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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Pendennis, Volume 1, by 
+William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A History of Pendennis, Volume 1
+       His fortunes and misfortunes, his friends and his greatest enemy
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Release Date: January 11, 2011 [EBook #34922]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF PENDENNIS, VOLUME 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Lee Dawei, David Garcia and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from scans of public domain works at the
+University of Michigan's Making of America collection.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS.
+
+HIS FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES, HIS FRIENDS AND HIS GREATEST ENEMY.
+
+BY
+
+WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS ON WOOD BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+NEW YORK:
+
+  HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
+  329 & 331 PEARL STREET,
+  FRANKLIN SQUARE.
+
+1858.
+
+
+
+
+TO DR. JOHN ELLIOTSON.
+
+
+  My Dear Doctor,
+
+  Thirteen months ago, when it seemed likely that this story had
+  come to a close, a kind friend brought you to my bedside, whence,
+  in all probability, I never should have risen but for your constant
+  watchfulness and skill. I like to recall your great goodness and
+  kindness (as well as many acts of others, showing quite a surprising
+  friendship and sympathy) at that time, when kindness and friendship
+  were most needed and welcome.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  And as you would take no other fee but thanks, let me record them
+  here in behalf of me and mine, and subscribe myself,
+
+  Yours, most sincerely and gratefully,
+
+  W. M. THACKERAY.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+   CHAP.                                                              PAGE
+
+   1.--SHOWS HOW FIRST LOVE MAY INTERRUPT BREAKFAST                     9
+
+   2.--A PEDIGREE AND OTHER FAMILY MATTERS                             14
+
+   3.--IN WHICH PENDENNIS APPEARS AS A VERY YOUNG MAN INDEED           30
+
+   4.--MRS. HALLER                                                     41
+
+   5.--MRS. HALLER AT HOME                                             49
+
+   6.--CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND WAR                                      62
+
+   7.--IN WHICH THE MAJOR MAKES HIS APPEARANCE                         73
+
+   8.--IN WHICH PEN IS KEPT WAITING AT THE DOOR, WHILE THE READER
+       IS INFORMED WHO LITTLE LAURA WAS                                81
+
+   9.--IN WHICH THE MAJOR OPENS THE CAMPAIGN                           92
+
+  10.--FACING THE ENEMY                                                99
+
+  11.--NEGOTIATION                                                    105
+
+  12.--IN WHICH A SHOOTING MATCH IS PROPOSED                          114
+
+  13.--A CRISIS                                                       122
+
+  14.--IN WHICH MISS FOTHERINGAY MAKES A NEW ENGAGEMENT               130
+
+  15.--THE HAPPY VILLAGE                                              137
+
+  16.--MORE STORMS IN THE PUDDLE                                      147
+
+  17.--WHICH CONCLUDES THE FIRST PART OF THIS HISTORY                 158
+
+  18.--ALMA MATER                                                     169
+
+  19.--PENDENNIS OF BONIFACE                                          178
+
+  20.--RAKE'S PROGRESS                                                191
+
+  21.--FLIGHT AFTER DEFEAT                                            201
+
+  22.--PRODIGAL'S RETURN                                              209
+
+  23.--NEW FACES                                                      217
+
+  24.--A LITTLE INNOCENT                                              233
+
+  25.--CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND JEALOUSY                                243
+
+  26.--A HOUSE FULL OF VISITORS                                       253
+
+  27.--CONTAINS SOME BALL PRACTICING                                  265
+
+  28.--WHICH IS BOTH QUARRELSOME AND SENTIMENTAL                      274
+
+  29.--BABYLON                                                        287
+
+  30.--THE KNIGHTS OF THE TEMPLE                                      297
+
+  31.--OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCES                                      306
+
+  32.--IN WHICH THE PRINTER'S DEVIL COMES TO THE DOOR                 317
+
+  33.--WHICH IS PASSED IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF LUDGATE HILL            329
+
+  34.--IN WHICH THE HISTORY STILL HOVERS ABOUT FLEET STREET           339
+
+  35.--A DINNER IN THE ROW                                            345
+
+  36.--THE PALL MALL GAZETTE                                          355
+
+  37.--WHERE PEN APPEARS IN TOWN AND COUNTRY                          361
+
+  38.--IN WHICH THE SYLPH REAPPEARS                                   376
+
+  39.--IN WHICH COLONEL ALTAMONT APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS               384
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+If this kind of composition, of which the two years' product is now laid
+before the public, fail in art, as it constantly does and must, it at
+least has the advantage of a certain truth and honesty, which a work
+more elaborate might lose. In his constant communication with the
+reader, the writer is forced into frankness of expression, and to speak
+out his own mind and feelings as they urge him. Many a slip of the pen
+and the printer, many a word spoken in haste, he sees and would recall
+as he looks over his volume. It is a sort of confidential talk between
+writer and reader, which must often be dull, must often flag. In the
+course of his volubility, the perpetual speaker must of necessity lay
+bare his own weaknesses, vanities, peculiarities. And as we judge of a
+man's character, after long frequenting his society, not by one speech,
+or by one mood or opinion, or by one day's talk, but by the tenor of his
+general bearing and conversation; so of a writer, who delivers himself
+up to you perforce unreservedly, you say, Is he honest? Does he tell the
+truth in the main? Does he seem actuated by a desire to find out and
+speak it? Is he a quack, who shams sentiment, or mouths for effect? Does
+he seek popularity by clap-traps or other arts? I can no more ignore
+good fortune than any other chance which has befallen me. I have found
+many thousands more readers than I ever looked for. I have no right to
+say to these, You shall not find fault with my Art, or fall asleep over
+my pages; but I ask you to believe that this person writing strives to
+tell the truth. If there is not that, there is nothing.
+
+Perhaps the lovers of "excitement" may care to know, that this book
+began with a very precise plan, which was entirely put aside. Ladies and
+gentlemen, you were to have been treated, and the writer's and the
+publishers' pocket benefited, by the recital of the most active horrors.
+What more exciting than a ruffian (with many admirable virtues) in St.
+Giles's, visited constantly by a young lady from Belgravia? What more
+stirring than the contrasts of society? the mixture of slang and
+fashionable language? the escapes, the battles, the murders? Nay, up to
+nine o'clock this very morning, my poor friend, Colonel Altamont, was
+doomed to execution, and the author only relented when his victim was
+actually at the window.
+
+The "exciting" plan was laid aside (with a very honorable 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
+jail-birds being quite unfamiliar to me, the idea of entering into
+competition with M. Eugène Sue was abandoned. To describe a real rascal,
+you must make him so horrible that he would be too hideous to show; and
+unless the painter paints him fairly, I hold he has no right to show him
+at all.
+
+Even the gentlemen of our age--this is an attempt to describe one of
+them, no better nor worse than most educated men--even these we can not
+show as they are, with the notorious foibles and selfishness of their
+lives and their education. Since the author of Tom Jones was buried, no
+writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict, to his utmost
+power, a MAN. We must drape him, and give him a certain conventional
+simper. Society will not tolerate the Natural in our Art. Many ladies
+have remonstrated, and subscribers left me, because, in the course of
+the story, I described a young man resisting and affected by temptation.
+My object was to say, that he had the passions to feel, and the
+manliness and generosity to overcome them. You will not hear--it is best
+to know it--what moves in the real world, what passes in society, in
+the clubs, colleges, newsrooms--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 labor, and bids his kind reader farewell.
+
+Kensington, _Nov. 26th, 1850_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PENDENNIS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+SHOWS HOW FIRST LOVE MAY INTERRUPT BREAKFAST.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+One fine morning in the full London season, Major Arthur Pendennis
+came over from his lodgings, according to his custom, to breakfast at
+a certain club in Pall Mall, of which he was a chief ornament. As he
+was one of the finest judges of wine in England, and a man of active,
+dominating, and inquiring spirit, he had been very properly chosen to be
+a member of the committee of this club and indeed was almost the manager
+of the institution; and the stewards and waiters bowed before him as
+reverentially as to a duke or a field-marshal.
+
+At a quarter past ten the major invariably made his appearance in the
+best blacked boots in all London, with a checked morning cravat that
+never was rumpled until dinner time, a buff waistcoat which bore the
+crown of his sovereign on the buttons, and linen so spotless that Mr.
+Brummel himself asked the name of his laundress, and would probably have
+employed her, had not misfortunes compelled that great man to fly the
+country. Pendennis's coat, his white gloves, his whiskers, his very
+cane, were perfect of their kind as specimens of the costume of a
+military man _en retraite_. At a distance, or seeing his back merely,
+you would have taken him to be not more than thirty years old: it was
+only by a nearer inspection that you saw the factitious nature of his
+rich brown hair, and that there were a few crows'-feet round about the
+somewhat faded eyes of his handsome mottled face. His nose was of the
+Wellington pattern. His hands and wristbands were beautifully long and
+white. On the latter he wore handsome gold buttons given to him by his
+Royal Highness the Duke of York, and on the others more than one elegant
+ring, the chief and largest of them being emblazoned with the famous
+arms of Pendennis.
+
+He always took possession of the same table in the same corner of the
+room, from which nobody ever now thought of ousting him. One or two
+mad wags and wild fellows had in former days, and in freak or bravado,
+endeavored 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 every body, and every other
+man he met was a lord.
+
+The major sate down at his accustomed table then, and while the waiters
+went to bring him his toast and his hot newspaper, he surveyed his
+letters through his gold double eye-glass. He carried it so gayly, 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 honor of Major Pendennis's company at Ealing House,
+all of which letters Pendennis read gracefully, and with the more
+satisfaction, because Glowry, the Scotch surgeon, breakfasting opposite
+to him, was looking on, and hating him for having so many invitations,
+which nobody ever sent to Glowry.
+
+These perused, the major took out his pocket-book to see on what days he
+was disengaged, and which of these many hospitable calls he could afford
+to accept or decline.
+
+He threw over Cutler, the East India Director, in Baker-street, in order
+to dine with Lord Steyne and the little French party at the Star and
+Garter--the bishop he accepted, because, though the dinner was slow he
+liked to dine with bishops--and so went through his list and disposed
+of them according to his fancy or interest. Then he took his breakfast
+and looked over the paper, the gazette, the births and deaths, and the
+fashionable intelligence, to see that his name was down among the guests
+at my Lord So-and-so's fête, and in the intervals of these occupations
+carried on cheerful conversation with his acquaintances about the room.
+
+Among the letters which formed Major Pendennis's budget for that morning
+there was only one unread, and which lay solitary and apart from all the
+fashionable London letters, with a country postmark and a homely seal.
+The superscription was in a pretty, delicate female hand, and though
+marked "Immediate" by the fair writer, with a strong dash of anxiety
+under the word, yet the major had, for reasons of his own, neglected up
+to the present moment his humble rural petitioner, who to be sure could
+hardly hope to get a hearing among so many grand folks who attended his
+levee. The fact was, this was a letter from a female relative of
+Pendennis, and while the grandees of her brother's acquaintance were
+received and got their interview, and drove off, as it were, the patient
+country letter remained for a long time waiting for an audience in the
+ante-chamber under the slop-basin.
+
+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
+post-mark. It was a double letter, and the major commenced perusing the
+envelope before he attacked the inner epistle.
+
+"Is it a letter from another _Jook_?" growled Mr. Glowry, inwardly,
+"Pendennis would not be leaving that to the last, I'm thinking."
+
+"My dear Major Pendennis," the letter ran, "I beg and implore you to
+come to me _immediately_"--very likely, thought Pendennis, and Steyne's
+dinner to-day--"I am in the very greatest grief and perplexity. My
+dearest boy, who has been hitherto every thing the fondest mother could
+wish, is grieving me _dreadfully_. He has formed--I can hardly write
+it--a passion, an infatuation,"--the major grinned--"for an actress
+who has been performing here. She is at least twelve years older than
+Arthur--who will not be eighteen till next February--and the wretched
+boy insists upon marrying her."
+
+"Hay! What's making Pendennis swear now?"--Mr. Glowry asked of himself,
+for rage and wonder were concentrated in the major's open mouth, as he
+read this astounding announcement.
+
+"Do, my dear friend," the grief-stricken lady went on, "come to me
+instantly on the receipt of this; and, as Arthur's guardian, entreat,
+command, the wretched child to give up this most deplorable resolution."
+And, after more entreaties to the above effect, the writer concluded
+by signing herself the major's "unhappy affectionate sister, Helen
+Pendennis."
+
+"Fairoaks, Tuesday"--the major concluded, reading the last words of
+the letter--"A d--d pretty business at Fairoaks, Tuesday; now let us
+see what the boy has to say;" and he took the other letter, which was
+written in a great floundering boy's hand, and sealed with the large
+signet of the Pendennises, even larger than the major's own, and with
+supplementary wax sputtered all round the seal, in token of the writer's
+tremulousness and agitation.
+
+The epistle ran thus--
+
+
+  "Fairoaks,
+  "_Monday, Midnight_.
+
+  "My dear Uncle,
+
+    "In informing you of my engagement with Miss Costigan, daughter of
+    J. Chesterfield Costigan Esq., of Costiganstown, but, perhaps, better
+    known to you under her professional name of Miss Fotheringay, of the
+    Theaters Royal Drury Lane and Crow-street, and of the Norwich and
+    Welsh Circuit, I am aware that I make an announcement which can not,
+    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 honorable
+    maintenance by the exercise of her splendid talents, Miss Costigan's
+    family is as ancient and noble as our own. When our ancestor, Ralph
+    Pendennis, landed with Richard II. in Ireland, my Emily's forefathers
+    were kings of that country. I have the information from Mr. Costigan,
+    who, like yourself, is a military man.
+
+    "It is in vain I have attempted to argue with my dear mother, and
+    prove to her that a young lady of irreproachable character and
+    lineage, endowed with the most splendid gifts of beauty and genius,
+    who devotes herself to the exercise of one of the noblest professions,
+    for the sacred purpose of maintaining her family, is a being whom we
+    should all love and reverence, rather than avoid;--my poor mother
+    has prejudices which it is impossible for my logic to overcome, and
+    refuses to welcome to her arms one who is disposed to be her most
+    affectionate daughter through life.
+
+    "Although Miss Costigan is some years older than myself, that
+    circumstance does not operate as a barrier to my affection, and I am
+    sure will not influence its duration. A love like mine, sir, I feel,
+    is contracted once and for ever. As I never had dreamed of love until
+    I saw her--I feel now that I shall die without ever knowing another
+    passion. It is the fate of my life. It was Miss C.'s own delicacy
+    which suggested that the difference of age, which I never felt, might
+    operate as a bar to our union. But having loved once, I should despise
+    myself, and be unworthy of my name as a gentleman, if I hesitated
+    to abide by my passion: if I did not give all where I felt all, and
+    endow the woman who loves me fondly with my whole heart and my whole
+    fortune.
+
+    "I press for a speedy marriage with my Emily--for why, in truth,
+    should it be delayed? A delay implies a doubt, which I cast from me
+    as unworthy. It is impossible that my sentiments can change toward
+    Emily--that at any age she can be any thing but the sole object of
+    my love. Why, then, wait? I entreat you, my dear uncle, to come down
+    and reconcile my dear mother to our union, and I address you as a man
+    of the world, _qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes_, who will
+    not feel any of the weak scruples and fears which agitate a lady who
+    has scarcely ever left her village.
+
+    "Pray come down to us immediately. I am quite confident that--apart
+    from considerations of fortune--you will admire and approve of
+    my Emily.
+
+  "Your affectionate Nephew.
+
+  "ARTHUR PENDENNIS, Jr."
+
+
+When the major had concluded the perusal of this letter, his
+countenance assumed an expression of such rage and horror that Glowry
+the surgeon-official, felt in his pocket for his lancet, which he always
+carried in his card-case, and thought his respected friend was going
+into a fit. The intelligence was indeed sufficient to agitate Pendennis.
+The head of the Pendennises going to marry an actress ten years his
+senior--a headstrong boy going to plunge into matrimony. "The mother has
+spoiled the young rascal," groaned the major inwardly, "with her cursed
+sentimentality and romantic rubbish. My nephew marry a tragedy queen!
+Gracious mercy, people will laugh at me so that I shall not dare show
+my head!" And he thought with an inexpressible pang that he must give
+up Lord Steyne's dinner at Richmond, and must lose his rest and pass the
+night in an abominable tight mail-coach, instead of taking pleasure,
+as he had promised himself, in some of the most agreeable and select
+society in England.
+
+And he must not only give up this but all other engagements for some
+time to come. Who knows how long the business might detain him. He
+quitted his breakfast table for the adjoining writing-room, and there
+ruefully wrote off refusals to the marquis, the earl, the bishop, and
+all his entertainers; and he ordered his servant to take places in
+the mail-coach for that evening, of course charging the sum which he
+disbursed for the seats to the account of the widow and the young
+scapegrace of whom he was guardian.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+A PEDIGREE AND OTHER FAMILY MATTERS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Early in the Regency of George the Magnificent, there lived in a small
+town in the west of England, called Clavering, a gentleman whose name
+was Pendennis. There were those alive who remembered having seen his
+name painted on a board, which was surmounted by a gilt pestle and
+mortar over the door of a very humble little shop in the city of Bath,
+where Mr. Pendennis exercised the profession of apothecary and surgeon;
+and where he not only attended gentlemen in their sick-rooms, and ladies
+at the most interesting periods of their lives, but would condescend to
+sell a brown-paper plaster to a farmer's wife across the counter--or to
+vend tooth-brushes, hair-powder, and London perfumery. For these facts
+a few folks at Clavering could vouch, where people's memories were more
+tenacious, perhaps, than they are in a great bustling metropolis.
+
+And yet that little apothecary who sold a stray customer a pennyworth
+of salts, or a more fragrant cake of Windsor soap, was a gentleman of
+good education, and of as old a family as any in the whole county of
+Somerset. He had a Cornish pedigree which carried the Pendennises up to
+the time of the Druids--and who knows how much farther back? They had
+intermarried with the Normans at a very late period of their family
+existence, and they were related to all the great families of Wales
+and Britanny. Pendennis had had a piece of University education too, and
+might have pursued that career with great honor, but that in his second
+year at Cambridge his father died insolvent, and poor Pen was obliged
+to betake himself to the pestle and apron. He always detested the trade,
+and it was only necessity, and the offer of his mother's brother, a
+London apothecary of low family, into which Pendennis's father had
+demeaned himself by marrying, that forced John Pendennis into so odious
+a calling.
+
+He quickly after his apprenticeship parted from the coarse-minded
+practitioner, his relative, and set up for himself at Bath with his
+modest medical ensign. He had for some time a hard struggle with
+poverty; and it was all he could do to keep the shop and its gilt
+ornaments in decent repair, and his bed-ridden mother in comfort: but
+Lady Ribstone, happening to be passing to the Rooms with an intoxicated
+Irish chair man who bumped her ladyship up against Pen's very door-post,
+and drove his chair-pole through the handsomest pink-bottle in the
+surgeon's window, alighted screaming from her vehicle, and was
+accommodated with a chair in Mr. Pendennis's shop, where she was
+brought round with cinnamon and sal-volatile.
+
+Mr. Pendennis's manners were so uncommonly gentlemanlike and soothing,
+that her ladyship, the wife of Sir Pepin Ribstone, of Codlingbury, in
+the county of Somerset, Bart., appointed her preserver, as she called
+him, apothecary to her person and family, which was very large. Master
+Ribstone coming home for the Christmas holidays from Eton, over-ate
+himself and had a fever, in which Mr. Pendennis treated him with the
+greatest skill and tenderness. In a word, he got the good graces of the
+Codlingbury family, and from that day began to prosper. The good company
+of Bath patronized him, and among 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 bed-room
+window to which her chair was rolled, her beloved John step into a
+close carriage of his own, a one-horse carriage it is true, but with
+the arms of the family of Pendennis handsomely emblazoned on the panels.
+"What would Arthur say now?" she asked, speaking of a younger son of
+hers--"who never so much as once came to see my dearest Johnny through
+all the time of his poverty and struggles!"
+
+"Captain Pendennis is with his regiment in India, mother," Mr. Pendennis
+remarked, "and, if you please, I wish you would not call me Johnny
+before the young man--before Mr. Parkins."
+
+Presently the day came when she ceased to call her son by the name of
+Johnny, or by any other title of endearment or affection; and his house
+was very lonely without that kind though querulous voice. He had his
+night-bell altered and placed in the room in which the good old lady
+had grumbled for many a long year, and he slept in the great large bed
+there. He was upward of forty years old when these events befell; before
+the war was over; before George the Magnificent came to the throne;
+before this history indeed: but what is a gentleman without his
+pedigree? Pendennis, by this time, had his handsomely framed and glazed,
+and hanging up in his drawing-room between the pictures of Codlingbury
+House in Somersetshire, and St. Boniface's College, Cambridge, where he
+had passed the brief and happy days of his early manhood. As for the
+pedigree he had taken it out of a trunk, as Sterne's officer called for
+his sword, now that he was a gentleman and could show it.
+
+About the time of Mrs. Pendennis's demise, another of her son's patients
+likewise died at Bath; that virtuous woman, old Lady Pontypool, daughter
+of Reginald twelfth Earl of Bareacres, and by consequence great grand
+aunt to the present earl, and widow of John second Lord Pontypool, and
+likewise of the Reverend Jonas Wales, of the Armageddon Chapel, Clifton.
+For the last five years of her life her ladyship had been attended by
+Miss Helen Thistlewood, a very distant relative of the noble house of
+Bareacres, before mentioned, and daughter of Lieutenant R. Thistlewood,
+R. N., killed at the battle of Copenhagen. Under Lady Pontypool's roof
+Miss Thistlewood found a comfortable shelter, as far as boarding and
+lodging went, but suffered under such an infernal tyranny as only women
+can inflict on, or bear from, one another; the doctor, who paid his
+visits to my Lady Pontypool at least twice a day, could not but remark
+the angelical sweetness and kindness with which the young lady bore her
+elderly relative's insults; and it was, as they were going in the fourth
+mourning coach to attend her ladyship's venerated remains to Bath Abbey,
+where they now repose, that he looked at her sweet pale face, and
+resolved upon putting a certain question to her, the very nature of
+which made his pulse beat ninety, at least.
+
+He was older than she by more than twenty years, and at no time the most
+ardent of men. Perhaps he had had a love affair in early life which he
+had to strangle--perhaps all early love affairs ought to be strangled or
+drowned, like so many blind kittens: well, at three-and-forty he was a
+collected quiet little gentleman in black stockings, with a bald head,
+and a few days after the ceremony he called to see her, and, as he felt
+her pulse, he kept hold of her hand in his, and asked her where she
+was going to live now that the Pontypool family had come down upon the
+property, which was being nailed into boxes, and packed into hampers,
+and swaddled up with haybands, and buried in straw, and locked under
+three keys in green-baize plate-chests, and carted away under the eyes
+of poor Miss Helen--he asked her where she was going to live finally.
+
+Her eyes filled with tears, and she said she did not know. She had a
+little money. The old lady had left her a thousand pounds, indeed; and
+she would go into a boarding-house or into a school; in fine, she did
+not know where.
+
+Then Pendennis, looking into her pale face, and keeping hold of her
+cold little hand, asked her if she would come and live with him? He
+was old compared to--to so blooming a young lady as Miss Thistlewood
+(Pendennis was of the grave old complimentary school of gentlemen and
+apothecaries), but he was of good birth, and, he flattered himself,
+of good principles and temper. His prospects were good, and daily
+mending. He was alone in the world, and had need of a kind and constant
+companion, whom it would be the study of his life to make happy; in a
+word, he recited to her a little speech, which he had composed that
+morning in bed, and rehearsed and perfected in his carriage, as he was
+coming to wait upon the young lady.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 up stairs 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 honorable; 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 courtesy, and asked
+leave to--to consider his very kind proposal.
+
+They were married in the dull Bath season, which was the height
+of the season in London. And Pendennis having previously, through
+a professional friend, M.R.C.S., secured lodgings in Holles-street,
+Cavendish Square, took his wife thither in a chaise and pair; conducted
+her to the theaters, 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 Honorable the Earl of Bareacres, and upon Sir Pepin and Lady
+Ribstone, his earliest and kindest patrons. Bareacres took no notice
+of the cards. Pontypool called, admired Mrs. Pendennis, and said Lady
+Pontypool would come and see her, which her ladyship did, per proxy of
+John her footman, who brought her card, and an invitation to a concert
+five weeks off. Pendennis was back in his little one-horse carriage,
+dispensing draughts and pills at that time: but the Ribstones asked him
+and Mrs. Pendennis to an entertainment, of which Mr. Pendennis bragged
+to the last day of his life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The secret ambition of Mr. Pendennis had always been to be a gentleman.
+It takes much time and careful saving for a provincial doctor, whose
+gains are not very large, to lay by enough money wherewith to purchase
+a house and land: but besides our friend's own frugality and prudence,
+fortune aided him considerably in his endeavor, 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 can not 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 realized 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 forever retired from the handling of the mortar and
+pestle.
+
+Arthur Pendennis, his son, was eight years old at the time of this
+event, so that it is no wonder that the latter, who left Bath and the
+surgery so young, should forget the existence of such a place almost
+entirely, and that his father's hands had ever been dirtied by the
+compounding of odious pills, or the preparation of filthy plasters. The
+old man never spoke about the shop himself, never alluded to it; called
+in the medical practitioner of Clavering to attend his family when
+occasion arrived; sunk the black breeches and stockings altogether;
+attended market and sessions, and wore a bottle-green coat and brass
+buttons with drab gaiters, just as if he had been an English gentleman
+all his life. He used to stand at his lodge-gate, and see the coaches
+come in, and bow gravely to the guards and coachmen as they touched
+their hats and drove by. It was he who founded the Clavering Book Club;
+and set up the Samaritan Soup and Blanket Society. It was he who brought
+the mail, which used to run through Cacklefield before, away from that
+village and through Clavering. At church he was equally active as a
+vestryman and a worshiper. At market every Thursday, he went from pen
+to stall, looked at samples of oats, and munched corn, felt beasts,
+punched geese in the breast, and weighed them with a knowing air, and
+did business with the farmers at the Clavering Arms, as well as the
+oldest frequenter of that house of call. It was now his shame, as it
+formerly was his pride, to be called doctor, and those who wished to
+please him always gave him the title of squire.
+
+Heaven knows where they came from, but a whole range of Pendennis
+portraits presently hung round the doctor's oak dining-room; Lelys and
+Vandykes he vowed all the portraits to be, and when questioned as to
+the history of the originals, would vaguely say they were "ancestors
+of his." You could see by his wife's looks that she disbelieved in
+these genealogical legends, for she generally endeavored to turn the
+conversation when he commenced them. But his little boy believed them to
+their fullest extent, and Roger Pendennis of Agincourt, Arthur Pendennis
+of Crecy, General Pendennis of Blenheim and Oudenarde, were as real
+and actual beings for this young gentleman as--whom shall we say?--as
+Robinson Crusoe, or Peter Wilkins, or the Seven Champions of
+Christendom, whose histories were in his library.
+
+Pendennis's fortune, which, at the best, was not above eight hundred
+pounds a year, did not, with the best economy and management, permit
+of his living with the great folks of the county; but he had a decent
+comfortable society of the second-best sort. If they were not the roses,
+they lived near the roses, as it were, and had a good deal of the odor
+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 forever swaggering about
+the squire's stables and gardens, and endeavoring to enlist him in
+his quarrels with the vicar, with the postmaster, with the Reverend F.
+Wapshot of Clavering Grammar School, for overflogging his son, Anglesea
+Glanders--with all the village, in fine. And Pendennis and his wife
+often blessed themselves, that their house of Fairoaks was nearly a
+mile out of Clavering, or their premises would never have been free
+from the prying eyes and prattle of one or other of the male and
+female inhabitants there.
+
+Fairoaks lawn comes down to the little river Brawl, and on the other
+side were the plantations and woods (as much as were left of them) of
+Clavering Park, Sir Francis Clavering, Bart. The park was let out in
+pasture and fed down by sheep and cattle, when the Pendennises came
+first to live at Fairoaks. Shutters were up in the house; a splendid
+freestone palace, with great stairs, statues, and porticos, whereof you
+may see a picture in the "Beauties of England and Wales." Sir Richard
+Clavering, Sir Francis's grandfather, had commenced the ruin of the
+family by the building of this palace; his successor had achieved the
+ruin by living in it. The present Sir Francis was abroad somewhere;
+nor could any body be found rich enough to rent that enormous mansion,
+through the deserted rooms, moldy 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 somber 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
+splendor. Little Arthur's figure and his mother's, cast long blue
+shadows over the grass; and he would repeat in a low voice (for a scene
+of great natural beauty always moved the boy, who inherited this
+sensibility from his mother) certain lines beginning, "These are thy
+glorious works, Parent of Good; Almighty! thine this universal frame,"
+greatly to Mrs. Pendennis's delight. Such walks and conversation
+generally ended in a profusion of filial and maternal embraces; for to
+love and to pray were the main occupations of this dear woman's life;
+and I have often heard Pendennis say in his wild way, that he felt that
+he was sure of going to heaven, for his mother never could be happy
+there without him.
+
+As for John Pendennis, as the father of the family, and that sort of
+thing, every body 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 wo to those who came late,
+as little Pen, a disorderly little rascal, sometimes did. Prayers were
+recited, his letters were read, his business dispatched, his stables
+and garden inspected, his hen-houses and kennel, his barn and pigstye
+visited, always at regular hours. After dinner he always had a nap with
+the Globe newspaper on his knee, and his yellow bandanna handkerchief on
+his face (Major Pendennis sent the yellow handkerchiefs from India, and
+his brother had helped in the purchase of his majority, so that they
+were good friends now). And so, as his dinner took place at six o'clock
+to a minute, and the sunset business alluded to may be supposed to have
+occurred at about half-past seven, it is probable that he did not much
+care for the view in front of his lawn windows, or take any share in the
+poetry and caresses which were taking place there.
+
+They seldom occurred in his presence. However frisky they were before,
+mother and child were hushed and quiet when Mr. Pendennis walked into
+the drawing room, his newspaper under his arm. And here, while little
+Pen, buried in a great chair, read all the books of which he could lay
+hold, the squire perused his own articles in the "Gardener's Gazette,"
+or took a solemn hand at picquet with Mrs. Pendennis, or an occasional
+friend from the village.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pendennis usually took care that at least one of his grand dinners
+should take place when his brother, the major, who, on the return of
+his regiment from India and New South Wales, had sold out and gone upon
+half-pay, came to pay his biennial visit to Fairoaks. "My brother, Major
+Pendennis," was a constant theme of the retired doctor's conversation.
+All the family delighted in my brother the major. He was the link which
+bound them to the great world of London, and the fashion. He always
+brought down the last news of the nobility, and was in the constant
+habit of dining with lords and great folks. He spoke of such with
+soldier-like 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 honor to move. I shall live and
+die an old bachelor, John: and your worthy friend, Miss Hunkle, I have
+no doubt, will find some more worthy object of her affection, than a
+worn-out old soldier on half-pay." Time showed the correctness of the
+surmise of the old man of the world; Miss Hunkle married a young French
+nobleman, and is now at this moment living at Lilybank, under the title
+of Baroness de Carambole, having been separated from her wild young
+scapegrace of a baron very shortly after their union.
+
+The major was a great favorite 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 honor 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 among his circle of acquaintance--women in whose
+angelical natures, there is something awful as well as beautiful, to
+contemplate; at whose feet the wildest and fiercest of us must fall down
+and humble ourselves;--in admiration of that adorable purity which never
+seems to do or to think wrong.
+
+Arthur Pendennis had the good fortune to have a mother endowed with
+those 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 mean while, this lady moved through the world quite regardless of
+all the comments that were made in her praise or disfavor. 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 neighbors, and doing her duty.
+
+That even a woman should be faultless, however, is an arrangement not
+permitted by nature, which assigns to us mental defects, as it awards
+to us headaches, illnesses, or death; without which, the scheme of
+the world could not be carried on--nay, some of the best qualities of
+mankind could not be brought into exercise. As pain produces or elicits
+fortitude and endurance; difficulty, perseverance; poverty, industry and
+ingenuity; danger, courage and what not; so the very virtues, on the
+other hand, will generate some vices: and, in fine, Mrs. Pendennis had
+that vice which Miss Pybus and Miss Pierce discovered in her, namely,
+that of pride; which did not vest itself so much in her own person, as
+in that of her family. She spoke about Mr. Pendennis (a worthy little
+gentleman enough, but there are others as good as he) with an awful
+reverence, as if he had been the Pope of Rome on his throne, and she
+a cardinal kneeling at his feet and giving him incense. The major she
+held to be a sort of Bayard among majors: and as for her son, Arthur, she
+worshiped that youth with an ardor which the young scapegrace accepted
+almost as coolly as the statue of the saint in Saint Peter's receives
+the rapturous osculations which the faithful deliver on his toe.
+
+This unfortunate superstition and idol-worship of this good woman was
+the cause of a great deal of the misfortune which befell the young
+gentleman who is the hero of this history, and deserves therefore to
+be mentioned at the outset of his story.
+
+Arthur Pendennis's schoolfellows at the Greyfriars School state that,
+as a boy, he was in no ways remarkable either as a dunce or as a scholar.
+He did, in fact, just as much as was required of him, and no more. If
+he was distinguished for any thing 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 ardor. 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 dishonored 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 pick-pockets), little Pen, at first uneasy and terrified by
+these charges, became gradually accustomed to hear them; and he has not,
+in fact, either murdered his parents, or committed any act worthy of
+transportation or hanging up to the present day.
+
+There were many of the upper boys, among the Cistercians with whom
+Pendennis was educated, who assumed all the privileges of men long
+before they quitted that seminary. Many of them, for example, smoked
+cigars--and some had already begun the practice of inebriation. One had
+fought a duel with an ensign in a marching regiment in consequence of a
+row at the theater--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 woman's turn to blush then. Before he was twelve
+years old and while his mother fancied him an angel of candor, little
+Pen had heard talk enough to make him quite awfully wise upon certain
+points--and so, madam, has your pretty little rosy-cheeked son, who
+is coming home from school for the ensuing Christmas holidays. I don't
+say that the boy is lost, or that the innocence has left him which
+he had from "Heaven, which is our home," but that the shades of the
+prison-house are closing very fast over him, and that we are helping
+as much as possible to corrupt him.
+
+Well--Pen had just made his public appearance in a coat with a tail, or
+cauda-virilis, and was looking most anxiously in his little study-glass
+to see if his whiskers were growing, like those of more fortunate youths
+his companions; and, instead of the treble voice with which he used to
+speak and sing (for his singing voice was a very sweet one, and he used
+when little to be made to perform "Home, sweet Home," "My pretty Page,"
+and a French song or two which his mother had taught him, and other
+ballads for the delectation of the senior boys), had suddenly plunged
+into a deep bass diversified by a squeak, which, when he was called upon
+to construe in school, set the master and scholars laughing--he was
+about sixteen years old, in a word, when he was suddenly called away
+from his academic studies.
+
+It was at the close of the forenoon school, and Pen had been unnoticed
+all the previous part of the morning till now, when the doctor put him
+on to construe in a Greek play. He did not know a word of it, though
+little Timmins, his form-fellow, was prompting him with all his might.
+Pen had made a sad blunder or two--when the awful chief broke out upon
+him.
+
+"Pendennis, sir," he said, "your idleness is incorrigible, and your
+stupidity beyond example. You are a disgrace to your school, and to your
+family, and I have no doubt will prove so in after-life to your country.
+If that vice, sir, which is described to us as the root of all evil, be
+really what moralists have represented (and I have no doubt of the
+correctness of their opinion), for what a prodigious quantity of future
+crime and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed! Miserable
+trifler! A boy who construes [Greek: de] _and_, instead of [Greek: de]
+_but_, at sixteen years of age is guilty not merely of folly, and
+ignorance, and dullness 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 neighbor. A man who forges on his neighbor 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 dishonored 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Indeed, while the master was making this oration, there was a general
+titter behind him in the school-room. The orator had his back to the
+door of this ancient apartment, which was open, and a gentleman who
+was quite familiar with the place, for both Major Arthur and Mr. John
+Pendennis had been at the school, was asking the fifth form boy who
+sate by the door for Pendennis. The lad grinning pointed to the culprit
+against whom the doctor was pouring out the thunders of his just
+wrath--Major Pendennis could not help laughing. He remembered having
+stood under that very pillar where Pen the younger now stood, and having
+been assaulted by the doctor's predecessor, years and years ago. The
+intelligence was "passed round" that it was Pendennis's uncle in an
+instant, and a hundred young faces wondering and giggling, between
+terror and laughter, turned now to the new comer and then to the awful
+doctor.
+
+The major asked the fifth-form boy to carry his card up to the doctor,
+which the lad did with an arch look. Major Pendennis had written on the
+card, "I must take A. P. home; his father is very ill."
+
+As the doctor received the card, and stopped his harangue with rather
+a scared look, the laughter of the boys, half constrained until then,
+burst out in a general shout. "Silence!" roared out the doctor, stamping
+with his foot. Pen looked up and saw who was his deliverer; the major
+beckoned to him gravely with one of his white gloves, and tumbling down
+his books, Pen went across.
+
+The doctor took out his watch. It was two minutes to one. "We will take
+the Juvenal at afternoon school," he said, nodding to the major, and all
+the boys, understanding the signal, gathered up their books and poured
+out of the hall.
+
+Young Pen saw by his uncle's face that something had happened at home.
+"Is there any thing the matter with--my mother?" he said. He could
+hardly speak, though, for emotion, and the tears which were ready
+to start.
+
+"No," said the major, "but your father's very ill. Go and pack your
+trunk directly; I have got a post-chaise at the gate."
+
+Pen went off quickly to his boarding-house to do as his uncle bade him;
+and the doctor, now left alone in the school-room, 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 gray petticoat,
+so, as the clock struck one, all the thundering majesty and awful wrath
+of the schoolmaster disappeared.
+
+"There is nothing serious, I hope," said the doctor. "It is a pity to
+take the boy away unless there is. He is a very good boy, rather idle
+and unenergetic, but he is a very honest, gentlemanlike little fellow,
+though I can't get him to construe as I wish. Won't you come in and
+have some luncheon? My wife will be very happy to see you."
+
+But Major Pendennis declined the luncheon. He said his brother was very
+ill, had had a fit the day before, and it was a great question if they
+should see him alive.
+
+"There's no other son, is there?" said the doctor. The major answered
+"No."
+
+"And there's a good eh--a good eh--property I believe?" asked the other,
+in an offhand way.
+
+"H'm--so so," said the major. Whereupon this colloquy came to an end.
+And Arthur Pendennis got into the post-chaise with his uncle never to
+come back to school any more.
+
+As the chaise drove through Clavering, the hostler standing whistling
+under the archway of the Clavering Arms, winked the postillion ominously,
+as much as to say all was over. The gardener's wife came and opened the
+lodge-gates, and let the travelers 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 harrier. But Arthur had
+been his father's pride and glory through life, and his name the last
+which John Pendennis had tried to articulate while he lay with his
+wife's hand clasping his own cold and clammy palm, as the flickering
+spirit went out into the darkness of death, and life and the world
+passed away from him.
+
+The little girl, whose face had peered for a moment under the blinds as
+the chaise came up, opened the door from the stairs into the hall, and
+taking Arthur's hand silently as he stooped down to kiss her, led him
+up-stairs to his mother. Old John opened the drawing-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 neighborhood held him; on
+what a loss he would be to the magistrates' bench, the county hospital,
+&c. Mrs. Pendennis bore up wonderfully, he said, especially since Master
+Arthur's arrival. The lawyer staid 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. Every thing
+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 every thing 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 afterward with the plate-basket; and
+the next morning brought him the key of the hall clock--the squire
+always used to wind it up of a Thursday, John said. Mrs. Pendennis's
+maid brought him messages from her mistress. She confirmed the doctor's
+report, of the comfort which Master Arthur's arrival had caused to his
+mother.
+
+What passed between that lady and the boy is not of import. A vail
+should be thrown over those sacred emotions of love and grief. The
+maternal passion is a sacred mystery to me. What one sees symbolized
+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 toward 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 _storgé_,
+which began with our race and sanctifies the history of mankind.
+
+So it was with this, in a word, that Mrs. Pendennis comforted herself on
+the death of her husband, whom, however, she always reverenced as the
+best, the most upright, wise, high-minded, accomplished, and awful of
+men. If the women did not make idols of us, and if they saw us as we see
+each other, would life be bearable, or could society go on? Let a man
+pray that none of his womankind should form a just estimation of him.
+If your wife knew you as you are, neighbor, she would not grieve much
+about being your widow, and would let your grave-lamp go out very
+soon, or perhaps not even take the trouble to light it. Whereas Helen
+Pendennis put up the handsomest of memorials to her husband, and
+constantly renewed it with the most precious oil.
+
+As for Arthur Pendennis, after that awful shock which the sight of his
+dead father must have produced on him, and the pity and feeling which
+such an event no doubt occasioned, I am not sure that in the very moment
+of the grief, and as he embraced his mother and tenderly consoled her,
+and promised to love her forever, there was not springing up in his
+breast a feeling of secret triumph and exultation. He was the chief now
+and lord. He was Pendennis; and all round about him were his servants
+and handmaids. "You'll never send me away," little Laura said, tripping
+by him, and holding his hand. "You won't send me to school, will you,
+Arthur?"
+
+Arthur kissed her and patted her head. No, she shouldn't go to school.
+And 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 his other
+favorite haunts, all the servants there assembled in great silence with
+their friends, and the laboring 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 courtesied 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
+honor 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 patronized 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 dairy-maid
+for taking cream.
+
+They buried John Pendennis, Esquire, "formerly an eminent medical
+practitioner at Bath, and subsequently an able magistrate, a benevolent
+landlord, and a benefactor to many charities and public institutions in
+this neighborhood 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 toward the sun, with the motto
+"_nec tenui pennâ_," 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+IN WHICH PENDENNIS APPEARS AS A VERY YOUNG MAN INDEED.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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
+color, which looks like gold in the sunshine, his face was round, rosy,
+freckled, and good-humored, his whiskers (when those facial ornaments
+for which he sighed so ardently were awarded to him by nature) were
+decidedly of a reddish hue; in fact, without being a beauty, he had such
+a frank, good-natured, kind face, and laughed so merrily at you out of
+his honest blue eyes, that no wonder Mrs. Pendennis thought him the
+pride of the whole county. Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen he
+rose from five feet six to five feet eight inches in height, at which
+altitude he paused. But his mother wondered at it. He was three inches
+taller than his father. Was it possible that any man could grow to be
+three inches taller than Mr. Pendennis?
+
+You may be certain he never went back to school; the discipline of the
+establishment did not suit him, and he liked being at home much better.
+The question of his return was debated, and his uncle was for his
+going back. The doctor wrote his opinion that it was most important
+for Arthur's success in after-life that he should know a Greek play
+thoroughly, but Pen adroitly managed to hint to his mother what a
+dangerous place Greyfriars was, and what sad wild fellows some of the
+chaps there were, and the timid soul, taking alarm at once, acceded
+to his desire to stay at home.
+
+Then Pen's uncle offered to use his influence with His Royal Highness
+the commander-in-chief, who was pleased to be very kind to him, and
+proposed to get Pen a commission in the Foot Guards. Pen's heart leaped
+at this: he had been to hear the band at St. James's play on a Sunday,
+when he went out to his uncle. He had seen Tom Ricketts, of the fourth
+form, who used to wear a jacket and trowsers 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 colors
+of the regiment. Tom had recognized him, and gave him a patronizing nod.
+Tom, a little wretch whom he had cut over the back with a hockey-stick
+last quarter--and there he was in the center of the square, rallying
+round the flag of his country, surrounded by bayonets, cross-belts,
+and scarlet, the band blowing trumpets and banging cymbals--talking
+familiarly to immense warriors with tufts to their chins and Waterloo
+medals. What would not Pen have given to wear such epaulettes and enter
+such a service?
+
+But Helen Pendennis, when this point was proposed to her by her son, put
+on a face full of terror and alarm. She said "she did not quarrel with
+others who thought differently, but that in her opinion a Christian had
+no right to make the army a profession. Mr. Pendennis never, never would
+have permitted his son to be a soldier. Finally, she should be very
+unhappy if he thought of it." Now, Pen would have as soon cut off his
+nose and ears as deliberately, and of aforethought malice, made his
+mother unhappy; and, as he was of such a generous disposition that he
+would give away any thing to any one, he instantly made a present of his
+visionary red coat and epaulettes and his ardor for military glory to
+his mother.
+
+She thought him the noblest creature in the world. But Major Pendennis,
+when the offer of the commission was acknowledged and refused, wrote
+back a curt and somewhat angry letter to the widow, and thought his
+nephew was rather a spooney.
+
+He was contented, however, when he saw the boy's performances out
+hunting at Christmas, when the major came down as usual to Fairoaks.
+Pen had a very good mare, and rode her with uncommon pluck and grace.
+He took his fences with great coolness, and yet with judgment, and
+without bravado. He wrote to the chaps at school about his top-boots,
+and his feats across country. He began to think seriously of a scarlet
+coat: and his mother must own that she thought it would become him
+remarkably well; though, of course, she passed hours of anguish during
+his absence, and daily expected to see him brought home on a shutter.
+
+With these amusements, in rather too great plenty, it must not be
+assumed that Pen neglected his studies altogether. He had a natural
+taste for reading every possible kind of book which did not fall into
+his school-course. It was only when they forced his head into the waters
+of knowledge that he refused to drink. He devoured all the books at
+home, from Inchbald's Theater to White's Farriery; he ransacked the
+neighboring 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 Hackluyt'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 Mira Portman
+being at that period only two years younger than Pen's mother, and
+weighing as much as Pen and Mrs. Pendennis together.
+
+Are these details insipid? Look back, good friend, at your own youth,
+and ask how was that? I like to think of a well-nurtured boy, brave and
+gentle, warm-hearted and loving, and looking the world in the face with
+kind, honest eyes. What bright colors it wore then, and how you enjoyed
+it! A man has not many years of such time. He does not know them while
+they are with him. It is only when they are passed long away that he
+remembers how dear and happy they were.
+
+In order to keep Mr. Pen from indulging in that idleness of which
+his friend the doctor of the Cistercians had prophesied such awful
+consequences, Mr. Smirke, Dr. Portman's curate, was engaged at a liberal
+salary, to walk or ride over from Clavering, and pass several hours
+daily with the young gentleman. Smirke was a man perfectly faultless at
+a tea-table, wore a curl on his fair forehead, and tied his neck-cloth
+with a melancholy grace. He was a decent scholar and mathematician, and
+taught Pen as much as the lad was ever disposed to learn, which was not
+much. For Pen had soon taken the measure of his tutor, who, when he came
+riding into the court-yard at Fairoaks on his pony, turned out his toes
+so absurdly, and left such a gap between his knees and the saddle, that
+it was impossible for any lad endowed with a sense of humor 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 stanch old sportsman, Mr. Hardhead, of
+Dumplingbeare) happened to meet. Mr. Smirke, on Pen's mare, Rebecca (she
+was named after Pen's favorite 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 among the pack, and receiving a
+speech from the latter, more remarkable for energy of language, than any
+oration he had ever heard since he left the bargemen on the banks of
+Isis.
+
+Smirke confided to his pupil his poems both Latin and English; and
+presented to Mrs. Pendennis a volume of the latter, printed at Clapham,
+his native place. The two read the ancient poets together, and rattled
+through them at a pleasant rate, very different from that steady
+grubbing pace with which the Cistercians used to go over the classic
+ground, scenting out each word as they went, and digging up every root
+in the way. Pen never liked to halt, but made his tutor construe when he
+was at fault, and thus galloped through the Iliad and the Odyssey, the
+tragic play-writers, and the charming wicked Aristophanes (whom he vowed
+to be the greatest poet of all). But he went at such a pace that, though
+he certainly galloped through a considerable extent of the ancient
+country, he clean forgot it in after-life, and had only such a vague
+remembrance of his early classic course as a man has in the House of
+Commons, let us say, who still keeps up two or three quotations; or a
+reviewer who, just for decency's sake, hints at a little Greek. Our
+people are the most prosaic in the world, but the most faithful; and
+with curious reverence we keep up and transmit, from generation to
+generation, the superstition of what we call the education of a
+gentleman.
+
+Besides the ancient poets you may be sure Pen read the English with
+great gusto. Smirke sighed and shook his head sadly both about Byron and
+Moore. But Pen was a sworn fire-worshiper and a Corsair; he had them by
+heart, and used to take little Laura into the window, and say--"Zuleika,
+I am not thy brother," in tones so tragic that they caused the solemn
+little maid to open her great eyes still wider. She sat until the proper
+hour for retirement, sewing at Mrs. Pendennis's knee, and listening to
+Pen reading out to her of nights, without comprehending one word of what
+he read.
+
+He read Shakspeare to his mother (which she said she liked, but didn't),
+and Byron, and Pope, and his favorite Lalla Rookh, which pleased
+her indifferently. But as for Bishop Heber, and Mrs. Hemans above
+all, this lady used to melt right away, and be absorbed into her
+pocket-handkerchief, when Pen read those authors to her in his kind,
+boyish voice. The "Christian Year" was a book which appeared about that
+time. The son and the mother whispered it to each other with awe: faint,
+very faint, and seldom in after-life Pendennis heard that solemn church
+music: but he always loved the remembrance of it, and of the times when
+it struck on his heart, and he walked over the fields full of hope and
+void of doubt, as the church bells rang on Sunday morning.
