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diff --git a/7265-h/7265-h.htm b/7265-h/7265-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a96ac21 --- /dev/null +++ b/7265-h/7265-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,42568 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The History of Pendennis, by William Makepeace Thackeray</title> + +<style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +p.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.right {text-align: right; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> +</head> +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The History of Pendennis, by William Makepeace Thackeray</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. 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. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The History of Pendennis<br /> + His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: William Makepeace Thackeray</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April 3, 2003 [eBook #7265]<br /> +[Most recently updated: September 24, 2021]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Tapio Riikonen and David Widger</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS ***</div> + +<h1>THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS</h1> + +<h3>His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy</h3> + +<h2 class="no-break">By William Makepeace Thackeray</h2> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#pref01">PREFACE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I. Shows how First Love may interrupt Breakfast</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II. A Pedigree and other Family Matters</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III. In which Pendennis appears as a very young Man indeed</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV. Mrs. Haller</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V. Mrs. Haller at Home</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI. Contains both Love and War</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII. In which the Major makes his Appearance</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII. In which Pen is kept waiting at the Door, while the Reader is informed who little Laura was.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX. In which the Major opens the Campaign</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X. Facing the Enemy</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI. Negotiation</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII. In which a Shooting Match is proposed</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII. A Crisis</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV. In which Miss Fotheringay makes a new Engagement</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV. The happy Village</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI. More Storms in the Puddle</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII. Which concludes the first Part of this History</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII. Alma Mater</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX. Pendennis of Boniface</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap20">CHAPTER XX. Rake’s Progress</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI. Flight after Defeat</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII. Prodigal’s Return</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII. New Faces</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV. A Little Innocent</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV. Contains both Love and Jealousy</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI. A House full of Visitors</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap27">CHAPTER XXVII. Contains some Ball-practising</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap28">CHAPTER XXVIII. Which is both Quarrelsome and Sentimental</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap29">CHAPTER XXIX. Babylon</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap30">CHAPTER XXX. The Knights of the Temple</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap31">CHAPTER XXXI. Old and new Acquaintances</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap32">CHAPTER XXXII. In which the Printer’s Devil comes to the Door</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap33">CHAPTER XXXIII. Which is passed in the Neighbourhood of Ludgate Hill</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap34">CHAPTER XXXIV. In which the History still hovers about Fleet Street</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap35">CHAPTER XXXV. Dinner in the Row</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap36">CHAPTER XXXVI. The Pall Mall Gazette</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap37">CHAPTER XXXVII. Where Pen appears in Town and Country</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap38">CHAPTER XXXVIII. In which the Sylph reappears</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap39">CHAPTER XXXIX. In which Colonel Altamont appears and disappears</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap40">CHAPTER XL. Relates to Mr. Harry Foker’s Affairs</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap41">CHAPTER XLI. Carries the Reader both to Richmond and Greenwich</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap42">CHAPTER XLII. Contains a novel Incident</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap43">CHAPTER XLIII. Alsatia</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap44">CHAPTER XLIV. In which the Colonel narrates some of his Adventures</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap45">CHAPTER XLV. A Chapter of Conversations</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap46">CHAPTER XLVI. Miss Amory’s Partners</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap47">CHAPTER XLVII. Monseigneur s’amuse</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap48">CHAPTER XLVIII. A Visit of Politeness</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap49">CHAPTER XLIX. In Shepherd’s Inn</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap50">CHAPTER L. In or near the Temple Garden</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap51">CHAPTER LI. The happy Village again</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap52">CHAPTER LII. Which had very nearly been the last of the Story</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap53">CHAPTER LIII. A critical Chapter</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap54">CHAPTER LIV. Convalescence</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap55">CHAPTER LV. Fanny’s Occupation’s gone</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap56">CHAPTER LVI. In which Fanny engages a new Medical Man</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap57">CHAPTER LVII. Foreign Ground</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap58">CHAPTER LVIII. “Fairoaks to let”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap59">CHAPTER LIX. Old Friends</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap60">CHAPTER LX. Explanations</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap61">CHAPTER LXI. Conversations</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap62">CHAPTER LXII. The Way of the World</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap63">CHAPTER LXIII. Which accounts perhaps for Chapter LXI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap64">CHAPTER LXIV. Phyllis and Corydon</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap65">CHAPTER LXV. Temptation</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap66">CHAPTER LXVI. In which Pen begins his Canvass</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap67">CHAPTER LXVII. In which Pen begins to doubt about his Election</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap68">CHAPTER LXVIII. In which the Major is bidden to Stand and Deliver</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap69">CHAPTER LXIX. In which the Major neither yields his Money nor his Life</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap70">CHAPTER LXX. In which Pendennis counts his Eggs</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap71">CHAPTER LXXI. Fiat Justitia</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap72">CHAPTER LXXII. In which the Decks begin to clear</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap73">CHAPTER LXXIII. Mr. and Mrs. Sam Huxter</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap74">CHAPTER LXXIV. Shows how Arthur had better have taken a Return-ticket</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap75">CHAPTER LXXV. A Chapter of Match-making</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap76">CHAPTER LXXVI. Exeunt Omnes</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="center"> +TO DR. JOHN ELLIOTSON +</p> + +<p> +My Dear Doctor, +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And as you would take no other fee but thanks, let me record them here in +behalf of me and mine, and subscribe myself +</p> + +<p class="right"> +Yours most sincerely and gratefully, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +W. M. THACKERAY. +</p> + +<hr /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="pref01"></a>PREFACE</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 M<small>AN</small>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +K<small>ENSINGTON</small>, Nov. 26th, 1850. +</p> + +<hr /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>PENDENNIS</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.<br/> +Shows how First Love may interrupt Breakfast</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>en retraite</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it a letter from another <i>Jook</i>,” growled Mr. Glowry, +inwardly, “Pendennis would not be leaving that to the last, I’m +thinking.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Major Pendennis,” the letter ran, “I beg and implore +you to come to me <i>immediately</i>”—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 <i>dreadfully</i>. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +The epistle ran thus: +</p> + +<p class="right"> +“F<small>AIROAKS</small>, <i>Monday, Midnight</i>. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“M<small>Y DEAR</small> U<small>NCLE</small>, +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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, <i>qui mores +hominum multorum vidit et urbes</i>, who will not feel any of the weak scruples +and fears which agitate a lady who has scarcely ever left her village. +</p> + +<p> +“Pray, come down to us immediately. I am quite confident that—apart +from considerations of fortune—you will admire and approve of my +Emily. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +“Your affectionate Nephew,<br/> +“A<small>RTHUR</small> P<small>ENDENNIS</small>, J<small>R</small>.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.<br/> +A Pedigree and other Family Matters</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>and</i>, instead of δε <i>but</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the Major, “but your father’s very ill. Go +and pack your trunk directly; I have got a postchaise at the gate.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s no other son, is there?” said the Doctor. The Major +answered “No.” +</p> + +<p> +“And there’s a good eh—a good eh—property I +believe?” asked the other in an off-hand way. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.<br/> +In which Pendennis appears as a very young Man indeed</h2> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Left that place for good, Pendennis?” Mr. Foker said, descending +from his landau and giving Pendennis a finger. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, this year—or more,” Pen said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all,” said Pen, with an air of the utmost consequence. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you stopping at Baymouth, Foker?” Pendennis asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m coaching there,” said the other, with a nod. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I came up on Bishop’s business,” the Doctor said. +“We’ll ride home, Arthur, if you like?” +</p> + +<p> +“I—I’m engaged to my friend here,” Pen answered. +</p> + +<p> +“You had better come home with me,” said the Doctor. +</p> + +<p> +“His mother knows he’s out, sir,” Mr. Foker remarked; +“don’t she, Pendennis?” +</p> + +<p> +“But that does not prove that he had not better come home with me,” +the Doctor growled, and he walked off with great dignity. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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—-” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br/> +Mrs. Haller</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +As he lay on the bank reading, his servant, Francis, made remarks upon his +master. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +[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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.) +</p> + +<p> +Francis. “Hope is the nurse of life.” +</p> + +<p> +Bingley. “And her cradle—is the grave.” +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Hush!” Pen said, “she’s speaking.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“She is a crusher, ain’t she now!” Mr. Foker asked of his +companion. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.<br/> +Mrs. Haller at Home</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Hullo!” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“The man we met yesterday,” said Pen, all in a tremor, “the +father of—-” +</p> + +<p> +“Of the Fotheringay,—the very man. Ain’t she a Venus, +Pen?” +</p> + +<p> +“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—-” +</p> + +<p> +“How much is it now?” +</p> + +<p> +“One, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“There cannot be a more honourable duty, surely,” Pen said. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is very fine weather,” Miss Fotheringay said, in an Irish +accent, and with a deep rich melancholy voice. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And very warm,” continued this empress and Queen of Sheba. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr—-the gentleman’s very obleging,” said Mrs. Haller. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I never knew the name was so pretty before,” Pen said. +</p> + +<p> +“’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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t take the leading business then,” Miss Fotheringay +said modestly; “I wasn’t fit for’t till Bows taught +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Sure, I’ve made a pie,” Emily said, with perfect simplicity. +She pronounced it “Poy.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“’Deed then I don’t know, Milly dear,” answered the +Captain. “We’ll ask Bows when he comes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Anyhow, he’s a nice, fair-spoken pretty young man,” the lady +said: “how many tickets did he take of you?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And Mrs. Haller?” said Mrs. Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +“She’s a stunner, ma’am,” Pen said, laughing, and using +the words of his revered friend, Mr. Foker. +</p> + +<p> +“A what, Arthur?” asked the lady. +</p> + +<p> +“What is a stunner, Arthur?” cried Laura, in the same voice. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br/> +Contains both Love and War</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Who is that odd-looking person bowing to you, Arthur?” Mrs. +Pendennis asked of her son. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“’Deed then, I think you do,” said Miss Costigan, perhaps +with a sort of pity for Pen. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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— +</p> + +<p> +“I say, ma! look up there”—and he waggled his innocent head. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Pen saw at once that there was a crisis, and that there had been a discovery. +“Now for it,” he thought. +</p> + +<p> +“Where have you been, Arthur?” Helen said in a trembling voice. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Sir!” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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—-” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Lady, sir,” cried the Doctor, “that a +lady—you—you—you stand in your mother’s presence and +call that—that woman a lady!—-” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Drunken old reprobate,” growled the Doctor, but Pen did not hear +or heed. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Pen put on his most princely air. “What else, Dr. Portman,” he +said, “do you suppose would be my desire?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br/> +In which the Major makes his Appearance</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She ran up and put her hand into his. “Come in, Pen,” she said, +“there’s somebody come; uncle Arthur’s come.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +She blushed and was moved in the usual manner of females. “I am thinking +that he is very unhappy—and I am too——” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br/> +In which Pen is kept waiting at the Door, while the Reader is informed who +little Laura was.