the swells.”
+
+“Thank God! thank God!” cried Arthur, “I needn’t be a charge upon the
+old mother. I can pay off Laura now. I can get my own living. I can
+make my own way.”
+
+“I can marry the grand vizier’s daughter: I can purchase a house in
+Belgrave Square; I can build a fine castle in the air!” said
+Warrington, pleased with the other’s exultation. “Well, you may get
+bread and cheese, Pen: and I own it tastes well, the bread which you
+earn yourself.”
+
+They had a magnum of claret at dinner at the club that day, at Pen’s
+charges. It was long since he had indulged in such a luxury, but
+Warrington would not baulk him: and they drank together to the health
+of the Spring Annual.
+
+It never rains but it pours, according to the proverb; so very speedily
+another chance occurred, by which Mr. Pen was to be helped in his
+scheme of making a livelihood. Warrington one day threw him a letter
+across the table, which was brought by a printer’s boy, “from Captain
+Shandon, sir”—the little emissary said: and then went and fell asleep
+on his accustomed bench in the passage. He paid many a subsequent visit
+there, and brought many a message to Pen.
+
+F. P. Tuesday Morning.
+
+“MY DEAR SIR,—Bungay will be here to-day, about the Pall Mall Gazette.
+You would be the very man to help us with a genuine West-end
+article,—you understand—dashing, trenchant, and d—— aristocratic. Lady
+Hipshaw will write; but she’s not much you know, and we’ve two lords;
+but the less they do the better. We must have you. We’ll give you your
+own terms, and we’ll make a hit with the Gazette.
+
+“Shall B. come and see you, or can you look in upon me here?—Ever
+yours,
+
+“C. S.”
+
+“Some more opposition,” Warrington said, when Pen had read the note.
+“Bungay and Bacon are at daggers drawn; each married the sister of the
+other, and they were for some time the closest friends and partners.
+Hack says it was Mrs. Bungay who caused all the mischief between the
+two; whereas Shandon, who reads for Bungay a good deal, says Mrs. Bacon
+did the business; but I don’t know which is right, Peachum or Lockit.
+But since they have separated, it is a furious war between the two
+publishers; and no sooner does one bring out a book of travels, or
+poems, a magazine or periodical, quarterly, or monthly, or weekly, or
+annual, but the rival is in the field with something similar. I have
+heard poor Shandon tell with great glee how he made Bungay give a grand
+dinner at Blackwall to all his writers, by saying that Bacon had
+invited his corps to an entertainment at Greenwich. When Bungay engaged
+your celebrated friend Mr. Wagg to edit the ‘Londoner,’ Bacon
+straightway rushed off and secured Mr. Grindle to give his name to the
+‘Westminster Magazine.’ When Bacon brought out his comic Irish novel of
+‘Barney Brallaghan,’ off went Bungay to Dublin, and produced his
+rollicking Hibernian story of ‘Looney MacTwolter.’ When Doctor Hicks
+brought out his ‘Wanderings in Mesopotamia’ under Bacon’s auspices,
+Bungay produced Professor Sandiman’s ‘Researches in Zahara;’ and Bungay
+is publishing his ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ as a counterpoise to Bacon’s
+‘Whitehall Review.’ Let us go and hear about the ‘Gazette.’ There may
+be a place for you in it, Pen, my boy. We will go and see Shandon. We
+are sure to find him at home.”
+
+“Where does he live?” asked Pen.
+
+“In the Fleet Prison,” Warrington said. “And very much at home he is
+there, too. He is the king of the place.”
+
+Pen had never seen this scene of London life, and walked with no small
+interest in at the grim gate of that dismal edifice. They went through
+the anteroom, where the officers and janitors of the place were seated,
+and passing in at the wicket, entered the prison. The noise and the
+crowd, the life and the shouting, the shabby bustle of the place,
+struck and excited Pen. People moved about ceaselessly and restless,
+like caged animals in a menagerie. Men were playing at fives. Others
+pacing and tramping: this one in colloquy with his lawyer in dingy
+black—that one walking sadly, with his wife by his side, and a child on
+his arm. Some were arrayed in tattered dressing-gowns, and had a look
+of rakish fashion. Everybody seemed to be busy, humming, and on the
+move. Pen felt as if he choked in the place, and as if the door being
+locked upon him they never would let him out.
+
+They went through a court up a stone staircase, and through passages
+full of people, and noise, and cross lights, and black doors clapping
+and banging;—Pen feeling as one does in a feverish morning dream. At
+last the same little runner who had brought Shandon’s note, and had
+followed them down Fleet Street munching apples, and who showed the way
+to the two gentlemen through the prison, said, “This is the Captain’s
+door,” and Mr. Shandon’s voice from within bade them enter.
+
+The room, though bare, was not uncheerful. The sun was shining in at
+the window—near which sate a lady at work, who had been gay and
+beautiful once, but in whose faded face kindness and tenderness still
+beamed. Through all his errors and reckless mishaps and misfortunes,
+this faithful creature adored her husband, and thought him the best and
+cleverest, as indeed he was one of the kindest of men. Nothing ever
+seemed to disturb the sweetness of his temper; not debts: not duns: not
+misery: not the bottle, not his wife’s unhappy position, or his
+children’s ruined chances. He was perfectly fond of wife and children
+after his fashion: he always had the kindest words and smiles for them,
+and ruined them with the utmost sweetness of temper. He never could
+refuse himself or any man any enjoyment which his money could purchase;
+he would share his last guinea with Jack and Tom, and we may be sure he
+had a score of such retainers. He would sign his name at the back of
+any man’s bill, and never pay any debt of his own. He would write on
+any side, and attack himself or another man with equal indifference. He
+was one of the wittiest, the most amiable, and the most incorrigible of
+Irishmen. Nobody could help liking Charley Shandon who saw him once,
+and those whom he ruined could scarcely be angry with him.
+
+When Pen and Warrington arrived, the Captain (he had been in an Irish
+militia regiment once, and the title remained with him) was sitting on
+his bed in a torn dressing-gown, with a desk on his knees, at which he
+was scribbling as fast as his rapid pen could write. Slip after slip of
+paper fell off the desk wet on to the ground. A picture of his children
+was hung up over his bed, and the youngest of them was pattering about
+the room.
+
+Opposite the Captain sate Mr. Bungay, a portly man of stolid
+countenance, with whom the little child had been trying a conversation.
+
+“Papa’s a very clever man,” said she; “mamma says so.”
+
+“Oh, very,” said Mr. Bungay.
+
+“And you’re a very rich man, Mr. Bundy,” cried the child, who could
+hardly speak plain.
+
+“Mary!” said Mamma, from her work.
+
+“Oh, never mind,” Bungay roared out with a great laugh; “no harm in
+saying I’m rich—he, he—I am pretty well off, my little dear.”
+
+“If you’re rich, why don’t you take papa out of piz’n?” asked the
+child.
+
+Mamma at this began to wipe her eyes with the work on which she was
+employed. (The poor lady had hung curtains up in the room, had brought
+the children’s picture and placed it there, and had made one or two
+attempts to ornament it.) Mamma began to cry; Mr. Bungay turned red,
+and looked fiercely out of his bloodshot little eyes; Shandon’s pen
+went on, and Pen and Warrington arrived with their knock.
+
+Captain Shandon looked up from his work. “How do you do, Mr.
+Warrington,” he said. “I’ll speak to you in a minute. Please sit down,
+gentlemen, if you can find places,” and away went the pen again.
+
+Warrington pulled forward an old portmanteau—the only available
+seat—and sate down on it, with a bow to Mrs. Shandon and a nod to
+Bungay: the child came and looked at Pen solemnly and in a couple of
+minutes the swift scribbling ceased; and Shandon, turning the desk over
+on the bed, stooped and picked up the papers.
+
+“I think this will do,” said he. “It’s the prospectus for the Pall Mall
+Gazette.”
+
+“And here’s the money for it,” Mr. Bungay said, laying down a
+five-pound note. “I’m as good as my word, I am. When I say I’ll pay, I
+pay.”
+
+“Faith that’s more than some of us can say,” said Shandon, and he
+eagerly clapped the note into his pocket.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+Which is passed in the Neighbourhood of Ludgate Hill
+
+
+Our imprisoned Captain announced, in smart and emphatic language in his
+prospectus, that the time had come at last when it was necessary for
+the gentlemen of England to band together in defence of their common
+rights and their glorious order, menaced on all sides by foreign
+revolutions, by intestine radicalism, by the artful calumnies of
+mill-owners and cotton-lords, and the stupid hostility of the masses
+whom they gulled and led. “The ancient monarchy was insulted,” the
+Captain said, “by a ferocious republican rabble. The Church was
+deserted by envious dissent, and undermined by stealthy infidelity. The
+good institutions, which had made our country glorious, and the name of
+English Gentleman the proudest in the world, were left without defence,
+and exposed to assault and contumely from men to whom no sanctuary was
+sacred, for they believed in nothing holy; no history venerable, for
+they were too ignorant to have heard of the past; and no law was
+binding which they were strong enough to break, when their leaders gave
+the signal for plunder. It was because the kings of France mistrusted
+their gentlemen,” Mr. Shandon remarked, “that the monarchy of Saint
+Louis went down: it was because the people of England still believed in
+their gentlemen, that this country encountered and overcame the
+greatest enemy a nation ever met: it was because we were headed by
+gentlemen, that the Eagles retreated before us from the Donro to the
+Garonne: it was a gentleman who broke the line at Trafalgar, and swept
+the plain of Waterloo.”
+
+Bungay nodded his head in a knowing manner, and winked his eyes when
+the Captain came to the Waterloo passage: and Warrington burst out
+laughing.
+
+“You see how our venerable friend Bungay is affected,” Shandon said,
+slily looking up from his papers—“that’s your true sort of test. I have
+used the Duke of Wellington and the battle of Waterloo a hundred times,
+and I never knew the Duke to fail.”
+
+The Captain then went on to confess, with much candour, that up to the
+present time the gentlemen of England, confident of their right, and
+careless of those who questioned it, had left the political interest of
+their order as they did the management of their estates, or the
+settlement of their legal affairs, to persons affected to each peculiar
+service, and had permitted their interests to be represented in the
+press by professional proctors and advocates. That time Shandon
+professed to consider was now gone by: the gentlemen of England must be
+their own champions: the declared enemies of their order were brave,
+strong, numerous, and uncompromising. They must meet their foes in the
+field: they must not be belied and misrepresented by hireling
+advocates: they must not have Grub Street publishing Gazettes from
+Whitehall; “that’s a dig at Bacon’s people, Mr. Bungay,” said Shandon,
+turning round to the publisher. Bungay clapped his stick on the floor.
+“Hang him, pitch into him, Capting,” he said with exultation: and
+turning to Warrington, wagged his dull head more vehemently than ever,
+and said, “For a slashing article, sir, there’s nobody like the
+Capting—no-obody like him.”
+
+The prospectus-writer went on to say that some gentlemen, whose names
+were, for obvious reasons, not brought before the public (at which Mr.
+Warrington began to laugh again), had determined to bring forward a
+journal, of which the principles were so-and-so. “These men are proud
+of their order, and anxious to uphold it,” cried out Captain Shandon,
+flourishing his paper with a grin. “They are loyal to their Sovereign,
+by faithful conviction and ancestral allegiance; they love their
+Church, where they would have their children worship, and for which
+their forefathers bled; they love their country, and would keep it what
+the gentlemen of England—yes, the gentlemen of England (we’ll have that
+in large caps, Bungay, my boy) have made it—the greatest and freest in
+the world: and as the names of some of them are appended to the deed
+which secured our liberties at Runnymede—”
+
+“What’s that?” asked Mr. Bungay.
+
+“An ancestor of mine sealed it with his sword-hilt,” Pen said, with
+great gravity.
+
+“It’s the Habeas Corpus, Mr. Bungay,” Warrington said, on which the
+publisher answered, “All right, I dare say,” and yawned, though he
+said, “Go on, Capting.”
+
+“—at Runnymede; they are ready to defend that freedom to-day with sword
+and pen, and now, as then, to rally round the old laws and liberties of
+England.”
+
+“Bravo!” cried Warrington. The little child stood wondering; the lady
+was working silently, and looking with fond admiration. “Come here,
+little Mary,” said Warrington, and patted the child’s fair curls with
+his large hand. But she shrank back from his rough caress, and
+preferred to go and take refuge at Pen’s knee, and play with his fine
+watch-chain: and Pen was very much pleased that she came to him; for he
+was very soft-hearted and simple, though he concealed his gentleness
+under a shy and pompous demeanour. So she clambered up on his lap,
+whilst her father continued to read his programme.
+
+“You were laughing,” the Captain said to Warrington, “about ‘the
+obvious reasons’ which I mentioned. Now, I’ll show ye what they are, ye
+unbelieving heathen. ‘We have said,’” he went on, “‘that we cannot give
+the names of the parties engaged in this undertaking, and that there
+were obvious reasons for that concealment. We number influential
+friends in both Houses of the Senate, and have secured allies in every
+diplomatic circle in Europe. Our sources of intelligence are such as
+cannot, by any possibility, be made public—and, indeed, such as no
+other London or European journal could, by any chance, acquire. But
+this we are free to say, that the very earliest information connected
+with the movement of English and Continental politics will be found
+only in the columns of the Pall Mall Gazette, The Statesman and the
+Capitalist, the Country Gentleman and the Divine, will be amongst our
+readers, because our writers are amongst them. We address ourselves to
+the higher circles of society: we care not to disown it—the Pall Mall
+Gazette is written by gentlemen for gentlemen; its conductors speak to
+the classes in which they live and were born. The field-preacher has
+his journal, the radical free-thinker has his journal: why should the
+Gentlemen of England be unrepresented in the Press?’”
+
+Mr. Shandon then went on with much modesty to descant upon the literary
+and fashionable departments of the Pall Mall Gazette, which were to be
+conducted by gentlemen of acknowledged reputation; men famous at the
+Universities (at which Mr Pendennis could scarcely help laughing and
+blushing), known at the Clubs, and of the Society which they described.
+He pointed out delicately to advertisers that there would be no such
+medium as the Pall Mall Gazette for giving publicity to their sales;
+and he eloquently called upon the nobility of England, the baronetage
+of England, the revered clergy of England, the bar of England, the
+matrons, the daughters, the homes and hearths of England, to rally
+round the good old cause; and Bungay at the conclusion of the reading
+woke up from a second snooze in which he had indulged himself, and
+again said it was all right.
+
+The reading of the prospectus concluded, the gentlemen present entered
+into some details regarding the political and literary management of
+the paper, and Mr. Bungay sate by listening and nodding his head, as if
+he understood what was the subject of their conversation, and approved
+of their opinions. Bungay’s opinions, in truth, were pretty simple. He
+thought the Captain could write the best smashing article in England.
+He wanted the opposition house of Bacon smashed, and it was his opinion
+that the Captain could do that business. If the Captain had written a
+letter of Junius on a sheet of paper, or copied a part of the Church
+Catechism, Mr. Bungay would have been perfectly contented, and have
+considered that the article was a smashing article. And he pocketed the
+papers with the greatest satisfaction: and he not only paid for the
+MS., as we have seen, but he called little Mary to him, and gave her a
+penny as he went away.
+
+The reading of the manuscript over, the party engaged in general
+conversation, Shandon leading with a jaunty fashionable air in
+compliment to the two guests who sate with him and, and who, by their
+appearance and manner, he presumed to be persons of the beau monde. He
+knew very little indeed of the great world, but he had seen it, and
+made the most of what he had seen. He spoke of the characters of the
+day, and great personages of the fashion, with easy familiarity and
+jocular allusions, as if it had been his habit to live amongst them. He
+told anecdotes of their private life, and of conversations he had had,
+and entertainments at which he had been present, and at which such and
+such a thing occurred. Pen was amused to hear the shabby prisoner in a
+tattered dressing-gown talking glibly about the great of the land. Mrs.
+Shandon was always delighted when her husband told these tales, and
+believed in them fondly every one. She did not want to mingle in the
+fashionable world herself, she was not clever enough; but the great
+Society was the very place for her Charles: he shone in it: he was
+respected in it. Indeed, Shandon had once been asked to dinner by the
+Earl of X; his wife treasured the invitation-card in her workbox at
+that very day.
+
+Mr. Bungay presently had enough of this talk and got up to take leave,
+whereupon Warrington and Pen rose to depart with the publisher, though
+the latter would have liked to stay to make a further acquaintance with
+this family, who interested him and touched him. He said something
+about hoping for permission to repeat his visit, upon which Shandon,
+with a rueful grin, said he was always to be found at home, and should
+be delighted to see Mr. Pennington.
+
+“I’ll see you to my park-gate, gentlemen,” said Captain Shandon,
+seizing his hat, in spite of a deprecatory look and a faint cry of
+“Charles” from Mrs. Shandon. And the Captain, in shabby slippers,
+shuffled out before his guests, leading the way through the dismal
+passages of the prison. His hand was already fiddling with his
+waistcoat pocket, where Bungay’s five-pound note was, as he took leave
+of the three gentlemen at the wicket; one of them, Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis, being greatly relieved when he was out of the horrid place,
+and again freely treading the flags of Farringdon Street.
+
+Mrs. Shandon sadly went on with her work at the window looking into the
+court. She saw Shandon with a couple of men at his heels run rapidly in
+the direction of the prison tavern. She had hoped to have had him to
+dinner herself that day: there was a piece of meat, and some salad in a
+basin, on the ledge outside of the window of their room which she had
+expected that she and little Mary were to share with the child’s
+father. But there was no chance of that now. He would be in that tavern
+until the hours for closing it; then he would go and play at cards or
+drink in some other man’s room and come back silent, with glazed eyes,
+reeling a little on his walk, that his wife might nurse him. Oh, what
+varieties of pain do we not make our women suffer!
+
+So Mrs. Shandon went to the cupboard, and, in lieu of a dinner, made
+herself some tea. And in those varieties of pain of which we spoke
+anon, what a part of confidante has that poor tea-pot played ever since
+the kindly plant was introduced among us! What myriads of women have
+cried over it, to be sure! What sick-beds it has smoked by! What
+fevered lips have received refreshment from out of it! Nature meant
+very gently by women when she made that tea-plant; and with a little
+thought what a series of pictures and groups the fancy may conjure up
+and assemble round the tea-pot and cup! Melissa and Sacharissa are
+talking love-secrets over it. Poor Polly has it and her lover’s letters
+upon the table; his letters who was her lover yesterday, and when it
+was with pleasure, not despair, she wept over them. Mary tripping
+noiselessly comes into her mother’s bedroom, bearing a cup of the
+consoler to the widow who will take no other food, Ruth is busy
+concocting it for her husband, who is coming home from the
+harvest-field—one could fill a page with hints for such
+pictures;—finally, Mrs. Shandon and little Mary sit down and drink
+their tea together, while the Captain goes out and takes his pleasure.
+She cares for nothing else but that, when her husband is away.
+
+A gentleman with whom we are already slightly acquainted, Mr. Jack
+Finucane, a townsman of Captain Shandon’s, found the Captain’s wife and
+little Mary (for whom Jack always brought a sweetmeat in his pocket)
+over this meal. Jack thought Shandon the greatest of created geniuses,
+had had one or two helps from the good-natured prodigal, who had always
+a kind word, and sometimes a guinea for any friend in need; and never
+missed a day in seeing his patron. He was ready to run Shandon’s
+errands and transact his money-business with publishers and newspaper
+editors, duns, creditors, holders of Shandon’s acceptances, gentlemen
+disposed to speculate in those securities, and to transact the thousand
+little affairs of an embarrassed Irish gentleman. I never knew an
+embarrassed Irish gentleman yet, but he had an aide-de-camp of his own
+nation, likewise in circumstances of pecuniary discomfort. That
+aide-de-camp has subordinates of his own, who again may have other
+insolvent dependents—all through his life our Captain marched at the
+head of a ragged staff, who shared in the rough fortunes of their
+chieftain.
+
+“He won’t have that five-pound note very long, I bet a guinea,” Mr.
+Bungay said of the Captain, as he and his two companions walked away
+from the prison; and the publisher judged rightly, for when Mrs.
+Shandon came to empty her husband’s pockets, she found but a couple of
+shillings, and a few halfpence out of the morning’s remittance. Shandon
+had given a pound to one follower; had sent a leg of mutton and
+potatoes and beer to an acquaintance in the poor side of the prison;
+had paid an outstanding bill at the tavern where he had changed his
+five-pound note; had had a dinner with two friends there, to whom he
+lost sundry half-crowns at cards afterwards; so that the night left him
+as poor as the morning had found him.
+
+The publisher and the two gentlemen had had some talk together after
+quitting Shandon, and Warrington reiterated to Bungay what he had said
+to his rival, Bacon, viz., that Pen was a high fellow, of great genius,
+and what was more, well with the great world, and related to “no end”
+of the peerage. Bungay replied that he should be happy to have dealings
+with Mr. Pendennis, and hoped to have the pleasure of seeing both gents
+to cut mutton with him before long, and so, with mutual politeness and
+protestations, they parted.
+
+“It is hard to see such a man as Shandon,” Pen said, musing, and
+talking that night over the sight which he had witnessed, “of
+accomplishments so multifarious, and of such an undoubted talent and
+humour, an inmate of a gaol for half his time, and a bookseller’s
+hanger-on when out of prison.”
+
+“I am a bookseller’s hanger-on—you are going to try your paces as a
+hack,” Warrington said with a laugh. “We are all hacks upon some road
+or other. I would rather be myself, than Paley our neighbour in
+chambers: who has as much enjoyment of his life as a mole. A deuced
+deal of undeserved compassion has been thrown away upon what you call
+your bookseller’s drudge.”
+
+“Much solitary pipes and ale make a cynic of you,” said Pen “You are a
+Diogenes by a beer-barrel, Warrington. No man shall tell me that a man
+of genius, as Shandon is, ought to be driven by such a vulgar
+slave-driver, as yonder Mr. Bungay, whom we have just left, who fattens
+on the profits of the other’s brains, and enriches himself out of his
+journeyman’s labour. It makes me indignant to see a gentleman the serf
+of such a creature as that, of a man who can’t speak the language that
+he lives by, who is not fit to black Shandon’s boots.”
+
+“So you have begun already to gird at the publishers, and to take your
+side amongst our order. Bravo, Pen, my be boy!” Warrington answered,
+laughing still. “What have you got to say against Bungay’s relations
+with Shandon? Was it the publisher, think you, who sent the author to
+prison? Is it Bungay who is tippling away the five-pound note which we
+saw just now, or Shandon?”
+
+“Misfortune drives a man into bad company,” Pen said. “It is easy to
+cry ‘Fie!’ against a poor fellow who has no society but such as he
+finds in a prison; and no resource except forgetfulness and the bottle.
+We must deal kindly with the eccentricities of genius, and remember
+that the very ardour and enthusiasm of temperament which makes the
+author delightful often leads the man astray.”
+
+“A fiddlestick about men of genius!” Warrington cried out, who was a
+very severe moralist upon some points, though possibly a very bad
+practitioner. “I deny that there are so many geniuses as people who
+whimper about the fate of men of letters assert there are. There are
+thousands of clever fellows in the world who could, if they would, turn
+verses, write articles, read books, and deliver a judgment upon them;
+the talk of professional critics and writers is not a whit more
+brilliant, or profound, or amusing, than that of any other society of
+educated people. If a lawyer, or a soldier, or a parson, outruns his
+income, and does not pay his bills, he must go to gaol; and an author
+must go, too. If an author fuddles himself, I don’t know why he should
+be let off a headache the next morning,—if he orders a coat from the
+tailor’s, why he shouldn’t pay for it.”
+
+“I would give him more money to buy coats,” said Pen, smiling. “I
+suppose I should like to belong to a well-dressed profession. I protest
+against that wretch of a middle-man whom I see between Genius and his
+great landlord, the Public, and who stops more than half of the
+labourer’s earnings and fame.”
+
+“I am a prose labourer,” Warrington said; “you, my boy, are a poet in a
+small way, and so, I suppose, consider you are authorised to be
+flighty. What is it you want? Do you want a body of capitalists that
+shall be forced to purchase the works of all authors, who may present
+themselves, manuscript in hand? Everybody who writes his epic, every
+driveller who can or can’t spell, and produces his novel or his
+tragedy,—are they all to come and find a bag of sovereigns in exchange
+for their worthless reams of paper? Who is to settle what is good or
+bad, saleable or otherwise? Will you give the buyer leave, in fine, to
+purchase or not? Why, sir, when Johnson sate behind the screen at Saint
+John’s Gate, and took his dinner apart, because he was too shabby and
+poor to join the literary bigwigs who were regaling themselves, round
+Mr. Cave’s best table-cloth, the tradesman was doing him no wrong. You
+couldn’t force the publisher to recognise the man of genius in the
+young man who presented himself before him, ragged, gaunt, and hungry.
+Rags are not a proof of genius; whereas capital is absolute, as times
+go, and is perforce the bargain-master. It has a right to deal with the
+literary inventor as with any other;—if I produce a novelty in the book
+trade, I must do the best I can with it; but I can no more force Mr.
+Murray to purchase my book of travels or sermons, than I can compel Mr.
+Tattersall to give me a hundred guineas for my horse. I may have my own
+ideas of the value of my Pegasus, and think him the most wonderful of
+animals; but the dealer has a right to his opinion, too, and may want a
+lady’s horse, or a cob for a heavy timid rider, or a sound hack for the
+road, and my beast won’t suit him.”
+
+“You deal in metaphors, Warrington,” Pen said; “but you rightly say
+that you are very prosaic. Poor Shandon! There is something about the
+kindness of that man, and the gentleness of that sweet creature of a
+wife, which touches me profoundly. I like him, I am afraid, better than
+a better man.”
+
+“And so do I,” Warrington said. “Let us give him the benefit of our
+sympathy, and the pity that is due to his weakness: though I fear that
+sort of kindness would be resented as contempt by a more high-minded
+man. You see he takes his consolation along with his misfortune, and
+one generates the other or balances it, as the way of the world. He is
+a prisoner, but he is not unhappy.”
+
+“His genius sings within his prison bars,” Pen said.
+
+“Yes,” Warrington said, bitterly; “Shandon accommodates himself to a
+cage pretty well. He ought to be wretched, but he has Jack and Tom to
+drink with, and that consoles him: he might have a high place, but, as
+he can’t, why, he can drink with Tom and Jack;—he might be providing
+for his wife and children, but Thomas and John have got a bottle of
+brandy which they want him to taste;—he might pay poor Snip, the
+tailor, the twenty pounds which the poor devil wants for his landlord,
+but John and Thomas lay their hands upon his purse;—and so he drinks
+whilst his tradesman goes to gaol and his family to ruin. Let us pity
+the misfortunes of genius, and conspire against the publishing tyrants
+who oppress men of letters.”
+
+“What! are you going to have another glass of brandy-and-water?” Pen
+said, with a humorous look. It was at the Black Kitchen that the above
+philosophical conversation took place between the two young men.
+
+Warrington began to laugh as usual. “Video meliora proboque—I mean,
+bring it me hot, with sugar, John,” he said to waiter.
+
+“I would have some more, too, only I don’t want it,” said Pen. “It does
+not seem to me, Warrington, that we are much better than our
+neighbours.” And Warrington’s last glass having been despatched, the
+pair returned to their chambers.
+
+They found a couple of notes in the letter-box, on their return, which
+had been sent by their acquaintance of the morning, Mr. Bungay. That
+hospitable gentleman presented his compliments to each of the
+gentlemen, and requested their pleasure of company at dinner on an
+early day, to meet a few literary friends.
+
+“We shall have a grand spread, Warrington. We shall meet all Bungay’s
+corps.”
+
+“All except poor Shandon,” said Pen, nodding a good-night to his
+friend, and he went into his own little room. The events and
+acquaintances of the day had excited him a good deal, and he lay for
+some time awake thinking over them, as Warrington’s vigorous and
+regular snore from the neighbouring apartment pronounced that that
+gentleman was engaged in deep slumber.
+
+Is it true, thought Pendennis, lying on his bed and gazing at a bright
+moon without, that lighted up a corner of his dressing-table, and the
+frame of a little sketch of Fairoaks drawn by Laura, and hung over his
+drawers—is it true that I am going to earn my bread at last, and with
+my pen? that I shall impoverish the dear mother no longer; and that I
+may gain a name and reputation in the world, perhaps? These are welcome
+if they come, thought the young visionary, laughing and blushing to
+himself, though alone and in the night, as he thought how dearly he
+would relish honour and fame if they could be his. If fortune favours
+me, I laud her; if she frowns, I resign her. I pray Heaven I may be
+honest if I fail, or if I succeed. I pray Heaven I may tell the truth
+as far as I know it: that I mayn’t swerve from it through flattery, or
+interest, or personal enmity, or party prejudice. Dearest old mother,
+what a pride will you have, if I can do anything worthy of our name I
+and you, Laura, you won’t scorn me as the worthless idler and
+spendthrift, when you see that I—when I have achieved a—psha! what an
+Alnaschar I am because I have made five pounds by my poems, and am
+engaged to write half a dozen articles for a newspaper. He went on with
+these musings, more happy and hopeful, and in a humbler frame of mind,
+than he had felt to be for many a day. He thought over the errors and
+idleness, the passions, extravagances, disappointments, of his wayward
+youth: he got up from the bed: threw open the window, and looked out
+into the night: and then, by some impulse, which we hope was a good
+one, he went up and kissed the picture of Fairoaks, and flinging
+himself down on his knees by the bed, remained for some time in that
+posture of hope and submission. When he rose, it was with streaming
+eyes. He had found himself repeating, mechanically, some little words
+which he had been accustomed to repeat as a child at his mother’s side,
+after the saying of which she would softly take him to his bed and
+close the curtains round him, hushing him with a benediction.
+
+The next day, Mr. Pidgeon, their attendant, brought in a large
+brown-paper parcel, directed to G. Warrington, Esq., with Mr. Trotter’s
+compliments, and a note which Warrington read.
+
+“Pen, you beggar!” roared Warrington to Pen, who was in his own room.
+
+“Hullo!” sung out Pen.
+
+“Come here, you’re wanted,” cried the other, and Pen came out.
+
+“What is it?” said he.
+
+“Catch!” cried Warrington, and flung the parcel at Pen’s head, who
+would have been knocked down had he not caught it.
+
+“It’s books for review for the Pall Mall Gazette: pitch into ’em,”
+Warrington said. As for Pen, he never had been so delighted in his
+life: his hand trembled as he cut the string of the packet, and beheld
+within a smart set of new neat calico-bound books—travels, and novels,
+and poems.
+
+“Sport the oak, Pidgeon,” said he. “I’m not at home to anybody to-day.”
+And he flung into his easy-chair, and hardly gave himself time to drink
+his tea, so eager was he to begin to read and to review.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+In which the History still hovers about Fleet Street
+
+
+Captain Shandon, urged on by his wife, who seldom meddled in business
+matters, had stipulated that John Finucane, Esquire, of the Upper
+Temple, should be appointed sub-editor of forthcoming Pall Mall
+Gazette, and this post was accordingly conferred upon Mr. Finucane by
+the spirited proprietor of the Journal. Indeed he deserved any kindness
+at the hands of Shandon, so fondly attached was he, as we have said, to
+the Captain and his family, and so eager to do him a service. It was in
+Finucane’s chambers that Shandon in former days used to hide when
+danger was near and bailiffs abroad: until at length his hiding-place
+was known, and the sheriff’s officers came as regularly to wait for the
+Captain on Finucane’s staircase as at his own door. It was to
+Finucane’s chambers that poor Mrs. Shandon came often and often to
+explain her troubles and griefs, and devise means of rescue for her
+adored Captain. Many a meal did Finucane furnish for her and the child
+there. It was an honour to his little rooms to be visited by such a
+lady; and as she went down the staircase with her veil over her face,
+Fin would lean over the balustrade looking after her, to see that no
+Temple Lovelace assailed her upon the road, perhaps hoping that some
+rogue might be induced to waylay her, so that he, Fin, might have the
+pleasure of rushing to her rescue, and breaking the rascal’s bones. It
+was a sincere pleasure to Mrs. Shandon when the arrangements were made
+by which her kind honest champion was appointed her husband’s
+aide-de-camp in the newspaper.
+
+He would have sate with Mrs. Shandon as late as the prison hours
+permitted, and had indeed many a time witnessed the putting to bed of
+little Mary, who occupied a crib in the room; and to whose evening
+prayers that God might bless papa, Finucane, although of the Romish
+faith himself, had said Amen with a great deal of sympathy—but he had
+an appointment with Mr. Bungay regarding the affairs of the paper which
+they were to discuss over a quiet dinner. So he went away at six
+o’clock from Mrs. Shandon, but made his accustomed appearance at the
+Fleet Prison next morning, having arrayed himself in his best clothes
+and ornaments, which, though cheap as to cost, were very brilliant as
+to colour and appearance, and having in his pocket four pounds two
+shillings, being the amount of his week’s salary at the Daily Journal,
+minus two shillings expended by him in the purchase of a pair of gloves
+on his way to the prison.
+
+He had cut his mutton with Mr. Bungay, as the latter gentleman phrased
+it, and Mr. Trotter, Bungay’s reader and literary man of business, at
+Dick’s Coffee-house on the previous day, and entered at large into his
+views respecting the conduct of the Pall Mall Gazette. In a masterly
+manner he had pointed out what should be the sub-editorial arrangements
+of the paper: what should be the type for the various articles: who
+should report the markets; who the turf and ring; who the Church
+intelligence; and who the fashionable chit-chat. He was acquainted with
+gentlemen engaged in cultivating these various departments of
+knowledge, and in communicating them afterwards to the public—in fine,
+Jack Finucane was, as Shandon had said of him, and as he proudly owned
+himself to be, one of the best sub-editors of a paper in London. He
+knew the weekly earnings of every man connected with the Press, and was
+up to a thousand dodges, or ingenious economic contrivances, by which
+money could be saved to spirited capitalists, who were going to set up
+a paper. He at once dazzled and mystified Mr. Bungay, who was slow of
+comprehension, by the rapidity of the calculations which he exhibited
+on paper, as they sate in the box. And Bungay afterwards owned to his
+subordinate Mr. Trotter, that that Irishman seemed a clever fellow.
+
+And now having succeeded in making this impression upon Mr. Bungay, the
+faithful fellow worked round to the point which he had very near at
+heart, viz., the liberation from prison of his admired friend and
+chief, Captain Shandon. He knew to a shilling the amount of the
+detainers which were against the Captain at the porter’s lodge of the
+Fleet; and, indeed, professed to know all his debts, though this was
+impossible, for no man in England, certainly not the Captain himself,
+was acquainted with them. He pointed out what Shandon’s engagements
+already were; and how much better he would work if removed from
+confinement (though this Mr. Bungay denied, for, “when the Captain’s
+locked up,” he said, “we are sure to find him at home; whereas, when
+he’s free, you can never catch hold of him”); finally, he so worked on
+Mr. Bungay’s feelings, by describing Mrs. Shandon pining away in the
+prison, and the child sickening there, that the publisher was induced
+to promise that, if Mrs. Shandon would come to him in the morning, he
+would see what could be done. And the colloquy ending at this time with
+the second round of brandy-and-water, although Finucane, who had four
+guineas in his pocket, would have discharged the tavern reckoning with
+delight, Bungay said, “No, sir,—this is my affair, sir, if you please.
+James, take the bill, and eighteenpence for yourself,” and he handed
+over the necessary funds to the waiter. Thus it was that Finucane, who
+went to bed at the Temple after the dinner at Dick’s, found himself
+actually with his week’s salary intact upon Saturday morning.
+
+He gave Mrs. Shandon a wink so knowing and joyful, that that kind
+creature knew some good news was in store for her, and hastened to get
+her bonnet and shawl, when Fin asked if he might have the honour of
+taking her a walk, and giving her a little fresh air. And little Mary
+jumped for joy at the idea of this holiday, for Finucane never
+neglected to give her a toy, or to take her to a show, and brought
+newspaper orders in his pocket for all sorts of London diversions to
+amuse the child. Indeed, he loved them with all his heart, and would
+cheerfully have dashed out his rambling brains to do them, or his
+adored Captain, a service.
+
+“May I go, Charley? or shall I stay with you, for you’re poorly, dear,
+this morning? He’s got a headache, Mr. Finucane. He suffers from
+headaches, and I persuaded him to stay in bed,” Mrs. Shandon said.
+
+“Go along with you, and Polly. Jack, take care of ’em. Hand me over the
+Burton’s Anatomy, and leave me to my abominable devices,” Shandon said,
+with perfect good-humour. He was writing, and not uncommonly took his
+Greek and Latin quotations (of which he knew the use as a public
+writer) from that wonderful repertory of learning.
+
+So Fin gave his arm to Mrs. Shandon, and Mary went skipping down the
+passages of the prison, and through the gate into the free air. From
+Fleet Street to Paternoster Row is not very far. As the three reached
+Mr. Bungay’s shop, Mrs. Bungay was also entering at the private door,
+holding in her hand a paper parcel and a manuscript volume bound in
+red, and, indeed, containing an account of her transactions with the
+butcher in the neighbouring market. Mrs. Bungay was in a gorgeous
+shot-silk dress, which flamed with red and purple; she wore a yellow
+shawl, and had red flowers inside her bonnet, and a brilliant light
+blue parasol.
+
+Mrs. Shandon was in an old black watered silk; her bonnet had never
+seen very brilliant days of prosperity any more than its owner, but she
+could not help looking like a lady whatever her attire was. The two
+women curtsied to each other, each according to her fashion.
+
+“I hope you’re pretty well, mum?” said Mrs. Bungay.
+
+“It’s a very fine day,” said Mrs. Shandon.
+
+“Won’t you step in, mum?” said Mrs. Bungay, looking so hard at the
+child as almost to frighten her.
+
+“I—I came about business with Mr. Bungay—I—I hope he’s pretty well?”
+said timid Mrs. Shandon.
+
+“If you go to see him in the counting-house, couldn’t you, couldn’t you
+leave your little gurl with me?” said Mrs. Bungay, in a deep voice, and
+with a tragic look, as she held out one finger towards the child.
+
+“I want to stay with mamma,” cried little Mary, burying her face in her
+mother’s dress.
+
+“Go with this lady, Mary, my dear,” said the mother.
+
+“I’ll show you some pretty pictures,” said Mrs. Bungay, with the voice
+of an ogress, “and some nice things besides; look here,”—and opening
+her brown-paper parcel, Mrs. Bungay displayed some choice sweet
+buscuits, such as her Bungay loved after his wine. Little Mary followed
+after this attraction, the whole party entering at the private
+entrance, from which a side door led into Mr. Bungay’s commercial
+apartments. Here, however, as the child was about to part from her
+mother, her courage again failed her, and again she ran to the maternal
+petticoat; upon which the kind and gentle Mrs. Shandon, seeing the look
+of disappointment in Mrs. Bungay’s face, good-naturedly said, “If you
+will let me, I will come up too, and sit for a few minutes,” and so the
+three females ascended the stairs together. A second biscuit charmed
+little Mary into perfect confidence, and in a minute or two she
+prattled away without the least restraint.
+
+Faithful Finucane meanwhile found Mr. Bungay in a severer mood than he
+had been on the night previous, when two-thirds of a bottle of port,
+and two large glasses of brandy-and-water, had warmed his soul into
+enthusiasm, and made him generous in his promises towards Captain
+Shandon. His impetuous wife had rebuked him on his return home. She had
+ordered that he should give no relief to the Captain; he was a
+good-for-nothing fellow, whom no money would help; she disapproved of
+the plan of the Pall Mall Gazette, and expected that Bungay would only
+lose his money in it as they were losing over the way (she always
+called her brother’s establishment “over the way”) by the Whitehall
+Journal. Let Shandon stop in prison and do his work; it was the best
+place for him. In vain Finucane pleaded and promised and implored, for
+his friend Bungay had had an hour’s lecture in the morning and was
+inexorable.
+
+But what honest Jack failed to do below-stairs in the counting-house,
+the pretty faces and manners of the mother and child were effecting in
+the drawing-room, where they were melting the fierce but really soft
+Mrs. Bungay. There was an artless sweetness in Mrs. Shandon’s voice,
+and a winning frankness of manner, which made most people fond of her,
+and pity her: and taking courage by the rugged kindness with which her
+hostess received her, the Captain’s lady told her story, and described
+her husband’s goodness and virtues, and her child’s failing health (she
+was obliged to part with two of them, she said, and send them to
+school, for she could not have them in that horrid place)—that Mrs.
+Bungay, though as grim as Lady Macbeth, melted under the influence of
+the simple tale, and said she would go down and speak to Bungay. Now in
+this household to speak was to command, with Mrs. Bungay; and with
+Bungay, to hear was to obey.
+
+It was just when poor Finucane was in despair about his negotiation,
+that the majestic Mrs. Bungay descended upon her spouse, politely
+requested Mr. Finucane to step up to his friends in her drawing-room,
+while she held a few minutes’ conversation with Mr. B., and when the
+pair were alone the publisher’s better half informed him of her
+intentions towards the Captain’s lady.
+
+“What’s in the wind now, my dear?” Maecenas asked, surprised at his
+wife’s altered tone. “You wouldn’t hear of my doing anything for the
+Captain this morning: I wonder what has been a changing of you.”
+
+“The Capting is an Irishman,” Mrs. Bungay replied; “and those Irish I
+have always said I couldn’t abide. But his wife is a lady, as any one
+can see; and a good woman, and a clergyman’s daughter, and a West of
+England woman, B., which I am myself, by my mother’s side—and, O
+Marmaduke! didn’t you remark the little gurl?”
+
+“Yes, Mrs. B., I saw the little girl.”
+
+“And didn’t you see how like she was to our angel, Bessy, Mr. B.?”—and
+Mrs. Bungay’s thoughts flew back to a period eighteen years back, when
+Bacon and Bungay had just set up in business as small booksellers in a
+country town, and when she had had a child, named Bessy, something like
+the little Mary who had moved her compassion.
+
+“Well, well, my dear,” Mr. Bungay said, seeing the little eyes of his
+wife begin to twinkle and grow red; “the Captain ain’t in for much.
+There’s only a hundred and thirty pound against him. Half the money
+will take him out of the Fleet, Finucane says, and we’ll pay him half
+salaries till he has made the account square. When the little ’un said,
+‘Why don’t you take Par out of prizn?’ I did feel it, Flora, upon my
+honour I did, now.” And the upshot of this conversation was, that Mr.
+and Mrs. Bungay both ascended to the drawing-room, and Mr. Bungay made
+a heavy and clumsy speech, in which he announced to Mrs. Shandon, that,
+hearing sixty-five pounds would set her husband free, he was ready to
+advance that sum of money, deducting it from the Captain’s salary, and
+that he would give it to her on condition that she would personally
+settle with the creditors regarding her husband’s liberation.
+
+I think this was the happiest day that Mrs. Shandon and Mr. Finucane
+had had for a long time. “Bedad, Bungay, you’re a trump!” roared out
+Fin, in an overpowering brogue and emotion. “Give us your fist, old
+boy: and won’t we send the Pall Mall Gazette up to ten thousand a week,
+that’s all!” and he jumped about the room, and tossed up little Mary,
+with a hundred frantic antics.
+
+“If I could drive you anywhere in my carriage, Mrs. Shandon—I’m sure
+it’s quite at your service,” Mrs. Bungay said, looking out at a
+one-horsed vehicle which had just driven up, and in which this lady
+took the air considerably—and the two ladies, with little Mary between
+them (whose tiny hand Maecenas’s wife kept fixed in her great grasp),
+with the delighted Mr. Finucane on the back seat, drove away from
+Paternoster Row, as the owner of the vehicle threw triumphant glances
+at the opposite windows at Bacon’s.
+
+“It won’t do the Captain any good,” thought Bungay, going back to his
+desk and accounts, “but Mrs. B. becomes reglar upset when she thinks
+about her misfortune. The child would have been of age yesterday, if
+she’d lived. Flora told me so:” and he wondered how women did remember
+things.
+
+We are happy to say that Mrs. Shandon sped with very good success upon
+her errand. She who had had to mollify creditors when she had no money
+at all, and only tears and entreaties wherewith to soothe them, found
+no difficulty in making them relent by means of a bribe of ten
+shillings in the pound; and the next Sunday was the last, for some time
+at least, which the Captain spent in prison.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+Dinner in the Row
+
+
+Upon the appointed day our two friends made their appearance at Mr.
+Bungay’s door in Paternoster Row; not the public entrance through which
+booksellers’ boys issued with their sacks full of Bungay’s volumes, and
+around which timid aspirants lingered with their virgin manuscripts
+ready for sale to Sultan Bungay, but at the private door of the house,
+whence the splendid Mrs. Bungay would come forth to step into her
+chaise and take her drive, settling herself on the cushions, and
+casting looks of defiance at Mrs. Bacon’s opposite windows—at Mrs.
+Bacon, who was as yet a chaiseless woman.
+
+On such occasions, when very much wroth at her sister-in-law’s
+splendour Mrs. Bacon would fling up the sash of her drawing-room
+window, and look out with her four children at the chaise, as much as
+to say, “Look at these four darlings. Flora Bungay! this is why I can’t
+drive in my carriage; you would give a coach-and-four to have the same
+reason.” And it was with these arrows out of her quiver that Emma Bacon
+shot Flora Bungay as she sate in her chariot envious and childless.
+
+As Pen and Warrington came to Bungay’s door, a carriage and a cab drove
+up to Bacon’s. Old Dr. Slocum descended heavily from the first; the
+Doctor’s equipage was as ponderous as his style, but both had a fine
+sonorous effect upon the publishers in the Row. A couple of dazzling
+white waistcoats stepped out of the cab.
+
+Warrington laughed. “You see Bacon has his dinner-party too. That is
+Dr. Slocum, author of ‘Memoirs of the Poisoners.’ You would hardly have
+recognised our friend Hoolan in that gallant white waistcoat. Doolan is
+one of Bungay’s men, and faith, here he comes.” Indeed, Messrs. Hoolan
+and Doolan had come from the Strand in the same cab, tossing up by the
+way which should pay the shilling; and Mr. D. stepped from the other
+side of the way, arrayed in black, with a large pair of white gloves
+which were spread out on his hands, and which the owner could not help
+regarding with pleasure.
+
+The house porter in an evening coat, and gentlemen with gloves as large
+as Doolan’s, but of the famous Berlin web, were on the passage of Mr.
+Bungay’s house to receive the guests’ hats and coats, and bawl their
+names up the stair. Some of the latter had arrived when the three new
+visitors made their appearance; but there was only Mrs. Bungay in red
+satin and a turban to represent her own charming sex. She made curtsies
+to each new-comer as he entered the drawing-room, but her mind was
+evidently pre-occupied by extraneous thoughts. The fact is, Mrs.
+Bacon’s dinner-party was disturbing her, and as soon as she had
+received each individual of her own company, Flora Bungay flew back to
+the embrasure of the window, whence she could rake the carriages of
+Emma Bacon’s friends as they came rattling up the Row. The sight of Dr.
+Slocum’s large carriage, with the gaunt job-horses, crushed Flora: none
+but hack cabs had driven up to her own door on that day.
+
+They were all literary gentlemen, though unknown as yet to Pen. There
+was Mr. Bole, the real editor of the magazine, of which Mr. Wagg was
+the nominal chief; Mr. Trotter, who, from having broken out on the
+world as a poet of a tragic and suicidial cast, had now subsided into
+one of Mr. Bungay’s back shops as reader for that gentleman; and
+Captain Sumph, an ex-beau reader about town, and related in some
+indistinct manner to Literature and the Peerage. He was said to have
+written a book once, to have been a friend of Lord Byron, to be related
+to Lord Sumphington; in fact, anecdotes of Byron formed his staple, and
+he seldom spoke but with the name of that poet or some of his
+contemporaries in his mouth, as thus: “I remember poor Shelley, at
+school being sent up for good for a copy of verses, every line of which
+I wrote, by Jove;” or, “I recollect, when I was at Missolonghi with
+Byron, offering to bet gamba,” and so forth. This gentleman, Pen
+remarked, was listened to with great attention by Mrs. Bungay; his
+anecdotes of the aristocracy, of which he was a middle-aged member,
+delighted the publisher’s lady; and he was almost a greater man than
+the great Mr. Wagg himself in her eyes. Had he but come in his own
+carriage, Mrs. Bungay would have made her Bungay purchase any given
+volume from his pen.
+
+Mr. Bungay went about to his guests as they arrived, and did the
+honours of his house with much cordiality. “How are you, sir? Fine day,
+sir. Glad to see you year, sir. Flora, my love, let me ave the honour
+of introducing Mr. Warrington to you. Mr. Warrington, Mrs. Bungay; Mr.
+Pendennis, Mrs. Bungay. Hope you’ve brought good appetites with you,
+gentlemen. You, Doolan, I know ave, for you’ve always ad a deuce of a
+twist.”
+
+“Lor, Bungay!” said Mrs. Bungay.
+
+“Faith, a man must be hard to please, Bungay, who can’t eat a good
+dinner in this house,” Doolan said, and he winked and stroked his lean
+chops with his large gloves; and made appeals of friendship to Mrs.
+Bungay, which that honest woman refused with scorn from the timid man.
+“She couldn’t abide that Doolan,” she said in confidence to her
+friends. Indeed, all his flatteries failed to win her.
+
+As they talked, Mrs. Bungay surveying mankind from her window, a
+magnificent vision of an enormous grey cab-horse appeared, and neared
+rapidly. A pair of white reins, held by small white gloves, were
+visible behind it; a face pale, but richly decorated with a chin-tuft,
+the head of an exiguous groom bobbing over the cab-head—these bright
+things were revealed to the delighted Mrs. Bungay. “The Honourable
+Percy Popjoy’s quite punctual, I declare,” she said, and sailed to the
+door to be in waiting at the nobleman’s arrival.
+
+“It’s Percy Popjoy,” said Pen, looking out of window, and seeing an
+individual, in extremely lacquered boots, descend from the swinging
+cab: and, in fact, it was that young nobleman Lord Falconet’s eldest
+son, as we all very well know, who was come to dine with the
+publisher—his publisher of the Row.
+
+“He was my fag at Eton,” Warrington said. “I ought to have licked him a
+little more.” He and Pen had had some bouts at the Oxbridge Union
+debates, in which Pen had had very much the better of Percy: who
+presently appeared, with his hat under his arm, and a look of
+indescribable good-humour and fatuity in his round dimpled face, upon
+which Nature had burst out with a chin-tuft, but, exhausted with the
+effort, had left the rest of the countenance bare of hair.
+
+The temporary groom of the chambers bawled out, “The Honourable Percy
+Popjoy,” much to that gentleman’s discomposure at hearing his titles
+announced.
+
+“What did the man want to take away my hat for, Bungay?” he asked of
+the publisher. “Can’t do without my hat—want it to make my bow to Mrs.
+Bungay. How well you look. Mrs. Bungay, to-day. Haven’t seen your
+carriage in the Park: why haven’t you been there? I missed you; indeed,
+I did.”
+
+“I’m afraid you’re a sad quiz,” said Mrs. Bungay.
+
+“Quiz! Never made a joke in my—hullo! who’s here? How d’ye do,
+Pendennis? How d’ye do, Warrington? These are old friends of mine, Mrs.
+Bungay. I say, how the doose did you come here?” he asked of the two
+young men, turning his lacquered heels upon Mrs. Bungay, who respected
+her husband’s two young guests, now that she found they were intimate
+with a lord’s son.
+
+“What! do they know him?” she asked rapidly of Mr. B.
+
+“High fellers, I tell you—the young one related to all the nobility,”
+said the publisher; and both ran forward, smiling and bowing, to greet
+almost as great personages as the young lord—no less characters,
+indeed, than the great Mr. Wenham and the great Mr. Wagg, who were now
+announced.
+
+Mr. Wenham entered, wearing the usual demure look and stealthy smile
+with which he commonly surveyed the tips of his neat little shining
+boots, and which he but seldom brought to bear upon the person who
+addressed him. Wagg’s white waistcoat spread out, on the contrary, with
+profuse brilliancy; his burly, red face shone resplendent over it,
+lighted up with the thoughts of good jokes and a good dinner. He liked
+to make his entree into a drawing-room with a laugh, and, when he went
+away at night, to leave a joke exploding behind him. No personal
+calamities or distresses (of which that humourist had his share in
+common with the unjocular part of mankind) could altogether keep his
+humour down. Whatever his griefs might be, the thought of a dinner
+rallied his great soul; and when he saw a lord, he saluted him with a
+pun.
+
+Wenham went up, then, with a smug smile and whisper, to Mrs. Bungay,
+and looked at her from under his eyes, and showed her the tips of his
+shoes. Wagg said she looked charming, and pushed on straight at the
+young nobleman, whom he called Pop, and to whom he instantly related a
+funny story, seasoned with what the French call gros sel. He was
+delighted to see Pen, too, and shook hands with him, and slapped him on
+the back cordially; for he was full of spirits and good-humour. And he
+talked in a loud voice about their last place and occasion of meeting
+at Baymouth; and asked how their friends of Clavering Park were, and
+whether Sir Francis was not coming to London for the season; and
+whether Pen had been to see Lady Rockminster, who had arrived—fine old
+lady, Lady Rockminster! These remarks Wagg made not for Pen’s ear so
+much as for the edification of the company, whom he was glad to inform
+that he paid visits to gentlemen’s country seats, and was on intimate
+terms with the nobility.
+
+Wenham also shook hands with our young friend—all of which scenes Mrs.
+Bungay remarked with respectful pleasure, and communicated her ideas to
+Bungay, afterwards, regarding the importance of Mr. Pendennis—ideas by
+which Pen profited much more than he was aware.
+
+Pen, who had read, and rather admired some of her works (and expected
+to find in Miss Bunion a person somewhat resembling her own description
+of herself in the ‘Passion-Flower,’ in which she stated that her youth
+resembled—
+
+“A violet, shrinking meanly
+When blows the March wind keenly;
+A timid fawn, on wild-wood lawn,
+Where oak-boughs rustle greenly,—”
+
+
+and that her maturer beauty was something very different, certainly, to
+the artless loveliness of her prime, but still exceedingly captivating
+and striking), beheld, rather to his surprise and amusement, a large
+and bony woman in a crumpled satin dress, who came creaking into the
+room with a step as heavy as a grenadier’s. Wagg instantly noted the
+straw which she brought in at the rumpled skirt of her dress, and would
+have stooped to pick it up: but Miss Bunion disarmed all criticism by
+observing this ornament herself, and, putting her own large foot upon
+it, so as to separate it from her robe, she stooped and picked up the
+straw, saying to Mrs. Bungay, that she was very sorry to be a little
+late, but that the omnibus was very slow, and what a comfort it was to
+get a ride all the way from Brompton for sixpence. Nobody laughed at
+the poetess’s speech, it was uttered so simply. Indeed, the worthy
+woman had not the least notion of being ashamed of an action incidental
+upon her poverty.
+
+“Is that ‘Passion-Flowers?’” Pen said to Wenham, by whom he was
+standing. “Why, her picture in the volume represents her as a very
+well-looking young woman.”
+
+“You know passion-flowers, like all others, will run to seed,” Wenham
+said; “Miss Bunion’s portrait was probably painted some years ago.”
+
+“Well, I like her for not being ashamed of her poverty.”
+
+“So do I,” said Mr. Wenham, who would have starved rather than have
+come to dinner in an omnibus, “but I don’t think that she need flourish
+the straw about, do you, Mr. Pendennis? My dear Miss Bunion, how do you
+do? I was in a great lady’s drawing-room this morning, and everybody
+was charmed with your new volume. Those lines on the christening of
+Lady Fanny Fantail brought tears into the Duchess’s eyes. I said that I
+thought I should have the pleasure of meeting you to-day, and she
+begged me to thank you, and say how greatly she was pleased.”
+
+This history, told in a bland smiling manner, of a Duchess whom Wenham
+had met that very morning, too, quite put poor Wagg’s dowager and
+baronet out of court, and placed Wenham beyond Wagg as a man of
+fashion. Wenham kept this inestimable advantage, and having the
+conversation to himself, ran on with a number of anecdotes regarding
+the aristocracy. He tried to bring Mr. Popjoy into the conversation by
+making appeals to him, and saying, “I was telling your father this
+morning,” or, “I think you were present at W. house the other night
+when the Duke said so-and-so,” but Mr. Popjoy would not gratify him by
+joining in the talk, preferring to fall back into the window recess
+with Mrs. Bungay, and watch the cabs that drove up to the opposite
+door. At least, if he would not talk, the hostess hoped that those
+odious Bacons would see how she had secured the noble Percy Popjoy for
+her party.
+
+And now the bell of Saint Paul’s tolled half an hour later than that
+for which Mr. Bungay had invited his party, and it was complete with
+the exception of two guests, who at last made their appearance, and in
+whom Pen was pleased to recognise Captain and Mrs. Shandon.
+
+When these two had made their greetings to the master and mistress of
+the house, and exchanged nods of more or less recognition with most of
+the people present, Pen and Warrington went up, and shook hands very
+warmly with Mrs. Shandon, who, perhaps, was affected to meet them, and
+think where it was she had seen them but a few days before. Shandon was
+brushed up, and looked pretty smart, in a red velvet waistcoat, and a
+frill, into which his wife had stuck her best brooch. In spite of Mrs.
+Bungay’s kindness, perhaps in consequence of it, Mrs. Shandon felt
+great terror and timidity in approaching her: indeed, she was more
+awful than ever in her red satin and bird of paradise, and it was not
+until she had asked in her great voice about the dear little gurl, that
+the latter was somewhat encouraged, and ventured to speak.
+
+“Nice-looking woman,” Popjoy whispered to Warrington. “Do introduce me
+to Captain Shandon, Warrington. I’m told he’s a tremendous clever
+fellow; and, dammy, I adore intellect, by Jove I do!” This was the
+truth: Heaven had not endowed young Mr. Popjoy with much intellect of
+his own, but had given him a generous faculty for admiring, if not for
+appreciating, the intellect of others. “And introduce me to Miss
+Bunion. I’m told she’s very clever too. She’s rum to look at,
+certainly, but that don’t matter. Dammy, I consider myself a literary
+man, and I wish to know all the clever fellows.” So Mr. Popjoy and Mr.
+Shandon had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with one another; and
+now the doors of the adjoining dining-room being flung open, the party
+entered and took their seats at table. Pen found himself next to Bunion
+on one side, and to Mr. Wagg—the truth is, Wagg fled alarmed from the
+vacant place by the poetess, and Pen was compelled to take it.
+
+The gifted being did not talk much during dinner, but Pen remarked that
+she ate with a vast appetite, and never refused any of the supplies of
+wine which were offered to her by the butler. Indeed, Miss Bunion
+having considered Mr. Pendennis for a minute, who gave himself rather
+grand airs, and who was attired in an extremely fashionable style, with
+his very best chains, shirt studs, and cambric fronts, he was set down,
+and not without reason, as a prig by the poetess; who thought it was
+much better to attend to her dinner than to take any notice of him. She
+told him as much in after days with her usual candour. “I took you for
+one of the little Mayfair dandies,” she said to Pen. “You looked as
+solemn as a little undertaker; and as I disliked, beyond measure, the
+odious creature who was on the other side of me, I thought it was best
+to eat my dinner and hold my tongue.”
+
+“And you did both very well, my dear Miss Bunion,” Pen said with a
+laugh.
+
+“Well, so I do, but I intend to talk to you the next time a great deal:
+for you are neither so solemn, nor so stupid, nor so pert as you look.”
+
+“Ah, Miss Bunion, how I pine for that ‘next time’ to come,” Pen said
+with an air of comical gallantry:—But we must return to the day, and
+the dinner at Paternoster Row.
+
+The repast was of the richest description—“What I call of the florid
+Gothic style,” Wagg whispered to Penn, who sate beside the humourist,
+in his side-wing voice. The men in creaking shoes and Berlin gloves
+were numerous and solemn, carrying on rapid conversations behind the
+guests, as they moved to and fro with the dishes. Doolan called out,
+“Waither,” to one of them, and blushed when he thought of his blunder.
+Mrs. Bungay’s footboy was lost amidst those large and black-coated
+attendants.
+
+“Look at that very bow-windowed man,” Wagg said. “He’s an undertaker in
+Amen Corner, and attends funerals and dinners. Cold meat and hot, don’t
+you perceive? He’s the sham butler here, and I observe, my dear Mr.
+Pendennis, as you will through life, that wherever there is a sham
+butler at a London dinner there is sham wine—this sherry is filthy.
+Bungay, my boy, where did you get this delicious brown sherry?”
+
+“I’m glad you like it, Mr. Wagg; glass with you,” said the publisher.
+“It’s some I got from Alderman Benning’s store, and gave a good figure
+for it, I can tell you. Mr. Pendennis, will you join us? Your ’ealth,
+gentlemen.”
+
+“The old rogue, where does he expect to go to? It came from the
+public-house,” Wagg said. “It requires two men to carry off that
+sherry, ’tis so uncommonly strong. I wish I had a bottle of old
+Steyne’s wine here, Pendennis: your uncle and I have had many a one. He
+sends it about to people where he is in the habit of dining. I remember
+at poor Rawdon Crawley’s, Sir Pitt Crawley’s brother—he was Governor of
+Coventry Island—Steyne’s chef always came in the morning, and the
+butler arrived with the champagne from Gaunt House, in the ice-pails
+ready.”
+
+“How good this is!” said Popjoy, good-naturedly. “You must have a
+cordon bleu in your kitchen.”
+
+“O yes,” Mrs. Bungay said, thinking he spoke of a jack-chain very
+likely.
+
+“I mean a French chef,” said the polite guest.
+
+“O yes, your lordship,” again said the lady.
+
+“Does your artist say he’s a Frenchman, Mrs. B.?” called out Wagg.
+
+“Well, I’m sure I don’t know,” answered the publisher’s lady.
+
+“Because, if he does, he’s a quizzin yer,” cried Mr. Wagg; but nobody
+saw the pun, which disconcerted somewhat the bashful punster. “The
+dinner is from Griggs, in St. Paul’s Churchyard; so is Bacon’s,” he
+whispered Pen. “Bungay writes to give half-a-crown a head more than
+Bacon, so does Bacon. They would poison each other’s ices if they could
+get near them; and as for the made-dishes—they are poison.
+This—hum—ha—this Brimborion a la Sevigne is delicious, Mrs. B.,” he
+said, helping himself to a dish which the undertaker handed to him.
+
+“Well, I’m glad you like it,” Mrs. Bungay answered, blushing and not
+knowing whether the name of the dish was actually that which Wagg gave
+to it, but dimly conscious that that individual was quizzing her.
+Accordingly she hated Mr. Wagg with female ardour; and would have
+deposed him from his command over Mr. Bungay’s periodical, but that his
+name was great in the trade, and his reputation in the land
+considerable.
+
+By the displacement of persons, Warrington had found himself on the
+right hand of Mrs. Shandon, who sate in plain black silk and faded
+ornaments by the side of the florid publisher. The sad smile of the
+lady moved his rough heart to pity. Nobody seemed to interest himself
+about her: she sate looking at her husband, who himself seemed rather
+abashed in the presence of some of the company. Wenham and Wagg both
+knew him and his circumstances. He had worked with the latter, and was
+immeasurably his superior in wit, genius, and acquirement; but Wagg’s
+star was brilliant in the world, and poor Shandon was unknown there. He
+could not speak before the noisy talk of the coarser and more
+successful man; but drank his wine in silence, and as much of it as the
+people would give him. He was under surveillance. Bungay had warned the
+undertaker not to fill the Captain’s glass too often or too full. It
+was a melancholy precaution that, and the more melancholy that it was
+necessary. Mrs. Shandon, too, cast alarmed glances across the table to
+see that her husband did not exceed.
+
+Abashed by the failure of his first pun, for he was impudent and easily
+disconcerted, Wagg kept his conversation pretty much to Pen during the
+rest of dinner, and of course chiefly spoke about their neighbours.
+“This is one of Bungay’s grand field-days,” he said. “We are all
+Bungavians here.—Did you read Popjoy’s novel? It was an old magazine
+story written by poor Buzzard years ago, and forgotten here until Mr.
+Trotter (that is Trotter with the large shirt collar) fished it out and
+bethought him that it was applicable to the late elopement; so Bob
+wrote a few chapters a propos—Popjoy permitted the use of his name, and
+I dare say supplied a page here and there—and ‘Desperation, or the
+Fugitive Duchess’ made its appearance. The great fun is to examine
+Popjoy about his own work, of which he doesn’t know a word.—I say,
+Popjoy, what a capital passage that is in Volume Three,—where the
+Cardinal in disguise, after being converted by the Bishop of London,
+proposes marriage to the Duchess’s daughter.”
+
+“Glad you like it,” Popjoy answered; “it’s a favourite bit of my own.”
+
+“There’s no such thing in the whole book,” whispered Wagg to Pen.
+“Invented it myself. Gad! it wouldn’t be a bad plot for a high-church
+novel.”
+
+“I remember poor Byron, Hobhouse, Trelawney, and myself, dining with
+Cardinal Mezzocaldo at Rome,” Captain Sumph began, “and we had some
+Orvieto wine for dinner, which Byron liked very much. And I remember
+how the Cardinal regretted that he was a single man. We went to Civita
+Vecchia two days afterwards, where Byron’s yacht was—and, by Jove, the
+Cardinal died within three weeks; and Byron was very sorry, for he
+rather liked him.”
+
+“A devilish interesting story, Sumph, indeed,” Wagg said.
+
+“You should publish some of those stories, Captain Sumph, you really
+should. Such a volume would make our friend Bungay’s fortune,” Shandon
+said.
+
+“Why don’t you ask Sumph to publish ’em in your new paper—the
+what-d’ye-call-’em—hay, Shandon?” bawled out Wagg.
+
+“Why don’t you ask him to publish ’em in your old magazine, the
+Thingumbob?” Shandon replied.
+
+“Is there going to be a new paper?” asked Wenham, who knew perfectly
+well, but was ashamed of his connection with the press.
+
+“Bungay going to bring out a paper?” cried Popjoy, who, on the
+contrary, was proud of his literary reputation and acquaintances. “You
+must employ me. Mrs. Bungay, use your influence with him, and make him
+employ me. Prose or verse—what shall it be? Novels, poems, travels, or
+leading articles, begad. Anything or everything—only let Bungay pay me,
+and I’m ready—I am now my dear Mrs. Bungay, begad now.”
+
+“It’s to be called the Small Beer Chronicle,” growled Wagg, “and little
+Popjoy is to be engaged for the infantine department.”
+
+“It is to be called the Pall Mall Gazette, sir, and we shall be very
+happy to have you with us,” Shandon said.
+
+“Pall Mall Gazette—why Pall Mall Gazette?” asked Wagg.
+
+“Because the editor was born at Dublin, the sub-editor at Cork, because
+the proprietor lives in Paternoster Row;—and the paper is published in
+Catherine Street, Strand. Won’t that reason suffice you, Wagg?” Shandon
+said; he was getting rather angry. “Everything must have a name. My dog
+Ponto has got a namee. You’ve got a name, and a name which you deserve,
+more or less, indeed. Why d’ye grudge the name to our paper?”
+
+“By any other name it would smell as sweet,” said Wagg.
+
+“I’ll have ye remember its name’s not what-d’ye-call-’em, Mr. Wagg,”
+said Shandon. “You know its name well enough, and—and you know mine.”
+
+“And I know your address too,” said Wagg; but this was spoken in an
+undertone, and the good-natured Irishman was appeased almost in an
+instant after his ebullition of spleen, and asked Wagg to drink wine
+with him in a friendly voice.
+
+When the ladies retired from the table, the talk grew louder still; and
+presently Wenham, in a courtly speech, proposed that everybody should
+drink to the health of the new Journal, eulogising highly the talents,
+wit, and learning of its editor, Captain Shandon. It was his maxim
+never to lose the support of a newspaper man, and in the course of that
+evening he went round and saluted every literary gentleman present with
+a privy compliment specially addressed to him; informing this one how
+great an impression had been made in Downing Street by his last
+article, and telling that one how profoundly his good friend, the Duke
+of So-and-So, had been struck by the ability of the late numbers.
+
+The evening came to a close, and in spite of all the precautions to the
+contrary, poor Shandon reeled in his walk, and went home to his new
+lodgings, with his faithful wife by his side, and the cabman on his box
+jeering at him. Wenham had a chariot of his own, which he put at
+Popjoy’s seat; and the timid Miss Bunion seeing Mr. Wagg, who was her
+neighbour, about to depart, insisted upon a seat in his carriage, much
+to that gentleman’s discomfiture.
+
+Pen and Warrington walked home together in the moonlight. “And now,”
+Warrington said, “that you have seen the men of letters, tell me, was I
+far wrong in saying that there are thousands of people in this town,
+who don’t write books, who are, to the full, as clever and intellectual
+as people who do?”
+
+Pen was forced to confess that the literary personages with whom he had
+become acquainted had not said much, in the course of the night’s
+conversation, that was worthy to be remembered or quoted. In fact not
+one word about literature had been said during the whole course of the
+night:—and it may be whispered to those uninitiated people who are
+anxious to know the habits and make the acquaintance of men of letters,
+that there are no race of people who talk about books, or, perhaps, who
+read books, so little as literary men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+The Pall Mall Gazette
+
+
+Considerable success at first attended the new journal. It was
+generally stated, that an influential political party supported the
+paper; and great names were cited amongst the contributors to its
+columns. Was there any foundation for these rumours? We are not at
+liberty to say whether they were ill-founded; but this much we may
+divulge, that an article upon foreign policy, which was generally
+attributed to a noble Lord, whose connexion with the Foreign Office is
+very well known, was in reality composed by Captain Shandon, in the
+parlour of the Bear and Staff public-house near Whitehall Stairs,
+whither the printer’s boy had tracked him, and where a literary ally of
+his, Mr. Bludyer, had a temporary residence; and that a series of
+papers on finance questions, which were universally supposed to be
+written by a great Statesman of the House of Commons, were in reality
+composed by Mr. George Warrington of the Upper Temple.
+
+That there may have been some dealings between the Pall Mall Gazette
+and this influential party, is very possible, Percy Popjoy (whose
+father, Lord Falconet, was a member of the party) might be seen not
+unfrequently ascending the stairs to Warrington’s chambers; and some
+information appeared in the paper which it gave a character, and could
+only be got from very peculiar sources. Several poems, feeble in
+thought, but loud and vigorous in expression, appeared in the Pall Mall
+Gazette, with the signature of “P. P.”; and it must be owned that his
+novel was praised in the new journal in a very outrageous manner.
+
+In the political department of the paper Mr. Pen did not take any
+share; but he was a most active literary contributor. The Pall Mall
+Gazette had its offices, as we have heard, in Catherine Street, in the
+Strand, and hither Pen often came with his manuscripts in his pocket,
+and with a great deal of bustle and pleasure; such as a man feels at
+the outset of his literary career, when to see himself in print is
+still a novel sensation, and he yet pleases himself to think that his
+writings are creating some noise in the world.
+
+Here it was that Mr. Jack Finucane, the sub-editor, compiled with paste
+and scissors the Journal of which he was supervisor. With an eagle eye
+he scanned all the paragraphs of all the newspapers which had anything
+to do with the world of fashion over which he presided. He didn’t let a
+death or a dinner-party of the aristocracy pass without having the
+event recorded in the columns of his Journal; and from the most
+recondite provincial prints, and distant Scotch and Irish newspapers,
+he fished out astonishing paragraphs and intelligence regarding the
+upper classes of society. It was a grand, nay, a touching sight, for a
+philosopher, to see Jack Finucane, Esquire, with a plate of meat from
+the cookshop and glass of porter from the public-house, for his meal,
+recounting the feasts of the great as if he had been present at them;
+and in tattered trousers and dingy shirt-sleeves, cheerfully describing
+and arranging the most brilliant fêtes of the world of fashion. The
+incongruity of Finucane’s avocation, and his manners and appearance
+amused his new friend Pen. Since he left his own native village, where
+his rank probably was not very lofty, Jack had seldom seen any society
+but such as used the parlour of the taverns which he frequented,
+whereas from his writing you would have supposed that he dined with
+ambassadors, and that his common lounge was the bow-window of White’s.
+Errors of description, it is true, occasionally slipped from his pen;
+but the Ballinafad Sentinel, of which he was own correspondent,
+suffered by these, not the Pall Mall Gazette, in which Jack was not
+permitted to write much, his London chiefs thinking that the scissors
+and the paste were better wielded by him than the pen.
+
+Pen took a great deal of pains with the writing of his reviews, and
+having a pretty fair share of desultory reading, acquired in the early
+years of his life an eager fancy and a keen sense of fun, his articles
+pleased his chief and the public, and he was proud to think that he
+deserved the money which he earned. We may be sure that the Pall Mall
+Gazette was taken in regularly at Fairoaks, and read with delight by
+the two ladies there. It was received at Clavering Park, too, where we
+know there was a young lady of great literary tastes; and old Doctor
+Portman himself, to whom the widow sent her paper after she had got her
+son’s articles by heart, signified his approval of Pen’s productions,
+saying that the lad had spirit, taste, and fancy, and wrote, if not
+like a scholar, at any rate like a gentleman.
+
+And what was the astonishment and delight of our friend Major
+Pendennis, on walking into one of his clubs, the Regent, where Wenham,
+Lord Falconet, and some other gentlemen of good reputation and fashion
+were assembled, to hear them one day talking over a number of the Pall
+Mall Gazette, and of an article which appeared in its columns, making
+some bitter fun of the book recently published by the wife of a
+celebrated member of the opposition party. The book in question was a
+Book of Travels in Spain and Italy, by the Countess of Muffborough, in
+which it was difficult to say which was the most wonderful, the French
+or the English, in which languages her ladyship wrote indifferently,
+and upon the blunders of which the critic pounced with delightful
+mischief. The critic was no other than Pen: he jumped and danced round
+about his subject with the greatest jocularity and high spirits: he
+showed up the noble lady’s faults with admirable mock gravity and
+decorum. There was not a word in the article which was not polite and
+gentlemanlike; and the unfortunate subject of the criticism was
+scarified and laughed at during the operation. Wenham’s bilious
+countenance was puckered up with malign pleasure as he read the
+critique. Lady Muffborough had not asked him to her parties during the
+last year. Lord Falconet giggled and laughed with all his heart; Lord
+Muffborough and he had been rivals ever since they began life; and
+these complimented Major Pendennis, who until now had scarcely paid any
+attention to some hints which his Fairoaks correspondence threw out of
+“dear Arthur’s constant and severe literary occupations, which I fear
+may undermine the poor boy’s health,” and had thought any notice of Mr.
+Pen and his newspaper connexions quite below his dignity as a Major and
+a gentleman.
+
+But when the oracular Wenham praised the boy’s production; when Lord
+Falconet, who had had the news from Percy Popjoy, approved of the
+genius of young Pen; when the great Lord Steyne himself, to whom the
+Major referred the article, laughed and sniggered over it, swore it was
+capital, and that the Muffborough would writhe under it, like a whale
+under a harpoon, the Major, as in duty bound, began to admire his
+nephew very much, said, “By gad, the young rascal had some stuff in
+him, and would do something; he had always said he would do something;”
+and with a hand quite tremulous with pleasure, the old gentleman sate
+down to write to the widow at Fairoaks all that the great folks had
+said in praise of Pen; and he wrote to the young rascal, too, asking
+when he would come and eat a chop with his old uncle, and saying that
+he was commissioned to take him to dinner at Gaunt House, for Lord
+Steyne liked anybody who could entertain him, whether by his folly,
+wit, or by his dulness, by his oddity, affectation, good spirits, or
+any other quality. Pen flung his letter across the table to Warrington:
+perhaps he was disappointed that the other did not seem to be much
+affected by it.
+
+The courage of young critics is prodigious: they clamber up to the
+judgment-seat, and, with scarce a hesitation, give their opinion upon
+works the most intricate or profound. Had Macaulay’s History or
+Herschel’s Astronomy been put before Pen at this period, he would have
+looked through the volumes, meditated his opinion over a cigar, and
+signified his august approval of either author, as if the critic had
+been their born superior and indulgent master and patron. By the help
+of the Biographie Universelle or the British Museum, he would be able
+to take a rapid resume of a historical period, and allude to names,
+dates, and facts, in such a masterly, easy way, as to astonish his
+mamma at home, who wondered where her boy could have acquired such a
+prodigious store of reading and himself, too, when he came to read over
+his articles two or three months after they had been composed, and when
+he had forgotten the subject and the books which he had consulted. At
+that period of his life, Mr. Pen owns that he would not have hesitated,
+at twenty-four hours’ notice, to pass his opinion upon the greatest
+scholars, or to give a judgment upon the Encyclopaedia. Luckily he had
+Warrington to laugh at him and to keep down his impertinence by a
+constant and wholesome ridicule, or he might have become conceited
+beyond all sufferance; for Shandon liked the dash and flippancy of his
+young aide-de-camp, and was, indeed, better pleased with Pen’s light
+and brilliant flashes, than with the heavier metal which his elder
+coadjutor brought to bear.
+
+But though he might justly be blamed on the score of impertinence and a
+certain prematurity of judgment, Mr. Pen was a perfectly honest critic;
+a great deal too candid for Mr. Bungay’s purposes, indeed, who grumbled
+sadly at his impartiality. Pen and his chief, the Captain, had a
+dispute upon this subject one day. “In the name of common-sense, Mr.
+Pendennis,” Shandon asked, “what have you been doing—praising one of
+Mr. Bacon’s books? Bungay has been with me in a fury this morning at
+seeing a laudatory article upon one of the works of the odious firm
+over the way.”
+
+Pen’s eyes opened with wide astonishment. “Do you mean to say,” he
+asked, “that we are to praise no books that Bacon publishes: or that,
+if the books are good, we are to say they are bad?”
+
+“My good young friend—for what do you suppose a benevolent publisher
+undertakes a critical journal, to benefit his rival?” Shandon inquired.
+
+“To benefit himself certainly, but to tell the truth too,” Pen said,
+“ruat coelum, to tell the truth.”
+
+“And my prospectus,” said Shandon, with a laugh and a sneer; “do you
+consider that was a work of mathematical accuracy of statement?”
+
+“Pardon me, that is not the question,” Pen said “and I don’t think you
+very much care to argue it. I had some qualms of conscience about that
+same prospectus, and debated the matter with my friend Warrington. We
+agreed, however,” Pen said, laughing “that because the prospectus was
+rather declamatory and poetical, and the giant was painted upon the
+show-board rather larger than the original, who was inside the caravan;
+we need not be too scrupulous about this trifling inaccuracy, but might
+do our part of the show, without loss of character or remorse of
+conscience. We are the fiddlers, and play our tunes only; you are the
+showman.”
+
+“And leader of the van,” said Shandon. “Well, I am glad that your
+conscience gave you leave to play for us.”
+
+“Yes, but,” said Pen, with a fine sense of the dignity of his position,
+“we are all party men in England, and I will stick to my party like a
+Briton. I will be as good-natured as you like to our own side, he is a
+fool who quarrels with his own nest; and I will hit the enemy as hard
+as you like—but with fair play, Captain, if you please. One can’t tell
+all the truth, I suppose; but one can tell nothing but the truth; and I
+would rather starve, by Jove, and never earn another penny by my pen”
+(this redoubted instrument had now been in use for some six weeks, and
+Pen spoke of it with vast enthusiasm and respect) “than strike an
+opponent an unfair blow, or, if called upon to place him, rank him
+below his honest desert.”
+
+“Well, Mr. Pendennis, when we want Bacon smashed, we must get some
+other hammer to do it,” Shandon said, with fatal good-nature; and very
+likely thought within himself, “A few years hence perhaps the young
+gentleman won’t be so squeamish.” The veteran Condottiere himself was
+no longer so scrupulous. He had fought and killed on so many a side for
+many a year past, that remorse had long left him. “Gad,” said he,
+“you’ve a tender conscience, Mr. Pendennis. It’s the luxury of all
+novices, and I may have had one once myself; but that sort of bloom
+wears off with the rubbing of the world, and I’m not going to the
+trouble myself of putting on an artificial complexion, like our pious
+friend Wenham, or our model of virtue, Wagg.”
+
+“I don’t know whether some people’s hypocrisy is not better, Captain,
+than others’ cynicism.”
+
+“It’s more profitable, at any rate,” said the Captain, biting his
+nails. “That Wenham is as dull a quack as ever quacked: and you see the
+carriage in which he drove to dinner. Faith, it’ll be a long time
+before Mrs. Shandon will take a drive in her own chariot. God help her,
+poor thing!” And Pen went away from his chief, after their little
+dispute and colloquy, pointing his own moral to the Captain’s tale, and
+thinking to himself, “Behold this man, stored with genius, wit,
+learning, and a hundred good natural gifts: see how he has wrecked
+them, by paltering with his honesty, and forgetting to respect himself.
+Wilt thou remember thyself, O Pen? thou art conceited enough! Wilt thou
+sell thy honour for a bottle? No, by heaven’s grace, we will be honest,
+whatever befalls, and our mouths shall only speak the truth when they
+open.”
+
+A punishment, or, at least, a trial, was in store for Mr. Pen. In the
+very next number of the Pall Mall Gazette, Warrington read out, with
+roars of laughter, an article which by no means amused Arthur
+Pendennis, who was himself at work with a criticism for the next week’s
+number of the same journal; and in which the Spring Annual was
+ferociously maltreated by some unknown writer. The person of all most
+cruelly mauled was Pen himself. His verses had not appeared with his
+own name in the Spring Annual, but under an assumed signature. As he
+had refused to review the book, Shandon had handed it over to Mr.
+Bludyer, with directions to that author to dispose of it. And he had
+done so effectually. Mr. Bludyer, who was a man of very considerable
+talent, and of a race which, I believe, is quite extinct in the press
+of our time, had a certain notoriety in his profession, and reputation
+for savage humour. He smashed and trampled down the poor spring flowers
+with no more mercy than a bull would have on a parterre; and having cut
+up the volume to his heart’s content, went and sold it at a bookstall,
+and purchased a pint of brandy with the proceeds of the volume.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+Where Pen appears in Town and Country
+
+
+Let us be allowed to pass over a few months of the history of Mr.
+Arthur Pendennis’s lifetime, during the which, many events may have
+occurred which were more interesting and exciting to himself, than they
+would be likely to prove to the reader of his present memoirs. We left
+him, in his last chapter, regularly entered upon his business as a
+professional writer, or literary hack, as Mr. Warrington chooses to
+style himself and his friend; and we know how the life of any hack,
+legal or literary, in a curacy, or in a marching regiment, or at a
+merchant’s desk, is dull of routine, and tedious of description. One
+day’s labour resembles another much too closely. A literary man has
+often to work for his bread against time, or against his will, or in
+spite of his health, or of his indolence, or of his repugnance to the
+subject on which he is called to exert himself, just like any other
+daily toiler. When you want to make money by Pegasus (as he must,
+perhaps, who has no other saleable property), farewell poetry and
+aerial flights: Pegasus only rises now like Mr. Green’s balloon, at
+periods advertised beforehand, and when the spectator’s money has been
+paid. Pegasus trots in harness, over the stony pavement, and pulls a
+cart or a cab behind him. Often Pegasus does his work with panting
+sides and trembling knees, and not seldom gets a cut of the whip from
+his driver.
+
+Do not let us, however, be too prodigal of our pity upon Pegasus. There
+is no reason why this animal should be exempt from labour, or illness,
+or decay, any more than any of the other creatures of God’s world. If
+he gets the whip, Pegasus often deserves it, and I for one am quite
+ready to protest my friend, George Warrington, against the doctrine
+which poetical sympathisers are inclined to put forward, viz., that of
+letters, and what is called genius, are to be exempt from prose duties
+of this daily, bread-wanting, tax-paying life, and not to be made to
+work and pay like their neighbours.
+
+Well, then, the Pall Mall Gazette being duly established and Arthur
+Pendennis’s merits recognised as a flippant, witty, and amusing critic,
+he worked away hard every week, preparing reviews of such works as came
+into his department, and writing his reviews with flippancy certainly,
+but with honesty, and to the best of his power. It might be that a
+historian of threescore, who had spent a quarter of a century in
+composing a work of which our young gentleman disposed in the course of
+a couple of days’ reading at the British Museum, was not altogether
+fairly treated by such a facile critic; or that a poet who had been
+elaborating sublime sonnets and odes until he thought them fit for the
+public and for fame, was annoyed by two or three dozen pert lines in
+Mr. Pen’s review, in which the poet’s claims were settled by the
+critic, as if the latter were my lord on the bench and the author a
+miserable little suitor trembling before him. The actors at the
+theatres complained of him wofully, too, and very likely he was too
+hard upon them. But there was not much harm done after all. It is
+different now, as we know; but there were so few great historians, or
+great poets, or great actors, in Pen’s time, that scarce any at all
+came up for judgment before his critical desk. Those who got a little
+whipping, got what in the main was good for them; not that the judge
+was any better or wiser than the persons whom he sentenced, or indeed
+ever fancied himself so. Pen had a strong sense of humour and justice,
+and had not therefore an overweening respect for his own works;
+besides, he had his friend Warrington at his elbow—a terrible critic if
+the young man was disposed to be conceited, and more savage over Pen
+than ever he was to those whom he tried at his literary assize.
+
+By these critical labours, and by occasional contributions to leading
+articles of the journal, when, without wounding his paper, this eminent
+publicist could conscientiously speak his mind, Mr. Arthur Pendennis
+gained the sum of four pounds four shillings weekly, and with no small
+pains and labour. Likewise he furnished Magazines and Reviews with
+articles of his composition, and is believed to have been (though on
+this score he never chooses to speak) London correspondent of the
+Chatteris Champion, which at that time contained some very brilliant
+and eloquent letters from the metropolis. By these labours the
+fortunate youth was enabled to earn a sum very nearly equal to four
+hundred pounds a year; and on the second Christmas after his arrival in
+London, he actually brought a hundred pounds to his mother, as a
+dividend upon the debt which he owed to Laura. That Mrs. Pendennis read
+every word of her son’s works, and considered him to be the profoundest
+thinker and most elegant writer of the day; that she thought his
+retribution of the hundred pounds an act of angelic virtue; that she
+feared he was ruining his health by his labours, and was delighted when
+he told her of the society which he met, and of the great men of
+letters and fashion whom he saw, will be imagined by all readers who
+have seen son-worship amongst mothers, and that charming simplicity of
+love with which women in the country watch the career of their darlings
+in London. If John has held such and such a brief; if Tom has been
+invited to such and such a ball; or George has met this or that great
+and famous man at dinner; what a delight there is in the hearts of
+mothers and sisters at home in Somersetshire! How young Hopeful’s
+letters are read and remembered! What a theme for village talk they
+give, and friendly congratulation! In the second winter, Pen came for a
+very brief space, and cheered the widow’s heart, and lightened up the
+lonely house at Fairoaks. Helen had her son all to herself; Laura was
+away on a visit to old Lady Rockminster; the folks of Clavering Park
+were absent; the very few old friends of the house, Doctor Portman at
+their head, called upon Mr. Pen, and treated him with marked respect;
+between mother and son, it was all fondness, confidence, and affection.
+It was the happiest fortnight of the widow’s whole life; perhaps in the
+lives of both of them. The holiday was gone only too quickly; and Pen
+was back in the busy world, and the gentle widow alone again. She sent
+Arthur’s money to Laura: I don’t know why this young lady took the
+opportunity of leaving home when Pen was coming thither, or whether he
+was the more piqued or relieved by her absence.
+
+He was by this time, by his own merits and his uncle’s introductions,
+pretty well introduced into London, and known both in literary and
+polite circles. Amongst the former his fashionable reputation stood him
+in no little stead; he was considered to be a gentleman of good present
+means and better expectations, who wrote for his pleasure, than which
+there cannot be a greater recommendation to a young literary aspirant.
+Bacon, Bungay and Co. were proud to accept his articles; Mr. Wenham
+asked him to dinner; Mr. Wagg looked upon him with a favourable eye;
+and they reported how they met him at the houses of persons of fashion,
+amongst whom he was pretty welcome, as they did not trouble themselves
+about his means, present or future; as his appearance and address were
+good; and as he had got a character for being a clever fellow. Finally,
+he was asked to one house, because he was seen at another house: and
+thus no small varieties of London life were presented to the young man:
+he was made familiar with all sorts of people from Paternoster Row to
+Pimlico, and was as much at home at Mayfair dining-tables as at those
+tavern boards where some of his companions of the pen were accustomed
+to assemble.
+
+Full of high spirits and curiosity, easily adapting himself to all whom
+he met, the young fellow pleased himself in this strange variety and
+jumble of men, and made himself welcome, or at ease at least, wherever
+he went. He would breakfast, for instance, at Mr. Plover’s of a
+morning, in company with a Peer, a Bishop, a parliamentary orator, two
+blue ladies of fashion, a popular preacher, the author of the last new
+novel, and the very latest lion imported from Egypt or from America:
+and would quit this distinguished society for the back room at the
+newspaper office, where pens and ink and the wet proof-sheets were
+awaiting him. Here would be Finucane, the sub-editor, with the last
+news from the Row: and Shandon would come in presently, and giving a
+nod to Pen, would begin scribbling his leading article at the other end
+of the table, flanked by the pint of sherry, which, when the attendant
+boy beheld him, was always silently brought for the Captain: or Mr.
+Bludyer’s roaring voice would be heard in the front room, where that
+truculent critic would impound the books on the counter in spite of the
+timid remonstrances of Mr. Midge, the publisher, and after looking
+through the volumes would sell them at his accustomed bookstall, and
+having drunken and dined upon the produce of the sale in a tavern box,
+would call for ink and paper, and proceed to “smash” the author of his
+dinner and the novel. Towards evening Mr. Pen would stroll in the
+direction of his club, and take up Warrington there for a
+constitutional walk. This exercise freed the lungs, and gave an
+appetite for dinner, after which Pen had the privilege to make his bow
+at some very pleasant houses which were opened to him; or the town
+before him for amusement. There was the Opera; or the Eagle Tavern; or
+a ball to go to in Mayfair; or a quiet night with a cigar and a book
+and a long talk with Warrington; or a wonderful new song at the Back
+Kitchen;—at this time of his life Mr. Pen beheld all sorts of places
+and men; and very likely did not know how much he enjoyed himself until
+long after, when balls gave him no pleasure, neither did farces make
+him laugh; nor did the tavern joke produce the least excitement in him;
+nor did the loveliest dancer that ever showed her ankles cause him to
+stir from his chair after dinner. At his present mature age all these
+pleasures are over: and the times have passed away too. It is but a
+very very few years since—but the time is gone, and most of the men.
+Bludyer will no more bully authors or cheat landlords of their score.
+Shandon, the learned and thriftless, the witty and unwise, sleeps his
+last sleep. They buried honest Doolan the other day: never will he
+cringe or flatter, never pull long-bow or empty whisky-noggin any more.
+
+The London season was now blooming in its full vigour, and the
+fashionable newspapers abounded with information regarding the grand
+banquets, routs, and balls which were enlivening the polite world. Our
+gracious Sovereign was holding levees and drawing-rooms at St. James’s:
+the bow-windows of the clubs were crowded with the heads of respectable
+red-faced newspaper-reading gentlemen: along the Serpentine trailed
+thousands of carriages: squadrons of dandy horsemen trampled over
+Rotten Row, everybody was in town, in a word; and of course Major
+Arthur Pendennis, who was somebody, was not absent.
+
+With his head tied up in a smart bandana handkerchief and his meagre
+carcass enveloped in a brilliant Turkish dressing-gown, the worthy
+gentleman sate on a certain morning by his fireside letting his feet
+gently simmer in a bath, whilst he took his early cup of tea, and
+perused his Morning Post. He could not have faced the day without his
+two hours’ toilet, without his early cup of tea, without his Morning
+Post. I suppose nobody in the world except Morgan, not even Morgan’s
+master himself, knew how feeble and ancient the Major was growing, and
+what numberless little comforts he required.
+
+If men sneer, as our habit is, at the artifices of an old beauty, at
+her paint, perfumes, ringlets; at those innumerable, and to us unknown,
+stratagems with which she is said to remedy the ravages of time and
+reconstruct the charms whereof years have bereft her; the ladies, it is
+to be presumed, are not on their side altogether ignorant that men are
+vain as well as they, and that the toilets of old bucks are to the full
+as elaborate as their own. How is it that old Blushington keeps that
+constant little rose-tint on his cheeks; and where does old Blondel get
+the preparation which makes his silver hair pass for golden? Have you
+ever seen Lord Hotspur get off his horse when he thinks nobody is
+looking? Taken out of his stirrups, his shiny boots can hardly totter
+up the steps of Hotspur House. He is a dashing young nobleman still as
+you see the back of him in Rotten Row; when you behold him on foot,
+what an old, old fellow! Did you ever form to yourself any idea of Dick
+Lacy (Dick has been Dick these sixty years) in a natural state, and
+without his stays? All these men are objects whom the observer of human
+life and manners may contemplate with as much profit as the most
+elderly Belgravian Venus, or inveterate Mayfair Jezebel. An old
+reprobate daddy-longlegs, who has never said his prayers (except
+perhaps in public) these fifty years: an old buck who still clings to
+as many of the habits of youth as his feeble grasp of health can hold
+by: who has given up the bottle, but sits with young fellows over it,
+and tells naughty stories upon toast-and-water—who has given up beauty,
+but still talks about it as wickedly as the youngest roue in
+company—such an old fellow, I say, if any parson in Pimlico or St.
+James’s were to order the beadles to bring him into the middle aisle,
+and there set him in an armchair, and make a text of him, and preach
+about him to the congregation, could be turned to a wholesome use for
+once in his life, and might be surprised to find that some good
+thoughts came out of him. But we are wandering from our text, the
+honest Major, who sits all this while with his feet cooling in the
+bath: Morgan takes them out of that place of purification, and dries
+them daintily, and proceeds to set the old gentleman on his legs, with
+waistband and wig, starched cravat, and spotless boots and gloves.
+
+It was during these hours of the toilet that Morgan and his employer
+had their confidential conversations, for they did not meet much at
+other times of the day—the Major abhorring the society of his own
+chairs and tables in his lodgings; and Morgan, his master’s toilet over
+and letters delivered, had his time very much on his own hands.
+
+This spare time the active and well-mannered gentleman bestowed among
+the valets and butlers of the nobility, his acquaintance; and Morgan
+Pendennis, as he was styled, for, by such compound names, gentlemen’s
+gentlemen are called in their private circles, was a frequent and
+welcome guest at some of the very highest tables in this town. He was a
+member of two influential clubs in Mayfair and Pimlico; and he was thus
+enabled to know the whole gossip of the town, and entertain his master
+very agreeably during the two hours’ toilet conversation. He knew a
+hundred tales and legends regarding persons of the very highest ton,
+whose valets canvass their august secrets, just, my dear Madam, as our
+own parlour-maids and dependants in the kitchen discuss our characters,
+our stinginess and generosity, our pecuniary means or embarrassments,
+and our little domestic or connubial tiffs and quarrels. If I leave
+this manuscript open on my table, I have not the slightest doubt Betty
+will read it, and they will talk it over in the lower regions to-night;
+and to-morrow she will bring in my breakfast with a face of such entire
+imperturbable innocence, that no mortal could suppose her guilty of
+playing the spy. If you and the Captain have high words upon any
+subject, which is just possible, the circumstances of the quarrel, and
+the characters of both of you, will be discussed with impartial
+eloquence over the kitchen tea-table; and if Mrs. Smith’s maid should
+by chance be taking a dish of tea with yours, her presence will not
+undoubtedly act as a restraint upon the discussion in question; her
+opinion will be given with candour; and the next day her mistress will
+probably know that Captain and Mrs. Jones have been a quarrelling as
+usual. Nothing is secret. Take it as a rule that John knows everything:
+and as in our humble world so in the greatest: a duke is no more a hero
+to his valet-de-chambre than you or I; and his Grace’s Man at his club,
+in company doubtless with other Men of equal social rank, talks over
+his master’s character and affairs with the ingenuous truthfulness
+which befits gentlemen who are met together in confidence. Who is a
+niggard and screws up his money-boxes: who is in the hands of the
+money-lenders, and is putting his noble name on the back of bills of
+exchange: who is intimate with whose wife: who wants whom to marry her
+daughter, and which he won’t, no not at any price:—all these facts
+gentlemen’s confidential gentlemen discuss confidentially, and are
+known and examined by every person who has any claim to rank in genteel
+society. In a word, if old Pendennis himself was said to know
+everything, and was at once admirably scandalous and delightfully
+discreet; it is but justice to Morgan to say, that a great deal of his
+master’s information was supplied to that worthy man by his valet, who
+went out and foraged knowledge for him. Indeed, what more effectual
+plan is there to get a knowledge of London society, than to begin at
+the foundation—that is, at the kitchen floor?
+
+So Mr. Morgan and his employer conversed as the latter’s toilet
+proceeded. There had been a drawing-room on the previous day, and the
+Major read among the presentations that of Lady Clavering by Lady
+Rockminster, and of Miss Amory by her mother Lady Clavering,—and in a
+further part of the paper their dresses were described, with a
+precision and in a jargon which will puzzle and amuse the antiquary of
+future generations. The sight of these names carried Pendennis back to
+the country. “How long have the Claverings been in London?” he asked;
+“pray, Morgan, have you seen any of their people?”
+
+“Sir Francis have sent away his foring man, sir,” Mr. Morgan replied;
+“and have took a friend of mine as own man, sir. Indeed he applied on
+my reckmendation. You may recklect Towler, sir,—tall red-aired man—but
+dyes his air. Was groom of the chambers in Lord Levant’s family till
+his Lordship broke hup. It’s a fall for Towler, sir; but pore men can’t
+be particklar,” said the valet, with a pathetic voice.
+
+“Devilish hard on Towler, by gad!” said the Major, amused, “and not
+pleasant for Lord Levant—he, he!”
+
+“Always knew it was coming, sir. I spoke to you of it Michaelmas was
+four years: when her Ladyship put the diamonds in pawn. It was Towler,
+sir, took ’em in two cabs to Dobree’s—and a good deal of the plate went
+the same way. Don’t you remember seeing of it at Blackwall, with the
+Levant arms and coronick, and Lord Levant settn oppsit to it at the
+Marquis of Steyne’s dinner? Beg your pardon; did I cut you, sir?”
+
+Morgan was now operating upon the Major’s chin—he continued the theme
+while strapping the skilful razor. “They’ve took a house in Grosvenor
+Place, and are coming out strong, sir. Her Ladyship’s going to give
+three parties, besides a dinner a week, sir. Her fortune won’t stand
+it—can’t stand it.”
+
+“Gad, she had a devilish good cook when I was at Fairoaks,” the Major
+said, with very little compassion for the widow Amory’s fortune.
+
+“Marobblan was his name, sir; Marobblan’s gone away, sir,” Morgan
+said,—and the Major, this time, with hearty sympathy, said, “he was
+devilish sorry to lose him.”
+
+“There’s been a tremenjuous row about that Mosseer Marobblan,” Morgan
+continued “At a ball at Baymouth, sir, bless his impadence, he
+challenged Mr. Harthur to fight a jewel, sir, which Mr. Arthur was very
+near knocking him down, and pitchin’ him outawinder, and serve him
+right; but Chevalier Strong, sir, came up and stopped the shindy—I beg
+pardon, the holtercation, sir—them French cooks has as much pride and
+hinsolence as if they was real gentlemen.”
+
+“I heard something of that quarrel,” said the Major; “but Mirobolant
+was not turned off for that?”
+
+“No, sir—that affair, sir, which Mr. Harthur forgave it him and beayved
+most handsome, was hushed hup: it was about Miss Hamory, sir, that he
+ad is dismissial. Those French fellers, they fancy everybody is in love
+with ’em; and he climbed up the large grape vine to her winder, sir,
+and was a trying to get in, when he was caught, sir; and Mr. Strong
+came out, and they got the garden-engine and played on him, and there
+was no end of a row, sir.”
+
+“Confound his impudence! You don’t mean to say Miss Amory encouraged
+him,” cried the Major, amazed at a peculiar expression in Mr. Morgan’s
+countenance.
+
+Morgan resumed his imperturbable demeanour. “Know nothing about it,
+sir. Servants don’t know them kind of things the least. Most probbly
+there was nothing in it—so many lies is told about families—Marobblan
+went away, bag and baggage, saucepans, and pianna, and all—the feller
+ad a pianna, and wrote potry in French, and he took a lodging at
+Clavering, and he hankered about the primises, and it was said that
+Madam Fribsy, the milliner, brought letters to Miss Hamory, though I
+don’t believe a word about it; nor that he tried to pison hisself with
+charcoal, which it was all a humbug betwigst him and Madam Fribsy; and
+he was nearly shot by the keeper in the park.”
+
+In the course of that very day, it chanced that the Major had stationed
+himself in the great window of Bays’s Club in Saint James’s Street, at
+the hour in the afternoon when you see a half-score of respectable old
+bucks similarly recreating themselves (Bays’s is rather an
+old-fashioned place of resort now, and many of its members more than
+middle-aged; but in the time of the Prince Regent, these old fellows
+occupied the same window, and were some of the very greatest dandies in
+this empire)—Major Pendennis was looking from the great window, and
+spied his nephew Arthur walking down the street in company with his
+friend Mr. Popjoy.
+
+“Look!” said Popjoy to Pen, as they passed, “did you ever pass Bays’s
+at four o’clock, without seeing that collection of old fogies? It’s a
+regular museum. They ought to be cast in wax, and set up at Madame
+Tussaud’s—”
+
+“—In a chamber of old horrors by themselves,” Pen said, laughing.
+
+“—In the chamber of horrors! Gad, doosid good!” Pop cried. “They are
+old rogues, most of ’em, and no mistake. There’s old Blondel; there’s
+my Uncle Colchicum, the most confounded old sinner in Europe;
+there’s—hullo! there’s somebody rapping the window and nodding at us.”
+
+“It’s my uncle, the Major,” said Pen. “Is he an old sinner too?”
+
+“Notorious old rogue,” Pop said, wagging his head. (“Notowious old
+wogue,” he pronounced the words, thereby rendering them much more
+emphatic.)—“He’s beckoning you in; he wants to speak to you.”
+
+“Come in too,” Pen said.
+
+“—Can’t,” replied the other. “Cut uncle Col. two years ago, about
+Mademoiselle Frangipane—Ta, ta,” and the young sinner took leave of
+Pen, and the club of the elder criminals, and sauntered into
+Blacquiere’s, an adjacent establishment, frequented by reprobates of
+his own age.
+
+Colchicum, Blondel, and the senior bucks had just been conversing about
+the Clavering family, whose appearance in London had formed the subject
+of Major Pendennis’s morning conversation with his valet. Mr. Blondel’s
+house was next to that of Sir Francis Clavering, in Grosvenor Place:
+giving very good dinners himself, he had remarked some activity in his
+neighbour’s kitchen. Sir Francis, indeed, had a new chef, who had come
+in more than once and dressed Mr. Blondel’s dinner for him; that
+gentleman having only a remarkably expert female artist permanently
+engaged in his establishment, and employing such chiefs of note as
+happened to be free on the occasion of his grand banquets. “They go to
+a devilish expense and see devilish bad company as yet, I hear,” Mr.
+Blondel said, “they scour the streets, by gad, to get people to dine
+with ’em. Champignon says it breaks his heart to serve up a dinner to
+their society. What a shame it is that those low people should have
+money at all,” cried Mr. Blondel, whose grandfather had been a
+reputable leather-breeches maker, and whose father had lent money to
+the Princes.
+
+“I wish I had fallen in with the widow myself” sighed Lord Colchicum,
+“and not been laid up with that confounded gout at Leghorn—I would have
+married the woman myself.—I’m told she has six hundred thousand pounds
+in the Threes.”
+
+“Not quite so much as that,—I knew her family in India,”—Major
+Pendennis said, “I knew her family in India; her father was an
+enormously rich old indigo-planter,—know all about her;—Clavering has
+the next estate to ours in the country.—Ha! there’s my nephew walking
+with”—“With mine,—the infernal young scamp,” said Lord Colchicum
+glowering at Popjoy out of his heavy eyebrows; and he turned away from
+the window as Major Pendennis tapped upon it.
+
+The Major was in high good-humour. The sun was bright, the air brisk
+and invigorating. He had determined upon a visit to Lady Clavering on
+that day, and bethought him that Arthur would be a good companion for
+the walk across the Green Park to her ladyship’s door. Master Pen was
+not displeased to accompany his illustrious relative, who pointed out a
+dozen great men in that brief transit through St. James’s Street, and
+got bows from a Duke at a crossing, a Bishop (on a cob), and a Cabinet
+Minister with an umbrella. The Duke gave the elder Pendennis a finger
+of a pipe-clayed glove to shake, which the Major embraced with great
+veneration; and all Pen’s blood tingled as he found himself in actual
+communication, as it were, with this famous man (for Pen had possession
+of the Major’s left arm, whilst the gentleman’s other wing was engaged
+with his Grace’s right) and he wished all Grey Friars’ School, all
+Oxbridge University, all Paternoster Row and the Temple and Laura and
+his mother at Fairoaks, could be standing on each side of the street,
+to see the meeting between him and his uncle, and the most famous duke
+in Christendom.
+
+“How do, Pendennis?—fine day,” were his Grace’s remarkable words, and
+with a nod of his august head he passed on—in a blue frock-coat and
+spotless white duck trousers, in a white stock, with a shining buckle
+behind.
+
+Old Pendennis, whose likeness to his Grace has been remarked, began to
+imitate him unconsciously, after they had parted, speaking with curt
+sentences, after the manner of the great man. We have all of us, no
+doubt, met with more than one military officer who has so imitated the
+manner of a certain great Captain of the Age; and has, perhaps, changed
+his own natural character and disposition, because Fate had endowed him
+with an aquiline nose. In like manner have we not seen many another man
+pride himself on having a tall forehead and a supposed likeness to Mr.
+Canning? many another go through life swelling with self-gratification
+on account of an imagined resemblance (we say “imagined,” because that
+anybody should be really like that most beautiful and perfect of men is
+impossible) to the great and revered George IV.: many third parties,
+who wore low necks to their dresses because they fancied that Lord
+Byron and themselves were similar in appearance: and has not the grave
+closed but lately upon poor Tom Bickerstaff, who having no more
+imagination than Mr. Joseph Hume, looked in the glass and fancied
+himself like Shakspeare? shaved his forehead so as farther to resemble
+the immortal bard, wrote tragedies incessantly, and died perfectly
+crazy—actually perished of his forehead? These or similar freaks of
+vanity most people who have frequented the world must have seen in
+their experience. Pen laughed in his roguish sleeve at the manner in
+which his uncle began to imitate the great man from whom they had just
+parted but Mr. Pen was as vain in his own way, perhaps, as the elder
+gentleman, and strutted, with a very consequential air of his own, by
+the Major’s side.
+
+“Yes, my dear boy,” said the old bachelor, as they sauntered through
+the Green Park, where many poor children were disporting happily, and
+errand-boys were playing at toss-halfpenny, and black sheep were
+grazing in the sunshine, and an actor was learning his part on a bench,
+and nursery-maids and their charges sauntered here and there, and
+several couples were walking in a leisurely manner; “yes, depend on it,
+my boy; for a poor man, there is nothing like having good
+acquaintances. Who were those men, with whom you saw me in the
+bow-window at Bays’s? Two were Peers of the realm. Hobananob will be a
+Peer, as soon as his grand-uncle dies, and he has had his third
+seizure; and of the other four, not one has less than his seven
+thousand a year. Did you see that dark blue brougham, with that
+tremendous stepping horse, waiting at the door of the club? You’ll know
+it again. It is Sir Hugh Trumpington’s; he was never known to walk in
+his life; never appears in the streets on foot—never: and if he is
+going two doors off, to see his mother, the old dowager (to whom I
+shall certainly introduce you, for she receives some of the best
+company in London), gad, sir—he mounts his horse at No. 23, and
+dismounts again at No. 25 A. He is now upstairs, at Bays’s, playing
+picquet with Count Punter: he is the second-best player in England—as
+well he may be; for he plays every day of his life, except Sundays (for
+Sir Hugh is an uncommonly religious man) from half-past three till
+half-past seven, when he dresses for dinner.
+
+“A very pious manner of spending his time,” Pen said, laughing and
+thinking that his uncle was falling into the twaddling state.
+
+“Gad, sir, that is not the question. A man of his estate may employ his
+time as he chooses. When you are a baronet, a county member, with ten
+thousand acres of the best land in Cheshire, and such a place as
+Trumpington (though he never goes there), you may do as you like.”
+
+“And so that was his brougham, sir, was it?” the nephew said with
+almost a sneer.
+
+“His brougham—O ay, yes!—and that brings me back to my point—revenons a
+nos moutons. Yes, begad! revenons a nous moutons. Well, that brougham
+is mine if I choose, between four and seven. Just as much mine as if I
+jobbed it from Tilbury’s, begad, for thirty pound a month. Sir Hugh is
+the best natured fellow in the world; and if it hadn’t been so fine an
+afternoon as it is, you and I would have been in that brougham at this
+very minute on our way to Grosvenor Place. That is the benefit of
+knowing rich men;—I dine for nothing, sir;—I go into the country, and
+I’m mounted for nothing. Other fellows keep hounds and gamekeepers for
+me. Sic vos, non vobis, as we used to say at Grey Friars, hey? I’m of
+the opinion of my old friend Leech, of the Forty-fourth; and a devilish
+good shrewd fellow he was, as most Scotchmen are. Gad, sir, Leech used
+to say, ‘He was so poor that he couldn’t afford to know a poor man.’”
+
+“You don’t act up to your principles, uncle,” Pen said good-naturedly.
+
+“Up to my principles; how, sir?” the Major asked, rather testily.
+
+“You would have cut me in Saint James’s Street, sir,” Pen said, “were
+your practice not more benevolent than your theory; you who live with
+dukes and magnates of the land, and would take no notice of a poor
+devil like me.” By which speech we may see that Mr. Pen was getting on
+in the world, and could flatter as well as laugh in his sleeve.
+
+Major Pendennis was appeased instantly, and very much pleased. He
+tapped affectionately his nephew’s arm on which he was leaning, and
+said,—“you, sir, you are my flesh and blood! Hang it, sir, I’ve been
+very proud of you and very fond of you, but for your confounded follies
+and extravagances—and wild oats, sir, which I hope you’ve sown ’em. I
+hope you’ve sown ’em; begad! My object, Arthur, is to make a man of
+you—to see you well placed in the world, as becomes one of your name
+and my own, sir. You have got yourself a little reputation by your
+literary talents, which I am very far from undervaluing, though in my
+time, begad, poetry and genius and that sort of thing were devilish
+disreputable. There was poor Byron, for instance, who ruined himself,
+and contracted the worst habits by living with poets and
+newspaper-writers, and people of that kind: But the times are changed
+now—there’s a run upon literature—clever fellows get into the best
+houses in town, begad! Tempora mutantur, sir; and by Jove, I suppose
+whatever is is right, as Shakspeare says.”
+
+Pen did not think fit to tell his uncle who was the author who had made
+use of that remarkable phrase, and here descending from the Green Park,
+the pair made their way into Grosvenor Place, and to the door of the
+mansion occupied there by Sir Francis and Lady Clavering.
+
+The dining-room shutters of this handsome mansion were freshly gilded;
+the knockers shone gorgeous upon the newly painted door; the balcony
+before the drawing-room bloomed with a portable garden of the most
+beautiful plants, and with flowers, white, and pink, and scarlet; the
+windows of the upper room (the sacred chamber and dressing-room of my
+lady, doubtless), and even a pretty little casement of the third story,
+which keen-sighted Mr. Pen presumed to belong to the virgin bedroom of
+Miss Blanche Amory, were similarly adorned with floral ornaments, and
+the whole exterior face of the house presented the most brilliant
+aspect which fresh new paint, shining plate-glass, newly cleaned
+bricks, and spotless mortar, could offer to the beholder.
+
+“How Strong must have rejoiced in organising all this splendour,”
+thought Pen. He recognised the Chevalier’s genius in the magnificence
+before him.
+
+“Lady Clavering is going out for her drive,” the Major said. “We shall
+only have to leave our pasteboards, Arthur.” He used the word
+‘pasteboards,’ having heard it from some of the ingenuous youth of the
+nobility about town, and as a modern phrase suited to Pen’s tender
+years. Indeed, as the two gentlemen reached the door, a landau drove
+up, a magnificent yellow carriage, lined with brocade or satin of a
+faint cream colour, drawn by wonderful grey horses, with flaming
+ribbons, and harness blazing all over with crests: no less than three
+of these heraldic emblems surmounted the coats-of-arms on the panels,
+and these shields contained a prodigious number of quarterings,
+betokening the antiquity and splendour of the house of Clavering and
+Snell. A coachman in a tight silver wig surmounted the magnificent
+hammer-cloth (whereon the same arms were worked in bullion), and
+controlled the prancing greys—a young man still, but of a solemn
+countenance, with a laced waistcoat and buckles in his shoes—little
+buckles, unlike those which John and Jeames, the footmen, wear, and
+which we know are large, and spread elegantly over the foot.
+
+One of the leaves of the hall door was opened, and John—one of the
+largest of his race—was leaning against the door-pillar with his
+ambrosial hair powdered, his legs crossed; beautiful, silk-stockinged;
+in his hand his cane, gold-headed, dolichoskion. Jeames was invisible,
+but near at hand, waiting in the hall, with the gentleman who does not
+wear livery, and ready to fling down the roll of hair-cloth over which
+her ladyship was to step to her carriage. These things and men, the
+which to tell of demands time, are seen in the glance of a practised
+eye: and, in fact, the Major and Pen had scarcely crossed the street,
+when the second battant of the door flew open; the horse-hair carpet
+tumbled down the door-steps to those of the carriage; John was opening
+it on one side of the emblazoned door, and Jeames on the other, the two
+ladies, attired in the highest style of fashion, and accompanied by a
+third, who carried a Blenheim spaniel, yelping in a light blue ribbon,
+came forth to ascend the carriage.
+
+Miss Amory was the first to enter, which she did with aerial lightness,
+and took the place which she liked best. Lady Clavering next followed,
+but her ladyship was more mature of age and heavy of foot, and one of
+those feet, attired in a green satin boot, with some part of a
+stocking, which was very fine, whatever the ankle might be which it
+encircled, might be seen swaying on the carriage-step, as her ladyship
+leaned for support on the arm of the unbending Jeames, by the
+enraptured observer of female beauty who happened to be passing at the
+time of this imposing ceremonial.
+
+The Pendennises senior and junior beheld those charms as they came up
+to the door—the Major looking grave and courtly, and Pen somewhat
+abashed at the carriage and its owners; for he thought of sundry little
+passages at Clavering, which made his heart beat rather quick.
+
+At that moment Lady Clavering, looking round the pair,—she was on the
+first carriage-step, and would have been in the vehicle in another
+second, but she gave a start backwards (which caused some of the powder
+to fly from the hair of ambrosial Jeames), and crying out, “Lor, if it
+isn’t Arthur Pendennis and the old Major!” jumped back to terra firma
+directly, and holding out two fat hands, encased in tight
+orange-coloured gloves, the good-natured woman warmly greeted the Major
+and his nephew.
+
+“Come in both of you.—Why haven’t you been before?—Get out, Blanche,
+and come and see your old friends.—O, I’m so glad to see you. We’ve
+been waitin and waitin for you ever so long. Come in, luncheon ain’t
+gone down,” cried out this hospitable lady, squeezing Pen’s hand in
+both hers (she had dropped the Major’s after a brief wrench of
+recognition), and Blanche, casting up her eyes towards the chimneys,
+descended from the carriage presently, with a timid, blushing,
+appealing look, and gave a little hand to Major Pendennis.
+
+The companion with the spaniel looked about irresolute, and doubting
+whether she should not take Fido his airing; but she too turned right
+about face and entered the house, after Lady Clavering, her daughter,
+and the two gentlemen. And the carriage, with the prancing greys, was
+left unoccupied, save by the coachman in the silver wig.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+In which the Sylph reappears
+
+
+Better folks than Morgan, the valet, were not so well instructed as
+that gentleman, regarding the amount of Lady Clavering’s riches; and
+the legend in London, upon her Ladyship’s arrival in the polite
+metropolis, was, that her fortune was enormous. Indigo factories, opium
+clippers, banks overflowing with rupees, diamonds and jewels of native
+princes, and vast sums of interest paid by them for loans contracted by
+themselves or their predecessors to Lady Clavering’s father, were
+mentioned as sources of her wealth. Her account at her London banker’s
+was positively known, and the sum embraced so many cyphers as to create
+as many O’s of admiration in the wondering hearer. It was a known fact
+that an envoy from an Indian Prince, a Colonel Altamont, the Nawaub of
+Lucknow’s prime favourite, an extraordinary man, who had, it was said,
+embraced Mahometanism, and undergone a thousand wild and perilous
+adventures was at present in this country, trying to negotiate with the
+Begum Clavering, the sale of the Nawaub’s celebrated nose-ring diamond,
+‘the light of the Dewan.’
+
+Under the title of the Begum, Lady Clavering’s fame began to spread in
+London before she herself descended upon the Capital, and as it has
+been the boast of Delolme, and Blackstone, and all panegyrists of the
+British Constitution, that we admit into our aristocracy merit of every
+kind, and that the lowliest-born man, if he but deserve it, may wear
+the robes of a peer, and sit alongside of a Cavendish or a Stanley: so
+it ought to be the boast of our good society, that haughty though it
+be, naturally jealous of its privileges, and careful who shall be
+admitted into its circle, yet, if an individual be but rich enough, all
+barriers are instantly removed, and he or she is welcomed, as from his
+wealth he merits to be. This fact shows our British independence and
+honest feeling—our higher orders are not such mere haughty aristocrats
+as the ignorant represent them: on the contrary, if a man have money
+they will hold out their hands to him, eat his dinners, dance at his
+balls, marry his daughters, or give their own lovely girls to his sons,
+as affably as your commonest roturier would do.
+
+As he had superintended the arrangements of the country mansion, our
+friend, the Chevalier Strong, gave the benefit of his taste and advice
+to the fashionable London upholsterers, who prepared the town house for
+the reception of the Clavering family. In the decoration of this
+elegant abode, honest Strong’s soul rejoiced as much as if he had been
+himself its proprietor. He hung and re-hung the pictures, he studied
+the positions of sofas, he had interviews with wine merchants and
+purveyors who were to supply the new establishment; and at the same
+time the Baronet’s factotum and confidential friend took the
+opportunity of furnishing his own chambers, and stocking his snug
+little cellar: his friends complimented him upon the neatness of the
+former; and the select guests who came in to share Strong’s cutlet now
+found a bottle of excellent claret to accompany the meal. The Chevalier
+was now, as he said, “in clover:” he had a very comfortable set of
+rooms in Shepherd’s Inn. He was waited on by a former Spanish Legionary
+and comrade of his whom he had left at a breach of a Spanish fort, and
+found at a crossing in Tottenham-court Road, and whom he had elevated
+to the rank of body-servant to himself and to the chum who, at present,
+shared his lodgings. This was no other than the favourite of the Nawaub
+of Lucknow, the valiant Colonel Altamont.
+
+No man was less curious, or at any rate, more discreet, than Ned
+Strong, and he did not care to inquire into the mysterious connexion
+which, very soon after their first meeting at Baymouth was established
+between Sir Francis Clavering and the envoy of the Nawaub. The latter
+knew some secret regarding the former, which put Clavering into his
+power, somehow; and Strong, who knew that his patron’s early life had
+been rather irregular, and that his career with his regiment in India
+had not been brilliant, supposed that the Colonel, who swore he knew
+Clavering well at Calcutta, had some hold upon Sir Francis, to which
+the latter was forced to yield. In truth, Strong had long understood
+Sir Francis Clavering’s character, as that of a man utterly weak in
+purpose, in principle, and intellect, a moral and physical trifler and
+poltroon.
+
+With poor Clavering, his Excellency had had one or two interviews after
+their Baymouth meeting, the nature of which conversations the Baronet
+did not confide to Strong: although he sent letters to Altamont by that
+gentleman, who was his ambassador in all sorts of affairs. On one of
+these occasions the Nawaub’s envoy must have been in an exceeding ill
+humour; for he crushed Clavering’s letter in his hand, and said with
+his own particular manner and emphasis:—
+
+“A hundred, be hanged. I’ll have no more letters nor no more
+shilly-shally. Tell Clavering I’ll have a thousand, or by Jove I’ll
+split, and burst him all to atoms. Let him give me a thousand and I’ll
+go abroad, and I give you my honour as a gentleman, I’ll not ask him
+for no more for a year. Give him that message from me, Strong, my boy;
+and tell him if the money ain’t here next Friday at twelve o’clock, as
+sure as my name’s what it is, I’ll have a paragraph in the newspaper on
+Saturday, and next week I’ll blow up the whole concern.”
+
+Strong carried back these words to his principal, on whom their effect
+was such that actually on the day and hour appointed, the Chevalier
+made his appearance once more at Altamont’s hotel at Baymouth, with the
+sum of money required. Altamont was a gentleman, he said, and behaved
+as such; he paid his bill at the Inn, and the Baymouth paper announced
+his departure on a foreign tour. Strong saw him embark at Dover. “It
+must be forgery at the very least,” he thought, “that has put Clavering
+into this fellow’s power, and the Colonel has got the bill.”
+
+Before the year was out, however, this happy country saw the Colonel
+once more upon its shores. A confounded run on the red had finished
+him, he said, at Baden Baden: no gentleman could stand against a colour
+coming up fourteen times. He had been obliged to draw upon Sir Francis
+Clavering for means of returning home: and Clavering, though pressed
+for money (for he had election expenses, had set up his establishment
+in the country and was engaged in furnishing his London house), yet
+found means to accept Colonel Altamont’s bill, though evidently very
+much against his will; for in Strong’s hearing, Sir Francis wished to
+heaven, with many curses, that the Colonel could have been locked up in
+a debtor’s goal in Germany for life, so that he might never be troubled
+again.
+
+These sums for the Colonel Sir Francis was obliged to raise without the
+knowledge of his wife; for though perfectly liberal, nay, sumptuous in
+her expenditure, the good lady had inherited a tolerable aptitude for
+business along with the large fortune of her father, Snell, and gave to
+her husband only such a handsome allowance as she thought befitted a
+gentleman of his rank. Now and again she would give him a present, or
+pay an outstanding gambling debt; but she always exacted a pretty
+accurate account of the moneys so required; and respecting the
+subsidies to the Colonel, Clavering fairly told Strong that he couldn’t
+speak to his wife.
+
+Part of Mr. Strong’s business in life was to procure this money and
+other sums, for his patron. And in the Chevalier’s apartments, in
+Shepherd’s Inn, many negotiations took place between gentlemen of the
+moneyed world and Sir Francis Clavering, and many valuable bank-notes
+and pieces of stamped paper were passed between them. When a man has
+been in the habit of getting in debt from his early youth, and of
+exchanging his promises to pay at twelve months against present sums of
+money, it would seem as if no piece of good fortune ever permanently
+benefited him: a little while after the advent of prosperity, the
+money-lender is pretty certain to be in the house again, and the bills
+with the old signature in the market. Clavering found it more
+convenient to see these gentry at Strong’s lodgings than at his own;
+and such was the Chevalier’s friendship for the Baronet that although
+he did not possess a shilling of his own, his name might be seen as the
+drawer of almost all the bills of exchange which Sir Francis Clavering
+accepted. Having drawn Clavering’s bills, he got them discounted “in
+the City.” When they became due he parleyed with the bill-holders, and
+gave them instalments of their debt, or got time in exchange for fresh
+acceptances. Regularly or irregularly, gentlemen must live somehow: and
+as we read how, the other day, at Comorn, the troops forming that
+garrison were gay and lively, acted plays, danced at balls, and
+consumed their rations; though menaced with an assault from the enemy
+without the walls, and with a gallows if the Austrians were
+successful,—so there are hundreds of gallant spirits in this town,
+walking about in good spirits, dining every day in tolerable gaiety and
+plenty, and going to sleep comfortably; with a bailiff always more or
+less near, and a rope of debt round their necks—the which trifling
+inconveniences, Ned Strong, the old soldier, bore very easily.
+
+But we shall have another opportunity of making acquaintance with these
+and some other interesting inhabitants of Shepherd’s Inn, and in the
+meanwhile are keeping Lady Clavering and her friends too long waiting
+on the door-steps of Grosvenor Place.
+
+First they went into the gorgeous dining-room, fitted up, Lady
+Clavering couldn’t for goodness gracious tell why, in the middle-aged
+style, “unless,” said her good-natured ladyship, laughing, “because me
+and Clavering are middle-aged people;”—and here they were offered the
+copious remains of the luncheon of which Lady Clavering and Blanche had
+just partaken. When nobody was near, our little Sylphide, who scarcely
+ate at dinner more than the six grains of rice of Amina, the friend of
+the Ghouls in the Arabian Nights, was most active with her knife and
+fork, and consumed a very substantial portion of mutton cutlets: in
+which piece of hypocrisy it is believed she resembled other young
+ladies of fashion. Pen and his uncle declined the refection, but they
+admired the dining-room with fitting compliments, and pronounced it
+“very chaste,” that being the proper phrase. There were, indeed,
+high-backed Dutch chairs of the seventeenth century; there was a
+sculptured carved buffet of the sixteenth; there was a sideboard robbed
+out of the carved work of a church in the Low Countries, and a large
+brass cathedral lamp over the round oak table; there were old family
+portraits from Wardour Street and tapestry from France, bits of armour,
+double-handed swords and battle-axes made of carton-pierre,
+looking-glasses, statuettes of saints, and Dresden china—nothing, in a
+word, could be chaster. Behind the dining-room was the library, fitted
+with busts and books all of a size, and wonderful easy-chairs, and
+solemn bronzes in the severe classic style. Here it was that, guarded
+by double doors, Sir Francis smoked cigars, and read Bell’s Life in
+London, and went to sleep after dinner, when he was not smoking over
+the billiard-table at his clubs, or punting at the gambling-houses in
+Saint James’s.
+
+But what could equal the chaste splendour of the drawing-rooms?—the
+carpets were so magnificently fluffy that your foot made no more noise
+on them than your shadow: on their white ground bloomed roses and
+tulips as big as warming-pans: about the room were high chairs and low
+chairs, bandy-legged chairs, chairs so attenuated that it was a wonder
+any but a sylph could sit upon them, marquetterie-tables covered with
+marvellous gimcracks, china ornaments of all ages and countries,
+bronzes, gilt daggers, Books of Beauty, yataghans, Turkish papooshes
+and boxes of Parisian bonbons. Wherever you sate down there were
+Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses convenient at your elbow; there
+were, moreover, light blue poodles and ducks and cocks and hens in
+porcelain; there were nymphs by Boucher, and shepherdesses by Greuze,
+very chaste indeed; there were muslin curtains and brocade curtains,
+gilt cages with parroquets and love-birds, two squealing cockatoos,
+each out-squealing and out-chattering the other; a clock singing tunes
+on a console-table, and another booming the hours like Great Tom, on
+the mantelpiece—there was, in a word, everything that comfort could
+desire, and the most elegant taste devise. A London drawing-room,
+fitted up without regard to expense, is surely one of the noblest and
+most curious sights of the present day. The Romans of the Lower Empire,
+the dear Marchionesses and Countesses of Louis XV., could scarcely have
+had a finer taste than our modern folks exhibit; and everybody who saw
+Lady Clavering’s reception rooms, was forced to confess that they were
+most elegant; and that the prettiest rooms in London—Lady Harley
+Quin’s, Lady Hanway Wardour’s, or Mrs. Hodge-Podgson’s own; the great
+Railroad Croesus’ wife, were not fitted up with a more consummate
+“chastity.”
+
+Poor Lady Clavering, meanwhile, knew little regarding these things, and
+had a sad want of respect for the splendours around her. “I only know
+they cost a precious deal of money, Major,” she said to her guest, “and
+that I don’t advise you to try one of them gossamer gilt chairs: I came
+down on one the night we gave our second dinner-party. Why didn’t you
+come and see us before? We’d have asked you to it.”
+
+“You would have liked to see Mamma break a chair, wouldn’t you, Mr.
+Pendennis?” dear Blanche said with a sneer. She was angry because Pen
+was talking and laughing with Mamma, because Mamma had made a number of
+blunders in describing the house—for a hundred other good reasons.
+
+“I should like to have been by to give Lady Clavering my arm if she had
+need of it,” Pen answered, with a bow and a blush.