+
+It was at this period of his existence, that Pen broke out in the poets'
+corner of the County Chronicle, with some verses with which he was
+perfectly well satisfied. His are the verses signed "NEP.," addressed
+"To a Tear;" "On the Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo;" "To Madame
+Caradori singing at the Assize Meetings;" "On Saint Bartholomew's Day"
+(a tremendous denunciation of Popery, and a solemn warning to the people
+of England to rally against emancipating the Roman Catholics), &c.,
+&c.--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 neighboring Dumpling Downs, or into the county town, which, if
+you please, we shall call Chatteries, spouting his own poems, and filled
+with quite a Byronic afflatus, as he thought.
+
+His genius at this time was of a decidedly gloomy cast. He brought his
+mother a tragedy, in which, though he killed sixteen people before the
+second act, it made her laugh so, that he thrust his 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 stanch, 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 gray mare Dowdy, and
+at the head of the Clavering voters, whom the doctor brought up to
+plump for the Protestant champion.
+
+On that day Pen made his first speech at the Blue Hotel; and also, it
+appears, for the first time in his life, took a little more wine than
+was good for him. Mercy! what a scene it was at Fairoaks, when he rode
+back at ever so much o'clock at night. What moving about of lanterns in
+the court-yard and stables, though the moon was shining out; what a
+gathering of servants, as Pen came home, clattering over the bridge and
+up the stable-yard, with half-a-score of the Clavering voters yelling
+after him the Blue song of the election.
+
+He wanted them all to come in and have some wine--some very good
+Madeira--some capital Madeira--John, go and get some Madeira--and there
+is no knowing what the farmers would have done, had not Madam Pendennis
+made her appearance in a white wrapper, with a candle, and scared those
+zealous Blues so by the sight of her pale, handsome face, that they
+touched their hats, and rode off.
+
+Besides these amusements and occupations in which Mr. Pen indulged,
+there was one which forms the main business and pleasure of youth, if
+the poets tell us aright, whom Pen was always studying; and this young
+fellow's heart was so ardent, and his imagination so eager, that it is
+not to be expected he should long escape the passion to which we allude,
+and which, ladies, you have rightly guessed to be that of Love. Pen
+sighed for it first in secret, and, like the love-sick swain in Ovid,
+opened his breast, and said--"Aura, veni." What generous youth is there
+that has not courted some such windy mistress in his time?
+
+Yes, Pen began to feel the necessity of a first love--of a consuming
+passion--of an object on which he could concentrate all those vague,
+floating fancies under which he sweetly suffered--of a young lady to
+whom he could really make verses, and whom he could set up and adore, in
+place of those unsubstantial Ianthes and Zuleikas to whom he addressed
+the outpourings of his gushing muse. He read his favorite 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 up-stairs in the study--in
+Pen's, as he sat 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 favorite lines which
+the reader will find in their proper place in the third book. He drew
+portraits of her--they are extant still--with straight noses and
+enormous eyes, and "Arthur Pendennis delineavit et pinxit" gallantly
+written underneath.
+
+As for Mr. Smirke he naturally preferred Andromache. And in consequence
+he was uncommonly kind to Pen. He gave him his Elzevir Horace, of which
+the boy was fond, and his little Greek Testament which his own mamma
+at Clapham had purchased and presented to him. He bought him a silver
+pencil case; and in the matter of learning let him do just as much or
+as little as ever he pleased. He always seemed to be on the point of
+unbosoming himself to Pen: nay, he confessed to the latter that he
+had a--an attachment, an ardently cherished attachment, about which
+Pendennis longed to hear, and said, "Tell us, old chap, is she handsome?
+has she got blue eyes or black?" But Doctor Portman's curate, heaving a
+gentle sigh, cast up his eyes to the ceiling, and begged Pen, faintly,
+to change the conversation. Poor Smirke! He invited Pen to dine at
+his lodgings over Madame Fribsby's, the milliner's, in Clavering, and
+once when it was raining, and Mrs. Pendennis, who had driven in her
+pony-chaise into Clavering with respect to some arrangements, about
+leaving off mourning probably, was prevailed upon to enter the curate's
+apartments, he sent out for poundcakes instantly. The sofa on which she
+sate became sacred to him from that day: and he kept flowers in the
+glass which she drank from ever after.
+
+As Mrs. Pendennis was never tired of hearing the praises of her son,
+we may be certain that this rogue of a tutor neglected no opportunity
+of conversing with her upon that subject. It might be a little tedious
+to him to hear the stories about Pen's generosity, about his bravery
+in fighting the big naughty boy, about his fun and jokes, about his
+prodigious skill in Latin, music, riding, &c.--but what price would he
+not pay to be in her company? and the widow, after these conversations,
+thought Mr. Smirke a very pleasing and well-informed man. As for her son
+she had not settled in her mind, whether he was to be Senior Wrangler
+and Archbishop of Canterbury, or Double First Class at Oxford, and Lord
+Chancellor. That all England did not possess his peer, was a fact about
+which there was, in her mind, no manner of question.
+
+A simple person of inexpensive habits, she began forthwith to save,
+and, perhaps, to be a little parsimonious, in favor of her boy. There
+were no entertainments, of course, at Fairoaks, during the year of
+her weeds. Nor, indeed, did the doctor's silver dish-covers, of which
+he was so proud, and which were flourished all over with the arms of
+the Pendennises, and surmounted with their crest, come out of the
+plate-chests again for long, long years. The household was diminished,
+and its expenses curtailed. There was a very blank anchorite repast
+when Pen dined from home: and he himself headed the remonstrance from
+the kitchen regarding the deteriorated quality of the Fairoaks beer.
+She was becoming miserly for Pen. Indeed, who ever accused women of
+being just? They are always sacrificing themselves or somebody for
+somebody else's sake.
+
+There happened to be no young woman in the small circle of friends who
+were in the widow's intimacy whom Pendennis could by any possibility
+gratify by endowing her with the inestimable treasure of a heart which
+he was longing to give away. Some young fellows in this predicament
+bestow their young affections upon Dolly, the dairy-maid, 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 dishonor. 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 Chatteries' Assemblies; in fine, he was not
+in love, because there was nobody at hand to fell 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 heating within him,
+and a secret tremor and hope that _she_ might be in that yellow
+post-chaise 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
+post-chaise contained a snuffy old dowager of seventy, with a maid,
+her contemporary. The three girls in the beaver bonnets were no
+handsomer than the turnips that skirted the roadside. Do as he might,
+and ride where he would, the fairy princess that he was to rescue and
+win, had not yet appeared to honest Pen.
+
+Upon these points he did not discourse to his mother. He had a world
+of his own. What generous, ardent, imaginative soul has not a secret
+pleasure-place in which it disports? Let no clumsy prying or dull
+meddling of ours try to disturb it in our children. Actæon was a brute
+for wanting to push in where Diana was bathing. Leave him occasionally
+alone, my good madame, 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 every body 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 them
+selves when your ladyship sits by.
+
+Helen Pendennis by the force of sheer love divined a great number of
+her son's secrets. But she kept these things in her heart (if we may so
+speak), and did not speak of them. Besides, she had made up her mind
+that he was to marry little Laura, who would be eighteen when Pen was
+six-and-twenty: and had finished his college career, and had made his
+grand tour, and was settled either in London, astonishing all the
+metropolis by his learning and eloquence at the bar, or, better still,
+in a sweet country parsonage surrounded with hollyhocks and roses, close
+to a delightful romantic ivy-covered church, from the pulpit of which
+Pen would utter the most beautiful sermons ever preached.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While these natural sentiments were waging war and trouble in honest
+Pen's bosom, it chanced one day that he rode into Chatteries, 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, patronizing manner. Pen had some difficulty in
+recognizing under the broad-brimmed hat and the vast great coats and
+neckcloths, with which the new comer was habited, the person and figure
+of his quondam schoolfellow, Mr. Foker.
+
+A year's absence had made no small difference in that gentleman. A youth
+who had been deservedly whipped a few months previously, and who spent
+his pocket-money on tarts and hardbake, now appeared before Pen in one
+of those costumes to which the public consent, that I take to be quite
+as influential in this respect as "Johnson's Dictionary," has awarded
+the title of "Swell." He had a bull-dog between his legs, and in his
+scarlet shawl neckcloth was a pin representing another bull-dog in gold:
+he wore a fur waistcoat laced over with gold chains; a green cut-away
+coat with basket-buttons, and a white upper-coat ornamented with
+cheese-plate buttons, on each of which was engraved some stirring
+incident of the road or the chase; all which ornaments set off this
+young fellow's figure to such advantage, that you would hesitate to say
+which character in life he most resembled, and whether he was a boxer
+_en goguette_, or a coachman in his gala suit.
+
+"Left that place for good, Pendennis?" Mr. Foker said, descending from
+his landau, and giving Pendennis a finger.
+
+"Yes, this year or more," Pen said.
+
+"Beastly old hole," Mr. Foker remarked. "Hate it. Hate the doctor: hate
+Towzer, the second master; hate every body there. Not a fit place for a
+gentleman."
+
+"Not at all," said Pen with an air of the utmost consequence.
+
+"By gad, sir, I sometimes dream, now, that the doctor's walking into
+me," Foker continued (and Pen smiled as he thought that he himself had
+likewise fearful dreams of this nature). "When I think of the diet
+there, by gad, sir, I wonder how I stood it. Mangy mutton, brutal beef,
+pudding on Thursdays and Sundays, and that fit to poison you. Just look
+at my leader--did you ever see a prettier animal? Drove over from
+Baymouth. Came the nine mile in two-and-forty minutes. Not bad going,
+sir."
+
+"Are you stopping at Baymouth, Foker?" Pendennis asked.
+
+"I'm coaching there," said the other, with a nod.
+
+"_What?_" asked Pen, and in a tone of such wonder, that Foker burst out
+laughing, and said, "He was blowed if he didn't think Pen was such a
+flat as not to know what coaching meant."
+
+"I'm come down with a coach from Oxford. A tutor, don't you see, old
+boy? He's coaching me, and some other men, for the little go. Me and
+Spavin have the drag between us. And I thought I'd just tool over, and
+go to the play. Did you ever see Rowkins do the hornpipe?" and Mr. Foker
+began to perform some steps of that popular dance in the inn yard,
+looking round for the sympathy of his groom and the stable men.
+
+Pen thought he would like to go to the play too: and could ride home
+afterward, as there was a moonlight. So he accepted Foker's invitation
+to dinner, and the young men entered the inn together, where Mr. Foker
+stopped at the bar, and called upon Miss Rincer, the landlady's fair
+daughter, who presided there, to give him a glass of "his mixture."
+
+Pen and his family had been known at the George ever since they came
+into the country; and Mr. Pendennis's carriages and horses always put up
+there when he paid a visit to the county town. The landlady dropped the
+heir of Fairoaks a respectful courtesy, and complimented him upon his
+growth and manly appearance, and asked news of the family at Fairoaks,
+and of Doctor Portman and the Clavering people, to all of which questions
+the young gentleman answered with much affability. But he spoke to Mr.
+and Mrs. Rincer with that sort of good nature with which a young prince
+addresses his father's subjects; never dreaming that those "bonnes gens"
+were his equals in life.
+
+Mr. Foker's behavior was quite different. He inquired for Rincer and the
+cold in his nose, told Mrs. Rincer a riddle, asked Miss Rincer when she
+would be ready to marry him, and paid his compliments to Miss Brett,
+the other young lady in the bar, all in a minute of time, and with a
+liveliness and facetiousness which set all these ladies in a giggle; and
+he gave a cluck, expressive of great satisfaction as he tossed off his
+mixture which Miss Rincer prepared and handed to him.
+
+"Have a drop," said he to Pen, "it's recommended to me by the faculty as
+a what-do-you-call-'em--a stomatic, old boy. Give the young one a glass,
+R, and score it up to yours truly."
+
+Poor Pen took a glass, and every body laughed at the face which he
+made as he put it down.--Gin, bitters, and some other cordial, was the
+compound with which Mr. Foker was so delighted as to call it by the name
+of Foker's own. As Pen choked, sputtered, and made faces, the other took
+occasion to remark to Mr. Rincer that the young fellow was green, very
+green, but that he would soon form him; and then they proceeded to order
+dinner--which Mr. Foker determined should consist of turtle and venison;
+cautioning the landlady to be very particular about icing the wine.
+
+Then Messrs. Foker and Pen strolled down the High-street together--the
+former having a cigar in his mouth, which he had drawn out of a case
+almost as big as a portmanteau. He went in to replenish it at Mr.
+Lewis's, and talked to that gentleman for a while, sitting down on the
+counter; he then looked in at the fruiterer's, to see the pretty girl
+there, to whom he paid compliments similar to those before addressed to
+the bar at the George; then they passed the County Chronicle office, for
+which Pen had his packet ready, in the shape of "Lines to Thyrza," but
+poor Pen did not like to put the letter into the editor's box while
+walking in company with such a fine gentleman as Mr. Foker. They met
+heavy dragoons of the regiment always quartered at Chatteries; 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 dullness. 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 Chatteries.
+
+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 Chatteries, and here they strolled until with a final burst of music
+the small congregation was played out.
+
+Old Doctor Portman was one of the few who came from the venerable gate.
+Spying Pen, he came and shook him by the hand, and eyed with wonder
+Pen's friend, from whose mouth and cigar clouds of fragrance issued,
+which curled round the doctor's honest face and shovel hat.
+
+"An old schoolfellow of mine, Mr. Foker," said Pen. The doctor said
+"H'm": and scowled at the cigar. He did not mind a pipe in his study,
+but the cigar was an abomination to the worthy gentleman.
+
+"I came up on Bishop's business," the doctor said. "We'll ride home,
+Arthur, if you like?"
+
+"I--I'm engaged to my friend here," Pen answered.
+
+"You had better come home with me," said the doctor.
+
+"His mother knows he's out, sir," Mr. Foker remarked; "don't she,
+Pendennis?"
+
+"But that does not prove that he had not better come home with me," the
+doctor growled, and he walked off with great dignity.
+
+"Old boy don't like the weed, I suppose," Foker said. "Ha! who's
+here?--here's the general, and Bingley, the manager. How do, Cos? How
+do, Bingley?"
+
+"How does my worthy and gallant young Foker?" said the gentleman
+addressed as the general; and who wore a shabby military cape with
+a mangy collar, and a hat cocked very much over one eye.
+
+"Trust you are very well, my very dear sir," said the other gentleman,
+"and that the Theater Royal will have the honor of your patronage
+to-night. We perform 'The Stranger,' in which your humble servant
+will--"
+
+"Can't stand you in tights and Hessians, Bingley," young Mr. Foker said.
+On which the general, with the Irish accent, said, "But I think ye'll
+like Miss Fotheringay, in Mrs. Haller, or me name's not Jack Costigan."
+
+Pen looked at these individuals with the greatest interest. He had never
+seen an actor before; and he saw Dr. Portman's red face looking over the
+doctor's shoulder, as he retreated from the Cathedral Yard, evidently
+quite dissatisfied with the acquaintances into whose hands Pen had
+fallen.
+
+Perhaps it would have been much better for him had he taken the parson's
+advice and company home. But which of us knows his fate?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MRS. HALLER.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 gayly away.
+
+"A bottle of sherry, a bottle of sham, a bottle of port and a shass
+caffy, it ain't so bad, hay, Pen?" Foker said, and pronounced, after all
+these delicacies and a quantity of nuts and fruit had been dispatched,
+that it was time to "toddle." Pen sprang up with very bright eyes, and
+a flushed face; and they moved off toward the theater, where they paid
+their money to the wheezy old lady slumbering in the money taker's box.
+"Mrs. Dropsicum, Bingley's mother-in-law, great in Lady Macbeth," Foker
+said to his companion. Foker knew her, too.
+
+They had almost their choice of places in the boxes of the theater,
+which was no better filled than country theaters usually are, in spite
+of the "universal burst of attraction and galvanic thrills of delight"
+advertised by Bingley in the play-bills. A score or so of people
+dotted the pit-benches, a few more kept a kicking and whistling in the
+galleries, and a dozen others, who came in with free admissions, were
+in the boxes where our young gentlemen sate. Lieutenants Rodgers and
+Podgers, and young Cornet Tidmus, of the Dragoons, occupied a private
+box. The performers acted to them, and these gentlemen seemed to hold
+conversations with the players when not engaged in the dialogue, and
+applauded them by name loudly.
+
+Bingley the manager, who assumed all the chief tragic and comic parts
+except when he modestly retreated to make way for the London stars, who
+came down occasionally to Chatteries; 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-jewelry 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 favor
+to the young men of his company to go on in light comedy parts with
+that ring. They flattered him by asking its history. The stage has its
+traditional jewels as the crown and all great families have. This had
+belonged to George Frederick Cooke, who had had it from Mr. Quin, who
+may have bought it for a shilling. Bingley fancied the world was
+fascinated with its glitter.
+
+He was reading out of the stage-book--that wonderful stage-book which
+is not bound like any other book in the world, but is rouged and tawdry
+like the hero or heroine who holds it; and who holds it as people never
+do hold books; and points with his finger to a passage, and wags his
+head ominously at the audience, and then lifts up eyes and finger to
+the ceiling professing to derive some intense consolation from the
+work, between which and heaven there is a strong affinity. Any body
+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--any body, I say, who has seen the
+great X. over a sham book has indeed had a great pleasure and an abiding
+matter for thought.
+
+Directly the Stranger saw the young men, he acted at them; eying them
+solemnly over his gilt volume as he lay on the stage-bank showing his
+hand, his ring, and his Hessians. He calculated the effect that every
+one of these ornaments would produce upon his victims; he was determined
+to fascinate them, for he knew they had paid their money; and he saw
+their families coming in from the country and filling the cane chairs
+in his boxes.
+
+As he lay on the bank reading, his servant, Francis, made remarks upon
+his master.
+
+"Again reading," said Francis, "thus it is, from morn to night. To him
+nature has no beauty--life no charm. For three years I have never seen
+him smile" (the gloom of Bingley's face was fearful to witness during
+these comments of the faithful domestic). "Nothing diverts him. O, if
+he would but attach himself to any living thing, were it an animal--for
+something man must love."
+
+[_Enter Tobias_ (_Goll_) _from the hut_]. He cries, "O, how refreshing,
+after seven long weeks, to feel these warm sunbeams once again. Thanks,
+bounteous heaven, for the joy I taste!" He presses his cap between his
+hands, looks up and prays. The Stranger eyes him attentively.
+
+_Francis to the Stranger._ "This old man's share of earthly happiness
+can be but little. Yet mark how grateful he is for his portion of it."
+
+_Bingley._ "Because though old, he is but a child in the leading-string
+of hope." (He looks steadily at Foker, who, however, continues to suck
+the top of his stick in an unconcerned manner.)
+
+_Francis._ "Hope is the nurse of life."
+
+_Bingley._ "And her cradle--is the grave."
+
+The stranger uttered this with the moan of a bassoon in agony, and
+fixed his eyes on Pendennis so steadily, that the poor lad was quite
+put out of countenance. He thought the whole house must be looking at
+him; and cast his eyes down. As soon as ever he raised them Bingley's
+were at him again. All through the scene the manager played at him.
+When he was about to do a good action, and sent off Francis with his
+book, so that that domestic should not witness the deed of benevolence
+which he meditated, Bingley marked the page carefully, so that he might
+continue the perusal of the volume off the stage if he liked. But all
+was done in the direct face of Pendennis, whom the manager was bent upon
+subjugating. How relieved the lad was when the scene ended, and Foker,
+tapping with his cane, cried out, "Bravo Bingley!"
+
+"Give him a hand, Pendennis; you know every chap likes a hand,"
+Mr. Foker said; and the good-natured young gentleman, and Pendennis
+laughing, and the dragoons in the opposite box, began clapping hands
+to the best of their power.
+
+A chamber in Wintersen Castle closed over Tobias's hut and the Stranger
+and his boots; and servants appeared bustling about with chairs and
+tables--"That's Hicks and Miss Thackthwaite," whispered Foker. "Pretty
+girl, ain't she, Pendennis? But stop--hurray--bravo! here's the
+Fotheringay."
+
+The pit thrilled and thumped its umbrellas; a volley of applause was
+fired from the gallery: the dragoon officers and Foker clapped their
+hands furiously: you would have thought the house was full, so loud
+were their plaudits. The red face and ragged whiskers of Mr. Costigan
+were seen peering from the side-scene. Pen's eyes opened wide and
+bright, as Mrs. Haller entered with a downcast look, then rallying at
+the sound of the applause, swept the house with a grateful glance,
+and, folding her hands across her breast, sank down in a magnificent
+courtesy. 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 every body else, and old Mr. Bows, the little
+first fiddler of the orchestra (which was this night increased by a
+detachment of the band of the Dragoons, by the kind permission of
+Colonel Swallowtail), looked up from the desk where he was perched,
+with his crutch beside him, and smiled at the enthusiasm of the lad.
+
+Those who have only seen Miss Fotheringay in later days, since her
+marriage and introduction into London life, have little idea how
+beautiful a creature she was at the time when our friend Pen first set
+eyes on her: and I warn my reader, as beforehand, that the pencil which
+illustrates this work (and can draw an ugly face tolerably well, but is
+sadly put out when it tries to delineate a beauty) can give no sort of
+notion of her. She was of the tallest of women, and at her then age of
+six-and-twenty--for six-and-twenty she was, though she vows she was
+only nineteen--in the prime and fullness 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 ear-rings she wore (though the handsomest
+properties in the theater) 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 gayety 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 valor,
+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 courtesied and bowed, and charmed it.
+
+Thus she stood for a minute--complete and beautiful--as Pen stared at
+her. "I say, Pen, isn't she a stunner?" asked Mr. Foker.
+
+"Hush!" Pen said. "She's speaking."
+
+She began her business in a deep sweet voice. Those who know the
+play of the "Stranger," are aware that the remarks made by the various
+characters are not valuable in themselves, either for their sound sense,
+their novelty of observation, or their poetic fancy. In fact, if a man
+were to say it was a stupid play he would not be far wrong. Nobody ever
+talked so. If we meet idiots in life, as will happen, it is a great
+mercy that they do not use such absurdly fine words. The Stranger's
+talk is sham, like the book he reads, and the hair he wears, and the
+bank he sits on, and the diamond ring he makes play with--but, in the
+midst of the balderdash, there runs that reality of love, children, and
+forgiveness of wrong, which will be listened to wherever it is preached,
+and sets all the world sympathizing.
+
+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, &c., 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 favorite passage "I have a William, too, if he be still
+alive--Ah, yes, if he be still alive. His little sisters, too! Why,
+Fancy, dost thou rack me so? Why dost thou image my poor children
+fainting in sickness, and crying to--to--their mum-um-_other_,"--when
+she came to this passage little Bows buried his face in his blue cotton
+handkerchief, after crying out "Bravo."
+
+All the house was affected. Foker, for his part, taking out a large
+yellow bandanna, wept piteously. As for Pen, he was gone too far for
+that. He followed the woman about and about--when she was off the stage,
+it and the house were blank; the lights and the red officers reeled
+wildly before his sight. He watched her at the side-scene--where she
+stood waiting to come on the stage, and where her father took off her
+shawl; when the reconciliation arrived, and she flung herself down on
+Mr. Bingley's shoulders, while 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 any
+body else but himself had caused the success of the play. At last he
+understood it--stepped back with a grin, and presently appeared with
+Mrs. Haller on his arm. How beautiful she looked! Her hair had fallen
+down, the officers threw her flowers. She clutched them to her heart.
+She put back her hair, and smiled all round. Her eyes met Pen's. Down
+went the curtain again: and she was gone. Not one note could he hear
+of the overture which the brass band of the Dragoons blew by kind
+permission of Colonel Swallowtail.
+
+"She _is_ a crusher, ain't she now?" Mr. Foker asked of his companion.
+
+Pen did not know exactly what Foker said, and answered vaguely. He could
+not tell the other what he felt; he could not have spoken, just then, to
+any mortal. Besides, Pendennis did not quite know what he felt yet; it
+was something overwhelming, maddening, delicious; a fever of wild joy
+and undefined longing.
+
+And now Rowkins and Miss Thackthwaite came on to dance the favorite
+double hornpipe, and Foker abandoned himself to the delights of this
+ballet, just as he had to the tears of the tragedy, a few minutes
+before. Pen did not care for it, or indeed think about the dance, except
+to remember that that woman was acting with her in the scene where she
+first came in. It was a mist before his eyes. At the end of the dance he
+looked at his watch and said it was time for him to go.
+
+"Hang it, stay to see The Bravo of the Battle-Ax," Foker said,
+"Bingley's splendid in it; he wears red tights, and has to carry Mrs. B.
+over the Pine-bridge of the Cataract, only she's too heavy. It's great
+fun, do stop."
+
+Pen looked at the bill with one lingering fond hope that Miss
+Fotheringay's name might be hidden somewhere in the list of the actors
+of the after-piece, but there was no such name. Go he must. He had a
+long ride home. He squeezed Foker's hand. He was choking to speak, but
+he couldn't. He quitted the theater and walked frantically about the
+town, he knew not how long; then he mounted at the George and rode
+homeward, and Clavering clock sang out one as he came into the yard at
+Fairoaks. The lady of the house might have been awake, but she only
+heard him from the passage outside his room as he dashed into bed and
+pulled the clothes over his head.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pen had not been in the habit of passing wakeful nights, so he at once
+fell off into a sound sleep. Even in later days, and with a great deal
+of care and other thoughtful matter to keep him awake, a man, from long
+practice or fatigue or resolution, _begins_ by going to sleep as usual:
+and gets a nap in advance of Anxiety. But she soon comes up with him and
+jogs his shoulder, and says "Come, my man, no more of this laziness, you
+must wake up and have a talk with me." Then they fall to together in the
+midnight. Well, whatever might afterward 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 bed-room windows; and--at that very
+instant and as his eyes started open, the beloved image was in his mind.
+"My dear boy," he heard her say, "you were in a sound sleep, and I would
+not disturb you: but I have been close by your pillow all this while:
+and I don't intend that you shall leave me. I am Love! I bring with me
+fever and passion: wild longing, maddening desire; restless craving and
+seeking. Many a long day ere this I heard you calling out for me; and
+behold now I am come."
+
+Was Pen frightened at the summons? Not he. He did not know what was
+coming: it was all wild pleasure and delight as yet. And as, when three
+years previously, and on entering the fifth form at the Cistercians, his
+father had made him a present of a gold watch, which the boy took from
+under his pillow and examined on the instant of waking: forever rubbing
+and polishing it up in private, and retiring into corners to listen to
+its ticking: so the young man exulted over his new delight; felt in his
+waistcoat pocket to see that it was safe; wound it up at nights, and at
+the very first moment of waking hugged it and looked at it.--By the way,
+that first watch of Pen's was a showy ill manufactured piece: it never
+went well from the beginning, and was always getting out of order. And
+after putting it aside into a drawer and forgetting it for some time,
+he swapped it finally away for a more useful time-keeper.
+
+Pen felt himself to be ever so many years older since yesterday. There
+was no mistake about it now. He was as much in love as the best hero in
+the best romance he ever read. He told John to bring his shaving water
+with the utmost confidence. He dressed himself in some of his finest
+clothes that morning: and came splendidly down to breakfast, patronizing
+his mother and little Laura, who had been strumming her music lesson for
+hours before; and who after he had read the prayers (of which he did not
+heed one single syllable) wondered at his grand appearance, and asked
+him to tell her what the play was about.
+
+Pen laughed, and declined to tell Laura what the play was about. In
+fact, it was quite as well that she should not know. Then she asked him
+why he had got on his fine pin and beautiful new waistcoat?
+
+Pen blushed, and told his mother that the old schoolfellow with whom
+he had dined at Chatteries was reading with a tutor at Baymouth, a very
+learned man; and as he was himself to go to College, and as there were
+several young men pursuing their studies at Baymouth--he was anxious to
+ride over--and--and just see what the course of their reading was.
+
+Laura made a long face. Helen Pendennis looked hard at her son, troubled
+more than ever with the vague doubt and terror which had been haunting
+her ever since the last night, when Farmer Gurnett brought back the news
+that Pen would not return home to dinner. Arthur's eyes defied her. She
+tried to console herself, and drive off her fears. The boy had never
+told her an untruth. Pen conducted himself during breakfast in a very
+haughty and supercilious manner; and, taking leave of the elder and
+younger lady, was presently heard riding out of the stable court. He
+went gently at first, but galloped like a madman as soon as he thought
+he was out of hearing.
+
+Smirke, thinking of his own affairs, and softly riding with his toes
+out, to give Pen his three hours' reading at Fairoaks, met his pupil,
+who shot by him like the wind. Smirke's pony shied, as the other
+thundered past him; the gentle curate went over his head among the
+stinging nettles in the hedge. Pen laughed as they met, pointed toward
+the Baymouth road, and was gone half a mile in that direction before
+poor Smirke had picked himself up.
+
+Pen had resolved in his mind that he _must_ see Foker, that morning, he
+must hear about her; know about her; be with somebody who knew her; and
+honest Smirke, for his part, sitting up among the stinging-nettles, as
+his pony cropped quietly in the hedge, thought dismally to himself,
+ought he to go to Fairoaks now that his pupil was evidently gone away
+for the day. Yes, he thought he might go too. He might go and ask Mrs.
+Pendennis when Arthur would be back; and hear Miss Laura her Watts's
+Catechism. He got up on the little pony--both were used to his slipping
+off--and advanced upon the house from which his scholar had just rushed
+away in a whirlwind.
+
+Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little; and the curate had
+tumbled over head and heels in pursuit of it, and Pen had started in the
+first heat of the mad race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MRS. HALLER AT HOME.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 soda-water 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 Chatteries, who was smoking, and teaching a little dog,
+a friend of his, tricks with a bit of biscuit.
+
+Pen's healthy red face fresh from the gallop, compared oddly, with the
+waxy, debauched little features of Foker's chum; the latter remarked it.
+"Who's that man?" he thought, "he looks as fresh as a bean, _His_ hand
+don't shake of a morning, I'd bet five to one."
+
+Foker had not come home at all. Here was a disappointment!--
+
+Mr. Spavin could not say when his friend would return. Sometimes he
+stopped a day, sometimes a week. Of what college was Pen? Would he have
+any thing? There was a very fair tap of ale. Mr. Spavin was enabled to
+know Pendennis's name, on the card which the latter took out and laid
+down (perhaps Pen in these days was rather proud of having a card)--and
+so the young men took leave.
+
+Then Pen went down the rock, and walked about on the sand, biting his
+nails by the shore of the much sounding sea. It stretched before him
+bright and immeasurable. The blue waters came rolling into the bay,
+foaming and roaring hoarsely: Pen looked them in the face, with blank
+eyes, hardly regarding them. What a tide there was pouring into the
+lad's own mind at the time, and what a little power had he to check it!
+Pen flung stones into the sea, but it still kept coming on. He was in
+a rage at not seeing Foker. He wanted to see Foker. He must see Foker.
+"Suppose I go on--on the Chatteries 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 Chatteries road. About four miles from
+Baymouth, the Clavering road branches off, as every body knows, and the
+mare naturally was for taking that turn, but, cutting her over the
+shoulder, Pen passed the turning, and rode on to the turnpike without
+seeing any sign of the black tandem and red wheels.
+
+As he was at the turnpike, he might as well go on: that was quite clear.
+So Pen rode to the George, and the hostler told him that Mr Foker was
+there sure enough, and that "he'd been a making a tremendous row the
+night afore, a drinkin and a singin, and wanting to fight Tom the
+post-boy: which I'm thinking he'd have the worst of it," the man added,
+with a grin.--"Have you carried up your master's hot water to shave
+with?" he added, in a very satirical manner, to Mr. Foker's domestic,
+who here came down the yard bearing his master's clothes, most
+beautifully brushed and arranged. "Show Mr. Pendennis up to 'un," and
+Pen followed the man at last to the apartment, where, in the midst of
+an immense bed, Mr. Harry Foker lay reposing.
+
+The feather bed and bolsters swelled up all round Mr. Foker, so that you
+could hardly see his little sallow face and red silk night-cap.
+
+"Hullo!" said Pen.
+
+"Who goes there? brother, quickly tell!" sang out the voice from the
+bed. "What! Pendennis again? Is your mamma acquainted with your absence?
+Did you sup with us last night? No--stop--who supped with us last night,
+Stoopid?"
+
+"There was the three officers, sir, and Mr. Bingley, sir, and Mr.
+Costigan, sir," the man answered, who received all Mr. Foker's remarks
+with perfect gravity.
+
+"Ah yes: the cup and merry jest went round. We chanted: and I remember
+I wanted to fight a post-boy. Did I thrash him, Stoopid?"
+
+"No, sir. Fight didn't come off, sir," said Stoopid, still with perfect
+gravity. He was arranging Mr. Foker's dressing-case--a trunk, the gift
+of a fond mother, without which the young fellow never traveled. It
+contained a prodigious apparatus in plate; a silver dish, a silver mug,
+silver boxes and bottles for all sorts of essences, and a choice of
+razors ready against the time when Mr. Foker's beard should come.
+
+"Do it some other day," said the young fellow, yawning and throwing up
+his little lean arms over his head. "No, there was no fight; but there
+was chanting. Bingley chanted, I chanted, the general chanted--Costigan
+I mean.--Did you ever hear him sing 'The Little Pig under the Bed,'
+Pen?"
+
+"The man we met yesterday," said Pen, all in a tremor, "the father of--"
+
+"Of the Fotheringay--the very man. Ain't she a Venus, Pen?"
+
+"Please sir, Mr. Costigan's in the sittin-room, sir, and says, sir, you
+asked him to breakfast, sir. Called five times, sir; but wouldn't wake
+you on no account; and has been year since eleven o'clock, sir--"
+
+"How much is it now?"
+
+"One, sir."
+
+"What would the best of mothers say," cried the little sluggard, "if she
+saw me in bed at this hour? She sent me down here with a grinder. She
+wants me to cultivate my neglected genus.--He he! I say, Pen, this isn't
+quite like seven o'clock school--is it, old boy?"--and the young fellow
+burst out into a boyish laugh of enjoyment. Then he added--"Go in and
+talk to the general whilst I dress. And I say, Pendennis, ask him to
+sing you 'The Little Pig under the Bed;' it's capital." Pen went off in
+great perturbation, to meet Mr. Costigan, and Mr. Foker commenced his
+toilet.
+
+Of Mr. Foker's two grandfathers, the one from whom he inherited a
+fortune, was a brewer; the other was an earl, who endowed him with the
+most doting mother in the world. The Fokers had been at the Cistercian
+school, from father to son; at which place, our friend whose name could
+be seen over the play-ground 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 can not be
+acquired by leaving school and entering at college as a fellow commoner;
+but he was now (in his own peculiar manner) as great a dandy as he
+before had been a slattern, and when he entered his sitting-room to join
+his two guests, arrived scented and arrayed in fine linen, and perfectly
+splendid in appearance.
+
+General or Captain Costigan--for the latter was the rank which he
+preferred to assume--was seated in the window with the newspaper held
+before him at arm's length. The captain's eyes were somewhat dim; and
+he was spelling the paper with the help of his lips as well as of those
+blood-shot 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-gray hair
+over his pate, and had a couple of wisps of the same falling down on
+each side of his face. Much whisky had spoiled what complexion Mr.
+Costigan may have possessed in his youth. His once handsome face had now
+a copper tinge. He wore a very high stock, scarred and stained in many
+places; and a dress-coat tightly buttoned up in those parts where the
+buttons had not parted company from the garment.
+
+"The young gentleman to whom I had the honor 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 thayater
+last night during me daughter's perfawrumance; and missed ye on my
+return. I did but conduct her home, sir, for Jack Costigan, though poor,
+is a gentleman; and when I reintered the house to pay me respects to me
+joyous young friend Mr. Foker--ye were gone. We had a jolly night of
+ut, sir--Mr. Foker, the three gallant young dragoons, and your 'umble
+servant. Gad, sir, it put me in mind of one of our old nights when I
+bore His Majesty's commission in the Foighting Hundtherd and Third."
+And he pulled out an old snuff-box, which he presented with a stately
+air to his new acquaintance.
+
+Arthur was a great deal too much flurried to speak. This shabby-looking
+buck was--was her father. The captain was perfumed with the recollections
+of the last night's cigars, and pulled and twisted the tuft on his chin
+as jauntily as any young dandy.
+
+"I hope, Miss F----, Miss Costigan is well sir," Pen said, flushing up.
+"She--she gave me greater pleasure, than--than I--I--I ever enjoyed at
+a play. I think, sir--I think she's the finest actress in the world,"
+he gasped out.
+
+"Your hand, young man! for ye speak from your heart," cried the
+captain. "Thank ye, sir, an old soldier and a fond father thanks ye.
+She _is_ the finest actress in the world. I've seen the Siddons, sir,
+and the O'Nale.--They were great, but what were they compared to Miss
+Fotheringay? I do not wish that 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
+colors in the Hundred and Third, would demean himself, by permitting
+his daughter to earn her old father's bread."
+
+"There can not be a more honorable duty, surely," Pen said.
+
+"Honorable! Bedad, sir, I'd like to see the man who said Jack Costigan
+would consent to any thing dishonorable. I have a heart, sir, though
+I am poor; I like a man who has a heart. You have; I read it in your
+honest face and steady eye. And would you believe it?" he added, after
+a pause, and with a pathetic whisper, "that that Bingley, who has made
+his fortune by me child, gives her but two guineas a week, out of which
+she finds herself in dresses, and which, added to me own small means
+makes our all?"
+
+Now the captain's means were so small as to be, it may be said, quite
+invisible. But nobody knows how the wind is tempered to shorn Irish
+lambs, and in what marvelous places they find pasture. If Captain
+Costigan, whom I had the honor to know, would but have told his history,
+it would have been a great moral story. But he neither would have told
+it if he could, nor could if he would; for the captain was not only
+unaccustomed to tell the truth--he was unable even to think it--and
+fact and fiction reeled together in his muzzy, whiskified brain.
+
+He began life rather brilliantly with a pair of colors, 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 humor, those wonderful
+Irish ballads which are so mirthful and so melancholy: and was always
+the first himself to cry at their pathos. Poor Cos! he was at once brave
+and maudlin, humorous and an idiot; always good-natured, and sometimes
+almost trustworthy. Up to the last day of his life he would drink with
+any man, and back any man's bill: and his end was in a spunging-house,
+where the sheriff's officer who took him, was fond of him.
+
+In his brief morning of life, Cos formed the delight of regimental
+messes, and had the honor of singing his songs, bacchanalian and
+sentimental, at the tables of the most illustrious generals and
+commanders-in-chief, in the course of which period he drank three
+times as much claret as was good for him, and spent his doubtful
+patrimony. What became of him subsequently to his retirement from the
+army, is no affair of ours. I take it, no foreigner understands the life
+of an Irish gentleman without money, the way in which he manages to keep
+afloat--the wind-raising conspiracies, in which he engages with heroes
+as unfortunate as himself--the means by which he contrives, during most
+days of the week, to get his portion of whisky-and-water: all these are
+mysteries to us inconceivable: but suffice it to say, that through all
+the storms of life Jack had floated somehow, and the lamp of his nose
+had never gone out.
+
+Before he and Pen had had a half hour's conversation, the captain
+managed to extract a couple of sovereigns from the young gentleman for
+tickets for his daughter's benefit, which was to take place speedily,
+and was not a _bonâ fide_ transaction such as that of the last year,
+when poor Miss Fotheringay had lost fifteen shillings by her venture,
+but was an arrangement with the manager, by which the lady was to have
+the sale of a certain number of tickets, keeping for herself a large
+portion of the sum for which they were sold.
+
+Pen had but two pounds in his purse, and he handed them over to the
+captain for the tickets; he would have been afraid to offer more, lest
+he should offend the latter's delicacy. Costigan scrawled him an order
+for a box, lightly slipped the sovereigns into his waistcoat, and
+slapped his hand over the place where they lay. They seemed to warm his
+old sides.
+
+"Faith, sir," said he, "the bullion's scarcer with me than it used to
+be, as is the case with many a good fellow. I won six hundthred of 'em
+in a single night, sir, when me kind friend, His Royal Highness the Duke
+of Kent, was in Gibralther." And he straightway poured out to Pen a
+series of stories regarding the claret drunk, the bets made, the races
+ridden by the garrison there, with which he kept the young gentleman
+amused until the arrival of their host and his breakfast.
+
+Then it was good to see the captain's behavior before the deviled 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 lazarone basked in it; he prated about his own affairs
+and past splendor, 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 apologized,
+gave a dinner at the Kildare-street, where six of them drank twinty-one
+bottles of claret, &c. 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 Curaçoa, 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 am in--sure I'll pay you, my boy"--and they
+parted finally with Mr. Foker at a billiard-room, where the latter had
+a particular engagement with some gentlemen of Colonel Swallowtail's
+regiment.
+
+Pen and the shabby captain still walked the streets together; the
+captain, in his sly way, making inquiries about Mr. Foker's fortune
+and station in life. Pen told him how Foker's father was a celebrated
+brewer, and his mother was Lady Agnes Milton, Lord Rosherville's
+daughter. The captain broke out into a strain of exaggerated compliment
+and panegyric about Mr. Foker, whose "native aristocracie," he said,
+"could be seen with the twinkling of an oi--and only served to adawrun
+other qualities which he possessed--a foin intellect and a generous
+heart"--in not one word of which speech did the captain accurately
+believe.
+
+Pen walked on, listening to his companion's prate, wondering, amused,
+and puzzled. It had not as yet entered into the boy's head to disbelieve
+any statement that was made to him; and being of a candid nature
+himself, he took naturally for truth what other people told him.
+Costigan had never had a better listener, and was highly flattered by
+the attentiveness and modest bearing of the young man.
+
+So much pleased was he with the young gentleman, so artless, honest,
+and cheerful did Pen seem to be, that the captain finally made him an
+invitation, which he very seldom accorded to young men, and asked Pen if
+he would do him the fevor to enter his humble abode, which was near at
+hand, where the captain would have the honor of inthrojuicing his young
+friend to his daughther, Miss Fotheringay?
+
+Pen was so delightfully shocked at this invitation, and was so stricken
+down by the happiness thus suddenly offered to him, that he thought he
+should have dropped from the captain's arm at first, and trembled lest
+the other should discover his emotion. He gasped out a few incoherent
+words, indicative of the high gratification he should have in being
+presented to the lady for whose--for whose talents he had conceived such
+an admiration--such an extreme admiration, and followed the captain,
+scarcely knowing whither that gentleman led him. He was going to see
+her! He was going to see her! In her was the center of the universe.
+She was the kernel of the world for Pen. Yesterday, before he knew her,
+seemed a period ever so long ago--a revolution was between him and that
+time, and a new world about to begin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The captain conducted his young friend to that quiet little street in
+Chatteries, 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 afterward to Pen, winking knowingly,
+and laying a finger on his nose.
+
+Pen tumbled down the step, and as he followed his companion up the
+creaking old stair, his knees trembled under him. He could hardly see
+when he entered, following the captain, and stood in the room--in her
+room. He saw something black before him, and waving as if making a
+courtesy, 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
+neighborhood, a person of refoined moind, and emiable manners, a sincare
+lover of poethry, and a man possest of a feeling and affectionate
+heart."
+
+"It is very fine weather," Miss Fotheringay said, in an Irish accent,
+and with a deep, rich, melancholy voice.
+
+"Very," said Mr. Pendennis. In this romantic way their conversation
+began, and he found himself seated on a chair, and having leisure to
+look at the young lady.
+
+She looked still handsomer off the stage than before the lamps. All her
+attitudes were naturally grand and majestical. If she went and stood up
+against the mantle-piece 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 scepter put into it, the folds of her dress fell
+naturally round her in order, like ladies of honor 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 gray, with
+prodigious long lashes; and as for her mouth, Mr. Pendennis has given
+me subsequently to understand, that it was of a staring red color, with
+which the most brilliant geranium, sealing-wax, or guardsman's coat,
+could not vie.
+
+"And very warm," continued this empress and Queen of Sheba.
+
+Mr. Pen again assented, and the conversation rolled on in this manner.
+She asked Costigan whether he had had a pleasant evening at the George,
+and he recounted the supper and the tumblers of punch. Then the father
+asked her how she had been employing the morning.
+
+"Bows came," said she, "at ten, and we studied Ophalia. It's for the
+twenty-fourth, when I hope, sir, we shall have the honor of seeing ye."
+
+"Indeed, indeed, you will," Mr. Pendennis cried, wondering that she
+should say "Ophalia," and speak with an Irish inflection of voice
+naturally, who had not the least Hibernian accent on the stage.
+
+"I've secured 'um for your benefit, dear," said the captain, tapping his
+waistcoat pocket, wherein lay Pen's sovereigns, and winking at Pen with
+one eye, at which the boy blushed.
+
+"Mr. ---- the gentleman's very obleging," said Mrs. Haller.
+
+"My name is Pendennis," said Pen, blushing. "I--I--hope you'll--you'll
+remember it." His heart thumped so as he made this audacious
+declaration, that he almost choked in uttering it.
+
+"Pendennis," she answered slowly, and looking him full in the eyes, with
+a glance so straight, so clear, so bright, so killing, with a voice so
+sweet, so round, so low, that the word and the glance shot Pen through
+and through, and perfectly transfixed him with pleasure.
+
+"I never knew the name was so pretty before," Pen said.
+
+"'Tis a very pretty name," Ophelia said. "Pentweazle's not a pretty
+name. Remember, papa, when we were on the Norwich Circuit, Young
+Pentweazle, who used to play second old men, and married Miss Rancy, the
+Columbine; they're both engaged in London now, at the Queen's, and get
+five pounds a week. Pentweazle wasn't his real name. 'Twas Judkin gave
+it him, I don't know why. His name was Harrington; that is, his real
+name was Potts; fawther a clergyman, very respectable. Harrington was in
+London, and got in debt. Ye remember, he came out in Falkland, to Mrs.
+Bunce's Julia."
+
+"And a pretty Julia she was," the captain interposed; "a woman of fifty,
+and a mother of ten children. 'Tis you ought to have been Julia, or my
+name's not Jack Costigan."
+
+"I didn't take the leading business then," Miss Fotheringay said,
+modestly; "I wasn't fit for't till Bows taught me."
+
+"True for you, my dear," said the captain: and bending to Pendennis, he
+added, "Rejuced in circumstances, sir, I was for some time a fencing
+master in Dublin (there's only three men in the empire could touch me
+with the foil once, but Jack Costigan's getting old and stiff now, sir);
+and my daughter had an engagement at the thayater there; and 'twas there
+that my friend, Mr. Bows, who saw her capabilities, and is an uncommon
+'cute man, gave her lessons in the dramatic art, and made her what ye
+see. What have ye done since Bows went, Emily?"
+
+"Sure, I've made a pie," Emily said, with perfect simplicity. She,
+pronounced it "poy."
+
+"If ye'll try it at four o'clock, sir, say the word," said Costigan,
+gallantly. "That girl, sir, makes the best veal and ham pie in England,
+and I think I can promise ye a glass of punch of the right flavor."
+
+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 while 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 humor,
+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 forever. He ate a crust of her making, he poured her out a
+glass of beer, he saw her drink a glass of punch--just one wine-glass
+full--out of the tumbler which she mixed for her papa. She was perfectly
+good-natured, and offered to mix one for Pendennis too. It was
+prodigiously strong; Pen had never in his life drunk so much spirits and
+water. Was it the punch, or the punch-maker who intoxicated him?
+
+During dinner, when the captain, whom his daughter treated most
+respectfully, ceased prattling about himself and his adventures, Pen
+tried to engage the Fotheringay in conversation about poetry and about
+her profession. He asked her what she thought of Ophelia's madness, and
+whether she was in love with Hamlet or not? "In love with such a little
+ojous wretch as that stunted manager of a Bingley?" She bristled with
+indignation at the thought. Pen explained it was not of her he spoke,
+but of Ophelia of the play. "Oh, indeed; if no offense was meant, none
+was taken; but as for Bingley, indeed, she did not value him--not that
+glass of punch." Pen next tried her on Kotzebue. "Kotzebue? who was
+he?"--"The author of the play in which she had been performing so
+admirably." "She did not know that--the man's name at the beginning
+of the book was Thompson," she said. Pen laughed at her adorable
+simplicity. He told her of the melancholy fate of the author of the
+play, and how Sand had killed him. It was for the first time in her life
+that Miss Costigan had ever heard of Mr. Kotzebue's existence, but she
+looked as if she was very much interested, and her sympathy sufficed for
+honest Pen.
+
+And in the midst of this simple conversation, the hour and a quarter
+which poor Pen could afford to allow himself, passed away only too
+quickly; and he had taken leave, he was gone, and away on his rapid road
+homeward on the back of Rebecca. She was called upon to show her mettle
+in the three journeys which she made that day.
+
+"What was that he was talking about, the madness of Hamlet, and the
+theory of the great German critic on the subject?" Emily asked of her
+father.
+
+"'Deed then I don't know, Milly dear," answered the captain. "We'll ask
+Bows when he comes."
+
+"Anyhow, he's a nice, fair-spoken, pretty young man," the lady said:
+"how many tickets did he take of you?"
+
+"'Fait, then, he took six, and gev me two guineas, Milly," the captain
+said, "I suppose them young chaps is not too flush of coin."