</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And now let Mr. Pen come in, who has been waiting all this while. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You know what I have is his,” cried out Mrs. Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know my mother will give me anything,” Pen said, looking rather +disturbed. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll die, I say, rather than forfeit my pledge to her,” said +Pen, doubling his fists and turning red. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, of course,” Pen said, feeling rather relieved. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, as you have pledged your word to her, give us another, will you +Arthur?” +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” Arthur asked. +</p> + +<p> +“That you will make no private marriage—that you won’t be +taking a trip to Scotland, you understand.” +</p> + +<p> +“That would be a falsehood. Pen never told his mother a falsehood,” +Helen said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s an angel—he’s an angel,” the mother cried +out in one of her usual raptures. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Arthur would never have done so,” Mrs. Pendennis said. +</p> + +<p> +“He hasn’t,—that is one comfort,” answered the +brother-in-law. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +Pen blushed and said, “Why, yes, he had written.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Pen blushed again, and said, “Why, yes, he had written verses.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br/> +In which the Major opens the Campaign</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X.<br/> +Facing the Enemy</h2> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What, is Mr. Arthur here?” the Major said, in great anger. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sir, you do me proud,” said Mr. Foker, with much courtesy. +“And so you are Arthur Pendennis’s uncle, are you?” +</p> + +<p> +“And guardian,” added the Major. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s as good a fellow as ever stepped, sir,” said Mr. Foker. +</p> + +<p> +“I am glad you think so.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“What! you know it too?” asked the Major. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“The young one is making the money spin, I can tell you,” Mr. Foker +said. +</p> + +<p> +“And is Sir Derby Oaks,” the Major said, with great delight and +anxiety, “another soupirant?” +</p> + +<p> +“Another what?” inquired Mr. Foker. +</p> + +<p> +“Another admirer of Miss Fotheringay?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think you seem tolerably wide-awake, too, Mr. Foker, Pendennis said, +laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Rouncy, I gather, was the confidante of the other.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“She can write,” said the Major, remembering Pen’s +breast-pocket. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you know it pretty well,” said the Major archly upon +which Mr. Foker winked at him again. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.’” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Love, indeed!” Foker said. “If Pen hadn’t two thousand +a year when he came of age——” +</p> + +<p> +“If Pen hadn’t what?” cried out the Major in astonishment. +</p> + +<p> +“Two thousand a year: hasn’t he got two thousand a year?—the +General says he has.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What! he ain’t rich then?” Foker asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Upon my honour he has no more than what I say.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you ain’t going to leave him anything?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m going to fight the dragon,” he said, with a laugh, to +Doctor Portman. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s Sir Derby Oaks taking his fencing lesson,” said the +child, who piloted Major Pendennis. “He takes it Mondays, Wednesdays, and +Fridays.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Pendennis made him a deferential bow. “I believe I have the honour of +speaking to Captain Costigan—My name is Major Pendennis.” +</p> + +<p> +The Captain brought his weapon up to the salute, and said, “Major, the +honer is moine; I’m deloighted to see ye.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br/> +Negotiation</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I needn’t apologoise to ye, Meejor,” he said, in his richest +and most courteous manner, “for receiving ye in me shirt-sleeves.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What, ye’ve heard of Jack Costigan, Major,” said the other, +greatly. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“There was two Mahers in Crow Street,” remarked Miss Emily; +“Fanny was well enough, but Biddy was no great things.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sure, the Major means the god of war, Milly, my dear,” interposed +the parent. +</p> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am very fond of flowers,” said Miss Fotheringay, with a +languishing ogle at Sir Derby Oaks—but the Baronet still scowled sulkily. +</p> + +<p> +“Sweets to the sweet—isn’t that the expression of the +play?” Mr. Pendennis asked, bent upon being good-humoured. +</p> + +<p> +“’Pon my life, I don’t know. Very likely it is. I ain’t +much of a literary man,” answered Sir Derby. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed,” said the other, and gave a sulky wag of his head. +</p> + +<p> +“He saved my life,” continued Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“A perfect champion,” said the Major, laughing. “I have no +doubt all the ladies admire him.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s very well, in spite of his weight, now he’s +young,” said Milly; “but he’s no conversation.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“She keeps the keys of the cellar, Major,” said Mr. Costigan, as +the girl left the room. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And no better man, Major, I’m sure,” cried Jack enraptured. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Your sentiments do you honour,” the other said. “But, +Captain Costigan, I can’t help smiling at one thing you have just +said.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what’s that, sir?” asked Jack, who was at a too heroic +and sentimental pitch to descend from it. +</p> + +<p> +“You were speaking about our splendid mansion—my sister’s +house, I mean.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have consented to waive that objection, sir,” said Costigan +majestically, “in consideration of the known respectability of your +family.” +</p> + +<p> +“Curse your impudence,” thought the Major; but he only smiled and +bowed. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Funded property, I’ve no doubt, Meejor, and something handsome +eventually from yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Captain Costigan—I give you my word that my brother did +not leave a shilling to his son Arthur.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are ye joking with me, Meejor Pendennis?” cried Jack Costigan. +“Are ye thrifling with the feelings of a father and a gentleman?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Costigan!” cried out the Major. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“You have described my intentions with perfect accuracy, Meejor +Pendennis,” answered the Captain, as he pulled his ragged whiskers over +his chin. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have my own opinion of the correctness of that assertion,” said +the Captain. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you go to my sister’s lawyers, Messrs. Tatham here, and +satisfy yourself?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I have not said mine, Major Pendennis—and ye shall hear more +from me,” Mr. Costigan said, with a look of tremendous severity. +</p> + +<p> +“’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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br/> +In which a Shooting Match is proposed</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +In a score of minutes Garbetts came back with an anxious and crestfallen +countenance. +</p> + +<p> +“Ye’ve seen ’um?” the Captain said. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, yes,” said Garbetts. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“When is what for?” asked Mr. Garbetts. +</p> + +<p> +“The meeting, my dear fellow?” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t mean to say, you mean mortal combat, Captain,” +Garbetts said, aghast. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Ye don’t mean to say ye saw ’um and didn’t give +’um the letter?” cried out the Captain in a fury. +</p> + +<p> +“I saw him, but I could not have speech with him, Captain,” said +Mr. Garbetts. +</p> + +<p> +“And why the devil not?” asked the other. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“The cowardly scoundthrel!” roared Costigan. “He’s +frightened, and already going to swear the peace against me.” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Ye’re tipsy again, Papa,” Miss Fotheringay said, pushing +back her sire. “Ye promised me ye wouldn’t take spirits before +dinner.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought he meant mischief. He was so uncommon civil,” the other +said. “What has he come to say?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is it? What has happened?” said Mr. Bows, growing rather +excited. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean, General?” said Bows. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“He! pooh! Sure the poor lad’s as simple as a schoolboy,” she +said. “All them children write verses and nonsense.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What has the poor fellow done, Papa?” asked Emily. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“That soft old gentleman? What has he been doing, Papa?” continued +Emily, still imperturbable. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why did the villain say he was a man of prawpertee?” asked +Costigan. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Bedad, you may send somebody else with the message,” said Bows, +laughing. “I’m a fiddler, not a fighting man, Captain.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s others that likes me as well, Bows, that has no money and +that’s old enough,” Miss Milly said sententiously. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, d—— it,” said Bows, with a bitter +curse—“that are old enough and poor enough and fools enough for +anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And the boy?” said Mr. Bows. “By Jove! you throw a man away +like an old glove, Miss Costigan.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“’Deed, then, you would not, Milly dear,” answered the +father. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“—As Croesus,” said Mr. Bows. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And there will be no noses pulled, Cos, my boy? I’m sorry +you’re baulked,” said Mr. Bows. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Wigsby would give a hundred pound for ’em,” Bows said, with +a sneer. +</p> + +<p> +“’Deed, then, he would,” said Captain Costigan, who was +easily led. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.<br/> +A Crisis</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t mean that Irishman, the actress’s father?” +cried Mr. Tatham, who was a dissenter himself, and did not patronise the drama. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Hullo, Garbetts, speak up!” cried Mr. Foker, delighted. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Costigan then was absent, but Miss Fotheringay was at home washing the tea-cups +whilst Mr. Bows sate opposite to her. +</p> + +<p> +“Just done breakfast I see—how do?” said Mr. Foker, popping +in his little funny head. +</p> + +<p> +“Get out, you funny little man,” cried Miss Fotheringay. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed he’s a nice poor boy,” said the Fotheringay rather +sadly. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“So she may be Mrs. Pendennis still,” Bows said with a +sneer—“No, thank you, Mr. F.—I’ve dined.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sure, that was at three o’clock,” said Miss Costigan, who +had an honest appetite, “and I can’t go without you.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” said Mr. Foker: and they parted with mutual esteem. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” she said nervously. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“It comes under her father’s envelope,” the Major said. +“Those letters you had before were not in her hand: that is hers.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know?” said Pen very fiercely. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I will know from herself if it is true,” Arthur said, crumpling up +the paper. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Arthur!” appealed his mother. +</p> + +<p> +“I will see her,” said Arthur. “I’ll ask her to marry +me, once more. I will. No one shall prevent me.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.<br/> +In which Miss Fotheringay makes a new Engagement</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Then having concluded his applause, Mr. Dolphin gave his secretary a slap on +the shoulder, and said, “By Jove, Billy, she’ll do!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“The secret is out,” said Mr. Wenham, “there’s a woman +in the case.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, d—— it, Wenham, he’s your age,” said the +gentleman behind the curtain. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a clear case,” said Mr. Wenham, having read this +letter; “old Pendennis is in love.” +</p> + +<p> +“And wants to get the woman up to London—evidently,” +continued Mr. Wagg. +</p> + +<p> +“I should like to see Pendennis on his knees, with the rheumatism,” +said Mr. Wenham. +</p> + +<p> +“Or accommodating the beloved object with a lock of his hair,” said +Wagg. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you do?” said Pen, interested out of himself, and wondering at +the crabbed homely little old man. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV.<br/> +The happy Village</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And so he sent you with the answer—did he, sir?” Mr. Foker +said, surveying the Schoolmaster in his black coat and clerical costume. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI.<br/> +More Storms in the Puddle</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is extremely wicked, and unlike my son,” said Mrs. Pendennis, +with tears in her eyes, and bewildered with the obstinacy of the boy. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s been there every day, in the most open manner, my +dear,” continued Mrs. Speers. +</p> + +<p> +“Enough to make poor Mr. Pendennis turn in his grave,” said Mrs. +Wapshot. +</p> + +<p> +“She never liked him, that we know,” says No. 1. +</p> + +<p> +“Married him for his money. Everybody knows that: was a penniless +hanger-on of Lady Pontypool’s,” says No. 2. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s rather too open, though, to encourage a lover under pretence +of having a tutor for your son,” cried No. 3. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“She is much too old for Mr. Smirke,” Mrs. Portman remarked: +“why, poor dear Mrs. Pendennis might be his mother almost.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You only think men should marry again, Doctor Portman,” answered +his lady, bridling up. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Hadn’t you better speak to Mr. Smirke, John?” Mrs Portman +asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Against whom I always warned you,—you know I did, my dear +John,” interposed Mrs. Portman. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“What is it, my dear John!—of course I won’t,” answered +the Rector’s lady. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“O gracilis puer,”—cried the Doctor.—“Whither are +you bound? I wanted you to come home to dinner.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII.<br/> +Which concludes the first Part of this History</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And on whom is it that Mr. Smirke has bestowed his heart?” asked +Mrs. Pendennis, with a superb air but rather an inward alarm. +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“’Pon my soul, it is a little too much,” the Major said, +laying down the newspaper and the double eye-glass. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve no patience with that Mrs. Pybus,” Helen continued +indignantly. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I always thought the fellow was looking in another direction,” +said the Major. +</p> + +<p> +“And in what?” asked Mrs. Pendennis quite +innocently,—“towards Myra Portman?” +</p> + +<p> +“Towards Helen Pendennis, if you must know,” answered her +brother-in-law. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“You—you are taking too much wine, Arthur,” Mr. Smirke said +softly—“you are exciting yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” said Smirke—and his beautiful cambric shirt front and +glistening studs heaved with the emotion which agitated his gentle and +suffering bosom. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you say so?” Smirke said, all of a tremble. “Do you +really say so, Arthur?” +</p> + +<p> +“Say so; of course, I say so. Down with it. Here’s Mrs. +Smirke’s good health: Hip, hip, hurray!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I accept the omen,” gasped out the blushing Curate. “Oh my +dear Arthur, you—you know her——” +</p> + +<p> +“What—Myra Portman? I wish you joy; she’s got a +dev’lish large waist; but I wish you joy, old fellow.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Arthur!” groaned the Curate again, and nodded his head, +speechless. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not Miss Portman,” the other said, in a voice of agony. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Pen burst out laughing. “It’s Madame Fribsby; by Jove, it’s +Madame Fribsby. Madame Frib. by the immortal Gods!” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What the deuce do you mean?—and what have I to do with your +money?” cried out Pen, in a puzzle. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you find that any objection?” cried Smirke piteously, and +alluding, of course, to the elderly subject of Pen’s own passion. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you mean, dear Arthur?” the Curate interposed sadly, +cowering as he felt that his sentence was about to be read. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Hicks, Croupier, in a brilliant and energetic manner, proposed Miss +Fotheringay’s health. +</p> + +<p> +Captain Costigan returned thanks in a speech full of feeling and eloquence. +</p> + +<p> +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.) +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.<br/> +Alma Mater</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX.<br/> +Pendennis of Boniface</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX.<br/> +Rake’s Progress</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap21"></a>CHAPTER XXI.<br/> +Flight after Defeat</h2> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m going where I deserve to go,” said Pen, with an +imprecation. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Gammon,” said Mr. Spavin. “This ain’t the way to town; +this is the Fenbury road, I tell you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I was just going to turn back,” Pen said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I want to see my uncle,” he cried, in a ghastly voice, and flung +himself down on a chair. +</p> + +<p> +Morgan backed before the pale and desperate-looking young man, with terrified +and wondering glances, and disappeared in his master’s apartment. +</p> + +<p> +The Major put his head out of the bedroom door, as soon as he had his wig on. +</p> + +<p> +“What? examination over? Senior Wrangler, double First Class, hay? said +the old gentleman—I’ll come directly;” and the head +disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +“They don’t know what has happened,” groaned Pen; “what +will they say when they know all?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll see it in the papers at breakfast, sir,” Pen said. +</p> + +<p> +“See what?” +</p> + +<p> +“My name isn’t there, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hang it, why should it be?” asked the Major, more perplexed. +</p> + +<p> +“I have lost everything, sir,” Pen groaned out; “my +honour’s gone; I’m ruined irretrievably; I can’t go back to +Oxbridge.” +</p> + +<p> +“Lost your honour?” screamed out the Major. “Heaven alive! +you don’t mean to say you have shown the white feather?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I couldn’t help it, sir. I did my classical papers well enough: it +was those infernal mathematics, which I have always neglected.” +</p> + +<p> +“Was it—was it done in public, sir?” the Major said. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +“The—the plucking?” asked the guardian, looking Pen anxiously +in the face. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<table summary="" style="margin-left: 3em"> + +<tr> <td>London Tailor.</td><td>Oxbridge do.</td> </tr> + +<tr> <td>Oxbridge do. </td><td>Bill for horses.</td> </tr> + +<tr> <td>Haberdasher, for shirts and gloves.</td><td>Printseller.</td> </tr> + +<tr> <td>Jeweller.</td><td>Books.</td> </tr> + +<tr> <td>College Cook.</td><td>Binding.</td> </tr> + +<tr> <td>Grump, for desserts.</td><td>Hairdresser and Perfumery.</td> </tr> + +<tr> <td>Bootmaker.</td><td>Hotel bill in London.</td> </tr> + +<tr> <td>Wine Merchant in London.</td><td>Sundries.</td> </tr> + +</table> <p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap22"></a>CHAPTER XXII.<br/> +Prodigal’s Return</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap23"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.<br/> +New Faces</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +And he pointed his hand towards the pale, languid gentleman who said, +“Don’t be an ass, Ned.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“O indeed,” said the Baronet “Gad, Ned, you know +everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I recollect my old governor caning me in that little room,” Sir +Francis said sententiously; “he always hated me, my old governor.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Helen cried out, “Don’t talk nonsense, Laura.” Pen laughed, +and said, “Well, there is the young Sir Francis for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And Miss Amory?” Laura asked. Laura was uncommonly curious about +Miss Amory. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hate clever women,” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But we are advancing matters in the fulness of our love and respect for +Monsieur Mirobolant, and bringing him prematurely on the stage. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Bell laughed and said, “The little boy had not given a particularly +good example.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“It is very wrong,” said Mrs. Pendennis, as if she had never done +such a thing herself as spoil a child. +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma says she spoils my brother,—do you think anything could, +Miss Bell? Look at him,—isn’t he like a little angel?” +</p> + +<p> +“Gad, I was quite wight,” said the Baronet. “He has cwied, +and he has got it, you see. Go it, Fwank, old boy.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you,” said Miss Bell, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Laura said “No!” but perhaps blushed a little at the idea or the +question, so that the other said,— +</p> + +<p> +“Ah Laura! I see it all. It is the beau cousin. Tell me everything. I +already love you as a sister.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are very kind,” said Miss Bell, smiling, “and—and +it must be owned that it is a very sudden attachment.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not yet,” said Laura; “but—I daresay I shall if I +try.” +</p> + +<p> +“Call me by my name, then.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I don’t know it,” Laura cried out. +</p> + +<p> +“My name is Blanche—isn’t it a pretty name? Call me by +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Blanche—it is very pretty, indeed.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap24"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.<br/> +A Little Innocent</h2> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“And gad, Strong, I hate her worse and worse every day. I can’t +stand her, Strong, by gad, I can’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wouldn’t take her at twice the figure,” Captain Strong +said, laughing. “I never saw such a little devil in my life.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should like to poison her,” said the sententious Baronet; +“by Jove I should.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, what has she been at now?” asked his friend. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What did Missy do to her?” Strong asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what did she say about you, Frank?” Mr. Strong, still +laughing, inquired of his friend and patron. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, didn’t you?” asked Strong. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He was not long before he described to her the subject and origin of his +passion. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dangerous man!” cried the milliner. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perfidious monster!” said the confidante. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap25"></a>CHAPTER XXV.<br/> +Contains both Love and Jealousy</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid he is sadly fickle,” Miss Blanche observed; +“Mrs. Pybus, and many more Clavering people, have told us all about the +actress.” +</p> + +<p> +“I was quite a child when it happened, and I don’t know anything +about it,” Laura answered, blushing very much. +</p> + +<p> +“He used her very ill,” Blanche said, wagging her little head. +“He was false to her.” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you didn’t know anything about the story, +dearest,” interposed Miss Blanche. +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma has said so,” said Laura. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, he is very clever,” continued the other little dear, +“What a sweet poet he is! Have you ever read his poems?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Has he never written you any poems, then, love?” asked Miss Amory. +</p> + +<p> +“No, my dear,” said Miss Bell. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And you have answered them, Blanche?” she asked, putting them +back. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap26"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.<br/> +A House full of Visitors</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t,” said Blanche, “the house is full of +people.” +</p> + +<p> +“Undine has left the stream,” Mr. Pen went on, choosing to be +poetical. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I knew that man at Oxbridge,” Mr. Pynsent said to Miss +Bell—“a Mr. Pendennis, I think.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Miss Bell. +</p> + +<p> +“He seems rather sweet upon Miss Amory,” the gentleman went on. +Laura looked at them, and perhaps thought so too, but said nothing. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Laura smiled. “His estates lie on the other side of the river, near the +lodge-gate. He is my cousin, and I live there.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where?” asked Mr. Pynsent, with a laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, on the other side of the river, at Fairoaks,” answered Miss +Bell. +</p> + +<p> +“Many pheasants there? Cover looks rather good,” said the simple +gentleman. +</p> + +<p> +Laura smiled again. “We have nine hens and a cock, a pig, and an old +pointer.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pendennis don’t preserve, then?” continued Mr. Pynsent. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think of the girl of the house?” asked Wagg. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Pynsent, be civil,” cried the other, “somebody can +hear.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it’s Pendennis of Boniface,” Mr. Pynsent said. +“Fine evening, Mr. Pendennis; we were just talking of your charming +cousin.” +</p> + +<p> +“Any relation to my old friend, Major Pendennis?” asked Mr. Wagg. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Snug little crib,” said Mr. Pynsent, “pretty cosy little +lawn.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Pendennis at home, old gentleman?” Mr. Wagg said to the old +domestic. John answered, “No, Master Pendennis was agone out.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t see the fun,” said Mr. Pynsent. +</p> + +<p> +“Never thought you did,” growled Wagg between his teeth; they +walked home rather sulkily. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing has happened at all,” Laura said. +</p> + +<p> +“Then why do you look at Pen so?” asked his mother quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure they are odious and vulgar,” interposed the widow. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“By Jupiter, it’s Mirobolant!” cried Strong, bursting out +laughing. “Bon jour, Chef!—Bon jour, Chevalier!” +</p> + +<p> +“De la croix de Juillet, Chevalier!” said the Chef, laying his hand +on his decoration. +</p> + +<p> +“By Jove, here’s some more ribbon!” said Pen, amused. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +After Lady Rockminster’s party, Lady Clavering’s followed in the +procession. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Altamont eyed it hard, holding a most musky pocket-handkerchief up to +his face, and bursting with laughter behind it. +</p> + +<p> +“Who’s the gal in green along with ’em, Cap’n?” +he asked of Strong. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s Miss Amory, Lady Clavering’s daughter,” replied +the Chevalier. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel could hardly contain himself for laughing. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap27"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.<br/> +Contains some Ball-practising</h2> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you waltz with me?” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Women forget very readily,” Pendennis said. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then, he’ll waltz with me, dear Blanche,” said the +other. “Won’t you, Pen?” +</p> + +<p> +“I promised to waltz with Miss Amory.” +</p> + +<p> +“Provoking!” said Laura, and making a curtsey in her turn she went +and placed herself under the ample wing of Lady Rockminster. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Who?” said Laura. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“How should I know?” asked Blanche. “He has a croix; he is +very distingue; he has beautiful eyes.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What did you say to him in the unknown tongue?” asked Miss +Blanche. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Poor Monsieur Mirobolant!” said Blanche. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is an odious, conceited, clumsy creature, that Mr. Pen,” said +Blanche. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Water ice. Who is that odd man staring at me—he is decore +too.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And so you’re Betsy Amory,” said he, after gazing at her. +“Betsy Amory, by Jove!” +</p> + +<p> +“Who—who speaks to me?” said Betsy, alias Blanche. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap28"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII.<br/> +Which is both Quarrelsome and Sentimental</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You speak French?” Mirobolant said in his own language to Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“What is that to you, pray?” said Pen, in English. +</p> + +<p> +“At any rate, you understand it?” continued the other, with a bow. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, sir,” said Pen, with a stamp of his foot; “I understand +it pretty well.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“What?” said Pen, starting round on him. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“What has happened?” Strong asked of the chef, in Spanish. +</p> + +<p> +“I am Chevalier de Juillet,” said the other, slapping his breast, +“and he has insulted me.” +</p> + +<p> +“What has he said to you?” asked Strong. +</p> + +<p> +“Il m’a appele—Cuisinier,” hissed out the little +Frenchman. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“D—— him, serve him right, too,—the impudent foreign +scoundrel,” the gentlemen said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall never dance again,” he replied, with a dark and determined +face. “Never. I’m surprised you should ask me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it because you can’t get Blanche for a partner?” asked +Laura, with a wicked, unlucky captiousness. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I—I was going in with my cousin,” Laura said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very,” said Laura. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Confound it,” said Pen, in a fury, “I can’t fight a +cook!” +</p> + +<p> +“He is a Chevalier of July,” replied the other. “They present +arms to him in his own country.” +</p> + +<p> +“And do you ask me, Captain Strong, to go out with a servant?” Pen +asked fiercely; “I’ll call a policeman him +but—but——” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Monsieur Pendennis has disproved my words himself,” said Alcide +with great politeness; “he has shown that he is a galant homme.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Excuse my glove,” said Laura, with a laugh, pressing Pen’s +hand kindly with it. “We are not angry again, are we, Pen?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you laugh at me?” said Pen. “You did the other night, +and made a fool of me to the people at Baymouth.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Confound Miss Roundle,” bellowed out Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You should not laugh at me, Laura,” said Pen, with some +bitterness; “not you, of all people.” +</p> + +<p> +“And why not? Are you such a great man?” asked Laura. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah no, Laura, I’m such a poor one,” Pen answered. +“Haven’t you baited me enough already?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is your kindness that humiliates me more even than your laughter, +Laura,” Pen said. “You are always my superior.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think mamma would be happy if you were otherwise, Arthur?” +Laura said in a low sad voice. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have seen somebody else,” said Pen, angry at her tone, and +recalling the incidents of the past days. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I ask your pardon, Laura, if I have offended you: but if I am jealous, +does it not prove that I have a heart?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will try,” said Arthur, in a great indignation. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“What—what do you mean?” asked Arthur, blushing, and still in +great wrath. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that your final decision, Laura?” Arthur cried. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap29"></a>CHAPTER XXIX.<br/> +Babylon</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Not for the world,” cried the daughter of the veteran Blenkinsop; +“Lord Colchicum gave it to me.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be always looking at that box, you naughty creature,” +cried Miss Blenkinsop. +</p> + +<p> +“She’s a dev’lish fine woman, that Mirabel,” said +Tiptoff; “though Mirabel was a d——d fool to marry her.” +</p> + +<p> +“A stupid old spooney,” said the peer. +</p> + +<p> +“Mirabel!” cried out Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha! ha!” laughed out Harry Foker. “We’ve heard of her +before, haven’t we, Pen?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Emily was always as stupid as an owl,” said Miss Blenkinsop. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh! Eh! pas si bete,” the old Peer said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, for shame!” cried the actress, who did not in the least know +what he meant. +</p> + +<p> +And Pen looked out and beheld his first love once again—and wondered how +he ever could have loved her. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Economical at any rate,” said the Major. +</p> + +<p> +“Very, sir. Three pair, sir. Nasty black staircase as ever I see. Wonder +how a gentleman can live in such a place.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Is that the beer?” cried out a great voice: “give us hold of +it.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Pen gave his news, and then introduced Mr. Warrington—an old Boniface +man—whose chambers he shared. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Rough and ready, your chum seems,” the Major said. “Somewhat +different from your dandy friends at Oxbridge.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that one of the books?” the Major asked, with a smile. A French +novel was lying at the foot of Pen’s chair. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What, we have had some new loves, have we?” the Major asked in +high good-humour. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +When he had completed his simple toilette, Mr. Warrington came out of this +room, and proceeded to the cupboard to search for his breakfast. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“The Back Kitchen? indeed!” said the Major. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap30"></a>CHAPTER XXX.<br/> +The Knights of the Temple</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“This is boiled-beef day, I believe, sir,” said Lowton to Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” said Pen, still amused. +</p> + +<p> +“I say, I like to mess with those chaps,” Lowton said, winking his +eye knowingly, and pouring out his glass of wine. +</p> + +<p> +“And why?” asked Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you St—— Warrington?” Pen said, delighted to see +this hero. +</p> + +<p> +Warrington laughed—“Stunning Warrington—yes,” he said, +“I recollect you in your freshman’s term. But you appear to have +quite cut me out.” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“Hush!” said Warrington—“glad to make your +acquaintance, Pendennis. Heard a good deal about you.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought of going home to dress, and hear Grisi in Norma,” Pen +said. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you going to meet anybody there?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +Pen said, “No—only to hear the music,” of which he was fond. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap31"></a>CHAPTER XXXI.<br/> +Old and new Acquaintances</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you,” said Warrington; “heard it nine times—know +it by heart, Hodgen.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Pen had many opportunities of seeing his early acquaintance afterwards, and of +renewing his relations with Costigan and the old musician. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Kidneys, John, and a glass of stout,” says Hoolan. “How are +you, Morgan? how’s Mrs. Doolan?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Warrington, laughing, took the Dawn which was lying before him, and pointed to +one of the leading articles in that journal, which commenced thus— +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“The taste for eloquence is going out, Mick,” said Morgan. +</p> + +<p> +“’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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And with powder and shot, too, as well as paper,” says Morgan, +“Faith, the Docthor was out twice, and Condy Roony winged his man.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Dined with him the day before yesterday at Gaunt House,” Archer +said. “We were four—the French Ambassador, Steyne, and we two +commoners.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?’” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.’” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you say Governor in French?” asked Pen, who piqued himself +on knowing that language. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Madame Massena must be rather an old woman, Archer,” Warrington +said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Has there been a private marriage, Archer?” asked Warrington. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is it makes him pull the long bow in that wonderful manner?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of us! Who are we?” asked Pen. “Of what profession is Mr. +Archer?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of the Corporation of the Goosequill—of the Press, my boy,” +said Warrington; “of the fourth estate.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you, too, of the craft, then?” Pendennis said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +And so talking, the friends turned into their chambers, as the dawn was +beginning to peep. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap32"></a>CHAPTER XXXII.<br/> +In which the Printer’s Devil comes to the Door</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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—” +</p> + +<p> +“Confound you,” cried Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“—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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Go on,” said Pen, growling. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hang gallypots,” cried Pen. “I can’t drive a coach, +cut corns, or cheat at cards. There’s nothing else you propose.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But how earn one?” asked Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“But how do you fill it?” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Arthur was so delighted that the tears came into his eyes. “How kind you +are to me, Warrington!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“By Jove!” said Pen, bouncing up and stamping his foot, +“I’ll show you that I am a better man than you think for.” +</p> + +<p> +Warrington only laughed the more, and blew twenty-four puffs rapidly out of his +pipe by way of reply to Pen. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” said Mr. Hack; and Warrington, having despatched his +own business, went home to Mr. Pen, plate in hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, boy, here’s a chance for you. Turn me off a copy of verses to +this.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Try,” said Warrington. “Earn your livelihood for once, you +who long so to do it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I will try,” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“And I’ll go out to dinner,” said Warrington, and left Mr. +Pen in a brown study. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think, they will,” said Warrington, after reading them; they ran +as follows:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + The Church Porch<br/> +<br/> +Although I enter not,<br/> +Yet round about the spot<br/> + Sometimes I hover,<br/> +And at the sacred gate,<br/> +With longing eyes I wait,<br/> + Expectant of her.<br/> +<br/> +The Minster bell tolls out<br/> +Above the city’s rout<br/> + And noise and humming<br/> +They’ve stopp’d the chiming bell,<br/> +I hear the organ’s swell<br/> + She’s coming, she’s coming!<br/> +<br/> +My lady comes at last,<br/> +Timid and stepping fast,<br/> + And hastening hither,<br/> +With modest eyes downcast.<br/> +She comes—she’s here—she’s past.<br/> + May Heaven go with her!<br/> +<br/> +Kneel undisturb’d, fair saint,<br/> +Pour out your praise or plaint<br/> + Meekly and duly.<br/> +I will not enter there,<br/> +To sully your pure prayer<br/> + With thoughts unruly.<br/> +<br/> +But suffer me to pace<br/> +Round the forbidden place,<br/> + Lingering a minute,<br/> +Like outcast spirits, who wait<br/> +And see through Heaven’s gate<br/> + Angels within it. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Law bless me, you don’t say so, sir. Well—really—Law +bless me now,” said Mr. Bacon. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Law bless me now, does he? The what-d’-you-call-’em. +Indeed!” +</p> + +<p> +“‘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.” +</p> + +<p> +“That they do, Mr. Warrington, sir,” said the publisher. +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you he’s a star; he’ll make a name, sir. He’s a +new man, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“They’ll like the book better than anything else,” said +Warrington, “with the young one’s name to the verses, printed among +the swells.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +F. P. Tuesday Morning. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall B. come and see you, or can you look in upon me here?—Ever +yours, +</p> + +<p> +“C. S.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where does he live?” asked Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“In the Fleet Prison,” Warrington said. “And very much at +home he is there, too. He is the king of the place.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Opposite the Captain sate Mr. Bungay, a portly man of stolid countenance, with +whom the little child had been trying a conversation. +</p> + +<p> +“Papa’s a very clever man,” said she; “mamma says +so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, very,” said Mr. Bungay. +</p> + +<p> +“And you’re a very rich man, Mr. Bundy,” cried the child, who +could hardly speak plain. +</p> + +<p> +“Mary!” said Mamma, from her work. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you’re rich, why don’t you take papa out of +piz’n?” asked the child. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I think this will do,” said he. “It’s the prospectus +for the Pall Mall Gazette.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Faith that’s more than some of us can say,” said Shandon, +and he eagerly clapped the note into his pocket. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap33"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII.<br/> +Which is passed in the Neighbourhood of Ludgate Hill</h2> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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—” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s that?” asked Mr. Bungay. +</p> + +<p> +“An ancestor of mine sealed it with his sword-hilt,” Pen said, with +great gravity. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“—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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?’” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“His genius sings within his prison bars,” Pen said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Warrington began to laugh as usual. “Video meliora proboque—I mean, +bring it me hot, with sugar, John,” he said to waiter. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“We shall have a grand spread, Warrington. We shall meet all +Bungay’s corps.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Pen, you beggar!” roared Warrington to Pen, who was in his own +room. +</p> + +<p> +“Hullo!” sung out Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“Come here, you’re wanted,” cried the other, and Pen came +out. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“Catch!” cried Warrington, and flung the parcel at Pen’s +head, who would have been knocked down had he not caught it. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap34"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV.<br/> +In which the History still hovers about Fleet Street</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you’re pretty well, mum?” said Mrs. Bungay. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a very fine day,” said Mrs. Shandon. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you step in, mum?” said Mrs. Bungay, looking so hard +at the child as almost to frighten her. +</p> + +<p> +“I—I came about business with Mr. Bungay—I—I hope +he’s pretty well?” said timid Mrs. Shandon. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I want to stay with mamma,” cried little Mary, burying her face in +her mother’s dress. +</p> + +<p> +“Go with this lady, Mary, my dear,” said the mother. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Mrs. B., I saw the little girl.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap35"></a>CHAPTER XXXV.<br/> +Dinner in the Row</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Lor, Bungay!” said Mrs. Bungay. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +The temporary groom of the chambers bawled out, “The Honourable Percy +Popjoy,” much to that gentleman’s discomposure at hearing his +titles announced. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid you’re a sad quiz,” said Mrs. Bungay. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“What! do they know him?” she asked rapidly of Mr. B. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“A violet, shrinking meanly<br/> +When blows the March wind keenly;<br/> +A timid fawn, on wild-wood lawn,<br/> +Where oak-boughs rustle greenly,—” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You know passion-flowers, like all others, will run to seed,” +Wenham said; “Miss Bunion’s portrait was probably painted some +years ago.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I like her for not being ashamed of her poverty.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you did both very well, my dear Miss Bunion,” Pen said with a +laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“How good this is!” said Popjoy, good-naturedly. “You must +have a cordon bleu in your kitchen.” +</p> + +<p> +“O yes,” Mrs. Bungay said, thinking he spoke of a jack-chain very +likely. +</p> + +<p> +“I mean a French chef,” said the polite guest. +</p> + +<p> +“O yes, your lordship,” again said the lady. +</p> + +<p> +“Does your artist say he’s a Frenchman, Mrs. B.?” called out +Wagg. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’m sure I don’t know,” answered the +publisher’s lady. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Glad you like it,” Popjoy answered; “it’s a favourite +bit of my own.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“A devilish interesting story, Sumph, indeed,” Wagg said. +</p> + +<p> +“You should publish some of those stories, Captain Sumph, you really +should. Such a volume would make our friend Bungay’s fortune,” +Shandon said. +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t you ask Sumph to publish ’em in your new +paper—the what-d’ye-call-’em—hay, Shandon?” +bawled out Wagg. +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t you ask him to publish ’em in your old magazine, +the Thingumbob?” Shandon replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Is there going to be a new paper?” asked Wenham, who knew +perfectly well, but was ashamed of his connection with the press. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s to be called the Small Beer Chronicle,” growled Wagg, +“and little Popjoy is to be engaged for the infantine department.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is to be called the Pall Mall Gazette, sir, and we shall be very +happy to have you with us,” Shandon said. +</p> + +<p> +“Pall Mall Gazette—why Pall Mall Gazette?” asked Wagg. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“By any other name it would smell as sweet,” said Wagg. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap36"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI.<br/> +The Pall Mall Gazette</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“My good young friend—for what do you suppose a benevolent +publisher undertakes a critical journal, to benefit his rival?” Shandon +inquired. +</p> + +<p> +“To benefit himself certainly, but to tell the truth too,” Pen +said, “ruat coelum, to tell the truth.” +</p> + +<p> +“And my prospectus,” said Shandon, with a laugh and a sneer; +“do you consider that was a work of mathematical accuracy of +statement?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And leader of the van,” said Shandon. “Well, I am glad that +your conscience gave you leave to play for us.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know whether some people’s hypocrisy is not better, +Captain, than others’ cynicism.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap37"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII.<br/> +Where Pen appears in Town and Country</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Devilish hard on Towler, by gad!” said the Major, amused, +“and not pleasant for Lord Levant—he, he!” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I heard something of that quarrel,” said the Major; “but +Mirobolant was not turned off for that?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +“—In a chamber of old horrors by themselves,” Pen said, +laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“—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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s my uncle, the Major,” said Pen. “Is he an old +sinner too?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Come in too,” Pen said. +</p> + +<p> +“—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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“A very pious manner of spending his time,” Pen said, laughing and +thinking that his uncle was falling into the twaddling state. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And so that was his brougham, sir, was it?” the nephew said with +almost a sneer. +</p> + +<p> +“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.’” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t act up to your principles, uncle,” Pen said +good-naturedly. +</p> + +<p> +“Up to my principles; how, sir?” the Major asked, rather testily. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“How Strong must have rejoiced in organising all this splendour,” +thought Pen. He recognised the Chevalier’s genius in the magnificence +before him. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap38"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII.<br/> +In which the Sylph reappears</h2> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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:— +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Quel preux Chevalier!” cried the Sylphide, tossing up her little +head. +</p> + +<p> +“I have a fellow-feeling with those who fall, remember,” Pen said. +“I suffered myself very much from doing so once.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“My cousin Laura has been staying with her,” Pen said. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not the dowager: it is the Lady Rockminster.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Lady Rockminster has took us up,” said Lady Clavering. +</p> + +<p> +“Taken us up, Mamma,” cried Blanche, in a shrill voice. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You seem to be a connoisseur in millinery, Uncle” Pen said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap39"></a>CHAPTER XXXIX.<br/> +In which Colonel Altamont appears and disappears</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Amory is a sylph herself,” said Mr. Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you liked Laura’s,” said Miss Blanche. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I like English music best. I don’t care for foreign songs much. +Get me some saddle of mutton,” said Mr. Foker. +</p> + +<p> +“I adore English ballads, of all things,” said Miss Amory. +</p> + +<p> +“Sing me one of the old songs after dinner, will you?” said Pen, +with an imploring voice. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +X advanced to the individual and said, “Now, sir, will you have the +kindness to move hon?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Move on out of this,” said X, “and don’t be a blocking +up the pavement, staring into gentlemen’s dining-rooms.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Friends! I dessay. Move on,” answered X. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very,” said Major Pendennis, drily, and wondering what in +goodness’ name was the company into which he had got. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pines—I’ve seen ’em feed pigs on pines,” said +the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“All the Nawaub of Lucknow’s pigs are fed on pines,” Strong +whispered to Major Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s his name?” cried the Colonel. Strong named Mr. +Pendennis again. +</p> + +<p> +“Pendennis!—Pendennis be hanged!” Altamont roared out to the +surprise of every one, and thumping with his fist on the table. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap40"></a>CHAPTER XL.<br/> +Relates to Mr. Harry Foker’s Affairs</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t the billiards,” Harry said, gloomily. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +Lady Agnes expressed her agreement in these, as in almost all other sentiments +of her son, who continued the artful conversation, saying— +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Very nice people the Claverings.” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” said Lady Agnes. +</p> + +<p> +“I know what you mean. Lady C. ain’t distangy exactly, but she is +very good-natured.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, very,” mamma said, who was herself one of the most +good-natured of women. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You have not asked Miss Whatdyecallem—Miss Emery, Lady +Clavering’s daughter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, that little creature!” Lady Agnes cried. “No! I think +not, Harry.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +The valet said, “Yes, he could.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I should think so, since his marriage,” said a wag. +</p> + +<p> +“He gives devilish good dinners,” said Foker, striking up for the +honour of his host of yesterday. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never heard a mermaid sing,” Mr. Poyntz, the wag, replied. +“Whoever heard a mermaid? Eales, you are an old fellow, did you?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What is the matter, Harry? why are you so pale? You have been raking and +smoking too much, you wicked boy,” said Lady Ann. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap41"></a>CHAPTER XLI.<br/> +Carries the Reader both to Richmond and Greenwich</h2> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“What the deuce is that Poyntz a talking about?” Miss Calverley +asked of her neighbour. “I hate him. He’s a drawlin’, +sneerin’ beast.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +My lord said, with a grin, “You flatter me, Madame Brack.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what do you think of her now?” the elder said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Were you? How far did it go? Did she return it?” asked the Major, +looking hard at Pen. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“A man might go farther and fare worse, Arthur,” the Major said, +still looking queerly at his nephew. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know about her money?” Pen asked, smiling. “You +seem to have information about everybody, and to know about all the +town.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, sir,” he said to his godfather and namesake, “make her +Mrs. Arthur Pendennis. You can do it as well as I.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I know who is,” said Mr. Arthur, making rather a pert bow. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the row about?” asked Mr. Foker, rather puzzled. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose Miss Clavering means ‘Walter Lorraine,’” +said the Major, looking knowing, and nodding at Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid Mr. Foker is a very sad young man,” she said, turning +round to Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“He does not look so,” Pen answered with a sneer. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Lor, Blanche!” mamma cried. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, delightful!” cried Blanche. +</p> + +<p> +“I like a bit of fun too,” said Lady Clavering; and we will take +some day when Sir Francis——” +</p> + +<p> +“When Sir Francis dines out,—yes, mamma,” the daughter said, +“it will be charming.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap42"></a>CHAPTER XLII.<br/> +Contains a novel Incident</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.’” +</p> + +<p> +“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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘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.——’” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Two flames!—two heaps of burnt-out cinders,” Warrington +said. “Are both the beauties in this book?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not a bad speech, young one,” Warrington said, “but that +does not prevent all poets from being humbugs.” +</p> + +<p> +“What—Homer, Aeschylus, Shakspeare and all?” +</p> + +<p> +“Their names are not to be breathed in the same sense with you +pigmies,” Mr. Warrington said: “there are men and men, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think so, Warrington?” said Pen, delighted, for this was +great praise from his cynical friend. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no, nothing,” said Mr. Bacon. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“A dependant! who ever so thought of you? You are the equal of all the +world,” Pynsent broke out. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“If Lady Rockminster asks you herself, will you listen to her?” +Pynsent cried eagerly. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap43"></a>CHAPTER XLIII.<br/> +Alsatia</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap44"></a>CHAPTER XLIV.<br/> +In which the Colonel narrates some of his Adventures</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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——” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What, were you there too?” Strong asked, “and before you +came to Grosvenor Place? That was beginning betimes.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel burst out with a laugh—“Ha, ha! he owes it me,” +he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know that that’s a reason with Frank for +paying,” Strong answered. “He owes plenty besides you.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Say? What did I say?” asked the other hastily. “Did I split +anything? Dammy, Strong, did I split anything?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed?” said Strong. +</p> + +<p> +“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.’” +</p> + +<p> +“‘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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘What little matters?’ says I. ‘Do you owe me any +money, Marky?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘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. +</p> + +<p> +“‘And mine for two hundred and ten,’ says +Bloundell-Bloundell, and he pulls out his bit of paper. +</p> + +<p> +“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——.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘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. +</p> + +<p> +“‘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. +</p> + +<p> +“‘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. +</p> + +<p> +“‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘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!’ +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought your name was Jack,” said Strong, with a laugh; at which +the Colonel blushed very much behind his dyed whiskers. +</p> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Then they’ll shoot you,’ says she; +‘they’ll kill my Ferdinand.’” +</p> + +<p> +“They’ll kill my Jack wouldn’t have sounded well in +French,” Strong said, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind about names,” said the other, sulkily; “a man of +honour may take any name he chooses, I suppose.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, go on with your story,” said Strong. “She said they +would kill you.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“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?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Field of honour be hanged, Countess,’ says I. ‘You +would not have me be a target for that little scoundrel’s pistol +practice.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘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. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Countess!’ says I, rushing after her and seizing her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +His pale face expressed extreme anger and irritation. “So sir,” he +said, addressing Altamont, “you’ve been at your old tricks.” +</p> + +<p> +“Which of ’um?” asked Altamont, with a sneer. +</p> + +<p> +“You have been at the Rouge et Noir: you were there last night,” +cried the Baronet. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You a gentleman! dammy, sir,” said the Baronet, “how dares a +fellow like you to call himself a gentleman?” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What is the matter now?” the latter asked of him. +“It’s the old story, I suppose.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap45"></a>CHAPTER XLV.<br/> +A Chapter of Conversations</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not very happy in this one,” said the Sylphide; “and +the stupidity of mamma is enough to provoke a saint.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, indeed,” said the Major, with the most sentimental and simple +air which he could muster. +</p> + +<p> +“Not that I know anything about it,” said Blanche, casting her eyes +down “except what I have read in novels.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“That is not the man,” Major Pendennis said. “He is engaged +to his cousin, Lord Gravesend’s daughter.—Good-bye, my dear Miss +Amory.” +</p> <hr /> <p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What condescension!” broke in Warrington. +</p> + +<p> +“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?’” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Devilish long,” Warrington said, “and a great deal too calm; +I’ve tried ’em.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where you go to sleep over the sermon,” Warrington said. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap46"></a>CHAPTER XLVI.<br/> +Miss Amory’s Partners</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you have left off tumbling when you waltz now?” Blanche asked, +archly looking up at her partner’s face. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you mean that he has been doing it for your sake?” Foker +asked, looking rather alarmed. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“What the doose are you driving at?” Foker asked, looking very much +agitated. +</p> + +<p> +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——” +</p> + +<p> +“Gammon, Pen—go on,” Foker said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“But you ain’t got any money, Pen,” said the other, still +looking alarmed. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you, Pendennis,” asked Foker, “you ain’t very fond +of the girl—you’re going to marry?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I—I thought so,” Foker said; “and has she accepted +you!” +</p> + +<p> +“Not quite,” Arthur replied, with a confident smile, which seemed +to say, I have but to ask, and she comes to me that instant. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear fellow, Fo! what’s the matter? You’re ill,” +Pen said, in a tone of real concern. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The unhappy Foker only groaned a reply, flinging himself prostrate on a sofa, +face forwards, his head in his hands. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap47"></a>CHAPTER XLVII.<br/> +Monseigneur s’amuse</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Bedad, sir, if ye doubt me honour, will ye obleege me by stipping out of +that box, and——” +</p> + +<p> +“Lor, Capting!” cried the elder lady. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t bother me,” said the man in the box. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Me poor child!” the Captain said. “Can ye see that, sir, and +will ye not let this innocent creature in?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do, Mr. Huxter,” the Prince of Fairoaks said in his +most princely manner—“I hope you are very well.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“How beautiful they are, sir!