+
+“Quel preux Chevalier!” cried the Sylphide, tossing up her little head.
+
+“I have a fellow-feeling with those who fall, remember,” Pen said. “I
+suffered myself very much from doing so once.”
+
+“And you went home to Laura to console you,” said Miss Amory. Pen
+winced. He did not like the remembrance of the consolation which Laura
+had given to him, nor was he very well pleased to find that his rebuff
+in that quarter was known to the world; so as he had nothing to say in
+reply, he began to be immensely interested in the furniture round about
+him, and to praise Lady Clavering’s taste with all his might.
+
+“No, don’t praise me,” said honest Lady Clavering, “it’s all the
+upholsterer’s doings and Captain Strong’s, they did it all while we was
+at the Park—and—and—Lady Rockminster has been here and says the salongs
+are very well,” said Lady Clavering, with an air and tone of great
+deference.
+
+“My cousin Laura has been staying with her,” Pen said.
+
+“It’s not the dowager: it is the Lady Rockminster.”
+
+“Indeed!” cried Major Pendennis, when he heard this great name of
+fashion. “If you have her ladyship’s approval, Lady Clavering, you
+cannot be far wrong. No, no, you cannot be far wrong. Lady Rockminster,
+I should say, Arthur, is the very centre of the circle of fashion and
+taste. The rooms are beautiful indeed!” and the Major’s voice hushed as
+he spoke of this great lady, and he looked round and surveyed the
+apartments awfully and respectfully, as if he had been at church.
+
+“Yes, Lady Rockminster has took us up,” said Lady Clavering.
+
+“Taken us up, Mamma,” cried Blanche, in a shrill voice.
+
+“Well, taken us up, then,” said my lady; “it’s very kind of her, and I
+dare say we shall like it when we git used to it, only at first one
+don’t fancy being took—well, taken up, at all. She is going to give our
+balls for us; and wants to invite all our dinners. But I won’t stand
+that. I will have my old friends and I won’t let her send all the cards
+out, and sit mum at the head of my own table. You must come to me,
+Arthur and Major—come, let me see, on the 14th.—It ain’t one of our
+grand dinners, Blanche,” she said, looking round at her daughter, who
+bit her lips and frowned very savagely for a sylphide.
+
+The Major, with a smile and a bow, said he would much rather come to a
+quiet meeting than to a grand dinner. He had had enough of those large
+entertainments, and preferred the simplicity of the home circle.
+
+“I always think a dinner’s the best the second day,” said Lady
+Clavering, thinking to mend her first speech. “On the 14th we’ll be
+quite a snug little party;” at which second blunder, Miss Blanche
+clasped her hands in despair, and said “O, mamma, vous etes
+incorrigible.” Major Pendennis vowed that he liked snug dinners of all
+things in the world, and confounded her ladyship’s impudence for daring
+to ask such a man as him to a second day’s dinner. But he was a man of
+an economical turn of mind, and bethinking himself that he could throw
+over these people if anything better should offer, he accepted with the
+blandest air. As for Pen, he was not a diner-out of thirty years’
+standing as yet, and the idea of a fine feast in a fine house was still
+perfectly welcome to him.
+
+“What was that pretty little quarrel which engaged itself between your
+worship and Miss Amory?” the Major asked of Pen, as they walked away
+together. “I thought you used to au mieux in that quarter.”
+
+“Used to be,” answered Pen, with a dandified air “is a vague phrase
+regarding a woman. Was and is are two very different terms, sir, as
+regards women’s hearts especially.
+
+“Egad, they change as we do,” cried the elder. “When we took the Cape
+of Good Hope, I recollect there was a lady who talked poisoning herself
+for your humble servant; and, begad, in three months she ran away from
+her husband with somebody else. Don’t get yourself entangled with that
+Miss Amory, She is forward, affected, and under-bred; and her character
+is somewhat—never mind what. But don’t think of her; ten thousand pound
+won’t do for you. What, my good fellow, is ten thousand pound? I would
+scarcely pay that girl’s milliner’s bill with the interest of the
+money.”
+
+“You seem to be a connoisseur in millinery, Uncle” Pen said.
+
+“I was, sir, I was,” replied the senior; “and the old war-horse, you
+know, never hears the sound of a trumpet, but he begins to he, he!—you
+understand,”—and he gave a killing and somewhat superannuated leer and
+bow to a carriage that passed them and entered the Park.
+
+“Lady Catherine Martingale’s carriage” he said “mons’ous fine girls the
+daughters, though, gad, I remember their mother a thousand times
+handsomer. No, Arthur, my dear fellow, with your person and
+expectations, you ought to make a good coup in marriage some day or
+other; and though I wouldn’t have this repeated at Fairoaks, you rogue,
+ha! ha! a reputation for a little wickedness, and for being an homme
+dangereux, don’t hurt a young fellow with the women. They like it, sir,
+they hate a milksop—young men must be young men, you know. But for
+marriage,” continued the veteran moralist, “that is a very different
+matter. Marry a woman with money. I’ve told you before it is as easy to
+get a rich wife as a poor one; and a doosed deal more comfortable to
+sit down to a well-cooked dinner, with your little entrees nicely
+served, than to have nothing but a damned cold leg of mutton between
+you and your wife. We shall have a good dinner on the 14th, when we
+dine with Sir Francis Clavering: stick to that, my boy, in your
+relations with the family. Cultivate ’em, but keep ’em for dining. No
+more of your youthful follies and nonsense about love in a cottage.”
+
+“It must be a cottage with a double coach-house, a cottage of
+gentility, sir,” said Pen, quoting the hackneyed ballad of the Devil’s
+Walk: but his Uncle did not know that poem (though, perhaps, he might
+be leading Pen upon the very promenade in question), and went on with
+his philosophical remarks, very much pleased with the aptness of the
+pupil to whom he addressed them. Indeed Arthur Pendennis was a clever
+fellow, who took his colour very readily from his neighbour, and found
+the adaptation only too easy.
+
+Warrington, the grumbler, growled out that Pen was becoming such a
+puppy that soon there would be no bearing him. But the truth is, the
+young man’s success and dashing manners pleased his elder companion. He
+liked to see Pen gay and spirited, and brimful of health, and life, and
+hope; as a man who has long since left off being amused with clown and
+harlequin, still gets a pleasure in watching a child at a pantomime.
+Mr. Pen’s former sulkiness disappeared with his better fortune: and he
+bloomed as the sun began to shine upon him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+In which Colonel Altamont appears and disappears
+
+
+On the day appointed, Major Pendennis, who had formed no better
+engagement, and Arthur who desired none, arrived together to dine with
+Sir Francis Clavering. The only tenants of the drawing-room when Pen
+and his uncle reached it, were Sir Francis and his wife, and our friend
+Captain Strong, whom Arthur was very glad to see, though the Major
+looked very sulkily at Strong, being by no means well pleased to sit
+down to dinner with Clavering’s d—— house-steward, as he irreverently
+called Strong. But Mr. Welbore Welbore, Clavering’s country neighbour
+and brother member of Parliament, speedily arriving, Pendennis the
+elder was somewhat appeased, for Welbore, though perfectly dull, and
+taking no more part in the conversation at dinner than the footman
+behind his chair, was a respectable country gentleman of ancient family
+and seven thousand a year: and the Major felt always at ease in such
+society. To these were added other persons of note: the Dowager Lady
+Rockminster, who had her reasons for being well with the Clavering
+family, and the Lady Agnes Foker, with her son Mr. Harry, our old
+acquaintance. Mr. Pynsent could not come, his parliamentary duties
+keeping him at the House, duties which sate upon the two other senators
+very lightly. Miss Blanche Amory was the last of the company who made
+her appearance. She was dressed in a killing white silk dress which
+displayed her pearly shoulders to the utmost advantage. Foker whisped
+to Pen, who regarded her with eyes of evident admiration, that he
+considered her “a stunner.” She chose to be very gracious to Arthur
+upon this day, and held out her hand most cordially, and talked about
+dear Fairoaks, and asked for dear Laura and his mother, and said she
+was longing to go back to the country, and in fact was entirely simple,
+affectionate, and artless.
+
+Harry Foker thought he had never seen anybody so amiable and
+delightful, Not accustomed much to the society of ladies, and
+ordinarily being dumb to their presence, he found that he could speak
+before Miss Amory, and became uncommonly lively and talkative, even
+before the dinner was announced and the party descended to the lower
+rooms. He would have longed to give his arm to the fair Blanche, and
+conduct her down the broad carpeted stair; but she fell to the lot of
+Pen upon this occasion, Mr. Foker being appointed to escort Mrs.
+Welbore Welbore, in consequence of his superior rank as an earl’s
+grandson.
+
+But though he was separated from the object of his desire during the
+passage downstairs, the delighted Foker found himself by Miss Amory’s
+side at the dinner-table, and flattered himself that he had manoeuvred
+very well in securing that happy place. It may be that the move was not
+his, but that it was made by another person. Blanche had thus the two
+young men, one on each side of her, and each tried to render himself
+gallant and agreeable.
+
+Foker’s mamma, from her place, surveying her darling boy, was surprised
+at his vivacity. Harry talked constantly to his fair neighbour about
+the topics of the day.
+
+“Seen Taglioni in the Sylphide, Miss Amory? Bring me that souprame of
+Volile again if you please (this was addressed to the attendant near
+him), very good: can’t think where the souprames come from; what
+becomes of the legs of the fowls, I wonder? She’s clipping in the
+Sylphide, ain’t she?” and he began very kindly to hum the pretty air
+which pervades that prettiest of all ballets, now faded into the past
+with that most beautiful and gracious of all dancers. Will the young
+folks ever see anything so charming, anything so classic, anything like
+Taglioni?
+
+“Miss Amory is a sylph herself,” said Mr. Pen.
+
+“What a delightful tenor voice you have, Mr. Foker,” said the young
+lady. “I am sure you have been well taught. I sing a little myself. I
+should like to sing with you.”
+
+Pen remembered that words very similar had been addressed to himself by
+the young lady, and that she had liked to sing with him in former days.
+And sneering within himself, he wondered with how many other gentlemen
+she had sung duets since his time? But he did not think fit to put this
+awkward question aloud: and only said, with the very tenderest air
+which he could assume, “I should like to hear you sing again, Miss
+Blanche. I never heard a voice I liked so well as yours, I think.”
+
+“I thought you liked Laura’s,” said Miss Blanche.
+
+“Laura’s is a contralto: and that voice is very often out, you know,”
+Pen said, bitterly. “I have heard a great deal of music, in London,” he
+continued. “I’m tired of those professional people—they sing too
+loud—or I have grown too old or too blase. One grows old very soon, in
+London, Miss Amory. And like all old fellows, I only care for the songs
+I heard in my youth.”
+
+“I like English music best. I don’t care for foreign songs much. Get me
+some saddle of mutton,” said Mr. Foker.
+
+“I adore English ballads, of all things,” said Miss Amory.
+
+“Sing me one of the old songs after dinner, will you?” said Pen, with
+an imploring voice.
+
+“Shall I sing you an English song, after dinner?” asked the Sylphide,
+turning to Mr. Foker. “I will, if you will promise to come up soon:”
+and she gave him a perfect broadside of her eyes.
+
+“I’ll come up after dinner, fast enough,” he said, simply. “I don’t
+care about much wine afterwards—I take my whack at dinner—I mean my
+share, you know; and when I have had as much as I want I toddle up to
+tea. I’m a domestic character, Miss Amory—my habits are simple—and when
+I’m pleased I’m generally in a good-humour, ain’t I, Pen?—that jelly,
+if you please—not that one, the other with the cherries inside. How the
+doose do they get those cherries inside the jellies?” In this way the
+artless youth prattled on: and Miss Amory listened to him with
+inexhaustible good-humour. When the ladies took their departure for the
+upper regions, Blanche made the two young men promise faithfully to
+quit the table soon, and departed with kind glances to each. She
+dropped her gloves on Foker’s side of the table and her handkerchief on
+Pen’s. Each had had some little attention paid to him: her politeness
+to Mr. Foker was perhaps a little more encouraging than her kindness to
+Arthur: but the benevolent little creature did her best to make both
+the gentlemen happy. Foker caught her last glance as she rushed out of
+the door; that bright look passed over Mr. Strong’s broad white
+waistcoat and shot straight at Harry Foker’s. The door closed on the
+charmer: he sate down with a sigh, and swallowed a bumper of claret.
+
+As the dinner at which Pen and his uncle took their places was not one
+of our grand parties, it had been served at a considerably earlier hour
+than those ceremonial banquets of the London season, which custom has
+ordained shall scarcely take place before nine o’clock; and, the
+company being small, and Miss Blanche anxious to betake herself to her
+piano in the drawing-room, giving constant hints to her mother to
+retreat,—Lady Clavering made that signal very speedily, so that it was
+quite daylight yet when the ladies reached the upper apartments, from
+the flower-embroidered balconies of which they could command a view of
+the two Parks, of the poor couples and children still sauntering in the
+one, and of the equipages of ladies and the horses of dandies passing
+through the arch of the other. The sun, in a word had not set behind
+the elms of Kensington Gardens, and was still gilding the statue
+erected by the ladies of England in honour of his Grace the Duke of
+Wellington, when Lady Clavering and her female friends left the
+gentlemen drinking wine.
+
+The windows of the dining-room were opened to let in the fresh air, and
+afforded to the passers-by in the street a pleasant, or perhaps,
+tantalising view of six gentlemen in white waistcoats with a quantity
+of decanters and a variety of fruits before them—little boys, as they
+passed and jumped up at the area-railings and took a peep, said to one
+another, “Hi hi, Jim, shouldn’t you like to be there and have a cut of
+that there pineapple?”—the horses and carriages of the nobility and
+gentry passed by conveying them to Belgravian toilets: the policeman,
+with clamping feet patrolled up and down before the mansion: the shades
+of evening began to fall: the gasman came and lighted the lamps before
+Sir Francis’s door: the butler entered the dining-room, and illuminated
+the antique gothic chandelier over the antique carved oak dining-table:
+so that from outside the house you looked inwards upon a night-scene of
+feasting and wax-candles; and from within you beheld a vision of a calm
+summer evening, and the wall of Saint James’s Park, and the sky above,
+in which a star or two was just beginning to twinkle.
+
+Jeames, with folded legs, leaning against the door-pillar of his
+master’s abode, looked forth musingly upon the latter tranquil sight:
+whilst a spectator clinging to the railings examined the former scene.
+Policeman X passing, gave his attention to neither, but fixed it upon
+the individual holding by the railings, and gazing into Sir Francis
+Clavering’s dining-room, where Strong was laughing and talking away,
+making the conversation for the party.
+
+The man at the railing was very gorgeously attired with chains,
+jewellery, and waistcoats, which the illumination from the house
+lighted up to great advantage; his boots were shiny; he had brass
+buttons to his coat, and large white wristbands over his knuckles; and
+indeed looked so grand, that X imagined he beheld a member of
+parliament, or a person of consideration before him. Whatever his rank,
+however, the M.P., or person of consideration, was considerably excited
+by wine; for he lurched and reeled somewhat in his gait, and his hat
+was cocked over his wild and bloodshot eyes in a manner which no sober
+hat ever could assume. His copious black hair was evidently
+surreptitious, and his whiskers of the Tyrian purple.
+
+As Strong’s laughter, following after one of his own gros mots, came
+ringing out of window, this gentleman without laughed and sniggered in
+the queerest way likewise, and he slapped his thigh and winked at
+Jeames pensive in the portico, as much as to say, “Plush, my boy, isn’t
+that a good story?”
+
+Jeames’s attention had been gradually drawn from the moon in the
+heavens to this sublunary scene; and he was puzzled and alarmed by the
+appearance of the man in shiny boots. “A holtercation,” he remarked
+afterwards, in the servants’-hall—a “holtercation with a feller in the
+streets is never no good; and indeed he was not hired for any such
+purpose.” So, having surveyed the man for some time, who went on
+laughing, reeling, nodding his head with tipsy knowingness, Jeames
+looked out of the portico, and softly called “Pleaceman,” and beckoned
+to that officer.
+
+X marched up resolute, with one Berlin glove stuck in his belt-side,
+and Jeames simply pointed with his index finger to the individual who
+was laughing against the railings. Not one single word more than
+“Pleaceman” did he say, but stood there in the calm summer evening,
+pointing calmly: a grand sight.
+
+X advanced to the individual and said, “Now, sir, will you have the
+kindness to move hon?”
+
+The individual, who was in perfect good-humour, did not appear to hear
+one word which Policeman X uttered, but nodded and waggled his grinning
+head at Strong, until his hat almost fell from his head over the area
+railings.
+
+“Now, sir, move on, do you hear?” cries X, in a much more peremptory
+tone, and he touched the stranger gently with one of the fingers
+enclosed in the gauntlets of the Berlin woof.
+
+He of the many rings instantly started, or rather staggered back, into
+what is called an attitude of self-defence, and in that position began
+the operation which is entitled ‘squaring’ at Policeman X, and showed
+himself brave and warlike, if unsteady. “Hullo! keep your hands off a
+gentleman,” he said, with an oath which need not be repeated.
+
+“Move on out of this,” said X, “and don’t be a blocking up the
+pavement, staring into gentlemen’s dining-rooms.”
+
+“Not stare—ho, ho,—not stare—that is a good one,” replied the other
+with a satiric laugh and sneer—“Who’s to prevent me from staring,
+looking at my friends, if I like? not you, old highlows.”
+
+“Friends! I dessay. Move on,” answered X.
+
+“If you touch me, I’ll pitch into you, I will,” roared the other. “I
+tell you I know ’em all—That’s Sir Francis Clavering, Baronet, M.P.—I
+know him, and he knows me—and that’s Strong, and that’s the young chap
+that made the row at the ball. I say, Strong, Strong!”
+
+“It’s that d—— Altamont,” cried Sir Francis within, with a start and a
+guilty look; and Strong also, with a look of annoyance, got up from the
+table, and ran out to the intruder.
+
+A gentleman in a white waistcoat, running out from a dining-room
+bareheaded, a policeman, and an individual decently attired, engaged in
+almost fisticuffs on the pavement, were enough to make a crowd, even in
+that quiet neighbourhood, at half-past eight o’clock in the evening,
+and a small mob began to assemble before Sir Francis Clavering’s door.
+“For God’s sake, come in,” Strong said, seizing his acquaintance’s arm.
+“Send for a cab, James, if you please,” he added in an under voice to
+that domestic; and carrying the excited gentleman out of the street,
+the outer door was closed upon him, and the small crowd began to move
+away.
+
+Mr. Strong had intended to convey the stranger into Sir Francis’s
+private sitting-room, where the hats of the male guests were awaiting
+them, and having there soothed his friend by bland conversation, to
+have carried him off as soon as the cab arrived—but the new-comer was
+in a great state of wrath at the indignity which had been put upon him;
+and when Strong would have led him into the second door, said in a
+tipsy voice, “That ain’t the door—that’s the dining-room door—where the
+drink’s going on—and I’ll go and have some, by Jove; I’ll go and have
+some.” At this audacity the butler stood aghast in the hall, and placed
+himself before the door: but it opened behind him, and the master of
+the house made his appearance, with anxious looks.
+
+“I will have some,—by —— I will,” the intruder was roaring out, as Sir
+Francis came forward. “Hullo! Clavering, I say I’m come to have some
+wine with you; hay! old boy—hay, old corkscrew? Get us a bottle of the
+yellow seal, you old thief—the very best—a hundred rupees a dozen, and
+no mistake.”
+
+The host reflected a moment over his company. There is only Welbore,
+Pendennis, and those two lads, he thought—and with a forced laugh and a
+piteous look, he said,—“Well, Altamont, come in. I am very glad to see
+you, I’m sure.”
+
+Colonel Altamont, for the intelligent reader has doubtless long ere
+this discovered in the stranger His Excellency the Ambassador of the
+Nawaub of Lucknow, reeled into the dining-room, with a triumphant look
+towards Jeames, the footman, which seemed to say, “There, sir, what do
+you think of that? Now, am I a gentleman or no?” and sank down into the
+first vacant chair. Sir Francis Clavering timidly stammered out the
+Colonel’s name to his guest Mr. Welbore Welbore, and his Excellency
+began drinking wine forthwith and gazing round upon the company, now
+with the most wonderful frowns, and anon with the blandest smiles, and
+hiccupped remarks encomiastic of the drink which he was imbibing.
+
+“Very singular man. Has resided long in a native court in India,”
+Strong said, with great gravity, the Chevalier’s presence of mind never
+deserting him—“in those Indian courts they get very singular habits.”
+
+“Very,” said Major Pendennis, drily, and wondering what in goodness’
+name was the company into which he had got.
+
+Mr. Foker was pleased with the new-comer. “It’s the man who would sing
+the Malay song at the Back Kitchen,” he whispered to Pen. “Try this
+pine, sir,” he then said to Colonel Altamont, “it’s uncommonly fine.”
+
+“Pines—I’ve seen ’em feed pigs on pines,” said the Colonel.
+
+“All the Nawaub of Lucknow’s pigs are fed on pines,” Strong whispered
+to Major Pendennis.
+
+“Oh, of course,” the Major answered. Sir Francis Clavering was, in the
+meanwhile, endeavouring to make an excuse to his brother-guest for the
+new-comer’s condition, and muttered something regarding Altamont, that
+he was an extraordinary character, very eccentric, very—had Indian
+habits—didn’t understand the rules of English society—to which old
+Welbore, a shrewd old gentleman, who drank his wine with great
+regularity, said, “that seemed pretty clear.”
+
+Then the Colonel, seeing Pen’s honest face, regarded it for a while
+with as much steadiness as became his condition; and said, “I know you,
+too, young fellow. I remember you. Baymouth ball, by Jingo. Wanted to
+fight the Frenchman. I remember you;” and he laughed, and he squared
+with his fists, and seemed hugely amused in the drunken depths of his
+mind, as these recollections passed, or, rather, reeled across it.
+
+“Mr. Pendennis, you remember Colonel Altamont, at Baymouth?” Strong
+said: upon which Pen, bowing rather stiffly, said, “he had the pleasure
+of remembering that circumstance perfectly.”
+
+“What’s his name?” cried the Colonel. Strong named Mr. Pendennis again.
+
+“Pendennis!—Pendennis be hanged!” Altamont roared out to the surprise
+of every one, and thumping with his fist on the table.
+
+“My name is also Pendennis, sir,” said the Major, whose dignity was
+exceedingly mortified by the evening’s events—that he, Major Pendennis,
+should have been asked to such a party, and that a drunken man should
+have been introduced to it. “My name is Pendennis, and I will be
+obliged to you not to curse it too loudly.”
+
+The tipsy man turned round to look at him, and as he looked, it
+appeared as if Colonel Altamont suddenly grew sober. He put his hand
+across his forehead, and in doing so, displaced somewhat the black wig
+which he wore; and his eyes stared fiercely at the Major, who, in his
+turn, like a resolute old warrior as he was, looked at his opponent
+very keenly and steadily. At the end of the mutual inspection, Altamont
+began to button up his brass-buttoned coat, and rising up from his
+chair, suddenly, and to the company’s astonishment, reeled towards the
+door, and issued from it, followed by Strong: all that the latter heard
+him utter was—“Captain Beak! Captain Beak, by jingo!”
+
+There had not passed above a quarter of an hour from his strange
+appearance to his equally sudden departure. The two young men and the
+baronet’s other guest wondered at the scene, and could find no
+explanation for it. Clavering seemed exceedingly pale and agitated, and
+turned with looks of almost terror towards Major Pendennis. The latter
+had been eyeing his host keenly for a moment or two. “Do you know him?”
+asked Sir Francis of the Major.
+
+“I am sure I have seen the fellow,” the Major replied, looking as if
+he, too, was puzzled. “Yes, I have it. He was a deserter from the Horse
+Artillery who got into the Nawaub’s service. I remember his face quite
+well.”
+
+“Oh!” said Clavering, with a sigh which indicated immense relief of
+mind, and the Major looked at him with a twinkle of his sharp old eyes.
+The cab which Strong had desired to be called, drove away with the
+Chevalier and Colonel Altamont; coffee was brought to the remaining
+gentlemen, and they went upstairs to the ladies in the drawing-room,
+Foker declaring confidentially to Pen that “this was the rummest go he
+ever saw,” which decision Pen said, laughing, “Showed great
+discrimination on Mr. Foker’s part.”
+
+Then, according to her promise, Miss Amory made music for the young
+men. Foker was enraptured with her performance, and kindly joined in
+the airs which she sang, when he happened to be acquainted with them.
+Pen affected to talk aside with others of the party, but Blanche
+brought him quickly to the piano, by singing some of his own words,
+those which we have given in a previous number, indeed, and which the
+Sylphide had herself, she said, set to music. I don’t know whether the
+air was hers, or how much of it was arranged for her by Signor
+Twankidillo, from whom she took lessons: but good or bad, original or
+otherwise, it delighted Mr. Pen, who remained by her side, and turned
+the leaves now for her most assiduously—“Gad! how I wish I could write
+verses like you, Pen,” Foker sighed afterwards to his companion. “If I
+could do ’em, wouldn’t I, that’s all? But I never was a dab at writing,
+you see, and I’m sorry I was so idle when I was at school.”
+
+No mention was made before the ladies of the curious little scene which
+had been transacted below-stairs; although Pen was just on the point of
+describing it to Miss Amory, when that young lady inquired for Captain
+Strong, who she wished should join her in a duet. But chancing to look
+up towards Sir Francis Clavering, Arthur saw a peculiar expression of
+alarm in the baronet’s ordinarily vacuous face, and discreetly held his
+tongue. It was rather a dull evening. Welbore went to sleep as he
+always did at music and after dinner: nor did Major Pendennis entertain
+the ladies with copious anecdotes and endless little scandalous
+stories, as his wont was, but sate silent for the most part, and
+appeared to be listening to the music, and watching the fair young
+performer.
+
+The hour of departure having arrived the Major rose, regretting that so
+delightful an evening should have passed away so quickly, and addressed
+a particularly fine compliment to Miss Amory upon her splendid talents
+as a singer. “Your daughter, Lady Clavering,” he said to that lady, “is
+a perfect nightingale—a perfect nightingale, begad! I have scarcely
+ever heard anything equal to her, and her pronunciation of every
+language—begad, of every language—seems to me to be perfect; and the
+best houses in London must open before a young lady who has such
+talents, and, allow an old fellow to say, Miss Amory, such a face.”
+
+Blanche was as much astonished by these compliments as Pen was, to whom
+his uncle, a little time since, had been speaking in very disparaging
+terms of the Sylph. The Major and the two young men walked home
+together, after Mr. Foker had placed his mother in her carriage, and
+procured a light for an enormous cigar.
+
+The young gentleman’s company or his tobacco did not appear to be
+agreeable to Major Pendennis, who eyed him askance several times, and
+with a look which plainly indicated that he wished Mr. Foker would take
+his leave; but Foker hung on resolutely to the uncle and nephew, even
+until they came to the former’s door in Bury Street, where the Major
+wished the lads good night.
+
+“And I say, Pen,” he said in a confidential whisper, calling his nephew
+back, “mind you make a point of calling in Grosvenor Place to-morrow.
+They’ve been uncommonly civil; mons’ously civil and kind.”
+
+Pen promised and wondered, and the Major’s door having been closed upon
+him by Morgan, Foker took Pen’s arm, and walked with him for some time
+silently puffing his cigar. At last, when they had reached Charing
+Cross on Arthur’s way home to the Temple, Harry Foker relieved himself,
+and broke out with that eulogium upon poetry, and those regrets
+regarding a misspent youth which have just been mentioned. And all the
+way along the Strand, and up to the door of Pen’s very staircase, in
+Lamb Court, Temple, young Harry Foker did not cease to speak about
+singing and Blanche Amory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+Relates to Mr. Harry Foker’s Affairs
+
+
+Since that fatal but delightful night in Grosvenor Place, Mr. Harry
+Foker’s heart had been in such a state of agitation as you would hardly
+have thought so great a philosopher could endure. When we remember what
+good advice he had given to Pen in former days, how an early wisdom and
+knowledge of the world had manifested itself in this gifted youth; how
+a constant course of self-indulgence, such as becomes a gentleman of
+his means and expectations, ought by right to have increased his
+cynicism, and made him, with every succeeding day of his life, care
+less and less for every individual in the world, with the single
+exception of Mr. Harry Foker, one may wonder that he should fall into
+the mishap to which most of us are subject once or twice in our lives,
+and disquiet his great mind about a woman. But Foker, though early
+wise, was still a man. He could no more escape the common lot than
+Achilles, or Ajax, or Lord Nelson, or Adam our first father, and now,
+his time being come, young Harry became a victim to Love, the
+All-conqueror.
+
+When he went to the Back Kitchen that night after quitting Arthur
+Pendennis at his staircase-door in Lamb Court, the gin-twist and
+devilled turkey had no charms for him, the jokes of his companions fell
+flatly on his ear; and when Mr. Hodgen, the singer of ‘The Body
+Snatcher,’ had a new chant even more dreadful and humorous than that
+famous composition, Foker, although he appeared his friend, and said
+“Bravo, Hodgen,” as common politeness and his position as one of the
+chiefs of the Back Kitchen bound him to do, yet never distinctly heard
+one word of the song, which under its title of ‘The Cat in the
+Cupboard,’ Hodgen has since rendered so famous. Late and very tired, he
+slipped into his private apartments at home and sought the downy
+pillow, but his slumbers were disturbed by the fever of his soul, and
+the very instant that he woke from his agitated sleep, the image of
+Miss Amory presented itself to him, and said, “Here I am, I am your
+princess and beauty, you have discovered me, and shall care for nothing
+else hereafter.”
+
+Heavens, how stale and distasteful his former pursuits and friendships
+appeared to him! He had not been, up to the present time, much
+accustomed to the society of females of his own rank in life. When he
+spoke of such, he called them “modest women.” That virtue which, let us
+hope, they possessed, had not hitherto compensated to Mr. Foker for the
+absence of more lively qualities which most of his own relatives did
+not enjoy, and which he found in Mesdemoiselles, the ladies of the
+theatre. His mother, though good and tender, did not amuse her boy; his
+cousins, the daughters of his maternal uncle, the respectable Earl of
+Rosherville, wearied him beyond measure. One was blue, and a geologist;
+one was a horsewoman, and smoked cigars; one was exceedingly Low
+Church, and had the most heterodox views on religious matters; at
+least, so the other said, who was herself of the very Highest Church
+faction, and made the cupboard in her room into an oratory, and fasted
+on every Friday in the year. Their paternal house of Drummington, Foker
+could very seldom be got to visit. He swore he had rather go on the
+treadmill than stay there. He was not much beloved by the inhabitants.
+Lord Erith, Lord Rosherville’s heir, considered his cousin a low
+person, of deplorably vulgar habits and manners; while Foker, and with
+equal reason, voted Erith a prig and a dullard, the nightcap of the
+House of Commons, the Speaker’s opprobrium, the dreariest of
+philanthropic spouters. Nor could George Robert, Earl of Gravesend and
+Rosherville, ever forget that on one evening when he condescended to
+play at billiards with his nephew, that young gentleman poked his
+lordship in the side with his cue, and said, “Well, old cock, I’ve seen
+many a bad stroke in my life, but I never saw such a bad one as that
+there.” He played the game out with angelic sweetness of temper, for
+Harry was his guest as well as his nephew; but he was nearly having a
+fit in the night; and he kept to his own rooms until young Harry
+quitted Drummington on his return to Oxbridge, where the interesting
+youth was finishing his education at the time when the occurrence took
+place. It was an awful blow to the venerable earl; the circumstance was
+never alluded to in the family; he shunned Foker whenever he came to
+see them in London or in the country, and could hardly be brought to
+gasp out a “How d’ye do?” to the young blasphemer. But he would not
+break his sister Agnes’s heart, by banishing Harry from the family
+altogether; nor, indeed, could he afford to break with Mr. Foker,
+senior, between whom and his lordship there had been many private
+transactions, producing an exchange of bank-cheques from Mr. Foker, and
+autographs from the earl himself, with the letters I O U written over
+his illustrious signature.
+
+Besides the four daughters of Lord Gravesend whose various qualities
+have been enumerated in the former paragraph, his lordship was blessed
+with a fifth girl, the Lady Ana Milton, who, from her earliest years
+and nursery, had been destined to a peculiar position in life. It was
+ordained between her parents and her aunt, that when Mr Harry Foker
+attained a proper age, Lady Ann should become his wife. The idea had
+been familiar to her mind when she yet wore pinafores, and when Harry
+the dirtiest of little boys, used to come back with black eyes from
+school to Drummington, or to his father’s house of Logwood, where Lady
+Ann lived, much with her aunt. Both of the young people coincided with
+the arrangement proposed by the elders, without any protests or
+difficulty. It no more entered Lady Ann’s mind to question the order of
+her father, than it would have entered Esther’s to dispute the commands
+of Ahasuerus. The heir-apparent of the house of Foker was also
+obedient, for when the old gentleman said, “Harry, your uncle and I
+have agreed that when you’re of a proper age, you’ll marry Lady Ann.
+She won’t have any money, but she’s good blood, and a good one to look
+at, and I shall make you comfortable. If you refuse, you’ll have your
+mother’s jointure, and two hundred a year during my life”—Harry, who
+knew that his sire, though a man of few words, was yet implicitly to be
+trusted, acquiesced at once in the parental decree, and said, “Well,
+sir, if Ann’s agreeable, I say ditto. She’s not a bad-looking girl.”
+
+“And she has the best blood in England, sir. Your mother’s blood, your
+own blood, sir,” said the Brewer. “There’s nothing like it, sir.”
+
+“Well, sir, as you like it,” Harry replied. “When you want me, please
+ring the bell. Only there’s no hurry, and I hope you’ll give us a long
+day. I should like to have my fling out before I marry.”
+
+“Fling away, Harry,” answered the benevolent father. “Nobody prevents
+you, do they?” And so very little more was said upon this subject, and
+Mr. Harry pursued those amusements in life which suited him best; and
+hung up a little picture of his cousin in his sitting-room, amidst the
+French prints, the favourite actresses and dancers, the racing and
+coaching works of art, which suited his taste and formed his gallery.
+It was an insignificant little picture, representing a simple round
+face with ringlets; and it made, as it must be confessed, a very poor
+figure by the side of Mademoiselle Petitot, dancing over a rainbow, or
+Mademoiselle Redowa, grinning in red boots and a lancer’s cap.
+
+Being engaged and disposed of, Lady Ann Milton did not go out so much
+in the world as her sisters: and often stayed at home in London at the
+parental house in Gaunt Square, when her mamma with the other ladies
+went abroad. They talked and they danced with one man after another,
+and the men came and went, and the stories about them were various. But
+there was only this one story about Ann: she was engaged to Harry
+Foker: she never was to think about anybody else. It was not a very
+amusing story.
+
+Well, the instant Foker awoke on the day after Lady Clavering’s dinner,
+there was Blanche’s image glaring upon him with its clear grey eyes,
+and winning smile. There was her tune ringing in his ears, “Yet round
+about the spot, ofttimes I hover, ofttimes I hover,” which poor Foker
+began piteously to hum, as he sat up in his bed under the crimson
+silken coverlet. Opposite him was a French Print, of a Turkish lady and
+her Greek lover, surprised by a venerable Ottoman, the lady’s husband;
+on the other wall was a French print of a gentleman and lady, riding
+and kissing each other at full gallop; all round the chaste bedroom
+were more French prints, either portraits of gauzy nymphs of the Opera,
+or lovely illustrations of the novels; or mayhap, an English
+chef-d’oeuvre or two, in which Miss Calverley of T. R. E. O. would be
+represented in tight pantaloons in her favourite page part; or Miss
+Rougemont as Venus; their value enhanced by the signatures of these
+ladies, Maria Calverley, or Frederica Rougemont, inscribed underneath
+the prints in an exquisite facsimile. Such were the pictures in which
+honest Harry delighted. He was no worse than many of his neighbours; he
+was an idle jovial kindly fast man about town; and if his rooms were
+rather profusely decorated with works of French art, so that simple
+Lady Agnes, his mamma on entering the apartments where her darling sate
+enveloped in fragrant clouds of Latakia, was often bewildered by the
+novelties which she beheld there, why, it must be remembered, that he
+was richer than most young men, and could better afford to gratify his
+taste.
+
+A letter from Miss Calverley written in a very degage style of spelling
+and handwriting, scrawling freely over the filagree paper, and
+commencing by calling Mr. Harry, her dear Hokey-pokey-fokey, lay on his
+bed table by his side, amidst keys, sovereigns, cigar-cases, and a bit
+of verbena, which Miss Amory had given him, and reminding him of the
+arrival of the day when he was ‘to stand that dinner at the Elefant and
+Castle, at Richmond, which he had promised;’ a card for a private box
+at Miss Rougemont’s approaching benefit, a bundle of tickets for ‘Ben
+Budgeon’s night, the North Lancashire Pippin, at Martin Faunce’s, the
+Three-cornered Hat, in St. Martin’s Lane; where Conkey Sam, Dick the
+Nailor, and Deadman (the Worcestershire Nobber), would put on the
+gloves, and the lovers of the good old British sport were invited to
+attend’—these and sundry other memoirs of Mr. Foker’s pursuits and
+pleasure lay on the table by his side when he woke.
+
+Ah! how faint all these pleasures seemed now. What did he care for
+Conkey Sam or the Worcestershire Nobber? What for the French prints
+ogling him from all sides of the room; those regular stunning slap-up
+out-and-outers? And Calverley spelling bad, and calling him
+Hokey-fokey, confound her impudence! The idea of being engaged to a
+dinner at the Elephant and Castle at Richmond with that old woman (who
+was seven-and-thirty years old, if she was a day) filled his mind with
+dreary disgust now, instead of that pleasure which he had only
+yesterday expected to find from the entertainment.
+
+When his fond mamma beheld her boy that morning, she remarked on the
+pallor of his cheek, and the general gloom of his aspect. “Why do you
+go on playing billiards at that wicked Spratt’s?” Lady Agnes asked. “My
+dearest child, those billiards will kill you, I’m sure they will.”
+
+“It isn’t the billiards,” Harry said, gloomily.
+
+“Then it’s the dreadful Back Kitchen,” said the Lady Agnes. “I’ve often
+thought, d’you know, Harry, of writing to the landlady, and begging
+that she would have the kindness to put only very little wine in the
+negus which you take, and see that you have your shawl on before you
+get into your brougham.”
+
+“Do, ma’am. Mrs Cutts is a most kind motley woman,” Harry said. “But it
+isn’t the Back Kitchen, neither,” he added, with a ghastly sigh.
+
+As Lady Agnes never denied her son anything, and fell into all his ways
+with the fondest acquiescence, she was rewarded by a perfect confidence
+on young Harry’s part, who never thought to disguise from her a
+knowledge of the haunts which he frequented; and, on the contrary,
+brought her home choice anecdotes from the clubs and billiard-rooms,
+which the simple lady relished, if she did not understand. “My son goes
+to Spratt’s,” she would say to her confidential friends. “All the young
+men go to Spratt’s after their balls. It is de rigueur, my dear; and
+they play billiards as they used to play macao and hazard in Mr. Fox’s
+time. Yes, my dear father often told me that they sate up always until
+nine o’clock the next morning with Mr. Fox at Brookes’s, whom I
+remember at Drummington, when I was a little girl, in a buff waistcoat
+and black satin small-clothes. My brother Erith never played as a young
+man, nor sate up late—he had no health for it; but my boy must do as
+everybody does, you know. Yes, and then he often goes to a place called
+the Back Kitchen, frequented by all the wits and authors, you know,
+whom one does not see in society, but whom it is a great privilege and
+pleasure for Harry to meet, and there he hears the questions of the day
+discussed; and my dear father often said that it was our duty to
+encourage literature, and he had hoped to see the late Dr. Johnson at
+Drummington, only Dr. Johnson died. Yes, and Mr. Sheridan came over,
+and drank a great deal of wine,—everybody drank a great deal of wine in
+those days,—and papa’s wine-merchant’s bill was ten times as much as
+Erith’s is, who gets it as he wants it from Fortnum and Mason’s and
+doesn’t keep any stock at all.”
+
+“That was an uncommon good dinner we had yesterday, ma’am,” the artful
+Harry broke out. “Their clear soup’s better than ours. Moufflet will
+put too much taragon into everything. The supreme de volaille was very
+good—uncommon, and the sweets were better than Moufflet’s sweets. Did
+you taste the plombiere, ma’am, and the maraschino jelly? Stunningly
+good that maraschino jelly!”
+
+Lady Agnes expressed her agreement in these, as in almost all other
+sentiments of her son, who continued the artful conversation, saying—
+
+“Very handsome house that of the Claverings. Furniture, I should say,
+got up regardless of expense. Magnificent display of plate, ma’am.” The
+lady assented to all these propositions.
+
+“Very nice people the Claverings.”
+
+“H’m!” said Lady Agnes.
+
+“I know what you mean. Lady C. ain’t distangy exactly, but she is very
+good-natured.”
+
+“Oh, very,” mamma said, who was herself one of the most good-natured of
+women.
+
+“And Sir Francis, he don’t talk much before ladies; but after dinner he
+comes out uncommon strong, ma’am—a highly agreeable, well-informed man.
+When will you ask them to dinner? Look out for an early day, ma’am;”
+and looking into Lady Agnes’s pocket-book, he chose a day only a
+fortnight hence (an age that fortnight seemed to the young gentleman),
+when the Claverings were to be invited to Grosvenor-street.
+
+The obedient Lady Agnes wrote the required invitation. She was
+accustomed to do so without consulting her husband, who had his own
+society and habits, and who left his wife to see her own friends alone.
+Harry looked at the card; but there was an omission in the invitation
+which did not please him.
+
+“You have not asked Miss Whatdyecallem—Miss Emery, Lady Clavering’s
+daughter.”
+
+“Oh, that little creature!” Lady Agnes cried. “No! I think not, Harry.”
+
+“We must ask Miss Amory,” Foker said. “I—I want to ask Pendennis;
+and—and he’s very sweet upon her. Don’t you think she sings very well,
+ma’am?”
+
+“I thought her rather forward, and didn’t listen to her singing. She
+only sang at you and Mr. Pendennis, it seemed to me. But I will ask her
+if you wish, Harry,” and so Miss Amory’s name was written on the card
+with her mother’s.
+
+This piece of diplomacy being triumphantly executed Harry embraced his
+fond parent with the utmost affection, and retired to his own
+apartments where he stretched himself on his ottoman, and lay brooding
+silently, sighing for the day which was to bring the fair Miss Amory
+under his paternal roof, and devising a hundred wild schemes for
+meeting her.
+
+On his return from making the grand tour, Mr. Foker, Junior, had
+brought with him a polyglot valet, who took the place of Stoopid, and
+condescended to wait at dinner, attired in shirt fronts of worked
+muslin, with many gold studs and chains, upon his master and the elders
+of the family. This man, who was of no particular country, and spoke
+all languages indifferently ill, made himself useful to Mr. Harry in a
+variety of ways,—read all the artless youth’s correspondence, knew his
+favourite haunts and the addresses of his acquaintance, and officiated
+at the private dinners which the young gentleman gave. As Harry lay
+upon his sofa after his interview with his mamma, robed in a wonderful
+dressing-gown, and puffing his pipe in gloomy silence, Anatole, too,
+must have remarked that something affected his master’s spirits; though
+he did not betray any ill-bred sympathy with Harry’s agitation of mind.
+When Harry began to dress himself in his out-of-door morning costume,
+he was very hard indeed to please, and particularly severe and snappish
+about his toilet: he tried, and cursed, pantaloons of many different
+stripes, checks, and colours: all the boots were villainously
+varnished; the shirts too “loud” in pattern. He scented his linen and
+person with peculiar richness this day; and what must have been the
+valet’s astonishment, when, after some blushing and hesitation on
+Harry’s part, the young gentleman asked, “I say, Anatole, when I
+engaged you, didn’t you—hem—didn’t you say that you could
+dress—hem—dress hair?”
+
+The valet said, “Yes, he could.”
+
+“Cherchy alors une paire de tongs,—et—curly moi un peu,” Mr. Foker
+said, in an easy manner; and the valet, wondering whether his master
+was in love or was going masquerading, went in search of the
+articles,—first from the old butler who waited upon Mr. Foker, senior,
+on whose bald pate the tongs would have scarcely found a hundred hairs
+to seize, and finally of the lady who had the charge of the meek auburn
+fronts of the Lady Agnes. And the tongs being got, Monsieur Anatole
+twisted his young master’s locks until he had made Harry’s head as
+curly as a negro’s; after which the youth dressed himself with the
+utmost care and splendour, and proceeded to sally out.
+
+“At what dime sall I order de drag, sir, to be to Miss Calverley’s
+door, sir?” the attendant whispered as his master was going forth.
+
+“Confound her!—Put the dinner off—I can’t go!” said Foker. “No, hang
+it—I must go. Poyntz and Rougemont, and ever so many more are coming.
+The drag at Pelham Corner at six o’clock, Anatole.”
+
+The drag was not one of Mr. Foker’s own equipages, but was hired from a
+livery-stable for festive purposes; Foker, however, put his own
+carriage into requisition that morning, and for what purpose does the
+kind reader suppose? Why, to drive down to Lamb Court, Temple, taking
+Grosvenor Place by the way (which lies in the exact direction of the
+Temple from Grosvenor Street, as everybody knows), where he just had
+the pleasure of peeping upwards at Miss Amory’s pink window-curtains,
+having achieved which satisfactory feat, he drove off to Pen’s
+chambers. Why did he want to see his dear friend Pen so much? Why did
+he yearn and long after him; and did it seem necessary to Foker’s very
+existence that he should see Pen that morning, having parted with him
+in perfect health on the night previous? Pen had lived two years in
+London, and Foker had not paid half a dozen visits to his chambers.
+What sent him thither now in such a hurry?
+
+What?—If any young ladies read this page, I have only to inform them
+that, when the same mishap befalls them, which now had for more than
+twelve hours befallen Harry Foker, people will grow interesting to them
+for whom they did not care sixpence on the day before; as on the other
+hand persons of whom they fancied themselves fond will be found to have
+become insipid and disagreeable. Then you dearest Eliza, or Maria of
+the other day, to whom you wrote letters and sent locks of hair yards
+long, will on a sudden be as indifferent to you as your stupidest
+relation whilst, on the contrary, about his relations you will begin to
+feel such a warm interest! such a loving desire to ingratiate yourself
+with his mamma; such a liking for that dear kind old man his father! If
+He is in the habit of visiting at any house, what advances you will
+make in order to visit there too. If He has a married sister you will
+like to spend long mornings with her. You will fatigue your servant by
+sending notes to her, for which there will be the most pressing
+occasion, twice or thrice in a day. You will cry if your mamma objects
+to your going too often to see His family. The only one of them you
+will dislike, is perhaps his younger brother, who is at home for the
+holidays, and who will persist in staying in the room when you come to
+see your dear new-found friend, his darling second sister. Something
+like this will happen to you, young ladies, or, at any rate, let us
+hope it may. Yes, you must go through the hot fits and the cold fits of
+that pretty fever. Your mothers, if they would acknowledge it, have
+passed through it before you were born, your dear papa being the object
+of the passion, of course,—who could it be but he? And as you suffer
+it, so will your brothers, in their way,—and after their kind. More
+selfish than you: more eager and headstrong than you: they will rush on
+their destiny when the doomed charmer makes her appearance. Or if they
+don’t, and you don’t, Heaven help you! As the gambler said of his dice,
+to love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best.
+You don’t die of the complaint: or very few do. The generous wounded
+heart suffers and survives it. And he is not a man, or she a woman, who
+is not conquered by it, or who does not conquer it in his time.——Now,
+then, if you ask why Henry Foker, Esquire, was in such a hurry to see
+Arthur Pendennis, and felt such a sudden value and esteem for him,
+there is no difficulty in saying it was because Pen had become really
+valuable in Mr. Foker’s eyes: because if Pen was not the rose, he yet
+had been near that fragrant flower of love. Was not he in the habit of
+going to her house in London? Did he not live near her in the
+country?—know all about the enchantress? What, I wonder, would Lady Ann
+Milton, Mr. Foker’s cousin and pretendue, have said, if her ladyship
+had known all that was going on in the bosom of that funny little
+gentleman?
+
+Alas! when Foker reached Lamb Court, leaving his carriage for the
+admiration of the little clerks who were lounging in the archway that
+leads thence into Flag Court which leads into Upper Temple Lane,
+Warrington was in the chambers but Pen was absent. Pen was gone to the
+printing-office to see his proofs. “Would Foker have a pipe and should
+the laundress go to the Cock and get him some beer?”—Warrington asked,
+remarking with a pleased surprise the splendid toilet of this scented
+and shiny-booted young aristocrat; but Foker had not the slightest wish
+for beer or tobacco: he had very important business: he rushed away to
+the Pall Mall Gazette office, still bent upon finding Pen. Pen had
+quitted that pace. Foker wanted him that they might go together to call
+upon Lady Clavering. Foker went away disconsolate, and whiled away an
+hour or two vaguely at clubs: and when it was time to pay a visit, he
+thought it would be but decent and polite to drive to Grosvenor Place
+and leave a card upon Lady Clavering. He had not the courage to ask to
+see her when the door was opened, he only delivered two cards, with Mr.
+Henry Foker engraved upon them, to Jeames, in a speechless agony.
+Jeames received the tickets bowing his powdered head. The varnished
+doors closed upon him. The beloved object was as far as ever from him,
+though so near. He thought he heard the tones of a piano and of a syren
+singing, coming from the drawing-room and sweeping over the
+balcony-shrubbery of geraniums. He would have liked to stop and listen,
+but it might not be. “Drive to Tattersall’s,” he said to the groom, in
+a voice smothered with emotion,—“And bring my pony round,” he added, as
+the man drove rapidly away.
+
+As good luck would have it, that splendid barouche of Lady Clavering’s,
+which has been inadequately described in a former chapter, drove up to
+her ladyship’s door just as Foker mounted the pony which was in waiting
+for him. He bestrode the fiery animal, and dodged about the arch of the
+Green Park, keeping the carriage well in view, until he saw Lady
+Clavering enter, and with her—whose could be that angel form, but the
+enchantress’s, clad in a sort of gossamer, with a pink bonnet and a
+light-blue parasol,—but Miss Amory?
+
+The carriage took its fair owners to Madame Rigodon’s cap and lace
+shop, to Mrs Wolsey’s Berlin worsted shop,—who knows to what other
+resorts of female commerce? Then it went and took ices at Hunter’s, for
+Lady Clavering was somewhat florid in her tastes and amusements, and
+not only liked to go abroad in the most showy carriage in London, but
+that the public should see her in it too. And so, in a white bonnet
+with a yellow feather, she ate a large pink ice in the sunshine before
+Hunter’s door, till Foker on his pony, and the red jacket who
+accompanied him, were almost tired of dodging.
+
+Then at last she made her way into the Park, and the rapid Foker made
+his dash forward. What to do? Just to get a nod of recognition from
+Miss Amory and her mother; to cross them a half-dozen times in the
+drive; to watch and ogle them from the other side of the ditch, where
+the horsemen assemble when the band plays in Kensington Gardens. What
+is the use of looking at a woman in a pink bonnet across a ditch? What
+is the earthly good to be got out of a nod of the head? Strange that
+men will be contented with such pleasures, or if not contented, at
+least that they will be so eager in seeking them. Not one word did
+Harry, he so fluent of conversation ordinarily, change with his charmer
+on that day. Mutely he beheld her return to her carriage, and drive
+away among rather ironical salutes from the young men in the Park. One
+said that the Indian widow was making the paternal rupees spin rapidly;
+another said that she ought to have burned herself alive, and left the
+money to her daughter. This one asked who Clavering was?—and old Tom
+Eales, who knew everybody, and never missed a day in the Park on his
+grey cob, kindly said that Clavering had come into an estate over head
+and heels in mortgage: that there were dev’lish ugly stories about him
+when he was a young man, and that it was reported of him that he had a
+share in a gambling-house, and had certainly shown the white feather in
+his regiment. “He plays still; he is in a hell every night almost,” Mr.
+Eales added.
+
+“I should think so, since his marriage,” said a wag.
+
+“He gives devilish good dinners,” said Foker, striking up for the
+honour of his host of yesterday.
+
+“I daresay, and I daresay he doesn’t ask Eales,” the wag said. “I say,
+Eales, do you dine at Clavering’s,—at the Begum’s?”
+
+“I dine there?” said Mr. Eales, who would have dined with Beelzebub if
+sure of a good cook, and when he came away, would have painted his host
+blacker than fate had made him.
+
+“You might, you know, although you do abuse him so,” continued the wag.
+“They say it’s very pleasant. Clavering goes to sleep after dinner; the
+Begum gets tipsy with cherry-brandy, and the young lady sings songs to
+the young gentlemen. She sings well, don’t she, Fo?”
+
+“Slap up,” said Fo. “I tell you what, Poyntz, she sings like a
+whatdyecallum—you know what I mean—like a mermaid, you know, but that’s
+not their name.”
+
+“I never heard a mermaid sing,” Mr. Poyntz, the wag, replied. “Whoever
+heard a mermaid? Eales, you are an old fellow, did you?”
+
+“Don’t make a lark of me, hang it, Poyntz,” said Foker, turning red,
+and with tears almost in his eyes, “you know what I mean: it’s those
+what’s-his-names—in Homer, you know. I never said I was a good
+scholar.”
+
+“And nobody ever said it of you, my boy,” Mr. Poyntz remarked, and
+Foker striking spurs into his pony, cantered away down Rotten Row, his
+mind agitated with various emotions, ambitions, mortifications. He was
+sorry that he had not been good at his books in early life—that he
+might have cut out all those chaps who were about her, and who talked
+the languages, and wrote poetry, and painted pictures in her album,
+and—and that—“What am I,” thought little Foker, “compared to her? She’s
+all soul, she is, and can write poetry or compose music, as easy as I
+could drink a glass of beer. Beer?—damme, that’s all I’m fit for, is
+beer. I am a poor, ignorant little beggar, good for nothing but Foker’s
+Entire. I misspent my youth, and used to get the chaps to do my
+exercises. And what’s the consequences now? Oh, Harry Foker, what a
+confounded little fool you have been!”
+
+As he made this dreary soliloquy, he had cantered out of Rotten Row
+into the Park, and there was on the point of riding down a large old
+roomy family carriage, of which he took no heed, when a cheery voice
+cried out, “Harry, Harry!” and looking up, he beheld his aunt, the Lady
+Rosherville, and two of her daughters, of whom the one who spoke was
+Harry’s betrothed, the Lady Ann.
+
+He started back with a pale, scared look, as a truth about which he had
+not thought during the whole day, came across him. There was his fate,
+there, in the back seat of that carriage.
+
+“What is the matter, Harry? why are you so pale? You have been raking
+and smoking too much, you wicked boy,” said Lady Ann.
+
+Foker said, “How do, aunt,” “How do, Ann,” in a perturbed
+manner—muttered something about a pressing engagement,—indeed he saw by
+the Park clock that he must have been keeping his party in the drag
+waiting for nearly an hour—and waved a good-bye. The little man and the
+little pony were out of sight in an instant—the great carriage rolled
+away. Nobody inside was very much interested about his coming or going;
+the Countess being occupied with her spaniel, the Lady Lucy’s thoughts
+and eyes being turned upon a volume of sermons, and those of the Lady
+Ann upon a new novel, which the sisters had just procured from the
+library.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+Carries the Reader both to Richmond and Greenwich
+
+
+Poor Foker found the dinner at Richmond to be the most dreary
+entertainment upon which ever mortal man wasted his guineas. “I wonder
+how the deuce I could ever have liked these people,” he thought in his
+own mind. “Why, I can see the crow’s-feet under Rougemont’s eyes, and
+the paint on her cheeks is laid on as thick as Clown’s in a pantomime!
+The way in which that Calverley talks slang, is quite disgusting. I
+hate chaff in a woman. And old Colchicum! that old Col, coming down
+here in his brougham, with his coronet on it, and sitting bodkin
+between Mademoiselle Coralie and her mother! It’s too bad. An English
+peer, and a horse-rider of Franconi’s!—It won’t do; by Jove, it won’t
+do. I ain’t proud; but it will not do!”
+
+“Twopence-halfpenny for your thoughts, Fokey!” cried out Miss
+Rougemont, taking her cigar from her truly vermilion lips, as she
+beheld the young fellow lost in thought, seated at the head of his
+table, amidst melting ices, and cut pineapples, and bottles full and
+empty, and cigar-ashes scattered on fruit, and the ruins of a dessert
+which had no pleasure for him.
+
+“Does Foker ever think?” drawled out Mr. Poyntz. “Foker, here is a
+considerable sum of money offered by a fair capitalist at this end of
+the table for the present emanations of your valuable and acute
+intellect, old boy!”
+
+“What the deuce is that Poyntz a talking about?” Miss Calverley asked
+of her neighbour. “I hate him. He’s a drawlin’, sneerin’ beast.”
+
+“What a droll of a little man is that little Fokare, my lor’,”
+Mademoiselle Coralie said, in her own language, and with the rich twang
+of that sunny Gascony in which her swarthy cheeks and bright black eyes
+had got their fire. “What a droll of a man! He does not look to have
+twenty years.”
+
+“I wish I were of his age,” said the venerable Colchicum, with a sigh,
+as he inclined his purple face towards a large goblet of claret.
+
+“C’te Jeunesse. Peuh! je m’en fiche” said Madame Brack, Coralie’s
+mamma, taking a great pinch out of Lord Colchicum’s delicate gold
+snuff-box. “Je m’aime que les hommes faits, moi. Comme milor. Coralie!
+n’est-ce pas que tu n’aimes que les hommes faits, ma bichette?”
+
+My lord said, with a grin, “You flatter me, Madame Brack.”
+
+“Taisez-vous, Maman, vous n’etes qu’une bete,” Coralie cried, with a
+shrug of her robust shoulders; upon which, my lord said that she did
+not flatter at any rate; and pocketed his snuff-box, not desirous that
+Madame Brack’s dubious fingers should plunge too frequently into his
+Mackabaw.
+
+There is no need to give a prolonged detail of the animated
+conversation which ensued during the rest of the banquet; a
+conversation which would not much edify the reader. And it is scarcely
+necessary to say, that all ladies of the corps de dance are not like
+Miss Calverley, any more than that all peers resemble that illustrious
+member of their order, the late lamented Viscount Colchicum. But there
+have been such in our memories who have loved the society of riotous
+youth better than the company of men of their own age and rank, and
+have given the young ones the precious benefit of their experience and
+example; and there have been very respectable men too who have not
+objected so much to the kind of entertainment as to the publicity of
+it. I am sure, for instance, that our friend Major Pendennis would have
+made no sort of objection to join a party of pleasure, provided that it
+were en petit comite, and that such men as my Lord Steyne and my Lord
+Colchicum were of the society. “Give the young men their pleasures,”
+this worthy guardian said to Pen more than once. “I’m not one of your
+strait-laced moralists, but an old man of the world, begad; and I know
+that as long as it lasts young men will be young men.” And there were
+some young men to whom this estimable philosopher accorded about
+seventy years as the proper period for sowing their wild oats: but they
+were men of fashion.
+
+Mr. Foker drove his lovely guests home to Brompton in the drag that
+night; but he was quite thoughtful and gloomy during the whole of the
+little journey from Richmond; neither listening to the jokes of the
+friends behind him and on the box by his side nor enlivening them as
+was his wont, by his own facetious sallies. And when the ladies whom he
+had conveyed alighted at the door of their house, and asked their
+accomplished coachman whether he would not step in and take something
+to drink, he declined with so melancholy an air, that they supposed
+that the Governor and he had had a difference or that some calamity had
+befallen him; and he did not tell these people what the cause of his
+grief was, but left Mesdames Rougemont and Calverley, unheeding the
+cries of the latter, who hung over her balcony like Jezebel, and called
+out to him to ask him to give another party soon.
+
+He sent the drag home under the guidance of one of the grooms, and went
+on foot himself; his hands in his pockets, plunged in thought. The
+stars and moon shining tranquilly overhead, looked down upon Mr. Foker
+that night, as he in his turn sentimentally regarded them. And he went
+and gazed upwards at the house in Grosvenor Place, and at the windows
+which he supposed to be those of the beloved object; and he moaned and
+he sighed in a way piteous and surprising to witness, which Policeman X
+did, who informed Sir Francis Clavering’s people, as they took the
+refreshment of beer on the coach-box at the neighbouring public-house,
+after bringing home their lady from the French play, that there had
+been another chap hanging about the premises that evening—a little
+chap, dressed like a swell.
+
+And now with that perspicuity and ingenuity and enterprise which only
+belongs to a certain passion, Mr. Foker began to dodge Miss Amory
+through London, and to appear wherever he could meet her. If Lady
+Clavering went to the French play, where her ladyship had a box, Mr.
+Foker, whose knowledge of the language, as we have heard, was not
+conspicuous, appeared in a stall. He found out where her engagements
+were (it is possible that Anatole, his man, was acquainted with Sir
+Francis Clavering’s gentleman, and so got a sight of her ladyship’s
+engagement-book), and at many of these evening parties Mr. Foker made
+his appearance—to the surprise of the world, and of his mother
+especially, whom he ordered to apply for cards to these parties, for
+which until now he had shown a supreme contempt. He told the pleased
+and unsuspicious lady that he went to parties because it was right for
+him to see the world: he told her that he went to the French play
+because he wanted to perfect himself in the language, and there was no
+such good lesson as a comedy or vaudeville,—and when one night the
+astonished Lady Agnes saw him stand up and dance, and complimented him
+upon his elegance and activity, the mendacious little rogue asserted
+that he had learned to dance in Paris, whereas Anatole knew that his
+young master used to go off privily to an academy in Brewer Street, and
+study there for some hours in the morning. The casino of our modern
+days was not invented, or was in its infancy as yet; and gentlemen of
+Mr. Foker’s time had not the facilities of acquiring the science of
+dancing which are enjoyed by our present youth.
+
+Old Pendennis seldom missed going to church. He considered it to be his
+duty as a gentleman to patronise the institution of public worship and
+that it was quite a correct thing to be seen at church of a Sunday. One
+day it chanced that he and Arthur went thither together: the latter,
+who was now in high favour, had been to breakfast with his uncle, from
+whose lodging they walked across the park to a church not far from
+Belgrave Square. There was a charity sermon at Saint James’s, as the
+Major knew by the bills posted on the pillars of his parish church,
+which probably caused him, for he was a thrifty man, to forsake it for
+that day: besides he had other views for himself and Pen. “We will go
+to church, sir, across the Park; and then, begad, we will go to the
+Claverings’ house and ask them for lunch in a friendly way. Lady
+Clavering likes to be asked for lunch, and is uncommonly kind, and
+monstrous hospitable.”
+
+“I met them at dinner last week, at Lady Agnes Foker’s, sir,” Pen said,
+“and the Begum was very kind indeed. So she was in the country: so she
+is everywhere. But I share your opinion about Miss Amory; one of your
+opinions, that is, uncle, for you were changing the last time we spoke
+about her.”
+
+“And what do you think of her now?” the elder said.
+
+“I think her the most confounded little flirt in London,” Pen answered,
+laughing “She made a tremendous assault upon Harry Foker, who sat next
+to her; and to whom she gave all the talk, though I took her down.”
+
+“Bah! Henry Foker is engaged to his cousin all the world knows it: not
+a bad coup of Lady Rosherville’s, that. I should say, that the young
+man at his father’s death, and old Foker’s life’s devilish bad: you
+know he had a fit at Arthur’s, last year: I should say, that young
+Foker won’t have less than fourteen thousand a year from the brewery,
+besides Logwood and Norfolk property. I’ve no pride about me, Pen. I
+like a man of birth certainly, but dammy, I like a brewery which brings
+in a man fourteen thousand a year; hey, Pen? Ha, ha, that’s the sort of
+man for me. And I recommend you now that you are lanced in the world,
+to stick to fellows of that sort, to fellows who have a stake in the
+country, begad.”
+
+“Foker sticks to me, sir,” Arthur answered. “He has been at our
+chambers several times lately. He has asked me to dinner. We are almost
+as great friends, as we used to be in our youth: and his talk is about
+Blanche Amory from morning till night. I’m sure he’s sweet upon her.”
+
+“I’m sure he is engaged to his cousin, and that they will keep the
+young man to his bargain,” said the Major. “The marriages in these
+families are affairs of state. Lady Agnes was made to marry old Foker
+by the late Lord, although she was notoriously partial to her cousin
+who was killed at Albuera afterwards, and who saved her life out of the
+lake at Drummington. I remember Lady Agnes, sir, an exceedingly fine
+woman. But what did she do?—of course she married her father’s man.
+Why, Mr. Foker sate for Drummington till the Reform Bill, and paid
+dev’lish well for his seat, too. And you may depend upon this, sir,
+that Foker senior, who is a parvenu, and loves a great man, as all
+parvenus do, has ambitious views for his son as well as himself, and
+that your friend Harry must do as his father bids him. Lord bless you!
+I’ve known a hundred cases of love in young men and women: hey, Master
+Arthur, do you take me? They kick, sir, they resist, they make a deuce
+of a riot and that sort of thing, but they end by listening to reason,
+begad.”
+
+“Blanche is a dangerous girl, sir,” Pen said. “I was smitten with her
+myself once, and very far gone, too,” he added; “but that is years
+ago.”
+
+“Were you? How far did it go? Did she return it?” asked the Major,
+looking hard at Pen.
+
+Pen, with a laugh, said “that at one time he did think he was pretty
+well in Miss Amory’s good graces. But my mother did not like her, and
+the affair went off.” Pen did not think it fit to tell his uncle all
+the particulars of that courtship which had passed between himself and
+the young lady.
+
+“A man might go farther and fare worse, Arthur,” the Major said, still
+looking queerly at his nephew.
+
+“Her birth, sir; her father was the mate of a ship, they say: and she
+has not money enough,” objected Pen, in a dandified manner. “What’s ten
+thousand pound and a girl bred up like her?”
+
+“You use my own words, and it is all very well. But, I tell you in
+confidence, Pen,—in strict honour, mind,—that it’s my belief she has a
+devilish deal more than ten thousand pound: and from what I saw of her
+the other day, and—and have heard of her—I should say she was a
+devilish accomplished, clever girl: and would make a good wife with a
+sensible husband.”
+
+“How do you know about her money?” Pen asked, smiling. “You seem to
+have information about everybody, and to know about all the town.”
+
+“I do know a few things, sir, and I don’t tell all I know. Mark that,”
+the uncle replied. “And as for that charming Miss Amory,—for charming,
+begad! she is,—if I saw her Mrs. Arthur Pendennis, I should neither be
+sorry nor surprised, begad! and if you object to ten thousand pound,
+what would you say, sir, to thirty, or forty, or fifty?” and the Major
+looked still more knowingly, and still harder at Pen.
+
+“Well, sir,” he said to his godfather and namesake, “make her Mrs.
+Arthur Pendennis. You can do it as well as I.”
+
+“Psha! you are laughing at me, sir,” the other replied rather
+peevishly, “and you ought not to laugh so near a church gate. Here we
+are at St. Benedict’s. They say Mr. Oriel is a beautiful preacher.”
+
+Indeed, the bells were tolling, the people were trooping into the
+handsome church, the carriages of the inhabitants of the lordly quarter
+poured forth their pretty loads of devotees, in whose company Pen and
+his uncle, ending their edifying conversation, entered the fane. I do
+not know whether other people carry their worldly affairs to the church
+door. Arthur, who, from habitual reverence and feeling, was always more
+than respectful in a place of worship, thought of the incongruity of
+their talk, perhaps; whilst the old gentleman at his side was utterly
+unconscious of any such contrast. His hat was brushed: his wig was
+trim: his neckcloth was perfectly tied. He looked at every soul in the
+congregation, it is true: the bald heads and the bonnets, the flowers
+and the feathers: but so demurely that he hardly lifted up his eyes
+from his book—from his book which he could not read without glasses. As
+for Pen’s gravity, it was sorely put to the test when, upon looking by
+chance towards the seats where the servants were collected, he spied
+out, by the side of a demure gentleman in plush, Henry Foker, Esquire,
+who had discovered this place of devotion. Following the direction of
+Harry’s eye, which strayed a good deal from his book, Pen found that it
+alighted upon a yellow bonnet and a pink one: and that these bonnets
+were on the heads of Lady Clavering and Blanche Amory. If Pen’s uncle
+is not the only man who has talked about his worldly affairs up to the
+church door, is poor Harry Foker the only one who has brought his
+worldly love into the aisle?
+
+When the congregation issued forth at the conclusion of the service,
+Foker was out amongst the first, but Pen came up with him presently, as
+he was hankering about the entrance, which he was unwilling to leave,
+until my lady’s barouche, with the bewigged coachman, had borne away
+its mistress and her daughter from their devotions.
+
+When the two ladies came out, they found together the Pendennises,
+uncle and nephew, and Harry Foker, Esquire, sucking the crook of his
+stick, standing there in the sunshine. To see and to ask to eat were
+simultaneous with the good-natured Begum, and she invited the three
+gentlemen to luncheon straightway.
+
+Blanche was, too, particularly gracious. “O! do come,” she said to
+Arthur, “if you are not too great a man. I want so to talk to you
+about—but we mustn’t say what, here, you know. What would Mr. Oriel
+say?” And the young devotee jumped into the carriage after her
+mamma.—“I’ve read every word of it. It’s adorable,” she added, still
+addressing herself to Pen.
+
+“I know who is,” said Mr. Arthur, making rather a pert bow.
+
+“What’s the row about?” asked Mr. Foker, rather puzzled.
+
+“I suppose Miss Clavering means ‘Walter Lorraine,’” said the Major,
+looking knowing, and nodding at Pen.
+
+“I suppose so, sir. There was a famous review in the Pall Mall this
+morning. It was Warrington’s doing though, and I must not be too
+proud.”
+
+“A review in Pall Mall?—Walter Lorraine? What the doose do you mean?”
+Foker asked. “Walter Lorraine died of the measles, poor little beggar,
+when we were at Grey Friars. I remember his mother coming up.”
+
+“You are not a literary man, Foker,” Pen said, laughing, and hooking
+his arm into his friend’s. “You must know I have been writing a novel,
+and some of the papers have spoken very well of it. Perhaps you don’t
+read the Sunday Papers?”
+
+“I read Bell’s Life regular, old boy,” Mr Foker answered: at which Pen
+laughed again, and the three gentlemen proceeded in great good-humour
+to Lady Clavering’s house.
+
+The subject of the novel was resumed after luncheon by Miss Amory, who
+indeed loved poets and men of letters if she loved anything, and was
+sincerely an artist in feeling. “Some of the passages in the book made
+me cry, positively they did,” she said.
+
+Pen said, with some fatuity, “I am happy to think I have a part of vos
+larmes, Miss Blanche,”—and the Major (who had not read more than six
+pages of Pen’s book) put on his sanctified look, saying, “Yes, there
+are some passages quite affecting, mons’ous affecting:” and,—“Oh, if it
+makes you cry,”—Lady Amory declared she would not read it, “that she
+wouldn’t.”
+
+“Don’t, mamma,” Blanche said, with a French shrug of her shoulders; and
+then she fell into a rhapsody about the book, about the snatches of
+poetry interspersed in it about the two heroines, Leonora and Neaera;
+about the two heroes, Walter Lorraine and his rival the young Duke—“and
+what good company you introduce us to,” said the young lady archly
+“quel ton! How much of your life have you passed at court, and are you
+a prime minister’s son, Mr. Arthur?”
+
+Pen began to laugh—“It is as cheap for a novelist to create a Duke as
+to make a Baronet,” he said. “Shall I tell you a secret, Miss Amory? I
+promoted all my characters at the request of the publisher. The young
+Duke was only a young Baron when the novel was first written; his false
+friend, the Viscount, was a simple commoner and so on with all the
+characters of the story.”
+
+“What a wicked, satirical, pert young man you have become! Comme vous
+voila forme!” said the young lady. “How different from Arthur Pendennis
+of the country! Ah! I think I like Arthur Pendennis of the country
+best, though!” and she gave him the full benefit of her eyes,—both of
+the fond appealing glance into his own, and of the modest look
+downwards towards the carpet, which showed off her dark eyelids and
+long fringed lashes.
+
+Pen of course protested that he had not changed in the least, to which
+the young lady replied by a tender sigh; and thinking that she had done
+quite enough to make Arthur happy or miserable (as the case might be),
+she proceeded to cajole his companion, Mr. Harry Foker, who during the
+literary conversation had sate silently imbibing the head of his cane,
+and wishing that he was a clever chap like that Pen.
+
+If the Major thought that by telling Miss Amory of Mr. Foker’s
+engagement to his cousin, Lady Ann Milton (which information the old
+gentleman neatly conveyed to the girl as he sate by her side at
+luncheon below-stairs),—if, we say, the Major thought that the
+knowledge of this fact would prevent Blanche from paying any further
+attention to the young heir of Foker’s Entire, he was entirely
+mistaken. She became only the more gracious to Foker: she praised him,
+and everything belonging to him; she praised his mamma; she praised the
+pony which he rode in the Park; she praised the lovely breloques or
+gimcracks which the young gentleman wore at his watch-chain, and that
+dear little darling of a cane, and those dear little delicious monkeys’
+heads with ruby eyes, which ornamented Harry’s shirt, and formed the
+buttons of his waistcoat. And then, having praised and coaxed the weak
+youth until he blushed and tingled with pleasure, and until Pen thought
+she really had gone quite far enough, she took another theme.
+
+“I am afraid Mr. Foker is a very sad young man,” she said, turning
+round to Pen.
+
+“He does not look so,” Pen answered with a sneer.
+
+“I mean we have heard sad stories about him. Haven’t we, mamma? What
+was Mr. Poyntz saying here, the other day, about that party at
+Richmond? O you naughty creature!” But here, seeing that Harry’s
+countenance assumed a great expression of alarm, while Pen’s wore a
+look of amusement, she turned to the latter and said, “I believe you
+are just as bad: I believe you would have liked to have been
+there,—wouldn’t you? I know you would: yes—and so should I.”
+
+“Lor, Blanche!” mamma cried.
+
+“Well, I would. I never saw an actress in my life. I would give
+anything to know one; for I adore talent. And I adore Richmond, that I
+do; and I adore Greenwich, and I say, I should like to go there.”
+
+“Why should not we three bachelors,” the Major here broke out,
+gallantly, and to his nephew’s special surprise, “beg these ladies to
+honour us with their company at Greenwich? Is Lady Clavering to go on
+for ever being hospitable to us, and may we make no return? Speak for
+yourselves, young men,—eh, begad! Here is my nephew, with his pockets
+full of money—his pockets full, begad! and Mr. Henry Foker, who, as I
+have heard say, is pretty well to do in the world,—how is your lovely
+cousin, Lady Ann, Mr. Foker?—here are these two young ones,—and they
+allow an old fellow like me to speak. Lady Clavering, will you do me
+the favour to be my guest? and Miss Blanche shall be Arthur’s, if she
+will be so good.”
+
+“Oh, delightful!” cried Blanche.
+
+“I like a bit of fun too,” said Lady Clavering; and we will take some
+day when Sir Francis——”
+
+“When Sir Francis dines out,—yes, mamma,” the daughter said, “it will
+be charming.”
+
+And a charming day it was. The dinner was ordered at Greenwich, and
+Foker, though he did not invite Miss Amory, had some delicious
+opportunities of conversation with her during the repast, and
+afterwards on the balcony of their room at the hotel, and again during
+the drive home in her ladyship’s barouche. Pen came down with his
+uncle, in Sir Hugh Trumpington’s brougham, which the Major borrowed for
+the occasion. “I am an old soldier, begad,” he said, “and I learned in
+early life to make myself comfortable.”
+
+And, being an old soldier, he allowed the two young men to pay for the
+dinner between them, and all the way home in the brougham he rallied
+Pen, about Miss Amory’s evident partiality for him: praised her good
+looks, spirits, and wit: and again told Pen in the strictest
+confidence, that she would be a devilish deal richer than people
+thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+Contains a novel Incident
+
+
+Some account has been given, in a former part of this story, how Mr.
+Pen, during his residence at home, after his defeat at Oxbridge, had
+occupied himself with various literary compositions, and amongst other
+works, had written the greater part of a novel. This book, written
+under the influence of his youthful embarrassments, amatory and
+pecuniary, was of a very fierce, gloomy, and passionate sort,—the
+Byronic despair, the Wertherian despondency, the mocking bitterness of
+Mephistopheles of Faust, were all reproduced and developed in the
+character of the hero; for our youth had just been learning the German
+language, and imitated, as almost all clever lads do, his favourite
+poets and writers. Passages in the volumes once so loved, and now read
+so seldom, still bear the mark of the pencil with which he noted them
+in those days. Tears fell upon the leaf of the book, perhaps, or
+blistered the pages of his manuscript as the passionate young man
+dashed his thoughts down. If he took up the books afterwards he had no
+ability or wish to sprinkle the leaves with that early dew of former
+times: his pencil was no longer eager to score its marks of approval:
+but as he looked over the pages of his manuscript, he remembered what
+had been overflowing feelings which had caused him to blot it, and the
+pain which had inspired the line. If the secret history of books could
+be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down
+alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become
+interesting, and dull tales excite the reader! Many a bitter smile
+passed over Pen’s face as he read his novel, and recalled the time and
+feelings which gave it birth. How pompous some of the grand passages
+appeared; and how weak were others in which he thought he had expressed
+his full heart! This page was imitated from a then favourite author, as
+he could now clearly see and confess, though he had believed himself to
+be writing originally then. As he mused over certain lines he
+recollected the place and hour where he wrote them: the ghost of the
+dead feeling came back as he mused, and he blushed to review the faint
+image. And what meant those blots on the page? As you come in the
+desert to a ground where camels’ hoofs are marked in the clay, and
+traces of withered herbage are yet visible, you know that water was
+there once; so the place in Pen’s mind was no longer green, and the
+fons lacrymarum was dried up.
+
+He used this simile one morning to Warrington, as the latter sate over
+his pipe and book, and Pen, with much gesticulation according to his
+wont when excited, and with a bitter laugh, thumped his manuscript down
+on the table, making the tea-things rattle, and, the blue milk dance in
+the jug. On the previous night he had taken the manuscript out of a
+long-neglected chest, containing old shooting jackets, old Oxbridge
+scribbling-books, his old surplice, and battered cap and gown, and
+other memorials of youth, school, and home. He read in the volume in
+bed until he fell asleep, for the commencement of the tale was somewhat
+dull, and he had come home tired from a London evening party.
+
+“By Jove!” said Pen, thumping down his papers, “when I think that these
+were written but very few years ago, I am ashamed of my memory. I wrote
+this when I believed myself be eternally in love with that little
+coquette, Miss Amory. I used to carry down verses to her, and put them
+into the hollow of a tree, and dedicate them ‘Amori.’”
+
+“That was a sweet little play upon words,” Warrington remarked, with a
+puff “Amory—Amori. It showed proof of scholarship. Let us hear a bit of
+the rubbish.” And he stretched over from his easy-chair, and caught
+hold of Pen’s manuscript with the fire-tongs, which he was just using
+in order to put a coal into his pipe. Thus, in possession of the
+volume, he began to read out from the ‘Leaves from the Life-book of
+Walter Lorraine.’
+
+“‘False as thou art beautiful! heartless as thou art fair! mockery of
+Passion!’ Walter cried, addressing Leonora; ‘what evil spirit hath sent
+thee to torture me so? O Leonora.——’”
+
+“Cut that part,” cried out Pen, making a dash at the book, which,
+however, his comrade would not release. “Well! don’t read it out at any
+rate. That’s about my other flame, my first—Lady Mirabel that is now. I
+saw her last night at Lady Whiston’s. She asked me to a party at her
+house, and said that, as old friends, we ought to meet oftener. She has
+been seeing me any time these two years in town, and never thought of
+inviting me before; but seeing Wenham talking to me, and Monsieur
+Dubois, the French literary man, who had a dozen orders on, and might
+have passed for a Marshal of France, she condescended to invite me. The
+Claverings are to be there on the same evening. Won’t it be exciting to
+meet one’s two flames at the same table?”
+
+“Two flames!—two heaps of burnt-out cinders,” Warrington said. “Are
+both the beauties in this book?”
+
+“Both, or something like them,” Pen said. “Leonora, who marries the
+Duke, is the Fotheringay. I drew the Duke from Magnus Charters, with
+whom I was at Oxford; it’s a little like him; and Miss Amory is Neaera.
+By gad, that first woman! I thought of her as I walked home from Lady
+Whiston’s in the moonlight; and the whole early scenes came back to me
+as if they had been yesterday. And when I got home, I pulled out the
+story which I wrote about her and the other three years ago: do you
+know, outrageous as it is, it has some good stuff in it, and if Bungay
+won’t publish it, I think Bacon will.”
+
+“That’s the way of poets,” said Warrington. “They fall in love, jilt,
+or are jilted; they suffer and they cry out that they suffer more than
+any other mortals: and when they have experienced feelings enough they
+note them down in a book, and take the book to market. All poets are
+humbugs, all literary men are humbugs; directly a man begins to sell
+his feelings for money he’s a humbug. If a poet gets a pain in his side
+from too good a dinner, he bellows Ai Ai louder than Prometheus.”
+
+“I suppose a poet has a greater sensibility than another man,” said
+Pen, with some spirit. “That is what makes him a poet. I suppose that
+he sees and feels more keenly: it is that which makes him speak, of
+what he feels and sees. You speak eagerly enough in your leading
+articles when you espy a false argument in an opponent, or detect a
+quack in the House. Paley, who does not care for anything else in the
+world, will talk for an hour about a question of law. Give another the
+privilege which you take yourself, and the free use of his faculty, and
+let him be what nature has made him. Why should not a man sell his
+sentimental thoughts as well as you your political ideas, or Paley his
+legal knowledge? Each alike is a matter of experience and practice. It
+is not money which causes you to perceive a fallacy, or Paley to argue
+a point; but a natural or acquired aptitude for that kind of truth: and
+a poet sets down his thoughts and experiences upon paper as a painter
+does a landscape or a face upon canvas, to the best of his ability, and
+according to his particular gift. If ever I think I have the stuff in
+me to write an epic, by Jove I will try. If I only feel that I am good
+enough to crack a joke or tell a story, I will do that.”
+
+“Not a bad speech, young one,” Warrington said, “but that does not
+prevent all poets from being humbugs.”
+
+“What—Homer, Aeschylus, Shakspeare and all?”
+
+“Their names are not to be breathed in the same sense with you
+pigmies,” Mr. Warrington said: “there are men and men, sir.”
+
+“Well, Shakspeare was a man who wrote for money, just as you and I do,”
+Pen answered, at which Warrington confounded his impudence, and resumed
+his pipe and his manuscript.
+
+There was not the slightest doubt then that this document contained a
+great deal of Pen’s personal experiences, and that ‘Leaves from the
+Life-book of Walter Lorraine’ would never have been written but for
+Arthur Pendennis’s own private griefs, passions, and follies. As we
+have become acquainted with these in the first volume of his biography,
+it will not be necessary to make large extracts from the novel of
+‘Walter Lorraine,’ in which the young gentleman had depicted such of
+them as he thought were likely to interest the reader, or were suitable
+for the purpose of his story.
+
+Now, though he had kept it in his box for nearly half of the period
+during which, according to the Horatian maxim, a work of art ought to
+lie ripening (a maxim, the truth of which may, by the way, be
+questioned altogether), Mr. Pen had not buried his novel for this time,
+in order that the work might improve, but because he did not know where
+else to bestow it, or had no particular desire to see it. A man who
+thinks of putting away a composition for ten years before he shall give
+it to the world, or exercise his own maturer judgment upon it, had best
+be very sure of the original strength and durability of the work;
+otherwise on withdrawing it from its crypt he may find, that like small
+wine it has lost what flavour it once had, and is only tasteless when
+opened. There are works of all tastes and smacks, the small and the
+strong, those that improve by age, and those that won’t bear keeping at
+all, but are pleasant at the first draught, when they refresh and
+sparkle.
+
+Now Pen had never any notion, even in the time of his youthful
+inexperience and fervour of imagination, that the story he was writing
+was a masterpiece of composition, or that he was the equal of the great
+authors whom he admired; and when he now reviewed his little
+performance, he was keenly enough alive to its faults, and pretty
+modest regarding its merits. It was not very good, he thought; but it
+was as good as most books of the kind that had the run of circulating
+libraries and the career of the season. He had critically examined more
+than one fashionable novel by the authors of the day then popular, and
+he thought that his intellect was as good as theirs and that he could
+write the English language as well as those ladies or gentlemen; and as
+he now ran over his early performance, he was pleased to find here and
+there passages exhibiting both fancy and vigour, and traits, if not of
+genius, of genuine passion and feeling. This, too, was Warrington’s
+verdict, when that severe critic, after half an hour’s perusal of the
+manuscript, and the consumption of a couple of pipes of tobacco, laid
+Pen’s book down, yawning portentously. “I can’t read any more of that
+balderdash now,” he said; “but it seems to me there is some good stuff
+in it, Pen, my boy. There’s a certain greenness and freshness in it
+which I like somehow. The bloom disappears off the face of poetry after
+you begin to shave. You can’t get up that naturalness and artless rosy
+tint in after days. Your cheeks are pale, and have got faded by
+exposure to evening parties, and you are obliged to take curling-irons,
+and macassar, and the deuce-knows-what to your whiskers; they curl
+ambrosially, and you are very grand and genteel, and so forth; but, ah!
+Pen, the spring-time was the best.”
+
+“What the deuce have my whiskers to do with the subject in hand?” Pen
+said (who, perhaps, may have been nettled by Warrington’s allusion to
+those ornaments, which, to say the truth, the young man coaxed, and
+curled, and oiled, and perfumed, and petted, in rather an absurd
+manner). “Do you think we can do anything with ‘Walter Lorraine’? Shall
+we take him to the publishers, or make an auto-da-fe of him?”
+
+“I don’t see what is the good of incremation,” Warrington said, “though
+I have a great mind to put him into the fire, to punish your atrocious
+humbug and hypocrisy. Shall I burn him indeed? You have much too great
+a value for him to hurt a hair of his head.”
+
+“Have I? Here goes,” said Pen, and ‘Walter Lorraine’ went off the
+table, and was flung on to the coals. But the fire having done its duty
+of boiling the young man’s breakfast-kettle, had given up work for the
+day, and had gone out, as Pen knew very well; Warrington with a
+scornful smile, once more took up the manuscript with the tongs from
+out of the harmless cinders.
+
+“Oh, Pen, what a humbug you are!” Warrington said; “and what is worst
+of all, sir, a clumsy humbug. I saw you look to see that the fire was
+out before you sent ‘Walter Lorraine’ behind the bars. No, we won’t
+burn him: we will carry him to the Egyptians, and sell him. We will
+exchange him away for money, yea, for silver and gold, and for beef and
+for liquors, and for tobacco and for raiment. This youth will fetch
+some price in the market; for he is a comely lad, though not over
+strong; but we will fatten him up and give him the bath, and curl his
+hair, and we will sell him for a hundred piasters to Bacon or to
+Bungay. The rubbish is saleable enough, sir; and my advice to you is
+this: the next time you go home for a holiday, take ‘Walter Lorraine’
+in your carpet-bag—give him a more modern air, prune away, though
+sparingly, some of the green passages, and add a little comedy, and
+cheerfulness, and satire, and that sort of thing, and then we’ll take
+him to market, and sell him. The book is not a wonder of wonders, but
+it will do very well.”
+
+“Do you think so, Warrington?” said Pen, delighted, for this was great
+praise from his cynical friend.
+
+“You silly young fool! I think it’s uncommonly clever,” Warrington said
+in a kind voice. “So do you, sir.” And with the manuscript which he
+held in his hand he playfully struck Pen on the cheek. That part of
+Pen’s countenance turned as red as it had ever done in the earliest
+days of his blushes: he grasped the other’s hand and said, “Thank you,
+Warrington,” with all his might: and then he retired to his own room
+with his book, and passed the greater part of the day upon his bed
+re-reading it; and he did as Warrington had advised, and altered not a
+little, and added a great deal, until at length he had fashioned
+‘Walter Lorraine’ pretty much into the shape in which, as the respected
+novel-reader knows, it subsequently appeared.
+
+Whilst he was at work upon this performance, the good-natured
+Warrington artfully inspired the two gentlemen who “read” for Messrs.
+Bacon and Bungay with the greatest curiosity regarding ‘Walter
+Lorraine,’ and pointed out the peculiar merits of its distinguished
+author. It was at the period when the novel, called ‘The Fashionable,’
+was in vogue among us; and Warrington did not fail to point out, as
+before, how Pen was a man of the very first fashion himself, and
+received at the houses of some of the greatest personages in the land.
+The simple and kind-hearted Percy Popjoy was brought to bear upon Mrs.
+Bungay, whom he informed that his friend Pendennis was occupied upon a
+work of the most exciting nature; a work that the whole town would run
+after, full of wit, genius, satire, pathos, and every conceivable good
+quality. We have said before, that Bungay knew no more about novels
+than he did about Hebrew or Algebra, and neither read nor understood
+any of the books which he published and paid for; but he took his
+opinions from his professional advisers and from Mrs. B., and,
+evidently with a view to a commercial transaction, asked Pendennis and
+Warrington to dinner again.
+
+Bacon, when he found that Bungay was about to treat, of course, began
+to be anxious and curious, and desired to outbid his rival. Was
+anything settled between Mr. Pendennis and the odious house “over the
+way” about the new book? Mr. Hack, the confidential reader, was told to
+make inquiries, and see if any thing was to be done, and the result of
+the inquiries of that diplomatist was, that one morning, Bacon himself
+toiled up the staircase of Lamb Court and to the door on which the
+names of Mr. Warrington, and Mr. Pendennis, were painted.
+
+For a gentleman of fashion as poor Pen was represented to be, it must
+be confessed, that the apartments he and his friend occupied were not
+very suitable. The ragged carpet had grown only more ragged during the
+two years of joint occupancy: a constant odour of tobacco perfumed the
+sitting-room: Bacon tumbled over the laundress’s buckets in the passage
+through which he had to pass; Warrington’s shooting-jacket was as
+tattered at the elbows as usual; and the chair which Bacon was
+requested to take on entering, broke down with the publisher.
+Warrington burst out laughing, said that Bacon had got the game chair,
+and bawled out to Pen to fetch a sound one from his bedroom. And seeing
+the publisher looking round the dingy room with an air of profound pity
+and wonder, asked him whether he didn’t think the apartments were
+elegant, and if he would like, for Mrs. Bacon’s drawing-room, any of
+the articles of furniture? Mr. Warrington’s character as a humourist
+was known to Mr. Bacon: “I never can make that chap out,” the publisher
+was heard to say, “or tell whether he is in earnest or only chaffing.”
+
+It is very possible that Mr. Bacon would have set the two gentlemen
+down as impostors altogether, but that there chanced to be on the
+breakfast-table certain cards of invitation which the post of the
+morning had brought in for Pen, and which happened to come from some
+very exalted personage of the beau-monde, into which our young man had
+his introduction. Looking down upon these, Bacon saw that the
+Marchioness of Steyne would be at home to Mr. Arthur Pendennis upon a
+given day, and that another lady of distinction proposed to have
+dancing at her house upon a certain future evening. Warrington saw the
+admiring publisher eyeing these documents. “Ah,” said he, with an air
+of simplicity, “Pendennis is one of the most affable young men I ever
+knew, Mr. Bacon. Here is a young fellow that dines with all the men in
+London, and yet he’ll take his mutton-chop with you and me quite
+contentedly. There’s nothing like the affability of the old English
+gentleman.”
+
+“Oh no, nothing,” said Mr. Bacon.
+
+“And you wonder why he should go on living up three pair of stairs with
+me, don’t you now? Well, it is a queer taste. But we are fond of each
+other; and as I can’t afford to live in a great house, he comes and
+stays in these rickety old chambers with me. He’s a man that can afford
+to live anywhere.”
+
+“I fancy it don’t cost him much here,” thought Mr. Bacon, and the
+object of these praises presently entered the room from his adjacent
+sleeping apartment.
+
+Then Mr. Bacon began to speak upon the subject of his visit; said he
+heard that Mr. Pendennis had a manuscript novel; professed himself
+anxious to have a sight of that work, and had no doubt that they could
+come to terms respecting it. What would be his price for it? would he
+give Bacon the refusal of it? he would find our house a liberal house,
+and so forth. The delighted Pen assumed an air of indifference, and
+said that he was already in treaty with Bungay, and could give no
+definite answer. This piqued the other into such liberal, though vague
+offers, that Pen began to fancy Eldorado was opening to him, and that
+his fortune was made from that day.
+
+I shall not mention what was the sum of money which Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis finally received for the first edition of his novel of
+‘Walter Lorraine,’ lest other young literary aspirants should expect to
+be as lucky as he was, and unprofessional persons forsake their own
+callings, whatever they may be, for the sake of supplying the world
+with novels, whereof there is already a sufficiency. Let no young
+people be misled and rush fatally into romance-writing: for one book
+which succeeds let them remember the many that fail, I do not say
+deservedly or otherwise, and wholesomely abstain or if they venture, at
+least let them do so at their own peril. As for those who have already
+written novels, this warning is not addressed, of course, to them. Let
+them take their wares to market; let them apply to Bacon and Bungay,
+and all the publishers in the Row, or the metropolis, and may they be
+happy in their ventures. This world is so wide, and the tastes of
+mankind happily so various, that there is always a chance for every
+man, and he may win the prize by his genius or by his good fortune. But
+what is the chance of success or failure; of obtaining popularity, or
+of holding it when achieved? One man goes over the ice, which bears
+him, and a score who follow flounder in. In fine, Mr. Pendennis’s was
+an exceptional case, and applies to himself only and I assert solemnly,
+and will to the last maintain, that it is one thing to write a novel,
+and another to get money for it.
+
+By merit, then, or good fortune, or the skilful playing off of Bungay
+against Bacon which Warrington performed (and which an amateur novelist
+is quite welcome to try upon any two publishers in the trade), Pen’s
+novel was actually sold for a certain sum of money to one of the two
+eminent patrons of letters whom we have introduced to our readers. The
+sum was so considerable that Pen thought of opening an account at a
+banker’s, or of keeping a cab and horse, or of descending into the
+first floor of Lamb Court into newly furnished apartments, or of
+migrating to the fashionable end of the town.
+
+Major Pendennis advised the latter move strongly; he opened his eyes
+with wonder when he heard of the good luck that had befallen Pen; and
+which the latter, as soon as it occurred, hastened eagerly to
+communicate to his uncle. The Major was almost angry that Pen should
+have earned so much money. “Who the doose reads this kind of thing?” he
+thought to himself when he heard of the bargain which Pen had made. “I
+never read your novels and rubbish. Except Paul de Kock, who certainly
+makes me laugh, I don’t think I’ve looked into a book of the sort these
+thirty years. Gad! Pen’s a lucky fellow. I should think he might write
+one of these in a month now,—say a month,—that’s twelve in a year.
+Dammy, he may go on spinning this nonsense for the next four to five
+years, and make a fortune. In the meantime I should wish him to live
+properly, take respectable apartments, and keep a brougham.” And on
+this simple calculation it was that the Major counselled Pen.
+
+Arthur, laughing, told Warrington what his uncle’s advice had been but
+he luckily had a much more reasonable counsellor than the old gentleman
+in the person of his friend, and in his own conscience, which said to
+him, “Be grateful for this piece of good fortune; don’t plunge into any
+extravagancies. Pay back Laura!” And he wrote a letter to her, in which
+he told her his thanks and his regard; and enclosed to her such an
+instalment of his debt as nearly wiped it off. The widow and Laura
+herself might well be affected by the letter. It was written with
+genuine tenderness and modesty; and old Dr. Portman when he read a
+passage in the letter, in which Pen, with an honest heart full of
+gratitude, humbly thanked Heaven for his present prosperity, and for
+sending him such dear and kind friends to support him in his ill
+fortune,—when Doctor Portman read this portion of the letter, his voice
+faltered, and his eyes twinkled behind his spectacles, and when he had
+quite finished reading the same, and had taken his glasses off his
+nose, and had folded up the paper and given it back to the widow, I am
+constrained to say, that after holding Mrs. Pendennis’s hand for a
+minute, the Doctor drew that lady towards him and fairly kissed her: at
+which salute, of course, Helen burst out crying on the Doctor’s
+shoulder, for her heart was too full to give any other reply: and the
+Doctor blushing at great deal after his feat, led the lady, with a bow,
+to the sofa, on which he seated himself by her; and he mumbled out, in
+a low voice, some words of a Great Poet whom he loved very much, and
+who describes how in the days of his prosperity he had made “the
+widow’s heart to sing for joy.”
+
+“The letter does the boy very great honour, very great honour, my
+dear,” he said, patting it as it lay on Helen’s knee—“and I think we
+have all reason to be thankful for it—very thankful. I need not tell
+you in what quarter, my dear, for you are a sainted woman: yes, Laura,
+my love, your mother is a sainted woman. And Mrs. Pendennis, ma’am, I
+shall order a copy of the book for myself, and another at the Book
+Club.”
+
+We may be sure that the widow and Laura walked out to meet the mail
+which brought them their copy of Pen’s precious novel, as soon as that
+work was printed and ready for delivery to the public and that they
+read it to each other: and that they also read it privately and
+separately, for when the widow came out of her room in her
+dressing-gown at one o’clock in the morning with volume two, which she
+had finished, she found Laura devouring volume three in bed. Laura did
+not say much about the book, but Helen pronounced that it was a happy
+mixture of Shakspeare, and Byron, and Walter Scott, and was quite
+certain that her son was the greatest genius, as he was the best son,
+in the world.
+
+Did Laura not think about the book and the author, although she said so
+little? At least she thought about Arthur Pendennis. Kind as his tone
+was, it vexed her. She did not like his eagerness to repay that money.
+She would rather that her brother had taken her gift as she intended
+it: and was pained that there should be money calculations between
+them. His letters from London, written with the good-natured wish to
+amuse his mother, were full of descriptions of the famous people and
+the entertainments and magnificence of the great city. Everybody was
+flattering him and spoiling him, she was sure. Was he not looking to
+some great marriage, with that cunning uncle for a Mentor (between whom
+and Laura there was always an antipathy), that inveterate worldling,
+whose whole thoughts were bent upon pleasure and rank and fortune? He
+never alluded to—to old times, when he spoke of her. He had forgotten
+them and her, perhaps had he not forgotten other things and people?
+
+These thoughts may have passed in Miss Laura’s mind, though she did
+not, she could not, confide them to Helen. She had one more secret,
+too, from that lady, which she could not divulge, perhaps because she
+knew how the widow would have rejoiced to know it. This regarded an
+event which had occurred during that visit to Lady Rockminster, which
+Laura had paid in the last Christmas holidays: when Pen was at home
+with his mother, and when Mr. Pynsent, supposed to be so cold and so
+ambitious, had formally offered his hand to Miss Bell. No one except
+herself and her admirer knew of this proposal: or that Pynsent had been
+rejected by her, and probably the reasons she gave to the mortified
+young man himself were not those which actuated her refusal, or those
+which she chose to acknowledge to herself. “I never,” she told Pynsent,
+“can accept such an offer as that which you make me, which you own is
+unknown to your family as I am sure it would be unwelcome to them. The
+difference of rank between us is too great. You are very kind to me
+here—too good and kind, dear Mr. Pynsent—but I am little better than a
+dependant.”
+
+“A dependant! who ever so thought of you? You are the equal of all the
+world,” Pynsent broke out.
+
+“I am a dependant at home, too,” Laura said, sweetly, “and indeed I
+would not be otherwise. Left early a poor orphan, I have found the
+kindest and tenderest of mothers, and I have vowed never to leave
+her—never. Pray do not speak of this again—here, under your relative’s
+roof, or elsewhere. It is impossible.”
+
+“If Lady Rockminster asks you herself, will you listen to her?” Pynsent
+cried eagerly.
+
+“No,” Laura said. “I beg you never to speak of this any more. I must go
+away if you do”—and with this she left him.
+
+Pynsent never asked for Lady Rockminster’s intercession; he knew how
+vain it was to look for that: and he never spoke again on that subject
+to Laura or to any person.
+
+When at length the famous novel appeared it not only met with applause
+from more impartial critics than Mrs. Pendennis, but, luckily for Pen
+it suited the taste of the public, and obtained a quick and
+considerable popularity before two months were over, Pen had the
+satisfaction and surprise of seeing the second edition of ‘Walter
+Lorraine’ advertised in the newspapers; and enjoyed the pleasure of
+reading and sending home the critiques of various literary journals and
+reviewers upon his book. Their censure did not much affect him; for the
+good-natured young man was disposed to accept with considerable
+humility the dispraises of others. Nor did their praise elate him over
+much; for, like most honest persons he had his own opinion about his
+own performance, and when a critic praised him in the wrong place he
+was rather hurt than pleased by the compliment. But if a review of his
+work was very laudatory, it was a great pleasure to him to send it home
+to his mother at Fairoaks, and to think of the joy which it would give
+there. There are some natures, and perhaps, as we have said,
+Pendennis’s was one, which are improved and softened by prosperity and
+kindness, as there are men of other dispositions, who become arrogant
+and graceless under good fortune. Happy he, who can endure one or the
+other with modesty and good-humour! Lucky he who has been educated to
+bear his fate, whatsoever it may be, by an early example of
+uprightness, and a childish training in honour!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+Alsatia
+
+
+Bred up, like a bailiff or a shabby attorney, about the purlieus of the
+Inns of Court, Shepherd’s Inn is always to be found in the close
+neighbourhood of Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, and the Temple. Some where
+behind the black gables and smutty chimney-stacks of Wych Street,
+Holywell Street, Chancery Lane, the quadrangle lies, hidden from the
+outer world; and it is approached by curious passages and ambiguous
+smoky alleys, on which the sun has forgotten to shine. Slop-sellers,
+brandy-ball and hard-bake vendors, purveyors of theatrical prints for
+youth, dealers in dingy furniture and bedding suggestive of anything
+but sleep, line the narrow walls and dark casements with their wares.
+The doors are many-belled: and crowds of dirty children form endless
+groups about the steps: or around the shell-fish dealers’ trays in
+these courts; whereof the damp pavements resound with pattens, and are
+drabbled with a never-failing mud. Ballad-singers come and chant here,
+in deadly guttural tones, satirical songs against the Whig
+administration, against the bishops and dignified clergy, against the
+German relatives of an august royal family: Punch sets up his theatre,
+sure of an audience, and occasionally of a halfpenny from the swarming
+occupants of the houses: women scream after their children for
+loitering in the gutter, or, worse still, against the husband who comes
+reeling from the gin-shop;—there is a ceaseless din and life in these
+courts out of which you pass into the tranquil, old-fashioned
+quadrangle of Shepherd’s Inn. In a mangy little grass-plat in the
+centre rises up the statue of Shepherd, defended by iron railings from
+the assaults of boys. The hall of the Inn, on which the founder’s arms
+are painted, occupies one side of the square, the tall and ancient
+chambers are carried round other two sides, and over the central
+archway, which leads into Oldcastle Street, and so into the great
+London thoroughfare.
+
+The Inn may have been occupied by lawyers once: but the laity have long
+since been admitted into its precincts, and I do not know that any of
+the principal legal firms have their chambers here. The offices of the
+Polwheedle and Tredyddlum Copper Mines occupy one set of the
+ground-floor chambers; the Registry of Patent Inventions and Union of
+Genius and Capital Company, another;—the only gentleman whose name
+figures here, and in the “Law List,” is Mr. Campion, who wears
+mustachios, and who comes in his cab twice or thrice in a week; and
+whose West End offices are in Curzon Street, Mayfair, where Mrs.
+Campion entertains the nobility and gentry to whom her husband lends
+money. There, and on his glazed cards, he is Mr. Somerset Campion; here
+he is Campion and Co.; and the same tuft which ornaments his chin,
+sprouts from the under lip of the rest of the firm. It is splendid to
+see his cab-horse harness blazing with heraldic bearings, as the
+vehicle stops at the door leading to his chambers: The horse flings
+froth off his nostrils as he chafes and tosses under the shining bit.
+The reins and the breeches of the groom are glittering white,—the
+lustre of that equipage makes a sunshine in that shady place.
+
+Our old friend, Captain Costigan, has examined Campion’s cab and horse
+many an afternoon, as he trailed about the court in his carpet slippers
+and dressing-gown, with his old hat cocked over his eye. He suns
+himself there after his breakfast when the day is suitable; and goes
+and pays a visit to the porter’s lodge, where he pats the heads of the
+children, and talks to Mrs. Bolton about the thayatres and me daughther
+Leedy Mirabel. Mrs. Bolton was herself in the profession once, and
+danced at the Wells in early days as the thirteenth of Mr. Serle’s
+forty pupils.
+
+Costigan lives in the third floor at No. 4, in the rooms which were Mr.
+Podmore’s, and whose name is still on the door—(somebody else’s name,
+by the way, is on almost all the doors in Shepherd’s Inn). When Charley
+Podmore (the pleasing tenor singer, T.R.D.L., and at the Back Kitchen
+Concert Rooms) married, and went to live at Lambeth, he ceded his
+chambers to Mr. Bows and Captain Costigan, who occupy them in common
+now, and you may often hear the tones of Mr. Bows’s piano of fine days
+when the windows are open, and when he is practising for amusement, or
+for the instruction of a theatrical pupil, of whom he has one or two.
+Fanny Bolton is one, the porteress’s daughter, who has heard tell of
+her mother’s theatrical glories, which she longs to emulate. She has a
+good voice and a pretty face and figure for the stage; and she prepares
+the rooms and makes the beds and breakfasts for Messrs. Costigan and
+Bows, in return for which the latter instructs her in music and
+singing. But for his unfortunate propensity to liquor (and in that
+excess she supposes that all men of fashion indulge), she thinks the
+Captain the finest gentleman in the world, and believes in all the
+versions of all his stories, and she is very fond of Mr. Bows too, and
+very grateful to him, and this shy queer old gentleman has a fatherly
+fondness for her too, for in truth his heart is full of kindness, and
+he is never easy unless he loves somebody.
+
+Costigan has had the carriages of visitors of distinction before his
+humble door in Shepherd’s Inn: and to hear him talk of a morning (for
+his evening song is of a much more melancholy nature) you would fancy
+that Sir Charles and Lady Mirabel were in the constant habit of calling
+at his chambers, and bringing with them the select nobility to visit
+the “old man, the honest old half-pay Captain, poor old Jack Costigan,”
+as Cos calls himself.
+
+The truth is, that Lady Mirabel has left her husband’s card (which has
+been stuck in the little looking-glass over the mantelpiece of the
+sitting-room at No. 4, for these many months past), and has come in
+person to see her father, but not of late days. A kind person, disposed
+to discharge her duties gravely, upon her marriage with Sir Charles she
+settled a little pension upon her father, who occasionally was admitted
+to the table of his daughter and son-in-law. At first poor Cos’s
+behaviour “in the hoight of poloit societee,” as he denominated Lady
+Mirabel’s drawing-room table, was harmless, if it was absurd. As he
+clothed his person in his best attire, so he selected the longest and
+richest words in his vocabulary to deck his conversation, and adopted a
+solemnity of demeanour which struck with astonishment all those persons
+in whose company he happened to be.—“Was your Leedyship in the Pork to
+dee?” he would demand of his daughter. “I looked for your equipage in
+veen:—the poor old man was not gratified by the soight of his
+daughther’s choriot. Sir Chorlus, I saw your neem at the Levee; many’s
+the Levee at the Castle at Dublin that poor old Jack Costigan has
+attended in his time. Did the Juke look pretty well? Bedad, I’ll call
+at Apsley House and lave me cyard upon ’um. I thank ye, James, a little
+dthrop more champeane.” Indeed, he was magnificent in his courtesy to
+all, and addressed his observations not only to the master and the
+guests, but to the domestics who waited at the table, and who had some
+difficulty in maintaining their professional gravity while they waited
+on Captain Costigan.
+
+On the first two or three visits to his son-in-law, Costigan maintained
+a strict sobriety, content to make up for his lost time when he got to
+the Back Kitchen, where he bragged about his son-in-law’s dart and
+burgundee, until his own utterance began to fail him, over his sixth
+tumbler of whisky-punch. But with familiarity his caution vanished, and
+poor Cos lamentably disgraced himself at Sir Charles Mirabel’s table,
+by premature inebriation. A carriage was called for him: the hospitable
+door was shut upon him. Often and sadly did he speak to his friends at
+the Kitchen of his resemblance to King Lear in the plee—of his having a
+thankless choild, bedad—of his being a pore worn-out lonely old man,
+dthriven to dthrinking by ingratitude, and seeking to dthrown his
+sorrows in punch.
+
+It is painful to be obliged to record the weaknesses of fathers, but it
+must be furthermore told of Costigan, that when his credit was
+exhausted and his money gone, he would not unfrequently beg money from
+his daughter, and made statements to her not altogether consistent with
+strict truth. On one day a bailiff was about to lead him to prison, he
+wrote, “unless the—to you insignificant—sum of three pound five can be
+forthcoming to liberate a poor man’s grey hairs from gaol.” And the
+good-natured Lady Mirabel despatched the money necessary for her
+father’s liberation, with a caution to him to be more economical for
+the future. On a second occasion the Captain met with a frightful
+accident, and broke a plate-glass window in the Strand, for which the
+proprietor of the shop held him liable. The money was forthcoming on
+this time too, to repair her papa’s disaster, and was carried down by
+Lady Mirabel’s servant to the slipshod messenger and aide-de-camp of
+the Captain, who brought the letter announcing his mishap. If the
+servant had followed the Captain’s aide-de-camp who carried the
+remittance, he would have seen that gentleman, a person of Costigan’s
+country too (for have we not said, that however poor an Irish gentleman
+is, he always has a poorer Irish gentleman to run on his errands and
+transact his pecuniary affairs?), call a cab from the nearest stand,
+and rattle down to the Roscius Head, Harlequin Yard, Drury Lane, where
+the Captain was indeed in pawn, and for several glasses containing
+rum-and-water, or other spirituous refreshment, of which he and his
+staff had partaken. On a third melancholy occasion he wrote that he was
+attacked by illness, and wanted money to pay the physician whom he was
+compelled to call in; and this time Lady Mirabel, alarmed about her
+father’s safety, and perhaps reproaching herself that she had of late
+lost sight of her father, called for her carriage and drove to
+Shepherd’s Inn, at the gate of which she alighted, whence she found the
+way to her father’s chambers, “No. 4, third floor, name of Podmore over
+the door,” the porteress said, with many curtsies, pointing towards the
+door of the house, into which the affectionate daughter entered and
+mounted the dingy stair. Alas! the door, surmounted by the name of
+Podmore, was opened to her by poor Cos in his shirt-sleeves, and
+prepared with the gridiron to receive the mutton-chops which Mrs.
+Bolton had gone to purchase.
+
+Also, it was not pleasant for Sir Charles Mirabel to have letters
+constantly addressed to him at Brookes’s, with the information that
+Captain Costigan was in the hall, waiting for an answer; or when he
+went to play his rubber at the Travellers’, to be obliged to shoot out
+of his brougham and run up the steps rapidly, lest his father-in-law
+should seize upon him; and to think that while he read his paper or
+played his whist, the Captain was walking on the opposite side of Pall
+Mall, with that dreadful cocked hat, and the eye beneath it fixed
+steadily upon the windows of the club. Sir Charles was a weak man; he
+was old, and had many infirmities: he cried about his father-in-law to
+his wife, whom he adored with senile infatuation: he said he must go
+abroad,—he must go and live in the country—he should die or have
+another fit if he saw that man again—he knew he should. And it was only
+by paying a second visit to Captain Costigan, and representing to him,
+that if he plagued Sir Charles by letters or addressed him in the
+street, or made any further applications for loans, his allowance would
+be withdrawn altogether, that Lady Mirabel was enabled to keep her papa
+in order, and to restore tranquillity to her husband. And on occasion
+of this visit, she sternly rebuked Bows for not keeping a better watch
+over the Captain; desired that he should not be allowed to drink in
+that shameful way; and that the people at the horrid taverns which he
+frequented should be told, upon no account to give him credit. “Papa’s
+conduct is bringing me to the grave,” she said (though she looked
+perfectly healthy), “and you, as an old man, Mr. Bows, and one that
+pretended to have a regard for us, ought to be ashamed of abetting him
+in it.” Those were the thanks which honest Bows got for his friendship
+and his life’s devotion. And I do not suppose that the old philosopher
+was much worse off than many other men, or had greater reason to
+grumble.
+
+On the second floor of the next house to Bows’s, in Shepherd’s Inn, at
+No. 3, live two other acquaintances of ours: Colonel Altamont, agent to
+the Nawaub of Lucknow, and Captain Chevalier Edward Strong. No name at
+all is over their door. The Captain does not choose to let all the
+world know where he lives and his cards bear the address of a Jermyn
+Street hotel; and as for the Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Indian
+potentate, he is not an envoy accredited to the Courts of St. James’s
+or Leadenhall Street but is here on a confidential mission quite
+independent of the East India Company or the Board of Control. “In
+fact,” Strong says, “Colonel Altamont’s object being financial, and to
+effectuate a sale of some of the principal diamonds and rubies of the
+Lucknow crown, his wish is not to report himself at the India House or
+in Cannon Row, but rather to negotiate with private capitalists—with
+whom he has had important transactions both in this country and on the
+Continent.”
+
+We have said that these anonymous chambers of Strong’s had been very
+comfortably furnished since the arrival of Sir Francis Clavering in
+London, and the Chevalier might boast with reason to the friends who
+visited him, that few retired Captains were more snugly quartered than
+he, in his crib in Shepherd’s Inn. There were three rooms below: the
+office where Strong transacted his business—whatever that might be—and
+where still remained the desk and railings of the departed officials
+who had preceded him, and the Chevalier’s own bedroom and sitting-room;
+and a private stair led out of the office to two upper apartments, the
+one occupied by Colonel Altamont, and the other serving as the kitchen
+of the establishment, and the bedroom of Mr. Grady, the attendant.
+These rooms were on a level with the apartments of our friends Bows and
+Costigan next door at No. 4; and by reaching over the communicating
+leads, Grady could command the mignonette-box which bloomed in Bows’s
+window.
+
+From Grady’s kitchen casement often came odours still more fragrant.
+The three old soldiers who formed the garrison of No. 3 were all
+skilled in the culinary art. Grady was great at an Irish stew; the
+Colonel was famous for pillaus and curries; and as for Strong he could
+cook anything. He made French dishes and Spanish dishes, stews,
+fricassees, and omelettes, to perfection; nor was there any man in
+England more hospitable than he when his purse was full or his credit
+was good. At those happy periods, he could give a friend, as he said, a
+good dinner, a good glass of wine, and a good song afterwards; and poor
+Cos often heard with envy the roar of Strong’s choruses, and the
+musical clinking of the glasses, as he sate in his own room, so far
+removed and yet so near to those festivities. It was not expedient to
+invite Mr. Costigan always: his practice of inebriation was lamentable;
+and he bored Strong’s guests with his stories when sober, and with his
+maudlin tears when drunk.
+
+A strange and motley set they were, these friends of the Chevalier; and
+though Major Pendennis would not much have relished their company,
+Arthur and Warrington liked it not a little, and Pen thought it as
+amusing as the society of the finest gentlemen in the finest houses
+which he had the honour to frequent. There was a history about every
+man of the set: they seemed all to have had their tides of luck and bad
+fortune. Most of them had wonderful schemes and speculations in their
+pockets, and plenty for making rapid and extraordinary fortunes. Jack
+Holt had been in Don Carlos’s army, when Ned Strong had fought on the
+other side; and was now organising a little scheme for smuggling
+tobacco into London, which must bring thirty thousand a year to any man
+who would advance fifteen hundred, just to bribe the last officer of
+the Excise who held out, and had wind of the scheme. Tom Diver, who had
+been in the Mexican navy, knew of a specie-ship which had been sunk in
+the first year of the war, with three hundred and eighty thousand
+dollars on board, and a hundred and eighty thousand pounds in bars and
+doubloons. “Give me eighteen hundred pounds,” Tom said, “and I’m off
+tomorrow. I take out four men, and a diving-bell with me; and I return
+in ten months to take my seat in Parliament, by Jove! and to buy back
+my family estate.” Keightley, the manager of the Tredyddlum and
+Polwheedle Copper Mines (which were as yet under water), besides
+singing as good a second as any professional man, and besides the
+Tredyddlum Office, had a Smyrna Sponge Company, and a little
+quicksilver operation in view, which would set him straight with the
+world yet. Filby had been everything: a corporal of dragoons, a
+field-preacher, and missionary-agent for converting the Irish; an actor
+at a Greenwich fair-booth, in front of which his father’s attorney
+found him when the old gentleman died and left him that famous
+property, from which he got no rents now, and of which nobody exactly
+knew the situation. Added to these was Sir Francis Clavering, Bart.,
+who liked their society, though he did not much add to its amusements
+by his convivial powers. But he was made much of by the company now, on
+account of his wealth and position in the world. He told his little
+story and sang his little song or two with great affability; and he had
+had his own history, too, before his accession to good fortune; and had
+seen the inside of more prisons than one, and written his name on many
+a stamped paper.
+
+When Altamont first returned from Paris, and after he had communicated
+with Sir Francis Clavering from the hotel at which he had taken up his
+quarters (and which he had reached in a very denuded state, considering
+the wealth of diamonds and rubies with which this honest man was
+entrusted), Strong was sent to his patron by the Baronet; paid his
+little bill at the inn, and invited him to come and sleep for a night
+or two at the chambers, where he subsequently took up his residence. To
+negotiate with this man was very well, but to have such a person
+settled in his rooms, and to be constantly burthened with such society,
+did not suit the Chevalier’s taste much; and he grumbled not a little
+to his principal.
+
+“I wish you would put this bear into somebody else’s cage,” he said to
+Clavering. “The fellow’s no gentleman. I don’t like walking with him.
+He dresses himself like a nigger on a holiday. I took him to the play
+the other night; and, by Jove, sir, he abused the actor who was doing
+the part of villain in the play, and swore at him so, that the people
+in the boxes wanted to turn him out. The after-piece was the ‘Brigand,’
+where Wallack comes in wounded, you know, and dies. When he died,
+Altamont began to cry like a child, and said it was a d——d shame, and
+cried and swore so, that there was another row, and everybody laughing.
+Then I had to take him away, because he wanted to take his coat off to
+one fellow who laughed at him; and bellowed to him to stand up like a
+man.—Who is he? Where the deuce does he come from? You had best tell me
+the whole story. Frank; you must one day. You and he have robbed a
+church together, that’s my belief. You had better get it off your mind
+at once, Clavering, and tell me what this Altamont is, and what hold he
+has over you.”
+
+“Hang him! I wish he was dead!” was the Baronet’s only reply; and his
+countenance became so gloomy, that Strong did not think fit to question
+his patron any further at that time; but resolved, if need were, to try
+and discover for himself what was the secret tie between Altamont and
+Clavering.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+In which the Colonel narrates some of his Adventures
+
+
+Early in the forenoon of the day after the dinner in Grosvenor Place,
+at which Colonel Altamont had chosen to appear, the Colonel emerged
+from his chamber in the upper story at Shepherd’s Inn, and entered into
+Strong’s sitting-room, where the Chevalier sate in his easy-chair with
+the newspaper and his cigar. He was a man who made his tent comfortable
+wherever he pitched it, and long before Altamont’s arrival, had done
+justice to a copious breakfast of fried eggs and broiled rashers, which
+Mr. Grady had prepared secundum artem. Good-humoured and talkative, he
+preferred any company rather than none; and though he had not the least
+liking for his fellow-lodger, and would not have grieved to hear that
+the accident had befallen him which Sir Francis Clavering desired so
+fervently, yet kept on fair terms with him. He had seen Altamont to bed
+with great friendliness on the night previous, and taken away his
+candle for fear of accidents; and finding a spirit-bottle empty, upon
+which he had counted for his nocturnal refreshment, had drunk a glass
+of water with perfect contentment over his pipe, before he turned into
+his own crib and to sleep. That enjoyment never failed him: he had
+always an easy temper, a faultless digestion, and a rosy cheek; and
+whether he was going into action the next morning or to prison (and
+both had been his lot), in the camp or the Fleet, the worthy Captain
+snored healthfully through the night, and woke with a good heart and
+appetite, for the struggles or difficulties or pleasures of the day.
+
+The first act of Colonel Altamont was to bellow to Grady for a pint of
+pale ale, the which he first poured into a pewter flagon, whence he
+transferred it to his own lips. He put down the tankard empty, drew a
+great breath, wiped his mouth in his dressing-gown (the difference of
+the colour of his beard from his dyed whiskers had long struck Captain
+Strong, who had seen too that his hair was fair under his black wig,
+but made no remarks upon these circumstances)—the Colonel drew a great
+breath, and professed himself immensely refreshed by his draught.
+“Nothing like that beer,” he remarked, “when the coppers are hot. Many
+a day I’ve drunk a dozen of Bass at Calcutta, and—and——”
+
+“And at Lucknow, I suppose,” Strong said with a laugh. “I got the beer
+for you on purpose: knew you’d want it after last night.” And the
+Colonel began to talk about his adventures of the preceding evening.
+
+“I cannot help myself,” the Colonel said, beating his head with his big
+hand. “I’m a madman when I get the liquor on board me; and ain’t fit to
+be trusted with a spirit-bottle. When I once begin I can’t stop till
+I’ve emptied it; and when I’ve swallowed it, Lord knows what I say or
+what I don’t say. I dined at home here quite quiet. Grady gave me just
+my two tumblers, and I intended to pass the evening at the Black and
+Red as sober as a parson. Why did you leave that confounded
+sample-bottle of Hollands out of the cupboard, Strong? Grady must go
+out too, and leave me the kettle a-boiling for tea. It was of no use, I
+couldn’t keep away from it. Washed it all down, sir, by Jove. And it’s
+my belief I had some more, too, afterwards at that infernal little
+thieves’ den.”
+
+“What, were you there too?” Strong asked, “and before you came to
+Grosvenor Place? That was beginning betimes.”
+
+“Early hours to be drunk and cleared out before nine o’clock, eh? But
+so it was. Yes, like a great big fool, I must go there; and found the
+fellows dining, Blackland and young Moss, and two or three more of the
+thieves. If we’d gone to Rouge et Noir, I must have won. But we didn’t
+try the black and red. No, hang ’em, they know’d I’d have beat ’em at
+that—I must have beat ’em—I can’t help beating ’em, I tell you. But
+they was too cunnin for me. That rascal Blackland got the bones out,
+and we played hazard on the dining-table. And I dropped all the money I
+had from you in the morning, be hanged to my luck. It was that that set
+me wild, and I suppose I must have been very hot about the head, for I
+went off thinking to get some more money from Clavering, I recollect;
+and then—and then I don’t much remember what happened till I woke this
+morning, and heard old Bows at No. 4 playing on his pianner.”
+
+Strong mused for a while as he lighted his cigar with a coal, “I should
+like to know how you always draw money from Clavering, Colonel,” he
+said.
+
+The Colonel burst out with a laugh—“Ha, ha! he owes it me,” he said.
+
+“I don’t know that that’s a reason with Frank for paying,” Strong
+answered. “He owes plenty besides you.”
+
+“Well, he gives it me because he is so fond of me,” the other said with
+the same grinning sneer. “He loves me like a brother; you know he does,
+Captain.—No?—He don’t?—Well, perhaps he don’t; and if you ask me no
+questions, perhaps I’ll tell you no lies, Captain Strong—put that in
+your pipe and smoke it, my boy.”
+
+“But I’ll give up that confounded brandy-bottle,” the Colonel
+continued, after a pause. “I must give it up, or it’ll be the ruin of
+me.”
+
+“It makes you say queer things,” said the Captain, looking Altamont
+hard in the face. “Remember what you said last night, at Clavering’s
+table.”
+
+“Say? What did I say?” asked the other hastily. “Did I split anything?
+Dammy, Strong, did I split anything?”
+
+“Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no lies,” the Chevalier
+replied on his part. Strong thought of the words Mr. Altamont had used,
+and his abrupt departure from the Baronet’s dining-table and house as
+soon as he recognised Major Pendennis, or Captain Beak, as he called
+the Major. But Strong resolved to seek an explanation of these words
+otherwise than from Colonel Altamont, and did not choose to recall them
+to the other’s memory. “No,” he said then, “you didn’t split as you
+call it, Colonel; it was only a trap of mine to see if I could make you
+speak; but you didn’t say a word that anybody could comprehend—you were
+too far gone for that.”
+
+So much the better, Altamont thought; and heaved a great sigh, as if
+relieved. Strong remarked the emotion, but took no notice, and the
+other being in a communicative mood, went on speaking.
+
+“Yes, I own to my faults,” continued the Colonel. “There is some things
+I can’t, do what I will, resist: a bottle of brandy, a box of dice, and
+a beautiful woman. No man of pluck and spirit, no man as was worth his
+salt ever could, as I know of. There’s hardly p’raps a country in the
+world in which them three ain’t got me into trouble.”
+
+“Indeed?” said Strong.
+
+“Yes, from the age of fifteen, when I ran away from home, and went
+cabin-boy on board an Indiaman, till now, when I’m fifty year old,
+pretty nigh, them women have always been my ruin. Why, it was one of
+’em, and with such black eyes and jewels on her neck, and Battens and
+ermine like a duchess, I tell you—it was one of ’em at Paris that swept
+off the best part of the thousand pound as I went off with. Didn’t I
+ever tell you of it? Well, I don’t mind. At first I was very cautious
+and having such a lot of money kept it close and lived like a
+gentleman—Colonel Altamont, Meurice’s hotel, and that sort of
+thing—never played, except at the public tables, and won more than I
+lost. Well, sir, there was a chap that I saw at the hotel and the
+Palace Royal too, a regular swell fellow, with white kid gloves and a
+tuft to his chin, Bloundell-Bloundell his name was, as I made
+acquaintance with somehow, and he asked me to dinner, and took me to
+Madame the Countess de Foljambe’s soirees—such a woman, Strong!—such an
+eye! such a hand at the pianner. Lor bless you, she’d sit down and sing
+to you, and gaze at you, until she warbled your soul out of your body
+a’most. She asked me to go to her evening parties every Toosday; and
+didn’t I take opera-boxes and give her dinners at the restauranteur’s,
+that’s all? But I had a run of luck at the tables, and it was not in
+the dinners and opera-boxes that poor Clavering’s money went. No, be
+hanged to it, it was swept off in another way. One night, at the
+Countess’s, there was several of us at supper—Mr. Bloundell-Bloundell,
+the Honourable Deuceace, the Marky de la Tour de Force—all tip-top
+nobs, sir, and the height of fashion, when we had supper, and champagne
+you may be sure in plenty, and then some of that confounded brandy. I
+would have it—I would go on at it—the Countess mixed the tumblers of
+punch for me, and we had cards as well as grog after supper, and I
+played and drank until I don’t know what I did. I was like I was last
+night. I was taken away and put to bed somehow, and never woke until
+the next day, to a roaring headache, and to see my servant, who said
+the Honourable Deuceace wanted to see me, and was waiting in the
+sitting-room. ‘How are you, Colonel?’ says he, a coming into my
+bedroom. ‘How long did you stay last night after I went away? The play
+was getting too high for me, and I’d lost enough to you for one
+night.’”
+
+“‘To me,’ says I, ‘how’s that, my dear feller? (for though he was an
+Earl’s son, we was as familiar as you and me). How’s that, my dear
+feller?’ says I, and he tells me, that he had borrowed thirty louis of
+me at vingt-et-un, that he gave me an I.O.U. for it the night before,
+which I put into my pocket-book before he left the room. I takes out my
+card-case—it was the Countess as worked it for me—and there was the
+I.O.U. sure enough, and he paid me thirty louis in gold down upon the
+table at my bedside. So I said he was a gentleman, and asked him if he
+would like to take anything, when my servant should get it for him; but
+the Honourable Deuceace don’t drink of a morning, and he went away to
+some business which he said he had.
+
+“Presently there’s another ring at my outer door; and this time it’s
+Bloundell-Bloundell and the Marky that comes in. ‘Bong jour, Marky,’
+says I. ‘Good morning—no headache?’ says he. So I said I had one; and
+how I must have been uncommon queer the night afore; but they both
+declared I didn’t show no signs of having had too much, but took my
+liquor as grave as a judge.