+
+"He's full of book-learning," Miss Fotheringay continued. "Kotzebue! He,
+he, what a droll name indeed, now; and the poor fellow killed by Sand,
+too! Did ye ever hear such a thing? I'll ask Bows about it, papa, dear."
+
+"A queer death, sure enough," ejaculated the captain, and changed
+the painful theme. "'Tis an elegant mare the young gentleman rides,"
+Costigan went on to say; "and a grand breakfast, intirely, that young
+Mister Foker gave us."
+
+"He's good for two private boxes, and at least twenty tickets, I should
+say," cried the daughter, a prudent lass, who always kept her fine eyes
+on the main chance.
+
+"I'll go bail of that," answered the papa; and so their conversation
+continued awhile, until the tumbler of punch was finished; and their
+hour of departure soon came, too; for at half past six Miss Fotheringay
+was to appear at the theater 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"How beautiful she is," thought Pen, cantering homeward. "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 humor she told the story of her comrade,
+Pentweazle, as he was called! There is no humor like Irish humor. Her
+father is rather tedious, but thoroughly amiable; and how fine of him,
+giving lessons in fencing after he quitted the army, where he was the
+pet of the Duke of Kent! Fencing! I should like to continue my fencing,
+or I shall forget what Angelo taught me. Uncle Arthur always liked me
+to fence--he says it is the exercise of a gentleman. Hang it. I'll take
+some lessons of Captain Costigan. Go along, Rebecca--up the hill, old
+lady. Pendennis, Pendennis--how she spoke the word! Emily, Emily! how
+good, how noble, how beautiful, how perfect, she is!"
+
+Now the reader, who has had the benefit of overhearing the entire
+conversation which Pen had with Miss Fotheringay, can judge for himself
+about the powers of her mind, and may perhaps be disposed to think that
+she has not said any thing astonishingly humorous or intellectual in the
+course of the above interview. She has married, and taken her position
+in the world as a 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 that
+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 Humor." But she had the best of the joke, for she had
+never heard of Irene, or Every Man in his Humor, or Dante, or perhaps
+Algiers. It was all one to her. She acted what little Bows told
+her--where he told her to sob, she sobbed--where he told her to laugh,
+she laughed. She gave the tirade or the repartee without the slightest
+notion of its meaning. She went to church and goes every Sunday, with a
+reputation perfectly intact, and was (and is) as guiltless of sense as
+of any other crime.
+
+But what did our Pen know of these things? He saw a pair of bright
+eyes, and he believed in them--a beautiful image, and he fell down
+and worshiped 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 toward 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 staid at the cottages on the way,
+and then dawdled with Laura over her lessons--and then looked at Mrs.
+Pendennis's gardens and improvements until he had perfectly bored out
+that lady: and he had taken his leave at the very last minute without
+that invitation to dinner which he fondly expected.
+
+Pen was full of kindness and triumph. "What, picked up and sound?" he
+cried out, laughing. "Come along back, old fellow, and eat my dinner--I
+have had mine: but we will have a bottle of the old wine and drink her
+health, Smirke."
+
+Poor Smirke turned the pony's head round, and jogged along with Arthur.
+His mother was charmed to see him in such high spirits, and welcomed Mr.
+Smirke for his sake, when Arthur said he had forced the curate back to
+dine. He gave a most ludicrous account of the play of the night before,
+and of the acting of Bingley the Manager, in his ricketty Hessians, and
+the enormous Mrs. Bingley as the Countess, in rumpled green satin and a
+Polish cap: he mimicked them, and delighted his mother and little Laura,
+who clapped her hands with pleasure.
+
+"And Mrs. Haller?" said Mrs. Pendennis.
+
+"She's a stunner, ma'am," Pen said, laughing, and using the words of his
+reverend friend, Mr. Foker.
+
+"A _what_, Arthur?" asked the lady.
+
+"What _is_ a stunner, Arthur?" cried Laura, in the same voice.
+
+So he gave them a queer account of Mr. Foker, and how he used to be
+called Vats and Grains, and by other contumelious names at school, and
+how he was now exceedingly rich, and a Fellow Commoner at St. Boniface.
+But gay and communicative as he was, Mr. Pen did not say one syllable
+about his ride to Chatteries that day, or about the new friends whom he
+had made there.
+
+When the two ladies retired, Pen, with flashing eyes, filled up two
+great bumpers of Madeira, and looking Smirke full in the face said,
+"Here's to her!"
+
+"Here's to her," said the curate with a sigh, lifting the glass: and
+emptying it, so that his face was a little pink when he put it down.
+
+Pen had even less sleep that night than on the night before. In
+the morning, and almost before dawn, he went out and saddled that
+unfortunate Rebecca himself, and rode her on the Downs like mad.
+Again Love had roused him--and said, "Awake Pendennis, I am here."
+That charming fever--that delicious longing--and fire, and uncertainty;
+he hugged them to him--he would not have lost them for all the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND WAR.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 Chatteries 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 Chatteries for the
+doctoring of his own, and the hire of another animal.
+
+Then, and perhaps once in a week, under pretense 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, staid a couple of hours in Chatteries,
+and returned on the Rival which left for London at ten at night.
+Once his secret was nearly lost by Smirke's simplicity, of whom Mrs.
+Pendennis asked whether they had read a great deal the night before,
+or a question to that effect. Smirke was about to tell the truth, that
+he had never seen Mr. Pen at all, when the latter's boot-heel came
+grinding down on Mr. Smirke's toe under the table, and warned the curate
+not to betray him.
+
+They had had conversations on the tender subject of course. It is good
+sport (if you are not yourself engaged in the conversation) to hear two
+men in love talk. There must be a confidant and depositary somewhere.
+When informed, under the most solemn vows of secrecy, of Pen's condition
+of mind, the curate said, with no small tremor, "that he hoped it was no
+unworthy object--no unlawful attachment, which Pen had formed"--for if
+so, the poor fellow felt it would be his duty to break his vow and
+inform Pen's mother, and then there would be a quarrel, he felt, with
+sickening apprehension, and he would never again have a chance of seeing
+what he most liked in the world.
+
+"Unlawful, unworthy!" Pen bounced out at the curate's question. "She is
+as pure as she is beautiful; I would give my heart to no other woman.
+I keep the matter a secret in my family, because--because--there are
+reasons of a weighty nature which I am not at liberty to disclose. But
+any man who breathes a word against her purity insults both her honor
+and mine, and--and dammy, I won't stand it."
+
+Smirke, with a faint laugh, only said, "Well, well, don't call me out,
+Arthur, for you know I can't fight;" but by this compromise the wretched
+curate was put more than ever into the power of his pupil, and the Greek
+and mathematics suffered correspondingly.
+
+If the reverend gentleman had had much discernment, and looked into the
+poet's corner of the County Chronicle, as it arrived in the Wednesday's
+bag, he might have seen "Mrs. Haller," "Passion and Genius," "Lines
+to Miss Fotheringay, of the Theater Royal," appearing every week; and
+other verses of the most gloomy, thrilling, and passionate cast. But
+as these poems were no longer signed NEP. by their artful composer, but
+subscribed EROS; neither the tutor nor Helen, the good soul, who cut all
+her son's verses out of the paper, knew that Nep. was no other than that
+flaming Eros, who sang so vehemently the character of the new actress.
+
+"Who is the lady," at last asked Mrs. Pendennis, "whom your rival is
+always singing in the County Chronicle. He writes something like you,
+dear Pen, but yours is much the best. Have you seen Miss Fotheringay?"
+
+Pen said yes, he had; that night he went to see the "Stranger," she
+acted Mrs. Haller. By the way she was going to have a benefit, and
+was to appear in Ophelia--suppose we were to go--Shakspeare you know,
+mother--we can get horses from the Clavering Arms. Little Laura sprang
+up with delight, she longed for a play.
+
+Pen introduced "Shakspeare you know," because the deceased Pendennis,
+as became a man of his character, professed an uncommon respect for the
+bard of Avon, in whose works he safely said there was more poetry than
+in all "Johnson's Poets" put together. And though Mr. Pendennis did not
+much read the works in question, yet he enjoined Pen to peruse them, and
+often said what pleasure he should have, when the boy was of a proper
+age, in taking him and his mother to see some good plays of the immortal
+poet.
+
+The ready tears welled up in the kind mother's eyes as she remembered
+these speeches of the man who was gone. She kissed her son fondly, and
+said she would go. Laura jumped for joy. Was Pen happy?--was he ashamed?
+As he held his mother to him, he longed to tell her all, but he kept his
+counsel. He would see how his mother liked her; the play should be the
+thing, and he would try his mother like Hamlet's.
+
+Helen, in her good humor, asked Mr. Smirke to be of the party. That
+ecclesiastic had been bred up by a fond parent at Clapham, who had an
+objection to dramatic entertainments, and he had never yet seen a play.
+But, Shakspeare!--but to go with Mrs. Pendennis in her carriage, and
+sit a whole night by her side!--he could not resist the idea of so much
+pleasure, and made a feeble speech, in which he spoke of temptation and
+gratitude, and finally accepted Mrs. Pendennis's most kind offer. As he
+spoke he gave her a look, which made her exceedingly uncomfortable. She
+had seen that look more than once, of late, pursuing her. He became more
+positively odious every day in the widow's eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We are not going to say a great deal about Pen's courtship of
+Miss Fotheringay, for the reader has already had a specimen of her
+conversation, much of which need surely not be reported. Pen sate with
+her hour after hour, and poured forth all his honest boyish soul to her.
+Every thing 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 _tête-à-tête_ 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 sympathizing. The fact is, while he was making
+one of his tirades--and delighted, perhaps, and wondering at his own
+eloquence, the lad would go on for twenty minutes at a time--the lovely
+Emily, who could not comprehend a tenth part of his talk, had leisure to
+think about her own affairs, and would arrange, in her own mind how they
+should dress the cold mutton, or how she would turn the black satin,
+or make herself out of her scarf a bonnet like Miss Thackthwaite's new
+one, and so forth. Pen spouted Byron and Moore; passion and poetry: her
+business was to throw up her eyes, or fixing them for a moment on his
+face, to cry, "Oh, 'tis beautiful! Ah, how exquisite! Repeat those
+lines again." And off the boy went, and she returned to her own simple
+thoughts about the turned gown, or the hashed mutton.
+
+In fact Pen's passion was not long a secret from the lovely Emily or
+her father. Upon his second visit, his admiration was quite evident
+to both of them, and on his departure the old gentleman said to his
+daughter, as he winked at her over his glass of grog, "Faith, Milly
+darling, I think ye've hooked that chap."
+
+"Pooh, 'tis only a boy, papa dear," Milly remarked. "Sure he's but
+a child." Pen would have been very much pleased if he had heard that
+phrase--he was galloping home wild with pleasure, and shouting out her
+name as he rode.
+
+"Ye've hooked 'um any how," said the captain, "and let me tell ye he's
+not a bad fish. I asked Tom at the George, and Flint, the grocer, where
+his mother dales--fine fortune--drives in her chariot--splendid park and
+grounds--Fairoaks Park--only son--property all his own at twenty-one--ye
+might go further and not fare so well, Miss Fotheringay."
+
+"Them boys are mostly talk," said Milly, seriously. "Ye know at Dublin
+how ye went on about young Poldoody, and I've a whole desk full of
+verses he wrote me when he was in Trinity College; but he went abroad,
+and his mother married him to an Englishwoman."
+
+"Lord Poldoody was a young nobleman; and in them it's natural: and ye
+weren't in the position in which ye are now, Milly dear. But ye mustn't
+encourage this young chap too much, for, bedad, Jack Costigan wont have
+any thrifling with his daughter."
+
+"No more will his daughter, papa, you may be sure of _that_," Milly
+said. "A little sip more of the punch--sure, 'tis beautiful. Ye needn't
+be afraid about the young chap--I think I'm old enough to take care of
+myself, Captain Costigan."
+
+So Pen used to come day after day, rushing in and galloping away, and
+growing more wild about the girl with every visit. Sometimes the captain
+was present at their meetings; but having a perfect confidence in his
+daughter, he was more often inclined to leave the young couple to
+themselves, and cocked his hat over his eye, and strutted off on some
+errand when Pen entered. How delightful these 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
+to 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 toward sunset--or the sound of
+the organ and the choristers would come over the quiet air, and gently
+hush Pen's talking.
+
+By the way, it must be said, that Miss Fotheringay, in a plain shawl
+and a close bonnet and vail, went to church every Sunday of her life,
+accompanied by her indefatigable father, who gave the responses in
+a very rich and fine brogue, joined in the psalms and chanting, and
+behaved in the most exemplary manner.
+
+Little Bows, the house-friend of the family, was exceedingly wroth at
+the notion of Miss Fotheringay's marriage with a stripling seven or
+eight years her junior. Bows, who was a cripple, and owned that he was
+a little more deformed even than Bingley the manager, so that he could
+not appear on the stage, was a singular wild man of no small talents and
+humor. 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 labors of the day over, she
+went to bed and snored as resolutely and as regularly as a porter.
+
+Bows then, was indignant at the notion that his pupil should throw her
+chances away in life by bestowing her hand upon a little country squire.
+As soon as a London manager saw her, he prophesied that she would get
+a London engagement, and a great success. The misfortune was that the
+London managers had seen her. She had played in London three years
+before, and failed from utter stupidity. Since then it was that Bows
+had taken her in hand and taught her part after part. How he worked
+and screamed, and twisted, and repeated lines over and over again, and
+with what indomitable patience and dullness she followed him! She knew
+that he made her: and let herself be made. She was not grateful, or
+ungrateful, or unkind, or ill-humored. She was only stupid; and Pen
+was madly in love with her.
+
+The post-horses from the Clavering Arms arrived in due time, and carried
+the party to the theater at Chatteries, 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 country-folks who
+go to a play in state. Samuel, coachman, groom, and gardener to Mr.
+Pendennis took his place in the pit, where Mr. Foker's man was also
+visible. It was dotted with non-commissioned officers of the Dragoons,
+whose band, by kind permission of Colonel Swallowtail, were as usual
+in the orchestra; and that corpulent and distinguished warrior himself,
+with his Waterloo medal and a number of his young men, made a handsome
+show in the boxes.
+
+"Who is that odd-looking person bowing to you, Arthur?" Mrs. Pendennis
+asked of her son.
+
+Pen blushed a great deal. "His name is Captain Costigan, ma'am," he
+said--a "Peninsular officer." In fact, it was the captain in a new
+shoot of clothes, as he called them, and with a large pair of white
+kid gloves, one of which he waved to Pendennis, while he laid the other
+sprawling over his heart and coat buttons. Pen did not say any more.
+And how was Mrs. Pendennis to know that Mr. Costigan was the father
+of Miss Fotheringay?
+
+Mr. Hornbull, from London, was the Hamlet of the night, Mr. Bingley
+modestly contenting himself with the part of Horatio, and reserving his
+chief strength for William in "Black-Eyed Susan," which was the second
+piece.
+
+We have nothing to do with the play: except to say, that Ophelia looked
+lovely, and performed with admirable wild pathos: laughing, weeping,
+gazing wildly, waving her beautiful white arms, and flinging about her
+snatches of flowers and songs with the most charming madness. What an
+opportunity her splendid black hair had of tossing over her shoulders!
+She made the most charming corpse ever seen; and while Hamlet and
+Laertes were battling in her grave, she was looking out from the back
+scenes with some curiosity toward Pen's box, and the family party
+assembled in it.
+
+There was but one voice in her praise there. Mrs. Pendennis was in
+ecstasies with her beauty. Little Laura was bewildered by the piece,
+and the Ghost, and the play within the play (during which, as Hamlet
+lay at Ophelia's knee, Pen felt that he would have liked to strangle Mr.
+Hornbull), but cried out great praises of that beautiful young creature.
+Pen was charmed with the effect which she produced on his mother--and
+the clergyman, for his part, was exceedingly enthusiastic.
+
+When the curtain fell upon that group of slaughtered personages,
+who are dispatched 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
+neighbors. They were led cheering into action by the portly Swallowtail,
+who waved his cap--the non-commissioned officers in the pit, of course,
+gallantly following their chiefs. There was a roar of bravos rang
+through the house: Pen bellowing with the loudest, "Fotheringay,
+Fotheringay!" and Messrs. Spavin and Foker giving the view halloo
+from their box. Even Mrs. Pendennis began to wave about her
+pocket-handkerchief, and little Laura danced, laughed, clapped, and
+looked up at Pen with wonder.
+
+Hornbull led the _beneficiaire_ forward amidst bursts of enthusiasm--and
+she looked so handsome and radiant, with her hair still over her
+shoulders, that Pen hardly could contain himself for rapture; and he
+leaned over his mother's chair and shouted, and hurrayed and waved his
+hat. It was all he could do to keep his secret from Helen, and not say,
+"Look! That's the woman! Isn't she peerless? I tell you I love her." But
+he disguised these feelings under an enormous bellowing and hurraying.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+As for Miss Fotheringay and her behavior, 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 favorite 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--&c. &c.--in a word--we refer the reader to page 46.
+Twinkling in her breast poor old Pen saw a locket which he had bought of
+Mr. Nathan in High-street, with the last shilling he was worth and a
+sovereign borrowed from Smirke.
+
+"Black-Eyed Susan" followed, at which sweet story our gentle-hearted
+friends were exceedingly charmed and affected: and in which Susan, with
+a russet gown and a pink ribbon in her cap, looked to the full as lovely
+as Ophelia. Bingley was great in William. Goll, as the admiral, looked
+like the figure-head of a seventy-four; and Garbetts, as Captain
+Boldweather, a miscreant who forms a plan for carrying off Black-eyed
+Susan, and, waving an immense cocked hat, says, "Come what may, he
+_will_ be the ruin of her"--all these performed their parts with their
+accustomed talent; and it was with a sincere regret that all our friends
+saw the curtain drop down and end that pretty and tender story.
+
+If Pen had been alone with his mother in the carriage as they went home,
+he would have told her all that night; but he sate on the box in the
+moonshine smoking a cigar by the side of Smirke, who warmed himself with
+a comforter. Mr. Foker's tandem and lamps whirled by the sober old
+Clavering posters, as they were a couple of miles on their road home,
+and Mr. Spavin saluted Mrs. Pendennis's carriage with some considerable
+variations of Rule Britannia on the key-bugle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It happened two days after the above gayeties that Mr. Dean of
+Chatteries entertained a few select clerical friends at dinner at his
+Deanery House. 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 stepped out of the French windows of the
+dining-room into the lawn, which skirts that apartment, and left the
+other white neckcloths to gird at my lord bishop. Then the doctor went
+up and offered Mrs. Dean his arm, and they sauntered over the ancient
+velvet lawn, which had been mowed and rolled for immemorial deans, in
+that easy, quiet, comfortable manner, in which people of middle age and
+good temper walk after a good dinner, in a calm golden summer evening,
+when the sun has but just sunk behind the enormous cathedral-towers, and
+the sickle-shaped moon is growing every instant brighter in the heavens.
+
+Now at the end of the dean's garden, there is, as we have stated, Mrs.
+Creed's house, and the windows of the first-floor room were open to
+admit the pleasant summer air. A young lady of six-and-twenty, whose
+eyes were perfectly wide open, and a luckless boy of eighteen, blind
+with love and infatuation, were in that chamber together; in which
+persons, as we have before seen them in the same place, the reader
+will have no difficulty in recognizing Mr. Arthur Pendennis and Miss
+Costigan.
+
+The poor boy had taken the plunge. Trembling with passionate emotion,
+his heart beating and throbbing fiercely, tears rushing forth in spite
+of him, his voice almost choking with feeling, poor Pen had said those
+words which he could withhold no more, and flung himself and his whole
+store of love, and admiration, and ardor, at the feet of this mature
+beauty. Is he the first who has done so? Have none before or after
+him staked all their treasure of life, as a savage does his land and
+possessions against a draught of the fair-skins' fire-water, or a couple
+of bauble eyes?
+
+"Does your mother know of this, _Arthur_?" said Miss Fotheringay,
+slowly. He seized her hand madly, and kissed it a thousand times.
+She did not withdraw it. "_Does_ the old lady know it?" Miss Costigan
+thought to herself "well, perhaps she may," and then she remembered what
+a handsome diamond cross Mrs. Pendennis had on the night of the play,
+and thought, "sure 'twill go in the family."
+
+"Calm yourself, dear Arthur," she said, in her low rich voice, and
+smiled sweetly and gravely upon him. Then, with her disengaged hand,
+she put the hair lightly off his throbbing forehead. He was in such a
+rapture and whirl of happiness that he could hardly speak. At last he
+gasped out, "My mother has seen you, and admires you beyond measure.
+She will learn to love you soon: who can do otherwise? She will love
+you because I do."
+
+"'Deed then, I think you do," said Miss Costigan, perhaps with a sort
+of pity for Pen.
+
+Think he did! Of course here Mr. Pen went off into a rhapsody through
+which, as we have perfect command over our own feelings, we have no
+reason to follow the lad. Of course, love, truth, and eternity were
+produced; and words were tried but found impossible to plumb the
+tremendous depth of his affection. This speech, we say, is no business
+of ours. It was most likely not very wise, but what right have we to
+overhear? Let the poor boy fling out his simple heart at the woman's
+feet, and deal gently with him. It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but
+to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of
+us can't; and are proud of our impotence too.
+
+At the end of his speech Pen again kissed the imperial hand with
+rapture--and I believe it was at this very moment, and while Mrs. Dean
+and Doctor Portman were engaged in conversation, that young Master
+Ridley Roset, her son, pulled his mother by the back of her capacious
+dress, and said--
+
+"I say, ma! look up there"--and he waggled his innocent head.
+
+That was, indeed, a view from the dean's garden such as seldom is seen
+by deans--or is written in chapters. There was poor Pen performing a
+salute upon the rosy fingers of his charmer, who received the embrace
+with perfect calmness and good humor. 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 favorite and
+dear pupil Pen, he stood mute with rage and wonder.
+
+Mrs. Haller spied the party below at the same moment, and gave a start
+and a laugh. "Sure there's somebody in the dean's garden," she cried
+out; and withdrew with perfect calmness, while Pen darted away with his
+face glowing like coals. The garden party had re-entered the house when
+he ventured to look out again. The sickle moon was blazing bright in
+the heavens then, the stars were glittering, the bell of the cathedral
+tolling nine, the dean's guests (all save one, who had called for his
+horse Dumpling, and ridden off early) were partaking of tea and buttered
+cakes in Mrs. Dean's drawing-room--when Pen took leave of Miss Costigan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pen arrived at home in due time afterward; and was going to slip off to
+bed, for the poor lad was greatly worn and agitated, and his high-strung
+nerves had been at almost a maddening pitch--when a summons came to him
+by John, the old footman, whose countenance bore a very ominous look,
+that his mother must see him below.
+
+On this he tied on his neckcloth again, and went down stairs to the
+drawing-room. There sate not only his mother, but her friend, the
+Reverend Doctor Portman. Helen's face looked very pale by the light of
+the lamp--the doctor's was flushed, on the contrary, and quivering with
+anger and emotion.
+
+Pen saw at once that there was a crisis, and that there had been a
+discovery. "Now for it," he thought.
+
+"Where have you been, Arthur?" Helen said, in a trembling voice.
+
+"How can you look that--that dear lady, and a Christian clergyman in the
+face, sir?" bounced out the doctor, in spite of Helen's pale, appealing
+looks. "Where has he been? Where his mother's son should have been
+ashamed to go. For your mother's an angel, sir, an angel. How dare you
+bring pollution into her house, and make that spotless creature wretched
+with the thoughts of your crime?"
+
+"Sir!" said Pen.
+
+"Don't deny it, sir," roared the doctor. "Don't add lies, sir, to your
+other infamy. I saw you myself, sir. I saw you from the dean's garden.
+I saw you kissing the hand of that infernal painted--"
+
+"Stop," Pen said, clapping his fist on the table, till the lamp
+flickered up and shook, "I am a very young man, but you will please to
+remember that I am a gentleman--I will hear no abuse of that lady."
+
+"Lady, sir," cried the doctor, "_that_ a lady--you--you--you stand in
+your mother's presence and call that--that woman a lady!--"
+
+"In any body'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
+honor."
+
+"No, no, Pen, dearest Pen," cried out Helen in an excess of joy. "I
+told, I told you, doctor, he was not--not what you thought;" and the
+tender creature coming trembling forward flung herself on Pen's
+shoulder.
+
+Pen felt himself a man, and a match for all the doctors in doctordom.
+He was glad this explanation had come. "You saw how beautiful she was,"
+he said to his mother, with a soothing, protecting air, like Hamlet
+with Gertrude in the play. "I tell you, dear mother, she is as good.
+When you know her you will say so. She is of all, except you, the
+simplest, the kindest, the most affectionate of women. Why should she
+not be on the stage?--She maintains her father by her labor."
+
+"Drunken old reprobate," growled the doctor, but Pen did not hear or
+heed.
+
+"If you could see, as I have, how orderly her life is, how pure and
+pious her whole conduct, you would--as I do--yes, as I do"--(with a
+savage look at the doctor)--"spurn the slanderer who dared to do her
+wrong. Her father was an officer, and distinguished himself in Spain.
+He was a friend of His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, and is
+intimately known to the Duke of Wellington, and some of the first
+officers of our army. He has met my uncle Arthur at Lord Hill's, he
+thinks. His own family is one of the most ancient and respectable in
+Ireland, and indeed is as good as our own. The--the Costigans, were
+kings of Ireland."
+
+"Why, God bless my soul," shrieked out the doctor, hardly knowing
+whether to burst with rage or laughter, "you don't mean to say you
+want to _marry_ her?"
+
+Pen put on his most princely air. "What else, Dr. Portman," he said,
+"do you suppose would be my desire?"
+
+Utterly foiled in his attack, and knocked down by this sudden lunge of
+Pen's, the doctor could only gasp out, "Mrs. Pendennis, ma'am, send for
+the major."
+
+"Send for the major? with all my heart," said Arthur, Prince of
+Pendennis and Grand Duke of Fairoaks, with a most superb wave of the
+hand. And the colloquy terminated by the writing of those two letters
+which were laid on Major Pendennis's breakfast-table, in London, at
+the commencement of Prince Arthur's most veracious history.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+IN WHICH THE MAJOR MAKES HIS APPEARANCE.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 neighbor 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 ardor
+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 traveled
+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 portress and gardener's wife
+reverentially greeted him; and, still more respectfully, Mr. Morgan,
+his man.
+
+Helen was on the lookout 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 his wigs: curling them in private places:
+introducing them mysteriously to his master's room;--nor without his
+head of hair would the major care to show himself to any member of
+his family or any acquaintance. He went to his apartment then, and
+supplied these deficiencies; he groaned and moaned, and wheezed, and
+cursed Morgan through his toilet, as an old buck will, who has been
+up all night with a rheumatism, and has a long duty to perform. And
+finally being belted, curled, and set straight, he descended upon the
+drawing-room, with a grave, majestic air, such as befitted one who was
+at once a man of business and a man of fashion.
+
+Pen was not there, however, only Helen, and little Laura sewing at her
+knees; and to whom he never presented more than a fore-finger, 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
+toward her as she came running.
+
+She ran up and put her hand into his. "Come in, Pen," she said, "there's
+somebody come; uncle Arthur's come."
+
+"He is, is he?" said Pen, and she felt him grasp her little hand. He
+looked round at Smirke with uncommon fierceness, as much as to say, I
+am ready for him or any man.--Mr. Smirke cast up his eyes as usual and
+heaved a gentle sigh.
+
+"Lead on, Laura," Pen said, with a half fierce half comic air--"Lead on,
+and say I wait upon my uncle." But he was laughing in order to hide a
+great anxiety: and was screwing his courage inwardly to face the ordeal
+which he knew was now before him.
+
+Pen had taken Smirke into his confidence in the last two days, and
+after the outbreak attendant on the discovery of Dr. 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, &c., 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, half convinced Mr. Smirke
+that the arrangement proposed by Mr. Pen was a very feasible and prudent
+one and that it would be a great comfort to have Emily settled at
+Fairoaks, Captain Costigan in the yellow room, established for life
+there, and Pen married at eighteen.
+
+And it is a fact that in these two days, the boy had almost talked over
+his mother too; had parried all her objections one after another with
+that indignant good sense which is often the perfection of absurdity and
+had brought her almost to acquiesce in the belief that if the marriage
+was doomed in heaven, why doomed it was--that if the young woman was a
+good person, it was all that she, for her part, had to ask; and rather
+to dread the arrival of the guardian uncle who, she foresaw, would
+regard Mr. Pen's marriage in a manner very different to that simple,
+romantic, honest, and utterly absurd way, in which the widow was already
+disposed to look at questions of this sort.
+
+For as in the old allegory of the gold and silver shield, about which
+the two knights quarreled, each is right according to the point from
+which he looks: so about marriage; the question whether it is foolish
+or good, wise or otherwise, depends upon the point of view from which
+you regard it. If it means a snug house in Belgravia, and pretty little
+dinner parties, and a pretty little brougham to drive in the Park, and
+a decent provision, not only for the young people, but for the little
+Belgravians to come; and if these are the necessaries of life (and they
+are with many honest people), to talk of any other arrangement is an
+absurdity: of love in lodgings--a babyish folly of affection: that can't
+pay coach-hire or afford a decent milliner--as mere wicked balderdash
+and childish romance. If, on the other hand your opinion is that people,
+not with an assured subsistence, but with a fair chance to obtain it,
+and with the stimulus of hope, health, and strong affection, may take
+the chance of fortune for better or worse, and share its good or its
+evil together, the polite theory then becomes an absurdity in its turn:
+worse than an absurdity, a blasphemy almost, and doubt of Providence;
+and a man who waits to make his chosen woman happy, until he can drive
+her to church in a neat little carriage with a pair of horses, is no
+better than a coward or a trifler, who is neither worthy of love nor
+of fortune.
+
+I don't say that the town folks are not right, but Helen Pendennis was
+a country bred woman, and the book of life, as she interpreted it, told
+her a different story to that page which is read in cities. Like most
+soft and sentimental women, match-making, in general, formed a great
+part of her thoughts, and I dare say 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 bed-room, 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 honored
+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
+honor, Mrs. Pendennis was willing to bow before her and welcome her,
+and yield her up the first place. But an actress--a mature woman, who
+had long ceased blushing except with rouge, as she stood under the eager
+glances of thousands of eyes--an illiterate and ill-bred person, very
+likely, who must have lived with light associates, and have heard
+doubtful conversation--Oh! it was hard that such a one should be chosen,
+and that the matron should be deposed to give place to such a Sultana.
+
+All these doubts the widow laid before Pen during the two days which
+had of necessity to elapse ere the uncle came down; but he met them
+with that happy frankness and ease which a young gentleman exhibits
+at his time of life, and routed his mother's objections with infinite
+satisfaction to himself. Miss Costigan was a paragon of virtue and
+delicacy; she was as sensitive as the most timid maiden; she was as pure
+as the unsullied snow; she had the finest manners, the most graceful wit
+and genius, the most charming refinement and justness of appreciation in
+all matters of taste; she had the most admirable temper and devotion to
+her father, a good old gentleman of high family and fallen fortunes, who
+had lived, however, with the best society in Europe: he was in no hurry,
+and could afford to wait any time--till he was one-and-twenty. But he
+felt (and here his face assumed an awful and harrowing solemnity) that
+he was engaged in the one only passion of his life, and that DEATH alone
+could close it.
+
+Helen told him, with a sad smile and shake of the head, that people
+survived these passions, and as for long engagements contracted
+between very young men and old women--she knew an instance in her own
+family--Laura's poor father was an instance--how fatal they were.
+
+Mr. Pen, however, was resolved that death must be his doom in case of
+disappointment, and rather than this--rather than balk him, in
+fact--this lady would have submitted to any sacrifice or personal pain,
+and would have gone down on her knees and have kissed the feet of a
+Hottentot daughter-in-law.
+
+Arthur knew his power over the widow, and the young tyrant was touched
+while he exercised it. In those two days he brought her almost into
+submission, and patronized her very kindly; and he passed one evening
+with the lovely pie-maker at Chatteries, in which he bragged of his
+influence over his mother; and he spent the other night in composing a
+most flaming and conceited copy of verses to his divinity, in which he
+vowed, like Montrose, that he would make her famous with his sword and
+glorious by his pen, and that he would love her as no mortal woman had
+been adored since the creation of womankind.
+
+It was on that night, long after midnight, that wakeful Helen, passing
+stealthily by her son's door, saw a light streaming through the chink of
+the door into the dark passage, and heard Pen tossing and tumbling, and
+mumbling verses in his bed. She waited outside for a while, anxiously
+listening to him. In infantile fevers and early boyish illnesses, many a
+night before, the kind soul had so kept watch. She turned the lock very
+softly now, and went in so gently, that Pen for a moment did not see
+her. His face was turned from her. His papers on his desk were scattered
+about, and more were lying on the bed round him. He was biting a pencil
+and thinking of rhymes and all sorts of follies and passions. He was
+Hamlet jumping into Ophelia's grave; he was the Stranger taking Mrs.
+Haller to his arms, beautiful Mrs. Haller with the raven ringlets
+falling over her shoulders. Despair and Byron, Thomas Moore and all the
+Loves of the Angels, Waller and Herrick, Beranger and all the love-songs
+he had ever read, were working and seething in this young gentleman's
+mind, and he was at the very height and paroxysm of the imaginative
+frenzy, when his mother found him.
+
+"Arthur," said the mother's soft silver voice: and he started up and
+turned round. He clutched some of the papers and pushed them under the
+pillow.
+
+"Why don't you go to sleep, my dear?" she said, with a sweet tender
+smile, and sate down on the bed and took one of his hot hands.
+
+Pen looked at her wildly for an instant--"I couldn't sleep," he
+said--"I--I was--I was writing."--And hereupon he flung his arms round
+her neck and said, "O mother! I love her, I love her!"--How could such a
+kind soul as that help soothing and pitying him? The gentle creature did
+her best: and thought with a strange wonderment and tenderness, that it
+was only yesterday that he was a child in that bed: and how she used to
+come and say her prayers over it before he woke upon holiday mornings.
+
+They were very grand verses, no doubt, although Miss Fotheringay did
+not understand them; but old Cos, with a wink and a knowing finger
+on his nose, said, "Put them up with th' other letthers, Milly
+darling. Poldoody's pomes was nothing to this." So Milly locked up
+the manuscripts.
+
+When, then, the major being dressed and presentable, presented himself
+to Mrs. Pendennis, he found in the course of ten minutes' colloquy that
+the poor widow was not merely distressed at the idea of the marriage
+contemplated by Pen, but actually more distressed at thinking that the
+boy himself was unhappy about it, and that his uncle and he should have
+any violent altercation on the subject. She besought Major Pendennis
+to be very gentle with Arthur: "He has a very high spirit, and will
+not brook unkind words," she hinted. "Dr. Portman spoke to him very
+roughly--and I must own unjustly, the other night--for my dearest boy's
+honor is as high as any mother can desire--but Pen's answer quite
+frightened me, it was so indignant. Recollect he is a man now; and be
+very--very cautious," said the widow, laying a fair long hand on the
+major's sleeve.
+
+He took it up, kissed it gallantly, and looked in her alarmed face with
+wonder, and a scorn which he was too polite to show. "_Bon dieu!_"
+thought the old negotiator, "the boy has actually talked the woman
+round, and she'd get him a wife as she would a toy, if master cried for
+it. Why are there no such things as _lettres-de-cachet_--and a Bastile
+for young fellows of family?" The major lived in such good company that
+he might be excused for feeling like an earl.--He kissed the widow's
+timid hand, pressed it in both his, and laid it down on the table with
+one of his own over it, as he smiled and looked her in the face.
+
+"Confess," said he, "now that you are thinking how you possibly can make
+it up to your conscience to let the boy have his own way."
+
+She blushed, and was moved, in the usual manner of females. "I am
+thinking that he is very unhappy; and I am too--"
+
+"To contradict him or to let him have his own wish?" asked the other;
+and added, with great comfort to his inward self, "I'm d--d if he
+shall."
+
+"To think that he should have formed so foolish and cruel and fatal an
+attachment," the widow said, "which can but end in pain whatever be the
+issue."
+
+"The issue shan't be marriage, my dear sister," the major said,
+resolutely. "We're not going to have a Pendennis, the head of the house,
+marry a strolling mountebank from a booth. No, no, we won't marry into
+Greenwich Fair, ma'am."
+
+"If the match is broken suddenly off," the widow interposed, "I don't
+know what may be the consequence. I know Arthur's ardent temper,
+the intensity of his affections, the agony of his pleasures and
+disappointments, and I tremble at this one, if it must be. Indeed,
+indeed, it must not come on him too suddenly."
+
+"My dear madam," the major said, with an air of the deepest
+commiseration, "I've no doubt Arthur will have to suffer confoundedly
+before he gets over the little disappointment. But is he, think you,
+the only person who has been so rendered miserable?"
+
+"No, indeed," said Helen, holding down her eyes. She was thinking of her
+own case, and was at that moment seventeen again, and most miserable.
+
+"I, myself," whispered her brother-in-law, "have undergone a disappointment
+in early life. A young woman with fifteen thousand pounds, niece to an
+earl--most accomplished creature--a third of her money would have run up
+my promotion in no time, and I should have been a lieutenant-colonel
+at thirty: but it might not be. I was but a penniless lieutenant: her
+parents interfered, and I embarked for India--where I had the honor of
+being secretary to Lord Buckley, when commander-in-chief--without her.
+What happened? We returned our letters, sent back our locks of hair
+(the major here passed his fingers through his wig), we suffered, but we
+recovered. She is now a baronet's wife with thirteen grown-up children:
+altered, it is true, in person; but her daughters remind me of what she
+was, and the third is to be presented early next week."
+
+Helen did not answer. She was still thinking of old times. I suppose if
+one lives to be a hundred, there are certain passages of one's early
+life whereof the recollection will always carry us back to youth again,
+and that Helen was thinking of one of these.
+
+"Look at my own brother, my dear creature," the major continued
+gallantly: "he himself, you know, had a little disappointment when
+he started in the--the medical profession--an eligible opportunity
+presented itself. Miss Balls, I remember the name, was daughter of
+an apoth--a practitioner in very large practice; my brother had very
+nearly succeeded in his suit.--But difficulties arose: disappointments
+supervened, and--and I am sure he had no reason to regret the
+disappointment, which gave him this hand," said the major, and he once
+more politely pressed Helen's fingers.
+
+"Those marriages between people of such different rank and age," said
+Helen, "are sad things. I have known them produce a great deal of
+unhappiness.--Laura's father, my cousin, who--who was brought up with
+me"--she added in a low voice, "was an instance of that."
+
+"Most injudicious," cut in the major. "I don't know any thing more
+painful than for a man to marry his superior in age or his inferior in
+station. Fancy marrying a woman of a 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 entirely, from the vulgarity of
+their wives' connections. What did Lady Snapperton do last year at her
+_déjeuné dansant_ after the Bohemian Ball? She told Lord Brouncker
+that he might bring his daughters or send them with a proper chaperon,
+but that she would not receive Lady Brouncker: who was a druggist's
+daughter, or some such thing, and as Tom Wagg remarked of her, never
+wanted medicine certainly, for she never had an _h_ in her life. Good
+Ged, what would have been the trifling pang of a separation in the
+first instance to the enduring infliction of a constant misalliance
+and intercourse with low people?"
+
+"What, indeed!" said Helen, dimly disposed toward laughter, but yet
+checking the inclination, because she remembered in what prodigious
+respect her deceased husband held Major Pendennis and his stories of the
+great world.
+
+"Then this fatal woman is ten years older than that silly young
+scapegrace of an Arthur. What happens in such cases, my dear creature?
+I don't mind telling _you_, now we are alone: that in the highest state
+of society, misery, undeviating misery, is the result. Look at Lord
+Clodworthy come into a room with his wife--why, good Ged, she looks like
+Clodworthy's mother. What's the case between Lord and Lady Willowbank,
+whose love match was notorious? He has already cut her down twice when
+she has hanged herself out of jealousy for Mademoiselle de Sainte
+Cunegonde, the dancer; and mark my words, good Ged, one day he'll _not_
+cut the old woman down. No, my dear madam, you are not in the world, but
+I am: you are a little romantic and sentimental (you know you are--women
+with those large beautiful eyes always are); you must leave this matter
+to my experience. Marry this woman! Marry at eighteen an actress of
+thirty--bah, bah!--I would as soon he sent into the kitchen and married
+the cook."
+
+"I know the evils of premature engagements," sighed out Helen: and as
+she made this allusion no less than thrice in the course of the above
+conversation, and seems to be so oppressed with the notion of long
+engagements and unequal marriages, and as the circumstance we have to
+relate will explain what perhaps some persons are anxious to know,
+namely, who little Laura is, who has appeared more than once before
+us, it will be as well to clear up these points in another chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+IN WHICH PEN IS KEPT WAITING AT THE DOOR, WHILE THE READER IS INFORMED
+WHO LITTLE LAURA WAS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Once upon a time, then, there was a young gentleman of Cambridge
+University who came to pass the long vacation at the village where
+young Helen Thistlewood was living with her mother, the widow of the
+lieutenant slain at Copenhagen.--This gentleman--whose name was the
+Reverend Francis Bell--was nephew to Mrs. Thistlewood, and by consequence,
+own cousin to Miss Helen, so that it was very right that he should take
+lodgings in his aunt's house, who lived in a very small way; and there
+he passed the long vacation, reading with three or four pupils who
+accompanied him to the village. Mr. Bell was fellow of a college, and
+famous in the University for his learning and skill as a tutor.
+
+His two kinswomen understood pretty early that the reverend gentleman
+was engaged to be married, and was only waiting for a college living
+to enable him to fulfill 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 while under Mr. Coacher's roof,
+indeed, and when only a boy of seventeen or eighteen years of age, that
+the impetuous young Bell had flung himself at the feet of Miss Martha
+Coacher, whom he was helping to pick peas in the garden. On his knees,
+before those peas and her, he pledged himself to an endless affection.
+
+Miss Coacher was by many years the young fellow's senior; and her
+own heart had been lacerated by many previous disappointments in the
+matrimonial line. No less than three pupils of her father had trifled
+with those young affections. The apothecary of the village had
+despicably jilted her. The dragoon officer, with whom she had danced so
+many times during that happy season which she passed at Bath with her
+gouty grandmamma, one day gayly 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-humor; at the end of
+his speech she said, "Law, Bell, I'm sure you are too young to think of
+such things;" but intimated that she too would revolve them in her own
+virgin bosom. She could not refer Mr. Bell to her mamma, for Mr. Coacher
+was a widower, and being immersed in his books, was of course unable
+to take the direction of so frail and wondrous an article as a lady's
+heart, which Miss Martha had to manage for herself.
+
+A lock of her hair, tied up in a piece of blue ribbon, conveyed to the
+happy Bell the result of the Vestal's conference with herself. Thrice
+before had she snipt off one of her auburn ringlets, and given them
+away. The possessors were faithless, but the hair had grown again; and
+Martha had indeed occasion to say that men were deceivers, when she
+handed over this token of love to the simple boy.
+
+Number 6, however, was an exception to former passions--Francis Bell was
+the most faithful of lovers. When his time arrived to go to college, and
+it became necessary to acquaint Mr. Coacher of the arrangements that had
+been made, the latter cried, "God bless my soul, I hadn't the least idea
+what was going on!" as was indeed very likely, for he had been taken in
+three times before in precisely a similar manner; and Francis went to
+the University resolved to conquer honors, so as to be able to lay them
+at the feet of his beloved Martha.
+
+This prize in view made him labor prodigiously. News came, term after
+term, of the honors he won. He sent the prize-books for his college
+essays to old Coacher, and his silver declamation cup to Miss Martha.
+In due season he was high among the Wranglers, and a fellow of his
+college; and during all the time of these transactions a constant tender
+correspondence was kept up with Miss Coacher, to whose influence, and
+perhaps with justice, he attributed the successes which he had won.
+
+By the time, however, when the Rev. Francis Bell, M.A., and fellow and
+tutor of his college, was twenty-six years of age, it happened that Miss
+Coacher was thirty-four, nor had her charms, her manners, or her temper
+improved since that sunny day in the spring-time of life when he found
+her picking peas in the garden. Having achieved his honors, he relaxed
+in the ardor of his studies, and his judgment and taste 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-favored,
+ill-mannered, middle-aged woman.
+
+It was in consequence of one of many altercations (in which Martha's
+eloquence shone, and in which therefore she was frequently pleased
+to indulge) that Francis refused to take his pupils to Bearleader's
+Green, where Mr. Coacher's living was, and where Bell was in the
+habit of spending the summer; and he bethought him that he would pass
+the vacation at his aunt's village, which he had not seen for many
+years--not since little Helen was a girl and used to sit on his knee.
+Down then he came and lived with them. Helen was grown a beautiful
+young woman now. The cousins were nearly four months together, from June
+to October. They walked in the summer evenings; they met in the early
+morn. They read out of the same book when the old lady dozed at night
+over the candles. What little Helen knew, Frank taught her. She sang to
+him: she gave her artless heart to him. She was aware of all his story.
+Had he made any secret?--had he not shown the picture of the woman to
+whom he was engaged, and with a blush--her letters, hard, eager, and
+cruel?--The days went on and on, happier and closer, with more kindness,
+more confidence, and more pity. At last one morning in October came when
+Francis went back to college, and the poor girl felt that her tender
+heart was gone with him.
+
+Frank too wakened up from the delightful midsummer-dream to the
+horrible reality of his own pain. He gnashed and tore at the chain
+which bound him. He was frantic to break it and be free. Should he
+confess?--give his savings to the woman to whom he was bound, and beg
+his release?--there was time yet--he temporized. No living might fall in
+for years to come. The cousins went on corresponding sadly and fondly:
+the betrothed woman, hard, jealous, and dissatisfied, complaining
+bitterly, and with reason, of her Francis's altered tone.
+
+At last things came to a crisis, and the new attachment was discovered.
+Francis owned it, cared not to disguise it, rebuked Martha with her
+violent temper and angry imperiousness, and, worst of all, with her
+inferiority and her age.
+
+Her reply was, that if he did not keep his promise she would carry his
+letters into every court in the kingdom--letters in which his love was
+pledged to her ten thousand times; and, after exposing him to the world
+as the perjurer and traitor he was, she would kill herself.
+
+Frank had one more interview with Helen, whose mother was dead then, and
+who was living companion with old Lady Pontypool--one more interview,
+where it was resolved that he was to do his duty; that is, to redeem his
+vow; that is, to pay a debt cozened from him by a sharper; that is, to
+make two honest people miserable. So the two judged their duty to be,
+and they parted.
+
+The living fell in only too soon; but yet Frank Bell was quite a gray
+and worn-out man when he was inducted into it, Helen wrote him a letter
+on his marriage, beginning "My dear cousin," and ending "always truly
+yours." She sent him back the other letters, and the lock of his
+hair--all but a small piece. She had it in her desk when she was talking
+to the major.
+
+Bell lived for three or four years in his living, at the end of which
+time, the Chaplainship of Coventry Island falling vacant, Frank applied
+for it privately, and having procured it, announced the appointment to
+his wife. She objected, as she did to every thing. He told her bitterly
+that he did not want _her_ to come: so she went. Bell went out in
+Governor Crawley's time, and was very intimate with that gentleman in
+his later years. And it was in Coventry Island, years after his own
+marriage, and five years after he had heard of the birth of Helen's
+boy, that his own daughter was born.
+
+She was not the daughter of the first Mrs. Bell, who died of island
+fever very soon after Helen Pendennis and her husband, to whom Helen had
+told every thing, 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
+child-birth, Bell gave up too: sending his little girl home to Helen
+Pendennis and her husband, with a parting prayer that they would
+befriend her.
+
+The little thing came to Fairoaks from Bristol, which is not very far
+off, dressed in black, and in company of a soldier's wife, her nurse,
+at parting from whom she wept bitterly. But she soon dried up her grief
+under Helen's motherly care.
+
+Round her neck she had a locket with hair, which Helen had given, ah,
+how many years ago! to poor Francis, dead and buried. This child was all
+that was left of him, and she cherished, as so tender a creature would,
+the legacy which he had bequeathed to her. The girl's name, as his dying
+letter stated, was Helen Laura. But John Pendennis, though he accepted
+the trust, was always rather jealous of the orphan; and gloomily
+ordered that she should be called by her own mother's name; and not
+by that first one which her father had given her. She was afraid of
+Mr. Pendennis, to the last moment of his life. And it was only when her
+husband was gone that Helen dared openly to indulge in the tenderness
+which she felt for the little girl.
+
+Thus it was that Laura Bell became Mrs. Pendennis's daughter. Neither
+her husband nor that gentleman's brother, the major, viewed her with
+very favorable eyes. She reminded the first of circumstances in his
+wife's life which he was forced to accept, but would have forgotten much
+more willingly: and as for the second, how could he regard her? She was
+neither related to his own family of Pendennis, nor to any nobleman
+in this empire, and she had but a couple of thousand pounds for her
+fortune.
+
+And now let Mr. Pen come in, who has been waiting all this while.
+
+Having strung up his nerves, and prepared himself, without at the door,
+for the meeting, he came to it, determined to face the awful uncle. He
+had settled in his mind that the encounter was to be a fierce one, and
+was resolved on bearing it through with all the courage and dignity of
+the famous family which he represented. And he flung open the door and
+entered with the most severe and warlike expression, armed _cap-à-pié_
+as it were, with lance couched and plumes displayed, and glancing at
+his adversary, as if to say, "Come on, I'm ready."