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t call me sir, Fanny,” Arthur said. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Again, Fanny! Well, I forgot; it is best so, my dear,” Pendennis +said, very kindly and gently. “I may call you Fanny?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes!” said Miss Fanny, with rather a demure look. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dad,” said Costigan, “I’d loike a snack to; only I +forgawt me purse, or I should have invoited these leedies to a +collection.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Bolton with considerable asperity said, She ad an eadache, and would much +rather go ome. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s no ray-admittance except ye pay again,” the Captain +said. “Hadn’t I better go back and take the fellow your +message?” +</p> + +<p> +Pen burst out laughing. “Take him a message! Do you think I would fight +with such a fellow as that?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap48"></a>CHAPTER XLVIII.<br/> +A Visit of Politeness</h2> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap49"></a>CHAPTER XLIX.<br/> +In Shepherd’s Inn</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! I live in a garret myself, and Shepherd’s Inn is twice as +cheerful as Lamb Court,” Mr. Pendennis broke in. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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—?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What a nice young man, to be sure!” cried Mrs. Bolton. +</p> + +<p> +“D’you think so, ma?” said Fanny. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Law, ma! they are a most beautiful hawburn,” Fanny said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Where’s your Ma, dear?” he said to Fanny. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” Fanny said, with an angry toss. “I +don’t follow Ma’s steps wherever she goes, I suppose, Mr. +Bows.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap50"></a>CHAPTER L.<br/> +In or near the Temple Garden</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +If Arthur was red, Fanny, on the contrary, was very worn and pale. Arthur +remarked it, and asked kindly why she looked so fatigued. +</p> + +<p> +“I was awake all night,” said Fanny, and began to blush a little. +</p> + +<p> +“I put out her candle, and hordered her to go to sleep and leave off +readin,” interposed the fond mother. +</p> + +<p> +“You were reading! And what was it that interested you so?” asked +Pen, amused. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it’s so beautiful!” said Fanny. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +“‘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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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——” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Your very umble servant, sir,” said Mr. Bows, making a sarcastic +bow, and lifting his old hat from his forehead. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And now, sir?” Arthur asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“Amen to that prayer,” said Mr. Bows, and went slowly down the +stair. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap51"></a>CHAPTER LI.<br/> +The happy Village again</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Jolly night at Vauxhall—wasn’t it?” he said, and +winked in a very knowing way. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m glad you liked it,” poor Pen said, groaning in spirit. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +The question was too much for Arthur. “Have I asked you any questions +about yourself, Mr. Huxter?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t mean any offence—beg pardon—hang it, you cut +up quite savage,” said Pen’s astonished interlocutor. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hang it, sir, I asked your pardon,” Huxter said, looking red. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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——” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap52"></a>CHAPTER LII.<br/> +Which had very nearly been the last of the Story</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I saw Mr. Pendennis last night, Fanny,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you? I thought you did,” Fanny answered, looking fiercely at +the melancholy old gentleman. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And now, I suppose, you are going to say ill of him,” said Fanny. +“Do, Mr. Bows—that will make me like you better.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed I shall do no such thing,” Bows answered; “I think he +is a very good and honest young man.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +Morgan said there was somebody a-nussing of Mr. Arthur. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Wagg said, “It’s a bailiff come down to nab the Major,” but +nobody laughed at the pleasantry. +</p> + +<p> +“Hullo! What’s the matter, Pendennis?” cried Lord Steyne, +with his strident voice;—“anything wrong?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s—it’s—my boy that’s dead,” said +the Major, and burst into a sob—the old man was quite overcome. +</p> + +<p> +“Not dead, my Lord; but very ill when I left London,” Mr. Bows +said, in a low voice. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +They knocked very gently at the door, on which Arthur’s name was written, +and it was opened by Fanny Bolton. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap53"></a>CHAPTER LIII.<br/> +A critical Chapter</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you, madam?” Mrs. Pendennis said. “I suppose I may now +relieve you from nursing my son. I am his mother, you understand.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, ma’am. I—this is the way to his—Oh, wait a +minute,” cried out Fanny. “I must prepare you for +his——” +</p> + +<p> +The widow, whose face had been hopelessly cruel and ruthless, here started back +with a gasp and a little cry, which she speedily stifled. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s been so since yesterday,” Fanny said, trembling very +much, and with chattering teeth. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“He does not know me, ma’am,” Fanny said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“What, nurse? How’s your patient?” asked the good-natured +Doctor. “Has he had any rest?” +</p> + +<p> +“Go and ask them. They’re inside,” Fanny answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Who? his mother?” +</p> + +<p> +Fanny nodded her head and didn’t speak. +</p> + +<p> +“You must go to bed yourself, my poor little maid,” said the +Doctor. “You will be ill, too, if you don’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +A dismal sitting it was for all parties; and when Goodenough appeared, he came +like an angel into the room. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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! +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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——. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I—I beg pardon, ma’am, for smoking,” Warrington said, +who now almost for the first time blushed for his wicked propensity. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap54"></a>CHAPTER LIV.<br/> +Convalescence</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap55"></a>CHAPTER LV.<br/> +Fanny’s Occupation’s gone</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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——” +</p> + +<p> +“Pray, spare me this,” Helen broke in, looking very stately. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear creature, I did not commence the conversation, permit me to +say,” the Major said, bowing very blandly. +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“His silence confirms it,” sobbed Mrs. Pendennis, behind her +pocket-handkerchief. +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all. There are subjects, my dear, about which a young fellow +cannot surely talk to his mamma,” insinuated the brother-in-law. +</p> + +<p> +“She has written to him,” cried the lady, behind the cambric. +</p> + +<p> +“What, before he was ill? Nothing more likely.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, since,” the mourner with the batiste mask gasped out; +“not before; that is, I don’t think so—that is, +I——” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am the most unhappy mother in the world,” cried out the +unfortunate Helen. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The widow burst out laughing through her tears—the victory was gained by +the old general. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He must come home! We must go off directly to Fairoaks,” the widow +cried out. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And were you very much smitten?” Warrington asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Hm!” said Lovelace. “She dropped her h’s, but she was +a dear little girl.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You ask him to come, my dear,” said the benevolent old gentleman, +“and then perhaps he will listen to you——” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should Mr. Warrington listen to me?” asked the young lady, +putting the query to her teaspoon seemingly and not to the Major. +</p> + +<p> +“Ask him; you have not asked him,” said Pen’s artless uncle. +</p> + +<p> +“I should be very glad, indeed, if Mr. Warrington would come,” +remarked Laura to the teaspoon. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you?” said George. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Laura blushed more red than ever and withdrew her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” Helen asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed!” Helen said. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap56"></a>CHAPTER LVI.<br/> +In which Fanny engages a new Medical Man</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what did you practise, George?” Pen asked, eagerly. “I +knew there was something. Tell us about it, Warrington.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What! not the General, Mr. Bows?” Warrington asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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——” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You remember your poem, Pen, of Ariadne in Naxos,” Warrington +said; “devilish bad poetry it was, to be sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“Apres?” asked Pen, in a great state of excitement. +</p> + +<p> +“When Theseus left Ariadne, do you remember what happened to her, young +fellow?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a lie, it’s a lie! You don’t mean that!” +cried out Pen, starting up, his face turning red. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap57"></a>CHAPTER LVII.<br/> +Foreign Ground</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know anything about this letter, sir?” Arthur asked. +</p> + +<p> +“What letter, my good sir?” said the other dryly, at once +perceiving what had happened. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then it’s my mother that did it,” Arthur broke out. +“Did my mother send that poor child away?” +</p> + +<p> +“I repeat I know nothing about it, sir,” the elder said testily. +“Let’s change the subject, if you please.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll never forgive the person who did it,” said Arthur, +bouncing up and seizing his hat. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“If she has, you must remember it is your mother,” Warrington +interposed. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hush!” said Warrington, “they can hear you from the next +room.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should think what you have to say will hardly be fit for me to +hear,” Laura said, haughtily. +</p> + +<p> +“You are welcome to hear it or not, as you like,” said Mr. Pen. +“I shall go in now and speak to my mother.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“By heavens! this is too much,” Pen cried out, with a violent +execration. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap58"></a>CHAPTER LVIII.<br/> +“Fairoaks to let”</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Warrington, Laura, and Major Pendennis, all remained breathless, aware that the +storm was about to break. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“For God’s sake stop,” cried out Warrington. +“She’s ill—don’t you see she is ill?” +</p> + +<p> +“Let him go on,” said the widow, faintly. +</p> + +<p> +“Let him go on and kill her,” said Laura, rushing up to her +mother’s side. “Speak on, sir, and see her die.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +The widow was going to get up here, and Warrington, seeing her attempt to rise, +said, “Do I tire you, ma’am?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—go on—go on,” said Helen, delighted, and he +continued. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“By Gad, sir,” cried the Major, in high good-humour, “I +intended you to marry Miss Laura here.” +</p> + +<p> +“And, by Gad, Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound,” +Warrington said. +</p> + +<p> +“How d’ye mean a thousand? it was only a pony, sir,” replied +the Major simply, at which the other laughed. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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——” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Warrington and I are going abroad again, sir, for a little, and then we +shall see what is to be done,” Arthur replied. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Warrington has been long—engaged,” Laura said, dropping +her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense, child! And good heavens, my dear! that’s a pretty +diamond cross. What do you mean by wearing it in the morning?” +</p> + +<p> +“Arthur—my brother, gave it me just now. It was—it +was——” +</p> + +<p> +She could not finish the sentence. The carriage passed over the bridge, and by +the dear, dear gate of Fairoaks—home no more. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap59"></a>CHAPTER LIX.<br/> +Old Friends</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Law!” said Mrs. Bungay. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t say so, now!” cried the astonished +publisher’s lady. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Law! why, you know everything, Mr. A.!” cried the lady of +Paternoster Row. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Lord Fiddlestick,” cried out Finucane, from the box. “Sure +it’s Tom Staples, of the Morning Advertiser, Archer.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You know ’em because you see ’em in the House,” +growled Finucane. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What a beautiful creature!” Fanny said. “What a lovely +dress! Did you remark, Mr. Sam, such little, little hands?” +</p> + +<p> +“It was Capting Strong,” said Mrs. Bolton: “and who was the +young woman, I wonder?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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—— +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Je lay vue,” she said; “Elle a de bien beaux yeux; vous etes +un monster!” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Clavering’s safe to pay up, ain’t he?” asked Captain +Crackenbury. +</p> + +<p> +“I hope so,” said his friend; and they disappeared, to enjoy +themselves among the Sticks. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Capital fun,” said mamma. “Wouldn’t it, Major?” +</p> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I say, Ma,” he said, “I’ve gone and done it this time, +I have.” +</p> + +<p> +“What have you gone and done, Franky dear?” asked Mamma. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You little wicked gambling creature, how dare you begin so soon?” +cried Miss Amory. +</p> + +<p> +“Hold your tongue, if you please. Who ever asked your leave, miss?” +the brother said. “And I say, Ma——” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Franky dear?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +The Begum expressed her desire to hear this something, and her son and heir +continued: +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap60"></a>CHAPTER LX.<br/> +Explanations</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap61"></a>CHAPTER LXI.<br/> +Conversations</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And break ’em,” said Mrs. Bonner. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He don’t think much of making my dear missus cry,” said Mrs. +Bonner—“poor dear soul!—look if he does, Captain.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who else does?” gasped Clavering. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He knows it, does he?” shrieked out Clavering. “Damn +him—kill him.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’d like to kill us all, wouldn’t you, old boy?” +said Strong, with a sneer, puffing his cigar. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’d like a chap to lend you a twenty-pound note, wouldn’t +you now?” the other asked. +</p> + +<p> +“If you would, I’d be grateful to you for ever—for ever, my +dearest friend,” cried Clavering. +</p> + +<p> +“How much would you give? Will you give a fifty-pound bill, at six +months, for half down and half in plate?” asked Altamont. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I was only chaffing you. I’ll give you twenty pound.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“How about the house in St. John’s Wood?” Mr. Morgan asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Play much?” asked Morgan. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s ten, Mr. Morgan,” cried Mr. Lightfoot, with great +animation. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know they would, Mr. Morgan,” said the other, with much +humility. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“The railroad will improve Mr. Arthur’s property,” remarked +Lightfoot. “What’s about the figure of it, should you say, +sir?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Is his man any good, Mr. Morgan?” Lightfoot resumed. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap62"></a>CHAPTER LXII.<br/> +The Way of the World</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are your uncle’s pupil,” said Warrington, rather sadly; +“and you speak like a worldling.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed, I don’t think you have much of either,” growled +Pen’s interlocutor. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You would have sacrificed to Jove,” Warrington said, “had +you lived in the time of the Christian persecutions.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And yet but a moment since you admitted the propriety of acquiescence in +the present, and, I suppose, all other tyrannies?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap63"></a>CHAPTER LXIII.<br/> +Which accounts perhaps for Chapter LXI.</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought we had paid all.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure I don’t know, if you don’t know,” the +Chevalier answered, with a look of surprise and suspicion. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly,” said Mr. Strong, drily. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I hear that you have got some money to invest, Morgan,” said the +Major. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s Mr. Arthur has been telling, hang him,” thought the +valet. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m glad my place is such a good one.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you, sir—I’ve no reason to complain of my place, nor +of my master,” replied Morgan, demurely. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You do a little in the discounting way, eh, Morgan?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, sir, a very little—I—I beg your pardon, sir—might +I be so free as to ask a question——” +</p> + +<p> +“Speak on, my good fellow,” the elder said, graciously. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“What, you’ve done something in that business already?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, how much have you netted by him, in Gad’s name?” asked +the Major. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You did what?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“At his old games, sir—can’t prevent that gentleman. He will +do it.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t know the bill, know Abrams quite well, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“So it’s you, old boy?” asked the Baronet, thinking that Mr. +Moss Abrams had arrived with the money. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s an old bill. I take my solemn oath it’s an old +bill,” shrieked out the Baronet. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Major Pendennis saw, from the other’s tone, that Clavering knew his +secret was in the Major’s hands. +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Poor Lady C., it would cut her up dreadfully,” whimpered Sir +Francis; “and it wasn’t my fault, Major; you know it +wasn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s you who are cruel to him,” said the old moralist. +“Why, sir, you’ll ruin him yourself inevitably in three +years.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“To be parted from you,” said the old Major, with a sneer; +“you know she won’t live with you again.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What! are you going into the House, Major Pendennis?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Dammy, does he know it, too?” cried out Clavering. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Major Pendennis, calling a cab in Piccadilly, drove to Lamb Court, +Temple, where he speedily was closeted with his nephew in deep conversation. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap64"></a>CHAPTER LXIV.<br/> +Phyllis and Corydon</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.’ +</p> + +<p> +Pen burst into a laugh. “Don’t tell about my smoking,” he +said, leaning out of his own window. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“And do you really like the country?” he asked her, as they walked +together. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Why that sigh, Blanche?” +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind why.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I do mind why. Tell me, tell me everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish you hadn’t come down;” and a second edition of +‘Mes Soupirs’ came out. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t want me, Blanche?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +‘Mes Soupirs’ were here laid aside, and ‘Mes Larmes’ +had begun. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +When one thinks of country houses and country walks, one wonders that any man +is left unmarried. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap65"></a>CHAPTER LXV.<br/> +Temptation</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“No! And why?” asked Arthur. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“With all my heart,” said Arthur, and pledged this toast with the +greatest cordiality. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I met that queer fellow Altamont the other day,” Pen said to his +uncle, a day or two afterwards. +</p> + +<p> +“Altamont? What Altamont? There’s Lord Westport’s son,” +said the Major. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, I think you have some means of persuasion over Clavering, uncle, or +why should he give me that seat in Parlament?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Merci du choix, Monsieur,” said the Sylphide, making a curtsey. +</p> + +<p> +“Look, my little Blanche,” said Pen, taking her hand, and with his +voice of sad good-humour; “at least I stoop to no flatteries.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite the contrary,” said Miss Blanche. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Merci,” Miss Blanche said, with another curtsey. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mais j’adore les bonbons, moi,” said the little Sylphide, +with a queer piteous look. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me, Arthur,” she said, after a pause in this strange +love-making. “Why does Sir Francis Clavering give up his seat in +Parliament?” +</p> + +<p> +“Au fait, why does he give it to me?” asked Arthur, now blushing in +his turn. +</p> + +<p> +“You always mock me, sir,” she said. “If it is good to be in +Parliament, why does Sir Francis go out?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap66"></a>CHAPTER LXVI.<br/> +In which Pen begins his Canvass</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“My good woman! I want to see Fanny—Fanny Bolton; is she +here?” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Bolton had a sudden suspicion, from the splendour of Blanche’s +appearance, that it must be a play-actor, or something worse. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you want with Fanny, pray?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I am Lady Clavering’s daughter—you have heard of Sir Francis +Clavering? And I wish very much indeed to see Fanny Bolton.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pray step in, miss.—Betsy-Jane, where’s Fanny?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hallo—hwhat’s that?” he presently said, looking up at +the windows: from which some piercing shrieks issued. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s oi, me boy. Hwhat’s that noise, Sthrong?” asked +Costigan. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“The women’s come,” said Grady, helping his master to the +boots. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you ask ’em if they would take a glass of anything?” +asked Altamont. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Will we take anything to drink?” Blanche asked again: and again +began to laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“Grady,” bawled out a voice from the chamber within:—a voice +that made Mrs. Bonner start. +</p> + +<p> +Grady did not answer: his song was heard from afar off, from the kitchen, his +upper room, where Grady was singing at his work. +</p> + +<p> +“Grady, my coat!” again roared the voice from within. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Bonner still looked quite puzzled at the sound of the voice which she had +heard. +</p> + +<p> +The bedroom door here opened and the individual who had called out +“Grady, my coat,” appeared without the garment in question. +</p> + +<p> +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——” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Grady, go and wait in the court,” he said, “and if anybody +comes—you understand me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it the play-actress and her mother?” said Grady. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—confound you—say that there’s nobody in chambers, +and the party’s off for to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I say that, sir? and after I bought them bokays?” asked +Grady of his master. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap67"></a>CHAPTER LXVII.<br/> +In which Pen begins to doubt about his Election</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know about the Parliament plan, then?” Pen asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“What! that too?” asked Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“So you are going to be married, sir,” said the old lady. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder, when you had Laura at home, you could take up with such an +affected little creature as that,” the old lady continued. +</p> + +<p> +“I am very sorry Miss Amory does not please your ladyship,” said +Pen, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am very glad you see Laura with such favourable eyes,” Pen said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope before you offered Miss Bell to the attaches,” said Pen, +with some heat, “you did her the favour to consult her?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why did you not write to me when you were ill?” asked Pen, with a +blush. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“A pretty sacrifice I made to get it for you!” said the sneerer. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Women don’t understand about politics, my dear,” Pen said +sneering at himself as he spoke. +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“He certainly is not a genius, Pynsent,” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“And what would you have me do?” asked Arthur. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +At last he cane close to her. “Tell me something, Laura,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Pen,” she said, bursting into tears. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Laura opened it hastily, and cast her eyes quickly over it, as Pen kept his +fixed on her, blushing. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“To Paris, to Scotland, to the Casino?” +</p> + +<p> +“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— +</p> + +<p> +“‘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. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Je t’envoie mille et mille baisers. When will that horrid +canvassing be over? Sleeves are worn, etc. etc. etc.’” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap68"></a>CHAPTER LXVIII.<br/> +In which the Major is bidden to Stand and Deliver</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Silence, you beast, and go!” cried out the Major. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have the goodness to leave the room, sir—I’m tired,” +said the Major. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish I might speak to you, sir,” said the landlady, very +piteously. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dev’lish sorry, Mrs. Brixham; pray take a chair. What can I +do?” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“God’s will be done, sir,” said the poor woman, drying her +tears. I must bear my fate.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Me?—by Gad, that is too pleasant! Where is the confounded +fellow?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap69"></a>CHAPTER LXIX.<br/> +In which the Major neither yields his Money nor his Life +</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s you, is it?” said the old fellow from his bed. “I +shan’t take you back again, you understand.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed,” said the warrior in the tent-bed. +</p> + +<p> +“He ave lived in the fust famlies, and I can wouch for his +respectability.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are very polite,” said the Major, “and your +recommendation, I am sure, will have every weight.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“With your kind permission, I will breakfast here, and afterwards we will +make our little arrangements.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you please, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you now oblige me by leaving the room?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And may I inquire of what nature, pray?” asked the Major. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“And if you don’t, sir—what?” Pendennis asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Tell that to the marines, Major,” replied the valet; “that +cock won’t fight with me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you doubt my word, you villain?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You gave ’em to me—you gave ’em to me!” cried +Morgan. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“He’ll smash me, will he?” thought the Major. +“I’ll crush him now, and finish with him.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Stop,” he said, “policeman. I’ll speak with this man +by himself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you give Mr. Morgan in charge?” said the policeman. +</p> + +<p> +“I have brought no charge as yet,” the Major said, with a +significant look at his man. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you, sir,” whispered Morgan, very low. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, sir,” said the man. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you want with me, sir?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Sir, I ain’t a-goin’ to part with my property,” +growled the man. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I won’t give it up,” said Morgan; “If I do +I’m——” +</p> + +<p> +“Policeman!” cried the Major. +</p> + +<p> +“You shall have the bill,” said Morgan. “You’re not +going to take money of me, and you a gentleman?” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall want you directly,” said the Major to X, who here entered, +and who again withdrew. +</p> + +<p> +“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—.’” +</p> + +<p> +And Mr. Morgan wrote as he was instructed, and as the pitiless old Major +continued:— +</p> + +<p> +“‘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. +</p> + +<p> +“During fifteen years,” wrote Morgan. +</p> + +<p> +“‘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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think if this pistol was loaded, I’d blow your brains +out,” said Morgan. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“‘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.’” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m d——d if I sign it,” said Morgan. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed, and where is he?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you want my uncle to take you back?” asked Arthur, insolent and +good-natured. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap70"></a>CHAPTER LXX.<br/> +In which Pendennis counts his Eggs</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Been in Switzerland?” says Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” says Warrington. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +“And the seat in Parliament, Pen? Have you made it all right?” asks +Warrington. +</p> + +<p> +“All right,—as soon as Parliament meets and a new writ can be +issued, Clavering retires, and I step into his shoes,” says Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“That means that we accept her caresses and her money.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And Laura? how is she?” Warrington asked frankly. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you only found out that now, young un?” Warrington said after +a pause. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“She was in this room once,” said George. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Here Pen began sprinkling himself with eau-de-Cologne, and carefully scenting +his hair and whiskers with that odoriferous water. +</p> + +<p> +“What is the matter? You’ve not been smoking. Is it my pipe that +has poisoned you?” growled Warrington. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t laugh at me, George.” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Pen blushed; and then looked at Warrington; and then—and then burst into +an uncontrollable fit of laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +So, obeying her ladyship’s orders, Arthur went downstairs and walked to +his uncle’s lodgings. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap71"></a>CHAPTER LXXI.<br/> +Fiat Justitia</h2> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And Blanche, I suppose, is her grandfather’s heir,” said +Warrington. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Blanche doesn’t know it,” said Laura, “nor poor Lady +Clavering?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is our friend Colonel Altamont, of course,” said Warrington +“I see all now.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t fancy it, dear Arthur,” said Laura, seizing +Arthur’s hand, and kissing it. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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— +</p> + +<p> +“And what now?” asked George. +</p> + +<p> +“And now we will have some tea,” said Miss Laura, with her smile. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed!” The old gentleman’s cheek began to flush +involuntarily, and he muttered, “The cat’s out of the bag now, +begad!” +</p> + +<p> +“He told me a story, sir, which gave me the deepest surprise and +pain,” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +The Major tried to look unconcerned. “What—that story +about—about—What-d’-you-call-’em, hey?” +</p> + +<p> +“About Miss Amory’s father—about Lady Clavering’s first +husband, and who he is, and what.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish I had known it sooner, or not at all,” said Arthur, +gloomily. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it true, sir?” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Great Heavens, sir!” said Arthur, “are you blind? +Can’t you see?” +</p> + +<p> +“See what, young gentleman?” asked the other. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“What in Heaven’s name do you mean, sir?” cried the old man. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll keep my promise to Miss Amory, sir,” said Arthur. +</p> + +<p> +“And, begad, her parents shall keep theirs to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +On the next day he kept his bed, and refused to see his nephew. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap72"></a>CHAPTER LXXII.<br/> +In which the Decks begin to clear</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“Dear Pen,—I shall be half-way home when you breakfast, and intend +to stay over Christmas, in Norfolk, or elsewhere.<br/> + “I have my own opinion of the issue of matters about which we talked +in J——— St. yesterday; and think my presence <i>de trop</i>. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +“Vale. G. W.” +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“Give my very best regards and adieux to your cousin.” +</p> + +<p> +And so George was gone, and Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, ruled over his empty +chambers. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!” said Arthur. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“A sneer, is there? I was thinking, my dear, that nature in making you so +good and loving did very well: but——” +</p> + +<p> +“But what? What is that wicked but? and why are you always calling it +up?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Pen, you frighten me,” cried Laura. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“He has been engaged for many years past to his cousin, +Lady——” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thrown away? What has happened?” asked Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +Blanche, No. 3, requires an explanation; and it cannot be better given than in +the surprising and mysterious letter of Arthur Pendennis. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap73"></a>CHAPTER LXXIII.<br/> +Mr. and Mrs. Sam Huxter</h2> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +“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! +</p> + +<p> +“B.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Pray take a chair, Mr. Huxter,” said Pen, in his most superb +manner. “In what way can I be of service to you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I had rather not speak before the flunk—before the man, Mr. +Pendennis:” on which Mr. Arthur’s attendant quitted the room. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m in a fix,” said Mr. Huxter, gloomily. +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed.” +</p> + +<p> +“She sent me to you,” continued the young surgeon. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“And tell him what?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve gone and done it, sir,” said Huxter, with a particular +look. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Last Thursday was five weeks—it was two days after Miss Amory came +to Shepherd’s Inn,” Huxter answered. +</p> + +<p> +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” +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“The wife takes the husband’s rank, of course,” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You should have her mother with her,” said Pen, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“So we have lost, Mr. Bows, and here is the lucky winner,” Pen +said, looking hard at the old man. +</p> + +<p> +“Here is the lucky winner, sir, as you say.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s as big fools as I am,” growled the young surgeon. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Huxter blushed scarlet, and covered his confusion with an imprecation. Pen +laughed; the scene suited his bitter humour more and more. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Huxter arose with great perturbation at this news, and plunged his stick into +the pocket of his paletot, and seized his hat. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is she fond of that fellow?” asked Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“There is no accounting for likes and dislikes,” Bows answered. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It seems to me,” she said, “as if Blanche is acting very +artfully.” +</p> + +<p> +“And wishes so to place matters that she may take me or leave me? Is it +not so?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“And if there is,” broke in Arthur, “and if I am free once +again, will the best and dearest of all women——” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Tunbridge Wells is not very far off, is it, Arthur? Hadn’t you +better go and see her?” +</p> + +<p> +They had been in town a week, and neither had thought of that simple plan +before! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap74"></a>CHAPTER LXXIV.<br/> +Shows how Arthur had better have taken a Return-ticket </h2> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I am Mr. Pendennis,” Arthur said. “Where is +Lightfoot?” +</p> + +<p> +“Lightfoot is gone,” answered the man. “My Lady is out, and +my orders was——” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“That you have,” said Foker, with devotion, and conviction in his +looks. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think you’re a——” Foker was beginning, in his +wrath, when Blanche interposed. +</p> + +<p> +“Henry, not a word!—I pray you let there be forgiveness!” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re an angel, by Jove, you’re an angel!” said +Foker, at which Blanche looked seraphically up to the chandelier. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I swear that is a villain who deceives such a loving creature as +that,” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +And at this moment Frank Clavering broke in upon the sentimental trio. +</p> + +<p> +“I say, Pendennis!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Frank!” +</p> + +<p> +“The man wants to be paid, and go back. He’s had some beer.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let’s have a cigar,” said Frank, as they went into the hall. +</p> + +<p> +“She don’t like it,” said Foker, gently. +</p> + +<p> +“Law bless you—she don’t mind. Pendennis used to smoke +regular,” said the candid youth. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I told you how much,” said Arthur. “I never deceived +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you will go back and marry Laura,” continued Blanche. +</p> + +<p> +“Was that what you had to say?” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“You are going to her this very night, I am sure of it. There is no +denying it. You never cared for me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Et vous?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“You know all, then?” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You will tell Harry everything, won’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“The pirate would have wearied you like the rest,” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap75"></a>CHAPTER LXXV.<br/> +A Chapter of Match-making</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +When Lady Rockminster, who has had her after-dinner nap, gets up and goes into +her sitting-room, we may enter with her ladyship. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +Pen starts up with looks of triumph, still holding Laura’s hand. +“She is consoling me for my misfortune, ma’am,” he says. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean by kissing her hand? I don’t know what you will +be next doing.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What stuff are you talking, sir?” cried the old lady. “What +has happened?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And so, as you can’t get Blanche, you put up with Laura; is that +it, sir?” asked the old lady. +</p> + +<p> +“He acted nobly,” Laura said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hm!” grumbled the old lady; “I should have preferred +Bluebeard.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“We must go and see them,” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Arthur and Laura begged for ten minutes more. +</p> + +<p> +“We will go to-morrow morning, then. I will come and fetch you with +Martha.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you mean conspiracy, young man?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was my father’s, too,” said Pen. “I sometimes wish +I had followed it.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“The very words that her Ladyship used yesterday, Mr. Pendennis. He ought +to marry. Sam should marry, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“The town is full of temptations, sir,” continued Pen. The old +gentleman thought of that houri, Mrs. O’Leary. +</p> + +<p> +“There is no better safeguard for a young man than an early marriage with +an honest affectionate creature.” +</p> + +<p> +“No better, sir, no better.” +</p> + +<p> +“And love is better than money, isn’t it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed it is,” said Miss Bell. +</p> + +<p> +“I agree with so fair an authority,” said the old gentleman, with a +bow. +</p> + +<p> +“And—and suppose, sir,” Pen said, “that I had a piece +of news to communicate to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“God bless my soul, Mr. Pendennis! what do you mean?” asked the old +gentleman. +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“Sam married! God bless my soul, sir, you don’t mean that!” +</p> + +<p> +“And to such a nice creature, dear Mr. Huxter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Her Ladyship is charmed with her,” said Pen, telling almost the +first fib which he has told in the course of this story. +</p> + +<p> +“Married! the rascal, is he?” thought the old gentleman. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Will never do so any more, sir,” said Sam. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s your name, my dear?” he said, after a minute of this +sport. +</p> + +<p> +“Fanny, papa,” said Mrs. Samuel. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap76"></a>CHAPTER LXXVI.<br/> +Exeunt Omnes</h2> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<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!” +</p> + +<p> +“It was for the sake of his uncle,” said Lady Rockminster, most +politely. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I have got a paper of yours, Mr. Morgan,” said the old gentleman. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” she asked, shutting the door. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you told Harry? Do you know that villain Morgan knows all?” +</p> + +<p> +“I know it,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you told Harry?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no,” she said. “You won’t betray me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Morgan will,” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope to Heaven she’ll tell him,” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where is Amory?” asked Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He has lost all his winnings, I suppose,” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And did he call you out?” said Pen. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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——” +</p> + +<p> +“But you must have sherry, sir. You must have sherry.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +And now we have brought up our narrative to the point, whither the announcement +in the Chatteris Champion had already conducted us. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s comin’—dammy, who’s a-comin’? +Who’s J. A., Mrs. Lightfoot—curse me, who’s J. A.?” +cried the husband. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Where is Blanche!” asked Harry, in a sickening +voice—“not down yet?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Be quiet, Frank,” said the mother. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do, sir?” she said, and put out both her hands. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m ill,” answered Harry. “I—I’ve brought +a letter for you, Blanche.” +</p> + +<p> +“A letter, and from whom is it, pray? Voyons,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know—I should like to know,” said Foker. +</p> + +<p> +“How can I tell until I see it?” asked Blanche. +</p> + +<p> +“Has Mrs. Bonner not told you?” he said, with a shaking +voice;—“there’s some secret. You give her the letter, Lady +Clavering.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is the matter?” cried Blanche, with rather a ghastly smile; +“the letter is only from—from a poor pensioner and relative of +ours.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not true, it’s not true,” screamed Lady +Clavering. “No, my Frank—is it, Clavering?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You—you shall not treat Miss Amory so in my house,” cried +the Baronet; “give back the letter, by Jove!” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +And Foker opened and read the letter:— +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure you didn’t,” said Foker, going up and kissing +her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“It was for her sake—for her sake, Harry.” Again Miss Amory +is in an attitude. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Blanche thought, “Why didn’t I tell him that night when Arthur +warned me?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“The what?” said Foker. Blanche gave a scream. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +A chaise was indeed coming up the avenue; and the two women shrieked each their +loudest, expecting at that moment to see Altamont arrive. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear good Lady Clavering,” Arthur repeated, with particular +emphasis, “something very strange has happened.” +</p> + +<p> +“Has anything happened to him?” gasped Lady Clavering. “Oh, +it’s horrid to think I should be glad of it—horrid!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it true? what he sometimes said to me,” she screamed +out,—“that he——” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The stranger then said he would go to his bedroom. Morgan said he would show +him the way. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Did he say he’d take away the Clavering Arms from us?” asked +Mr. Lightfoot, turning round. “Hang him, I’ll throttle him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Keep him, darling, till the coach passes to the up train. It’ll be +here now directly.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Note 1 ran as follows:— +</p> + +<p> +“Garbanzos Wine Company, Shepherd’s Inn.—Monday. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And now for the other letter,” said Pen. “Dear old +fellow!” and he kissed the seal before he broke it. +</p> + +<p> +“Warrington, Tuesday. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +THE END +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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