+
+“‘So,’ says the Marky, ‘Deuceace has been with you; we met him in the
+Palais Royal as we were coming from breakfast. Has he settled with you?
+Get it while you can: he’s a slippery card; and as he won three ponies
+of Bloundell, I recommend you to get your money while he has some.’
+
+“‘He has paid me,’ says I; ‘but I knew no more than the dead that he
+owed me anything, and don’t remember a bit about lending him thirty
+louis.’
+
+“The Marky and Bloundell looks and smiles at each other at this; and
+Bloundell says, ‘Colonel, you are a queer feller. No man could have
+supposed, from your manners, that you had tasted anything stronger than
+tea all night, and yet you forget things in the morning. Come,
+come,—tell that to the marines, my friend,—we won’t have it at any
+price.’
+
+“‘En efet,’ says the Marky, twiddling his little black mustachios in
+the chimney-glass, and making a lunge or two as he used to do at the
+fencing-school. (He was a wonder at the fencing-school, and I’ve seen
+him knock down the image fourteen times running, at Lepage’s.) ‘Let us
+speak of affairs. Colonel, you understand that affairs of honour are
+best settled at once: perhaps it won’t be inconvenient to you to
+arrange our little matters of last night.’
+
+“‘What little matters?’ says I. ‘Do you owe me any money, Marky?’
+
+“‘Bah!’ says he; ‘do not let us have any more jesting. I have your note
+of hand for three hundred and forty louis. La voia!’ says he, taking
+out a paper from his pocket-book.
+
+“‘And mine for two hundred and ten,’ says Bloundell-Bloundell, and he
+pulls out his bit of paper.
+
+“I was in such a rage of wonder at this, that I sprang out of bed, and
+wrapped my dressing-gown round me. ‘Are you come here to make a fool of
+me?’ says I. ‘I don’t owe you two hundred, or two thousand, or two
+louis; and I won’t pay you a farthing. Do you suppose you can catch me
+with your notes of hand? I laugh at ’em and at you; and I believe you
+to be a couple——.’
+
+“‘A couple of what?’ says Mr. Bloundell. ‘You, of course, are aware
+that we are a couple of men of honour, Colonel Altamont, and not come
+here to trifle or to listen to abuse from you. You will either pay us
+or we will expose you as a cheat, and chastise you as a cheat, too,’
+says Bloundell.
+
+“‘Oui, parbleu,’ says the Marky,—but I didn’t mind him, for I could
+have thrown the little fellow out of the window; but it was different
+with Bloundell,—he was a large man, that weighs three stone more than
+me, and stands six inches higher, and I think he could have done for
+me.
+
+“‘Monsieur will pay, or Monsieur will give me the reason why. I believe
+you’re little better than a polisson, Colonel Altamont,’—that was the
+phrase he used—Altamont said with a grin—and I got plenty more of this
+language from the two fellows, and was in the thick of the row with
+them, when another of our party came in. This was a friend of mine—a
+gent I had met at Boulogne, and had taken to the Countess’s myself. And
+as he hadn’t played at all on the previous night, and had actually
+warned me against Bloundell and the others, I told the story to him,
+and so did the other two.
+
+“‘I am very sorry,’ says he. ‘You would go on playing: the Countess
+entreated you to discontinue. These gentlemen offered repeatedly to
+stop. It was you that insisted on the large stakes, not they.’ In fact
+he charged dead against me: and when the two others went away, he told
+me how the Marky would shoot me as sure as my name was—was what it is.
+‘I left the Countess crying, too,’ said he. ‘She hates these two men;
+she has warned you repeatedly against them’ (which she actually had
+done, and often told me never to play with them), ‘and now, Colonel, I
+have left her in hysterics almost, lest there should be any quarrel
+between you, and that confounded Marky should put a bullet through your
+head. It’s my belief,’ says my friend, ‘that that woman is distractedly
+in love with you.’
+
+“‘Do you think so?’ says I; upon which my friend told me how she had
+actually gone down on her knees to him and ‘Save Colonel Altamont!’
+
+“As soon as I was dressed, I went and called upon that lovely woman.
+She gave a shriek and pretty near fainted when she saw me. She called
+me Ferdinand,—I’m blest if she didn’t.”
+
+“I thought your name was Jack,” said Strong, with a laugh; at which the
+Colonel blushed very much behind his dyed whiskers.
+
+“A man may have more names than one, mayn’t he, Strong?” Altamont
+asked. “When I’m with a lady, I like to take a good one. She called me
+by my Christian name. She cried fit to break your heart. I can’t stand
+seeing a woman cry—never could—not whilst I’m fond of her. She said she
+could bear not to think of my losing so much money in her house.
+Wouldn’t I take her diamonds and necklaces, and pay part?
+
+“I swore I wouldn’t touch a farthing’s worth of her jewellery, which
+perhaps I did not think was worth a great deal,—but what can a woman do
+more than give you her all? That’s the sort I like, and I know there’s
+plenty of ’em. And I told her to be easy about the money, for I would
+not pay one single farthing.
+
+“‘Then they’ll shoot you,’ says she; ‘they’ll kill my Ferdinand.’”
+
+“They’ll kill my Jack wouldn’t have sounded well in French,” Strong
+said, laughing.
+
+“Never mind about names,” said the other, sulkily; “a man of honour may
+take any name he chooses, I suppose.”
+
+“Well, go on with your story,” said Strong. “She said they would kill
+you.”
+
+“‘No,’ says I, ‘they won’t: for I will not let that scamp of a Marquis
+send me out of the world; and if he lays a hand on me, I’ll brain him,
+Marquis as he is.’
+
+“At this the Countess shrank back from me as if I had said something
+very shocking. ‘Do I understand Colonel Altamont aright?’ says she:
+‘and that a British officer refuses to meet any person who provokes him
+to the field of honour?’
+
+“‘Field of honour be hanged, Countess,’ says I. ‘You would not have me
+be a target for that little scoundrel’s pistol practice.’
+
+“‘Colonel Altamont,’ says the Countess, ‘I thought you were a man of
+honour—I thought, I—but no matter. Good-bye, sir.’—And she was sweeping
+out of the room, her voice regular choking in her pocket-handkerchief.
+
+“‘Countess!’ says I, rushing after her and seizing her hand.
+
+“‘Leave me, Monsieur le Colonel,’ says she, shaking me off, ‘my father
+was a General of the Grand Army. A soldier should know how to pay all
+his debts of honour.’
+
+“What could I do? Everybody was against me. Caroline said I had lost
+the money: though I didn’t remember a syllable about the business. I
+had taken Deuceace’s money too; but then it was because he offered it
+to me you know, and that’s a different thing. Every one of these chaps
+was a man of fashion and honour; and the Marky and the Countess of the
+first families in France. And, by Jove, sir, rather than offend her, I
+paid the money up five hundred and sixty gold Napoleons, by Jove:
+besides three hundred which I lost when I had my revenge.
+
+“And I can’t tell you at this minute whether I was done or not,”
+concluded the Colonel, musing. “Sometimes I think I was: but then
+Caroline was so fond of me. That woman would never have seen me done:
+never, I’m sure she wouldn’t: at least, if she would, I’m deceived in
+woman.”
+
+Any further revelations of his past life which Altamont might have been
+disposed to confide to his honest comrade the Chevalier, were
+interrupted by a knocking at the outer door of their chambers; which,
+when opened by Grady the servant, admitted no less a person than Sir
+Francis Clavering into the presence of the two worthies.
+
+“The Governor, by Jove,” cried Strong, regarding the arrival of his
+patron with surprise. “What’s brought you here?” growled Altamont,
+looking sternly from under his heavy eyebrows at the Baronet. “It’s no
+good, I warrant.” And indeed, good very seldom brought Sir Francis
+Clavering into that or any other place.
+
+Whenever he came into Shepherd’s Inn it was money that brought the
+unlucky baronet into those precincts; and there was commonly a
+gentleman of the money-dealing world in waiting for him at Strong’s
+chambers, or at Campion’s below; and a question of bills to negotiate
+or to renew. Clavering was a man who had never looked his debts fairly
+in the face, familiar as he had been with them all his life; as long as
+he could renew a bill, his mind was easy regarding it; and he would
+sign almost anything for to-morrow, provided to-day could be left
+unmolested. He was a man whom scarcely any amount of fortune could have
+benefited permanently, and who was made to be ruined, to cheat small
+tradesmen, to be the victim of astuter sharpers: to be niggardly and
+reckless, and as destitute of honesty as the people who cheated him,
+and a dupe, chiefly because he was too mean to be a successful knave.
+He had told more lies in his time, and undergone more baseness of
+stratagem in order to stave off a small debt, or to swindle a poor
+creditor, than would have sufficed to make a fortune for a braver
+rogue. He was abject and a shuffler in the very height of his
+prosperity. Had he been a Crown Prince—he could not have been more
+weak, useless, dissolute or ungrateful. He could not move through life
+except leaning on the arm of somebody: and yet he never had an agent
+but he mistrusted him; and marred any plans which might be arranged for
+his benefit, and secretly acting against the people whom he employed.
+Strong knew Clavering and judged him quite correctly. It was not as
+friends that this pair met: but the Chevalier worked for his principal,
+as he would when in the army have pursued a harassing march, or
+undergone his part in the danger and privations of a siege; because it
+was his duty, and because he had agreed to it. “What is it he wants?”
+thought the officers of the Shepherd’s Inn garrison when the Baronet
+came among them.
+
+His pale face expressed extreme anger and irritation. “So sir,” he
+said, addressing Altamont, “you’ve been at your old tricks.”
+
+“Which of ’um?” asked Altamont, with a sneer.
+
+“You have been at the Rouge et Noir: you were there last night,” cried
+the Baronet.
+
+“How do you know,—were you there?” the other said. “I was at the Club
+but it wasn’t on the colours I played,—ask the Captain,—I’ve been
+telling him of it. It was with the bones. It was at hazard, Sir
+Francis, upon my word and honour it was;” and he looked at the Baronet
+with a knowing humorous mock humility, which only seemed to make the
+other more angry.
+
+“What the deuce do I care, sir, how a man like you loses his money, and
+whether it is at hazard or roulette?” screamed the Baronet, with a
+multiplicity of oaths, and at the top of his voice. “What I will not
+have, sir, is that you should use my name, or couple it with
+yours.—Damn him, Strong, why don’t you keep him in better order? I tell
+you he has gone and used my name again, sir,—drawn a bill upon me, and
+lost the money on the table—I can’t stand it—I won’t stand it. Flesh
+and blood won’t bear it—Do you know how much I have paid for you, sir?”
+
+“This was only a very little ’un, Sir Francis—only fifteen pound,
+Captain Strong, they wouldn’t stand another: and it oughtn’t to anger
+you, Governor. Why, it’s so trifling I did not even mention it to
+Strong,—did I now, Captain? I protest it had quite slipped my memory,
+and all on account of that confounded liquor I took.”
+
+“Liquor or no liquor, sir, it is no business of mine. I don’t care what
+you drink, or where you drink it—only it shan’t be in my house. And I
+will not have you breaking into my house of a night, and a fellow like
+you intruding himself on my company: how dared you show yourself in
+Grosvenor Place last night, sir,—and—and what do you suppose my friends
+must think of me when they see a man of your sort walking into my
+dining-room uninvited, and drunk, and calling for liquor as if you were
+the master of the house?”
+
+“They’ll think you know some very queer sort of people, I dare say,”
+Altamont said with impenetrable good-humour. “Look here, Baronet, I
+apologise; on my honour I do, and ain’t an apology enough between two
+gentlemen? It was a strong measure I own, walking into your cuddy, and
+calling for drink as if I was the Captain: but I had had too much
+before, you see, that’s why I wanted some more; nothing can be more
+simple—and it was because they wouldn’t give me no more money upon your
+name at the Black and Red, that I thought I would come down and speak
+to you about it. To refuse me was nothing: but to refuse a bill drawn
+on you that have been such a friend to the shop, and are a baronet and
+a member of parliament, and a gentleman and no mistake—Damme, its
+ungrateful.”
+
+“By heavens, if ever you do it again—if ever you dare to show yourself
+in my house; or give my name at a gambling-house or at any other house,
+by Jove—at any other house—or give any reference at all to me, or speak
+to me in the street, by God, or anywhere else until I speak to you—I
+disclaim you altogether—I won’t give you another shilling.”
+
+“Governor, don’t be provoking,” Altamont said surlily. “Don’t talk to
+me about daring to do this thing or t’other, or when my dander is up
+it’s the very thing to urge me on. I oughtn’t to have come last night,
+I know I oughtn’t: but I told you I was drunk, and that ought to be
+sufficient between gentleman and gentleman.”
+
+“You a gentleman! dammy, sir,” said the Baronet, “how dares a fellow
+like you to call himself a gentleman?”
+
+“I ain’t a baronet, I know,” growled the other; “and I’ve forgotten how
+to be a gentleman almost now, but—but I was one, once, and my father
+was one, and I’ll not have this sort of talk from you, Sir F.
+Clavering, that’s flat. I want to go abroad again. Why don’t you come
+down with the money, and let me go? Why the devil are you to be rolling
+in riches, and me to have none? Why should you have a house and a table
+covered with plate, and me be in a garret here in this beggarly
+Shepherd’s Inn? We’re partners, ain’t we? I’d as good a right to be
+rich as you have, haven’t I? Tell the story to Strong here, if you
+like; and ask him to be umpire between us. I don’t mind letting my
+secret out to a man that won’t split. Look here, Strong—perhaps you
+guess the story already—the fact is, me and the Governor——”
+
+“D——, hold your tongue,” shrieked out the Baronet in a fury. “You shall
+have the money as soon as I can get it. I ain’t made of money. I’m so
+pressed and badgered, I don’t know where to turn. I shall go mad; by
+Jove, I shall. I wish I was dead, for I’m the most miserable brute
+alive. I say, Mr. Altamont, don’t mind me. When I’m out of health—and
+I’m devilish bilious this morning—hang me, I abuse everybody, and don’t
+know what I say. Excuse me if I’ve offended you. I—I’ll try and get
+that little business done. Strong shall try. Upon my word he shall. And
+I say, Strong, my boy, I want to speak to you. Come into the office for
+a minute.”
+
+Almost all Clavering’s assaults ended in this ignominious way, and in a
+shameful retreat. Altamont sneered after the Baronet as he left the
+room, and entered into the office, to talk privately with his factotum.
+
+“What is the matter now?” the latter asked of him. “It’s the old story,
+I suppose.”
+
+“D—— it, yes,” the Baronet said. “I dropped two hundred in ready money
+at the Little Coventry last night, and gave a cheque for three hundred
+more. On her ladyship’s bankers, too, for to-morrow; and I must meet
+it, for there’ll be the deuce to pay else. The last time she paid my
+play-debts, I swore I would not touch a dice-box again, and she’ll keep
+her word, Strong, and dissolve partnership, if I go on. I wish I had
+three hundred a year, and was away. At a German watering-place you can
+do devilish well with three hundred a year. But my habits are so
+d——-reckless: I wish I was in the Serpentine. I wish I was dead, by Gad
+I wish I was. I wish I had never touched those confounded bones. I had
+such a run of luck last night, with five for the main, and seven to
+five all night, until those ruffians wanted to pay me with Altamont’s
+bill upon me. The luck turned from that minute. Never held the box
+again for three mains, and came away cleared out, leaving that infernal
+cheque behind me. How shall I pay it? Blackland won’t hold it over.
+Hulker and Bullock will write about it directly to her ladyship. By
+Jove, Ned, I’m the most miserable brute in all England.”
+
+It was necessary for Ned to devise some plan to console the Baronet
+under this pressure of grief; and no doubt he found the means of
+procuring a loan for his patron, for he was closeted at Mr. Campion’s
+offices that day for some time. Altamont had once more a guinea or two
+in his pocket, with a promise of a further settlement; and the Baronet
+had no need to wish himself dead for the next two or three months at
+least. And Strong, putting together what he had learned from the
+Colonel and Sir Francis, began to form in his own mind a pretty
+accurate opinion as to the nature of the tie which bound the two men
+together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+A Chapter of Conversations
+
+
+Every day, after the entertainment at Grosvenor Place and Greenwich, of
+which we have seen Major Pendennis partake, the worthy gentleman’s
+friendship and cordiality for the Clavering family seemed to increase.
+His calls were frequent; his attentions to the lady of the house
+unremitting. An old man about town, he had the good fortune to be
+received in many houses, at which a lady of Lady Clavering’s
+distinction ought to be seen. Would her ladyship not like to be present
+at the grand entertainment at Gaunt House? There was to be a very
+pretty breakfast ball at Viscount Marrowfat’s, at Fulham. Everybody was
+to be there (including august personages of the highest rank), and
+there was to be a Watteau quadrille, in which Miss Amory would surely
+look charming. To these and other amusements the obsequious old
+gentleman kindly offered to conduct Lady Clavering, and was also ready
+to make himself useful to the Baronet in any way agreeable to the
+latter.
+
+In spite of his present station and fortune, the world persisted in
+looking rather coldly upon Clavering, and strange suspicious rumours
+followed him about. He was blackballed at two clubs in succession. In
+the House of Commons, he only conversed with a few of the most
+disreputable members of that famous body, having a happy knack of
+choosing bad society, and adapting himself naturally to it, as other
+people do to the company of their betters. To name all the senators
+with whom Clavering consorted, would be invidious. We may mention only
+a few. There was Captain Raff, the honourable member for Epsom, who
+retired after the last Goodwood races, having accepted, as Mr. Hotspur,
+the whip of the party, said, a mission to the Levant; there was
+Hustingson, the patriotic member for Islington, whose voice is never
+heard now denunciating corruption, since his appointment to the
+Governorship of Coventry Island; there was Bob Freeny, of the
+Booterstown Freenys, who is a dead shot, and of whom we therefore wish
+to speak with every respect; and of all these gentlemen, with whom in
+the course of his professional duty Mr. Hotspur had to confer, there
+was none for whom he had a more thorough contempt and dislike than for
+Sir Francis Clavering, the representative of an ancient race, who had
+sat for their own borough of Clavering time out of mind in the House.
+“If that man is wanted for a division,” Hotspur said, “ten to one he is
+to be found in a hell. He was educated in the Fleet, and he has not
+heard the end of Newgate yet, take my word for it. He’ll muddle away
+the Begum’s fortune at thimble-rig, be caught picking pockets, and
+finish on board the hulks.” And if the high-born Hotspur, with such an
+opinion of Clavering, could yet from professional reasons be civil to
+him, why should not Major Pendennis also have reasons of his own for
+being attentive to this unlucky gentleman?
+
+“He has a very good cellar and a very good cook,” the Major said; “as
+long as he is silent he is not offensive, and he very seldom speaks. If
+he chooses to frequent gambling-tables, and lose his money to
+blacklegs, what matters to me? Don’t look too curiously into any man’s
+affairs, Pen, my boy; every fellow has some cupboard in his house,
+begad, which he would not like you and me to peep into. Why should we
+try, when the rest of the house is open to us? And a devilish good
+house, too, as you and I know. And if the man of the family is not all
+one could wish, the women are excellent. The Begum is not over-refined,
+but as kind a woman as ever lived, and devilish clever too; and as for
+the little Blanche, you know my opinion about her, you rogue; you know
+my belief is that she is sweet on you, and would have you for the
+asking. But you are growing such a great man, that I suppose you won’t
+be content under a Duke’s daughter—Hey, sir? I recommend you to ask one
+of them, and try.”
+
+Perhaps Pen was somewhat intoxicated by his success in the world; and
+it may also have entered into the young man’s mind (his uncle’s
+perpetual hints serving not a little to encourage the notion) that Miss
+Amory was tolerably well disposed to renew the little flirtation which
+had been carried on in the early days of both of them, by the banks of
+the rural Brawl. But he was little disposed to marriage, he said, at
+that moment, and, adopting some of his uncle’s worldly tone, spoke
+rather contemptuously of the institution, and in favour of a bachelor
+life.
+
+“You are very happy, sir,” said he, “and you get on very well alone,
+and so do I. With a wife at my side, I should lose my place in society;
+and I don’t, for my part, much fancy retiring into the country with a
+Mrs. Pendennis; or taking my wife into lodgings to be waited upon by
+the servant-of-all-work. The period of my little illusions is over. You
+cured me of my first love who, certainly was a fool, and would have had
+a fool for her husband, and a very sulky discontented husband too if
+she had taken me. We young fellows live fast, sir; and I feel as old at
+five-and-twenty as many of the old fo—the old bachelors—whom I see in
+the bow-window at Bays’s. Don’t look offended, I only mean that I am
+blase about love matters, and that I could no more fan myself into a
+flame for Miss Amory now, than I could adore Lady Mirabel over again. I
+wish I could; I rather like old Mirabel for his infatuation about her,
+and think his passion is the most respectable part of his life.”
+
+“Sir Charles Mirabel was always a theatrical man, sir,” the Major said,
+annoyed that his nephew should speak flippantly of any person of Sir
+Charles’s rank and station. “He has been occupied with theatricals
+since his early days. He acted at Carlton House when he was Page to the
+Prince; he has been mixed up with that sort of thing: he could afford
+to marry whom he chooses; and Lady Mirabel is a most respectable woman,
+received everywhere—everywhere, mind. The Duchess of Connaught receives
+her, Lady Rockminster receives her—it doesn’t become young fellows to
+speak lightly of people in that station. There’s not a more respectable
+woman in England than Lady Mirabel:—and the old fogies, as you call
+them, at Bays’s, are some of the first gentlemen in England, of whom
+you youngsters had best learn a little manners, and a little breeding,
+and a little modesty.” And the Major began to think that Pen was
+growing exceedingly pert and conceited, and that the world made a great
+deal too much of him.
+
+The Major’s anger amused Pen. He studied his uncle’s peculiarities with
+a constant relish, and was always in a good humour with his worldly old
+Mentor. “I am a youngster of fifteen years’ standing, sir,” he said,
+adroitly, “and if you think that we are disrespectful, you should see
+those of the present generation. A protege of yours came to breakfast
+with me the other day. You told me to ask him, and I did it to please
+you. We had a day’s sights together, and dined at the club, and went to
+the play. He said the wine at the Polyanthus was not so good as Ellis’s
+wine at Richmond, smoked Warrington’s cavendish after breakfast, and
+when I gave him a sovereign as a farewell token, said he had plenty of
+them, but would take it to show he wasn’t proud.”
+
+“Did he?—did you ask young Clavering?” cried the Major, appeased at
+once—“fine boy, rather wild, but a fine boy—parents like that sort of
+attention, and you can’t do better than pay it to our worthy friends of
+Grosvenor Place. And so you took him to the play and tipped him? That
+was right, sir, that was right:” with which Mentor quitted Telemachus,
+thinking that the young men were not so very bad, and that he should
+make something of that fellow yet.
+
+As Master Clavering grew into years and stature, he became too strong
+for the authority of his fond parents and governess; and rather
+governed them than permitted himself to be led by their orders. With
+his papa he was silent and sulky, seldom making his appearance,
+however, in the neighbourhood of that gentleman; with his mamma he
+roared and fought when any contest between them arose as to the
+gratification of his appetite, or other wish of his heart; and in his
+disputes with his governess over his book, he kicked that quiet
+creature’s shins so fiercely, that she was entirely overmastered and
+subdued by him. And he would have so treated his sister Blanche, too,
+and did on one or two occasions attempt to prevail over her; but she
+showed an immense resolution and spirit on her part, and boxed his ears
+so soundly, that he forbore from molesting Miss Amory, as he did the
+governess and his mamma, and his mamma’s maid.
+
+At length, when the family came to London, Sir Francis gave forth his
+opinion, that “the little beggar had best be sent to school.”
+Accordingly the young son and heir of the house of Clavering was
+despatched to the Rev. Otto Rose’s establishment at Twickenham, where
+young noblemen and gentlemen were received preparatory to their
+introduction to the great English public schools.
+
+It is not our intention to follow Master Clavering in his scholastic
+career; the paths to the Temple of Learning were made more easy to him
+than they were to some of us of earlier generations. He advanced
+towards that fane in a carriage-and-four, so to speak, and might halt
+and take refreshment almost whenever he pleased. He wore varnished
+boots from the earliest period of youth, and had cambric handkerchiefs
+and lemon-coloured kid gloves, of the smallest size ever manufactured
+by Privat. They dressed regularly at Mr. Rose’s to come down to dinner;
+the young gentlemen had shawl dressing-gowns, fires in their bedrooms,
+horse and carriage exercise occasionally, and oil for their hair.
+Corporal punishment was altogether dispensed with by the Principal, who
+thought that moral discipline was entirely sufficient to lead youth;
+and the boys were so rapidly advanced in many branches of learning,
+that they acquired the art of drinking spirits and smoking cigars, even
+before they were old enough to enter a public school. Young Frank
+Clavering stole his father’s Havannahs, and conveyed them to school, or
+smoked them in the stables, at a surprisingly early period of life, and
+at ten years old drank his champagne almost as stoutly as any whiskered
+cornet of dragoons could do.
+
+When this interesting youth came home for his vacations Major Pendennis
+was as laboriously civil and gracious to him as he was to the rest of
+the family; although the boy had rather a contempt for old Wigsby, as
+the Major was denominated, mimicked him behind his back, as the polite
+Major bowed and smirked with Lady Clavering or Miss Amory; and drew
+rude caricatures, such as are designed by ingenious youths, in which
+the Major’s wig, his nose, his tie, etc., were represented with artless
+exaggeration. Untiring in his efforts to be agreeable, the Major wished
+that Pen, too, should take particular notice of this child; incited
+Arthur to invite him to his chambers, to give him a dinner at the club,
+to take him to Madame Tussaud’s, the Tower, the play, and so forth, and
+to tip him, as the phrase is, at the end of the day’s pleasures.
+Arthur, who was good-natured and fond of children, went through all
+these ceremonies one day; had the boy to breakfast at the Temple, where
+he made the most contemptuous remarks regarding the furniture, the
+crockery, and the tattered state of Warrington’s dressing-gown; and
+smoked a short pipe, and recounted the history of a fight between Tuffy
+and Long Biggings, at Rose’s, greatly to the edification of the two
+gentlemen his hosts.
+
+As the Major rightly predicted, Lady Clavering was very grateful for
+Arthur’s attention to the boy; more grateful than the lad himself, who
+took attentions as a matter of course, and very likely had more
+sovereigns in his pocket than poor Pen, who generously gave him one of
+his own slender stock of those coins.
+
+The Major, with the sharp eyes with which Nature endowed him, and with
+the glasses of age and experience, watched this boy, and surveyed his
+position in the family without seeming to be rudely curious about their
+affairs. But, as a country neighbour, one who had many family
+obligations to the Claverings, an old man of the world, he took
+occasion to find out what Lady Clavering’s means were, how her capital
+was disposed, and what the boy was to inherit. And setting himself to
+work,—for what purposes will appear, no doubt, ulteriorly,—he soon had
+got a pretty accurate knowledge of Lady Clavering’s affairs and
+fortune, and of the prospects of her daughter and son. The daughter was
+to have but a slender provision; the bulk of the property was, as
+before has been said, to go to the son,—his father did not care for him
+or anybody else,—his mother was dotingly fond of him as the child of
+her latter days,—his sister disliked him. Such may be stated in round
+numbers, to be the result of the information which Major Pendennis got.
+“Ah! my dear madam,” he would say, patting the head of the boy, “this
+boy may wear a baron’s coronet on his head on some future coronation,
+if matters are but managed rightly, and if Sir Francis Clavering would
+but play his cards well.”
+
+At this the widow Amory heaved a deep sigh. “He plays only too much of
+his cards, Major, I’m afraid,” she said. The Major owned that he knew
+as much; did not disguise that he had heard of Sir Francis Clavering’s
+unfortunate propensity to play; pitied Lady Clavering sincerely; but
+spoke with such genuine sentiment and sense, that her ladyship, glad to
+find a person of experience to whom she could confide her grief and her
+condition, talked about them pretty unreservedly to Major Pendennis,
+and was eager to have his advice and consolation. Major Pendennis
+became the Begum’s confidante and house-friend, and as a mother, a
+wife, and a capitalist, she consulted him.
+
+He gave her to understand (showing at the same time a great deal of
+respectful sympathy) that he was acquainted with some of the
+circumstances of her first unfortunate marriage, and with even the
+person of her late husband, whom he remembered in Calcutta—when she was
+living in seclusion with her father. The poor lady, with tears of shame
+more than of grief in her eyes, told her version of her story. Going
+back a child to India after two years at a European school, she had met
+Amory, and foolishly married him. “Oh, you don’t know how miserable
+that man made me,” she said, “or what a life I passed betwixt him and
+my father. Before I saw him I had never seen a man except my father’s
+clerks and native servants. You know we didn’t go into society in India
+on account of——” (“I know,” said Major Pendennis, with a bow) “I was a
+wild romantic child, my head was full of novels which I’d read at
+school—I listened to his wild stories and adventures, for he was a
+daring fellow, and I thought he talked beautifully of those calm nights
+on the passage out, when he used to——. Well, I married him, and I was
+wretched from that day—wretched with my father, whose character you
+know, Major Pendennis, and I won’t speak of: but he wasn’t a good man,
+sir,—neither to my poor mother, nor to me, except that he left me his
+money,—nor to no one else that I ever heard of: and he didn’t do many
+kind actions in his lifetime, I’m afraid. And as for Amory, he was
+almost worse; he was a spendthrift when my father was close: he drank
+dreadfully, and was furious when in that way. He wasn’t in any way a
+good or a faithful husband to me, Major Pendennis, and if he’d died in
+the gaol before this trial, instead of afterwards he would have saved
+me a deal of shame and of unhappiness since, sir.” Lady Clavering
+added: “For perhaps I should not have married at all if I had not been
+so anxious to change his horrid name, and I have not been happy in my
+second husband, as I suppose you know, sir. Ah, Major Pendennis, I’ve
+got money to be sure, and I’m a lady, and people fancy I’m very happy,
+but I ain’t. We all have our cares, and griefs, and troubles: and
+many’s the day that I sit down to one of my grand dinners with an
+aching heart, and many a night do I lay awake on my fine bed a great
+deal more unhappy than the maid that makes for it. I’m not a happy
+woman, Major, for all the world says; and envies the Begum her
+diamonds, and carriages, and the great company that comes to my house.
+I’m not happy in my husband; I’m not in my daughter. She ain’t a good
+girl like that dear Laura Bell at Fairoaks. She’s cost me many a tear
+though you don’t see ’em; and she sneers at her mother because I
+haven’t had learning and that. How should I? I was brought up amongst
+natives till I was twelve, and went back to India when I was fourteen.
+Ah, Major, I should have been a good woman if I had had a good husband.
+And now I must go upstairs and wipe my eyes, for they’re red with
+cryin. And Lady Rockminster’s a comin, and we’re goin to ave a drive in
+the Park.” And when Lady Rockminster made her appearance, there was not
+a trace of tears or vexation on Lady Clavering’s face, but she was full
+of spirits, and bounced out with her blunders and talk, and murdered
+the king’s English with the utmost liveliness and good-humour.
+
+“Begad, she is not such a bad woman!” the Major thought within himself.
+“She is not refined, certainly, and calls ‘Apollo’ ‘Apoller;’ but she
+has some heart, and I like that sort of thing, and a devilish deal of
+money, too. Three stars in India Stock to her name, begad! which that
+young cub is to have—is he?” And he thought how he should like to see a
+little of the money transferred to Miss Blanche, and, better still, one
+of those stars shining in the name of Mr. Arthur Pendennis.
+
+Still bent upon pursuing his schemes, whatsoever they might be, the old
+negotiator took the privilege of his intimacy and age, to talk in a
+kindly and fatherly manner to Miss Blanche, when he found occasion to
+see her alone. He came in so frequently at luncheon-time, and became so
+familiar with the ladies, that they did not even hesitate to quarrel
+before him; and Lady Clavering, whose tongue was loud, and temper
+brusque, had many a battle with the Sylphide in the family friend’s
+presence. Blanche’s wit seldom failed to have the mastery in these
+encounters, and the keen barbs of her arrows drove her adversary
+discomfited away. “I am an old fellow,” the Major said; “I have nothing
+to do in life. I have my eyes open. I keep good counsel. I am the
+friend of both of you; and if you choose to quarrel before me, why, I
+shan’t tell any one. But you are two good people, and I intend to make
+it up between you. I have between lots of people—husbands and wives,
+fathers and sons, daughters and mammas, before this. I like it; I’ve
+nothing else to do.”
+
+One day, then, the old diplomatist entered Lady Clavering’s
+drawing-room, just as the latter quitted it, evidently in a high state
+of indignation, and ran past him up the stairs to her own apartments.
+“She couldn’t speak to him now,” she said; “she was a great deal too
+angry with that—that—that little, wicked”—anger choked the rest of the
+words, or prevented their utterance until Lady Clavering had passed out
+of hearing.
+
+“My dear, good Miss Amory,” the Major said, entering the drawing-room,
+“I see what is happening. You and mamma have been disagreeing. Mothers
+and daughters disagree in the best families. It was but last week that
+I healed up a quarrel between Lady Clapperton and her daughter Lady
+Claudia. Lady Lear and her eldest daughter have not spoken for fourteen
+years. Kinder and more worthy people than these I never knew in the
+whole course of my life; for everybody but each other admirable. But
+they can’t live together: they oughtn’t to live together: and I wish,
+my dear creature, with all my soul, that I could see you with an
+establishment of your own—for there is no woman in London who could
+conduct one better—with your own establishment, making your own home
+happy.”
+
+“I am not very happy in this one,” said the Sylphide; “and the
+stupidity of mamma is enough to provoke a saint.”
+
+“Precisely so; you are not suited to one another. Your mother committed
+one fault in early life—or was it Nature, my dear, in your case?—she
+ought not to have educated you. You ought not to have been bred up to
+become the refined and intellectual being you are, surrounded, as I own
+you are, by those who have not your genius or your refinement. Your
+place would be to lead in the most brilliant circles, not to follow,
+and take a second place in any society. I have watched you, Miss Amory:
+you are ambitious; and your proper sphere is command. You ought to
+shine; and you never can in this house, I know it. I hope I shall see
+you in another and a happier one, some day, and the mistress of it.”
+
+The Sylphide shrugged her lily shoulders with a look of scorn. “Where
+is the Prince, and where is the palace, Major Pendennis?” she said. “I
+am ready. But there is no romance in the world now, no real affection.”
+
+“No, indeed,” said the Major, with the most sentimental and simple air
+which he could muster.
+
+“Not that I know anything about it,” said Blanche, casting her eyes
+down “except what I have read in novels.”
+
+“Of course not,” Major Pendennis cried; “how should you, my dear young
+lady? and novels ain’t true, as you remark admirably, and there is no
+romance left in the world. Begad, I wish I was a young fellow like my
+nephew.”
+
+“And what,” continued Miss Amory, musing, “what are the men whom we see
+about at the balls every night—dancing guardsmen, penniless treasury
+clerks—boobies! If I had my brother’s fortune, I might have such an
+establishment as you promise me—but with my name, and with my little
+means, what am I to look to! A country parson, or a barrister in a
+street near Russell Square, or a captain in a dragoon regiment, who
+will take lodgings for me, and come home from the mess tipsy and
+smelling of smoke like Sir Francis Clavering. That is how we girls are
+destined to end life. O Major Pendennis, I am sick of London, and of
+balls, and of young dandies with their chin-tips, and of the insolent
+great ladies who know us one day and cut us the next—and of the world
+altogether. I should like to leave it and to go into a convent, that I
+should. I shall never find anybody to understand me. And I live here as
+much alone in my family and in the world, as if I were in a cell locked
+up for ever. I wish there were Sisters of Charity here, and that I
+could be one and catch the plague, and die of it—I wish to quit the
+world. I am not very old: but I am tired, I have suffered so much—I’ve
+been so disillusionated—I’m weary, I’m weary—O that the Angel of Death
+would come and beckon me away!”
+
+This speech may be interpreted as follows. A few nights since a great
+lady, Lady Flamingo, had cut Miss Amory and Lady Clavering. She was
+quite mad because she could not get an invitation to Lady Drum’s ball:
+it was the end of the season and nobody had proposed to her: she had
+made no sensation at all, she who was so much cleverer than any girl of
+the year, and of the young ladies forming her special circle. Dora who
+had but five thousand pounds, Flora who had nothing, and Leonora who
+had red hair, were going to be married, and nobody had come for Blanche
+Amory!
+
+“You judge wisely about the world, and about your position, my dear
+Miss Blanche,” the Major said. “The Prince don’t marry nowadays, as you
+say: unless the Princess has a doosid deal of money in the funds, or is
+a lady of his own rank.—The young folks of the great families marry
+into the great families: if they haven’t fortune they have each other’s
+shoulders, to push on in the world, which is pretty nearly as good.—A
+girl with your fortune can scarcely hope for a great match: but a girl
+with your genius and your admirable tact and fine manners, with a
+clever husband by her side, may make any place for herself in the
+world.—We are grown doosid republican. Talent ranks with birth and
+wealth now, begad: and a clever man with a clever wife, may take any
+place they please.”
+
+Miss Amory did not of course in the least understand what Major
+Pendennis meant.—Perhaps she thought over circumstances in her mind and
+asked herself, could he be a negotiator for a former suitor of hers,
+and could he mean Pen? No, it was impossible—He had been civil, but
+nothing more.—So she said laughing, “Who is the clever man, and when
+will you bring him to me, Major Pendennis? I am dying to see him.”
+
+At this moment a servant threw open the door, and announced Mr. Henry
+Foker: at which name, and at the appearance of our friend, both the
+lady and the gentleman burst out laughing.
+
+“That is not the man,” Major Pendennis said. “He is engaged to his
+cousin, Lord Gravesend’s daughter.—Good-bye, my dear Miss Amory.”
+
+Was Pen growing worldly, and should a man not get the experience of the
+world and lay it to his account? “He felt, for his part,” as he said,
+“that he was growing very old very soon.” “How this town forms and
+changes us,” he said once to Warrington. Each had come in from his
+night’s amusement; and Pen was smoking his pipe, and recounting, as his
+habit was, to his friend the observations and adventures of the evening
+just past. “How I am changed,” he said, “from the simpleton boy at
+Fairoaks, who was fit to break his heart about his first love! Lady
+Mirabel had a reception to-night, and was as grave and collected as if
+she had been born a Duchess, and had never seen a trap-door in her
+life. She gave me the honour of a conversation, and patronised me about
+‘Walter Lorraine,’ quite kindly.”
+
+“What condescension!” broke in Warrington.
+
+“Wasn’t it?” Pen said, simply—at which the other burst out laughing
+according to his wont. “Is it possible,” he said, “that anybody should
+think of patronising the eminent author of ‘Walter Lorraine?’”
+
+“You laugh at both of us,” Pen said, blushing a little—“I was coming to
+that myself. She told me that she had not read the book (as indeed I
+believe she never read a book in her life), but that Lady Rockminster
+had, and that the Duchess of Connaught pronounced it to be very clever.
+In that case, I said, I should die happy, for that to please those two
+ladies was in fact the great aim of my existence, and having their
+approbation, of course I need look for no other. Lady Mirabel looked at
+me solemnly out of her fine eyes, and said, ‘Oh, indeed,’ as if she
+understood me, and then she asked me whether I went to the Duchess’s
+Thursdays, and when I said No, hoped she should see me there, and that
+I must try and get there, everybody went there—everybody who was in
+society: and then we talked of the new ambassador from Timbuctoo, and
+how he was better than the old one; and how Lady Mary Billington was
+going to marry a clergyman quite below her in rank; and how Lord and
+Lady Ringdove had fallen out three months after their marriage about
+Tom Pouter of the Blues, Lady Ringdove’s cousin—and so forth. From the
+gravity of that woman you would have fancied she had been born in a
+palace, and lived all the seasons of her life in Belgrave Square.”
+
+“And you, I suppose you took your part in the conversation pretty well,
+as the descendant of the Earl your father, and the heir of Fairoaks
+Castle?” Warrington said. “Yes, I remember reading of the festivities
+which occurred when you came of age. The Countess gave a brilliant tea
+soiree to the neighbouring nobility; and the tenantry were regaled in
+the kitchen with a leg of mutton and a quart of ale. The remains of the
+banquet were distributed amongst the poor of the village, and the
+entrance to the park was illuminated until old John put the candle out
+on retiring to rest at his usual hour.”
+
+“My mother is not a countess,” said Pen, “though she has very good
+blood in her veins too—but commoner as she is, I have never met a
+peeress who was more than her peer, Mr. George; and if you will come to
+Fairoaks Castle you shall judge for yourself of her and of my cousin
+too. They are not so witty as the London women, but they certainly are
+as well bred. The thoughts of women in the country are turned to other
+objects than those which occupy your London ladies. In the country a
+woman has her household and her poor, her long calm days and long calm
+evenings.”
+
+“Devilish long,” Warrington said, “and a great deal too calm; I’ve
+tried ’em.”
+
+“The monotony of that existence must be to a certain degree
+melancholy—like the tune of a long ballad; and its harmony grave and
+gentle, sad and tender: it would be unendurable else. The loneliness of
+women in the country makes them of necessity soft and sentimental.
+Leading a life of calm duty, constant routine, mystic reverie,—a sort
+of nuns at large—too much gaiety or laughter would jar upon their
+almost sacred quiet, and would be as out of place there as in a
+church.”
+
+“Where you go to sleep over the sermon,” Warrington said.
+
+“You are a professed misogynist, and hate the sex because, I suspect,
+you know very little about them,” Mr. Pen continued, with an air of
+considerable self-complacency. “If you dislike the women in the country
+for being too slow, surely the London woman ought to be fast enough for
+you. The pace of London life is enormous: how do people last at it, I
+wonder,—male and female? Take a woman of the world: follow her course
+through the season; one asks how she can survive it? or if she tumbles
+into a sleep at the end of August, and lies torpid until the spring?
+She goes into the world every night, and sits watching her marriageable
+daughters dancing till long after dawn. She has a nursery of little
+ones, very likely, at home, to whom she administers example and
+affection; having an eye likewise to bread-and-milk, catechism, music
+and French, and roast leg of mutton at one o’clock; she has to call
+upon ladies of her own station, either domestically or in her public
+character, in which she sits upon Charity Committees, or Ball
+Committees, or Emigration Committees, or Queen’s College Committees,
+and discharges I don’t know what more duties of British
+stateswomanship. She very likely keeps a poor-visiting list; has
+conversations with the clergyman about soup or flannel, or proper
+religious teaching for the parish; and (if she lives in certain
+districts) probably attends early church. She has the newspapers to
+read, and, at least, must know what her husband’s party is about, so as
+to be able to talk to her neighbour at dinner; and it is a fact that
+she reads every new book that comes out; for she can talk, and very
+smartly and well, about them all, and you see them all upon her
+drawing-room table. She has the cares of her household besides—to make
+both ends meet; to make the girls’ milliner’s bills appear not too
+dreadful to the father and paymaster of the family; to snip off, in
+secret, a little extra article of expenditure here and there, and
+convey it, in the shape of a bank-note, to the boys at college or at
+sea; to check the encroachments of tradesmen and housekeepers’
+financial fallacies; to keep upper and lower servants from jangling
+with one another, and the household in order. Add to this, that she has
+a secret taste for some art or science, models in clay, makes
+experiments in chemistry, or plays in private on the violoncello,—and I
+say, without exaggeration, many London ladies are doing this,—and you
+have a character before you such as our ancestors never heard of, and
+such as belongs entirely to our era and period of civilisation. Ye
+gods! how rapidly we live and grow! In nine months, Mr. Paxton grows
+you a pineapple as large as a portmanteau, whereas a little one, no
+bigger than a Dutch cheese, took three years to attain his majority in
+old times; and as the race of pineapples so is the race of man.
+Hoiaper—what’s the Greek for a pineapple, Warrington?”
+
+“Stop, for mercy’s sake, stop with the English and before you come to
+the Greek,” Warrington cried out, laughing. “I never heard you make
+such a long speech, or was aware that you had penetrated so deeply into
+the female mysteries. Who taught you all this, and into whose boudoirs
+and nurseries have you been peeping, whilst I was smoking my pipe, and
+reading my book, lying on my straw bed?”
+
+“You are on the bank; old boy, content to watch the waves tossing in
+the winds, and the struggles of others at sea,” Pen said. “I am in the
+stream now, and by Jove I like it. How rapidly we go down it, hey?
+Strong and feeble, old and young—the metal pitchers and the earthen
+pitchers—the pretty little china boat swims gaily till the big bruised
+brazen one bumps him and sends him down—eh, vogue la galere!—you see a
+man sink in the race, and say good-bye to him—look, he has only dived
+under the other fellow’s legs, and comes up shaking his pole, and
+striking out ever so far ahead. Eh, vogue la galere, I say. It’s good
+sport, Warrington—not winning merely, but playing.”
+
+“Well, go in and win, young ’un. I’ll sit and mark the game,”
+Warrington said, surveying the ardent young fellow with an almost
+fatherly pleasure. “A generous fellow plays for the play, a sordid one
+for the stake; an old fogy sits by and smokes the pipe of tranquillity,
+while Jack and Tom are pummelling each other in the ring.”
+
+“Why don’t you come in, George, and have a turn with the gloves? You
+are big enough and strong enough,” Pen said. “Dear old boy, you are
+worth ten of me.”
+
+“You are not quite as tall as Goliath, certainly,” the other answered,
+with a laugh that was rough and yet tender. “As for me, I am disabled.
+I had a fatal hit in early life. I will tell you about it some day. You
+may, too, meet with your master. Don’t be too eager, or too confident,
+or too worldly, my boy.”
+
+Was Pendennis becoming worldly, or only seeing the worldly, or both?
+and is a man very wrong for being after all only a man? Which is the
+most reasonable, and does his duty best: he who stands aloof from the
+struggle of life, calmly contemplating, or he who descends to the
+ground, and takes his part in the contest? “That philosopher,” Pen
+said, “had held a great place amongst the leaders of the world, and
+enjoyed to the full what it had to give of rank and riches, renown and
+pleasure, who came, weary-hearted, out of it, and said that all was
+vanity and vexation of spirit. Many a teacher of those whom we
+reverence, and who steps out of his carriage up to his carved cathedral
+place, shakes his lawn ruffles over the velvet cushions, and cries out,
+that the whole struggle is an accursed one, and the works of the world
+are evil. Many a conscience-stricken mystic flies from it altogether,
+and shuts himself out from it within convent walls (real or spiritual),
+whence he can only look up to the sky, and contemplate the heaven out
+of which there is no rest, and no good.
+
+“But the earth, where our feet are, is the work of the same Power as
+the immeasurable blue yonder, in which the future lies into which we
+would peer. Who ordered toil as the condition of life, ordered
+weariness, ordered sickness, ordered poverty, failure, success—to this
+man a foremost place, to the other a nameless struggle with the
+crowd—to that a shameful fall, or paralysed limb, or sudden accident—to
+each some work upon the ground he stands on, until he is laid beneath
+it.” While they were talking, the dawn came shining through the windows
+of the room, and Pen threw them open to receive the fresh morning air.
+“Look, George,” said he; “look and see the sun rise: he sees the
+labourer on his way a-field; the work-girl plying her poor needle; the
+lawyer at his desk, perhaps; the beauty smiling asleep upon her pillow
+of down; or the jaded reveller reeling to bed; or the fevered patient
+tossing on it; or the doctor watching by it, over the throes of the
+mother for the child that is to be born into the world;—to be born and
+to take his part in the suffering and struggling, the tears and
+laughter, the crime, remorse, love, folly, sorrow, rest.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+Miss Amory’s Partners
+
+
+The noble Henry Foker, of whom we have lost sight for a few pages, has
+been in the meanwhile occupied, as we might suppose a man of his
+constancy would be, in the pursuit and indulgence of his all-absorbing
+passion of love.
+
+I wish that a few of my youthful readers who are inclined to that
+amusement would take the trouble to calculate the time which is spent
+in the pursuit, when they would find it to be one of the most costly
+occupations in which a man can possibly indulge. What don’t you
+sacrifice to it, indeed, young gentlemen and young ladies of
+ill-regulated minds? Many hours of your precious sleep in the first
+place, in which you lie tossing and thinking about the adored object,
+whence you come down late to breakfast, when noon is advancing and all
+the family is long since away to its daily occupations. Then when you
+at length get to these occupations you pay no attention to them, and
+engage in them with no ardour—all your thoughts and powers of mind
+being fixed elsewhere. Then the day’s work being slurred over, you
+neglect your friends and relatives, your natural companions and usual
+associates in life, that you may go and have a glance at the dear
+personage, or a look up at her windows, or a peep at her carriage in
+the Park. Then at night the artless blandishments of home bore you;
+mamma’s conversation palls upon you; the dishes which that good soul
+prepares for the dinner of her favourite are sent away untasted,—the
+whole meal of life, indeed, except one particular plat, has no relish.
+Life, business, family ties, home, all things useful and dear once,
+become intolerable, and you are never easy except when you are in
+pursuit of your flame.
+
+Such I believe to be not unfrequently the state of mind amongst
+ill-regulated young gentlemen, and such indeed was Mr. H. Foker’s
+condition, who, having been bred up to indulge in every propensity
+towards which he was inclined, abandoned himself to this one with his
+usual selfish enthusiasm. Nor because he had given his friend Arthur
+Pendennis a great deal of good advice on a former occasion, need men of
+the world wonder that Mr. Foker became passion’s slave in his turn. Who
+among us has not given a plenty of the very best advice to his friends?
+Who has not preached, and who has practised? To be sure, you, madam,
+are perhaps a perfect being, and never had a wrong thought in the whole
+course of your frigid and irreproachable existence: or sir, you are a
+great deal too strong-minded to allow any foolish passion to interfere
+with your equanimity in chambers or your attendance on ’Change; you are
+so strong that you don’t want any sympathy. We don’t give you any,
+then; we keep ours for the humble and weak, that struggle and stumble
+and get up again, and so march with the rest of mortals. What need have
+you of a hand who never fall? Your serene virtue is never shaded by
+passion, or ruffled by temptation, or darkened by remorse; compassion
+would be impertinence for such an angel: but then with such a one
+companionship becomes intolerable; you are, from the elevation of your
+very virtue and high attributes, of necessity lonely; we can’t reach up
+and talk familiarly with such potentatess good-bye, then; our way lies
+with humble folks, and not with serene highnesses like you; and we give
+notice that there are no perfect characters in this history, except,
+perhaps, one little one, and that one is not perfect either, for she
+never knows to this day that she is perfect, and with a deplorable
+misapprehension and perverseness of humility, believes herself to be as
+great a sinner as need be.
+
+This young person does not happen to be in London at the present period
+of our story, and it is by no means for the like of her that Mr. Henry
+Foker’s mind is agitated. But what matters a few failings? Need we be
+angels, male or female, in order to be worshipped as such? Let us
+admire the diversity of the tastes of mankind; and the oldest, the
+ugliest, the stupidest and most pompous, the silliest and most vapid,
+the greatest criminal, tyrant booby, Bluebeard, Catherine Hayes, George
+Barnwell, amongst us, we need never despair. I have read of the passion
+of a transported pickpocket for a female convict (each of them advanced
+in age, being repulsive in person, ignorant, quarrelsome, and given to
+drink), that was as magnificent as the loves of Cleopatra and Antony,
+or Lancelot and Guinever. The passion which Count Borulawski, the
+Polish dwarf, inspired in the bosom of the most beautiful Baroness at
+the Court of Dresden, is a matter with which we are all of us
+acquainted: the flame which burned in the heart of young Cornet Tozer
+but the other day, and caused him to run off and espouse Mrs.
+Battersby, who was old enough to be his mamma,—all these instances are
+told in the page of history or the newspaper column. Are we to be
+ashamed or pleased to think that our hearts are formed so that the
+biggest and highest-placed Ajax among us may some day find himself
+prostrate before the pattens of his kitchen-maid; as that there is no
+poverty or shame or crime, which will not be supported, hugged even
+with delight, and cherished more closely than virtue would be, by the
+perverse fidelity and admirable constant folly of a woman?
+
+So then Henry Foker, Esquire, longed after his love, and cursed the
+fate which separated him from her. When Lord Gravesend’s family retired
+to the country (his lordship leaving his proxy with the venerable Lord
+Bagwig), Harry still remained lingering on in London, certainly not
+much to the sorrow of Lady Ann, to whom he was affianced, and who did
+not in the least miss him. Wherever Miss Clavering went, this
+infatuated young fellow continued to follow her; and being aware that
+his engagement to his cousin was known in the world, he was forced to
+make a mystery of his passion, and confine it to his own breast, so
+that it was so pent in there and pressed down, that it is a wonder he
+did not explode some day with the stormy secret, and perish collapsed
+after the outburst.
+
+There had been a grand entertainment at Gaunt House on one beautiful
+evening in June, and the next day’s journals contained almost two
+columns of the names of the most closely printed nobility and gentry
+who had been honoured with invitations to the ball. Among the guests
+were Sir Francis and Lady Clavering and Miss Amory, for whom the
+indefatigable Major Pendennis had procured an invitation, and our two
+young friends Arthur and Harry. Each exerted himself, and danced a
+great deal with Miss Blanche. As for the worthy Major, he assumed the
+charge of Lady Clavering, and took care to introduce her to that
+department of the mansion where her ladyship specially distinguished
+herself, namely, the refreshment-room, where, amongst pictures of
+Titian and Giorgione, and regal portraits of Vandyke and Reynolds, and
+enormous salvers of gold and silver, and pyramids of large flowers, and
+constellations of wax candles—in a manner perfectly regardless of
+expense, in a word—a supper was going on all night. Of how many creams,
+jellies, salads, peaches, white soups, grapes, pates, galantines, cups
+of tea, champagne, and so forth, Lady Clavering partook, it does not
+become us to say. How much the Major suffered as he followed the honest
+woman about, calling to the solemn male attendants and lovely
+servant-maids, and administering to Lady Clavering’s various wants with
+admirable patience, nobody knows;—he never confessed. He never allowed
+his agony to appear on his countenance in the least; but with a
+constant kindness brought plate after plate to the Begum.
+
+Mr. Wagg counted up all the dishes of which Lady Clavering partook as
+long as he could count (but as he partook very freely himself of
+champagne during the evening, his powers of calculation were not to be
+trusted at the close of the entertainment), and he recommended Mr.
+Honeyman, Lady Steyne’s medical man, to look carefully after the Begum,
+and to call and get news of her ladyship the next day.
+
+Sir Francis Clavering made his appearance, and skulked for a while
+about the magnificent rooms; but the company and the splendour which he
+met there were not to the Baronet’s taste, and after tossing off a
+tumbler of wine or two at the buffet, he quitted Gaunt House for the
+neighbourhood of Jermyn Street, where his friends Loder, Punter, little
+Moss Abramns, and Captain Skewball were assembled at the familiar green
+table. In the rattle of the box, and of their agreeable conversation,
+Sir Francis’s spirits rose to their accustomed point of feeble
+hilarity.
+
+Mr. Pynsent, who had asked Miss Amory to dance, came up on one occasion
+to claim her hand, but scowls of recognition having already passed
+between him and Mr. Arthur Pendennis in the dancing-room, Arthur
+suddenly rose up and claimed Miss Amory as his partner for the present
+dance, on which Mr. Pynsent, biting his lips and scowling yet more
+savagely, withdrew with a profound bow, saying that he gave up his
+claim. There are some men who are always falling in one’s way in life.
+Pynsent and Pen had this view of each other; and each regarded other
+accordingly.
+
+“What a confounded conceited provincial fool that is!” thought the one.
+“Because he has written a twopenny novel, his absurd head is turned,
+and a kicking would take his conceit out of him.”
+
+“What an impertinent idiot that man is!” remarked the other to his
+partner. “His soul is in Downing Street; his neckcloth is foolscap; his
+hair is sand; his legs are rulers; his vitals are tape and sealing-wax;
+he was a prig in his cradle; and never laughed since he was born,
+except three times at the same joke of his chief. I have the same
+liking for that man, Miss Amory, I have for that cold boiled veal.”
+Upon which Blanche of course remarked, that Mr. Pendennis was wicked,
+mechant, perfectly abominable, and wondered what he would say when her
+back was turned.
+
+“Say!—Say that you have the most beautiful figure, and the slimmest
+waist in the world, Blanche—Miss Amory, I mean. I beg your pardon.
+Another turn; this music would make an alderman dance.”
+
+“And you have left off tumbling when you waltz now?” Blanche asked,
+archly looking up at her partner’s face.
+
+“One falls and one gets up again in life, Blanche; you know I used to
+call you so in old times, and it is the prettiest name in the world.
+Besides, I have practised since then.”
+
+“And with a great number of partners, I’m afraid,” Blanche said, with a
+little sham sigh, and a shrug of the shoulders. And so in truth Mr. Pen
+had practised a good deal in this life; and had undoubtedly arrived at
+being able to dance better.
+
+If Pendennis was impertinent in his talk, Foker, on the other hand, so
+bland and communicative on most occasions, was entirely mum and
+melancholy when he danced with Miss Amory. To clasp her slender waist
+was a rapture, to whirl round the room with her was a delirium; but to
+speak to her, what could he say that was worthy of her? What pearl of
+conversation could he bring that was fit for the acceptance of such a
+Queen of love and wit as Blanche? It was she who made the talk when she
+was in the company of this love-stricken partner. It was she who asked
+him how that dear little pony was, and looked at him and thanked him
+with such a tender kindness and regret, and refused the dear little
+pony with such a delicate sigh when he offered it. “I have nobody to
+ride with in London,” she said. “Mamma is timid, and her figure is not
+pretty on horseback. Sir Francis never goes out with me. He loves me
+like—like a stepdaughter. Oh, how delightful it must be to have a
+father—a father, Mr. Foker!”
+
+“Oh, uncommon,” said Mr. Harry, who enjoyed that blessing very calmly,
+upon which, and forgetting the sentimental air which she had just
+before assumed, Blanche’s grey eyes gazed at Foker with such an arch
+twinkle that both of them burst out laughing, and Harry enraptured and
+at his ease began to entertain her with a variety of innocent
+prattle—good kind simple Foker talk, flavoured with many expressions by
+no means to be discovered in dictionaries, and relating to the personal
+history of himself or horses, or other things dear and important to
+him, or to persons in the ballroom then passing before them, and about
+whose appearance or character Mr. Harry spoke with artless freedom, and
+a considerable dash of humour.
+
+And it was Blanche who, when the conversation flagged, and the youth’s
+modesty came rushing back and overpowering him, knew how to reanimate
+her companion: asked him questions about Logwood, and whether it was a
+pretty place? Whether he was a hunting man, and whether he liked women
+to hunt? (in which case she was prepared to say that she adored
+hunting)—but Mr. Foker expressing his opinion against sporting females,
+and pointing out Lady Bullfinch, who happened to pass by, as a
+horse-godmother, whom he had seen at cover with a cigar in her face,
+Blanche too expressed her detestation of the sports of the field, and
+said it would make her shudder to think of a dear sweet little fox
+being killed, on which Foker laughed and waltzed with renewed vigour
+and grace.
+
+And at the end of the waltz,—the last waltz they had on that
+night,—Blanche asked him about Drummington, and whether it was a fine
+house. His cousins, she had heard, were very accomplished: Lord Erith
+she had met, and which of his cousins was his favourite? Was it not
+Lady Ann? Yes, she was sure it was she; sure by his looks and his
+blushes. She was tired of dancing; it was getting very late; she must
+go to mamma;—and, without another word, she sprang away from Harry
+Foker’s arm, and seized upon Pen’s, who was swaggering about the
+dancing-room, and again said, “Mamma, mamma!—take me to mamma, dear,
+Mr. Pendennis!” transfixing Harry with a Parthian shot, as she fled
+from him.
+
+My Lord Steyne, with garter and ribbon, with a bald head and shining
+eyes, and a collar of red whiskers round his face, always looked grand
+upon an occasion of state; and made a great effect upon Lady Clavering,
+when he introduced himself to her at the request of the obsequious
+Major Pendennis. With his own white and royal hand, he handed to her
+ladyship a glass of wine, said he had heard of her charming daughter,
+and begged to be presented to her; and, at this very juncture, Mr.
+Arthur Pendennis came up with the young lady on his arm.
+
+The peer made a profound bow, and Blanche the deepest curtesy that ever
+was seen. His lordship gave Mr. Arthur Pendennis his hand to shake;
+said he had read his book, which was very wicked and clever; asked Miss
+Blanche if she had read it,—at which Pen blushed and winced. Why,
+Blanche was one of the heroines of the novel. Blanche, in black
+ringlets and a little altered, was the Neaera of ‘Walter Lorraine.’
+
+Blanche had read it: the language of the eyes expressed her admiration
+and rapture at the performance. This little play being achieved, the
+Marquis of Steyne made other two profound bows to Lady Clavering and
+her daughter, and passed on to some other of his guests at the splendid
+entertainment.
+
+Mamma and daughter were loud in their expressions of admiration of the
+noble Marquis so soon as his broad back was turned upon them. “He said
+they make a very nice couple,” whispered major Pendennis to Lady
+Clavering. Did he now, really? Mamma thought they would; Mamma was so
+flustered with the honour which had just been shown to her, and with
+other intoxicating events of the evening, that her good-humour knew no
+bounds. She laughed, she winked, and nodded knowingly at Pen; she
+tapped him on the arm with her fan; she tapped Blanche; she tapped the
+Major;—her contentment was boundless, and her method of showing her joy
+equally expansive.
+
+As the party went down the great staircase of Gaunt House, the morning
+had risen stark and clear over the black trees of the square; the skies
+were tinged with pink; and the cheeks of some of the people at the
+ball,—ah, how ghastly they looked! That admirable and devoted Major
+above all,—who had been for hours by Lady Clavering’s side, ministering
+to her and feeding her body with everything that was nice, and her ear
+with everything that was sweet and flattering,—oh! what an object he
+was! The rings round his eyes were of the colour of bistre; those orbs
+themselves were like the plovers’ eggs whereof Lady Clavering and
+Blanche had each tasted; the wrinkles in his old face were furrowed in
+deep gashes; and a silver stubble, like an elderly morning dew was
+glittering on his chin, and alongside the dyed whiskers now limp and
+out of curl.
+
+There he stood, with admirable patience, enduring, uncomplainingly, a
+silent agony; knowing that people could see the state of his face (for
+could he not himself perceive the condition of others, males and
+females, of his own age?)—longing to go to rest for hours past; aware
+that suppers disagreed with him, and yet having eaten a little so as to
+keep his friend, Lady Clavering, in good-humour; with twinges of
+rheumatism in the back and knees; with weary feet burning in his
+varnished boots,—so tired, oh, so tired and longing for bed! If a man,
+struggling with hardship and bravely overcoming it, is an object of
+admiration for the gods, that Power in whose chapels the old Major was
+a faithful worshipper must have looked upwards approvingly upon the
+constancy of Pendennis’s martyrdom. There are sufferers in that cause
+as in the other: the negroes in the service of Mumbo Jumbo tattoo and
+drill themselves with burning skewers with great fortitude; and we read
+that the priests in the service of Baal gashed themselves and bled
+freely. You who can smash the idols, do so with a good courage; but do
+not be too fierce with the idolaters,—they worship the best thing they
+know.
+
+The Pendennises, the elder and the younger, waited with Lady Clavering
+and her daughter until her ladyship’s carriage was announced, when the
+elder’s martyrdom may be said to have come to an end, for the
+good-natured Begum insisted upon leaving him at his door in Bury
+Street; so he took the back seat of the carriage after a feeble bow or
+two, and speech of thanks, polite to the last, and resolute in doing
+his duty. The Begum waved her dumpy little hand by way of farewell to
+Arthur and Foker, and Blanche smiled languidly out upon the young men,
+thinking whether she looked very wan and green under her rose-coloured
+hood, and whether it was the mirrors at Gaunt House, or the fatigue and
+fever of her own eyes, which made her fancy herself so pale.
+
+Arthur, perhaps, saw quite well how yellow Blanche looked, but did not
+attribute that peculiarity of her complexion to the effect of the
+looking-glasses, or to any error in his sight or her own. Our young man
+of the world could use his eyes very keenly, and could see Blanche’s
+face pretty much as nature had made it. But for poor Foker it had a
+radiance which dazzled and blinded him: he could see no more faults in
+it than in the sun, which was now flaring over the house-tops.
+
+Amongst other wicked London habits which Pen had acquired, the moralist
+will remark that he had got to keep very bad hours; and often was going
+to bed at the time when sober country-people were thinking of leaving
+it. Men get used to one hour as to another. Editors of newspapers,
+Covent Garden market-people, night cabmen and coffee-sellers,
+chimney-sweeps, and gentlemen and ladies of fashion who frequent balls,
+are often quite lively at three or four o’clock of a morning, when
+ordinary mortals are snoring. We have shown in the last chapter how Pen
+was in a brisk condition of mind at this period, inclined to smoke his
+cigar at ease, and to speak freely.
+
+Foker and Pen walked away from Gaunt House, then, indulging in both the
+above amusements: or rather Pen talked, and Foker looked as if he
+wanted to say something. Pen was sarcastic and dandified when he had
+been in the company of great folks; he could not help imitating some of
+their airs and tones, and having a most lively imagination, mistook
+himself for a person of importance very easily. He rattled away, and
+attacked this person and that; sneered at Lady John Turnbull’s bad
+French, which her ladyship will introduce into all conversations in
+spite of the sneers of everybody; at Mrs. Slack Roper’s extraordinary
+costume and sham jewels; at the old dandies and the young ones;—at whom
+didn’t he sneer and laugh?
+
+“You fire at everybody, Pen—you’re grown awful, that you are,” Foker
+said. “Now you’ve pulled about Blondel’s yellow wig, and Colchicum’s
+black one, why don’t you have a shy at a brown one, hay? you know whose
+I mean. It got into Lady Clavering’s carriage.”
+
+“Under my uncle’s hat? My uncle is a martyr, Foker, my boy. My uncle
+has been doing excruciating duties all night. He likes to go to bed
+rather early. He has a dreadful headache if he sits up and touches
+supper. He always has the gout if he walks or stands much at a ball. He
+has been sitting up, and standing up, and supping. He has gone home to
+the gout and the headache, and for my sake. Shall I make fun of the old
+boy? no, not for Venice!”
+
+“How do you mean that he has been doing it for your sake?” Foker asked,
+looking rather alarmed.
+
+“Boy! canst thou keep a secret if I impart it to thee?” Pen cried out,
+in high spirits. “Art thou of good counsel? Wilt thou swear? Wilt thou
+be mum, or wilt thou preach? Wilt thou be silent and hear, or wilt thou
+speak and die?” And as he spoke, flinging himself into an absurd
+theatrical attitude, the men in the cabstand in Piccadilly wondered and
+grinned at the antics of the two young swells.
+
+“What the doose are you driving at?” Foker asked, looking very much
+agitated.
+
+Pen, however, did not remark this agitation much, but continued in the
+same bantering and excited vein. “Henry, friend of my youth,” he said,
+“and witness of my early follies, though dull at thy books, yet thou
+art not altogether deprived of sense,—nay, blush not, Henrico, thou
+hast a good portion of that, and of courage and kindness too, at the
+service of thy friends. Were I in a strait of poverty, I would come to
+my Foker’s purse. Were I in grief, I would discharge my grief upon his
+sympathising bosom——”
+
+“Gammon, Pen—go on,” Foker said.
+
+“I would, Henrico, upon thy studs, and upon thy cambric worked by the
+hands of beauty, to adorn the breast of valour! Know then, friend of my
+boyhood’s days, that Arthur Pendennis of the Upper Temple,
+student-at-law, feels that he is growing lonely and old Care is
+furrowing his temples, and Baldness is busy with his crown. Shall we
+stop and have a drop of coffee at this stall, it looks very hot and
+nice? Look how that cabman is blowing at his saucer. No, you won’t?
+Aristocrat! I resume my tale. I am getting on in life. I have got
+devilish little money. I want some. I am thinking of getting some, and
+settling in life. I’m thinking of settling. I’m thinking of marrying,
+old boy. I’m thinking of becoming a moral man; a steady port and sherry
+character: with a good reputation in my quartier, and a moderate
+establishment of two maids and a man—with an occasional brougham to
+drive out Mrs. Pendennis, and a house near the Parks for the
+accommodation of the children. Ha! what sayest thou? Answer thy friend,
+thou worthy child of beer. Speak, I adjure thee by all thy vats.
+
+“But you ain’t got any money, Pen,” said the other, still looking
+alarmed.
+
+“I ain’t? No, but she ave. I tell thee there is gold in store for
+me—not what you call money, nursed in the lap of luxury, and cradled on
+grains, and drinking in wealth from a thousand mash-tubs. What do you
+know about money? What is poverty to you, is splendour to the hardy son
+of the humble apothecary. You can’t live without an establishment, and
+your houses in town and country. A snug little house somewhere off
+Belgravia, a brougham for my wife, a decent cook, and a fair bottle of
+wine for my friends at home sometimes; these simple necessaries suffice
+for me, my Foker.” And here Pendennis began to look more serious.
+Without bantering further, Pen continued, “I’ve rather serious thoughts
+of settling and marrying. No man can get on in the world without some
+money at his back. You must have a certain stake to begin with, before
+you can go in and play the great game. Who knows that I’m not going to
+try, old fellow? Worse men than I have won at it. And as I have not got
+enough capital from my fathers, I must get some by my wife—that’s all.”
+
+They were walking down Grosvenor Street, as they talked, or rather as
+Pen talked, in the selfish fulness of his heart; and Mr. Pen must have
+been too much occupied with his own affairs to remark the concern and
+agitation of his neighbour, for he continued: “We are no longer
+children, you know, you and I, Harry. Bah! the time of our romance has
+passed away. We don’t marry for passion, but for prudence and for
+establishment. What do you take your cousin for? Because she is a nice
+girl, and an Earl’s daughter, and the old folks wish it, and that sort
+of thing.”
+
+“And you, Pendennis,” asked Foker, “you ain’t very fond of the
+girl—you’re going to marry?”
+
+Pen shrugged his shoulders. “Comme ca,” said he; “I like her well
+enough. She’s pretty enough; she’s clever enough. I think she’ll do
+very well. And she has got money enough—that’s the great point. Psha!
+you know who she is, don’t you? I thought you were sweet on her
+yourself one night when we dined with her mamma. It’s little Amory.”
+
+“I—I thought so,” Foker said; “and has she accepted you!”
+
+“Not quite,” Arthur replied, with a confident smile, which seemed to
+say, I have but to ask, and she comes to me that instant.
+
+“Oh, not quite,” said Foker; and he broke out with such a dreadful
+laugh, that Pen, for the first time, turned his thoughts from himself
+towards his companion, and was struck by the other’s ghastly pale face.
+
+“My dear fellow, Fo! what’s the matter? You’re ill,” Pen said, in a
+tone of real concern.
+
+“You think it was the champagne at Gaunt House, don’t you? It ain’t
+that. Come in; let me talk to you for a minute. I’ll tell you what it
+is. D——it, let me tell somebody,” Foker said.
+
+They were at Mr. Foker’s door by this time, and, opening it, Harry
+walked with his friend into his apartments, which were situated in the
+back part of the house, and behind the family dining-room where the
+elder Foker received his guests, surrounded by pictures of himself, his
+wife, his infant son on a donkey, and the late Earl of Gravesend in his
+robes as a Peer. Foker and Pen passed by this chamber, now closed with
+death-like shutters, and entered into the young man’s own quarters.
+Dusky streams of sunbeams were playing into that room, and lighting up
+poor Harry’s gallery of dancing-girls and opera nymphs with flickering
+illuminations.
+
+“Look here! I can’t help telling you, Pen,” he said. “Ever since the
+night we dined there, I’m so fond of that girl, that I think I shall
+die if I don’t get her. I feel as if I should go mad sometimes. I can’t
+stand it, Pen. I couldn’t bear to hear you talking about her, just now,
+about marrying her only because she’s money. Ah, Pen! that ain’t the
+question in marrying. I’d bet anything it ain’t. Talking about money
+and such a girl as that, it’s—it’s—what-d’ye-call-’em—you know what I
+mean—I ain’t good at talking—sacrilege, then. If she’d have me, I’d
+take and sweep a crossing, that I would!”
+
+“Poor Fo! I don’t think that would tempt her,” Pen said, eyeing his
+friend with a great deal of real good-nature and pity. “She is not a
+girl for love and a cottage.”
+
+“She ought to be a duchess, I know that very well, and I know she
+wouldn’t take me unless I could make her a great place in the world—for
+I ain’t good for anything myself much—I ain’t clever and that sort of
+thing,” Foker said sadly. “If I had all the diamonds that all the
+duchesses and marchionesses had on to-night, wouldn’t I put ’em in her
+lap? But what’s the use of talking? I’m booked for another race. It’s
+that kills me, Pen. I can’t get out of it; though I die, I can’t get
+out of it. And though my cousin’s a nice girl, and I like her very
+well, and that, yet I hadn’t seen this one when our Governors settled
+that matter between us. And when you talked, just now, about her doing
+very well, and about her having money enough for both of you, I thought
+to myself it isn’t money or mere liking a girl, that ought to be enough
+to make a fellow marry. He may marry, and find he likes somebody else
+better. All the money in the world won’t make you happy then. Look at
+me; I’ve plenty of money, or shall have out of the mash-tubs, as you
+call ’em. My Governor thought he’d made it all right for me in settling
+my marriage with my cousin. I tell you it won’t do; and when Lady Ann
+has got her husband, it won’t be happy for either of us, and she’ll
+have the most miserable beggar in town.”
+
+“Poor old fellow!” Pen said, with rather a cheap magnanimity, “I wish I
+could help you. I had no idea of this, and that you were so wild about
+the girl. Do you think she would have you without your money? No. Do
+you think your father would agree to break off your engagement with
+your cousin? You know him very well, and that he would cast you off
+rather than do so.”
+
+The unhappy Foker only groaned a reply, flinging himself prostrate on a
+sofa, face forwards, his head in his hands.
+
+“As for my affair,” Pen went on, “my dear fellow, if I had thought
+matters were so critical with you, at least I would not have pained you
+by choosing you as my confidant. And my business is not serious, at
+least not as yet. I have not spoken a word about it to Miss Amory. Very
+likely she would not have me if I asked her. Only I have had a great
+deal of talk about it with my uncle, who says that the match might be
+an eligible one for me. I’m ambitious and I’m poor. And it appears Lady
+Clavering will give her a good deal of money, and Sir Francis might be
+got to never mind the rest. Nothing is settled, Harry. They are going
+out of town directly. I promise you I won’t ask her before she goes.
+There’s no hurry: there’s time for everybody. But, suppose you got her,
+Foker. Remember what you said about marriages just now, and the misery
+of a man who doesn’t care for his wife; and what sort of a wife would
+you have who didn’t care for her husband?”
+
+“But she would care for me,” said Foker, from his sofa—“that is, I
+think she would. Last night only, as we were dancing, she said——”
+
+“What did she say?” Pen cried, starting up in great wrath. But he saw
+his own meaning more clearly than Foker, and broke off with a
+laugh—“Well, never mind what she said, Harry. Miss Amory is a clever
+girl, and says numbers of civil things—to you—to me, perhaps—and who
+the deuce knows to whom besides? Nothing’s settled, old boy. At least,
+my heart won’t break if I don’t get her. Win her if you can, and I wish
+you joy of her. Good-bye! Don’t think about what I said to you. I was
+excited, and confoundedly thirsty in those hot rooms, and didn’t, I
+suppose, put enough Seltzer-water into the champagne. Good night! I’ll
+keep your counsel too. ‘Mum’ is the word between us; and ‘let there be
+a fair fight, and let the best man win,’ as Peter Crawley says.”
+
+So saying, Mr. Arthur Pendennis, giving a very queer and rather
+dangerous look at his companion, shook him by the hand, with something
+of that sort of cordiality which befitted his just repeated simile of
+the boxing-match, and which Mr. Bendigo displays when he shakes hands
+with Mr. Gaunt before they fight each other for the champion’s belt and
+two hundred pounds a side. Foker returned his friend’s salute with an
+imploring look, and a piteous squeeze of the hand, sank back on his
+cushions again, and Pen, putting on his hat, strode forth into the air,
+and almost over the body of the matutinal housemaid, who was rubbing
+the steps at the door.
+
+“And so he wants her too, does be?” thought Pen as he marched along—and
+noted within himself with a fatal keenness of perception and almost an
+infernal mischief, that the very pains and tortures which that honest
+heart of Foker’s was suffering gave a zest and an impetus to his own
+pursuit of Blanche: if pursuit might be called which had been no
+pursuit as yet, but mere sport and idle dallying. “She said something
+to him, did she? perhaps she gave him the fellow flower to this;” and
+he took out of his coat and twiddled in his thumb and finger a poor
+little shrivelled crumpled bud that had faded and blackened with the
+heat and flare of the night—“I wonder to how many more she has given
+her artless tokens of affection—the little flirt”—and he flung his into
+the gutter, where the water may have refreshed it, and where any
+amateur of rosebuds may have picked it up. And then bethinking him that
+the day was quite bright, and that the passers-by by might be staring
+at his beard and white neckcloth, our modest young gentleman took a cab
+and drove to the Temple.
+
+Ah! is this the boy that prayed at his mother’s knee but a few years
+since, and for whom very likely at this hour of morning she is praying?
+Is this jaded and selfish worldling the lad who, a short while back,
+was ready to fling away his worldly all, his hope, his ambition, his
+chance of life, for his love? This is the man you are proud of, old
+Pendennis. You boast of having formed him: and of having reasoned him
+out of his absurd romance and folly—and groaning in your bed over your
+pains and rheumatisms, satisfy yourself still by thinking, that, at
+last, that lad will do something to better himself in life, and that
+the Pendennises will take a good place in the world. And is he the only
+one, who in his progress through this dark life goes wilfully or
+fatally astray, whilst the natural truth and love which should illumine
+him grow dim in the poisoned air, and suffice to light him no more?
+
+When Pen was gone away, poor Harry Foker got up from the sofa, and
+taking out from his waistcoat—the splendidly buttoned, but the
+gorgeously embroidered, the work of his mamma—a little white rosebud,
+he drew from his dressing-case, also the maternal present, a pair of
+scissors, with which he nipped carefully the stalk of the flower, and
+placing it in a glass of water opposite his bed, he sought refuge there
+from care and bitter remembrances.
+
+It is to be presumed that Miss Blanche Amory had more than one rose in
+her bouquet, and why should not the kind young creature give out of her
+superfluity, and make as many partners as possible happy?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+Monseigneur s’amuse
+
+
+The exertions of that last night at Gaunt House had proved almost too
+much for Major Pendennis; and as soon as he could move his weary old
+body with safety, he transported himself groaning to Buxton, and sought
+relief in the healing waters of that place. Parliament broke up. Sir
+Francis Clavering and family left town, and the affairs which we have
+just mentioned to the reader were not advanced, in the brief interval
+of a few days or weeks which have occurred between this and the last
+chapter. The town was, however, emptied since then.
+
+The season was now come to a conclusion: Pen’s neighbours, the lawyers,
+were gone upon circuit: and his more fashionable friends had taken
+their passports for the Continent, or had fled for health or excitement
+to the Scotch moors. Scarce a man was to be seen in the bow-windows of
+the Clubs, or on the solitary Pall Mall pavement. The red jackets had
+disappeared from before the Palace-gate: the tradesmen of St. James’s
+were abroad taking their pleasure: the tailors had grown mustachios and
+were gone up the Rhine: the bootmakers were at Ems or Baden, blushing
+when they met their customers at those places of recreation, or punting
+beside their creditors at the gambling-tables: the clergymen of St.
+James’s only preached to half a congregation, in which there was not a
+single sinner of distinction: the band in Kensington Gardens had shut
+up their instruments of brass and trumpets of silver: only two or three
+old flies and chaises crawled by the banks of the Serpentine; and
+Clarence Bulbul, who was retained in town by his arduous duties as a
+Treasury clerk, when he took his afternoon ride in Rotten Row, compared
+its loneliness to the vastness of the Arabian desert and himself to a
+Bedouin wending his way through that dusty solitude. Warrington stowed
+away a quantity of Cavendish tobacco in his carpet-bag, and betook
+himself, as his custom was in the vacation, to his brother’s house in
+Norfolk. Pen was left alone in chambers for a while, for this man of
+fashion could not quit the metropolis when he chose always: and was at
+present detained by the affairs of his newspaper, the Pall Mall
+Gazette, of, which he acted as the editor and charge d’affaires during
+the temporary absence of the chief, Captain Shandon, who was with his
+family at the salutary watering-place of Boulogne-sur-Mer.
+
+Although, as we have seen, Mr. Pen had pronounced himself for years
+past to be a man perfectly blase and wearied of life, yet the truth is
+that he was an exceedingly healthy young fellow still: with a fine
+appetite, which he satisfied with the greatest relish and satisfaction
+at least once a day; and a constant desire for society, which showed
+him to be anything but misanthropical. If he could not get a good
+dinner he sate down to a bad one with perfect contentment; if he could
+not procure the company of witty or great or beautiful persons, he put
+up with any society that came to hand; and was perfectly satisfied in a
+tavern-parlour or on board a Greenwich steamboat, or in a jaunt to
+Hampstead with Mr. Finucane, his colleague at the Pall Mall Gazette; or
+in a visit to the summer theatres across the river; or to the Royal
+Gardens of Vauxhall, where he was on terms of friendship with the great
+Simpson, and where he shook the principal comic singer of the lovely
+equestrian of the arena by the hand. And while he could watch the
+grimaces or the graces of these with a satiric humour that was not
+deprived of sympathy, he could look on with an eye of kindness at the
+lookers-on too; at the roystering youth bent upon enjoyment, and here
+taking it: at the honest parents, with their delighted children
+laughing and clapping their hands at the show: at the poor outcasts,
+whose laughter was less innocent though perhaps louder, and who brought
+their shame and their youth here, to dance and be merry till the dawn
+at least; and to get bread and drown care. Of this sympathy with all
+conditions of men Arthur often boasted: said he was pleased to possess
+it: and that he hoped thus to the last he should retain it. As another
+man has an ardour for art or music, or natural science, Mr. Pen said
+that anthropology was his favourite pursuit; and had his eyes always
+eagerly open to its infinite varieties and beauties: contemplating with
+an unfailing delight all specimens of it in all places to which he
+resorted, whether it was the coquetting of a wrinkled dowager in a
+ballroom, or a high-bred young beauty blushing in her prime there;
+whether it was a hulking guardsman coaxing a servant-girl in the
+Park—or innocent little Tommy that was feeding the ducks whilst the
+nurse listened. And indeed a man whose heart is pretty clean, can
+indulge in this pursuit with an enjoyment that never ceases, and is
+only perhaps the more keen because it is secret and has a touch of
+sadness in it: because he is of his mood and humour lonely, and apart
+although not alone.
+
+Yes, Pen used to brag and talk in his impetuous way to Warrington. “I
+was in love so fiercely in my youth, that I have burned out that flame
+for ever, I think, and if ever I marry, it will be a marriage of reason
+that I will make, with a well-bred, good-tempered, good-looking person
+who has a little money, and so forth, that will cushion our carriage in
+its course through life. As for romance, it is all done; I have spent
+that out, and am old before my time—I’m proud of it.”
+
+“Stuff!” growled the other, “you fancied you were getting bald the
+other day, and bragged about it as you do about everything. But you
+began to use the bear’s-grease pot directly the hairdresser told you;
+and are scented like a barber ever since.”
+
+“You are Diogenes,” the other answered, “and you want every man to live
+in a tub like yourself. Violets smell better than stale tobacco, you
+grizzly old cynic.” But Mr. Pen was blushing whilst he made this reply
+to his unromantical friend, and indeed cared a great deal more about
+himself still than such a philosopher perhaps should have done. Indeed,
+considering that he was careless about the world, Mr. Pen ornamented
+his person with no small pains in order to make himself agreeable to
+it, and for a weary pilgrim as he was, wore very tight boots and bright
+varnish.
+
+It was in this dull season of the year, then, of a shining Friday night
+in autumn, that Mr. Pendennis, having completed at his newspaper office
+a brilliant leading article—such as Captain Shandon himself might have
+written, had the Captain been in good-humour, and inclined to work,
+which he never would do except under compulsion—that Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis having written his article, and reviewed it approvingly as it
+lay before him in its wet proof-sheet at the office of the paper,
+bethought him that he would cross the water, and regale himself with
+the fireworks and other amusements of Vauxhall. So he affably put in
+his pocket the order which admitted “Editor of Pall Mall Gazette and
+friend” to that place of recreation, and paid with the coin of the
+realm a sufficient sum to enable him to cross Waterloo Bridge. The walk
+thence to the Gardens was pleasant, the stars were shining in the skies
+above, looking down upon the royal property, whence the rockets and
+Roman candles had not yet ascended to outshine the stars.
+
+Before you enter the enchanted ground, where twenty thousand additional
+lamps are burned every night as usual, most of us have passed through
+the black and dreary passage and wickets which hide the splendours of
+Vauxhall from uninitiated men. In the walls of this passage are two
+holes strongly illuminated, in the midst of which you see two gentlemen
+at desks, where they will take either your money as a private
+individual, or your order of admission if you are provided with that
+passport to the Gardens. Pen went to exhibit his ticket at the
+last-named orifice, where, however, a gentleman and two ladies were
+already in parley before him.
+
+The gentleman, whose hat was very much on one side, and who wore a
+short and shabby cloak in an excessively smart manner, was crying out
+in a voice which Pen at once recognised.
+
+“Bedad, sir, if ye doubt me honour, will ye obleege me by stipping out
+of that box, and——”
+
+“Lor, Capting!” cried the elder lady.
+
+“Don’t bother me,” said the man in the box.
+
+“And ask Mr. Hodgen himself, who’s in the gyardens, to let these
+leedies pass. Don’t be froightened, me dear madam, I’m not going to
+quarl with this gintleman, at anyreet before leedies. Will ye go, sir,
+and desoire Mr. Hodgen (whose orther I keem in with, and he’s me most
+intemate friend, and I know he’s goan to sing the ‘Body Snatcher’ here
+to-noight), with Captain Costigan’s compliments, to stip out and let in
+the leedies—for meself, sir, I’ve seen Vauxhall, and I scawrun any
+interfayrance on moi account: but for these leedies, one of them has
+never been there, and of should think ye’d harly take advantage of me
+misfartune in losing the ticket, to deproive her of her pleasure.”
+
+“It ain’t no use, Captain. I can’t go about your business,” the
+check-taker said; on which the Captain swore an oath, and the elder
+lady said, “Lor, ow provokin!”
+
+As for the young one, she looked up at the Captain and said, “Never
+mind, Captain Costigan, I’m sure I don’t want to go at all. Come away,
+mamma.” And with this, although she did not want to go at all, her
+feelings overcame her, and she began to cry.
+
+“Me poor child!” the Captain said. “Can ye see that, sir, and will ye
+not let this innocent creature in?”
+
+“It ain’t my business,” cried the doorkeeper, peevishly, out of the
+illuminated box. And at this minute Arthur came up, and recognising
+Costigan, said, “Don’t you know me, Captain? Pendennis!” And he took
+off his hat and made a bow to the two ladies. “Me dear boy! Me dear
+friend!” cried the Captain, extending towards Pendennis the grasp of
+friendship; and he rapidly explained to the other what he called “a
+most unluckee conthratong.” He had an order for Vauxhall, admitting
+two, from Mr. Hodgen, then within the Gardens, and singing (as he did
+at the Back Kitchen and the nobility’s concerts, the ‘Body Snatcher,’
+the ‘Death of General Wolfe,’ the ‘Banner of Blood,’ and other
+favourite melodies); and, having this order for the admission of two
+persons, he thought that it would admit three, and had come accordingly
+to the Gardens with his friends. But, on his way, Captain Costigan had
+lost the paper of admission—it was not forthcoming at all; and the
+leedies must go back again, to the great disappointment of one of them,
+as Pendennis saw.
+
+Arthur had a great deal of good-nature for everybody, and sympathised
+with the misfortunes of all sorts of people: how could he refuse his
+sympathy in such a case as this? He had seen the innocent face as it
+looked up to the Captain, the appealing look of the girl, the piteous
+quiver of the mouth, and the final outburst of tears. If it had been
+his last guinea in the world, he must have paid it to have given the
+poor little thing pleasure. She turned the sad imploring eyes away
+directly they lighted upon a stranger, and began to wipe them with her
+handkerchief. Arthur looked very handsome and kind as he stood before
+the women, with his hat off, blushing, bowing, generous, a gentleman.
+“Who are they?” he asked of himself. He thought he had seen the elder
+lady before.
+
+“If I can be of any service to you, Captain Costigan,” the young man
+said, “I hope you will command me; is there any difficulty about taking
+these ladies into the garden? Will you kindly make use of my purse?
+And—and I have a ticket myself which will admit two—I hope, ma’am, you
+will permit me?”
+
+The first impulse of the Prince of Fairoaks was to pay for the whole
+party, and to make away with his newspaper order as poor Costigan had
+done with his own ticket. But his instinct, and the appearance of the
+two women, told him that they would be better pleased if he did not
+give himself the airs of a grand seigneur, and he handed his purse to
+Costigan, and laughingly pulled out his ticket with one hand, as he
+offered the other to the elder of the ladies—ladies was not the
+word—they had bonnets and shawls, and collars and ribbons, and the
+youngest showed a pretty little foot and boot under her modest grey
+gown, but his Highness of Fairoaks was courteous to every person who
+wore a petticoat whatever its texture was, and the humbler the wearer,
+only the more stately and polite in his demeanour.
+
+“Fanny, take the gentleman’s arm,” the elder said; “Since you will be
+so very kind—I’ve seen you often come in at our gate, sir, and go in to
+Captain Strong’s at No. 3.”
+
+Fanny made a little curtsey, and put her hand under Arthur’s arm. It
+had on a shabby little glove, but it was pretty and small. She was not
+a child, but she was scarcely a woman as yet; her tears had dried up,
+and her cheek mantled with youthful blushes, and her eyes glistened
+with pleasure and gratitude, as she looked up into Arthur’s kind face.
+
+Arthur, in a protecting way, put his other hand upon the little one
+resting on his arm. “Fanny’s a very pretty little name,” he said, “and
+so you know me, do you?”
+
+“We keep the lodge, sir, at Shepherd’s Inn,” Fanny said with a curtsey;
+“and I’ve never been at Vauxhall, sir, and Papa didn’t like me to
+go—and—and—O—O—law, how beautiful!” She shrank back as she spoke,
+starting with wonder and delight as she saw the Royal Gardens blaze
+before her with a hundred million of lamps, with a splendour such as
+the finest fairy tale, the finest pantomime she had ever witnessed at
+the theatre, had never realised. Pen was pleased with her pleasure, and
+pressed to his side the little hand which clung so kindly to him. “What
+would I not give for a little of this pleasure?” said the blase young
+man.
+
+“Your purse, Pendennis, me dear boy,” said the Captain’s voice behind
+him. “Will ye count it? it’s all roight—no—ye thrust in old Jack
+Costigan (he thrusts me, ye see, madam). Ye’ve been me preserver, Pen
+(I’ve known um since choildhood, Mrs. Bolton; he’s the proproietor of
+Fairoaks Castle, and many’s the cooper of clart I’ve dthrunk there with
+the first nobilitee of his neetive countee),—Mr. Pendennis, ye’ve been
+me preserver, and of thank ye; me daughtther will thank ye;—Mr.
+Simpson, your humble servant sir.”
+
+If Pen was magnificent in his courtesy to the ladies, what was his
+splendour in comparison to Captain Costigan’s bowing here and there,
+and crying bravo to the singers?
+
+A man, descended like Costigan, from a long line of Hibernian kings,
+chieftains, and other magnates and sheriffs of the county, had of
+course too much dignity and self-respect to walk arrum-in-arrum (as the
+Captain phrased it) with a lady who occasionally swept his room out,
+and cooked his mutton-chops. In the course of their journey from
+Shepherd’s Inn to Vauxhall Gardens, Captain Costigan had walked by the
+side of the two ladies, in a patronising and affable manner pointing
+out to them the edifices worthy of note, and discoorsing, according to
+his wont, about other cities and countries which he had visited, and
+the people of rank and fashion with whom he had the honour of an
+acquaintance. Nor could it be expected, nor, indeed, did Mrs. Bolton
+expect, that, arrived in the Royal property, and strongly illuminated
+by the flare of the twenty thousand additional lamps, the Captain could
+relax from his dignity, and give an arm to a lady who was, in fact,
+little better than a housekeeper or charwoman.
+
+But Pen, on his part, had no such scruples. Miss Fanny Bolton did not
+make his bed nor sweep his chambers; and he did not choose to let go
+his pretty little partner. As for Fanny, her colour heightened, and her
+bright eyes shone the brighter with pleasure, as she leaned for
+protection on the arm of such a fine gentleman as Mr. Pen. And she
+looked at numbers of other ladies in the place, and at scores of other
+gentlemen under whose protection they were walking here and there; and
+she thought that her gentleman was handsomer and grander-looking than
+any other gent in the place. Of course there were votaries of pleasure
+of all ranks there—rakish young surgeons, fast young clerks and
+commercialists, occasional dandies of the Guard regiments, and the
+rest. Old Lord Colchicum was there in attendance upon Mademoiselle
+Caracoline, who had been riding in the ring; and who talked her native
+French very loud, and used idiomatic expressions of exceeding strength
+as she walked about, leaning on the arm of his lordship.
+
+Colchicum was in attendance upon Mademoiselle Carandine, little Tom
+Tufthunt was in attendance upon Lord Colchicum; and rather pleased,
+too, with his position. When Don Juan scalles the wall, there’s never a
+want of a Leporello to hold the ladder. Tom Tufthunt was quite happy to
+act as friend to the elderly viscount, and to carve the fowl, and to
+make the salad at supper. When Pen and his young lady met the
+Viscount’s party, that noble poor only gave Arthur a passing leer of
+recognition as his lordship’s eyes passed from Pen’s face under the
+bonnet of Pen’s companion. But Tom Tufthunt wagged his head very
+good-naturedly at Mr. Arthur, and said, “How are you, old boy?” and
+looked extremely knowing at the godfather of this history.
+
+“That is the great rider at Astley’s; I have seen her there,” Miss
+Bolton said, looking after Mademoiselle Caracoline; “and who is that
+old man? is it not the gentleman in the ring!”
+
+“That is Lord Viscount Colchicum, Miss Fanny,” said Pen with an air of
+protection. He meant no harm; he was pleased to patronise the young
+girl, and he was not displeased that she should be so pretty, and that
+she should be hanging upon his arm, and that yonder elderly Don Juan
+should have seen her there.
+
+Fanny was very pretty; her eyes were dark and brilliant, her teeth were
+like little pearls; her mouth was almost as red as Mademoiselle
+Caracoline’s when the latter had put on her vermilion. And what a
+difference there was between the one’s voice and the other’s, between
+the girl’s laugh and the woman’s! It was only very lately, indeed, that
+Fanny, when looking in the little glass over the Bows-Costigan
+mantelpiece as she was dusting it had begun to suspect that she was a
+beauty. But a year ago, she was a clumsy, gawky girl, at whom her
+father sneered, and of whom the girls at the day-school (Miss
+Minifer’s, Newcastle Street, Strand; Miss M., the younger sister, took
+the leading business at the Norwich circuit in 182—; and she herself
+had played for two seasons with some credit T. R. E. O., T. R. S. W.,
+until she fell down a trap-door and broke her leg); the girls at
+Fanny’s school, we say, took no account of her, and thought her a dowdy
+little creature as long as she remained under Miss Minifer’s
+instruction. And it was unremarked and almost unseen in the porter’s
+dark lodge of Shepherd’s Inn, that this little flower bloomed into
+beauty.
+
+So this young person hung upon Mr. Pen’s arm, and they paced the
+gardens together. Empty as London was, there were still some two
+millions of people left lingering about it, and amongst them, one or
+two of the acquaintances of Mr. Arthur Pendennis.
+
+Amongst them, silent and alone, pale, with his hands in his pockets,
+and a rueful nod of the head to Arthur as they met, passed Henry Foker,
+Esq. Young Henry was trying to ease his mind by moving from place to
+place, and from excitement to excitement. But he thought about Blanche
+as he sauntered in the dark walks; he thought about Blanche as he
+looked at the devices of the lamps. He consulted the fortune-teller
+about her, and was disappointed when that gipsy told him that he was in
+love with a dark lady who would make him happy; and at the concert,
+though Mr. Momus sang his most stunning comic songs, and asked his most
+astonishing riddles, never did a kind smile come to visit Foker’s lips.
+In fact, he never heard Mr. Momus at all.
+
+Pen and Miss Bolton were hard by listening to the same concert, and the
+latter remarked, and Pen laughed at Mr. Foker’s woebegone face.
+
+Fanny asked what it was that made that odd-looking little man so
+dismal? “I think he is crossed in love!” Pen, said. “Isn’t that enough
+to make any man dismal, Fanny?” And he looked down at her, splendidly
+protecting her, like Egmont at Clara in Goethe’s play, or Leicester at
+Amy in Scott’s novel.
+
+“Crossed in love is he? poor gentleman,” said Fanny with a sigh, and
+her eyes turned round towards him with no little kindness and pity—but
+Harry did not see the beautiful dark eyes.
+
+“How dy do, Mr. Pendennis!”—a voice broke in here—it was that of a
+young man in a large white coat with a red neckcloth, over which a
+dingy shirt-collar was turned so as to exhibit a dubious neck—with a
+large pin of bullion or other metal, and an imaginative waistcoat with
+exceedingly fanciful glass buttons, and trousers that cried with a loud
+voice, “Come look at me and see how cheap and tawdry I am; my master,
+what a dirty buck!” and a little stick in one pocket of his coat, and a
+lady in pink satin on the other arm—“How dy do—Forget me, I dare say?
+Huxter,—Clavering.”
+
+“How do you do, Mr. Huxter,” the Prince of Fairoaks said in his most
+princely manner—“I hope you are very well.”
+
+“Pretty bobbish, thanky.”—And Mr. Huxter wagged his head. “I say,
+Pendennis, you’ve been coming it uncommon strong since we had the row
+at Wapshot’s, don’t you remember. Great author, hay? Go about with the
+swells. Saw your name in the Morning Post. I suppose you’re too much of
+a swell to come and have a bit of supper with an old
+friend?—Charterhouse Lane to-morrow night,—some devilish good fellows
+from Bartholomew’s, and some stunning gin-punch. Here’s my card.” And
+with this Mr. Huxter released his hand from the pocket where his cane
+was, and pulling off the top of his card-case with his teeth produced
+thence a visiting ticket, which he handed to Pen.
+
+“You are exceedingly kind, I am sure,” said Pen: “but I regret that I
+have an engagement which will take me out of town to-morrow night.” And
+the Marquis of Fairoaks, wondering that such a creature as this could
+have the audacity to give him a card, put Mr. Huxter’s card into his
+waistcoat pocket with a lofty courtesy. Possibly Mr. Samuel Huxter was
+not aware that there was any great social difference between Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis and himself. Mr. Huxter’s father was a surgeon and apothecary
+at Clavering just as Mr. Pendennis’s papa had been a surgeon and
+apothecary at Bath. But the impudence of some men is beyond all
+calculation.
+
+“Well, old fellow, never mind,” said Mr. Huxter, who, always frank and
+familiar, was from vinous excitement even more affable than usual. “If
+ever you are passing, look up our place, I’m mostly at home Saturdays;
+and there’s generally a cheese cupboard. Ta, ta.—There’s the bell for
+the fireworks ringing. Come along, Mary.” And he set off running with
+the rest of the crowd in the direction of the fireworks.
+
+So did Pen presently, when this agreeable youth was out of sight, begin
+to run with his little companion; Mrs. Bolton following after them,
+with Captain Costigan at her side. But the Captain was too majestic and
+dignified in his movements to run for friend or enemy, and he pursued
+his course with the usual jaunty swagger which distinguished his steps,
+so that he and his companion were speedily distanced by Pen and Miss
+Fanny.
+
+Perhaps Arthur forgot, or perhaps he did not choose to remember, that
+the elder couple had no money in their pockets, as had been proved by
+their adventure at the entrance of the Gardens; howbeit, Pen paid a
+couple of shillings for himself and his partner, and with her hanging
+close on his arm, scaled the staircase which leads to the firework
+gallery. The Captain and mamma might have followed them if they liked,
+but Arthur and Fanny were too busy to look back. People were pushing
+and squeezing there beside and behind them. One eager individual rushed
+by Fanny, and elbowed her so, that she fell back with a little cry,
+upon which, of course, Arthur caught her adroitly in his arms, and,
+just for protection, kept her so defended, until they mounted the
+stair, and took their places.
+
+Poor Foker sate alone on one of the highest benches, his face
+illuminated by the fireworks, or in their absence by the moon. Arthur
+saw him, and laughed, but did not occupy himself about his friend much.
+He was engaged with Fanny. How she wondered! how happy she was! how she
+cried O, O, O, as the rockets soared into the air, and showered down in
+azure, and emerald, and vermilion! As these wonders blazed and
+disappeared before her, the little girl thrilled and trembled with
+delight at Arthur’s side—her hand was under his arm still, he felt it
+pressing him as she looked up delighted.
+
+“How beautiful they are, sir!” she cried.
+
+“Don’t call me sir, Fanny,” Arthur said.
+
+A quick blush rushed up into the girl’s face. “What shall I call you?”
+she said, in a low voice, sweet and tremulous. “What would you wish me
+to say, sir?”
+
+“Again, Fanny! Well, I forgot; it is best so, my dear,” Pendennis said,
+very kindly and gently. “I may call you Fanny?”
+
+“Oh yes!” she said, and the little hand pressed his arm once more very
+eagerly, and the girl clung to him so that he could feel her heart
+beating on his shoulder.
+
+“I may call you Fanny, because you are a young girl, and a good girl,
+Fanny, and I am an old gentleman. But you mustn’t call me anything but
+sir, or Mr. Pendennis, if you like; for we live in very different
+stations, Fanny; and don’t think I speak unkindly; and—and why do you
+take your hand away, Fanny? Are you afraid of me? Do you think I would
+hurt you? Not for all the world, my dear little girl. And—and look how
+beautiful the moon and stars are, and how calmly they shine when the
+rockets have gone out, and the noisy wheels have done hissing and
+blazing. When I came here to-night I did not think I should have had
+such a pretty little companion to sit by my side, and see these fine
+fireworks. You must know I live by myself, and work very hard. I write
+in books and newspapers, Fanny; and I quite tired out, and was expected
+to sit alone all night; and—don’t cry, my dear, dear, little girl.”
+Here Pen broke out, rapidly putting an end to the calm oration which he
+had begun to deliver; for the sight of a woman’s tears always put his
+nerves in a quiver, and he began forthwith to coax her and soothe her,
+and to utter a hundred and twenty little ejaculations of pity and
+sympathy, which need not be repeated here, because they would be absurd
+in print. So would a mother’s talk to a child be absurd in print; so
+would a lover’s to his bride. That sweet artless poetry bears no
+translation; and is too subtle for grammarians’ clumsy definitions. You
+have but the same four letters to describe the salute which you perform
+on your grandmother’s forehead, and that which you bestow on the sacred
+cheek of your mistress; but the same four letters, and not one of them
+a labial. Do we mean to hint that r. Arthur Pendennis made any use of
+the monosyllable in question? Not so. In the first place, it was dark:
+the fireworks were over, and nobody could see him; secondly, he was not
+a man to have this kind of secret, and tell it; thirdly and lastly, let
+the honest fellow who has kissed a pretty girl, say what would have
+been his own conduct in such a delicate juncture?
+
+Well, the truth is, that however you may suspect him, and whatever you
+would have done under the circumstances, or Mr. Pen would have liked to
+do, he behaved honestly, and like a man. “I will not play with this
+little girl’s heart,” he said within himself, “and forget my own or her
+honour. She seems to have a great deal of dangerous and rather
+contagious sensibility, and I am very glad the fireworks are over, and
+that I can take her back to her mother. Come along, Fanny; mind the
+steps, and lean on me. Don’t stumble, you heedless little thing; this
+is the way, and there is your mamma at the door.”
+
+And there, indeed, Mrs. Bolton was, unquiet in spirit, and grasping her
+umbrella. She seized Fanny with maternal fierceness and eagerness, and
+uttered some rapid abuse to the girl in an undertone. The expression in
+Captain Costigan’s eye—standing behind the matron and winking at
+Pendennis from under his hat—was, I am bound to say, indefinably
+humorous.
+
+It was so much so, that Pen could not refrain from bursting into a
+laugh. “You should have taken my arm, Mrs. Bolton,” he said, offering
+it. “I am very glad to bring Miss Fanny back quite safe to you. We
+thought you would have followed us up into the gallery. We enjoyed the
+fireworks, didn’t we?”
+
+“Oh yes!” said Miss Fanny, with rather a demure look.
+
+“And the bouquet was magnificent,” said Pen. “And it is ten hours since
+I had anything to eat, ladies; and I wish you would permit me to invite
+you to supper.”
+
+“Dad,” said Costigan, “I’d loike a snack to; only I forgawt me purse,
+or I should have invoited these leedies to a collection.”
+
+Mrs. Bolton with considerable asperity said, She ad an eadache, and
+would much rather go ome.
+
+“A lobster salad is the best thing in the world for a headache,” Pen
+said gallantly, “and a glass of wine I’m sure will do you good. Come,
+Mrs. Bolton, be kind to me and oblige me. I shan’t have the heart to
+sup without you, and upon my word I have had no dinner. Give me your
+arm: give me the umbrella. Costigan, I’m sure you’ll take care of Miss
+Fanny; and I shall think Mrs. Bolton angry with me, unless she will
+favour me with her society. And we will all sup quietly, and go back in
+a cab together.”
+
+The cab, the lobster salad, the frank and good-humoured look of
+Pendennis, as he smilingly invited the worthy matron, subdued her
+suspicions and her anger. Since he would be so obliging, she thought
+she could take a little bit of lobster, and so they all marched away to
+a box; and Costigan called for a waither with such a loud and
+belligerent voice, as caused one of those officials instantly to run to
+him.
+
+The carte was examined on the wall, and Fanny was asked to choose her
+favourite dish; upon which the young creature said she was fond of
+lobster, too, but also owned to a partiality for raspberry tart. This
+delicacy was provided by Pen, and a bottle of the most frisky champagne
+was moreover ordered for the delight of the ladies. Little Fanny drank
+this;—what other sweet intoxication had she not drunk in the course of
+the night?
+
+When the supper, which was very brisk and gay, was over, and Captain
+Costigan and Mrs. Bolton had partaken of some of the rack-punch that is
+so fragrant at Vauxhall, the bill was called and discharged by Pen with
+great generosity,—“loike a foin young English gentleman of th’ olden
+toime, be Jove,” Costigan enthusiastically remarked. And as, when they
+went out of the box, he stepped forward and gave Mrs. Bolton his arm,
+Fanny fell to Pen’s lot, and the young people walked away in high
+good-humour together, in the wake of their seniors.
+
+The champagne and the rack-punch, though taken in moderation by all
+persons, except perhaps poor Cos, who lurched ever so little in his
+gait, had set them in high spirits and good-humour, so that Fanny began
+to skip and move her brisk little feet in time to the band, which was
+playing waltzes and galops for the dancers. As they came up to the
+dancing, the music and Fanny’s feet seemed to go quicker together—she
+seemed to spring, as if naturally, from the ground, and as if she
+required repression to keep her there.
+
+“Shouldn’t you like a turn?” said the Prince of Fairoaks. “What fun it
+would be! Mrs. Bolton, ma’am, do let me take her once round.” Upon
+which Mr. Costigan said, “Off wid you!” and Mrs. Bolton not refusing
+(indeed, she was an old war-horse, and would have liked, at the
+trumpet’s sound, to have entered the arena herself), Fanny’s shawl was
+off her back in a minute, and she and Arthur were whirling round in a
+waltz in the midst of a great deal of queer, but exceedingly joyful
+company.
+
+Pen had no mishap this time with little Fanny, as he had with Miss
+Blanche in old days,—at least, there was no mishap of his making. The
+pair danced away with great agility and contentment,—first a waltz,
+then a galop, then a waltz again, until, in the second waltz, they were
+bumped by another couple who had joined the Terpsichorean choir. This
+was Mr. Huxter and his pink satin young friend, of whom we have already
+had a glimpse.
+
+Mr. Huxter very probably had been also partaking of supper, for he was
+even more excited now than at the time when he had previously claimed
+Pen’s acquaintance; and, having run against Arthur and his partner, and
+nearly knocked them down, this amiable gentleman of course began to
+abuse the people whom he had injured, and broke out into a volley of
+slang against the unoffending couple. “Now then, stoopid! Don’t keep
+the ground if you can’t dance, old Slow Coach!” the young surgeon
+roared out (using, at the same time, other expressions far more
+emphatic), and was joined in his abuse by the shrill language and
+laughter of his partner; to the interruption of the ball, the terror of
+poor little Fanny, and the immense indignation of Pen.
+
+Arthur was furious; and not so angry at the quarrel as at the shame
+attending it. A battle with a fellow like that! A row in a public
+garden, and with a porter’s daughter on his arm! What a position for
+Arthur Pendennis! He drew poor little Fanny hastily away from the
+dancers to her mother, and wished that lady, and Costigan, and poor
+Fanny underground, rather than there, in his companionship, and under
+his protection.
+
+When Huxter commenced his attack, that free-spoken young gentleman had
+not seen who was his opponent; and directly he was aware that it was
+Arthur whom he had insulted, he began to make apologies. “Hold your
+stoopid tongue, Mary,” he said to his partner. “It’s an old friend and
+crony at home. I beg pardon, Pendennis; wasn’t aware it was you, old
+boy.” Mr. Huxter had been one of the boys of the Clavering School, who
+had been present at a combat which has been mentioned in the early part
+of this story, when young Pen knocked down the biggest champion of the
+academy, and Huxter knew that it was dangerous to quarrel with Arthur.
+
+His apologies were as odious to the other as his abuse had been. Pen
+stopped his tipsy remonstrance, by telling him to hold his tongue, and
+desiring him not to use his (Pendennis’s) name in that place or any
+other; and he walked out of the gardens with a titter behind him from
+the crowd, every one of whom he would have liked to massacre for having
+been witness to the degrading broil. He walked out of the gardens,
+quite forgetting poor little Fanny, who came trembling behind him with
+her mother and the stately Costigan.
+
+He was brought back to himself by a word from the Captain, who touched
+him on the shoulder just as they were passing the inner gate.
+
+“There’s no ray-admittance except ye pay again,” the Captain said.
+“Hadn’t I better go back and take the fellow your message?”
+
+Pen burst out laughing. “Take him a message! Do you think I would fight
+with such a fellow as that?” he asked.
+
+“No, no! Don’t, don’t?” cried out little Fanny. “How can you be so
+wicked, Captain Costigan?” The Captain muttered something about honour,
+and winked knowingly at Pen, but Arthur said gallantly, “No, Fanny,
+don’t be frightened. It was my fault to have danced in such a place,—I
+beg your padon to have asked you to dance there.” And he gave her his
+arm once more, and called a cab, and put his three friends into it.
+
+He was about to pay the driver, and to take another carriage for
+himself, when little Fanny, still alarmed, put her little hand out, and
+caught him by the coat, and implored him and besought him to come in.
+
+“Will nothing satisfy you,” said Pen, in great good-humour, “that I am
+not going back to fight him? Well, I will come home with you. Drive to
+Shepherd’s Inn, cab.” The cab drove to its destination. Arthur was
+immensely pleased by the girl’s solicitude about him: her tender
+terrors quite made him forget his previous annoyance.
+
+Pen put the ladies into their lodge, having shaken hands kindly with
+both of them; and the Captain again whispered to him that he would see
+um in the morning if he was inclined, and take his message to that
+“scounthrel.” But the Captain was in his usual condition when he made
+the proposal; and Pen was perfectly sure that neither he nor Mr.
+Huxter, when they awoke, would remember anything about the dispute.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+A Visit of Politeness
+
+
+Costigan never roused Pen from his slumbers; there was no hostile
+message from Mr. Huxter to disturb him; and when Pen woke, it was with
+a brisker and more lively feeling than ordinarily attends that moment
+in the day of the tired and blase London man. A City man wakes up to
+care and consols, and the thoughts of ’Change and the counting-house
+take possession of him as soon as sleep flies from under his night-cap;
+a lawyer rouses himself with the early morning to think of the case
+that will take him all his day to work upon, and the inevitable
+attorney to whom he has promised his papers ere night. Which of us has
+not his anxiety instantly present when his eyes are opened, to it and
+to the world, after his night’s sleep? Kind strengthener that enables
+us to face the day’s task with renewed heart! Beautiful ordinance of
+Providence that creates rest as it awards labour!
+
+Mr. Pendennis’s labour, or rather his disposition, was of that sort
+that his daily occupations did not much interest him, for the
+excitement of literary composition pretty soon subsides with the hired
+labourer, and the delight of seeing one’s-self in print only extends to
+the first two or three appearances in the magazine or newspaper page.
+Pegasus put into harness, and obliged to run a stage every day, is as
+prosaic as any other hack, and won’t work without his whip or his feed
+of corn. So, indeed, Mr. Arthur performed his work at the Pall Mall
+Gazette (and since his success as a novelist with an increased salary),
+but without the least enthusiasm, doing his best or pretty nearly, and
+sometimes writing ill and sometimes well. He was a literary hack,
+naturally fast in pace, and brilliant in action.
+
+Neither did society, or that portion which he saw, excite or amuse him
+over much. In spite of his brag and boast to the contrary, he was too
+young as yet for women’s society, which probably can only be had in
+perfection when a man has ceased to think about his own person, and has
+given up all designs of being a conqueror of ladies; he was too young
+to be admitted as an equal amongst men who had made their mark in the
+world, and of whose conversation he could scarcely as yet expect to be
+more than a listener. And he was too old for the men of pleasure of his
+own age; too much a man of pleasure for the men of business; destinied
+in a word to be a good deal alone. Fate awards this lot of solitude to
+many a man; and many like it from taste, as many without difficulty
+bear it. Pendennis, in reality, suffered it very equanimously; but in
+words, and according to his wont, grumbled over it not a little.
+
+“What a nice little artless creature that was,” Mr. Pen thought at the
+very instant of waking after the Vauxhall affair; “what a pretty
+natural manner she has; how much pleasanter than the minauderies of the
+young ladies in the ballrooms” (and here he recalled to himself some
+instances of what he could not help seeing was the artful simplicity of
+Miss Blanche, and some of the stupid graces of other young ladies in
+the polite world); “who could have thought that such a pretty rose
+could grow in a porter’s lodge, or bloom in that dismal old flower-pot
+of a Shepherd’s Inn? So she learns to sing from old Bows? If her
+singing voice is as sweet as her speaking voice, it must be pretty. I
+like those low voilees voices. ‘What would you like me to call you?’
+indeed, poor little Fanny! It went to my heart to adopt the grand air
+with her and tell her to call me, ‘Sir.’ But we’ll have no nonsense of
+that sort—no Faust and Margaret business for me. That old Bows! So he
+teaches her to sing, does he? He’s a dear old fellow, old Bows: a
+gentleman in those old clothes: a philosopher, and with a kind heart,
+too. How good he was to me in the Fotheringay business. He, too, has
+had his griefs and his sorrows. I must cultivate old Bows. A man ought
+to see people of all sorts. I am getting tired of genteel society.
+Besides, there’s nobody in town. Yes, I’ll go and see Bows, and
+Costigan too; what a rich character! begad, I’ll study him, and put him
+into a book.” In this way our young anthropologist talked with himself,
+and as Saturday was the holiday of the week, the Pall Mall Gazette
+making its appearance upon that day, and the contributors to that
+journal having no further calls upon their brains or ink-bottles, Mr.
+Pendennis determined he would take advantage of his leisure, and pay a
+visit to Shepherd’s Inn—of course to see old Bows.
+
+The truth is, that if Arthur had been the most determined roue and
+artful Lovelace who ever set about deceiving a young girl, he could
+hardly have adopted better means for fascinating and overcoming poor
+little Fanny Bolton than those which he had employed on the previous
+night. His dandified protecting air, his conceit, generosity, and
+good-humour, the very sense of good and honesty which had enabled him
+to check the tremulous advances of the young creature, and not to take
+advantage of that little fluttering sensibility,—his faults and his
+virtues at once contributed to make her admire him; and if we could
+peep into Fanny’s bed (which she shared in a cupboard, along with those
+two little sisters to whom we have seen Mr. Costigan administering
+gingerbread and apples), we should find the poor little maid tossing
+upon her mattress, to the great disturbance of its other two occupants,
+and thinking over all the delights and events of that delightful,
+eventful night, and all the words, looks, and actions of Arthur, its
+splendid hero. Many novels had Fanny read, in secret and at home, in
+three volumes and in numbers. Periodical literature had not reached the
+height which it has attained subsequently, and the girls of Fanny’s
+generation were not enabled to purchase sixteen pages of excitement for
+a penny, rich with histories of crime, murder, oppressed virtue, and
+the heartless seductions of the aristocracy; but she had had the
+benefit of the circulating library which, in conjunction with her
+school and a small brandy-ball and millinery business, Miss Minifer
+kept,—and Arthur appeared to her at once as the type and realisation of
+all the heroes of all those darling greasy volumes which the young girl
+had devoured. Mr. Pen, we have seen, was rather a dandy about shirts
+and haberdashery in general. Fanny had looked with delight at the
+fineness of his linen, at the brilliancy of his shirt-studs, at his
+elegant cambric pocket-handkerchief and white gloves, and at the jetty
+brightness of his charming boots. The Prince had appeared and
+subjugated the poor little handmaid. His image traversed constantly her
+restless slumbers; the tone of his voice, the blue light of his eyes,
+the generous look, half love, half pity,—the manly protecting smile,
+the frank, winning laughter,—all these were repeated in the girl’s fond
+memory. She felt still his arm encircling her, and saw him smiling so
+grand as he filled up that delicious glass of champagne. And then she
+thought of the girls, her friends, who used to sneer at her—of Emma
+Baker, who was so proud, forsooth, because she was engaged to a
+cheesemonger, in a white apron, near Clare Market; and of Betsy
+Rodgers, who make such a to-do about her young man—an attorney’s clerk,
+indeed, that went about with a bag!
+
+So that, at about two o’clock in the afternoon—the Bolton family having
+concluded their dinner (and Mr. B., who besides his place of porter of
+the Inn, was in the employ of Messrs. Tressler, the eminent undertakers
+of the Strand, being absent in the country with the Countess of
+Estrich’s hearse), when a gentleman in a white hat and white trousers
+made his appearance under the Inn archway, and stopped at the porter’s
+wicket, Fanny was not in the least surprised, only delightful, only
+happy, and blushing beyond all measure. She knew it could be no other
+than He. She knew He’d come. There he was; there was His Royal Highness
+beaming upon her from the gate. She called to her mother, who was busy
+in the upper apartment, “Mamma, mamma,” and ran to the wicket at once,
+and opened it, pushing aside the other children. How she blushed as she
+gave her hand to him! How affably he took off his white hat as he came
+in; the children staring up at him! He asked Mrs. Bolton if she had
+slept well, after the fatigues of the night, and hoped she had no
+headache; and he said that as he was going that way, he could not pass
+the door without asking news of his little partner.
+
+Mrs. Bolton was perhaps rather shy and suspicious about these advances;
+but Mr. Pen’s good-humour was inexhaustible, he could not see that he
+was unwelcome. He looked about the premises for a seat, and none being
+disengaged, for a dish-cover was on one, a workbox on the other, and so
+forth, he took one of the children’s chairs, and perched himself upon
+that uncomfortable eminence. At this, the children began laughing, the
+child Fanny louder than all—at least, she was more amused than any of
+them, and amazed at His Royal Highness’s condescension. He to sit down
+in that chair—that little child’s chair!—Many and many a time after,
+she regarded it: haven’t we almost all, such furniture in our rooms,
+that our fancy peoples with dear figures, that our memory fills with
+sweet smiling faces, which may never look on us more?
+
+So Pen sate down and talked away with great volubility to Mrs. Bolton.
+He asked about the undertaking business, and how many mutes went down
+with Lady Estrich’s remains; and about the Inn, and who lived there. He
+seemed very much interested about Mr. Campion’s cab and horse, and had
+met that gentleman in society. He thought he should like shares in the
+Polwheedle and Tredyddlum; did Mrs. Bolton do for those chambers? Were
+there any chambers to let in the Inn? It was better than the Temple: he
+should like to come to live in Shepherd’s Inn. As for Captain Strong,
+and—Colonel Altamont—was his name? he was deeply interested in them
+too. The Captain was an old friend at home. He had dined with him at
+chambers here, before the Colonel came to live with him. What sort of
+man was the Colonel? Wasn’t he a stout man, with a large quantity of
+jewellery, and a wig and large black whiskers—very black (here Pen was
+immensely waggish, and caused hysteric giggles of delight from the
+ladies)—very black indeed; in fact, blue black; that is to say, a rich
+greenish purple? That was the man; he had met him, too, at Sir Fr—— in
+Society.
+
+“Oh, we know,” said the ladies, “Sir F—— is Sir F. Clavering he’s often
+here: two or three times a week with the Captain. My little boy has
+been out for bill-stamps for him. O Lor! I beg pardon, I shouldn’t have
+mentioned no secrets,” Mrs. Bolton blurted out, being talked perfectly
+into good-nature by this time. “But we know you to be a gentleman, Mr.
+Pendennis, for I’m sure you have shown that you can beayve as such.
+Hasn’t Mr. Pendennis, Fanny?”
+
+Fanny loved her mother for that speech. She cast up her dark eyes to
+the low ceiling and said, “Oh, that he has, I’m sure, Ma,” with a voice
+full of feeling.
+
+Pen was rather curious about the bill-stamps, and concerning the
+transactions in Strong’s chambers. And he asked, when Altamont came and
+joined the Chevalier, whether he too was out for bill-stamps, who he
+was, whether he saw many people, and so forth. These questions, put
+with considerable adroitness by Pen who was interested about Sir
+Francis Clavering’s doings from private motives of his own, were
+artlessly answered by Mrs. Bolton, and to the utmost of her knowledge
+and ability, which, in truth, were not very great.
+
+These questions answered, and Pen being at a loss for more, luckily
+recollected his privilege as a member of the Press, and asked the
+ladies whether they would like any orders for the play? The play was
+their delight, as it is almost always the delight of every theatrical
+person. When Bolton was away professionally (it appeared that of late
+the porter of Shepherd’s Inn had taken a serious turn, drank a good
+deal, and otherwise made himself unpleasant to the ladies of his
+family), they would like of all things to slip out and go to the
+theatre—little Barney, their son, keeping the lodge; and Mr.
+Pendennis’s most generous and most genteel compliment of orders was
+received with boundless gratitude by both mother and daughter.
+
+Fanny clapped her hands with pleasure: her faced beamed with it. She
+looked and nodded, and laughed at her mamma, who nodded and laughed in
+her turn. Mrs. Bolton was not superannuated for pleasure yet, or by any
+means too old for admiration, she thought. And very likely Mr.
+Pendennis, in his conversation with her, had insinuated some
+compliments, or shaped his talk so as to please her. At first against
+Pen, and suspicious of him, she was his partisan now, and almost as
+enthusiastic about him as her daughter. When two women get together to
+like a man, they help each other on—each pushes the other forward—and
+the second, out of sheer sympathy, becomes as eager as the
+principal:—at least, so it is said by philosophers who have examined
+this science.
+
+So the offer of the play-tickets, and other pleasantries; put all
+parties into perfect good-humour, except for one brief moment, when one
+of the younger children, hearing the name of ‘Astley’s’ pronounced,
+came forward and stated that she should like very much to go, too; on
+which, Fanny said, “Don’t bother!” rather sharply; and Mamma said,
+“Git-long, Betsy-Jane, do now, and play in the court:” so that the two
+little ones, namely, Betsy-Jane and Ameliar-Ann, went away in their
+little innocent pinafores, and disported in the courtyard on the smooth
+gravel, round about the statue of Shepherd the Great.
+
+And here, as they were playing, they very possibly communicated with an
+old friend of theirs and dweller in the Inn; for while Pen was making
+himself agreeable to the ladies at the lodge, who were laughing
+delighted at his sallies, an old gentleman passed under the archway
+from the Inn-square, and came and looked in at the door of the lodge.
+
+He made a very blank and rueful face when he saw Mr. Arthur seated upon
+a table, like Macheath in the play, in easy discourse with Mrs. Bolton
+and her daughter.
+
+“What! Mr. Bows? How d’you do, Bows?” cried out Pen, in a cheery, loud
+voice. “I was coming to see you, and was asking your address of these
+ladies.”
+
+“You were coming to see me, were you, sir?” Bows said, and came in with
+a sad face, and shook hands with Arthur. “Plague on that old man!”
+somebody thought in the room: and so, perhaps, some one else besides
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+In Shepherd’s Inn
+
+
+Our friend Pen said “How d’ye do, Mr. Bows,” in a loud cheery voice on
+perceiving that gentleman, and saluted him in a dashing off-hand
+manner, yet you could have seen a blush upon Arthur’s face (answered by
+Fanny, whose cheek straightway threw out a similar fluttering red
+signal); and after Bows and Arthur had shaken hands, and the former had
+ironically accepted the other’s assertion that he was about to pay Mr.
+Costigan’s chambers a visit, there was a gloomy and rather guilty
+silence in the company, which Pen presently tried to dispel by making a
+great rattling noise. The silence of course departed at Mr. Arthur’s
+noise, but the gloom remained and deepened, as the darkness does in a
+vault if you light up a single taper in it. Pendennis tried to
+describe, in a jocular manner, the transactions of the previous night,
+and attempted to give an imitation of Costigan vainly expostulating
+with the check-taker at Vauxhall. It was not a good imitation. What
+stranger can imitate that perfection? Nobody laughed. Mrs. Bolton did
+not in the least understand what part Mr. Pendennis was performing, and
+whether it was the check-taker or the Captain he was taking off. Fanny
+wore an alarmed face, and tried a timid giggle; old Mr. Bows looked as
+glum as when he fiddled in the orchestra, or played a difficult piece
+upon the old piano at the Back Kitchen. Pen felt that his story was a
+failure; his voice sank and dwindled away dismally at the end of
+it—flickered, and went out; and it was all dark again. You could hear
+the ticket-porter, who lolls about Shepherd’s Inn, as he passed on the
+flags under the archway: the clink of his boot-heels was noted by
+everybody.
+
+“You were coming to see me, sir,” Mr. Bows said. “Won’t you have the
+kindness to walk up to my chambers with me? You do them a great honour,
+I am sure. They are rather high up; but——”
+
+“Oh! I live in a garret myself, and Shepherd’s Inn is twice as cheerful
+as Lamb Court,” Mr. Pendennis broke in.
+
+“I knew that you had third-floor apartments,” Mr. Bows said; “and was
+going to say—you will please not take my remark as discourteous—that
+the air up three pair of stairs is wholesomer for gentlemen, than the
+air of a porter’s lodge.”
+
+“Sir!” said Pen, whose candle flamed up again in his wrath, and who was
+disposed to be as quarrelsome as men are when they are in the wrong.
+“Will you permit me to choose my society without—?”
+
+“You were so polite as to say that you were about to honour my umble
+domicile with a visit,” Mr. Bows said, with his sad voice. “Shall I
+show you the way? Mr. Pendennis and I are old friends, Mrs. Bolton—very
+old acquaintances; and at the earliest dawn of his life we crossed each
+other.”
+
+The old man pointed towards the door with a trembling finger, and a hat
+in the other hand, and in an attitude slightly theatrical; so were his
+words when he spoke somewhat artificial, and chosen from the vocabulary
+which he had heard all his life from the painted lips of the orators
+before the stage-lamps. But he was not acting or masquerading, as Pen
+knew very well, though he was disposed to pooh-pooh the old fellow’s
+melodramatic airs. “Come along, sir,” he said, “as you are so very
+pressing. Mrs. Bolton, I wish you a good day. Good-bye, Miss Fanny; I
+shall always think of our night at Vauxhall with pleasure; and be sure
+I will remember the theatre tickets.” And he took her hand, pressed it,
+was pressed by it, and was gone.
+
+“What a nice young man, to be sure!” cried Mrs. Bolton.
+
+“D’you think so, ma?” said Fanny.
+
+“I was a-thinkin who he was like. When I was at the Wells with Mrs.