+
+The old man of the world, as he surveyed the boy's demeanor, 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-humored natural
+smile in the world, held out his hands to Pen, shook the lad's passive
+fingers gayly, and said, "Well Pen, my boy, tell us all about it."
+
+Helen was delighted with the generosity of the major's good humor.
+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
+_entrée_ was altogether balked and ludicrous. He blushed and winced with
+mortified vanity and bewilderment. He felt immensely inclined to begin
+to cry--"I--I--I didn't know that you were come till just now," he said:
+"is--is--town very full, I suppose?"
+
+If Pen could hardly gulp his tears down, it was all the major could do
+to keep from laughter. He turned round and shot a comical glance at
+Mrs. Pendennis, who too felt that the scene was at once ridiculous and
+sentimental. And so, having nothing to say, she went up and kissed Mr.
+Pen: as he thought of her tenderness and soft obedience to his wishes,
+it is very possible too the boy was melted.
+
+"What a couple of fools they are," thought the old guardian. "If I
+hadn't come down, she would have driven over in state to pay a visit
+and give her blessing to the young lady's family."
+
+"Come, come," said he still grinning at the couple, "let us have as
+little sentiment as possible, and Pen, my good fellow, tell us the
+whole story."
+
+Pen got back at once to his tragic and heroical air. "The story is,
+sir," said he, "as I have written it to you before. I have made the
+acquaintance of a most beautiful and most virtuous lady; of a high
+family, although in reduced circumstances: I have found the woman
+in whom I know that the happiness of my life is centered; I feel
+that I never, never can think about any woman but her. I am aware of
+the difference of our ages and other difficulties in my way. But my
+affection was so great that I felt I could surmount all these;--that
+we both could: and she has consented to unite her lot with mine, and
+to accept my heart and my fortune."
+
+"How much is that, my boy?" said the major. "Has any body left you some
+money? I don't know that you are worth a shilling in the world."
+
+"You know what I have is his," cried out Mrs. Pendennis.
+
+"Good heavens, madam, hold your tongue!" was what the guardian was
+disposed to say; but he kept his temper, not without a struggle. "No
+doubt, no doubt," he said. "You would sacrifice any thing for him. Every
+body knows that. But it is, after all, then, your fortune which Pen is
+offering to the young lady; and of which he wishes to take possession
+at eighteen."
+
+"I know my mother will give me any thing," Pen said, looking rather
+disturbed.
+
+"Yes, my good fellow, but there is reason in all things. If your mother
+keeps the house, it is but fair that she should select her company.
+When you give her house over her head, and transfer her banker's
+account to yourself for the benefit of Miss What-d'-you-call-'em--Miss
+Costigan--don't you think you should at least have consulted my sister
+as one of the principal parties in the transaction? I am speaking to
+you, you see, without the least anger or assumption of authority, such
+as the law and your father's will give me over you for three years to
+come--but as one man of the world to another,--and I ask you, if you
+think that, because you can do what you like with your mother, therefore
+you have a right to do so! As you are her dependent, would it not have
+been more generous to wait before you took this step, and at least to
+have paid her the courtesy to ask her leave?"
+
+Pen held down his head, and began dimly to perceive that the action on
+which he had prided himself as a most romantic, generous instance of
+disinterested affection, was perhaps a very selfish and headstrong piece
+of folly.
+
+"I did it in a moment of passion," said Pen, floundering; "I was not
+aware what I was going to say or to do" (and in this he spoke with
+perfect sincerity). "But now it is said, and I stand to it. No; I
+neither can nor will recall it. I'll die rather than do so. And I--I
+don't want to burthen my mother," he continued. "I'll work for myself.
+I'll go on the stage and act with her. She--she says I should do well
+there."
+
+"But will she take you on those terms?" the major interposed. "Mind, I
+do not say that Miss Costigan is not the most disinterested of women:
+but, don't you suppose, now, fairly, that your position as a young
+gentleman of ancient birth and decent expectations, forms a part of
+the cause why she finds your addresses welcome?"
+
+"I'll die, I say, rather than forfeit my pledge to her," said Pen,
+doubling his fists and turning red.
+
+"Who asks you, my dear friend?" answered the imperturbable guardian. "No
+gentleman breaks his word, of course, when it has been given freely. But
+after all, you can wait. You owe something to your mother, something to
+your family--something to me as your father's representative."
+
+"Oh, of course," Pen said, feeling rather relieved.
+
+"Well, as you have pledged your word to her, give us another, will you,
+Arthur?"
+
+"What is it?" Arthur asked.
+
+"That you will make no private marriage--that you won't be taking a trip
+to Scotland, you understand."
+
+"That would be a falsehood. Pen never told his mother a falsehood,"
+Helen said.
+
+Pen hung down his head again, and his eyes filled with tears of shame.
+Had not this whole intrigue been a falsehood to that tender and
+confiding creature who was ready to give up all for his sake? He gave
+his uncle his hand.
+
+"No, sir--on my word of honor, as a gentleman," he said, "I will never
+marry without my mother's consent!" and giving Helen a bright parting
+look of confidence and affection unchangeable, the boy went out of the
+drawing-room into his own study.
+
+"He's an angel--he's an angel," the mother cried out, in one of her
+usual raptures.
+
+"He comes of a good stock, ma'am," said her brother-in-law--"of a good
+stock on both sides." The major was greatly pleased with the result of
+his diplomacy--so much so, that he once more saluted the tips of Mrs.
+Pendennis's glove, and dropping the curt, manly, and straightforward
+tone in which he had conducted the conversation with the lad, assumed
+a certain drawl which he always adopted when he was most conceited and
+fine.
+
+"My dear creature," said he, in that his politest tone, "I think it
+certainly as well that I came down, and I flatter myself that last
+_botte_ was a successful one. I tell you how I came to think of it.
+Three years ago my kind friend Lady Ferrybridge sent for me in the
+greatest state of alarm about her son Gretna, whose affair you remember,
+and implored me to use my influence with the young gentleman, who was
+engaged in an _affaire de coeur_ with a Scotch clergyman's daughter,
+Miss MacToddy. I implored, I entreated gentle measures. But Lord
+Ferrybridge was furious, and tried the high hand. Gretna was sulky and
+silent, and his parents thought they had conquered. But what was the
+fact, my dear creature? The young people had been married for three
+months before Lord Ferrybridge knew any thing about it. And that was
+why I extracted the promise from Master Pen."
+
+"Arthur would never have done so," Mrs. Pendennis said.
+
+"He hasn't--that is one comfort," answered the brother-in-law.
+
+Like a wary and patient man of the world, Major Pendennis did not press
+poor Pen any farther for the moment, but hoped the best from time, and
+that the young fellow's eyes would be opened before long to see the
+absurdity of which he was guilty. And having found out how keen the
+boy's point of honor 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, while it advanced the interests of the
+negotiator, "you must bear in mind that you are throwing yourself away.
+Your mother might submit to your marriage, as she would to any thing
+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 theater 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 endeavor 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 honor 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 honors 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 toward
+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!_ forever" (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 honor, however fatal your
+promise may be. However, promise us on our side, my boy, what I set out
+by entreating you to grant--that there shall be nothing clandestine,
+that you will pursue your studies, that you will only visit your
+interesting friend at proper intervals. Do you write to her much?"
+
+Pen blushed and said, "Why, yes, he had written."
+
+"I suppose verses, eh! as well as prose? I was a dab at verses myself. I
+recollect when I first joined, I used to write verses for the fellows in
+the regiment; and did some pretty things in that way. I was talking to
+my old friend General Hobbler about some lines I dashed off for him in
+the year 1806, when we were at the Cape, and, Gad, he remembered every
+line of them still; for he'd used 'em so often, the old rogue, and had
+actually tried 'em on Mrs. Hobbler, sir--who brought him sixty thousand
+pounds. I suppose you've tried verses, eh, Pen?"
+
+Pen blushed again, and said, "Why, yes, he had written verses."
+
+"And does the fair one respond in poetry or prose?" asked the major,
+eying his nephew with the queerest expression, as much as to say,
+"O Moses and green spectacles! what a fool the boy is."
+
+Pen blushed again. She had written, but not in verse, the young lover
+owned, and he gave his breast-pocket the benefit of a squeeze with his
+left arm, which the major remarked, according to his wont.
+
+"You have got the letters there, I see," said the old campaigner,
+nodding at Pen, and pointing to his own chest (which was manfully wadded
+with cotton by Mr. Stultz). "You know you have. I would give twopence to
+see 'em."
+
+"Why," said Pen, twiddling the stalks of the strawberries, "I--I," but
+this sentence never finished; for Pen's face was so comical and
+embarrassed, as the major watched it, that the elder could contain his
+gravity no longer, and burst into a fit of laughter, in which chorus Pen
+himself was obliged to join after a minute: when he broke out fairly
+into a guffaw.
+
+It sent them with great good humor into Mrs. Pendennis's drawing-room.
+She was pleased to hear them laughing in the hall as they crossed it.
+
+"You sly rascal!" said the major, putting his arm gayly on Pen's
+shoulder, and giving a playful push at the boy's breast-pocket. He
+felt the papers crackling there, sure enough. The young fellow was
+delighted--conceited--triumphant--and, in one word, a spoony.
+
+The pair came to the tea-table in the highest spirits. The major's
+politeness was beyond expression. He had never tasted such good tea, and
+such bread was only to be had in the country. He asked Mrs. Pendennis
+for one of her charming songs. He then made Pen sing, and was delighted
+and astonished at the beauty of the boy's voice: he made his nephew
+fetch his map 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 bed time came, mother and son went to
+their several rooms perfectly enchanted with the kind major.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they had reached those apartments, I suppose Helen took to her
+knees as usual: and Pen read over his letters before going to bed just
+as if he didn't know every word of them by heart already. In truth,
+there were but three of those documents: and to learn their contents
+required no great effort of memory.
+
+In No. 1, Miss Fotheringay presents grateful compliments to Mr.
+Pendennis, and in her papa's name and her own begs to thank him for his
+_most beautiful presents_. They will always be _kept carefully_; and
+Miss F. and Captain C. will never forget the _delightful evening_ which
+they passed on _Tuesday last_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. 2, said--Dear sir, we shall have a small quiet party of _social
+friends_ at our _humble board_, next Tuesday evening, at an _early tea_,
+when I shall wear the _beautiful scarf_ which, with its _accompanying
+delightful verses_, I shall _ever, ever cherish_; and papa bids me say
+how happy he will be if you will join "_the feast of reason and the
+flow of soul_" in our _festive little party_, as I am sure will be your
+_truly grateful_ Emily Fotheringay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. 3 was somewhat more confidential, and showed that matters had
+proceeded rather far. You were _odious_ yesterday night, the letter
+said, Why did you not come to the stage-door? Papa could not escort me
+on account of his eye; he had an accident, and fell down over a loose
+carpet on the stair on Sunday night. I saw you looking at Miss Diggle
+all night; and you were so _enchanted_ with Lydia Languish you scarcely
+once looked at Julia. I could have _crushed_ Bingley, I was so _angry_.
+I play _Ella Rosenberg_ on Friday: will you come then? _Miss Diggle
+performs_--ever your E. F.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These three letters Mr. Pen used to read at intervals, during the day
+and night, and embrace with that delight and fervor which such beautiful
+compositions surely warranted. A thousand times at least he had kissed
+fondly the musky satin paper, made sacred to him by the hand of Emily
+Fotheringay. This was all he had in return for his passion and flames,
+his vows and protests, his rhymes and similes, his wakeful nights and
+endless thoughts, his fondness, fears, and folly. The young wiseacre had
+pledged away his all for this: signed his name to endless promissory
+notes, conferring his heart upon the bearer; bound himself for life, and
+got back twopence as an equivalent. For Miss Costigan was a young lady
+of such perfect good conduct and self-command, that she never would have
+thought of giving more, and reserved the treasures of her affection
+until she could transfer them lawfully at church.
+
+Howbeit, Mr. Pen was content with what tokens of regard he had got, and
+mumbled over his three letters in a rapture of high spirits, and went to
+sleep delighted with his kind old uncle from London, who must evidently
+yield to his wishes in time; and, in a word, in a preposterous state of
+contentment with himself and all the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+IN WHICH THE MAJOR OPENS THE CAMPAIGN.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Let those who have a real heartfelt relish for London society, and
+the privilege of an entrée into its most select circles, admit that
+Major Pendennis was a man of no ordinary generosity and affection,
+in the sacrifice which he now made. He gave up London in May--his
+newspapers and his mornings--his afternoons from club to club, his little
+confidential visits to my ladies, his rides in Rotten Row, his dinners
+and his stall at the opera, his rapid escapades to Fulham or Richmond on
+Saturdays and Sundays, his bow from my Lord Duke or my Lord Marquis at
+the great London entertainments, and his name in the Morning Post of the
+succeeding day--his quieter little festivals, more select, secret, and
+delightful--all these he resigned to lock himself into a lone little
+country house, with a simple widow and a greenhorn of a son, a mawkish
+curate, and a little girl of ten years of age.
+
+He made the sacrifice, and it was the greater that few knew the extent
+of it. His letters came down franked from town, and he showed the
+invitations to Helen with a sigh. It was beautiful and tragical to
+see him refuse one party after another--at least to those who could
+understand, as Helen didn't, the melancholy grandeur of his self-denial.
+Helen did not, or only smiled at the awful pathos with which the major
+spoke of the Court Guide in general: but young Pen looked with great
+respect at the great names upon the superscriptions of his uncle's
+letters, and listened to the major's stories about the fashionable
+world with constant interest and sympathy.
+
+The elder Pendennis's rich memory was stored with thousands of these
+delightful tales, and he poured them into Pen's willing ear with
+unfailing eloquence. He knew the name and pedigree of every body in the
+Peerage, and every body's relations. "My dear boy," he would say, with a
+mournful earnestness and veracity, "you can not begin your genealogical
+studies too early; I wish to Heavens you would read in Debrett every
+day. Not so much the historical part (for the pedigrees, between
+ourselves, are many of them very fabulous, and there are few families
+that can show such a clear descent as our own) as the account of family
+alliances, and who is related to whom. I have known a man's career in
+life blasted, by ignorance on this important, this all-important
+subject. Why, only last month, at dinner at my Lord Hobanob's, a young
+man, who has lately been received among us, young Mr. Suckling (author
+of a work, I believe), began to speak lightly of Admiral Bowser's
+conduct for ratting to ministers, in what I must own is the most
+audacious manner. But who do you think sate next and opposite to
+this Mr. Suckling? Why--why, next to him was Lady Grampound Bowser's
+daughter, and opposite to him was Lord Grampound Bowser's son-in-law.
+The infatuated young man went on cutting his jokes at the admiral's
+expense, fancying that all the world was laughing with him, and I
+leave you to imagine Lady Hobanob's feelings--Hobanob's!--those of
+every well-bred man, as the wretched _intru_ was so exposing himself.
+_He_ will never dine again in South-street. I promise you _that_."
+
+With such discourses the major entertained his nephew, as he paced the
+terrace in front of the house for his two hours' constitutional walk, or
+as they sate together after dinner over their wine. He grieved that Sir
+Francis Clavering had not come down to the park, to live in it since his
+marriage, and to make a society for the neighborhood. He mourned that
+Lord Eyrie was not in the country, that he might take Pen and present
+him to his lordship. "He has daughters," the major said. "Who knows? you
+might have married Lady Emily or Lady Barbara Trehawk: but all those
+dreams are over; my poor fellow, you must lie on the bed which you have
+made for yourself."
+
+These things to hear did young Pendennis seriously incline. They are
+not so interesting in print as when delivered orally; but the major's
+anecdotes of the great George, of the royal dukes, of the statesmen,
+beauties, and fashionable ladies of the day, filled young Pen's soul
+with longing and wonder; and he found the conversations with his
+guardian, which sadly bored and perplexed poor Mrs. Pendennis, for
+his own part, never tedious.
+
+It can't be said that Mr. Pen's new guide, philosopher and friend,
+discoursed him on the most elevated subjects, or treated the subjects
+which he chose in the most elevated manner. But his morality, such as
+it was, was consistent. It might not, perhaps, tend to a man's progress
+in another world, but it was pretty well calculated to advance his
+interests in this: and then it must be remembered, that the major never
+for one instant doubted that his views were the only views practicable,
+and that his conduct was perfectly virtuous and respectable. He was
+a man of honor, in a word; and had his eyes, what he called, open. He
+took pity on this young greenhorn of a nephew, and wanted to open his
+eyes too.
+
+No man, for instance, went more regularly to church, when in the
+country, than the old bachelor. "It don't matter so much in town, Pen,"
+he said, "for there the women go, and the men are not missed. But when
+a gentleman is _sur ses terres_, he must give an example to the country
+people; and if I could turn a tune, I even think I should sing. The Duke
+of Saint David's, whom I have the honor of knowing, always sings in
+the country, and let me tell you, it has a doosed fine effect from the
+family pew. And you are somebody down here. As long as the Claverings
+are away you are the first man in the parish; and as good as any. You
+might represent the town if you played your cards well. Your poor dear
+father would have done so had he lived; so might you.--Not if you marry
+a lady, however amiable, whom the country people won't meet.--Well,
+well: it's a painful subject. Let us change it, my boy." But if Major
+Pendennis changed the subject once, he recurred to it a score of times
+in the day; and the moral of his discourse always was, that Pen was
+throwing himself away. Now it does not require much coaxing or wheedling
+to make a simple boy believe that he is a very fine fellow.
+
+Pen took his uncle's counsels to heart. He was glad enough, we have
+said, to listen to his elder's talk. The conversation of Captain
+Costigan became by no means pleasant to him, and the idea of that tipsy
+old father-in-law haunted him with terror. He couldn't bring that man,
+unshaven and reeking of punch, to associate with his mother. Even about
+Emily--he faltered when the pitiless guardian began to question him.
+"Was she accomplished?" He was obliged to own, no. "Was she clever?"
+Well, she had a very good average intellect: but he could not absolutely
+say she was clever. "Come, let us see some of her letters." So Pen
+confessed that he had but those three of which we have made mention--and
+that they were but trivial invitations or answers.
+
+"_She_ is cautious enough," the major said, drily. "She is older than
+you, my poor boy;" and then he apologized 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 honor in view--for
+Arthur was ready to flame up in indignation whenever Miss Costigan's
+honesty was doubted, and swore that he would never have her name
+mentioned lightly, and never, never would part from her.
+
+He repeated this to his uncle and his friends at home, and also, it must
+be confessed, to Miss Fotheringay and the amiable family at Chatteries,
+with whom he still continued to spend some portion of his time. Miss
+Emily was alarmed when she heard of the arrival of Pen's guardian, and
+rightly conceived that the major came down with hostile intentions to
+herself. "I suppose ye intend to leave me, now your grand relation, has
+come down from town. He'll carry ye off, and you'll forget your poor
+Emily, Mr. Arthur!"
+
+Forget her! In her presence, in that of Miss Rouncy, the Columbine and
+Milly's confidential friend, of the company, in the presence of the
+captain himself, Pen swore he never could think of any other woman but
+his beloved Miss Fotheringay; and the captain, looking up at his foils,
+which were hung as a trophy on the wall of the room where Pen and he
+used to fence, grimly said, he would not advoise any man to meddle
+rashly with the affections of _his_ darling child; and would never
+believe his gallant young Arthur, whom he treated as his son, whom he
+called his son, would ever be guilty of conduct so revolting to every
+idaya of honor and humanity.
+
+He went up and embraced Pen after speaking. He cried, and wiped
+his eye with one large dirty hand as he clasped Pen with the other.
+Arthur shuddered in that grasp, and thought of his uncle at home.
+His father-in-law looked unusually dirty and shabby; the odor 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 (inclosing to him a sovereign,
+the loan of which the worthy gentleman had need), saying, that one
+day he hoped to sign himself his affectionate son, Arthur Pendennis.
+He was glad to get away from Chatteries 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 tattled homeward on
+Rebecca, "you little know what sacrifices I am making for you!--for you
+who are always so cold, so cautious, so mistrustful;" and he thought of
+a character in Pope to whom he had often involuntarily compared her.
+
+Pen never rode over to Chatteries 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 every body knew whence he came, and appeared quite
+guilty before his mother and guardian, over their books or their game
+at picquet.
+
+Once having walked out half a mile, to the Fairoaks Inn, beyond the
+lodge gates, to be in readiness for the Competitor coach, which changed
+horses there, to take a run for Chatteries, a man on the roof touched
+his hat to the young gentleman: it was his uncle's man, Mr. Morgan,
+who was going on a message for his master, and had been took up at the
+lodge, as he said. And Mr. Morgan came back by the Rival, too; so that
+Pen had the pleasure of that domestic's company both ways. Nothing was
+said at home. The lad seemed to have every decent liberty; and yet he
+felt himself dimly watched and guarded, and that there were eyes upon
+him even in the presence of his Dulcinea.
+
+In fact, Pen's suspicions were not unfounded, and his guardian had sent
+forth to gather all possible information regarding the lad and his
+interesting young friend. The discreet and ingenious Mr. Morgan, a
+London confidential valet, whose fidelity could be trusted, had been
+to Chatteries 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 color 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 tooth-pick, and looked over the paper, and
+if any friend asked him to dinner, he staid. 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, traveled in
+charge of the dressing-case.
+
+From the servants of the officers at the barracks Mr. Morgan found
+that the captain had so frequently and outrageously inebriated himself
+there, that Colonel Swallowtail had forbidden him the mess-room. The
+indefatigable Morgan then put himself in communication with some of the
+inferior actors at the theater, 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 toward persons disposed to treat his daughter
+with freedom. She never came to the theater 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
+hact, and was uncommon delighted with the performance, besides thinking
+her a most splendid woman.
+
+Mrs. Creed, the pew-opener, confirmed these statements to Doctor
+Portman, who examined her personally, and threatened her with the
+terrors of the Church, one day after afternoon service. Mrs. Creed had
+nothing unfavorable to her lodger to divulge. She saw nobody; only
+one or two ladies of the theater. 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 down stairs to Mrs. Creed's
+own room.
+
+The doctor and the major consulting together as they often did, groaned
+in spirit over that information. Major Pendennis openly expressed his
+disappointment; and, I believe the divine himself was ill-pleased at
+not being able to pick a hole in poor Miss Fotheringay's reputation.
+
+Even about Pen himself, Mrs. Creed's reports were desperately favorable.
+"Whenever he come," Mrs. Creed said, "she always have me or one of the
+children with her. And Mrs. Creed, marm, says she, if you please marm,
+you'll on no account leave the room when that young gentleman's here.
+And many's the time I've seen him a lookin' as if he wished I was away,
+poor young man: and he took to coming in service-time, when I wasn't at
+home, of course: but she always had one of the boys up if her pa wasn't
+at home, or old Mr. Bowser with her a teaching of her her lesson, or one
+of the young ladies of the theayter."
+
+It was all true: whatever encouragements might have been given him
+before he avowed his passion, the prudence of Miss Emily was prodigious
+after Pen had declared himself: and the poor fellow chafed against her
+hopeless reserve, which maintained his ardor as it excited his anger.
+
+The major surveyed the state of things with a sigh. "If it were but a
+temporary liaison," the excellent man said, "one could bear it. A young
+fellow must sow his wild oats and that sort of thing. But a virtuous
+attachment is the deuce. It comes from the d--d romantic notions boys
+get from being brought up by women."
+
+"Allow me to say, major, that you speak a little too like a man of
+the world," replied the doctor. "Nothing can be more desirable for Pen
+than a virtuous attachment for a young lady of his own rank and with
+a corresponding fortune--this present infatuation, of course, I must
+deplore as sincerely as you do. If I were his guardian I should command
+him to give it up."
+
+"The very means, I tell you, to make him marry to-morrow. We have got
+time from him, that is all, and we must do our best with that."
+
+"I say, major," said the doctor, at the end of the conversation in which
+the above subject was discussed--"I am not, of course, a play-going
+man--but suppose, I say, we go and see her."
+
+The major laughed--he had been a fortnight at Fairoaks, and strange to
+say, had not thought of that. "Well," he said, "why not? After all, it
+is not my niece, but Miss Fotheringay the actress, and we have as good
+a right as any other of the public to see her if we pay our money." So
+upon a day when it was arranged that Pen was to dine at home, and pass
+the evening with his mother, the two elderly gentlemen drove over to
+Chatteries in the doctor's chaise, and there, like a couple of jolly
+bachelors, dined at the George Inn, before proceeding to the play.
+
+Only two other guests were in the room--an officer of the regiment
+quartered at Chatteries, and a young gentleman whom the doctor thought
+he had somewhere seen. They left them at their meal, however, and
+hastened to the theater. It was Hamlet over again. Shakspeare was
+Article XL. of stout old Dr. Portman's creed, to which he always made
+a point of testifying publicly at least once in a year.
+
+We have described the play before, and how those who saw Miss
+Fotheringay perform in Ophelia saw precisely the same thing on one
+night as on another. Both the elderly gentlemen looked at her with
+extraordinary interest, thinking how very much young Pen was charmed
+with her.
+
+"Gad," said the major, between his teeth, as he surveyed her, when she
+was called forward as usual, and swept her courtesies to the scanty
+audience, "the young rascal has not made a bad choice."
+
+The doctor applauded her loudly and loyally. "Upon my word," said he,
+"she is a very clever actress; and I must say, major, she is endowed
+with very considerable personal attractions."
+
+"So that young officer thinks in the stage-box," Major Pendennis
+answered, and he pointed out to Doctor Portman's attention the young
+dragoon of the George Coffee-room, who sat 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 theater; the doctor returning to Mrs. Portman,
+who was on a visit at the Deanery, and the major walking home full of
+thought toward the George, where he had bespoken a bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+FACING THE ENEMY.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Sauntering slowly homeward Major Pendennis reached the George presently,
+and found Mr. Morgan his faithful valet, awaiting him at the door of the
+George Inn, who stopped his master as he was about to take a candle to
+go to bed, and said, with his usual air of knowing deference, "I think,
+sir, if you would go into the coffee-room, there's a young gentleman
+there as you would like to see."
+
+"What, is Mr. Arthur here?" the major said, in great anger.
+
+"No, sir--but his great friend, Mr. Foker, sir. Lady Hagnes Foker's
+son is here, sir. He's been asleep in the coffee-room since he took his
+dinner, and has just rung for his coffee, sir. And I think, p'raps, you
+might like to git into conversation with him," the valet said, opening
+the coffee-room door.
+
+The major entered; and there indeed was Mr. Foker, the only occupant of
+the place. He was rubbing his eyes, and sate before a table decorated
+with empty decanters and relics of dessert. He had intended to go to the
+play too, but sleep had overtaken him after a copious meal, and he had
+flung up his legs on the bench, and indulged in a nap instead of the
+dramatic amusement. The major was meditating how to address the young
+man, but the latter prevented him that trouble.
+
+"Like to look at the evening paper, sir?" said Mr. Foker, who was always
+communicative and affable; and he took up the _Globe_ from his table,
+and offered it to the new comer.
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," said the major, with a grateful bow
+and smile. "If I don't mistake the family likeness, I have the pleasure
+of speaking to Mr. Henry Foker, Lady Agnes Foker's son. I have the
+happiness to name her ladyship among my acquaintances--and you bear,
+sir, a Rosherville face."
+
+"Hullo! I beg your pardon," Mr. Foker said, "I took you"--he was going
+to say--"I took you for a commercial gent." But he stopped that phrase.
+"To whom have I the pleasure of speaking?" he added.
+
+"To a relative of a friend and schoolfellow of yours--Arthur Pendennis,
+my nephew, who has often spoken to me about you in terms of great
+regard. I am Major Pendennis, of whom you may have heard him speak. May
+I take my soda-water at your table? I have had the pleasure of sitting
+at your grandfather's."
+
+"Sir, you do me proud," said Mr. Foker, with much courtesy. "And so you
+are Arthur Pendennis's uncle, are you?"
+
+"And guardian," added the major.
+
+"He's as good a fellow as ever stepped, sir," said Mr. Foker.
+
+"I am glad you think so."
+
+"And clever, too--I was always a stupid chap, I was--but you see, sir,
+I know 'em when they are clever, and like 'em of that sort.
+
+"You show your taste and your modesty, too," said the major. "I have
+heard Arthur repeatedly speak of you, and he said your talents were
+very good."
+
+"I'm not good at the books," Mr. Foker said, wagging his head--"never
+could manage that--Pendennis could--he used to do half the chaps'
+verses--and yet"--the young gentleman broke out--"you are his guardian;
+and I hope you will pardon me for saying that I think he is what _we_
+call a flat," the candid young gentleman said.
+
+The major found himself on the instant in the midst of a most
+interesting and confidential conversation. "And how is Arthur a flat?"
+he asked, with a smile.
+
+"You know," Foker answered, winking at him--he would have winked at the
+Duke of Wellington with just as little scruple, for he was in that state
+of absence, candor, and fearlessness, which a man sometimes possesses
+after drinking a couple of bottles of wine--"You know Arthur's a
+flat--about women I mean."
+
+"He is not the first of us, my dear Mr. Harry," answered the major.
+"I have heard something of this--but pray tell me more.'"
+
+"Why, sir, see--it's partly my fault. He went to the play one
+night--for you see I'm down here readin' for my little-go during the
+Long, only I come over from Baymouth pretty often in my drag--well,
+sir, we went to the play, and Pen was struck all of a heap with Miss
+Fotheringay--Costigan her real name is--an uncommon fine gal she
+is too; and the next morning I introduced him to the general, as
+we call her father--a regular old scamp--and _such_ a boy for the
+whisky-and-water!--and he's gone on being intimate there. And he's
+fallen in love with her--and I'm blessed if he hasn't proposed to
+her," Foker said, slapping his hand on the table, until all the
+dessert began to jingle.
+
+"What! you know it too?" asked the major.
+
+"Know it! don't I? and many more too. We were talking about it at mess,
+yesterday, and chaffing Derby Oaks--until he was as mad as a hatter.
+Know Sir Derby Oaks? We dined together, and he went to the play; we were
+standing at the door smoking, I remember, when you passed in to dinner."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I remember Sir Thomas Oaks, his father, before he was a baronet or
+a knight; he lived in Cavendish-square, and was Physician to Queen
+Charlotte."
+
+"The young one is making the money spin, I can tell you," Mr. Foker
+said.
+
+"And is Sir Derby Oaks," the major said, with great delight and anxiety,
+"another _soupirant_?"
+
+"Another _what_?" inquired Mr. Foker.
+
+"Another admirer of Miss Fotheringay?"
+
+"Lord bless you! we call him, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Pen,
+Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. But, mind you, nothing wrong! No,
+no! Miss F. is a deal too wide awake for that, Major Pendennis. She
+plays one off against the other. What you call two strings to her bow."
+
+"I think you seem tolerably wide awake, too, Mr. Foker," Pendennis said,
+laughing.
+
+"Pretty well thank you, sir--how are you?" Foker replied, imperturbably.
+"I'm not clever, p'raps: but I _am_ rather downy; and partial friends
+say I know what's o'clock tolerably well. Can I tell you the time of day
+in any way?"
+
+"Upon my word," the major answered, quite delighted, "I think you may
+be of very great service to me. You are a young man of the world, and
+with such one likes to deal. And as such I need not inform you that our
+family is by no means delighted at this absurd intrigue in which Arthur
+is engaged."
+
+"I should rather think not," said Mr. Foker. "Connection not eligible.
+Too much beer drunk on the premises. No Irish need apply. That I take
+to be your meaning."
+
+The major said it was, exactly; though in truth he did not quite
+understand what Mr. Foker's meaning was: and he proceeded to examine his
+new acquaintance regarding the amiable family into which his nephew
+proposed to enter, and soon got from the candid witness a number of
+particulars regarding the house of Costigan.
+
+We must do Mr. Foker the justice to say that he spoke most favorably 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 any thing but what's honorable. Pen's attentions to her are talked
+about in the whole Company, and I hear all about them from a young lady
+who used to be very intimate with her, and with whose family I sometimes
+take tea in a friendly way. Miss Rouncy says, Sir Derby Oaks has been
+hanging about Miss Fotheringay ever since his regiment has been down
+here; but Pen has come in and cut him out lately, which has made the
+baronet so mad, that he has been very near on the point of proposing
+too. Wish he would; and you'd see which of the two Miss Fotheringay
+would jump at."
+
+"I thought as much," the major said. "You give me a great deal of
+pleasure, Mr. Foker. I wish I could have seen you before."
+
+"Didn't like to put in my oar," replied the other. "Don't speak till I'm
+asked, when, if there's no objections, I speak pretty freely. Heard your
+man had been hankering about my servant--didn't know myself what was
+going on until Miss Fotheringay and Miss Rouncy had the row about the
+ostrich feathers, when Miss R. told me every thing."
+
+"Miss Rouncy, I gather, was the confidante of the other."
+
+"Confidant? I believe you. Why she's twice as clever a girl as
+Fotheringay, and literary and that, while Miss Foth can't do much more
+than read."
+
+"She can write," said the major, remembering Pen's breast pocket.
+
+Foker broke out into a sardonic "He, he! Rouncy writes her letters," he
+said; "every one of 'em; and since they've quarreled, she don't know how
+the deuce to get on. Miss Rouncy is an uncommon pretty hand, whereas the
+old one makes dreadful work of the writing and spelling when Bows ain't
+by. Rouncy's been settin' her copies lately--she writes a beautiful
+hand, Rouncy does."
+
+"I suppose you know it pretty well," said the major archly: upon which
+Mr. Foker winked at him again.
+
+"I would give a great deal to have a specimen of her handwriting,"
+continued Major Pendennis, "I dare say you could give me one."
+
+"No, no, that would be too bad," Foker replied. "Perhaps I oughtn't to
+have said as much as I have. Miss F.'s writin' ain't so _very_ bad, I
+dare say; only she got Miss R. to write the first letter, and has gone
+on ever since. But you mark my word, that till they are friends again
+the letters will stop."
+
+"I hope they will never be reconciled," the major said, with great
+sincerity; "and I can't tell you how delighted I am to have had the good
+fortune of making your acquaintance. You must feel, my dear sir, as a
+man of the world, how fatal to my nephew's prospects in life is this
+step which he contemplates, and how eager we all must be to free him
+from this absurd engagement."
+
+"He has come out uncommon strong," said Mr. Foker; "I have seen his
+verses; Rouncy copied 'em. And I said to myself when I saw 'em, 'Catch
+_me_ writin' verses to a woman--that's all.'"
+
+"He has made a fool of himself, as many a good fellow has before him.
+How can we make him see his folly and cure it? I am sure you will give
+us what aid you can in extricating a generous young man from such a pair
+of schemers as this father and daughter seem to be. Love on the lady's
+side is out of the question."
+
+"Love, indeed!" Foker said. "If Pen hadn't two thousand a year when he
+came of age--"
+
+"If Pen hadn't _what_?" cried out the major, in astonishment.
+
+"Two thousand a year: hasn't he got two thousand a year?--the general
+says he has."
+
+"My dear friend," shrieked out the major, with an eagerness which
+this gentleman rarely showed, "thank you!--thank you!--I begin to see
+now.--Two thousand a year! Why, his mother has but five hundred a year
+in the world.--She is likely to live to eighty, and Arthur has not a
+shilling but what she can allow him."
+
+"What! he ain't rich then?" Foker asked.
+
+"Upon my honor, he has no more than what I say."
+
+"And you ain't going to leave him any thing?"
+
+The major had sunk every shilling he could scrape together on annuity,
+and of course was going to leave Pen nothing; but he did not tell Foker
+this. "How much do you think a major on half-pay can save?" he asked.
+"If these people have been looking at him as a fortune, they are utterly
+mistaken--and--and you have made me the happiest man in the world."
+
+"Sir to you," said Mr. Foker, politely, and when they parted for the
+night they shook hands with the greatest cordiality; the younger
+gentleman promising the elder not to leave Chatteries without a further
+conversation in the morning. And as the major went up to his room, and
+Mr. Foker smoked his cigar against the door pillars of the George, Pen,
+very likely, ten miles off, was lying in bed kissing the letter from his
+Emily.
+
+The next morning before Mr. Foker drove off in his drag, the insinuating
+major had actually got a letter of Miss Rouncy's in his own pocket-book.
+Let it be a lesson to women how they write. And in very high spirits
+Major Pendennis went to call upon Doctor Portman at the Deanery, and
+told him what happy discoveries he had made on the previous night.
+As they sat in confidential conversation in the dean's oak breakfast
+parlor, they could look across the lawn and see Captain Costigan's
+window, at which poor Pen had been only too visible some three weeks
+since. The doctor was most indignant against Mrs. Creed the landlady,
+for her duplicity, in concealing Sir Derby Oaks's constant visits to her
+lodgers, and threatened to excommunicate her out of the cathedral. But
+the wary major thought that all things were for the best; and, having
+taken counsel with himself over night, felt himself quite strong enough
+to go and face Captain Costigan.
+
+"I'm going to fight the dragon," he said, with a laugh, to Doctor
+Portman.
+
+"And I shrive you, sir, and bid good fortune go with you," answered the
+doctor. Perhaps he and Mrs. Portman and Miss Mira, as they sate with
+their friend the dean's lady, in her drawing-room, looked up more than
+once at the enemy's window to see if they could perceive any signs of
+the combat.
+
+The major walked round, according to the directions given him, and soon
+found Mrs. Creed's little door. He passed in, and as he ascended to
+Captain Costigan's apartment, he could hear a stamping of feet, and a
+great shouting of "Ha, ha!" within.
+
+"It's Sir Derby Oaks taking his fencing lesson," said the child, who
+piloted Major Pendennis. "He takes it Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays."
+
+The major knocked, and at length a tall gentleman came forth, with a
+foil and mask in one hand, and a fencing glove on the other.
+
+Pendennis made him a deferential bow. "I believe I have the honor of
+speaking to Captain Costigan.--My name is Major Pendennis."
+
+The captain brought his weapon up to the salute, and said--"Major, the
+honor is moine; I'm deloighted to see ye."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+NEGOTIATION.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 theater music, in the
+copying of which he had been engaged) looked up eagerly toward the new
+comer as the major of the well-blacked boots entered the apartment
+distributing the most graceful bows to every body present.
+
+"Me daughter--me friend, Mr. Bows--me gallant young pupil and friend, I
+may call 'um, Sir Derby Oaks," said Costigan splendidly waving his hand,
+and pointing each of these individuals to the major's attention. "In one
+moment, meejor, I'm your humble servant," and to dash into the little
+adjoining chamber where he slept, to give a twist to his lank hair with
+his hair-brush (a wonderful and ancient piece), to tear off his old
+stock and put on a new one which Emily had constructed for him, and to
+assume a handsome clean collar, and the new coat which had been ordered
+upon the occasion of Miss Fotheringay's benefit, was with the still
+active Costigan the work of a minute.
+
+After him, Sir Derby entered, and presently emerged from the same
+apartment, where he also cased himself in his little shell-jacket, which
+fitted tightly upon the young officer's big person; and which he, and
+Miss Fotheringay, and poor Pen too, perhaps, admired prodigiously.
+
+Meanwhile conversation was engaged between the actress and the
+new comer; and the usual remarks about the weather had been interchanged
+before Costigan re-entered in his new "shoot," as he called it.
+
+"I needn't apologize to ye, meejor," he said, in his richest and most
+courteous manner, "for receiving ye in me shirt-sleeves."
+
+"An old soldier can't be better employed than in teaching a young one
+the use of his sword," answered the major, gallantly. "I remember in old
+times hearing that you could use yours pretty well, Captain Costigan."
+
+"What, ye've heard of Jack Costigan, major," said the other, greatly.
+
+The major had, indeed; he had pumped his nephew concerning his new
+friend, the Irish officer; and whether he had no other knowledge of the
+captain than what he had thus gained, or whether he actually remembered
+him, we can not say. But Major Pendennis was a person of honor and
+undoubted veracity, and said that he perfectly well recollected meeting
+Mr. Costigan, and hearing him sing, at Sir Richard Strachan's table at
+Walcheren.
+
+At this information, and the bland and cordial manner in which it was
+conveyed, Bows looked up, entirely puzzled. "But we will talk of these
+matters another time," the major continued, perhaps not wishing to
+commit himself; "it is to Miss Fotheringay that I came to pay my
+respects to-day;" and he performed another bow for her, so courtly and
+gracious, that if she had been a duchess he could not have made it more
+handsome.
+
+"I had heard of your performances from my nephew, madam," the major
+said, "who raves about you, as I believe you know pretty well. But
+Arthur is but a boy, and a wild enthusiastic young fellow, whose
+opinions one must not take _au pied de la lettre_; and I confess I was
+anxious to judge for myself. Permit me to say your performance delighted
+and astonished me. I have seen our best actresses, and, on my word,
+I think you surpass them all. You are as majestic as Mrs. Siddons."
+
+"Faith, I always said so," Costigan said, winking at his daughter;
+"Major take a chair." Milly rose at this hint, took an unripped satin
+garment off the only vacant seat, and brought the latter to Major
+Pendennis with one of her finest courtesies.
+
+"You are as pathetic as Miss O'Neill," he continued, bowing and seating
+himself; "your snatches of song reminded me of Mrs. Jordan in her best
+time, when we were young men, Captain Costigan; and your manner reminded
+me of Mars. Did you ever see the Mars, Miss Fotheringay?"
+
+"There was two Mahers in Crow-street," remarked Miss Emily; "Fanny was
+well enough, but Biddy was no great things."
+
+"Sure, the major means the god of war, Milly, my dear," interposed the
+parent.
+
+"It is not that Mars I meant, though Venus, I suppose, may be pardoned
+for thinking about him;" the major replied, with a smile directed in
+full to Sir Derby Oaks, who now re-entered in his shell-jacket, but
+the lady did not understand the words of which he made use, nor did the
+compliment at all pacify Sir Derby, who, probably, did not understand it
+either, and at any rate received it with great sulkiness and stiffness;
+scowling uneasily at Miss Fotheringay, with an expression which seemed
+to ask, "What the deuce does this man here?"
+
+Major Pendennis was not in the least annoyed by the gentleman's
+ill-humor. On the contrary, it delighted him. "So," thought he, "a rival
+is in the field;" and he offered up vows that Sir Derby might be, not
+only a rival, but a winner too, in this love-match in which he and Pen
+were engaged.
+
+"I fear I interrupted your fencing lesson; but my stay in Chatteries
+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 _épris_ 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 mantle-piece yonder?"
+
+"I am very fond of flowers," said Miss Fotheringay, with a languishing
+ogle at Sir Derby Oaks--but the baronet still scowled sulkily.
+
+"Sweets to the sweet--isn't that the expression of the play?" Mr.
+Pendennis asked, bent upon being good-humored.
+
+"'Pon my life, I don't know. Very likely it is. I ain't much of a
+literary man," answered Sir Derby.
+
+"Is it possible?" the major continued, with an air of surprise. "You
+don't inherit your father's love of letters, then, Sir Derby? He was a
+remarkably fine scholar, and I had the honor of knowing him very well."
+
+"Indeed," said the other, and gave a sulky wag of his head.
+
+"He saved my life," continued Pendennis.
+
+"Did he now?" cried Miss Fotheringay, rolling her eyes first upon the
+major with surprise, then toward Sir Derby with gratitude--but the
+latter was proof against those glances; and far from appearing to
+be pleased that the apothecary, his father, should have saved Major
+Pendennis's life, the young man actually looked as if he wished the
+event had turned the other way.
+
+"My father, I believe, was a very good doctor," the young gentleman
+said, by way of reply. "I'm not in that line myself. I wish you good
+morning, sir. I've got an appointment--Cos, by-by--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 saber 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The major did not smile in the least, though he had every reason to be
+amused. "Monstrous handsome young man that--as fine a looking soldier
+as ever I saw," he said to Costigan.
+
+"A credit to the army and to human nature in general," answered
+Costigan. "A young man of refoined manners, polite affabilitee, and
+princely fortune. His table is sumptuous: he's adawr'd in the regiment:
+and he rides sixteen stone."
+
+"A perfect champion," said the major, laughing. "I have no doubt all the
+ladies admire him."
+
+"He's very well in spite of his weight, now he's young," said Milly;
+"but he's no conversation."
+
+"He's best on horseback," Mr. Bows said: on which Milly replied,
+that the baronet had ridden third in the steeple-chase on his horse
+Tareaways, and the major began to comprehend that the young lady herself
+was not of a particular genius, and to wonder how she should be so
+stupid and act so well.
+
+Costigan, with Irish hospitality, of course pressed refreshment upon his
+guest: and the major, who was no more hungry than you are after a Lord
+Mayor's dinner, declared that he should like a biscuit and a glass of
+wine above all things, as he felt quite faint from long fasting--but he
+knew that to receive small kindnesses flatters the donors very much, and
+that people must needs grow well disposed toward you as they give you
+their hospitality.
+
+"Some of the old Madara, Milly, love," Costigan said, winking to his
+child--and that lady, turning to her father a glance of intelligence,
+went out of the room, and down the stair, where she softly summoned
+her little emissary Master Tommy Creed; and giving him a piece of
+money, ordered him to go buy a pint of Madara wine at the Grapes, and
+sixpennyworth of sorted biscuits at the baker's, and to return in a
+hurry, when he might have two biscuits for himself.
+
+While Tommy Creed was gone on this errand, Miss Costigan sate below with
+Mrs. Creed, telling her landlady how Mr. Arthur Pendennis's uncle, the
+major, was above stairs; a nice, soft-spoken old gentleman: that butter
+wouldn't melt in his mouth; and how Sir Derby had gone out of the room
+in a rage of jealousy, and thinking what must be done to pacify both of
+them.
+
+"She keeps the keys of the cellar, major," said Mr. Costigan, as the
+girl left the room.
+
+"Upon my word you have a very beautiful butler," answered Pendennis,
+gallantly, "and I don't wonder at the young fellows raving about her.
+When we were of their age, Captain Costigan, I think plainer women would
+have done our business."
+
+"Faith, and ye may say that, sir--and lucky is the man who gets her. Ask
+me friend Bob Bows here whether Miss Fotheringay's moind is not even
+shuparior to her person, and whether she does not possess a cultiveated
+intellect, a refoined understanding, and an emiable disposition?"
+
+"O, of course," said Mr. Bows, rather drily. "Here comes Hebe blushing
+from the cellar. Don't you think it is time to go to rehearsal, Miss
+Hebe? You will be fined if you are later"--and he gave the young lady a
+look, which intimated that they had much better leave the room and the
+two elders together.
+
+At this order Miss Hebe took up her bonnet and shawl, looking uncommonly
+pretty, good-humored, and smiling; and Bows gathered up his roll of
+papers, and hobbled across the room for his hat and cane.
+
+"Must you go?" said the major. "Can't you give us a few minutes more,
+Miss Fotheringay? Before you leave us, permit an old fellow to shake you
+by the hand, and believe that I am proud to have had the honor of making
+your acquaintance, and am most sincerely anxious to be your friend."
+
+Miss Fotheringay made a low courtesy at the conclusion of this gallant
+speech, and the major followed her retreating steps to the door, where
+he squeezed her hand with the kindest and most paternal pressure. Bows
+was puzzled with this exhibition of cordiality: "The lad's relatives
+can't be really wanting to marry him to her," he thought--and so they
+departed.
+
+"Now for it," thought Major Pendennis: and as for Mr. Costigan he
+profited instantaneously by his daughter's absence to drink up the rest
+of the wine; and tossed off one bumper after another of the Madeira from
+the Grapes, with an eager, shaking hand. The major came up to the table,
+and took up his glass and drained it with a jovial smack. If it had been
+Lord Steyne's particular, and not public-house Cape, he could not have
+appeared to relish it more.
+
+"Capital Madeira, Captain Costigan," he said. "Where do you get it? I
+drink the health of that charming creature in a bumper. Faith, captain,
+I don't wonder that the men are wild about her. I never saw such eyes in
+my life, or such a grand manner. I am sure she is as intellectual as she
+is beautiful; and I have no doubt she's as good as she is clever."
+
+"A good girl, sir--a good girl, sir," said the delighted father; "and
+I pledge a toast to her with all my heart. Shall I send to the--to the
+cellar for another pint? It's handy by. No? Well, indeed, sir, ye may
+say she is a good girl, and the pride and glory of her father--honest
+old Jack Costigan. The man who gets her will have a jew'l to a wife,
+sir; and I drink his health, sir, and ye know who I mean, major."
+
+"I am not surprised at young or old falling in love with her," said the
+major, "and frankly must tell you, that though I was very angry with my
+poor nephew Arthur, when I heard of the boy's passion--now I have seen
+the lady I can pardon him any extent of it. By George, I should like to
+enter for the race myself, if I wern't an old fellow and a poor one."
+
+"And no better man, major, I'm sure," cried Jack, enraptured. "Your
+friendship, sir, delights me. Your admiration for my girl brings tears
+to me eyes--tears, sir--manlee tears--and when she leaves me humble home
+for your own more splendid mansion, I hope she'll keep a place for her
+poor old father, poor old Jack Costigan."--The captain suited the action
+to the word, and his blood-shot eyes were suffused with water, as he
+addressed the major.
+
+"Your sentiments do you honor," the other said. "But, Captain Costigan,
+I can't help smiling at one thing you have just said."
+
+"And what's that, sir?" asked Jack, who was at a too heroic and
+sentimental pitch to descend from it.
+
+"You were speaking about our splendid mansion--my sister's house, I
+mean."
+
+"I mane the park and mansion of Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, of Fairoaks
+Park, whom I hope to see a Mimber of Parliament for his native town of
+Clavering, when he is of ege to take that responsible stetion," cried
+the captain, with much dignity.
+
+The major smiled as he recognized a shaft out of his own bow. It
+was he who had set Pen upon the idea of sitting in parliament for the
+neighboring borough--and the poor lad had evidently been bragging on the
+subject to Costigan and the lady of his affections. "Fairoaks Park, my
+dear sir," he said. "Do you know our history? We are of excessively
+ancient family certainly, but I began life with scarce enough money to
+purchase my commission, and my eldest brother was a country apothecary;
+who made every shilling he died possessed of out of his pestle and
+mortar."
+
+"I have consented to waive that objection, sir," said Costigan
+majestically, "in consideration of the known respectability of your
+family."
+
+"Curse your impudence," thought the major; but he only smiled and bowed.
+
+"The Costigans, too, have met with misfortunes; and our house of Castle
+Costigan is by no manes what it was. I have known very honest men
+apothecaries, sir, and there's some in Dublin that has had the honor of
+dining at the Lord Leftenant's teeble."
+
+"You are very kind to give us the benefit of your charity," the major
+continued: "but permit me to say that is not the question. You spoke
+just now of my little nephew as heir of Fairoaks Park, and I don't know
+what besides."
+
+"Funded property, I've no doubt, meejor, and something handsome
+eventually from yourself."
+
+"My good sir, I tell you the boy is the son of a country apothecary,"
+cried out Major Pendennis; "and that when he comes of age he won't have
+a shilling."
+
+"Pooh, major, you're laughing at me," said Mr. Costigan, "me young
+friend, I make no doubt, is heir to two thousand pounds a year."
+
+"Two thousand fiddlesticks! I beg your pardon, my dear sir; but has the
+boy been humbugging you?--it is not his habit. Upon my word and honor,
+as a gentleman and an executor to my brother's will too, he left little
+more than five hundred a year behind him."
+
+"And with aconomy, a handsome sum of money too, sir," the captain
+answered. "Faith, I've known a man drink his clar't, and drive his
+coach-and-four on five hundred a year and strict aconomy, in Ireland,
+sir. We'll manage on it, sir--trust Jack Costigan for that."
+
+"My dear Captain Costigan--I give you my word that my brother did not
+leave a shilling to his son Arthur."
+
+"Are ye joking with me, Meejor Pendennis?" cried Jack Costigan. "Are ye
+thrifling with the feelings of a father and a gentleman?"
+
+"I am telling you the honest truth," said Major Pendennis. "Every
+shilling my brother had, he left to his widow: with a partial reversion,
+it is true, to the boy. But she is a young woman, and may marry if he
+offends her--or she may outlive him, for she comes of an uncommonly
+long-lived family. And I ask you, as a gentleman and a man of the world,
+what allowance can my sister, Mrs. Pendennis, make to her son out of
+five hundred a year, which is all her fortune--that shall enable him
+to maintain himself and your daughter in the rank befitting such an
+accomplished young lady?"
+
+"Am I to understand, sir, that the young gentleman, your nephew, and
+whom I have fosthered and cherished as the son of me bosom, is an
+imposther who has been thrifling with the affections of me beloved
+child?" exclaimed the general, with an outbreak of wrath.--"Have you
+yourself been working upon the feelings of the young man's susceptible
+nature to injuice him to break off an engagement, and with it me adored
+Emily's heart? Have a care, sir, how you thrifle with the honor of John
+Costigan. If I thought any mortal man meant to do so, be heavens I'd
+have his blood, sir--were he old or young."
+
+"Mr. Costigan!" cried out the major.
+
+"Mr. Costigan can protect his own and his daughter's honor, 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 band-box with; and when I
+have dragged the scoundthrel before the courts of law, and shown up his
+perjury and his dishonor, 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 counseled your
+nephew to insult a soldier and a gentleman. What? Me daughter to be
+jilted, and me gray hairs dishonored by an apothecary's son. By the
+laws of heaven, sir, I should like to see the man that shall do it."
+
+"I am to understand, then, that you threaten in the first place to
+publish the letters of a boy of eighteen to a woman of eight-and-twenty:
+and afterward to do me the honor of calling me out," the major said,
+still with perfect coolness.
+
+"You have described my intentions with perfect accuracy, Meejor
+Pendennis," answered the captain, as he pulled his ragged whiskers over
+his chin.
+
+"Well, well; these shall be the subjects of future arrangements, but
+before we come to powder and ball, my good sir--do have the kindness to
+think with yourself in what earthly way I have injured you? I have told
+you that my nephew is dependent upon his mother, who has scarcely more
+than five hundred a year."
+
+"I have my own opinion of the correctness of that assertion," said the
+captain.
+
+"Will you go to my sister's lawyers, Messrs. Tatham here, and satisfy
+yourself?"
+
+"I decline to meet those gentlemen," said the captain, with rather a
+disturbed air. "If it be as you say, I have been athrociously deceived
+by some one, and on that person I'll be revenged."
+
+"Is it my nephew?" cried the major, starting up and putting on his hat.
+"Did he ever tell you that his property was two thousand a year? If he
+did, I'm mistaken in the boy. To tell lies has not been a habit in our
+family, Mr. Costigan, and I don't think my brother's son has learned
+it as yet. Try and consider whether you have not deceived yourself; or
+adopted extravagant reports from hearsay. As for me, sir, you are at
+liberty to understand that I am not afraid of all the Costigans in
+Ireland and know quite well how to defend myself against any threats
+from any quarter. I come here as the boy's guardian to protest against
+a marriage, most absurd and unequal, that can not 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 honorable young lady), as
+the friend of my own family; and prevent the marriage I will, sir, by
+every means in my power. There, I have said my say, sir."
+
+"But I have not said mine, Major Pendennis--and ye shall hear more from
+me," Mr. Costigan said, with a look of tremendous severity.
+
+"'Sdeath, sir, what do you mean?" the major asked, turning round on the
+threshold of the door, and looking the intrepid Costigan in the face.
+
+"Ye said, in the coorse of conversation, that ye were at the George
+Hotel, I think," Mr. Costigan said, in a stately manner. "A friend shall
+wait upon ye there before ye leave town, sir."
+
+"Let him make haste, Mr. Costigan," cried out the major, almost beside
+himself with rage. "I wish you a good morning, sir." And Captain
+Costigan, bowed a magnificent bow of defiance to Major Pendennis over
+the landing-place as the latter retreated down the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+IN WHICH A SHOOTING MATCH IS PROPOSED.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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, with whom and Mr. Costigan there was a
+considerable intimacy. They were the chief ornaments of the convivial
+club held at the Magpie Hotel; they helped each other in various bill
+transactions in which they had been engaged, with the mutual loan of
+each other's valuable signatures. They were friends, in fine: although
+Mr. Garbetts seldom called at Costigan's house, being disliked by Miss
+Fotheringay, of whom in her turn Mrs. Garbetts was considerably jealous.
+The truth is, that Garbetts had paid his court to Miss Fotheringay
+and been refused by her, before he offered his hand to Mrs. G. Their
+history, however, forms no part of our present scheme--suffice it,
+Mr. Garbetts was called in by Captain Costigan immediately after his
+daughter and Mr. Bows had quitted the house, as a friend proper to be
+consulted at the actual juncture. He was a large man, with a loud voice
+and fierce aspect, who had the finest legs of the whole company, and
+could break a poker in mere sport across his stalwart arm.
+
+"Run, Tommy," said Mr. Costigan to the little messenger, "and fetch Mr.
+Garbetts from his lodgings over the tripe shop, ye know, and tell 'em to
+send two glasses of whisky-and-water, hot, from the Grapes." So Tommy
+went his way; and presently Mr. Garbetts and the whisky came.
+
+Captain Costigan did not disclose to him the whole of the previous
+events, of which the reader is in possession; but, with the aid of the
+spirits-and-water, he composed a letter of a threatening nature to Major
+Pendennis's address, in which he called upon that gentleman to offer no
+hindrance to the marriage projected between Mr. Arthur Pendennis and his
+daughter, Miss Fotheringay, and to fix an early day for its celebration:
+or, in any other case, to give him the satisfaction which was usual
+between gentlemen of honor. 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 can not give, for reasons
+which shall be specified presently; but it was, no doubt, couched in the
+captain's finest style, and sealed elaborately with the great silver
+seal of the Costigans--the only bit of the family plate which the
+captain possessed.
+
+Garbetts was dispatched then with this message and letter; and bidding
+Heaven bless 'um, the general squeezed his embassador's hand, and saw
+him depart. Then he took down his venerable and murderous dueling
+pistols, with flint locks, that had done the business of many a pretty
+fellow in Dublin: and having examined these, and seen that they were in
+a satisfactory condition, he brought from the drawer all Pen's letters
+and poems which he kept there, and which he always read before he
+permitted his Emily to enjoy their perusal.
+
+In a score of minutes Garbetts came back, with an anxious and
+crestfallen countenance.
+
+"Ye've seen 'um?" the captain said.
+
+"Why, yes," said Garbetts.
+
+"And when is it for?" asked Costigan, trying the lock of one of the
+ancient pistols, and bringing it to a level with his oi--as he called
+that blood-shot orb.
+
+"When is what for?" asked Mr. Garbetts.
+
+"The meeting, my dear fellow?"
+
+"You don't mean to say, you mean mortal combat, captain," Garbetts said,
+aghast.
+
+"What the devil else do I mean, Garbetts?--I want to shoot that man that
+has trajuiced me honor, or meself dthrop a victim on the sod."
+
+"D---- if I carry challenges," Mr. Garbetts replied. "I'm a family man,
+captain, and will have nothing to do with pistols--take back your
+letter;" and, to the surprise and indignation of Captain Costigan, his
+emissary flung the letter down with its great sprawling superscription
+and blotched seal.
+
+"Ye don't mean to say ye saw 'um and didn't give 'um the letter?" cried
+out the captain, in a fury.
+
+"I saw him, but I could not have speech with him, captain," said Mr.
+Garbetts.
+
+"And why the devil not?" asked the other.
+
+"There was one there I cared not to meet, nor would you," the
+tragedian answered, in a sepulchral voice. "The minion Tatham was
+there, captain."
+
+"The cowardly scoundthrel!" roared Costigan. "He's frightened, already
+going to swear the peace against me."
+
+"I'll have nothing to do with the fighting, mark that," the tragedian
+doggedly said, "and I wish I'd not seen Tatham neither, nor that bit
+of--"
+
+"Hold your tongue, Bob Acres. It's my belief ye're no better than a
+coward," said Captain Costigan, quoting Sir Lucius O'Trigger, which
+character he had performed with credit, both off and on the stage, and
+after some more parley between the couple they separated in not very
+good humor.
+
+Their colloquy has been here condensed, as the reader knows the main
+point upon which it turned. But the latter will now see how it is
+impossible to give a correct account of the letter which the captain
+wrote to Major Pendennis, as it was never opened at all by that
+gentleman.
+
+When Miss Costigan came home from rehearsal, which she did in the
+company of the faithful Mr. Bows, she found her father pacing up and
+down their apartment in a great state of agitation, and in the midst of
+a powerful odor of spirits-and-water, which, as it appeared, had not
+succeeded in pacifying his disordered mind. The Pendennis papers were on
+the table surrounding the empty goblets and now useless teaspoon which
+had served to hold and mix the captain's liquor and his friend's. As
+Emily entered he seized her in his arms, and cried out "Prepare yourself
+me child, me blessed child," in a voice of agony, and with eyes brimful
+of tears.
+
+"Ye're tipsy again, papa," Miss Fotheringay said, pushing back her sire.
+"Ye promised me ye wouldn't take spirits before dinner."
+
+"It's to forget me sorrows, me poor girl, that I've taken just a drop,"
+cried the bereaved father--"it's to drown me care that I drain the
+bowl."
+
+"Your care takes a deal of drowning, captain dear," said Bows, mimicking
+his friend's accent; "what has happened? Has the soft-spoken gentleman
+in the wig been vexing you?"
+
+"The oily miscreant! I'll have his blood!" roared Cos. Miss Milly, it
+must be premised, had fled to her room out of his embrace, and was
+taking off her bonnet and shawl there.
+
+"I thought he meant mischief. He was so uncommon civil," the other said.
+"What has he come to say?"
+
+"O Bows! He has overwhellum'd me," the captain said. "There's a hellish
+conspiracy on foot against me poor girl; and it's me opinion that both
+them Pendennises, nephew and uncle, is two infernal thrators and
+scoundthrels, who should be conshumed from off the face of the earth."
+
+"What is it? What has happened?" said Mr. Bows, growing rather excited.
+
+Costigan then told him the major's statement that the young Pendennis
+had not two thousand, nor two hundred pounds a year; and expressed his
+fury that he should have permitted such an impostor to coax and wheedle
+his innocent girl, and that he should have nourished such a viper in his
+own personal bosom. "I have shaken the reptile from me, however," said
+Costigan; "and as for his uncle, I'll have such a revenge on that old
+man, as shall make 'um rue the day he ever insulted a Costigan."
+
+"What do you mean, general?" said Bows.
+
+"I mean to have his life, Bows--his villainous skulking life, my boy;"
+and he rapped upon the battered old pistol-case in an ominous and savage
+manner. Bows had often heard him appeal to that box of death, with which
+he proposed to sacrifice his enemies; but the captain did not tell him
+that he had actually written and sent a challenge to Major Pendennis,
+and Mr. Bows therefore rather disregarded the pistols in the present
+instance.
+
+At this juncture Miss Fotheringay returned to the common sitting-room
+from her private apartment, looking perfectly healthy, happy, and
+unconcerned, a striking and wholesome contrast to her father, who was in
+a delirious tremor of grief, anger, and other agitation. She brought in
+a pair of ex-white satin shoes with her, which she proposed to rub as
+clean as might be with bread-crumb; intending to go mad with them upon
+next Tuesday evening in Ophelia, in which character she was to reappear
+on that night.
+
+She looked at the papers on the table; stopped, as if she was going to
+ask a question, but thought better of it, and going to the cupboard,
+selected an eligible piece of bread wherewith she might operate on the
+satin slippers: and afterward coming back to the table, seated herself
+there commodiously with the shoes, and then asked her father, in her
+honest, Irish brogue, "What, have ye got them letthers, and pothry, and
+stuff, of Master Arthur's out for, pa? Sure ye don't want to be reading
+over that nonsense."
+
+"O Emilee!" cried the captain, "that boy whom I loved as the boy of mee
+bosom is only a scoundthrel, and a deceiver, mee poor girl;" and he
+looked in the most tragical way at Mr. Bows, opposite: who, in his turn,
+gazed somewhat anxiously at Miss Costigan.
+
+"He! pooh! Sure the poor lad's as simple as a school-boy," she said.
+"All them children write verses and nonsense."
+
+"He's been acting the part of a viper to this fire-side, and a traitor
+in this familee," cried the captain. "I tell ye he's no better than an
+impostor."
+
+"What has the poor fellow done, papa?" asked Emily.
+
+"Done? He has deceived us in the most athrocious manner," Miss Emily's
+papa said. "He has thrifled with your affections, and outraged my own
+fine feelings. He has represented himself as a man of property, and it
+turruns out that he is no betther than a beggar. Haven't I often told ye
+he had two thousand a year? He's a pauper, I tell ye, Miss Costigan; a
+depindent upon the bountee of his mother; a good woman, who may marry
+again, who's likely to live forever, and who has but five hundred a year.
+How dar he ask ye to marry into a family which has not the means of
+providing for ye? Ye've been grossly deceived and put upon, Milly, and
+it's my belief, his old ruffian of an uncle in a wig is in the plot
+against us."
+
+"That soft old gentleman? What has he been doing, papa?" continued Emily
+still imperturbable.
+
+Costigan informed Milly, that when she was gone, Major Pendennis told
+him, in his double-faced Pall Mall polite manner, that young Arthur had
+no fortune at all, that the major had asked him (Costigan) to go to the
+lawyers ("wherein he knew the scoundthrels have a bill of mine, and I
+can't meet them," the captain parenthetically remarked), and see the
+lad's father's will: and finally that an infernal swindle had been
+practiced upon him by the pair, and that he was resolved either on a
+marriage, or on the blood of both of them.
+
+Milly looked very grave and thoughtful, rubbing the white satin shoes.
+"Sure, if he's no money, there's no use marrying him, papa," she said
+sententiously.
+
+"Why did the villain say he was a man of prawpertee?" asked Costigan.
+
+"The poor fellow always said he was poor," answered the girl. "'Twas you
+would have it he was rich, papa--and made me agree to take him."
+
+"He should have been explicit and told us his income, Milly," answered
+the father. "A young fellow who rides a blood mare, and makes presents
+of shawls and bracelets, is an impostor, if he has no money:--and as for
+his uncle, bedad, I'll pull off his wig whenever I see 'um. Bows, here,
+shall take a message to him and tell him so. Either it's a marriage, or
+he meets me in the field like a man, or I tweak 'um on the nose in front
+of his hotel or in the gravel walks of Fairoaks Park before all the
+county, bedad."
+
+"Bedad you may send somebody else with the message," said Bows,
+laughing. "I'm a fiddler not a fighting man, captain."
+
+"Pooh, you've no spirit, sir," roared the general. "I'll be my own
+second, if no one will stand by and see me injured. And I'll take my
+case of pistols and shoot 'um in the coffee-room of the George."
+
+"And so poor Arthur has no money?" sighed out Miss Costigan, rather
+plaintively. "Poor lad, he was a good lad too: wild and talking
+nonsense, with his verses and pothry and that, but a brave, generous
+boy, and indeed I liked him--and he liked me too," she added, rather
+softly, and rubbing away at the shoe.
+
+"Why don't you marry him if you like him so?" Mr. Bows said, rather
+savagely. "He is not more than ten years younger than you are. His
+mother may relent, and you might go and live and have enough at Fairoaks
+Park. Why not go and be a lady? I could go on with the fiddle, and the
+general live on his half-pay. Why don't you marry him? You know he likes
+you."
+
+"There's others that likes me as well, Bows, that has no money and
+that's old enough," Miss Milly said sententiously.
+
+"Yes, d---- it," said Bows with a bitter curse--"that are old enough
+and poor enough and fools enough for any thing."
+
+"There's old fools and young fools too. You've often said so, you silly
+man," the imperious beauty said, with a conscious glance at the old
+gentleman. "If Pendennis has not enough money to live upon, it's folly
+to talk about marrying him; and that's the long and short of it."
+
+"And the boy?" said Mr. Bows. "By Jove! you throw a man away like an old
+glove, Miss Costigan."
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Bows," said Miss Fotheringay, placidly,
+rubbing the second shoe. "If he had had half of two thousand a year that
+papa gave him, or the half of that, I would marry him. But what is the
+good of taking on with a beggar? We're poor enough already. There's no
+use in my going to live with an old lady that's testy and cross, maybe,
+and would grudge me every morsel of meat. (Sure, it's near dinner time,
+and Suky not laid the cloth yet), and then," added Miss Costigan, quite
+simply, "suppose there was a family?--why, papa, we shouldn't be as well
+off as we are now."
+
+"'Deed then, you would not Milly dear," answered the father.
+
+"And there's an end to all the fine talk about Mrs. Arthur Pendennis
+of Fairoaks Park--the member of Parliament's lady," said Milly, with a
+laugh. "Pretty carriages and horses we should have to ride!--that you
+were always talking about, papa! But it's always the same. If a man
+looked at me, you fancied he was going to marry me; and if he had a good
+coat, you fancied he was as rich as Crazes."
+
+"--As Croesus," said Mr. Bows.
+
+"Well, call 'um what ye like. But it's a fact now that papa has married
+me these eight years a score of times. Wasn't I to be my Lady Poldoody
+of Oystherstown castle? Then there was the navy captain at Portsmouth,
+and the old surgeon at Norwich, and the Methodist preacher here last
+year, and who knows how many more? Well, I bet a penny, with all your
+scheming, I shall die Milly Costigan, at last. So poor little Arthur
+has no money? Stop and take dinner, Bows; we've a beautiful beefsteak
+pudding."
+
+"I wonder whether she is on with Sir Derby Oaks," thought Bows, whose
+eyes and thoughts were always watching her. "The dodges of women beat
+all comprehension; and I am sure she wouldn't let the lad off so easily
+if she had not some other scheme on hand."
+
+It will have been perceived that Miss Fotheringay, though silent in
+general, and by no means brilliant as a conversationalist, where poetry,
+literature, or the fine arts were concerned, could talk freely, and with
+good sense, too, in her own family circle. She can not justly be called
+a romantic person: nor were her literary acquirements great: she never
+opened a Shakspeare from the day she left the stage, nor, indeed,
+understood it during all the time she adorned the boards: but about a
+pudding, a piece of needle-work, or her own domestic affairs, she was
+as good a judge as could be found; and not being misled by a strong
+imagination or a passionate temper, was better enabled to keep her
+judgment cool. When, over their dinner, Costigan tried to convince himself
+and the company, that the major's statement regarding Pen's finances was
+unworthy of credit, and a mere _ruse_ upon the old hypocrite's part, so
+as to induce them, on their side, to break off the match, Miss Milly
+would not, for a moment, admit the possibility of deceit on the side of
+the adversary: and pointed out clearly that it was her father who had
+deceived himself, and not poor little Pen, who had tried to take them
+in. As for that poor lad, she said she pitied him with all her heart.
+And she ate an exceedingly good dinner, to the admiration of Mr. Bows,
+who had a remarkable regard and contempt for this woman, during, and
+after which repast, the party devised upon the best means of bringing
+this love matter to a close. As for Costigan, his idea of tweaking the
+major's nose vanished with his supply of after-dinner whisky-and-water;
+and he was submissive to his daughter, and ready for any plan on which
+she might decide, in order to meet the crisis which she saw was at hand.
+
+The captain, who, as long as he had a notion that he was wronged, was
+eager to face and demolish both Pen and his uncle, perhaps shrank from
+the idea of meeting the former, and asked "what the juice they were to
+say to the lad if he remained steady to his engagement, and they broke
+from theirs?" "What? don't you know how to throw a man over?" said Bows;
+"ask a woman to tell you?" and Miss Fotheringay showed how this feat was
+to be done simply enough--nothing was more easy. "Papa writes to Arthur
+to know what settlements he proposes to make in the event of a marriage;
+and asks what his means are. Arthur writes back and says what he's got,
+and you'll find it's as the major says, I'll go bail. Then papa writes
+and says it's not enough, and the match had best be at an end."
+
+"And, of course, you inclose a parting line, in which you say you will
+always regard him as a brother;" said Mr. Bows, eying her in his
+scornful way.
+
+"Of course, and so I shall," answered Miss Fotheringay. "He's a most
+worthy young man I'm sure. I'll thank ye hand me the salt. Them filberts
+is beautiful."
+
+"And there will be no noses pulled, Cos, my boy? I'm sorry you're
+balked," said Mr. Bows.
+
+"'Dad I suppose not," said Cos, rubbing his own.--"What'll ye do about
+them letters, and verses and pomes, Milly, darling?--Ye must send 'em
+back."
+
+"Wigsby would give a hundred pound for 'em," Bows said, with a sneer.
+
+"'Deed, then he would," said Captain Costigan, who was easily led.
+
+"Papa!" said Miss Milly, "ye wouldn't be for not sending the poor boy
+his letters back? Them letters and pomes is mine. They were very long
+and full of all sorts of nonsense, and Latin and things I couldn't
+understand the half of; indeed I've not read 'em all; but we'll send 'em
+back to him when the proper time comes." And going to a drawer, Miss
+Fotheringay took out from it a number of the County Chronicle and
+Chatteries 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 favorable printed notices of her performances),
+she wrapped up Pen's letters, poems, passions, and fancies, and tied
+them with a piece of string neatly, as she would a parcel of sugar.
+
+Nor was she in the least moved while performing this act. What hours the
+boy had passed over those papers! What love and longing: what generous
+faith and manly devotion--what watchful nights and lonely fevers might
+they tell of! She tied them up like so much grocery, and sate down and
+made tea afterward with a perfectly placid and contented heart; while
+Pen was yearning after her, ten miles off; and hugging her image to his
+soul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+A CRISIS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 Chatteries another day,
+being anxious to have some talk with Messrs. Tatham, the lawyers, whom
+he would meet that afternoon: but no mention was made of the transaction
+in which the writer had been engaged during the morning. Indeed the note
+was written at the pause after the first part of the engagement, and
+when the major had decidedly had the worst of the battle.
+
+Pen did not care somehow to go into the town while 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, while 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 days when you kissed those silly letters
+with rapture--lived upon six absurd lines for a week, and until the
+reactionary period came, when you were restless and miserable until
+you got a fresh supply of folly.
+
+That is why we decline to publish any of the letters and verses which
+Mr. Pen wrote at this period of his life, out of mere regard for the
+young fellow's character. They are too spooney and wild. Young ladies
+ought not to be called upon to read them in cold blood. Bide your time
+young women; perhaps you will get and write them on your own account
+soon. Meanwhile we will respect Mr. Pen's first outpourings, and keep
+them tied up in the newspapers with Miss Fotheringay's string, and
+sealed with Captain Costigan's great silver seal.
+
+The major came away from his interview with Captain Costigan in a
+state of such concentrated fury as rendered him terrible to approach!
+"The impudent bog-trotting scamp," he thought, "dare to threaten _me_!
+Dare to talk of permitting his damned Costigans to marry with the
+Pendennises! Send me a challenge! If the fellow can get any thing in the
+shape of a genleman to carry it, I have the greatest mind in life not to
+balk 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 behavior, but stated that the affair was a very ugly
+and disagreeable one, and that it was by no means over yet.
+
+He enjoined Doctor and Mrs. Portman to say nothing about the business at
+Fairoaks; whither he contented himself with dispatching 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 up stairs and down
+stairs," as that gentleman observed to Mr. Foker's man, in whose company
+he partook of dinner in the servants' room of the George.
+
+The servant carried the news to his master; and Mr. Foker having
+finished his breakfast about this time, it being two o'clock in the
+afternoon, remembered that he was anxious to know the result of the
+interview between his two friends, and having inquired the number of the
+major's sitting-room, went over in his brocade dressing-gown, and
+knocked for admission.
+
+Major Pendennis had some business, as he had stated, respecting a lease
+of the widow's, about which he was desirous of consulting old Mr.
+Tatham, the lawyer, who had been his brother's man of business, and who
+had a branch-office at Clavering, where he and his son attended market
+and other days three or four in the week. This gentleman and his client
+were now in consultation when Mr. Foker showed his grand dressing-gown
+and embroidered skull-cap at Major Pendennis's door.
+
+Seeing the major engaged with papers and red-tape, and an old man with a
+white head, the modest youth was for drawing back--and said, "O, you're
+busy--call again another time." But Mr. Pendennis wanted to see him,
+and begged him, with a smile, to enter: whereupon Mr. Foker took off
+the embroidered tarboosh or fez (it had been worked by the fondest of
+mothers), and advanced, bowing to the gentlemen, and smiling on them
+graciously. Mr. Tatham had never seen so splendid an apparition before
+as this brocaded youth, who seated himself in an arm chair, spreading
+out his crimson skirts, and looking with exceeding kindness and
+frankness on the other two tenants of the room. "You seem to like my
+dressing-gown, sir," he said to Mr. Tatham. "A pretty thing, isn't it?
+Neat, but not in the least gaudy. And how do _you_ do? Major Pendennis,
+sir, and how does the world treat you?"
+
+There was that in Foker's manner and appearance which would have put
+an Inquisitor into good humor, and it smoothed the wrinkles under
+Pendennis's head of hair.
+
+"I have had an interview with that Irishman (you may speak before my
+friend, Mr. Tatham here, who knows all the affairs of the family), and
+it has not, I own, been very satisfactory. He won't believe that my
+nephew is poor: he says we are both liars; he did me the honor to hint
+that I was a coward, as I took leave. And I thought when you knocked at
+the door, that you might be the gentleman whom I expect with a challenge
+from Mr. Costigan--that is how the world treats me, Mr. Foker."
+
+"You don't mean that Irishman, the actress's father?" cried Mr. Tatham,
+who was a dissenter himself, and did not patronize the drama.
+
+"That Irishman, the actress's father--the very man. Have not you heard
+what a fool my nephew has made of himself about the girl?"--Mr. Tatham,
+who never entered the walls of a theater, had heard nothing: and Major
+Pendennis had to recount the story of his nephew's loves to the lawyer,
+Mr. Foker coming in with appropriate comments in his usual familiar
+language.
+
+Tatham was lost in wonder at the narrative. Why had not Mrs. Pendennis
+married a serious man, he thought--Mr. Tatham was a widower--and kept
+this unfortunate boy from perdition? As for Miss Costigan he would say
+nothing: her profession was sufficient to characterize _her_. Mr. Foker
+here interposed to say he had known some uncommon good people in the
+booths, as he called the temple of the muses. Well, it might be so, Mr.
+Tatham hoped so--but the father, Tatham knew personally--a man of the
+worst character, a wine-bibber and an idler in taverns and
+billiard-rooms, and a notorious insolvent. "I can understand the reason,
+major," he said, "why the fellow would not come to my office to
+ascertain the truth of the statements which you made him.--We have a
+writ out against him and another disreputable fellow, one of the
+play-actors, for a bill given to Mr. Skinner of this city, a most
+respectable grocer and wine and spirit merchant, and a member of the
+Society of Friends. This Costigan came crying to Mr. Skinner--crying
+in the shop, sir--and we have not proceeded against him or the other,
+as neither were worth powder and shot."
+
+It was while Mr. Tatham was engaged in telling this story that a third
+knock came to the door, and there entered an athletic gentleman in a
+shabby braided frock, bearing in his hand a letter with a large blotched
+red seal.
+
+"Can I have the honor of speaking with Major Pendennis in private?" he
+began--"I have a few words, for your ear, sir. I am the bearer of a
+mission from my friend Captain Costigan,"--but here the man with the
+bass voice paused, faltered, and turned pale--he caught sight of the red
+and well-remembered face of Mr. Tatham.
+
+"Hullo, Garbetts, speak up!" cried Mr. Foker, delighted.
+
+"Why, bless my soul, it is the other party to the bill!" said Mr. Tatham.
+"I say, sir; stop, I say." But Garbetts, with a face as blank as
+Macbeth's when Banquo's ghost appears upon him, gasped some inarticulate
+words, and fled out of the room.
+
+The major's gravity was also altogether upset, and he burst out
+laughing. So did Mr. Foker, who said, "By Jove, it was a good 'un."
+So did the attorney, although by profession a serious man.
+
+"I don't think there'll be any fight, major," young Foker said; and
+began mimicking the tragedian. "If there is, the old gentleman--your
+name Tatham?--very happy to make your acquaintance Mr. Tatham--may send
+the bailiffs to separate the men;" and Mr. Tatham--promised to do so.
+The major was by no means sorry at the ludicrous issue of the quarrel.
+"It seems to me, sir," he said to Mr. Foker, "that you always arrive to
+put me into good humor."
+
+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 _entrée_ of Captain Costigan's lodgings, and in the course of the
+afternoon he thought he would pay the general a visit, and hear from his
+own lips what had occurred in the conversation, in the morning, with Mr.
+Pendennis. Captain Costigan was not at home. He had received permission,
+nay, encouragement from his daughter, to go to the convivial club at
+the Magpie Hotel, where no doubt he was bragging at that moment of his
+desire to murder a certain ruffian; for he was not only brave, but he
+knew it too, and liked to take out his courage, and, as it were, give
+it an airing in company.
+
+Costigan then was absent, but Miss Fotheringay was at home washing the
+tea-cups while Mr. Bows sate opposite to her.
+
+"Just done breakfast I see--how do?" said Mr. Foker, popping in his
+little funny head.
+
+"Get out you funny little man," cried Miss Fotheringay.
+
+"You mean come in," answered the other.--"Here we are!" and entering the
+room he folded his arms and began twirling his head round and round with
+immense rapidity, like Harlequin in the Pantomime when he first issues
+from his cocoon or envelope. Miss Fotheringay laughed with all her
+heart: a wink of Foker's would set her off laughing, when the bitterest
+joke Bows ever made could not get a smile from her, or the finest of poor
+Pen's speeches would only puzzle her. At the end of the harlequinade he
+sank down on one knee and kissed her hand. "You're the drollest little
+man," she said, and gave him a great good-humored slap. Pen used to
+tremble as he kissed her hand. Pen would have died of a slap.
+
+These preliminaries over, the three began to talk; Mr. Foker amused his
+companions by recounting to them the scene which he had just witnessed
+of the discomfiture of Mr. Garbetts, by which they learned, for the
+first time, how far the general had carried his wrath against Major
+Pendennis. Foker spoke strongly in favor of the major's character for
+veracity and honor, and described him as a tip-top swell, moving in the
+upper circle of society, who would never submit to any deceit--much more
+to deceive such a charming young woman as Miss Foth.
+
+He touched delicately upon the delicate marriage question, though he
+couldn't help showing that he held Pen rather cheap. In fact, he had a
+perhaps just contempt for Mr. Pen's high flown sentimentality; his own
+weakness, as he thought, not lying that way. "I knew it wouldn't do,
+Miss Foth," said he, nodding his little head. "Couldn't do.--Didn't like
+to put _my_ hand into the bag, but knew it couldn't do. He's too young
+for you: too green: a deal too green: and he turns out to be poor as
+Job. Can't have him at no price, can she, Mr. Bo?"
+
+"Indeed he's a nice poor boy," said the Fotheringay, rather sadly.
+
+"Poor little beggar," said Bows, with his hands in his pockets, and
+stealing up a queer look at Miss Fotheringay. Perhaps he thought and
+wondered at the way in which women play with men, and coax them and win
+them and drop them.
+
+But Mr. Bows had not the least objection to acknowledge that he thought
+Miss Fotheringay was perfectly right in giving up Mr. Arthur Pendennis,
+and that in his idea the match was always an absurd one: and Miss
+Costigan owned that she thought so herself, only she couldn't send away
+two thousand a year. "It all comes of believing papa's silly stories,"
+she said; "faith, I'll choose for meself another time"--and very likely
+the large image of Lieutenant Sir Derby Oaks entered into her mind at
+that instant.
+
+After praising Major Pendennis, whom Miss Costigan declared to be a
+proper gentleman entirely, smelling of lavender, and as neat as a
+pin--and who was pronounced by Mr. Bows to be the right sort of fellow,
+though rather too much of an old buck, Mr. Foker suddenly bethought him
+to ask the pair to come and meet the major that very evening at dinner
+at his apartment at the George. "He agreed to dine with me, and I think
+after the--after the little shindy this morning, in which I must say the
+general was wrong, it would look kind, you know.--I know the major fell
+in love with you Miss Foth: he said so."
+
+"So she may be Mrs. Pendennis still," Bows said, with a sneer--"No thank
+you, Mr. F.--I've dined."
+
+"Sure, that was at three o'clock," said Miss Costigan, who had an honest
+appetite, "and I can't go without you."
+
+"We'll have lobster salad and Champagne," said the little monster, who
+could not construe a line of Latin, or do a sum beyond the Rule of
+Three. Now, for lobster-salad and Champagne in an honorable manner Miss
+Costigan would have gone any where--and Major Pendennis actually found
+himself at seven o'clock, seated at a dinner-table in company with Mr.
+Bows, a professional fiddler, and Miss Costigan, whose father had wanted
+to blow his brains out a few hours before.
+
+To make the happy meeting complete, Mr. Foker, who knew Costigan's
+haunts, dispatched Stoopid to the club at the Magpie, where the general
+was in the act of singing a pathetic song, and brought him off to
+supper. To find his daughter and Bows seated at the board was a surprise
+indeed--Major Pendennis laughed, and cordially held out his hand, which
+the general officer grasped _avec effusion_, as the French say. In fact,
+he was considerably inebriated, and had already been crying over his own
+song before he joined the little party at the George. He burst into
+tears more than once, during the entertainment, and called the major his
+dearest friend. Stoopid and Mr. Foker walked home with him; the major
+gallantly giving his arm to Miss Costigan. He was received with great
+friendliness when he called the next day, when many civilities passed
+between the gentlemen. On taking leave he expressed his anxious desire
+to serve Miss Costigan on any occasion in which he could be useful to
+her, and he shook hands with Mr. Foker most cordially and gratefully,
+and said that gentleman had done him the very greatest service.
+
+"All right," said Mr. Foker: and they parted with mutual esteem.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On his return to Fairoaks the next day, Major Pendennis did not say what
+had happened to him on the previous night, or allude to the company in
+which he had passed it. But he engaged Mr. Smirke to stop to dinner; and
+any person accustomed to watch his manner might have remarked that there
+was something constrained in his hilarity and talkativeness, and that
+he was unusually gracious and watchful in his communications with his
+nephew. He gave Pen an emphatic God-bless-you, when the lad went to bed;
+and as they were about to part for the night, he seemed as if he was
+going to say something to Mrs. Pendennis, but he bethought him that if
+he spoke he might spoil her night's rest, and allowed her to sleep in
+peace.
+
+The next morning he was down in the breakfast-room earlier than was his
+custom, and saluted every body 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 Chatteries the day before.
+
+He told little Laura to go away, which the child did, having a thorough
+dislike to him; and as the door closed on her, he took Mrs. Pendennis's
+hand, and giving her a look full of meaning, pointed to the letter under
+the newspaper which Pen was pretending to read. "Will you come into the
+drawing-room?" he said. "I want to speak to you." And she followed him,
+wondering, into the hall.
+
+"What is it?" she said, nervously.
+
+"The affair is at an end," Major Pendennis said. "He has a letter there
+giving him his dismissal. I dictated it myself yesterday. There are a
+few lines from the lady, too, bidding him farewell. It is all over."
+
+Helen ran back to the dining-room, her brother following. Pen had jumped
+at his letter the instant they were gone. He was reading it, with a
+stupefied face. It stated what the major had said, that Mr. Costigan
+was most gratified for the kindness with which Arthur had treated
+his daughter, but that he was only now made aware of Mr. Pendennis's
+pecuniary circumstances. They were such that marriage was at present out
+of the question, and considering the great disparity in the age of the
+two, a future union was impossible. Under these circumstances, and
+with the deepest regret and esteem for him, Mr. Costigan bade Arthur
+farewell, and suggested that he should cease visiting, for some time
+at least, at his house.
+
+A few lines from Miss Costigan were inclosed. She acquiesced in the
+decision of her papa. She pointed out that she was many years older
+than Arthur, and that an engagement was not to be thought of. She would
+always be grateful for his kindness to her, and hoped to keep his
+friendship. But at present, and until the pain of the separation should
+be over, she entreated they should not meet.
+
+Pen read Costigan's letter and its inclosure 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 anxieties.
+
+"What--what is this?" Pen said. "It's some joke. This is not her
+writing. This is some servant's writing. Who's playing these tricks upon
+me?"
+
+"It comes under her father's envelope," the major said. "Those letters
+you had before were not in her hand: that is hers."
+
+"How do you know?" said Pen, very fiercely.
+
+"I saw her write it," the uncle answered, as the boy started up; and his
+mother, coming forward, took his hand. He put her away.
+
+"How came you to see her? How came you between me and her? What
+have I ever done to you that you should.--Oh, it's not true, it's not
+true!"--Pen broke out with a wild execration. "She can't have done it of
+her own accord. She can't mean it. She's pledged to me. Who has told her
+lies to break her from me?"
+
+"Lies are not told in the family, Arthur," Major Pendennis replied.
+"I told her the truth, which was, that you had no money to maintain her,
+for her foolish father had represented you to be rich. And when she
+knew how poor you were, she withdrew at once, and without any persuasion
+of mine. She was quite right. She is ten years older than you are.
+She is perfectly unfitted to be your wife, and knows it. Look at
+that handwriting, and ask yourself, is such a woman fitted to be the
+companion of your mother?"
+
+"I will know from herself if it is true," Arthur said, crumpling up the
+paper.
+
+"Won't you take my word of honor? Her letters were written by a
+confidante of hers, who writes better than she can--look here. Here's
+one from the lady to your friend, Mr. Foker. You have seen her with Miss
+Costigan, as whose amanuensis she acted"--the major said, with ever so
+little of a sneer, and laid down a certain billet which Mr. Foker had
+given to him.
+
+"It's not that," said Pen, burning with shame and rage. "I suppose what
+you say is true, sir, but I'll hear it from herself."
+
+"Arthur!" appealed his mother.
+
+"I _will_ see her," said Arthur. "I'll ask her to marry me, once more.
+I will. No one shall prevent me."
+
+"What, a woman who spells affection with one f? Nonsense, sir. Be a man,
+and remember that your mother is a lady. She was never made to associate
+with that tipsy old swindler or his daughter. Be a man, and forget her,
+as she does you."
+
+"Be a man and comfort your mother, my Arthur," Helen said, going and
+embracing him: and seeing that the pair were greatly moved, Major
+Pendennis went out of the room and shut the door upon them, wisely
+judging that they were best alone.
+
+He had won a complete victory. He actually had brought away Pen's
+letters in his portmanteau from Chatteries: having complimented Mr.
+Costigan, when he returned them, by giving him the little promissory
+note which had disquieted himself and Mr. Garbetts; and for which the
+major settled with Mr. Tatham.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pen rushed wildly off to Chatteries that day, but in vain attempted to
+see Miss Fotheringay, for whom he left a letter, inclosed to her father.
+The inclosure was returned by Mr. Costigan, who begged that all
+correspondence might end; and after one or two further attempts of the
+lad's, the indignant general desired that their acquaintance might
+cease. He cut Pen in the street. As Arthur and Foker were pacing the
+Castle walk, one day, they came upon Emily on her father's arm. She
+passed without any nod of recognition. Foker felt poor Pen trembling
+on his arm.
+
+His uncle wanted him to travel, to quit the country for a while, and
+his mother urged him, too: for he was growing very ill, and suffered
+severely. But he refused, and said point blank he would not go. He would
+not obey in this instance: and his mother was too fond and his uncle too
+wise to force him. Whenever Miss Fotheringay acted he rode over to the
+Chatteries Theater 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 balked in love besides Mr. Pen? Yes, indeed: but
+few die of the malady.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+IN WHICH MISS FOTHERINGAY MAKES A NEW ENGAGEMENT.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 favorite with the people of Chatteries as it was with
+the accomplished actor himself. Scarce any body was in the theater. Poor
+Pen had the boxes almost all to himself, and sate there lonely, with
+blood-shot eyes, leaning over the ledge, and gazing haggardly toward 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 one of them; and only saw Cora whom his soul longed after. He said
+afterward 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 Chatteries
+jail? There he sate then, miserable, and gazing at her. And she took no
+more notice of him than he did of the rest of the house.
+
+The Fotheringay was uncommonly handsome, in a white raiment and leopard
+skin, with a sun upon her breast, and fine tawdry bracelets on her
+beautiful glancing arms. She spouted to admiration the few words of her
+part, and looked it still better. The eyes, which had overthrown Pen's
+soul, rolled and gleamed as lustrous as ever; but it was not to him that
+they were directed that night. He did not know to whom, or remark a
+couple of gentlemen, in the box next to him, upon whom Miss
+Fotheringay's glances were perpetually shining.
+
+Nor had Pen noticed the extraordinary change which had taken place on
+the stage a short time after entry of these two gentleman into the
+theater. There were so few people in the house, that the first act
+of the play languished entirely, and there had been some question of
+returning the money, as upon that other unfortunate night when poor Pen
+had been driven away. The actors were perfectly careless about their
+parts, and yawned through the dialogue, and talked loud to each other
+in the intervals. Even Bingley was listless, and Mrs. B. in Elvira
+spoke under her breath.
+
+How came it that all of a sudden Mrs. Bingley began to raise her voice
+and bellow like a bull of Bashan? Whence was it that Bingley, flinging
+off his apathy, darted about the stage and yelled like Kean? Why did
+Garbetts and Rowkins and Miss Rouncy try, each of them the force of
+their charms or graces, and act and swagger and scowl and spout their
+very loudest at the two gentlemen in box No. 3?
+
+One was a quiet little man in black, with a gray 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, jeweled pins and neck-chains. When he took out his
+yellow pocket-hankerchief with his hand that was cased in white kids,
+a delightful odor of musk and bergamot was shaken through the house.
+He was evidently a personage of rank, and it was at him that the little
+Chatteries company was acting.
+
+He was, in a word, no other than Mr. Dolphin, the great manager from
+London, accompanied by his faithful friend and secretary Mr. William
+Minns: without whom he never traveled. He had not been ten minutes in
+the theater 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 favor of the great stage sultan. Pizaro never got a hand from him.
+Bingley yelled, and Mrs. Bingley bellowed, and the manager only took
+snuff out of his great gold box. It was only in the last scene, when
+Rolla comes in staggering with the infant (Bingley is not so strong as
+he was, and his fourth son Master Talma Bingley is a monstrous large
+child for his age)--when Rolla comes staggering with the child to Cora,
+who rushes forward with a shriek, and says--"O God, there's blood upon
+him!"--that the London manager clapped his hands, and broke out with an
+enthusiastic bravo.
+
+Then having concluded his applause, Mr. Dolphin gave his secretary a
+slap on the shoulder, and said "By Jove, Billy, she'll do!"
+
+"Who taught her that dodge?" said old Billy, who was a sardonic old
+gentleman--"I remember her at the Olympic, and hang me if she could say
+Bo to a goose."
+
+It was little Mr. Bows in the orchestra who had taught her the 'dodge'
+in question. All the company heard the applause, and, as the curtain
+went down, came round her, and congratulated and hated Miss Fotheringay.
+
+Now Mr. Dolphin's appearance in the remote little Chatteries theater 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 theater (which,
+if you please, and to injure no present susceptibilities and vested
+interests, we shall call the Museum Theater) 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 any body but himself: the celebrated Mr. and Mrs. Cawdor
+had come out in Mr. Rawhead's tragedy, and in their favorite 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 splendor 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 every body was looking
+out for the day when he should appear in the Gazette.
+
+One of the illustrious patrons of the Museum Theater, 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 theater 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 any
+thing occurred there which particularly pleased him, when a new face
+made its appearance among the coryphées, or a fair dancer executed a
+_pas_ with especial grace or agility, Mr. Wenham, Mr. Wagg, or some
+other aid-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 toward 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 toward 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 Sautarelle, or Mademoiselle de Bondi (known as la petite
+Caoutchouc), 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, courtesied and smiled, especially to those hands, before they
+walked up the stage again, panting and happy.
+
+One night this great prince surrounded by a few choice friends was in
+his box at the Museum, and they were making such a noise and laughter
+that the pit was scandalized, and many indignant voices were bawling
+out silence so loudly, that Wagg wondered the police did not interfere
+to take the rascals out. Wenham was amusing the party in the box
+with extracts from a private letter which he had received from Major
+Pendennis, whose absence in the country at the full London season had
+been remarked, and of course deplored, by his friends.
+
+"The secret is out," said Mr. Wenham, "There's a woman in the case."
+
+"Why d---- it, Wenham, he's your age," said the gentleman behind the
+curtain.
+
+"Pour les âmes bien nées, l'amour ne compte pas le nombre des années,"
+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 conservé."
+
+"Wenham, you affect me," said the great man, with one of his usual
+oaths. "By ---- you do. I like to see a fellow preserving all the
+illusions of youth up to our time of life--and keeping his heart warm
+as yours is. Hang it, sir--it's a comfort to meet with such a generous,
+candid creature.--Who's that gal in the second row, with blue ribbons,
+third from the stage?--fine gal. Yes, you and I are sentimentalists.
+Wagg I don't think so much cares--it's the stomach rather more than the
+heart with you, eh, Wagg, my boy?"
+
+"I like every thing that's good," said Mr. Wagg, generously. "Beauty and
+Burgundy, Venus and Venison. I don't say that Venus's turtles are to be
+despised, because they don't cook them at the London Tavern: but--but
+tell us about old Pendennis, Mr. Wenham," he abruptly concluded--for his
+joke flagged just then, as he saw that his patron was not listening. In
+fact, Steyne's glasses were up, and he was examining some object on the
+stage.
+
+"Yes, I've heard that joke about Venus's turtles and the London Tavern
+before--you begin to fail, my poor Wagg. If you don't mind I shall be
+obliged to have a new Jester," Lord Steyne said, laying down his glass.
+"Go on, Wenham, about old Pendennis."
+
+"'Dear Wenham,'--he begins," Mr. Wenham read,--"'as you have had my
+character in your hands for the last three weeks, and no doubt have torn
+me to shreds, according to your custom, I think you can afford to be
+good-humored 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 theater 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 any thing 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 _any thing_ I can
+in return for your service--which I shall consider as one of the
+greatest _that can be done to me_. Do, do this now as a good fellow,
+which _I always said you were_: and, in return, command yours truly,
+A. Pendennis.'"
+
+"It's a clear case," said Mr. Wenham, having read this letter; "old
+Pendennis is in love."
+
+"And wants to get the woman up to London--evidently," continued Mr.
+Wagg.
+
+"I should like to see Pendennis on his knees, with the rheumatism," said
+Mr. Wenham.
+
+"Or accommodating the beloved object with a lock of his hair," said
+Wagg.