+Serle,” Mrs. Bolton continued, looking through the window-curtain after
+Pen, as he went up the court with Bows, “there was a young gentleman
+from the city, that used to come in a tilbry, in a white at, the very
+image of him, only his whiskers was black, and Mr. P.’s is red.”
+
+“Law, ma! they are a most beautiful hawburn,” Fanny said.
+
+“He used to come for Emly Budd, who danced Columbine in ‘Arleykin
+Ornpipe, or the Battle of Navarino,’ when Miss De la Bosky was took
+ill—a pretty dancer, and a fine stage figure of a woman—and he was a
+great sugar-baker in the city, with a country ouse at Omerton; and he
+used to drive her in the tilbry down Goswell Street Road; and one day
+they drove and was married at St. Bartholomew’s Church, Smithfield,
+where they had their bands read quite private; and she now keeps her
+carriage, and I sor her name in the paper as patroness of the
+Manshing-House Ball for the Washywomen’s Asylum. And look at Lady
+Mirabel—capting Costigan’s daughter—she was profeshnl, as all very well
+know.” Thus, and more to this purpose, Mrs. Bolton spoke, now peeping
+through the window-curtain, now cleaning the mugs and plates, and
+consigning them to their place in the corner cupboard; and finishing
+her speech as she and Fanny shook out and folded up the dinner-cloth
+between them, and restored it to its drawer in the table.
+
+Although Costigan had once before been made pretty accurately to
+understand what Pen’s pecuniary means and expectations were, I suppose
+Cos had forgotten the information acquired at Chatteris years ago, or
+had been induced by his natural enthusiasm to exaggerate his friend’s
+income. He had described Fairoaks Park in the most glowing terms to
+Mrs. Bolton, on the preceding evening, as he was walking about with her
+during Pen’s little escapade with Fanny, had dilated upon the enormous
+wealth of Pen’s famous uncle, the Major, and shown an intimate
+acquaintance with Arthur’s funded and landed property. Very likely Mrs.
+Bolton, in her wisdom, had speculated upon these matters during the
+night; and had had visions of Fanny driving in her carriage, like Mrs.
+Bolton’s old comrade, the dancer of Sadler’s Wells.
+
+In the last operation of table-cloth folding, these two foolish women,
+of necessity, came close together; and as Fanny took the cloth and gave
+it the last fold, her mother put her finger under the young girl’s
+chin, and kissed her. Again the red signal flew out, and fluttered on
+Fanny’s cheek. What did it mean? It was not alarm this time. It was
+pleasure which caused the poor little Fanny to blush so. Poor little
+Fanny! What? is love sin? that it is so pleasant at the beginning, and
+so bitter at the end?
+
+After the embrace, Mrs. Bolton thought proper to say that she was
+a-goin out upon business, and that Fanny must keep the lodge; which
+Fanny, after a very faint objection indeed, consented to do. So Mrs.
+Bolton took her bonnet and market-basket, and departed; and the instant
+she was gone, Fanny went and sate by the window which commanded Bows’s
+door, and never once took her eyes away from that quarter of Shepherd’s
+Inn.
+
+Betsy-Jane and Ameliar-Ann were buzzing in one corner of the place, and
+making believe to read out of a picture-book, which one of them held
+topsy-turvy. It was a grave and dreadful tract, of Mr. Bolton’s
+collection. Fanny did not hear her sisters prattling over it. She
+noticed nothing but Bows’s door.
+
+At last she gave a little shake, and her eyes lighted up. He had come
+out. He would pass the door again. But her poor little countenance fell
+in an instant more. Pendennis, indeed, came out; but Bows followed
+after him. They passed under the archway together. He only took off his
+hat, and bowed as he looked in. He did not stop to speak.
+
+In three or four minutes—Fanny did not know how long, but she looked
+furiously at him when he came into the lodge—Bows returned alone, and
+entered into the porter’s room.
+
+“Where’s your Ma, dear?” he said to Fanny.
+
+“I don’t know,” Fanny said, with an angry toss. “I don’t follow Ma’s
+steps wherever she goes, I suppose, Mr. Bows.”
+
+“Am I my mother’s keeper?” Bows said, with his usual melancholy
+bitterness. “Come here, Betsy-Jane and Amelia-Ann; I’ve brought a cake
+for the one who can read her letters best, and a cake for the other who
+can read them the next best.”
+
+When the young ladies had undergone the examination through which Bows
+put them, they were rewarded with their gingerbread medals, and went
+off to discuss them in the court. Meanwhile Fanny took out some work,
+and pretended to busy herself with it, her mind being in great
+excitement and anger, as she plied her needle. Bows sate so that he
+could command the entrance from the lodge to the street. But the person
+whom, perhaps, he expected to see, never made his appearance again. And
+Mrs. Bolton came in from market, and found Mr. Bows in place of the
+person whom she had expected to see. The reader perhaps can guess what
+was his name?
+
+The interview between Bows and his guest, when those two mounted to the
+apartment occupied by the former in common with the descendant of the
+Milesian kings, was not particularly satisfactory to either party. Pen
+was sulky. If Bows had anything on his mind, he did not care to deliver
+himself of his thoughts in the presence of Captain Costigan, who
+remained in the apartment during the whole of Pen’s visit; having
+quitted his bedchamber, indeed, but a very few minutes before the
+arrival of that gentleman. We have witnessed the deshabille of Major
+Pendennis: will any man wish to be valet-de-chambre to our other hero,
+Costigan? It would seem that the Captain, before issuing from his
+bedroom, scented himself with otto-of-whisky. A rich odour of that
+delicious perfume breathed from out him, as he held out the grasp of
+cordiality to his visitor. The hand which performed that grasp shook
+wofully: it was a wonder how it could hold the razor with which the
+poor gentleman daily operated on his chin.
+
+Bows’s room was as neat, on the other hand, as his comrade’s was
+disorderly. His humble wardrobe hung behind a curtain. His books and
+manuscript music were trimly arranged upon shelves. A lithographed
+portrait of Miss Fotheringay, as Mrs. Haller, with the actress’s
+sprawling signature at the corner, hung faithfully over the old
+gentleman’s bed. Lady Mirabel wrote much better than Miss Fotheringay
+had been able to do. Her Ladyship had laboured assiduously to acquire
+the art of penmanship since her marriage; and, in a common note of
+invitation or acceptance, acquitted herself very genteelly. Bows loved
+the old handwriting best, though; the fair artist’s earlier manner. He
+had but one specimen of the new style, a note in reply to a song
+composed and dedicated to Lady Mirabel, by her most humble servant
+Robert Bows; and which document was treasured in his desk amongst his
+other state papers. He was teaching Fanny Bolton now to sing and to
+write, as he had taught Emily in former days. It was the nature of the
+man to attach himself to something. When Emily was torn from him he
+took a substitute: as a man looks out for a crutch when he loses a leg;
+or lashes himself to a raft when he has suffered shipwreck. Latude had
+given his heart to a woman, no doubt, before he grew to be so fond of a
+mouse in the Bastille. There are people who in their youth have felt
+and inspired an heroic passion, and end by being happy in the caresses,
+or agitated by the illness of a poodle. But it was hard upon Bows, and
+grating to his feelings as a man and a sentimentalist, that he should
+find Pen again upon his track, and in pursuit of this little Fanny.
+
+Meanwhile, Costigan had not the least idea but that his company was
+perfectly welcome to Messrs. Pendennis and Bows, and that the visit of
+the former was intended for himself. He expressed himself greatly
+pleased with that mark of poloightness and promised, in his own mind,
+that he would repay that obligation at least—which was not the only
+debt which the Captain owed in life—by several visits to his young
+friend. He entertained him affably with news of the day, or rather of
+ten days previous; for Pen, in his quality of Journalist, remembered to
+have seen some of the Captain’s opinions in the Sporting and Theatrical
+Newspaper, which was Costigan’s oracle. He stated that Sir Charles and
+Lady Mirabel were gone to Baden-Baden, and were most pressing in their
+invitations that he should join them there. Pen replied with great
+gravity, that he had heard that Baden was very pleasant, and the Grand
+Duke exceedingly hospitable to English. Costigan answered, that the
+laws of hospitalitee bekeam a Grand Juke; that he sariously would think
+about visiting him; and made some remarks upon the splendid festivities
+at Dublin Castle, when his Excellency the Earl of Portansherry held the
+Viceraygal Coort there, and of which he, Costigan, had been a humble
+but pleased spectator. And Pen—as he heard these oft-told
+well-remembered legends—recollected the time when he had given a sort
+of credence to them, and had a certain respect for the Captain. Emily
+and first love, and the little room at Chatteris, and the kind talk
+with Bows on the bridge, came back to him. He felt quite kindly
+disposed towards his two old friends; and cordially shook the hands of
+both of them when he rose to go away.
+
+He had quite forgotten about little Fanny Bolton whilst the Captain was
+talking, and Pen himself was absorbed in other selfish meditations. He
+only remembered her again as Bows came hobbling down the stairs after
+him, bent evidently upon following him out of Shepherd’s Inn.
+
+Mr. Bows’s precaution was not a lucky one. The wrath of Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis rose at the poor old fellow’s feeble persecution. Confound
+him, what does he mean by dogging me? thought Pen. And he burst out
+laughing when he was in the Strand and by himself, as he thought of the
+elder’s stratagem. It was not an honest laugh, Arthur Pendennis.
+Perhaps the thought struck Arthur himself, and he blushed at his own
+sense of humour.
+
+He went off to endeavour to banish the thoughts which occupied him,
+whatever those thoughts might be, and tried various places of amusement
+with but indifferent success. He struggled up the highest stairs of the
+Panorama; but when he had arrived, panting at the height of the
+eminence, Care had come up with him, and was bearing him company. He
+went to the Club, and wrote a long letter home, exceedingly witty and
+sarcastic, and in which, if he did not say a single word about Vauxhall
+and Fanny Bolton, it was because he thought that subject, however
+interesting to himself, would not be very interesting to his mother and
+Laura. Nor could the novels or the library table fix his attention, nor
+the grave and respectable Jawkins (the only man in town), who wished to
+engage him in conversation; nor any of the amusements which he tried,
+after flying from Jawkins. He passed a Comic Theatre on his way home,
+and saw ‘Stunning Farce,’ ‘Roars of Laughter,’ ‘Good Old English Fun
+and Frolic,’ placarded in vermilion letters on the gate. He went into
+the pit, and saw the lovely Mrs. Leary, as usual, in a man’s attire;
+and that eminent buffo actor, Tom Horseman, dressed as a woman.
+Horseman’s travesty seemed to him a horrid and hideous degradation;
+Mrs. Leary’s glances and ankles had not the least effect. He laughed
+again, and bitterly, to himself, as he thought of the effect which she
+had produced upon him, on the first night of his arrival in London, a
+short time—what a long long time ago!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+In or near the Temple Garden
+
+
+Fashion has long deserted the green and pretty Temple Garden, which in
+Shakespeare makes York and Lancaster to pluck the innocent white and
+red roses which became the badges of their bloody wars; and the learned
+and pleasant writer of the Handbook of London tells us that “the
+commonest and hardiest kind of rose has long ceased to put forth a bud”
+in that smoky air. Not many of the present occupiers of the buildings
+round about the quarter know or care, very likely, whether or not roses
+grow there, or pass the old gate, except on their way to chambers. The
+attorneys’ clerks don’t carry flowers in their bags, or posies under
+their arms, as they run to the counsel’s chambers—the few lawyers who
+take constitutional walks think very little about York and Lancaster,
+especially since the railroad business is over. Only antiquarians and
+literary amateurs care to look at the gardens with much interest, and
+fancy good Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. Spectator with his short face
+pacing up and down the road; or dear Oliver Goldsmith in the
+summer-house, perhaps meditating about the next ‘Citizen of the World,’
+or the new suit that Mr. Filby, the tailor, is fashioning for him, or
+the dunning letter that Mr. Newbery has sent. Treading heavily on the
+gravel, and rolling majestically along in a snuff-coloured suit, and a
+wig that sadly wants the barber’s powder and irons, one sees the Great
+Doctor step up to him (his Scotch lackey following at the
+lexicographer’s heels, a little the worse for port wine that they have
+been taking at the Mitre), and Mr. Johnson asks Mr. Goldsmith to come
+home and take a dish of tea with Miss Williams. Kind faith of Fancy!
+Sir Roger and Mr. Spectator are as real to us now as the two doctors
+and the boozy and faithful Scotchman. The poetical figures live in our
+memory just as much as the real personages,—and as Mr. Arthur Pendennis
+was of a romantic and literary turn, by no means addicted to the legal
+pursuits common in the neighbourhood of the place, we may presume that
+he was cherishing some such poetical reflections as these, when, upon
+the evening after the events recorded in the last chapter, the young
+gentleman chose the Temple Gardens as a place for exercise and
+meditation.
+
+On the Sunday evening the Temple is commonly calm. The chambers are for
+the most part vacant: the great lawyers are giving grand dinner-parties
+at their houses in the Belgravian or Tyburnian districts; the agreeable
+young barristers are absent, attending those parties, and paying their
+respects to Mr. Kewsy’s excellent claret, or Mr. Justice Ermine’s
+accomplished daughters: the uninvited are partaking of the economic
+joint and the modest half-pint of wine at the Club, entertaining
+themselves, and the rest of the company in the Club-room, with Circuit
+jokes and points of wit and law. Nobody is in chambers at all, except
+poor Mr. Cockle, who is ill, and whose laundress is making him gruel;
+or Mr. Toodle, who is an amateur of the flute, and whom you may hear
+piping solitary from his chambers in the second floor; or young Tiger,
+the student, from whose open windows comes a great gush of cigar smoke,
+and at whose door are a quantity of dishes and covers, bearing the
+insignia of Dicks’ or the Cock. But stop! Whither does Fancy lead us?
+It is vacation time; and with the exception of Pendennis, nobody is in
+Chambers at all.
+
+Perhaps it was solitude, then, which drove Pen into the garden; for
+although he had never before passed the gate, and had looked rather
+carelessly at the pretty flower-beds, and the groups of pleased
+citizens sauntering over the trim lawn and the broad gravel-walks by
+the river, on this evening it happened, as we have said, that the young
+gentleman, who had dined alone at a tavern in the neighbourhood of the
+Temple, took a fancy, as he was returning home to his chambers, to take
+a little walk in the gardens, and enjoy the fresh evening air, and the
+sight of the shining Thames. After walking for a brief space, and
+looking at the many peaceful and happy groups round about him, he grew
+tired of the exercise, and betook himself to one of the summer-houses
+which flank either end of the main walk, and there modestly seated
+himself. What were his cogitations? The evening was delightfully bright
+and calm; the sky was cloudless; the chimneys on the opposite bank were
+not smoking; the wharfs warehouses looked rosy in the sunshine, and as
+clear as if they, too, had washed for the holiday. The steamers rushed
+rapidly up and down the stream, laden with holiday passengers. The
+bells of the multitudinous city churches were ringing to evening
+prayers—such peaceful Sabbath evenings as this Pen may have remembered
+in his early days, as he paced, with his arm round his mother’s waist,
+on the terrace before the lawn at home. The sun was lighting up the
+little Brawl, too, as well as the broad Thames, and sinking downwards
+majestically behind the Clavering elms, and the tower of the familiar
+village church. Was it thoughts of these, or the sunset merely, that
+caused the blush in the young man’s face? He beat time on the bench, to
+the chorus of the bells without; flicked the dust off his shining boots
+with his pocket-handkerchief, and starting up, stamped with his foot
+and said, “No, by Jove, I’ll go home.” And with this resolution, which
+indicated that some struggle as to the propriety of remaining where he
+was, or of quitting the garden, had been going on in his mind, he
+stepped out of the summer-house.
+
+He nearly knocked down two little children, who did not indeed reach
+much higher than his knee, and were trotting along the gravel-walk,
+with their long blue shadows slanting towards the east.
+
+One cried out “Oh!” the other began to laugh; and with a knowing little
+infantile chuckle, said, “Missa Pendennis!” And Arthur, looking down,
+saw his two little friends of the day before, Mesdemoiselles
+Ameliar-Ann and Betsy-Jane. He blushed more than ever at seeing them,
+and seizing the one whom he had nearly upset, jumped her up into the
+air, and kissed her: at which sudden assault Ameliar-Ann began to cry
+in great alarm.
+
+This cry brought up instantly two ladies in clean collars and new
+ribbons, and grand shawls, namely: Mrs. Bolton in a rich scarlet
+Caledonian Cashmere, and a black silk dress, and Miss F. Bolton with a
+yellow scarf and a sweet sprigged muslin, and a parasol—quite the lady.
+Fanny did not say one single word: though; her eyes flashed a welcome,
+and shone as bright—as bright as the most blazing windows in Paper
+Buildings. But Mrs. Bolton, after admonishing Betsy-Jane, said, “Lor
+sir—how very odd that we should meet you year! I ope you ave your ealth
+well, sir.—Ain’t it odd, Fanny, that we should meet Mr. Pendennis?”
+What do you mean by sniggering, Mesdames? When young Croesus has been
+staying at a country-house, have you never, by any singular
+coincidence, been walking with your Fanny in the shrubberies? Have you
+and your Fanny never happened to be listening to the band of the
+Heavies at Brighton, when young De Boots and Captain Padmore came
+clinking down the Pier? Have you and your darling Frances never chanced
+to be visiting old widow Wheezy at the cottage on the common, when the
+young curate has stepped in with a tract adapted to the rheumatism? Do
+you suppose that, if singular coincidences occur at the Hall, they
+don’t also happen at the Lodge?
+
+It was a coincidence, no doubt: that was all. In the course of the
+conversation on the day previous, Mr. Pendennis had merely said, in the
+simplest way imaginable, and in reply to a question of Miss Bolton,
+that although some of the courts were gloomy, parts of the Temple were
+very cheerful and agreeable, especially the chambers looking on the
+river and around the gardens, and that the gardens were a very pleasant
+walk on Sunday evenings and frequented by a great number of people—and
+here, by the merest chance, all our acquaintances met together, just
+like so many people in genteel life. What could be more artless,
+good-natured, or natural?
+
+Pen looked very grave, pompous, and dandified. He was unusually smart
+and brilliant in his costume. His white duck trousers and white hat,
+his neckcloth of many colours, his light waistcoat, gold chains, and
+shirt-studs, gave him the air of a prince of the blood at least. How
+his splendour became his figure! Was anybody ever like him? some one
+thought. He blushed—how his blushes became him! the same individual
+said to herself. The children, on seeing him the day before, had been
+so struck with him, that after he had gone away they had been playing
+at him. And Ameliar-Ann, sticking her little chubby fingers into the
+arm-holes of her pinafore, as Pen was wont to do with his waistcoat,
+had said, “Now, Bessy-Jane, I’ll be Missa Pendennis.” Fanny had laughed
+till she cried, and smothered her sister with kisses for that feat. How
+happy, too, she was to see Arthur embracing the child!
+
+If Arthur was red, Fanny, on the contrary, was very worn and pale.
+Arthur remarked it, and asked kindly why she looked so fatigued.
+
+“I was awake all night,” said Fanny, and began to blush a little.
+
+“I put out her candle, and hordered her to go to sleep and leave off
+readin,” interposed the fond mother.
+
+“You were reading! And what was it that interested you so?” asked Pen,
+amused.
+
+“Oh, it’s so beautiful!” said Fanny.
+
+“What?”
+
+“‘Walter Lorraine,’” Fanny sighed out. “How I do hate that
+Neaera—Neaera—I don’t know the pronunciation. And I love Leonora, and
+Walter, oh, how dear he is!”
+
+How had Fanny discovered the novel of ‘Walter Lorraine,’ and that Pen
+was the author? This little person remembered every single word which
+Mr. Pendennis had spoken on the night previous, and how he wrote in
+books and newspapers. What books? She was so eager to know, that she
+had almost a mind to be civil to old Bows, who was suffering under her
+displeasure since yesterday, but she determined first to make
+application to Costigan. She began by coaxing the Captain and smiling
+upon him in her most winning way, as she helped to arrange his dinner
+and set his humble apartment in order. She was sure his linen wanted
+mending (and indeed the Captain’s linen-closet contained some curious
+specimens of manufactured flax and cotton). She would mend his
+shirts—all his shirts. What horrid holes—what funny holes! She put her
+little face through one of them, and laughed at the old warrior in the
+most winning manner. She would have made a funny little picture looking
+through the holes. Then she daintily removed Costigan’s dinner things,
+tripping about the room as she had seen the dancers do at the play; and
+she danced to the Captain’s cupboard, and produced his whisky-bottle,
+and mixed him a tumbler, and must taste a drop of it—a little drop; and
+the Captain must sing her one of his songs, his dear songs, and teach
+it to her. And when he had sung an Irish melody in his rich quavering
+voice, fancying it was he who was fascinating the little siren, she put
+her little question about Arthur Pendennis and his novel, and having
+got an answer, cared for nothing more, but left the Captain at the
+piano about to sing her another song, and the dinner-tray on the
+passage, and the shirts on the chair, and ran downstairs quickening her
+pace as she sped.
+
+Captain Costigan, as he said, was not a litherary cyarkter, nor had he
+as yet found time to peruse his young friend’s ellygant perfaurumance,
+though he intended to teak an early opporchunitee of purchasing a
+cawpee of his work. But he knew the name of Pen’s novel from the fact
+that Messrs. Finucane, Bludyer, and other frequenters of the Back
+Kitchen, spoke of Mr. Pendennis (and not all of them with great
+friendship; for Bludyer called him a confounded coxcomb, and Hoolan
+wondered that Doolan did not kick him etc.) by the sobriquet of Walter
+Lorraine,—and was hence enabled to give Fanny the information which she
+required.
+
+“And she went and ast for it at the libery,” Mrs. Bolton said,
+“—several liberies—and some ad it and it was bout, and some adn’t it.
+And one of the liberies as ad it wouldn’t let er ave it without a
+sovering: and she adn’t one, and she came back a-cryin to me—didn’t
+you, Fanny?—and I gave her a sovering.”
+
+“And, oh, I was in such a fright lest any one should have come to the
+libery and took it while I was away,” Fanny said, her cheeks and eyes
+glowing. “And, oh, I do like it so!”
+
+Arthur was touched by this artless sympathy, immensely flattered and
+moved by it. “Do you like it?” he said. “If you will come up to my
+chambers I will—No, I will bring you one—no, I will send you one. Good
+night. Thank you, Fanny. God bless you. I mustn’t stay with you.
+Good-bye, good-bye.” And, pressing her hand once, and nodding to her
+mother and the other children, he strode out of the gardens.
+
+He quickened his pace as he went from them, and ran out of the gate
+talking to himself. “Dear, dear little thing,” he said,—“darling little
+Fanny! You are worth them all. I wish to heaven Shandon was back. I’d
+go home to my mother. I mustn’t see her. I won’t. I won’t, so help
+me——”
+
+As he was talking thus, and running, the passers-by turning to look at
+him, he ran against a little old man, and perceived it was Mr. Bows.
+
+“Your very umble servant, sir,” said Mr. Bows, making a sarcastic bow,
+and lifting his old hat from his forehead.
+
+“I wish you a good day,” Arthur answered sulkily. “Don’t let me detain
+you, or give you the trouble to follow me again. I am in a hurry, sir.
+Good evening.”
+
+Bows thought Pen had some reason for hurrying to his rooms. “Where are
+they?” exclaimed the old gentleman. “You know whom I mean. They’re not
+in your rooms, sir, are they? They told Bolton they were going to
+church at the Temple, they weren’t there. They are in your chambers:
+they mustn’t stay in your chambers, Mr. Pendennis.”
+
+“Damn it, sir!” cried out Pendennis, fiercely. “Come and see if they
+are in my chambers: here’s the court and the door—come in and see.” And
+Bows, taking off his hat and bowing first, followed the young man.
+
+They were not in Pen’s chambers, as we know. But when the gardens were
+closed, the two women, who had had but a melancholy evening’s
+amusement, walked away sadly with the children, and they entered into
+Lamb Court, and stood under the lamp-post which cheerfully ornaments
+the centre of that quadrangle, and looked up to the third floor of the
+house where Pendennis’s chambers were, and where they saw a light
+presently kindled. Then this couple of fools went away, the children
+dragging wearily after them, and returned to Mr. Bolton, who was
+immersed in rum-and-water at his lodge in Shepherd’s Inn.
+
+Mr. Bows looked round the blank room which the young man occupied, and
+which had received but very few ornaments or additions since the last
+time we saw them. Warrington’s old bookcase and battered library, Pen’s
+writing-table with its litter of papers, presented an aspect cheerless
+enough. “Will you like to look in the bedrooms, Mr. Bows, and see if my
+victims are there?” he said bitterly; “or whether I have made away with
+the little girls, and hid them in the coal-hole?”
+
+“Your word is sufficient, Mr. Pendennis,” the other said in his sad
+tone. “You say they are not here, and I know they are not. And I hope
+they never have been here, and never will come.”
+
+“Upon my word, sir, you are very good, to choose my acquaintances for
+me,” Arthur said, in a haughty tone; “and to suppose that anybody would
+be the worse for my society. I remember you, and owe you kindness from
+old times, Mr. Bows; or I should speak more angrily than I do, about a
+very intolerable sort of persecution to which you seem inclined to
+subject me. You followed me out of your Inn yesterday, as if you wanted
+to watch that I shouldn’t steal something.” Here Pen stammered and
+turned red, directly he had said the words; he felt he had given the
+other an opening, which Bows instantly took.
+
+“I do think you came to steal something, as you say the words, sir,”
+Bows said. “Do you mean to say that you came to pay a visit to poor old
+Bows, the fiddler; or to Mrs. Bolton, at the porter’s lodge? O fie!
+Such a fine gentleman as Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, doesn’t condescend
+to walk up to my garret, or to sit in a laundress’s kitchen, but for
+reasons of his own. And my belief is that you came to steal a pretty
+girl’s heart away, and to ruin it, and to spurn it afterwards, Mr.
+Arthur Pendennis. That’s what the world makes of you young dandies, you
+gentlemen of fashion, you high and mighty aristocrats that trample upon
+the people. It’s sport to you, but what is it to the poor, think you;
+the toys of your pleasures, whom you play with and whom you fling into
+the streets when you are tired? I know your order, sir. I know your
+selfishness, and your arrogance, and your pride. What does it matter to
+my lord, that the poor man’s daughter is made miserable, and her family
+brought to shame? You must have your pleasures, and the people of
+course must pay for them. What are we made for, but for that? It’s the
+way with you all—the way with you all, sir.”
+
+Bows was speaking beside the question, and Pen had his advantage here,
+which he was not sorry to take—not sorry to put off the debate from the
+point upon which his adversary had first engaged it. Arthur broke out
+with a sort of laugh, for which he asked Bows’s pardon. “Yes, I am an
+aristocrat,” he said, “in a palace up three pair of stairs, with a
+carpet nearly as handsome as yours, Mr. Bows. My life is passed in
+grinding the people, is it?—in ruining virgins and robbing the poor? My
+good sir, this is very well in a comedy, where Job Thornberry slaps his
+breast, and asks my Lord how dare he trample on an honest man and poke
+out an Englishman’s fireside; but in real life, Mr. Bows, to a man who
+has to work for his bread as much as you do—how can you talk about
+aristocrats tyrannising over the people? Have I ever done you a wrong?
+or assumed airs of superiority over you? Did you not have an early
+regard for me—in days when we were both of us romantic young fellows,
+Mr. Bows? Come, don’t be angry with me now, and let us be as good
+friends as we were before.”
+
+“Those days were very different,” Mr. Bows answered; “and Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis was an honest, impetuous young fellow then; rather selfish
+and conceited, perhaps, but honest. He liked you then, because you were
+ready to ruin yourself for a woman.”
+
+“And now, sir?” Arthur asked.
+
+“And now times are changed, and you want a woman to ruin herself for
+you,” Bows answered. “I know this child, sir. I’ve always said this lot
+was hanging over her. She has heated her little brain with novels,
+until her whole thoughts are about love and lovers, and she scarcely
+sees that she treads on a kitchen floor. I have taught the little
+thing. She is full of many talents and winning ways, I grant you. I am
+fond of the girl, sir. I’m a lonely old man; I lead a life that I don’t
+like, among boon companions, who make me melancholy. I have but this
+child that I care for. Have pity upon me, and don’t take her away from
+me, Mr. Pendennis—don’t take her away.”
+
+The old man’s voice broke as he spoke. Its accents touched Pen, much
+more than the menacing or sarcastic tone which Bows had commenced by
+adopting.
+
+“Indeed,” said he, kindly, “you do me a wrong if you fancy I intend one
+to poor little Fanny. I never saw her till Friday night. It was the
+merest chance that our friend Costigan threw her into my way. I have no
+intentions regarding her—that is——”
+
+“That is, you know very well that she is a foolish girl, and her mother
+a foolish woman,—that is, you meet her in the Temple Gardens, and of
+course without previous concert,—that is, that when I found her
+yesterday reading the book you’ve wrote, she scorned me,” Bows said.
+“What am I good for but to be laughed at? a deformed old fellow like
+me; an old fiddler, that wears a threadbare coat, and gets his bread by
+playing tunes at an ale-house? You are a fine gentleman, you are. You
+wear scent in your handkerchief, and a ring on your finger. You go to
+dine with great people. Who ever gives a crust to old Bows? And yet I
+might have been as good a man as the best of you. I might have been a
+man of genius, if I had had the chance; ay, and have lived with the
+master-spirits of the land. But everything had failed with me. I’d
+ambition once, and wrote plays, poems, music—nobody would give me a
+hearing. I never loved a woman, but she laughed at me; and here I am in
+my old age alone—alone! Don’t take this girl from me, Mr. Pendennis, I
+say again. Leave her with me a little longer. She was like a child to
+me till yesterday. Why did you step in, and made her to mock my
+deformity and old age?”
+
+“I am guiltless of that, at least,” Arthur said, with something of a
+sigh. “Upon my word of honour, I wish I had never seen the girl. My
+calling is not seduction, Mr. Bows. I did not imagine that I had made
+an impression on poor Fanny, until—until to-night. And then, sir, I was
+sorry, and was flying from my temptation, as you came upon me. And,” he
+added, with a glow upon his cheek, which, in the gathering darkness,
+his companion could not see, and with an audible tremor in his voice,
+“I do not mind telling you, sir, that on this Sabbath evening, as the
+church bells were ringing, I thought of my own home, and of women
+angelically pure and good, who dwell there; and I was running hither as
+I met you, that I might avoid the danger which beset me, and ask
+strength of God Almighty to do my duty.”
+
+After these words from Arthur a silence ensued, and when the
+conversation was resumed by his guest, the latter spoke in a tone which
+was much more gentle and friendly. And on taking farewell of Pen, Bows
+asked leave to shake hands with him, and with a very warm and
+affectionate greeting on both sides, apologised to Arthur for having
+mistaken him, and paid him some compliments which caused the young man
+to squeeze his old friend’s hand heartily again. And as they parted at
+Pen’s door, Arthur said he had given a promise, and he hoped and
+trusted that Mr. Bows might rely on it?
+
+“Amen to that prayer,” said Mr. Bows, and went slowly down the stair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+The happy Village again
+
+
+Early in this history, we have had occasion to speak of the little town
+of Clavering, near which Pen’s paternal home of Fairoaks stood, and of
+some of the people who inhabite the place; and as the society there was
+by no means amusing or pleasant, our reports concerning it were not
+carried to any very great length. Mr. Samuel Huxter, the gentleman
+whose acquaintance we lately made at Vauxhall, was one of the choice
+spirits of the little town, when he visited it during his vacation, and
+enlivened the tables of his friends there, by the wit of Bartholomew’s
+and the gossip of the fashionable London circles which he frequented.
+
+Mr. Hobnell, the young gentleman whom Pen had thrashed in consequence
+of the quarrel in the Fotheringay affair, was, whilst a pupil at the
+Grammar School at Clavering, made very welcome at the tea-table of Mrs.
+Huxter, Samuel’s mother, and was free of the surgery, where he knew the
+way to the tamarind-pots, and could scent his pocket-handkerchief with
+rose-water. And it was at this period of his life that he formed an
+attachment for Miss Sophy Huxter, whom, on his father’s demise, he
+married, and took home to his house of the Warren, at a few miles from
+Clavering.
+
+The family had possessed and cultivated an estate there for many years,
+as yeomen and farmers. Mr. Hobnell’s father pulled down the old
+farmhouse; built a flaring new whitewashed mansion, with capacious
+stables; and a piano in the drawing-room; kept a pack of harriers; and
+assumed the title of Squire Hobnell. When he died, and his son reigned
+in his stead, the family might be fairly considered to be established
+as county gentry. And Sam Huxter, at London, did no great wrong in
+boasting about his brother-in-law’s place, his hounds, horses, and
+hospitality, to his admiring comrades at Bartholomew’s. Every year, at
+a time commonly when Mrs. Hobnell could not leave the increasing duties
+of her nursery, Hobnell came up to London for a lark, had rooms at the
+Tavistock, and he and Sam indulged in the pleasures of the town
+together. Ascot, the theatres, Vauxhall, and the convivial taverns in
+the joyous neighbourhood of Covent Garden, were visited by the
+vivacious squire, in company with his learned brother. When he was in
+London, as he said, he liked to do as London does, and to “go it a
+bit,” and when he returned to the west, he took a new bonnet and shawl
+to Mrs. Hobnell, and relinquished, for country sports and occupations
+during the next eleven months, the elegant amusements of London life.
+
+Sam Huxter kept up a correspondence with his relative, and supplied him
+with choice news of the metropolis, in return for the baskets of hares,
+partridges, and clouted cream which the squire and his good-natured
+wife forwarded to Sam. A youth more brilliant and distinguished they
+did not know. He was the life and soul of their house, when he made his
+appearance in his native place. His songs, jokes, and fun kept the
+Warren in a roar. He had saved their eldest darling’s life, by taking a
+fish-bone out of her throat: in fine, he was the delight of their
+circle.
+
+As ill-luck would have it, Pen again fell in with Mr. Huxter, only
+three days after the rencontre at Vauxhall. Faithful to his vow, he had
+not been to see little Fanny. He was trying to drive her from his mind
+by occupation, or other mental excitement. He laboured, though not to
+much profit, incessantly in his rooms; and, in his capacity of critic
+for the Pall Mall Gazette, made woeful and savage onslaught on a poem
+and a romance which came before him for judgment. These authors slain,
+he went to dine alone at the lonely club of the Polyanthus, where the
+vast solitudes frightened him, and made him only the more moody. He had
+been to more theatres for relaxation. The whole house was roaring with
+laughter and applause, and he saw only an ignoble farce that made him
+sad. It would have damped the spirits of the buffoon on the stage to
+have seen Pen’s dismal face. He hardly knew what was happening; the
+scene and the drama passed before him like a dream or a fever. Then he
+thought he would go to the Back Kitchen, his old haunt with
+Warrington—he was not a bit sleepy yet. The day before he had walked
+twenty miles in search after rest, over Hampstead Common and Hendon
+lanes, and had got no sleep at night. He would go to the Back Kitchen.
+It was a sort of comfort to him to think he should see Bows. Bows was
+there, very calm, presiding at the old piano. Some tremendous comic
+songs were sung, which made the room crack with laughter. How strange
+they seemed to Pen! He could only see Bows. In an extinct volcano, such
+as he boasted that his breast was, it was wonderful how he should feel
+such a flame! Two days’ indulgence had kindled it; two days’ abstinence
+had set it burning in fury. So, musing upon this, and drinking down one
+glass after another, as ill luck would have it, Arthur’s eyes lighted
+upon Mr. Huxter, who had been to the theatre, like himself, and, with
+two or three comrades, now entered the room. Huxter whispered to his
+companions, greatly to Pen’s annoyance. Arthur felt that the other was
+talking about him. Huxter then worked through the room, followed by his
+friends, and came and took a place opposite Pen, nodding familiarly to
+him, and holding him out a dirty hand to shake.
+
+Pen shook hands with his fellow-townsman. He thought he had been
+needlessly savage to him on the last night when they had met. As for
+Huxter, perfectly at good-humour with himself, and the world, it never
+entered his mind that he could be disagreeable to anybody; and the
+little dispute, or “chaff,” as he styled it, of Vauxhall, was a trifle
+which he did not in the least regard.
+
+The disciple of Galen having called for “four stouts,” with which he
+and his party refreshed themselves, began to think what would be the
+most amusing topic of conversation with Pen, and hit upon that precise
+one which was most painful to our young gentleman.
+
+“Jolly night at Vauxhall—wasn’t it?” he said, and winked in a very
+knowing way.
+
+“I’m glad you liked it,” poor Pen said, groaning in spirit.
+
+“I was dev’lish cut—uncommon—been dining with some chaps at Greenwich.
+That was a pretty bit of muslin hanging on your arm—who was she?” asked
+the fascinating student.
+
+The question was too much for Arthur. “Have I asked you any questions
+about yourself, Mr. Huxter?” he said.
+
+“I didn’t mean any offence—beg pardon—hang it, you cut up quite
+savage,” said Pen’s astonished interlocutor.
+
+“Do you remember what took place between us the other night?” Pen
+asked, with gathering wrath. “You forget? Very probably. You were
+tipsy, as you observed just now, and very rude.”
+
+“Hang it, sir, I asked your pardon,” Huxter said, looking red.
+
+“You did certainly, and it was granted with all my heart. I am sure.
+But if you recollect, I begged that you would have the goodness to omit
+me from the list of your acquaintance for the future; and when we met
+in public, that you would not take the trouble to recognise me. Will
+you please to remember this, hereafter? and as the song is beginning,
+permit me to leave you to the unrestrained enjoyment of the music.”
+
+He took his hat, and making a bow to the amazed Mr. Huxter left the
+table, as Huxter’s comrades, after a pause of wonder, set up such a
+roar of laughter at Huxter, as called for the intervention of the
+president of the room; who bawled out, “Silence, gentlemen; do have
+silence for the Body Snatcher!” which popular song began as Pen left
+the Back Kitchen. He flattered himself that he had commanded his temper
+perfectly. He rather wished that Huxter had been pugnacious. He would
+have liked to fight him or somebody. He went home. The day’s work, the
+dinner, the play, the whisky-and-water, the quarrel,—nothing soothed
+him. He slept no better than on the previous night.
+
+A few days afterwards, Mr. Sam Huxter wrote home a letter to Mr.
+Hobnell in the country, of which Mr. Arthur Pendennis formed the
+principal subject. Sam described Arthur’s pursuits in London, and his
+confounded insolence of behaviour to his old friends from home. He said
+he was an abandoned criminal, a regular Don Juan, a fellow who, when he
+did come into the country, ought to be kept out of honest people’s
+houses. He had seen him at Vauxhall, dancing with an innocent girl in
+the lower ranks of life, of whom he was making a victim. He had found
+out from an Irish gentleman (formerly in the army), who frequented a
+club of which he, Huxter, was member, who the girl was, on whom this
+conceited humbug was practising his infernal arts; and he thought he
+should warn her father, etc. etc.,—the letter then touched on general
+news, conveyed the writer’s thanks for the last parcel and the rabbits,
+and hinted his extreme readiness for further favours.
+
+About once a year, as we have stated, there was occasion for a
+christening at the Warren, and it happened that this ceremony took
+place a day after Hobnell had received the letter of his brother-in-law
+in town. The infant (a darling little girl) was christened Myra
+Lucretia, after its two godmothers, Miss Portman and Mrs. Pybus of
+Clavering, and as of course Hobnell had communicated Sam’s letter to
+his wife, Mrs. Hobnell imparted its horrid contents to her two gossips.
+A pretty story it was, and prettily it was told throughout Clavering in
+the course of that day.
+
+Myra did not—she was too much shocked to do so—speak on the matter to
+her mamma, but Mrs. Pybus had no such feelings of reserve. She talked
+over the matter not only with Mrs. Portman, but with Mr. and the
+Honourable Mrs. Simcoe, with Mrs. Glanders, her daughters being to that
+end ordered out of the room, with Madame Fribsby, and, in a word, with
+the whole of the Clavering society. Madame Fribsby looking furtively up
+at her picture of the dragoon, and inwards into her own wounded memory,
+said that men would be men, and as long as they were men would be
+deceivers; and she pensively quoted some lines from Marmion, requesting
+to know where deceiving lovers should rest? Mrs. Pybus had no words of
+hatred, horror, contempt, strong enough for a villain who could be
+capable of conduct so base. This was what came of early indulgence, and
+insolence, and extravagance, and aristocratic airs (it is certain that
+Pen had refused to drink tea with Mrs. Pybus), and attending the
+corrupt and horrid parties in the dreadful modern Babylon! Mrs. Portman
+was afraid that she must acknowledge that the mother’s fatal partiality
+had spoiled this boy, that his literary successes had turned his head,
+and his horrid passions had made him forget the principles which Doctor
+Portman had instilled into him in early life. Glanders, the atrocious
+Captain of Dragoons, when informed of the occurrence by Mrs. Glanders,
+whistled and made jocular allusions to it at dinner-time; on which Mrs.
+Glanders called him a brute, and ordered the girls again out of the
+room, as the horrid Captain burst out laughing. Mr. Simcoe was calm
+under the intelligence; but rather pleased than otherwise; it only
+served to confirm the opinion which he had always had of that wretched
+young man: not that he knew anything about him—not that he had read one
+line of his dangerous and poisonous works; Heaven forbid that he
+should: but what could be expected from such a youth, and such
+frightful, such lamentable, such deplorable want of seriousness? Pen
+formed the subject for a second sermon at the Clavering chapel-of-ease:
+where the dangers of London, and the crime of reading or writing
+novels, were pointed out on a Sunday evening to a large and warm
+congregation. They did not wait to hear whether he was guilty or not.
+They took his wickedness for granted: and with these admirable
+moralists, it was who should fling the stone at poor Pen.
+
+The next day Mrs. Pendennis, alone and almost fainting with emotion and
+fatigue, walked or rather ran to Dr. Portman’s house to consult the
+good Doctor. She had had an anonymous letter;—some Christian had
+thought it his or her duty to stab the good soul who had never done
+mortal a wrong—an anonymous letter with references to Scripture,
+pointing out the doom of such sinners and a detailed account of Pen’s
+crime. She was in a state of terror and excitement pitiable to witness.
+Two or three hours of this pain had aged her already. In her first
+moment of agitation she had dropped the letter, and Laura had read it.
+Laura blushed when she read it; her whole frame trembled, but it was
+with anger. “The cowards,” she said.—It isn’t true.—No, mother, it
+isn’t true.”
+
+“It is true, and you’ve done it, Laura,” cried out Helen fiercely. “Why
+did you refuse him when he asked you? Why did you break my heart and
+refuse him? It is you who led him into crime. It is you who flung him
+into the arms of this—this woman.—Don’t speak to me.—Don’t answer me. I
+will never forgive you, never. Martha, bring me my bonnet and shawl.
+I’ll go out. I won’t have you come with me. Go away. Leave me, cruel
+girl; why have you brought this shame on me?” And bidding her daughter
+and her servants keep away from her, she ran down the road to
+Clavering.
+
+Doctor Portman, glancing over the letter, thought he knew the
+handwriting, and, of course, was already acquainted with the charge
+made against poor Pen. Against his own conscience, perhaps (for the
+worthy Doctor, like most of us, had a considerable natural aptitude for
+receiving any report unfavourable to his neighbours), he strove to
+console Helen; he pointed out that the slander came from an anonymous
+quarter, and therefore must be the work of a rascal; that the charge
+might not be true—was not true, most likely—at least, that Pen must be
+heard before he was condemned; that the son of such a mother was not
+likely to commit such a crime, etc. etc.
+
+Helen at once saw through his feint of objection and denial. “You think
+he has done it,” she said,—“you know you think he has done it. Oh, why
+did I ever leave him, Doctor Portman, or suffer him away from me? But
+he can’t be dishonest—pray God, not dishonest—you don’t think that, do
+you? Remember his conduct about that other—person—how madly he was
+attached to her. He was an honest boy then—he is now. And I thank
+God—yes, I fall down on my knees and thank God he paid Laura. You said
+he was good—you did yourself. And now—if this woman loves him—and you
+know they must—if he has taken her from her home, or she tempted him,
+which is most likely—why still, she must be his wife and my daughter.
+And he must leave the dreadful world and come back to me—to his mother,
+Doctor Portman. Let us go away and bring him back—yes—bring him
+back—and there shall be joy for the—the sinner that repenteth. Let us
+go now, directly, dear friend—this very——”
+
+Helen could say no more. She fell back and fainted. She was carried to
+a bed in the house of the pitying Doctor, and the surgeon was called to
+attend her. She lay all night in an alarming state. Laura came to her,
+or to the rectory rather; for she would not see Laura. And Doctor
+Portman, still beseeching her to be tranquil, and growing bolder and
+more confident of Arthur’s innocence as he witnessed the terrible grief
+of the poor mother, wrote a letter to Pen warning him of the rumours
+that were against him and earnestly praying that he would break off and
+repent of a connexion so fatal to his best interests and his soul’s
+welfare.
+
+And Laura?—was her heart not wrung by the thought of Arthur’s crime and
+Helen’s estrangement? Was it not a bitter blow for the innocent girl to
+think that at one stroke she should lose all the love which she cared
+for in the world?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+Which had very nearly been the last of the Story
+
+
+Doctor Portman’s letter was sent off to its destination in London, and
+the worthy clergyman endeavoured to soothe down Mrs. Pendennis into
+some state of composure until an answer should arrive, which the Doctor
+tried to think, or at any rate persisted in saying, would be
+satisfactory as regarded the morality of Mr. Pen. At least Helen’s
+wisdom of moving upon London and appearing in person to warn her son of
+his wickedness, was impracticable for a day or two. The apothecary
+forbade her moving even so far as Fairoaks for the first day, and it
+was not until the subsequent morning that she found herself again back
+on her sofa at home, with the faithful, though silent, Laura nursing at
+her side.
+
+Unluckily for himself and all parties, Pen never read that homily which
+Doctor Portman addressed to him, until many weeks after the epistle had
+been composed; and day after day the widow waited for her son’s reply
+to the charges against him; her own illness increasing with every day’s
+delay. It was a hard task for Laura to bear the anxiety; to witness her
+dearest friend’s suffering; worst of all, to support Helen’s
+estrangement, and the pain caused to her by that averted affection. But
+it was the custom of this young lady to the utmost of her power, and by
+means of that gracious assistance which Heaven awarded to her pure and
+constant prayers, to do her duty. And; as that duty was performed quite
+noiselessly,—while the supplications, which endowed her with the
+requisite strength for fulfilling it, also took place in her own
+chamber, away from all mortal sight,—we, too, must be perforce silent
+about these virtues of hers, which no more bear public talking about,
+than a flower will bear to bloom in a ballroom. This only we will
+say—that a good woman is the loveliest flower that blooms under heaven;
+and that we look with love and wonder upon its silent grace, its pure
+fragrance, its delicate bloom of beauty. Sweet and beautiful!—the
+fairest and the most spotless!—is it not pity to see them bowed down or
+devoured by Grief or Death inexorable—wasting in disease—pining with
+long pain—or cut off by sudden fate in their prime? We may deserve
+grief—but why should these be unhappy?—except that we know that Heaven
+chastens those whom it loves best; being pleased, by repeated trials,
+to make these pure spirits more pure.
+
+So Pen never got the letter, although it was duly posted and faithfully
+discharged by the postman into his letter-box in Lamb Court, and thence
+carried by the laundress to his writing-table with the rest of his
+lordship’s correspondence; into which room, have we not seen a picture
+of him, entering from his little bedroom adjoining, as Mrs. Flanagan,
+his laundress, was in the act of drinking his gin?
+
+Those kind readers who have watched Mr. Arthur’s career hitherto, and
+have made, as they naturally would do, observations upon the moral
+character and peculiarities of their acquaintance, have probably
+discovered by this time what was the prevailing fault in Mr. Pen’s
+disposition, and who was that greatest enemy, artfully indicated in the
+title-page, with whom he had to contend. Not a few of us, my beloved
+public, have the very same rascal to contend with: a scoundrel who
+takes every opportunity of bringing us into mischief, of plunging us
+into quarrels, of leading us into idleness and unprofitable company,
+and what not. In a word, Pen’s greatest enemy was himself: and as he
+had been pampering, and coaxing, and indulging that individual all his
+life, the rogue grew insolent, as all spoiled servants will be; and at
+the slightest attempt to coerce him, or make him do that which was
+unpleasant to him, became frantically rude and unruly. A person who is
+used to making sacrifices—Laura, for instance, who had got such a habit
+of giving up her own pleasure for others—can do the business quite
+easily; but Pen, unaccustomed as he was to any sort of self-denial,
+suffered woundily when called on to pay his share, and savagely
+grumbled at being obliged to forgo anything he liked.
+
+He had resolved in his mighty mind then that he would not see Fanny;
+and he wouldn’t. He tried to drive the thoughts of that fascinating
+little person out of his head, by constant occupation, by exercise, by
+dissipation and society. He worked then too much; he walked and rode
+too much; he ate, drank, and smoked too much: nor could all the cigars
+and the punch of which he partook drive little Fanny’s image out of his
+inflamed brain, and at the end of a week of this discipline and
+self-denial our young gentleman was in bed with a fever. Let the reader
+who has never had a fever in chambers pity the wretch who is bound to
+undergo that calamity.
+
+A committee of marriageable ladies, or of any Christian persons
+interested in the propagation of the domestic virtues, should employ a
+Cruikshank or a Leech, or some other kindly expositor of the follies of
+the day, to make a series of designs representing the horrors of a
+bachelor’s life in chambers, and leading the beholder to think of
+better things, and a more wholesome condition. What can be more
+uncomfortable than the bachelor’s lonely breakfast?—with the black
+kettle in the dreary fire in midsummer; or, worse still, with the fire
+gone out at Christmas, half an hour after the laundress has quitted the
+sitting-room? Into this solitude the owner enters shivering, and has to
+commence his day by hunting for coals and wood; and before he begins
+the work of a student, has to discharge the duties of a housemaid, vice
+Mrs. Flanagan, who is absent without leave. Or, again, what can form a
+finer subject for the classical designer than the bachelor’s shirt—that
+garment which he wants to assume just at dinner-time, and which he
+finds without any buttons to fasten it? Then there is the bachelor’s
+return to chambers, after a merry Christmas holiday, spent in a cosy
+country-house, full of pretty faces, and kind welcomes and regrets. He
+leaves his portmanteau at the barber’s in the Court: he lights his
+dismal old candle at the sputtering little lamp on the stair: he enters
+the blank familiar room, where the only tokens to greet him, that show
+any interest in his personal welfare, are the Christmas bills, which
+are lying in wait for him, amiably spread out on his reading-table. Add
+to these scenes an appalling picture of bachelor’s illness, and the
+rents in the Temple will begin to fall from the day of the publication
+of the dismal diorama. To be well in chambers is melancholy, and lonely
+and selfish enough; but to be ill in chambers—to pass long nights of
+pain and watchfulness—to long for the morning and the laundress—to
+serve yourself your own medicine by your own watch—to have no other
+companion for long hours but your own sickening fancies and fevered
+thoughts: no kind hand to give you drink if you are thirsty, or to
+smooth the hot pillow that crumples under you,—this, indeed, is a fate
+so dismal and tragic, that we shall not enlarge upon its horrors, and
+shall only heartily pity those bachelors in the Temple, who brave it
+every day.
+
+This lot befell Arthur Pendennis after the various excesses which we
+have mentioned, and to which he had subjected his unfortunate brains.
+One night he went to bed ill, and the next day awoke worse. His only
+visitor that day, besides the laundress, was the Printer’s Devil, from
+the Pall Mall Gazette office, whom the writer endeavoured, as best he
+could, to satisfy. His exertions to complete his work rendered his
+fever the greater: he could only furnish a part of the quantity of
+“copy” usually supplied by him; and Shandon being absent, and
+Warrington not in London to give a help, the political and editorial
+columns of the Gazette looked very blank indeed; nor did the sub-editor
+know how to fill them.
+
+Mr. Finucane rushed up to Pen’s chambers, and found that gentleman so
+exceedingly unwell, that the good-natured Irishman set to work to
+supply his place, if possible, and produced a series of political and
+critical compositions, such as no doubt greatly edified the readers of
+the periodical in which he and Pen were concerned. Allusions to the
+greatness of Ireland, and the genius and virtue of the inhabitants of
+that injured country, flowed magnificently from Finucane’s pen; and
+Shandon, the Chief of the paper, who was enjoying himself placidly at
+Boulogne-sur-Mer, looking over the columns of the journal, which was
+forwarded to him, instantly recognised the hand of the great
+Sub-editor, and said, laughing, as he flung over the paper to his wife,
+“Look here, Mary, my dear, here is Jack at work again.” Indeed, Jack
+was a warm friend, and a gallant partisan, and when he had the pen in
+hand, seldom let slip an opportunity of letting the world know that
+Rafferty was the greatest painter in Europe, and wondering at the petty
+jealousy of the Academy, which refused to make him an R.A.: of stating
+that it was generally reported at the West End, that Mr. Rooney, M.P.,
+was appointed Governor of Barataria; or of introducing into the subject
+in hand, whatever it might be, a compliment to the Round Towers, or the
+Giant’s Causeway. And besides doing Pen’s work for him, to the best of
+his ability, his kind-hearted comrade offered to forgo his Saturday’s
+and Sunday’s holiday, and pass those days of holiday and rest as
+nurse-tender to Arthur, who, however, insisted, that the other should
+not forgo his pleasure, and thankfully assured him that he could bear
+best his malady alone.
+
+Taking his supper at the Back Kitchen on the Friday night, after having
+achieved the work of the paper, Finucane informed Captain Costigan of
+the illness of their young friend in the Temple; and remembering the
+fact two days afterwards, the Captain went to Lamb Court and paid a
+visit to the invalid on Sunday afternoon.
+
+He found Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, in tears in the sitting-room,
+and got a bad report of the poor dear young gentleman within. Pen’s
+condition had so much alarmed her, that she was obliged to have
+recourse to the stimulus of brandy to enable her to support the grief
+which his illness occasioned. As she hung about his bed, and
+endeavoured to minister to him, her attentions became intolerable to
+the invalid, and he begged her peevishly not to come near him. Hence
+the laundress’s tears and redoubled grief, and renewed application to
+the bottle, which she was accustomed to use as an anodyne. The Captain
+rated the woman soundly for her intemperance, and pointed out to her
+the fatal consequences which must ensue if she persisted in her
+imprudent courses.
+
+Pen, who was by this time in a very fevered state, yet was greatly
+pleased to receive Costigan’s visit. He heard the well-known voice in
+his sitting-room, as he lay in the bedroom within, and called the
+Captain eagerly to him, and thanked him for coming, and begged him to
+take a chair and talk to him. The Captain felt the young man’s pulse
+with great gravity—(his own tremulous and clammy hand growing steady
+for the instant while his finger pressed Arthur’s throbbing vein)—the
+pulse was beating very fiercely—Pen’s face was haggard and hot—his eyes
+were bloodshot and gloomy; his “bird,” as the Captain pronounced the
+word, afterwards giving a description of his condition, had not been
+shaved for nearly a week. Pen made his visitor sit down, and, tossing
+and turning in his comfortless bed, began to try and talk to the
+Captain in a lively manner, about the Back Kitchen, about Vauxhall and
+when they should go again, and about Fanny—how was little Fanny?
+
+Indeed how was she? We know how she went home very sadly on the
+previous Sunday evening, after she had seen Arthur light his lamp in
+his chambers, whilst he was having his interview with Bows. Bows came
+back to his own rooms presently, passing by the lodge door, and looking
+into Mrs. Bolton’s, according to his wont, as he passed, but with a
+very melancholy face. She had another weary night that night. Her
+restlessness wakened her little bedfellows more than once. She daren’t
+read more of ‘Walter Lorraine:’ Father was at home, and would suffer no
+light. She kept the book under her pillow, and felt for it in the
+night. She had only just got to sleep, when the children began to stir
+with the morning, almost as early as the birds. Though she was very
+angry with Bows, she went to his room at her accustomed hour in the
+day, and there the good-hearted musician began to talk to her.
+
+“I saw Mr. Pendennis last night, Fanny,” he said.
+
+“Did you? I thought you did,” Fanny answered, looking fiercely at the
+melancholy old gentleman.
+
+“I’ve been fond of you ever since we came to live in this place,” he
+continued. “You were a child when I came; and you used to like me,
+Fanny, until three or four days ago: until you saw this gentleman.”
+
+“And now, I suppose, you are going to say ill of him,” said Fanny. “Do,
+Mr. Bows—that will make me like you better.”
+
+“Indeed I shall do no such thing,” Bows answered; “I think he is a very
+good and honest young man.”
+
+“Indeed! you know that if you said a word against him, I would never
+speak a word to you again—never!” cried Miss Fanny; and clenched her
+little hand, and paced up and down the room. Bows noted, watched, and
+followed the ardent little creature with admiration and gloomy
+sympathy. Her cheeks flushed, her frame trembled; her eyes beamed love,
+anger, defiance. “You would like to speak ill of him,” she said; “but
+you daren’t—you know you daren’t!”
+
+“I knew him many years since,” Bows continued, “when he was almost as
+young as you are, and he had a romantic attachment for our friend the
+Captain’s daughter—Lady Mirabel that is now.”
+
+Fanny laughed. “I suppose there was other people, too, that had
+romantic attachments for Miss Costigan,” she said: “I don’t want to
+hear about ’em.”
+
+“He wanted to marry her; but their ages were quite disproportionate:
+and their rank in life. She would not have him because he had no money.
+She acted very wisely in refusing him; for the two would have been very
+unhappy, and she wasn’t a fit person to go and live with his family, or
+to make his home comfortable. Mr. Pendennis has his way to make in the
+world, and must marry a lady of his own rank. A woman who loves a man
+will not ruin his prospects, cause him to quarrel with his family, and
+lead him into poverty and misery for her gratification. An honest girl
+won’t do that, for her own sake, or for the man’s.”
+
+Fanny’s emotion, which but now had been that of defiance and anger,
+here turned to dismay and supplication. “What do I know about marrying,
+Bows?” she said. “When was there any talk of it? What has there been
+between this young gentleman and me that’s to make people speak so
+cruel? It was not my doing; nor Arthur’s—Mr. Pendennis’s—that I met him
+at Vauxhall. It was the Captain took me and Ma there. We never thought
+of nothing wrong, I’m sure. He came and rescued us, and he was so very
+kind. Then he came to call and ask after us: and very, very good it was
+of a such grand gentleman to be so polite to humble folks like us! And
+yesterday Ma and me just went to walk in the Temple Gardens,
+and—and”—here she broke out with that usual, unanswerable female
+argument of tears—and cried, “Oh! I wish I was dead! I wish I was laid
+in my grave; and had never, never seen him!”
+
+“He said as much himself, Fanny,” Bows said; and Fanny asked through
+her sobs, Why, why should he wish he had never seen her? Had she ever
+done him any harm? Oh, she would perish rather than do him any harm.
+Whereupon the musician informed her of the conversation of the day
+previous, showed her that Pen could not and must not think of her as a
+wife fitting for him, and that she, as she valued her honest
+reputation, must strive too to forget him. And Fanny, leaving the
+musician, convinced, but still of the same mind, and promising that she
+would avoid the danger which menaced her, went back to the porter’s
+lodge, and told her mother all. She talked of her love for Arthur, and
+bewailed, in her artless manner, the inequality of their condition,
+that set barriers between them. “There’s the ‘Lady of Lyons,’” Fanny
+said; “Oh, Ma! how I did love Mr. Macready when I saw him do it; and
+Pauline, for being faithful to poor Claude, and always thinking of him;
+and he coming back to her, an officer, through all his dangers! And if
+everybody admires Pauline—and I’m sure everybody does, for being so
+true to a poor man—why should a gentleman be ashamed of loving a poor
+girl? Not that Mr. Arthur loves me—Oh no, no! I ain’t worthy of him;
+only a princess is worthy of such a gentleman as him. Such a
+poet!—writing so beautifully, and looking so grand! I am sure he’s a
+nobleman, and of ancient family, and kep’ out of his estate. Perhaps
+his uncle has it. Ah, if I might, oh, how I’d serve him, and work for
+him, and slave for him, that I would. I wouldn’t ask for more than
+that, Ma, just to be allowed to see him of a morning; and sometimes
+he’d say ‘How d’you, Fanny?’ or ‘God bless you, Fanny!’ as he said on
+Sunday. And I’d work, and work; and I’d sit up all night, and read, and
+learn, and make myself worthy of him. The Captain says his mother lives
+in the country, and is a grand lady there. Oh, how I wish I might go
+and be her servant, Ma! I can do plenty of things, and work very neat;
+and—and sometimes he’d come home, and I should see him!”
+
+The girl’s head fell on her mother’s shoulder, as she spoke, and she
+gave way to a plentiful outpouring of girlish tears, to which the
+matron, of course, joined her own. “You mustn’t think no more of him,
+Fanny,” she said. “If he don’t come to you, he’s a horrid, wicked man.”
+
+“Don’t call him so, Mother,” Fanny replied. “He’s the best of men, the
+best and the kindest. Bows says he thinks he is unhappy at leaving poor
+little Fanny. It wasn’t his fault, was it, that we met?—and it ain’t
+his that I mustn’t see him again. He says I mustn’t—and I mustn’t,
+Mother. He’ll forget me, but I shall never forget him. No! I’ll pray
+for him, and love him always—until I die—and I shall die, I know I
+shall—and then my spirit will always go and be with him.”
+
+“You forget your poor mother, Fanny, and you’ll break my heart by goin
+on so,” Mrs. Bolton said. “Perhaps you will see him. I’m sure you’ll
+see him. I’m sure he’ll come to-day. If ever I saw a man in love, that
+man is him. When Emily Budd’s young man first came about her, he was
+sent away by old Budd, a most respectable man, and violoncello in the
+orchestra at the Wells; and his own family wouldn’t hear of it neither.
+But he came back. We all knew he would. Emily always said so; and he
+married her; and this one will come back too; and you mark a mother’s
+words, and see if he don’t, dear.”
+
+At this point of the conversation Mr. Bolton entered the lodge for his
+evening meal. At the father’s appearance, the talk between mother and
+daughter ceased instantly. Mrs. Bolton caressed and cajoled the surly
+undertaker’s aide-de-camp, and said, “Lor, Mr. B. who’d have thought to
+see you away from the Club of a Saturday night. Fanny, dear, get your
+pa some supper. What will you have, B.? The poor gurl’s got a gathering
+in her eye, or somethink in it—I was lookin at it just now as you came
+in.” And she squeezed her daughter’s hand as a signal of prudence and
+secrecy; and Fanny’s tears were dried up likewise; and by that wondrous
+hypocrisy and power of disguise which women practise, and with which
+weapons of defence nature endows them, the traces of her emotion
+disappeared; and she went and took her work, and sate in the corner so
+demure and quiet, that the careless male parent never suspected that
+anything ailed her.
+
+Thus, as if fate seemed determined to inflame and increase the poor
+child’s malady and passion, all circumstances and all parties round
+about her urged it on. Her mother encouraged and applauded it; and the
+very words which Bows used in endeavouring to repress her flame only
+augmented this unlucky fever. Pen was not wicked and a seducer: Pen was
+high-minded in wishing to avoid her. Pen loved her: the good and the
+great, the magnificent youth, with the chains of gold and the scented
+auburn hair! And so he did: or so he would have loved her five years
+back perhaps, before the world had hardened the ardent and reckless
+boy—before he was ashamed of a foolish and imprudent passion, and
+strangled it as poor women do their illicit children, not on account of
+the crime, but of the shame, and from dread that the finger of the
+world should point to them.
+
+What respectable person in the world will not say he was quite right to
+avoid a marriage with an ill-educated person of low degree, whose
+relations a gentleman could not well acknowledge, and whose manners
+would not become her new station?—and what philosopher would not tell
+him that the best thing to do with these little passions if they spring
+up, is to get rid of them, and let them pass over and cure them: that
+no man dies about a woman or vice versa: and that one or the other
+having found the impossibility of gratifying his or her desire in the
+particular instance, must make the best of matters, forget each other,
+look out elsewhere, and choose again? And yet, perhaps, there may be
+something said on the other side. Perhaps Bows was right in admiring
+that passion of Pen’s, blind and unreasoning as it was, that made him
+ready to stake his all for his love; perhaps if self-sacrifice is a
+laudable virtue, mere worldly self-sacrifice is not very much to be
+praised;—in fine, let this be a reserved point to be settled by the
+individual moralist who chooses to debate it.
+
+So much is certain, that with the experience of the world which Mr. Pen
+now had, he would have laughed at and scouted the idea of marrying a
+penniless girl out of a kitchen. And this point being fixed in his
+mind, he was but doing his duty as an honest man, in crushing any
+unlucky fondness which he might feel towards poor little Fanny.
+
+So she waited and waited in hopes that Arthur would come. She waited
+for a whole week, and it was at the end of that time that the poor
+little creature heard from Costigan of the illness under which Arthur
+was suffering.
+
+It chanced on that very evening after Costigan had visited Pen, that
+Arthur’s uncle the excellent Major arrived in town from Buxton, where
+his health had been mended, and sent his valet Morgan to make inquiries
+for Arthur, and to request that gentleman to breakfast with the Major
+the next morning. The Major was merely passing through London on his
+way to the Marquis of Steyne’s house of Stillbrook, where he was
+engaged to shoot partridges.
+
+Morgan came back to his master with a very long face. He had seen Mr.
+Arthur; Mr. Arthur was very bad indeed; Mr. Arthur was in bed with a
+fever. A doctor ought to be sent to him; and Morgan thought his case
+most alarming.
+
+Gracious goodness! this was sad news indeed. He had hoped that Arthur
+could come down to Stillbrook: he had arranged that he should go, and
+procured an invitation for his nephew from Lord Steyne. He must go
+himself; he couldn’t throw Lord Steyne over: the fever might be
+catching: it might be measles: he had never himself had the measles;
+they were dangerous when contracted at his age. Was anybody with Mr.
+Arthur?
+
+Morgan said there was somebody a-nussing of Mr. Arthur.
+
+The Major then asked, had his nephew taken any advice? Morgan said he
+had asked that question, and had been told that Mr. Pendennis had had
+no doctor.
+
+Morgan’s master was sincerely vexed at hearing of Arthur’s calamity. He
+would have gone to him, but what good could it do Arthur that he, the
+Major, should catch a fever? His own ailments rendered it absolutely
+impossible that he should attend to anybody but himself. But the young
+man must have advice—the best advice; and Morgan was straightway
+despatched with a note from Major Pendennis to his friend Doctor
+Goodenough, who by good luck happened to be in London and at home, and
+who quitted his dinner instantly, and whose carriage was in half an
+hour in Upper Temple Lane, near Pen’s chambers.
+
+The Major had asked the kind-hearted physician to bring him news of his
+nephew at the Club where he himself was dining, and in the course of
+the night the Doctor made his appearance. The affair was very serious:
+the patient was in a high fever: he had had Pen bled instantly: and
+would see him the first thing in the morning. The Major went
+disconsolate to bed with this unfortunate news. When Goodenough came to
+see him according to his promise the next day, the Doctor had to listen
+for a quarter of an hour to an account of the Major’s own maladies,
+before the latter had leisure to hear about Arthur.
+
+He had had a very bad night—his—his nurse said: at one hour he had been
+delirious. It might end badly: his mother had better be sent for
+immediately. The Major wrote the letter to Mrs. Pendennis with the
+greatest alacrity, and at the same time with the most polite
+precautions. As for going himself to the lad, in his state it was
+impossible. “Could I be of any use to him, my dear Doctor?” he asked.
+
+The Doctor, with a peculiar laugh, said, No: he didn’t think the Major
+could be of any use: that his own precious health required the most
+delicate treatment, and that he had best go into the country and stay:
+that he himself would take care to see the patient twice a day, and do
+all in his power for him.
+
+The Major declared upon his honour, that if he could be of any use he
+would rush to Pen’s chambers. As it was, Morgan should go and see that
+everything was right. The Doctor must write to him by every post to
+Stillbrook: it was but forty miles distant from London, and if anything
+happened he would come up at any sacrifice.
+
+Major Pendennis transacted his benevolence by deputy and by post. “What
+else could he do,” as he said? “Gad, you know, in these cases, it’s
+best not disturbing a fellow. If a poor fellow goes to the bad, why,
+Gad, you know he’s disposed of. But in order to get well (and in this,
+my dear Doctor, I’m sure that you will agree with me), the best way is
+to keep him quiet—perfectly quiet.”
+
+Thus it was the old gentleman tried to satisfy his conscience and he
+went his way that day to Stillbrook by railway (for railways have
+sprung up in the course of this narrative, though they have not quite
+penetrated into Pen’s country yet), and made his appearance in his
+usual trim order and curly wig, at the dinner-table of the Marquis of
+Steyne. But we must do the Major the justice to say, that he was very
+unhappy and gloomy in demeanour. Wagg and Wenham rallied him about his
+low spirits; asked whether he was crossed in love? and otherwise
+diverted themselves at his expense. He lost his money at whist after
+dinner, and actually trumped his partner’s highest spade. And the
+thoughts of the suffering boy, of whom he was proud, and whom he loved
+after his manner, kept the old fellow awake half through the night, and
+made him feverish and uneasy.
+
+On the morrow he received a note in a handwriting which he did not
+know: it was that of Mr. Bows, indeed, saying that Mr. Arthur Pendennis
+had had a tolerable night; and that as Dr. Goodenough had stated that
+the Major desired to be informed of his nephew’s health, he, R. B., had
+sent him the news per rail.
+
+The next day he was going out shooting, about noon, with some of the
+gentlemen staying at Lord Steyne’s house; and the company, waiting for
+the carriages, were assembled on the terrace in front of the house,
+when a fly drove up from the neighbouring station, and a grey-headed,
+rather shabby old gentleman jumped out, and asked for Major Pendennis.
+It was Mr. Bows. He took the Major aside and spoke to him; most of the
+gentlemen round about saw that something serious had happened, from the
+alarmed look of the Major’s face.
+
+Wagg said, “It’s a bailiff come down to nab the Major,” but nobody
+laughed at the pleasantry.
+
+“Hullo! What’s the matter, Pendennis?” cried Lord Steyne, with his
+strident voice;—“anything wrong?”
+
+“It’s—it’s—my boy that’s dead,” said the Major, and burst into a
+sob—the old man was quite overcome.
+
+“Not dead, my Lord; but very ill when I left London,” Mr. Bows said, in
+a low voice.
+
+A britzka came up at this moment as the three men were speaking. The
+Peer looked at his watch. “You’ve twenty minutes to catch the
+mail-train. Jump in, Pendennis; and drive like h——, sir, do you hear?”
+
+The carriage drove off swiftly with Pendennis and his companions, and
+let us trust that the oath will be pardoned to the Marquis of Steyne.
+
+The Major drove rapidly from the station to the Temple, and found a
+travelling carriage already before him, and blocking up the narrow
+Temple Lane. Two ladies got out of it, and were asking their way of the
+porters; the Major looked by chance at the panel of the carriage, and
+saw the worn-out crest of the Eagle looking at the Sun, and the motto,
+“Nec tenui penna,” painted beneath. It was his brother’s old carriage,
+built many, many years ago. It was Helen and Laura that were asking
+their way to Pen’s room.
+
+He ran up to them; hastily clasped his sister’s arm and kissed her
+hand; and the three entered into Lamb Court, and mounted the long
+gloomy stair.
+
+They knocked very gently at the door, on which Arthur’s name was
+written, and it was opened by Fanny Bolton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+A critical Chapter
+
+
+As Fanny saw the two ladies and the anxious countenance of the elder,
+who regarded her with a look of inscrutable alarm and terror, the poor
+girl at once knew that Pen’s mother was before her; there was a
+resemblance between the widow’s haggard eyes and Arthur’s as he tossed
+in his bed in fever. Fanny looked wistfully at Mrs. Pendennis and at
+Laura afterwards; there was no more expression in the latter’s face
+than if it had been a mass of stone. Hard-heartedness and gloom dwelt
+on the figures of both the new-comers; neither showed any the faintest
+gleam of mercy or sympathy for Fanny. She looked desperately from them
+to the Major behind them. Old Pendennis dropped his eyelids, looking up
+ever so stealthily from under them at Arthur’s poor little nurse.
+
+“I—I wrote to you yesterday, if you please, ma’am,” Fanny said,
+trembling in every limb as she spoke; and as pale as Laura, whose sad
+menacing face looked over Mrs. Pendennis’s shoulder.
+
+“Did you, madam?” Mrs. Pendennis said. “I suppose I may now relieve you
+from nursing my son. I am his mother, you understand.”
+
+“Yes, ma’am. I—this is the way to his—Oh, wait a minute,” cried out
+Fanny. “I must prepare you for his——”
+
+The widow, whose face had been hopelessly cruel and ruthless, here
+started back with a gasp and a little cry, which she speedily stifled.
+
+“He’s been so since yesterday,” Fanny said, trembling very much, and
+with chattering teeth.
+
+A horrid shriek of laughter came out of Pen’s room, whereof the door
+was open; and, after several shouts, the poor wretch began to sing a
+college drinking-song, and then to hurray and to shout as if he was in
+the midst of a wine-party, and to thump with his fist against the
+wainscot. He was quite delirious.
+
+“He does not know me, ma’am,” Fanny said.
+
+“Indeed. Perhaps he will know his mother; let me pass, if you please,
+and go in to him.” And the widow hastily pushed by little Fanny, and
+through the dark passage which led into Pen’s sitting-room. Laura
+sailed by Fanny, too, without a word; and Major Pendennis followed
+them. Fanny sat down on a bench in the passage, and cried, and prayed
+as well as she could. She would have died for him; and they hated her.
+They had not a word of thanks or kindness for her, the fine ladies. She
+sate there in the passage, she did not know how long. They never came
+out to speak to her. She sate there until Doctor Goodenough came to pay
+his second visit that day; he found the poor little thing at the door.
+
+“What, nurse? How’s your patient?” asked the good-natured Doctor. “Has
+he had any rest?”
+
+“Go and ask them. They’re inside,” Fanny answered.
+
+“Who? his mother?”
+
+Fanny nodded her head and didn’t speak.
+
+“You must go to bed yourself, my poor little maid,” said the Doctor.
+“You will be ill, too, if you don’t.”
+
+“Oh, mayn’t I come and see him: mayn’t I come and see him! I—I—love him
+so,” the little girl said; and as she spoke she fell down on her knees
+and clasped hold of the Doctor’s hand in such an agony that to see her
+melted the kind physician’s heart, and caused a mist to come over his
+spectacles.
+
+“Pooh, pooh! Nonsense! Nurse, has he taken his draught? Has he had any
+rest? Of course you must come and see him. So must I.”
+
+“They’ll let me sit here, won’t they, sir? I’ll never make no noise. I
+only ask to stop here,” Fanny said. On which the Doctor called her a
+stupid little thing; put her down upon the bench where Pen’s printer’s
+devil used to sit so many hours; tapped her pale cheek with his finger,
+and bustled into the farther room.
+
+Mrs. Pendennis was ensconced pale and solemn in a great chair by Pen’s
+bedside. Her watch was on the bed-table by Pen’s medicines. Her bonnet
+and cloaks were laid in the window. She had her Bible in her lap,
+without which she never travelled. Her first movement, after seeing her
+son, had been to take Fanny’s shawl and bonnet which were on his
+drawers, and bring them out and drop them down upon his study-table.
+She had closed the door upon Major Pendennis, and Laura too; and taken
+possession of her son.
+
+She had had a great doubt and terror lest Arthur should not know her;
+but that pang was spared to her in part at least. Pen knew his mother
+quite well, and familiarly smiled and nodded at her. When she came in,
+he instantly fancied that they were at home at Fairoaks; and began to
+talk and chatter and laugh in a rambling wild way. Laura could hear him
+outside. His laughter shot shafts of poison into her heart. It was
+true, then. He had been guilty—and with that creature!—an intrigue with
+a servant-maid, and she had loved him—and he was dying most likely
+raving and unrepentant. The Major now and then hummed out a word of
+remark or consolation, which Laura scarce heard.
+
+A dismal sitting it was for all parties; and when Goodenough appeared,
+he came like an angel into the room.
+
+It is not only for the sick man, it is for the sick man’s friends that
+the Doctor comes. His presence is often as good for them as for the
+patient, and they long for him yet more eagerly. How we have all
+watched after him! what an emotion the thrill of his carriage-wheels in
+the street, and at length at the door, has made us feel! how we hang
+upon his words, and what a comfort we get from a smile or two, if he
+can vouchsafe that sunshine to lighten our darkness! Who hasn’t seen
+the mother prying into his face, to know if there is hope for the sick
+infant that cannot speak, and that lies yonder, its little frame
+battling with fever? Ah how she looks into his eyes! What thanks if
+there is light there; what grief and pain if he casts them down, and
+dares not say “hope!” Or it is the house-father who is stricken. The
+terrified wife looks on, while the Physician feels his patient’s wrist,
+smothering her agonies, as the children have been called upon to stay
+their plays and their talk. Over the patient in the fever, the wife
+expectant, the children unconscious, the Doctor stands as if he were
+Fate, the dispenser of life and death: he must let the patient off this
+time: the woman prays so for his respite! One can fancy how awful the
+responsibility must be to a conscientious man: how cruel the feeling
+that he has given the wrong remedy, or that it might have been possible
+to do better: how harassing the sympathy with survivors, if the case is
+unfortunate—how immense the delight of victory!
+
+Having passed through a hasty ceremony of introduction to the
+new-comers, of whose arrival he had been made aware by the heartbroken
+little nurse in waiting without, the Doctor proceeded to examine the
+patient, about whose condition of high fever there could be no mistake,
+and on whom he thought it necessary to exercise the strongest
+antiphlogistic remedies in his power. He consoled the unfortunate
+mother as best he might; and giving her the most comfortable assurances
+on which he could venture, that there was no reason to despair yet,
+that everything might still be hoped from his youth, the strength of
+his constitution, and so forth; and having done his utmost to allay the
+horrors of the alarmed matron, he took the elder Pendennis aside into
+the vacant room (Warrington’s bedroom), for the purpose of holding a
+little consultation.
+
+The case was very critical. The fever, if not stopped, might and would
+carry off the young fellow: he must be bled forthwith: the mother must
+be informed of this necessity. Why was that other young lady brought
+with her? She was out of place in a sick-room.
+
+“And there was another woman still, be hanged to it!” the Major said,
+“the—the little person who opened the door.” His sister-in-law had
+brought the poor little devil’s bonnet and shawl out, flung them upon
+the study-table. Did Goodenough know anything about the—the little
+person? “I just caught a glimpse of her as we passed in,” the Major
+said, “and begad she was uncommonly nice-looking.” The Doctor looked
+queer: the Doctor smiled—in the very gravest moments, with life and
+death pending, such strange contrasts and occasions of humour will
+arise, and such smiles will pass, to satirise the gloom, as it were,
+and to make it more gloomy!
+
+“I have it,” at last he said, re-entering the study; and he wrote a
+couple of notes hastily at the table there, and sealed one of them.
+Then, taking up poor Fanny’s shawl and bonnet, and the notes, he went
+out in the passage to that poor little messenger, and said, “Quick,
+nurse; you must carry this to the surgeon, and bid him come instantly;
+and then go to my house, and ask for my servant Harbottle, and tell him
+to get this prescription prepared, and wait until I—until it is ready.
+It may take a little in preparation.”
+
+So poor Fanny trudged away with her two notes, and found the
+apothecary, who lived in the Strand hard by, and who came straightway,
+his lancet in his pocket, to operate on his patient; and then Fanny
+made for the Doctor’s house, in Hanover Square.
+
+The Doctor was at home again before the prescription was made up, which
+took Harbottle, his servant, such a long time in compounding; and,
+during the remainder of Arthur’s illness, poor Fanny never made her
+appearance in the quality of nurse at his chambers any more. But for
+that day and the next, a little figure might be seen lurking about
+Pen’s staircase,—a sad, sad little face looked at and interrogated the
+apothecary, and the apothecary’s boy, and the laundress, and the kind
+physician himself, as they passed out of the chambers of the sick man.
+And on the third day, the kind Doctor’s chariot stopped at Shepherd’s
+Inn, and the good, and honest, and benevolent man went into the
+porter’s lodge, and tended a little patient whom he had there, for the
+best remedy he found was on the day when he was enabled to tell Fanny
+Bolton that the crisis was over, and that there was at length every
+hope for Arthur Pendennis.
+
+J. Costigan, Esquire, late of Her Majesty’s service, saw the Doctor’s
+carriage, and criticised its horses and appointments. “Green liveries,
+bedad!” the General said, “and as foin a pair of high-stepping bee
+horses as ever a gentleman need sit behoind, let alone a docthor.
+There’s no ind to the proide and ar’gance of them docthors,
+nowadays—not but that is a good one, and a scoientific cyarkter, and a
+roight good fellow, bedad; and he’s brought the poor little girl well
+troo her faver, Bows, me boy;” and so pleased was Mr. Costigan with the
+Doctor’s behaviour and skill, that, whenever he met Dr. Goodenough’s
+carriage in future, he made a point of saluting it and the physician
+inside, in as courteous and magnificent a manner, as if Dr. Goodenough
+had been the Lord Liftenant himself, and Captain Costigan had been in
+his glory in Phaynix Park.
+
+The widow’s gratitude to the physician knew no bounds—or scarcely any
+bounds, at least. The kind gentleman laughed at the idea of taking a
+fee from a literary man, or the widow of a brother practitioner; and
+she determined when she got to Fairoaks that she would send Goodenough
+the silver-gilt vase, the jewel of the house, and the glory of the late
+John Pendennis, preserved in green baize, and presented to him at Bath,
+by the Lady Elizabeth Firebrace, on the recovery of her son, the late
+Sir Anthony Firebrace, from the scarlet fever. Hippocrates, Hygeia,
+King Bladud, and a wreath of serpents surmount the cup to this day;
+which was executed in their finest manner by Messrs. Abednego, of
+Milsom Street; and the inscription was by Mr. Birch, tutor to the young
+baronet.
+
+This priceless gem of art the widow determined to devote to Goodenough,
+the preserver of her son; and there was scarcely any other favour which
+her gratitude would not have conferred upon him, except one, which he
+desired most, and which was that she should think a little charitably
+and kindly of poor Fanny, of whose artless, sad story he had got
+something during his interviews with her, and of whom he was induced to
+think very kindly,—not being disposed, indeed, to give much credit to
+Pen for his conduct in the affair, or not knowing what that conduct had
+been. He knew enough, however, to be aware that the poor infatuated
+little girl was without stain as yet; that while she had been in Pen’s
+room it was to see the last of him, as she thought, and that Arthur was
+scarcely aware of her presence; and that she suffered under the deepest
+and most pitiful grief, at the idea of losing him, dead or living.
+
+But on the one or two occasions when Goodenough alluded to Fanny, the
+widow’s countenance, always soft and gentle, assumed an expression so
+cruel and inexorable, that the Doctor saw it was in vain to ask her for
+justice or pity, and he broke off all entreaties, and ceased making any
+further allusions regarding his little client. There is a complaint
+which neither poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the
+East could allay, in the men in his time, as we are informed by a
+popular poet of the days of Elizabeth; and which, when exhibited in
+women, no medical discoveries or practice subsequent—neither
+homoeopathy, nor hydropathy, nor mesmerism, nor Dr. Simpson, nor Dr.
+Locock can cure, and that is—we won’t call it jealousy, but rather
+gently denominate rivalry and emulation in ladies.
+
+Some of those mischievous and prosaic people who carp and calculate at
+every detail of the romancer, and want to know, for instance, how, when
+the characters in the ‘Critic’ are at a dead lock with their daggers at
+each other’s throats, they are to be got out of that murderous
+complication of circumstances, may be induced to ask how it was
+possible in a set of chambers in the Temple, consisting of three rooms,
+two cupboards, a passage, and a coal-box, Arthur a sick gentleman,
+Helen his mother, Laura her adopted daughter, Martha their country
+attendant, Mrs. Wheezer a nurse from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, Mrs.
+Flanagan an Irish laundress, Major Pendennis a retired military
+officer, Morgan his valet, Pidgeon Mr. Arthur Pendennis’s boy, and
+others could be accommodated—the answer is given at once, that almost
+everybody in the Temple was out of town, and that there was scarcely a
+single occupant of Pen’s house in Lamb Court except those who were
+occupied round the sick-bed of the sick gentleman, about whose fever we
+have not given a lengthy account, neither enlarge we very much upon the
+more cheerful theme of his recovery.
+
+Everybody we have said was out of town, and of course such a
+fashionable man as young Mr. Sibwright, who occupied chambers on the
+second floor in Pen’s staircase, could not be supposed to remain in
+London. Mrs. Flanagan, Mr. Pendennis’s laundress was acquainted with
+Mrs. Rouncy who did for Mr. Sibwright; and that gentleman’s bedroom was
+got ready for Miss Bell, or Mrs. Pendennis, when the latter should be
+inclined to leave her son’s sick-room, to try and seek for a little
+rest for herself.
+
+If that young buck and flower of Baker Street, Percy Sibwright, could
+have known who was the occupant of his bedroom, how proud he would have
+been of that apartment:—what poems he would have written about Laura!
+(several of his things have appeared in the annuals, and in manuscript
+in the nobility’s albums)—he was a Camford man and very nearly got the
+English Prize Poem, it was said—Sibwright, however, was absent and his
+bed given up to Miss Bell. It was the prettiest little brass bed in the
+world, with chintz curtains lined with pink—he had a mignonette-box in
+his bedroom window, and the mere sight of his little exhibition of
+shiny boots, arranged in trim rows over his wardrobe, was a
+gratification to the beholder. He had a museum of scent, pomatum, and
+bear’s-grease pots, quite curious to examine, too; and a choice
+selection of portraits of females, almost always in sadness and
+generally in disguise or deshabille, glittered round the neat walls of
+his elegant little bower of repose. Medora with dishevelled hair was
+consoling herself over her banjo for the absence of her Conrad—the
+Princesse Fleur de Marie (of Rudolstein and the Mysteres de Paris) was
+sadly ogling out of the bars of her convent cage, in which, poor
+prisoned bird, she was moulting away,—Dorothea of Don Quixote was
+washing her eternal feet:—in fine, it was such an elegant gallery as
+became a gallant lover of the sex. And in Sibwright’s sitting-room,
+while there was quite an infantine law library clad in skins of fresh
+new-born calf, there was a tolerably large collection of classical
+books which he could not read, and of English and French works of
+poetry and fiction which he read a great deal too much. His invitation
+cards of the past season still decorated his looking-glass: and scarce
+anything told of the lawyer but the wig-box beside the Venus upon the
+middle shelf of the bookcase, on which the name of P. Sibwright,
+Esquire, was gilded.
+
+With Sibwright in chambers was Mr. Bangham. Mr. Bangham was a sporting
+man married to a rich widow. Mr. Bangham had no practice—did not come
+to chambers thrice in a term: went a circuit for those mysterious
+reasons which make men go circuit,—and his room served as a great
+convenience to Sibwright when that young gentleman gave his little
+dinners. It must be confessed that these two gentlemen have nothing to
+do with our history, will never appear in it again probably, but we
+cannot help glancing through their doors as they happen to be open to
+us, and as we pass to Pen’s rooms; as in the pursuit of our own
+business in life through the Strand, at the Club, nay at church itself,
+we cannot help peeping at the shops on the way, or at our neighbour’s
+dinner, or at the faces under the bonnets in the next pew.
+
+Very many years after the circumstances about which we are at present
+occupied, Laura, with a blush and a laugh showing much humour, owned to
+having read a French novel once much in vogue, and when her husband
+asked her, wondering where on earth she could have got such a volume,
+she owned that it was in the Temple, when she lived in Mr. Percy
+Sibwright’s chambers.
+
+“And, also, I never confessed,” she said, “on that same occasion, what
+I must now own to: that I opened the japanned box, and took out that
+strange-looking wig inside it, and put it on and looked at myself in
+the glass in it.”
+
+Suppose Percy Sibwright had come in at such a moment as that? What
+would he have said,—the enraptured rogue? What would have been all the
+pictures of disguised beauties in his room compared to that living one?
+Ah, we are speaking of old times, when Sibwright was a bachelor and
+before he got a county court,—when people were young—when most people
+were young. Other people are young now; but we no more.
+
+When Miss Laura played this prank with the wig, you can’t suppose that
+Pen could have been very ill upstairs; otherwise, though she had grown
+to care for him ever so little, common sense of feeling and decorum
+would have prevented her from performing any tricks or trying any
+disguises.
+
+But all sorts of events had occurred in the course of the last few days
+which had contributed to increase or account for her gaiety, and a
+little colony of the reader’s old friends and acquaintances was by this
+time established in Lamb Court, Temple, and round Pen’s sick-bed there.
+First, Martha, Mrs. Pendennis’s servant, had arrived from Fairoaks,
+being summoned thence by the Major who justly thought her presence
+would be comfortable and useful to her mistress and her young master,
+for neither of whom the constant neighbourhood of Mrs. Flanagan (who
+during Pen’s illness required more spirituous consolation than ever to
+support her) could be pleasant. Martha then made her appearance in due
+season to wait upon Mr. Pendennis, nor did that lady go once to bed
+until the faithful servant had reached her, when, with a heart full of
+maternal thankfulness she went and lay down upon Warrington’s straw
+mattress, and among his mathematical books as has been already
+described.
+
+It is true that ere that day a great and delightful alteration in Pen’s
+condition had taken place. The fever, subjugated by Dr. Goodenough’s
+blisters, potions, and lancet, had left the young man, or only returned
+at intervals of feeble intermittence; his wandering senses had settled
+in his weakened brain: he had had time to kiss and bless his mother for
+coming to him, and calling for Laura and his uncle (who were both
+affected according to their different natures by his wan appearance,
+his lean shrunken hands, his hollow eyes and voice, his thin bearded
+face) to press their hands and thank them affectionately; and after
+this greeting, and after they had been turned out of the room by his
+affectionate nurse, he had sunk into a fine sleep which had lasted for
+about sixteen hours, at the end of which period he awoke calling out
+that he was very hungry. If it is hard to be ill and to loathe food,
+oh, how pleasant to be getting well and to be feeling hungry—how
+hungry! Alas, the joys of convalescence become feebler with increasing
+years, as other joys do—and then—and then comes that illness when one
+does not convalesce at all.
+
+On the day of this happy event, too, came another arrival in Lamb
+Court. This was introduced into the Pen-Warring sitting-room by large
+puffs of tobacco smoke—the puffs of smoke were followed by an
+individual with a cigar in his mouth, and a carpet-bag under his
+arm—this was Warrington who had run back from Norfolk, when Mr. Bows
+thoughtfully wrote to inform him of his friend’s calamity. But he had
+been from home when Bows’s letter had reached his brother’s house—the
+Eastern Counties did not then boast of a railway (for we beg the reader
+to understand that we only commit anachronisms when we choose and when
+by a daring violation of those natural laws some great ethical truth is
+to be advanced)—in fine, Warrington only appeared with the rest of the
+good luck upon the lucky day after Pen’s convalescence may have been
+said to have begun.
+
+His surprise was, after all, not very great when he found the chambers
+of his sick friend occupied, and his old acquaintance the Major seated
+demurely in an easy-chair (Warrington had let himself into the rooms
+with his own passkey), listening, or pretending to listen, to a young
+lady who was reading to him a play of Shakspeare in a low sweet voice.
+The lady stopped and started, and laid down her book, at the apparition
+of the tall traveller with the cigar and the carpet-bag. He blushed, he
+flung the cigar into the passage: he took off his hat, and dropped that
+too, and going up to the Major, seized that old gentleman’s hand, and
+asked questions about Arthur.
+
+The Major answered in a tremulous, though cheery voice—it was curious
+how emotion seemed to olden him—and returning Warrington’s pressure
+with a shaking hand, told him the news of Arthur’s happy crisis, of his
+mother’s arrival—with her young charge—with Miss——.
+
+“You need not tell me her name,” Mr. Warrington said with great
+animation, for he was affected and elated with the thought of his
+friend’s recovery—“you need not tell me your name. I knew at once it
+was Laura.” And he held out his hand and took hers. Immense kindness
+and tenderness gleamed from under his rough eyebrows, and shook his
+voice as he gazed at her and spoke to her. “And this is Laura!” his
+looks seemed to say. “And this is Warrington!” the generous girl’s
+heart beat back. “Arthur’s hero—the brave and the kind—he has come
+hundreds of miles to succour him, when he heard of his friend’s
+misfortune!”
+
+“Thank you, Mr. Warrington,” was all that Laura said, however; and as
+she returned the pressure of his kind hand, she blushed so, that she
+was glad the lamp was behind her to conceal her flushing face.
+
+As these two were standing in this attitude, the door of Pen’s
+bedchamber was opened stealthily as his mother was wont to open it, and
+Warrington saw another lady, who first looked at him, and then turning
+round towards the bed, said, “Hsh!” and put up her hand.
+
+It was to Pen Helen was turning, and giving caution. He called out with
+a feeble, tremulous, but cheery voice, “Come in, Stunner—come in,
+Warrington. I knew it was you—by the—by the smoke, old boy,” he said,
+as holding his worn hand out, and with tears at once of weakness and
+pleasure in his eyes, he greeted his friend.
+
+“I—I beg pardon, ma’am, for smoking,” Warrington said, who now almost
+for the first time blushed for his wicked propensity.
+
+Helen only said, “God bless you, Mr. Warrington.” She was so happy, she
+would have liked to kiss George. Then, and after the friends had had a
+brief, very brief interview, the delighted and inexorable mother,
+giving her hand to Warrington, sent him out of the room, too, back to
+Laura and the Major, who had not resumed their play of Cymbeline where
+they had left it off at the arrival of the rightful owner of Pen’s
+chambers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+Convalescence
+
+
+Our duty now is to record a fact concerning Pendennis, which, however
+shameful and disgraceful, when told regarding the chief personage and
+godfather of a novel, must, nevertheless, be made known to the public
+who reads his veritable memoirs. Having gone to bed ill with fever, and
+suffering to a certain degree under the passion of love, after he had
+gone through his physical malady, and had been bled and had been
+blistered, and had had his head shaved, and had been treated and
+medicamented as the doctor ordained:—it is a fact, that, when he
+rallied up from his bodily ailment, his mental malady had likewise
+quitted him, and he was no more in love with Fanny Bolton than you or
+I, who are much too wise, or too moral, to allow our hearts to go
+gadding after porters’ daughters.
+
+He laughed at himself as he lay on his pillow, thinking of this second
+cure which had been effected upon him. He did not care the least about
+Fanny now: he wondered how he ever should have cared: and according to
+his custom made an autopsy of that dead passion, and anatomised his own
+defunct sensation for his poor little nurse. What could have made him
+so hot and eager about her but a few weeks back? Not her wit, not her
+breeding, not her beauty—there were hundreds of women better-looking
+than she. It was out of himself that the passion had gone: it did not
+reside in her. She was the same; but the eyes which saw were changed;
+and, alas, that it should be so! were not particularly eager to see her
+any more. He felt very well disposed towards the little thing, and so
+forth, but as for violent personal regard, such as he had but a few
+weeks ago, it had fled under the influence of the pill and lancet,
+which had destroyed the fever in his frame. And an immense source of
+comfort and gratitude it was to Pendennis (though there was something
+selfish in that feeling, as in most others of our young man), that he
+had been enabled to resist temptation at the time when the danger was
+greatest, and had no particular cause of self-reproach as he remembered
+his conduct towards the young girl. As from a precipice down which he
+might have fallen, so from the fever from which he had recovered, he
+reviewed the Fanny Bolton snare, now that he had escaped out of it, but
+I’m not sure that he was not ashamed of the very satisfaction which he
+experienced. It is pleasant, perhaps, but it is humiliating to own that
+you love no more.
+
+Meanwhile the kind smiles and tender watchfulness of the mother at his
+bedside, filled the young man with peace and security. To see that
+health was returning, was all the unwearied nurse demanded: to execute
+any caprice or order of her patient’s, her chiefest joy and reward. He
+felt himself environed by her love, and thought himself almost as
+grateful for it as he had been when weak and helpless in childhood.
+
+Some misty notions regarding the first part of his illness, and that
+Fanny had nursed him, Pen may have had, but they were so dim that he
+could not realise them with accuracy, or distinguish them from what he
+knew to be delusions which had occurred and were remembered during the
+delirium of his fever. So as he had not thought proper on former
+occasions to make any allusions about Fanny Bolton to his mother, of
+course he could not now confide to her his sentiments regarding Fanny,
+or make this worthy lady a confidante. It was on both sides an unlucky
+precaution and want of confidence; and a word or two in time might have
+spared the good lady, and those connected with her, a deal of pain and
+anguish.
+
+Seeing Miss Bolton installed as nurse and tender to Pen, I am sorry to
+say Mrs. Pendennis had put the worst construction on the fact of the
+intimacy of these two unlucky young persons, and had settled in her own
+mind that the accusations against Arthur were true. Why not have
+stopped to inquire?—There are stories to a man’s disadvantage that the
+women who are fondest of him are always the most eager to believe.
+Isn’t a man’s wife often the first to be jealous of him? Poor Pen got a
+good stock of this suspicious kind of love from the nurse who was now
+watching over him; and the kind and pure creature thought that her boy
+had gone through a malady much more awful and debasing than the mere
+physical fever, and was stained by crime as well as weakened by
+illness. The consciousness of this she had to bear perforce silently,
+and to try to put a mask of cheerfulness and confidence over her doubt
+and despair and inward horror.
+
+When Captain Shandon, at Boulogne, read the next number of the Pall
+Mall Gazette, it was to remark to Mrs. Shandon that Jack Finucane’s
+hand was no longer visible in the leading articles, and that Mr.
+Warrington must be at work there again. “I know the crack of his whip
+in a hundred, and the cut which the fellow’s thong leaves. There’s Jack
+Bludyer, goes to work like a butcher, and mangles a subject. Mr.
+Warrington finished a man, and lays his cuts neat and regular, straight
+down the back, and drawing blood every line;” at which dreadful
+metaphor, Mrs. Shandon said, “Law, Charles, how can you talk so! I
+always thought Mr. Warrington very high, but a kind gentleman; and I’m
+sure he was most kind to the children.” Upon which Shandon said, “yes;
+he’s kind to the children; but he’s savage to the men; and to be sure,
+my dear, you don’t understand a word about what I’m saying; and it’s
+best you shouldn’t; for it’s little good comes out of writing for
+newspapers; and it’s better here, living easy at Boulogne, where the
+wine’s plenty, and the brandy costs but two francs a bottle. Mix us
+another tumbler, Mary, my dear; we’ll go back into harness soon. ‘Cras
+ingens iterabimus aequor’ bad luck to it.”
+
+In a word, Warrington went to work with all his might, in place of his
+prostrate friend, and did Pen’s portion of the Pall Mall Gazette “with
+a vengeance,” as the saying is. He wrote occasional articles and
+literary criticisms; he attended theatres and musical performances, and
+discoursed about them with his usual savage energy. His hand was too
+strong for such small subjects, and it pleased him to tell Arthur’s
+mother, and uncle, and Laura, that there was no hand in all the band of
+penmen more graceful and light, more pleasant and more elegant, than
+Arthur’s. “The people in this country, ma’am, don’t understand what
+style is, or they would see the merits of our young one,” he said to
+Mrs. Pendennis. “I call him ours, ma’am, for I bred him; and I am as
+proud of him as you are; and, bating a little wilfulness, and a little
+selfishness, and a little dandification, I don’t know a more honest, or
+loyal, or gentle creature. His pen is wicked sometimes, but he is as
+kind as a young lady—as Miss Laura here—and I believe he would not do
+any living mortal harm.”
+
+At this, Helen, though she heaved a deep, deep sigh, and Laura, though
+she, too, was sadly wounded, nevertheless were most thankful for
+Warrington’s good opinion of Arthur, and loved him for being so
+attached to their Pen. And Major Pendennis was loud in his praises of
+Mr. Warrington,—more loud and enthusiastic than it was the Major’s wont
+to be. “He is a gentleman, my dear creature,” he said to Helen, “every
+inch a gentleman, my good madam—the Suffolk Warringtons—Charles the
+First’s baronets:—what could he be but a gentleman, come out of that
+family?—father,—Sir Miles Warrington; ran away with—beg your pardon,
+Miss Bell. Sir Miles was a very well known man in London, and a friend
+of the Prince of Wales, This gentleman is a man of the greatest
+talents, the very highest accomplishments,—sure to get on, if he had a
+motive to put his energies to work.”
+
+Laura blushed for herself whilst the Major was talking and praising
+Arthur’s hero. As she looked at Warrington’s manly face, and dark,
+melancholy eyes, this young person had been speculating about him, and
+had settled in her mind that he must have been the victim of an unhappy
+attachment; and as she caught herself so speculating, why, Miss Bell
+blushed.
+
+Warrington got chambers hard by,—Grenier’s chambers in Flag Court; and
+having executed Pen’s task with great energy in the morning, his
+delight and pleasure of an afternoon was to come and sit with the sick
+man’s company in the sunny autumn evenings; and he had the honour more
+than once of giving Miss Bell his arm for a walk in the Temple Gardens;
+to take which pastime, when the frank Laura asked of Helen permission,
+the Major eagerly said, “Yes, yes, begad—of course you go out with
+him—it’s like the country, you know; everybody goes out with everybody
+in the Gardens, and there are beadles, you know, and that sort of
+thing—everybody walks in the Temple Gardens.” If the great arbiter of
+morals did not object, why should simple Helen? She was glad that her
+girl should have such fresh air as the river could give, and to see her
+return with heightened colour and spirits from these harmless
+excursions.
+
+Laura and Helen had come, you must know, to a little explanation. When
+the news arrived of Pen’s alarming illness, Laura insisted upon
+accompanying the terrified mother to London, would not hear of the
+refusal which the still angry Helen gave her, and, when refused a
+second time yet more sternly, and when it seemed that the poor lost
+lad’s life was despaired of, and when it was known that his conduct was
+such as to render all thoughts of union hopeless, Laura had, with many
+tears, told her mother a secret with which every observant person who
+reads this story was acquainted already. Now she never could marry him,
+was she to be denied the consolation of owning how fondly, how truly,
+how entirely she had loved him? The mingling tears of the woman
+appeased the agony of their grief somewhat; and the sorrows and terrors
+of their journey were at least in so far mitigated that they shared
+them together.
+
+What could Fanny expect when suddenly brought up for sentence before a
+couple of such judges? Nothing but swift condemnation, awful
+punishment, merciless dismissal! Women are cruel critics in cases such
+as that in which poor Fanny was implicated; and we like them to be so;
+for, besides the guard which a man places round his own harem, and the
+defences which a woman has in her heart, her faith, and honour, hasn’t
+she all her own friends of her own sex to keep watch that she does not
+go astray, and to tear her to pieces if she is found erring? When our
+Mahmouds or Selims of Baker Street or Belgrave Square visit their
+Fatimas with condign punishment, their mothers sew up Fatima’s sack for
+her, and her sisters and sisters-in-law see her well under water. And
+this present writer does not say nay. He protests most solemnly he is a
+Turk, too. He wears a turban and a beard like another, and is all for
+the sack practice, Bismillah! But O you spotless, who have the right of
+capital punishment vested in you, at least be very cautious that you
+make away with the proper (if so she may be called) person. Be very
+sure of the fact before you order the barge out: and don’t pop your
+subject into the Bosphorus, until you are quite certain that she
+deserves it. This is all I would urge in poor Fatima’s
+behalf—absolutely all—not a word more, by the beard of the Prophet. If
+she’s guilty, down with her—heave over the sack, away with it into the
+Golden Horn bubble and squeak, and justice being done, give way, men,
+and let us pull back to supper.
+
+So the Major did not in any way object to Warrington’s continued
+promenades with Miss Laura, but, like a benevolent old gentleman,
+encouraged in every way the intimacy of that couple. Were there any
+exhibitions in town? he was for Warrington conducting her to them. If
+Warrington had proposed to take her to Vauxhall itself, this most
+complaisant of men would have seen no harm,—nor would Helen, if
+Pendennis the elder had so ruled it,—nor would there have been any harm
+between two persons whose honour was entirely spotless,—between
+Warrington, who saw in intimacy a pure, and high-minded, and artless
+woman for the first time in his life,—and Laura, who too for the first
+time was thrown into the constant society of a gentleman of great
+natural parts and powers of pleasing; who possessed varied
+acquirements, enthusiasm, simplicity, humour, and that freshness of
+mind which his simple life and habits gave him, and which contrasted so
+much with Pen’s dandy indifference of manner and faded sneer. In
+Warrington’s very uncouthness there was a refinement, which the other’s
+finery lacked. In his energy, his respect, his desire to please, his
+hearty laughter, or simple confiding pathos, what a difference to
+Sultan Pen’s yawning sovereignty and languid acceptance of homage! What
+had made Pen at home such a dandy and such a despot? The women had
+spoiled him, as we like them and as they like to do. They had cloyed
+him with obedience, and surfeited him with sweet respect and
+submission, until he grew weary of the slaves who waited upon him, and
+their caresses and cajoleries excited him no more. Abroad, he was brisk
+and lively, and eager and impassioned enough—most men are so
+constituted and so nurtured.—Does this, like the former sentence, run a
+chance of being misinterpreted, and does any one dare to suppose that
+the writer would incite the women to revolt? Never, by the whiskers of
+the Prophet again, he says. He wears a beard, and he likes his women to
+be slaves. What man doesn’t? What man would be henpecked, I say? We
+will cut off all the heads in Christendom or Turkeydom rather than
+that.
+
+Well, then, Arthur being so languid, and indifferent, and careless
+about the favours bestowed upon him, how came it that Laura should have
+such a love and rapturous regard for him, that a mere inadequate
+expression of it should have kept the girl talking all the way from
+Fairoaks to London, as she and Helen travelled in the post-chaise? As
+soon as Helen had finished one story about the dear fellow, and
+narrated, with a hundred sobs and ejaculations, and looks up to heaven,
+some thrilling incidents which occurred about the period when the hero
+was breeched, Laura began another equally interesting and equally
+ornamented with tears, and told how heroically he had a tooth out or
+wouldn’t have it out, or how daringly he robbed a bird’s nest or how
+magnanimously he spared it; or how he gave a shilling to the old woman
+on the common, or went without his bread-and-butter for the beggar-boy
+who came into the yard—and so on. One to another the sobbing women sang
+laments upon their hero, who, my worthy reader has long since
+perceived, is no more a hero than one of us. Being as he was, why
+should a sensible girl be so fond of him?
+
+This point has been argued before in a previous unfortunate sentence
+(which lately drew down all the wrath of Ireland upon the writer’s
+head), and which said that the greatest rascal-cut-throats have had
+somebody to be fond of them, and if those monsters, why not ordinary
+mortals? And with whom shall a young lady fall in love but with the
+person she sees? She is not supposed to lose her heart in a dream, like
+a Princess in the Arabian Nights; or to plight her young affections to
+the portrait of a gentleman in the Exhibition, or a sketch in the
+Illustrated London News. You have an instinct within you which inclines
+you to attach yourself to some one: you meet Somebody: you hear
+Somebody constantly praised: you walk, or ride, or waltz, or talk or
+sit in the same pew at church with Somebody: you meet again, and again,
+and—“Marriages are made in Heaven,” your dear mamma says, pinning your
+orange-flowers wreath on, with her blessed eyes dimmed with tears—and
+there is a wedding breakfast, and you take off your white satin and
+retire to your coach-and-four, and you and he are a happy pair.—Or, the
+affair is broken off, and then, poor wounded heart! why, then you meet
+Somebody Else, and twine your young affections round number two. It is
+your nature so to do. Do you suppose it is all for the man’s sake that
+you love, and not a bit for your own? Do you suppose you would drink if
+you were not thirsty, or eat if you were not hungry?
+
+So then Laura liked Pen because she saw scarcely anybody else at
+Fairoaks except Doctor Portman and Captain Glanders, and because his
+mother constantly praised her Arthur, and because he was gentlemanlike,
+tolerably good-looking and witty, and because, above all, it was of her
+nature to like somebody. And having once received this image into her
+heart, she there tenderly nursed it and clasped it—she there, in his
+long absences and her constant solitudes, silently brooded over it and
+fondled it—and when after this she came to London, and had an
+opportunity of becoming rather intimate with Mr. George Warrington,
+what on earth was to prevent her from thinking him a most odd,
+original, agreeable, and pleasing person?
+
+A long time afterwards, when these days were over, and Fate in its own
+way had disposed of the various persons now assembled in the dingy
+building in Lamb Court, perhaps some of them looked back and thought
+how happy the time was, and how pleasant had been their evening talks
+and little walks and simple recreations round the sofa of Pen the
+convalescent. The Major had a favourable opinion of September in London
+from that time forward, and declared at his clubs and in society that
+the dead season in town was often pleasant, doosid pleasant, begad. He
+used to go home to his lodgings in Bury Street of a night, wondering
+that it was already so late, and that the evening had passed away so
+quickly. He made his appearance at the Temple pretty constantly in the
+afternoon, and tugged up the long black staircase with quite a
+benevolent activity and perseverance. And he made interest with the
+chef at Bays’s (that renowned cook, the superintendence of whose work
+upon Gastronomy compelled the gifted author to stay in the metropolis),
+to prepare little jellies, delicate clear soups, aspics, and other
+trifles good for invalids, which Morgan the valet constantly brought
+down to the little Lamb Court colony. And the permission to drink a
+glass or two of pure sherry being accorded to Pen by Doctor Goodenough,
+the Major told with almost tears in his eyes how his noble friend the
+Marquis of Steyne, passing through London on his way to the Continent,
+had ordered any quantity of his precious, his priceless Amontillado,
+that had been a present from King Ferdinand to the noble Marquis, to be
+placed at the disposal of Mr. Arthur Pendennis. The widow and Laura
+tasted it with respect (though they didn’t in the least like the bitter
+flavour) but the invalid was greatly invigorated by it, and Warrington
+pronounced it superlatively good, and proposed the Major’s health in a
+mock speech after dinner on the first day when the wine was served, and
+that of Lord Steyne and the aristocracy in general.
+
+Major Pendennis returned thanks with the utmost gravity and in a speech
+in which he used the words, ‘the present occasion,’ at least the proper
+number of times. Pen cheered with his feeble voice from his armchair.
+Warrington taught Miss Laura to cry “Hear! hear!” and tapped the table
+with his knuckles. Pidgeon the attendant grinned, and honest Doctor
+Goodenough found the party so merrily engaged, when he came in to pay
+his faithful gratuitous visit.
+
+Warrington knew Sibwright, who lived below and that gallant gentleman,
+in reply to a letter informing him of the use to which his apartment
+had been put, wrote back the most polite and flowery letter of
+acquiescence. He placed his chambers at the service of their fair
+occupants, his bed at their disposal, his carpets at their feet.
+Everybody was kindly disposed towards the sick man and his family. His
+heart (and his mother’s too, as we may fancy) melted within him at the
+thought of so much good-feeling and good-nature. Let Pen’s biographer
+be pardoned for alluding to a time not far distant when a somewhat
+similar mishap brought him a providential friend, a kind physician, and
+a thousand proofs of a most touching and surprising kindness and
+sympathy.
+
+There was a piano in Mr. Sibwright’s chamber (indeed, this gentleman, a
+lover of all the arts, performed himself—and excellently ill too—upon
+the instrument; and had had a song dedicated to him, the words by
+himself, the air by his devoted friend Leopoldo Twankidillo), and at
+this music-box, as Mr. Warrington called it, Laura, at first with a
+great deal of tremor and blushing (which became her very much), played
+and sang, sometimes of an evening, simple airs, and old songs of home.
+Her voice was a rich contralto, and Warrington, who scarcely knew one
+tune from another and who had but one tune or bray in his repertoire,—a
+most discordant imitation of ‘God save the King’—sat rapt in delight
+listening to these songs. He could follow their rhythm if not their
+harmony; and he could watch, with a constant and daily growing
+enthusiasm, the pure and tender and generous creature who made the
+music.
+
+I wonder how that poor pale little girl in the black bonnet, who used
+to stand at the lamp-post in Lamb Court sometimes of an evening,
+looking up to the open windows from which the music came, liked to hear
+it? When Pen’s bedtime came the songs were hushed. Lights appeared in
+the upper room: his room, whither the widow used to conduct him; and
+then the Major and Mr. Warrington, and sometimes Miss Laura, would have
+a game at ecarte or backgammon; or she would sit by working a pair of
+slippers in worsted—a pair of gentleman’s slippers—they might have been
+for Arthur or for George or for Major Pendennis: one of those three
+would have given anything for the slippers.
+
+Whilst such business as this was going on within, a rather shabby old
+gentleman would come and lead away the pale girl in the black bonnet,
+who had no right to be abroad in the night air; and the Temple porters,
+the few laundresses, and other amateurs who had been listening to the
+concert, would also disappear.
+
+Just before ten o’clock there was another musical performance, namely
+that of the chimes of St. Clement’s clock in the Strand, which played
+the clear cheerful notes of a psalm, before it proceeded to ring its
+ten fatal strokes. As they were ringing, Laura began to fold up the
+slippers; Martha from Fairoaks appeared with a bed-candle, and a
+constant smile on her face; the Major said, “God bless my soul, is it
+so late?” Warrington and he left their unfinished game, and got up and
+shook hands with Miss Bell. Martha from Fairoaks lighted them out of
+the passage and down the stair, and, as they descended, they could hear
+her bolting and locking “the sporting door” after them, upon her young
+mistress and herself. If there had been any danger, grinning Martha
+said she would have got down “that thar hooky soord which hung up in
+gantleman’s room,”—meaning the Damascus scimitar with the names of the
+prophet engraved on the blade and the red velvet scabbard, which Percy
+Sibwright, Esquire, brought back from his tour in the Levant, along
+with an Albanian dress, and which he wore with such elegant effect at
+Lady Mullingar’s fancy ball, Gloucester Square, Hyde Park. It entangled
+itself in Miss Kewsey’s train, who appeared in the dress in which she,
+with her mamma, had been presented to their sovereign (the latter by
+the L—d Ch-nc-ll-r’s lady), and led to events which have nothing to do
+with this history. Is not Miss Kewsey now Mrs. Sibwright? Has Sibwright
+not got a county court?—Good night, Laura and Fairoaks Martha. Sleep
+well and wake happy, pure and gentle lady.
+
+Sometimes after these evenings Warrington would walk a little way with
+Major Pendennis—just a little way just as far as the Temple gate—as the
+Strand—as Charing Cross—as the Club—he was not going into the Club?
+Well, as far as Bury Street, where he would laughingly shake hands on
+the Major’s own door-step. They had been talking about Laura all the
+way. It was wonderful how enthusiastic the Major, who, as we know, used
+to dislike her, had grown to be regarding the young lady—“Dev’lish fine
+girl, begad. Dev’lish well-mannered girl—my sister-in-law has the
+manners of a duchess and would bring up any girl well. Miss Bell’s a
+little countryfied. But the smell of the hawthorn is pleasant, demmy.
+How she blushes! Your London girls would give many a guinea for a
+bouquet like that—natural flowers, begad! And she’s a little money
+too—nothing to speak of—but a pooty little bit of money.” In all which
+opinions no doubt Mr. Warrington agreed; and though he laughed as he
+shook hands with the Major, his face fell as he left his veteran
+companion; and he strode back to chambers, and smoked pipe after pipe
+long into the night, and wrote article upon article, more and more
+savage, in lieu of friend Pen disabled.
+
+Well, it was a happy time for almost all parties concerned. Pen mended
+daily. Sleeping and eating were his constant occupations. His appetite
+was something frightful. He was ashamed of exhibiting it before Laura,
+and almost before his mother who laughed and applauded him. As the
+roast chicken of his dinner went away he eyed the departing friend with
+sad longing, and began to long for jelly, or tea, or what not. He was
+like an ogre in devouring. The Doctor cried stop, but Pen would not.
+Nature called out to him more loudly than the Doctor, and that kind and
+friendly physician handed him over with a very good grace to the other
+healer.
+
+And here let us speak very tenderly and in the strictest confidence of
+an event which befell him, and to which he never liked an allusion.
+During his delirium the ruthless Goodenough ordered ice to be put to
+his head, and all his lovely hair to be cut. It was done in the time
+of—of the other nurse, who left every single hair of course in a paper
+for the widow to count and treasure up. She never believed but that the
+girl had taken away some of it, but then women are so suspicious upon
+these matters.
+
+When this direful loss was made visible to Major Pendennis as of course
+it was the first time the elder saw the poor young man’s shorn pate,
+and when Pen was quite out of danger, and gaining daily vigour, the
+Major, with something like blushes and a queer wink of his eyes, said
+he knew of a—a person—a coiffeur, in fact—a good man, whom he would
+send down to the Temple, and who would—a—apply—a—a temporary remedy to
+that misfortune.
+
+Laura looked at Warrington with the archest sparkle in her
+eyes—Warrington fairly burst out into a boohoo of laughter: even the
+widow was obliged to laugh: and the Major erubescent confounded the
+impudence of the young folks, and said when he had his hair cut he
+would keep a lock of it for Miss Laura.
+
+Warrington voted that Pen should wear a barrister’s wig. There was
+Sibwright’s down below, which would become him hugely. Pen said
+“Stuff,” and seemed as confused as his uncle; and the end was that a
+gentleman from Burlington Arcade waited next day upon Mr. Pendennis,
+and had a private interview with him in his bedroom; and a week
+afterwards the same individual appeared with a box under his arm, and
+an ineffable grin of politeness on his face, and announced that he had
+brought ’ome Mr. Pendennis’s ’ead of ’air.
+
+It must have been a grand but melancholy sight to see Pen in the
+recesses of his apartment, sadly contemplating his ravaged beauty, and
+the artificial means of hiding its ruin. He appeared at length in the
+’ead of ’air; but Warrington laughed so, that Pen grew sulky, and went
+back for his velvet cap, a neat turban which the fondest of mammas had
+worked for him. Then Mr. Warrington and Miss Bell got some flowers off
+the ladies’ bonnets and made a wreath, with which they decorated the
+wig and brought it out in procession, and did homage before it. In fact
+they indulged in a hundred sports, jularities, waggeries, and petits
+jeux innocens: so that the second and third floors of Number 6 Lamb
+Court, Temple, rang with more cheerfulness and laughter than had been
+known in those precincts for many a long day.
+
+At last, after about ten days of this life, one evening when the little
+spy of the court came out to take her usual post of observation at the
+lamp, there was no music from the second-floor window, there were no
+lights in the third-story chambers, the windows of each were open, and
+the occupants were gone. Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, told Fanny what
+had happened. The ladies and all the party had gone to Richmond for
+change of air. The antique travelling chariot was brought out again and
+cushioned with many pillows for Pen and his mother; and Miss Laura went
+in the most affable manner in the omnibus under the guardianship of Mr.
+George Warrington. He came back and took possession of his old bed that
+night in the vacant and cheerless chambers, and to his old books and
+his old pipes, but not perhaps to his old sleep.
+
+The widow had left a jar full of flowers upon his table, prettily
+arranged, and when he entered they filled the solitary room with odour.
+They were memorials of the kind, gentle souls who had gone away, and
+who had decorated for a little while that lonely cheerless place. He
+had had the happiest days of his whole life George felt—he knew it now
+they were just gone: he went and took up the flowers and put his face
+to them, and smelt them—perhaps kissed them. As he put them down, he
+rubbed his rough hand across his eyes with a bitter word and laugh. He
+would have given his whole life and soul to win that prize which Arthur
+rejected. Did she want fame? he would have won it for her:—devotion?—a
+great heart full of pent-up tenderness and manly love and gentleness
+was there for her, if she might take it. But it might not be. Fate had
+ruled otherwise. “Even if I could, she would not have me,” George
+thought. “What has an ugly, rough old fellow like me, to make any woman
+like him? I’m getting old, and I’ve made no mark in life. I’ve neither
+good looks, nor youth, nor money, nor reputation. A man must be able to
+do something besides stare at her and offer on his knees his smooth
+devotion, to make a woman like him. What can I do? Lots of young
+fellows have passed me in the race—what they call the prizes of life
+didn’t seem to me worth the trouble of the struggle. But for her. If
+she had been mine and liked a diamond—ah! shouldn’t she have worn it!
+Psha, what a fool I am to brag of what I would have done! We are the
+slaves of destiny. Our lots are shaped for us, and mine is ordained
+long ago. Come, let us have a pipe, and put the smell of these flowers
+out of court, poor little silent flowers! you’ll be dead to-morrow.
+What business had you to show your red cheeks in this dingy place?”
+
+By his bedside George found a new Bible which the widow had placed
+there, with a note inside saying that she had not seen the book amongst
+his collection in a room where she had spent a number of hours, and
+where God had vouchsafed to her prayers the life of her son, and that
+she gave to Arthur’s friend the best thing she could, and besought him
+to read in the volume sometimes, and to keep it as a token of a
+grateful mother’s regard and affection. Poor George mournfully kissed
+the book as he had done the flowers; and the morning found him still
+reading in its awful pages, in which so many stricken hearts, in which
+so many tender and faithful souls, have found comfort under calamity,
+and refuge and hope in affliction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+Fanny’s Occupation’s gone
+
+
+Good Helen, ever since her son’s illness, had taken, as we have seen,
+entire possession of the young man, of his drawers and closets and all
+which they contained: whether shirts that wanted buttons, or stockings
+that required mending, or, must it be owned? letters that lay amongst
+those articles of raiment, and which of course it was necessary that
+somebody should answer during Arthur’s weakened and incapable
+condition. Perhaps Mrs. Pendennis was laudably desirous to have some
+explanations about the dreadful Fanny Bolton mystery, regarding which
+she had never breathed a word to her son, though it was present in her
+mind always, and occasioned her inexpressible anxiety and disquiet. She
+had caused the brass knocker to be screwed off the inner door of the
+chambers, where upon the postman’s startling double rap would, as she
+justly argued, disturb the rest of her patient, and she did not allow
+him to see any letter which arrived, whether from bootmakers who
+importuned him, or hatters who had a heavy account to make up against
+next Saturday, and would be very much obliged if Mr. Arthur Pendennis
+would have the kindness to settle, etc. Of these documents, Pen, who
+was always freehanded and careless, of course had his share, and though
+no great one, one quite enough to alarm his scrupulous and
+conscientious mother. She had some savings; Pen’s magnificent
+self-denial, and her own economy, amounting from her great simplicity
+and avoidance of show to parsimony almost, had enabled her to put by a
+little sum of money, a part of which she delightedly consecrated to the
+paying off the young gentleman’s obligations. At this price, many a
+worthy youth and respected reader would hand over his correspondence to
+his parents; and perhaps there is no greater test of a man’s regularity
+and easiness of conscience, than his readiness to face the postman.
+Blessed is he who is made happy by the sound of the rat-tat! The good
+are eager for it: but the naughty tremble at the sound thereof. So it
+was very kind of Mrs. Pendennis doubly to spare Pen the trouble of
+hearing or answering letters during his illness.
+
+There could have been nothing in the young man’s chest of drawers and
+wardrobes which could be considered as inculpating him in any way, nor
+any satisfactory documents regarding the Fanny Bolton affair found
+there, for the widow had to ask her brother-in-law if he knew anything
+about the odious transaction, and the dreadful intrigue about which her
+son was engaged. When they were at Richmond one day, and Pen with
+Warrington had taken a seat on a bench on the terrace, the widow kept
+Major Pendennis in consultation, and laid her terrors and perplexities
+before him, such of them at least (for as is the wont of men and women,
+she did not make quite a clean confession, and I suppose no spendthrift
+asked for a schedule of his debts, no lady of fashion asked by her
+husband for her dressmaker’s bills, ever sent in the whole of them
+yet)—such, we say, of her perplexities, at least, as she chose to
+confide to her Director for the time being.
+
+When, then, she asked the Major what course she ought to pursue, about
+this dreadful—this horrid affair, and whether he knew anything
+regarding it? the old gentleman puckered up his face, so that you could
+not tell whether he was smiling or not; gave the widow one queer look
+with his little eyes; cast them down to the carpet again, and said, “My
+dear, good creature, I don’t know anything about it; and I don’t wish
+to know anything about it; and, as you ask me my opinion, I think you
+had best know nothing about it too. Young men will be young men; begad,
+and, my good ma’am, if you think our boy is a Jo——”
+
+“Pray, spare me this,” Helen broke in, looking very stately.
+
+“My dear creature, I did not commence the conversation, permit me to
+say,” the Major said, bowing very blandly.
+
+“I can’t bear to hear such a sin—such a dreadful sin—spoken of in such
+a way,” the widow said, with tears of annoyance starting from her eyes.
+“I can’t bear to think that my boy should commit such a crime. I wish
+he had died, almost, before he had done it. I don’t know how I survive
+it myself; for it is breaking my heart, Major Pendennis, to think that
+his father’s son—my child—whom I remember so good—oh, so good, and full
+of honour!—should be fallen so dreadfully low, as to—as to——”
+
+“As to flirt with a little grisette, my dear creature?” said the Major.
+“Egad, if all the mothers in England were to break their hearts
+because—Nay, nay; upon my word and honour, now, don’t agitate
+yourself—don’t cry. I can’t bear to see a woman’s tears—I never
+could—never. But how do we know that anything serious has happened? Has
+Arthur said anything?”
+
+“His silence confirms it,” sobbed Mrs. Pendennis, behind her
+pocket-handkerchief.
+
+“Not at all. There are subjects, my dear, about which a young fellow
+cannot surely talk to his mamma,” insinuated the brother-in-law.
+
+“She has written to him,” cried the lady, behind the cambric.
+
+“What, before he was ill? Nothing more likely.”
+
+“No, since,” the mourner with the batiste mask gasped out; “not before;
+that is, I don’t think so—that is, I——”
+
+“Only since; and you have—yes, I understand. I suppose when he was too
+ill to read his own correspondence, you took charge of it, did you?”
+
+“I am the most unhappy mother in the world,” cried out the unfortunate
+Helen.
+
+“The most unhappy mother in the world, because your son is a man and
+not a hermit! Have a care, my dear sister. If you have suppressed any
+letters to him, you may have done yourself a great injury; and, if I
+know anything of Arthur’s spirit, may cause a difference between him
+and you, which you’ll rue all your life—a difference that’s a dev’lish
+deal more important, my good madam, than the little—little—trumpery
+cause which originated it.”
+
+“There was only one letter,” broke out Helen,—“only a very little
+one—only a few words. Here it is—Oh—how can you, how can you speak so?”
+
+When the good soul said “only a very little one,” the Major could not
+speak at all, so inclined was he to laugh, in spite of the agonies of
+the poor soul before him, and for whom he had a hearty pity and liking
+too. But each was looking at the matter with his or her peculiar eyes
+and views of morals, and the Major’s morals, as the reader knows, were
+not those of an ascetic.
+
+“I recommend you,” he gravely continued, “if you can, to seal it
+up—those letters ain’t unfrequently sealed with wafers—and to put it
+amongst Pen’s other letters, and let him have them when he calls for
+them. Or if we can’t seal it, we mistook it for a bill.”
+
+“I can’t tell my son a lie,” said the widow. It had been put silently
+into the letter-box two days previous to their departure from the
+Temple, and had been brought to Mrs. Pendennis by Martha. She had never
+seen Fanny’s handwriting, of course; but when the letter was put into
+her hands she knew the author at once. She had been on the watch for
+that letter every day since Pen had been ill. She had opened some of
+his other letters because she wanted to get at that one. She had the
+horrid paper poisoning her bag at that moment. She took it out and
+offered it to her brother-in-law.
+
+“Arther Pendennis, Esq.,” he read in a timid little sprawling
+handwriting, and with a sneer on his face. “No, my dear, I won’t read
+any more. But you who have read it may tell me what the letter
+contains—only prayers for his health in bad spelling, you say—and a
+desire to see him? Well—there’s no harm in that. And as you ask me—”
+Here the Major began to look a little queer for his own part, and put
+on his demure look—“as you ask me, my dear, for information, why, I
+don’t mind telling you that—ah—that—Morgan, my man, has made some
+inquiries regarding this affair, and that—my friend Doctor Goodenough
+also looked into it—and it appears that this person was greatly smitten
+with Arthur; that he paid for her and took her to Vauxhall Gardens, as
+Morgan heard from an old acquaintance of Pen’s and ours, an Irish
+gentleman, who was very nearly once having the honour of being the—from
+an Irishman, in fact;—that the girl’s father, a violent man of
+intoxicated habits, has beaten her mother, who persists in declaring
+her daughter’s entire innocence to her husband on the one hand, while
+on the other she told Goodenough, that Arthur has acted like a brute to
+her child. And so you see the story remains in a mystery. Will you have
+it cleared up? I have but to ask Pen, and he will tell me at once—he is
+as honourable a man as ever lived.”