+
+"Stuff," said the great man. "He has relations in the country, hasn't
+he? He said something about a nephew, whose interest could return
+a member. It is the nephew's affair, depend on it. The young one is
+in a scrape. I was myself--when I was in the fifth form at Eton--a
+market-gardener's daughter--and swore I'd marry her. I was mad about
+her--poor Polly!"--Here he made a pause, and perhaps the past rose
+up to Lord Steyne, and George Gaunt was a boy again, not altogether
+lost.--"But I say, she must be a fine woman from Pendennis's account.
+Have in Dolphin, and let us hear if he knows any thing of her."
+
+At this Wenham sprang out of the box, passed the servitor who waited at
+the door communicating with the stage, and who saluted Mr. Wenham with
+profound respect; and the latter emissary, pushing on, and familiar
+with the place, had no difficulty in finding out the manager, who was
+employed, as he not unfrequently was, in swearing and cursing the ladies
+of the corps-de-ballet for not doing their duty.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 Coryphées, 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 embassador, and pay his
+personal respects to that great man.
+
+The visit to Chatteries was the result of their conversation: and Mr.
+Dolphin wrote to his lordship from that place, and did himself the honor
+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 honor of appearing before a
+London audience, and his noble and enlightened patron the Marquess of
+Steyne.
+
+Pen read the announcement of Miss Fotheringay's engagement in the
+Chatteries paper, where he had so often praised her charms. The editor
+made very handsome mention of her talent and beauty, and prophesied her
+success in the metropolis. Bingley, the manager, began to advertise
+"The last night of Miss Fotheringay's engagement." Poor Pen and Sir
+Derby Oaks were very constant at the play: Sir Derby in the stage-box,
+throwing bouquets and getting glances.--Pen in the almost deserted
+boxes, haggard, wretched, and lonely. Nobody cared whether Miss
+Fotheringay was going or staying except those two--and perhaps one
+more, which was Mr. Bows of the orchestra.
+
+He came out of his place one night, and went into the house to the box
+where Pen was; and he held out his hand to him, and asked him to come
+and walk. They walked down the street together: and went and sate upon
+Chatteries 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'm older and know her
+better. She has no more heart than the stone you are leaning on; and it
+or you or I might fall into the water, and never come up again, and she
+wouldn't care. Yes--she would care for me, because she wants me to teach
+her; and she won't be able to get on without me, and will be forced to
+send for me from London. But she wouldn't if she didn't want me. She has
+no heart and no head, and no sense, and no feelings, and no griefs or
+cares, whatever. I was going to say no pleasures--but the fact is, she
+does like her dinner, and she is pleased when people admire her."
+
+"And you do?" said Pen, interested out of himself, and wondering at the
+crabbed, homely little old man.
+
+"It's a habit, like taking snuff, or drinking drams," said the other,
+"I've been taking her these five years, and can't do without, her. It
+was I made her. If she doesn't send for me, I shall follow her: but I
+know she'll send for me. She wants me. Same day she'll marry, and fling
+me over, as I do the end of this cigar."
+
+The little flaming spark dropped into the water below, and disappeared;
+and Pen, as he rode home that night, actually thought about somebody but
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE HAPPY VILLAGE.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 behavior or to put any restraint on his nephew's
+actions, but he managed nevertheless to keep the lad constantly under
+his eye or those of his agents, and young Arthur's comings and goings
+were quite well known to his vigilant guardian.
+
+I suppose there is scarcely any man who reads this or any other
+novel but has been balked in love sometime or other, by fate, and
+circumstance, by the falsehood of woman, 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 per centage 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 a quarter of him may be said
+to have perished; and that is no small portion. He has come back to his
+old size subsequently; perhaps is bigger than ever: very likely some new
+affection has closed round his heart and ribs and made them comfortable,
+and young Pen is a man who will console himself like the rest of us. We
+say this lest the ladies should be disposed to deplore him prematurely,
+or be seriously uneasy with regard to his complaint. His mother was, but
+what will not a maternal fondness fear or invent? "Depend on it, my dear
+creature," Major Pendennis would say gallantly to her, "the boy will
+recover. As soon as we get her out of the country we will take him
+somewhere, and show him a little life. Meantime make yourself easy about
+him. Half a fellow's pangs at losing a woman result from vanity more
+than affection. To be left by a woman is the deuce and all, to be sure;
+but look how easily we leave 'em."
+
+Mrs. Pendennis did not know. This sort of knowledge had by no means come
+within the simple lady's scope. Indeed she did not like the subject or
+to talk of it: her heart had had its own little private misadventure and
+she had borne up against it and cured it; and perhaps she had not much
+patience with other folks' passions, except, of course, Arthur's whose
+sufferings she made her own, feeling indeed, very likely, in many of the
+boy's illnesses and pains a great deal more than Pen himself endured.
+And she watched him through this present grief with a jealous silent
+sympathy; although, as we have said, he did not talk to her of his
+unfortunate condition.
+
+The major must be allowed to have had not a little merit and
+forbearance, and to have exhibited a highly creditable degree of family
+affection. The life at Fairoaks was uncommonly dull to a man who had the
+_entrée_ 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 neighboring 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 bed-room, which he sedulously studied. It is thus a well-regulated
+man will accommodate himself to circumstances, and show himself calmly
+superior to fortune.
+
+Pen sometimes took the box at backgammon of a night, or would listen to
+his mother's simple music of summer evenings--but he was very restless
+and wretched in spite of all; and has been known to be up before the
+early daylight even: and down at a carp-pond in Clavering Park, a dreary
+pool with innumerable-whispering rushes and green alders, where a
+milkmaid drowned herself in the baronet's grandfather's time, and her
+ghost was said to walk still. But Pen did not drown himself, as perhaps
+his mother fancied might be his intention. He liked to go and fish
+there, and think and think at leisure, as the float quivered in the
+little eddies of the pond, and the fish flapped about him. If he got a
+bite he was excited enough: and in this way occasionally brought home,
+carps, tenches, and eels, which the major cooked in the continental
+fashion.
+
+By this pond, and under a tree, which was his favorite 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 afterward--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 cudgeling his brain to
+find any rhyme for sorrow, beside 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 Chatteries, her rider gesticulating wildly on
+her back, and astonishing carters and turnpikemen as he passed, crying
+out the name of the false one.
+
+Mr. Foker became a very frequent and welcome visitor at Fairoaks during
+this period, where his good spirits and oddities always amused the major
+and Pendennis, while they astonished the widow and little Laura not a
+little. His tandem made a great sensation in Clavering market-place;
+where he upset a market stall, and cut Mrs. Pybus's poodle over the
+shaven quarters, and drank a glass of raspberry bitters at the Clavering
+Arms. All the society in the little place heard who he was, and looked
+out his name in their Peerages. He was so young, and their books so old,
+that his name did not appear in many of their volumes; and his mamma,
+now quite an antiquated lady, figured among the progeny of the Earl of
+Rosherville, as Lady Agnes Milton, still. But his name, wealth, and
+honorable lineage were speedily known about Clavering, where you may be
+sure that poor Pen's little transaction with the Chatteries actress was
+also pretty freely discussed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Looking at the little old town of Clavering St. Mary from the London
+road as it runs by the lodge at Fairoaks, and seeing the rapid and
+shining Brawl winding down from the town and skirting the woods of
+Clavering Park, and the ancient church tower and peaked roofs of the
+houses rising up among trees and old walls, behind which swells a fair
+back-ground of sunshiny hills that stretch from Clavering westward
+toward the sea--the place looks so cheery and comfortable that many a
+traveler's heart must have yearned toward it from the coach-top, and he
+must have thought that it was in such a calm friendly nook he would like
+to shelter at the end of life's struggle. Tom Smith who used to drive
+the Alacrity coach, would often point to a tree near the river, from
+which a fine view of the church and town was commanded, and inform his
+companion on the box that "Artises come and take hoff the Church from
+that there tree.--It was a Habby once, sir:"--and indeed a pretty view
+it is, which I recommend to Mr. Stanfield or Mr. Roberts, for their next
+tour.
+
+Like Constantinople seen from the Bosphorus; like Mrs. Rougemont viewed
+in her box from the opposite side of the house; like many an object
+which we pursue in life, and admire before we have attained it;
+Clavering is rather prettier at a distance than it is on a closer
+acquaintance. The town so cheerful of aspect a few furlongs off, looks
+very blank and dreary. Except on market days there is nobody in the
+streets.
+
+The clack of a pair of pattens echoes through half the place, and you
+may hear the creaking of the rusty old ensign at the Clavering Arms,
+without being disturbed by any other noise. There has not been a ball
+in the assembly rooms since the Clavering volunteers gave one to their
+colonel, the old Sir Francis Clavering; and the stables which once held
+a great part of that brilliant, but defunct regiment, are now cheerless
+and empty, except on Thursdays, when the farmers put up there, and their
+tilted carts and gigs make a feeble show of liveliness in the place, or
+on petty sessions, when the magistrates attend in what used to be the
+old card-room.
+
+On the south side of the market rises up the church, with its great gray
+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 Honorable Mrs. Simcoe)
+incumbent and architect of the Chapel of Ease in the lower town, thinks
+them the abomination of desolation.
+
+The rectory is a stout broad-shouldered brick house, of the reign of
+Anne. It communicates with the church and market by different gates,
+and stands at the opening of Yew-tree Lane, where the Grammar School
+(Rev. ---- Wapshot) is; Yew-tree Cottage (Miss Flather); the butcher's
+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 down stairs; and the young ladies' bonnets make a tolerable show
+in the rather vacant aisles. Nobody is in the great pew of the Clavering
+family except the statues of defunct baronets and their ladies: there
+is Sir Poyntz Clavering, knight and baronet, kneeling in a square
+beard opposite his wife in a ruff; a very fat lady, the Dame Rebecca
+Clavering, in alto-relievo, is borne up to Heaven by two little
+blue-veined angels, who seem to have a severe task--and so forth. How
+well, in after life, Pen remembered those effigies, and how often in
+youth he scanned them as the doctor was grumbling the sermon from the
+pulpit, and Smirke's mild head and forehead curl peered over the great
+prayer-book in the desk!
+
+The Fairoaks folks were constant at the old church; their servants
+had a pew, so had the doctor's, so had Wapshot's, and those of Misses
+Finucane's establishment, three maids and a very nice looking young man
+in a livery. The Wapshot family were numerous and faithful. Glanders and
+his children regularly came to church: so did one of the apothecaries.
+Mrs. Pybus went, turn and turn about, to the Low Town church, and to the
+Abbey: the Charity School and their families of course came; Wapshot's
+boys made a good cheerful noise, scuffling with their feet as they
+marched into church and up the organ-loft stair, and blowing their noses
+a good deal during the service. To be brief, the congregation looked as
+decent as might be in these bad times. The Abbey Church was furnished
+with a magnificent screen, and many hatchments and heraldic tombstones.
+The doctor spent a great part of his income in beautifying his darling
+place; he had endowed it with a superb painted window, bought in the
+Netherlands, and an organ grand enough for a cathedral.
+
+But in spite of organ and window, in consequence of the latter very
+likely, which had come out of a papistical place of worship and was
+blazoned all over with idolatry, Clavering New Church prospered
+scandalously in the teeth of orthodoxy; and many of the doctor's
+congregation deserted to Mr. Simcoe and the honorable 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 aids-de-camp. Ah, it was a hard burthen for the doctor's
+lady to bear, to behold her husband's congregation dwindling away; to
+give the precedence on the few occasions when they met to a notorious
+low-churchman's wife who was the daughter of an Irish Peer; to know that
+there was a party in Clavering, their own town of Clavering, on which
+her doctor spent a great deal more than his professional income, who
+held him up to odium because he played a rubber at whist; and pronounced
+him to be a heathen because he went to the play. In her grief she
+besought him to give up the play and the rubber--indeed they could
+scarcely get a table now, so dreadful was the outcry against the
+sport--but the doctor declared that he would do what he thought right,
+and what the great and good George the Third did (whose chaplain he had
+been): and as for giving up whist because those silly folks cried out
+against it, he would play dummy to the end of his days with his wife and
+Myra, rather than yield to their despicable persecutions.
+
+Of the two families, owners of the factory (which had spoiled the Brawl
+as a trout-stream and brought all the mischief into the town), the
+senior partner, Mr. Rolt, went to Ebenezer; the junior, Mr. Barker, to
+the New Church. In a word, people quarreled in this little place a great
+deal more than neighbors 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
+mustache might be seen at the window; and of course, little Mrs. Pybus,
+who looked at every body's letters as the post brought them (for the
+Clavering reading room, as every one knows, used to be held at Baker's
+Library, London-street formerly Hog Lane), and read every advertisement
+in the paper.
+
+It may be imagined how great a sensation was created in this amiable
+little community when the news reached it of Mr. Pen's love-passages at
+Chatteries. 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 Chatteries. They always hated him and called
+him Lord Pendennis, because he did not wear corduroys as they did, and
+rode a horse, and gave himself the airs of a buck.
+
+And if the truth must be told, it was Mrs. Portman herself who was the
+chief narrator of the story of Pen's loves. Whatever tales this candid
+woman heard, she was sure to impart them to her neighbors; and after she
+had been put into possession of Pen's secret by the little scandal at
+Chatteries, 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 Honorable Mrs. Simcoe's
+_soirée_, at the factory; nay, through the mill itself the tale was
+current in a few hours, and young Arthur Pendennis's madness, was in
+every mouth.
+
+All Doctor 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 rumor, 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 among any folks in our country, and assuredly we have enough
+of it, there is no pride more deep-seated than that of twopenny old
+gentlewomen in small towns. "Gracious goodness," the cry was, "how
+infatuated the mother is about that pert and headstrong boy, who gives
+himself the airs of a _lord_ on his _blood-horse_, and for whom _our_
+society is not good enough, and who would marry an odious painted
+actress off a booth, where very likely he wants to rant himself. If
+dear, good Mr. Pendennis had been alive this scandal would never have
+happened."
+
+No more it would, very likely, nor should we have been occupied in
+narrating Pen's history. It was true that he gave himself airs to the
+Clavering folks. Naturally haughty and frank, their cackle and small
+talk and small dignities bored him, and he showed a contempt which he
+could not conceal. The doctor and the curate were the only people Pen
+cared for in the place--even Mrs. Portman shared in the general distrust
+of him, and of his mother, the widow, who kept herself aloof from the
+village society, and was sneered at accordingly, because she tried,
+forsooth, to keep her head up with the great county families. She,
+indeed! Mrs. Barker at the factory has four times the butcher's meat
+that goes up to Fairoaks, with all their fine airs.
+
+_&c. &c. &c._: 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
+neighbor and her children, and an honest, brave lad, impetuous, and
+full of good, and wishing well to every mortal alive, found enemies and
+detractors among people to whom they were superior, and to whom they
+had never done any thing like harm. The Clavering curs were yelping all
+round the house of Fairoaks, and delighted to pull Pen down.
+
+Doctor Portman and Smirke were both cautious of informing the widow
+of the constant outbreak of calumny which was pursuing poor Pen,
+though Glanders, who was a friend of the house, kept him _au courant_.
+It may be imagined what his indignation was; was there any man in the
+village whom he could call to account? Presently some wags began to
+chalk up "Fotheringay forever!" and other sarcastic allusions to late
+transactions, at Fairoaks gate. Another brought a large play-bill from
+Chatteries, 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 neighboring small squire, who lived
+in the doubtful capacity of parlor boarder with Mr. Wapshot, flung
+himself into a theatrical attitude near a newly-made grave, and began
+repeating Hamlet's verses over Ophelia, with a hideous leer at Pen.
+
+The young fellow was so enraged that he rushed at Hobnell Major with a
+shriek very much resembling an oath, cut him furiously across the face
+with the riding-whip which he carried, flung it away, calling upon the
+cowardly villain to defend himself, and in another minute knocked the
+bewildered young ruffian into the grave which was just waiting for a
+different lodger.
+
+Then with his fists clenched, and his face quivering with passion and
+indignation, he roared out to Mr. Hobnell's gaping companions, to know
+if any of the blackguards would come on? But they held back with a
+growl, and retreated as Doctor Portman came up to his wicket, and Mr.
+Hobnell, with his nose and lip bleeding piteously, emerged from the
+grave.
+
+Pen, looking death and defiance at the lads, who retreated toward their
+side of the churchyard, walked back again through the doctor's wicket,
+and was interrogated by that gentleman. The young fellow was so agitated
+he could scarcely speak. His voice broke into a sob, as he answered.
+"The ---- coward insulted me, sir," he said; and the doctor passed over
+the oath, and respected the emotion of the honest, suffering young
+heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pendennis the elder, who like a real man of the world had a proper and
+constant dread of the opinion of his neighbor, was prodigiously annoyed
+by the absurd little tempest which was blowing in Chatteries, and
+tossing about Master Pen's reputation. Doctor Portman and Captain
+Glanders had to support the charges of the whole Chatteries society
+against the young reprobate, who was looked upon as a monster of crime.
+Pen did not say any thing about the churchyard scuffle at home; but went
+over to Baymouth, and took counsel with his friend Harry Foker, Esq.,
+who drove over his drag presently to the Clavering Arms, whence he sent
+Stoopid with a note to Thomas Hobnell, Esq., at the Rev. J. Wapshot's,
+and a civil message to ask when he should wait upon that gentleman.
+
+Stoopid brought back word that the note had been opened by Mr. Hobnell,
+and read to half-a-dozen of the big boys, on whom it seemed to make a
+great impression; and that after consulting together, and laughing, Mr.
+Hobnell said he would send an answer "arter arternoon school, which the
+bell was a ringing; and Mr. Wapshot he came out in his Master's gownd."
+Stoopid was learned in academical costume, having attended Mr. Foker at
+St. Boniface.
+
+Mr. Foker went out to see the curiosities of Clavering, meanwhile; but
+not having a taste for architecture, Doctor Portman's fine church did
+not engage his attention much, and he pronounced the tower to be as
+moldy 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 Madam
+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 parlor, 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It was no other than Mr. Wapshot himself, who came with an air of great
+indignation, and holding Pen's missive in his hand, asked Mr. Foker
+"how dared he bring such an unchristian message as a challenge to a
+boy of his school?"
+
+In fact Pen had written a note to his adversary of the day before,
+telling him that if after the chastisement which his insolence richly
+deserved, he felt inclined to ask the reparation which was usually given
+among gentlemen, Mr. Arthur Pendennis's friend, Mr. Henry Foker, was
+empowered to make any arrangements for the satisfaction of Mr. Hobnell.
+
+"And so he sent _you_ with the answer--did he, sir?" Mr. Foker said,
+surveying the schoolmaster in his black coat and clerical costume.
+
+"If he had accepted this wicked challenge, I should have flogged him,"
+Mr. Wapshot said, and gave Mr. Foker a glance which seemed to say, "and
+I should like very much to flog you, too."
+
+"Uncommon kind of you, sir, I'm sure," said Pen's emissary. "I told my
+principal that I didn't think the other man would fight," he continued,
+with a great air of dignity. "He prefers being flogged to fighting, sir,
+I dare say. May I offer you any refreshment, Mr. ----? I haven't the
+advantage of your name."
+
+"My name is Wapshot, sir, and I am master of the grammar school of this
+town, sir," cried the other: "and I want no refreshment, sir, I thank
+you, and have no desire to make your acquaintance, sir."
+
+"I didn't seek yours, sir, I'm sure," replied Mr. Foker. "In affairs
+of this sort, you see, I think it is a pity that the clergy should be
+called in, but there's no accounting for tastes, sir."
+
+"I think it's a pity that boys should talk about committing murder, sir,
+as lightly as you do," roared the schoolmaster; "and if I had you in my
+school--"
+
+"I dare say you would teach me better, sir," Mr. Foker said, with a bow.
+"Thank you, sir. I've finished my education, sir, and ain't a going back
+to school, sir--when I do, I'll remember your kind offer, sir. John,
+show this gentleman down stairs--and, of course, as Mr. Hobnell likes
+being thrashed, we can have no objection, sir, and we shall be very
+happy to accommodate him, whenever he comes our way."
+
+And with this, the young fellow bowed the elder gentleman out of the
+room, and sate down and wrote a note off to Pen, in which he informed
+the latter, that Mr. Hobnell was not disposed to fight, and proposed
+to put up with the caning which Pen had administered to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+MORE STORMS IN THE PUDDLE.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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
+behavior. 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 Chatteries for
+a while--any where removed from the woman who had brought him into so
+much trouble.
+
+Pen, when remonstrated with by this fond parent, and angrily rebuked by
+the doctor for his violence and ferocious intentions, took the matter
+_au grand sérieux_, 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
+honor, and appealing with great dignity to his uncle, asked whether he
+could have acted otherwise as a gentleman, than as he did in resenting
+the outrage offered to him, and in offering satisfaction to the person
+chastised?
+
+"_Vous allez trop vite_, my good sir," said the uncle, rather
+puzzled, for he had been indoctrinating his nephew with some of his
+own notions upon the point of honor--old-world notions savoring 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
+school-boys, this sort of thing is ridiculous, my dear boy--perfectly
+ridiculous."
+
+"It is extremely wicked, and unlike my son," said Mrs. Pendennis, with
+tears in her eyes; and bewildered with the obstinacy of the boy.
+
+Pen kissed her, and said with great pomposity, "Women, dear mother,
+don't understand these matters--I put myself into Foker's hands--I had
+no other course to pursue."
+
+Major Pendennis grinned and shrugged his shoulders. The young ones were
+certainly making great progress, he thought. Mrs. Pendennis declared
+that that Foker was a wicked horrid little wretch, and was sure that he
+would lead her dear boy into mischief, if Pen went to the same college
+with him. "I have a great mind not to let him go at all," she said: and
+only that she remembered that the lad's father had always destined him
+for the college in which he had had his own brief education, very likely
+the fond mother would have put a veto upon his going to the University.
+
+That he was to go, and at the next October term, had been arranged
+between all the authorities who presided over the lad's welfare. Foker
+had promised to introduce him to the right set; and Major Pendennis laid
+great store upon Pen's introduction into college life and society by
+this admirable young gentleman. "Mr. Foker knows the very best young men
+now at the University," the major said, "and Pen will form acquaintances
+there who will be of the greatest advantage through life to him. The
+young Marquis of Plinlimmon is there, eldest son of the Duke of Saint
+David's--Lord Magnus Charters is there, Lord Runnymede's son; and a
+first cousin of Mr. Foker (Lady Runnymede, my dear, was Lady Agatha
+Milton, you of course remember), Lady Agnes will certainly invite him to
+Logwood; and far from being alarmed at his intimacy with her son, who is
+a singular and humorous, but most prudent and amiable young man, to
+whom, I am sure, we are under every obligation for his admirable conduct
+in the affair of the Fotheringay marriage, I look upon it as one of the
+very luckiest things which could have happened to Pen, that he should
+have formed an intimacy with this most amusing young gentleman."
+
+Helen sighed, she supposed the major knew best. Mr. Foker had been
+very kind in the wretched business with Miss Costigan, certainly, and
+she was grateful to him. But she could not feel otherwise than a dim
+presentiment of evil; and all these quarrels, and riots, and worldliness,
+scared her about the fate of her boy.
+
+Doctor Portman was decidedly of opinion that Pen should go to college.
+He hoped the lad would read, and have a moderate indulgence of the best
+society too. He was of opinion that Pen would distinguish himself:
+Smirke spoke very highly of his proficiency: the doctor himself had
+heard him construe, and thought he acquitted himself remarkably well.
+That he should go out of Chatteries was a great point, at any rate, and
+Pen, who was distracted from his private grief by the various rows and
+troubles which had risen round about him, gloomily said he would obey.
+
+There were assizes, races, and the entertainments, and the flux of
+company consequent upon them, at Chatteries, 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 Chatteries Theater 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 favor find any thing
+remarkable in the actress performing on the little Chatteries boards.
+Many a 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 dullness 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 dullness is a much finer gift than we
+give it credit for being, and that some people are very lucky whom
+Nature has endowed with a good store of that great anodyne.
+
+Pen used to go drearily in and out from the play at Chatteries 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 favorable turn had occurred in Pen's malady. It was the violent
+efflux of versification, among other symptoms, which gave Pen's guardian
+and physician satisfaction. He might be heard spouting verses in the
+shrubbery walks, or muttering them between his teeth as he sat with
+the home party of evenings. One day prowling about the house in Pen's
+absence, the major found a great book full of verses in the lad's study.
+They were in English, and in Latin; quotations from the classic authors
+were given in the scholastic manner in the foot-notes. He can't be very
+bad, wisely thought the Pall Mall Philosopher: and he made Pen's mother
+remark (not, perhaps, without a secret feeling of disappointment, for
+she loved romance like other soft women), that the young gentleman
+during the last fortnight came home quite hungry to dinner at night,
+and also showed a very decent appetite at the breakfast table in the
+morning. "Gad, I wish I could," said the major, thinking ruefully of his
+dinner pills. "The boy begins to sleep well, depend upon that." It was
+cruel, but it was true.
+
+Having no other soul to confide in--for he could not speak to his mother
+of his loves and disappointments--his uncle treated them in a scornful
+and worldly tone, which, though carefully guarded and polite, yet jarred
+greatly on the feelings of Mr. Pen--and Foker was much too coarse to
+appreciate those refined sentimental secrets--the lad's friendship for
+the curate redoubled, or rather, he was never tired of having Smirke for
+a listener on that one subject. What is a lover without a confidant?
+Pen employed Mr. Smirke, as Corydon does the elm-tree, to cut out his
+mistress's name upon. He made him echo with the name of the beautiful
+Amaryllis. When men have left off playing the tune, they do not care
+much for the pipe: but Pen thought he had a great friendship for Smirke,
+because he could sigh out his loves and griefs into his tutor's ears;
+and Smirke had his own reasons for always being ready at the lad's call.
+
+Pen's affection gushed out in a multitude of sonnets to the friend
+of his heart, as he styled the curate, which the other received with
+great sympathy. He plied Smirke with Latin Sapphics and Alcaics. The
+love-songs multiplied under his fluent pen; and Smirke declared and
+believed that they were beautiful. On the other hand, Pen expressed
+a boundless gratitude to think that Heaven should have sent him
+such a friend at such a moment. He presented his tutor with his best
+bound books, and his gold guard chain, and wanted him to take his
+double-barreled gun. He went into Chatteries and got a gold pencil-case
+on credit (for he had no money, and indeed was still in debt to Smirke
+for some of the Fotheringay presents), which he presented to Smirke,
+with an inscription indicative of his unalterable and eternal regard
+for the curate; who of course was pleased with every mark of the boy's
+attachment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The poor curate was naturally very much dismayed at the contemplated
+departure of his pupil. When Arthur should go, Smirke's occupation and
+delight would go too. What pretext could he find for a daily visit to
+Fairoaks, and that kind word or glance from the lady there, which was as
+necessary to the curate as the frugal dinner which Madam 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 behavior which flattered his
+hopes. She had praised his sermon 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 forever--and within that door
+lay all the world for Mr. Smirke.
+
+Thus, oh friendly readers, we see how every man in the world, has his
+own private griefs and business, by which he is more cast down or
+occupied than by the affairs or sorrows of any other person. While Mrs.
+Pendennis is disquieting herself about losing her son and that anxious
+hold she has had of him, as long as he has remained in the mother's
+nest, whence he is about to take flight into the great world
+beyond--while the major's great soul chafes and frets, inwardly vexed as
+he thinks what great parties are going on in London, and that he might
+be sunning himself in the glances of dukes and duchesses, but for those
+cursed affairs which keep him in a wretched little country hole--while
+Pen is tossing between his passion and a more agreeable sensation,
+unacknowledged yet, but swaying him considerably, namely, his longing to
+see the world--Mr. Smirke has a private care watching at his bed side,
+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,
+every body! You and your wife have pressed the same pillow for forty
+years and fancy yourselves united.--Pshaw, does she cry out when you
+have the gout, or do you lie awake when she has the tooth-ache? 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 cotillion with the captain, before your
+father proposed for her; or, what a silly little over-rated creature
+your wife is, and how absurdly you are infatuated about her--and, as for
+your wife--O philosophic reader, answer and say--Do you tell her all?
+Ah, sir--a distinct universe walks about under your hat and under
+mine--all things in nature are different to each--the woman we look
+at has not the same features, the dish we eat from has not the same
+taste to the one and the other--you and I are but a pair of infinite
+isolations, with some fellow-islands a little more or less near to us.
+Let us return, however, to the solitary Smirke.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Smirke had one confidante for his passion--that most injudicious woman,
+Madame Fribsby. How she became Madame Fribsby, nobody knows; she had
+left Clavering to go to a milliner's in London as Miss Fribsby--she
+pretended that she had got the rank in Paris during her residence in
+that city. But how could the French king, were he ever so much disposed,
+give her any such title? We shall not inquire into this mystery,
+however. Suffice to say, she went away from home a bouncing young lass;
+she returned a rather elderly character, with a Madonna front and a
+melancholy countenance--bought the late Mrs. Harbottle's business for
+a song--took her elderly mother to live with her; was very good to the
+poor, was constant at church, and had the best of characters. But there
+was no one in all Clavering, not Mrs. Portman herself, who read so many
+novels as Madame Fribsby. She had plenty of time for this amusement,
+for, in truth, very few people besides the folks at the Rectory and
+Fairoaks employed her; and by a perpetual perusal of such works (which
+were by no means so moral or edifying in the days of which we write, as
+they are at present), she had got to be so absurdly sentimental, that in
+her eyes life was nothing but an immense love-match; and she never could
+see two people together, but she fancied they were dying for one
+another.
+
+On the day after Mrs. Pendennis's visit to the curate, which we have
+recorded many pages back, Madame Fribsby settled in her mind that Mr.
+Smirke must be in love with the widow, and did every thing in her power
+to encourage this passion on both sides. Mrs. Pendennis she very seldom
+saw, indeed, except in public, and in her pew at church. That lady had
+very little need of millinery, or made most of her own dresses and caps;
+but on the rare occasions when Madame Fribsby received visits from
+Mrs. Pendennis, or paid her respects at Fairoaks, she never failed to
+entertain the widow with praises of the curate, pointing out what an
+angelical man he was, how gentle, how studious, how lonely; and she
+would wonder that no lady would take pity upon him.
+
+Helen laughed at these sentimental remarks, and wondered that madame
+herself did not compassionate her lodger, and console him. Madame
+Fribsby shook her Madonna front, "_Mong cure a boco souffare_," she
+said, laying her hand on the part she designated as her cure. "_Il 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 dependent on the
+house of Pendennis. Nor were madame's constant allusions to the curate
+particularly agreeable to her. It required a very ingenious sentimental
+turn indeed to find out that the widow had a secret regard for Mr.
+Smirke, to which pernicious error, however, Madame Fribsby persisted
+in holding.
+
+Her lodger was very much more willing to talk on this subject with his
+soft-hearted landlady. Every time after that she praised the curate to
+Mrs. Pendennis, she came away from the latter with the notion that the
+widow herself had been praising him. "_Etre soul au monde est bien
+ouneeyong_," 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'ong suis
+sure--Je conny cela biang--Ally, Monsieur Smirke._"
+
+He softly blushed; he sighed; he hoped; he feared; he doubted; he
+sometimes yielded to the delightful idea--his pleasure was to sit
+in Madame Fribsby's apartment, and talk upon the subject, where, as
+the greater part of the conversation was carried on in French by the
+milliner, and her old mother was deaf, that retired old individual
+(who had once been a housekeeper, wife and widow of a butler in the
+Clavering family), could understand scarce one syllable of their talk.
+
+Thus it was, that when Major Pendennis announced to his nephew's tutor
+that the young fellow would go to college in October, and that Mr.
+Smirke's valuable services would no longer be needful to his pupil, for
+which services the major, who spoke as grandly as a lord, professed
+himself exceedingly grateful, and besought Mr. Smirke to command his
+interest in any way--thus it was, that the curate felt that the critical
+moment was come for him, and was racked and tortured by those severe
+pangs which the occasion warranted.
+
+Madame Fribsby had, of course, taken the strongest interest in the
+progress of Mr. Pen's love affair with Miss Fotheringay. She had been
+over to Chatteries, and having seen that actress perform, had pronounced
+that she was old and overrated: and had talked over Master Pen's passion
+in her shop many and many a time to the half-dozen old maids, and old
+women in male clothes, who are to be found in little country towns,
+and who formed the genteel population of Clavering. Captain Glanders,
+H.P., had pronounced that Pen was going to be a devil of a fellow,
+and had begun early; Mrs. Glanders had told him to check his horrid
+observations, and to respect his own wife, if he pleased. She said it
+would be a lesson to Helen for her pride and absurd infatuation about
+that boy. Mrs. Pybus said many people were proud of very small things,
+and for her part, she didn't know why an apothecary's wife should give
+herself such airs. Mrs. Wapshot called her daughters away from that
+side of the street, one day when Pen, on Rebecca, was stopping at the
+saddler's, to get a new lash to his whip--one and all of these people
+had made visits of curiosity to Fairoaks, and had tried to condole with
+the widow, or bring the subject of the Fotheringay affair on the tapis,
+and had been severally checked by the haughty reserve of Mrs. Pendennis,
+supported by the frigid politeness of the major her brother.
+
+These rebuffs, however, did not put an end to the gossip, and slander
+went on increasing about the unlucky Fairoaks family. Glanders (H.P.),
+a retired cavalry officer, whose half-pay and large family compelled
+him to fuddle himself with brandy-and-water instead of claret, after
+he quitted the dragoons, had the occasional _entrée_ 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 Chatteries, and gone to the George on purpose to get the particulars.
+Mrs. Speers's man had treated Mr. Foker's servant to drink at Baymouth
+for a similar purpose. It was said that Pen had hanged himself for
+despair in the orchard, and that his uncle had cut him down; that, on
+the contrary, it was Miss Costigan who was jilted, and not young Arthur;
+and that the affair had only been hushed up by the payment of a large
+sum of money, the exact amount of which there were several people in
+Clavering could testify--the sum of course varying according to the
+calculation of the individual narrator of the story.
+
+Pen shook his mane and raged like a furious lion when these scandals,
+affecting Miss Costigan's honor 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, while he sate
+sulking, Achilles-like in his tent, for the loss of his ravished
+Briseis?
+
+After the affair with Hobnell, Pen was pronounced to be a murderer as
+well as a profligate, and his name became a name of terror and a byword
+in Clavering. But this was not all; he was not the only one of the
+family about whom the village began to chatter, and his unlucky mother
+was the next to become a victim to their gossip.
+
+"It is all settled," said Mrs. Pybus to Mrs. Speers, "the boy is to go
+to college, and then the widow is to console herself."
+
+"He's been there every day, in the most open manner, my dear," continued
+Mrs. Speers.
+
+"Enough to make poor Mr. Pendennis turn in his grave," said Mrs.
+Wapshot.
+
+"She never liked him, that we know," says No. 1.
+
+"Married him for his money. Every body knows that; was a penniless
+hanger-on of Lady Pontypool's," says No. 2.
+
+"It's rather too open, though, to encourage a lover under pretense of
+having a tutor for your son," cried No. 3.
+
+"Hush! here comes Mrs. Portman," some one said; as the good rector's
+wife entered Madame Fribsby's shop, to inspect her monthly book of
+fashions just arrived from London. And the fact is, that Madame Fribsby
+had been able to hold out no longer; and one day, after she and her
+lodger had been talking of Pen's approaching departure, and the curate
+had gone off to give one of his last lessons to that gentleman, Madame
+Fribsby had communicated to Mrs. Pybus, who happened to step in with
+Mrs. Speers, her strong suspicion, her certainty almost, that there was
+an attachment between a certain clerical gentleman and a certain lady,
+whose naughty son was growing quite unmanageable, and that a certain
+marriage would take place pretty soon.
+
+Mrs. Portman saw it all, of course, when the matter was mentioned. What
+a sly fox that curate was! He was low-church, and she never liked him.
+And to think of Mrs. Pendennis taking a fancy to him after she had been
+married to such a man as Mr. Pendennis! She could hardly stay five
+minutes at Madame Fribsby's, so eager was she to run to the Rectory and
+give Doctor Portman the news.
+
+When Doctor Portman heard this piece of intelligence, he was in such
+a rage with his curate, that his first movement was to break with
+Mr. Smirke, and to beg him to transfer his services to some other
+parish. "That milksop of a creature pretend to be worthy of such a woman
+as Mrs. Pendennis," broke out the doctor: "where will impudence stop
+next?"
+
+"She is much too old for Mr. Smirke," Mrs. Portman remarked: "why, poor
+dear Mrs. Pendennis might be his mother almost."
+
+"You always choose the most charitable reason, Betsy," cried the rector.
+"A matron with a son grown up--she would never think of marrying again."
+
+"You only think _men_ should marry again, Doctor Portman," answered his
+lady, bridling up.
+
+"You stupid old woman," said the doctor, "when I am gone, you shall
+marry whomsoever you like. I will leave orders in my will, my dear, to
+that effect: and I'll bequeath a ring to my successor, and my ghost
+shall come and dance at your wedding."
+
+"It is cruel for a clergyman to talk so," the lady answered, with a
+ready whimper: but these little breezes used to pass very rapidly over
+the surface of the doctor's domestic bliss; and were followed by a great
+calm and sunshine. The doctor adopted a plan for soothing Mrs. Portman's
+ruffled countenance, which has a great effect when it is tried between a
+worthy couple who are sincerely fond of one another; and which I think
+becomes "John Anderson" at three-score, just as much as it used to do
+when he was a black haired young Jo of five-and-twenty.
+
+"Hadn't you better speak to Mr. Smirke, John?" Mrs. Portman asked.
+
+"When Pen goes to college, _cadit quæstio_," replied the rector,
+"Smirke's visits at Fairoaks will cease of themselves, and there will be
+no need to bother the widow. She has trouble enough on her hands, with
+the affairs of that silly young scapegrace, without being pestered by
+the tittle-tattle of this place. It is all an invention, of that fool,
+Fribsby."
+
+"Against whom I always warned you--you know I did, my dear John,"
+interposed Mrs. Portman.
+
+"That you did; you very often do, my love," the doctor answered, with a
+laugh. "It is not from want of warning on your part, I am sure, that I
+have formed my opinion of most women with whom we are acquainted. Madam
+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 had poultry from Livermore's two days
+before)--"and as for Mr. Smirke, my dear Betsy, will you promise me that
+you will never breathe to any mortal what I am going to tell you as a
+profound secret?"
+
+"What is it, my dear John?--of course I won't," answered the rector's
+lady.
+
+"Well then--I can not say it is a fact, mind--but if you find that
+Smirke is at this moment--ay, and has been for years--engaged to a young
+lady, a Miss--a Miss Thompson, if you will have the name, who lives
+on Clapham Common--yes, on Clapham Common, not far from Mrs. Smirke's
+house, what becomes of your story then about Smirke and Mrs. Pendennis?"
+
+"Why did you not tell me this before?" asked the doctor's wife.--"How
+long have you known it?--How we all of us have been deceived in that
+man!"
+
+"Why should I meddle in other folks' business, my dear?" the doctor
+answered. "I know how to keep a secret--and perhaps this is only an
+invention like that other absurd story; at least, Madam Portman, I
+should never have told you this but for the other, which I beg you to
+contradict whenever you hear it." And so saying the doctor went away to
+his study, and Mrs. Portman, seeing that the day was a remarkably fine
+one, thought she would take advantage of the weather and pay a few
+visits.
+
+The doctor looking out of his study window saw the wife of his
+bosom presently issue forth, attired in her best. She crossed the
+market-place, saluting the market-women right and left, and giving a
+glance at the grocery and general emporium at the corner: then entering
+London-street (formerly Hog Lane), she stopped for a minute at Madame
+Fribsby's window, and looking at the fashions which hung up there,
+seemed hesitating whether she should enter; but she passed on, and never
+stopped again until she came to Mrs. Pybus's little green gate and
+garden, through which she went to that lady's cottage.
+
+There, of course, her husband lost sight of Mrs. Portman. "Oh, what a
+long bow I have pulled," he said inwardly--"Goodness forgive me! and
+shot my own flesh and blood. There must be no more tattling and scandal
+about that house. I must stop it, and speak to Smirke. I'll ask him to
+dinner this very day."
+
+Having a sermon to compose, the doctor sat down to that work, and was so
+engaged in the composition, that he had not concluded it until near five
+o'clock in the afternoon: when he stepped over to Mr. Smirke's lodgings,
+to put his hospitable intentions, regarding that gentleman, into effect.
+He reached Madame Fribsby's door, just as the curate issued from it.
+
+Mr. Smirke was magnificently dressed, and as he turned out his toes he
+showed a pair of elegant open-worked silk stockings and glossy pumps.
+His white cravat was arranged in a splendid stiff tie, and his gold
+shirt studs shone on his spotless linen. His hair was curled round his
+fair temples. Had he borrowed Madame Fribsby's irons to give that curly
+grace? His white cambric pocket handkerchief was scented with the most
+delicious Eau-de-Cologne.
+
+"_O gracilis puer_,"--cried the doctor.--"Whither are you bound? I
+wanted you to come home to dinner."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I am engaged to dine at--at Fairoaks," said Mr. Smirke, blushing
+faintly and whisking the scented pocket-handkerchief, and his pony being
+in waiting, he mounted and rode away simpering down the street. No
+accident befell him that day, and he arrived with his tie in the very
+best order at Mrs. Pendennis's house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+WHICH CONCLUDES THE FIRST PART OF THIS HISTORY.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The curate had gone on his daily errand to Fairoaks, and was up-stairs
+in Pen's study pretending to read with his pupil, in the early part of
+that very afternoon when Mrs. Portman after transacting business with
+Mrs. Pybus had found the weather so exceedingly fine that she pursued
+her walk as far as Fairoaks, in order to pay a visit to her dear friend
+there. In the course of their conversation, the rector's lady told
+Mrs. Pendennis and the major a very great secret about the curate, Mr.
+Smirke, which was no less than that he had an attachment, a very old
+attachment, which he had long kept quite private.
+
+"And on whom is it that Mr. Smirke has bestowed his heart?" asked Mrs.
+Pendennis, with a superb air, but rather an inward alarm.
+
+"Why, my dear," the other lady answered, "when he first came and used to
+dine at the Rectory, people said we wanted him for Myra, and we were
+forced to give up asking him. Then they used to say he was smitten in
+another quarter; but I always contradicted it, for my part, and said
+that you--"
+
+"That _I_," cried Mrs. Pendennis; "people are very impertinent, I am
+sure. Mr. Smirke came here as Arthur's tutor, and I am surprised that
+any body should dare to speak so--"
+
+"'Pon my soul, it is a _little_ too much," the major said, laying down
+the newspaper and the double eye-glass.
+
+"I've no patience with that Mrs. Pybus," Helen continued, indignantly.
+
+"I told her there was no truth in it," Mrs. Portman said. "I always said
+so, my dear: and now it comes out that my demure gentleman has been
+engaged to a young lady--Miss Thompson, of Clapham Common, ever so long:
+and I am delighted, for my part, and on Myra's account, too, for an
+unmarried curate is always objectionable about one's house: and of
+course it is strictly private, but I thought I would tell you, as it
+might remove unpleasantnesses. But mind: not one word, if you please,
+about the story."
+
+Mrs. Pendennis said, with perfect sincerity, that she was exceedingly
+glad to hear the news: and hoped Mr. Smirke, who was a very kind
+and amiable man, would have a deserving wife: and when her visitor
+went away, Helen and her brother talked of the matter with great
+satisfaction, the kind lady rebuking herself for her haughty behavior
+to Mr. Smirke, whom she had avoided of late, instead of being grateful
+to him for his constant attention to Arthur.
+
+"Gratitude to this kind of people," the major said, "is very well; but
+familiarity is out of the question. This gentleman gives his lessons
+and receives his money like any other master. You are too humble, my
+good soul. There must be distinctions in ranks, and that sort of thing.
+I told you before, you were too kind to Mr. Smirke."
+
+But Helen did not think so; and now that Arthur was going away, and she
+bethought her how very polite Mr. Smirke had been; how he had gone on
+messages for her; how he had brought books and copied music; how he had
+taught Laura so many things, and given her so many kind presents, her
+heart smote her on account of her ingratitude toward the curate;--so
+much so, that when he came down from study with Pen, and was hankering
+about the hall previous to his departure, she went out and shook hands
+with him with rather a blushing face, and begged him to come into her
+drawing-room, where she said they now never saw him. And as there was to
+be rather a good dinner that day, she invited Mr. Smirke to partake of
+it; and we may be sure that he was too happy to accept such a delightful
+summons.
+
+Eased, by the above report, of all her former doubts and misgivings
+regarding the curate, Helen was exceedingly kind and gracious to Mr.
+Smirke during dinner, redoubling her attentions, perhaps because Major
+Pendennis was very high and reserved with his nephew's tutor. When
+Pendennis asked Smirke to drink wine, he addressed him as if he was a
+sovereign speaking to a petty retainer, in a manner so condescending,
+that even Pen laughed at it, although quite ready, for his part, to be
+as conceited as most young men are.
+
+But Smirke did not care for the impertinences of the major so long as he
+had his hostess's kind behavior; and he passed a delightful time by her
+side at table, exerting all his powers of conversation to please her,
+talking in a manner both clerical and worldly, about the Fancy Bazaar,
+and the Great Missionary Meeting, about the last new novel, and the
+bishop's excellent sermon--about the fashionable parties in London,
+an account of which he read in the newspapers--in fine, he neglected
+no art, by which a college divine who has both sprightly and serious
+talents, a taste for the genteel, an irreproachable conduct, and a
+susceptible heart, will try and make himself agreeable to the person
+on whom he has fixed his affections.
+
+Major Pendennis came yawning out of the dining-room very soon
+after his sister and little Laura had left the apartment--"What an
+unsufferable bore that man is, and how he did talk!" the major said.
+
+"He has been very good to Arthur, who is very fond of him," Mrs.
+Pendennis said--"I wonder who the Miss Thompson is whom he is going
+to marry."
+
+"I always thought the fellow was looking in another direction," said
+the major.
+
+"And in what?" asked Mrs. Pendennis, quite innocently--"toward Myra
+Portman?"
+
+"Toward Helen Pendennis, if you must know," answered her brother-in-law.
+
+"Toward me! impossible!" Helen said, who knew perfectly well that such
+had been the case. "His marriage will be a very happy thing. I hope
+Arthur will not take too much wine."
+
+Now Arthur flushed with a good deal of pride at the privilege of having
+the keys of the cellar, and remembering that a very few more dinners
+would probably take place which he and his dear friend Smirke could
+share, had brought up a liberal supply of claret for the company's
+drinking, and when the elders with little Laura left him, he and the
+curate began to pass the wine very freely.
+
+One bottle speedly yielded up the ghost, another shed more than half
+its blood, before the two topers had been much more than half an hour
+together--Pen, with a hollow laugh and voice, had drunk off one bumper
+to the falsehood of women, and had said sardonically, that wine, at any
+rate, was a mistress who never deceived, and was sure to give a man a
+welcome.
+
+Smirke gently said that he knew for his part some women who were all
+truth and tenderness; and casting up his eyes toward the ceiling, and
+heaving a sigh as if evoking some being dear and unmentionable, he took
+up his glass and drained it, and the rosy liquor began to suffuse his
+face.
+
+Pen trolled over some verses he had been making that morning, in which
+he informed himself that the woman who had slighted his passion could
+not be worthy to win it: that he was awaking from love's mad fever, and,
+of course, under these circumstances, proceeded to leave her, and to
+quit a heartless deceiver: that a name which had one day been famous in
+the land, might again be heard in it: and, that though he never should
+be the happy and careless boy he was but a few months since, or his
+heart be what it had been ere passion had filled it and grief had
+well-nigh killed it; that though to him personally death was as welcome
+as life, and that he would not hesitate to part with the latter, but for
+the love of one kind being whose happiness depended on his own--yet he
+hoped to show he was a man worthy of his race, and that one day the
+false one should be brought to know how great was the treasure and noble
+the heart which she had flung away.
+
+Pen, we say, who was a very excitable person, rolled out these verses in
+his rich, sweet voice, which trembled with emotion while our young poet
+spoke. He had a trick of blushing when in this excited state, and his
+large and honest gray eyes also exhibited proofs of a sensibility so
+genuine, hearty, and manly, that Miss Costigan, if she had a heart, must
+needs have softened toward him; and very likely she was, as he said,
+altogether unworthy of the affection which he lavished upon her.
+
+The sentimental Smirke was caught by the emotion which agitated his
+young friend. He grasped Pen's hand over the dessert dishes and wine
+glasses. He said the verses were beautiful: that Pen was a poet, a great
+poet, and likely by heaven's permission to run a great career in the
+world. "Go on and prosper, dear Arthur," he cried; "the wounds under
+which at present you suffer are only temporary, and the very grief you
+endure will cleanse and strengthen your heart. I have always prophesied
+the greatest and brightest things of you, as soon as you have corrected
+some failings and weaknesses of character, which at present belong to
+you. But you will get over these, my boy; you will get over these; and
+when you are famous and celebrated, as I know you will be, will you
+remember your old tutor and the happy early days of your youth?"
+
+Pen swore he would: with another shake of the hand across the glasses
+and apricots. "I shall never forget how kind you have been to me,
+Smirke," he said. "I don't know what I should have done without you.
+You are my best friend."
+
+"Am I, _really_, Arthur?" said Smirke, looking through his spectacles;
+and his heart began to beat so that he thought Pen must almost hear it
+throbbing.