+
+“Honourable!” said the widow with bitter scorn. “Oh, brother, what is
+this you call honour? If my boy has been guilty, he must marry her. I
+would go down on my knees and pray him to do so.”
+
+“Good God! are you mad?” screamed out the Major; and remembering former
+passages in Arthur’s history and Helen’s, the truth came across his
+mind that, were Helen to make this prayer to her son, he would marry
+the girl: he was wild enough and obstinate enough to commit any folly
+when a woman he loved was in the case. “My dear sister, have you lost
+your senses?” he continued (after an agitated pause, during which the
+above dreary reflection crossed him); and in a softened tone, “What
+right have we to suppose that anything has passed between this girl and
+him? Let’s see the letter. Her heart is breaking; pray, pray, write to
+me—home unhappy—unkind father—your nurse—poor little Fanny—spelt, as
+you say, in a manner to outrage all sense of decorum. But, good
+heavens! my dear, what is there in this? only that the little devil is
+making love to him still. Why, she didn’t come into his chambers until
+he was so delirious that he didn’t know her. What-d’you-call-’em,
+Flanagan, the laundress, told Morgan, my man, so. She came in company
+of an old fellow, an old Mr. Bows, who came most kindly down to
+Stillbrook and brought me away—by the way, I left him in the cab, and
+never paid the fare; and dev’lish kind it was of him. No, there’s
+nothing in the story.”
+
+“Do you think so? Thank Heaven—thank God!” Helen cried. “I’ll take the
+letter to Arthur and ask him now. Look at him there. He’s on the
+terrace with Mr. Warrington. They are talking to some children. My boy
+was always fond of children. He’s innocent, thank God—thank God! Let me
+go to him.”
+
+Old Pendennis had his own opinion. When he briskly took the not guilty
+side of the case, but a moment before, very likely the old gentleman
+had a different view from that which he chose to advocate, and judged
+of Arthur by what he himself would have done. If she goes to Arthur,
+and he speaks the truth, as the rascal will, it spoils all, he thought.
+And he tried one more effort.
+
+“My dear, good soul,” he said, taking Helen’s hand and kissing it, “as
+your son has not acquainted you with this affair, think if you have any
+right to examine it. As you believe him to be a man of honour, what
+right have you to doubt his honour in this instance? Who is his
+accuser? An anonymous scoundrel who has brought no specific charge
+against him. If there were any such, wouldn’t the girl’s parents have
+come forward? He is not called upon to rebut, nor you to entertain an
+anonymous accusation; and as for believing him guilty because a girl of
+that rank happened to be in his rooms acting as nurse to him, begad you
+might as well insist upon his marrying that dem’d old Irish
+gin-drinking laundress, Mrs. Flanagan.”
+
+The widow burst out laughing through her tears—the victory was gained
+by the old general.
+
+“Marry Mrs. Flanagan, by Ged,” he continued, tapping her slender hand.
+“No. The boy has told you nothing about it, and you know nothing about
+it. The boy is innocent—of course. And what, my good soul, is the
+course for us to pursue? Suppose he is attached to this girl—don’t look
+sad again, it’s merely a supposition—and begad a young fellow may have
+an attachment, mayn’t he?—Directly he gets well he will be at her
+again.”
+
+“He must come home! We must go off directly to Fairoaks,” the widow
+cried out.
+
+“My good creature, he’ll bore himself to death at Fairoaks. He’ll have
+nothing to do but to think about his passion there. There’s no place in
+the world for making a little passion into a big one, and where a
+fellow feeds on his own thoughts, like a dem’d lonely country-house
+where there’s nothing to do. We must occupy him: amuse him: we must
+take him abroad: he’s never been abroad except to Paris for a lark. We
+must travel a little. He must have a nurse with him, to take great care
+of him, for Goodenough says he had a dev’lish narrow squeak of it
+(don’t look frightened), and so you must come and watch: and I suppose
+you’ll take Miss Bell, and I should like to ask Warrington to come.
+Arthur’s dev’lish fond of Warrington. He can’t do without Warrington.
+Warrington’s family is one of the oldest in England, and he is one of
+the best young fellows I ever met in my life. I like him exceedingly.”
+
+“Does Mr. Warrington know anything about this—this affair?” asked
+Helen. “He had been away, I know, for two months before it happened;
+Pen wrote me so.”
+
+“Not a word—I—I’ve asked him about it. I’ve pumped him. He never heard
+of the transaction, never; I pledge you my word,” cried out the Major,
+in some alarm. “And, my dear, I think you had much best not talk to him
+about it—much best not—of course not: the subject is most delicate and
+painful.”
+
+The simple widow took her brother’s hand and pressed it. “Thank you,
+brother,” she said. “You have been very, very kind to me. You have
+given me a great deal of comfort. I’ll go to my room, and think of what
+you have said. This illness and these—these emotions—have agitated me a
+great deal; and I’m not very strong, you know. But I’ll go and thank
+God that my boy is innocent. He is innocent. Isn’t he, sir?”
+
+“Yes, my dearest creature, yes,” said the old fellow, kissing her
+affectionately, and quite overcome by her tenderness. He looked after
+her as she retreated, with a fondness which was rendered more piquant,
+as it were, by the mixture of a certain scorn which accompanied it.
+“Innocent!” he said; “I’d swear, till I was black in the face, he was
+innocent, rather than give that good soul pain.”
+
+Having achieved this victory, the fatigued and happy warrior laid
+himself down on the sofa, and put his yellow silk pocket-handkerchief
+over his face, and indulged in a snug little nap, of which the dreams,
+no doubt, were very pleasant, as he snored with refreshing regularity.
+The young men sate, meanwhile, dawdling away the sunshiny hours on the
+terrace, very happy, and Pen, at least, very talkative. He was
+narrating to Warrington a plan for a new novel, and a new tragedy.
+Warrington laughed at the idea of his writing a tragedy? By Jove, he
+would show that he could; and he began to spout some of the lines of
+his play.
+
+The little solo on the wind instrument which the Major was performing
+was interrupted by the entrance of Miss Bell. She had been on a visit
+to her old friend, Lady Rockminster, who had taken a summer villa in
+the neighbourhood; and who, hearing of Arthur’s illness, and his
+mother’s arrival at Richmond, had visited the latter; and, for the
+benefit of the former, whom she didn’t like, had been prodigal of
+grapes, partridges, and other attentions. For Laura the old lady had a
+great fondness, and longed that she should come and stay with her; but
+Laura could not leave her mother at this juncture. Worn out by constant
+watching over Arthur’s health, Helen’s own had suffered very
+considerably; and Doctor Goodenough had had reason to prescribe for her
+as well as for his younger patient.
+
+Old Pendennis started up on the entrance of the young lady. His
+slumbers were easily broken. He made her a gallant speech—he had been
+full of gallantry towards her of late. Where had she been gathering
+those roses which she wore on her cheeks? How happy he was to be
+disturbed out of his dreams by such a charming reality! Laura had
+plenty of humour and honesty; and these two caused her to have on her
+side something very like a contempt for the old gentleman. It delighted
+her to draw out his worldlinesses, and to make the old habitue of clubs
+and drawing-rooms tell his twaddling tales about great folks, and
+expound his views of morals.
+
+Not in this instance, however, was she disposed to be satirical. She
+had been to drive with Lady Rockminster in the Park, she said; and she
+had brought home game for Pen, and flowers for mamma. She looked very
+grave about mamma. She had just been with Mrs. Pendennis. Helen was
+very much worn, and she feared she was very, very ill. Her large eyes
+filled with tender marks of the sympathy which she felt in her beloved
+friend’s condition. She was alarmed about her. Could not that good—that
+dear Dr. Goodenough cure her?
+
+“Arthur’s illness, and other mental anxiety,” the Major slowly said,
+“had, no doubt, shaken Helen.” A burning blush upon the girl’s face
+showed that she understood the old man’s allusion. But she looked him
+full in the face and made no reply. “He might have spared me that,” she
+thought. “What is he aiming at in recalling that shame to me?”
+
+That he had an aim in view is very possible. The old diplomatist seldom
+spoke without some such end. Doctor Goodenough had talked to him, he
+said, about their dear friend’s health, and she wanted rest and change
+of scene—yes, change of scene. Painful circumstances which had occurred
+must be forgotten and never alluded to; he begged pardon for even
+hinting at them to Miss Bell—he never should do so again—nor, he was
+sure, would she. Everything must be done to soothe and comfort their
+friend, and his proposal was that they should go abroad for the autumn
+to a watering-place in the Rhine neighbourhood, where Helen might rally
+her exhausted spirits, and Arthur try and become a new man. Of course,
+Laura would not forsake her mother?
+
+Of course not. It was about Helen, and Helen only—that is, about Arthur
+too for her sake, that Laura was anxious. She would go abroad or
+anywhere with Helen.
+
+And Helen having thought the matter over for an hour in her room, had
+by that time grown to be as anxious for the tour as any schoolboy, who
+has been reading a book of voyages, is eager to go to sea. Whither
+should they go? the farther the better—to some place so remote that
+even recollection could not follow them thither: so delightful that Pen
+should never want to leave it—anywhere so that he could be happy. She
+opened her desk with trembling fingers and took out her banker’s book,
+and counted up her little savings. If more was wanted, she had the
+diamond cross. She would borrow from Laura again. “Let us go—let us
+go,” she thought; “directly he can bear the journey let us go away.
+Come, kind Doctor Goodenough—come quick, and give us leave to quit
+England.”
+
+The good Doctor drove over to dine with them that very day. “If you
+agitate yourself so,” he said to her, “and if your heart beats so, and
+if you persist in being so anxious about a young gentleman who is
+getting well as fast as he can, we shall have you laid up, and Miss
+Laura to watch you; and then it will be her turn to be ill, and I
+should like to know how the deuce a doctor is to live who is obliged to
+come and attend you all for nothing? Mrs. Goodenough is already jealous
+of you, and says, with perfect justice, that I fall in love with my
+patients. And you must please to get out of the country as soon as ever
+you can, that I may have a little peace in my family.”
+
+When the plan of going abroad was proposed, it was received by that
+gentleman with the greatest alacrity and enthusiasm. He longed to be
+off at once. He let his mustachios grow from that very moment, in
+order, I suppose, that he might get his mouth into training for a
+perfect French and German pronunciation; and he was seriously
+disquieted in his mind because the mustachios, when they came, were of
+a decidedly red colour. He had looked forward to an autumn at Fairoaks;
+and perhaps the idea of passing two or three months there did not amuse
+the young man. “There is not a soul to speak to in the place,” he said
+to Warrington. “I can’t stand old Portman’s sermons, and pompous
+after-dinner conversation. I know all old Glanders’s stories about the
+Peninsular war. The Claverings are the only Christian people in the
+neighbourhood, and they are not to be at home before Christmas, my
+uncle says: besides, Warrington, I want to get out of the country.
+Whilst you were away, confound it, I had a temptation, from which I am
+very thankful to have escaped, and which I count that even my illness
+came very luckily to put an end to.” And here he narrated to his friend
+the circumstances of the Vauxhall affair, with which the reader is
+already acquainted.
+
+Warrington looked very grave when he heard this story. Putting the
+moral delinquency out of the question, he was extremely glad for
+Arthur’s sake that the latter had escaped from a danger which might
+have made his whole life wretched; “which certainly,” said Warrington,
+“would have occasioned the wretchedness and ruin of the other party.
+And your mother and—and your friends—what a pain it would have been to
+them!” urged Pen’s companion, little knowing what grief and annoyance
+these good people had already suffered.
+
+“Not a word to my mother!” Pen cried out, in a state of great alarm.
+“She would never get over it. An esclandre of that sort would kill her,
+I do believe. And,” he added, with a knowing air, and as if, like a
+young rascal of a Lovelace, he had been engaged in what are called
+affaires de coeur, all his life; “the best way, when a danger of that
+sort menaces, is not to face it, but to turn one’s back on it and run.”
+
+“And were you very much smitten?” Warrington asked.
+
+“Hm!” said Lovelace. “She dropped her h’s, but she was a dear little
+girl.”
+
+O Clarissas of this life, O you poor little ignorant vain foolish
+maidens! if you did but know the way in which the Lovelaces speak of
+you: if you could but hear Jack talking to Tom across the coffee-room
+of a Club; or see Ned taking your poor little letters out of his
+cigar-case, and handing them over to Charley, and Billy, and Harry
+across the messroom table, you would not be so eager to write, or so
+ready to listen! There’s a sort of crime which is not complete unless
+the lucky rogue boasts of it afterwards; and the man who betrays your
+honour in the first place, is pretty sure, remember that, to betray
+your secret too.
+
+“It’s hard to fight, and it’s easy to fall,” Warrington said gloomily.
+“And as you say, Pendennis, when a danger like this is imminent, the
+best way is to turn your back on it and run.”
+
+After this little discourse upon a subject about which Pen would have
+talked a great deal more eloquently a month back, the conversation
+reverted to the plans for going abroad, and Arthur eagerly pressed his
+friend to be of the party. Warrington was a part of the family—a part
+of the cure. Arthur said he should not have half the pleasure without
+Warrington.
+
+But George said no, he couldn’t go. He must stop at home and take Pen’s
+place. The other remarked that that was needless, for Shandon was now
+come back to London, and Arthur was entitled to a holiday.
+
+“Don’t press me,” Warrington said, “I can’t go. I’ve particular
+engagements. I’m best at home. I’ve not got the money to travel, that’s
+the long and short of it—for travelling costs money, you know.”
+
+This little obstacle seemed fatal to Pen. He mentioned it to his
+mother: Mrs. Pendennis was very sorry; Mr. Warrington had been
+exceedingly kind; but she supposed he knew best about his affairs. And
+then, no doubt, she reproached herself, for selfishness in wishing to
+carry the boy off and have him to herself altogether.
+
+“What is this I hear from Pen, my dear Mr. Warrington?” the Major asked
+one day, when the pair were alone and after Warrington’s objection had
+been stated to him. “Not go with us? We can’t hear of such a thing—Pen
+won’t get well without you. I promise you, I’m not going to be his
+nurse. He must have somebody with him that’s stronger and gayer and
+better able to amuse him than a rheumatic old fogy like me. I shall go
+to Carlsbad very likely, when I’ve seen you people settle down.
+Travelling costs nothing nowadays—or so little! And—and, pray,
+Warrington, remember that I was your father’s very old friend, and if
+you and your brother are not on such terms as to—to enable you to—to
+anticipate your younger brother’s allowance, I beg you to make me your
+banker, for hasn’t Pen been getting into your debt these three weeks
+past, during which you have been doing what he informs me is his work,
+with such exemplary talent and genius, begad?”
+
+Still, in spite of this kind offer and unheard-of generosity on the
+part of the Major, George Warrington refused, and said he would stay at
+home. But it was with a faltering voice and an irresolute accent which
+showed how much he would like to go, though his tongue persisted in
+saying nay.
+
+But the Major’s persevering benevolence was not to be baulked in this
+way. At the tea-table that evening, Helen happening to be absent from
+the room for the moment, looking for Pen who had gone to roost, old
+Pendennis returned to the charge and rated Warrington for refusing to
+join in their excursion. “Isn’t it ungallant, Miss Bell?” he said,
+turning to that young lady. “Isn’t it unfriendly? Here we have been the
+happiest party in the world, and this odious selfish creature breaks it
+up!”
+
+Miss Bell’s long eyelashes looked down towards her teacup: and
+Warrington blushed hugely but did not speak. Neither did Miss Bell
+speak: but when he blushed she blushed too.
+
+“You ask him to come, my dear,” said the benevolent old gentleman, “and
+then perhaps he will listen to you——”
+
+“Why should Mr. Warrington listen to me?” asked the young lady, putting
+the query to her teaspoon seemingly and not to the Major.
+
+“Ask him; you have not asked him,” said Pen’s artless uncle.
+
+“I should be very glad, indeed, if Mr. Warrington would come,” remarked
+Laura to the teaspoon.
+
+“Would you?” said George.
+
+She looked up and said, “Yes.” Their eyes met. “I will go anywhere you
+ask me, or do anything,” said George, lowly, and forcing out the words
+as if they gave him pain.
+
+Old Pendennis was delighted; the affectionate old creature clapped his
+hands and cried “Bravo! bravo! It’s a bargain—a bargain, begad! Shake
+hands on it, young people!” And Laura, with a look full of tender
+brightness, put out her hand to Warrington. He took hers; his face
+indicated a strange agitation. He seemed to be about to speak, when
+from Pen’s neighbouring room Helen entered, looking at them as the
+candle which she held lighted her pale frightened face.
+
+Laura blushed more red than ever and withdrew her hand.
+
+“What is it?” Helen asked.
+
+“It’s a bargain we have been making, my dear creature,” said the Major
+in his most caressing voice. “We have just bound over Mr. Warrington in
+a promise to come abroad with us.”
+
+“Indeed!” Helen said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+In which Fanny engages a new Medical Man
+
+
+Could Helen have suspected that, with Pen’s returning strength, his
+unhappy partiality for little Fanny would also reawaken? Though she
+never spoke a word regarding that young person, after her conversation
+with the Major, and though, to all appearances, she utterly ignored
+Fanny’s existence, yet Mrs. Pendennis kept a particularly close watch
+upon all Master Arthur’s actions; on the plea of ill-health would
+scarcely let him out of her sight; and was especially anxious that he
+should be spared the trouble of all correspondence for the present at
+least. Very likely Arthur looked at his own letters with some tremor;
+very likely, as he received them at the family table, feeling his
+mother’s watch upon him (though the good soul’s eye seemed fixed upon
+her teacup or her book), he expected daily to see a little handwriting,
+which he would have known, though he had never seen it yet, and his
+heart beat as he received the letters to his address. Was he more
+pleased or annoyed, that, day after day, his expectations were not
+realised; and was his mind relieved, that there came no letter from
+Fanny? Though, no doubt, in these matters, when Lovelace is tired of
+Clarissa (or the contrary) it is best for both parties to break at
+once, and each, after the failure of the attempt at union, to go his
+own way, and pursue his course through life solitary; yet our
+self-love, or our pity, or our sense of decency, does not like that
+sudden bankruptcy. Before we announce to the world that our firm of
+Lovelace and Co. can’t meet its engagements, we try to make
+compromises: we have mournful meetings of partners: we delay the
+putting up of the shutters, and the dreary announcement of the failure.
+It must come: but we pawn our jewels to keep things going a little
+longer. On the whole, I dare say, Pen was rather annoyed that he had no
+remonstrances from Fanny. What! could she part from him, and never so
+much as once look round? could she sink, and never once hold a little
+hand out, or cry, “Help, Arthur?” Well, well: they don’t all go down
+who venture on that voyage. Some few drown when the vessel founders;
+but most are only ducked, and scramble to shore. And the reader’s
+experience of A. Pendennis, Esquire, of the Upper Temple, will enable
+him to state whether that gentleman belonged to the class of persons
+who were likely to sink or to swim.
+
+Though Pen was as yet too weak to walk half a mile; and might not, on
+account of his precious health, be trusted to take a drive in a
+carriage by himself, and without a nurse in attendance; yet Helen could
+not keep watch over Mr. Warrington too, and had no authority to prevent
+that gentleman from going to London if business called him thither.
+Indeed, if he had gone and stayed, perhaps the widow, from reasons of
+her own, would have been glad; but she checked these selfish wishes as
+soon as she ascertained or owned them; and, remembering Warrington’s
+great regard and services, and constant friendship for her boy,
+received him as a member of her family almost, with her usual
+melancholy kindness and submissive acquiescence. Yet somehow, one
+morning when his affairs called him to town, she divined what
+Warrington’s errand was, and that he was gone to London to get news
+about Fanny for Pen.
+
+Indeed, Arthur had had some talk with his friend, and told him more at
+large what his adventures had been with Fanny (adventures which the
+reader knows already), and what were his feelings respecting her. He
+was very thankful that he had escaped the great danger, to which
+Warrington said Amen heartily: that he had no great fault wherewith to
+reproach himself in regard of his behaviour to her, but that if they
+parted, as they must, he would be glad to say a God bless her, and to
+hope that she would remember him kindly. In his discourse with
+Warrington he spoke upon these matters with so much gravity, and so
+much emotion, that George, who had pronounced himself most strongly for
+the separation too, began to fear that his friend was not so well cured
+as he boasted of being; and that, if the two were to come together
+again, all the danger and the temptation might have to be fought once
+more. And with what result? “It is hard to struggle, Arthur, and it is
+easy to fall,” Warrington said: “and the best courage for us poor
+wretches is to fly from danger. I would not have been what I am now,
+had I practised what I preach.”
+
+“And what did you practise, George?” Pen asked, eagerly. “I knew there
+was something. Tell us about it, Warrington.”
+
+“There was something that can’t be mended, and that shattered my whole
+fortunes early,” Warrington answered. “I said I would tell you about it
+some day, Pen: and will, but not now. Take the moral without the fable
+now, Pen, my boy; and if you want to see a man whose whole life has
+been wrecked, by an unlucky rock against which he struck as a boy—here
+he is, Arthur: and so I warn you.”
+
+We have shown how Mr. Huxter, in writing home to his Clavering friends,
+mentioned that there was a fashionable club in London of which he was
+an attendant, and that he was there in the habit of meeting an Irish
+officer of distinction, who, amongst other news, had given that
+intelligence regarding Pendennis, which the young surgeon had
+transmitted to Clavering. This club was no other than the Back Kitchen,
+where the disciple of Saint Bartholomew was accustomed to meet the
+General, the peculiarities of whose brogue, appearance, disposition,
+and general conversation, greatly diverted many young gentlemen who
+used the Back Kitchen as a place of nightly entertainment and
+refreshment. Huxter, who had a fine natural genius for mimicking
+everything, whether it was a favourite tragic or comic actor, or a cock
+on a dunghill, a corkscrew going into a bottle and a cork issuing
+thence, or an Irish officer of genteel connexions who offered himself
+as an object of imitation with only too much readiness, talked his
+talk, and twanged his poor old long bow whenever drink, a hearer, and
+an opportunity occurred, studied our friend the General with peculiar
+gusto, and drew the honest fellow out many a night. A bait, consisting
+of sixpennyworth of brandy-and-water, the worthy old man was sure to
+swallow: and under the influence of this liquor, who was more happy
+than he to tell his stories of his daughter’s triumphs and his own, in
+love, war, drink, and polite society? Thus Huxter was enabled to
+present to his friends many pictures of Costigan: of Costigan fighting
+a jewel in the Phaynix—of Costigan and his interview with the Juke of
+York—of Costigan at his sonunlaw’s teeble, surrounded by the nobilitee
+of his countree—of Costigan, when crying drunk, at which time he was in
+the habit of confidentially lamenting his daughter’s ingratichewd, and
+stating that his grey hairs were hastening to a praymachure greeve. And
+thus our friend was the means of bringing a number of young fellows to
+the Back Kitchen, who consumed the landlord’s liquors whilst they
+relished the General’s peculiarities, so that mine host pardoned many
+of the latter’s foibles, in consideration of the good which they
+brought to his house. Not the highest position in life was
+this—certainly, or one which, if we had a reverence for an old man, we
+would be anxious that he should occupy: but of this aged buffoon it may
+be mentioned that he had no particular idea that his condition of life
+was not a high one, and that in his whiskied blood there was not a
+black drop, nor in his muddled brains a bitter feeling, against any
+mortal being. Even his child, his cruel Emily, he would have taken to
+his heart and forgiven with tears; and what more can one say of the
+Christian charity of a man than that he is actually ready to forgive
+those who have done him every kindness, and with whom he is wrong in a
+dispute!
+
+There was some idea amongst the young men who frequented the Back
+Kitchen, and made themselves merry with the society of Captain
+Costigan, that the Captain made a mystery regarding his lodgings for
+fear of duns, or from a desire of privacy, and lived in some wonderful
+place. Nor would the landlord of the premises, when questioned upon
+this subject, answer any inquiries; his maxim being that he only knew
+gentlemen who frequented that room, in that room; that when they
+quitted that room, having paid their scores as gentlemen, and behaved
+as gentlemen, his communication with them ceased; and that, as a
+gentleman himself, he thought it was only impertinent curiosity to ask
+where any other gentleman lived. Costigan, in his most intoxicated and
+confidential moments, also evaded any replies to questions or hints
+addressed to him on this subject: there was no particular secret about
+it, as we have seen, who have had more than once the honour of entering
+his apartments, but in the vicissitudes of a long life he had been
+pretty often in the habit of residing in houses where privacy was
+necessary to his comfort, and where the appearance of some visitors
+would have brought him anything but pleasure. Hence all sorts of
+legends were formed by wags or credulous persons respecting his place
+of abode. It was stated that he slept habitually in a watch-box in the
+city: in a cab at a mews, where a cab-proprietor gave him a shelter: in
+the Duke of York’s Column etc, the wildest of these theories being put
+abroad by the facetious and imaginative Huxter. For Huxey, when not
+silenced by the company of “swells,” and when in the society of his own
+friends, was a very different fellow to the youth whom we have seen
+cowed by Pen’s impertinent airs, and, adored by his family at home, was
+the life and soul of the circle whom he met, either round the festive
+board or the dissecting table. On one brilliant September morning, as
+Huxter was regaling himself with a cup of coffee at a stall in Covent
+Garden, having spent a delicious night dancing at Vauxhall, he spied
+the General reeling down Henrietta Street, with a crowd of hooting
+blackguard boys at his heels, who had left their beds under the arches
+of the river betimes, and were prowling about already for breakfast,
+and the strange livelihood of the day. The poor old General was not in
+that condition when the sneers and jokes of these young beggars had
+much effect upon him: the cabmen and watermen at the cabstand knew him
+and passed their comments upon him: the policemen gazed after him and
+warned the boys off him, with looks of scorn and pity; what did the
+scorn and pity of men, the jokes of ribald children, matter to the
+General? He reeled along the street with glazed eyes, having just sense
+enough to know whither he was bound, and to pursue his accustomed beat
+homewards. He went to bed not knowing how he had reached it, as often
+as any man in London. He woke and found himself there, and asked no
+questions, and he was tacking about on this daily though perilous
+voyage, when, from his station at the coffee-stall, Huxter spied him.
+To note his friend, to pay his twopence (indeed, he had but eightpence
+left, or he would have had a cab from Vauxhall to take him home), was
+with the eager Huxter the work of an instant—Costigan dived down the
+alleys by Drury Lane Theatre, where gin-shops, oyster-shops, and
+theatrical wardrobes abound, the proprietors of which were now asleep
+behind their shutters, as the pink morning lighted up their chimneys;
+and through these courts Huxter followed the General, until he reached
+Oldcastle Street, in which is the gate of Shepherd’s Inn.
+
+Here, just as he was within sight of home, a luckless slice of
+orange-peel came between the General’s heel and the pavement, and
+caused the poor old fellow to fall backwards.
+
+Huxter ran up to him instantly, and after a pause, during which the
+veteran, giddy with his fall and his previous whisky, gathered, as he
+best might, his dizzy brains together, the young surgeon lifted up the
+limping General, and very kindly and good-naturedly offered to conduct
+him to his home. For some time, and in reply to the queries which the
+student of medicine put to him, the muzzy General refused to say where
+his lodgings were and declared that they were hard by, and that he
+could reach them without difficulty; and he disengaged himself from
+Huxter’s arm, and made a rush as if to get to his own home unattended:
+but he reeled and lurched so, that the young surgeon insisted upon
+accompanying him, and, with many soothing expressions and cheering and
+consolatory phrases, succeeded in getting the General’s dirty old hand
+under what he called his own fin, and led the old fellow, moaning
+piteously, across the street. He stopped when he came to the ancient
+gate, ornamented with the armorial bearings of the venerable Shepherd.
+“Here ’tis,” said he, drawing up at the portal, and he made a
+successful pull at the gate bell, which presently brought out old Mr.
+Bolton, the porter, scowling fiercely, and grumbling as he was used to
+do every morning when it became his turn to let in that early bird.
+
+Costigan tried to hold Bolton for a moment in genteel conversation, but
+the other surlily would not. “Don’t bother me,” said he; “go to your
+hown bed Capting, and don’t keep honest men out of theirs.” So the
+Captain tacked across the square and reached his own staircase, up
+which he stumbled with the worthy Huxter at his heels. Costigan had a
+key of his own, which Huxter inserted into the keyhole for him, so that
+there was no need to call up little Mr. Bows from the sleep into which
+the old musician had not long since fallen, and Huxter having aided to
+disrobe his tipsy patient, and ascertained that no bones were broken,
+helped him to bed and applied compresses and water to one of his knees
+and shins, which, with the pair of trousers which encased them,
+Costigan had severely torn in his fall. At the General’s age, and with
+his habit of body, such wounds as he had inflicted on himself are slow
+to heal: a good deal of inflammation ensued, and the old fellow lay ill
+for some days, suffering both pain and fever.
+
+Mr. Huxter undertook the case of his interesting patient with great
+confidence and alacrity, and conducted it with becoming skill. He
+visited his friend day after day, and consoled him with lively rattle
+and conversation for the absence of the society which Costigan needed,
+and of which he was an ornament; and he gave special instructions to
+the invalid’s nurse about the quantity of whisky which the patient was
+to take—instructions which, as the poor old fellow could not for many
+days get out of his bed or sofa himself, he could not by any means
+infringe. Bows, Mrs. Bolton, and our little friend Fanny, when able to
+do so, officiated at the General’s bedside, and the old warrior was
+made as comfortable as possible under his calamity.
+
+Thus Huxter, whose affable manners and social turn made him quickly
+intimate with persons in whose society he fell, and whose
+over-refinement did not lead them to repulse the familiarities of this
+young gentleman, became pretty soon intimate in Shepherd’s Inn, both
+with our acquaintances in the garrets and those in the porter’s lodge.
+He thought he had seen Fanny somewhere: he felt certain that he had:
+but it is no wonder that he should not accurately remember her, for the
+poor little thing never chose to tell him where she had met him: he
+himself had seen her at a period, when his own views both of persons
+and of right and wrong were clouded by the excitement of drinking and
+dancing, and also little Fanny was very much changed and worn by the
+fever and agitation, and passion and despair, which the past three
+weeks had poured upon the head of that little victim. Borne down was
+the head now, and very pale and wan the face; and many and many a time
+the sad eyes had looked into the postman’s, as he came to the Inn, and
+the sickened heart had sunk as he passed away. When Mr. Costigan’s
+accident occurred, Fanny was rather glad to have an opportunity of
+being useful and doing something kind—something that would make her
+forget her own little sorrows perhaps: she felt she bore them better
+whilst she did her duty, though I dare say many a tear dropped into the
+old Irishman’s gruel. Ah, me! stir the gruel well, and have courage,
+little Fanny! If everybody who has suffered from your complaint were to
+die of it straightway, what a fine year the undertakers would have!
+
+Whether from compassion for his only patient, or delight in his
+society, Mr. Huxter found now occasion to visit Costigan two or three
+times in the day at least, and if any of the members of the porter’s
+lodge family were not in attendance on the General, the young doctor
+was sure to have some particular directions to address to those at
+their own place of habitation. He was a kind fellow; he made or
+purchased toys for the children; he brought them apples and
+brandy-balls; he brought a mask and frightened them with it, and caused
+a smile upon the face of pale Fanny. He called Mrs. Bolton Mrs. B., and
+was very intimate, familiar, and facetious with that lady, quite
+different from that “aughty, artless beast,” as Mrs. Bolton now
+denominated a certain young gentleman of our acquaintance, and whom she
+now vowed she never could abear.
+
+It was from this lady, who was very free in her conversation, that
+Huxter presently learnt what was the illness which was evidently
+preying upon little Fan, and what had been Pen’s behaviour regarding
+her. Mrs. Bolton’s account of the transaction was not, it may be
+imagined, entirely an impartial narrative. One would have thought from
+her story that the young gentleman had employed a course of the most
+persevering and flagitious artifices to win the girl’s heart, had
+broken the most solemn promises made to her and was a wretch to be
+hated and chastised by every champion of woman. Huxter, in his present
+frame of mind respecting Arthur, and suffering under the latter’s
+contumely, was ready, of course, to take all for granted that was said
+in the disfavour of this unfortunate convalescent. But why did he not
+write home to Clavering, as he had done previously, giving an account
+of Pen’s misconduct, and of the particulars regarding it, which had now
+come to his knowledge? He soon, in a letter to his brother-in-law,
+announced that that nice young man, Mr. Pendennis, had escaped narrowly
+from a fever, and that no doubt all Clavering, where he was so popular,
+would be pleased at his recovery; and he mentioned that he had an
+interesting case of compound fracture, an officer of distinction, which
+kept him in town; but as for Fanny Bolton, he made no more mention of
+her in his letters—no more than Pen himself had made mention of her. O
+you mothers at home, how much do you think you know about your lads?
+How much do you think you know?
+
+But with Bows, there was no reason why Huxter should not speak his
+mind, and so, a very short time after his conversation with Mrs.
+Bolton, Mr. Sam talked to the musician about his early acquaintance
+with Pendennis; described him as a confounded conceited blackguard, and
+expressed a determination to punch his impudent head as soon as ever he
+should be well enough to stand up like a man.
+
+Then it was that Bows on his part spoke and told his version of the
+story, whereof Arthur and little Fan were the hero and heroine; how
+they had met by no contrivance of the former, but by a blunder of the
+old Irishman, now in bed with a broken shin—how Pen had acted with
+manliness and self-control in the business—how Mrs Bolton was an idiot;
+and he related the conversation which he, Bows, had had with Pen, and
+the sentiments uttered by the young man. Perhaps Bow’s story caused
+some twinges of conscience in the breast of Pen’s accuser, and that
+gentleman frankly owned that he had been wrong with regard to Arthur,
+and withdrew his project for punching Mr. Pendennis’s head.
+
+But the cessation of his hostility for Pen did not diminish Huxter’s
+attentions to Fanny, which unlucky Mr Bows marked with his usual
+jealousy and bitterness of spirit, “I have but to like anybody” the old
+fellow thought, “and somebody is sure to come and be preferred to me.
+It has been the same ill-luck with me since I was a lad, until now that
+I am sixty years old. What can such a man as I am expect better than to
+be laughed at? It is for the young to succeed, and to be happy, and not
+for old fools like me. I’ve played a second fiddle through life,” he
+said, with a bitter laugh; “how can I suppose the luck is to change
+after it has gone against me so long?” This was the selfish way in
+which Bows looked at the state of affairs: though few persons would
+have thought there was any cause for his jealousy, who looked at the
+pale and grief-stricken countenance of the hapless little girl, its
+object. Fanny received Huxter’s good-natured efforts at consolation and
+kind attentions kindly. She laughed now and again at his jokes and
+games with her little sisters, but relapsed quickly into a dejection
+which ought to have satisfied Mr. Bows that the new-comer had no place
+in her heart as yet, had jealous Mr. Bows been enabled to see with
+clear eyes.
+
+But Bows did not. Fanny attributed Pen’s silence somehow to Bows’s
+interference. Fanny hated him. Fanny treated Bows with constant cruelty
+and injustice. She turned from him when he spoke—she loathed his
+attempts at consolation. A hard life had Mr. Bows, and a cruel return
+for his regard.
+
+When Warrington came to Shepherd’s Inn as Pen’s ambassador, it was for
+Mr. Bows’s apartments he inquired (no doubt upon a previous agreement
+with the principal for whom he acted in this delicate negotiation), and
+he did not so much as catch a glimpse of Miss Fanny when he stopped at
+the Inn-gate and made his inquiry. Warrington was, of course, directed
+to the musician’s chambers, and found him tending the patient there,
+from whose chamber he came out to wait upon his guest. We have said
+that they had been previously known to one another, and the pair shook
+hands with sufficient cordiality. After a little preliminary talk,
+Warrington said that he had come from his friend Arthur Pendennis, and
+from his family, to thank Bows for his attention at the commencement of
+Pen’s illness, and for his kindness in hastening into the country to
+fetch the Major.
+
+Bows replied that it was but his duty: he had never thought to have
+seen the young gentleman alive again when he went in search of Pen’s
+relatives, and he was very glad of Mr. Pendennis’s recovery, and that
+he had his friends with him. “Lucky are they who have friends, Mr.
+Warrington,” said the musician. “I might be up in this garret and
+nobody would care for me, or mind whether I was alive or dead.”
+
+“What! not the General, Mr. Bows?” Warrington asked.
+
+“The General likes his whisky-bottle more than anything in life,” the
+other answered; “we live together from habit and convenience; and he
+cares for me no more than you do. What is it you want to ask me, Mr.
+Warrington? You ain’t come to visit me, I know very well. Nobody comes
+to visit me. It is about Fanny, the porter’s daughter, you are come—I
+see that—very well. Is Mr. Pendennis, now he has got well, anxious to
+see her again? Does his lordship the Sultan propose to throw his
+’andkerchief to her? She has been very ill, sir, ever since the day
+when Mrs. Pendennis turned her out of doors—kind of a lady, wasn’t it?
+The poor girl and myself found the young gentleman raving in a fever,
+knowing nobody, with nobody to tend him but his drunken laundress—she
+watched day and night by him. I set off to fetch his uncle. Mamma comes
+and turns Fanny to the right-about. Uncle comes and leaves me to pay
+the cab. Carry my compliments to the ladies and gentleman, and say we
+are both very thankful, very. Why, a countess couldn’t have behaved
+better, and for an apothecary’s lady, as I’m given to understand Mrs.
+Pendennis was—I’m sure her behaviour is most uncommon aristocratic and
+genteel. She ought to have a double-gilt pestle and mortar to her
+coach.”
+
+It was from Mr. Huxter that Bows had learned Pen’s parentage, no doubt,
+and if he took Pen’s part against the young surgeon, and Fanny’s
+against Mr. Pendennis, it was because the old gentleman was in so
+savage a mood, that his humour was to contradict everybody.
+
+Warrington was curious, and not ill pleased at the musician’s taunts
+and irascibility. “I never heard of these transactions,” he said, “or
+got but a very imperfect account of them from Major Pendennis. What was
+a lady to do? I think (I have never spoken with her on the subject) she
+had some notion that the young woman and my friend Pen were on—on terms
+of—of an intimacy which Mrs. Pendennis could not, of course,
+recognise——”
+
+“Oh, of course not, sir. Speak out, sir; say what you mean at once,
+that the young gentleman of the Temple had made a victim of the girl of
+Shepherd’s Inn, eh? And so she was turned to be out of doors—or brayed
+alive in the double-gilt pestle and mortar, by Jove! No, Mr.
+Warrington, there was no such thing: there was no victimising, or if
+there was, Mr. Arthur was the victim, not the girl. He is an honest
+fellow, he is, though he is conceited, and a puppy sometimes. He can
+feel like a man, and run away from temptation like a man. I own it,
+though I suffer by it, I own it. He has a heart, he has: but the girl
+hasn’t, sir. That girl will do anything to win a man, and fling him
+away without a pang, sir. If she’s flung away herself, sir, she’ll feel
+it and cry. She had a fever when Mrs. Pendennis turned her out of
+doors; and she made love to the Doctor, Doctor Goodenough, who came to
+cure her. Now she has taken on with another chap—another sawbones, ha,
+ha! d—— it, sir, she likes the pestle and mortar, and hangs round the
+pill-boxes, she’s so fond of ’em, and she has got a fellow from Saint
+Bartholomew’s, who grins through a horse-collar for her sisters, and
+charms away her melancholy. Go and see, sir: very likely he’s in the
+lodge now. If you want news about Miss Fanny, you must ask at the
+Doctor’s shop, sir, not of an old fiddler like me—Good-bye, sir.
+There’s my patient calling.”
+
+And a voice was heard from the Captain’s bedroom, a well-known voice,
+which said, “I’d loike a dthrop of dthrink, Bows, I’m thirstee.” And
+not sorry, perhaps, to hear that such was the state of things, and that
+Pen’s forsaken was consoling herself, Warrington took his leave of the
+irascible musician.
+
+As luck would have it, he passed the lodge door just as Mr. Huxter was
+in the act of frightening the children with the mask whereof we have
+spoken, and Fanny was smiling languidly at his farces. Warrington
+laughed bitterly. “Are all women like that?” he thought. “I think
+there’s one that’s not,” he added, with a sigh.
+
+At Piccadilly, waiting for the Richmond omnibus, George fell in with
+Major Pendennis, bound in the same direction, and he told the old
+gentleman of what he had seen and heard respecting Fanny.
+
+Major Pendennis was highly delighted: and as might be expected of such
+a philosopher, made precisely the same observation as that which had
+escaped from Warrington. “All women are the same,” he said. “La petite
+se console. Daymy, when I used to read ‘Telemaque’ at school, Calypso
+ne pouvait se consoler,—you know the rest, Warrington,—I used to say it
+was absard. Absard, by Gad, and so it is. And so she’s got a new
+soupirant, has she, the little porteress? Dayvlish nice little girl.
+How mad Pen will be—eh, Warrington? But we must break it to him gently,
+or he’ll be in such a rage that he will be going after her again. We
+must menager the young fellow.”
+
+“I think Mrs. Pendennis ought to know that Pen acted very well in the
+business. She evidently thinks him guilty, and according to Mr. Bows,
+Arthur behaved like a good fellow,” Warrington said.
+
+“My dear Warrington,” said the Major, with a look of some alarm, “in
+Mrs. Pendennis’s agitated state of health and that sort of thing, the
+best way, I think, is not to say a single word about the subject—or,
+stay, leave it to me: and I’ll talk to her—break it to her gently, you
+know, and that sort of thing. I give you my word I will. And so
+Calypso’s consoled, is she,” And he sniggered over this gratifying
+truth, happy in the corner of the omnibus during the rest of the
+journey.
+
+Pen was very anxious to hear from his envoy what had been the result of
+the latter’s mission; and as soon as the two young men could be alone,
+the ambassador spoke in reply to Arthur’s eager queries.
+
+“You remember your poem, Pen, of Ariadne in Naxos,” Warrington said;
+“devilish bad poetry it was, to be sure.”
+
+“Apres?” asked Pen, in a great state of excitement.
+
+“When Theseus left Ariadne, do you remember what happened to her, young
+fellow?”
+
+“It’s a lie, it’s a lie! You don’t mean that!” cried out Pen, starting
+up, his face turning red.
+
+“Sit down, stoopid,” Warrington said, and with two fingers pushed Pen
+back into his seat again. “It’s better for you as it is, young one,” he
+said sadly, in reply to the savage flush in Arthur’s face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+Foreign Ground
+
+
+Worthy Major Pendennis fulfilled his promise to Warrington so far as to
+satisfy his own conscience, and in so far to ease poor Helen with
+regard to her son, as to make her understand that all connexion between
+Arthur and the odious little gatekeeper was at an end, and that she
+need have no further anxiety with respect to an imprudent attachment or
+a degrading marriage on Pen’s part. And that young fellow’s mind was
+also relieved (after he had recovered the shock to his vanity) by
+thinking that Miss Fanny was not going to die of love for him, and that
+no unpleasant consequences were to be apprehended from the luckless and
+brief connexion.
+
+So the whole party were free to carry into effect their projected
+Continental trip, and Arthur Pendennis, rentier, voyageant avec Madame
+Pendennis and Mademoiselle Bell, and George Warrington, particulier,
+age de 32 ans, taille 6 pieds (Anglais), figure ordinaire, cheveux
+noirs, barbe idem, etc., procured passports from the consul of H.M. the
+King of the Belgians at Dover, and passed over from that port to
+Ostend, whence the party took their way leisurely, visiting Bruges and
+Ghent on their way to Brussels and the Rhine. It is not our purpose to
+describe this oft-travelled tour, or Laura’s delight at the tranquil
+and ancient cities which she saw for the first time, or Helen’s wonder
+and interest at the Beguine convents which they visited, or the almost
+terror with which she saw the black-veiled nuns with outstretched arms
+kneeling before the illuminated altars, and beheld the strange pomps
+and ceremonials of the Catholic worship. Barefooted friars in the
+streets; crowned images of Saints and Virgins in the churches before
+which people were bowing down and worshipping, in direct defiance, as
+she held, of the written law; priests in gorgeous robes, or lurking in
+dark confessionals; theatres opened, and people dancing on Sundays,—all
+these new sights and manners shocked and bewildered the simple country
+lady; and when the young men after their evening drive or walk returned
+to the widow and her adopted daughter, they found their books of
+devotion on the table, and at their entrance Laura would commonly cease
+reading some of the psalms or the sacred pages which, of all others,
+Helen loved. The late events connected with her son had cruelly shaken
+her; Laura watched with intense, though hidden anxiety, every movement
+of her dearest friend; and poor Pen was most constant and affectionate
+in waiting upon his mother, whose wounded bosom yearned with love
+towards him, though there was a secret between them, and an anguish or
+rage almost on the mother’s part, to think that she was dispossessed
+somehow of her son’s heart, or that there were recesses in it which she
+must not or dared not enter. She sickened as she thought of the sacred
+days of boyhood when it had not been so—when her Arthur’s heart had no
+secrets, and she was his all in all: when he poured his hopes and
+pleasures, his childish griefs, vanities, triumphs into her willing and
+tender embrace; when her home was his nest still; and before fate,
+selfishness, nature, had driven him forth on wayward wings—to range his
+own flight—to sing his own song—and to seek his own home and his own
+mate. Watching this devouring care and racking disappointment in her
+friend, Laura once said to Helen, “If Pen had loved me as you wished, I
+should have gained him, but I should have lost you, mamma, I know I
+should; and I like you to love me best. Men do not know what it is to
+love as we do, I think,”—and Helen, sighing, agreed to this portion of
+the young lady’s speech, though she protested against the former part.
+For my part I suppose Miss Laura was right in both statements, and with
+regard to the latter assertion especially, that it is an old and
+received truism—love is an hour with us: it is all night and all day
+with a woman. Damon has taxes, sermon, parade, tailors’ bills,
+parliamentary duties, and the deuce knows what to think of; Delia has
+to think about Damon—Damon is the oak (or the post) and stands up, and
+Delia is the ivy or the honeysuckle whose arms twine about him. Is it
+not so, Delia? Is it not your nature to creep about his feet and kiss
+them, to twine round his trunk and hang there; and Damon’s to stand
+like a British man with his hands in his breeches pocket, while the
+pretty fond parasite clings round him?
+
+Old Pendennis had only accompanied our friends to the water’s edge, and
+left them on board the boat, giving the chief charge of the little
+expedition to Warrington. He himself was bound on a brief visit to the
+house of a great man, a friend of his, after which sojourn he proposed
+to join his sister-in-law at the German watering-place, whither the
+party was bound. The Major himself thought that his long attentions to
+his sick family had earned for him a little relaxation—and though the
+best of the partridges were thinned off, the pheasants were still to be
+shot at Stillbrook, where the noble owner still was; old Pendennis
+betook himself to that hospitable mansion and disported there with
+great comfort to himself. A royal Duke, some foreigners of note, some
+illustrious statesmen, and some pleasant people visited it: it did the
+old fellow’s heart good to see his name in the Morning Post amongst the
+list of the distinguished company which the Marquis of Steyne was
+entertaining at his country-house at Stillbrook. He was a very useful
+and pleasant personage in a country-house. He entertained the young men
+with queer little anecdotes and grivoises stories on their
+shooting-parties or in their smoking-room, where they laughed at him
+and with him. He was obsequious with the ladies of a morning, in the
+rooms dedicated to them. He walked the new arrivals about the park and
+gardens, and showed them the carte du pays, and where there was the
+best view of the mansion, and where the most favourable point to look
+at the lake: he showed, where the timber was to be felled, and where
+the old road went before the new bridge was built, and the hill cut
+down; and where the place in the wood was where old Lord Lynx
+discovered Sir Phelim O’Neal on his knees before her ladyship, etc.
+etc.; he called the lodge-keepers and gardeners by their names; he knew
+the number of domestics that sat down in the housekeeper’s room, and
+how many dined in the servants’-hall; he had a word for everybody, and
+about everybody, and a little against everybody. He was invaluable in a
+country-house, in a word: and richly merited and enjoyed his vacation
+after his labours. And perhaps whilst he was thus deservedly enjoying
+himself with his country friends, the Major was not ill pleased at
+transferring to Warrington the command of the family expedition to the
+Continent, and thus perforce keeping him in the service of the
+ladies,—a servitude which George was only too willing to undergo, for
+his friend’s sake, and for that of a society which he found daily more
+delightful. Warrington was a good German scholar, and was willing to
+give Miss Laura lessons in the language, who was very glad to improve
+herself, though Pen, for his part, was too weak or lazy now to resume
+his German studies. Warrington acted as courier and interpreter;
+Warrington saw the baggage in and out of ships, inns and carriages,
+managed the money matters, and put the little troop into marching
+order. Warrington found out where the English church was, and, if Mrs.
+Pendennis and Miss Laura were inclined to go thither, walked with great
+decorum along with them. Warrington walked by Mrs. Pendennis’s donkey,
+when that lady went out on her evening excursions; or took carriages
+for her; or got ‘Galignani’ for her; or devised comfortable seats under
+the lime-trees for her, when the guests paraded after dinner, and the
+Kursaal band at the bath, where our tired friends stopped, performed
+their pleasant music under the trees. Many a fine whiskered Prussian or
+French dandy, come to the bath for the ‘Trente-et-quarante,’ cast
+glances of longing towards the pretty fresh-coloured English girl who
+accompanied the pale widow, and would have longed to take a turn with
+her at the galop or the waltz. But Laura did not appear in the
+ballroom, except once or twice, when Pen vouchsafed to walk with her;
+and as for Warrington, that rough diamond had not had the polish of a
+dancing-master, and he did not know how to waltz,—though he would have
+liked to learn, if he could have had such a partner as Laura.—Such a
+partner! psha, what had a stiff bachelor to do with partners and
+waltzing? what was he about, dancing attendance here? drinking in sweet
+pleasure at a risk he knows not of what after-sadness, and regret, and
+lonely longing? But yet he stayed on. You would have said he was the
+widow’s son, to watch his constant care and watchfulness of her; or
+that he was an adventurer, and wanted to marry her fortune, or, at any
+rate, that he wanted some very great treasure or benefit from her,—and
+very likely he did,—for ours, as the reader has possibly already
+discovered, is a Selfish Story, and almost every person, according to
+his nature, more or less generous than George, and according to the way
+of the world as it seems to us, is occupied about Number One. So
+Warrington selfishly devoted himself to Helen, who selfishly devoted
+herself to Pen, who selfishly devoted himself to himself at this
+present period, having no other personage or object to occupy him,
+except, indeed, his mother’s health, which gave him a serious and real
+disquiet; but though they, sate together, they did not talk much, and
+the cloud was always between them.
+
+Every day Laura looked for Warrington, and received him with more frank
+and eager welcome. He found himself talking to her as he didn’t know
+himself that he could talk. He found himself performing acts of
+gallantry which astounded him after the performance: he found himself
+looking blankly in the glass at the crow’s feet round his eyes, and at
+some streaks of white in his hair, and some intrusive silver bristles
+in his grim, blue beard. He found himself looking at the young bucks at
+the bath—at the bland, tight-waisted Germans—at the capering Frenchmen,
+with their lacquered mustachios and trim varnished boots—at the English
+dandies, Pen amongst them, with their calm domineering air, and
+insolent languor: and envied each one of these some excellence or
+quality of youth, or good looks, which he possessed, and of which
+Warrington felt the need. And every night, as the night came, he
+quitted the little circle with greater reluctance; and, retiring to his
+own lodging in their neighbourhood, felt himself the more lonely and
+unhappy. The widow could not help seeing his attachment. She
+understood, now, why Major Pendennis (always a tacit enemy of her
+darling project) had been so eager that Warrington should be of their
+party. Laura frankly owned her great, her enthusiastic, regard for him:
+and Arthur would make no movement. Arthur did not choose to see what
+was going on; or did not care to prevent, or actually encouraged, it.
+She remembered his often having said that he could not understand how a
+man proposed to a woman twice. She was in torture—at secret feud with
+her son, of all objects in the world the dearest to her—in doubt, which
+she dared not express to herself, about Laura—averse to Warrington, the
+good and generous. No wonder that the healing waters of Rosenbad did
+not do her good, or that Doctor von Glauber, the bath physician, when
+he came to visit her, found that the poor lady made no progress to
+recovery. Meanwhile Pen got well rapidly; slept with immense
+perseverance twelve hours out of the twenty-four; ate huge meals; and,
+at the end of a couple of months, had almost got back the bodily
+strength and weight which he had possessed before his illness.
+
+After they had passed some fifteen days at their place of rest and
+refreshment, a letter came from Major Pendennis announcing his speedy
+arrival at Rosenbad, and, soon after the letter, the Major himself made
+his appearance accompanied by Morgan his faithful valet, without whom
+the old gentleman could not move. When the Major travelled he wore a
+jaunty and juvenile travelling costume; to see his back still you would
+have taken him for one of the young fellows whose slim waist and
+youthful appearance Warrington was beginning to envy. It was not until
+the worthy man began to move, that the observer remarked that Time had
+weakened his ancient knees, and had unkindly interfered to impede the
+action of the natty little varnished boots in which the gay old
+traveller still pinched his toes. There were magnates both of our own
+country and of foreign nations present that autumn at Rosenbad. The
+elder Pendennis read over the strangers’ list with great gratification
+on the night of his arrival, was pleased to find several of his
+acquaintances among the great folks, and would have the honour of
+presenting his nephew to a German Grand Duchess, a Russian Princess,
+and an English Marquis, before many days were over: nor was Pen by any
+means averse to making the acquaintance of these great personages,
+having a liking for polite life, and all the splendours and amenities
+belonging to it. That very evening the resolute old gentleman, leaning
+on his nephew’s arm, made his appearance in the halls of the Kursaal,
+and lost or won a napoleon or two at the table of ‘Trente-et-quarante.’
+He did not play to lose, he said, or to win, but he did as other folks
+did, and betted his napoleon and took his luck as it came. He pointed
+out the Russians and Spaniards gambling for heaps of gold, and
+denounced their eagerness as something sordid and barbarous; an English
+gentleman should play where the fashion is play, but should not elate
+or depress himself at the sport; and he told how he had seen his friend
+the Marquis of Steyne, when Lord Gaunt, lose eighteen thousand at a
+sitting, and break the bank three nights running at Paris, without ever
+showing the least emotion at his defeat or victory. “And that’s what I
+call being an English gentleman, Pen, my dear boy,” the old gentleman
+said, warming as he prattled about his recollections—“what I call the
+great manner only remains with us and with a few families in France.”
+And as Russian Princesses passed him, whose reputation had long ceased
+to be doubtful, and damaged English ladies, who are constantly seen in
+company of their faithful attendant for the time being in these gay
+haunts of dissipation, the old Major, with eager garrulity and
+mischievous relish, told his nephew wonderful particulars regarding the
+lives of these heroines; and diverted the young man with a thousand
+scandals. Egad, he felt himself quite young again, he remarked to Pen,
+as, rouged and grinning, her enormous chasseur behind her bearing her
+shawl, the Princess Obstropski smiled and recognised and accosted him.
+He remembered her in ’14 when she was an actress of the Paris
+Boulevard, and the Emperor Alexander’s aide-de-camp Obstropski (a man
+of great talents, who knew a good deal about the Emperor Paul’s death,
+and was a devil to play) married her. He most courteously and
+respectfully asked leave to call upon the Princess, and to present to
+her his nephew, Mr. Arthur Pendennis; and he pointed out to the latter
+a half-dozen of other personages whose names were as famous, and whose
+histories were as satisfying. What would poor Helen have thought, could
+she have heard those tales, or known to what kind of people her
+brother-in-law was presenting her son? Only once, leaning on Arthur’s
+arm, she had passed through the room where the green tables were
+prepared for play, and the croaking croupiers were calling out their
+fatal words of Rouge gagne and Couleur perd. She had shrunk terrified
+out of the pandemonium, imploring Pen, extorting from him a promise, on
+his word of honour, that he would never play at those tables; and the
+scene which so frightened the simple widow, only amused the worldly old
+veteran, and made him young again! He could breathe the air cheerfully
+which stifled her. Her right was not his right: his food was her
+poison. Human creatures are constituted thus differently, and with this
+variety the marvellous world is peopled. To the credit of Mr. Pen, let
+it be said, that he kept honestly the promise made to his mother, and
+stoutly told his uncle of his intention to abide by it.
+
+When the Major arrived, his presence somehow cast a damp upon at least
+three of the persons of our little party—upon Laura who had anything
+but respect for him; upon Warrington, whose manner towards him showed
+an involuntary haughtiness and contempt; and upon the timid and alarmed
+widow, who dreaded lest he should interfere with her darling, though
+almost desperate, projects for her boy. And, indeed, the Major, unknown
+to himself, was the bearer of tidings which were to bring about a
+catastrophe in the affairs of all our friends.
+
+Pen with his two ladies had apartments in the town of Rosenbad; honest
+Warrington had lodgings hard by; the Major, on arrival at Rosenbad,
+had, as befitted his dignity, taken his quarters at one of the great
+hotels, at the Roman Emperor or the Four Seasons, where two or three
+hundred gamblers, pleasure-seekers, or invalids, sate down and over-ate
+themselves daily at the enormous table-d’hote. To this hotel Pen went
+on the morning after the Major’s arrival, dutifully to pay his respects
+to his uncle, and found the latter’s sitting-room duly prepared and
+arranged by Mr. Morgan, with the Major’s hats brushed, and his coats
+laid out: his despatch-boxes and umbrella-cases, his guidebooks,
+passports, maps, and other elaborate necessaries of the English
+traveller, all as trim and ready as they could be in their master’s own
+room in Jermyn Street. Everything was ready, from the medicine-bottle
+fresh filled from the pharmacien’s, down to the old fellow’s
+prayer-book, without which he never travelled, for he made a point of
+appearing at the English church at every place which he honoured with a
+stay. “Everybody did it,” he said; “every English gentleman did it,”
+and this pious man would as soon have thought of not calling upon the
+English ambassador in a Continental town, as of not showing himself at
+the national place of worship.
+
+The old gentleman had been to take one of the baths for which Rosenbad
+is famous, and which everybody takes, and his after-bath toilet was not
+yet completed when Pen arrived. The elder called out to Arthur in a
+cheery voice from the inner apartment, in which he and Morgan were
+engaged, and the valet presently came in, bearing a little packet to
+Pen’s address—Mr. Arthur’s letters and papers, Morgan said, which he
+had brought from Mr. Arthur’s chambers in London, and which consisted
+chiefly of numbers of the Pall Mall Gazette, which our friend Mr.
+Finucane thought his collaborateur would like to see. The papers were
+tied together: the letters in an envelope, addressed to Pen, in the
+last-named gentleman’s handwriting.
+
+Amongst the letters there was a little note addressed, as a former
+letter we have heard of had been, to “Arther Pendennis, Esquire,” which
+Arthur opened with a start and a blush, and read with a very keen pang
+of interest, and sorrow, and regard. She had come to Arthur’s house,
+Fanny Bolton said—and found that he was gone—gone away to Germany
+without ever leaving a word for her—or answer to her last letter, in
+which she prayed but for one word of kindness—or the books which he had
+promised her in happier times, before he was ill, and which she should
+like to keep in remembrance of him. She said she would not reproach
+those who had found her at his bedside when he was in the fever, and
+knew nobody, and who had turned the poor girl away without a word. She
+thought she should have died, she said, of that, but Doctor Goodenough
+had kindly tended her, and kept her life, when, perhaps, the keeping of
+it was of no good, and she forgave everybody and as for Arthur, she
+would pray for him for ever. And when he was so ill, and they cut off
+his hair, she had made so free as to keep one little lock for herself,
+and that she owned. And might she still keep it, or would his mamma
+order that that should be gave up too? She was willing to obey him in
+all things, and couldn’t but remember that once he was so kind, oh! so
+good and kind! to his poor Fanny.
+
+When Major Pendennis, fresh and smirking from his toilet, came out of
+his bedroom to his sitting-room, he found Arthur, with this note before
+him, and an expression of savage anger on his face, which surprised the
+elder gentleman. “What news from London, my boy?” he rather faintly
+asked; “are the duns at you that you look so glum?”
+
+“Do you know anything about this letter, sir?” Arthur asked.
+
+“What letter, my good sir?” said the other dryly, at once perceiving
+what had happened.
+
+“You know what I mean—about, about Miss—about Fanny Bolton—the poor
+dear little girl,” Arthur broke out. “When she was in my room? Was she
+there when I was delirious—I fancied she was—was she? Who sent her out
+of my chambers? who intercepted her letters to me? Who dared to do it?
+Did you do it, uncle?”
+
+“It’s not my practice to tamper with gentlemen’s letters, or to answer
+damned impertinent questions,” Major Pendennis cried out, in a great
+tremor of emotion and indignation. “There was a girl in your rooms when
+I came up at great personal inconvenience, daymy—and to meet with a
+return of this kind for my affection to you, is not pleasant, by Gad,
+sir—not at all pleasant.”
+
+“That’s not the question, sir,” Arthur said hotly—“and I beg your
+pardon, uncle. You were, you always have been, most kind to me: but I
+say again, did you say anything harsh to this poor girl? Did you send
+her away from me?”
+
+“I never spoke a word to the girl,” the uncle said, “and I never sent
+her away from you, and know no more about her, and wish to know no more
+about her, than about the man in the moon.”
+
+“Then it’s my mother that did it,” Arthur broke out. “Did my mother
+send that poor child away?”
+
+“I repeat I know nothing about it, sir,” the elder said testily. “Let’s
+change the subject, if you please.”
+
+“I’ll never forgive the person who did it,” said Arthur, bouncing up
+and seizing his hat.
+
+The Major cried out, “Stop, Arthur, for God’s sake, stop;” but before
+he had uttered his sentence Arthur had rushed out of the room, and at
+the next minute the Major saw him striding rapidly down the street that
+led towards his home.
+
+“Get breakfast!” said the old fellow to Morgan, and he wagged his head
+and sighed as he looked out of the window. “Poor Helen—poor soul!
+There’ll be a row. I knew there would: and begad all the fat’s in the
+fire.”
+
+When Pen reached home he only found Warrington in the ladies’
+drawing-room, waiting their arrival in order to conduct them to the
+room where the little English colony at Rosenbad held their Sunday
+church. Helen and Laura had not appeared as yet; the former was ailing,
+and her daughter was with her. Pen’s wrath was so great that he could
+not defer expressing it. He flung Fanny’s letter across the table to
+his friend. “Look there, Warrington,” he said; “she tended me in my
+illness, she rescued me out of the jaws of death, and this is the way
+they have treated the dear little creature. They have kept her letters
+from me; they have treated me like a child, and her like a dog, poor
+thing! My mother has done this.”
+
+“If she has, you must remember it is your mother,” Warrington
+interposed.
+
+“It only makes the crime the greater, because it is she who has done
+it,” Pen answered. “She ought to have been the poor girl’s defender,
+not her enemy: she ought to go down on her knees and ask pardon of her.
+I ought! I will! I am shocked at the cruelty which has been shown her.
+What? She gave me her all, and this is her return! She sacrifices
+everything for me, and they spurn her.”
+
+“Hush!” said Warrington, “they can hear you from the next room.”
+
+“Hear? let them hear!” Pen cried out, only so much the louder. “Those
+may overhear my talk who intercept my letters. I say this poor girl has
+been shamefully used, and I will do my best to right her; I will.”
+
+The door of the neighbouring room opened, and Laura came forth with a
+pale and stern face. She looked at Pen with glances from which beamed
+pride, defiance, aversion. “Arthur, your mother is very ill,” she said;
+“it is a pity that you should speak so loud as to disturb her.”
+
+“It is a pity that I should have been obliged to speak at all,” Pen
+answered. “And I have more to say before I have done.”
+
+“I should think what you have to say will hardly be fit for me to
+hear,” Laura said, haughtily.
+
+“You are welcome to hear it or not, as you like,” said Mr. Pen. “I
+shall go in now and speak to my mother.”
+
+Laura came rapidly forward, so that she should not be overheard by her
+friend within. “Not now, sir,” she said to Pen. “You may kill her if
+you do. Your conduct has gone far enough to make her wretched.”
+
+“What conduct?” cried out Pen, in a fury. “Who dares impugn it? Who
+dares meddle with me? Is it you who are the instigator of this
+persecution?”
+
+“I said before it was a subject of which it did not become me to hear
+or to speak,” Laura said. “But as for mamma, if she had acted otherwise
+than she did with regard to—to the person about whom you seem to take
+such an interest, it would have been I that must have quitted your
+house, and not that—that person.”
+
+“By heavens! this is too much,” Pen cried out, with a violent
+execration.
+
+“Perhaps that is what you wished,” Laura said, tossing her head up. “No
+more of this, if you please; I am not accustomed to hear such subjects
+spoken of in such language,” and with a stately curtsey the young lady
+passed to her room, looking her adversary full in the face as she
+retreated and closed the door upon him.
+
+Pen was bewildered with wonder, perplexity, fury, at this monstrous and
+unreasonable persecution. He burst out into a loud and bitter laugh as
+Laura quitted him, and with sneers and revilings, as a man who jeers
+under an operation, ridiculed at once his own pain and his persecutor’s
+anger. The laugh, which was one of bitter humour, and no unmanly or
+unkindly expression of suffering under most cruel and unmerited
+torture, was heard in the next apartment, as some of his unlucky
+previous expressions had been, and, like them, entirely misinterpreted
+by the hearers. It struck like a dagger into the wounded and tender
+heart of Helen; it pierced Laura, and inflamed the high-spirited girl
+with scorn and anger. “And it was to this hardened libertine,” she
+thought—“to this boaster of low intrigues, that I had given my heart
+away.” “He breaks the most sacred laws,” thought Helen. “He prefers the
+creature of his passion to his own mother; and when he is upbraided, he
+laughs, and glories in his crime. ‘She gave me her all,’ I heard him
+say it,” argued the poor widow, “and he boasts of it, and laughs, and
+breaks his mother’s heart.” The emotion, the shame, the grief, the
+mortification almost killed her. She felt she should die of his
+unkindness.
+
+Warrington thought of Laura’s speech—“Perhaps that is what you wished.”
+“She loves Pen still,” he said. “It was jealousy made her speak.”—“Come
+away, Pen. Come away, and let us go to church and get calm. You must
+explain this matter to your mother. She does not appear to know the
+truth: nor do you quite, my good fellow. Come away, and let us talk
+about it.” And again he muttered to himself, “‘Perhaps that is what you
+wished.’ Yes, she loves him. Why shouldn’t she love him? Whom else
+would I have her love? What can she be to me but the dearest and the
+fairest and the best of women?”
+
+So, leaving the women similarly engaged within, the two gentlemen
+walked away, each occupied with his own thought, and silent for a
+considerable space. “I must set this matter right,” thought honest
+George “as she loves him still—I must set his mind right about the
+other woman.” And with this charitable thought, the good fellow began
+to tell more at large what Bows had said to him regarding Miss Bolton’s
+behaviour and fickleness, and he described how the girl was no better
+than a little light-minded flirt; and, perhaps, he exaggerated the
+good-humour and contentedness which he had himself, as he thought,
+witnessed in her behaviour in the scene with Mr. Huxter.
+
+Now, all Bows’s statements had been coloured by an insane jealousy and
+rage on that old man’s part; and instead of allaying Pen’s renascent
+desire to see his little conquest again, Warrington’s accounts inflamed
+and angered Pendennis, and made him more anxious than before to set
+himself right, as he persisted in phrasing it, with Fanny. They arrived
+at the church door presently; but scarce one word of the service, and
+not a syllable of Mr. Shamble’s sermon, did either of them comprehend,
+probably—so much was each engaged with his own private speculations.
+The Major came up to them after the service, with his well-brushed hat
+and wig, and his jauntiest, most cheerful air. He complimented them
+upon being seen at church; again he said that every comme-il
+faut-person made a point of attending the English service abroad; and
+he walked back with the young men, prattling to them in garrulous
+good-humour, and making bows to his acquaintances as they passed; and
+thinking innocently that Pen and George were both highly delighted by
+his anecdotes, which they suffered to run on in a scornful and silent
+acquiescence.
+
+At the time of Mr. Shamble’s sermon (an erratic Anglican divine, hired
+for the season at places of English resort, and addicted to debts,
+drinking, and even to roulette, it was said), Pen, chafing under the
+persecution which his womankind inflicted upon him, had been meditating
+a great act of revolt and of justice, as he had worked himself up to
+believe; and Warrington on his part had been thinking that a crisis in
+his affairs had likewise come, and that it was necessary for him to
+break away from a connexion which every day made more and more wretched
+and dear to him. Yes, the time was come. He took those fatal words,
+“Perhaps that is what you wished,” as a text for a gloomy homily, which
+he preached to himself, in the dark pew of his own heart, whilst Mr.
+Shamble was feebly giving utterance to his sermon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+“Fairoaks to let”
+
+
+Our poor widow (with the assistance of her faithful Martha of Fairoaks,
+who laughed and wondered at the German ways, and superintended the
+affairs of the simple household) had made a little feast in honour of
+Major Pendennis’s arrival, of which, however, only the Major and his
+two younger friends partook, for Helen sent to say that she was too
+unwell to dine at their table, and Laura bore her company. The Major
+talked for the party, and did not perceive, or choose to perceive, what
+a gloom and silence pervaded the other two sharers of the modest
+dinner. It was evening before Helen and Laura came into the
+sitting-room to join the company there. She came in leaning on Laura,
+with her back to the waning light, so that Arthur could not see how
+pallid and woe-stricken her face was, and as she went up to Pen, whom
+she had not seen during the day, and placed her fond arms on his
+shoulders and kissed him tenderly, Laura left her, and moved away to
+another part of the room. Pen remarked that his mother’s voice and her
+whole frame trembled, her hand was clammy cold as she put it up to his
+forehead, piteously embracing him. The spectacle of her misery only
+added, somehow, to the wrath and testiness of the young man. He
+scarcely returned the kiss which the suffering lady gave him: and the
+countenance with which he met the appeal of her look was hard and
+cruel. “She persecutes me,” he thought within himself, “and she comes
+to me with the air of a martyr!” “You look very ill, my child,” she
+said. “I don’t like to see you look in that way.” And she tottered to a
+sofa, still holding one of his passive hands in her thin cold clinging
+fingers.
+
+“I have had much to annoy me, mother,” Pen said, with a throbbing
+breast: and as he spoke Helen’s heart began to beat so, that she sate
+almost dead and speechless with terror.
+
+Warrington, Laura, and Major Pendennis, all remained breathless, aware
+that the storm was about to break.
+
+“I have had letters from London,” Arthur continued, “and one that has
+given me more pain than I ever had in my life. It tells me that former
+letters of mine have been intercepted and purloined away from
+me;—that—that a young creature who has shown the greatest love and care
+for me, has been most cruelly used by—by you, mother.”
+
+“For God’s sake stop,” cried out Warrington. “She’s ill—don’t you see
+she is ill?”
+
+“Let him go on,” said the widow, faintly.
+
+“Let him go on and kill her,” said Laura, rushing up to her mother’s
+side. “Speak on, sir, and see her die.”
+
+“It is you who are cruel,” cried Pen, more exasperated and more savage,
+because his own heart, naturally soft and weak, revolted indignantly at
+the injustice of the very suffering which was laid at his door. “It is
+you that are cruel, who attribute all this pain to me: it is you who
+are cruel with your wicked reproaches, your wicked doubts of me, your
+wicked persecutions of those who love me,—yes, those who love me, and
+who brave everything for me, and whom you despise and trample upon
+because they are of lower degree than you. Shall I tell you what I will
+do,—what I am resolved to do, now that I know what your conduct has
+been?—I will go back to this poor girl whom you turned out of my doors,
+and ask her to come back and share my home with me. I’ll defy the pride
+which persecutes her, and the pitiless suspicion which insults her and
+me.”
+
+“Do you mean, Pen, that you——” here the widow, with eager eyes and
+outstretched hands, was breaking out, but Laura stopped her: “Silence,
+hush, dear mother,” she cried, and the widow hushed. Savagely as Pen
+spoke, she was only too eager to hear what more he had to say. “Go on,
+Arthur, go on, Arthur,” was all she said, almost swooning away as she
+spoke.
+
+“By Gad, I say he shan’t go on, or I won’t hear him, by Gad,” the Major
+said, trembling too in his wrath. “If you choose, sir, after all we’ve
+done for you, after all I’ve done for you myself, to insult your mother
+and disgrace your name, by allying yourself with a low-born
+kitchen-girl, go and do it, by Gad,—but let us, ma’am, have no more to
+do with him. I wash my hands of you, sir,—I wash my hands of you. I’m
+an old fellow,—I ain’t long for this world. I come of as ancient and
+honourable a family as any in England, by Gad, and I did hope, before I
+went off the hooks, by Gad, that the fellow that I’d liked, and brought
+up, and nursed through life, by Jove, would do something to show me
+that our name—yes, the name of Pendennis, by Gad, was left
+undishonoured behind us, but if he won’t, dammy, I say, amen. By G—,
+both my father and my brother Jack were the proudest men in England,
+and I never would have thought that there would come this disgrace to
+my name,—never—and—and I’m ashamed that it’s Arthur Pendennis.” The old
+fellow’s voice here broke off into a sob: it was the second time that
+Arthur had brought tears from those wrinkled lids.
+
+The sound of his breaking voice stayed Pen’s anger instantly, and he
+stopped pacing the room, as he had been doing until that moment. Laura
+was by Helen’s sofa; and Warrington had remained hitherto an almost
+silent, but not uninterested spectator of the family storm. As the
+parties were talking, it had grown almost dark; and after the lull
+which succeeded the passionate outbreak of the Major, George’s deep
+voice, as it here broke trembling into the twilight room, was heard
+with no small emotion by all.
+
+“Will you let me tell you something about myself, my kind friends?” he
+said,—“you have been so good to me, ma’am, you have been so kind to me,
+Laura—I hope I may call you so sometimes—my dear Pen and I have been
+such friends that I have long wanted to tell you my story such as it
+is, and would have told it to you earlier but that it is a sad one and
+contains another’s secret. However, it may do good for Arthur to know
+it—it is right that every one here should. It will divert you from
+thinking about a subject, which, out of a fatal misconception, has
+caused a great deal of pain to all of you. May I please tell you, Mrs.
+Pendennis?”
+
+“Pray speak,” was all Helen said; and indeed she was not much heeding;
+her mind was full of another idea with which Pen’s words had supplied
+her, and she was in a terror of hope that what he had hinted might be
+as she wished.
+
+George filled himself a bumper of wine and emptied it, and began to
+speak. “You all of you know how you see me,” he said, “a man without a
+desire to make an advance in the world: careless about reputation; and
+living in a garret and from hand to mouth, though I have friends and a
+name, and I daresay capabilities of my own, that would serve me if I
+had a mind. But mind I have none. I shall die in that garret most
+likely, and alone. I nailed myself to that doom in early life. Shall I
+tell you what it was that interested me about Arthur years ago, and
+made me inclined towards him when first I saw him? The men from our
+college at Oxbridge brought up accounts of that early affair with the
+Chatteris actress, about whom Pen has talked to me since; and who, but
+for the Major’s generalship, might have been your daughter-in-law,
+ma’am. I can’t see Pen in the dark, but he blushes, I’m sure; and I
+dare say Miss Bell does; and my friend Major Pendennis, I dare say,
+laughs as he ought to do—for he won. What would have been Arthur’s lot
+now had he been tied at nineteen to an illiterate woman older than
+himself, with no qualities in common between them to make one a
+companion for the other, no equality, no confidence, and no love
+speedily? What could he have been but most miserable? And when he spoke
+just now and threatened a similar union, be sure it was but a threat
+occasioned by anger, which you must give me leave to say, ma’am, was
+very natural on his part, for after a generous and manly conduct—let me
+say who know the circumstances well—most generous and manly and
+self-denying (which is rare with him),—he has met from some friends of
+his with a most unkind suspicion, and has had to complain of the unfair
+treatment of another innocent person, towards whom he and you all are
+under much obligation.”
+
+The widow was going to get up here, and Warrington, seeing her attempt
+to rise, said, “Do I tire you, ma’am?”
+
+“Oh no—go on—go on,” said Helen, delighted, and he continued.
+
+“I liked him, you see, because of that early history of his, which had
+come to my ears in college gossip, and because I like a man, if you
+will pardon me for saying so, Miss Laura, who shows that he can have a
+great unreasonable attachment for a woman. That was why we became
+friends—and are all friends here—for always, aren’t we?” he added, in a
+lower voice, leaning over to her, “and Pen has been a great comfort and
+companion to a lonely and unfortunate man.
+
+“I am not complaining of my lot, you see; for no man’s is what he would
+have it; and up in my garret, where you left the flowers, and with my
+old books and my pipe for a wife, I am pretty contented, and only
+occasionally envy other men, whose careers in life are more brilliant,
+or who can solace their ill fortune by what Fate and my own fault has
+deprived me of—the affection of a woman or a child.” Here there came a
+sigh from somewhere near Warrington in the dark, and a hand was held
+out in his direction, which, however, was instantly, withdrawn, for the
+prudery of our females is such, that before all expression of feeling,
+or natural kindness and regard, a woman is ‘taught to think of herself
+and the proprieties, and to be ready to blush at the very slightest
+notice;’ and checking, as, of course, it ought, this spontaneous
+motion, modesty drew up again, kindly friendship shrank back ashamed of
+itself, and Warrington resumed his history. “My fate is such as I made
+it, and not lucky for me or for others involved in it.
+
+“I, too, had an adventure before I went to college; and there was no
+one to save me as Major Pendennis saved Pen. Pardon me, Miss Laura, if
+I tell this story before you. It is as well that you all of you should
+hear my confession. Before I went to college, as a boy of eighteen, I
+was at a private tutor’s, and there, like Arthur, I became attached, or
+fancied I was attached, to a woman of a much lower degree and a greater
+age than my own. You shrink from me——”
+
+“No, I don’t,” Laura said, and here the hand went out resolutely, and
+laid itself in Warrington’s. She had divined his story from some
+previous hints let fall by him, and his first words at its
+commencement.
+
+“She was a yeoman’s daughter in the neighbourhood,” Warrington said,
+with rather a faltering voice, “and I fancied—what all young men fancy.
+Her parents knew who my father was, and encouraged me, with all sorts
+of coarse artifices and scoundrel flatteries, which I see now, about
+their house. To do her justice, I own she never cared for me, but was
+forced into what happened by the threats and compulsion of her family.
+Would to God that I had not been deceived: but in these matters we are
+deceived because we wish to be so, and I thought I loved that poor
+woman.
+
+“What could come of such a marriage? I found, before long, that I was
+married to a boor. She could not comprehend one subject that interested
+me. Her dulness palled upon me till I grew to loathe it. And after some
+time of a wretched, furtive union—I must tell you all—I found letters
+somewhere (and such letters they were!) which showed me that her heart,
+such as it was, had never been mine, but had always belonged to a
+person of her own degree.
+
+“At my father’s death, I paid what debts I had contracted at college,
+and settled every shilling which remained to me in an annuity upon—upon
+those who bore my name, on condition that they should hide themselves
+away, and not assume it. They have kept that condition, as they would
+break it, for more money. If I had earned fame or reputation, that
+woman would have come to claim it: if I had made a name for myself
+those who had no right to it would have borne it; and I entered life at
+twenty, God help me—hopeless and ruined beyond remission. I was the
+boyish victim of vulgar cheats, and, perhaps, it is only of late I have
+found out how hard—ah, how hard—it is to forgive them. I told you the
+moral before, Pen; and now I have told you the fable. Beware how you
+marry out of your degree. I was made for a better lot than this, I
+think: but God has awarded me this one—and so, you see, it is for me to
+look on, and see others successful and others happy, with a heart that
+shall be as little bitter as possible.”
+
+“By Gad, sir,” cried the Major, in high good-humour, “I intended you to
+marry Miss Laura here.”
+
+“And, by Gad, Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound,” Warrington
+said.
+
+“How d’ye mean a thousand? it was only a pony, sir,” replied the Major
+simply, at which the other laughed.
+
+As for Helen, she was so delighted, that she started up, and said, “God
+bless you—God for ever bless you, Mr. Warrington;” and kissed both his
+hands, and ran up to Pen, and fell into his arms.
+
+“Yes, dearest mother,” he said as he held her to him, and with a noble
+tenderness and emotion, embraced and forgave her. “I am innocent, and
+my dear, dear mother has done me a wrong.”
+
+“Oh yes, my child, I have wronged you, thank God, I have wronged you!”
+Helen whispered. “Come away, Arthur—not here—I want to ask my child to
+forgive me—and—and my God, to forgive me; and to bless you, and love
+you, my son.”
+
+He led her, tottering, into her room, and closed the door, as the three
+touched spectators of the reconciliation looked on in pleased silence.
+Ever after, ever after, the tender accents of that voice faltering
+sweetly at his ear—the look of the sacred eyes beaming with an
+affection unutterable—the quiver of the fond lips smiling
+mournfully—were remembered by the young man. And at his best moments,
+and at his hours of trial and grief, and at his times of success or
+well-doing, the mother’s face looked down upon him, and blessed him
+with its gaze of pity and purity, as he saw it in that night when she
+yet lingered with him; and when she seemed, ere she quite left him, an
+angel, transfigured and glorified with love—for which love, as for the
+greatest of the bounties and wonders of God’s provision for us, let us
+kneel and thank Our Father.
+
+The moon had risen by this time; Arthur recollected well afterwards how
+it lighted up his mother’s sweet pale face. Their talk, or his rather,
+for she scarcely could speak, was more tender and confidential than it
+had been for years before. He was the frank and generous boy of her
+early days and love. He told her the story, the mistake regarding which
+had caused her so much pain—his struggles to fly from temptation, and
+his thankfulness that he had been able to overcome it. He never would
+do the girl wrong, never; or wound his own honour or his mother’s pure
+heart. The threat that he would return was uttered in a moment of
+exasperation, of which he repented. He never would see her again. But
+his mother said yes he should; and it was she who had been proud and
+culpable—and she would like to give Fanny Bolton something—and she
+begged her dear boy’s pardon for opening the letter—and she would write
+to the young girl, if,—if she had time. Poor thing! was it not natural
+that she should love her Arthur? And again she kissed him, and she
+blessed him.
+
+As they were talking the clock struck nine, and Helen reminded him how,
+when he was a little boy, she used to go up to his bedroom at that
+hour, and hear him say Our Father. And once more, oh, once more, the
+young man fell down at his mother’s sacred knees, and sobbed out the
+prayer which the Divine Tenderness uttered for us, and which has been
+echoed by twenty ages since by millions of sinful and humbled men. And
+as he spoke the last words of the supplication, the mother’s head fell
+down on her boy’s, and her arms closed round him, and together they
+repeated the words “for ever and ever” and “Amen.”
+
+A little time after, it might have been a quarter of an hour, Laura
+heard Arthur’s voice call from within, “Laura! Laura!” She rushed into
+the room instantly and found the young man still on his knees, and
+holding his mother’s hand. Helen’s head had sunk back and was quite
+pale in the room. Pen looked round, scared with a ghastly terror.
+“Help, Laura, help!” he said, “she’s fainted—she’s——”
+
+Laura screamed, and fell by the side of Helen. The shriek brought
+Warrington and Major Pendennis and the servants to the room. The
+sainted woman was dead. The last emotion of her soul here was joy to be
+henceforth unchequered and eternal. The tender heart beat no more; it
+was to have no more pangs, no more doubts, no more griefs and trials.
+Its last throb was love; and Helen’s last breath was a benediction.
+
+The melancholy party bent their way speedily homewards, and Helen was
+laid by her husband’s side at Clavering, in the old church where she
+had prayed so often. For a while Laura went to stay with Dr. Portman,
+who read the service over his dear departed sister, amidst his own sobs
+and those of the little congregation which assembled round Helen’s
+tomb. There were not many who cared for her, or who spoke of her when
+gone. Scarcely more than of a nun in a cloister did people know of that
+pious and gentle lady. A few words among the cottagers whom her bounty
+was accustomed to relieve, a little talk from house to house at
+Clavering, where this lady told how their neighbour died of a complaint
+in the heart; whilst that speculated upon the amount of a property
+which the widow had left; and a third wondered whether Arthur would let
+Fairoaks or live in it, and expected that he would not be long getting
+through his property,—this was all, and except with one or two who
+cherished her, the kind soul was forgotten by the next market-day.
+Would you desire that grief for you should last for a few more weeks?
+and does after-life seem less solitary, provided that our names, when
+we “go down into silence,” are echoing on this side of the grave yet
+for a little while, and human voices are still talking about us? She
+was gone, the pure soul, whom only two or three loved and knew. The
+great blank she left was in Laura’s heart, to whom her love had been
+everything, and who had now but to worship her memory. “I am glad that
+she gave me her blessing before she went away,” Warrington said to Pen;
+and as for Arthur, with a humble acknowledgment and wonder at so much
+affection, he hardly dared to ask of Heaven to make him worthy of it,
+though he felt that a saint there was interceding for him.
+
+All the lady’s affairs were found in perfect order, and her little
+property ready for transmission to her son, in trust for whom she held
+it. Papers in her desk showed that she had long been aware of the
+complaint, one of the heart, under which she laboured, and knew that it
+would suddenly remove her: and a prayer was found in her handwriting,
+asking that her end might be, as it was, in the arms of her son.
+
+Laura and Arthur talked over her sayings, all of which the former most
+fondly remembered, to the young man’s shame somewhat, who thought how
+much greater her love had been for Helen than his own. He referred
+himself entirely to Laura to know what Helen would have wished should
+be done; what poor persons she would have liked to relieve; what
+legacies or remembrances she would have wished to transmit. They packed
+up the vase which Helen in her gratitude had destined to Dr.
+Goodenough, and duly sent it to the kind Doctor; a silver coffee-pot,
+which she used, was sent off to Portman: a diamond ring, with her hair,
+was given with affectionate greeting to Warrington.
+
+It must have been a hard day for poor Laura when she went over to
+Fairoaks first and to the little room which she had occupied, and which
+was hers no more, and to the widow’s own blank chamber in which those
+two had passed so many beloved hours. There, of course, were the
+clothes in the wardrobe, the cushion on which she prayed, the chair at
+the toilette: the glass that was no more to reflect her dear sad face.
+After she had been here a while Pen knocked and led her downstairs to
+the parlour again, and made her drink a little wine, and said, “God
+bless you,” as she touched the glass. “Nothing shall ever be changed in
+your room,” he said—“it is always your room—it is always my sister’s
+room. Shall it not be so, Laura?” and Laura said, “Yes!”
+
+Among the widow’s papers was found a packet, marked by the widow,
+“Letters from Laura’s father,” and which Arthur gave to her. They were
+the letters which had passed between the cousins in the early days
+before the marriage of either of them. The ink was faded in which they
+were written: the tears dried out that both perhaps had shed over them:
+the grief healed now whose bitterness they chronicled: the friends
+doubtless united whose parting on earth had caused to both pangs so
+cruel. And Laura learned fully now for the first time what the tie was
+which had bound her so tenderly to Helen: how faithfully her more than
+mother had cherished her father’s memory, how truly she had loved him,
+how meekly resigned him.
+
+One legacy of his mother’s Pen remembered, of which Laura could have no
+cognisance. It was that wish of Helen’s to make some present to Fanny
+Bolton; and Pen wrote to her, putting his letter under an envelope to
+Mr. Bows, and requesting that gentleman to read it before he delivered
+it to Fanny. “Dear Fanny,” Pen said, “I have to acknowledge two letters
+from you, one of which was delayed in my illness” (Pen found the first
+letter in his mother’s desk after her decease and the reading it gave
+him a strange pang), “and to thank you, my kind nurse and friend, who
+watched me so tenderly during my fever. And I have to tell you that the
+last words of my dear mother who is no more, were words of goodwill and
+gratitude to you for nursing me: and she said she would have written to
+you, had she had time—that she would like to ask your pardon if she had
+harshly treated you—and that she would beg you to show your forgiveness
+by accepting some token of friendship and regard from her.” Pen
+concluded by saying that his friend, George Warrington, Esq., of Lamb
+Court, Temple, was trustee of a little sum of money, of which the
+interest would be paid to her until she became of age, or changed her
+name, which would always be affectionately remembered by her grateful
+friend, A. Pendennis. The sum was in truth but small, although enough
+to make a little heiress of Fanny Bolton, whose parents were appeased,
+and whose father said Mr. P. had acted quite as the gentleman—though
+Bows growled out that to plaster a wounded heart with a banknote was an
+easy kind of sympathy; and poor Fanny felt only too clearly that Pen’s
+letter was one of farewell.
+
+“Sending hundred-pound notes to porters’ daughters is all dev’lish
+well,” old Major Pendennis said to his nephew (whom, as the proprietor
+of Fairoaks and the head of the family, he now treated with marked
+deference and civility), “and as there was a little ready money at the
+bank, and your poor mother wished it, there’s perhaps no harm done.
+But, my good lad, I’d have you to remember that you’ve not above five
+hundred a year, though, thanks to me the world gives you credit for
+being a doosid deal better off; and, on my knees, I beg you, my boy,
+don’t break into your capital: Stick to it, sir; don’t speculate with
+it, sir; keep your land, and don’t borrow on it. Tatham tells me that
+the Chatteris branch of the railway may—will almost certainly pass
+through Chatteris, and of it can be brought on this side of the Brawl,
+sir, and through your fields, they’ll be worth a dev’lish deal of
+money, and your five hundred a year will jump up to eight or nine.
+Whatever it is, keep it, I implore you keep it. And I say, Pen, I think
+you should give up living in those dirty chambers in the Temple and let
+a decent lodging. And I should have a man, sir, to wait upon me; and a
+horse or two in town in the season. All this will pretty well swallow
+up your income, and I know you must live close. But remember you have a
+certain place in society, and you can’t afford to cut a poor figure in
+the world. What are you going to do in the winter? You don’t intend to
+stay down here, or, I suppose, to go on writing for
+that—what-d’ye-call-’em—that newspaper?”
+
+“Warrington and I are going abroad again, sir, for a little, and then
+we shall see what is to be done,” Arthur replied.
+
+“And you’ll let Fairoaks, of course? Good school in the neighbourhood;
+cheap country: dev’lish nice place for East India Colonels, or families
+wanting to retire. I’ll speak about it at the club; there are lots of
+fellows at the club want a place of that sort.”
+
+“I hope Laura will live in it for the winter, at least, and will make
+it her home,” Arthur replied: at which the Major pish’d and psha’d, and
+said that there ought to be convents, begad, for English ladies, and
+wished that Miss Bell had not been there to interfere with the
+arrangements of the family, and that she would mope herself to death
+alone in that place.
+
+Indeed, it would have been a very dismal abode for poor Laura, who was
+not too happy either in Dr. Portman’s household, and in the town where
+too many things reminded her of the dear parent whom she had lost. But
+old Lady Rockminster, who adored her young friend Laura, as soon as she
+read in the paper of her loss, and of her presence in the country,
+rushed over from Baymouth, where the old lady was staying, and insisted
+that Laura should remain six months, twelve months, all her life with
+her; and to her ladyship’s house, Martha from Fairoaks, as femme de
+chambre, accompanied her young mistress.
+
+Pen and Warrington saw her depart. It was difficult to say which of the
+young men seemed to regard her the most tenderly. “Your cousin is pert
+and rather vulgar, my dear, but he seems to have a good heart,” little
+Lady Rockminster said, who said her say about everybody—“but I like
+Bluebeard best. Tell me, is he touche au coeur?”
+
+“Mr. Warrington has been long—engaged,” Laura said, dropping her eyes.
+
+“Nonsense, child! And good heavens, my dear! that’s a pretty diamond
+cross. What do you mean by wearing it in the morning?”
+
+“Arthur—my brother, gave it me just now. It was—it was——”
+
+She could not finish the sentence. The carriage passed over the bridge,
+and by the dear, dear gate of Fairoaks—home no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX.
+Old Friends
+
+
+It chanced at that great English festival, at which all London takes a
+holiday upon Epsom Downs, that a great number of the personages to whom
+we have been introduced in the course of this history, were assembled
+to see the Derby. In a comfortable open carriage, which had been
+brought to the ground by a pair of horses, might be seen Mrs. Bungay,
+of Paternoster Row, attired like Solomon in all his glory, and having
+by her side modest Mrs. Shandon, for whom, since the commencement of
+their acquaintance, the worthy publisher’s lady had maintained a steady
+friendship. Bungay, having recreated himself with a copious luncheon,
+was madly shying at the sticks hard by, till the perspiration ran off
+his bald pate. Shandon was shambling about among the drinking tenants
+and gipsies: Finucane constant in attendance on the two ladies, to whom
+gentlemen of their acquaintance, and connected with the publishing
+house, came up to pay a visit.
+
+Among others, Mr. Archer came up to make her his bow, and told Mrs.
+Bungay who was on the course. Yonder was the Prime Minister: his
+lordship had just told him to back Borax for the race; but Archer
+thought Munmeer the better horse. He pointed out countless dukes and
+grandees to the delighted Mrs. Bungay. “Look yonder in the Grand
+Stand,” he said. “There sits the Chinese Ambassador with the Mandarins
+of his suite, Fou-choo-foo brought me over letters of introduction from
+the Governor-General of India, my most intimate friend, and I was for
+some time very kind to him, and he had his chopsticks laid for him at
+my table whenever he chose to come and dine. But he brought his own
+cook with him, and—would you believe it, Mrs. Bungay?—one day, when I
+was out, and the Ambassador was with Mrs. Archer in our garden eating
+gooseberries, of which the Chinese are passionately fond, the beast of
+a cook, seeing my wife’s dear little Blenheim spaniel (that we had from
+the Duke of Marlborough himself, whose ancestor’s life Mrs. Archer’s
+great-great-grandfather saved at the battle of Malplaquet), seized upon
+the poor little devil, cut his throat, and skinned him, and served him
+up stuffed with forced-meat in the second course.”
+
+“Law!” said Mrs. Bungay.
+
+“You may fancy my wife’s agony when she knew what had happened! The
+cook came screaming upstairs, and told us that she had found poor
+Fido’s skin in the area, just after we had all of us tasted of the
+dish! She never would speak to the Ambassador again—never; and, upon my
+word, he has never been to dine with us since. The Lord Mayor, who did
+me the honour to dine, liked the dish very much; and, eaten with green
+peas, it tastes rather like duck.”
+
+“You don’t say so, now!” cried the astonished publisher’s lady.
+
+“Fact, upon my word. Look at that lady in blue, seated by the
+Ambassador: that is Lady Flamingo, and they say she is going to be
+married to him, and return to Pekin with his Excellency. She is getting
+her feet squeezed down on purpose. But she’ll only cripple herself, and
+will never be able to do it—never. My wife has the smallest foot in
+England, and wears shoes for a six-years-old child; but what is that to
+a Chinese lady’s foot, Mrs. Bungay?”
+
+“Who is that carriage as Mr. Pendennis is with, Mr. Archer?” Mrs.
+Bungay presently asked. “He and Mr. Warrington was here jest now. He’s
+’aughty in his manners, that Mr. Pendennis, and well he may be, for I’m
+told he keeps tip-top company. ’As he ’ad a large fortune left him, Mr.
+Archer? He’s in black still, I see.”
+
+“Eighteen hundred a year in land, and twenty-two thousand five hundred
+in the Three-and-a-half per Cents; that’s about it,” said Mr. Archer.
+
+“Law! why, you know everything, Mr. A.!” cried the lady of Paternoster
+Row.
+
+“I happen to know, because I was called in about poor Mrs. Pendennis’s
+will,” Mr. Archer replied. “Pendennis’s uncle, the Major, seldom does
+anything without me; and as he is likely to be extravagant we’ve tied
+up the property, so that he can’t make ducks and drakes with it.—How do
+you do, my lord?—Do you know that gentleman, ladies? You have read his
+speeches in the House; it is Lord Rochester.”
+
+“Lord Fiddlestick,” cried out Finucane, from the box. “Sure it’s Tom
+Staples, of the Morning Advertiser, Archer.”
+
+“Is it?” Archer said, simply. “Well I’m very short-sighted, and upon my
+word I thought it was Rochester. That gentleman with the double
+opera-glass (another nod) is Lord John; and the tall man with him,
+don’t you know him? is Sir James.”
+
+“You know ’em because you see ’em in the House,” growled Finucane.
+
+“I know them because they are kind enough to allow me to call them my
+most intimate friends,” Archer continued. “Look at the Duke of
+Hampshire; what a pattern of a fine old English gentleman! He never
+misses ‘the Derby.’ ‘Archer,’ he said to me only yesterday, ‘I have
+been at sixty-five Derbies! appeared on the field for the first time on
+a piebald pony when I was seven years old, with my father, the Prince
+of Wales, and Colonel Hanger; and only missing two races—one when I had
+the measles at Eton, and one in the Waterloo year, when I was with my
+friend Wellington in Flanders.”
+
+“And who is that yellow carriage, with the pink and yellow parasols,
+that Mr. Pendennis is talking to, and ever so many gentlemen?” asked
+Mrs. Bungay.
+
+“That is Lady Clavering, of Clavering Park, next estate to my friend
+Pendennis. That is the young son and heir upon the box; he’s awfully
+tipsy, the little scamp! and the young lady is Miss Amory, Lady
+Clavering’s daughter by a first marriage, and uncommonly sweet upon my
+friend Pendennis; but I’ve reason to think he has his heart fixed
+elsewhere. You have heard of young Mr. Foker—the great brewer, Foker,
+you know—he was going to hang himself in consequence of a fatal passion
+for Miss Amory who refused him, but was cut down just in time by his
+valet, and is now abroad, under a keeper.”
+
+“How happy that young fellow is!” sighed Mrs. Bungay. “Who’d have
+thought when he came so quiet and demure to dine with us, three or four
+years ago, he would turn out such a grand character! Why, I saw his
+name at Court the other day, and presented by the Marquis of Steyne and
+all; and in every party of the nobility his name’s down as sure as a
+gun.”
+
+“I introduced him a good deal when he first came up to town,” Mr.
+Archer said, “and his uncle, Major Pendennis, did the rest. Hallo!
+There’s Cobden here, of all men in the world! I must go and speak to
+him. Good-bye, Mrs. Bungay. Good morning, Mrs. Shandon.”
+
+An hour previous to this time, and at a different part of the course,
+there might have been seen an old stage-coach, on the battered roof of
+which a crowd of shabby raffs were stamping and hallooing, as the great
+event of the day—the Derby race—rushed over the greensward, and by the
+shouting millions of people assembled to view that magnificent scene.
+This was Wheeler’s (the Harlequin’s Head) drag, which had brought down
+a company of choice spirits from Bow Street, with a slap-up luncheon in
+the boot. As the whirling race flashed by, each of the choice spirits
+bellowed out the name of the horse or the colours which he thought or
+he hoped might be foremost. “The Cornet!” “It’s Muffineer!” “It’s blue
+sleeves!” “Yallow cap! yallow cap! yallow cap!” and so forth, yelled
+the gentlemen sportsmen during that delicious and thrilling minute
+before the contest was decided; and as the fluttering signal blew out,
+showing the number of the famous horse Podasokus as winner of the race,
+one of the gentlemen on the Harlequin’s Head drag sprang up off the
+roof, as if he was a pigeon and about to fly away to London or York
+with the news.
+
+But his elation did not lift him many inches from his standing-place,
+to which he came down again on the instant, causing the boards of the
+crazy old coach-roof to crack with the weight of his joy. “Hurray,
+hurray!” he bawled out, “Podasokus is the horse! Supper for ten,
+Wheeler, my boy. Ask you all round of course, and damn the expense.”
+
+And the gentlemen on the carriage, the shabby swaggerers, the dubious
+bucks, said, “Thank you—congratulate you, Colonel; sup with you with
+pleasure:” and whispered to one another, “The Colonel stands to win
+fifteen hundred, and he got the odds from a good man, too.”
+
+And each of the shabby bucks and dusky dandies began to eye his
+neighbour with suspicion, lest that neighbour, taking his advantage,
+should get the Colonel into a lonely place and borrow money of him. And
+the winner on Podasokus could not be alone during the whole of that
+afternoon, so closely did his friends watch him and each other.
+
+At another part of the course you might have seen a vehicle certainly
+more modest, if not more shabby than that battered coach which had
+brought down the choice spirits from the Harlequin’s Head; this was cab
+No. 2002, which had conveyed a gentleman and two ladies from the
+cabstand in the Strand: whereof one of the ladies, as she sate on the
+box of the cab enjoying with her mamma and their companion a repast of
+lobster salad and bitter ale, looked so fresh and pretty that many of
+the splendid young dandies who were strolling about the course, and
+enjoying themselves at the noble diversion of Sticks, and talking to
+the beautifully dressed ladies in the beautiful carriages, on the hill,
+forsook these fascinations to have a glance at the smiling and
+rosy-cheeked lass on the cab. The blushes of youth and good-humour
+mantled on the girl’s cheeks, and played over that fair countenance
+like the pretty shining cloudlets on the serene sky overhead; the elder
+lady’s cheek was red too; but that was a permanent mottled rose,
+deepening only as it received free draughts of pale ale and
+brandy-and-water, until her face emulated the rich shell of the lobster
+which she devoured.
+
+The gentleman who escorted these two ladies was most active in
+attendance upon them: here on the course, as he had been during the
+previous journey. During the whole of that animated and delightful
+drive from London, his jokes had never ceased. He spoke up undauntedly
+to the most awful drags full of the biggest and most solemn guardsmen;
+as to the humblest donkey-chaise in which Bob the dustman was driving
+Molly to the race. He had fired astonishing volleys of what is called
+“chaff” into endless windows as he passed; into lines of grinning
+girls’ schools; into little regiments of shouting urchins hurraying
+behind the railings of their Classical and Commercial Academies; into
+casements whence smiling maid-servants, and nurses tossing babies, or
+demure old maiden ladies with dissenting countenances, were looking.
+And the pretty girl in the straw bonnet with pink ribbon, and her mamma
+the devourer of lobsters, had both agreed that when he was in “spirits”
+there was nothing like that Mr. Sam. He had crammed the cab with
+trophies won from the bankrupt proprietors of the Sticks hard by, and
+with countless pincushions, wooden apples, backy-boxes,
+Jack-in-the-boxes, and little soldiers. He had brought up a gipsy with
+a tawny child in her arms to tell the fortunes of the ladies: and the
+only cloud which momentarily obscured the sunshine of that happy party,
+was when the teller of fate informed the young lady that had had reason
+to beware of a fair man, who was false to her: that she had had a bad
+illness, and that she would find that a man would prove true.
+
+The girl looked very much abashed at this news: her mother and the
+young man interchanged signs of wonder and intelligence. Perhaps the
+conjurer had used the same words to a hundred different carriages on
+that day.
+
+Making his way solitary amongst the crowd and the carriages, and
+noting, according to his wont, the various circumstances and characters
+which the animated scene presented, a young friend of ours came
+suddenly upon cab 2002, and the little group of persons assembled on
+the outside of the vehicle. As he caught sight of the young lady on the
+box, she started and turned pale: her mother became redder than ever:
+the heretofore gay and triumphant Mr. Sam immediately assumed a fierce
+and suspicious look, and his eyes turned savagely from Fanny Bolton
+(whom the reader, no doubt, has recognised in the young lady of the
+cab) to Arthur Pendennis, advancing to meet her.
+
+Arthur, too, looked dark and suspicious on perceiving Mr. Samuel Huxter
+in company with his old acquaintances: his suspicion was that of
+alarmed morality, and, I dare say, highly creditable to Mr. Arthur:
+like the suspicion of Mrs. Lynx, when she sees Mr. Brown and Mrs. Jones
+talking together, or when she remarks Mrs. Lamb twice or thrice in a
+handsome opera-box. There may be no harm in the conversation of Mr. B.
+and Mr. J.: and Mrs. Lamb’s opera-box (though she notoriously can’t
+afford one) may be honestly come by: but yet a moralist like Mrs. Lynx
+has a right to the little precautionary fright: and Arthur was no doubt
+justified in adopting that severe demeanour of his.
+
+Fanny’s heart began to patter violently: Huxter’s fists, plunged into
+the pockets of his paletot, clenched themselves involuntarily and armed
+themselves, as it were, in ambush: Mrs. Bolton began to talk with all
+her might, and with a wonderful volubility: and Lor! she was so ’apply
+to see Mr. Pendennis, and how well he was a-lookin’, and we’d been
+talking’ about Mr. P. only jest before; hadn’t we, Fanny? and if this
+was the famous Epsom races that they talked so much about, she didn’t
+care, for her part, if she never saw them again. And how was Major
+Pendennis, and that kind Mr. Warrington, who brought Mr. P.’s great
+kindness to Fanny? and she never would forget it, never: and Mr.
+Warrington was so tall, he almost broke his ’ead up against their lodge
+door. You recollect Mr. Warrington a-knocking’ of his head—don’t you,
+Fanny?
+
+Whilst Mrs. Bolton was so discoursing, I wonder how many thousands of
+thoughts passed through Fanny’s mind, and what dear times, sad
+struggles, lonely griefs, and subsequent shamefaced consolations were
+recalled to her? What pangs had the poor little thing, as she thought
+how much she had loved him, and that she loved him no more? There he
+stood, about whom she was going to die ten months since, dandified,
+supercilious, with a black crape to his white hat, and jet buttons in
+his shirt-front and a pink in his coat, that some one else had probably
+given him: with the tightest lavender-coloured gloves sewn with black
+and the smallest of canes. And Mr. Huxter wore no gloves, and great
+Blucher boots, and smelt very much of tobacco certainly; and looked,
+oh, it must be owned, he looked as if a bucket of water would do him a
+great deal of good! All these thoughts, and a myriad of others, rushed
+through Fanny’s mind as her mamma was delivering herself of her speech,
+and as the girl, from under her eyes, surveyed Pendennis—surveyed him
+entirely from head to foot, the circle on his white forehead that his
+hat left when he lifted it (his beautiful, beautiful hair had grown
+again), the trinkets at his watch-chain, the ring on his hand under his
+glove, the neat shining boot, so, so unlike Sam’s high-low!—and after
+her hand had given a little twittering pressure to the
+lavender-coloured kid grasp which was held out to it, and after her
+mother had delivered herself of her speech, all Fanny could find to say
+was, “This is Mr. Samuel Huxter whom you knew formerly, I believe, sir;
+Mr. Samuel, you know you knew Mr. Pendennis formerly—and—and, will you
+take a little refreshment?”
+
+These little words, tremulous and uncoloured as they were, yet were
+understood by Pendennis in such a manner as to take a great load of
+suspicion from off his mind—of remorse, perhaps, from his heart. The
+frown on the countenance of the Prince of Fairoaks disappeared, and a
+good-natured smile and a knowing twinkle of the eyes illuminated his
+highness’s countenance. “I am very thirsty,” he said, “and I will be
+glad to drink your health, Fanny; and I hope Mr. Huxter will pardon me
+for having been very rude to him the last time we met, and when I was
+so ill and out of spirits, that indeed I scarcely knew what I said.”
+And herewith the lavender-coloured Dexter kid-glove was handed out, in
+token of amity, to Huxter.
+
+The dirty fist in the young surgeon’s pocket was obliged to undoable
+itself, and come out of its ambush disarmed. The poor fellow himself
+felt, as he laid it in Pen’s hand, how hot his own was, and how
+black—it left black marks on Pen’s gloves; he saw them,—he would have
+liked to have clenched it again and dashed it into the other’s
+good-humoured face; and have seen, there upon that round, with Fanny,
+with all England looking on, which was the best man—he Sam Huxter of
+Bartholomew’s, or that grinning dandy.
+
+Pen with ineffable good-humour took a glass—he didn’t mind what it
+was—he was content to drink after the ladies; and he filled it with
+frothing lukewarm beer, which he pronounced to be delicious, and which
+he drank cordially to the health of the party.
+
+As he was drinking and talking on in an engaging manner, a young lady
+in a shot dove-coloured dress, with a white parasol lined with pink,
+and the prettiest dove-coloured boots that ever stepped, passed by Pen,
+leaning on the arm of a stalwart gentleman with a military moustache.
+
+The young lady clenched her little fist, and gave a mischievous
+side-look as she passed Pen. He of the mustachios burst out into a
+jolly laugh. He had taken off his hat to the ladies of cab No. 2002.
+You should have seen Fanny Bolton’s eyes watching after the
+dove-coloured young lady. Immediately Huxter perceived the direction
+which they took, they ceased looking after the dove-coloured nymph, and
+they turned and looked into Sam Huxter’s orbs with the most artless
+good-humoured expression.
+
+“What a beautiful creature!” Fanny said. “What a lovely dress! Did you
+remark, Mr. Sam, such little, little hands?”
+
+“It was Capting Strong,” said Mrs. Bolton: “and who was the young
+woman, I wonder?”
+
+“A neighbour of mine in the country—Miss ‘Amory,’” Arthur said,—“Lady
+Clavering’s daughter. You’ve seen Sir Francis often in Shepherd’s Inn,
+Mrs. Bolton.”
+
+As he spoke, Fanny built up a perfect romance in three
+volumes—love—faithlessness—splendid marriage at St. George’s, Hanover
+Square—broken-hearted maid—and Sam Huxter was not the hero of that
+story—poor Sam, who by this time had got out an exceedingly rank Cuba
+cigar, and was smoking it under Fanny’s little nose.
+
+After that confounded prig Pendennis joined and left the party, the sun
+was less bright to Sam Huxter, the sky less blue—the Sticks had no
+attraction for him—the bitter beer hot and undrinkable—the world was
+changed. He had a quantity of peas and a tin pea-shooter in the pocket
+of the cab for amusement on the homeward route. He didn’t take them
+out, and forgot their existence until some other wag, on their return
+from the races, fired a volley into Sam’s sad face; upon which salute,
+after a few oaths indicative of surprise, he burst into a savage and
+sardonic laugh.
+
+But Fanny was charming all the way home. She coaxed, and snuggled, and
+smiled. She laughed pretty laughs; she admired everything; she took out
+the darling little Jack-in-the-boxes, and was so obliged to Sam. And
+when they got home, and Mr. Huxter, still with darkness on his
+countenance, was taking a frigid leave of her—she burst into tears, and
+said he was a naughty unkind thing.
+
+Upon which, with a burst of emotion almost as emphatic as hers, the
+young surgeon held the girl in his arms—swore that she was an angel,
+and that he was a jealous brute; owned that he was unworthy of her, and
+that he had no right to hate Pendennis; and asked her, implored her, to
+say once more that she——
+
+That she what?—The end of the question and Fanny’s answer were
+pronounced by lips that were so near each other, that no bystander
+could hear the words. Mrs. Bolton only said, “Come, come, Mr. H.—no
+nonsense, if you please; and I think you’ve acted like a wicked wretch,
+and been most uncommon cruel to Fanny, that I do.”
+
+When Arthur left No. 2002, he went to pay his respects to the carriage
+to which, and to the side of her mamma, the dove-coloured author of Mes
+Larmes had by this time returned. Indefatigable old Major Pendennis was
+in waiting upon Lady Clavering, and had occupied the back seat in her
+carriage; the box being in possession of young Hopeful, under the care
+of Captain Strong.
+
+A number of dandies, and men of a certain fashion—of military bucks, of
+young rakes of the public offices, of those who may be styled men’s men
+rather than ladies’—had come about the carriage during its station on
+the hill—and had exchanged a word or two with Lady Clavering, and a
+little talk (a little “chaff,” some of the most elegant of the men
+styled their conversation) with Miss Amory. They had offered her
+sportive bets, and exchanged with her all sorts of free-talk and
+knowing innuendoes. They pointed out to her who was on the course: and
+the “who” was not always the person a young lady should know.
+
+When Pen came up to Lady Clavering’s carriage, he had to push his way
+through a crowd of these young bucks who were paying their court to
+Miss Amory, in order to arrive as near that young lady, who beckoned
+him by many pretty signals to her side.
+
+“Je lay vue,” she said; “Elle a de bien beaux yeux; vous etes un
+monster!”
+
+“Why monster?” said Pen, with a laugh; “Hone suit qui mal y peens. My
+young friend, yonder, is as well protected as any young lady in
+Christendom. She has her mamma on one side, her pretend on the other.
+Could any harm happen to a girl between those two?”
+
+“One does not know what may or may not arrive,” said Miss Blanche, in
+French, “when a girl has the mind, and when she is pursued by a wicked
+monster like you. Figure to yourself, Major, that I come to find
+Monsieur, your nephew, near to a cab, by two ladies, and a man, oh,
+such a man! and who ate lobsters, and who laughed, who laughed!”
+
+“It did not strike me that the man laughed,” Pen said, “And as for
+lobsters, I thought he would have liked to eat me after the lobsters.
+He shook hands with me, and gripped me so, that he bruised my glove
+black-and-blue. He is a young surgeon. He comes from Clavering. Don’t
+you remember the gilt pestle and mortar in High Street?”
+
+“If he attends you when you are sick,” continued Miss Amory, “he will
+kill you. He will serve you right; for you are a monster.”
+
+The perpetual recurrence to the word “monster” jarred upon Pen. “She
+speaks about these matters a great deal too lightly,” he thought. “If I
+had been a monster, as she calls it, she would have received me just
+the same. This is not the way in which an English lady should speak or
+think. Laura would not speak in that way, thank God;” and as he thought
+so, his own countenance fell.
+
+“Of what are you thinking? Are you going to bouder me at present?”
+Blanche asked. “Major, scold your mechant nephew. He does not amuse me
+at all. He is as bete as Captain Crackenbury.”
+
+“What are you saying about me, Miss Amory?” said the guardsman, with a
+grin. “If it’s anything good, say it in English, for I don’t understand
+French when it’s spoke so devilish quick.”
+
+“It ain’t anything good, Crack,” said Crackenbury’s fellow, Captain
+Clinker. “Let’s come away, and don’t spoil sport. They say Pendennis is
+sweet upon her.”
+
+“I’m told he’s a devilish clever fellow,” sighed Crackenbury. “Lady
+Violet Lebas says he’s a devilish clever fellow. He wrote a work, or a
+poem, or something; and he writes those devilish clever things in
+the—in the papers, you know. Dammy, I wish I was a clever fellow,
+Clinker.”
+
+“That’s past wishing for, Crack, my boy,” the other said. “I can’t
+write a good book, but I think I can make a pretty good one on the
+Derby. What a flat Clavering is! And the Begum! I like that old Begum.
+She’s worth ten of her daughter. How pleased the old girl was at
+winning the lottery!”
+
+“Clavering’s safe to pay up, ain’t he?” asked Captain Crackenbury.
+
+“I hope so,” said his friend; and they disappeared, to enjoy themselves
+among the Sticks.
+
+Before the end of the day’s amusements, many more gentlemen of Lady
+Clavering’s acquaintance came up to her carriage, and chatted with the
+party which it contained. The worthy lady was in high spirits and
+good-humour, laughing and talking according to her wont, and offering
+refreshments to all her friends, until her ample baskets and bottles
+were emptied, and her servants and postillions were in such a royal
+state of excitement as servants and postillions commonly are upon the
+Derby day.
+
+The Major remarked that some of the visitors to the carriage appeared
+to look with rather queer and meaning glances towards its owner. “How
+easily she takes it!” one man whispered to another. “The Begum’s made
+of money,” the friend replied. “How easily she takes what?” thought old
+Pendennis. “Has anybody lost any money?” Lady Clavering said she was
+happy in the morning because Sir Francis had promised her not to bet.
+
+Mr. Welbore, the country neighbour of the Claverings, was passing the
+carriage, when he was called back by the Begum, who rallied him for
+wishing to cut her. “Why didn’t he come before? Why didn’t he come to
+lunch?” Her ladyship was in great delight, she told him—she told
+everybody, that she had won five pounds in a lottery. As she conveyed
+this piece of intelligence to him, Mr. Welbore looked so particularly
+knowing, and withal melancholy, that a dismal apprehension seized upon
+Major Pendennis. “He would go and look after the horses and those
+rascals of postillions, who were so long in coming round.” When he came
+back to the carriage, his usually benign and smirking countenance was
+obscured by some sorrow. “What is the matter with you now?” the
+good-natured Begum asked. The Major pretended a headache from the
+fatigue and sunshine of the day. The carriage wheeled off the course
+and took its way Londonwards, not the least brilliant equipage in that
+vast and picturesque procession. The tipsy drivers dashed gallantly
+over the turf, amidst the admiration of foot-passengers, the ironical
+cheers of the little donkey-carriages and spring vans, and the loud
+objurgations of horse-and-chaise men, with whom the reckless post-boys
+came in contact. The jolly Begum looked the picture of good-humour as
+she reclined on her splendid cushions; the lovely Sylphide smiled with
+languid elegance. Many an honest holiday-maker with his family wadded
+into a tax-cart, many a cheap dandy working his way home on his weary
+hack, admired that brilliant turn-out, and thought, no doubt, how happy
+those “swells” must be. Strong sat on the box still, with a lordly
+voice calling to the post-boys and the crowd. Master Frank had been put
+inside of the carriage and was asleep there by the side of the Major,
+dozing away the effects of the constant luncheon and champagne of which
+he had freely partaken.
+
+The Major was revolving in his mind meanwhile the news the receipt of
+which had made him so grave. “If Sir Francis Clavering goes on in this
+way,” Pendennis the elder thought, “this little tipsy rascal will be as
+bankrupt as his father and grandfather before him. The Begum’s fortune
+can’t stand such drains upon it: no fortune can stand them: she has
+paid his debts half a dozen times already. A few years more of the
+turf, and a few coups like this, will ruin her.”
+
+“Don’t you think we could get up races at Clavering, mamma?” Miss Amory
+asked. “Yes, we must have them there again. There were races there in
+the old times, the good old times. It’s a national amusement, you know:
+and we could have a Clavering ball: and we might have dances for the
+tenantry, and rustic sports in the park—Oh, it would be charming.”
+
+“Capital fun,” said mamma. “Wouldn’t it, Major?”
+
+“The turf is a very expensive amusement, my dear lady,” Major Pendennis
+answered, with such a rueful face, that the Begum rallied him, and
+asked laughingly whether he had lost money on the race?
+
+After a slumber of about an hour and a half, the heir of the house
+began to exhibit symptoms of wakefulness, stretching his youthful arms
+over the Major’s face, and kicking his sister’s knees as she sate
+opposite to him. When the amiable youth was quite restored to
+consciousness, he began a sprightly conversation.
+
+“I say, Ma,” he said, “I’ve gone and done it this time, I have.”
+
+“What have you gone and done, Franky dear?” asked Mamma.
+
+“How much is seventeen half-crowns? Two pound and half-a crown, ain’t
+it? I drew Borax in our lottery, but I bought Podasokus and
+Man-milliner of Leggat minor for two open tarts and a bottle of
+ginger-beer.”
+
+“You little wicked gambling creature, how dare you begin so soon?”
+cried Miss Amory.
+
+“Hold your tongue, if you please. Who ever asked your leave, miss?” the
+brother said. “And I say, Ma——”
+
+“Well, Franky dear?”
+
+“You’ll tip me all the same, you know, when I go back——” and here he
+broke out into a laugh. “I say, Ma, shall I tell you something?”
+
+The Begum expressed her desire to hear this something, and her son and
+heir continued:
+
+“When me and Strong was down at the grand stand after the race, and I
+was talking to Leggat minor, who was there with his governor, I saw Pa
+look as savage as a bear. And I say, Ma, Leggat minor told me that he
+heard his governor say that Pa had lost seven thousand backing the
+favourite. I’ll never back the favourite when I’m of age. No, no—hang
+me if I do: leave me alone, Strong, will you?”
+
+“Captain Strong! Captain Strong! is this true?” cried out the
+unfortunate Begum. “Has Sir Francis been betting again? He promised me
+he wouldn’t. He gave me his word of honour he wouldn’t.”
+
+Strong, from his place on the box, had overheard the end of young
+Clavering’s communication, and was trying in vain to stop his unlucky
+tongue.
+
+“I’m afraid it’s true, ma’am,” he said, turning round, “I deplore the
+loss as much as you can. He promised me as he promised you; but the
+play is too strong for him! he can’t refrain from it.”
+
+Lady Clavering at this sad news burst into a fit of tears. She deplored
+her wretched fate as the most miserable of women, she declared she
+would separate, and pay no more debts for the ungrateful man. She
+narrated with tearful volubility a score of stories only too authentic,
+which showed how her husband had deceived, and how constantly she had
+befriended him: and in this melancholy condition, whilst young Hopeful
+was thinking about the two guineas which he himself had won; and the
+Major revolving, in his darkened mind, whether certain plans which he
+had been forming had better not be abandoned; the splendid carriage
+drove up at length to the Begum’s house in Grosvenor Place; the idlers
+and boys lingering about the place to witness, according to public
+wont, the close of the Derby Day, cheering the carriage as it drew up,
+and envying the happy folks who descended from it.
+
+“And it’s for the son of this man that I am made a beggar!” Blanche
+said, quivering with anger, as she walked upstairs leaning on the
+Major’s arm—“for this cheat—for this blackleg—for this liar—for this
+robber of women.”
+
+“Calm yourself, my dear Miss Blanche,” the old gentleman said; “I pray
+calm yourself. You have been hardly treated, most unjustly. But
+remember that you have always a friend in me, and trust to an old
+fellow who will try and serve you.”
+
+And the young lady, and the heir of the hopeful house of Clavering,
+having retired to their beds, the remaining three of the Epsom party
+remained for some time in deep consultation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX.
+Explanations
+
+
+Almost a year, as the reader will perceive, has passed since an event
+described a few pages back. Arthur’s black coat is about to be
+exchanged for a blue one. His person has undergone other more pleasing
+and remarkable changes. His wig has been laid aside, and his hair,
+though somewhat thinner, has returned to public view. And he has had
+the honour of appearing at Court in the uniform of a Cornet of the
+Clavering troop of the ——shire Yeomanry Cavalry, being presented to the
+Sovereign by the Marquis of Steyne.
+
+This was a measure strongly and pathetically urged by Arthur’s uncle.
+The Major would not hear of a year passing before this ceremony of
+gentlemanhood was gone through. The old gentleman thought that his
+nephew should belong to some rather more select Club than the
+Megatherium; and has announced everywhere in the world his
+disappointment that the young man’s property has turned out not by any
+means as well as he could have hoped, and is under fifteen hundred a
+year.
+
+That is the amount at which Pendennis’s property is set down in the
+world—where his publishers begin to respect him much more than
+formerly, and where even mammas are by no means uncivil to him. For if
+the pretty daughters are, naturally, to marry people of very different
+expectations—at any rate, he will be eligible for the plain ones: and
+if the brilliant and fascinating Myra is to hook an Earl, poor little
+Beatrice, who has one shoulder higher than the other, must hang on to
+some boor through life, and why should not Mr. Pendennis be her
+support? In the very first winter after the accession to his mother’s
+fortune, Mrs. Hawxby in a country-house caused her Beatrice to learn
+billiards from Mr. Pendennis and would be driven by nobody but him in
+the pony carriage, because he was literary and her Beatrice was
+literary too, and declared that the young man, under the instigation of
+his horrid old uncle, had behaved most infamously in trifling with
+Beatrice’s feelings. The truth is the old gentleman, who knew Mrs.
+Hawxby’s character, and how desperately that lady would practise upon
+unwary young men, had come to the country-house in question and carried
+Arthur out of the danger of her immediate claws, though not out of the
+reach of her tongue. The elder Pendennis would have had his nephew pass
+a part of the Christmas at Clavering, whither the family had returned;
+but Arthur had not the heart for that. Clavering was too near poor old
+Fairoaks; and that was too full of sad recollections for the young man.
+
+We have lost sight of the Claverings, too, until their reappearance
+upon the Epsom race-ground, and must give a brief account of them in
+the interval. During the past year, the world has not treated any
+member of the Clavering family very kindly; Lady Clavering, one of the
+best-natured women that ever enjoyed a good dinner, or made a slip in
+grammar, has had her appetite and good-nature sadly tried by constant
+family grievances, and disputes such as make the efforts of the best
+French cook unpalatable, and the most delicately-stuffed sofa-cushion
+hard to lie on. “I’d rather have a turnip, Strong, for dessert, than
+that pineapple, and all them Muscatel grapes, from Clavering,” says
+poor Lady Clavering, looking at her dinner-table, and confiding her
+grief to her faithful friend, “if I could but have a little quiet to
+eat it with. Oh, how much happier I was when I was a widow and before
+all this money fell in to me!”
+
+The Clavering family had indeed made a false start in life, and had got
+neither conduct, nor position, nor thanks for the hospitalities which
+they administered, nor a return of kindness from the people whom they
+entertained. The success of their first London season was doubtful; and
+their failure afterwards notorious. “Human patience was not great
+enough to put up with Sir Francis Clavering,” people said. “He was too
+hopelessly low, dull, and disreputable. You could not say what, but
+there was a taint about the house and its entourages. Who was the
+Begum, with her money, and without her h’s, and where did she come
+from? What an extraordinary little piece of conceit the daughter was,
+with her Gallicised graces and daring affectations, not fit for
+well-bred English girls to associate with! What strange people were
+those they assembled round about them! Sir Francis Clavering was a
+gambler, living notoriously in the society of blacklegs and
+profligates. Hely Clinker, who was in his regiment, said that he not
+only cheated at cards, but showed the white feather. What could Lady
+Rockminster have meant by taking her up? After the first season,
+indeed, Lady Rockminster, who had taken up Lady Clavering, put her
+down; the great ladies would not take their daughters to her parties;
+the young men who attended them behaved with the most odious freedom
+and scornful familiarity; and poor Lady Clavering herself avowed that
+she was obliged to take what she called ‘the canal’ into her parlour,
+because the tip-tops wouldn’t come.”
+
+She had not the slightest ill-will towards “the canal,” the poor dear
+lady, or any pride about herself, or idea, that she was better than her
+neighbour; but she had taken implicitly the orders which on her entry
+into the world her social godmother had given her: she had been willing
+to know whom they knew, and ask whom they asked. The “canal,” in fact,
+was much pleasanter than what is called “society;” but, as we said
+before, that to leave a mistress is easy, while, on the contrary, to be
+left by her is cruel: so you may give up society without any great
+pang, or anything but a sensation of relief at the parting; but severe
+are the mortifications and pains you have if society gives up you.
+
+One young man of fashion we have mentioned, who at least it might have
+been expected would have been found faithful amongst the faithless, and
+Harry Foker, Esq., was indeed that young man. But he had not managed
+matters with prudence, and the unhappy passion at first confided to Pen
+became notorious and ridiculous to the town, was carried to the ears of
+his weak and fond mother; and finally brought under the cognisance of
+the bald-headed and inflexible Foker senior.
+
+When Mr. Foker learned this disagreeable news, there took place between
+him and his son a violent and painful scene, which ended in the poor
+little gentleman’s banishment from England for a year, with a positive
+order to return at the expiration of that time and complete his
+marriage with his cousin, or to retire into private life and three
+hundred a year altogether, and never see parent or brewery more. Mr.
+Henry Foker went away then, carrying with him that grief and care which
+passes free at the strictest Custom-houses, and which proverbially
+accompanies the exile; and with this crape over his eyes, even the
+Parisian Boulevard looked melancholy to him, and the sky of Italy
+black.
+
+To Sir Francis Clavering, that year was a most unfortunate one. The
+events described in the last chapter came to complete the ruin of the
+year. It was that year of grace in which, as our sporting readers may
+remember, Lord Harrowhill’s horse (he was a classical young nobleman,
+and named his stud out of the Iliad)—when Podasokus won the Derby, to
+the dismay of the knowing ones, who pronounced the winning horse’s name
+in various extraordinary ways, and who backed Borax, who was nowhere in
+the race. Sir Francis Clavering, who was intimate with some of the most
+rascally characters of the turf, and, of course, had “valuable
+information,” had laid heavy odds against the winning horse, and backed
+the favourite freely, and the result of his dealings was, as his son
+correctly stated to poor Lady Clavering, a loss of seven thousand
+pounds.
+
+Indeed, it was a cruel blow upon the lady, who had discharged her
+husband’s debts many times over; who had received as many times his
+oaths and promises of amendment; who had paid his money-lenders and
+horse-dealers; who had furnished his town and country houses, and who
+was called upon now instantly to meet this enormous sum, the penalty of
+her cowardly husband’s extravagance.
+
+It has been described in former pages how the elder Pendennis had
+become the adviser of the Clavering family, and, in his quality of
+intimate friend of the house, had gone over every room of it, and even
+seen that ugly closet which we all of us have, and in which, according
+to the proverb, the family skeleton is locked up. About the Baronet’s
+pecuniary matters, if the Major did not know, it was because Clavering
+himself did not know them, and hid them from himself and others in such
+a hopeless entanglement of lies that it was impossible for adviser or
+attorney or principal to get an accurate knowledge of his affairs. But,
+concerning Lady Clavering, the Major was much better informed; and when
+the unlucky mishap of the Derby arose, he took upon himself to become
+completely and thoroughly acquainted with all her means, whatsoever
+they were; and was now accurately informed of the vast and repeated
+sacrifices which the widow Amory had made in behalf of her present
+husband.
+
+He did not conceal—and he had won no small favour from Miss Blanche by
+avowing it—his opinion, that Lady Clavering’s daughter had been hardly
+treated at the expense of her son, by her second marriage: and in his
+conversations with Lady Clavering had fairly hinted that he thought
+Miss Blanche ought to have a better provision. We have said that he had
+already given the widow to understand that he knew all the particulars
+of her early and unfortunate history, having been in India at the time
+when—when the painful circumstances occurred which had ended in her
+parting from her first husband. He could tell her where to find the
+Calcutta newspaper which contained the account of Amory’s trial, and he
+showed, and the Begum was not a little grateful to him for his
+forbearance, how, being aware all along of this mishap which had
+befallen her, he had kept all knowledge of it to himself, and been
+constantly the friend of her family.
+
+“Interested motives, my dear Lady Clavering,” he said, “of course I may
+have had. We all have interested motives, and mine, I don’t conceal
+from you, was to make a marriage between my nephew and your daughter.”
+To which Lady Clavering, perhaps with some surprise that the Major
+should choose her family for a union with his own, said she was quite
+willing to consent.
+
+But frankly he said, “My dear lady, my boy has but five hundred a year,
+and a wife with ten thousand pounds to her fortune would scarcely
+better him. We could do better for him than that, permit me to say, and
+he is a shrewd, cautious young fellow who has sown his wild oats
+now—who has very good parts and plenty of ambition—and whose object in
+marrying is to better himself. If you and Sir Francis chose—and Sir
+Francis, take my word for it, will refuse you nothing—you could put
+Arthur in a way to advance very considerably in the world, and show the
+stuff which he has in him. Of what use is that seat in Parliament to
+Clavering, who scarcely ever shows his face in the House, or speaks a
+word there? I’m told by gentlemen who heard my boy at Oxbridge, that he
+was famous as an orator, begad!—and once put his foot into the stirrup
+and mount him, I’ve no doubt he won’t be the last of the field, ma’am.
+I’ve tested the chap, and know him pretty well, I think. He is much too
+lazy, and careless, and flighty a fellow, to make a jog-trot journey,
+and arrive, as your lawyers do, at the end of their lives! but give him
+a start and good friends, and an opportunity, and take my word for it,
+he’ll make himself a name that his sons shall be proud of. I don’t see
+any way for a fellow like him to parvenir, but by making a prudent
+marriage—not with a beggarly heiress—to sit down for life upon a
+miserable fifteen hundred a year—but with somebody whom he can help,
+and who can help him forward in the world, and whom he can give a good
+name and a station in the country, begad, in return for the advantages
+which she brings him. It would be better for you to have a
+distinguished son-in-law, than to keep your husband on in Parliament,
+who’s of no good to himself or to anybody else there, and that’s, I
+say, why I’ve been interested about you, and offer you what I think a
+good bargain for both.”
+
+“You know I look upon Arthur as one of the family almost now,” said the
+good-natured Begum; “he comes and goes when he likes; and the more I
+think of his dear mother, the more I see there’s few people so
+good—none so good to me. And I’m sure I cried when I heard of her
+death, and would have gone into mourning for her myself, only black
+don’t become me. And I know who his mother wanted him to marry—Laura, I
+mean—whom old Lady Rockminster has taken such a fancy to, and, no
+wonder. She’s a better girl than my girl. I know both. And my
+Betsy—Blanche, I mean—ain’t been a comfort to me, Major. It’s Laura Pen
+ought to marry.
+
+“Marry on five hundred a year! My dear good soul, you are mad!” Major
+Pendennis said. “Think over what I have said to you. Do nothing in your
+affairs with that unhappy husband of yours without consulting me; and
+remember that old Pendennis is always your friend.”
+
+For some time previous, Pen’s uncle had held similar language to Miss
+Amory. He had pointed out to her the convenience of the match which he
+had at heart, and was bound to say, that mutual convenience was of all
+things the very best in the world to marry upon—the only thing. “Look
+at your love-marriages, my dear young creature. The love-match people
+are the most notorious of all for quarrelling afterwards; and a girl
+who runs away with Jack to Gretna Green, constantly runs away with Tom
+to Switzerland afterwards. The great point in marriage is for people to
+agree to be useful to one another. The lady brings the means, and the
+gentleman avails himself of them. My boy’s wife brings the horse, and
+begad Pen goes in and wins the plate. That’s what I call a sensible
+union. A couple like that have something to talk to each other about
+when they come together. If you had Cupid himself to talk to—if Blanche
+and Pen were Cupid and Psyche, begad—they’d begin to yawn after a few
+evenings, if they had nothing but sentiment to speak on.”
+
+As for Miss Amory, she was contented enough with Pen as long as there
+was nobody better. And how many other young ladies are like her?—and
+how many love-marriages carry on well to the last?—and how sentimental
+firms do not finish in bankruptcy?—and how many heroic passions don’t
+dwindle down into despicable indifference, or end in shameful defeat?
+
+These views of life and philosophy the Major was constantly, according
+to his custom, inculcating to Pen, whose mind was such that he could
+see the right on both sides of many questions, and, comprehending the
+sentimental life which was quite out of the reach of the honest Major’s
+intelligence, could understand the practical life too, and accommodate
+himself, or think he could accommodate himself, to it. So it came to
+pass that during the spring succeeding his mother’s death he became a
+good deal under the influence of his uncle’s advice, and domesticated
+in Lady Clavering’s house; and in a measure was accepted by Miss Amory
+without being a suitor, and was received without being engaged. The
+young people were extremely familiar, without being particularly
+sentimental, and met and parted with each other in perfect good-humour.
+“And I,” thought Pendennis, “am the fellow who eight years ago had a
+Grand passion, and last year was raging in a fever about Briseis!”
+
+Yes, it was the same Pendennis, and time had brought to him, as to the
+rest of us, its ordinary consequences, consolations, developments. We
+alter very little. When we talk of this man or that woman being no
+longer the same person whom we remember in youth, and remark (of course
+to deplore) changes in our friends, we don’t, perhaps, calculate that
+circumstance only brings out the latent defect or quality, and does not
+create it. The selfish languor and indifference of to-day’s possession
+is the consequence of the selfish ardour of yesterday’s pursuit: the
+scorn and weariness which cries vanitas vanitatum is but the lassitude
+of the sick appetite palled with pleasure: the insolence of the
+successful parvenu is only the necessary continuance of the career of
+the needy struggler: our mental changes are like our grey hairs or our
+wrinkles—but the fulfilment of the plan of mortal growth and decay:
+that which is snow-white now was glossy black once; that which is
+sluggish obesity to-day was boisterous rosy health a few years back;
+that calm weariness, benevolent, resigned, and disappointed, was
+ambition, fierce and violent, but a few years since, and has only
+settled into submissive repose after many a battle and defeat. Lucky he
+who can bear his failure so generously, and give up his broken sword to
+Fate the Conqueror with a manly and humble heart! Are you not
+awestricken, you, friendly reader, who, taking the page up for a
+moment’s light reading, lay it down, perchance, for a graver
+reflection,—to think how you, who have consummated your success or your
+disaster, may be holding marked station, or a hopeless and nameless
+place, in the crowd—who have passed through how many struggles of
+defeat, success, crime, remorse, to yourself only known!—who may have
+loved and grown cold, wept and laughed again, how often!—to think how
+you are the same, You, whom in childhood you remember, before the
+voyage of life began? It has been prosperous, and you are riding into
+port, the people huzzaing and the guns saluting,—and the lucky captain
+bows from the ship’s side, and there is a care under the star on his
+breast which nobody knows of: or you are wrecked, and lashed, hopeless,
+to a solitary spar out at sea:—the sinking man and the successful one
+are thinking each about home, very likely, and remembering the time
+when they were children; alone on the hopeless spar, drowning out of
+sight; alone in the midst of the crowd applauding you.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI.
+Conversations
+
+
+Our good-natured Begum was at first so much enraged at this last
+instance of her husband’s duplicity and folly, that she refused to give
+Sir Francis Clavering any aid in order to meet his debts of honour, and
+declared that she would separate from him, and leave him to the
+consequences of his incorrigible weakness and waste. After that fatal
+day’s transactions at the Derby, the unlucky gambler was in such a
+condition of mind that he was disposed to avoid everybody; alike his
+turf-associates with whom he had made the debts which he trembled lest
+he should not have the means of paying, and his wife, his
+long-suffering banker, on whom he reasonably doubted whether he should
+be allowed any longer to draw. When Lady Clavering asked the next
+morning whether Sir Francis was in the house, she received answer that
+he had not returned that night, but had sent a messenger to his valet,
+ordering him to forward clothes and letters by the bearer. Strong knew
+that he should have a visit or a message from him in the course of that
+or the subsequent day, and accordingly got a note beseeching him to
+call upon his distracted friend F. C. at Short Hotel, Blackfriars, and
+ask for Mr. Francis there. For the Baronet was a gentleman of that
+peculiarity of mind that he would rather tell a lie than not, and
+always began a contest with fortune by running away and hiding himself.
+The Boots of Mr. Short’s establishment, who carried Clavering’s message
+to Grosvenor Place, and brought back his carpet-bag, was instantly
+aware who was the owner of the bag, and he imparted his information to
+the footman who was laying the breakfast-table, who carried down the
+news to the servants’-hall, who took it to Mrs. Bonner, my lady’s
+housekeeper and confidential maid, who carried it to my lady. And thus
+every single person in the Grosvenor Place establishment knew that Sir
+Francis was in hiding, under the name of Francis, at an inn in the
+Blackfriars Road. And Sir Francis’s coachman told the news to other
+gentlemen’s coachmen, who carried it to their masters, and to the
+neighbouring Tattersall’s, where very gloomy anticipations were formed
+that Sir Francis Clavering was about to make a tour in the Levant.
+
+In the course of that day the number of letters addressed to Sir
+Francis Clavering, Bart., which found their way to his hall-table, was
+quite remarkable. The French cook sent in his account to my lady; the
+tradesmen who supplied her ladyship’s table, and Messrs. Finer and
+Gimcrack, the mercers and ornamental dealers, and Madame Crinoline, the
+eminent milliner, also forwarded their little bills to her ladyship, in
+company with Miss Amory’s private, and by no means inconsiderable,
+account at each establishment.
+
+In the afternoon of the day after the Derby, when Strong (after a
+colloquy with his principal at Short’s Hotel, whom he found crying and
+drinking Curacoa) called to transact business according to his custom
+at Grosvenor Place, he found all these suspicious documents ranged in
+the Baronet’s study; and began to open them and examine them with a
+rueful countenance.
+
+Mrs. Bonner, my lady’s maid and housekeeper, came down upon him whilst
+engaged in this occupation. Mrs. Bonner, a part of the family and as
+necessary to her mistress as the Chevalier was to Sir Francis, was of
+course on Lady Clavering’s side in the dispute between her and her
+husband, and as by duty bound even more angry than her ladyship
+herself.
+
+“She won’t pay, if she takes my advice,” Mrs. Bonner said. “You’ll
+please to go back to Sir Francis, Captain—and he lurking about in a low
+public-house and don’t dare to face his wife like a man!—and say that
+we won’t pay his debts no longer. We made a man of him, we took him out
+of gaol (and other folks too perhaps), we’ve paid his debts over and
+over again—we set him up in Parliament and gave him a house in town and
+country, and where he don’t dare show his face, the shabby sneak! We’ve
+given him the horse he rides and the dinner he eats and the very
+clothes he has on his back; and we will give him no more. Our fortune,
+such as is left of it, is left to ourselves, and we won’t waste any
+more of it on this ungrateful man. We’ll give him enough to live upon
+and leave him, that’s what we’ll do: and that’s what you may tell him
+from Susan Bonner.”
+
+Susan Bonner’s mistress hearing of Strong’s arrival sent for him at
+this juncture, and the Chevalier went up to her ladyship not without
+hopes that he should find her more tractable than her factotum Mrs.
+Bonner. Many a time before had he pleaded his client’s cause with Lady
+Clavering and caused her good-nature to relent. He tried again once
+more. He painted in dismal colours the situation in which he had found
+Sir Francis: and would not answer for any consequences which might
+ensue if he could not find means of meeting his engagements.
+
+“Kill hisself,” laughed Mrs. Bonner, “kill hisself, will he? Dying’s
+the best thing he could do.” Strong vowed that he had found him with
+the razors on the table; but at this, in her turn, Lady Clavering
+laughed bitterly. “He’ll do himself no harm, as long as there’s a
+shilling left of which he can rob a poor woman. His life’s quite safe,
+Captain: you may depend upon that. Ah! it was a bad day that ever I set
+eyes on him.”
+
+“He’s worse than the first man,” cried out my lady’s aide-de-camp. “He
+was a man, he was—a wild devil, but he had the courage of a man—whereas
+this fellow—what’s the use of my lady paying his bills, and selling her
+diamonds, and forgiving him? He’ll be as bad again next year. The very
+next chance he has he’ll be a-cheating of her, and robbing of her; and
+her money will go to keep a pack of rogues and swindlers—I don’t mean
+you, Captain—you’ve been a good friend to us enough, bating we wish
+we’d never set eyes on you.”
+
+The Chevalier saw from the words which Mrs. Bonner had let slip
+regarding the diamonds, that the kind Begum was disposed to relent once
+more at least, and that there were hopes still for his principal.
+
+“Upon my word, ma’am,” he said, with a real feeling of sympathy for
+Lady Clavering’s troubles, and admiration for her untiring good-nature,
+and with a show of enthusiasm which advanced not a little his graceless
+patron’s cause—“anything you say against Clavering, or Mrs. Bonner here
+cries out against me, is no better than we deserve, both of us, and it
+was an unlucky day for you when you saw either. He has behaved cruelly
+to you and if you were not the most generous and forgiving woman in the
+world, I know there would be no chance for him. But you can’t let the
+father of your son be a disgraced man, and send little Frank into the
+world with such a stain upon him. Tie him down; bind him by any
+promises you like: I vouch for him that he will subscribe them.”
+
+“And break ’em,” said Mrs. Bonner.
+
+“And keep ’em this time,” cried out Strong. “He must keep them. If you
+could have seen how he wept, ma’am! ‘Oh, Strong,’ he said to me, ‘it’s
+not for myself I feel now: it’s for my boy—it’s for the best woman in
+England, whom I have treated basely—I know I have.’ He didn’t intend to
+bet upon this race, ma’am—indeed he didn’t. He was cheated into it: all
+the ring was taken in. He thought he might make the bet quite safely,
+without the least risk. And it will be a lesson to him for all his life
+long. To see a man cry—oh, it’s dreadful.”
+
+“He don’t think much of making my dear missus cry,” said Mrs.
+Bonner—“poor dear soul!—look if he does, Captain.”
+
+“If you’ve the soul of a man, Clavering,” Strong said to his principal,
+when he recounted this scene to him, “you’ll keep your promise this
+time: and, so help me Heaven! if you break word with her, I’ll turn
+against you, and tell all.”
+
+“What all?” cried Mr. Francis, to whom his ambassador brought the news
+back at Short’s Hotel, where Strong found the Baronet crying and
+drinking curacoa.
+
+“Psha! Do you suppose I am a fool?” burst out Strong. “Do you suppose I
+could have lived so long in the world, Frank Clavering, without having
+my eyes about me? You know I have but to speak and you are a beggar
+to-morrow. And I am not the only man who knows your secret.”
+
+“Who else does?” gasped Clavering.
+
+“Old Pendennis does, or I am very much mistaken. He recognised the man
+the first night he saw him, when he came drunk into your house.”
+
+“He knows it, does he?” shrieked out Clavering. “Damn him—kill him.”
+
+“You’d like to kill us all, wouldn’t you, old boy?” said Strong, with a
+sneer, puffing his cigar.
+
+The Baronet dashed his weak hand against his forehead; perhaps the
+other had interpreted his wish rightly. “Oh, Strong!” he cried, “if I
+dared, I’d put an end to myself, for I’m the d——est miserable dog in
+all England. It’s that that makes me so wild and reckless. It’s that
+which makes me take to drink” (and he drank, with a trembling hand, a
+bumper of his fortifier—the curacoa), “and to live about with these
+thieves. I know they’re thieves, every one of ’em, d——d thieves.
+And—and how can I help it?—and I didn’t know it, you know—and, by Gad,
+I’m innocent—and until I saw the d——d scoundrel first, I knew no more
+about it than the dead—and I’ll fly, and I’ll go abroad out of the
+reach of the confounded hells, and I’ll bury myself in a forest, by
+Gad! and hang myself up to a tree—and, oh—I’m the most miserable beggar
+in all England!” And so with more tears, shrieks, and curses, the
+impotent wretch vented his grief and deplored his unhappy fate; and, in
+the midst of groans and despair and blasphemy, vowed his miserable
+repentance.
+
+The honoured proverb which declares that to be an ill wind which blows
+good to nobody, was verified in the case of Sir Francis Clavering, and
+another of the occupants of Mr. Strong’s chambers in Shepherd’s Inn.
+The man was “good,” by a lucky hap, with whom Colonel Altamont made his
+bet; and on the settling day of the Derby—as Captain Clinker, who was
+appointed to settle Sir Francis Clavering’s book for him (for Lady
+Clavering by the advice of Major Pendennis, would not allow the Baronet
+to liquidate his own money transactions), paid over the notes to the
+Baronet’s many creditors—Colonel Altamont had the satisfaction of
+receiving the odds of thirty to one in fifties, which he had taken
+against the winning horse of the day.
+
+Numbers of the Colonel’s friends were present on the occasion to
+congratulate him on his luck—all Altamont’s own set, and the gents who
+met in the private parlour of the convivial Wheeler, my host of the
+Harlequin’s Head, came to witness their comrade’s good fortune, and
+would have liked, with a generous sympathy for success, to share in it.
+“Now was the time,” Tom Driver had suggested to the Colonel, “to have
+up the specie ship that was sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, with the three
+hundred and eighty thousand dollars on board, besides bars and
+doubloons.” “The Tredyddlums were very low—to be bought for an old
+song—never was such an opportunity for buying shares,” Mr. Keightley
+insinuated; and Jack Holt pressed forward his tobacco-smuggling scheme,
+the audacity of which pleased the Colonel more than any other of the
+speculations proposed to him. Then of the Harlequin’s Head boys: there
+was Jack Rackstraw, who knew of a pair of horses which the Colonel must
+buy; Tom Fleet, whose satirical paper, The Swell, wanted but two
+hundred pounds of capital to be worth a thousand a year to any
+man—“with such a power and influence, Colonel, you rogue, and the
+entree of the green-rooms in London,” Tom urged; whilst little Moss
+Abrams entreated the Colonel not to listen to these absurd fellows with
+their humbugging speculations, but to invest his money in some good
+bills which Moss could get for him, and which would return him fifty
+per cent as safe as the Bank of England.
+
+Each and all of these worthies came round the Colonel with their
+various blandishments; but he had courage enough to resist them, and to
+button up his notes in the pocket of his coat, and go home to Strong,
+and “sport” the outer door of the chambers. Honest Strong had given his
+fellow-lodger good advice about all his acquaintances; and though, when
+pressed, he did not mind frankly taking twenty pounds himself out of
+the Colonel’s winnings, Strong was a great deal too upright to let
+others cheat him.
+
+He was not a bad fellow when in good fortune, this Altamont. He ordered
+a smart livery for Grady, and made poor old Costigan shed tears of
+quickly dried gratitude by giving him a five-pound note after a snug
+dinner at the Back Kitchen, and he bought a green shawl for Mrs.
+Bolton, and a yellow one for Fanny: the most brilliant “sacrifices” of
+a Regent Street haberdasher’s window. And a short time after this, upon
+her birthday, which happened in the month of June, Miss Amory received
+from “a friend” a parcel containing an enormous brass inlaid
+writing-desk, in which there was a set of amethysts, the most hideous
+eyes ever looked upon,—a musical snuff-box, and two Keepsakes of the
+year before last, and accompanied with a couple of gown pieces of the
+most astounding colours, the receipt of which goods made the Sylphide
+laugh and wonder immoderately. Now it is a fact that Colonel Altamont
+had made a purchase of cigars and French silks from some duffers in
+Fleet Street about this period; and he was found by Strong in the open
+Auction Room in Cheapside, having invested some money in two desks,
+several pairs of richly-plated candlesticks, a dinner epergne, and a
+bagatelle-board. The dinner epergne remained at chambers, and figured
+at the banquets there, which the Colonel gave pretty freely. It seemed
+beautiful in his eyes, until Jack Holt said it looked as if it had been
+taken “in a bill.” And Jack Holt certainly knew.
+
+The dinners were pretty frequent at chambers, and Sir Francis Clavering
+condescended to partake of them constantly. His own house was shut up:
+the successor of Mirobolant, who had sent in his bills so prematurely,
+was dismissed by the indignant Lady Clavering: the luxuriance of the
+establishment was greatly pruned and reduced. One of the large footmen
+was cashiered, upon which the other gave warning, not liking to serve
+without his mate, or in a family where on’y one footman was kep’.
+General and severe economical reforms were practised by the Begum in
+her whole household, in consequence of the extravagance of which her
+graceless husband had been guilty. The Major, as her ladyship’s friend;
+Strong, on the part of poor Clavering; her ladyship’s lawyer, and the
+honest Begum herself, executed these reforms with promptitude and
+severity. After paying the Baronet’s debts, the settlement of which
+occasioned considerable public scandal, and caused the Baronet to sink
+even lower in the world’s estimation than he had been before, Lady
+Clavering quitted London for Tunbridge Wells in high dudgeon, refusing
+to see her reprobate husband, whom nobody pitied. Clavering remained in
+London patiently, by no means anxious to meet his wife’s just
+indignation, and sneaked in and out of the House of Commons, whence he
+and Captain Raff and Mr. Marker would go to have a game at billiards
+and a cigar or showed in the sporting public-houses; or might be seen
+lurking about Lincoln’s Inn and his lawyers’, where the principals kept
+him for hours waiting, and the clerks winked at each other, as he sate
+in their office. No wonder that he relished the dinners at Shepherd’s
+Inn, and was perfectly resigned there: resigned? he was so happy
+nowhere else; he was wretched amongst his equals, who scorned him—but
+here he was the chief guest at the table, where they continually
+addressed him with “Yes, Sir Francis” and “No, Sir Francis,” where he
+told his wretched jokes, and where he quavered his dreary little French
+song, after Strong had sung his Jovial chorus, and honest Costigan had
+piped his Irish ditties. Such a jolly menage as Strong’s, with Grady’s
+Irish-stew, and the Chevalier’s brew of punch after dinner, would have
+been welcome to many a better man than Clavering, the solitude of whose
+great house at home frightened him, where he was attended only by the
+old woman who kept the house, and his valet who sneered at him.
+
+“Yes, dammit,” said he to his friends in Shepherd’s Inn, “that fellow
+of mine, I must turn him away, only I owe him two years’ wages, curse
+him, and can’t ask my lady. He brings me my tea cold of a morning, with
+a dem’d leaden teaspoon, and he says my lady’s sent all the plate to
+the banker’s because it ain’t safe.—Now ain’t it hard that she won’t
+trust me with a single teaspoon; ain’t it ungentlemanlike, Altamont?
+You know my lady’s of low birth—that is—I beg your pardon—hem—that is,
+it’s most cruel of her not to show more confidence in me. And the very
+servants begin to laugh—the damn scoundrels! I’ll break every bone in
+their great hulking bodies, curse ’em, I will.—They don’t answer my
+bell: and—and my man was at Vauxhall last night with one of my
+dress-shirts and my velvet waistcoat on, I know it was mine—the
+confounded impudent blackguard—and he went on dancing before my eyes
+confound him! I’m sure he’ll live to be hanged—he deserves to be
+hanged—all those infernal rascals of valets.”
+
+He was very kind to Altamont now: he listened to the Colonel’s loud
+stories when Altamont described how—when he was working his way home
+once from New Zealand, where he had been on a whaling expedition—he and
+his comrades had been obliged to slink on board at night, to escape
+from their wives, by Jove—and how the poor devils put out in their
+canoes when they saw the ship under sail, and paddled madly after her:
+how he had been lost in the bush once for three months in New South
+Wales, when he was there once on a trading speculation: how he had seen
+Boney at Saint Helena, and been presented to him with the rest of the
+officers of the Indiaman of which he was a mate—to all these tales (and
+over his cups Altamont told many of them; and, it must be owned, lied
+and bragged a great deal) Sir Francis now listened with great
+attention; making a point of drinking wine with Altamont at dinner and
+of treating him with every distinction.
+
+“Leave him alone, I know what he’s a-coming to,” Altamont said,
+laughing to Strong, who remonstrated with him, “and leave me alone; I
+know what I’m a-telling, very well. I was officer on board an Indiaman,
+so I was; I traded to New South Wales, so I did, in a ship of my own,
+and lost her. I became officer to the Nawaub, so I did; only me and my
+royal master have had a difference, Strong—that’s it. Who’s the better
+or the worse for what I tell? or knows anything about me? The other
+chap is dead—shot in the bush, and his body reckonised at Sydney. If I
+thought anybody would split, do you think I wouldn’t wring his neck?
+I’ve done as good before now, Strong—I told you how I did for the
+overseer before I took leave—but in fair fight, I mean—in fair fight;
+or, rayther, he had the best of it. He had his gun and bay’net, and I
+had only an axe. Fifty of ’em saw it—ay, and cheered me when I did
+it—and I’d do it again,—him, wouldn’t I? I ain’t afraid of anybody; and
+I’d have the life of the man who split upon me. That’s my maxim, and
+pass me the liquor.—You wouldn’t turn on a man. I know you. You’re an
+honest feller, and will stand by a feller, and have looked death in the
+face like a man. But as for that lily-livered sneak—that poor lyin’
+swindlin’ cringin’ cur of a Clavering—who stands in my shoes—stands in
+my shoes, hang him! I’ll make him pull my boots off and clean ’em, I
+will. Ha, ha!” Here he burst out into a wild laugh, at which Strong got
+up and put away the brandy-bottle. The other still laughed
+good-humouredly. “You’re right, old boy,” he said; “you always keep
+your head cool, you do—and when I begin to talk too much—I say, when I
+begin to pitch, I authorise you, and order you, and command you, to put
+away the rum-bottle.”
+
+“Take my counsel, Altamont,” Strong said, gravely, “and mind how you
+deal with that man. Don’t make it too much his interest to get rid of
+you; or who knows what he may do?”
+
+The event for which, with cynical enjoyment, Altamont had been on the
+look-out, came very speedily. One day, Strong being absent upon an
+errand for his principal, Sir Francis made his appearance in the
+chambers, and found the envoy of the Nawaub alone. He abused the world
+in general for being heartless and unkind to him: he abused his wife
+for being ungenerous to him; he abused Strong for being
+ungrateful—hundreds of pounds had he given Ned Strong—been his friend
+for life and kept him out of gaol, by Jove,—and now Ned was taking her
+ladyship’s side against him and abetting her in her infernal unkind
+treatment of him. “They’ve entered into a conspiracy to keep me
+penniless, Altamont,” the Baronet said: “they don’t give me as much
+pocket money as Frank has at school.”
+
+“Why don’t you go down to Richmond and borrow of him, Clavering?”
+Altamont broke out with a savage laugh. “He wouldn’t see his poor old
+beggar of a father without pocket-money, would he?”
+
+“I tell you, I’ve been obliged to humiliate myself cruelly” Clavering
+said. “Look here, sir—look here, at these pawn-tickets! Fancy a Member
+of Parliament and an old English Baronet, by Gad! obliged to put a
+drawing-room clock and a buhl inkstand up the spout; and a gold
+duck’s-head paper-holder, that I dare say cost my wife five pound, for
+which they’d only give me fifteen-and-six! Oh, it’s a humiliating
+thing, sir, poverty to a man of my habits; and it’s made me shed tears,
+sir,—tears; and that d——d valet of mine—curse him, I wish he was
+hanged!—he had the confounded impudence to threaten to tell my lady: as
+the things in my own house weren’t my own, to sell or to keep, or fling
+out of window if I chose—by Gad! the confounded scoundrel.
+
+“Cry a little; don’t mind cryin’ before me—it’ll relieve you
+Clavering,” the other said. “Why, I say, old feller, what a happy
+feller I once thought you, and what a miserable son of a gun you really
+are!”
+
+“It’s a shame that they treat me so, ain’t it?” Clavering went on,—for,
+though ordinarily silent and apathetic, about his own griefs the
+Baronet could whine for an hour at a time. “And—and, by Gad, sir, I
+haven’t got the money to pay the very cab that’s waiting for me at the
+door; and the porteress, that Mrs. Bolton, lent me three shillin’s, and
+I don’t like to ask her for any more: and I asked that d——d old
+Costigan, the confounded old penniless Irish miscreant, and he hadn’t
+got a shillin’, the beggar; and Campion’s out of town, or else he’d do
+a little bill for me, I know he would.”
+
+“I thought you swore on your honour to your wife that you wouldn’t put
+your name to paper,” said Mr. Altamont, puffing at his cigar.
+
+“Why does she leave me without pocket-money, then? Damme, I must have
+money,” cried out the Baronet. “Oh, Am——, oh, Altamont, I’m the most
+miserable beggar alive.”
+
+“You’d like a chap to lend you a twenty-pound note, wouldn’t you now?”
+the other asked.
+
+“If you would, I’d be grateful to you for ever—for ever, my dearest
+friend,” cried Clavering.
+
+“How much would you give? Will you give a fifty-pound bill, at six
+months, for half down and half in plate?” asked Altamont.
+
+“Yes, I would, so help me——, and pay it on the day,” screamed
+Clavering. “I’ll make it payable at my banker’s: I’ll do anything you
+like.”
+
+“Well, I was only chaffing you. I’ll give you twenty pound.”
+
+“You said a pony,” interposed Clavering; “my dear fellow, you said a
+pony, and I’ll be eternally obliged to you; and I’ll not take it as a
+gift—only as a loan, and pay you back in six months. I take my oath, I
+will.”
+
+“Well—well—there’s the money, Sir Francis Clavering. I ain’t a bad
+fellow. When I’ve money in my pocket, dammy, I spend it like a man.
+Here’s five-and-twenty for you. Don’t be losing it at the hells now.
+Don’t be making a fool of yourself. Go down to Clavering Park, and
+it’ll keep you ever so long. You needn’t ’ave butchers’ meat: there’s
+pigs, I dare say, on the premises: and you can shoot rabbits for
+dinner, you know, every day till the game comes in. Besides, the
+neighbours will ask you about to dinner, you know, sometimes: for you
+are a Baronet, though you have outrun the constable. And you’ve got
+this comfort, that I’m off your shoulders for a good bit to come—p’raps
+this two years—if I don’t play; and I don’t intend to touch the
+confounded black and red: and by that time my lady, as you call
+her—Jimmy, I used to say—will have come round again; and you’ll be
+ready for me, you know, and come down handsomely to yours truly.”
+
+At this juncture of their conversation Strong returned, nor did the
+Baronet care much about prolonging the talk, having got the money: and
+he made his way from Shepherd’s Inn, and went home and bullied his
+servant in a manner so unusually brisk and insolent that the man
+concluded his master must have pawned some more of the house furniture,
+or, at any rate, have come into possession of some ready money.
+
+“And yet I’ve looked over the house, Morgan, and I don’t thin he has
+took any more of the things,” Sir Francis’s valet said to Major
+Pendennis’s man, as they met at their Club soon after. “My lady locked
+up a’most all the bejews afore she went away, and he couldn’t take away
+the picters and looking-glasses in a cab and he wouldn’t spout the
+fenders and fire-irons—he ain’t so bad as that. But he’s got money
+somehow. He’s so dam’d imperent when he have. A few nights ago I sor
+him at Vauxhall, where I was a-polkin with Lady Hemly Babewood’s gals—a
+wery pleasant room that is, and an uncommon good lot in it, hall except
+the ’ousekeeper, and she’s methodisticle—I was a-polkin—you’re too old
+a cove to polk, Mr. Morgan—and ’ere’s your ’ealth—and I ’appened to
+’ave on some of Clavering’s abberdashery, and he sor it too: and he
+didn’t dare so much as speak a word.”
+
+“How about the house in St. John’s Wood?” Mr. Morgan asked.
+
+“Execution in it.—Sold up heverythin: ponies, and pianna, and brougham,
+and all. Mrs. Montague were hoff to Boulogne,—non est inwentus, Mr.
+Morgan. It’s my belief she put the execution in herself: and was tired
+of him.”
+
+“Play much?” asked Morgan.
+
+“Not since the smash. When your Governor, and the lawyers, and my lady
+and him had that tremendous scene: he went down on his knees, my lady
+told Mrs. Bonner, as told me,—and swear as he never more would touch a
+card or a dice, or put his name to a bit of paper; and my lady was
+a-goin’ to give him the notes down to pay his liabilities after the
+race: only your Governor said (which he wrote it on a piece of paper,
+and passed it across the table to the lawyer and my lady) that some one
+else had better book up for him, for he’d have kep’ some of the money.
+He’s a sly old cove, your Gov’nor.”
+
+The expression of “old cove,” thus flippantly applied by the younger
+gentleman to himself and his master, displeased Mr. Morgan exceedingly.
+On the first occasion, when Mr. Lightfoot used the obnoxious
+expression, his comrade’s anger was only indicated by a silent frown;
+but on the second offence, Morgan, who was smoking his cigar elegantly,
+and holding it on the tip of his penknife, withdrew the cigar from his
+lips, and took his young friend to task.
+
+“Don’t call Major Pendennis an old cove, if you’ll ’ave the goodness,
+Lightfoot, and don’t call me an old cove, nether. Such words ain’t used
+in society; and we have lived in the fust society, both at ’ome and
+foring. We’ve been intimate with the fust statesmen of Europe. When we
+go abroad we dine with Prince Metternitch and Louy Philup reg’lar. We
+go here to the best houses, the tip-tops, I tell you. We ride with Lord
+John and the noble Whycount at the edd of Foring Affairs. We dine with
+the Hearl of Burgrave, and are consulted by the Marquis of Steyne in
+everythink. We ought to know a thing or two, Mr. Lightfoot. You’re a
+young man, I’m an old cove, as you say. We’ve both seen the world, and
+we both know that it ain’t money, nor bein’ a Baronet, nor ’avin’ a
+town and country ’ouse, nor a paltry five or six thousand a year.”
+
+“It’s ten, Mr. Morgan,” cried Mr. Lightfoot, with great animation.
+
+“It may have been, sir,” Morgan said, with calm severity; “it may have
+been, Mr. Lightfoot, but it ain’t six now, nor five, sir. It’s been
+doosedly dipped and cut into, sir, by the confounded extravygance of
+your master, with his helbow shakin’, and his bill discountin’, and his
+cottage in the Regency Park, and his many wickednesses. He’s a bad un,
+Mr. Lightfoot,—a bad lot, sir, and that you know. And it ain’t money,
+sir—not such money as that, at any rate, come from a Calcuttar
+attorney, and I dussay wrung out of the pore starving blacks—that will
+give a pusson position in society, as you know very well. We’ve no
+money, but we go everywhere; there’s not a housekeeper’s room, sir, in
+this town of any consiquince, where James Morgan ain’t welcome. And it
+was me who got you into this Club, Lightfoot, as you very well know,
+though I am an old cove, and they would have blackballed you without me
+as sure as your name is Frederic.”
+
+“I know they would, Mr. Morgan,” said the other, with much humility.
+
+“Well, then, don’t call me an old cove, sir. It ain’t gentlemanlike,
+Frederic Lightfoot, which I knew you when you was a cab-boy, and when
+your father was in trouble, and got you the place you have now when the
+Frenchman went away. And if you think, sir, that because you’re making
+up to Mrs. Bonner, who may have saved her two thousand pound—and I dare
+say she has in five-and-twenty years as she have lived confidential
+maid to Lady Clavering—yet, sir, you must remember who put you into
+that service; and who knows what you were before, sir, and it don’t
+become you, Frederic Lightfoot, to call me an old cove.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, Mr. Morgan—I can’t do more than make an
+apology—will you have a glass, sir, and let me drink your ’ealth?”
+
+“You know I don’t take sperrits. Lightfoot,” replied Morgan, appeased.
+“And so you and Mrs. Bonner is going to put up together, are you?”
+
+“She’s old, but two thousand pound’s a good bit, you see, Mr Morgan.
+And we’ll get the ‘Clavering Arms’ for a very little; and that’ll be no
+bad thing when the railroad runs through Clavering. And when we are
+there, I hope you’ll come and see us, Mr. Morgan.”
+
+“It’s a stoopid place, and no society,” said Mr. Morgan. “I know it
+well. In Mrs Pendennis’s time we used to go down, reg’lar, and the hair
+refreshed me after the London racket.”
+
+“The railroad will improve Mr. Arthur’s property,” remarked Lightfoot.
+“What’s about the figure of it, should you say, sir?”
+
+“Under fifteen hundred, sir,” answered Morgan; at which the other, who
+knew the extent of poor Arthur’s acres, thrust his tongue in his cheek,
+but remained wisely silent.
+
+“Is his man any good, Mr. Morgan?” Lightfoot resumed.
+
+“Pidgeon ain’t used to society as yet; but he’s young and has good
+talents, and has read a good deal, and I dessay he will do very well,”
+replied Morgan. “He wouldn’t quite do for this kind of thing,
+Lightfoot, for he ain’t seen the world yet.”
+
+When the pint of sherry for which Mr. Lightfoot called, upon Mr.
+Morgan’s announcement that he declined to drink spirits, had been
+discussed by the two gentlemen, who held the wine up to the light, and
+smacked their lips, and winked their eyes at it, and rallied the
+landlord as to the vintage, in the most approved manner of
+connoisseurs, Morgan’s ruffled equanimity was quite restored, and he
+was prepared to treat his young friend with perfect good-humour.
+
+“What d’you think about Miss Amory, Lightfoot—tell us in confidence,
+now—Do you think we should do well—you understand—if we make Miss A.
+into Mrs. A. P., comprendy vous?”
+
+“She and her Ma’s always quarrellin’,” said Mr. Lightfoot. “Bonner is
+more than a match for the old lady, and treats Sir Francis like
+that—like this year spill, which I fling into the grate. But she
+daren’t say a word to Miss Amory. No more dare none of us. When a
+visitor comes in, she smiles and languishes, you’d think that butter
+wouldn’t melt in her mouth: and the minute he is gone, very likely, she
+flares up like a little demon, and says things fit to send you wild. If
+Mr. Arthur comes, it’s ‘Do let’s sing that there delightful Song!’ or,
+‘Come and write me them pooty verses in this halbum!’ and very likely
+she’s been a-rilin’ her mother, or sticking pins into her maid, a
+minute before. She do stick pins into her and pinch her. Mary Hann
+showed me one of her arms quite black and blue; and I recklect Mrs.
+Bonner, who’s as jealous of me as a old cat, boxed her ears for showing
+me. And then you should see Miss at luncheon, when there’s nobody but
+the family! She makes b’leave she never heats, and my! you should only
+jest see her. She has Mary Hann to bring her up plum-cakes and creams
+into her bedroom; and the cook’s the only man in the house she’s civil
+to. Bonner says, how, the second season in London, Mr. Soppington was
+a-goin’ to propose for her, and actially came one day, and sor her
+fling a book into the fire, and scold her mother so, that he went down
+softly by the back droring-room door, which he came in by; and next
+thing we heard of him was, he was married to Miss Rider. Oh, she’s a
+devil, that little Blanche, and that’s my candig apinium, Mr. Morgan.”
+
+“Apinion, not apinium, Lightfoot, my good fellow,” Mr. Morgan said,
+with parental kindness, and then asked of his own bosom with a sigh,
+why the deuce does my Governor want Master Arthur to marry such a girl
+as this? and the tete-a-tete of the two gentlemen was broken up by the
+entry of other gentlemen, members of the Club—when fashionable
+town-talk, politics, cribbage, and other amusements ensued, and the
+conversation became general.
+
+The Gentleman’s Club was held in the parlour of the Wheel of Fortune
+public-house, in a snug little by-lane, leading out of one of the great
+streets of Mayfair, and frequented by some of the most select gentlemen
+about town. Their masters’ affairs, debts, intrigues, adventures; their
+ladies’ good and bad qualities and quarrels with their husbands; all
+the family secrets were here discussed with perfect freedom and
+confidence, and here, when about to enter into a new situation, a
+gentleman was enabled to get every requisite information regarding the
+family of which he proposed to become a member. Liveries it may be
+imagined were excluded from this select precinct; and the powdered
+heads of the largest metropolitan footmen might bow down in vain
+entreating admission into the Gentleman’s Club. These outcast giants in
+plush took their beer in an outer apartment of the Wheel of Fortune,
+and could no more get an entry into the Clubroom than a Pall Mall
+tradesman or a Lincoln’s Inn attorney could get admission into Bays’s
+or Spratt’s. And it is because the conversation which we have permitted
+to overhear here, in some measure explains the characters and bearings
+of our story, that we have ventured to introduce the reader into a
+society so exclusive.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII.
+The Way of the World
+
+
+A short time after the piece of good fortune which befell Colonel
+Altamont at Epsom, that gentleman put into execution his projected
+foreign tour, and the chronicler of the polite world who goes down to
+London Bridge for the purpose of taking leave of the people of fashion
+who quit this country, announced that among the company on board the
+Soho to Antwerp last Saturday, were “Sir Robert, Lady, and the Misses
+Hodge; Mr. Serjeant Kewsy, and Mrs. and Miss Kewsy; Colonel Altamont,
+Major Coddy, etc.” The Colonel travelled in state, and as became a
+gentleman: he appeared in a rich travelling costume; he drank
+brandy-and-water freely during the passage, and was not sick, as some
+of the other passengers were; and he was attended by his body-servant;
+the faithful Irish legionary who had been for some time in waiting upon
+himself and Captain Strong in their chambers of Shepherd’s Inn.
+
+The Chevalier partook of a copious dinner at Blackwall with his
+departing friend the Colonel, and one or two others, who drank many
+healths to Altamont at that liberal gentleman’s expense. “Strong, old
+boy,” the Chevalier’s worthy chum said, “if you want a little money,
+now’s your time. I’m your man. You’re a good feller, and have been a
+good feller to me, and a twenty-pound note, more or less, will make no
+odds to me,” But Strong said, No, he didn’t want any money; he was
+flush, quite flush—“that is, not flush enough to pay you back your last
+loan, Altamont, but quite able to carry on for some time to come,” and
+so, with a not uncordial greeting between them, the two parted. Had the
+possession of money really made Altamont more honest and amiable than
+he had hitherto been, or only caused him to seem more amiable in
+Strong’s eyes? Perhaps he really was better, and money improved him.
+Perhaps it was the beauty of wealth Strong saw and respected. But he
+argued within himself, “This poor devil, this unlucky outcast of a
+returned convict, is ten times as good a fellow as my friend Sir
+Francis Clavering, Bart. He has pluck and honesty in his way. He will
+stick to a friend, and face an enemy. The other never had courage to do
+either. And what is it that has put the poor devil under a cloud? He
+was only a little wild, and signed his father-in-law’s name. Many a man
+has done worse, and come to no wrong, and holds his head up. Clavering
+does. No, he don’t hold his head up: he never did in his best days.”
+And Strong, perhaps, repented him of the falsehood which he had told to
+the free-handed Colonel, that he was not in want of money; but it was a
+falsehood on the side of honesty, and the Chevalier could not bring
+down his stomach to borrow a second time from his outlawed friend.
+Besides, he could get on. Clavering had promised him some: not that
+Clavering’s promises were much to be believed, but the Chevalier was of
+a hopeful turn, and trusted in many chances of catching his patron, and
+waylaying some of those stray remittances and supplies, in the
+procuring of which for his principal lay Mr. Strong’s chief business.
+
+He had grumbled about Altamont’s companionship in the Shepherd’s Inn
+chambers; but he found those lodgings more glum now without his partner
+than with him. The solitary life was not agreeable to his social soul;
+and he had got into extravagant and luxurious habits, too, having a
+servant at his command to run his errands, to arrange his toilets, and
+to cook his meal. It was rather a grand and touching sight now to see
+the portly and handsome gentleman painting his own boots, and broiling
+his own mutton chop. It has been before stated that the Chevalier had a
+wife, a Spanish lady of Vittoria, who had gone back to her friends,
+after a few months’ union with the Captain, whose head she broke with a
+dish. He began to think whether he should not go back and see his
+Juanita. The Chevalier was growing melancholy after the departure of
+his friend the Colonel; or, to use his own picturesque expression, was
+“down on his luck.” These moments of depression and intervals of ill
+fortune occur constantly in the lives of heroes; Marius at Minturme,
+Charles Edward in the Highlands, Napoleon before Elba. What great man
+has not been called upon to face evil fortune?
+
+From Clavering no supplies were to be had for some time, the
+five-and-twenty pounds or the “pony,” which the exemplary Baronet had
+received from Mr. Altamont, had fled out of Clavering’s keeping as
+swiftly as many previous ponies. He had been down the river with a
+choice party of sporting gents, who dodged the police and landed in
+Essex, where they put up Billy Bluck to fight Dick the cabman whom the
+Baronet backed, and who had it all his own way for thirteen rounds,
+when, by an unlucky blow in the windpipe, Billy killed him. “It’s
+always my luck, Strong,” Sir Francis said; “the betting was three to
+one on the cabman, and I thought myself as sure of thirty pound, as if
+I had it in my pocket. And dammy, I owe my man Lightfoot fourteen pound
+now which he’s lent and paid for me: and he duns me—the confounded
+impudent blackguard: and I wish to Heaven I knew any way of getting a
+bill done, or of screwing a little out of my lady! I’ll give you half,
+Ned, upon my soul and honour, I’ll give you half if you can get anybody
+to do us a little fifty.”
+
+But Ned said sternly that he had given his word of honour, as a
+gentleman, that he would be no party to any future bill transactions in
+which her husband might engage (who had given his word of honour too),
+and the Chevalier said that he, at least, would keep his word, and
+would black his own boots all his life rather than break his promise.
+And what is more, he vowed he would advise Lady Clavering that Sir
+Francis was about to break his faith towards her upon the very first
+hint which he could get that such was Clavering’s intention.
+
+Upon this information Sir Francis Clavering, according to his custom,
+cried and cursed very volubly. He spoke of death as his only resource.
+He besought and implored his dear Strong, his best friend, his dear old
+Ned, not to throw him over: and when he quitted his dearest Ned, as he
+went down the stairs of Shepherd’s Inn, swore and blasphemed at Ned as
+the most infernal villain, and traitor, and blackguard, and coward
+under the sun, and wished Ned was in his grave, and in a worse place,
+only he would like the confounded ruffian to live, until Frank
+Clavering had had his revenge out of him.
+
+In Strong’s chambers the Baronet met a gentleman whose visits were now,
+as it has been shown, very frequent in Shepherd’s Inn, Mr. Samuel
+Huxter, of Clavering. That young fellow, who had poached the walnuts in
+Clavering Park in his youth, and had seen the Baronet drive through the
+street at home with four horses, and prance up to church with powdered
+footmen, had an immense respect for his Member, and a prodigious
+delight in making his acquaintance. He introduced himself with much
+blushing and trepidation, as a Clavering man—son of Mr. Huxter, of the
+market-place—father attended Sir Francis’s keeper, Coxwood, when his
+gun burst and took off three fingers—proud to make Sir Francis’s
+acquaintance. All of which introduction Sir Francis received affably.
+And honest Huxter talked about Sir Francis to the chaps at
+Bartholomew’s: and told Fanny, in the lodge, that, after all, there was
+nothing like a thoroughbred un, a regular good old English gentleman,
+one of the olden time! To which Fanny replied, that she thought Sir
+Francis was an ojous creature—she didn’t know why—but she couldn’t
+abear him—she was sure he was wicked, and low, and mean—she knew he
+was; and when Sam to this replied that Sir Francis was very affable,
+and had borrowed half a sov’ of him quite kindly, Fanny burst into a
+laugh, pulled Sam’s long hair (which was not yet of irreproachable
+cleanliness), patted his chin, and called him a stoopid, stoopid, old
+foolish stoopid, and said that Sir Francis was always borrering money
+of everybody, and that Mar had actially refused him twice, and had had
+to wait three months to get seven shillings which he had borrowed of
+’er.
+
+“Don’t say ’er but her, borrer but borrow, actially but actually,
+Fanny,” Mr. Huxter replied—not to a fault in her argument, but to
+grammatical errors in her statement.
+
+“Well then, her, and borrow, and hactually—there then, you stoopid,”
+said the other; and the scholar made such a pretty face that the
+grammar master was quickly appeased, and would have willingly given her
+a hundred more lessons on the spot at the price which he took for that
+one.
+
+Of course Mrs. Bolton was by, and I suppose that Fanny and Dr. Sam were
+on exceedingly familiar and confidential terms by this time, and that
+time had brought to the former certain consolations, and soothed
+certain regrets, which are deucedly bitter when they occur, but which
+are, no more than tooth-pulling, or any other pang, eternal.
+
+As you sit, surrounded by respect and affection; happy, honoured, and
+flattered in your old age; your foibles gently indulged; your least
+words kindly cherished; your garrulous old stories received for the
+hundredth time with dutiful forbearance, and never-failing hypocritical
+smiles; the women of your house constant in their flatteries; the young
+men hushed and attentive when you begin to speak; the servants
+awestricken; the tenants cap in hand, and ready to act in the place of
+your worship’s horses when your honour takes a drive—it has often
+struck you, O thoughtful Dives! that this respect, and these glories,
+are for the main part transferred, with your fee simple, to your
+successor—that the servants will bow, and the tenants shout, for your
+son as for you; that the butler will fetch him the wine (improved by a
+little keeping) that’s now in your cellar; and that, when your night is
+come, and the light of your life is gone down, as sure as the morning
+rises after you and without you, the sun of prosperity and flattery
+shines on your heir. Men come and bask in the halo of consols and acres
+that beams round about him: the reverence is transferred with the
+estate; of which, with all its advantages, pleasures, respect, and
+good-will, he in turn becomes the life-tenant. How long do you wish or
+expect that your people will regret you? How much time does a man
+devote to grief before he begins to enjoy? A great man must keep his
+heir at his feast like a living memento mori. If he holds very much by
+life, the presence of the other must be a constant sting and warning.
+“Make ready to go,” says the successor to your honour; “I am waiting:
+and I could hold it as well as you.”
+
+What has this reference to the possible reader, to do with any of the
+characters of this history? Do we wish to apologise for Pen because he
+has got a white hat, and because his mourning for his mother is
+fainter? All the lapse of years, all the career of fortune, all the
+events of life, however strongly they may move or eagerly excite him,
+never can remove that sainted image from his heart, or banish that
+blessed love from its sanctuary. If he yields to wrong, the dear eyes
+will look sadly upon him when he dares to meet them; if he does well,
+endures pain, or conquers temptation, the ever present love will greet
+him, he knows, with approval and pity; if he falls, plead for him; if
+he suffers, cheer him;—be with him and accompany him always until death
+is past; and sorrow and sin are no more. Is this mere dreaming, or, on
+the part of an idle story-teller, useless moralising? May not the man
+of the world take his moment, too, to be grave and thoughtful? Ask of
+your own hearts and memories, brother and sister, if we do not live in
+the dead; and (to speak reverently) prove God by love?
+
+Of these matters Pen and Warrington often spoke in many a solemn and
+friendly converse in after days; and Pendennis’s mother was worshipped
+in his memory, and canonised there, as such a saint ought to be. Lucky
+he in life who knows a few such women! A kind provision of Heaven it
+was, that sent us such; and gave us to admire that touching and
+wonderful spectacle of innocence, and love, and beauty.
+
+But as it is certain that if, in the course of these sentimental
+conversations, any outer stranger, Major Pendennis for instance, had
+walked into Pen’s chambers, Arthur and Warrington would have stopped
+their talk, and chosen another subject, and discoursed about the Opera,
+or the last debate in Parliament, or Miss Jones’s marriage with Captain
+Smith, or what not,—so, let us imagine that the public steps in at this
+juncture, and stops the confidential talk between author and reader,
+and begs us to resume our remarks about this world, with which both are
+certainly better acquainted than with that other one into which we have
+just been peeping.
+
+On coming into his property, Arthur Pendennis at first comported
+himself with a modesty and equanimity which obtained his friend
+Warrington’s praises, though Arthur’s uncle was a little inclined to
+quarrel with his nephew’s meanness of spirit, for not assuming greater
+state and pretensions now that he had entered on the enjoyment of his
+kingdom. He would have had Arthur installed in handsome quarters, and
+riding on showy park hacks, or in well-built cabriolets, every day. “I
+am too absent,” Arthur said, with a laugh, “to drive a cab in London;
+the omnibus would cut me in two, or I should send my horse’s head into
+the ladies’ carriage-windows; and you wouldn’t have me driven about by
+my servant like an apothecary, uncle?” No, Major Pendennis would on no
+account have his nephew appear like an apothecary; the august
+representative of the house of Pendennis must not so demean himself.
+And when Arthur, pursuing his banter, said, “And yet, I dare say, sir,
+my father was proud enough when he first set up his gig,” the old Major
+hemmed and ha’d, and his wrinkled face reddened with a blush as he
+answered, “You know what Buonaparte said, sir, ‘Il faut laver son linge
+sale en famille.’ There is no need, sir, for you to brag that your
+father was a—a medical man. He came of a most ancient but fallen house,
+and was obliged to reconstruct the family fortunes as many a man of
+good family has done before him. You are like the fellow in Sterne,
+sir—the Marquis who came to demand his sword again. Your father got
+back yours for you. You are a man of landed estate, by Gad, sir, and a
+gentleman—never forget you are a gentleman.”
+
+Then Arthur slily turned on his uncle the argument which he had heard
+the old gentleman often use regarding himself. “In the society which I
+have the honour of frequenting through your introduction, who cares to
+ask about my paltry means or my humble gentility, uncle?” he asked. “It
+would be absurd of me to attempt to compete with the great folks; and
+all that they can ask from us is, that we should have a decent address
+and good manners.”
+
+“But for all that, sir, I should belong to a better Club or two,” the
+uncle answered: “I should give an occasional dinner, and select my
+society well; and I should come out of that horrible garret in the
+Temple, sir.” And so Arthur compromised by descending to the second
+floor in Lamb Court: Warrington still occupying his old quarters, and
+the two friends being determined not to part one from the other.
+Cultivate kindly, reader, those friendships of your youth: it is only
+in that generous time that they are formed. How different the
+intimacies of after days are, and how much weaker the grasp of your own
+hand after it has been shaken about in twenty years’ commerce with the
+world, and has squeezed and dropped a thousand equally careless palms!
+As you can seldom fashion your tongue to speak a new language after
+twenty, the heart refuses to receive friendship pretty soon: it gets
+too hard to yield to the impression.
+
+So Pen had many acquaintances, and being of a jovial and easy turn, got
+more daily: but no friend like Warrington; and the two men continued to
+live almost as much in common as the Knights of the Temple, riding upon
+one horse (for Pen’s was at Warrington’s service), and having their
+chambers and their servitor in common.
+
+Mr. Warrington had made the acquaintance of Pen’s friends of Grosvenor
+Place during their last unlucky season in London, and had expressed
+himself no better satisfied with Sir Francis and Lady Clavering and her
+ladyship’s daughter than was the public in general. “The world is
+right,” George said, “about those people. The young men laugh and talk
+freely before those ladies, and about them. The girl sees people whom
+she has no right to know, and talks to men with whom no girl should
+have an intimacy. Did you see those two reprobates leaning over Lady
+Clavering’s carriage in the Park the other day, and leering under Miss
+Blanche’s bonnet? No good mother would let her daughter know those men,
+or admit them within her doors.”
+
+“The Begum is the most innocent and good-natured soul alive,”
+interposed Pen. “She never heard any harm of Captain Blackball, or read
+that trial in which Charley Lovelace figures. Do you suppose that
+honest ladies read and remember the Chronique Scandaleuse as well as
+you, you old grumbler?”
+
+“Would you like Laura Bell to know those fellows?” Warrington asked,
+his face turning rather red. “Would you let any woman you loved be
+contaminated by their company? I have no doubt that the poor Begum is
+ignorant of their histories. It seems to me she is ignorant of a great
+number of better things. It seems to me that your honest Begum is not a
+lady, Pen. It is not her fault, doubtless, that she has not had the
+education, or learned the refinements of a lady.”
+
+“She is as moral as Lady Portsea, who has all the world at her balls,
+and as refined as Mrs. Bull, who breaks the King’s English, and has
+half a dozen dukes at her table,” Pen answered, rather sulkily. “Why
+should you and I be more squeamish than the rest of the world? Why are
+we to visit the sins of her father on this harmless kind creature? She
+never did anything but kindness to you or any mortal soul. As far as
+she knows she does her best. She does not set up to be more than she
+is. She gives you the best dinners she can buy, and the best company
+she can get. She pays the debts of that scamp of a husband of hers. She
+spoils her boy like the most virtuous mother in England. Her opinion
+about literary matters, to be sure, is not much; and I daresay she
+never read a line of Wordsworth, or heard of Tennyson in her life.”
+
+“No more has Mrs. Flanagan the laundress,” growled out Pen’s Mentor;
+“no more has Betty the housemaid; and I have no word of blame against
+them. But a high-souled man doesn’t make friends of these. A gentleman
+doesn’t choose these for his companions, or bitterly rues it afterwards
+if he do. Are you, who are setting up to be a man of the world and a
+philosopher, to tell me that the aim of life is to guttle three courses
+and dine off silver? Do you dare to own to yourself that your ambition
+in life is good claret, and that you’ll dine with any, provided you get
+a stalled ox to feed on? You call me a Cynic—why, what a monstrous
+Cynicism it is, which you and the rest of you men of the world admit!
+I’d rather live upon raw turnips and sleep in a hollow tree, or turn
+backwoodsman or savage, than degrade myself to this civilisation, and
+own that a French cook was the thing in life best worth living for.”
+
+“Because you like a raw beefsteak and a pipe afterwards,” broke out
+Pen, “you give yourself airs of superiority over people whose tastes
+are more dainty, and are not ashamed of the world they live in. Who
+goes about professing particular admiration, or esteem, or friendship,
+or gratitude even, for the people one meets every day? If A. asks me to
+his house, and gives me his best, I take his good things for what they
+are worth and no more. I do not profess to pay him back in friendship,
+but in the conventional money of society. When we part, we part without
+any grief. When we meet, we are tolerably glad to see one another. If I
+were only to live with my friends, your black muzzle, old George, is
+the only face I should see.”
+
+“You are your uncle’s pupil,” said Warrington, rather sadly; “and you
+speak like a worldling.”
+
+“And why not?” asked Pendennis; “why not acknowledge the world I stand
+upon, and submit to the conditions of the society which we live in and
+live by? I am older than you, George, in spite of your grizzled
+whiskers, and have seen much more of the world than you have in your
+garret here, shut up with your books and your reveries and your ideas
+of one-and-twenty. I say, I take the world as it is, and being of it,
+will not be ashamed of it. If the time is out of joint, have I any
+calling or strength to set it right?”
+
+“Indeed, I don’t think you have much of either,” growled Pen’s
+interlocutor.
+
+“If I doubt whether I am better than my neighbour,” Arthur continued,
+“if I concede that I am no better,—I also doubt whether he is better
+than I. I see men who begin with ideas of universal reform, and who,
+before their beards are grown, propound their loud plans for the
+regeneration of mankind, give up their schemes after a few years of
+bootless talking and vainglorious attempts to lead their fellows; and
+after they have found that men will no longer bear them, as indeed they
+never were in the least worthy to be heard, sink quietly into the
+ranks-and-file,—acknowledging their aims impracticable, or thankful
+that they were never put into practice. The fiercest reformers grow
+calm, and are faire to put up with things as they are: the loudest
+Radical orators become dumb, quiescent placemen: the most fervent
+Liberals when out of power, become humdrum Conservatives or downright
+tyrants or despots in office. Look at the Thiers, look at Guizot, in
+opposition and in place! Look at the Whigs appealing to the country,
+and the Whigs in power! Would you say that the conduct of these men is
+an act of treason, as the Radicals bawl,—who would give way in their
+turn, were their turn ever to come? No, only that they submit to
+circumstances which are stronger than they,—march as the world marches
+towards reform, but at the world’s pace (and the movements of the vast
+body of mankind must needs be slow), forgo this scheme as
+impracticable, on account of opposition,—that as immature, because
+against the sense of the majority,—are forced to calculate drawbacks
+and difficulties, as well as to think of reforms and advances,—and
+compelled finally to submit, and to wait, and to compromise.”
+
+“The Right Honourable Arthur Pendennis could not speak better, or be
+more satisfied with himself, if he was First Lord of the Treasury and
+Chancellor of the Exchequer,” Warrington said.
+
+“Self-satisfied? Why self-satisfied?” continued Pen. “It seems to me
+that my scepticism is more respectful and more modest than the
+revolutionary ardour of other folks. Many a patriot of eighteen, many a
+Spouting-Club orator, would turn the Bishops out of the House of Lords
+to-morrow, and throw the Lords out after the Bishops, and throw the
+Throne into the Thames after the Peers and the Bench. Is that man more
+modest than I, who takes these institutions as I find them, and waits
+for time and truth to develop, or fortify, or (if you like) destroy
+them? A college tutor, or a nobleman’s toady, who appears one fine day
+as my right reverend lord, in a silk apron and a shovel-hat, and
+assumes benedictory airs over me, is still the same man we remember at
+Oxbridge, when he was truckling to the tufts, and bullying the poor
+undergraduates in the lecture-room. An hereditary legislator, who
+passes his time with jockeys and black-legs and ballet-girls, and who
+is called to rule over me and his other betters because his grandfather
+made a lucky speculation in the funds, or found a coal or tin mine on
+his property, or because his stupid ancestor happened to be in command
+of ten thousand men as brave as himself, who overcame twelve thousand
+Frenchmen, or fifty thousand Indians—such a man, I say, inspires me
+with no more respect than the bitterest democrat can feel towards him.
+But, such as he is, he is a part of the old society to which we belong
+and I submit to his lordship with acquiescence; and he takes his place
+above the best of us at all dinner-parties, and there bides his time. I
+don’t want to chop his head off with a guillotine, or to fling mud at
+him in the streets. When they call such a man a disgrace to his order;
+and such another, who is good and gentle, refined and generous, who
+employs his great means in promoting every kindness and charity, and
+art and grace of life, in the kindest and most gracious manner, an
+ornament to his rank—the question as to the use and propriety of the
+order is not in the least affected one way or other. There it is,
+extant among us, a part of our habits, the creed of many of us, the
+growth of centuries, the symbol of a most complicated tradition—there
+stand my lord the bishop and my lord the hereditary legislator—what the
+French call transactions both of them,—representing in their present
+shape mail-clad barons and double-sworded chiefs (from whom their
+lordships the hereditaries, for the most part, don’t descend), and
+priests, professing to hold an absolute truth and a divinely inherited
+power, the which truth absolute our ancestors burned at the stake, and
+denied there; the which divine transmissible power still exists in
+print—to be believed, or not, pretty much at choice; and of these, I
+say, I acquiesce that they exist, and no more. If you say that these
+schemes, devised before printing was known, or steam was born; when
+thought was an infant, scared and whipped; and truth under its
+guardians was gagged, and swathed, and blindfolded, and not allowed to
+lift its voice, or to look out or to walk under the sun; before men
+were permitted to meet, or to trade, or to speak with each other—if any
+one says (as some faithful souls do) that these schemes are for ever,
+and having been changed and modified constantly are to be subject to no
+further development or decay, I laugh, and let the man speak. But I
+would have toleration for these, as I would ask it for my own opinions;
+and if they are to die, I would rather they had a decent and natural
+than an abrupt and violent death.”
+
+“You would have sacrificed to Jove,” Warrington said, “had you lived in
+the time of the Christian persecutions.”
+
+“Perhaps I would,” said Pen, with some sadness. “Perhaps I am a
+coward,—perhaps my faith is unsteady; but this is my own reserve. What
+I argue here is that I will not persecute. Make a faith or a dogma
+absolute, and persecution becomes a logical consequence; and Dominic
+burns a Jew, or Calvin an Arian, or Nero a Christian, or Elizabeth or
+Mary a Papist or Protestant; or their father both or either, according
+to his humour; and acting without any pangs of remorse,—but, on the
+contrary, notions of duty fulfilled. Make dogma absolute, and to
+inflict or to suffer death becomes easy and necessary; and Mahomet’s
+soldiers shouting, ‘Paradise! Paradise!’ and dying on the Christian
+spears, are not more or less praiseworthy than the same men
+slaughtering a townful of Jews, or cutting off the heads of all
+prisoners who would not acknowledge that there was but one Prophet of
+God.”
+
+“A little while since, young one,” Warrington said, who had been
+listening to his friend’s confessions neither without sympathy nor
+scorn, for his mood led him to indulge in both, “you asked me why I
+remained out of the strife of the world, and looked on at the great
+labour of my neighbour without taking any part in the struggle? Why,
+what a mere dilettante you own yourself to be, in this confession of
+general scepticism, and what a listless spectator yourself! You are
+six-and-twenty years old; and as blase as a rake of sixty. You neither
+hope much nor care much, nor believe much. You doubt about other men as
+much as about yourself. Were it made of such pococuranti as you, the
+world would be intolerable; and I had rather live in a wilderness of
+monkeys, and listen to their chatter, than in a company of men who
+denied everything.”
+
+“Were the world composed of Saint Bernards or Saint Dominies, it would
+be equally odious,” said Pen, “and at the end of a few scores of years
+would cease to exist altogether. Would you have every man with his head
+shaved, and every woman in a cloister,—carrying out to the full the
+ascetic principle? Would you have conventicle hymns twanging from every
+lane in every city in the world? Would you have all the birds of the
+forest sing one note and fly with one feather? You call me a sceptic
+because I acknowledge what is; and in acknowledging that, be it linnet
+or lark, or priest or parson, be it, I mean, any single one of the
+infinite varieties of the creatures of God (whose very name I would be
+understood to pronounce with reverence, and never to approach but with
+distant awe), I say that the study and acknowledgment of that variety
+amongst men especially increases our respect and wonder for the
+Creator, Commander, and Ordainer of all these minds, so different and
+yet so united,—meeting in a common adoration, and offering up, each
+according to his degree and means of approaching the Divine centre, his
+acknowledgment of praise and worship, each singing (to recur to the
+bird simile) his natural song.”
+
+“And so, Arthur, the hymn of a saint, or the ode of a poet, or the
+chant of a Newgate thief, are all pretty much the same in your
+philosophy,” said George.
+
+“Even that sneer could be answered were it to the point,” Pendennis
+replied; “but it is not; and it could be replied to you, that even to
+the wretched outcry of the thief on the tree, the wisest and the best
+of all teachers we know of, the untiring Comforter and Consoler,
+promised a pitiful hearing and a certain hope. Hymns of saints! odes of
+poets! who are we to measure the chances and opportunities, the means
+of doing, or even judging, right and wrong, awarded to men; and to
+establish the rule for meting out their punishments and rewards? We are
+as insolent and unthinking in judging of men’s morals as of their
+intellects. We admire this man as being a great philosopher, and set
+down the other as a dullard, not knowing either, or the amount of truth
+in either, or being certain of the truth anywhere. We sing Te Deum for
+this hero who has won a battle, and De Profundis for that other one who
+has broken out of prison, and has been caught afterwards by the
+policeman. Our measure of rewards and punishments is most partial and
+incomplete, absurdly inadequate, utterly worldly, and we wish to
+continue it into the next world. Into that next and awful world we
+strive to pursue men, and send after them our impotent party verdicts
+of condemnation or acquittal. We set up our paltry little rods to
+measure Heaven immeasurable, as if, in comparison to that, Newton’s
+mind or Pascal’s or Shakspeare’s was any loftier than mine; as if the
+ray which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than the man who
+blacks my boots. Measured by that altitude, the tallest and the
+smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, that I
+say we should take no count of the calculation, and it is a meanness to
+reckon the difference.”
+
+“Your figure fails there, Arthur,” said the other, better pleased; “if
+even by common arithmetic we can multiply as we can reduce almost
+infinitely, the Great Reckoner must take count of all; and the small is
+not small, or the great great, to his infinity.”
+
+“I don’t call those calculations in question,” Arthur said; “I only say
+that yours are incomplete and premature; false in consequence, and, by
+every operation, multiplying into wider error. I do not condemn the men
+who murdered Socrates and damned Galileo. I say that they damned
+Galileo and murdered Socrates.”
+
+“And yet but a moment since you admitted the propriety of acquiescence
+in the present, and, I suppose, all other tyrannies?”
+
+“No: but that if an opponent menaces me, of whom and without cost of
+blood and violence I can get rid, I would rather wait him out, and
+starve him out, than fight him out. Fabius fought Hannibal sceptically.
+Who was his Roman coadjutor, whom we read of in Plutarch when we were
+boys, who scoffed at the other’s procrastination and doubted his
+courage, and engaged the enemy and was beaten for his pains?”
+
+In these speculations and confessions of Arthur, the reader may perhaps
+see allusions to questions which, no doubt, have occupied and
+discomposed himself, and which he has answered by very different
+solutions to those come to by our friend. We are not pledging ourselves
+for the correctness of his opinions, which readers will please to
+consider are delivered dramatically, the writer being no more
+answerable for them, than for the sentiments uttered by any other
+character of the story: our endeavour is merely to follow out, in its
+progress, the development of the mind of a worldly and selfish, but not
+ungenerous or unkind or truth-avoiding man. And it will be seen that
+the lamentable stage to which his logic at present has brought him, is
+one of general scepticism and sneering acquiescence in the world as it
+is; or if you like so to call it, a belief qualified with scorn in all
+things extant. The tastes and habits of such a man prevent him from
+being a boisterous demagogue, and his love of truth and dislike of cant
+keep him from advancing crude propositions, such as many loud reformers
+are constantly ready with; much more of uttering downright falsehoods
+in arguing questions or abusing opponents, which he would die or starve
+rather than use. It was not in our friend’s nature to be able to utter
+certain lies; nor was he strong enough to protest against others,
+except with a polite sneer; his maxim being, that he owed obedience to
+all Acts of Parliament, as long as they were not repealed.
+
+And to what does this easy and sceptical life lead a man? Friend Arthur
+was a Sadducee, and the Baptist might be in the Wilderness shouting to
+the poor, who were listening with all their might and faith to the
+preacher’s awful accents and denunciations of wrath or woe or
+salvation; and our friend the Sadducee would turn his sleek mule with a
+shrug and a smile from the crowd, and go home to the shade of his
+terrace, and muse over preacher and audience, and turn to his roll of
+Plato, or his pleasant Greek songbook babbling of honey and Hybla, and
+nymphs and fountains and love. To what, we say, does this scepticism
+lead? It leads a man to a shameful loneliness and selfishness, so to
+speak—the more shameful, because it is so good-humoured and
+conscienceless and serene. Conscience! What is conscience? Why accept
+remorse? What is public or private faith? Mythuses alike enveloped in
+enormous tradition. If seeing and acknowledging the lies of the world,
+Arthur, as see them you can with only too fatal a clearness, you submit
+to them without any protest further than a laugh: if, plunged yourself
+in easy sensuality, you allow the whole wretched world to pass groaning
+by you unmoved: if the fight for the truth is taking place, and all men
+of honour are on the ground armed on the one side or the other, and you
+alone are to lie on your balcony and smoke your pipe out of the noise
+and the danger, you had better have died, or never have been at all,
+than such a sensual coward.
+
+“The truth, friend!” Arthur said, imperturbably; “where is the truth?
+Show it me. That is the question between us. I see it on both sides. I
+see it on the Conservative side of the house, and amongst the Radicals,
+and even on the ministerial benches. I see it in this man, who worships
+by Act of Parliament, and is rewarded with a silk apron and five
+thousand a year; in that man, who, driven fatally by the remorseless
+logic of his creed, gives up everything, friends, fame, dearest ties,
+closest vanities, the respect of an army of churchmen, the recognised
+position of a leader, and passes over, truth-impelled, to the enemy, in
+whose ranks he will serve henceforth as a nameless private soldier:—I
+see the truth in that man, as I do in his brother, whose logic drives
+him to quite a different conclusion, and who, after having passed a
+life in vain endeavours to reconcile an irreconcilable book, flings it
+at last down in despair, and declares, with tearful eyes, and hands up
+to heaven, his revolt and recantation. If the truth is with all these,
+why should I take side with any one of them? Some are called upon to
+preach: let them preach. Of these preachers there are somewhat too
+many, methinks, who fancy they have the gift. But we cannot all be
+parsons in church, that is clear. Some must sit silent and listen, or
+go to sleep mayhap. Have we not all our duties? The head charity-boy
+blows the bellows; the master canes the other boys in the organ-loft;
+the clerk sings out Amen from the desk; and the beadle with the staff
+opens the door for his Reverence, who rustles in silk up to the
+cushion. I won’t cane the boys, nay, or say Amen always, or act as the
+church’s champion and warrior, in the shape of the beadle with the
+staff; but I will take off my hat in the place, and say my prayers
+there too, and shake hands with the clergyman as he steps on the grass
+outside. Don’t I know that his being there is a compromise, and that he
+stands before me an Act of Parliament? That the church he occupies was
+built for other worship? That the Methodist chapel is next door; and
+that Bunyan the tinker is bawling out the tidings of damnation on the
+common hard by? Yes, I am a Sadducee; and I take things as I find them,
+and the world, and the Acts of Parliament of the world, as they are;
+and as I intend to take a wife, if I find one—not to be madly in love
+and prostrate at her feet like a fool—not to worship her as an angel,
+or to expect to find her as such—but to be good-natured to her, and
+courteous, expecting good-nature and pleasant society from her in turn.
+And so, George, if ever you hear of my marrying, depend on it, it won’t
+be a romantic attachment on my side: and if you hear of any good place
+under Government, I have no particular scruples that I know of, which
+would prevent me from accepting your offer.”
+
+“O Pen, you scoundrel! I know what you mean,” here Warrington broke
+out. “This is the meaning of your scepticism, of your quietism, of your
+atheism, my poor fellow. You’re going to sell yourself, and Heaven help
+you! You are going to make a bargain which will degrade you and make
+you miserable for life, and there’s no use talking of it. If you are
+once bent on it, the devil won’t prevent you.”
+
+“On the contrary, he’s on my side, isn’t he, George?” said Pen with a
+laugh. “What good cigars these are! Come down and have a little dinner
+at the Club; the chef’s in town, and he’ll cook a good one for me. No,
+you won’t? Don’t be sulky, old boy, I’m going down to—to the country
+to-morrow.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIII.
+Which accounts perhaps for Chapter LXI.
+
+
+The information regarding the affairs of the Clavering family, which
+Major Pendennis had acquired through Strong, and by his own personal
+interference as the friend of the house, was such as almost made the
+old gentleman pause in any plans which he might have once entertained
+for his nephew’s benefit. To bestow upon Arthur a wife with two such
+fathers-in-law, as the two worthies whom the guileless and unfortunate
+Lady Clavering had drawn in her marriage ventures, was to benefit no
+man. And though the one, in a manner, neutralised the other, and the
+appearance of Amory or Altamont in public would be the signal for his
+instantaneous withdrawal and condign punishment,—for the fugitive
+convict had cut down the officer in charge of him,—and a rope would be
+inevitably his end; if he came again under British authorities; yet, no
+guardian would like to secure for his ward a wife, whose parent was to
+be got rid of in such a way; and the old gentleman’s notion always had
+been that Altamont, with the gallows before his eyes, would assuredly
+avoid recognition; while, at the same time, by holding the threat of
+his discovery over Clavering, the latter, who would lose everything by
+Amory’s appearance, would be a slave in the hands of the person who
+knew so fatal a secret.
+
+But if the Begum paid Clavering’s debts many times more, her wealth
+would be expended altogether upon this irreclaimable reprobate; and her
+heirs, whoever they might be, would succeed but to an emptied treasury;
+and Miss Amory, instead of bringing her husband a good income and a
+seat in Parliament, would bring to that individual her person only, and
+her pedigree with that lamentable note of sus. per coll. at the name of
+the last male of her line.
+
+There was, however, to the old schemer revolving these things in his
+mind, another course yet open; the which will appear to the reader who
+may take the trouble to peruse a conversation, which presently ensued,
+between Major Pendennis and the honourable Baronet, the Member for
+Clavering.
+
+When a man, under pecuniary difficulties, disappears from among his
+usual friends and equals,—dives out of sight, as it were, from the
+flock of birds in which he is accustomed to sail, it is wonderful at
+what strange and distant nooks he comes up again for breath. I have
+known a Pall Mall lounger and Rotten Row buck, of no inconsiderable
+fashion, vanish from amongst his comrades of the Clubs and the Park,
+and be discovered, very happy and affable, at an eighteenpenny ordinary
+in Billingsgate: another gentleman, of great learning and wit, when
+outrunning the constable (were I to say he was a literary man, some
+critics would vow that I intended to insult the literary profession),
+once sent me his address at a little public-house called the “Fox under
+the Hill,” down a most darksome and cavernous archway in the Strand.
+Such a man, under such misfortunes, may have a house, but he is never
+in his house; and has an address where letters may be left; but only
+simpletons go with the hopes of seeing him.—Only a few of the faithful
+know where he is to be found, and have the clue to his hiding-place.
+So, after the disputes with his wife, and the misfortunes consequent
+thereon, to find Sir Francis Clavering at home was impossible. “Ever
+since I hast him for my book, which is fourteen pound, he don’t come
+home till three o’clock, and purtends to be asleep when I bring his
+water of a mornin’, and dodges hout when I’m downstairs,” Mr. Lightfoot
+remarked to his friend Morgan; and announced that he should go down to
+my Lady, and be butler there, and marry his old woman. In like manner,
+after his altercations with Strong, the Baronet did not come near him,
+and fled to other haunts, out of the reach of the Chevalier’s
+reproaches;—out of the reach of conscience, if possible, which many of
+us try to dodge and leave behind us by changes of scene and other
+fugitive stratagems.
+
+So, though the elder Pendennis, having his own ulterior object, was
+bent upon seeing Pen’s country neighbour and representative in
+Parliament, it took the Major no inconsiderable trouble and time before
+he could get him into such a confidential state and conversation, as
+were necessary for the ends which the Major had in view. For since the
+Major had been called in as family friend, and had cognisance of
+Clavering’s affairs, conjugal and pecuniary, the Baronet avoided him:
+as he always avoided all his lawyers and agents when there was an
+account to be rendered, or an affair of business to be discussed
+between them; and never kept any appointment but when its object was
+the raising of money. Thus, previous to catching this most shy and
+timorous bird, the Major made more than one futile attempt to hold
+him;—on one day it was a most innocent-looking invitation to dinner at
+Greenwich, to meet a few friends; the Baronet accepted, suspected
+something, and did not come; leaving the Major (who indeed proposed to
+represent in himself the body of friends) to eat his whitebait
+alone:—on another occasion the Major wrote and asked for ten minutes’
+talk, and the Baronet instantly acknowledged the note, and made the
+appointment at four o’clock the next day at Bays’s precisely (he
+carefully underlined the “precisely”); but though four o’clock came, as
+in the course of time and destiny it could not do otherwise, no
+Clavering made his appearance. Indeed, if he had borrowed twenty pounds
+of Pendennis, he could not have been more timid, or desirous of
+avoiding the Major; and the latter found that it was one thing to seek
+a man, and another to find him.
+
+Before the close of that day in which Strong’s patron had given the
+Chevalier the benefit of so many blessings before his face and curses
+behind his back, Sir Francis Clavering, who had pledged his word and
+his oath to his wife’s advisers to draw or accept no more bills of
+exchange, and to be content with the allowance which his victimised
+wife still awarded him, had managed to sign his respectable name to a
+piece of stamped paper, which the Baronet’s friend, Mr. Moss Abrams,
+had carried off, promising to have the bill “done” by a party with
+whose intimacy Mr. Abrams was favoured. And it chanced that Strong
+heard of this transaction at the place where the writings had been
+drawn,—in the back-parlour, namely, of Mr. Santiago’s cigar-shop, where
+the Chevalier was constantly in the habit of spending an hour in the
+evening.
+
+“He is at his old work again,” Mr. Santiago told his customer. “He and
+Moss Abrams were in my parlour. Moss sent out my boy for a stamp. It
+must have been a bill for fifty pound. I heard the Baronet tell Moss to
+date it two months back. He will pretend that it is an old bill, and
+that he forgot it when he came to a settlement with his wife the other
+day. I dare say they will give him some more money now he is clear.” A
+man who has the habit of putting his unlucky name to “promises to pay”
+at six months, has the satisfaction of knowing, too, that his affairs
+are known and canvassed, and his signature handed round among the very
+worst knaves and rogues of London.
+
+Mr. Santiago’s shop was close by St. James’s Street and Bury Street,
+where we have had the honour of visiting our friend Major Pendennis in
+his lodgings. The Major was walking daintily towards his apartment, as
+Strong, burning with wrath and redolent of Havanna, strode along the
+same pavement opposite to him.
+
+“Confound these young men: how they poison everything with their
+smoke,” thought the Major. “Here comes a fellow with mustachios and a
+cigar. Every fellow who smokes and wears mustachios is a low fellow.
+Oh! it’s Mr. Strong.—I hope you are well, Mr. Strong?” and the old
+gentleman, making a dignified bow to the Chevalier, was about to pass
+into his house; directing towards the lock of the door, with trembling
+hand, the polished door-key.
+
+We have said that, at the long and weary disputes and conferences
+regarding the payment of Sir Francis Clavering’s last debts, Strong and
+Pendennis had both been present as friends and advisers of the
+Baronet’s unlucky family. Strong stopped and held out his hand to his
+brother negotiator, and old Pendennis put out towards him a couple of
+ungracious fingers.
+
+“What is your good news?” said Major Pendennis, patronising the other
+still further, and condescending to address to him an observation; for
+old Pendennis had kept such good company all his life, that he vaguely
+imagined he honoured common men by speaking to them. “Still in town,
+Mr. Strong? I hope I see you well.”
+
+“My news is bad news, sir,” Strong answered; “it concerns our friends
+at Tunbridge Wells, and I should like to talk to you about it.
+Clavering is at his old tricks again, Major Pendennis.”
+
+“Indeed! Pray do me the favour to come into my lodging,” cried the
+Major with awakened interest; and the pair entered and took possession
+of his drawing-room. Here seated, Strong unburthened himself of his
+indignation to the Major, and spoke at large of Clavering’s
+recklessness and treachery. “No promises will bind him, sir,” he said.
+“You remember when we met, sir, with my lady’s lawyer, how he wouldn’t
+be satisfied with giving his honour, but wanted to take his oath on his
+knees to his wife, and rang the bell for a Bible, and swore perdition
+on his soul if he ever would give another bill. He has been signing one
+this very day, sir: and will sign as many more as you please for ready
+money: and will deceive anybody, his wife or his child, or his old
+friend, who has backed him a hundred times. Why, there’s a bill of his
+and mine will be due next week.”
+
+“I thought we had paid all.”
+
+“Not that one,” Strong said, blushing. “He asked me not to mention it,
+and—and—I had half the money for that, Major; And they will be down on
+me. But I don’t care for it; I’m used to it. It’s Lady Clavering that
+riles me. It’s a shame that that good-natured woman, who has paid him
+out of gaol a score of times, should be ruined by his heartlessness. A
+parcel of bill-stealers boxers, any rascals, get his money; and he
+don’t scruple to throw an honest fellow over. Would you believe it,
+sir, he took money of Altamont—you know whom I mean.”
+
+“Indeed? of that singular man, who I think came tipsy once to Sir
+Francis’s house?” Major Pendennis said, with impenetrable countenance.
+“Who is Altamont, Mr. Strong?”
+
+“I am sure I don’t know, if you don’t know,” the Chevalier answered,
+with a look of surprise and suspicion.
+
+“To tell you frankly,” said the Major, “I have my suspicions—I
+suppose—mind, I only suppose—that in our friend Clavering’s a life—who,
+between you and me, Captain Strong, we must own about as loose a fish
+as any in my acquaintance—there are, no doubt, some queer secrets and
+stories which he would not like to have known: none of us would. And
+very likely this fellow, who calls himself Altamont, knows some story
+against Clavering, and has some hold on him, and gets money out of him
+on the strength of his information. I know some of the best men of the
+best families in England who are paying through the nose in that way.
+But their private affairs are no business of mine, Mr. Strong; and it
+is not to be supposed that because I go and dine with a man, I pry into
+his secrets, or am answerable for all his past life. And so with our
+friend Clavering, I am most interested for his wife’s sake, and her
+daughter’s, who is a most charming creature: and when her ladyship
+asked me, I looked into her affairs, and tried to set them straight;
+and shall do so again, you understand, to the best of my humble power
+and ability, if I can make myself useful. And if I am called upon—you
+understand, if I am called upon—and—by the way, this Mr. Altamont, Mr.
+Strong? How is this Mr. Altamont? I believe you are acquainted with
+him. Is he in town?”
+
+“I don’t know that I am called upon to know where he is, Major
+Pendennis,” said Strong, rising and taking up his hat in dudgeon, for
+the Major’s patronising manner and impertinence of caution offended the
+honest gentleman not a little.
+
+Pendennis’s manner altered at once from a tone of hauteur to one of
+knowing good-humour. “Ah, Captain Strong, you are cautious too, I see;
+and quite right, my good sir, quite right. We don’t know what ears
+walls may have, sir, or to whom we may be talking; and as a man of the
+world, and an old soldier,—an old and distinguished soldier, I have
+been told, Captain Strong,—you know very well that there is no use in
+throwing away your fire; you may have your ideas, and I may put two and
+two together and have mine. But there are things which don’t concern
+him that many a man had better not know, eh, Captain? and which I, for
+one, won’t know until I have reason for knowing them: and that I
+believe is your maxim too. With regard to our friend the Baronet, I
+think with you, it would be most advisable that he should be checked in
+his imprudent courses; and most strongly reprehend any man’s departure
+from his word, or any conduct of his which can give any pain to his
+family, or cause them annoyance in any way. That is my full and frank
+opinion, and I am sure it is yours.”
+
+“Certainly,” said Mr. Strong, drily.
+
+“I am delighted to hear it; delighted that an old brother soldier
+should agree with me so fully. And I am exceedingly glad of the lucky
+meeting which has procured me the good fortune of your visit. Good
+evening. Thank you. Morgan, show the door to Captain Strong.”
+
+And Strong, preceded by Morgan, took his leave of Major Pendennis; the
+Chevalier not a little puzzled at the old fellow’s prudence; and the
+valet, to say the truth, to the full as much perplexed at his master’s
+reticence. For Mr. Morgan, in his capacity of accomplished valet, moved
+here and there in a house as silent as a shadow; and, as it so
+happened, during the latter part of his master’s conversation with his
+visitor, had been standing very close to the door, and had overheard
+not a little of the talk between the two gentlemen, and a great deal
+more than he could understand.
+
+“Who is that Altamont? know anything about him and Strong?” Mr. Morgan
+asked of Mr. Lightfoot, on the next convenient occasion when they met
+at the Club.
+
+“Strong’s his man of business, draws the Governor’s bills, and indosses
+’em, and does his odd jobs and that; and I suppose Altamont’s in it
+too,” Mr. Lightfoot replied. “That kite-flying, you know, Mr. M.,
+always takes two or three on ’em to set the paper going. Altamont put
+the pot on at the Derby, and won a good bit of money. I wish the
+Governor could get some somewhere, and I could get my book paid up.”
+
+“Do you think my Lady would pay his debts again?” Morgan asked. “Find
+out that for me, Lightfoot, and I’ll make it worth your while, my boy.”
+
+Major Pendennis had often said with a laugh, that his valet Morgan was
+a much richer man than himself: and, indeed, by long course of careful
+speculation, this wary and silent attendant had been amassing a
+considerable sum of money, during the year which he had passed in the
+Major’s service, where he had made the acquaintance of many other
+valets of distinction, from whom he had learned the affairs of their
+principals. When Mr. Arthur came into his property, but not until then,
+Morgan had surprised the young gentleman, by saying that he had a
+little sum of money, some fifty or a hundred pound, which he wanted to
+lay out to advantage; perhaps the gentlemen in the Temple, knowing
+about affairs and business and that, could help a poor fellow to a good
+investment? Morgan would be very much obliged to Mr. Arthur, most
+grateful and obliged indeed, if Arthur could tell him of one. When
+Arthur laughingly replied, that he knew nothing about money matters,
+and knew no earthly way of helping Morgan, the latter, with the utmost
+simplicity, was very grateful, very grateful indeed, to Mr. Arthur, and
+if Mr. Arthur should want a little money before his rents was paid,
+perhaps he would kindly remember that his uncle’s old and faithful
+servant had some as he would like to put out: and be most proud if he
+could be useful anyways to any of the family.
+
+The Prince of Fairoaks, who was tolerably prudent and had no need of
+ready money, would as soon have thought of borrowing from his uncle’s
+servant as of stealing the valet’s pocket-handkerchief, and was on the
+point of making some haughty reply to Morgan’s offer, but was checked
+by the humour of the transaction. Morgan a capitalist! Morgan offering
+to lend to him—The joke was excellent. On the other hand, the man might
+be quite innocent, and the proposal of money a simple offer of
+good-will. So Arthur withheld the sarcasm that was rising to his lips,
+and contented himself by declining Mr. Morgan’s kind proposal. He
+mentioned the matter to his uncle, however, and congratulated the
+latter on having such a treasure in his service.
+
+It was then that the Major said that he believed Morgan had been
+getting devilish rich for a devilish long time; in fact, he had bought
+the house in Bury Street, in which his master was a lodger and had
+actually made a considerable sum of money, from his acquaintance with
+the Clavering family and his knowledge obtained through his master that
+the Begum would pay all her husband’s debts, by buying up as many of
+the Baronet’s acceptances as he could raise money to purchase. Of these
+transactions the Major, however, knew no more than most gentlemen do of
+their servants, who live with us all our days and are strangers to us,
+so strong custom is, and so pitiless the distinction between class and
+class.
+
+“So he offered to lend you money, did he?” the elder Pendennis remarked
+to his nephew. “He’s a dev’lish sly fellow, and a dev’lish rich fellow;
+and there’s many a nobleman would like to have such a valet in his
+service, and borrow from him too. And he ain’t a bit changed, Monsieur
+Morgan. He does his work just as well as ever—he’s always ready to my
+bell—steals about the room like a cat—he’s so dev’lishly attached to
+me, Morgan!”
+
+On the day of Strong’s visit, the Major bethought him of Pen’s story,
+and that Morgan might help him, and rallied the valet regarding his
+wealth with that free and insolent way which so high-placed a gentleman
+might be disposed to adopt towards so unfortunate a creature.
+
+“I hear that you have got some money to invest, Morgan,” said the
+Major.
+
+“It’s Mr. Arthur has been telling, hang him,” thought the valet.
+
+“I’m glad my place is such a good one.”
+
+“Thank you, sir—I’ve no reason to complain of my place, nor of my
+master,” replied Morgan, demurely.
+
+“You’re a good fellow: and I believe you are attached to me; and I’m
+glad you get on well. And I hope you’ll be prudent, and not be taking a
+public-house or that kind of thing.”
+
+A public-house, thought Morgan—me in a public-house!—the old
+fool!—Dammy, if I was ten years younger I’d set in Parlyment before I
+died, that I would.—“No, thank you kindly, sir. I don’t think of the
+public line, sir. And I’ve got my little savings pretty well put out,
+sir.”
+
+“You do a little in the discounting way, eh, Morgan?”
+
+“Yes, sir, a very little—I—I beg your pardon, sir—might I be so free as
+to ask a question——”
+
+“Speak on, my good fellow,” the elder said, graciously.
+
+“About Sir Francis Clavering’s paper, sir? Do you think he’s any longer
+any good, sir? Will my Lady pay on ’em, any more, sir?”
+
+“What, you’ve done something in that business already?”
+
+“Yes, sir, a little,” replied Morgan, dropping down his eyes. “And I
+don’t mind owning, sir, and I hope I may take the liberty of saying,
+sir, that a little more would make me very comfortable if it turned out
+as well as the last.”
+
+“Why, how much have you netted by him, in Gad’s name?” asked the Major.
+
+“I’ve done a good bit, sir, at it: that I own, sir. Having some
+information, and made acquaintance with the fam’ly through your
+kindness, I put on the pot, sir.”
+
+“You did what?”
+
+“I laid my money on, sir—I got all I could, and borrowed, and bought
+Sir Francis’s bills; many of ’em had his name, and the gentleman’s as
+is just gone out, Edward Strong, Esquire, sir: and of course I know of
+the blow-hup and shindy as is took place in Grosvenor Place, sir: and
+as I may as well make my money as another, I’d be very much obleeged to
+you if you’d tell me whether my Lady will come down any more.”
+
+Although Major Pendennis was as much surprised at this intelligence
+regarding his servant, as if he had heard that Morgan was a disguised
+Marquis, about to throw off his mask and assume his seat in the House
+of Peers; and although he was of course indignant at the audacity of
+the fellow who had dared to grow rich under his nose, and without his
+cognisance; yet he had a natural admiration for every man who
+represented money and success, and found himself respecting Morgan, and
+being rather afraid of that worthy, as the truth began to dawn upon
+him.
+
+“Well, Morgan,” said he, “I mustn’t ask how rich you are; and the
+richer the better for your sake, I’m sure. And if I could give you any
+information that could serve you, I would speedily help you. But
+frankly, if Lady Clavering asks me whether she shall pay any more of
+Sir Francis’s debts, I shall advise and I hope she won’t, though I fear
+she will—and that is all I know. And so you are aware that Sir Francis
+is beginning again in his—eh—reckless and imprudent course?”
+
+“At his old games, sir—can’t prevent that gentleman. He will do it.”
+
+“Mr. Strong was saying that a Mr. Moss Abrams was the holder of one of
+Sir Francis Clavering’s notes. Do you know anything of this Mr. Abrams;
+or the amount of the bill?”
+
+“Don’t know the bill, know Abrams quite well, sir.”
+
+“I wish you would find out about it for me. And I wish you would find
+out where I can see Sir Francis Clavering, Morgan.”
+
+And Morgan said, “Thank you, sir, yes, sir, I will, sir;” and retired
+from the room, as he had entered it, with his usual stealthy respect
+and quiet humility; leaving the Major to muse and wonder over what he
+had just heard.
+
+The next morning the valet informed Major Pendennis that he had seen
+Mr. Abrams; what was the amount of the bill that gentleman was desirous
+to negotiate; and that the Baronet would be sure to be in the
+back-parlour of the Wheel of Fortune Tavern that day at one o’clock.
+
+To this appointment Sir Francis Clavering was punctual, and as at one
+o’clock he sate in the parlour of the tavern in question, surrounded by
+spittoons, Windsor chairs, cheerful prints of boxers, trotting horses,
+and pedestrians, and the lingering of last night’s tobacco fumes—as the
+descendant of an ancient line sate in this delectable place
+accommodated with an old copy of Bell’s Life in London, much blotted
+with beer, the polite Major Pendennis walked into the apartment.
+
+“So it’s you, old boy?” asked the Baronet, thinking that Mr. Moss
+Abrams had arrived with the money.
+
+“How do you do, Sir Francis Clavering? I wanted to see you, and
+followed you here,” said the Major, at sight of whom the other’s
+countenance fell.
+
+Now that he had his opponent before him, the Major was determined to
+make a brisk and sudden attack upon him, and went into action at once.
+“I know,” he continued, “who is the exceedingly disreputable person for
+whom you took me, Clavering; and the errand which brought you here.”
+
+“It ain’t your business, is it?” asked the Baronet, with a sulky and
+deprecatory look. “Why are you following me about and taking the
+command, and meddling in my affairs, Major Pendennis? I’ve never done
+you any harm, have I? I’ve never had your money. And I don’t choose to
+be dodged about in this way, and domineered over. I don’t choose it,
+and I won’t have it. If Lady Clavering has any proposal to make to me,
+let it be done in the regular way, and through the lawyers. I’d rather
+not have you.”
+
+“I am not come from Lady Clavering,” the Major said, “but of my own
+accord, to try and remonstrate with you, Clavering, and see if you can
+be kept from ruin. It is but a month ago that you swore on your honour,
+and wanted to get a Bible to strengthen the oath, that you would accept
+no more bills, but content yourself with the allowance which Lady
+Clavering gives you. All your debts were paid with that proviso, and
+you have broken it; this Mr. Abrams has a bill of yours for sixty
+pounds.”
+
+“It’s an old bill. I take my solemn oath it’s an old bill,” shrieked
+out the Baronet.
+
+“You drew it yesterday, and you dated it three months back purposely.
+By Gad, Clavering, you sicken me with lies, I can’t help telling you
+so. I’ve no patience with you, by Gad. You cheat everybody, yourself
+included. I’ve seen a deal of the world, but I never met your equal at
+humbugging. It’s my belief you had rather lie than not.”
+
+“Have you come here, you old—old beast, to tempt me to—to pitch into
+you, and—and knock your old head off?” said the Baronet, with a
+poisonous look of hatred at the Major.
+
+“What, sir?” shouted out the old Major, rising to his feet and clasping
+his cane, and looking so fiercely, that the Baronet’s tone instantly
+changed towards him.
+
+“No, no,” said Clavering, piteously, “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean
+to be angry, or say anything unkind, only you’re so damned harsh to me,
+Major Pendennis. What is it you want of me? Why have you been hunting
+me so? Do you want money out of me too? By Jove, you know I’ve not got
+a shilling,”—and so Clavering, according to his custom, passed from a
+curse into a whimper.
+
+Major Pendennis saw, from the other’s tone, that Clavering knew his
+secret was in the Major’s hands.
+
+“I’ve no errand from anybody, or no design upon you,” Pendennis said,
+“but an endeavour, if it’s not too late, to save you and your family
+from utter ruin, through the infernal recklessness of your courses. I
+knew your secret——”
+
+“I didn’t know it when I married her; upon my oath I didn’t know it
+till the d——d scoundrel came back and told me himself; and it’s the
+misery about that which makes me so reckless, Pendennis; indeed it is,”
+the Baronet cried, clasping his hands.
+
+“I knew your secret from the very first day when I saw Amory come drunk
+into your dining-room in Grosvenor Place. I never forget faces. I
+remember that fellow in Sydney a convict, and he remembers me. I know
+his trial, the date of his marriage, and of his reported death in the
+bush. I could swear to him. And I know that you are no more married to
+Lady Clavering than I am. I’ve kept your secret well enough, for I’ve
+not told a single soul that I know it,—not your wife, not yourself till
+now.”
+
+“Poor Lady C., it would cut her up dreadfully,” whimpered Sir Francis;
+“and it wasn’t my fault, Major; you know it wasn’t.”
+
+“Rather than allow you to go on ruining her as you do; I will tell her,
+Clavering, and tell all the world too; that is what I swear I will do,
+unless I can come to some terms with you, and put some curb on your
+infernal folly. By play, debt, and extravagance of all kind, you’ve got
+through half your wife’s fortune, and that of her legitimate heirs,
+mind—her legitimate heirs. Here it must stop. You can’t live together.
+You’re not fit to live in a great house like Clavering; and before
+three years’ more were over would not leave a shilling to carry on.
+I’ve settled what must be done. You shall have six hundred a year; you
+shall go abroad and live on that. You must give up Parliament, and get
+on as well as you can. If you refuse, I give you my word I’ll make the
+real state of things known to-morrow; I’ll swear to Amory, who, when
+identified, will go back to the country from whence he came, and will
+rid the widow of you and himself together. And so that boy of yours
+loses at once all title to old Spell’s property, and it goes to your
+wife’s daughter. Ain’t I making myself pretty clearly understood?”
+
+“You wouldn’t be so cruel to that poor boy, would you, Pendennis?”
+asked the father, pleading piteously; “hang it, think about him. He’s a
+nice boy: though he’s dev’lish wild, I own he’s dev’lish wild.”
+
+“It’s you who are cruel to him,” said the old moralist. “Why, sir,
+you’ll ruin him yourself inevitably in three years.”
+
+“Yes, but perhaps I won’t have such dev’lish bad luck, you know;—the
+luck must turn: and I’ll reform, by Gad, I’ll reform. And if you were
+to split on me, it would cut up my wife so; you know it would, most
+infernally.”
+
+“To be parted from you,” said the old Major, with a sneer; “you know
+she won’t live with you again.”
+
+“But why can’t Lady C. live abroad, or at Bath, or at Tunbridge, or at
+the doose, and I go on here?” Clavering continued. “I like being here
+better than abroad, and I like being in Parliament. It’s dev’lish
+convenient being in Parliament. There’s very few seats like mine left;
+and if I gave it to ’em, I should not wonder the ministry would give me
+an island to govern, or some dev’lish good thing; for you know I’m a
+gentleman of dev’lish good family, and have a handle to my name,
+and—and that sort of thing, Major Pendennis. Eh, don’t you see? Don’t
+you think they’d give me something dev’lish good if I was to play my
+cards well? And then, you know, I’d save money, and be kept out of the
+way of the confounded hells and rouge et noir—and—and so I’d rather not
+give up Parliament, please.” For at one instant to hate and defy a man,
+at the next to weep before him, and at the next to be perfectly
+confidential and friendly with him, was not an unusual process with our
+versatile-minded Baronet.
+
+“As for your seat in Parliament,” the Major said, with something of a
+blush on his cheek, and a certain tremor, which the other did not see,
+“you must part with that, Sir Francis Clavering, to—to me.”
+
+“What! are you going into the House, Major Pendennis?”
+
+“No—not I; but my nephew, Arthur, is a very clever fellow and would
+make a figure there: and when Clavering had two members, his father
+might very likely have been one; and—and should like Arthur to be
+there,” the Major said.
+
+“Dammy, does he know it, too?” cried out Clavering.
+
+“Nobody knows anything out of this room,” Pendennis answered; “and if
+you do this favour for me, I hold my tongue. If not, I’m a man of my
+word, and will do what I have said.”
+
+“I say, Major,” said Sir Francis, with a peculiarly humble smile
+“You—You couldn’t get me my first quarter in advance, could you, like
+the best of fellows? You can do anything with Lady Clavering; and, upon
+my oath, I’ll take up that bill of Abrams’. The little dam scoundrel, I
+know he’ll do me in the business—he always does; and if you could do
+this for me, we’d see, Major.”
+
+“And I think your best plan would be to go down in September to
+Clavering to shoot, and take my nephew with you, and introduce him.
+Yes, that will be the best time. And we will try and manage about the
+advance.” (Arthur may lend him that, thought old Pendennis. Confound
+him, a seat in Parliament is worth a hundred and fifty pounds.) “And,
+Clavering, you understand, of course, my nephew knows nothing about
+this business. You have a mind to retire: he is a Clavering man and a
+good representative for the borough; you introduce him, and your people
+vote for him—you see.”
+
+“When can you get me the hundred and fifty, Major? When shall I come
+and see you? Will you be at home this evening or to-morrow morning?
+Will you have anything here? They’ve got some dev’lish good bitters in
+the bar. I often have a glass of bitters, it sets one up so.”
+
+The old Major would take no refreshment; but rose and took his leave of
+the Baronet, who walked with him to the door of the Wheel of Fortune,
+and then strolled into the bar, where he took a glass of gin and
+bitters with the landlady there: and a gentleman connected with the
+ring (who boarded at the Wheel of F.) coming in, he and Sir Francis
+Clavering and the landlord talked about the fights and the news of the
+sporting world in general; and at length Mr. Moss Abrams arrived with
+the proceeds of the Baronet’s bill, from which his own handsome
+commission was deducted, and out of the remainder Sir Francis “stood” a
+dinner at Greenwich to his distinguished friend, and passed the evening
+gaily at Vauxhall.
+
+Meanwhile Major Pendennis, calling a cab in Piccadilly, drove to Lamb
+Court, Temple, where he speedily was closeted with his nephew in deep
+conversation.
+
+After their talk they parted on very good terms, and it was in
+consequence of that unreported conversation, whereof the reader
+nevertheless can pretty well guess the bearing, that Arthur expressed
+himself as we have heard in the colloquy with Warrington, which is
+reported in the last chapter.
+
+When a man is tempted to do a tempting thing, he can find a hundred
+ingenious reasons for gratifying his liking; and Arthur thought very
+much that he would like to be in Parliament, and that he would like to
+distinguish himself there, and that he need not care much what side he
+took, as there was falsehood and truth on every side. And on this and
+on other matters he thought he would compromise with his conscience,
+and that Sadduceeism was a very convenient and good-humoured profession
+of faith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIV.
+Phyllis and Corydon
+
+
+On a picturesque common in the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells, Lady
+Clavering had found a pretty villa, whither she retired after her
+conjugal disputes at the end of that unlucky London season. Miss Amory,
+of course, accompanied her mother, and Master Clavering came home for
+the holidays, with whom Blanche’s chief occupation was to fight and
+quarrel. But this was only a home pastime, and the young schoolboy was
+not fond of home sports. He found cricket, and horses, and plenty of
+friends at Tunbridge. The good-natured Begum’s house was filled with a
+constant society of young gentlemen of thirteen, who ate and drank much
+too copiously of tarts and champagne, who rode races on the lawn, and
+frightened the fond mother, who smoked and made themselves sick, and
+the dining-room unbearable to Miss Blanche. She did not like the
+society of young gentlemen of thirteen.
+
+As for that fair young creature, any change as long as it was change
+was pleasant to her; and for a week or two she would have liked poverty
+and a cottage, and bread-and-cheese; and, for a night, perhaps, a
+dungeon and bread-and-water, and so the move to Tunbridge was by no
+means unwelcome to her. She wandered in the woods, and sketched trees
+and farmhouses; she read French novels habitually; she drove into
+Tunbridge Wells pretty often, and to any play, or ball, or conjurer, or
+musician who might happen to appear in the place; she slept a great
+deal; she quarrelled with Mamma and Frank during the morning; she found
+the little village school and attended it, and first fondled the girls
+and thwarted the mistress, then scolded the girls and laughed at the
+teacher; she was constant at church, of course. It was a pretty little
+church, of immense antiquity—a little Anglo-Norman bijou, built the day
+before yesterday, and decorated with all sorts of painted windows,
+carved saints’ heads, gilt scripture texts, and open pews. Blanche
+began forthwith to work a most correct high-church altar-cover for the
+church. She passed for a saint with the clergyman for a while, whom she
+quite took in, and whom she coaxed, and wheedled, and fondled so
+artfully, that poor Mrs. Smirke, who at first was charmed with her,
+then bore with her, then would hardly speak to her, was almost mad with
+jealousy. Mrs. Smirke was the wife of our old friend Smirke, Pen’s
+tutor and poor Helen’s suitor. He had consoled himself for her refusal
+with a young lady from Clapham whom his mamma provided. When the latter
+died, our friend’s views became every day more and more pronounced. He
+cut off his coat collar, and let his hair grow over his back. He
+rigorously gave up the curl which he used to sport on his forehead, and
+the tie of his neckcloth, of which he was rather proud. He went without
+any tie at all. He went without dinner on Fridays. He read the Roman
+Hours, and intimated that he was ready to receive confessions in the
+vestry. The most harmless creature in the world, he was denounced as a
+black and most dangerous Jesuit and Papist, by Muffin of the Dissenting
+chapel, and Mr. Simeon Knight at the old church. Mr. Smirke had built
+his chapel-of-ease with the money left him by his mother at Clapham.
+Lord! lord! what would she have said to hear a table called an altar!
+to see candlesticks on it! to get letters signed on the Feast of Saint
+So-and-so, or the Vigil of Saint What-do-you-call-’em! All these things
+did the boy of Clapham practise; his faithful wife following him. But
+when Blanche had a conference of near two hours in the vestry with Mr.
+Smirke, Belinda paced up and down on the grass, where there were only
+two little grave-stones as yet; she wished that she had a third there:
+only, only he would offer very likely to that creature, who had
+infatuated him in a fortnight. No, she would retire; she would go into
+a convent, and profess and leave him. Such bad thoughts had Smirke’s
+wife and his neighbours regarding him; these, thinking him in direct
+correspondence with the Bishop of Rome; that, bewailing errors to her
+even more odious and fatal; and yet our friend meant no earthly harm.
+The post-office never brought him any letters from the Pope; he thought
+Blanche, to be sure, at first, the most pious, gifted, right-thinking,
+fascinating person he had ever met; and her manner of singing the
+Chants delighted him—but after a while he began to grow rather tired of
+Miss Amory, her ways and graces grew stale somehow; then he was
+doubtful about Miss Amory; then she made a disturbance in his school,
+lost her temper, and rapped the children’s fingers. Blanche inspired
+this admiration and satiety, somehow, in many men. She tried to please
+them, and flung out all her graces at once; came down to them with all
+her jewels on, all her smiles, and cajoleries, and coaxings, and ogles.
+Then she grew tired of them and of trying to please them, and never
+having cared about them, dropped them: and the men grew tired of her,
+and dropped her too. It was a happy night for Belinda when Blanche went
+away; and her husband, with rather a blush and a sigh, said “he had
+been deceived in her; he had thought her endowed with many precious
+gifts, he feared they were mere tinsel; he thought she had been a
+right-thinking person, he feared she had merely made religion an
+amusement—she certainly had quite lost her temper to the
+schoolmistress, and beat Polly Rucker’s knuckles cruelly.” Belinda flew
+to his arms, there was no question about the grave or the veil any
+more. He tenderly embraced her on the forehead. “There is none like
+thee, my Belinda,” he said, throwing his fine eyes up to the ceiling,
+“precious among women!” As for Blanche, from the instant she lost sight
+of him and Belinda, she never thought or cared about either any more.
+
+But when Arthur went down to pass a few days at Tunbridge Wells with
+the Begum, this stage of indifference had not arrived on Miss Blanche’s
+part or on that of the simple clergyman. Smirke believed her to be an
+angel and wonder of a woman. Such a perfection he had never seen, and
+sate listening to her music in the summer evenings, open-mouthed, rapt
+in wonder, tea-less, and bread-and-butter-less. Fascinating as he had
+heard the music of the opera to be—he had never but once attended an
+exhibition of that nature (which he mentioned with a blush and a
+sigh—it was on that day when he had accompanied Helen and her son to
+the play at Chatteris)—he could not conceive anything more delicious,
+more celestial, he had almost said, than Miss Amory’s music. She was a
+most gifted being: she had a precious soul: she had the most remarkable
+talents—to all outward seeming, the most heavenly disposition, etc.
+etc. It was in this way that, being then at the height of his own fever
+and bewitchment for Blanche, Smirke discoursed to Arthur about her.
+
+The meeting between the two old acquaintances had been very cordial.
+Arthur loved anybody who loved his mother; Smirke could speak on that
+theme with genuine feeling and emotion. They had a hundred things to
+tell each other of what had occurred in their lives. “Arthur would
+perceive,” Smirke said, “that his—his views on Church matters had
+developed themselves since their acquaintance.” Mrs. Smirke, a most
+exemplary person, seconded them with all her endeavours. He had built
+this little church on his mother’s demise, who had left him provided
+with a sufficiency of worldly means. Though in the cloister himself, he
+had heard of Arthur’s reputation. He spoke in the kindest and most
+saddened tone; he held his eyelids down, and bowed his fair head on one
+side. Arthur was immensely amused with him; with his airs; with his
+follies and simplicity; with his blank stock and long hair; with his
+real goodness, kindness, friendliness of feeling. And his praises of
+Blanche pleased and surprised our friend not a little, and made him
+regard her with eyes of particular favour.
+
+The truth is, Blanche was very glad to see Arthur; as one is glad to
+see an agreeable man in the country, who brings down the last news and
+stories from the great city; who can talk better than most
+country-folks, at least can talk that darling London jargon, so dear
+and indispensable to London people, so little understood by persons out
+of the world. The first day Pen came down, he kept Blanche laughing for
+hours after dinner. She sang her songs with redoubled spirit. She did
+not scold her mother; she fondled and kissed her, to the honest Begum’s
+surprise. When it came to be bedtime, she said, “Deja!” with the
+prettiest air of regret possible; and was really quite sorry to go to
+bed, and squeezed Arthur’s hand quite fondly. He on his side gave her
+pretty palm a very cordial pressure. Our young gentleman was of that
+turn, that eyes very moderately bright dazzled him.
+
+“She is very much improved,” thought Pen, looking out into the night,
+“very much. I suppose the Begum won’t mind my smoking with the window
+open. She’s a jolly good old woman, and Blanche is immensely improved.
+I liked her manner with her mother tonight. I liked her laughing way
+with that stupid young cub of a boy, whom they oughtn’t to allow to get
+tipsy. She sang those little verses very prettily; they were devilish
+pretty verses too, though I say it who shouldn’t say it.” And he hummed
+a tune which Blanche had put to some verses of his own. “Ah! what a
+fine night! How jolly a cigar is at night! How pretty that little Saxon
+church looks in the moonlight! I wonder what old Warrington’s doing?
+Yes, she’s a dayvlish nice little thing, as my uncle says.”
+
+“Oh, heavenly!” Here broke out a voice from a clematis-covered casement
+near—a girl’s voice: it was the voice of the author of ‘Mes Larmes.’
+
+Pen burst into a laugh. “Don’t tell about my smoking,” he said, leaning
+out of his own window.
+
+“Oh! go on! I adore it,” cried the lady of ‘Mes Larmes.’ “Heavenly
+night! heavenly, heavenly moon! but I must shut my window, and not talk
+to you on account of les moeurs. How droll they are, les moeurs!
+Adieu.” And Pen began to sing the Goodnight to Don Basilio.
+
+The next day they were walking in the fields together, laughing and
+chattering—the gayest pair of friends. They talked about the days of
+their youth, and Blanche was prettily sentimental. They talked about
+Laura, dearest Laura—Blanche had loved her as a sister: was she happy
+with that odd Lady Rockminster? Wouldn’t she come and stay with them at
+Tunbridge? Oh, what walks they would take together! What songs they
+would sing—the old, old songs! Laura’s voice was splendid. Did
+Arthur—she must call him Arthur—remember the songs they sang in the
+happy old days, now he was grown such a great man, and had such a
+succes? etc. etc.
+
+And the day after, which was enlivened with a happy ramble through the
+woods to Penshurst, and a sight of that pleasant park and hall, came
+that conversation with the curate which we have narrated, and which
+made our young friend think more and more.
+
+“Is she all this perfection?” he asked himself. “Has she become serious
+and religious? Does she tend schools, and visit the poor? Is she kind
+to her mother and brother? Yes, I am sure of that, I have seen her.”
+And walking with his old tutor over his little parish, and going to
+visit his school, it was with inexpressible delight that Pen found
+Blanche seated instructing the children, and fancied to himself how
+patient she must be, how good-natured, how ingenuous, how really simple
+in her tastes, and unspoiled by the world.
+
+“And do you really like the country?” he asked her, as they walked
+together.
+
+“I should like never to see that odious city again. O Arthur—that is,
+Mr.—well, Arthur, then—one’s good thoughts grow up in these sweet woods
+and calm solitudes, like those flowers which won’t bloom in London, you
+know. The gardener comes and changes our balconies once a week. I don’t
+think I shall bear to look London in the face again—its odious, smoky,
+brazen face! But, heigho!”
+
+“Why that sigh, Blanche?”
+
+“Never mind why.”
+
+“Yes, I do mind why. Tell me, tell me everything.”
+
+“I wish you hadn’t come down;” and a second edition of ‘Mes Soupirs’
+came out.
+
+“You don’t want me, Blanche?”
+
+“I don’t want you to go away. I don’t think this house will be very
+happy without you, and that’s why I wish that you never had come.”
+
+‘Mes Soupirs’ were here laid aside, and ‘Mes Larmes’ had begun.
+
+Ah! What answer is given to those in the eyes of a young woman? What is
+the method employed for drying them? What took place? O ringdoves and
+roses, O dews and wildflowers, O waving greenwoods and balmy airs of
+summer! Here were two battered London rakes, taking themselves in for a
+moment, and fancying that they were in love with each other, like
+Phillis and Corydon!
+
+When one thinks of country houses and country walks, one wonders that
+any man is left unmarried.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV.
+Temptation
+
+
+Easy and frank-spoken as Pendennis commonly was with Warrington, how
+came it that Arthur did not inform the friend and depository of all his
+secrets, of the little circumstances which had taken place at the villa
+near Tunbridge Wells? He talked about the discovery of his old tutor
+Smirke, freely enough, and of his wife, and of his Anglo-Norman church,
+and of his departure from Clapham to Rome; but, when asked about
+Blanche, his answers were evasive or general: he said she was a
+good-natured clever little thing, that rightly guided she might make no
+such bad wife after all, but that he had for the moment no intention of
+marriage, that his days of romance were over, that he was contented
+with his present lot, and so forth.
+
+In the meantime there came occasionally to Lamb Court, Temple, pretty
+little satin envelopes, superscribed in the neatest handwriting, and
+sealed with one of those admirable ciphers, which, if Warrington had
+been curious enough to watch his friend’s letters, or indeed if the
+cipher had been decipherable, would have shown George that Mr. Arthur
+was in correspondence with a young lady whose initials were B. A. To
+these pretty little compositions Mr. Pen replied in his best and
+gallantest manner; with jokes, with news of the town, with points of
+wit, nay, with pretty little verses very likely, in reply to the
+versicles of the Muse of ‘Mes Larmes.’ Blanche we know rhymes with
+“branch,” and “stanch,” and “launch,” and no doubt a gentleman of Pen’s
+ingenuity would not forgo these advantages of position, and would ring
+the pretty little changes upon these pleasing notes. Indeed we believe
+that those love-verses of Mr. Pen’s, which had such a pleasing success
+in the ‘Roseleaves,’ that charming Annual edited by Lady Violet Lebas,
+and illustrated by portraits of the female nobility by the famous
+artist Pinkney, were composed at this period of our hero’s life; and
+were first addressed to Blanche per post, before they figured in print,
+cornets as it were to Pinkney’s pictorial garland.
+
+“Verses are all very well,” the elder Pendennis said, who found Pen
+scratching down one of these artless effusions at the Club as he was
+waiting for his dinner; “and letter-writing if mamma allows it, and
+between such old country friends of course there may be a
+correspondence, and that sort of thing—but mind, Pen, and don’t commit
+yourself, my boy. For who knows what the doose may happen? The best way
+is to make your letters safe. I never wrote a letter in all my life
+that would commit me, and demmy, sir, I have had some experience of
+women.” And the worthy gentleman, growing more garrulous and
+confidential with his nephew as he grew older, told many affecting
+instances of the evil results consequent upon this want of caution to
+many persons in “Society;”—how from using too ardent expressions in
+some poetical notes to the widow Naylor, young Spoony had subjected
+himself to a visit of remonstrance from the widow’s brother, Colonel
+Flint; and thus had been forced into a marriage with a woman old enough
+to be his mother: how when Louisa Salter had at length succeeded in
+securing young Sir John Bird, Hopwood, of the Blues, produced some
+letters which Miss S. had written to him, and caused a withdrawal on
+Bird’s part, who afterwards was united to Miss Stickney, of Lyme Regis,
+etc. The Major, if he had not reading, had plenty of observation, and
+could back his wise saws with a multitude of modern instances, which he
+had acquired in a long and careful perusal of the great book of the
+world.
+
+Pen laughed at the examples, and blushing a little at his uncle’s
+remonstrances, said that he would bear them in mind and be cautious. He
+blushed, perhaps, because he had borne them in mind; because he was
+cautious: because in his letters to Miss Blanche he had from instinct,
+or honesty perhaps, refrained from any avowals which might compromise
+him. “Don’t you remember the lesson I had, sir, in Lady Mirabel’s—Miss
+Fotheringay’s affair? I am not to be caught again, uncle,” Arthur said
+with mock frankness and humility. Old Pendennis congratulated himself
+and his nephew heartily on the latter’s prudence and progress, and was
+pleased at the position which Arthur was taking as a man of the world.
+
+No doubt, if Warrington had been consulted, his opinion would have been
+different: and he would have told Pen that the boy’s foolish letters
+were better than the man’s adroit compliments and slippery gallantries;
+that to win the woman he loves, only a knave or a coward advances under
+cover, with subterfuges, and a retreat secured behind him: but Pen
+spoke not on this matter to Mr. Warrington, knowing pretty well that he
+was guilty, and what his friend’s verdict would be.
+
+Colonel Altamont had not been for many weeks absent on his foreign
+tour, Sir Francis Clavering having retired meanwhile into the country
+pursuant to his agreement with Major Pendennis, when the ills of fate
+began to fall rather suddenly and heavily upon the sole remaining
+partner of the little firm of Shepherd’s Inn. When Strong, at parting
+with Altamont, refused the loan proffered by the latter in the fulness
+of his purse and the generosity of his heart, he made such a sacrifice
+to conscience and delicacy as caused him many an after twinge and pang;
+and he felt—it was not very many hours in his life he had experienced
+the feeling—that in this juncture of his affairs he had been too
+delicate and too scrupulous. Why should a fellow in want refuse a kind
+offer kindly made? Why should a thirsty man decline a pitcher of water
+from a friendly hand, because it was a little soiled? Strong’s
+conscience smote him for refusing what the other had fairly come by,
+and generously proffered: and he thought ruefully, now it was too late,
+that Altamont’s cash would have been as well in his pocket as in that
+of the gambling-house proprietor at Baden or Ems, with whom his
+Excellency would infallibly leave his Derby winnings. It was whispered
+among the tradesmen, bill-discounters, and others who had commercial
+dealings with Captain Strong, that he and the Baronet had parted
+company, and that the Captain’s “paper” was henceforth of no value. The
+tradesmen, who had put a wonderful confidence in him hitherto,—for who
+could resist Strong’s jolly face and frank and honest demeanour?—now
+began to pour in their bills with a cowardly mistrust and unanimity.
+The knocks at the Shepherd’s Inn chambers door were constant, and
+tailors, bootmakers, pastrycooks who had furnished dinners, in their
+own persons, or by the boys their representatives, held levees on
+Strong’s stairs. To these were added one or two persons of a less
+clamorous but far more sly and dangerous sort,—the young clerks of
+lawyers, namely, who lurked about the Inn, or concerted with Mr.
+Campion’s young man in the chambers hard by, having in their dismal
+pocketbooks copies of writs to be served on Edward Strong, requiring
+him to appear on an early day next term before our Sovereign Lady the
+Queen, and answer to, etc. etc.
+
+From this invasion of creditors, poor Strong, who had not a guinea in
+his pocket, had, of course, no refuge but that of the Englishman’s
+castle, into which he retired, shutting the outer and inner door upon
+the enemy, and not quitting his stronghold until after nightfall.
+Against this outer barrier the foe used to come and knock and curse in
+vain, whilst the Chevalier peeped at them from behind the little
+curtain which he had put over the orifice of his letter-box; and had
+the dismal satisfaction of seeing the faces of furious clerk and fiery
+dun, as they dashed up against the door and retreated from it. But as
+they could not be always at his gate, or sleep on his staircase, the
+enemies of the Chevalier sometimes left him free.
+
+Strong, when so pressed by his commercial antagonists, was not quite
+alone in his defence against them, but had secured for himself an ally
+or two. His friends were instructed to communicate with him by a system
+of private signals: and they thus kept the garrison from starving by
+bringing in necessary supplies, and kept up Strong’s heart and
+prevented him from surrendering by visiting him and cheering him in his
+retreat. Two of Ned’s most faithful allies were Huxter and Miss Fanny
+Bolton: when hostile visitors were prowling about the Inn, Fanny’s
+little sisters were taught a particular cry or jodel, which they
+innocently whooped in the court: when Fanny and Huxter came up to visit
+Strong, they archly sang this same note at his door; when that barrier
+was straightway opened, the honest garrison came out smiling, the
+provisions and the pot of porter were brought in, and in the society of
+his faithful friends the beleaguered one passed a comfortable night.
+There are some men who could not live under this excitement, but Strong
+was a brave man, as we have said, who had seen service and never lost
+heart in peril.
+
+But besides allies, our general had secured for himself, under
+difficulties, that still more necessary aid, a retreat. It has been
+mentioned in a former part of this history, how Messrs. Costigan and
+Bows lived in the house next door to Captain Strong, and that the
+window of one of their rooms was not very far off the kitchen-window
+which was situated in the upper story of Strong’s chambers. A leaden
+water-pipe and gutter served for the two; and Strong, looking out from
+his kitchen one day, saw that he could spring with great ease up to the
+sill of his neighbour’s window, and clamber up the pipe which
+communicated from one to the other. He had laughingly shown this refuge
+to his chum, Altamont; and they had agreed that it would be as well not
+to mention the circumstance to Captain Costigan, whose duns were
+numerous, and who would be constantly flying down the pipe into their
+apartments if this way of escape were shown to him.
+
+But now that the evil days were come, Strong made use of the passage,
+and one afternoon burst in upon Bows and Costigan with his jolly face,
+and explained that the enemy was in waiting on his staircase, and that
+he had taken this means of giving them the slip. So while Mr. Marks’s
+aides-de-camp were in waiting in the passage of No. 3, Strong walked
+down the steps of No. 4, dined at the Albion, went to the play, and
+returned home at midnight, to the astonishment of Mrs. Bolton and
+Fanny, who had not seen him quit his chambers and could not conceive
+how he could have passed the line of sentries.
+
+Strong bore this siege for some weeks with admirable spirit and
+resolution, and as only such an old and brave soldier would, for the
+pains and privations which he had to endure were enough to depress any
+man of ordinary courage; and what vexed and riled him (to use his own
+expression) was the infernal indifference and cowardly ingratitude of
+Clavering, to whom he wrote letter after letter, which the Baronet
+never acknowledged by a single word, or by the smallest remittance,
+though a five-pound note, as Strong said, at that time would have been
+a fortune to him.
+
+But better days were in store for the Chevalier, and in the midst of
+his despondency and perplexities there came to him a most welcome aid.
+“Yes, if it hadn’t been for this good fellow here,” said Strong,—“for a
+good fellow you are, Altamont, my boy, and hang me if I don’t stand by
+you as long as I live,—I think, Pendennis, it would have been all up
+with Ned Strong. I was the fifth week of my being kept a prisoner, for
+I couldn’t be always risking my neck across that water-pipe, and taking
+my walks abroad through poor old Cos’s window, and my spirit was quite
+broken, sir—dammy, quite beat, and I was thinking of putting an end to
+myself, and should have done it in another week, when who should drop
+down from heaven but Altamont!”
+
+“Heaven ain’t exactly the place, Ned,” said Altamont. “I came from
+Baden-Baden,” said he, “and I’d had a deuced lucky month there, that’s
+all.”
+
+“Well, sir, he took up Marks’s bill, and he paid the other fellows that
+were upon me, like a man, sir, that he did,” said Strong,
+enthusiastically.
+
+“And I shall be very happy to stand a bottle of claret for this
+company, and as many more as the company chooses,” said Mr. Altamont,
+with a blush. “Hallo! waiter, bring us a magnum of the right sort, do
+you hear? And we’ll drink our healths all round, sir—and may every good
+fellow like Strong find another good fellow to stand by him at a pinch.
+That’s my sentiment, Mr. Pendennis, though I don’t like your name.”
+
+“No! And why?” asked Arthur.
+
+Strong pressed the Colonel’s foot under the table here; and Altamont,
+rather excited, filled up another bumper, nodded to Pen, drank off his
+wine, and said, “He was a gentleman, and that was sufficient, and they
+were all gentlemen.”
+
+The meeting between these “all gentlemen” took place at Richmond,
+whither Pendennis had gone to dinner, and where he found the Chevalier
+and his friend at table in the coffee-room. Both of the latter were
+exceedingly hilarious, talkative, and excited by wine; and Strong, who
+was an admirable story-teller, told the story of his own siege, and
+adventures, and escapes with great liveliness and humour, and described
+the talk of the sheriff’s officers at his door, the pretty little
+signals of Fanny, the grotesque exclamations of Costigan when the
+Chevalier burst in at his window, and his final rescue by Altamont, in
+a most graphic manner, and so as greatly to interest his hearers.