+
+"My best friend, my friend _forever_," Pen said. "God bless you, old
+boy," and he drank up the last glass of the second bottle of the famous
+wine which his father had laid in, which his uncle had bought, which
+Lord Levant had imported, and which now, like a slave indifferent, was
+ministering pleasure to its present owner, and giving its young master
+delectation.
+
+"We'll have another bottle, old boy," Pen said, "by Jove we will.
+Hurray!--claret goes for nothing. My uncle was telling me that he
+saw Sheridan drink five bottles at Brookes's, besides a bottle of
+Maraschino. This is some of the finest wine in England, he says. So it
+is, by Jove. There's nothing like it. _Nunc vino pellite curas--cras
+ingens iterabimus æq_--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 Freischütz. The dining-room windows were open, and his mother was
+softly pacing on the lawn outside, while little Laura was looking at the
+sunset. The sweet fresh notes of the boy's voice came to the widow. It
+cheered her kind heart to hear him sing.
+
+"You--you are taking too much wine, Arthur," Mr. Smirke said,
+softly--"you are exciting yourself."
+
+"No," said Pen, "women give headaches, but this don't. Fill your glass,
+old fellow, and let's drink--I say, Smirke, my boy--let's drink to
+her--_your_ her, I mean, not mine, for whom I swear I'll care no
+more--no, not a penny--no, not a fig--no, not a glass of wine. Tell
+us about the lady, Smirke; I've often seen you sighing about her."
+
+"Oh!" said Smirke--and his beautiful cambric shirt front and glistening
+studs heaved with the emotion which agitated his gentle and suffering
+bosom.
+
+"Oh--what a sigh!" Pen cried, growing very hilarious; "fill, my boy, and
+drink the toast, you can't refuse a toast, no gentleman refuses a toast.
+Here's her health, and good luck to you, and may she soon be Mrs.
+Smirke."
+
+"_Do_ you say so?" Smirke said, all of a tremble. "Do you really say so,
+Arthur?"
+
+"Say so; of course, I say so. Down with it. Here's Mrs. Smirke's good
+health: hip, hip, hurray!"
+
+Smirke convulsively gulped down his glass of wine, and Pen waved his
+over his head, cheering so as to make his mother and Laura wonder on the
+lawn, and his uncle, who was dozing over the paper in the drawing-room,
+start, and say to himself, "that boy's drinking too much."
+
+Smirke put down the glass.
+
+"I accept the omen," gasped out the blushing curate. "Oh, my dear
+Arthur, you--you know her--"
+
+"What--Myra Portman? I wish you joy: she's got a dev'lish large waist;
+but I wish you joy, old fellow."
+
+"Oh, Arthur!" groaned the curate again, and nodded his head, speechless.
+
+"Beg your pardon--sorry I offended you--but she _has_ got a large waist,
+you know--devilish large waist," Pen continued--the third bottle
+evidently beginning to act upon the young gentleman.
+
+"It's not Miss Portman," the other said, in a voice of agony.
+
+"Is it any body at Chatteries or at Clapham? Somebody here? No--it ain't
+old Pybus? it can't be Miss Rolt at the factory--she's only fourteen."
+
+"It's somebody rather older than I am, Pen," the curate cried, looking
+up at his friend, and then guiltily casting his eyes down into his
+plate.
+
+Pen burst out laughing. "It's Madame Fribsby, by Jove, it's Madame
+Fribsby. Madame Frib, by the immortal gods!"
+
+The curate could contain no more. "O Pen," he cried, "how can you
+suppose that any of those--of those more than ordinary beings you have
+named, could have an influence upon this heart, when I have been daily
+in the habit of contemplating perfection! I may be insane, I may be
+madly ambitious, I may be presumptuous--but for two years my heart has
+been filled by one image, and has known no other idol. Haven't I loved
+you as a son, Arthur?--say, hasn't Charles Smirke loved you as a son?"
+
+"Yes, old boy, you've been very good to me," Pen said, whose liking,
+however, for his tutor was not by any means of the filial kind.
+
+"My means," rushed on Smirke, "are at present limited, I own, and my
+mother is not so liberal as might be desired; but what she has will
+be mine at her death. Were she to hear of my marrying a lady of rank
+and good fortune, my mother would be liberal, I am sure she would be
+liberal. Whatever I have or subsequently inherit--and it's five hundred
+a year at the very least--would be settled upon her and--and--and you
+at my death--that is--"
+
+"What the deuce do you mean?--and what have I to do with your money?"
+cried out Pen, in a puzzle.
+
+"Arthur, Arthur!" exclaimed the other wildly; "You say I am your dearest
+friend--let me be more. Oh, can't you see that the angelic being I
+love--the purest, the best of women--is no other than your dear, dear
+angel of a mother."
+
+"My mother!" cried out Arthur, jumping up, and sober in a minute. "Pooh!
+damn it, Smirke, you must be mad--she's seven or eight years older than
+you are."
+
+"Did _you_ find that any objection," cried Smirke piteously, and
+alluding, of course, to the elderly subject of Pen's own passion.
+
+The lad felt the hint, and blushed quite red. "The cases are not
+similar, Smirke," he said, "and the allusion might have been spared.
+A man may forget his own rank and elevate any woman to it; but allow
+me to say our positions are very different."
+
+"How do you mean, dear Arthur?" the curate interposed sadly, cowering as
+he felt that his sentence was about to be read.
+
+"Mean?" said Arthur. "I mean what I say. My tutor, I say, _my tutor_,
+has no right to ask a lady of my mother's rank of life to marry him.
+It's a breach of confidence. I say it's a liberty you take, Smirke--it's
+a liberty. Mean, indeed!"
+
+"Oh Arthur!" the curate began to cry, with clasped hands, and a scared
+face, but Arthur gave another stamp with his foot, and began to pull at
+the bell. "Don't let's have any more of this. We'll have some coffee, if
+you please," he said, with a majestic air: and the old butler entering
+at the summons, Arthur bade him to serve that refreshment.
+
+John said he had just carried coffee into the drawing-room, where his
+uncle was asking for Master Arthur, and the old man gave a glance
+of wonder at the three empty claret-bottles. Smirke said he thought
+he'd--he'd rather not go into the drawing-room, on which Arthur
+haughtily said, "As you please," and called for Mr. Smirke's horse to
+be brought round. The poor fellow said he knew the way to the stable
+and would get his pony himself, and he went into the hall and sadly put
+on his coat and hat.
+
+Pen followed him out uncovered. Helen was still walking up and down the
+soft lawn as the sun was setting, and the curate took off his hat and
+bowed by way of farewell, and passed on to the door leading to the
+stable-court by which the pair disappeared. Smirke knew the way to the
+stables, as he said, well enough. He fumbled at the girths of the saddle
+which Pen fastened for him, and put on the bridle and led the pony into
+the yard. The boy was touched by the grief which appeared in the other's
+face as he mounted. Pen held out his hand, and Smirke wrung it silently.
+
+"I say, Smirke," he said, in an agitated voice, "forgive me if I have
+said any thing harsh--for you have always been very, very kind to me.
+But it can't be, old fellow, it can't be. Be a man. God bless you."
+
+Smirke nodded his head silently, and rode out of the lodge gate; and Pen
+looked after him for a couple of minutes, until he disappeared down the
+road, and the clatter of the pony's hoofs died away. Helen was still
+lingering in the lawn waiting until the boy came back--she put his
+hair off his forehead and kissed it fondly. She was afraid he had been
+drinking too much wine. Why had Mr. Smirke gone away without any tea?
+
+He looked at her with a kind humor 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 out Major Pendennis, "your coffee is getting quite cold."
+
+When Laura was gone to bed, Pen, who was big with his secret, burst
+out with it, and described the dismal but ludicrous scene which had
+occurred. Helen heard of it with many blushes, which became her pale
+face very well, and a perplexity which Arthur roguishly enjoyed.
+
+"Confound the fellow's impudence," Major Pendennis said, as he took his
+candle, "where will the assurance of these people stop?" Pen and his
+mother had a long talk that night, full of love, confidence, and
+laughter, and the boy somehow slept more soundly and woke up more easily
+than he had done for many months before.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before the great Mr. Dolphin quitted Chatteries, 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 honor
+in the least call upon him to accomplish that threat.
+
+When Miss Costigan had seen all the outstanding bills paid to the
+uttermost shilling, she handed over the balance to her father, who broke
+out into hospitalities to all his friends, gave the little Creeds more
+apples and gingerbread, than he had ever bestowed upon them, so that the
+widow Creed ever after held the memory of her lodger in veneration, and
+the young ones wept bitterly when he went away; and in a word, managed
+the money so cleverly that it was entirely expended before many days,
+and that he was compelled to draw upon Mr. Dolphin for a sum to pay for
+traveling expenses when the time of their departure arrived.
+
+There was held at an inn in that county town a weekly meeting of a
+festive, almost a riotous character, of a society of gentlemen who
+called themselves the Buccaneers. Some of the choice spirits of
+Chatteries 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 Chatteries
+Champion, were among the crew of the Buccaneers, whom also Bingley the
+manager liked to join of a Saturday evening, whenever he received
+permission from his lady.
+
+Costigan had been also an occasional Buccaneer. But a want of
+punctuality of payments had of late somewhat excluded him from the
+society, where he was subject to disagreeable remarks from the landlord,
+who said that a Buccaneer who didn't pay his shot was utterly unworthy
+to be a Marine Bandit. But when it became known to the 'Ears, as the
+clubbists called themselves familiarly, that Miss Fotheringay had made
+a splendid engagement, a great revolution of feeling took place in the
+club regarding Captain Costigan. Solly, mine host of the Grapes, (and
+I need not say as worthy a fellow as ever stood behind a bar), told
+the gents in the Buccaneers' room one night how noble the captain had
+beayved: having been round and paid off all his ticks in Chatteries,
+including his score of three pound fourteen here, and pronounced that
+Cos was a good feller, a gentleman at bottom, and he, Solly, had always
+said so, and finally worked upon the feelings of the Buccaneers to give
+the captain a dinner.
+
+The banquet took place on the last night of Costigan's stay in
+Chatteries, 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 this 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 Chatteries men, and then without
+further circumlocution proposed their friend "Captain Costigan."
+
+After the enthusiastic cheering which rang through old Chatteries had
+subsided, Captain Costigan rose in reply, and made a speech of twenty
+minutes, in which he was repeatedly overcome by his emotions.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 Chatteries she had acquired the skill which
+she was about to exercise in another sphere, and in her name and his
+own, Jack Costigan thanked and blessed them. The gallant officer's speech
+was received with tremendous cheers.
+
+Mr. Hicks, Croupier, in a brilliant and energetic manner, proposed Miss
+Fotheringay's health.
+
+Captain Costigan returned thanks in a speech full of feeling and
+eloquence.
+
+Mr. Jubber proposed the Drama and the Chatteries Theater, and Mr.
+Bingley was about to rise, but was prevented by Captain Costigan, who,
+as long connected with the Chatteries Theater, 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 honor
+of dining with His Royal Highness and the Duke of Kent many times; and
+the former had justly been named the friend of the soldier. (Cheers.)
+
+The army was then proposed, and Captain Costigan returned thanks. In
+the course of the night he sang his well known songs, "The Deserter,"
+"The Shan Van Voght," "The Little Pig under the Bed," and "The Vale of
+Avoca." The evening was a great triumph for him--it ended. All triumphs
+and all evenings end. And the next day, Miss Costigan having taken leave
+of all her friends, and having been reconciled to Miss Rouncy, to whom
+she left a necklace and a white satin gown--the next day he and Miss
+Costigan had places in the Competitor coach rolling by the gates of
+Fairoaks Lodge--and Pendennis never saw them.
+
+Tom Smith, the coachman, pointed out Fairoaks to Mr. Costigan, who sate
+on the box smelling of rum-and-water--and the captain said it was a
+poor place--and added, "Ye should see Castle Costigan, County Mayo, me
+boy,"--which Tom said he should like very much to see.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were gone and Pen had never seen them! He only knew of their
+departure by its announcement in the county paper the next day and
+straight galloped over to Chatteries 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 bed-room. It was
+swept out and prepared for new comers. The glass which had reflected her
+fair face was shining ready for her successor. The curtains lay square
+folded on the little bed: he flung himself down and buried his head on
+the vacant pillow.
+
+Laura had netted a purse into which his mother had put some sovereigns,
+and Pen had found it on his dressing-table that very morning. He gave
+one to the little servant who had been used to wait upon the Costigans,
+and another to the children, because they said they were very fond of
+her. It was but a few months back, yet what years ago it seemed since
+he had first entered that room! He felt that it was all done. The very
+missing her at the coach had something fatal in it. Blank, weary,
+utterly wretched and lonely the poor lad felt.
+
+His mother saw she was gone by his look when he came home. He was eager
+to fly too now, as were other folks round about Chatteries. Poor Smirke
+wanted to go away from the sight of the syren widow. Foker began to
+think he had had enough of Baymouth, and that a few supper parties at
+Saint Boniface would not be unpleasant. And Major Pendennis longed to be
+off, and have a little pheasant-shooting at Stillbrook, and get rid of
+all annoyances and _tracasseries_ of the village. The widow and Laura
+nervously set about the preparation for Pen's kit, and filled trunks
+with his books and linen. Helen wrote cards with the name of Arthur
+Pendennis, Esq., which were duly nailed on the boxes; and at which both
+she and Laura looked with tearful, wistful eyes. It was not until long,
+long after he was gone, that Pen remembered how constant and tender the
+affection of these women had been, and how selfish his own conduct was.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A night soon comes, when the mail, with echoing horn and blazing lamps,
+stops at the lodge-gate of Fairoaks, and Pen's trunks and his uncle's
+are placed on the roof of the carriage, into which the pair presently
+afterward enter. Helen and Laura are standing by the evergreens of the
+shrubbery, their figures lighted up by the coach lamps; the guard cries,
+All right: in another instant the carriage whirls onward; the lights
+disappear, and Helen's heart and prayers go with them. Her sainted
+benedictions follow the departing boy. He has left the home-nest in
+which he has been chafing, and whither, after his very first flight, he
+returned bleeding and wounded; he is eager to go forth again, and try
+his restless wings.
+
+How lonely the house looks without him! The corded trunks and book-boxes
+are there in his empty study. Laura asks leave to come and sleep in
+Helen's room: and when she has cried herself to sleep there, the mother
+goes softly into Pen's vacant chamber, and kneels down by the bed, on
+which the moon is shining, and there prays for her boy, as mothers only
+know how to plead. He knows that her pure blessings are following him,
+as he is carried miles away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+ALMA MATER.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 _excat_ somehow, and was bent on a day's lark in London: he never
+stopped rattling and talking from the commencement of the journey until
+its close (which was a great deal too soon for me, for I never was tired
+of listening to the honest young fellow's jokes and cheery laughter);
+and when we arrived at the terminus nothing would satisfy him but a
+Hansom cab, so that he might get into town the quicker, and plunge into
+the pleasures awaiting him there. Away the young lad went whirling, with
+joy lighting up his honest face; and as for the reader's humble servant,
+having but a small carpet-bag, I got up on the outside of the omnibus,
+and sate there very contentedly between a Jew-pedlar smoking bad cigars,
+and a gentleman's servant taking care of a poodle-dog, until we got
+our fated complement of passengers and boxes, when the coachman drove
+leisurely away. _We_ weren't in a hurry to get to town. Neither one of
+us was particularly eager about rushing into that near smoking Babylon,
+or thought of dining at the club that night, or dancing at the Casino.
+Yet a few years more, and my young friend of the railroad will be not
+a whit more eager.
+
+There were no railroads made when Arthur Pendennis went to the famous
+University of Oxbridge; but he drove thither in a well appointed coach,
+filled inside and out with dons, gownsmen, young freshmen about to
+enter, and their guardians, who were conducting them to the University.
+A fat old gentleman, in gray stockings, from the City, who sate by Major
+Pendennis inside the coach, having his pale-faced son opposite, was
+frightened beyond measure, when he heard that the coach had been driven
+for a couple of stages by young Mr. Foker, of Saint Boniface College,
+who was the friend of all men, including coachmen, and could drive as
+well as Tom Hicks himself. Pen sate on the roof, examining coach,
+passengers, and country, with great delight and curiosity. His heart
+jumped with pleasure as the famous University came in view, and the
+magnificent prospect of venerable towers and pinnacles, tall elms and
+shining river, spread before him.
+
+Pen had passed a few days with his uncle at the major's lodgings,
+in Bury-street, before they set out for Oxbridge. Major Pendennis
+thought that the lad's wardrobe wanted renewal; and Arthur was by
+no means averse to any plan which was to bring him new coats and
+waistcoats. There was no end to the sacrifices which the self-denying
+uncle made in the youth's behalf. London was awfully lonely. The Pall
+Mall pavement was deserted; the very red jackets had gone out of town.
+There was scarce a face to be seen in the bow windows of the clubs.
+The major conducted his nephew into one or two of those desert
+mansions, and wrote down the lad's name on the candidate-list of one
+of them; and Arthur's pleasure at this compliment on his guardian's
+part was excessive. He read in the parchment volume his name and titles,
+as "Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, of Fairoaks Lodge, --shire, and Saint
+Boniface College, Oxbridge; proposed by Major Pendennis, and seconded by
+Viscount Colchicum," with a thrill of intense gratification. "You will
+come in for ballot in about three years, by which time you will have
+taken your degree," the guardian said. Pen longed for the three years to
+be over, and surveyed the stucco-halls, and vast libraries, and drawing
+rooms, as already his own property. The major laughed slily 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
+Gray Friars, and renewed acquaintance with some of their old comrades
+there. The boys came crowding up to the cab as it stood by the Gray
+Friars gates, where they were entering, and admired the chestnut horse,
+and the tights and livery and gravity of Stoopid, the tiger. The bell
+for afternoon-school rang as they were swaggering about the play ground
+talking to their old cronies. The awful doctor passed into school with
+his grammar in his hand. Foker slunk away uneasily at his presence, but
+Pen went up blushing, and shook the dignitary by the hand. He laughed as
+he thought that well-remembered Latin Grammar had boxed his ears many a
+time. He was generous, good-natured, and, in a word, perfectly conceited
+and satisfied with himself.
+
+Then they drove to the parental brew-house. Foker's Entire is composed
+in an enormous pile of buildings, not far from the Gray Friars, and the
+name of that well known firm is gilded upon innumerable public-house
+signs, tenanted by its vassals in the neighborhood; and the venerable
+junior partner and manager did honor to the young lord of the vats,
+and his friend, and served them with silver flagons of brown stout, so
+strong, that you would have thought, not only the young men, but the
+very horse Mr. Harry Foker drove, was affected by the potency of the
+drink, for he rushed home to the west-end of the town at a rapid pace,
+which endangered the pie-stalls and the women on the crossings, and
+brought the cab-steps into collision with the posts at the street
+corners, and caused Stoopid to swing fearfully on his board behind.
+
+The major was quite pleased when Pen was with his young acquaintance;
+listened to Mr. Foker's artless stories with the greatest interest,
+gave the two boys a fine dinner at a Covent Garden Coffee-house, whence
+they proceeded to the play; but was above all happy when Mr. and
+Lady Agnes Foker, who happened to be in London, requested the pleasure
+of Major Pendennis and Mr. Arthur Pendennis's company at dinner in
+Grosvenor-street. "Having obtained the _entrée_ 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-honored
+joke.
+
+Lady Agnes, who, wrapped up in Harry, was the fondest of mothers, and
+one of the most good-natured though not the wisest of women, received
+her son's friend with great cordiality: and astonished Pen by accounts
+of the severe course of studies which her darling boy was pursuing, and
+which she feared might injure his dear health. Foker the elder burst
+into a horse-laugh at some of these speeches, and the heir of the house
+winked his eye very knowingly at his friend. And Lady Agnes then going
+through her son's history from the earliest time, and recounting his
+miraculous sufferings in the measles and whooping-cough, his escape
+from drowning, the shocking tyrannies practiced 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 the pheasants came with the second course, which the major praised
+as the very finest birds he ever saw, her ladyship said they came from
+Logwood (as the major knew perfectly well) and hoped that they would
+both pay her a visit there--at Christmas, or when dear Harry was at
+home for the vacations.
+
+"God bless you, my dear boy," Pendennis said to Arthur, as they were
+lighting their candles in Bury-street afterward 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 _entrée_--with a good _entrée_,
+mind--it is just as easy for you to have good society as bad, and that
+it costs a man, when properly introduced, no more trouble or _soins_ to
+keep a good footing in the best houses in London than to dine with a
+lawyer in Bedford-square. Mind this when you are at Oxbridge pursuing
+your studies, and for Heaven's sake be _very_ particular in the
+acquaintances which you make. The _premier pas_ in life is the most
+important of all--did you write to your mother to-day?--No?--well, do,
+before you go, and call and ask Mr. Foker for a frank.--They like
+it.--Good night. God bless you."
+
+Pen wrote a droll account of his doings in London, and the play, and the
+visit to the old Friars, and the brewery, and the party at Mr. Foker's,
+to his dearest mother, who was saying her prayers at home in the lonely
+house at Fairoaks, her heart full of love and tenderness unutterable for
+the boy: and she and Laura read that letter and those which followed,
+many, many times, and brooded over them as women do. It was the first
+step in life that Pen was making--Ah! what a dangerous journey it
+is, and how the bravest may stumble and the strongest fail. Brother
+wayfarer! may you have a kind arm to support you on the path, and a
+friendly hand to succor those who fall beside you. May truth guide,
+mercy forgive at the end, and love accompany always. Without that
+lamp how blind the traveler would be, and how black and cheerless
+the journey!
+
+So the coach drove up to that ancient and comfortable inn the
+Trencher, which stands in Main-street Oxbridge, and Pen with delight
+and eagerness remarked, for the first time, gownsmen going about,
+chapel bells clinking (bells in Oxbridge are ringing from morning-tide
+till even-song)--towers and pinnacles rising calm and stately over
+the gables and antique house-roofs of the homely, busy city. Previous
+communications had taken place between Dr. Portman on Pen's part, and
+Mr. Buck, Tutor of Boniface, on whose side Pen was entered; and as soon
+as Major Pendennis had arranged his personal appearance, so that it
+should make a satisfactory impression upon Pen's tutor, the pair walked
+down Main-street, and passed the great gate and belfry-tower of Saint
+George's College, and so came, as they were directed, to Saint Boniface:
+where again Pen's heart began to beat as they entered at the wicket of
+the venerable ivy-mantled gate of the college. It is surmounted with an
+ancient dome almost covered with creepers, and adorned with the effigy
+of the saint from whom the house takes its name, and many coats-of-arms
+of its royal and noble benefactors.
+
+The porter pointed out a queer old tower at the corner of the
+quadrangle, by which Mr. Buck's rooms were approached, and the two
+gentlemen walked across the square, the main features of which, were
+at once and forever stamped in Pen's mind--the pretty fountain playing
+in the center 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
+awfully in rustling silks; the lines of the surrounding rooms pleasantly
+broken by carved chimneys, gray turrets, and quaint gables--all these
+Mr. Pen's eyes drank in with an eagerness which belongs to first
+impressions; and Major Pendennis surveyed with that calmness which
+belongs to a gentleman who does not care for the picturesque, and whose
+eyes have been somewhat dimmed by the constant glare of the pavement of
+Pall Mall.
+
+Saint George's is the great college of the University of Oxbridge, with
+its four vast quadrangles, and its beautiful hall and gardens, and the
+Georgians, as the men are called, wear gowns of a peculiar cut, and give
+themselves no small airs of superiority over all other young men. Little
+Saint Boniface is but a petty hermitage in comparison of the huge
+consecrated pile alongside of which it lies. But considering its size it
+has always kept an excellent name in the University. Its _ton_ is very
+good; the best families of certain counties have time out of mind sent
+up their young men to Saint Boniface; the college livings are remarkably
+good, the fellowships easy; the Boniface men had had more than their
+fair share of University honors; 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 Dr. 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 St. 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 honors in the
+other University of Camford) and the wine in the fellows' room has long
+been famed for its excellence and abundance.
+
+Into this certainly not the least snugly sheltered arbor among the
+groves of Academe, Pen now found his way, leaning on his uncle's arm,
+and they speedily reached Mr. Buck's rooms, and were conducted into the
+apartment of that courteous gentleman.
+
+He had received previous information from Dr. Portman regarding Pen,
+with respect to whose family, fortune, and personal merits the honest
+doctor had spoken with no small enthusiasm. Indeed Portman had described
+Arthur to the tutor "as a young gentleman of some fortune and landed
+estate, of one of the most ancient families in the kingdom, and
+possessing such a character and genius as were sure, under the proper
+guidance, to make him a credit to the college and the University." Under
+such recommendations the tutor was, of course, most cordial to the young
+freshman and his guardian, invited the latter to dine in hall, where he
+would have the satisfaction of seeing his nephew wear his gown and eat
+his dinner for the first time, and requested the pair to take wine at
+his rooms after hall, and in consequence of the highly favorable report
+he had received of Mr. Arthur Pendennis, said he should be happy to give
+him the best set of rooms to be had in college--a gentleman-pensioner's
+set, indeed, which were just luckily vacant. So they parted until
+dinner-time, which was very near at hand, and Major Pendennis pronounced
+Mr. Buck to be uncommonly civil indeed. Indeed when a college magnate
+takes the trouble to be polite, there is no man more splendidly
+courteous. Immersed in their books and excluded from the world by the
+gravity of their occupations, these reverend men assume a solemn
+magnificence of compliment in which they rustle and swell as in their
+grand robes of state. Those silks and brocades are not put on for all
+comers or every day.
+
+When the two gentlemen had taken leave of the tutor in his study, and
+had returned to Mr. Buck's ante-room, or lecture-room, a very handsome
+apartment, turkey-carpeted, and hung with excellent prints and richly
+framed pictures, they found the tutor's servant already in waiting
+there, accompanied by a man with a bag full of caps and a number of
+gowns, from which Pen might select a cap and gown for himself, and the
+servant, no doubt, would get a commission proportionable to the service
+done by him. Mr. Pen was all in a tremor of pleasure as the bustling
+tailor tried on a gown and pronounced that it was an excellent fit; and
+then he put the pretty college cap on, in rather a dandified manner and
+somewhat on one side, as he had seen Fiddicombe, the youngest master at
+Gray 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Then Davis, the skip or attendant, led the way, keys in hand, across the
+quadrangle, the major and Pen following him, the latter blushing, and
+pleased with his new academical habiliments, across the quadrangle to
+the rooms which were destined for the freshman; and which were vacated
+by the retreat of the gentleman-pensioner, Mr. Spicer. The rooms were
+very comfortable, with large cross beams, high wainscots and small
+windows in deep embrasures. Mr. Spicer's furniture was there, and to be
+sold at a valuation, and Major Pendennis agreed on his nephew's behalf
+to take the available part of it, laughingly, however, declining (as,
+indeed, Pen did for his own part), six sporting prints, and four groups
+of opera-dancers with gauze draperies, which formed the late occupant's
+pictorial collection.
+
+Then they went to hall, where Pen sate down and ate his commons with his
+brother freshmen, and the major took his place at the high-table along
+with the college dignitaries and other fathers or guardians of youth,
+who had come up with their sons to Oxbridge; and after hall they went
+to Mr. Buck's to take wine: and after wine to chapel, where the major
+sate with great gravity in the upper place, having a fine view of the
+Master in his carved throne or stall under the organ-loft, where that
+gentleman, the learned Doctor Donne, sate magnificent, with his great
+prayer-book before him, an image of statuesque piety and rigid devotion.
+All the young freshmen behaved with gravity and decorum, but Pen was
+shocked to see that atrocious little Foker, who came in very late,
+and half-a-dozen of his comrades in the gentlemen-pensioners' seats,
+giggling and talking as if they had been in so many stalls at the opera.
+But these circumstances, it must be remembered, took place some years
+back, when William the Fourth was king. Young men are much better
+behaved now, and besides, Saint Boniface was rather a fast college.
+
+Pen could hardly sleep at night in his bed-room 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 in the mire! that there was a time in his life,
+and that but a few months back, when he was willing to take Costigan
+for his father-in-law!--
+
+"Poor old Smirke!" Pen presently laughed out--"well, I'll write and try
+and console the poor old boy. He won't die of his passion, ha, ha!" The
+major, had he been awake, might have heard a score of such ejaculations
+uttered by Pen as he lay awake and restless through the first night of
+his residence at Oxbridge.
+
+It would, perhaps, have been better for a youth, the battle of whose
+life was going to begin on the morrow, to have passed the eve in a
+different sort of vigil: but the world had got hold of Pen in the
+shape of his selfish old Mentor; and those who have any interest in
+his character, must have perceived ere now, that this lad was very
+weak as well as very impetuous, very vain as well as very frank, and
+if of a generous disposition, not a little selfish in the midst of
+his profuseness, and also rather fickle, as all eager pursuers of
+self-gratification are.
+
+The six months' passion had aged him very considerably. There was
+an immense gulf between Pen the victim of love, and Pen the innocent
+boy of eighteen, sighing after it: and so Arthur Pendennis had all the
+experience and superiority, besides that command which afterward conceit
+and imperiousness of disposition gave him over the young men with whom
+he now began to live.
+
+He and his uncle passed the morning with great satisfaction in making
+purchases for the better comfort of the apartments which the lad was
+about to occupy. Mr. Spicer's china and glass was in a dreadfully
+dismantled condition, his lamps smashed, and his book cases by no means
+so spacious as those shelves which would be requisite to receive the
+contents of the boxes which were lying in the hall at Fairoaks, and
+which were addressed to Arthur in the hand of poor Helen.
+
+The boxes arrived in a few days, that his mother had packed with so
+much care. Pen was touched as he read the superscriptions in the dear
+well-known hand, and he arranged in their proper places all the books,
+his old friends, and all the linen and table-cloths which Helen had
+selected from the family stock, and all the jam-pots which little Laura
+had bound in straw, and the hundred simple gifts of home. Pen had
+another Alma Mater now. But it is not all children who take to her
+kindly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+PENDENNIS OF BONIFACE.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 honor, 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 _tu 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
+neighboring great houses, whereof the families were not gone abroad, and
+where good shooting and company was to be had.
+
+A quarter of the space which custom has awarded to works styled the
+Serial Nature, has been assigned to the account of one passage in Pen's
+career, and it is manifest that the whole of his adventures can not 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 honor 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 neighbors, only that his neighbors are bad, for the most part. Let
+us have the candor to own as much at least. Can you point out ten
+spotless men of your acquaintance? Mine is pretty large, but I can't
+find ten saints in the list.
+
+During the first term of Mr. Pen's academical life, he attended
+classical and mathematical lectures with tolerable assiduity; but
+discovering, before very long time, that he had little taste or genius
+for the pursuing of the exact sciences, and being, perhaps, rather
+annoyed that one or two very vulgar young men, who did not even use
+straps to their trowsers, so as to cover the abominably thick and
+coarse shoes and stockings which they wore, beat him completely in the
+lecture-room, he gave up his attendance at that course, and announced to
+his fond parent that he proposed to devote himself exclusively to the
+cultivation of Greek and Roman literature.
+
+Mrs. Pendennis was, for her part, quite satisfied that her darling boy
+should pursue that branch of learning for which he had the greatest
+inclination; and only besought him not to ruin his health by too much
+study, for she had heard the most melancholy stories of young students
+who, by over fatigue, had brought on brain-fevers and perished untimely
+in the midst of their university career. And Pen's health, which was
+always delicate, was to be regarded, as she justly said, beyond all
+considerations or vain honors. Pen, although not aware of any lurking
+disease which was likely to endanger his life, yet kindly promised his
+mamma not to sit up reading too late of nights, and stuck to his word in
+this respect with a great deal more tenacity of resolution than he
+exhibited upon some other occasions, when, perhaps, he was a little
+remiss.
+
+Presently he began too to find that he learned little good in the
+classical lecture. His fellow-students there were too dull, as in
+mathematics they were too learned for him. Mr. Buck, the tutor, was no
+better a scholar than many a fifth-form boy at Gray Friars; might have
+some stupid humdrum notions about the meter and grammatical construction
+of a passage of Æschylus or Aristophanes, but had no more notion of the
+poetry than Mrs. Binge, his bed-maker; and Pen grew weary of hearing the
+dull students and tutor blunder through a few lines of a play, which he
+could read in a tenth part of the time which they gave to it. After all,
+private reading, as he began to perceive, was the only study which was
+really profitable to a man; and he announced to his mamma, that he
+should read by himself a great deal more, and in public a great deal
+less. That excellent woman knew no more about Homer than she did about
+algebra, but she was quite contented with Pen's arrangements regarding
+his course of studies, and felt perfectly confident that her dear boy
+would get the place which he merited.
+
+Pen did not come home until after Christmas, a little to the fond
+mother's disappointment, and Laura's, who was longing for him to make a
+fine snow fortification, such as he had made three winters before. But
+he was invited to Logwood, Lady Agnes Foker's, where there were private
+theatricals, and a gay Christmas party of very fine folks, some of them
+whom Major Pendennis would, on no account, have his nephew neglect.
+However, he staid at home for the last three weeks of the vacation,
+and Laura had the opportunity of remarking what a quantity of fine new
+clothes he brought with him, and his mother admired his improved
+appearance and manly and decided tone.
+
+He did not come home at Easter; but when he arrived for the long
+vacation, he brought more smart clothes: appearing in the morning in
+wonderful shooting-jackets, with remarkable buttons; and in the evening
+in gorgeous velvet waistcoats, with richly-embroidered cravats, and
+curious linen. And as she pried about his room, she saw, oh, such a
+beautiful dressing-case, with silver mountings, and a quantity of lovely
+rings and jewelry. 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 time-piece 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 favor, and of that
+other school watch which has once before been mentioned in this history.
+Our old friend, Rebecca, Pen pronounced to be no longer up to his
+weight, and swapped her away for another and more powerful horse, for
+which he had to pay rather a heavy figure. Mrs. Pendennis gave the boy
+the money for the new horse; and Laura cried when Rebecca was fetched
+away.
+
+Also Pen brought a large box of cigars, branded _Colorados_,
+_Afrancesados_, _Telescopios_, Fudson, Oxford-street, or by some such
+strange titles, and began to consume these not only about the stables
+and green-houses, where they were very good for Helen's plants, but in
+his own study, of which practice his mother did not at first approve.
+But he was at work upon a prize-poem, he said, and could not compose
+without his cigar, and quoted the late lamented Lord Byron's lines in
+favor 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 labors (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 bed-room which was adjacent, and
+actually put the cigar into his mouth and lighted the match at which he
+kindled it. Pen laughed, and kissed his mother's hand as it hung fondly
+over the back of the sofa. "Dear old mother," he said, "if I were to
+tell you to burn the house down, I think you would do it." And it is
+very likely that Mr. Pen was right, and that the foolish woman would
+have done almost as much for him as he said.
+
+Besides the works of English "light literature" which this diligent
+student devoured, he brought down boxes of the light literature of the
+neighboring 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 Molière. And Mrs. Pendennis yielded with a sigh of perplexity.
+But Miss Laura was warned off the books, both by his anxious mother, and
+that rigid moralist Mr. Arthur Pendennis himself, who, however _he_
+might be called upon to study every branch of literature in order to
+form his mind and to perfect his style, would by no means prescribe such
+a course of reading to a young lady whose business in life was very
+different.
+
+In the course of this long vacation Mr. Pen drank up the bin of
+claret which his father had laid in, and of which we have heard the son
+remark, that there was not a headache in a hogshead; and this wine being
+exhausted, he wrote for a further supply to "his wine merchants,"
+Messrs. Binney and Latham of Mark Lane, London: from whom, indeed, old
+Doctor Portman had recommended Pen to get a supply of port and sherry on
+going to college. "You will have, no doubt, to entertain your young
+friends at Boniface with wine parties," the honest rector had remarked
+to the lad. "They used to be customary at college in my time, and I
+would advise you to employ an honest and respectable house in London for
+your small stock of wine, rather than to have recourse to the Oxbridge
+tradesmen, whose liquor, if I remember rightly, was both deleterious in
+quality and exorbitant in price." And the obedient young gentleman took
+the doctor's advice, and patronized Messrs. Binney and Latham at the
+rector's suggestion.
+
+So when he wrote orders for a stock of wine to be sent down to the
+cellars at Fairoaks, he hinted that Messrs. B. and L. might send in his
+university account for wine at the same time with the Fairoaks bill.
+The poor widow was frightened at the amount. But Pen laughed at her
+old-fashioned views, said that the bill was moderate, that every body
+drank claret and champagne now, and, finally, the widow paid, feeling
+dimly, that the expenses of her household were increasing considerably,
+and that her narrow income would scarce suffice to meet them. But they
+were only occasional. Pen merely came home for a few weeks at the
+vacation. Laura and she might pinch when he was gone. In the brief time
+he was with them ought they not to make him happy?
+
+Arthur's own allowances were liberal all this time; indeed, much more
+so than those of the sons of far more wealthy men. Years before, the
+thrifty and affectionate John Pendennis, whose darling project it had
+ever been to give his son a university education, and those advantages
+of which his own father's extravagance had deprived him, had begun
+laying by a store of money which he called Arthur's Education Fund. Year
+after year in his book his executors found entries of sums vested as
+A. E. F., and during the period subsequent to her husband's decease,
+and before Pen's entry at college, the widow had added sundry sums
+to this fund, so that when Arthur went up to Oxbridge it reached no
+inconsiderable amount. Let him be liberally allowanced, was Major
+Pendennis's maxim. Let him make his first _entrée_ into the world as a
+gentleman, and take his place with men of good rank and station: after
+giving it to him, it will be his own duty to hold it. There is no such
+bad policy as stinting a boy--or putting him on a lower allowance than
+his fellows. Arthur will have to face the world and fight for himself
+presently. Meanwhile we shall have procured for him good friends,
+gentlemanly habits, and have him well backed and well trained against
+the time when the real struggle comes. And these liberal opinions the
+major probably advanced, both because they were just, and because he
+was not dealing with his own money.
+
+Thus young Pen, the only son of an estated country gentleman, with a
+good allowance, and a gentlemanlike bearing and person, looked to be
+a lad of much more consequence than he was really; and was held by
+the Oxbridge authorities, tradesmen, and undergraduates, as quite a
+young buck and member of the aristocracy. His manner was frank, brave,
+and perhaps a little impertinent, as becomes a high-spirited youth. He
+was perfectly generous and free-handed with his money, which seemed
+pretty plentiful. He loved joviality, and had a good voice for a song.
+Boat-racing had not risen in Pen's time to the _fureur_ which, as we are
+given to understand, it has since attained in the University; and riding
+and tandem-driving were the fashions of the ingenuous youth. Pen rode
+well to hounds, appeared in pink, as became a young buck, and not
+particularly extravagant in equestrian or any other amusement, yet
+managed to run up a fine bill at Nile's the livery stable-keeper, and
+in a number of other quarters. In fact, this lucky young gentleman had
+almost every taste to a considerable degree. He was very fond of books
+of all sorts: Doctor Portman had taught him to like rare editions, and
+his own taste led him to like beautiful bindings. It was marvelous
+what tall copies, and gilding, and marbling, and blind-tooling, the
+booksellers and binders put upon Pen's book-shelves. 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, jewelry, 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 splendor. He and his
+polite friends would dress themselves out with as much care in order
+to go and dine at each others' rooms, as other folks would who were
+going to enslave a mistress. They said he used to wear rings over
+his kid gloves, which he always denies; but what follies will not youth
+perpetrate with its own admirable gravity and simplicity? That he took
+perfumed baths is a truth; and he used to say that he took them after
+meeting certain men of a very low set in hall.
+
+In Pen's second year, when Miss Fotheringay made her chief hit in
+London, and scores of prints were published of her, Pen had one of these
+hung in his bed-room, 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 lionize the University, and passed before
+him on the arms of happy gownsmen, and give his opinion upon their
+personal charms, or their toilets, 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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
+jeweler, was known to sell no less than two gross of Pendennis pins,
+from a pattern which the young gentleman had selected in his shop.
+
+Now if any person with an arithmetical turn of mind will take the
+trouble to calculate what a sum of money it would cost a young man to
+indulge freely in all the above propensities which we have said Mr.
+Pen possessed, it will be seen that a young fellow, with such liberal
+tastes and amusements, must needs in the course of two or three years
+spend or owe a very handsome sum of money. We have said our friend Pen
+had not a calculating turn. No one propensity of his was outrageously
+extravagant; and it is certain that Paddington's tailor's account;
+Guttlebury's cook's bill for dinners; Dillon Tandy's bill with Finn, the
+print-seller, for Raphael-Morghens, 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 horse-dealer, 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 gentleman, 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 Calender" or "Bell's Life," or cared for any
+manuscript except his greasy little scrawl of a betting-book:--our
+Catholic-minded young friend occupied himself in every one of the
+branches of science or pleasure above-mentioned, and distinguished
+himself tolerably in each.
+
+Hence young Pen got a prodigious reputation in the University, and was
+hailed as a sort of Crichton; and as for the English verse prize, in
+competition for which we have seen him busily engaged at Fairoaks, Jones
+of Jesus carried it that year certainly, but the undergraduates thought
+Pen's a much finer poem, and he had his verses printed at his own
+expense, and distributed in gilt morocco covers among his acquaintance.
+I found a copy of it lately in a dusty corner of Mr. Pen's book-cases,
+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 lusters!
+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 defense
+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-ax 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 frank and false,
+and so 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 honors which
+now are of little worth to him: that had virtue, learning, genius--every
+faculty and endowment which might secure love, admiration and worldly
+fame: an obscure and solitary churchyard contains the grave of many fond
+hopes, and the pathetic stone which bids them farewell--I saw the sun
+shining on it in the fall of last year, and heard the sweet village
+choir raising anthems round about. What boots whether it be Westminster
+or a little country spire which covers your ashes, or if, a few days
+sooner or later, the world forgets you?
+
+Amidst these friends then, and a host more, Pen passed more than two
+brilliant and happy years of his life. He had his fill of pleasure and
+popularity. No dinner or supper party was complete without him; and
+Pen's jovial wit, and Pen's songs, and dashing courage, and frank and
+manly bearing, charmed all the undergraduates, and even disarmed the
+tutors who cried out at his idleness, and murmured about his extravagant
+way of life. Though he became the favorite and leader of young men who
+were much his superiors in wealth and station, he was much too generous
+to endeavor 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 favor 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
+afterward, and he became a Liberal of the most violent order. He avowed
+himself a Dantonist and asserted that Louis the Sixteenth was served
+right. And as for Charles the First, he vowed that he would chop off
+that monarch's head with his own right hand were he then in the room at
+the Union Debating Club, and had Cromwell no other executioner for the
+traitor. He and Lord Magnus Charters, the Marquis of Runnymede's son,
+before-mentioned, were the most truculent republicans of their day.
+
+There are reputations of this sort made quite independent of the
+collegiate hierarchy, in the republic of gownsmen. A man may be famous
+in the honor-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 any thing." He was backed for
+the Greek Ode won by Smith of Trinity; every body was sure he would have
+the Latin hexameter prize which Brown of St. John's, however, carried
+off, and in this way, one university honor 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 honor which Oxbridge
+was capable of awarding.
+
+As vacation after vacation and term after term passed away without the
+desired news that Pen had sate for any scholarship or won any honor,
+Doctor Portman grew mightily gloomy in his behavior toward Arthur,
+and adopted a sulky grandeur of deportment toward 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 can not stand the doctor's patronizing air,"
+Pen said. "He's too kind to me, a great deal too fatherly. I have seen
+in the world better men than him, and I 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 Doctor Portman, and was afraid to go to the
+Rectory when Arthur was at home.
+
+One Sunday in the last long vacation, the wretched boy pushed his
+rebellious spirit so far as not to go to church, and he was seen at
+the gate of the Clavering Arms, smoking a cigar, in the face of the
+congregation as it issued from St. Mary's. There was an awful sensation
+in the village-society, Portman prophesied Pen's ruin after that, and
+groaned in spirit over the rebellious young prodigal.
+
+So did Helen tremble in her heart, and little Laura--Laura had grown to
+be a fine young stripling by this time, graceful and fair, clinging
+round Helen and worshiping her, with a passionate affection. Both of
+these women felt that their boy was changed. He was no longer the
+artless Pen of old days, so brave, so artless, so impetuous, and tender.
+His face looked careworn and haggard, his voice had a deeper sound, and
+tones more sarcastic. Care seemed to be pursuing him; but he only
+laughed when his mother questioned him, and parried her anxious queries
+with some scornful jest. Nor did he spend much of his vacations at home;
+he went on visits to one great friend or another, and scared the quiet
+pair at Fairoaks, by stories of great houses whither he had been
+invited, and by talking of lords without their titles.
+
+Honest Harry Foker, who had been the means of introducing Arthur
+Pendennis to that set of young men at the University, from whose
+society and connections 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 _protégé_, and
+admired Pen quite as much as any of the other youth did. It was he
+who followed Pen now, and quoted his sayings; learned his songs, and
+retailed them at minor supper-parties, and was never weary of hearing
+them from the gifted young poet's own mouth--for a good deal of the
+time which Mr. Pen might have employed much more advantageously
+in the pursuit of the regular scholastic studies was given up to the
+composition of secular ballads, which he sang about at parties according
+to university wont.
+
+It had been as well for Arthur if the honest Foker had remained for
+some time at college, for, with all his vivacity, he was a prudent
+young man, and often curbed Pen's propensity to extravagance: but Foker's
+collegiate career did not last very long after Arthur's entrance at
+Boniface. Repeated differences with the university authorities caused
+Mr. Foker to quit Oxbridge in an untimely manner. He would persist in
+attending races on the neighboring 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 valor, yet these
+feats rather injured than served Foker, whom the proctor knew very well
+and who was taken with the brush in his hand, and who was summarily
+convened and sent down from the University.
+
+The tutor wrote a very kind and feeling letter to Lady Agnes on the
+subject, stating that every body was fond of the youth; that he never
+meant harm to any mortal creature; that he, for his own part, would have
+been delighted to pardon the harmless little boyish frolic, had not its
+unhappy publicity rendered it impossible to look the freak over; and
+breathing the most fervent wishes for the young fellow's welfare--wishes
+no doubt sincere, for Foker, as we know, came of a noble family on his
+mother's side, and on the other was heir to a great number of thousand
+pounds a year.
+
+"It don't matter," said Foker, talking over the matter with Pen--"a
+little sooner or a little later, what is the odds? I should have been
+plucked for my little-go again, I know I should--that Latin I can not
+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 at
+every thing. I saw you sit down to _écarté_ 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 wont
+play with 'em. You're no match for 'em. You ain't up to their weight.
+It's like little Black Strap standing up to Tom Spring--the Black's a
+pretty fighter, but, Law bless you, his arm ain't long enough to touch
+Tom--and I tell you, you're going it with fellers beyond your weight.
+Look here--If you'll promise me never to bet nor touch a box nor a card,
+I'll let you off the two ponies."
+
+But Pen, laughingly, said, "that though it wasn't convenient to him
+to pay the two ponies at that moment, he by no means wished to be let
+off any just debts he owed;" and he and Foker parted, not without many
+dark forebodings on the latter's part with regard to his friend, who,
+Harry thought, was traveling speedily on the road to ruin.
+
+"One must do at Rome as Rome does," Pen said, in a dandified manner,
+jingling some sovereigns in his waistcoat-pocket. "A little quiet
+play at _écarté_ 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 favorite.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+RAKE'S PROGRESS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 victory elsewhere.
+
+In Pen's second year Major Pendennis paid a brief visit to his nephew,
+and was introduced to several of Pen's university friends--the gentle
+and polite Lord Plinlimmon, the gallant and open-hearted Magnus Charters,
+the sly and witty Harland; the intrepid Ringwood, who was called Rupert
+in the Union Debating Club, from his opinions and the bravery of his
+blunders; Broadbent, styled Barebones Broadbent from the republican
+nature of his opinions (he was of a dissenting family from Bristol and a
+perfect Boanerges of debate); Mr. Bloundell-Bloundell, finally, who had
+at once taken his place among the select of the University.
+
+Major Pendennis, though he did not understand Harland's Greek quotations,
+or quite appreciate Broadbent's thick shoes and dingy hands, was
+nevertheless delighted with the company assembled round his nephew, and
+highly approved of all the young men with the exception of that one who
+gave himself the greatest airs in the society, and affected most to have
+the manners of a man of the world.
+
+As he and Pen sate at breakfast on the morning after the party in the
+rooms of the latter, the major gave his opinions regarding the young
+men, with whom he was in the greatest good humor. 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 _racconteur_. Only once or twice during the
+telling of the anecdotes, 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 every body knew old Pen, regular old trencherman at Gaunt
+House, notorious old bore, regular old fogy.
+
+Major Pendennis, on his side, liked Mr. Bloundell not a whit. These
+sympathies are pretty sure to be mutual among 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 odor of certain flowers, or the taste of certain dishes, or
+wines, or certain books. We can't tell why--but, as a general rule, all
+the reasons in the world will not make us love Dr. Fell, and as sure as
+we dislike him, we may be sure that he dislikes us.
+
+So the major said, "Pen, my boy, your dinner went off _à merveille_;
+you did the honors very nicely--you carved well--I am glad you learned
+to carve--it is done on the side-board now in most good houses, but
+is still an important point, and may aid you in middle-life--young
+Lord Plinlimmon is a very amiable young man, quite the image of his
+dear mother (whom I knew as Lady Aquila Brownbill); and Lord Magnus's
+republicanism will wear off--it sits prettily enough on a young
+patrician in early life, though nothing is so loathsome among persons of
+our rank--Mr. Broadbent seems to have much eloquence and considerable
+reading; your friend Foker is always delightful: but your acquaintance,
+Mr. Bloundell, struck me as in all respects a most ineligible young man.