+
+“As for me, it’s nothing,” Altamont said. “When a ship’s paid off, a
+chap spends his money, you know. And it’s the fellers at the black and
+red at Baden-Baden that did it. I won a good bit of money there, and
+intend to win a good bit more, don’t I, Strong? I’m going to take him
+with me. I’ve got a system. I’ll make his fortune, I tell you. I’ll
+make your fortune, if you like—dammy, everybody’s fortune. But what
+I’ll do, and no mistake, boys, I promise you. I’ll put in for that
+little Fanny. Dammy, sir, what do you think she did? She had two pound,
+and I’m blest if she didn’t go and lend it to Ned Strong! Didn’t she,
+Ned? Let’s drink her health.”
+
+“With all my heart,” said Arthur, and pledged this toast with the
+greatest cordiality.
+
+Mr. Altamont then began, with the greatest volubility, at great length,
+to describe his system. He said that it was infallible, if played with
+coolness; that he had it from a chap at Baden, who had lost by it, it
+was true, but because he had not enough capital; if he could have stood
+one more turn of the wheel, he would have had all his money back; that
+he and several more chaps were going to make a bank, and try it; and
+that he would put every shilling he was worth into it, and had come
+back to the country for the express purpose of fetching away his money,
+and Captain Strong; that Strong should play for him; that he could
+trust Strong and his temper much better than he could his own; and much
+better than Bloundell-Bloundell or the Italian that “stood in.” As he
+emptied his bottle, the Colonel described at full length all his plans
+and prospects to Pen, who was interested in listening to his story, and
+the confessions of his daring and lawless good-humour.
+
+“I met that queer fellow Altamont the other day,” Pen said to his
+uncle, a day or two afterwards.
+
+“Altamont? What Altamont? There’s Lord Westport’s son,” said the Major.
+
+“No, no; the fellow who came tipsy into Clavering’s dining-room one day
+when we were there,” said the nephew, laughing, “he said he did not
+like the name of Pendennis, though he did me the honour to think that I
+was a good fellow.”
+
+“I don’t know any man of the name of Altamont, I give you my honour,”
+said the impenetrable Major; “and as for your acquaintance, I think the
+less you have to do with him the better, Arthur.”
+
+Arthur laughed again. “He is going to quit the country, and make his
+fortune by a gambling system. He and my amiable college acquaintance,
+Bloundell, are partners, and the Colonel takes out Strong with him as
+aide-de-camp. What is it that binds the Chevalier and Clavering, I
+wonder?”
+
+“I should think, mind you, Pen, I should think, but of course I have
+only the idea, that there has been something in Clavering’s previous
+life which gives these fellows and some others a certain power over
+him; and if there should be no such a secret, which affair of ours, my
+boy, dammy, I say, it ought to be a lesson to a man to keep himself
+straight in life, and not to give any man a chance over him.”
+
+“Why, I think you have some means of persuasion over Clavering, uncle,
+or why should he give me that seat in Parlament?”
+
+“Clavering thinks he ain’t fit for Parliament,” the Major answered. “No
+more he is. What’s to prevent him from putting you or anybody else into
+his place if he likes? Do you think that Government or the Opposition
+would make any bones about accepting the seat if he offered it to them!
+Why should you be more squeamish than the first men, and the most
+honourable men, and men of the highest birth and position in the
+country, begad?” The Major had an answer of this kind to most of Pen’s
+objections, and Pen accepted his uncle’s replies, not so much because
+he believed them, but because he wished to believe them. We do a
+thing—which of us has not?—not because “everybody does it,” but because
+we like it; and our acquiescence, alas! proves not that everybody is
+right, but that we and the rest of the world are poor creatures alike.
+
+At his next visit to Tunbridge, Mr. Pen did not forget to amuse Miss
+Blanche with the history which he had learned at Richmond of the
+Chevalier’s imprisonment, and of Altamont’s gallant rescue. And after
+he had told his tale in his usual satirical way, he mentioned with
+praise and emotion little Fanny’s generous behaviour to the Chevalier,
+and Altamont’s enthusiasm in her behalf.
+
+Miss Blanche was somewhat jealous, and a good deal piqued and curious
+about Fanny. Among the many confidential little communications which
+Arthur made to Miss Amory in the course of their delightful rural
+drives and their sweet evening walks, it may be supposed that our hero
+would not forget a story so interesting to himself and so likely to be
+interesting to her, as that of the passion and cure of the poor little
+Ariadne of Shepherd’s Inn. His own part in that drama he described, to
+do him justice, with becoming modesty; the moral which he wished to
+draw from the tale being one in accordance with his usual satirical
+mood, viz., that women get over their first loves quite as easily as
+men do (for the fair Blanche, in their intimes conversations, did not
+cease to twit Mr. Pen about his notorious failure in his own virgin
+attachment to the Fotheringay), and, number one being withdrawn,
+transfer themselves to number two without much difficulty. And poor
+little Fanny was offered up in sacrifice as an instance to prove this
+theory. What griefs she had endured and surmounted, what bitter pangs
+of hopeless attachment she had gone through, what time it had taken to
+heal those wounds of the tender little bleeding heart, Mr. Pen did not
+know, or perhaps did not choose to know; for he was at once modest and
+doubtful about his capabilities as a conqueror of hearts, and averse to
+believe that he had executed any dangerous ravages on that particular
+one, though his own instance and argument told against himself in this
+case; for if, as he said, Miss Fanny was by this time in love with her
+surgical adorer, who had neither good looks, nor good manners, nor wit,
+nor anything but ardour and fidelity to recommend him, must she not in
+her first sickness of the love-complaint have had a serious attack, and
+suffered keenly for a man who had certainly a number of the showy
+qualities which Mr. Huxter wanted?
+
+“You wicked odious creature,” Miss Blanche said, “I believe that you
+are enraged with Fanny for being so impudent as to forget you, and that
+you are actually jealous of Mr. Huxter.” Perhaps Miss Amory was right,
+as the blush which came in spite of himself and tingled upon
+Pendennis’s cheek (one of those blows with which a man’s vanity is
+constantly slapping his face) proved to Pen that he was angry to think
+he had been superseded by such a rival. By such a fellow as that!
+without any conceivable good quality! O Mr. Pendennis! (although this
+remark does not apply to such a smart fellow as you) if Nature had not
+made that provision for each sex in the credulity of the other, which
+sees good qualities where none exist, good looks in donkeys’ ears, wit
+in their numskulls, and music in their bray, there would not have been
+near so much marrying and giving in marriage as now obtains, and as is
+necessary for the due propagation and continuance of the noble race to
+which we belong.
+
+“Jealous or not,” Pen said, “and, Blanche, I don’t say no, I should
+have liked Fanny to have come to a better end than that. I don’t like
+histories that end in that cynical way; and when we arrive at the
+conclusion of the story of a pretty girl’s passion, to find such a
+figure as Huxter’s at the last page of the tale. Is a life a
+compromise, my lady fair, and the end of the battle of love an ignoble
+surrender? Is the search for the Cupid which my poor little Psyche
+pursued in the darkness—the god of her soul’s longing—the god of the
+blooming cheek and rainbow pinions,—to result in Huxter smelling of
+tobacco and gallypots? I wish, though I don’t see it in life, that
+people could be like Jenny and Jessamy, or my Lord and Lady Clementina
+in the story-books and fashionable novels, and at once under the
+ceremony, and, as it were, at the parson’s benediction, become
+perfectly handsome and good and happy ever after.”
+
+“And don’t you intend to be good and happy, pray, Monsieur le
+Misanthrope—and are you very discontented with your lot—and will your
+marriage be a compromise”—(asked the author of ‘Mes Larmes,’ with a
+charming moue)—“and is your Psyche an odious vulgar wretch? You wicked
+satirical creature, I can’t abide you! You take the hearts of young
+things, play with them, and fling them away with scorn. You ask for
+love and trample on it. You—you make me cry, that you do, Arthur,
+and—and don’t—and I won’t be consoled in that way—and I think Fanny was
+quite right in leaving such a heartless creature.”
+
+“Again, I don’t say no,” said Pen, looking very gloomily at Blanche,
+and not offering by any means to repeat the attempt at consolation,
+which had elicited that sweet monosyllable “don’t” from the young lady.
+“I don’t think I have much of what people call heart; but I don’t
+profess it. I made my venture when I was eighteen, and lighted my lamp
+and went in search of Cupid. And what was my discovery of love?—a
+vulgar dancing-woman! I failed, as everybody does, almost everybody;
+only it is luckier to fail before marriage than after.”
+
+“Merci du choix, Monsieur,” said the Sylphide, making a curtsey.
+
+“Look, my little Blanche,” said Pen, taking her hand, and with his
+voice of sad good-humour; “at least I stoop to no flatteries.”
+
+“Quite the contrary,” said Miss Blanche.
+
+“And tell you no foolish lies, as vulgar men do. Why should you and I,
+with our experience, ape romance and dissemble passion? I do not
+believe Miss Blanche Amory to be peerless among the beautiful, nor the
+greatest poetess, nor the most surpassing musician, any more than I
+believe you to be the tallest woman in the whole world—like the
+giantess whose picture we saw as we rode through the fair yesterday.
+But if I don’t set you up as a heroine, neither do I offer you your
+very humble servant as a hero. But I think you are—well, there, I think
+you are very sufficiently good-looking.”
+
+“Merci,” Miss Blanche said, with another curtsey.
+
+“I think you sing charmingly. I’m sure you’re clever. I hope and
+believe that you are good-natured, and that you will be companionable.”
+
+“And so, provided I bring you a certain sum of money and a seat in
+Parliament, you condescend to fling to me your royal
+pocket-handkerchief,” said Blanche. “Que d’honneur! We used to call
+your Highness the Prince of Fairoaks. What an honour to think that I am
+to be elevated to the throne, and to bring the seat in Parliament as
+backsheesh to the sultan! I am glad I am clever, and that I can play
+and sing to your liking; my songs will amuse my lord’s leisure.”
+
+“And if thieves are about the house,” said Pen, grimly pursuing the
+simile, “forty besetting thieves in the shape of lurking cares and
+enemies in ambush and passions in arms, my Morgiana will dance round me
+with a tambourine, and kill all my rogues and thieves with a smile.
+Won’t she?” But Pen looked as if he did not believe that she would.
+“Ah, Blanche,” he continued after a pause, “don’t be angry; don’t be
+hurt at my truth-telling.—Don’t you see that I always take you at your
+word? You say you will be a slave and dance—I say, dance. You say, ‘I
+take you with what you bring:’ I say, ‘I take you with what you bring.’
+To the necessary deceits and hypocrisies of our life, why add any that
+are useless and unnecessary? If I offer myself to you because I think
+we have a fair chance of being happy together, and because by your help
+I may get for both of us a good place and a not undistinguished name,
+why ask me to feign raptures and counterfeit romance, in which neither
+of us believe? Do you want me to come wooing in a Prince Prettyman’s
+dress from the masquerade warehouse, and to pay you compliments like
+Sir Charles Grandison? Do you want me to make you verses as in the days
+when we were—when we were children? I will if you like, and sell them
+to Bacon and Bungay afterwards. Shall I feed my pretty princess with
+bonbons?”
+
+“Mais j’adore les bonbons, moi,” said the little Sylphide, with a queer
+piteous look.
+
+“I can buy a hatful at Fortnum and Mason’s for a guinea. And it shall
+have its bonbons, its pooty little sugar-plums, that it shall,” Pen
+said with a bitter smile. “Nay, my dear, nay, my dearest little
+Blanche, don’t cry. Dry the pretty eyes, I can’t bear that;” and he
+proceeded to offer that consolation which the circumstance required,
+and which the tears, the genuine tears of vexation, which now sprang
+from the angry eyes of the author of ‘Mes Larmes’ demanded.
+
+The scornful and sarcastic tone of Pendennis quite frightened and
+overcame the girl. “I—I don’t want your consolation. I—I never
+was—so—spoken to before—by any of my—my—by anybody”—she sobbed out,
+with much simplicity.
+
+“Anybody!” shouted out Pen, with a savage burst of laughter, and
+Blanche blushed one of the most genuine blushes which her cheek had
+ever exhibited, and she cried out, “O Arthur, vous etes un homme
+terrible!” She felt bewildered, frightened, oppressed, the worldly
+little flirt who had been playing at love for the last dozen years of
+her life, and yet not displeased at meeting a master.
+
+“Tell me, Arthur,” she said, after a pause in this strange love-making.
+“Why does Sir Francis Clavering give up his seat in Parliament?”
+
+“Au fait, why does he give it to me?” asked Arthur, now blushing in his
+turn.
+
+“You always mock me, sir,” she said. “If it is good to be in
+Parliament, why does Sir Francis go out?”
+
+“My uncle has talked him over. He always said that you were not
+sufficiently provided for. In the—the family disputes, when your mamma
+paid his debts so liberally, it was stipulated, I suppose, that
+you—that is, that I—that is, upon my word, I don’t know why he goes out
+of Parliament,” Pen said, with rather a forced laugh. “You see,
+Blanche, that you and I are two good little children, and that this
+marriage has been arranged for us by our mammas and uncles, and that we
+must be obedient, like a good little boy and girl.”
+
+So, when Pen went to London, he sent Blanche a box of bonbons, each
+sugar-plum of which was wrapped up in ready-made French verses, of the
+most tender kind; and, besides, despatched to her some poems of his own
+manufacture, quite as artless and authentic; and it was no wonder that
+he did not tell Warrington what his conversations with Miss Amory had
+been, of so delicate a sentiment were they, and of a nature so
+necessarily private.
+
+And if, like many a worse and better man, Arthur Pendennis, the widow’s
+son, was meditating an apostasy, and going to sell himself to—we all
+know whom,—at least the renegade did not pretend to be a believer in
+the creed to which he was ready to swear. And if every woman and man in
+this kingdom, who has sold her or himself for money or position, as Mr.
+Pendennis was about to do, would but purchase a copy of his memoirs,
+what tons of volumes Messrs. Bradbury and Evans would sell!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI.
+In which Pen begins his Canvass
+
+
+Melancholy as the great house at Clavering Park had been in the days
+before his marriage, when its bankrupt proprietor was a refugee in
+foreign lands, it was not much more cheerful now when Sir Francis
+Clavering came to inhabit it. The greater part of the mansion was shut
+up, and the Baronet only occupied a few of the rooms on the ground
+floor, where his housekeeper and her assistant from the lodge-gate
+waited upon the luckless gentleman in his forced retreat, and cooked a
+part of the game which he spent the dreary mornings in shooting.
+Lightfoot, his man, had passed over to my Lady’s service; and, as Pen
+was informed in a letter from Mr. Smirke, who performed the ceremony,
+had executed his prudent intention of marrying Mrs. Bonner, my Lady’s
+woman, who, in her mature years, was stricken with the charms of the
+youth, and endowed him with her savings and her mature person.
+
+To be landlord and landlady of the Clavering Arms was the ambition of
+both of them; and it was agreed that they were to remain in Lady
+Clavering’s service until quarter-day arrived, when they were to take
+possession of their hotel. Pen graciously promised that he would give
+his election dinner there, when the Baronet should vacate his seat in
+the young man’s favour; and, as it had been agreed by his uncle, to
+whom Clavering seemed to be able to refuse nothing, Arthur came down in
+September on a visit to Clavering Park, the owner of which was very
+glad to have a companion who would relieve his loneliness, and perhaps
+would lend him a little ready money.
+
+Pen furnished his host with these desirable supplies a couple of days
+after he had made his appearance at Clavering: and no sooner were these
+small funds in Sir Francis’s pocket, than the latter found he had
+business at Chatteris and at the neighbouring watering-places, of
+which———shire boasts many, and went off to see to his affairs, which
+were transacted, as might be supposed, at the county race-grounds and
+billiard-rooms. Arthur could live alone well enough, having many mental
+resources and amusements which did not require other persons’ company:
+he could walk with the gamekeeper of a morning, and for the evenings
+there was a plenty of books and occupation for a literary genius like
+Mr. Arthur, who required but a cigar and a sheet of paper or two to
+make the night pass away pleasantly. In truth, in two or three days he
+had found the society of Sir Francis Clavering perfectly intolerable;
+and it was with a mischievous eagerness and satisfaction that he
+offered Clavering the little pecuniary aid which the latter according
+to his custom solicited, and supplied him with the means of taking
+flight from his own house.
+
+Besides, our ingenious friend had to ingratiate himself with the
+townspeople of Clavering, and with the voters of the borough which he
+hoped to represent; and he set himself to this task with only the more
+eagerness, remembering how unpopular he had before been in Clavering,
+and determined to vanquish the odium which he had inspired amongst the
+simple people there. His sense of humour made him delight in this task.
+Naturally rather reserved and silent in public, he became on a sudden
+as frank, easy, and jovial as Captain Strong. He laughed with everybody
+who would exchange a laugh with him, shook hands right and left, with
+what may be certainly called a dexterous cordiality; made his
+appearance at the market-day and the farmers’ ordinary; and, in fine,
+acted like a consummate hypocrite, and as gentlemen of the highest
+birth and most spotless integrity act when they wish to make themselves
+agreeable to their constituents, and have some end to gain of the
+country-folks. How is it that we allow ourselves not to be deceived,
+but to be ingratiated so readily by a glib tongue, a ready laugh, and a
+frank manner? We know, for the most part, that it is false coin, and we
+take it: we know that it is flattery, which it costs nothing to
+distribute to everybody, and we had rather have it than be without it.
+Friend Pen went about at Clavering, laboriously simple and adroitly
+pleased, and quite a different being from the scornful and rather sulky
+young dandy whom the inhabitants remembered ten years ago.
+
+The Rectory was shut up. Doctor Portman was gone, with his gout and his
+family, to Harrogate,—an event which Pen deplored very much in a letter
+to the Doctor, in which, in a few kind and simple words, he expressed
+his regret at not seeing his old friend, whose advice he wanted and
+whose aid he might require some day: but Pen consoled himself for the
+Doctor’s absence by making acquaintance with Mr. Simcoe, the opposition
+preacher, and with the two partners of the cloth-factory at Chatteris,
+and with the Independent preacher there, all of whom he met at
+Clavering Athenaeum, which the Liberal party had set up in accordance
+with the advanced spirit of the age, and perhaps in opposition to the
+aristocratic old reading-room, into which the Edinburgh Review had once
+scarcely got an admission, and where no tradesmen were allowed an
+entrance. He propitiated the younger partner of the cloth-factory, by
+asking him to dine in a friendly way at the Park; he complimented the
+Honourable Mrs. Simcoe with hares and partridges from the same quarter,
+and a request to read her husband’s last sermon; and being a little
+unwell one day, the rascal took advantage of the circumstance to show
+his tongue to Mr. Huxter, who sent him medicines and called the next
+morning. How delighted old Pendennis would have been with his pupil!
+Pen himself was amused with the sport in which he was engaged, and his
+success inspired him with a wicked good-humour.
+
+And yet, as he walked out of Clavering of a night, after “presiding” at
+a meeting of the Athenaeum, or working through an evening with Mrs.
+Simcoe, who, with her husband, was awed by the young Londoner’s
+reputation, and had heard of his social successes; as he passed over
+the old familiar bridge of the rushing Brawl, and heard that
+well-remembered sound of waters beneath, and saw his own cottage of
+Fairoaks among the trees, their darkling outlines clear against the
+starlit sky, different thoughts no doubt came to the young man’s mind,
+and awakened pangs of grief and shame there. There still used to be a
+light in the windows of the room which he remembered so well, and in
+which the Saint who loved him had passed so many hours of care and
+yearning and prayer. He turned away his gaze from the faint light which
+seemed to pursue him with its wan reproachful gaze, as though it was
+his mother’s spirit watching and warning. How clear the night was! How
+keen the stars shone! how ceaseless the rush of the flowing waters! the
+old home trees whispered, and waved gently their dark heads and
+branches over the cottage roof. Yonder, in the faint starlight glimmer,
+was the terrace where, as a boy, he walked of summer evenings, ardent
+and trustful, unspotted, untried, ignorant of doubts or passions;
+sheltered as yet from the world’s contamination in the pure and anxious
+bosom of love. The clock of the near town tolling midnight, with a
+clang, disturbs our wanderer’s reverie, and sends him onwards towards
+his night’s resting-place, through the lodge into Clavering avenue, and
+under the dark arcades of the rustling limes.
+
+When he sees the cottage the next time, it is smiling in sunset; those
+bedroom windows are open where the light was burning the night before;
+and Pen’s tenant, Captain Stokes, of the Bombay Artillery (whose
+mother, old Mrs. Stokes, lives in Clavering), receives his landlord’s
+visit with great cordiality: shows him over the grounds and the new
+pond he has made in the back-garden from the stables; talks to him
+confidentially about the roof and chimneys, and begs Mr. Pendennis to
+name a day when he will do himself and Mrs. Stokes the pleasure to,
+etc. Pen, who has been a fortnight in the country, excuses himself for
+not having called sooner upon the Captain by frankly owning that he had
+not the heart to do it. “I understand you, sir,” the Captain says; and
+Mrs. Stokes, who had slipped away at the ring of the bell (how odd it
+seemed to Pen to ring the bell!), comes down in her best gown,
+surrounded by her children. The young ones clamber about Stokes: the
+boy jumps into an arm-chair. It was Pen’s father’s arm-chair; and
+Arthur remembers the days when he would as soon have thought of
+mounting the king’s throne as of seating himself in that arm-chair. He
+asks if Miss Stokes—she is the very image of her mamma—if she can play?
+He should like to hear a tune on that piano. She plays. He hears the
+notes of the old piano once more, enfeebled by age, but he does not
+listen to the player. He is listening to Laura singing as in the days
+of their youth, and sees his mother bending and beating time over the
+shoulder of the girl.
+
+The dinner at Fairoaks given in Pen’s honour by his tenant, and at
+which old Mrs. Stokes, Captain Glanders, Squire Hobnel and the
+clergyman and his lady from Tinckleton, were present, was very stupid
+and melancholy for Pen, until the waiter from Clavering (who aided the
+captain’s stable-boy and Mrs. Stokes’s butler) whom Pen remembered as a
+street boy, and who was now indeed barber in that place, dropped a
+plate over Pen’s shoulder, on which Mr. Hobnell (who also employed him)
+remarked, “I suppose, Hodson, your hands are slippery with
+bear’s-grease. He’s always dropping the crockery about, that Hodson
+is—haw, haw!” On which Hodson blushed, and looked so disconcerted, that
+Pen burst out laughing; and good-humour and hilarity were the order of
+the evening. For the second course, there was a hare and partridges top
+and bottom, and when after the withdrawal of the servants Pen said to
+the Vicar of Tinckleton, “I think, Mr. Stooks, you should have asked
+Hodson to cut the hare,” the joke was taken instantly by the clergyman,
+who was followed in the course of a few minutes by Captains Stokes and
+Glanders, and by Mr. Hobnell, who arrived rather late, but with an
+immense guffaw.
+
+While Mr. Pen was engaged in the country in the above schemes, it
+happened that the lady of his choice, if not of his affections, came up
+to London from the Tunbridge villa bound upon shopping expeditions or
+important business, and in company of old Mrs. Bonner, her mother’s
+maid, who had lived and quarrelled with Blanche many times since she
+was an infant, and who now being about to quit Lady Clavering’s service
+for the hymeneal state, was anxious like a good soul to bestow some
+token of respectful kindness upon her old and young mistress before she
+quitted them altogether, to take her post as the wife of Lightfoot, and
+landlady of the Clavering Arms.
+
+The honest woman took the benefit of Miss Amory’s taste to make the
+purchase which she intended to offer her ladyship; and, requested the
+fair Blanche to choose something for herself that should be to her
+liking, and remind her of her old nurse who had attended her through
+many a wakeful night, and eventful teething, and childish fever, and
+who loved her like a child of her own a’most. These purchases were
+made, and as the nurse insisted on buying an immense Bible for Blanche,
+the young lady suggested that Bonner should purchase a large Johnson’s
+Dictionary for her mamma. Each of the two women might certainly profit
+by the present made to her.
+
+Then Mrs. Bonner invested money in some bargains in linen-drapery,
+which might be useful at the Clavering Arms, and bought a red and
+yellow neck-handkerchief, which Blanche could see at once was intended
+for Mr. Lightfoot. Younger than herself by at least five-and-twenty
+years, Mrs. Bonner regarded that youth with a fondness at once parental
+and conjugal, and loved to lavish ornaments on his person, which
+already glittered with pins, rings, shirt-studs, and chains and seals,
+purchased at the good creature’s expense.
+
+It was in the Strand that Mrs. Bonner made her purchases, aided by Miss
+Blanche, who liked the fun very well; and when the old lady had bought
+everything that she desired, and was leaving the shop, Blanche, with a
+smiling face, and a sweet bow to one of the shopmen, said, “Pray, sir,
+will you have the kindness to show us the way to Shepherd’s Inn?”
+
+Shepherd’s Inn was but a few score of yards off, Old Castle Street was
+close by, the elegant young shopman pointed out the turning which the
+young lady was to take, and she and her companion walked off together.
+
+“Shepherd’s Inn! what can you want in Shepherd’s Inn, Miss Blanche?”
+Bonner inquired. “Mr. Strong lives there. Do you want to go and see the
+Captain?”
+
+“I should like to see the Captain very well. I like the Captain; but it
+is not him I want. I want to see a dear little good girl, who was very
+kind to—to Mr. Arthur when he was so ill last year, and saved his life
+almost; and I want to thank her and ask her if she would like anything.
+I looked out several of my dresses on purpose this morning, Bonner!”
+and she looked at Bonner as if she had a right to admiration, and had
+performed an act of remarkable virtue. Blanche, indeed, was very fond
+of sugar-plums; she would have fed the poor upon them, when she had had
+enough, and given a country girl a ball-dress, when she had worn it and
+was tired of it.
+
+“Pretty girl—pretty young woman!” mumbled Mrs. Bonner. “I know I want
+no pretty young women to come about Lightfoot,” and in imagination she
+peopled the Clavering Arms with a harem of the most hideous
+chambermaids and barmaids.
+
+Blanche, with pink and blue, and feathers, and flowers, and trinkets
+(that wondrous invention, a chatelaine, was not extant yet, or she
+would have had one, we may be sure), and a shot-silk dress, and a
+wonderful mantle, and a charming parasol, presented a vision of
+elegance and beauty such as bewildered the eyes of Mrs. Bolton, who was
+scrubbing the lodge-floor of Shepherd’s Inn and caused Betsy-Jane and
+Ameliar-Ann to look with delight.
+
+Blanche looked on them with a smile of ineffable sweetness and
+protection; like Rowena going to see Rebecca; like Marie Antoinette
+visiting the poor in the famine; like the Marchioness of Carabas
+alighting from her carriage-and-four at a pauper-tenant’s door, and
+taking from John No II. the packet of Epsom salts for the invalid’s
+benefit, carrying it with her own imperial hand into the
+sick-room—Blanche felt a queen stepping down from her throne to visit a
+subject, and enjoyed all the bland consciousness of doing a good
+action.
+
+“My good woman! I want to see Fanny—Fanny Bolton; is she here?”
+
+Mrs. Bolton had a sudden suspicion, from the splendour of Blanche’s
+appearance, that it must be a play-actor, or something worse.
+
+“What do you want with Fanny, pray?” she asked.
+
+“I am Lady Clavering’s daughter—you have heard of Sir Francis
+Clavering? And I wish very much indeed to see Fanny Bolton.”
+
+“Pray step in, miss.—Betsy-Jane, where’s Fanny?”
+
+Betsy-Jane said Fanny had gone into No. 3 staircase, on which Mrs.
+Bolton said she was probably in Strong’s rooms, and bade the child go
+and see if she was there.
+
+“In Captain Strong’s rooms! oh, let us go to Captain Strong’s rooms,”
+cried out Miss Blanche. “I know him very well. You dearest little girl,
+show us the way to Captain Strong!” cried out Miss Blanche, for the
+floor reeked with the recent scrubbing, and the goddess did not like
+the smell of brown-soap.
+
+And as they passed up the stairs, a gentleman by the name of Costigan,
+who happened to be swaggering about the court, and gave a very knowing
+look with his “oi” under Blanche’s bonnet, remarked to himself, “That’s
+a devilish foine gyurll, bedad, goan up to Sthrong and Altamont:
+they’re always having foine gyurlls up their stairs.”
+
+“Hallo—hwhat’s that?” he presently said, looking up at the windows:
+from which some piercing shrieks issued.
+
+At the sound of the voice of a distressed female the intrepid Cos
+rushed up the stairs as fast as his old legs would carry him, being
+nearly overthrown by Strong’s servant, who was descending the stair.
+Cos found the outer door of Strong’s chambers opened, and began to
+thunder at the knocker. After many and fierce knocks, the inner door
+was partially unclosed, and Strong’s head appeared.
+
+“It’s oi, me boy. Hwhat’s that noise, Sthrong?” asked Costigan.
+
+“Go to the d——!” was the only answer, and the door was shut on Cos’s
+venerable red nose: and he went downstairs muttering threats at the
+indignity offered to him, and vowing that he would have satisfaction.
+In the meanwhile the reader, more lucky than Captain Costigan, will
+have the privilege of being made acquainted with the secret which was
+withheld from that officer.
+
+It has been said of how generous a disposition Mr. Altamont was, and
+when he was well supplied with funds how liberally he spent them. Of a
+hospitable turn, he had no greater pleasure than drinking in company
+with other people; so that there was no man more welcome at Greenwich
+and Richmond than the Emissary of the Nawaub of Lucknow.
+
+Now it chanced that on the day when Blanche and Mrs. Bonner ascended
+the staircase to Strong’s room in Shepherd’s Inn, the Colonel had
+invited Miss Delaval of the ——— Theatre Royal, and her mother, Mrs.
+Hodge, to a little party down the river, and it had been agreed that
+they were to meet at Chambers, and thence walk down to a port in the
+neighbouring Strand to take water. So that when Mrs. Bonner and Mes
+Larmes came to the door, where Grady, Altamont’s servant, was standing,
+the domestic said, “Walk in, ladies,” with the utmost affability, and
+led them into the room, which was arranged as if they had been expected
+there. Indeed, two bouquets of flowers, bought at Covent Garden that
+morning, and instances of the tender gallantry of Altamont, were
+awaiting his guests upon the table. Blanche smelt at the bouquet, and
+put her pretty little dainty nose into it, and tripped about the room,
+and looked behind the curtains, and at the books and prints, and at the
+plan of Clavering estate hanging up on the wall; and had asked the
+servant for Captain Strong, and had almost forgotten his existence and
+the errand about which she had come, namely, to visit Fanny Bolton; so
+pleased was she with the new adventure, and the odd, strange,
+delightful, droll little idea of being in a bachelor’s chambers in a
+queer old place in the city!
+
+Grady meanwhile, with a pair of ample varnished boots, had disappeared
+into his master’s room. Blanche had hardly the leisure to remark how
+big the boots were, and how unlike Mr. Strong’s.
+
+“The women’s come,” said Grady, helping his master to the boots.
+
+“Did you ask ’em if they would take a glass of anything?” asked
+Altamont.
+
+Grady came out—“He says, will you take anything to drink?” the domestic
+asked of them; at which Blanche, amused with the artless question,
+broke out into a pretty little laugh, and asked of Mrs. Bonner, “Shall
+we take anything to drink?”
+
+“Well, you may take it or lave it,” said Mr. Grady, who thought his
+offer slighted, and did not like the contemptuous manners of the
+new-comers, and so left them.
+
+“Will we take anything to drink?” Blanche asked again: and again began
+to laugh.
+
+“Grady,” bawled out a voice from the chamber within:—a voice that made
+Mrs. Bonner start.
+
+Grady did not answer: his song was heard from afar off, from the
+kitchen, his upper room, where Grady was singing at his work.
+
+“Grady, my coat!” again roared the voice from within.
+
+“Why, that is not Mr. Strong’s voice,” said the Sylphide, still half
+laughing. “Grady my coat!—Bonner, who is Grady my coat? We ought to go
+away.”
+
+Bonner still looked quite puzzled at the sound of the voice which she
+had heard.
+
+The bedroom door here opened and the individual who had called out
+“Grady, my coat,” appeared without the garment in question.
+
+He nodded to the women, and walked across the room. “I beg your pardon,
+ladies. Grady, bring my coat down, sir! Well, my dears, it’s a fine
+day, and we’ll have a jolly lark at——”
+
+He said no more; for here Mrs. Bonner, who had been looking at him with
+scared eyes, suddenly shrieked out, “Amory! Amory!” and fell back
+screaming and fainting in her chair.
+
+The man, so apostrophised, looked at the woman an instant, and, rushing
+up to Blanche, seized her and kissed her. “Yes, Betsy,” he said, “by
+G—it is me. Mary Bonner knew me. What a fine gal we’ve grown! But it’s
+a secret, mind. I’m dead, though I’m your father. Your poor mother
+don’t know it. What a pretty gal we’ve grown! Kiss me—kiss me close, my
+Betsy? D—— it, I love you: I’m your old father.”
+
+Betsy or Blanche looked quite bewildered, and began to scream too—once,
+twice, thrice; and it was her piercing shrieks which Captain Costigan
+heard as he walked the court below.
+
+At the sound of these shrieks the perplexed parent clasped his hands
+(his wristbands were open, and on one brawny arm you could see letters
+tattooed in blue), and, rushing to his apartment, came back with an
+eau-de-Cologne bottle from his grand silver dressing-case, with the
+fragrant contents of which he began liberally to sprinkle Bonner and
+Blanche.
+
+The screams of these women brought the other occupants of the chambers
+into the room: Grady from his kitchen, and Strong from his apartment in
+the upper story. The latter at once saw from the aspect of the two
+women what had occurred.
+
+“Grady, go and wait in the court,” he said, “and if anybody comes—you
+understand me.”
+
+“Is it the play-actress and her mother?” said Grady.
+
+“Yes—confound you—say that there’s nobody in chambers, and the party’s
+off for to-day.”
+
+“Shall I say that, sir? and after I bought them bokays?” asked Grady of
+his master.
+
+“Yes,” said Amory, with a stamp of his foot; and Strong going to the
+door, too, reached it just in time to prevent the entrance of Captain
+Costigan, who had mounted the stair.
+
+The ladies from the theatre did not have their treat to Greenwich, nor
+did Blanche pay her visit to Fanny Bolton on that day. And Cos, who
+took occasion majestically to inquire of Grady what the mischief was,
+and who was crying?—had for answer that ’twas a woman, another of them,
+and that they were, in Grady’s opinion, the cause of ’most all the
+mischief in the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII.
+In which Pen begins to doubt about his Election
+
+
+Whilst Pen, in his own county, was thus carrying on his selfish plans
+and parliamentary schemes, news came to him that Lady Rockminster had
+arrived at Baymouth, and had brought with her our friend Laura. At the
+announcement that Laura his sister was near him, Pen felt rather
+guilty. His wish was to stand higher in her esteem, perhaps; than in
+that of any other person in the world. She was his mother’s legacy to
+him. He was to be her patron and protector in some sort. How would she
+brave the news which he had to tell her; and how should he explain the
+plans which he was meditating? He felt as if neither he nor Blanche
+could bear Laura’s dazzling glance of calm scrutiny, and as if he would
+not dare to disclose his worldly hopes and ambitions to that spotless
+judge. At her arrival at Baymouth, he wrote a letter thither which
+contained a great number of fine phrases and protests of affection, and
+a great deal of easy satire and raillery; in the midst of all which Mr.
+Pen could not help feeling that he was in panic, and that he was acting
+like a rogue and hypocrite.
+
+How was it that a simple country girl should be the object of fear and
+trembling to such an accomplished gentleman as Mr. Pen? His worldly
+tactics and diplomacy, his satire and knowledge of the world, could not
+bear the test of her purity, he felt somehow. And he had to own to
+himself that his affairs were in such a position, that he could not
+tell the truth to that honest soul. As he rode from Clavering to
+Baymouth he felt as guilty as a schoolboy who doesn’t know his lesson
+and is about to face the awful master. For is not truth the master
+always, and does she not have the power and hold the book?
+
+Under the charge of her kind, though somewhat wayward and absolute
+patroness, Lady Rockminster, Laura had seen somewhat of the world in
+the last year, had gathered some accomplishments, and profited by the
+lessons of society. Many a girl who had been accustomed to that too
+great tenderness in which Laura’s early life had been passed, would
+have been unfitted for the changed existence which she now had to lead.
+Helen worshipped her two children, and thought, as home-bred women
+will, that all the world was made for them, or to be considered after
+them. She tended Laura with a watchfulness of affection which never
+left her. If she had a headache, the widow was as alarmed as if there
+had never been an aching head before in the world. She slept and woke,
+read and moved under her mother’s fond superintendence, which was now
+withdrawn from her, along with the tender creature whose anxious heart
+would beat no more. And painful moments of grief and depression no
+doubt Laura had, when she stood in the great careless world alone.
+Nobody heeded her griefs or her solitude. She was not quite the equal,
+in social rank, of the lady whose companion she was, or of the friends
+and relatives of the imperious, but kind old dowager. Some very likely
+bore her no goodwill—some, perhaps, slighted her: it might have been
+that servants were occasionally rude; their mistress certainly was
+often. Laura not seldom found herself in family meetings, the
+confidence and familiarity of which she felt were interrupted by her
+intrusion; and her sensitiveness of course was wounded at the idea that
+she should give or feel this annoyance. How many governesses are there
+in the world, thought cheerful Laura,—how many ladies, whose
+necessities make them slaves and companions by profession! What bad
+tempers and coarse unkindness have not these to encounter? How
+infinitely better my lot is with these really kind and affectionate
+people than that of thousands of unprotected girls! It was with this
+cordial spirit that our young lady adapted herself to her new position;
+and went in advance of her fortune with a trustful smile.
+
+Did you ever know a person who met Fortune in that way, whom the
+goddess did not regard kindly? Are not even bad people won by a
+constant cheerfulness and a pure and affectionate heart? When the babes
+in the wood, in the ballad, looked up fondly and trustfully at those
+notorious rogues whom their uncle had set to make away with the little
+folks, we all know how one of the rascals relented, and made away with
+the other—not having the heart to be unkind to so much innocence and
+beauty. Oh, happy they who have that virgin loving trust and sweet
+smiling confidence in the world, and fear no evil because they think
+none! Miss Laura Bell was one of these fortunate persons; and besides
+the gentle widow’s little cross, which, as we have seen, Pen gave her,
+had such a sparkling and brilliant kohinoor in her bosom, as is even
+more precious than that famous jewel; for it not only fetches a price,
+and is retained, by its owner in another world where diamonds are
+stated to be of no value, but here, too, is of inestimable worth to its
+possessor; is a talisman against evil, and lightens up the darkness of
+life, like Cogia Hassan’s famous stone.
+
+So that before Miss Bell had been a year in Lady Rockminster’s house,
+there was not a single person in it whose love she had not won by the
+use of this talisman. From the old lady to the lowest dependent of her
+bounty, Laura had secured the goodwill and kindness of everybody. With
+a mistress of such a temper, my Lady’s woman (who had endured her
+mistress for forty years, and had been clawed and scolded and jibed
+every day and night in that space of time) could not be expected to
+have a good temper of her own; and was at first angry against Miss
+Laura, as she had been against her Ladyship’s fifteen preceding
+companions. But when Laura was ill at Paris, this old woman nursed her
+in spite of her mistress, who was afraid of catching the fever, and
+absolutely fought for her medicine with Martha from Fairoaks, now
+advanced to be Miss Laura’s own maid. As she was recovering, Grandjean
+the chef wanted to kill her by the numbers of delicacies which he
+dressed for her, and wept when she ate her first slice of chicken. The
+Swiss major-domo of the house celebrated Miss Bell’s praises in almost
+every European language, which he spoke with indifferent incorrectness;
+the coachman was happy to drive her out; the page cried when he heard
+she was ill; and Calverley and Coldstream (those two footmen, so large,
+so calm ordinarily, and so difficult to move) broke out into
+extraordinary hilarity at the news of her convalescence, and
+intoxicated the page at a wine-shop, to fête Laura’s recovery. Even
+Lady Diana Pynsent (our former acquaintance Mr. Pynsent had married by
+this time), Lady Diana, who had had a considerable dislike to Laura for
+some time, was so enthusiastic as to say that she thought Miss Bell was
+a very agreeable person, and that grandmamma had found a great
+trouvaille in her. All this goodwill and kindness Laura had acquired,
+not by any arts, not by any flattery, but by the simple force of
+good-nature, and by the blessed gift of pleasing and being pleased.
+
+On the one or two occasions when he had seen Lady Rockminster, the old
+lady, who did not admire him, had been very pitiless and abrupt with
+our young friend, and perhaps Pen expected when he came to Baymouth to
+find Laura installed in her house in the quality of humble companion,
+and treated no better than himself. When she heard of his arrival she
+came running downstairs, and I am not sure that she did not embrace him
+in the presence of Calverley and Coldstream: not that those gentlemen
+ever told: if the fractus orbis had come to a smash, if Laura, instead
+of kissing Pen, had taken her scissors and snipped off his
+head—Calverley and Coldstream would have looked on impavidly, without
+allowing a grain of powder to be disturbed by the calamity.
+
+Laura had so much improved in health and looks that Pen could not but
+admire her. The frank and kind eyes which met his, beamed with
+good-health; the cheek which he kissed blushed with beauty. As he
+looked at her, artless and graceful, pure and candid, he thought he had
+never seen her so beautiful. Why should he remark her beauty now so
+much, and remark too to himself that he had not remarked it sooner? He
+took her fair trustful hand and kissed it fondly: he looked in her
+bright clear eyes, and read in them that kindling welcome which he was
+always sure to find there. He was affected and touched by the tender
+tone and the pure sparkling glance; their innocence smote him somehow
+and moved him.
+
+“How good you are to me, Laura—sister!” said Pen; “I don’t deserve that
+you should—that you should be so kind to me.”
+
+“Mamma left you to me,” she said, stooping down and brushing his
+forehead with her lips hastily. “You know you were to come to me when
+you were in trouble, or to tell me when you were very happy: that was
+our compact, Arthur, last year, before we parted. Are you very happy
+now, or are you in trouble—which is it?” and she looked at him with an
+arch glance of kindness. “Do you like going into Parliament! Do you
+intend to distinguish yourself there? How I shall tremble for your
+first speech!”
+
+“Do you know about the Parliament plan, then?” Pen asked.
+
+“Know?—all the world knows! I have heard it talked about many times.
+Lady Rockminster’s doctor talked about it to-day. I daresay it will be
+in the Chatteris paper to-morrow. It is all over the county that Sir
+Francis Clavering, of Clavering, is going to retire, in behalf of Mr.
+Arthur Pendennis, of Fairoaks; and that the young and beautiful Miss
+Blanche Amory is——”
+
+“What! that too?” asked Pendennis.
+
+“That, too, dear Arthur. Tout se sait, as somebody would say, whom I
+intend to be very fond of; and who I am sure is very clever and pretty.
+I have had a letter from Blanche. The kindest of letters. She speaks so
+warmly of you, Arthur! I hope—I know she feels what she writes.—When is
+it to be, Arthur? Why did you not tell me? I may come and live with you
+then, mayn’t I?”
+
+“My home is yours, dear Laura, and everything I have,” Pen said. “If I
+did not tell you, it was because—because—I do not know: nothing is
+decided as yet. No words have passed between us. But you think Blanche
+could be happy with me—don’t you? Not a romantic fondness, you know. I
+have no heart, I think; I’ve told her so: only a sober-sided
+attachment:—and want my wife on one side of the fire and my sister on
+the other,—Parliament in the session and Fairoaks in the holidays, and
+my Laura never to leave me until somebody who has a right comes to take
+her away.”
+
+Somebody who has a right—somebody with a right! Why did Pen, as he
+looked at the girl and slowly uttered the words, begin to feel angry
+and jealous of the invisible somebody with the right to take her away?
+Anxious, but a minute ago, how she would take the news regarding his
+probable arrangements with Blanche, Pen was hurt somehow that she
+received the intelligence so easily, and took his happiness for
+granted.
+
+“Until somebody comes,” Laura said, with a laugh, “I will stay at home
+and be aunt Laura, and take care of the children when Blanche is in the
+world. I have arranged it all. I am an excellent housekeeper. Do you
+know I have been to market at Paris with Mrs. Beck, and have taken some
+lessons from M. Grandjean? And I have had some lessons in Paris in
+singing too, with the money which you sent me, you kind boy: and I can
+sing much better now: and I have learned to dance, though not so well
+as Blanche; and when you become a minister of state, Blanche shall
+present me:” and with this, and with a provoking good-humour, she
+performed for him the last Parisian curtsey.
+
+Lady Rockminster came in whilst this curtsey was being performed, and
+gave to Arthur one finger to shake; which he took, and over which he
+bowed as well as he could, which, in truth, was very clumsily.
+
+“So you are going to be married, sir,” said the old lady.
+
+“Scold him, Lady Rockminster, for not telling us,” Laura said, going
+away: which, in truth, the old lady began instantly to do. “So you are
+going to marry, and to go into Parliament in place of that
+good-for-nothing Sir Francis Clavering. I wanted him to give my
+grandson his seat—why did he not give my grandson his seat? I hope you
+are to have a great deal of money with Miss Amory. I wouldn’t take her
+without a great deal.”
+
+“Sir Francis Clavering is tired of Parliament,” Pen said, wincing,
+“and—and I rather wish to attempt that career. The rest of the story is
+at least premature.”
+
+“I wonder, when you had Laura at home, you could take up with such an
+affected little creature as that,” the old lady continued.
+
+“I am very sorry Miss Amory does not please your ladyship,” said Pen,
+smiling.
+
+“You mean—that it is no affair of mine, and that I am not going to
+marry her. Well, I’m not, and I’m very glad I am not—a little odious
+thing—when I think that a man could prefer her to my Laura, I’ve no
+patience with him, and so I tell you, Mr. Arthur Pendennis.”
+
+“I am very glad you see Laura with such favourable eyes,” Pen said.
+
+“You are very glad, and you are very sorry. What does it matter, sir,
+whether you are very glad or very sorry? A young man who prefers Miss
+Amory to Miss Bell has no business to be sorry or glad. A young man who
+takes up with such a crooked lump of affectation as that little
+Amory,—for she is crooked, I tell you she is,—after seeing my Laura,
+has no right to hold up his head again. Where is your friend Bluebeard?
+The tall young man, I mean,—Warrington, isn’t his name? Why does he not
+come down, and marry Laura? What do the young men mean by not marrying
+such a girl as that? They all marry for money now. You are all selfish
+and cowards. We ran away with each other, and made foolish matches in
+my time. I have no patience with the young men! When I was at Paris in
+the winter, I asked all the three attaches at the Embassy why they did
+not fall in love with Miss Bell? They laughed—they said they wanted
+money. You are all selfish—you are all cowards.”
+
+“I hope before you offered Miss Bell to the attaches,” said Pen, with
+some heat, “you did her the favour to consult her?”
+
+“Miss Bell has only a little money. Miss Bell must marry soon. Somebody
+must make a match for her, sir; and a girl can’t offer herself,” said
+the old dowager, with great state. “Laura, my dear, I’ve been telling
+your cousin that all the young men are selfish; and that there is not a
+pennyworth of romance left among them. He is as bad as the rest.”
+
+“Have you been asking Arthur why he won’t marry me?” said Laura, with a
+kindling smile, coming back and taking her cousin’s hand. (She had been
+away, perhaps, to hide some traces of emotion, which she did not wish
+others to see.) “He is going to marry somebody else; and I intend to be
+very fond of her, and to go and live with them, provided he then does
+not ask every bachelor who comes to his house, why he does not marry
+me?”
+
+The terrors of Pen’s conscience being thus appeased, and his
+examination before Laura over without any reproaches on the part of the
+latter, Pen began to find that his duty and inclination led him
+constantly to Baymouth, where Lady Rockminster informed him that a
+place was always reserved for him at her table. “And I recommend you to
+come often,” the old lady said, “for Grandjean is an excellent cook,
+and to be with Laura and me will do your manners good. It is easy to
+see that you are always thinking about yourself. Don’t blush and
+stammer—almost all young men are always thinking about themselves. My
+sons and grandsons always were until I cured them. Come here, and let
+us teach you to behave properly; you will not have to carve, that is
+done at the side-table. Hecker will give you as much wine as is good
+for you; and on days when you are very good and amusing you shall have
+some champagne. Hecker, mind what I say. Mr. Pendennis is Miss Laura’s
+brother; and you will make him comfortable, and see that he does not
+have too much wine, or disturb me whilst I am taking my nap after
+dinner. You are selfish: I intend to cure you of being selfish. You
+will dine here when you have no other engagements; and if it rains you
+had better put up at the hotel.” As long as the good lady could order
+everybody round about her, she was not hard to please; and all the
+slaves and subjects of her little dowager court trembled before her,
+but loved her.
+
+She did not receive a very numerous or brilliant society. The doctor,
+of course, was admitted as a constant and faithful visitor; the vicar
+and his curate; and on public days the vicar’s wife and daughters, and
+some of the season visitors at Baymouth, were received at the old
+lady’s entertainments: but generally the company was a small one, and
+Mr. Arthur drank his wine by himself, when Lady Rockminster retired to
+take her doze, and to be played and sung to sleep by Laura after
+dinner.
+
+“If my music can give her a nap,” said the good-natured girl, “ought I
+not to be very glad that it can do so much good? Lady Rockminster
+sleeps very little of nights: and I used to read to her until I fell
+ill at Paris, since when she will not hear of my sitting up.”
+
+“Why did you not write to me when you were ill?” asked Pen, with a
+blush.
+
+“What good could you do me? I had Martha to nurse me and the doctor
+every day. You are too busy to write to women or to think about them.
+You have your books and your newspapers, and your politics and your
+railroads to occupy you. I wrote when I was well.”
+
+And Pen looked at her, and blushed again, as he remembered that, during
+all the time of her illness, he had never written to her and had
+scarcely thought about her.
+
+In consequence of his relationship, Pen was free to walk and ride with
+his cousin constantly, and in the course of those walks and rides,
+could appreciate the sweet frankness of her disposition, and the truth,
+simplicity, and kindliness of her fair and spotless heart. In their
+mother’s lifetime, she had never spoken so openly or so cordially as
+now. The desire of poor Helen to make an union between her two
+children, had caused a reserve on Laura’s part towards Pen; for which,
+under the altered circumstances of Arthur’s life, there was now no
+necessity. He was engaged to another woman; and Laura became his sister
+at once,—hiding, or banishing from herself, any doubts which she might
+have as to his choice; striving to look cheerfully forward, and hope
+for his prosperity; promising herself to do all that affection might do
+to make her mother’s darling happy.
+
+Their talk was often about the departed mother. And it was from a
+thousand stories which Laura told him that Arthur was made aware how
+constant and absorbing that silent maternal devotion had been; which
+had accompanied him present and absent through life, and had only ended
+with the fond widow’s last breath. One day the people in Clavering saw
+a lad in charge of a couple of horses at the churchyard-gate: and it
+was told over the place that Pen and Laura had visited Helen’s grave
+together. Since Arthur had come down into the country, he had been
+there once or twice: but the sight of the sacred stone had brought no
+consolation to him. A guilty man doing a guilty deed: a mere
+speculator, content to lay down his faith and honour for a fortune and
+a worldly career; and owning that his life was but a contemptible
+surrender—what right had he in the holy place? what booted it to him in
+the world he lived in, that others were no better than himself? Arthur
+and Laura rode by the gates of Fairoaks; and he shook hands with his
+tenant’s children, playing on the lawn and the terrace—Laura looked
+steadily at the cottage wall, at the creeper on the porch and the
+magnolia growing up to her window. “Mr. Pendennis rode by to-day,” one
+of the boys told his mother, “with a lady, and he stopped and talked to
+us, and he asked for a bit of honeysuckle off the porch, and gave it
+the lady. I couldn’t see if she was pretty; she had her veil down. She
+was riding one of Cramp’s horses, out of Baymouth.”
+
+As they rode over the downs between home and Baymouth, Pen did not
+speak much, though they rode very close together. He was thinking what
+a mockery life was, and how men refuse happiness when they may have it;
+or, having it, kick it down; or barter it, with their eyes open, for a
+little worthless money or beggarly honour. And then the thought came,
+what does it matter for the little space? The lives of the best and
+purest of us are consumed in a vain desire, and end in a
+disappointment: as the dear soul’s who sleeps in her grave yonder. She
+had her selfish ambition, as much as Caesar had; and died, baulked of
+her life’s longing. The stone covers over our hopes and our memories.
+Our place knows us not. “Other people’s children are playing on the
+grass,” he broke out, in a hard voice, “where you and I used to play,
+Laura. And you see how the magnolia we planted has grown up since our
+time. I have been round to one or two of the cottages where my mother
+used to visit. It is scarcely more than a year that she is gone, and
+the people whom she used to benefit care no more for her death than for
+Queen Anne’s. We are all selfish: the world is selfish: there are but a
+few exceptions, like you, my dear, to shine like good deeds in a
+naughty world, and make the blackness more dismal.”
+
+“I wish you would not speak in that way, Arthur,” said Laura, looking
+down and bending her head to the honeysuckle on her breast. “When you
+told the little boy to give me this, you were not selfish.”
+
+“A pretty sacrifice I made to get it for you!” said the sneerer.
+
+“But your heart was kind and full of love when you did so. One cannot
+ask for more than love and kindness; and if you think humbly of
+yourself Arthur, the love and kindness are—diminished—are they? I often
+thought our dearest mother spoiled you at home, by worshipping you; and
+that if you are—I hate the word—what you say, her too great fondness
+helped to make you so. And as for the world, when men go out into it, I
+suppose they cannot be otherwise than selfish. You have to fight for
+yourself, and to get on for yourself, and to make a name for yourself.
+Mamma and your uncle both encouraged you in this ambition. If it is a
+vain thing, why pursue it? I suppose such a clever man as you intend to
+do a great deal of good to the country, by going into Parliament, or
+you would not wish to be there. What are you going to do when you are
+in the House of Commons?”
+
+“Women don’t understand about politics, my dear,” Pen said sneering at
+himself as he spoke.
+
+“But why don’t you make us understand? I could never tell about Mr.
+Pynsent why he should like to be there so much. He is not a clever
+man——”
+
+“He certainly is not a genius, Pynsent,” said Pen.
+
+“Lady Diana says that he attends Committees all day; that then again he
+is at the House all night; that he always votes as he is told; that he
+never speaks; that he will never get on beyond a subordinate place; and
+as his grandmother tells him, he is choked with red-tape. Are you going
+to follow the same career; Arthur? What is there in it so brilliant
+that you should be so eager for it? I would rather that you should stop
+at home, and write books—good books, kind books, with gentle kind
+thoughts, such as you have, dear Arthur, and such as might do people
+good to read. And if you do not win fame, what then? You own it is
+vanity, and you can live very happily without it. I must not pretend to
+advise; but I take you at your own word about the world; and as you own
+it is wicked, and that it tires you, ask you why you don’t leave it?”
+
+“And what would you have me do?” asked Arthur.
+
+“I would have you bring your wife to Fairoaks to live there, and study,
+and do good round about you. I would like to see your own children
+playing on the lawn, Arthur, and that we might pray in our mother’s
+church again once more, dear brother. If the world is a temptation, are
+we not told to pray that we may not be led into it?”
+
+“Do you think Blanche would make a good wife for a petty country
+gentleman? Do you think I should become the character very well,
+Laura?” Pen asked. “Remember temptation walks about the hedgerows as
+well as the city streets: and idleness is the greatest tempter of all.”
+
+“What does—does Mr. Warrington say?” said Laura, as a blush mounted up
+to her cheek, and of which Pen saw the fervour, though Laura’s veil
+fell over her face to hide it.
+
+Pen rode on by Laura’s side silently for a while. George’s name so
+mentioned brought back the past to him, and the thoughts which he had
+once had regarding George and Laura. Why should the recurrence of the
+thought agitate him, now that he knew the union was impossible? Why
+should he be curious to know if, during the months of their intimacy,
+Laura had felt a regard for Warrington? From that day until the present
+time George had never alluded to his story, and Arthur remembered now
+that since then George had scarcely ever mentioned Laura’s name.
+
+At last he cane close to her. “Tell me something, Laura,” he said.
+
+She put back her veil and looked at him. “What is it, Arthur?” she
+asked—though from the tremor of her voice she guessed very well.
+
+“Tell me—but for George’s misfortune—I never knew him speak of it
+before or since that day—would you—would you have given him—what you
+refused me?”
+
+“Yes, Pen,” she said, bursting into tears.
+
+“He deserved you better than I did,” poor Arthur groaned forth, with an
+indescribable pang at his heart. “I am but a selfish wretch, and George
+is better, nobler, truer, than I am. God bless him!”
+
+“Yes, Pen,” said Laura, reaching out her hand to her cousin, and he put
+his arm round her, and for a moment she sobbed on his shoulder.
+
+The gentle girl had had her secret, and told it. In the widow’s last
+journey from Fairoaks, when hastening with her mother to Arthur’s
+sick-bed, Laura had made a different confession; and it was only when
+Warrington told his own story, and described the hopeless condition of
+his life, that she discovered how much her feelings had changed, and
+with what tender sympathy, with what great respect, delight, and
+admiration she had grown to regard her cousin’s friend. Until she knew
+that some plans she might have dreamed of were impossible, and that
+Warrington, reading in her heart, perhaps, had told his melancholy
+story to warn her, she had not asked herself whether it was possible
+that her affections could change; and had been shocked and seared by
+the discovery of the truth. How should she have told it to Helen, and
+confessed her shame? Poor Laura felt guilty before her friend, with the
+secret which she dared not confide to her; felt as if she had been
+ungrateful for Helen’s love and regard; felt as if she had been
+wickedly faithless to Pen in withdrawing that love from him which he
+did not even care to accept; humbled even and repentant before
+Warrington, lest she should have encouraged him by undue sympathy, or
+shown the preference which she began to feel.
+
+The catastrophe which broke up Laura’s home, and the grief and anguish
+which she felt for her mother’s death, gave her little leisure for
+thoughts more selfish; and by the time she rallied from that grief the
+minor one was also almost cured. It was but for a moment that she had
+indulged a hope about Warrington. Her admiration and respect for him
+remained as strong as ever. But the tender feeling with which she knew
+she had regarded him, was schooled into such calmness, that it may be
+said to have been dead and passed away. The pang which it left behind
+was one of humility and remorse. “Oh, how wicked and proud I was about
+Arthur,” she thought, “how self-confident and unforgiving! I never
+forgave from my heart this poor girl, who was fond of him, or him for
+encouraging her love; and I have been more guilty than she, poor,
+little, artless creature! I, professing to love one man, could listen
+to another only too eagerly; and would not pardon the change of
+feelings in Arthur, whilst I myself was changing and unfaithful:” And
+so humiliating herself, and acknowledging her weakness, the poor girl
+sought for strength and refuge in the manner in which she had been
+accustomed to look for them.
+
+She had done no wrong: but there are some folks who suffer for a fault
+ever so trifling as much as others whose stout consciences can walk
+under crimes of almost any weight; and poor Laura chose to fancy that
+she had acted in this delicate juncture of her life as a very great
+criminal. She determined that she had done Pen a great injury by
+withdrawing that love which, privately in her mother’s hearing, she had
+bestowed upon him; that she had been ungrateful to her dead
+benefactress by ever allowing herself to think of another or of
+violating her promise; and that, considering her own enormous crimes,
+she ought to be very gentle in judging those of others, whose
+temptations were much greater, very likely, and whose motives she could
+not understand.
+
+A year back Laura would have been indignant at the idea that Arthur
+should marry Blanche: and her high spirit would have risen, as she
+thought that from worldly motives he should stoop to one so unworthy.
+Now when the news was brought to her of such a chance (the intelligence
+was given to her by old Lady Rockminster, whose speeches were as direct
+and rapid as a slap on the face), the humbled girl winced a little at
+the blow, but bore it meekly, and with a desperate acquiescence. “He
+has a right to marry, he knows a great deal more of the world than I
+do,” she argued with herself. “Blanche may not be so light-minded as
+she seemed, and who am I to be her judge? I daresay it is very good
+that Arthur should go into Parliament and distinguish himself, and my
+duty is to do everything that lies in my power to aid him and Blanche,
+and to make his home happy. I daresay I shall live with them. If I am
+godmother to one of their children, I will leave her my three thousand
+pounds!” And forthwith she began to think what she could give Blanche
+out of her small treasures, and how best to conciliate her affection.
+She wrote her forthwith a kind letter, in which, of course, no mention
+was made of the plans in contemplation, but in which Laura recalled old
+times, and spoke her goodwill, and in reply to this she received an
+eager answer from Blanche: in which not a word about marriage was said,
+to be sure, but Mr. Pendennis was mentioned two or three times in the
+letter, and they were to be henceforth, dearest Laura, and dearest
+Blanche, and loving sisters, and so forth.
+
+When Pen and Laura reached home, after Laura’s confession (Pen’s noble
+acknowledgment of his own inferiority and generous expression of love
+for Warrington, causing the girl’s heart to throb, and rendering doubly
+keen those tears which she sobbed on his shoulder), a little slim
+letter was awaiting Miss Bell in the hall, which she trembled rather
+guiltily as she unsealed, and which Pen blushed as he recognised: for
+he saw instantly that it was from Blanche.
+
+Laura opened it hastily, and cast her eyes quickly over it, as Pen kept
+his fixed on her, blushing.
+
+“She dates from London,” Laura said. “She has been with old Bonner,
+Lady Clavering’s maid. Bonner is going to marry Lightfoot the butler.
+Where do you think Blanche has been?” she cried out eagerly.
+
+“To Paris, to Scotland, to the Casino?”
+
+“To Shepherd’s Inn, to see Fanny; but Fanny wasn’t there, and Blanche
+is going to leave a present for her. Isn’t it kind of her and
+thoughtful?” And she handed the letter to Pen, who read—
+
+“‘I saw Madame Mere, who was scrubbing the room, and looked at me with
+very scrubby looks; but la belle Fanny was not au logis; and as I heard
+that she was in Captain Strong’s apartments, Bonner and I mounted au
+troisieme to see this famous beauty. Another disappointment—only the
+Chevalier Strong and a friend of his in the room: so we came away after
+all without seeing the enchanting Fanny.
+
+“‘Je t’envoie mille et mille baisers. When will that horrid canvassing
+be over? Sleeves are worn, etc. etc. etc.’”
+
+After dinner the doctor was reading the Times. “A young gentleman I
+attended when he was here some eight or nine years ago, has come into a
+fine fortune,” the doctor said. “I see here announced the death of John
+Henry Foker, Esq., of Logwood Hall, at Pau, in the Pyrenees, on the
+15th ult.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVIII.
+In which the Major is bidden to Stand and Deliver
+
+
+Any gentleman who has frequented the Wheel of Fortune public-house,
+where it may be remembered that Mr. James Morgan’s Club was held, and
+where Sir Francis Clavering had an interview with Major Pendennis, is
+aware that there are three rooms for guests upon the ground floor,
+besides the bar where the landlady sits. One is a parlour frequented by
+the public at large; to another room gentlemen in livery resort; and
+the third apartment, on the door of which “Private” is painted, is that
+hired by the Club of “The Confidentials,” of which Messrs Morgan and
+Lightfoot were members.
+
+The noiseless Morgan had listened to the conversation between Strong
+and Major Pendennis at the latter’s own lodgings, and had carried away
+from it matter for much private speculation; and a desire of knowledge
+had led him to follow his master when the Major came to the Wheel of
+Fortune, and to take his place quietly in the Confidential room, whilst
+Pendennis and Clavering had their discourse in the parlour. There was a
+particular corner in the Confidential room from which you could hear
+almost all that passed in the next apartment; and as the conversation
+between the two gentlemen there was rather angry, and carried on in a
+high key, Morgan had the benefit of overhearing almost the whole of it
+and what he heard, strengthened the conclusions which his mind had
+previously formed.
+
+“He knew Altamont at once, did he, when he saw him in Sydney? Clavering
+ain’t no more married to my Lady than I am! Altamont’s the man:
+Altamont’s a convict; young Harthur comes into Parlyment, and the
+Gov’nor promises not to split. By Jove, what a sly old rogue it is,
+that old Gov’nor! No wonder he’s anxious to make the match between
+Blanche and Harthur: why, she’ll have a hundred thousand if she’s a
+penny, and bring her man a seat in Parlyment into the bargain.” Nobody
+saw, but a physiognomist would have liked to behold, the expression of
+Mr. Morgan’s countenance, when this astounding intelligence was made
+clear to him. “But for my hage, and the confounded preudices of
+society,” he said, surveying himself in the glass, “dammy, James
+Morgan, you might marry her yourself.” But if he could not marry Miss
+Blanche and her fortune, Morgan thought he could mend his own by the
+possession of this information, and that it might be productive of
+benefit to him from very many sources. Of all the persons whom the
+secret affected, the greater number would not like to have it known.
+For instance, Sir Francis Clavering, whose fortune it involved, would
+wish to keep it quiet; Colonel Altamont, whose neck it implicated,
+would naturally be desirous to hush it: and that young hupstart beast,
+Mr. Harthur, who was for gettin’ into Parlyment on the strenth of it,
+and was as proud as if he was a duke with half a millium a year (such,
+we grieve to say, was Morgan’s opinion of his employer’s nephew), would
+pay anythink sooner than let the world know that he was married to a
+convick’s daughter, and had got his seat in Parlyment by trafficking
+with this secret. As for Lady C., Morgan thought, if she’s tired of
+Clavering, and wants to get rid of him, she’ll pay: if she’s frightened
+about her son, and fond of the little beggar, she’ll pay all the same:
+and Miss Blanche will certainly come down handsome to the man who will
+put her into her rights, which she was unjustly defrauded of them, and
+no mistake. “Dammy,” concluded the valet, reflecting upon this
+wonderful hand which luck had given him to play, “with such cards as
+these, James Morgan, you are a made man. It may be a reg’lar enewity to
+me. Every one of ’em must susscribe. And with what I’ve made already, I
+may cut business, give my old Gov’nor warning, turn gentleman, and have
+a servant of my own, begad.” Entertaining himself with calculations
+such as these, that were not a little likely to perturb a man’s spirit,
+Mr. Morgan showed a very great degree of self-command by appearing and
+being calm, and by not allowing his future prospects in any way to
+interfere with his present duties.
+
+One of the persons whom the story chiefly concerned, Colonel Altamont,
+was absent from London when Morgan was thus made acquainted with his
+history. The valet knew of Sir Francis Clavering’s Shepherd’s Inn
+haunt, and walked thither an hour or two after the Baronet and
+Pendennis had had their conversation together. But that bird was flown;
+Colonel Altamont had received his Derby winnings, and was gone to the
+Continent. The fact of his absence was exceedingly vexatious to Mr.
+Morgan. “He’ll drop all that money at the gambling-shops on the Rhind,”
+thought Morgan, “and I might have had a good bit of it. It’s confounded
+annoying to think he’s gone and couldn’t have waited a few days
+longer.” Hope, triumphant or deferred, ambition or disappointment,
+victory or patient ambush, Morgan bore all alike, with similar equable
+countenance. Until the proper day came, the Major’s boots were
+varnished and his hair was curled, his early cup of tea was brought to
+his bedside, his oaths, rebukes, and senile satire borne, with silent,
+obsequious fidelity. Who would think, to see him waiting upon his
+master, packing and shouldering his trunks, and occasionally assisting
+at table, at the country-houses where he might be staying, that Morgan
+was richer than his employer, and knew his secrets and other people’s?
+In the profession Mr. Morgan was greatly respected and admired, and his
+reputation for wealth and wisdom got him much renown at most
+supper-tables: the younger gentlemen voted him stoopid, a feller of no
+idears, and a fogey, in a word: but not one of them would not say amen
+to the heartfelt prayer which some of the most serious-minded among the
+gentlemen uttered, “When I die may I cut up as well as Morgan
+Pendennis!”
+
+As became a man of fashion, Major Pendennis spent the autumn passing
+from house to house of such country friends as were at home to receive
+him; and if the Duke happened to be abroad, the Marquis in Scotland,
+condescending to sojourn with Sir John or the plain Squire. To say the
+truth, the old gentleman’s reputation was somewhat on the wane: many of
+the men of his time had died out, and the occupants of their halls and
+the present wearers of their titles knew not Major Pendennis: and
+little cared for his traditions of “the wild Prince and Poins,” and of
+the heroes of fashion passed away. It must have struck the good man
+with melancholy as he walked by many a London door, to think how seldom
+it was now opened for him, and how often he used to knock at it—to what
+banquets and welcome he used to pass through it—a score of years back.
+He began to own that he was no longer of the present age, and dimly to
+apprehend that the young men laughed at him. Such melancholy musings
+must come across many a Pall Mall philosopher. The men, thinks he, are
+not such as they used to be in his time: the old grand manner and
+courtly grace of life are gone: what is Castlewood House and the
+present Castlewood, compared to the magnificence of the old mansion and
+owner? The late lord came to London with four postchaises and sixteen
+horses: all the North Road hurried out to look at his cavalcade: the
+people in London streets even stopped as his procession passed them.
+The present lord travels with five bagmen in a railway carriage, and
+sneaks away from the station, smoking a cigar in a brougham. The late
+lord in autumn filled Castlewood with company, who drank claret till
+midnight: the present man buries himself in a hut on a Scotch mountain,
+and passes November in two or three closets in an entresol at Paris,
+where his amusements are a dinner at a cafe and a box at a little
+theatre. What a contrast there is between his Lady Lorraine, the
+Regent’s Lady Lorraine, and her little ladyship of the present era! He
+figures to himself the first, beautiful, gorgeous, magnificent in
+diamonds and velvets, daring in rouge, the wits of the world (the old
+wits, the old polished gentlemen—not the canaille of to-day with their
+language of the cabstand, and their coats smelling of smoke) bowing at
+her feet; and then thinks of to-day’s Lady Lorraine—a little woman in a
+black silk gown, like a governess, who talks astronomy, and labouring
+classes, and emigration, and the deuce knows what, and lurks to church
+at eight o’clock in the morning. Abbots-Lorraine, that used to be the
+noblest house in the county, is turned into a monastery—a regular La
+Trappe. They don’t drink two glasses of wine after dinner, and every
+other man at table is a country curate, with a white neckcloth, whose
+talk is about Polly Higson’s progress at school, or widow Watkins’s
+lumbago. “And the other young men, those lounging guardsmen and great
+lazy dandies—sprawling over sofas and billiard-tables, and stealing off
+to smoke pipes in each other’s bedrooms, caring for nothing,
+reverencing nothing, not even an old gentleman who has known their
+fathers and their betters, not even a pretty woman—what a difference
+there is between these men, who poison the very turnips and
+stubble-fields with their tobacco, and the gentlemen of our time!”
+thinks the Major; “the breed is gone—there’s no use for ’em; they’re
+replaced by a parcel of damned cotton-spinners and utilitarians, and
+young sprigs of parsons with their hair combed down their barks. I’m
+getting old: they’re getting past me: they laugh at us old boys,”
+thought old Pendennis. And he was not far wrong; the times and manners
+which he admired were pretty nearly gone—the gay young men “larked” him
+irreverently, whilst the serious youth had a grave pity and wonder at
+him; which would have been even more painful to bear, had the old
+gentleman been aware of its extent. But he was rather simple: his
+examination of moral questions had never been very deep; it had never
+struck him perhaps, until very lately, that he was otherwise than a
+most respectable and rather fortunate man. Is there no old age but his
+without reverence? Did youthful folly never jeer at other bald pates?
+For the past two or three years, he had begun to perceive that his day
+was well-nigh over, and that the men of the new time had begun to
+reign.
+
+After a rather unsuccessful autumn season, then, during which he was
+faithfully followed by Mr. Morgan, his nephew Arthur being engaged, as
+we have seen, at Clavering, it happened that Major Pendennis came back
+for a while to London, at the dismal end of October, when the fogs and
+the lawyers come to town. Who has not looked with interest at those
+loaded cabs, piled boxes, and crowded children, rattling through the
+streets on the dun October evenings; stopping at the dark houses, where
+they discharge nurse and infant, girls, matron and father, whose
+holidays are over? Yesterday it was France and sunshine, or Broadstairs
+and liberty; to-day comes work and a yellow fog; and, ye gods! what a
+heap of bills there lies in Master’s study! And the clerk has brought
+the lawyer’s papers from Chambers; and in half an hour the literary man
+knows that the printer’s boy will be in the passage; and Mr. Smith with
+that little account (that particular little account) has called
+presentient of your arrival, and has left word that he will call
+to-morrow morning at ten. Who amongst us has not said Good-bye to his
+holiday; returned to dun London, and his fate; surveyed his labours and
+liabilities laid out before him, and been aware of that inevitable
+little account to settle? Smith and his little account in the morning,
+symbolise duty, difficulty, struggle, which you will meet, let us hope,
+friend, with a manly and honest heart.—And you think of him, as the
+children are slumbering once more in their own beds, and the watchful
+housewife tenderly pretends to sleep.
+
+Old Pendennis had no special labours or bills to encounter on the
+morrow, as he had no affection at home to soothe him. He had always
+money in his desk sufficient for his wants; and being by nature and
+habit tolerably indifferent to the wants of other people, these latter
+were not likely to disturb him. But a gentleman may be out of temper
+though he does not owe a shilling and though he may be ever so selfish,
+he must occasionally feel dispirited and lonely. He had had two or
+three twinges of gout in the country-house where he had been staying:
+the birds were wild and shy, and the walking over the ploughed fields
+had fatigued him deucedly: the young men had laughed at him, and he had
+been peevish at table once or twice: he had not been able to get his
+whist of an evening: and, in fine, was glad to come away. In all his
+dealings with Morgan, his valet, he had been exceedingly sulky and
+discontented. He had sworn at him and abused him for many days past. He
+had scalded his mouth with bad soup at Swindon. He had left his
+umbrella in the railroad carriage: at which piece of forgetfulness, he
+was in such a rage, that he cursed Morgan more freely than ever. Both,
+the chimneys smoked furiously in his lodgings; and when he caused the
+windows to be flung open, he swore so acrimoniously, that Morgan was
+inclined to fling him out of window too, through that opened casement.
+The valet swore after his master, as Pendennis went down the street on
+his way to the Club.
+
+Bays’s was not at all pleasant. The house had been new painted, and
+smelt of varnish and turpentine, and a large streak of white paint
+inflicted itself on the back of the old boy’s fur-collared surtout. The
+dinner was not good: and the three most odious men in all London—old
+Hawkshaw, whose cough and accompaniments are fit to make any man
+uncomfortable; old Colonel Gripley, who seizes on all the newspapers;
+and that irreclaimable old bore Jawkins, who would come and dine at the
+next table to Pendennis, and describe to him every inn-bill which he
+had paid in his foreign tour: each and all of these disagreeable
+personages and incidents had contributed to make Major Pendennis
+miserable; and the Club waiter trod on his toe as he brought him his
+coffee. Never alone appear the Immortals. The Furies always hunt in
+company: they pursued Pendennis from home to the Club, and from the
+Club home.
+
+Whilst the Major was absent from his lodgings, Morgan had been seated
+in the landlady’s parlour, drinking freely of hot brandy-and-water, and
+pouring out on Mrs. Brixham some of the abuse which he had received
+from his master upstairs. Mrs. Brixham was Mr. Morgan’s slave. He was
+his landlady’s landlord. He had bought the lease of the house which she
+rented; he had got her name and her son’s to acceptances, and a bill of
+sale which made him master of the luckless widow’s furniture. The young
+Brixham was a clerk in an insurance office, and Morgan could put him
+into what he called quod any day. Mrs. Brixham was a clergyman’s widow,
+and Mr. Morgan, after performing his duties on the first floor, had a
+pleasure in making the old lady fetch him his bootjack and his
+slippers. She was his slave. The little black profiles of her son and
+daughter; the very picture of Tiddlecot Church, where she was married,
+and her poor dear Brixham lived and died, was now Morgan’s property, as
+it hung there over the mantelpiece of his back-parlour. Morgan sate in
+the widow’s back-room, in the ex-curate’s old horse-hair study-chair,
+making Mrs. Brixham bring supper for him, and fill his glass again and
+again.
+
+The liquor was bought with the poor woman’s own coin, and hence Morgan
+indulged in it only the more freely; and he had eaten his supper and
+was drinking a third tumbler, when old Pendennis returned from the
+Club, and went upstairs to his rooms. Mr. Morgan swore very savagely at
+him and his bell, when he heard the latter, and finished his tumbler of
+brandy before he went up to answer the summons.
+
+He received the abuse consequent on this delay in silence, nor did the
+Major condescend to read in the flushed face and glaring eyes of the
+man, the anger under which he was labouring. The old gentleman’s
+foot-bath was at the fire; his gown and slippers awaiting him there.
+Morgan knelt down to take his boots off with due subordination: and as
+the Major abused him from above, kept up a growl of maledictions below
+at his feet. Thus, when Pendennis was crying “Confound you, sir, mind
+that strap—curse you, don’t wrench my foot off,” Morgan sotto voce
+below was expressing a wish to strangle him, drown him, and punch his
+head off.
+
+The boots removed, it became necessary to divest Mr. Pendennis of his
+coat: and for this purpose the valet had necessarily to approach very
+near to his employer; so near that Pendennis could not but perceive
+what Mr. Morgan’s late occupation had been; to which he adverted in
+that simple and forcible phraseology which men are sometimes in the
+habit of using to their domestics; informing Morgan that he was a
+drunken beast, and that he smelt of brandy.
+
+At this the man broke out, losing patience, and flinging up all
+subordination, “I’m drunk, am I? I’m a beast, am I? I’m d——d, am I? you
+infernal old miscreant. Shall I wring your old head off, and drownd yer
+in that pail of water? Do you think I’m a-goin’ to bear your confounded
+old harrogance, you old Wigsby! Chatter your old hivories at me, do
+you, you grinning old baboon! Come on, if you are a man, and can stand
+to a man. Ha! you coward, knives, knives!”
+
+“If you advance a step, I’ll send it into you,” said the Major, seizing
+up a knife that was on the table near him. “Go downstairs, you drunken
+brute, and leave the house; send for your book and your wages in the
+morning, and never let me see your insolent face again. This d——d
+impertinence of yours has been growing for some months past. You have
+been growing too rich. You are not fit for service. Get out of it, and
+out of the house.”
+
+“And where would you wish me to go, pray, out of the ’ouse?” asked the
+man, “and won’t it be equal convenient to-morrow mornin’?—tootyfay mame
+shose, sivvaplay, munseer?”
+
+“Silence, you beast, and go!” cried out the Major.
+
+Morgan began to laugh, with rather a sinister laugh. “Look yere,
+Pendennis,” he said, seating himself; “since I’ve been in this room
+you’ve called me beast, brute, dog: and d——d me, haven’t you? How do
+you suppose one man likes that sort of talk from another? How many
+years have I waited on you, and how many damns and cusses have you
+given me, along with my wages? Do you think a man’s a dog, that you can
+talk to him in this way? If I choose to drink a little, why shouldn’t
+I? I’ve seen many a gentleman drunk form’ly, and peraps have the abit
+from them. I ain’t a-goin’ to leave this house, old feller, and shall I
+tell you why? The house is my house, every stick of furnitur’ in it is
+mine, excep’ your old traps, and your shower-bath, and your wigbox.
+I’ve bought the place, I tell you, with my own industry and
+perseverance. I can show a hundred pound, where you can show a fifty,
+or your damned supersellious nephew either. I’ve served you honourable,
+done everythink for you these dozen years, and I’m a dog, am I? I’m a
+beast, am I? That’s the language for gentlemen, not for our rank. But
+I’ll bear it no more. I throw up your service; I’m tired on it; I’ve
+combed your old wig and buckled your old girths and waistbands long
+enough, I tell you. Don’t look savage at me, I’m sitting in my own
+chair, in my own room, a-telling the truth to you. I’ll be your beast,
+and your brute, and your dog, no more, Major Pendennis Alf Pay.”
+
+The fury of the old gentleman, met by the servant’s abrupt revolt, had
+been shocked and cooled by the concussion, as much as if a sudden
+shower-bath or a pail of cold water had been flung upon him. That
+effect produced, and his anger calmed, Morgan’s speech had interested
+him, and he rather respected his adversary, and his courage in facing
+him; as of old days, in the fencing-room, he would have admired the
+opponent who hit him.
+
+“You are no longer my servant,” the Major said, “and the house may be
+yours; but the lodgings are mine, and you will have the goodness to
+leave them. To-morrow morning, when we have settled our accounts, I
+shall remove into other quarters. In the meantime, I desire to go to
+bed, and have not the slightest wish for your further company.”
+
+“We’ll have a settlement, don’t you be afraid,” Morgan said, getting up
+from his chair. “I ain’t done with you yet; nor with your family, nor
+with the Clavering family, Major Pendennis; and that you shall know.”
+
+“Have the goodness to leave the room, sir—I’m tired,” said the Major.
+
+“Hah! you’ll be more tired of me afore you’ve done,” answered the man,
+with a sneer, and walked out of the room; leaving the Major to compose
+himself as best he might, after the agitation of this extraordinary
+scene.
+
+He sate and mused by his fireside over the past events, and the
+confounded impudence and ingratitude of servants; and thought how he
+should get a new man: how devilish unpleasant it was for a man of his
+age, and with his habits, to part with a fellow to whom he had been
+accustomed: how Morgan had a receipt for boot-varnish, which was
+incomparably better and more comfortable to the feet than any he had
+ever tried: how very well he made mutton-broth, and tended him when he
+was unwell. “Gad, it’s a hard thing to lose a fellow of that sort: but
+he must go,” thought the Major. “He has grown rich, and impudent since
+he has grown rich. He was horribly tipsy and abusive to-night. We must
+part, and I must go out of the lodgings. Dammy, I like the lodgings;
+I’m used to ’em. It’s very unpleasant, at my time of life, to change my
+quarters.” And so on, mused the old gentleman. The shower-bath had done
+him good: the testiness was gone: the loss of the umbrella, the smell
+of paint at the Club, were forgotten under the superior excitement.
+“Confound the insolent villain!” thought the old gentleman. “He
+understood my wants to a nicety: he was the best servant in England.”
+He thought about his servant as a man thinks of a horse that has
+carried him long and well, and that has come down with him, and is safe
+no longer. How the deuce to replace him? Where can he get such another
+animal?
+
+In these melancholy cogitations the Major, who had donned his own
+dressing-gown and replaced his head of hair (a little grey had been
+introduced into the coiffure of late by Mr. Truefitt, which had given
+the Major’s head the most artless and respectable appearance); in these
+cogitations, we say, the Major, who had taken off his wig and put on
+his night-handkerchief, sate absorbed by the fireside, when a feeble
+knock came at his door, which was presently opened by the landlady of
+the lodgings.
+
+“God bless my soul, Mrs. Brixham!” cried out the Major, startled that a
+lady should behold him in the simple appareil of his night-toilet.
+“It—it’s very late, Mrs. Brixham.”
+
+“I wish I might speak to you, sir,” said the landlady, very piteously.
+
+“About Morgan, I suppose? He has cooled himself at the pump. Can’t take
+him back, Mrs. Brixham. Impossible. I’d determined to part with him
+before, when I heard of his dealings in the discount business—I suppose
+you’ve heard of them, Mrs. Brixham? My servant’s a capitalist, begad.”
+
+“Oh, sir,” said Mrs. Brixham, “I know it to my cost. I borrowed from
+him a little money five years ago; and though I have paid him many
+times over, I am entirely in his power. I am ruined by him, sir.
+Everything I had is his. He’s a dreadful man.”
+
+“Eh, Mrs. Brixham? tout pis—dev’lish sorry for you, and that I must
+quit your house after lodging here so long: there’s no help for it. I
+must go.”
+
+“He says we must all go, sir,” sobbed out the luckless widow. “He came
+downstairs from you just now—he had been drinking, and it always makes
+him very wicked—and he said that you had insulted him, sir, and treated
+him like a dog, and spoken to him unkindly; and he swore he would be
+revenged, and—and I owe him a hundred and twenty pounds, sir—and he has
+a bill of sale of all my furniture—and says he will turn me out of my
+house, and send my poor George to prison. He has been the ruin of my
+family, that man.”
+
+“Dev’lish sorry, Mrs. Brixham; pray take a chair. What can I do?”
+
+“Could you not intercede with him for us? George will give half his
+allowance; my daughter can send something. If you will but stay on,
+sir, and pay a quarter’s rent in advance——”
+
+“My good madam, I would as soon give you a quarter in advance as not,
+if I were going to stay in the lodgings. But I can’t; and I can’t
+afford to fling away twenty pounds, my good madam. I’m a poor half-pay
+officer, and want every shilling I have, begad. As far as a few pounds
+goes—say five pounds—I don’t say—and shall be most happy, and that sort
+of thing: and I’ll give it you in the morning with pleasure: but—but
+it’s getting late, and I have made a railroad journey.”
+
+“God’s will be done, sir,” said the poor woman, drying her tears. I
+must bear my fate.”
+
+“And a dev’lish hard one it is, and most sincerely I pity you, Mrs.
+Brixham. I—I’ll say ten pounds, if you will permit me. Good night.”
+
+“Mr. Morgan, sir, when he came downstairs, and when—when I besought him
+to have pity on me, and told him he had been the ruin of my family,
+said something which I did not well understand—that he would ruin every
+family in the house—that he knew something would bring you down too—and
+that you should pay him for your—your insolence to him. I—I must own to
+you, that I went down on my knees to him, sir; and he said, with a
+dreadful oath against you, that he would have you on your knees.”
+
+“Me?—by Gad, that is too pleasant! Where is the confounded fellow?”
+
+“He went away, sir. He said he should see you in the morning. Oh, pray
+try and pacify him, and save me and my poor boy.” And the widow went
+away with this prayer, to pass her night as she might, and look for the
+dreadful morrow.
+
+The last words about himself excited Major Pendennis so much, that his
+compassion for Mrs. Brixham’s misfortunes was quite forgotten in the
+consideration of his own case.
+
+“Me on my knees?” thought he, as he got into bed: “confound his
+impudence! Who ever saw me on my knees? What the devil does the fellow
+know? Gad, I’ve not had an affair these twenty years. I defy him.” And
+the old compaigner turned round and slept pretty sound, being rather
+excited and amused by the events of the day—the last day in Bury
+Street, he was determined it should be. “For it’s impossible to stay on
+with a valet over me, and a bankrupt landlady. What good can I do this
+poor devil of a woman? I’ll give her twenty pound—there’s Warrington’s
+twenty pound, which he has just paid—but what’s the use? She’ll want
+more, and more, and more, and that cormorant Morgan will swallow all.
+No, dammy, I can’t afford to know poor people; and to-morrow I’ll say
+Good-bye—to Mrs. Brixham and Mr. Morgan.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIX.
+In which the Major neither yields his Money nor his Life
+
+
+Early next morning Pendennis’s shutters were opened by Morgan, who
+appeared as usual, with a face perfectly grave and respectful, bearing
+with him the old gentleman’s clothes, cans of water, and elaborate
+toilet requisites.
+
+“It’s you, is it?” said the old fellow from his bed. “I shan’t take you
+back again, you understand.”
+
+“I ave not the least wish to be took back agin, Major Pendennis,” Mr.
+Morgan said, with grave dignity, “nor to serve you nor hany man. But as
+I wish you to be comftable as long as you stay in my house, I came up
+to do what’s nessary.” And once more, and for the last time, Mr. James
+Morgan laid out the silver dressing-case, and strapped the shining
+razor.
+
+These offices concluded, he addressed himself to the Major with an
+indescribable solemnity, and said: “Thinkin’ that you would most likely
+be in want of a respectable pusson, until you suited yourself, I spoke
+to a young man last night, who is ’ere.”
+
+“Indeed,” said the warrior in the tent-bed.
+
+“He ave lived in the fust famlies, and I can wouch for his
+respectability.”
+
+“You are monstrous polite,” grinned the old Major. And the truth is,
+that after the occurrences of the previous evening, Morgan had gone out
+to his own Club at the Wheel of Fortune, and there finding Frosch, a
+courier and valet just returned from a foreign tour with young Lord
+Cubley, and for the present disposable, had represented to Mr. Frosch,
+that he, Morgan, had “a devil of a blow hup with his own Gov’nor, and
+was goin’ to retire from the business haltogether, and that if Frosch
+wanted a tempory job, he might probbly have it by applying in Bury
+Street.”
+
+“You are very polite,” said the Major, “and your recommendation, I am
+sure, will have every weight.”
+
+Morgan blushed; he felt his master was ‘a-chaffin’ of him.’ “The man
+have awaited on you before, sir,” he said with great dignity. “Lord De
+la Pole, sir, gave him to his nephew young Lord Cubley, and he have
+been with him on his foring tour, and not wishing to go to Fitzurse
+Castle, which Frosch’s chest is delicate, and he cannot bear the cold
+in Scotland, he is free to serve you or not, as you choose.”
+
+“I repeat, sir, that you are exceedingly polite,” said the Major. “Come
+in, Frosch—you will do very well—Mr. Morgan, will you have the great
+kindness to——”
+
+“I shall show him what is nessary, sir, and what is customry for you to
+wish to ave done. Will you please to take breakfast ’ere or at the
+Club, Major Pendennis?”
+
+“With your kind permission, I will breakfast here, and afterwards we
+will make our little arrangements.”
+
+“If you please, sir.”
+
+“Will you now oblige me by leaving the room?”
+
+Morgan withdrew; the excessive politeness of his ex-employer made him
+almost as angry as the Major’s bitterest words. And whilst the old
+gentleman is making his mysterious toilet, we will also modestly
+retire.
+
+After breakfast, Major Pendennis and his new aide-de-camp occupied
+themselves in preparing for their departure. The establishment of the
+old bachelor was not very complicated. He encumbered himself with no
+useless wardrobe. A bible (his mother’s), a road book, Pen’s novel
+(calf elegant), and the Duke of Wellington’s Despatches, with a few
+prints, maps, and portraits of that illustrious general, and of various
+sovereigns and consorts of this country, and of the General under whom
+Major Pendennis had served in India, formed his literary and artistical
+collection: he was always ready to march at a few hours’ notice, and
+the cases in which he had brought his property into his lodgings some
+fifteen years before, were still in the lofts amply sufficient to
+receive all his goods. These, the young woman who did the work of the
+house, and who was known by the name of Betty to her mistress, and of
+“Slavey” to Mr. Morgan, brought down from their resting-place, and
+obediently dusted and cleaned under the eyes of the terrible Morgan.
+His demeanour was guarded and solemn; he had spoken no word as yet to
+Mrs. Brixham respecting his threats of the past night, but he looked as
+if he would execute them, and the poor widow tremblingly awaited her
+fate.
+
+Old Pendennis, armed with his cane, superintended the package of his
+goods and chattels, under the hands of Mr. Frosch, and the Slavey
+burned such of his papers as he did not care to keep; flung open doors
+and closets until they were all empty; and now all boxes and chests
+were closed, except his desk, which was ready to receive the final
+accounts of Mr. Morgan.
+
+That individual now made his appearance, and brought his books. “As I
+wish to speak to you in privick, peraps you will ave the kindness to
+request Frosch to step downstairs,” he said, on entering.
+
+“Bring a couple of cabs, Frosch, if you please—and wait downstairs
+until I ring for you,” said the Major. Morgan saw Frosch downstairs,
+watched him go along the street upon his errand, and produced his books
+and accounts, which were simple and very easily settled.
+
+“And now, sir,” said he, having pocketed the cheque which his
+ex-employer gave him, and signed his name to his book with a flourish,
+“and now that accounts is closed between us, sir,” he said, “I porpose
+to speak to you as one man to another”—(Morgan liked the sound of his
+own voice; and, as an individual, indulged in public speaking whenever
+he could get an opportunity, at the Club, or the housekeeper’s
+room)—“and I must tell you, that I’m in possession of certing
+infamation.”
+
+“And may I inquire of what nature, pray?” asked the Major.
+
+“It’s valuble information, Major Pendennis, as you know very well. I
+know of a marriage as is no marriage—of a honourable Baronet as is no
+more married than I am; and which his wife is married to somebody else,
+as you know too, sir.”
+
+Pendennis at once understood all. “Ha! this accounts for your
+behaviour. You have been listening at the door, sir, I suppose,” said
+the Major, looking very haughty; “I forgot to look at the keyhole when
+I went to that public-house, or I might have suspected what sort of a
+person was behind it.”
+
+“I may have my schemes as you may have yours, I suppose,” answered
+Morgan. “I may get my information, and I may act on that information,
+and I may find that information valuble as anybody else may. A poor
+servant may have a bit of luck as well as a gentleman, mayn’t he? Don’t
+you be putting on your aughty looks, sir, and comin’ the aristocrat
+over me. That’s all gammon with me. I’m an Englishman, I am, and as
+good as you.”
+
+“To what the devil does this tend, sir? and how does the secret which
+you have surprised concern me, I should like to know?” asked Major
+Pendennis, with great majesty.
+
+“How does it concern me, indeed! how grand we are! How does it concern
+my nephew, I wonder? How does it concern my nephew’s seat in Parlyment:
+and to subornation of bigamy? How does it concern that? What, are you
+to be the only man to have a secret, and to trade on it? Why shouldn’t
+I go halves, Major Pendennis? I’ve found it out too. Look here! I ain’t
+goin’ to be unreasonable with you. Make it worth my while, and I’ll
+keep the thing close. Let Mr. Arthur take his seat, and his rich wife,
+if you like; I don’t want to marry her. But I will have my share, as
+sure as my name’s James Morgan. And if I don’t——”
+
+“And if you don’t, sir—what?” Pendennis asked.
+
+“If I don’t, I split, and tell all. I smash Clavering, and have him and
+his wife up for bigamy—so help me, I will! I smash young Hopeful’s
+marriage, and I show up you and him as makin’ use of this secret, in
+order to squeeze a seat in Parlyment out of Sir Francis, and a fortune
+out of his wife.”
+
+“Mr. Pendennis knows no more of this business than the babe unborn,
+sir,” cried the Major, aghast. “No more than Lady Clavering, than Miss
+Amory does.”
+
+“Tell that to the marines, Major,” replied the valet; “that cock won’t
+fight with me.”
+
+“Do you doubt my word, you villain?”
+
+“No bad language. I don’t care one twopence’a’p’ny whether your word’s
+true or not. I tell you, I intend this to be a nice little annuity to
+me, Major: for I have every one of you; and I ain’t such a fool as to
+let you go. I should say that you might make it five hundred a year to
+me among you, easy. Pay me down the first quarter now and I’m as mum as
+a mouse. Just give a note for one twenty-five. There’s your cheque-book
+on your desk.”
+
+“And there’s this too, you villain,” cried the old gentleman. In the
+desk to which the valet pointed was a little double-barrelled pistol,
+which had belonged to Pendennis’s old patron; the Indian
+commander-in-chief, and which had accompanied him in many a campaign.
+“One more word, you scoundrel and I’ll shoot you, like a mad dog.
+Stop—by Jove, I’ll do it now. You’ll assault me, will you? You’ll
+strike at an old man, will you, you lying coward? Kneel down and say
+your prayers, sir, for by the Lord you shall die.”
+
+The Major’s face glared with rage at his adversary, who looked
+terrified before him for a moment, and at the next, with a shriek of
+“Murder!” sprang towards the open window, under which a policeman
+happened to be on his beat. “Murder! Police!” bellowed Mr. Morgan.
+
+To his surprise, Major Pendennis wheeled away the table and walked to
+the other window, which was also open. He beckoned the policeman. “Come
+up here, policeman,” he said, and then went and placed himself against
+the door.
+
+“You miserable sneak,” he said to Morgan; “the pistol hasn’t been
+loaded these fifteen years, as you would have known very well, if you
+had not been such a coward. That policeman is coming, and I will have
+him up, and have your trunks searched; I have reason to believe that
+you are a thief, sir. I know you are. I’ll swear to the things.”
+
+“You gave ’em to me—you gave ’em to me!” cried Morgan.
+
+The Major laughed. “We’ll see,” he said; and the guilty valet
+remembered some fine lawn-fronted shirts—a certain gold-headed cane—an
+opera-glass, which he had forgotten to bring down, and of which he had
+assumed the use along with certain articles of his master’s clothes,
+which the old dandy neither wore nor asked for.
+
+Policeman X entered; followed by the seared Mrs. Brixham and her
+maid-of-all-work, who had been at the door and found some difficulty in
+closing it against the street amateurs, who wished to see the row. The
+Major began instantly to speak.
+
+“I have had occasion to discharge this drunken scoundrel,” he said.
+“Both last night and this morning he insulted and assaulted me. I am an
+old man and took up a pistol. You see it is not loaded, and this coward
+cried out before he was hurt. I am glad you are come. I was charging
+him with taking my property, and desired to examine his trunks and his
+room.”
+
+“The velvet cloak you ain’t worn these three years, nor the weskits,
+and I thought I might take the shirts, and I—I take my hoath I intended
+to put back the hopera-glass,” roared Morgan, writhing with rage and
+terror.
+
+“The man acknowledges that he is a thief,” the Major said, calmly. “He
+has been in my service for years, and I have treated him with every
+kindness and confidence. We will go upstairs and examine his trunks.”
+
+In those trunks Mr. Morgan had things which he would fain keep from
+public eyes. Mr. Morgan, the bill-discounter, gave goods as well as
+money to his customers. He provided young spendthrifts with snuff boxes
+and pins and jewels and pictures and cigars, and of a very doubtful
+quality those cigars and jewels and pictures were. Their display at a
+police-office, the discovery of his occult profession, and the exposure
+of the Major’s property, which he had appropriated, indeed, rather than
+stolen,—would not have added to the reputation of Mr. Morgan. He looked
+a piteous image of terror and discomfiture.
+
+“He’ll smash me, will he?” thought the Major. “I’ll crush him now, and
+finish with him.”
+
+But he paused. He looked at poor Mrs. Brixham’s scared face; and he
+thought for a moment to himself that the man brought to bay and in
+prison might make disclosures which had best be kept secret, and that
+it was best not to deal too fiercely with a desperate man.
+
+“Stop,” he said, “policeman. I’ll speak with this man by himself.”
+
+“Do you give Mr. Morgan in charge?” said the policeman.
+
+“I have brought no charge as yet,” the Major said, with a significant
+look at his man.
+
+“Thank you, sir,” whispered Morgan, very low.
+
+“Go outside the door, and wait there, policeman, if you please.—Now,
+Morgan, you have played one game with me, and you have not had the best
+of it, my good man. No, begad, you’ve not had the best of it, though
+you had the best hand; and you’ve got to pay, too, now, you scoundrel.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the man.
+
+“I’ve only found out, within the last week, the game which you have
+been driving, you villain. Young De Boots, of the Blues, recognised you
+as the man who came to barracks, and did business one-third in money,
+one-third in eau-de-Cologne, and one-third in French prints, you
+confounded demure old sinner! I didn’t miss anything, or care a straw
+what you’d taken, you booby; but I took the shot, and it hit—hit the
+bull’s-eye, begad. Dammy, six, I’m an old campaigner.”
+
+“What do you want with me, sir?”
+
+“I’ll tell you. Your bills, I suppose, you keep about you in that dem’d
+great leather pocket-book, don’t you? You’ll burn Mrs. Brixham’s bill?”
+
+“Sir, I ain’t a-goin’ to part with my property,” growled the man.
+
+“You lent her sixty pounds five years ago. She and that poor devil of
+an insurance clerk, her son, have paid you fifty pounds a year ever
+since; and you have got a bill of sale of her furniture, and her note
+of hand for a hundred and fifty pounds. She told me so last night. By
+Jove, sir, you’ve bled that poor woman enough.”
+
+“I won’t give it up,” said Morgan; “If I do I’m——”
+
+“Policeman!” cried the Major.
+
+“You shall have the bill,” said Morgan. “You’re not going to take money
+of me, and you a gentleman?”
+
+“I shall want you directly,” said the Major to X, who here entered, and
+who again withdrew.
+
+“No, my good sir,” the old gentleman continued; “I have not any desire
+to have further pecuniary transactions with you; but we will draw out a
+little paper, which you will have the kindness to sign. No, stop!—you
+shall write it: you have improved immensely in writing of late, and
+have now a very good hand. You shall sit down and write, if you
+please—there, at that table—so—let me see—we may as well have the date.
+Write ‘Bury Street, St. James’s, October 21, 18—.’”
+
+And Mr. Morgan wrote as he was instructed, and as the pitiless old
+Major continued:—
+
+“‘I, James Morgan, having come in extreme poverty into the service of
+Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, of Bury Street, St. James’s, a Major in her
+Majesty’s service, acknowledge that I received liberal wages and board
+wages from my employer, during fifteen years.’—You can’t object to
+that, I am sure,” said the Major.
+
+“During fifteen years,” wrote Morgan.
+
+“‘In which time, by my own care and prudence,’” the dictator resumed,
+“‘I have managed to amass sufficient money to purchase the house in
+which my master resides, and, besides, to effect other savings. Amongst
+other persons from whom I have had money, I may mention my present
+tenant, Mrs. Brixham, who, in consideration of sixty pounds advanced by
+me five years since, has paid back to me the sum of two hundred and
+fifty pounds sterling, besides giving me a note of hand for one hundred
+and twenty pounds, which I restore to her at the desire of my late
+master, Major Arthur Pendennis, and therewith free her furniture, of
+which I had a bill of sale.’—Have you written?”
+
+“I think if this pistol was loaded, I’d blow your brains out,” said
+Morgan.
+
+“No, you wouldn’t. You have too great a respect for your valuable life,
+my good man,” the Major answered. “Let us go on and begin a new
+sentence.
+
+“‘And having, in return for my master’s kindness, stolen his property
+from him, which I acknowledge to be now upstairs in my trunks; and
+having uttered falsehoods regarding his and other honourable families,
+I do hereby, in consideration of his clemency to me, express my regret
+for uttering these falsehoods, and for stealing his property; and
+declare that I am not worthy of belief, and that I hope’—yes,
+begad—‘that I hope to amend for the future. Signed, James Morgan.’”
+
+“I’m d——d if I sign it,” said Morgan.
+
+“My good man, it will happen to you, whether you sign or no, begad,”
+said the old fellow, chuckling at his own wit. “There, I shall not use
+this, you understand, unless—unless I am compelled to do so. Mrs.
+Brixham, and our friend the policeman, will witness it, I dare say,
+without reading it: and I will give the old lady back her note of hand,
+and say, which you will confirm, that she and you are quits. I see
+there is Frosch come back with the cab for my trunks; I shall go to an
+hotel.—You may come in now, policeman; Mr. Morgan and I have arranged
+our little dispute. If Mrs. Brixham will sign this paper, and you,
+policeman, will do so, I shall be very much obliged to you both. Mrs.
+Brixham, you and your worthy landlord, Mr. Morgan, are quits. I wish
+you joy of him. Let Frosch come and pack the rest of the things.”
+
+Frosch, aided by the Slavey, under the calm superintendence of Mr.
+Morgan, carried Major Pendennis’s boxes to the cabs in waiting; and
+Mrs. Brixham, when her persecutor was not by, came and asked a Heaven’s
+blessing upon the Major, her preserver, and the best and quietest and
+kindest of lodgers. And having given her a finger to shake, which the
+humble lady received with a curtsey, and over which she was ready to
+make a speech full of tears, the Major cut short that valedictory
+oration, and walked out of the house to the hotel in Jermyn Street,
+which was not many steps from Morgan’s door.
+
+That individual, looking forth from the parlour-window, discharged
+anything but blessings at his parting guest; but the stout old boy
+could afford not to be frightened at Mr. Morgan, and flung him a look
+of great contempt and humour as he strutted away with his cane.
+
+Major Pendennis had not quitted his house of Bury Street many hours,
+and Mr. Morgan was enjoying his otium in a dignified manner, surveying
+the evening fog, and smoking a cigar, on the door-steps, when Arthur
+Pendennis, Esq., the hero of this history, made his appearance at the
+well-known door.
+
+“My uncle out, I suppose, Morgan?” he said to the functionary; knowing
+full well that to smoke was treason, in the presence of the Major.
+
+“Major Pendennis is hout, sir,” said Morgan, with gravity, bowing, but
+not touching the elegant cap which he wore. “Major Pendennis have left
+this ouse to-day, sir, and I have no longer the honour of being in his
+service, sir.”
+
+“Indeed, and where is he?”
+
+“I believe he ave taken tempory lodgings at Cox’s otel, in Jummin
+Street,” said Mr. Morgan; and added, after a pause, “Are you in town
+for some time, pray, sir? Are you in Chambers? I should like to have
+the honour of waiting on you there: and would be thankful if you would
+favour me with a quarter of an hour.”
+
+“Do you want my uncle to take you back?” asked Arthur, insolent and
+good-natured.
+
+“I want no such thing; I’d see him——” The man glared at him for a
+minute, but he stopped. “No, sir, thank you,” he said in a softer
+voice; “it’s only with you that I wish to speak, on some business which
+concerns you; and perhaps you would favour me by walking into my
+house.”
+
+“If it is but for a minute or two, I will listen to you, Morgan,” said
+Arthur; and thought to himself, “I suppose the fellow wants me to
+patronise him;” and he entered the house. A card was already in the
+front windows, proclaiming that apartments were to be let; and having
+introduced Mr. Pendennis into the dining-room, and offered him a chair,
+Mr. Morgan took one himself, and proceeded to convey some information
+to him, of which the reader has already had cognisance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXX.
+In which Pendennis counts his Eggs
+
+
+Our friend had arrived in London on that day only, though but for a
+brief visit; and having left some fellow-travellers at an hotel to
+which he had convoyed them from the West, he hastened to the Chambers
+in Lamb Court, which were basking in as much sun as chose to visit that
+dreary but not altogether comfortless building. Freedom stands in lieu
+of sunshine in chambers; and Templars grumble, but take their ease in
+their Inn. Pen’s domestic announced to him that Warrington was in
+Chambers too, and, of course, Arthur ran up to his friend’s room
+straightway, and found it, as of old, perfumed with the pipe, and
+George once more at work with his newspapers and reviews. The pair
+greeted each other with the rough cordiality which young Englishmen use
+one to another: and which carries a great deal of warmth and kindness
+under its rude exterior. Warrington smiled and took his pipe out of his
+mouth, and said, “Well, young one!” Pen advanced and held out his hand,
+and said, “How are you, old boy?” And so this greeting passed between
+two friends who had not seen each other for months. Alphonse and
+Frederic would have rushed into each other’s arms and shrieked Ce bon
+coeur! ce cher Alphonse! over each other’s shoulders. Max and Wilhelm
+would have bestowed half a dozen kisses, scented with Havannah, upon
+each other’s mustachios. “Well, young one!” “How are you, old boy?” is
+what two Britons say: after saving each other’s lives, possibly, the
+day before. To-morrow they will leave off shaking hands, and only wag
+their heads at one another as they come to breakfast. Each has for the
+other the very warmest confidence and regard: each would share his
+purse with the other: and hearing him attacked would break out in the
+loudest and most enthusiastic praise of his friend; but they part with
+a mere Good-bye, they meet with a mere How-d’you-do? and they don’t
+write to each other in the interval. Curious, modesty, strange stoical
+decorum of English friendship! “Yes, we are not demonstrative like
+those confounded foreigners,” says Hardman: who not only shows no
+friendship, but never felt any all his life long.
+
+“Been in Switzerland?” says Pen.
+
+“Yes,” says Warrington.
+
+“Couldn’t find a bit of tobacco fit to smoke till we came to Strasburg,
+where I got some caporal.” The man’s mind is full, very likely, of the
+great sights which he has seen, of the great emotions with which the
+vast works of nature have inspired it. But his enthusiasm is too coy to
+show itself, even to his closest friend, and he veils it with a cloud
+of tobacco. He will speak more fully of confidential evenings, however,
+and write ardently and frankly about that which he is shy of saying.
+The thoughts and experience of his travel will come forth in his
+writings; as the learning, which he never displays in talk, enriches
+his style with pregnant allusion and brilliant illustration, colours
+his generous eloquence, and points his wit.
+
+The elder gives a rapid account of the places which he has visited in
+his tour. He has seen Switzerland, North Italy, and the Tyrol—he has
+come home by Vienna, and Dresden, and the Rhine. He speaks about these
+places in a shy sulky voice, as if he had rather not mention them at
+all, and as if the sight of them had rendered him very unhappy. The
+outline of the elder man’s tour thus gloomily sketched out, the young
+one begins to speak. He has been in the country—very much
+bored—canvassing uncommonly slow—he is here for a day or two, and going
+on to—to the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells, to some friends that
+will be uncommonly slow, too. How hard it is to make an Englishman
+acknowledge that he is happy!
+
+“And the seat in Parliament, Pen? Have you made it all right?” asks
+Warrington.
+
+“All right,—as soon as Parliament meets and a new writ can be issued,
+Clavering retires, and I step into his shoes,” says Pen.
+
+“And under which king does Bezonian speak or die?” asked Warrington.
+“Do we come out as Liberal Conservative, or as Government man, or on
+our own hook?”
+
+“Hem! There are no politics now; every man’s politics, at least, are
+pretty much the same. I have not got acres enough to make me a
+Protectionist; nor could I be one, I think, if I had all the land in
+the county. I shall go pretty much with Government, and in advance of
+them upon some social questions which I have been getting up during the
+vacation;—don’t grin, you old cynic, I have been getting up the Blue
+Books, and intend to come out rather strong on the Sanitary and
+Colonisation questions.”
+
+“We reserve to ourselves the liberty of voting against Government,
+though we are generally friendly. We are, however, friends of the
+people avant tout. We give lectures at the Clavering Institute, and
+shake hands with the intelligent mechanics. We think the franchise
+ought to be very considerably enlarged; at the same time we are free to
+accept office some day, when the House has listened to a few crack
+speeches from us, and the Administration perceives our merit.”
+
+“I am not Moses,” said Pen, with, as usual, somewhat of melancholy in
+his voice. “I have no laws from Heaven to bring down to the people from
+the mountain. I don’t belong to the mountain at all, or set up to be a
+leader and reformer of mankind. My faith is not strong enough for that;
+nor my vanity, nor my hypocrisy, great enough. I will tell no lies,
+George, that I promise you; and do no more than coincide in those which
+are necessary and pass current, and can’t be got in without recalling
+the whole circulation. Give a man at least the advantage of his
+sceptical turn. If I find a good thing to say in the House, I will say
+it; a good measure, I will support it; a fair place, I will take it,
+and be glad of my luck. But I would no more flatter a great man than a
+mob; and now you know as much about my politics as I do. What call have
+I to be a Whig? Whiggism is not a divine institution. Why not vote with
+the Liberal Conservatives? They have done for the nation what the Whigs
+would never have done without them. Who converted both?—the Radicals
+and the country outside. I think the Morning Post is often right, and
+Punch is often wrong. I don’t profess a call, but take advantage of a
+chance. Parlons d’autre chose.”
+
+“The next thing at your heart, after ambition is love, I suppose?”
+Warrington said. “How have our young loves prospered? Are we going to
+change our condition, and give up our chambers? Are you going to
+divorce me, Arthur, and take unto yourself a wife?”
+
+“I suppose so. She is very good-natured and lively. She sings, and she
+don’t mind smoking. She’ll have a fair fortune—I don’t know how
+much—but my uncle augurs everything from the Begum’s generosity, and
+says that she will come down very handsomely. And I think Blanche is
+dev’lish fond of me,” said Arthur, with a sigh.
+
+“That means that we accept her caresses and her money.”
+
+“Haven’t we said before that life was a transaction?” Pendennis said.
+“I don’t pretend to break my heart about her. I have told her pretty
+fairly what my feelings are—and—and have engaged myself to her. And
+since I saw her last, and for the last two months especially, whilst I
+have been in the country, I think she has been growing fonder and
+fonder of me; and her letters to me, and especially to Laura, seem to
+show it. Mine have been simple enough—no raptures, nor vows, you
+understand—but looking upon the thing as an affaire faite; and not
+desirous to hasten or defer the completion.”
+
+“And Laura? how is she?” Warrington asked frankly.
+
+“Laura, George,” said Pen, looking his friend hard in the face—“by
+heaven, Laura is the best, and noblest, and dearest girl the sun ever
+shone upon.” His own voice fell as he spoke: it seemed as if he could
+hardly utter the words: he stretched out his hand to his comrade, who
+took it and nodded his head.
+
+“Have you only found out that now, young un?” Warrington said after a
+pause.
+
+“Who has not learned things too late, George?” cried Arthur, in his
+impetuous way, gathering words and emotion as he went on. “Whose life
+is not a disappointment? Who carries his heart entire to the grave
+without a mutilation? I never knew anybody who was happy quite: or who
+has not had to ransom himself out of the hands of Fate with the payment
+of some dearest treasure or other. Lucky if we are left alone
+afterwards, when we have paid our fine, and if the tyrant visits us no
+more. Suppose I have found out that I have lost the greatest prize in
+the world, now that it can’t be mine—that for years I had an angel
+under my tent, and let her go?—am I the only one—ah, dear old boy, am I
+the only one? And do you think my lot is easier to bear because I own
+that I deserve it? She’s gone from us. God’s blessing be with her! She
+might have stayed, and I lost her; it’s like Undine: isn’t it, George?”
+
+“She was in this room once,” said George.
+
+He saw her there—he heard the sweet low voice—he saw the sweet smile
+and eyes shining so kindly—the face remembered so fondly—thought of in
+what night-watches—blest and loved always—gone now! A glass that had
+held a nosegay—a bible with Helen’s handwriting—were all that were left
+him of that brief flower of his life. Say it is a dream: say it passes:
+better the recollection of a dream than an aimless waking from a blank
+stupor.
+
+The two friends sate in silence a while, each occupied with his own
+thoughts and aware of the other’s. Pen broke it presently, by saying
+that he must go and seek for his uncle, and report progress to the old
+gentleman. The Major had written in a very bad humour; the Major was
+getting old. “I should like to see you in Parliament, and snugly
+settled with a comfortable house and an heir to the name before I make
+my bow. Show me these,” the Major wrote, “and then, let old Arthur
+Pendennis make room for the younger fellows; he has walked the Pall
+Mall pave long enough.”
+
+“There is a kindness about the old heathen,” said Warrington. “He cares
+for somebody besides himself, at least for some other part of himself
+besides that which is buttoned into his own coat;—for you and your
+race. He would like to see the progeny of the Pendennises multiplying
+and increasing, and hopes that they may inherit the land. The old
+patriarch blesses you from the Club window of Bays’s, and is carried
+off and buried under the flags of St. James’s Church, in sight of
+Piccadilly, and the cabstand, and the carriages going to the levee. It
+is an edifying ending.”
+
+“The new blood I bring into the family,” mused Pen, “is rather tainted.
+If I had chosen, I think my father-in-law Amory would not have been the
+progenitor I should have desired for my race; nor my grandfather-in-law
+Snell; nor our Oriental ancestors. By the way, who was Amory? Amory was
+lieutenant of an Indiaman. Blanche wrote some verses about him, about
+the storm, the mountain wave, the seaman’s grave, the gallant father,
+and that sort of thing. Amory was drowned commanding a country ship
+between Calcutta and Sydney; Amory and the Begum weren’t happy
+together. She has been unlucky in her selection of husbands, the good
+old lady, for, between ourselves, a more despicable creature than Sir
+Francis Clavering, of Clavering Park, Baronet, never——” “Never
+legislated for his country,” broke in Warrington; at which Pen blushed
+rather.
+
+“By the way, at Baden,” said Warrington, “I found our friend the
+Chevalier Strong in great state, and wearing his orders. He told me
+that he had quarrelled with Clavering, of whom he seemed to have almost
+as bad an opinion as you have, and in fact, I think, though I will not
+be certain, confided to me his opinion, that Clavering was an utter
+scoundrel. That fellow Bloundell, who taught you card-playing at
+Oxbridge, was with Strong; and time, I think, has brought out his
+valuable qualities, and rendered him a more accomplished rascal than he
+was during your undergraduateship. But the king of the place was the
+famous Colonel Altamont, who was carrying all before him, giving flies
+to the whole society, and breaking the bank, it was said.”
+
+“My uncle knows something about that fellow—Clavering knows something
+about him. There’s something louche regarding him. But come! I must go
+to Bury Street, like a dutiful nephew.” And, taking his hat, Pen
+prepared to go.
+
+“I will walk, too,” said Warrington. And they descended the stairs,
+stopping, however, at Pen’s chambers, which, as the reader has been
+informed, were now on the lower story.
+
+Here Pen began sprinkling himself with eau-de-Cologne, and carefully
+scenting his hair and whiskers with that odoriferous water.
+
+“What is the matter? You’ve not been smoking. Is it my pipe that has
+poisoned you?” growled Warrington.
+
+“I am going to call upon some women,” said Pen. “I’m—I’m going to dine
+with ’em. They are passing through town, and are at an hotel in Jermyn
+Street.”
+
+Warrington looked with good-natured interest at the young fellow
+dandifying himself up to a pitch of completeness; and appearing at
+length in a gorgeous shirt-front and neckcloth, fresh gloves, and
+glistening boots. George had a pair of thick high-lows, and his old
+shirt was torn about the breast, and ragged at the collar, where his
+blue beard had worn it.
+
+“Well, young un,” said he, simply, “I like you to be a buck; somehow.
+When I walk about with you, it is as if I had a rose in my button-hole.
+And you are still affable. I don’t think there is any young fellow in
+the Temple turns out like you; and I don’t believe you were ever
+ashamed of walking with me yet.”
+
+“Don’t laugh at me, George.” said Pen.
+
+“I say, Pen,” continued the other, sadly, “if you write—if you write to
+Laura, I wish you would say ‘God bless her’ from me.”
+
+Pen blushed; and then looked at Warrington; and then—and then burst
+into an uncontrollable fit of laughing.
+
+“I’m going to dine with her,” he said. “I brought her and Lady
+Rockminster up from the country to-day—made two days of it—slept last
+night at Bath—I say, George, come and dine, too. I may ask any one I
+please, and the old lady is constantly talking about you.”
+
+George refused. George had an article to write. George hesitated; and
+oh, strange to say! at last he agreed to go. It was agreed that they
+should go and call upon the ladies; and they marched away in high
+spirits to the hotel in Jermyn Street. Once more the dear face shone
+upon him; once more the sweet voice spoke to him, and the tender hand
+pressed a welcome.
+
+There still wanted half an hour to dinner. “You will go and see your
+uncle now, Mr. Pendennis,” old Lady Rockminster said. “You will not
+bring him to dinner-no—his old stories are intolerable; and I want to
+talk to Mr. Warrington; I daresay he will amuse us. I think we have
+heard all your stories. We have been together for two whole days, and I
+think we are getting tired of each other.”
+
+So, obeying her ladyship’s orders, Arthur went downstairs and walked to
+his uncle’s lodgings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXI.
+Fiat Justitia
+
+
+The dinner was served when Arthur returned, and Lady Rockminster began
+to scold him for arriving late. But Laura, looking at her cousin, saw
+that his face was so pale and scared, that she interrupted her
+imperious patroness; and asked, with tender alarm, what had happened?
+Was Arthur ill?
+
+Arthur drank a large bumper of sherry. “I have heard the most
+extraordinary news; I will tell you afterwards,” he said, looking at
+the servants. He was very nervous and agitated during the dinner.
+“Don’t tramp and beat so with your feet under the table,” Lady
+Rockminster said. “You have trodden on Fido, and upset his saucer. You
+see Mr. Warrington keeps his boots quiet.”
+
+At the dessert—it seemed as if the unlucky dinner would never be
+over—Lady Rockminster said, “This dinner has been exceedingly stupid. I
+suppose something has happened, and that you want to speak to Laura. I
+will go and have my nap. I am not sure that I shall have any tea—no.
+Good night, Mr. Warrington. You must come again, and when there is no
+business to talk about.” And the old lady, tossing up her head, walked
+away from the room with great dignity.
+
+George and the others had risen with her, and Warrington was about to
+go away, and was saying “Good night” to Laura, who, of course, was
+looking much alarmed about her cousin, when Arthur said, “Pray, stay,
+George. You should hear my news too, and give me your counsel in this
+case. I hardly know how to act in it.”
+
+“It’s something about Blanche, Arthur,” said Laura, her heart beating,
+and her cheek blushing as she thought it had never blushed in her life.
+
+“Yes—and the most extraordinary story,” said Pen. “When I left you to
+go to my uncle’s lodgings, I found his servant, Morgan, who has been
+with him so long, at the door, and he said that he and his master had
+parted that morning; that my uncle had quitted the house, and had gone
+to an hotel—this hotel. I asked for him when I came in; but he was gone
+out to dinner. Morgan then said that he had something of a most
+important nature to communicate to me, and begged me to step into the
+house; his house it is now. It appears the scoundrel has saved a great
+deal of money whilst in my uncle’s service, and is now a capitalist and
+a millionaire, for what I know. Well, I went into the house, and what
+do you think he told me? This must be a secret between us all—at least
+if we can keep it, now that it is in possession of that villain.
+Blanche’s father is not dead. He has come to life again. The marriage
+between Clavering and the Begum is no marriage.”
+
+“And Blanche, I suppose, is her grandfather’s heir,” said Warrington.
+
+“Perhaps: but the child of what a father! Amory is an escaped
+convict—Clavering knows it; my uncle knows it—and it was with this
+piece of information held over Clavering in terrorem that the wretched
+old man got him to give up his borough to me.”
+
+“Blanche doesn’t know it,” said Laura, “nor poor Lady Clavering?”
+
+“No,” said Pen; “Blanche does not even know the history of her father.
+She knew that he and her mother had separated, and had heard as a
+child, from Bonner, her nurse, that Mr. Amory was drowned in New South
+Wales. He was there as a convict, not as a ship’s-captain, as the poor
+girl thought. Lady Clavering has told me that they were not happy, and
+that her husband was a bad character. She would tell me all, she said,
+some day: and I remember her saying to me, with tears in her eyes, that
+it was hard for a woman to be forced to own that she was glad to hear
+her husband was dead: and that twice in her life she should have chosen
+so badly. What is to be done now? The man can’t show and claim his
+wife: death is probably over him if he discovers himself: return to
+transportation certainly. But the rascal has held the threat of
+discovery over Clavering for some time past, and has extorted money
+from him time after time.”
+
+“It is our friend Colonel Altamont, of course,” said Warrington “I see
+all now.”
+
+“If the rascal comes back,” continued Arthur, “Morgan, who knows his
+secret, will use it over him—and having it in his possession, proposes
+to extort money from us all. The d——d rascal supposed I was cognisant
+of it,” said Pen, white with anger; “asked me if I would give him an
+annuity to keep it quiet; threatened me, me, as if I was trafficking
+with this wretched old Begum’s misfortune, and would extort a seat in
+Parliament out of that miserable Clavering. Good heavens! was my uncle
+mad, to tamper in such a conspiracy? Fancy our mother’s son, Laura,
+trading on such a treason!”
+
+“I can’t fancy it, dear Arthur,” said Laura, seizing Arthur’s hand, and
+kissing it.
+
+“No!” broke out Warrington’s deep voice, with a tremor; he surveyed the
+two generous and loving young people with a pang of indescribable love
+and pain. “No. Our boy can’t meddle with such a wretched intrigue as
+that. Arthur Pendennis can’t marry a convict’s daughter; and sit in
+Parliament as member for the hulks. You must wash your hands of the
+whole affair, Pen. You must break off. You must give no explanations of
+why and wherefore, but state that family reasons render a match
+impossible. It is better that those poor women should fancy you false
+to your word than that they should know the truth. Besides, you can get
+from that dog Clavering—I can fetch that for you easily enough an
+acknowledgment that the reasons which you have given to him as the head
+of the family are amply sufficient for breaking off the union. Don’t
+you think with me, Laura?” He scarcely dared to look her in the face as
+he spoke. Any lingering hope that he might have—any feeble hold that he
+might feel upon the last spar of his wrecked fortune, he knew he was
+casting away; and he let the wave of his calamity close over him. Pen
+had started up whilst he was speaking, looking eagerly at him. He
+turned his head away. He saw Laura rise up also and go to Pen, and once
+more take his hand and kiss it. “She thinks so too—God bless her!” said
+George.
+
+“Her father’s shame is not Blanche’s fault, dear Arthur, is it?” Laura
+said, very pale, and speaking very quickly. “Suppose you had been
+married, would you desert her because she had done no wrong? Are you
+not pledged to her? Would you leave her because she is in misfortune?
+And if she is unhappy, wouldn’t you console her? Our mother would, had
+she been here.” And, as she spoke, the kind girl folded her arms round
+him, and buried her face upon his heart.
+
+“Our mother is an angel with God,” Pen sobbed out. “And you are the
+dearest and best of women—the dearest, the dearest and the best. Teach
+me my duty. Pray for me that I may do it—pure heart. God bless you—God
+bless you, my sister!”
+
+“Amen,” groaned out Warrington, with his head in his hands. “She is
+right,” he murmured to himself. “She can’t do any wrong, I think—that
+girl.” Indeed, she looked and smiled like an angel. Many a day after he
+saw that smile—saw her radiant face as she looked up at Pen—saw her
+putting back her curls, blushing and smiling, and still looking fondly
+towards him.
+
+She leaned for a moment her little fair hand on the table, playing on
+it. “And now, and now,” she said, looking at the two gentlemen—
+
+“And what now?” asked George.
+
+“And now we will have some tea,” said Miss Laura, with her smile.
+
+But before this unromantic conclusion to a rather sentimental scene
+could be suffered to take place, a servant brought word that Major
+Pendennis had returned to the hotel, and was waiting to see his nephew.
+Upon this announcement, Laura, not without some alarm, and an appealing
+look to Pen, which said, “Behave yourself well—hold to the right, and
+do your duty—be gentle, but firm with your uncle”—Laura, we say, with
+these warnings written in her face, took leave of the two gentlemen,
+and retreated to her dormitory. Warrington, who was not generally fond
+of tea, yet grudged that expected cup very much. Why could not old
+Pendennis have come in an hour later? Well, an hour sooner or later,
+what matter? The hour strikes at last. The inevitable moment comes to
+say Farewell, The hand is shaken, the door closed, and the friend gone;
+and, the brief joy over, you are alone. “In which of those many windows
+of the hotel does her light beam?” perhaps he asks himself as he passes
+down the street. He strides away to the smoking-room of a neighbouring
+Club, and, there applies himself to his usual solace of a cigar. Men
+are brawling and talking loud about politics, opera-girls,
+horse-racing, the atrocious tyranny of the committee:—bearing this
+sacred secret about him, he enters into this brawl. Talk away, each
+louder than the other. Rattle and crack jokes. Laugh and tell your wild
+stories. It is strange to take one’s place and part in the midst of the
+smoke and din, and think every man here has his secret ego most likely,
+which is sitting lonely and apart, away in the private chamber, from
+the loud game in which the rest of us is joining!
+
+Arthur, as he traversed the passages of the hotel, felt his anger
+rousing up within him. He was indignant to think that yonder old
+gentleman whom he was about to meet, should have made him such a tool
+and puppet, and so compromised his honour and good name. The old
+fellow’s hand was very cold and shaky when Arthur took it. He was
+coughing; he was grumbling over the fire; Frosch could not bring his
+dressing-gown or arrange his papers as that d——d confounded impudent
+scoundrel of a Morgan. The old gentleman bemoaned himself, and cursed
+Morgan’s ingratitude with peevish pathos.
+
+“The confounded impudent scoundrel! He was drunk last night, and
+challenged me to fight him, Pen; and, begad, at one time I was so
+excited that I thought I should have driven a knife into him; and the
+infernal rascal has made ten thousand pound, I believe—and deserves to
+be hanged, and will be; but, curse him, I wish he could have lasted out
+my time. He knew all my ways, and, dammy, when I rang the bell, the
+confounded thief brought the thing I wanted—not like that stupid German
+lout. And what sort of time have you had in the country? Been a good
+deal with Lady Rockminster? You can’t do better. She is one of the old
+school—vieille ecole, bonne ecole, hey? Dammy, they don’t make
+gentlemen and ladies now; and in fifty years you’ll hardly know one man
+from another. But they’ll last my time. I ain’t long for this business:
+I am getting very old, Pen, my boy; and, gad, I was thinking to-day, as
+I was packing up my little library, there’s a bible amongst the books
+that belonged to my poor mother; I would like you to keep that, Pen. I
+was thinking, sir, that you would most likely open the box when it was
+your property, and the old fellow was laid under the sod, sir,” and the
+Major coughed and wagged his old head over the fire.
+
+His age—his kindness, disarmed Pen’s anger somewhat, and made Arthur
+feel no little compunction for the deed which he was about to do. He
+knew that the announcement which he was about to make would destroy the
+darling hope of the old gentleman’s life, and create in his breast a
+woeful anger and commotion.
+
+“Hey—hey—I’m off, sir,” nodded the Elder; “but I’d like to read a
+speech of yours in the Times before I go—‘Mr. Pendennis said,
+Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking’—hey, sir? hey, Arthur? Begad,
+you look dev’lish well and healthy, sir. I always said my brother Jack
+would bring the family right. You must go down into the west, and buy
+the old estate, sir. Nec tenui penna, hey? We’ll rise again, sir—rise
+again on the wing—and, begad, I shouldn’t be surprised that you will be
+a Baronet before you die.”
+
+His words smote Pen. “And it is I,” he thought, “that am going to fling
+down the poor old fellow’s air-castle. Well, it must be. Here goes.—I—I
+went into your lodgings at Bury Street, though I did not find you,” Pen
+slowly began—“and I talked with Morgan, uncle.”
+
+“Indeed!” The old gentleman’s cheek began to flush involuntarily, and
+he muttered, “The cat’s out of the bag now, begad!”
+
+“He told me a story, sir, which gave me the deepest surprise and pain,”
+said Pen.
+
+The Major tried to look unconcerned. “What—that story
+about—about—What-d’-you-call-’em, hey?”
+
+“About Miss Amory’s father—about Lady Clavering’s first husband, and
+who he is, and what.”
+
+“Hem—a dev’lish awkward affair!” said the old man, rubbing his nose.
+“I—I’ve been aware of that—eh—confounded circumstance for some time.”
+
+“I wish I had known it sooner, or not at all,” said Arthur, gloomily.
+
+“He is all safe,” thought the Senior, greatly relieved. “Gad! I should
+have liked to keep it from you altogether—and from those two poor
+women, who are as innocent as unborn babes in the transaction.”
+
+“You are right. There is no reason why the two women should hear it;
+and I shall never tell them—though that villain, Morgan, perhaps may,”
+Arthur said, gloomily. “He seems disposed to trade upon his secret, and
+has already proposed terms of ransom to me. I wish I had known of the
+matter earlier, sir. It is not a very pleasant thought to me that I am
+engaged to a convict’s daughter.”
+
+“The very reason why I kept it from you—my dear boy. But Miss Amory is
+not a convict’s daughter, don’t you see? Miss Amory is the daughter of
+Lady Clavering, with fifty or sixty thousand pounds for a fortune; and
+her father-in-law, a Baronet and country gentleman, of high reputation,
+approves of the match, and gives up his seat in Parliament to his
+son-in-law. What can be more simple?”
+
+“Is it true, sir?”
+
+“Begad, yes, it is true, of course it’s true. Amory’s dead. I tell you
+he is dead. The first sign of life he shows, he is dead. He can’t
+appear. We have him at a deadlock, like the fellow in the play—the
+‘Critic,’ hey?—dev’lish amusing play, that ‘Critic.’ Monstrous witty
+man, Sheridan; and so was his son. By Gad, sir, when I was at the Cape,
+I remember——”
+
+The old gentleman’s garrulity, and wish to conduct Arthur to the Cape,
+perhaps arose from a desire to avoid the subject which was nearest his
+nephew’s heart; but Arthur broke out, interrupting him—“If you had told
+me this tale sooner, I believe you would have spared me and yourself a
+great deal of pain and disappointment; and I should not have found
+myself tied to an engagement from which I can’t, in honour, recede.”
+
+“No, begad, we’ve fixed you—and a man who’s fixed to a seat in
+Parliament, and a pretty girl, with a couple of thousand a year, is
+fixed to no bad thing, let me tell you,” said the old man.
+
+“Great Heavens, sir!” said Arthur, “are you blind? Can’t you see?”
+
+“See what, young gentleman?” asked the other.
+
+“See, that rather than trade upon this secret of Amory’s,” Arthur cried
+out, “I would go and join my father-in-law at the hulks! See, that
+rather than take a seat in Parliament as a bribe from Clavering for
+silence, I would take the spoons off the table! See, that you have
+given me a felon’s daughter for a wife; doomed me to poverty and shame;
+cursed my career when it might have been—when it might have been so
+different but for you! Don’t you see that we have been playing a guilty
+game, and have been overreached;—that in offering to marry this poor
+girl, for the sake of her money, and the advancement she would bring, I
+was degrading myself, and prostituting my honour?”
+
+“What in Heaven’s name do you mean, sir?” cried the old man.
+
+“I mean to say that there is a measure of baseness which I can’t pass,”
+Arthur said. “I have no other words for it, and am sorry if they hurt
+you. I have felt, for months past, that my conduct in this affair has
+been wicked, sordid, and worldly. I am rightly punished by the event,
+and having sold myself for money and a seat in Parliament, by losing
+both.”
+
+“How do you mean that you lose either?” shrieked the old gentleman.
+“Who the devil’s to take your fortune or your seat away from you? By
+G—, Clavering shall give ’em to you. You shall have every shilling of
+eighty thousand pounds.”
+
+“I’ll keep my promise to Miss Amory, sir,” said Arthur.
+
+“And, begad, her parents shall keep theirs to you.”
+
+“Not so, please God,” Arthur answered. “I have sinned, but, Heaven help
+me, I will sin no more. I will let Clavering off from that bargain
+which was made without my knowledge. I will take no money with Blanche
+but that which was originally settled upon her; and I will try to make
+her happy. You have done it. You have brought this on me, sir. But you
+knew no better: and I forgive——”
+
+“Arthur—in God’s name—in your father’s, who, by Heavens, was the
+proudest man alive, and had the honour of the family always at heart—in
+mine—for the sake of a poor broken-down old fellow, who has always been
+dev’lish fond of you—don’t fling this chance away—I pray you, I beg
+you, I implore you, my dear, dear boy, don’t fling this chance away.
+It’s the making of you. You’re sure to get on. You’ll be a Baronet;
+it’s three thousand a year: dammy, on my knees, there, I beg of you,
+don’t do this.”
+
+And the old man actually sank down on his knees, and, seizing one of
+Arthur’s hands, looked up piteously at him. It was cruel to remark the
+shaking hands, the wrinkled and quivering face, the old eyes weeping
+and winking, the broken voice. “Ah, sir,” said Arthur, with a groan,
+“you have brought pain enough on me, spare me this. You have wished me
+to marry Blanche. I marry her. For God’s sake, sir, rise! I can’t bear
+it.”
+
+“You—you mean to say that you will take her as a beggar, and be one
+yourself?” said the old gentleman, rising up and coughing violently.
+
+“I look at her as a person to whom a great calamity has befallen, and
+to whom I am promised. She cannot help the misfortune; and as she had
+my word when she was prosperous, I shall not withdraw it now she is
+poor. I will not take Clavering’s seat, unless afterwards it should be
+given of his free will. I will not have a shilling more than her
+original fortune.”
+
+“Have the kindness to ring the bell,” said the old gentleman. “I have
+done my best, and said my say; and I’m a dev’lish old fellow.
+And—and—it don’t matter. And—and Shakspeare was right—and Cardinal
+Wolsey—begad—‘and had I but served my God as I’ve served you’—yes, on
+my knees, by Jove, to my own nephew—I mightn’t have been—Good night,
+sir, you needn’t trouble yourself to call again.”
+
+Arthur took his hand, which the old man left to him; it was quite
+passive and clammy. He looked very much oldened; and it seemed as if
+the contest and defeat had quite broken him.
+
+On the next day he kept his bed, and refused to see his nephew.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXII.
+In which the Decks begin to clear
+
+
+When, arrayed in his dressing-gown, Pen walked up, according to custom,
+to Warrington’s chambers next morning, to inform his friend of the
+issue of the last night’s interview with his uncle, and to ask, as
+usual, for George’s advice and opinion, Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress,
+was the only person whom Arthur found in the dear old chambers. George
+had taken a carpet-bag, and was gone. His address was to his brother’s
+house, in Suffolk. Packages addressed to the newspaper and review for
+which he wrote lay on the table, awaiting delivery.
+
+“I found him at the table, when I came, the dear gentleman!” Mrs.
+Flanagan said, “writing at his papers, and one of the candles was
+burned out; and hard as his bed is, he wasn’t in it all night, sir.”
+
+Indeed, having sat at the Club until the brawl there became intolerable
+to him, George had walked home, and had passed the night finishing some
+work on which he was employed, and to the completion of which he bent
+himself with all his might. The labour was done, and the night was worn
+away somehow, and the tardy November dawn came and looked in on the
+young man as he sate over his desk. In the next day’s paper, or
+quarter’s review, many of us very likely admired the work of his
+genius, the variety of his illustration, the fierce vigour of his
+satire, the depth of his reason. There was no hint in his writing of
+the other thoughts which occupied him, and always accompanied him in
+his work—a tone more melancholy than was customary, a satire more
+bitter and impatient than that which he afterwards showed, may have
+marked the writings of this period of his life to the very few persons
+who knew his style or his name. We have said before, could we know the
+man’s feelings as well as the author’s thoughts—how interesting most
+books would be!—more interesting than merry. I suppose harlequin’s face
+behind his mask is always grave, if not melancholy—certainly each man
+who lives by the pen, and happens to read this, must remember, if he
+will, his own experiences, and recall many solemn hours of solitude and
+labour. What a constant care sate at the side of the desk and
+accompanied him! Fever or sickness were lying possibly in the next
+room: a sick child might be there, with a wife watching over it
+terrified and in prayer: or grief might be bearing him down, and the
+cruel mist before the eyes rendering the paper scarce visible as he
+wrote on it, and the inexorable necessity drove on the pen. What man
+among us has not had nights and hours like these? But to the manly
+heart—severe as these pangs are, they are endurable: long as the night
+seems, the dawn comes at last, and the wounds heal, and the fever
+abates, and rest comes, and you can afford to look back on the past
+misery with feelings that are anything but bitter.
+
+Two or three books for reference, fragments of torn-up manuscript,
+drawers open, pens and inkstand, lines half visible on the
+blotting-paper, a bit of sealing-wax twisted and bitten and broken into
+sundry pieces—such relics as these were about the table, and Pen flung
+himself down in George’s empty chair—noting things according to his
+wont, or in spite of himself. There was a gap in the bookcase (next to
+the old College Plato, with the Boniface Arms), where Helen’s bible
+used to be. He has taken that with him, thought Pen. He knew why his
+friend was gone. Dear, dear old George!
+
+Pen rubbed his hand over his eyes. Oh, how much wiser, how much better,
+how much nobler he is than I! he thought. Where was such a friend, or
+such a brave heart? Where shall I ever hear such a frank voice, and
+kind laughter? Where shall I ever see such a true gentleman? No wonder
+she loved him. God bless him! What was I compared to him? What could
+she do else but love him? To the end of our days we will be her
+brothers, as fate wills that we can be no more. We’ll be her knights,
+and wait on her: and when we’re old, we’ll say how we loved her. Dear,
+dear old George!
+
+When Pen descended to his own chambers, his eye fell on the letter-box
+of his outer door, which he had previously overlooked, and there was a
+little note to A. P., Esq., in George’s well-known handwriting, George
+had put into Pen’s box probably as he was going away.
+
+“Dear Pen,—I shall be half-way home when you breakfast, and intend to
+stay over Christmas, in Norfolk, or elsewhere.
+    “I have my own opinion of the issue of matters about which we
+    talked in J——— St. yesterday; and think my presence _de trop_.
+
+
+“Vale. G. W.”
+
+
+“Give my very best regards and adieux to your cousin.”
+
+
+And so George was gone, and Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, ruled over
+his empty chambers.
+
+Pen of course had to go and see his uncle on the day after their
+colloquy, and not being admitted, he naturally went to Lady
+Rockminster’s apartments, where the old lady instantly asked for
+Bluebeard, and insisted that he should come to dinner.
+
+“Bluebeard is gone,” Pen said, and he took out poor George’s scrap of
+paper, and handed it to Laura, who looked at it—did not look at Pen in
+return, but passed the paper back to him, and walked away. Pen rushed
+into an eloquent eulogium upon his dear old George to Lady Rockminster,
+who was astonished at his enthusiasm. She had never heard him so warm
+in praise of anybody; and told him with her usual frankness, that she
+didn’t think it had been in his nature to care so much about any other
+person.
+
+As Mr. Pendennis was passing in Waterloo Place, in one of his many
+walks to the hotel where Laura lived, and whither duty to his uncle
+carried Arthur every day, Arthur saw issuing from Messrs. Gimcrack’s
+celebrated shop an old friend, who was followed to his brougham by an
+obsequious shopman bearing parcels. The gentleman was in the deepest
+mourning: the brougham, the driver, and the horse were in mourning.
+Grief in easy circumstances and supported by the comfortablest springs
+and cushions, was typified in the equipage and the little gentleman,
+its proprietor.
+
+“What, Foker! Hail, Foker!” cried out Pen—the reader, no doubt, has
+likewise recognised Arthur’s old schoolfellow—and he held out his hand
+to the heir of the late lamented John Henry Foker, Esq., the master of
+Logwood and other houses, the principal partner in the great brewery of
+Foker and Co.: the greater portion of Foker’s Entire.
+
+A little hand, covered with a glove of the deepest ebony, and set off
+by three inches of a snowy wristband, was put forth to meet Arthur’s
+salutation. The other little hand held a little morocco case,
+containing, no doubt, something precious, of which Mr. Foker had just
+become proprietor in Messrs. Gimcrack’s shop. Pen’s keen eyes and
+satiric turn showed him at once upon what errand Mr. Foker had been
+employed; and he thought of the heir in Horace pouring forth the
+gathered wine of his father’s vats; and that human nature is pretty
+much the same in Regent Street as in the Via Sacra.
+
+“Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!” said Arthur.
+
+“Ah!” said the other. “Yes. Thank you—very much obliged. How do you do,
+Pen?—very busy—good-bye!” and he jumped into the black brougham, and
+sate like a little black Care behind the black coachman. He had blushed
+on seeing Pen, and shown other signs of guilt and perturbation, which
+Pen attributed to the novelty of his situation; and on which he began
+to speculate in his usual sardonic manner.
+
+“Yes: so wags the world,” thought Pen. “The stone closes over Harry the
+Fourth, and Harry the Fifth reigns in his stead. The old ministers at
+the brewery come and kneel before him with their books; the draymen,
+his subjects, fling up their red caps, and shout for him. What a grave
+deference and sympathy the bankers and the lawyers show! There was too
+great a stake at issue between those two that they should ever love
+each other very cordially. As long as one man keeps another out of
+twenty thousand a year, the younger must be always hankering after the
+crown, and the wish must be the father to the thought of possession.
+Thank Heaven, there was no thought of money between me and our dear
+mother, Laura.”
+
+“There never could have been. You would have spurned it!” cried Laura.
+“Why make yourself more selfish than you are, Pen; and allow your mind
+to own for an instant that it would have entertained such—such dreadful
+meanness? You make me blush for you, Arthur: you make me——” her eyes
+finished this sentence, and she passed her handkerchief across them.
+
+“There are some truths which women will never acknowledge,” Pen said,
+“and from which your modesty always turns away. I do not say that I
+ever knew the feeling, only that I am glad I had not the temptation. Is
+there any harm in that confession of weakness?”
+
+“We are all taught to ask to be delivered from evil, Arthur,” said
+Laura, in a low voice. “I am glad if you were spared from that great
+crime; and only sorry to think that you could by any possibility have
+been led into it. But you never could; and you don’t think you could.
+Your acts are generous and kind: you disdain mean actions. You take
+Blanche without money, and without a bribe. Yes, thanks be to Heaven,
+dear brother. You could not have sold yourself away; I knew you could
+not when it came to the day, and you did not. Praise be—be where praise
+is due. Why does this horrid scepticism pursue you, my Arthur? Why
+doubt and sneer at your own heart—at every one’s? Oh, if you knew the
+pain you give me—how I lie awake and think of those hard sentences,
+dear brother, and wish them unspoken, unthought!”
+
+“Do I cause you many thoughts and many tears, Laura?” asked Arthur. The
+fulness of innocent love beamed from her in reply. A smile heavenly
+pure, a glance of unutterable tenderness, sympathy, pity, shone in her
+face—all which indications of love and purity Arthur beheld and
+worshipped in her, as you would watch them in a child, as one fancies
+one might regard them in an angel.
+
+“I—I don’t know what I have done,” he said, simply, “to have merited
+such regard from two such women. It is like undeserved praise, Laura—or
+too much good fortune, which frightens one—or a great post, when a man
+feels that he is not fit for it. Ah, sister, how weak and wicked we
+are; how spotless, and full of love and truth, Heaven made you! I think
+for some of you there has been no fall,” he said, looking at the
+charming girl with an almost paternal glance of admiration. “You can’t
+help having sweet thoughts, and doing good actions. Dear creature! they
+are the flowers which you bear.”
+
+“And what else, sir?” asked Laura. “I see a sneer coming over your
+face. What is it? Why does it come to drive all the good thoughts
+away?”
+
+“A sneer, is there? I was thinking, my dear, that nature in making you
+so good and loving did very well: but——”
+
+“But what? What is that wicked but? and why are you always calling it
+up?”
+
+“But will come in spite of us. But is reflection. But is the sceptic’s
+familiar, with whom he has made a compact; and if he forgets it, and
+indulges in happy day-dreams, or building of air-castles, or listens to
+sweet music let us say, or to the bells ringing to church, But taps at
+the door, and says, Master, I am here. You are my master; but I am
+yours. Go where you will you can’t travel without me. I will whisper to
+you when you are on your knees at church. I will be at your marriage
+pillow. I will sit down at your table with your children. I will be
+behind your deathbed curtain. That is what But is,” Pen said.
+
+“Pen, you frighten me,” cried Laura.
+
+“Do you know what But came and said to me just now, when I was looking
+at you? But said, If that girl had reason as well as love, she would
+love you no more. If she knew you as you are—the sullied, selfish being
+which you know—she must part from you, and could give you no love and
+no sympathy. Didn’t I say,” he added fondly, “that some of you seem
+exempt from the fall? Love you know; but the knowledge of evil is kept
+from you.”
+
+“What is this you young folks are talking about?” asked Lady
+Rockminster, who at this moment made her appearance in the room, having
+performed, in the mystic retirement of her own apartments, and under
+the hands of her attendant, those elaborate toilet-rites without which
+the worthy old lady never presented herself to public view. “Mr.
+Pendennis, you are always coming here.”
+
+“It is very pleasant to be here,” Arthur said; “and we were talking,
+when you came in, about my friend Foker, whom I met just now; and who,
+as your ladyship knows, has succeeded to his father’s kingdom.”
+
+“He has a very fine property, he has fifteen thousand a year. He is my
+cousin. He is a very worthy young man. He must come and see me,” said
+Lady Rockminster, with a look at Laura.
+
+“He has been engaged for many years past to his cousin, Lady——”
+
+“Lady Ann is a foolish little chit,” Lady Rockminster said, with much
+dignity; “and I have no patience with her. She has outraged every
+feeling of society. She has broken her father’s heart, and thrown away
+fifteen thousand a year.”
+
+“Thrown away? What has happened?” asked Pen.
+
+“It will be the talk of the town in a day or two; and there is no need
+why I should keep the secret any longer,” said Lady Rockminster, who
+had written and received a dozen letters on the subject. “I had a
+letter yesterday from my daughter, who was staying at Drummington until
+all the world was obliged to go away on account of the frightful
+catastrophe which happened there. When Mr. Foker came home from Nice,
+and after the funeral, Lady Ann went down on her knees to her father,
+said that she never could marry her cousin, that she had contracted
+another attachment, and that she must die rather than fulfil her
+contract. Poor Lord Rosherville, who is dreadfully embarrassed, showed
+his daughter what the state of his affairs was, and that it was
+necessary that the arrangements should take place; and in fine, we all
+supposed that she had listened to reason, and intended to comply with
+the desires of her family. But what has happened?—last Thursday she
+went out after breakfast with her maid, and was married in the very
+church in Drummington Park to Mr. Hobson, her father’s own chaplain and
+her brother’s tutor; a red-haired widower with two children. Poor dear
+Rosherville is in a dreadful way: he wishes Henry Foker should marry
+Alice or Barbara; but Alice is marked with the small-pox, and Barbara
+is ten years older than he is. And, of course, now the young man is his
+own master, he will think of choosing for himself. The blow on Lady
+Agnes is very cruel. She is inconsolable. She has the house in
+Grosvenor Street for her life, and her settlement, which was very
+handsome. Have you not met her? Yes, she dined one day at Lady
+Clavering’s—the first day I saw you, and a very disagreeable young man
+I thought you were. But I have formed you. We have formed him, haven’t
+we, Laura? Where is Bluebeard? let him come. That horrid Grindley, the
+dentist, will keep me in town another week.”
+
+To the latter part of her ladyship’s speech Arthur gave no ear. He was
+thinking for whom could Foker be purchasing those trinkets which he was
+carrying away from the jeweller’s? Why did Harry seem anxious to avoid
+him? Could he be still faithful to the attachment which had agitated
+him so much, and sent him abroad eighteen months back? Psha! The
+bracelets and presents were for some of Harry’s old friends of the
+Opera or the French theatre. Rumours from Naples and Paris, rumours
+such as are borne to Club smoking-rooms, had announced that the young
+man had found distractions; or, precluded from his virtuous attachment,
+the poor fellow had flung himself back upon his old companions and
+amusements—not the only man or woman whom society forces into evil, or
+debars from good; not the only victim of the world’s selfish and wicked
+laws.
+
+As a good thing when it is to be done cannot be done too quickly, Laura
+was anxious that Pen’s marriage intentions should be put into execution
+as speedily as possible, and pressed on his arrangements with rather a
+feverish anxiety. Why could she not wait? Pen could afford to do so
+with perfect equanimity, but Laura would hear of no delay. She wrote to
+Pen: she implored Pen: she used every means to urge expedition. It
+seemed as if she could have no rest until Arthur’s happiness was
+complete.
+
+She offered herself to dearest Blanche to come and stay at Tunbridge
+with her, when Lady Rockminster should go on her intended visit to the
+reigning house of Rockminster; and although the old dowager scolded,
+and ordered, and commanded, Laura was deaf and disobedient: she must go
+to Tunbridge, she would go to Tunbridge: she who ordinarily had no will
+of her own, and complied smilingly with anybody’s whim and caprices,
+showed the most selfish and obstinate determination in this instance.
+The dowager lady must nurse herself in her rheumatism, she must read
+herself to sleep, if she would not hear her maid, whose voice croaked,
+and who made sad work of the sentimental passages in the novels—Laura
+must go,—and be with her new sister. In another week, she proposed,
+with many loves and regards to dear Lady Clavering, to pass some time
+with dearest Blanche.
+
+Dearest Blanche wrote instantly in reply to dearest Laura’s No. 1, to
+say with what extreme delight she should welcome her sister: how
+charming it would be to practise their old duets together, to wander
+o’er the grassy sward, and amidst the yellowing woods of Penshurst and
+Southborough! Blanche counted the hours till she should embrace her
+dearest friend.
+
+Laura, No. 2, expressed her delight at dearest Blanche’s affectionate
+reply. She hoped that their friendship would never diminish; that the
+confidence between them would grow in after years; that they should
+have no secrets from each other; that the aim of the life of each would
+be to make one person happy.
+
+Blanche, No. 2, followed in two days. “How provoking! Their house was
+very small, the two spare bedrooms were occupied by that horrid Mrs.
+Planter and her daughter, who had thought proper to fall ill (she
+always fell ill in country-houses), and she could not or would not be
+moved for some days.”
+
+Laura, No. 3. “It was indeed very provoking. L. had hoped to hear one
+of dearest B.’s dear songs on Friday; but she was the more consoled to
+wait, because Lady R. was not very well, and liked to be nursed by her.
+Poor Major Pendennis was very unwell, too, in the same hotel—too unwell
+even to see Arthur, who was constant in his calls on his uncle.
+Arthur’s heart was full of tenderness and affection. She had known
+Arthur all her life. She would answer”—yes, even in italics she would
+answer—“for his kindness, his goodness, and his gentleness.”
+
+Blanche, No. 3. “What is this most surprising, most extraordinary
+letter from A. P.? What does dearest Laura know about it? What has
+happened? What, what mystery is enveloped under his frightful reserve?”
+
+Blanche, No. 3, requires an explanation; and it cannot be better given
+than in the surprising and mysterious letter of Arthur Pendennis.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIII.
+Mr. and Mrs. Sam Huxter
+
+
+“Dear Blanche,” Arthur wrote, “you are always reading and dreaming
+pretty dramas, and exciting romances in real life: are you now prepared
+to enact a part of one? And not the pleasantest part, dear Blanche,
+that in which the heroine takes possession of her father’s palace and
+wealth, and introducing her husband to the loyal retainers and faithful
+vassals, greets her happy bridegroom with ‘All of this is mine and
+thine,’—but the other character, that of the luckless lady, who
+suddenly discovers that she is not the Prince’s wife, but Claude
+Melnotte’s the beggar’s: that of Alnaschar’s wife, who comes in just as
+her husband has kicked over the tray of porcelain which was to be the
+making of his fortune—But stay; Alnaschar, who kicked down the china,
+was not a married man; he had cast his eye on the Vizier’s daughter,
+and his hopes of her went to the ground with the shattered bowls and
+tea-cups.
+
+“Will you be the Vizier’s daughter, and refuse and laugh to scorn
+Alnaschar, or will you be the Lady of Lyons, and love the penniless
+Claude Melnotte? I will act that part if you like. I will love you my
+best in return. I will do my all to make your humble life happy: for
+humble it will be: at least the odds are against any other conclusion;
+we shall live and die in a poor prosy humdrum way. There will be no
+stars and epaulettes for the hero of our story. I shall write one or
+two more stories, which will presently be forgotten. I shall be called
+to the Bar, and try to get on in my profession: perhaps some day, if I
+am very lucky, and work very hard (which is absurd), I may get a
+colonial appointment, and you may be an Indian Judge’s lady. Meanwhile.
+I shall buy back the Pall Mall Gazette; the publishers are tired of it
+since the death of poor Shandon, and will sell it for a small sum.
+Warrington will be my right hand, and write it up to a respectable
+sale. I will introduce you to Mr. Finucane the sub-editor, and I know
+who in the end will be Mrs. Finucane,—a very nice gentle creature, who
+has lived sweetly through a sad life and we will jog on, I say, and
+look out for better times, and earn our living decently. You shall have
+the opera-boxes, and superintend the fashionable intelligence, and
+break your little heart in the poet’s corner. Shall we live over the
+offices?—there are four very good rooms, a kitchen, and a garret for
+Laura, in Catherine Street in the Strand; or would you like a house in
+the Waterloo Road?—it would be very pleasant, only there is that
+halfpenny toll at the Bridge. The boys may go to King’s College, mayn’t
+they? Does all this read to you like a joke?
+
+“Ah, dear Blanche, it is no joke, and I am sober and telling the truth.
+Our fine day-dreams are gone. Our carriage has whirled out of sight
+like Cinderella’s: our house in Belgravia has been whisked away into
+the air by a malevolent Genius, and I am no more a member of Parliament
+than I am a Bishop on his bench in the House of Lords, or a Duke with a
+garter at his knee. You know pretty well what my property is, and your
+own little fortune: we may have enough with those two to live in decent
+comfort; to take a cab sometimes when we go out to see our friends, and
+not to deny ourselves an omnibus when we are tired. But that is all: is
+that enough for you, my little dainty lady? I doubt sometimes whether
+you can bear the life which I offer you—at least, it is fair that you
+should know what it will be. If you say, ‘Yes, Arthur, I will follow
+your fate whatever it may be, and be a loyal and loving wife to aid and
+cheer you’—come to me, dear Blanche, and may God help me so that I may
+do my duty to you. If not, and you look to a higher station, I must not
+bar Blanche’s fortune—I will stand in the crowd, and see your ladyship
+go to Court when you are presented, and you shall give me a smile from
+your chariot window. I saw Lady Mirabel going to the drawing-room last
+season: the happy husband at her side glittered with stars and cordons.
+All the flowers in the garden bloomed in the coachman’s bosom. Will you
+have these and the chariot, or walk on foot and mend your husband’s
+stockings?
+
+“I cannot tell you now—afterwards I might, should the day come when we
+may have no secrets from one another—what has happened within the last
+few hours which has changed all my prospects in life: but so it is,
+that I have learned something which forces me to give up the plans
+which I had formed, and many vain and ambitious hopes in which I had
+been indulging. I have written and despatched a letter to Sir Francis
+Clavering, saying that I cannot accept his seat in Parliament until
+after my marriage; in like manner I cannot and will not accept any
+larger fortune with you than that which has always belonged to you
+since your grandfather’s death, and the birth of your half-brother.
+Your good mother is not in the least aware—I hope she never may be—of
+the reasons which force me to this very strange decision. They arise
+from a painful circumstance, which is attributable to none of our
+faults; but, having once befallen, they are as fatal and irreparable as
+that shock which overset honest Alnaschar’s porcelain, and shattered
+all his hopes beyond the power of mending. I write gaily enough, for
+there is no use in bewailing such a hopeless mischance. We have not
+drawn the great prize in the lottery, dear Blanche: but I shall be
+contented enough without it, if you can be so; and I repeat, with all
+my heart, that I will do my best to make you happy.
+
+“And now, what news shall I give you? My uncle is very unwell, and
+takes my refusal of the seat in Parliament in sad dudgeon: the scheme
+was his, poor old gentleman, and he naturally bemoans its failure. But
+Warrington, Laura, and I had a council of war: they know this awful
+secret, and back me in my decision. You must love George as you love
+what is generous and upright and noble; and as for Laura—she must be
+our Sister, Blanche, our Saint, our good Angel. With two such friends
+at home, what need we care for the world without; or who is member for
+Clavering, or who is asked or not asked to the great balls of the
+season?”
+
+To this frank communication came back the letter from Blanche to Laura,
+and one to Pen himself, which perhaps his own letter justified. “You
+are spoiled by the world,” Blanche wrote; “you do not love your poor
+Blanche as she would be loved, or you would not offer thus lightly to
+take her or to leave her, no, Arthur, you love me not—a man of the
+world, you have given me your plighted troth, and are ready to redeem
+it; but that entire affection, that love whole and abiding, where—where
+is that vision of my youth? I am but a pastime of your life, and I
+would be its all;—but a fleeting thought, and I would be your whole
+soul. I would have our two hearts one; but ah, my Arthur, how lonely
+yours is! how little you give me of it! You speak of our parting with a
+smile on your lip; of our meeting, and you care not to hasten it! Is
+life but a disillusion, then, and are the flowers of our garden faded
+away? I have wept—I have prayed—I have passed sleepless hours—I have
+shed bitter, bitter tears over your letter! To you I bring the gushing
+poesy of my being—the yearnings of the soul that longs to be loved—that
+pines for love, love, love, beyond all!—that flings itself at your
+feet, and cries, Love me, Arthur! Your heart beats no quicker at the
+kneeling appeal of my love!—your proud eye is dimmed by no tear of
+sympathy!—you accept my soul’s treasure as though ’twere dross! not the
+pearls from the unfathomable deeps of affection! not the diamonds from
+the caverns of the heart. You treat me like a slave, and bid me bow to
+my master! Is this the guerdon of a free maiden—is this the price of a
+life’s passion? Ah me! when was it otherwise? when did love meet with
+aught but disappointment? Could I hope (fond fool!) to be the exception
+to the lot of my race; and lay my fevered brow on a heart that
+comprehended my own? Foolish girl that I was! One by one, all the
+flowers of my young life have faded away; and this, the last, the
+sweetest, the dearest, the fondly, the madly loved, the wildly
+cherished—where is it? But no more of this. Heed not my bleeding
+heart.—Bless you, bless you always, Arthur!
+
+“I will write more when I am more collected. My racking brain renders
+thought almost impossible. I long to see Laura! She will come to us
+directly we return from the country, will she not? And you, cold one!
+
+“B.”
+
+The words of this letter were perfectly clear, and written in Blanche’s
+neatest hand upon her scented paper; and yet the meaning of the
+composition not a little puzzled Pen. Did Blanche mean to accept or to
+refuse his polite offer? Her phrases either meant that Pen did not love
+her, and she declined him, or that she took him, and sacrificed herself
+to him, cold as he was. He laughed sardonically over the letter, and
+over the transaction which occasioned it. He laughed to think how
+Fortune had jilted him, and how he deserved his slippery fortune. He
+turned over and over the musky gilt-edged riddle. It amused his humour:
+he enjoyed it as if it had been a funny story.
+
+He was thus seated, twiddling the queer manuscript in his hand, joking
+grimly to himself, when his servant came in with a card from a
+gentleman, who wished to speak to him very particularly. And if Pen had
+gone out into the passage, he would have seen, sucking his stick,
+rolling his eyes, and showing great marks of anxiety, his old
+acquaintance, Mr. Samuel Huxter.
+
+“Mr. Huxter on particular business! Pray, beg Mr. Huxter to come in,”
+said Pen, amused rather; and not the less so when poor Sam appeared
+before him.
+
+“Pray take a chair, Mr. Huxter,” said Pen, in his most superb manner.
+“In what way can I be of service to you?”
+
+“I had rather not speak before the flunk—before the man, Mr.
+Pendennis:” on which Mr. Arthur’s attendant quitted the room.
+
+“I’m in a fix,” said Mr. Huxter, gloomily.
+
+“Indeed.”
+
+“She sent me to you,” continued the young surgeon.
+
+“What, Fanny? Is she well? I was coming to see her, but I have had a
+great deal of business since my return to London.”
+
+“I heard of you through my governor and Jack Hobnell,” broke in Huxter.
+“I wish you joy, Mr. Pendennis, both of the borough and the lady, sir.
+Fanny wishes you joy, too,” he added, with something of a blush.
+
+“There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip! Who knows what may
+happen, Mr. Huxter, or who will sit in Parliament for Clavering next
+session?”
+
+“You can do anything with my governor,” continued Mr. Huxter. “You got
+him Clavering Park. The old boy was very much pleased, sir, at your
+calling him in. Hobnell wrote me so. Do you think you could speak to
+the governor for me, Mr. Pendennis?”
+
+“And tell him what?”
+
+“I’ve gone and done it, sir,” said Huxter, with a particular look.
+
+“You—you don’t mean to say you have—you have done any wrong to that
+dear little creature, sir?” said Pen, starting up in a great fury.
+
+“I hope not,” said Huxter, with a hangdog look: “but I’ve married her.
+And I know there will be an awful shindy at home. It was agreed that I
+should be taken into partnership when I had passed the College, and it
+was to have been Huxter and Son. But I would have it, confound it. It’s
+all over now, and the old boy’s wrote me that he’s coming up to town
+for drugs: he will be here to-morrow, and then it must all come out.”
+
+“And when did this event happen?” asked Pen, not over well pleased,
+most likely, that a person who had once attracted some portion of his
+royal good graces should have transferred her allegiance, and consoled
+herself for his loss.
+
+“Last Thursday was five weeks—it was two days after Miss Amory came to
+Shepherd’s Inn,” Huxter answered.
+
+Pen remembered that Blanche had written and mentioned her visit. “I was
+called in,” Huxter said. “I was in the Inn looking after old Cos’s leg;
+and about something else too, very likely: and I met Strong, who told
+me there was a woman taken ill in Chambers, and went up to give her my
+professional services. It was the old lady who attends Miss Amory—her
+housekeeper, or some such thing. She was taken with strong hysterics: I
+found her kicking and screaming like a good one—in Strong’s chamber,
+along with him and Colonel Altamont, and Miss Amory crying and as pale
+as a sheet; and Altamont fuming about—a regular kick-up. They were two
+hours in the Chambers; and the old woman went whooping off in a cab.
+She was much worse than the young one. I called in Grosvenor Place next
+day to see if I could be of any service, but they were gone without so
+much as thanking me: and the day after I had business of my own to
+attend to—a bad business too,” said Mr. Huxter, gloomily. “But it’s
+done, and can’t be undone; and we must make the best of it”
+
+She has known the story for a month, thought Pen, with a sharp pang of
+grief, and a gloomy sympathy—this accounts for her letter of to-day.
+She will not implicate her father, or divulge his secret; she wishes to
+let me off from the marriage—and finds a pretext—the generous girl!
+
+“Do you know who Altamont is, sir?” asked Huxter, after the pause
+during which Pen had been thinking of his own affairs. “Fanny and I
+have talked him over, and we can’t help fancying that it’s Mrs.
+Lightfoot’s first husband come to life again, and she who has just
+married a second. Perhaps Lightfoot won’t be very sorry for it,” sighed
+Huxter, looking savagely at Arthur, for the demon of jealousy was still
+in possession of his soul; and now, and more than ever since his
+marriage, the poor fellow fancied that Fanny’s heart belonged to his
+rival.
+
+“Let us talk about your affairs,” said Pen. “Show me how I can be of
+any service to you, Huxter. Let me congratulate you on your marriage. I
+am thankful that Fanny, who is so good, so fascinating, so kind a
+creature, has found an honest man, and a gentleman who will make her
+happy. Show me what I can do to help you.”
+
+“She thinks you can, sir,” said Huxter, accepting Pen’s proffered hand,
+“and I’m very much obliged to you, I’m sure; and that you might talk
+over my father, and break the business to him, and my mother, who
+always has her back up about being a clergyman’s daughter. Fanny ain’t
+of a good family, I know, and not up to us in breeding and that—but
+she’s a Huxter now.”
+
+“The wife takes the husband’s rank, of course,” said Pen.
+
+“And with a little practice in society,” continued Huxter, imbibing his
+stick, “she’ll be as good as any girl in Clavering. You should hear her
+sing and play on the piano. Did you ever? Old Bows taught her. And
+she’ll do on the stage, if the governor was to throw me over; but I’d
+rather not have her there. She can’t help being a coquette, Mr.
+Pendennis, she can’t help it. Dammy, sir! I’ll be bound to say, that
+two or three of the Bartholomew chaps, that I’ve brought into my place,
+are sitting with her now: even Jack Linton, that I took down as my best
+man, is as bad as the rest, and she will go on singing and making eyes
+at him. It’s what Bows says, if there were twenty men in a room, and
+one not taking notice of her, she wouldn’t be satisfied until the
+twentieth was at her elbow.”
+
+“You should have her mother with her,” said Pen, laughing.
+
+“She must keep the lodge. She can’t see so much of her family as she
+used. I can’t, you know, sir, go on with that lot. Consider my rank in
+life,” said Huxter, putting a very dirty hand up to his chin.
+
+“Au fait,” said Mr. Pen, who was infinitely amused, and concerning whom
+mutato nomine (and of course concerning nobody else in the world) the
+fable might have been narrated.
+
+As the two gentlemen were in the midst of this colloquy, another knock
+came to Pen’s door, and his servant presently announced Mr. Bows. The
+old man followed slowly, his pale face blushing, and his hand trembling
+somewhat as he took Pen’s. He coughed, and wiped his face in his
+checked cotton pocket-handkerchief, and sate down with his hands on his
+knees, the sunshining on his bald head. Pen looked at the homely figure
+with no small sympathy and kindness. This man, too, has had his griefs
+and his wounds, Arthur thought. This man, too, has brought his genius
+and his heart, and laid them at a woman’s feet; where she spurned them.
+The chance of life has gone against him, and the prize is with that
+creature yonder. Fanny’s bridegroom, thus mutely apostrophised, had
+winked meanwhile with one eye at old Bows, and was driving holes in the
+floor with the cane which he loved.
+
+“So we have lost, Mr. Bows, and here is the lucky winner,” Pen said,
+looking hard at the old man.
+
+“Here is the lucky winner, sir, as you say.”
+
+“I suppose you have come from my place?” asked Huxter, who, having
+winked at Bows with one eye, now favoured Pen with a wink of the
+other—a wink which seemed to say, “Infatuated old boy—you
+understand—over head and ears in love with her poor old fool.”
+
+“Yes, I have been there ever since you went away. It was Mrs. Sam who
+sent me after you: who said that she thought you might be doing
+something stupid—something like yourself, Huxter.”
+
+“There’s as big fools as I am,” growled the young surgeon.
+
+“A few, p’raps,” said the old man; “not many, let us trust. Yes, she
+sent me after you for fear you should offend Mr. Pendennis; and I
+daresay because she thought you wouldn’t give her message to him, and
+beg him to go and see her; and she knew I would take her errand. Did he
+tell you that, sir?”
+
+Huxter blushed scarlet, and covered his confusion with an imprecation.
+Pen laughed; the scene suited his bitter humour more and more.
+
+“I have no doubt Mr. Huxter was going to tell me,” Arthur said, “and
+very much flattered I am sure I shall be to pay my respects to his
+wife.”
+
+“It’s in Charterhouse Lane, over the baker’s, on the right hand side as
+you go from St. John’s Street,” continued Bows, without any pity. “You
+know Smithfield, Mr. Pendennis? St. John’s Street leads into
+Smithfield. Doctor Johnson has been down the street many a time with
+ragged shoes, and a bundle of penny-a-lining for the Gent’s Magazine.
+You literary gents are better off now—eh? You ride in your cabs, and
+wear yellow kid gloves now.”
+
+“I have known so many brave and good men fail, and so many quacks and
+impostors succeed, that you mistake me if you think I am puffed up by
+my own personal good luck, old friend,” Arthur said, sadly. “Do you
+think the prizes of life are carried by the most deserving? and set up
+that mean test of prosperity for merit? You must feel that you are as
+good as I. I have never questioned it. It is you that are peevish
+against the freaks of fortune, and grudge the good luck that befalls
+others. It’s not the first time you have unjustly accused me, Bows.”
+
+“Perhaps you are not far wrong, sir,” said the old fellow, wiping his
+bald forehead. “I am thinking about myself and grumbling; most men do
+when they get on that subject. Here’s the fellow that’s got the prize
+in the lottery; here’s the fortunate youth.”
+
+“I don’t know what you are driving at,” Huxter said, who had been much
+puzzled as the above remarks passed between his two companions.
+
+“Perhaps not,” said Bows, drily. “Mrs. H. sent me here to look after
+you, and to see that you brought that little message to Mr. Pendennis,
+which you didn’t, you see, and so she was right. Women always are; they
+have always a reason for everything. Why, sir,” he said, turning round
+to Pen with a sneer, “she had a reason even for giving me that message.
+I was sitting with her after you left us, very quiet and comfortable; I
+was talking away, and she was mending your shirts, when your two young
+friends, Jack Linton and Bob Blades, looked in from Bartholomew’s; and
+then it was she found out that she had this message to send. You
+needn’t hurry yourself, she don’t want you back again; they’ll stay
+these two hours, I daresay.”
+
+Huxter arose with great perturbation at this news, and plunged his
+stick into the pocket of his paletot, and seized his hat.
+
+“You’ll come and see us, sir, won’t you?” he said to Pen. “You’ll talk
+over the governor, won’t you, sir, if I can get out of this place and
+down to Clavering?”
+
+“You will promise to attend me gratis if ever I fall ill at Fairoaks,
+will you, Huxter?” Pen said, good-naturedly. “I will do anything I can
+for you. I will come and see Mrs. Huxter immediately, and we will
+conspire together about what is to be done.”
+
+“I thought that would send him out, sir,” Bows said, dropping into his
+chair again as soon as the young surgeon had quitted the room. “And
+it’s all true, sir—every word of it. She wants you back again, and
+sends her husband after you. She cajoles everybody, the little devil.
+She tries it on you, on me, on poor Costigan, on the young chaps from
+Bartholomew’s. She’s got a little court of ’em already. And if there’s
+nobody there, she practises on the old German baker in the shop, or
+coaxes the black sweeper at the crossing.”
+
+“Is she fond of that fellow?” asked Pen.
+
+“There is no accounting for likes and dislikes,” Bows answered.
+
+“Yes, she is fond of him; and having taken the thing into her head, she
+would not rest until she married him. They had their banns published at
+St. Clement’s, and nobody heard it or knew any just cause or
+impediment. And one day she slips out of the porter’s lodge and has the
+business done, and goes off to Gravesend with Lothario; and leaves a
+note for me to go and explain all things to her Ma. Bless you! the old
+woman knew it as well as I did, though she pretended ignorance. And so
+she goes, and I’m alone again. I miss her, sir, tripping along that
+court, and coming for her singing lesson; and I’ve no heart to look
+into the porter’s lodge now, which looks very empty without her, the
+little flirting thing. And I go and sit and dangle about her lodgings,
+like an old fool. She makes ’em very trim and nice, though; gets up all
+Huxter’s shirts and clothes: cooks his little dinner, and sings at her
+business like a little lark. What’s the use of being angry? I lent ’em
+three pound to go on with: for they haven’t got a shilling till the
+reconciliation, and Pa comes down.”
+
+When Bows had taken his leave, Pen carried his letter from Blanche, and
+the news which he had just received, to his usual adviser, Laura. It
+was wonderful upon how many points Mr. Arthur, who generally followed
+his own opinion, now wanted another person’s counsel. He could hardly
+so much as choose a waistcoat without referring to Miss Bell: if he
+wanted to buy a horse he must have Miss Bell’s opinion; all which marks
+of deference tended greatly to the amusement of the shrewd old lady
+with whom Miss Bell lived, and whose plans regarding her protegee we
+have indicated.
+
+Arthur produced Blanche’s letter then to Laura, and asked her to
+interpret it. Laura was very much agitated and puzzled by the contents
+of the note.
+
+“It seems to me,” she said, “as if Blanche is acting very artfully.”
+
+“And wishes so to place matters that she may take me or leave me? Is it
+not so?”
+
+“It is, I am afraid, a kind of duplicity which does not augur well for
+your future happiness; and is a bad reply to your own candour and
+honesty, Arthur. Do you know, I think, I think—I scarcely like to say
+what I think,” said Laura with a deep blush; but of course the blushing
+young lady yielded to her cousin’s persuasion, and expressed what her
+thoughts were. “It looks to me, Arthur, as if there might be—there
+might be somebody else,” said, Laura, with a repetition of the blush.
+
+“And if there is,” broke in Arthur, “and if I am free once again, will
+the best and dearest of all women——”
+
+“You are not free, dear brother,” Laura said calmly. “You belong to
+another; of whom I own it grieves me to think ill. But I can’t do
+otherwise. It is very odd that in this letter she does not urge you to
+tell her the reason why you have broken arrangements which would have
+been so advantageous to you; and avoids speaking on the subject. She
+somehow seems to write as if she knows her father’s secret.”
+
+Pen said, “Yes, she must know it;” and told the story, which he had
+just heard from Huxter, of the interview at Shepherd’s Inn.
+
+“It was not so that she described the meeting,” said Laura; and, going
+to her desk, produced from it that letter of Blanche’s which mentioned
+her visit to Shepherd’s Inn. ‘Another disappointment—only the Chevalier
+Strong and a friend of his in the room.’ This was all that Blanche had
+said. “But she was bound to keep her father’s secret, Pen,” Laura
+added. “And yet, and yet—it is very puzzling.”
+
+The puzzle was this, that for three weeks after this eventful discovery
+Blanche had been only too eager about her dearest Arthur; was urging,
+as strongly as so much modesty could urge, the completion of the happy
+arrangements which were to make her Arthur’s for ever; and now it
+seemed as if something had interfered to mar these happy
+arrangements—as if Arthur poor was not quite so agreeable to Blanche as
+Arthur rich and a member of Parliament—as if there was some mystery. At
+last she said:
+
+“Tunbridge Wells is not very far off, is it, Arthur? Hadn’t you better
+go and see her?”
+
+They had been in town a week, and neither had thought of that simple
+plan before!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIV.
+Shows how Arthur had better have taken a Return-ticket
+
+
+The train carried Arthur only too quickly to Tunbridge, though he had
+time to review all the circumstances of his life as he made the brief
+journey; and to acknowledge to what sad conclusions his selfishness and
+waywardness had led him. “Here is the end of hopes and aspirations,”
+thought he, “of romance and ambitions! Where I yield or where I am
+obstinate, I am alike unfortunate; my mother implores me, and I refuse
+an angel! Say I had taken her; forced on me as she was, Laura would
+never have been an angel to me. I could not have given her my heart at
+another’s instigation; I never could have known her as she is had I
+been obliged to ask another to interpret her qualities and point out
+her virtues. I yield to my uncle’s solicitations, and accept on his
+guarantee Blanche, and a seat in Parliament, and wealth, and ambition,
+and a career; and see!—fortune comes and leaves me the wife without the
+dowry, which I had taken in compensation of a heart. Why was I not more
+honest, or am I not less so? It would have cost my poor old uncle no
+pangs to accept Blanche’s fortune whencesoever it came; he can’t even
+understand, he is bitterly indignant, heart-stricken, almost, at the
+scruples which actuate me in refusing it. I dissatisfy everybody. A
+maimed, weak, imperfect wretch, it seems as if I am unequal to any
+fortune. I neither make myself nor any one connected with me happy.
+What prospect is there for this poor little frivolous girl, who is to
+take my obscure name and share my fortune? I have not even ambition to
+excite me, or self-esteem enough to console myself, much more her, for
+my failure. If I were to write a book that should go through twenty
+editions, why, I should be the very first to sneer at my reputation.
+Say I could succeed at the Bar, and achieve a fortune by bullying
+witnesses and twisting evidence; is that a fame which would satisfy my
+longings, or a calling in which my life would be well spent? How I wish
+I could be that priest opposite, who never has lifted his eyes from his
+breviary, except when we were in Reigate tunnel, when he could not see;
+or that old gentleman next him, who scowls at him with eyes of hatred
+over his newspaper. The priest shuts his eyes to the world, but has his
+thoughts on the book, which is his directory to the world to come. His
+neighbour hates him as a monster, tyrant, persecutor, and fancies
+burning martyrs, and that pale countenance looking on, and lighted up
+by the flame. These have no doubts; these march on trustfully, bearing
+their load of logic.”
+
+“Would you like to look at the paper, sir?” here interposed the stout
+gentleman (it had a flaming article against the order of the
+black-coated gentleman who was travelling with them in the carriage),
+and Pen thanked him and took it, and pursued his reverie, without
+reading two sentences of the journal.
+
+“And yet, would you take either of those men’s creeds, with its
+consequences?” he thought. “Ah me! you must bear your own burthen,
+fashion your own faith, think your own thoughts, and pray your own
+prayer. To what mortal ear could I tell all, if I had a mind? or who
+could understand all? Who can tell another’s shortcomings, lost
+opportunities, weigh the passions which overpower, the defects which
+incapacitate reason?—what extent of truth and right his neighbour’s
+mind is organised to perceive and to do?—what invisible and forgotten
+accident, terror of youth, chance or mischance of fortune, may have
+altered the whole current of life? A grain of sand may alter it, as the
+flinging of a pebble may end it. Who can weigh circumstances, passions,
+temptations, that go to our good and evil account, save One, before
+whose awful wisdom we kneel, and at whose mercy we ask absolution? Here
+it ends,” thought Pen; “this day or to-morrow will wind up the account
+of my youth; a weary retrospect, alas! a sad history, with many a page
+I would fain not look back on! But who has not been tired or fallen,
+and who has escaped without scars from that struggle?” And his head
+fell on his breast, and the young man’s heart prostrated itself humbly
+and sadly before that Throne where sits wisdom, and love, and pity for
+all, and made its confession. “What matters about fame or poverty!” he
+thought. “If I marry this woman I have chosen, may I have strength and
+will to be true to her, and to make her happy. If I have children, pray
+God teach me to speak and to do the truth among them, and to leave them
+an honest name. There are no splendours for my marriage. Does my life
+deserve any? I begin a new phase of it; a better than the last may it
+be, I pray Heaven!”
+
+The train stopped at Tunbridge as Pen was making these reflections; and
+he handed over the newspaper to his neighbour, of whom he took leave,
+while the foreign clergyman in the opposite corner still sate with his
+eyes on his book. Pen jumped out of the carriage then, his carpet-bag
+in hand, and briskly determined to face his fortune.
+
+A fly carried him rapidly to Lady Clavering’s house from the station;
+and, as he was transported thither, Arthur composed a little speech,
+which he intended to address to Blanche, and which was really as
+virtuous, honest, and well-minded an oration as any man of his turn of
+mind, and under his circumstances, could have uttered. The purport of
+it was—“Blanche, I cannot understand from your last letter what your
+meaning is, or whether my fair and frank proposal to you is acceptable
+or no. I think you know the reason which induces me to forgo the
+worldly advantages which a union with you offered, and which I could
+not accept without, as I fancy, being dishonoured. If you doubt of my
+affection, here I am ready to prove it. Let Smirke be called in, and
+let us be married out of hand; and with all my heart I purpose to keep
+my vow, and to cherish you through life, and to be a true and a loving
+husband to you.”
+
+From the fly Arthur sprang out then to the hall-door, where he was met
+by a domestic whom he did not know. The man seemed to be surprised at
+the approach of the gentleman with the carpet-bag, which he made no
+attempt to take from Arthur’s hands. “Her Ladyship’s not at home, sir,”
+the man remarked.
+
+“I am Mr. Pendennis,” Arthur said. “Where is Lightfoot?”
+
+“Lightfoot is gone,” answered the man. “My Lady is out, and my orders
+was——”
+
+“I hear Miss Amory’s voice in the drawing-room,” said Arthur. “Take the
+bag to a dressing-room, if you please;” and, passing by the porter, he
+walked straight towards that apartment, from which, as the door opened,
+a warble of melodious notes issued.
+
+Our little Siren was at her piano singing with all her might and
+fascinations. Master Clavering was asleep on the sofa, indifferent to
+the music; but near Blanche sat a gentleman who was perfectly
+enraptured with her strain, which was of a passionate and melancholy
+nature.
+
+As the door opened, the gentleman started up with Hullo! the music
+stopped, with a little shriek from the singer; Frank Clavering woke up
+from the sofa, and Arthur came forward and said, “What, Foker! how do
+you do, Foker?” He looked at the piano, and there, by Miss Amory’s
+side, was just such another purple-leather box as he had seen in
+Harry’s hand three days before, when the heir of Logwood was coming out
+of a jeweller’s shop in Waterloo Place. It was opened, and curled round
+the white satin cushion within was, oh, such a magnificent serpentine
+bracelet, with such a blazing ruby head and diamond tail!
+
+“How de-do, Pendennis?” said Foker. Blanche made many motions of the
+shoulders, and gave signs of unrest and agitation. And she put her
+handkerchief over the bracelet, and then she advanced, with a hand
+which trembled very much, to greet Pen.
+
+“How is dearest Laura?” she said. The face of Foker looking up from his
+profound mourning—that face, so piteous and puzzled, was one which the
+reader’s imagination must depict for himself; also that of Master Frank
+Clavering, who, looking at the three interesting individuals with an
+expression of the utmost knowingness, had only time to ejaculate the
+words, “Here’s a jolly go!” and to disappear sniggering.
+
+Pen, too, had restrained himself up to that minute; but looking still
+at Foker, whose ears and cheeks tingled with blushes, Arthur burst out
+into a fit of laughter, so wild and loud, that it frightened Blanche
+much more than any the most serious exhibition.
+
+“And this was the secret, was it? Don’t blush and turn away, Foker, my
+boy. Why, man, you are a pattern of fidelity. Could I stand between
+Blanche and such constancy—could I stand between Miss Amory and fifteen
+thousand a year?”
+
+“It is not that, Mr. Pendennis,” Blanche said, with great dignity. “It
+is not money, it is not rank, it is not gold that moves me; but it is
+constancy, it is fidelity, it is a whole trustful loving heart offered
+to me, that I treasure—yes, that I treasure!” And she made for her
+handkerchief, but, reflecting what was underneath it, she paused. “I do
+not disown, I do not disguise—my life is above disguise—to him on whom
+it is bestowed, my heart must be for ever bare—that I once thought I
+loved you,—yes, thought I was beloved by you, I own! How I clung to
+that faith! How I strove, I prayed, I longed to believe it! But your
+conduct always—your own words so cold, so heartless, so unkind, have
+undeceived me. You trifled with the heart of the poor maiden! You flung
+me back with scorn the troth which I had plighted! I have explained
+all—all to Mr. Foker.”
+
+“That you have,” said Foker, with devotion, and conviction in his
+looks.
+
+“What, all?” said Pen, with a meaning look at Blanche. “It is I am in
+fault, is it? Well, well, Blanche, be it so. I won’t appeal against
+your sentence, and bear it in silence. I came down here looking to very
+different things, Heaven knows, and with a heart most truly and kindly
+disposed towards you. I hope you may be happy with another, as, on my
+word, it was my wish to make you so; and I hope my honest old friend
+here will have a wife worthy of his loyalty, his constancy, and
+affection. Indeed they deserve the regard of any woman—even Miss
+Blanche Amory. Shake hands, Harry; don’t look askance at me. Has
+anybody told you that I was a false and heartless character?”
+
+“I think you’re a——” Foker was beginning, in his wrath, when Blanche
+interposed.
+
+“Henry, not a word!—I pray you let there be forgiveness!”
+
+“You’re an angel, by Jove, you’re an angel!” said Foker, at which
+Blanche looked seraphically up to the chandelier.
+
+“In spite of what has passed, for the sake of what has passed, I must
+always regard Arthur as a brother,” the seraph continued; “we have
+known each other years, we have trodden the same fields, and plucked
+the same flowers together. Arthur! Henry! I beseech you to take hands
+and to be friends! Forgive you!—I forgive you, Arthur, with my heart I
+do. Should I not do so for making me so happy?”
+
+“There is only one person of us three whom I pity, Blanche,” Arthur
+said, gravely, “and I say to you again, that I hope you will make this
+good fellow, this honest and loyal creature, happy.”
+
+“Happy! O Heavens!” said Harry. He could not speak. His happiness
+gushed out at his eyes. “She don’t know—she can’t know how fond I am of
+her, and—and who am I? a poor little beggar, and she takes me up and
+says she’ll try and I—I—love me. I ain’t worthy of so much happiness.
+Give us your hand, old boy, since she forgives you after your heartless
+conduct, and says she loves you. I’ll make you welcome. I tell you I’ll
+love everybody who loves her. By——, if she tells me to kiss the ground
+I’ll kiss it. Tell me to kiss the ground! I say, tell me. I love you
+so. You see I love you so.”
+
+Blanche looked up seraphically again. Her gentle bosom heaved. She held
+out one hand as if to bless Harry, and then royally permitted him to
+kiss it. She took up the pocket-handkerchief and hid her own eyes, as
+the other fair hand was abandoned to poor Harry’s tearful embrace.
+
+“I swear that is a villain who deceives such a loving creature as
+that,” said Pen.
+
+Blanche laid down the handkerchief, and put hand No. 2 softly on
+Foker’s head, which was bent down kissing and weeping over hand No. 1.
+“Foolish boy?” she said, “it shall be loved as it deserves: who could
+help loving such a silly creature!”
+
+And at this moment Frank Clavering broke in upon the sentimental trio.
+
+“I say, Pendennis!” he said.
+
+“Well, Frank!”
+
+“The man wants to be paid, and go back. He’s had some beer.”
+
+“I’ll go back with him,” cried Pen. “Good-bye, Blanche. God bless you,
+Foker, old friend. You know, neither of you want me here.” He longed to
+be off that instant.
+
+“Stay—I must say one word to you. One word in private, if you please,”
+Blanche said. “You can trust us together, can’t you, Henry?” The tone
+in which the word Henry was spoken, and the appeal, ravished Foker with
+delight. “Trust you!” said he. “Oh, who wouldn’t trust you! Come along,
+Franky, my boy.”
+
+“Let’s have a cigar,” said Frank, as they went into the hall.
+
+“She don’t like it,” said Foker, gently.
+
+“Law bless you—she don’t mind. Pendennis used to smoke regular,” said
+the candid youth.
+
+“It was but a short word I had to say,” said Blanche to Pen, with great
+calm, when they were alone. “You never loved me, Mr. Pendennis.”
+
+“I told you how much,” said Arthur. “I never deceived you.”
+
+“I suppose you will go back and marry Laura,” continued Blanche.
+
+“Was that what you had to say?” said Pen.
+
+“You are going to her this very night, I am sure of it. There is no
+denying it. You never cared for me.”
+
+“Et vous?”
+
+“Et moi, c’est different. I have been spoilt early. I cannot live out
+of the world, out of excitement. I could have done so, but it is too
+late. If I cannot have emotions, I must have the world. You would offer
+me neither one nor the other. You are blase in everything, even in
+ambition. You had a career before you, and you would not take it. You
+give it up!—for what?—for a betise, for an absurd scruple. Why would
+you not have that seat, and be such a puritain? Why should you refuse
+what is mine by right, by right, entendez-vous?”
+
+“You know all, then?” said Pen.
+
+“Only within a month. But I have suspected ever since
+Baymouth—n’importe since when. It is not too late. He is as if he had
+never been; and there is a position in the world before you yet. Why
+not sit in Parliament, exert your talent, and give a place in the world
+to yourself, to your wife? I take celui-la. Il est bon. Il est riche.
+Il est—vous le connaissez autant que moi enfin. Think you that I would
+not prefer un homme qui fera parler de moi? If the secret appears I am
+rich a millions. How does it affect me? It is not my fault. It will
+never appear.”
+
+“You will tell Harry everything, won’t you?”
+
+“Je comprends. Vous refusez,” said Blanche, savagely. “I will tell
+Harry at my own time, when we are married. You will not betray me, will
+you? You, having a defenceless girl’s secret, will not turn upon her
+and use it? S’il me plait de le cacher, mon secret; pourquoi le
+donnerai je? Je l’aime, mon pauvre pere, voyez-vous? I would rather
+live with that man than with you fades intriguers of the world. I must
+have emotions—il m’en donne. Il m’ecrit. Il ecrit tres-bien,
+voyez-vous—comme un pirate—comme un Bohemien—comme un homme. But for
+this I would have said to my mother—Ma mere! quittons ce lache mari,
+cette lache societe—retournons a mon pere.”
+
+“The pirate would have wearied you like the rest,” said Pen.
+
+“Eh! Il me faut des emotions,” said Blanche. Pen had never seen her or
+known so much about her in all the years of their intimacy as he saw
+and knew now: though he saw more than existed in reality. For this
+young lady was not able to carry out any emotion to the full; but had a
+sham enthusiasm, a sham hatred, a sham love, a sham taste, a sham
+grief, each of which flared and shone very vehemently for an instant,
+but subsided and gave place to the next sham emotion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXV.
+A Chapter of Match-making
+
+
+Upon the platform at Tunbridge, Pen fumed and fretted until the arrival
+of the evening train to London, a full half-hour,—six hours it seemed
+to him; but even this immense interval was passed, the train arrived,
+the train sped on, the London lights came in view—a gentleman who
+forgot his carpet-bag in the train rushed at a cab, and said to the
+man, “Drive as hard as you can go to Jermyn Street.” The cabman,
+although a hansom-cabman, said Thank you for the gratuity which was put
+into his hand, and Pen ran up the stairs of the hotel to Lady
+Rockminster’s apartments. Laura was alone in the drawing-room, reading,
+with a pale face, by the lamp. The pale face looked up when Pen opened
+the door. May we follow him? The great moments of life are but moments
+like the others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look
+from the eyes; a mere pressure of the hand may decide it; or of the
+lips, though they cannot speak.
+
+When Lady Rockminster, who has had her after-dinner nap, gets up and
+goes into her sitting-room, we may enter with her ladyship.
+
+“Upon my word, young people!” are the first words she says, and her
+attendant makes wondering eyes over her shoulder. And well may she say
+so; and well may the attendant cast wondering eyes; for the young
+people are in an attitude; and Pen in such a position as every young
+lady who reads this has heard tell of, or has seen, or hopes, or at any
+rate deserves to see.
+
+In a word, directly he entered the room, Pen went up to Laura of the
+pale face, who had not time even to say, What, back so soon? and
+seizing her outstretched and trembling hand just as she was rising from
+her chair, fell down on his knees before her, and said quickly, “I have
+seen her. She has engaged herself to Harry Foker—and—and Now, Laura?”
+
+The hand gives a pressure—the eyes beam a reply—the quivering lips
+answer, though speechless. Pen’s head sinks down in the girl’s lap, as
+he sobs out, “Come and bless us, dear mother,” and arms as tender as
+Helen’s once more enfold him.
+
+In this juncture it is that Lady Rockminster comes in and says, “Upon
+my word, young people! Beck! leave the room. What do you want poking
+your nose in here?”
+
+Pen starts up with looks of triumph, still holding Laura’s hand. “She
+is consoling me for my misfortune, ma’am,” he says.
+
+“What do you mean by kissing her hand? I don’t know what you will be
+next doing.”
+
+Pen kissed her Ladyship’s. “I have been to Tunbridge,” he says, “and
+seen Miss Amory; and find on my arrival that—that a villain has
+transplanted me in her affections,” he says with a tragedy air.
+
+“Is that all? Is that what you were whimpering on your knees about?”
+says the old lady, growing angry. “You might have kept the news till
+to-morrow.”
+
+“Yes—another has superseded me,” goes on Pen; “but why call him
+villain? He is brave, he is constant, he is young, he is wealthy, he is
+beautiful.”
+
+“What stuff are you talking, sir?” cried the old lady. “What has
+happened?”
+
+“Miss Amory has jilted me, and accepted Henry Foker, Esq. I found her
+warbling ditties to him as he lay at her feet; presents had been
+accepted, vows exchanged, these ten days. Harry was old Mrs. Planter’s
+rheumatism, which kept dearest Laura out of the house. He is the most
+constant and generous of men. He has promised the living of Logwood to
+Lady Ann’s husband, and given her a splendid present on her marriage;
+and he rushed to fling himself at Blanche’s feet the instant he found
+he was free.”
+
+“And so, as you can’t get Blanche, you put up with Laura; is that it,
+sir?” asked the old lady.
+
+“He acted nobly,” Laura said.
+
+“I acted as she bade me,” said Pen. “Never mind how, Lady Rockminster;
+but to the best of my knowledge and power. And if you mean that I am
+not worthy of Laura, I know it, and pray Heaven to better me; and if
+the love and company of the best and purest creature in the world can
+do so, at least I shall have these to help me.”
+
+“Hm, hm,” replied the old lady to this, looking with rather an appeased
+air at the young people. “It is all very well; but I should have
+preferred Bluebeard.”
+
+And now Pen, to divert the conversation from a theme which was growing
+painful to some parties present, bethought him of his interview with
+Huxter in the morning, and of Fanny Bolton’s affairs, which he had
+forgotten under the immediate pressure and excitement of his own. And
+he told the ladies how Huxter had elevated Fanny to the rank of wife,
+and what terrors he was in respecting the arrival of his father. He
+described the scene with considerable humour, taking care to dwell
+especially upon that part of it which concerned Fanny’s coquetry and
+irrepressible desire of captivating mankind; his meaning being, “You
+see, Laura, I was not so guilty in that little affair; it was the girl
+who made love to me, and I who resisted. As I am no longer present, the
+little siren practises her arts and fascinations upon others. Let that
+transaction be forgotten in your mind, if you please; or visit me with
+a very gentle punishment for my error.”
+
+Laura understood his meaning under the eagerness of his explanations.
+“If you did any wrong, you repented, dear Pen,” she said; “and you
+know,” she added, with meaning eyes and blushes, “that I have no right
+to reproach you.”
+
+“Hm!” grumbled the old lady; “I should have preferred Bluebeard.”
+
+“The past is broken away. The morrow is before us. I will do my best to
+make your morrow happy, dear Laura,” Pen said. His heart was humbled by
+the prospect of his happiness: it stood awestricken in the
+contemplation of her sweet goodness and purity. He liked his wife
+better that she had owned to that passing feeling for Warrington, and
+laid bare her generous heart to him. And she—very likely she was
+thinking, “How strange it is that I ever should have cared for another!
+I am vexed almost to think I care for him so little, am so little sorry
+that he is gone away. Oh, in these past two months how I have learned
+to love Arthur! I care about nothing but Arthur: my waking and sleeping
+thoughts are about him; he is never absent from me. And to think that
+he is to be mine, mine! and that I am to marry him, and not to be his
+servant as I expected to be only this morning; for I would have gone
+down on my knees to Blanche to beg her to let me live with him. And
+now—Oh, it is too much. Oh, mother! mother, that you were here!”
+Indeed, she felt as if Helen were there—by her actually, though
+invisibly. A halo of happiness beamed from her.
+
+She moved with a different step, and bloomed with a new beauty. Arthur
+saw the change; and the old Lady Rockminster remarked it with her
+shrewd eyes.
+
+“What a sly demure little wretch you have been,” she whispered to
+Laura—while Pen, in great spirits, was laughing, and telling his story
+about Huxter—“and how you have kept your secret!”
+
+“How are we to help the young couple?” said Laura. Of course Miss Laura
+felt an interest in all young couples, as generous lovers always love
+other lovers.
+
+“We must go and see them,” said Pen.
+
+“Of course we must go and see them,” said Laura. “I intend to be very
+fond of Fanny. Let us go this instant. Lady Rockminster, may I have the
+carriage?”
+
+“Go now!—why, you stupid creature, it is eleven o’clock at night. Mr.
+and Mrs. Huxter have got their nightcaps on, I dare say. And it is time
+for you to go now. Good night, Mr. Pendennis.”
+
+Arthur and Laura begged for ten minutes more.
+
+“We will go to-morrow morning, then. I will come and fetch you with
+Martha.”
+
+“An earl’s coronet,” said Pen, who, no doubt, was pleased himself,
+“will have a great effect in Lamb Court and Smithfield. Stay—Lady
+Rockminster, will you join us in a little conspiracy?”
+
+“How do you mean conspiracy, young man?”
+
+“Will you please to be a little ill to-morrow; and when old Mr. Huxter
+arrives, will you let me call him in? If he is put into a good humour
+at the notion of attending a baronet in the country, what influence
+won’t a countess have on him? When he is softened—when he is quite
+ripe, we will break the secret upon him; bring in the young people,
+extort the paternal benediction, and finish the comedy.”
+
+“A parcel of stuff,” said the old lady. “Take your hat, sir. Come away,
+miss. There—my head is turned another way. Good night, young people.”
+And who knows but the old lady thought of her own early days as she
+went away on Laura’s arm, nodding her head and humming to herself?
+
+With the early morning came Laura and Martha according to appointment;
+and the desired sensation was, let us hope, effected in Lamb Court,
+whence the three proceeded to wait upon Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Huxter, at
+their residence in Charterhouse Lane.
+
+The two ladies looked at each other with great interest, and not a
+little emotion on Fanny’s part. She had not seen her “guardian,” as she
+was pleased to call Pen in consequence of his bequest, since the event
+had occurred which had united her to Mr. Huxter.
+
+“Samuel told me how kind you had been,” she said. “You were always very
+kind, Mr. Pendennis. And—and I hope your friend is better, who was took
+ill in Shepherd’s Inn, ma’am.”
+
+“My name is Laura,” said the other, with a blush. “I am—that is, I
+was—that is, I am Arthur’s sister; and we shall always love you for
+being so good to him when he was ill. And when we live in the country,
+I hope we shall see each other. And I shall be always happy to hear of
+your happiness, Fanny.”
+
+“We are going to do what you and Huxter have done, Fanny.—Where is
+Huxter? What nice, snug lodgings you’ve got! What a pretty cat!”
+
+While Fanny is answering these questions in reply to Pen, Laura says to
+herself—“Well, now really! is this the creature about whom we were all
+so frightened? What could he see in her? She’s a homely little thing,
+but such manners! Well, she was very kind to him,—bless her for that.”
+
+Mr. Samuel had gone out to meet his Pa. Mrs. Huxter said that the old
+gentleman was to arrive that day at the Somerset Coffee-house, in the
+Strand; and Fanny confessed that she was in a sad tremor about the
+meeting. “If his parent casts him off, what are we to do?” she said. “I
+shall never pardon myself for bringing ruing on my ’usband’s ’ead. You
+must intercede for us, Mr. Arthur. If mortal man can, you can bend and
+influence Mr. Huxter senior.” Fanny still regarded Pen in the light of
+a superior being, that was evident. No doubt Arthur thought of the
+past, as he marked the solemn little tragedy-airs and looks, the little
+ways, the little trepidations, vanities, of the little bride. As soon
+as the interview was over, entered Messrs. Linton and Blades, who came,
+of course, to visit Huxter, and brought with them a fine fragrance of
+tobacco. They had watched the carriage at the baker’s door, and
+remarked the coronet with awe. They asked of Fanny who was that
+uncommonly heavy swell who had just driven off? and pronounced the
+countess was of the right sort. And when they heard that it was Mr.
+Pendennis and his sister, they remarked that Pen’s father was only a
+sawbones; and that he gave himself confounded airs; they had been in
+Huxter’s company on the night of his little altercation with Pen in the
+Back Kitchen.
+
+Returning homewards through Fleet Street, and as Laura was just stating
+to Pen’s infinite amusement that Fanny was very well, but that really
+there was no beauty in her,—there might be, but she could not see
+it,—as they were locked near Temple Bar, they saw young Huxter
+returning to his bride. “The governor had arrived; was at the Somerset
+Coffee-house—was in tolerable good-humour—something about the railway:
+but he had been afraid to speak about—about that business. Would Mr.
+Pendennis try it on?”
+
+Pen said he would go and call at that moment upon Mr. Huxter, and see
+what might be done. Huxter junior would lurk outside whilst that awful
+interview took place. The coronet on the carriage inspired his soul
+also with wonder; and old Mr. Huxter himself beheld it with delight, as
+he looked from the coffee-house window on that Strand which it was
+always a treat to him to survey.
+
+“And I can afford to give myself a lark, sir,” said Mr. Huxter, shaking
+hands with Pen. “Of course you know the news? we have got our bill,
+sir. We shall have our branch line—our shares are up, sir—and we buy
+your three fields along the Brawl, and put a pretty penny into your
+pocket, Mr. Pendennis.”
+
+“Indeed!—that was good news.” Pen remembered that there was a letter
+from Mr. Tatham, at Chambers, these three days; but he had not opened
+the communication, being interested with other affairs.
+
+“I hope you don’t intend to grow rich, and give up practice,” said Pen.
+“We can’t lose you at Clavering, Mr. Huxter; though I hear very good
+accounts of your son. My friend, Dr. Goodenough speaks most highly of
+his talents. It is hard that a man of your eminence, though, should be
+kept in a country town.”
+
+“The metropolis would have been my sphere of action, sir,” said Mr.
+Huxter, surveying the Strand. “But a man takes his business where he
+finds it; and I succeeded to that of my father.”
+
+“It was my father’s, too,” said Pen. “I sometimes wish I had followed
+it.”
+
+“You, sir, have taken a more lofty career,” said the old gentleman.
+“You aspire to the senate: and to literary honours. You wield the
+poet’s pen, sir, and move in the circles of fashion. We keep an eye
+upon you at Clavering. We read your name in the lists of the select
+parties of the nobility. Why, it was only the other day that my wife
+was remarking how odd it was that at a party at the Earl of
+Kidderminster’s your name was not mentioned. To what member of the
+aristocracy may I ask does that equipage belong from which I saw you
+descend? The Countess Dowager of Rockminster? How is her Ladyship?”
+
+“Her Ladyship is not very well; and when I heard that you were coming
+to town, I strongly urged her to see you, Mr. Huxter,” Pen said. Old
+Huxter felt, if he had a hundred votes for Clavering, he would give
+them all to Pen.
+
+“There is an old friend of yours in the carriage—a Clavering lady,
+too—will you come out and speak to her?” asked Pen. The old surgeon was
+delighted to speak to a coroneted carriage in the midst of the full
+Strand: he ran out bowing and smiling. Huxter junior, dodging about the
+district, beheld the meeting between his father and Laura, saw the
+latter put out her hand, and presently, after a little colloquy with
+Pen, beheld his father actually jump into the carriage, and drive away
+with Miss Bell.
+
+There was no room for Arthur, who came back, laughing, to the young
+surgeon, and told him whither his parent was bound. During the whole of
+the journey, that artful Laura coaxed, and wheedled, and cajoled him so
+adroitly, that the old gentleman would have granted her anything; and
+Lady Rockminster achieved the victory over him by complimenting him on
+his skill, and professing her anxiety to consult him. What were her
+Ladyship’s symptoms? Should he meet her Ladyship’s usual medical
+attendant? Mr. Jones was called out of town? He should be delighted to
+devote his very best energies and experience to her Ladyship’s service.
+
+He was so charmed with his patient, that he wrote home about her to his
+wife and family; he talked of nothing but Lady Rockminster to Samuel,
+when that youth came to partake of beefsteak and oyster-sauce and
+accompany his parent to the play. There was a simple grandeur, a polite
+urbanity, a high-bred grace about her Ladyship, which he had never
+witnessed in any woman. Her symptoms did not seem alarming; he had
+prescribed—Spir: Ammon: Aromat: with a little Spir: Menth: Pip: and
+orange-flower, which would be all that was necessary.
+
+“Miss Bell seemed to be on the most confidential and affectionate
+footing with her Ladyship. She was about to form a matrimonial
+connexion. All young people ought to marry. Such were her Ladyship’s
+words; and the Countess condescended to ask respecting my own family,
+and I mentioned you by name to her Ladyship, Sam, my boy. I shall look
+in to-morrow, when, if the remedies which I have prescribed for her
+Ladyship have had the effect which I anticipate, I shall probably
+follow them up by a little Spir: Lavend: Comp:—and so set my noble
+patient up. What is the theatre which is most frequented by the—by the
+higher classes in town, hey, Sam! and to what amusement will you take
+an old country doctor to-night, hey, sir?”
+
+On the next day, when Mr. Huxter called in Jermyn Street at twelve
+o’clock, Lady Rockminster had not yet left her room, but Miss Bell and
+Mr. Pendennis were in waiting to receive him. Lady Rockminster had had
+a most comfortable night, and was getting on as well as possible. How
+had Mr. Huxter amused himself? at the theatre? with his son? What a
+capital piece it was, and how charmingly Mrs. O’Leary looked and sang
+it! and what a good fellow young Huxter was! liked by everybody, an
+honour to his profession. He has not his father’s manners, I grant you,
+or that old-world tone which is passing away from us, but a more
+excellent, sterling fellow never lived. “He ought to practise in the
+country whatever you do, sir,” said Arthur—“he ought to marry—other
+people are going to do so—and settle.”
+
+“The very words that her Ladyship used yesterday, Mr. Pendennis. He
+ought to marry. Sam should marry, sir.”
+
+“The town is full of temptations, sir,” continued Pen. The old
+gentleman thought of that houri, Mrs. O’Leary.
+
+“There is no better safeguard for a young man than an early marriage
+with an honest affectionate creature.”
+
+“No better, sir, no better.”
+
+“And love is better than money, isn’t it?”
+
+“Indeed it is,” said Miss Bell.
+
+“I agree with so fair an authority,” said the old gentleman, with a
+bow.
+
+“And—and suppose, sir,” Pen said, “that I had a piece of news to
+communicate to you.”
+
+“God bless my soul, Mr. Pendennis! what do you mean?” asked the old
+gentleman.
+
+“Suppose I had to tell you that a young man, carried away by an
+irresistible passion for an admirable and most virtuous young
+creature—whom everybody falls in love with—had consulted the dictates
+of reason and his heart, and had married. Suppose I were to tell you
+that that man is my friend; that our excellent, our truly noble friend
+the Countess Dowager of Rockminster is truly interested about him (and
+you may fancy what a young man can do in life when THAT family is
+interested for him); suppose I were to tell you that you know him—that
+he is here—that he is——”
+
+“Sam married! God bless my soul, sir, you don’t mean that!”
+
+“And to such a nice creature, dear Mr. Huxter.”
+
+“Her Ladyship is charmed with her,” said Pen, telling almost the first
+fib which he has told in the course of this story.
+
+“Married! the rascal, is he?” thought the old gentleman.
+
+“They will do it, sir,” said Pen; and went and opened the door. Mr. and
+Mrs. Samuel Huxter issued thence, and both came and knelt down before
+the old gentleman. The kneeling little Fanny found favour in his sight.
+There must have been some thing attractive about her, in spite of
+Laura’s opinion.
+
+“Will never do so any more, sir,” said Sam.
+
+“Get up, sir,” said Mr. Huxter. And they got up, and Fanny came a
+little nearer and a little nearer still, and looked so pretty and
+pitiful, that somehow Mr. Huxter found himself kissing the little
+crying-laughing thing, and feeling as if he liked it.
+
+“What’s your name, my dear?” he said, after a minute of this sport.
+
+“Fanny, papa,” said Mrs. Samuel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVI.
+Exeunt Omnes
+
+
+Our characters are all a month older than they were when the
+last-described adventures and conversations occurred, and a great
+number of the personages of our story have chanced to reassemble at the
+little country town where we were first introduced to them. Frederic
+Lightfoot, formerly maitre d’hotel in the service of Sir Francis
+Clavering, of Clavering Park, Bart., has begged leave to inform the
+nobility and gentry of ———shire that he has taken that well-known and
+comfortable hotel, the Clavering Arms, in Clavering, where he hopes for
+the continued patronage of the gentlemen and families of the county.
+“This ancient and well-established house,” Mr. Lightfoot’s manifesto
+states, “has been repaired and decorated in a style of the greatest
+comfort. Gentlemen hunting with the Dumplingbeare hounds will find
+excellent stabling and loose-boxes for horses at the Clavering Arms. A
+commodious billiard-room has been attached to the hotel, and the
+cellars have been furnished with the choicest wines and spirits,
+selected, without regard to expense, by C. L. Commercial gentlemen will
+find the Clavering Arms a most comfortable place of resort: and the
+scale of charges has been regulated for all, so as to meet the
+economical spirit of the present times.”
+
+Indeed, there is a considerable air of liveliness about the old inn.
+The Clavering arms have been splendidly repainted over the gateway. The
+coffee-room windows are bright and fresh, and decorated with Christmas
+holly; the magistrates have met in petty sessions in the card-room of
+the old Assembly. The farmers’ ordinary is held as of old, and
+frequented by increased numbers, who are pleased with Mrs. Lightfoot’s
+cuisine. Her Indian curries and Mulligatawny soup are especially
+popular: Major Stokes, the respected tenant of Fairoaks Cottage,
+Captain Glanders, H.P., and other resident gentry, have pronounced in
+their favour, and have partaken of them more than once both in private
+and at the dinner of the Clavering Institute, attendant on the
+incorporation of the reading-room, and when the chief inhabitants of
+that flourishing little town met together and did justice to the
+hostess’s excellent cheer. The chair was taken by Sir Francis
+Clavering, Bart., supported by the esteemed rector, Dr. Portman; the
+vice chair being ably filled by Barker, Esq. (supported by the Rev. J.
+Simcoe and the Rev. S. Jowls), the enterprising head of the ribbon
+factory in Clavering, and chief director of the Clavering and Chatteris
+Branch of the Great Western Railway, which will be opened in another
+year, and upon the works of which the engineers and workmen are now
+busily engaged.
+
+“An interesting event, which is likely to take place in the life of our
+talented townsman, Arthur Pendennis, Esq., has, we understand, caused
+him to relinquish the intentions which he had of offering himself as a
+candidate for our borough: and rumour whispers” (says the Chatteris
+Champion, Clavering Agriculturist, and Baymouth Fisherman,—that
+independent county paper, so distinguished for its unswerving
+principles and loyalty to the British oak, and so eligible a medium for
+advertisements)—rumour states, says the C. C. C. A. and B. F., “that
+should Sir Francis Clavering’s failing health oblige him to relinquish
+his seat in Parliament, he will vacate it in favour of a young
+gentleman of colossal fortune and related to the highest aristocracy of
+the empire, who is about to contract a matrimonial alliance with an
+accomplished and lovely lady, connected by the nearest ties with the
+respected family at Clavering Park. Lady Clavering and Miss Amory have
+arrived at the Park for the Christmas holidays; and we understand that
+a large number of the aristocracy are expected, and that festivities of
+a peculiarly interesting nature will take place there at the
+commencement of the new year.”
+
+The ingenious reader will be enabled, by the help of the above
+announcement, to understand what has taken place during the little
+break which has occurred in our narrative. Although Lady Rockminster
+grumbled a little at Laura’s preference for Pendennis over Bluebeard,
+those who are aware of the latter’s secret will understand that the
+young girl could make no other choice, and the kind old lady who had
+constituted herself Miss Bell’s guardian was not ill pleased that she
+was to fulfil the great purpose in life of young ladies and marry. She
+informed her maid of the interesting event that very night, and of
+course Mrs. Beck, who was perfectly aware of every single circumstance,
+and kept by Martha, of Fairoaks, in the fullest knowledge of what was
+passing, was immensely surprised and delighted. “Mr. Pendennis’s income
+is so much; the railroad will give him so much more, he states; Miss
+Bell has so much, and may probably have a little more one day. For
+persons in their degree, they will be able to manage very well. And I
+shall speak to my nephew Pynsent, who I suspect was once rather
+attached to her,—but of course that was out of the question (‘Oh! of
+course, my lady; I should think so indeed!’)—not that you know anything
+whatever about it, or have any business to think at all on the
+subject,—I shall speak to George Pynsent, who is now chief secretary of
+the Tape and Sealing Wax Office, and have Mr. Pendennis made something.
+And, Beck, in the morning you will carry down my compliments to Major
+Pendennis, and say that I shall pay him a visit at one o’clock.”—“Yes,”
+muttered the old lady, “the Major must be reconciled, and he must leave
+his fortune to Laura’s children.”
+
+Accordingly, at one o’clock, the Dowager Lady Rockminster appeared at
+Major Pendennis’s, who was delighted, as may be imagined, to receive so
+noble a visitor. The Major had been prepared, if not for the news which
+her Ladyship was about to give him, at least with the intelligence that
+Pen’s marriage with Miss Amory was broken off. The young gentleman
+bethinking him of his uncle, for the first time that day it must be
+owned, and meeting his new servant in the hall of the hotel, asked
+after the Major’s health from Mr. Frosch; and then went into the
+coffee-room of the hotel, where he wrote a half-dozen lines to acquaint
+his guardian with what had occurred. “Dear uncle,” he said, “if there
+has been any question between us, it is over now. I went to Tunbridge
+Wells yesterday, and found that somebody else had carried off the prize
+about which we were hesitating. Miss A., without any compunction for
+me, has bestowed herself upon Harry Foker, with his fifteen thousand a
+year. I came in suddenly upon their loves, and found and left him in
+possession.
+
+“And you’ll be glad to hear, Tatham writes me, that he has sold three
+of my fields at Fairoaks to the Railroad Company, at a great figure. I
+will tell you this, and more when we meet; and am always your
+affectionate,—A. P.”
+
+“I think I am aware of what you were about to tell me,” the Major said,
+with a most courtly smile and bow to Pen’s ambassadress. “It was a very
+great kindness of your Ladyship to think of bringing me the news. How
+well you look! How very good you are! How very kind you have always
+been to that young man!”
+
+“It was for the sake of his uncle,” said Lady Rockminster, most
+politely.
+
+“He has informed me of the state of affairs, and written me a nice
+note,—yes, a nice note,” continued the old gentleman; “and I find he
+has had an increase to his fortune,—yes; and, all things considered, I
+don’t much regret that this affair with Miss Amory is manquee, though I
+wished for it once, in fact, all things considered, I am very glad of
+it.”
+
+“We must console him, Major Pendennis,” continued the lady; “we must
+get him a wife.” The truth then came across the Major’s mind, and he
+saw for what purpose Lady Rockminster had chosen to assume the office
+of ambassadress.
+
+It is not necessary to enter into the conversation which ensued, or to
+tell at any length how her Ladyship concluded a negotiation which, in
+truth, was tolerably easy. There could be no reason why Pen should not
+marry according to his own and his mother’s wish; and as for Lady
+Rockminster, she supported the marriage by intimations which had very
+great weight with the Major, but of which we shall say nothing, as her
+ladyship (now, of course, much advanced in years) is still alive, and
+the family might be angry; and, in fine, the old gentleman was quite
+overcome by the determined graciousness of the lady, and her fondness
+for Laura. Nothing, indeed, could be more bland and kind than Lady
+Rockminster’s whole demeanour, except for one moment when the Major
+talked about his boy throwing himself away, at which her ladyship broke
+out into a little speech, in which she made the Major understand, what
+poor Pen and his friends acknowledge very humbly, that Laura was a
+thousand times too good for him. Laura was fit to be the wife of a
+king,—Laura was a paragon of virtue and excellence. And it must be
+said, that when Major Pendennis found that a lady of the rank of the
+Countess of Rockminster seriously admired Miss Bell, he instantly began
+to admire her himself.
+
+So that when Herr Frosch was requested to walk upstairs to Lady
+Rockminster’s apartments, and inform Miss Bell and Mr. Arthur Pendennis
+that the Major would receive them, and Laura appeared blushing and
+happy as she hung on Pen’s arm, the Major gave a shaky hand to one and
+the other, with unaffected emotion and cordiality, and then went
+through another salutation to Laura, which caused her to blush still
+more. Happy blushes! bright eyes beaming with the light of love! The
+story-teller turns from this group to his young audience, and hopes
+that one day their eyes may all shine so.
+
+Pen having retreated in the most friendly manner, and the lovely
+Blanche having bestowed her young affections upon a blushing bridegroom
+with fifteen thousand a year, there was such an outbreak of happiness
+in Lady Clavering’s heart and family as the good Begum had not known
+for many a year, and she and Blanche were on the most delightful terms
+of cordiality and affection. The ardent Foker pressed onwards the happy
+day, and was as anxious as might be expected to abridge the period of
+mourning which had put him in possession of so many charms and amiable
+qualities, of which he had been only, as it were, the heir-apparent,
+not the actual owner, until then. The gentle Blanche, everything that
+her affianced lord could desire, was not averse to gratify the wishes
+of her fond Henry. Lady Clavering came up from Tunbridge. Milliners and
+jewellers were set to work and engaged to prepare the delightful
+paraphernalia of Hymen. Lady Clavering was in such a good humour, that
+Sir Francis even benefited by it, and such a reconciliation was
+effected between this pair, that Sir Francis came to London, sate at
+the head of his own table once more, and appeared tolerably flush of
+money at his billiard-rooms and gambling-houses again. One day, when
+Major Pendennis and Arthur went to dine in Grosvenor Place, they found
+an old acquaintance established in the quality of major-domo, and the
+gentleman in black, who, with perfect politeness and gravity, offered
+them their choice of sweet or dry champagne, was no other than Mr.
+James Morgan. The Chevalier Strong was one of the party; he was in high
+spirits and condition, and entertained the company with accounts of his
+amusements abroad.
+
+“It was my Lady who invited me,” said Strong to Arthur, under his
+voice—“that fellow Morgan looked as black as thunder when I came in. He
+is about no good here. I will go away first, and wait for you and Major
+Pendennis at Hyde Park Gate.”
+
+Mr. Morgan helped Major Pendennis to his great-coat when he was
+quitting the house; and muttered something about having accepted a
+temporary engagement with the Clavering family.
+
+“I have got a paper of yours, Mr. Morgan,” said the old gentleman.
+
+“Which you can show, if you please, to Sir Francis, sir, and perfectly
+welcome,” said Mr. Morgan, with downcast eyes. “I’m very much obliged
+to you, Major Pendennis, and if I can pay you for all your kindness I
+will.”
+
+Arthur overheard the sentence, and saw the look of hatred which
+accompanied it, suddenly cried out that he had forgotten his
+handkerchief, and ran upstairs to the drawing-room again. Foker was
+still there; still lingering about his siren. Pen gave the siren a look
+full of meaning, and we suppose that the siren understood meaning
+looks, for when, after finding the veracious handkerchief of which he
+came in quest, he once more went out, the siren, with a laughing voice,
+said, “Oh, Arthur—Mr. Pendennis—I want you to tell dear Laura
+something!” and she came out to the door.
+
+“What is it?” she asked, shutting the door.
+
+“Have you told Harry? Do you know that villain Morgan knows all?”
+
+“I know it,” she said.
+
+“Have you told Harry?”
+
+“No, no,” she said. “You won’t betray me?”
+
+“Morgan will,” said Pen.
+
+“No, he won’t,” said Blanche. “I have promised him—n’importe. Wait
+until after our marriage—Oh, until after our marriage—Oh, how wretched
+I am,” said the girl, who had been all smiles, and grace, and gaiety
+during the evening.
+
+Arthur said, “I beg and implore you to tell Harry. Tell him now. It is
+no fault of yours. He will pardon you anything. Tell him to-night.”
+
+“And give her this—Il est la—with my love, please; and I beg your
+pardon for calling you back; and if she will be at Madame Crinoline’s
+at half-past three, and if Lady Rockminster can spare her, I should so
+like to drive with her in the park;” and she went in, singing and
+kissing her little hand, as Morgan the velvet-footed came up the
+carpeted stair.
+
+Pen heard Blanche’s piano breaking out into brilliant music as he went
+down to join his uncle; and they walked away together. Arthur briefly
+told him what he had done. “What was to be done?” he asked.
+
+“What is to be done, begad?” said the old gentleman. “What is to be
+done but to leave it alone? Begad, let us be thankful,” said the old
+fellow, with a shudder, “that we are out of the business, and leave it
+to those it concerns.”
+
+“I hope to Heaven she’ll tell him,” said Pen.
+
+“Begad, she’ll take her own course,” said the old man. “Miss Amory is a
+dev’lish wide-awake girl, sir, and must play her own cards; and I’m
+doosid glad you are out of it—doosid glad, begad. Who’s this smoking?
+Oh, it’s Mr. Strong again. He wants to put in his oar, I suppose. I
+tell you, don’t meddle in the business, Arthur.”
+
+Strong began once or twice, as if to converse upon the subject, but the
+Major would not hear a word. He remarked on the moonlight on Apsley
+House, the weather, the cabstands—anything but that subject. He bowed
+stiffly to Strong, and clung to his nephew’s arm, as he turned down St.
+James’s Street, and again cautioned Pen to leave the affair alone. “It
+had like to have cost you so much, sir, that you may take my advice,”
+he said.
+
+When Arthur came out of the hotel, Strong’s cloak and cigar were
+visible a few doors off. The jolly Chevalier laughed as they met. “I’m
+an old soldier, too,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you, Pendennis. I
+have heard of all that has happened, and all the chops and changes that
+have taken place during my absence. I congratulate you on your
+marriage, and I congratulate you on your escape, too,—you understand
+me. It was not my business to speak, but I know this, that a certain
+party is as arrant a little—well—well, never mind what. You acted like
+a man and a trump, and are well out of it.”
+
+“I have no reason to complain,” said Pen. “I went back to beg and
+entreat poor Blanche to tell Foker all: I hope, for her sake, she will;
+but I fear not. There is but one policy, Strong, there is but one.”
+
+“And lucky he that can stick to it,” said the Chevalier. “That rascal
+Morgan means mischief. He has been lurking about our chambers for the
+last two months: he has found out that poor mad devil Amory’s secret.
+He has been trying to discover where he was: he has been pumping Mr.
+Bolton, and making old Costigan drunk several times. He bribed the Inn
+porter to tell him when we came back: and he has got into Clavering’s
+service on the strength of his information. He will get very good pay
+for it, mark my words, the villain.”
+
+“Where is Amory?” asked Pen.
+
+“At Boulogne, I believe. I left him there, and warned him not to come
+back. I have broken with him, after a desperate quarrel, such as one
+might have expected with such a madman. And I’m glad to think that he
+is in my debt now, and that I have been the means of keeping him out of
+more harms than one.”
+
+“He has lost all his winnings, I suppose,” said Pen.
+
+“No: he is rather better than when he went away, or was a fortnight
+ago. He had extraordinary luck at Baden: broke the bank several nights,
+and was the fable of the place. He lied himself there with a fellow by
+the name of Bloundell, who gathered about him a society of all sorts of
+sharpers, male and female, Russians, Germans, French, English. Amory
+got so insolent, that I was obliged to thrash him one day within an
+inch of his life. I couldn’t help myself; the fellow has plenty of
+pluck, and I had nothing for it but to hit out.”
+
+“And did he call you out?” said Pen.
+
+“You think if I had shot him I should have done nobody any harm? No,
+sir; I waited for his challenge, but it never came and the next time I
+met him he begged my pardon, and said, ‘Strong, I beg your pardon; you
+whopped me and you served me right.’ I shook hands: but I couldn’t live
+with him after that. I paid him what I owed him the night before,” said
+Strong with a blush, “I pawned everything to pay him, and then I went
+with my last ten florins, and had a shy at the roulette. If I had lost,
+I should have let him shoot me in the morning. I was weary of my life.
+By Jove, sir, isn’t it a shame that a man like me, who may have had a
+few bills out, but who never deserted a friend, or did an unfair
+action, shouldn’t be able to turn his hand to anything to get bread? I
+made a good night, sir, at roulette, and I’ve done with that. I’m going
+into the wine business. My wife’s relations live at Cadiz. I intend to
+bring over Spanish wine and hams; there’s a fortune to be made by it,
+sir,—a fortune—here’s my card. If you want any sherry or hams,
+recollect Ned Strong is your man.” And the Chevalier pulled out a
+handsome card, stating that Strong and Company, Shepherd’s Inn, were
+sole agents of the celebrated Diamond Manzanilla of the Duke of
+Garbanzos, Grandee of Spain of the First Class; and of the famous
+Toboso hams, fed on acorns only in the country of Don Quixote. “Come
+and taste ’em, sir,—come and try ’em at my chambers. You see, I’ve an
+eye to business, and by Jove this time I’ll succeed.”
+
+Pen laughed as he took the card. “I don’t know whether I shall be
+allowed to go to bachelors’ parties,” he said. “You know I’m going
+to——”
+
+“But you must have sherry, sir. You must have sherry.”
+
+“I will have it from you, depend on it,” said the other. “And I think
+you are very well out of your other partnership. That worthy Altamont
+and his daughter correspond, I hear,” Pen added after a pause.
+
+“Yes; she wrote him the longest rigmarole letters, that I used to read:
+the sly little devil; and he answered under cover to Mrs. Bonner. He
+was for carrying her off the first day or two, and nothing would
+content him but having back his child. But she didn’t want to come, as
+you may fancy; and he was not very eager about it.” Here the Chevalier
+burst out in a laugh. “Why, sir, do you know what was the cause of our
+quarrel and boxing match? There was a certain widow at Baden, a Madame
+la Baronne de la Cruche-cassee, who was not much better than himself,
+and whom the scoundrel wanted to marry; and would, but that I told her
+he was married already. I don’t think that she was much better than he
+was. I saw her on the pier at Boulogne the day I came to England.”
+
+And now we have brought up our narrative to the point, whither the
+announcement in the Chatteris Champion had already conducted us.
+
+It wanted but very, very few days before that blissful one when Foker
+should call Blanche his own; the Clavering folks had all pressed to see
+the most splendid new carriage in the whole world, which was standing
+in the coach-house at the Clavering Arms; and shown, in grateful return
+for drink, commonly, by Mr. Foker’s head-coachman. Madame Fribsby was
+occupied in making some lovely dresses for the tenants’ daughters, who
+were to figure as a sort of bridesmaids’ chorus at the breakfast and
+marriage ceremony. And immense festivities were to take place at the
+Park upon this delightful occasion.
+
+“Yes, Mr. Huxter, yes; a happy tenantry, its country’s pride, will
+assemble in the baronial hall, where the beards will wag all. The ox
+shall be slain, and the cup they’ll drain; and the bells shall peal
+quite genteel; and my father-in-law, with the tear of sensibility
+bedewing his eye, shall bless us at his baronial porch. That shall be
+the order of proceedings, I think, Mr. Huxter; and I hope we shall see
+you and your lovely bride by her husband’s side; and what will you
+please to drink, sir? Mrs. Lightfoot, madam, you will give to my
+excellent friend and body-surgeon, Mr. Huxter, Mr. Samuel Huxter,
+M.R.C.S., every refreshment that your hostel affords, and place the
+festive amount to my account; and Mr. Lightfoot, sir, what will you
+take? though you’ve had enough already, I think; yes, ha.”
+
+So spoke Harry Foker in the bar of the Clavering Arms. He had
+apartments at that hotel, and had gathered a circle of friends round
+him there. He treated all to drink who came. He was hail-fellow with
+every man. He was so happy! He danced round Madame Fribsby, Mrs.
+Lightfoot’s great ally, as she sate pensive in the bar. He consoled
+Mrs. Lightfoot, who had already begun to have causes of matrimonial
+disquiet; for the truth must be told, that young Lightfoot, having now
+the full command of the cellar, had none over his own unbridled
+desires, and was tippling and tipsy from morning till night. And a
+piteous sight it was for his fond wife to behold the big youth reeling
+about the yard and coffee-room, or drinking with the farmers and
+tradesmen his own neat wines and carefully selected stock of spirits.
+
+When he could find time, Mr. Morgan the butler came from the Park, and
+took a glass at the expense of the landlord of the Clavering Arms. He
+watched poor Lightfoot’s tipsy vagaries with savage sneers. Mrs.
+Lightfoot felt always doubly uncomfortable when her unhappy spouse was
+under his comrade’s eye. But a few months married, and to think he had
+got to this! Madame Fribsby could feel for her. Madame Fribsby could
+tell her stories of men every bit as bad. She had had her own woes too,
+and her sad experience of men. So it is that nobody seems happy
+altogether; and that there’s bitters, as Mr. Foker remarked, in the cup
+of every man’s life. And yet there did not seem to be any in his, the
+honest young fellow! It was brimming over with happiness and
+good-humour.
+
+Mr. Morgan was constant in his attentions to Foker. “And yet I don’t
+like him somehow,” said the candid young man to Mrs. Lightfoot. “He
+always seems as if he was measuring me for my coffin somehow.
+Pa-in-law’s afraid of him; pa-in-law’s, ahem! never mind, but
+ma-in-law’s a trump, Mrs. Lightfoot.”
+
+“Indeed my Lady was,” and Mrs. Lightfoot owned, with a sigh, that
+perhaps it had been better for her had she never left her mistress.
+
+“No, I do not like thee, Dr. Fell; the reason why I cannot tell,”
+continued Mr. Foker; “and he wants to be taken as my head man. Blanche
+wants me to take him. Why does Miss Amory like him so?”
+
+“Did Miss Blanche like him so?” The notion seemed to disturb Mrs.
+Lightfoot very much; and there came to this worthy landlady another
+cause for disturbance. A letter, bearing the Boulogne postmark, was
+brought to her one morning, and she and her husband were quarrelling
+over it as Foker passed down the stairs by the bar, on his way to the
+Park. His custom was to breakfast there, and bask a while in the
+presence of Armida; then, as the company of Clavering tired him
+exceedingly, and he did not care for sporting, he would return for an
+hour or two to billiards and the society of the Clavering Arms; then it
+would be time to ride with Miss Amory, and, after dining with her, he
+left her and returned modestly to his inn.
+
+Lightfoot and his wife were quarrelling over the letter. What was that
+letter from abroad? Why was she always having letters from abroad? Who
+wrote ’em?—he would know. He didn’t believe it was her brother. It was
+no business of his? It was a business of his; and, with a curse, he
+seized hold of his wife, and dashed at her pocket for the letter.
+
+The poor woman gave a scream; and said, “Well, take it.” Just as her
+husband seized on the letter, and Mr. Foker entered at the door, she
+gave another scream at seeing him, and once more tried to seize the
+paper. Lightfoot opened it, shaking her away, and an enclosure dropped
+down on the breakfast-table.
+
+“Hands off, man alive!” cried little Harry, springing in. “Don’t lay
+hands on a woman, sir. The man that lays his hand upon a woman, save in
+the way of kindness, is a—hallo! it’s a letter for Miss Amory. What’s
+this, Mrs. Lightfoot?”
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot began, in piteous tones of reproach to her husband,—“You
+unmanly! to treat a woman so who took you off the street. Oh, you
+coward, to lay your hand upon your wife! Why did I marry you? Why did I
+leave my Lady for you? Why did I spend eight hundred pound in fitting
+up this house that you might drink and guzzle?”
+
+“She gets letters, and she won’t tell me who writes letters,” said Mr.
+Lightfoot, with a muzzy voice; “it’s a family affair, sir. Will you
+take anything, sir?”
+
+“I will take this letter to Miss Amory, as I am going to the Park,”
+said Foker, turning very pale; and taking it up from the table, which
+was arranged for the poor landlady’s breakfast, he went away.
+
+“He’s comin’—dammy, who’s a-comin’? Who’s J. A., Mrs. Lightfoot—curse
+me, who’s J. A.?” cried the husband.
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot cried out, “Be quiet, you tipsy brute, do,” and running
+to her bonnet and shawl, threw them on, saw Mr. Foker walking down the
+street, took the by-lane which skirts it, and ran as quickly as she
+could to the lodge-gate, Clavering Park. Foker saw a running figure
+before him, but it was lost when he got to the lodge-gate. He stopped
+and asked, “Who was that who had just come in? Mrs. Bonner, was it?” He
+reeled almost in his walk: the trees swam before him. He rested once or
+twice against the trunks of the naked limes.
+
+Lady Clavering was in the breakfast-room with her son, and her husband
+yawning over his paper. “Good morning, Harry,” said the Begum. “Here’s
+letters, lots of letters; Lady Rockminster will be here on Tuesday
+instead of Monday, and Arthur and the Major come to-day; and Laura is
+to go to Dr. Portman’s, and come to church from there: and—what’s the
+matter, my dear? What makes you so pale, Harry?”
+
+“Where is Blanche!” asked Harry, in a sickening voice—“not down yet?”
+
+“Blanche is always the last,” said the boy, eating muffins; “she’s a
+regular dawdle, she is. When you’re not here, she lays in bed till
+lunch-time.”
+
+“Be quiet, Frank,” said the mother.
+
+Blanche came down presently, looking pale, and with rather an eager
+look towards Foker; then she advanced and kissed her mother, and had a
+face beaming with her very best smiles on when she greeted Harry.
+
+“How do you do, sir?” she said, and put out both her hands.
+
+“I’m ill,” answered Harry. “I—I’ve brought a letter for you, Blanche.”
+
+“A letter, and from whom is it, pray? Voyons,” she said.
+
+“I don’t know—I should like to know,” said Foker.
+
+“How can I tell until I see it?” asked Blanche.
+
+“Has Mrs. Bonner not told you?” he said, with a shaking voice;—“there’s
+some secret. You give her the letter, Lady Clavering.”
+
+Lady Clavering, wondering, took the letter from poor Foker’s shaking
+hand, and looked at the superscription. As she looked at it, she too
+began to shake in every limb, and with a scared face she dropped the
+letter, and running up to Frank, clutched the boy to her, and burst out
+with a sob—“Take that away—it’s impossible, it’s impossible.”
+
+“What is the matter?” cried Blanche, with rather a ghastly smile; “the
+letter is only from—from a poor pensioner and relative of ours.”
+
+“It’s not true, it’s not true,” screamed Lady Clavering. “No, my
+Frank—is it, Clavering?”
+
+Blanche had taken up the letter, and was moving with it towards the
+fire, but Foker ran to her and clutched her arm—“I must see that
+letter,” he said; “give it me. You shan’t burn it.”
+
+“You—you shall not treat Miss Amory so in my house,” cried the Baronet;
+“give back the letter, by Jove!”
+
+“Read it—and look at her,” Blanche cried, pointing to her mother;
+“it—it was for her I kept the secret! Read it, cruel man!”
+
+And Foker opened and read the letter:—
+
+“I have not wrote, my darling Betsy, this three weeks; but this is to
+give her a father’s blessing, and I shall come down pretty soon as
+quick as my note, and intend to see the ceremony, and my son-in-law. I
+shall put up at Bonner’s. I have had a pleasant autumn, and am staying
+here at an hotel where there is good company, and which is kep’ in good
+style. I don’t know whether I quite approve of your throwing over Mr.
+P. for Mr. F., and don’t think Foker’s such a pretty name, and from
+your account of him he seems a muff, and not a beauty. But he has got
+the rowdy, which is the thing. So no more, my dear little Betsy, till
+we meet, from your affectionate father, J. Amory Altamont.”
+
+“Read it, Lady Clavering; it is too late to keep it from you now,” said
+poor Foker; and the distracted woman, having cast her eyes over it,
+again broke out into hysterical screams, and convulsively grasped her
+son.
+
+“They have made an outcast of you, my boy,” she said. “They’ve
+dishonoured your old mother; but I’m innocent, Frank; before God, I’m
+innocent. I didn’t know this, Mr. Foker; indeed, indeed, I didn’t.”
+
+“I’m sure you didn’t,” said Foker, going up and kissing her hand.
+
+“Generous, generous Harry!” cried out Blanche, in an ecstasy. But he
+withdrew his hand, which was upon her side, and turned from her with a
+quivering lip. “That’s different,” he says.
+
+“It was for her sake—for her sake, Harry.” Again Miss Amory is in an
+attitude.
+
+“There was something to be done for mine,” said Foker. “I would have
+taken you, whatever you were. Everything’s talked about in London. I
+knew that your father had come to—to grief. You don’t think it was—it
+was for your connexion I married you? D—— it all! I’ve loved you with
+all my heart and soul for two years, and you’ve been playing with me,
+and cheating me,” broke out the young man, with a cry. “Oh, Blanche,
+Blanche, it’s a hard thing, a hard thing!” and he covered his face with
+his hands, and sobbed behind them.
+
+Blanche thought, “Why didn’t I tell him that night when Arthur warned
+me?”
+
+“Don’t refuse her, Harry,” cried out Lady Clavering. “Take her, take
+everything I have. It’s all hers, you know, at my death. This boy’s
+disinherited.”—(Master Frank, who had been looking as scared at the
+strange scene, here burst into a loud cry.) “Take every shilling. Give
+me just enough to live, and to go and hide my head with this child, and
+to fly from both. Oh, they’ve both been bad, bad men. Perhaps he’s here
+now. Don’t let me see him. Clavering, you coward, defend me from him.”
+
+Clavering started up at this proposal. “You ain’t serious, Jemima? You
+don’t mean that?” he said. “You won’t throw me and Frank over? I didn’t
+know it, so help me ——. Foker, I’d no more idea of it than the
+dead—until the fellow came and found me out, the d——d escaped convict
+scoundrel.”
+
+“The what?” said Foker. Blanche gave a scream.
+
+“Yes,” screamed out the Baronet in his turn, “yes, a d——d runaway
+convict—a fellow that forged his father-in-law’s name—a d——d attorney,
+and killed a fellow in Botany Bay, hang him—and ran into the Bush,
+curse him; I wish he’d died there. And he came to me, a good six years
+ago, and robbed me; and I’ve been ruining myself to keep him, the
+infernal scoundrel! And Pendennis knows it, and Strong knows it, and
+that d——d Morgan knows it, and she knows it, ever so long; and I never
+would tell it, never: and I kept it from my wife.”
+
+“And you saw him, and you didn’t kill him, Clavering, you coward?” said
+the wife of Amory. “Come away, Frank; your father’s a coward. I am
+dishonoured, but I’m your old mother, and you’ll—you’ll love me, won’t
+you?”
+
+Blanche, eploree, went up to her mother; but Lady Clavering shrank from
+her with a sort of terror. “Don’t touch me,” she said; “you’ve no
+heart; you never had. I see all now. I see why that coward was going to
+give up his place in Parliament to Arthur; yes, that coward! and why
+you threatened that you would make me give you half Frank’s fortune.
+And when Arthur offered to marry you without a shilling, because he
+wouldn’t rob my boy, you left him, and you took poor Harry. Have
+nothing to do with her, Harry. You’re good, you are. Don’t marry
+that—that convict’s daughter. Come away, Frank, my darling; come to
+your poor old mother. We’ll hide ourselves; but we’re honest, yes, we
+are honest.”
+
+All this while a strange feeling of exultation had taken possession of
+Blanche’s mind. That month with poor Harry had been a weary month to
+her. All his fortune and splendour scarcely sufficed to make the idea
+of himself supportable. She was wearied of his simple ways, and sick of
+coaxing and cajoling him.
+
+“Stay, mamma; stay, madam!” she cried out, with a gesture which was
+always appropriate, though rather theatrical; “I have no heart, have I?
+I keep the secret of my mother’s shame. I give up my rights to my
+half-brother and my bastard brother, yes, my rights and my fortune. I
+don’t betray my father, and for this I have no heart. I’ll have my
+rights now, and the laws of my country shall give them to me. I appeal
+to my country’s laws—yes, my country’s laws! The persecuted one returns
+this day. I desire to go to my father.” And the little lady swept round
+her hand, and thought that she was a heroine.
+
+“You will, will you?” cried out Clavering, with one of his usual oaths.
+“I’m a magistrate, and dammy, I’ll commit him. Here’s a chaise coming;
+perhaps it’s him. Let him come.”
+
+A chaise was indeed coming up the avenue; and the two women shrieked
+each their loudest, expecting at that moment to see Altamont arrive.
+
+The door opened, and Mr. Morgan announced Major Pendennis and Mr.
+Pendennis, who entered, and found all parties engaged in this fierce
+quarrel. A large screen fenced the breakfast-room from the hall; and it
+is probable that, according to his custom, Mr. Morgan had taken
+advantage of the screen to make himself acquainted with all that
+occurred.
+
+It had been arranged on the previous day that the young people should
+ride; and at the appointed hour in the afternoon, Mr. Foker’s horses
+arrived from the Clavering Arms. But Miss Blanche did not accompany him
+on this occasion. Pen came out and shook hands with him on the
+door-steps; and Harry Foker rode away, followed by his groom in
+mourning. The whole transactions which have occupied the most active
+part of our history were debated by the parties concerned during those
+two or three hours. Many counsels had been given, stories told, and
+compromises suggested; and at the end, Harry Foker rode away, with a
+sad “God bless you!” from Pen. There was a dreary dinner at Clavering
+Park, at which the lately installed butler did not attend; and the
+ladies were both absent. After dinner, Pen said, “I will walk down to
+Clavering and see if he is come.” And he walked through the dark
+avenue, across the bridge and road by his own cottage,—the once quiet
+and familiar fields of which were flaming with the kilns and forges of
+the artificers employed on the new railroad works; and so he entered
+the town, and made for the Clavering Arms.
+
+It was past midnight when he returned to Clavering Park. He was
+exceedingly pale and agitated. “Is Lady Clavering up yet?” he asked.
+Yes, she was in her own sitting-room. He went up to her, and there
+found the poor lady in a piteous state of tears and agitation.
+
+“It is I,—Arthur,” he said, looking in; and entering, he took her hand
+very affectionately and kissed it. “You were always the kindest of
+friends to me, dear Lady Clavering,” he said. “I love you very much. I
+have got some news for you.”
+
+“Don’t call me by that name,” she said, pressing his hand. “You were
+always a good boy, Arthur; and it’s kind of you to come now,—very kind.
+You sometimes look very like your ma, my dear.”
+
+“Dear good Lady Clavering,” Arthur repeated, with particular emphasis,
+“something very strange has happened.”
+
+“Has anything happened to him?” gasped Lady Clavering. “Oh, it’s horrid
+to think I should be glad of it—horrid!”
+
+“He is well. He has been and is gone, my dear lady. Don’t alarm
+yourself;—he is gone, and you are Lady Clavering still.”
+
+“Is it true? what he sometimes said to me,” she screamed out,—“that
+he——”
+
+“He was married before he married you,” said Pen. “He has confessed it
+to-night. He will never come back.” There came another shriek from Lady
+Clavering, as she flung her arms round Pen, and kissed him, and burst
+into tears on his shoulder.
+
+What Pen had to tell, through a multiplicity of sobs and interruptions,
+must be compressed briefly, for behold our prescribed limit is reached,
+and our tale is coming to its end. With the Branch Coach from the
+railroad, which had succeeded the old Alacrity and Perseverance, Amory
+arrived, and was set down at the Clavering Arms. He ordered his dinner
+at the place under his assumed name of Altamont; and, being of a jovial
+turn, he welcomed the landlord, who was nothing loth, to a share of his
+wine. Having extracted from Mr. Lightfoot all the news regarding the
+family at the Park, and found, from examining his host, that Mrs.
+Lightfoot, as she said, had kept his counsel, he called for more wine
+of Mr. Lightfoot; and at the end of this symposium, both, being greatly
+excited, went into Mrs. Lightfoot’s bar.
+
+She was there taking tea with her friend, Madame Fribsby; and Lightfoot
+was by this time in such a happy state as not to be surprised at
+anything which might occur, so that, when Altamont shook hands with
+Mrs. Lightfoot as an old acquaintance, the recognition did not appear
+to him to be in the least strange, but only a reasonable cause for
+further drinking. The gentlemen partook then of brandy-and-water, which
+they offered to the ladies, not heeding the terrified looks of one or
+the other.
+
+Whilst they were so engaged, at about six o’clock in the evening, Mr.
+Morgan, Sir Francis Clavering’s new man, came in, and was requested to
+drink. He selected his favourite beverage, and the parties engaged in
+general conversation.
+
+After a while Mr. Lightfoot began to doze. Mr. Morgan had repeatedly
+given hints to Mrs. Fribsby to quit the premises; but that lady,
+strangely fascinated, and terrified it would seem, or persuaded by Mrs.
+Lightfoot not to go, kept her place. Her persistence occasioned much
+annoyance to Mr. Morgan, who vented his displeasure in such language as
+gave pain to Mrs. Lightfoot, and caused Mr. Altamont to say, that he
+was a rum customer, and not polite to the sex.
+
+The altercation between the two gentlemen became very painful to the
+women, especially to Mrs. Lightfoot, who did everything to soothe Mr.
+Morgan; and, under pretence of giving a pipe-light to the stranger, she
+handed him a paper on which she had privily written the words, “He
+knows you. Go.” There may have been something suspicious in her manner
+of handing, or in her guest’s of reading, the paper; for when he got up
+a short time afterwards, and said he would go to bed, Morgan rose too,
+with a laugh, and said it was too early to go to bed.
+
+The stranger then said he would go to his bedroom. Morgan said he would
+show him the way.
+
+At this the guest said, “Come up. I’ve got a brace of pistols up there
+to blow out the brains of any traitor or skulking spy,” and glared so
+fiercely upon Morgan, that the latter, seizing hold of Lightfoot by the
+collar, and waking him, said, “John Amory, I arrest you in the Queen’s
+name. Stand by me, Lightfoot. This capture is worth a thousand pounds.”
+
+He put forward his hand as if to seize his prisoner, but the other,
+doubling his fist, gave Morgan with his left hand so fierce a blow on
+the chest, that it knocked him back behind Mr. Lightfoot. That
+gentleman, who was athletic and courageous, said he would knock his
+guest’s head off, and prepared to do so, as the stranger, tearing off
+his coat, and cursing both of his opponents, roared to them to come on.
+
+But with a piercing scream Mrs. Lightfoot flung herself before her
+husband, whilst with another and louder shriek Madame Fribsby ran to
+the stranger, and calling out “Armstrong, Johnny Armstrong!” seized
+hold of his naked arm, on which a blue tattooing of a heart and M. F.
+were visible.
+
+The ejaculation of Madame Fribsby seemed to astound and sober the
+stranger. He looked down upon her, and cried out, “it’s Polly, by
+Jove.”
+
+Mrs. Fribsby continued to exclaim, “This is not Amory. This is Johnny
+Armstrong, my wicked—wicked husband, married to me in St. Martin’s
+Church, mate on board an Indiaman, and he left me two months after, the
+wicked wretch. This is John Armstrong—here’s the mark on his arm which
+he made for me.”
+
+The stranger said, “I am John Armstrong, sure enough, Polly. I’m John
+Armstrong, Amory, Altamont—and let ’em all come on, and try what they
+can do against a British sailor. Hurray, who’s for it?”
+
+Morgan still called out, “Arrest him!” But Mrs. Lightfoot said, “Arrest
+him! arrest you, you mean spy! What! stop the marriage and ruin my
+lady, and take away the Clavering Arms from us?”
+
+“Did he say he’d take away the Clavering Arms from us?” asked Mr.
+Lightfoot, turning round. “Hang him, I’ll throttle him.”
+
+“Keep him, darling, till the coach passes to the up train. It’ll be
+here now directly.”
+
+“D—— him, I’ll choke him if he stirs,” said Lightfoot. And so they kept
+Morgan until the coach came, and Mr. Amory or Armstrong went away back
+to London.
+
+Morgan had followed him: but of this event Arthur Pendennis did not
+inform Lady Clavering, and left her invoking blessings upon him at her
+son’s door, going to kiss him as he was asleep. It had been a busy day.
+
+We have to chronicle the events of but one day more, and that was a day
+when Mr. Arthur, attired in a new hat, a new blue frock-coat and blue
+handkerchief, in a new fancy waistcoat, new boots, and new shirt-studs
+(presented by the Right Honourable the Countess Dowager of
+Rockminster), made his appearance at a solitary breakfast-table, in
+Clavering Park, where he could scarce eat a single morsel of food. Two
+letters were laid by his worship’s plate; and he chose to open the
+first, which was in a round clerk-like hand, in preference to the
+second more familiar superscription.
+
+Note 1 ran as follows:—
+
+“Garbanzos Wine Company, Shepherd’s Inn.—Monday.
+
+“My Dear Pendennis,—In congratulating you heartily upon the event which
+is to make you happy for life, I send my very kindest remembrances to
+Mrs. Pendennis, whom I hope to know even longer than I have already
+known her. And when I call her attention to the fact, that one of the
+most necessary articles to her husband’s comfort is pure sherry, I know
+I shall have her for a customer for your worship’s sake.
+
+“But I have to speak to you of other than my own concerns. Yesterday
+afternoon, a certain J. A. arrived at my chambers from Clavering, which
+he had left under circumstances of which you are doubtless now aware.
+In spite of our difference, I could not but give him food and shelter
+(and he partook freely both of the Garbanzos Amontillado and the Toboso
+ham), and he told me what had happened to him, and many other
+surprising adventures. The rascal married at sixteen, and has
+repeatedly since performed that ceremony—in Sydney, in New Zealand, in
+South America, in Newcastle, he says, first, before he knew our poor
+friend the milliner. He is a perfect Don Juan.
+
+“And it seemed as if the commendatore had at last overtaken him, for,
+as we were at our meal, there came three heavy knocks at my outer door,
+which made our friend start. I have sustained a siege or two here, and
+went to my usual place to reconnoitre. Thank my stars I have not a bill
+out in the world, and besides, those gentry do not come in that way. I
+found that it was your uncle’s late valet, Morgan, and a policeman (I
+think a sham policeman), and they said they had a warrant to take the
+person of John Armstrong, alias Amory, alias Altamont, a runaway
+convict, and threatened to break in the oak.
+
+“Now, sir, in my own days of captivity I had discovered a little
+passage along the gutter into Bows and Costigan’s window, and I sent
+Jack Alias along this covered way, not without terror of his life, for
+it had grown very cranky; and then, after a parley, let in Mons. Morgan
+and friend.
+
+“The rascal had been instructed about that covered way, for he made for
+the room instantly, telling the policeman to go downstairs and keep the
+gate; and he charged up my little staircase as if he had known the
+premises. As he was going out of the window we heard a voice that you
+know, from Bows’s garret, saying, ‘Who are ye, and hwhat the divvle are
+ye at? You’d betther leave the gutther; bedad there’s a man killed
+himself already.’
+
+“And as Morgan, crossing over and looking into the darkness, was trying
+to see whether this awful news was true, he took a broomstick, and with
+a vigorous dash broke down the pipe of communication—and told me this
+morning, with great glee, that he was reminded of that ’aisy sthratagem
+by remembering his dorling Emilie, when she acted the pawrt of Cora in
+the Plee—and by the bridge in Pezawro, bedad.’ I wish that scoundrel
+Morgan had been on the bridge when the General tried his ‘sthratagem.’
+
+“If I hear more of Jack Alias I will tell you. He has got plenty of
+money still, and I wanted him to send some to our poor friend the
+milliner; but the scoundrel laughed, and said he had no more than he
+wanted, but offered to give anybody a lock of his hair. Farewell—be
+happy! and believe me always truly yours, E. Strong.”
+
+“And now for the other letter,” said Pen. “Dear old fellow!” and he
+kissed the seal before he broke it.
+
+“Warrington, Tuesday.
+
+“I must not let the day pass over without saying a God bless you, to
+both of you. May Heaven make you happy, dear Arthur, and dear Laura. I
+think, Pen, that you have the best wife in the world; and pray that, as
+such, you will cherish her and tend her. The chambers will be lonely
+without you, dear Pen; but if I am tired, I shall have a new home to go
+to in the house of my brother and sister. I am practising in the
+nursery here, in order to prepare for the part of Uncle George.
+Farewell! make your wedding tour, and come back to your affectionate G.
+W.”
+
+Pendennis and his wife read this letter together after Doctor Portman’s
+breakfast was over, and the guests were gone; and when the carriage was
+waiting amidst the crowd at the Doctor’s outer gate. But the wicket led
+into the churchyard of St. Mary’s, where the bells were pealing with
+all their might, and it was here, over Helen’s green grass, that Arthur
+showed his wife George’s letter. For which of those two—for grief was
+it or for happiness, that Laura’s tears abundantly fell on the paper?
+And once more, in the presence of the sacred dust, she kissed and
+blessed her Arthur.
+
+There was only one marriage on that day at Clavering Church; for in
+spite of Blanche’s sacrifices for her dearest mother, honest Harry
+Foker could not pardon the woman who had deceived her husband, and
+justly argued that she would deceive him again. He went to the Pyramids
+and Syria, and there left his malady behind him, and returned with a
+fine beard, and a supply of tarbooshes and nargillies, with which he
+regales all his friends. He lives splendidly, and, through Pen’s
+mediation, gets his wine from the celebrated vintages of the Duke of
+Garbanzos.
+
+As for poor Cos, his fate has been mentioned in an early part of this
+story. No very glorious end could be expected to such a career. Morgan
+is one of the most respectable men in the parish of St. James’s, and in
+the present political movement has pronounced himself like a man and a
+Briton. And Bows,—on the demise of Mr. Piper, who played the organ at
+Clavering, little Mrs. Sam Hunter, who has the entire command of Doctor
+Portman, brought Bows down from London to contest the organ-loft, and
+her candidate carried the chair. When Sir Francis Clavering quitted
+this worthless life, the same little indefatigable canvasser took the
+borough by storm, and it is now represented by Arthur Pendennis, Esq.
+Blanche Amory, it is well known, married at Paris, and the saloons of
+Madame la Comtesse de Montmorenci de Valentinois were amongst the most
+suivis of that capital. The duel between the Count and the young and
+fiery Representative of the Mountain, Alcide de Mirobo, arose solely
+from the latter questioning at the Club the titles borne by the former
+nobleman. Madame de Montmorenci de Valentinois travelled after the
+adventure: and Bungay bought her poems, and published them, with the
+Countess’s coronet emblazoned on the Countess’s work.
+
+Major Pendennis became very serious in his last days, and was never so
+happy as when Laura was reading to him with her sweet voice, or
+listening to his stories. For this sweet lady is the friend of the
+young and the old: and her life is always passed in making other lives
+happy.
+
+“And what sort of a husband would this Pendennis be?” many a reader
+will ask, doubting the happiness of such a marriage and the fortune of
+Laura. The querists, if they meet her, are referred to that lady
+herself, who, seeing his faults and wayward moods—seeing and owning
+that there are men better than he—loves him always with the most
+constant affection. His children or their mother have never heard a
+harsh word from him; and when his fits of moodiness and solitude are
+over, welcome him back with a never-failing regard and confidence. His
+friend is his friend still,—entirely heart-whole. That malady is never
+fatal to a sound organ. And George goes through his part of godpapa
+perfectly, and lives alone. If Mr. Pen’s works have procured him more
+reputation than has been acquired by his abler friend, whom no one
+knows, George lives contented without the fame. If the best men do not
+draw the great prizes in life, we know it has been so settled by the
+Ordainer of the lottery. We own, and see daily, how the false and
+worthless live and prosper, while the good are called away, and the
+dear and young perish untimely,—we perceive in every man’s life the
+maimed happiness, the frequent falling, the bootless endeavour, the
+struggle of Right and Wrong, in which the strong often succumb and the
+swift fail: we see flowers of good blooming in foul places, as, in the
+most lofty and splendid fortunes, flaws of vice and meanness, and
+stains of evil; and, knowing how mean the best of us is, let us give a
+hand of charity to Arthur Pendennis, with all his faults and
+shortcomings, who does not claim to be a hero, but only a man and a
+brother.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS ***
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