+
+"Bless my soul, sir, Bloundell-Bloundell!" cried Pen, laughing; "Why,
+sir, he's the most popular man of the University. We elected him
+of the Barmecides the first week he came up--had a special meeting on
+purpose--he's of an excellent family--Suffolk Bloundells, descended from
+Richard's Blondel, bear a harp in chief--and motto O Mong Roy."
+
+"A man may have a very good coat-of-arms, and be a tiger, my boy," the
+major said, chipping his egg; "that man is a tiger, mark my word--a low
+man. I will lay a wager that he left his regiment, which was a good one
+(for not a more respectable man than my friend Lord Martingale never
+sate in a saddle), in bad odor. 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 jewelry 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
+_soufflé_ uncommonly light and good. The third bottle of champagne was
+not necessary; but you have a good income, and as long as you keep
+within it, I shall not quarrel with you, my dear boy."
+
+Poor Pen! the worthy uncle little knew how often those dinners took
+place, while the reckless young Amphitryon delighted to show his
+hospitality and skill in _gourmandise_. There is no art, than that
+(so long to learn, so difficult to acquire, so impossible and beyond
+the means of many unhappy people!) about which boys are more anxious to
+have an air of knowingness. A taste and knowledge of wines and cookery
+appears to them to be the sign of an accomplished _roué_ 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 they know that they know nothing of the
+science, when perhaps their conscience whispers them that the science
+is in itself little worth, and that a leg of mutton and content is
+as good as the dinners of pontiffs. But little Pen, in his character
+of admirable Crichton, thought it necessary to be a great judge and
+practitioner of dinners; we have just said how the college-cook
+respected him, and shall soon have to deplore that that worthy man so
+blindly trusted our Pen. In the third year of the lad's residence at
+Oxbridge, his staircase was by no means encumbered with dish-covers
+and desserts, and waiters carrying in dishes, and skips opening iced
+champagne; crowds of different sorts of attendants, with faces sulky or
+piteous, hung about the outer oak, and assailed the unfortunate lad as
+he issued out of his den.
+
+Nor did his guardian's advice take any effect, or induce Mr. Pen to
+avoid the society of the disreputable Mr. Bloundell. What young men like
+in their companions is, what had got Pen a great part of his own repute
+and popularity, a real or supposed knowledge of life. A man who has seen
+the world, or can speak of it with a knowing air--a _roué_, or Lovelace,
+who has his adventures to relate, is sure of an admiring audience among
+boys. It is hard to confess, but so it is. We respect that sort of
+prowess. From our school-days we have been taught to admire it. Are
+there five in the hundred, out of the hundreds and hundreds of English
+school-boys, brought up at our great schools and colleges, that must not
+own at one time of their lives to having read and liked Don Juan? Awful
+propagation of evil!--The idea of it should make the man tremble who
+holds the pen, lest untruth, or impurity, or unjust anger, or unjust
+praise escape it.
+
+One such diseased creature as this is enough to infect a whole colony,
+and the tutors of Boniface began to find the moral tone of their college
+lowered, and their young men growing unruly and almost ungentleman-like,
+soon after Mr. Bloundell's arrival at Oxbridge. The young magnates of
+the neighboring 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
+any thing in the captain's disfavor, but hinted to Pen that he had
+better have him for a partner at whist than play against him, and better
+back him at _écarté_ than bet on the other side. "You see, he plays
+better than you do, Pen," was the astute young gentleman's remark: "he
+plays uncommonly well, the captain does;--and Pen, I wouldn't take the
+odds too freely from him, if I was you. I don't think he's too flush
+of money, the captain ain't." But beyond these dark suggestions and
+generalities, the cautious Foker could not be got to speak.
+
+Not that his advice would have had more weight with a headstrong young
+man, than advice commonly has with a lad who is determined on pursuing
+his own way. Pen's appetite for pleasure was insatiable, and he rushed
+at it wherever it presented itself with an eagerness which bespoke
+his fiery constitution and youthful health. He called taking pleasure
+"seeing life," and quoted well-known maxims from Terence, from Horace,
+from Shakspeare, to show that one should do all that might become a man.
+He bade fair to be utterly used up and a _roué_ in a few years, if he
+were to continue at the pace at which he was going.
+
+One night after a supper-party in college, at which Pen and Macheath had
+been present, and at which a little quiet _vingt-et-un_ had been played,
+(an amusement much pleasanter to men in their second and third year than
+the boisterous custom of singing songs, which bring the proctors about
+the rooms, and which have grown quite stale by this time, every man
+having expended his budget)--as the men had taken their caps and were
+going away, after no great losses or winnings on any side, Mr. Bloundell
+playfully took up a green wine-glass from the supper-table, which had
+been destined to contain iced champagne, 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, Seven's the main,
+and whisking the ivory cubes gently on the table, swept them up lightly
+again from the cloth, and repeated this process two or three times. The
+other men looked on, Pen, of course, among the number, who had never
+used the dice as yet, except to play a humdrum game of backgammon at
+home.
+
+Mr. Bloundell, who had a good voice, began to troll out the chorus from
+Robert the Devil, an opera then in great vogue, in which chorus many of
+the men joined, especially Pen, who was in very high spirits, having won
+a good number of shillings and half-crowns at the _vingt-et-un_--and
+presently, instead of going home, most of the party were seated round
+the table playing at dice, the green glass going round from hand to hand
+until Pen finally shivered it, after throwing six mains.
+
+From that night Pen plunged into the delights of the game of hazard, as
+eagerly as it was his custom to pursue any new pleasure. Dice can be
+played of mornings as well as after dinner or supper. Bloundell would
+come into Pen's rooms after breakfast, and it was astonishing how quick
+the time passed as the bones were rattling. They had little quiet
+parties with closed doors, and Bloundell devised a box lined with felt,
+so that the dice should make no noise, and their tell-tale rattle not
+bring the sharp-eared tutors up to the rooms. Bloundell, Ringwood,
+and Pen were once very nearly caught by Mr. Buck, who, passing in the
+Quadrangle, thought he heard the words "Two to one on the caster,"
+through Pen's open window; but when the tutor got into Arthur's rooms
+he found the lads with three Homers before them, and Pen said, he was
+trying to coach the two other men, and asked Mr. Buck with great gravity
+what was the present condition of the River Scamander, and whether it
+was navigable or no?
+
+Mr. Arthur Pendennis did not win much money in these transactions with
+Mr. Bloundell, or indeed gain good of any kind except a knowledge of the
+odds at hazard, which he might have learned out of books.
+
+Captain Macheath had other accomplishments which he exercised for Pen's
+benefit. The captain's stories had a great and unfortunate charm for
+Arthur, who was never tired of hearing Bloundell's histories of garrison
+conquests, and of his feats in country-quarters. He had been at Paris,
+and had plenty of legends about the Palais Royal, and the Salon, and
+Frascati's. He had gone to the Salon one night, after a dinner at the
+Café de Paris, "when we were all devilishly cut by Jove; and on waking
+in the morning in my own rooms, I found myself with twelve thousand
+francs under my pillow, and a hundred and forty-nine Napoleons in one
+of my boots. Wasn't that a _coup_, hay?" the captain said. Pen's eyes
+glistened with excitement as he heard this story. He respected the man
+who could win such a sum of money. He sighed, and said it would set
+him all right. Macheath laughed, and told him to drink another drop of
+Maraschino. "I could tell you stories much more wonderful than that," he
+added; and so indeed the captain could have done, without any further
+trouble than that of invention, with which portion of the poetic faculty
+nature had copiously endowed him.
+
+He laughed to scorn Pen's love for Miss Fotheringay, when he came to
+hear of that amour from Arthur, as he pretty soon did, for, we have
+said, Pen was not averse to telling the story now to his confidential
+friends, and he and they were rather proud of the transaction. But
+Macheath took away all Pen's conceit on this head, not by demonstrating
+the folly of the lad's passion for an uneducated woman much his senior
+in years, but by exposing his absurd desire of gratifying his passion
+in a legitimate way. "Marry _her_," said he, "you might as well marry
+----," and he named one of the most notorious actresses on the stage.
+"She hadn't a shred of a character." He knew twenty men who were openly
+admirers of her, and named them and the sums each had spent upon her. I
+know no kind of calumny more frightful or frequent than this which takes
+away the character of women, no men more reckless and mischievous than
+those who lightly use it, and no kind of cowards more despicable than
+the people who invent these slanders.
+
+Is it, or not, a misfortune that a man, himself of a candid disposition,
+and disposed, like our friend Pen, to blurt out the truth on all
+occasions, begins life by believing all that is said to him? Would it be
+better for a lad to be less trustful, and so less honest? It requires no
+small experience of the world to know that a man, who has no especial
+reason thereto, is telling you lies. I am not sure whether it is not
+best to go on being duped for a certain time. At all events, our honest
+Pen had a natural credulity, which enabled him to accept all statements
+which were made to him, and he took every one of Captain Macheath's
+figments as if they had been the most unquestioned facts of history.
+
+So Bloundell's account about Miss Fotheringay pained and mortified Pen
+exceedingly. If he had been ashamed of his passion before--what were
+his feelings regarding it now, when the object of so much pure flame
+and adoration turned out to be only a worthless impostor, an impostor
+detected by all but him? It never occurred to Pen to doubt the fact, or
+to question whether the stories of a man who, like his new friend, never
+spoke well of any woman, were likely to be true.
+
+One Easter vacation, when Pen had announced to his mother and uncle his
+intention not to go down, but stay at Oxbridge and read, Mr. Pen was
+nevertheless induced to take a brief visit to London in company with his
+friend Mr. Bloundell. They put up at a hotel in Covent Garden, where
+Bloundell had a tick, as he called it, and took the pleasures of 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
+mustaches, 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
+theaters 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 Theater, 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
+_éclat_, had come back to shine in London with somewhat diminished
+luster, and now was acting with "ever increasing attraction, &c.,"
+"triumph of the good old British drama," as the play-bills avowed,
+to houses in which there was plenty of room for any body who wanted
+to see her.
+
+It was not the first time Pen had seen her since that memorable day when
+the two had parted in Chatteries. 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
+theater 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 Chatteries,
+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 courtesy, 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 theater 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 recognize him. The next
+night he came in late, and staid very quietly for the after-piece, and on
+the third and last night of his stay in London--why, Taglioni was going
+to dance at the opera--Taglioni! and there was to be Don Giovanni, which
+he admired of all things in the world; so Mr. Pen went to Don Giovanni
+and Taglioni.
+
+This time the illusion about her was quite gone. She was not less
+handsome, but she was not the same, somehow. The light was gone out of
+her eyes which used to flash there, or Pen's no longer were dazzled by
+it. The rich voice spoke as of old, yet it did not make Pen's bosom
+thrill as formerly. He thought he could recognize the brogue underneath;
+the accents seemed to him coarse and false. It annoyed him to hear the
+same emphasis on the same words only uttered a little louder; worse than
+this, it annoyed him to think that he should ever have mistaken that
+loud imitation for genius, or melted at those mechanical sobs and sighs.
+He felt that it was in another life almost, that it was another man who
+had so madly loved her. He was ashamed and bitterly humiliated, and very
+lonely. Ah, poor Pen! the delusion is better than the truth sometimes,
+and fine dreams than dismal waking.
+
+They went and had an uproarious supper that night, and Mr. Pen had a
+fine headache the next morning, with which he went back to Oxbridge,
+having spent all his ready money.
+
+As all this narrative is taken from Pen's own confessions, so that the
+reader may be assured of the truth of every word of it, and as Pen
+himself never had any accurate notion of the manner in which he spent
+his money, and plunged himself in much deeper pecuniary difficulties,
+during his luckless residence at Oxbridge University, it is, of course
+impossible for me to give any accurate account of all 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 honored with his
+patronage at the outset of his career. Even Finch, the money-lender,
+to whom Bloundell introduced him, and with whom he had various
+transactions, in which the young rascal's signature appeared upon
+stamped paper, treated him, according to Pen's own account, with
+forbearance, and never mulcted him of more than a hundred per cent. The
+old college-cook, his fervent admirer, made him a private bill, offered
+to send him in dinners up to the very last, and never would have pressed
+his account to his dying day. There was that kindness and frankness
+about Arthur Pendennis, which won most people who came in contact with
+him, and which, if it rendered him an easy prey to rogues, got him,
+perhaps, more goodwill than he merited from many honest men. It was
+impossible to resist his good nature, or, in his worst moments, not
+to hope for his rescue from utter ruin.
+
+At the time of his full career of University pleasure, he would
+leave the gayest party to go and sit with a sick friend. He never
+knew the difference between small and great in the treatment of his
+acquaintances, however much the unlucky lad's tastes, which were of the
+sumptuous order, led him to prefer good society; he was only too ready
+to share his guinea with a poor friend, and when he got money, had an
+irresistible propensity for paying, which he never could conquer through
+life.
+
+In his third year at College, the duns began to gather awfully round
+about him, and there was a levee at his oak which scandalized 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 the 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 jewelry except two
+old gold sleeve-buttons, which had belonged to his father, and rushed
+with the proceeds to Frodsham's shop, where, with tears in his eyes,
+and the deepest repentance and humility, he asked the poor tradesman's
+pardon.
+
+This, young gentlemen, is not told as an instance of Pen's virtue, but
+rather of his weakness. It would have been much more virtuous to have
+had no prints at all. He still owed 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 jeweler's account, so that she was in
+the end the sufferer by the lad's impertinent fancies and follies. We
+are not presenting Pen to you as a hero or a model, only as a lad, who,
+in the midst of a thousand vanities and weaknesses, has as yet some
+generous impulses, and is not altogether dishonest.
+
+We have said it was to the scandal of Mr. Buck the tutor that Pen's
+extravagances became known: from the manner in which he entered college,
+the associates he kept, and the introductions of Doctor Portman and the
+major, Buck for a long time thought that his pupil was a man of large
+property, and wondered rather that he only wore a plain gown. Once on
+going up to London to the levee with an address from his Majesty's Loyal
+University of Oxbridge, Buck had seen Major Pendennis at Saint James's
+in conversation with two knights of the garter, in the carriage of one
+of whom the dazzled tutor saw the major whisked away after the levee. He
+asked Pen to wine the instant he came back, let him off from chapels and
+lectures more than ever, and felt perfectly sure that he was a young
+gentleman of large estate.
+
+Thus, he was thunderstruck when he heard the truth, and received a
+dismal confession from Pen. His University debts were large, and the
+tutor had nothing to do, and of course Pen did not acquaint him, with
+his London debts. What man ever does tell all when pressed by his
+friends about his liabilities? The tutor learned enough to know that Pen
+was poor, that he had spent a handsome, almost a magnificent allowance,
+and had raised around him such a fine crop of debts, as it would be very
+hard work for any man to mow down; for there is no plant that grows so
+rapidly when once it has taken root.
+
+Perhaps it was because she was so tender and good that Pen was terrified
+lest his mother should know of his sins. "I can't bear to break it to
+her," he said to the tutor in an agony of grief, "O! sir, I've been a
+villain to her"--and he repented, and he wished he had the time to come
+over again, and he asked himself, "Why, why did his uncle insist upon
+the necessity of living with great people, and in how much did all his
+grand acquaintance profit him?"
+
+They were not shy, but Pen thought they were, and slunk from them
+during his last terms at college. He was as gloomy as a death's-head at
+parties, which he avoided of his own part, or to which his young friends
+soon ceased to invite him. Every body knew that Pendennis was "hard up."
+That man Bloundell, who could pay nobody, and who was obliged to go down
+after three terms, was his ruin, the men said. His melancholy figure
+might be seen shirking about the lonely quadrangles in his battered old
+cap and torn gown, and he who had been the pride of the University but a
+year before, the man whom all the young ones loved to look at, was now
+the object of conversation at freshmen's wine parties, and they spoke
+of him with wonder and awe.
+
+At last came the Degree examinations. Many a young man of his year
+whose hob-nailed shoes Pen had derided, and whose face or coat he
+had caricatured--many a man whom he had treated with scorn in the
+lecture-room or crushed with his eloquence in the debating-club--many
+of his own set who had not half his brains, but a little regularity and
+constancy of occupation, took high places in the honors or passed with
+decent credit. And where on 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 rumor rushed through the University, that
+Pendennis of Boniface was plucked.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+FLIGHT AFTER DEFEAT.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Every body 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 our 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 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 us all: if we have only Justice to look
+to, Heaven help us!
+
+During the latter part of Pen's residence at the University of Oxbridge,
+his uncle's partiality had greatly increased for the lad. The major was
+proud of Arthur, who had high spirits, frank manners, a good person,
+and high gentlemanlike 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 honor. 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, &c., 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 every where 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 any thing that any body chose to say in favor of her son.
+
+And all this pride and affection of uncle and mother had been trampled
+down by Pen's wicked extravagance and idleness! I don't envy Pen's
+feelings (as the phrase is), as he thought of what he had done. He had
+slept and the tortoise had won the race. He had marred at its outset
+what might have been a brilliant career. He had dipped ungenerously into
+a generous mother's purse; basely and recklessly spilt her little cruse.
+O! it was a coward hand that could strike and rob a creature so tender.
+And if Pen felt the wrong which he had done too thers, 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 Joe 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 theater 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
+patronized or scorned--how could he bear to look any of them in the face
+now? He rushed to his rooms, into which he shut himself, and there he
+penned a letter to his tutor, full of thanks, regards, remorse, and
+despair, requesting that his name might be taken off the college books,
+and intimating a wish and expectation that death would speedily end the
+woes of the disgraced Arthur Pendennis.
+
+Then he slunk out scarcely knowing whither he went, but mechanically
+taking the unfrequented little lanes by the backs of the colleges, until
+he cleared the University precincts, and got down to the banks of the
+Camisis river, now deserted, but so often alive with the boat-races, and
+the crowds of cheering gownsmen, he wandered on and on, until he found
+himself at some miles' distance from Oxbridge, or rather was found by
+some acquaintances leaving that city.
+
+As Pen went up a hill, a drizzling January rain beating in his face, and
+his ragged gown flying behind him--for he had not divested himself of
+his academical garments since the morning--a postchaise came rattling
+up the road, on the box of which was seated a servant, while 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 homeward in triumph in his yellow postchaise. He caught a sight
+of the figure, madly gesticulating as he worked up the hill, and of poor
+Pen's pale and ghastly face as the chaise whirled by him.
+
+"Wo!" roared Mr. Spavin to the postboy, and the horses stopped in their
+mad career, and the carriage pulled up some fifty yards before Pen. He
+presently heard his own name shouted, and beheld the upper half of the
+body of Mr. Spavin thrust out of the side-window of the vehicle, and
+beckoning Pen vehemently toward it.
+
+Pen stopped, hesitated--nodded his head fiercely, and pointed onward,
+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 toward Pen, holding out his hand, and
+grasping Pen's, said, "I say--hullo, old boy, where are you going, and
+what's the row now?"
+
+"I'm going where I deserve to go," said Pen, with an imprecation.
+
+"This ain't the way," said Mr. Spavin, smiling. "This is the Fenbury
+road. I say, Pen, don't take on because you are plucked. It's nothing
+when you are used to it. I've been plucked three times, old boy--and
+after the first time I didn't care. Glad it's over, though. You'll have
+better luck next time."
+
+Pen looked at his early acquaintance--who had been plucked, who had been
+rusticated, who had only, after repeated failures, learned to read and
+write correctly, and who, in spite of all these drawbacks, had attained
+the honor of a degree. "This man has passed," he thought, "and I have
+failed!" It was almost too much for him to bear.
+
+"Good-by, Spavin," said he; "I'm very glad you are through. Don't let me
+keep you; I'm in a hurry--I'm going to town to-night."
+
+"Gammon," said Mr. Spavin. "This ain't the way to town; this is the
+Fenbury road, I tell you."
+
+"I was just going to turn back," Pen said.
+
+"All the coaches are full with the men going down," Spavin said. Pen
+winced. "You'd not get a place for a ten-pound note. Get into my yellow;
+I'll drop you at Mudford, where you have a chance of the Fenbury mail.
+I'll lend you a hat and a coat; I've got lots. Come along; jump in,
+old boy--go it leathers!"--and in this way Pen found himself in Mr.
+Spavin's postchaise, and rode with that gentleman as far as the Ram Inn
+at Mudford, fifteen miles from Oxbridge; where the Fenbury mail changed
+horses, and where Pen got a place on to London.
+
+The next day there was an immense excitement in Boniface College,
+Oxbridge, where, for some time, a rumor prevailed, to the terror of
+Pen's tutor and tradesmen, that Pendennis, maddened at losing his
+degree, had made away with himself--a battered cap, in which his name
+was almost discernible, together with a seal bearing his crest of an
+eagle looking at a now extinct sun, had been found three miles on the
+Fenbury road, near a mill-stream; and, for four-and-twenty hours, it was
+supposed that poor Pen had flung himself into the stream, until letters
+arrived from him, bearing the London post-mark.
+
+The mail reached London at the dreary hour of five; and he hastened to
+the inn at Covent Garden, at which he was accustomed to put up, where
+the ever-wakeful porter admitted him, and showed him to a bed. Pen
+looked hard at the man, and wondered whether Boots knew he was plucked?
+When in bed he could not sleep there. He tossed about until the
+appearance of the dismal London daylight, when he sprang up desperately,
+and walked off to his uncle's lodgings in Bury-street; where the maid
+who was scouring the steps, looked up suspiciously at him, as he came
+with an unshaven face, and yesterday's linen. He thought she knew of his
+mishap, too.
+
+"Good evens! Mr. Harthur, what _as_ appened, sir?" Mr. Morgan, the
+valet, asked, who had just arranged the well-brushed clothes and shiny
+boots at the door of his master's bed-room, and was carrying in his wig
+to the major.
+
+"I want to see my uncle," he cried, in a ghastly voice, and flung
+himself down on a chair.
+
+Morgan backed before the pale and desperate-looking young man, with
+terrified and wondering glances, and disappeared into his master's
+apartment.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The major put his head out of the bed-room door, as soon as he had his
+wig on.
+
+"What! examination over? Senior Wrangler, double First Class, hay?" said
+the old gentleman--"I'll come directly;" and the head disappeared.
+
+"They don't know what has happened," groaned Pen; "what will they say
+when they know all?"
+
+Pen had been standing with his back to the window, and to such a dubious
+light as Bury-street enjoys of a foggy January morning, so that his
+uncle could not see the expression of the young man's countenance, or
+the looks of gloom and despair which even Mr. Morgan had remarked.
+
+But when the major came out of his dressing-room, neat and radiant, and
+preceded by faint odors from Delcroix's shop, from which emporium Major
+Pendennis's wig and his pocket-handkerchief got their perfume, he held
+out one of his hands to Pen, and was about addressing him in his cheery
+high-toned voice, when he caught sight of the boy's face at length, and
+dropping his hand, said, "Good God! Pen, what's the matter?"
+
+"You'll see it in the papers, at breakfast, sir," Pen said.
+
+"See what?"
+
+"My name isn't there, sir."
+
+"Hang it, why _should_ it be?" asked the major, more perplexed.
+
+"I have lost every thing, sir," Pen groaned out; "my honor's gone; I'm
+ruined irretrievably; I can't go back to Oxbridge."
+
+"Lost your honor?" screamed out the major. "Heaven alive! you don't mean
+to say you have shown the white feather?"
+
+Pen laughed bitterly at the word feather, and repeated it. "No, it isn't
+that, sir. I'm not afraid of being shot; I wish to God any body would.
+I have not got my degree. I--I'm plucked, sir."
+
+The major had heard of plucking, but in a very vague and cursory way,
+and concluded that it was some ceremony performed corporally upon
+rebellious University youth. "I wonder you can look me in the face after
+such a disgrace, sir," he said; "I wonder you submitted to it as a
+gentleman."
+
+"I couldn't help it, sir. I did my classical papers well enough: it was
+those infernal mathematics, which I have always neglected."
+
+"Was it--was it done in public, sir?" the major said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"The--the plucking?" asked the guardian, looking Pen anxiously in the
+face.
+
+Pen perceived the error under which his guardian was laboring, 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 dishonor, as far as he
+saw, and that Pen must try again.
+
+"_Me_ again at Oxbridge," Pen thought, "after such a humiliation as
+that!" He felt that, except he went down to burn the place, he could not
+enter it.
+
+But it was when he came to tell his uncle of his debts that the other
+felt surprise and anger most keenly, and broke out into speeches most
+severe upon Pen, which the lad bore, as best he might, without flinching.
+He had determined to make a clean breast, and had formed a full, true,
+and complete list of all his bills and liabilities at the University,
+and in London, They consisted of various items, such as
+
+  London Tailor.
+  Oxbridge do.
+  Haberdasher, for shirts and gloves.
+  Jeweler.
+  College Cook.
+  Crump, for desserts.
+  Bootmaker.
+  Wine Merchant in London.
+  Oxbridge do.
+  Bill for horses.
+  Printseller.
+  Books.
+  Binding.
+  Hairdresser and Perfumery.
+  Hotel Bill in London.
+  Sundries.
+
+All which items the reader may fill in at his pleasure--such accounts
+have been inspected by the parents of many University youth--and it
+appeared that Mr. Pen's bills in all amounted to about seven hundred
+pounds; and, furthermore, it was calculated that he had had more than
+twice that sum of ready money during his stay at Oxbridge. This sum he
+had spent, and for it had to show--what?
+
+"You need not press a man who is down, sir," Pen said to his uncle
+gloomily. "I know very well, sir, how wicked and idle I have been. My
+mother won't like to see me dishonored, sir," he continued, with his
+voice failing; "and I know she will pay these accounts. But I shall ask
+her for no more money."
+
+"As you like, sir," the major said. "You are of age, and my hands are
+washed of your affairs. But you can't live without money, and have no
+means of making it that I see, though you have a fine talent in spending
+it, and it is my belief that you will proceed as you have begun, and
+ruin your mother before you are five years older.--Good morning; it is
+time for me to go to breakfast. My engagements won't permit me to see
+you much during the time that you stay in London. I presume that you
+will acquaint your mother with the news which you have just conveyed
+to me."
+
+And pulling on his hat, and trembling in his limbs somewhat, Major
+Pendennis walked out of his lodgings before his nephew, and went
+ruefully off to take his accustomed corner at the club. He saw the
+Oxbridge examination-lists in the morning papers, and read over the
+names, not understanding the business, with mournful accuracy. He
+consulted various old fogies of his acquaintance, in the course of the
+day, at his clubs; Wenham, a dean, various civilians; and, as it is
+called, "took their opinion," showing to some of them the amount of his
+nephew's debts, which he had dotted down on the back of a card, and
+asking what was to be done, and whether such debts were not monstrous,
+preposterous? What was to be done?--There was nothing for it but to pay.
+Wenham and the others told the major of young men who owed twice as
+much--five times as much--as Arthur, and with no means at all to pay.
+The consultations, and calculations, and opinions, comforted the major
+somewhat. After all, _he_ was not to pay.
+
+But he thought bitterly of the many plans he had formed to make a man of
+his nephew, of the sacrifices which he had made, and of the manner in
+which he was disappointed. And he wrote off a letter to Doctor Portman,
+informing him of the direful events which had taken place, and begging
+the doctor to break them to Helen. For the orthodox old gentleman,
+preserved the regular routine in all things, and was of opinion that it
+was more correct to "break" a piece of bad news to a person by means of
+a (possibly maladroit and unfeeling) messenger, than to convey it simply
+to its destination by a note. So the major wrote to Doctor Portman, and
+then went out to dinner, one of the saddest men in any London
+dining-room that day.
+
+Pen, too, wrote his letter, and skulked about London streets for
+the rest of the day, fancying that every body was looking at him and
+whispering to his neighbor, "That is Pendennis of Boniface, who was
+plucked yesterday." His letter to his mother was full of tenderness and
+remorse: he wept the bitterest tears over it--and the repentance and
+passion soothed him to some degree.
+
+He saw a party of roaring young blades from Oxbridge in the coffee-room
+of his hotel, and slunk away from them, and paced the streets. He
+remembers, he says, the prints which he saw hanging up at Ackermann's
+window in the rain, and a book which he read at a stall near the Temple:
+at night he went to the pit of the play, and saw Miss Fotheringay, but
+he doesn't in the least recollect in what piece.
+
+On the second day there came a kind letter from his tutor, containing
+many grave and appropriate remarks upon the event which had befallen
+him, but strongly urging Pen not to take his name off the University
+books, and to retrieve a disaster which, every body knew, was owing
+to his own carelessness alone, and which he might repair by a month's
+application. He said he had ordered Pen's skip to pack up some trunks of
+the young gentleman's wardrobe, which duly arrived, with fresh copies of
+all Pen's bills laid on the top.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the third day there arrived a letter from home; which Pen read in
+his bed-room, and the result of which was that he fell down on his
+knees, with his head in the bed-clothes, and there prayed out his heart,
+and humbled himself; and having gone down stairs and eaten an immense
+breakfast, he sallied forth and took his place at the Bull and Mouth,
+Piccadilly, by the Chatteries coach for that evening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+PRODIGAL'S RETURN.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 into the chair, and it is surprising with what
+courage and vigor 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 Mira 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 dispatch, and strode over to Fairoaks
+to break the intelligence to the widow.
+
+She had the news already. She had read Pen's letter, and it had relieved
+her somehow. A gloomy presentiment of evil had been hanging over her for
+many, many months past. She knew the worst now, and her darling boy was
+come back to her repentant and tender-hearted. Did she want more? All
+that the rector could say (and his remarks were both dictated by common
+sense, and made respectable by antiquity) could not bring Helen to feel
+any indignation or particular unhappiness, except that the boy should be
+unhappy. What was this degree that they made such an outcry about, and
+what good would it do Pen? Why did Doctor Portman and his uncle insist
+upon sending the boy to a place where there was so much temptation to be
+risked, and so little good to be won? Why didn't they leave him at home
+with his mother? As for his debts, of course they must be paid;--his
+debts!--wasn't his father's money all his, and hadn't he a right to
+spend it. In this way the widow met the virtuous doctor, and all the
+arrows of his indignation somehow took no effect upon her gentle bosom.
+
+For some time past, an agreeable practice, known since times ever
+so ancient, by which brothers and sisters are wont to exhibit their
+affection toward 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 courtesy and a proffered hand, and with
+a great blush which rose up to the cheek, just upon the very spot which
+young Pen had been used to salute.
+
+I am not good at descriptions of female beauty; and, indeed, do not care
+for it in the least (thinking that goodness and virtue are, of course,
+far more advantageous to a young lady than any mere fleeting charms of
+person and face), and so shall not attempt any particular delineation
+of Miss Laura Bell at the age of sixteen years. At that age she had
+attained her present altitude of five feet four inches, so that she was
+called tall and gawky by some, and a Maypole by others, of her own sex,
+who prefer littler women. But if she was a Maypole, she had beautiful
+roses about her head, and it is a fact that many swains were disposed
+to dance round her. She was ordinarily pale, with a faint rose tinge
+in her cheeks; but they flushed up in a minute when occasion called,
+and continued so blushing ever so long, the roses remaining after the
+emotion had passed away which had summoned those pretty flowers into
+existence. Her eyes have been described as very large from her earliest
+childhood, and retained that characteristic in later life. Good-natured
+critics (always females) said that she was in the habit of making play
+with those eyes, and ogling the gentlemen and ladies in her company; but
+the fact is, that nature had made them so to shine and to look, and they
+could no more help so looking and shining than one star can help being
+brighter than another. It was doubtless to mitigate their brightness
+that Miss Laura's eyes were provided with two pairs of vails 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 dare say that
+to see her asleep would have been a pretty sight.
+
+As for her complexion, that was nearly as brilliant as Lady Mantrap's,
+and without the powder which her ladyship uses. Her nose must be left to
+the reader's imagination: if her mouth was rather large (as Miss Piminy
+avers, who, but for her known appetite, one would think could not
+swallow any thing larger than a button) every body allowed that her
+smile was charming, and showed off a set of pearly teeth, while her
+voice was so low and sweet, that to hear it was like listening to sweet
+music. Because she is in the habit of wearing very long dresses, people
+of course say that her feet are not small: but it may be, that they are
+of the size becoming her figure, and it does not follow, because Mrs.
+Pincher is always putting _her_ foot out, that all other ladies should
+be perpetually bringing theirs on the tapis. In fine, Miss Laura Bell,
+at the age of sixteen, was a sweet young lady. Many thousands of such
+are to be found, let us hope, in this country, where there is no lack of
+goodness, and modesty, and purity, and beauty.
+
+Now, Miss Laura, since she had learned to think for herself (and in the
+past two years her mind and her person had both developed themselves
+considerably), had only been half pleased with Pen's general conduct
+and bearing. His letters to his mother at home had become of late very
+rare and short. It was in vain that the fond widow urged how constant
+Arthur's occupations and studies were, and how many his engagements.
+"It is better that he should lose a prize," Laura said, "than forget
+his mother: and indeed, mamma, I don't see that he gets many prizes. Why
+doesn't he come home and stay with you, instead of passing his vacations
+at his great friends' fine houses? There is nobody there will love him
+half so much as--as you do." "As _I_ do only, Laura," sighed out Mrs.
+Pendennis. Laura declared stoutly that she did not love Pen a bit, when
+he did not do his duty to his mother: nor would she be convinced by
+any of Helen's fond arguments, that the boy must make his way in the
+world; that his uncle was most desirous that Pen should cultivate the
+acquaintance of persons who were likely to befriend him in life; that
+men had a thousand ties and calls which women could not understand,
+and so forth. Perhaps Helen no more believed in these excuses than her
+adopted daughter did; but she tried to believe that she believed them,
+and comforted herself with the maternal infatuation. And that is a point
+whereon, I suppose, many a gentleman has reflected, that, do what we
+will, we are pretty sure of the woman's love that once has been ours;
+and that that untiring tenderness and forgiveness never fail us.
+
+Also, there had been that freedom, not to say audacity, in Arthur's
+latter talk and ways, which had shocked and displeased Laura. Not that
+he ever offended her by rudeness, or addressed to her a word which
+she ought not to hear, for Mr. Pen was a gentleman, and by nature and
+education polite to every woman, high and low; but he spoke lightly and
+laxly of women in general; was less courteous in his actions than in his
+words--neglectful in sundry ways, and in many of the little offices of
+life. It offended Miss Laura that he should smoke his horrid pipes in
+the house; that he should refuse to go to church with his mother, or on
+walks or visits with her, and be found yawning over his novel in his
+dressing-gown, when the gentle widow returned from those duties. The
+hero of Laura's early infancy, about whom she had passed so many, many
+nights talking with Helen (who recited endless stories of the boy's
+virtues, and love, and bravery, when he was away at school), was a
+very different person from the young man whom now she knew; bold and
+brilliant, sarcastic and defiant, seeming to scorn the simple occupations
+or pleasures, or even devotions, of the women with whom he lived, and
+whom he quitted on such light pretexts.
+
+The Fotheringay affair, too, when Laura came to hear of it (which she
+did first by some sarcastic allusions of Major Pendennis, when on a
+visit to Fairoaks, and then from their neighbors at Clavering, who had
+plenty of information to give her on this head), vastly shocked and
+outraged Miss Laura. A Pendennis fling himself away on such a woman as
+that! Helen's boy galloping away from home, day after day, to fall on
+his knees to an actress, and drink with her horrid father! A good son
+want to bring such a man and such a woman into his house, and set her
+over his mother! "I would have run away, mamma; I would, if I had had
+to walk barefoot through the snow," Laura said.
+
+"And _you_ would have left me too, then?" Helen answered; on which,
+of course, Laura withdrew her previous observation, and the two women
+rushed into each other's embraces, with that warmth which belonged to
+both their natures, and which characterizes not a few of their sex.
+Whence came all this 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 behavior to the doctor, and since the wretch had smoked
+cigars in church-time: perhaps, finally, she was jealous: but this is
+a vice in which, it is said, the ladies very seldom indulge.
+
+Albeit she was angry with Pen; against his mother she had no such
+feeling; but devoted herself to Helen with the utmost force of her
+girlish affection--such affection as women, whose hearts are disengaged,
+are apt to bestow upon the near female friend. It was devotion--it was
+passion--it was all sorts of fondness and folly; it was a profusion of
+caresses, tender epithets and endearments, such as it does not become
+sober historians with beards to narrate. Do not let us men despise these
+instincts because we can not feel them. These women were made for our
+comfort and delectation, gentlemen--with all the rest of the minor
+animals.
+
+But as soon as Miss Laura heard that Pen was unfortunate and unhappy,
+all her wrath against him straightway vanished, and gave place to the
+most tender and unreasonable compassion. He was the Pen of old days
+once more restored to her, the frank and affectionate, the generous and
+tender-hearted. She at once took side with Helen against Doctor Portman,
+when he outcried at the enormity of Pen's transgressions. Debts? what
+were his debts? they were a trifle; he had been thrown into expensive
+society by his uncle's order, and of course was obliged to live in
+the same manner as the young gentlemen whose company he frequented.
+Disgraced by not getting his degree? the poor boy was ill when he went
+in for the examinations; he couldn't think of his mathematics and stuff
+on account of those very debts which oppressed him; very likely some of
+the odious tutors and masters were jealous of him, and had favorites
+of their own whom they wanted to put over his head. _Other_ people
+disliked him, and were cruel to him, and were unfair to him, she was
+very sure. And so, with flushing cheeks and eyes bright with anger, this
+young creature reasoned; and she went up and seized Helen's hand, and
+kissed her in the doctor's presence, and her looks braved the doctor,
+and seemed to ask how he dared to say a word against her darling
+mother's Pen?
+
+When that divine took his leave, not a little discomfited and amazed at
+the pertinacious obstinacy of the women, Laura repeated her embraces
+and arguments with tenfold fervor to Helen, who felt that there was a
+great deal of cogency in most of the latter. There must be some jealousy
+against Pen. She felt quite sure that he had offended some of the
+examiners, who had taken a mean revenge of him--nothing more likely.
+Altogether, the announcement of the misfortune vexed these two ladies
+very little indeed. Pen, who was plunged in his shame and grief in
+London, and torn with great remorse, for thinking of his mother's
+sorrow, would have wondered, had he seen how easily she bore the
+calamity. Indeed, calamity is welcome to women if they think it will
+bring truant affection home again: and if you have reduced your mistress
+to a crust, depend upon it that she won't repine, and only take a very
+little bit of it for herself, provided you will eat the remainder in her
+company.
+
+And directly the doctor was gone, Laura ordered fires to be lighted
+in Mr. Arthur's rooms, and his bedding to be aired; and had these
+preparations completed by the time Helen had finished a most tender and
+affectionate letter to Pen: when the girl, smiling fondly, took her
+mamma by the hand, and led her into those apartments where the fires
+were blazing so cheerfully, and there the two kind creatures sate down
+on the bed, and talked about Pen ever so long. Laura added a postscript
+to Helen's letter, in which she called him her dearest Pen, and bade him
+come home _instantly_, with two of the handsomest dashes under the word,
+and be happy with his mother and his affectionate sister Laura.
+
+In the middle of the night--as these two ladies, after reading their
+Bibles a great deal during the evening, and after taking just a look
+into Pen's room as they passed to their own--in the middle of the night,
+I say, Laura, whose head not unfrequently chose to occupy that pillow
+which the nightcap of the late Pendennis had been accustomed to press,
+cried out, suddenly, "Mamma, are you awake?"
+
+Helen stirred and said, "Yes, I'm awake." The truth is, though she had
+been lying quite still and silent, she had not been asleep one instant,
+but had been looking at the night-lamp in the chimney, and had been
+thinking of Pen for hours and hours.
+
+Then Miss Laura (who had been acting with similar hypocrisy, and lying,
+occupied with her own thoughts, as motionless as Helen's brooch, with
+Pen's and Laura's hair in it, on the frilled white pincushion on the
+dressing-table) began to tell Mrs. Pendennis of a notable plan which
+she had been forming in her busy little brains; and by which all Pen's
+embarrassments would be made to vanish in a moment, and without the
+least trouble to any body.
+
+"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
+into the bank at Chatteries for me, and which doesn't belong to me a
+bit. Now, to-morrow we will go to Chatteries, 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 any body, and then we will live happy
+ever after."
+
+What Helen replied to this speech need not be repeated, as the widow's
+answer was made up of a great number of incoherent ejaculations,
+embraces, and other irrelative matter. But the two women slept well
+after that talk; and when the night-lamp went out with a splutter, and
+the sun rose gloriously over the purple hills, and the birds began
+to sing and pipe cheerfully amidst the leafless trees and glistening
+evergreens on Fairoaks lawn, Helen woke too, and, as she looked at the
+sweet face of the girl, sleeping beside her, her lips parted with a
+smile, blushes on her cheeks, her spotless bosom heaving and falling
+with gentle undulations, as if happy dreams were sweeping over it--Pen's
+mother felt happy and grateful beyond all power of words, save such as
+pious women offer up to the Beneficent Dispenser of love and mercy--in
+whose honor a chorus of such praises is constantly rising up all round
+the world.
+
+Although it was January, and rather cold weather, so sincere was Mr.
+Pen's remorse, and so determined his plans of economy, that he would not
+take an inside place in the coach, but sate up behind with his friend
+the guard, who remembered his former liberality, and lent him plenty of
+great coats. Perhaps it was the cold that made his knees tremble as he
+got down at the lodge gate, or it may be that he was agitated at the
+notion of seeing the kind creature for whose love he had made so selfish
+a return. Old John was in waiting to receive his master's baggage, but
+he appeared in a fustian jacket, and no longer wore his livery of drab
+and blue. "I'se garner and stable man, and lives in the ladge now," this
+worthy man remarked, with a grin of welcome to Pen, and something of
+a blush; but instantly as Pen turned the corner of the shrubbery and
+was out of eye-shot of the coach, Helen made her appearance, her face
+beaming with love and forgiveness--for forgiving is what some women love
+best of all.
+
+We may be sure that the widow, having a certain other object in view,
+had lost no time in writing off to Pen an account of the noble, the
+magnanimous, the magnificent offer of Laura, filling up her letter with
+a profusion of benedictions upon both her children. It was probably the
+knowledge of this money-obligation which caused Pen to blush very much
+when he saw Laura, who was in waiting in the hall, and who this time,
+and for this time only, broke through the little arrangement of which we
+have spoken, as having subsisted between her and Arthur for the last few
+years; but the truth is, there has been a great deal too much said about
+kissing in the present chapter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So the prodigal came home, and the fatted calf was killed for him, and
+he was made as happy as two simple women could make him. No allusions
+were made to the Oxbridge mishap, or questions asked as to his farther
+proceedings, for some time. But Pen debated these anxiously in his own
+mind and up in his own room, where he passed much time in cogitation.
+
+A few days after he came home, he rode to Chatteries 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 check, which she, and possibly Pen himself, thought
+was an act of uncommon virtue and self-denial, but which Laura
+pronounced to be only strict justice.
+
+He had 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 succor. He was wild to find some means of repaying her.
+
+He left off drinking wine, and betook himself, but with great
+moderation, to the refreshment of whisky-and-water. He gave up cigar
+smoking; but it must be confessed that of late years he had liked pipes
+and tobacco as well or even better, so that this sacrifice was not a
+very severe one.
+
+He fell asleep a great deal after dinner, when he joined the ladies
+in the drawing-room, and was certainly very moody and melancholy. He
+watched the coaches with great interest, walked in to read the papers at
+Clavering assiduously, dined with any body who would ask him (and the
+widow was glad that he should have any entertainment in their solitary
+place), and played a good deal at cribbage with Captain Glanders.
+
+He avoided Dr. Portman, who, in his turn, whenever Pen passed, gave him
+very severe looks from under his shovel-hat. He went to church with his
+mother, however, very regularly, and read prayers for her at home to the
+little household. Always humble, it was greatly diminished now: a couple
+of maids did the work of the house of Fairoaks; the silver dish-covers
+never saw the light at all. John put on his livery to go to church, and
+assert his dignity on Sundays, but it was only for form's sake. He was
+gardener and out-door man, vice Upton resigned. There was but little
+fire in Fairoaks kitchen, and John and the maids drank their evening
+beer there by the light of a single candle. All this was Mr. Pen's doing,
+and the state of things did not increase his cheerfulness.
+
+For some time Pen said no power on earth could induce him to go back
+to Oxbridge again after his failure there; but one day, Laura said to
+him with many blushes, that she thought as some sort of reparation, of
+punishment on himself for his--for his idleness, he ought to go back and
+get his degree, if he could fetch it by doing so; and so back Mr. Pen
+went.
+
+A plucked man is a dismal being in a University; belonging to no set
+of men there, and owned by no one. Pen felt himself plucked indeed of
+all the fine feathers which he had won during his brilliant years, and
+rarely appeared out of his college; regularly going to morning chapel,
+and shutting himself up in his rooms of nights, away from the noise and
+suppers of the undergraduates. There were no duns about his door, they
+were all paid--scarcely any cards were left there. The men of his
+year had taken their degrees, and were gone. He went into a second
+examination, and passed with perfect ease. He was somewhat more easy
+in his mind when he appeared in his bachelor's gown.
+
+On his way back from Oxbridge he paid a visit to his uncle in London;
+but the old gentleman received him with very cold looks, and would
+scarcely give him his fore-finger to shake. He called a second time,
+but Morgan, the valet, said his master was from home.
+
+Pen came back to Fairoaks, and to his books and to his idleness, and
+loneliness and despair. He commenced several tragedies, and wrote many
+copies of verses of a gloomy cast. He formed plans of reading, and broke
+them. He thought about enlisting--about the Spanish legion--about a
+profession. He chafed against his captivity, and cursed the idleness
+which had caused it. Helen said he was breaking his heart, and was sad
+to see his prostration. As soon as they could afford it, he should go
+abroad--he should go to London--he should be freed from the dull society
+of two poor women. It _was_ dull--very, certainly. The tender widow's
+habitual melancholy seemed to deepen into a sadder gloom; and Laura saw
+with alarm that the dear friend became every year more languid and
+weary, and that her pale cheek grew more wan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+NEW FACES.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The inmates of Fairoaks were drowsily pursuing this humdrum existence
+while the great house upon the hill, on the other side of the River
+Brawl, was shaking off the slumber in which it had lain during the lives
+of two generations of masters, and giving extraordinary signs of renewed
+liveliness.
+
+Just about the time of Pen's little mishap, and when he was so absorbed
+in the grief occasioned by that calamity as to take no notice of events
+which befell persons less interesting to himself than Arthur Pendennis,
+an announcement appeared in the provincial journals which caused no
+small sensation in the county at least, and in all the towns, villages,
+halls and mansions, and parsonages for many miles round Clavering Park.
+At Clavering Market, at Cackleby Fair; at Chatteries Sessions; on
+Gooseberry Green, as the squire's carriage met the vicar's one-horse
+contrivance, and the inmates of both vehicles stopped on the road to
+talk; at Tinkleton Church gate, as the bell was tolling in the sunshine,
+and the white smocks and scarlet cloaks came trooping over the green
+common, to Sunday worship; in a hundred societies round about--the word
+was, that Clavering Park was to be inhabited again.
+
+Some five years before, the county papers had advertised the marriage at
+Florence, at the British Legation, of Francis Clavering, Esq., only son
+of Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., of Clavering Park, with Jemima Augusta,
+daughter of Samuel Snell, of Calcutta, Esq., and widow of the late J.
+Amory, Esq. At that time the legend in the county was that Clavering,
+who had been ruined for many a year, had married a widow from India with
+some money. Some of the county folks caught a sight of the newly-married
+pair. The Kickleburys, traveling 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 rumors of them came, as it were by gusts, to Clavering's
+ancestral place.
+
+Their last place of abode was Paris, where they appear to have lived in
+great fashion and splendor after the news of the death of Samuel Snell,
+Esq., of Calcutta, reached his orphan daughter in Europe.
+
+Of Sir Francis Clavering's antecedents little can be said that would be
+advantageous to that respected baronet. The son of an outlaw, living
+in a dismal old chateau near Bruges, this gentleman had made a feeble
+attempt to start in life with a commission in a dragoon regiment, and
+had broken down almost at the outset. Transactions at the gambling-table
+had speedily effected his ruin; after a couple of years in the army he
+had been forced to sell out, had passed some time in Her Majesty's
+prison of the Fleet, and had then shipped over to Ostend to join the
+gouty exile, his father. And in Belgium, France, and Germany, for some
+years, this decayed and abortive prodigal might be seen lurking about
+billiard-rooms and watering-places, punting at gambling-houses, dancing
+at boarding-house balls, and riding steeple-chases on other folks'
+horses.
+
+It was at a boarding-house at Lausanne, that Francis Clavering made what
+he called the lucky _coup_ of marrying the widow Amory, very lately
+returned from Calcutta. His father died soon after, by consequence of
+whose demise his wife became Lady Clavering. The title so delighted Mr.
+Snell of Calcutta, that he doubled his daughter's allowance; and dying
+himself soon after, left a fortune to her and her children, the amount
+of which was, if not magnified by rumor, something very splendid indeed.
+
+Before this time there had been, not rumors unfavorable to Lady
+Clavering's reputation, but unpleasant impressions regarding her
+ladyship. The best English people abroad were shy of making her
+acquaintance; her manners were not the most refined; her origin was
+lamentably low and doubtful. The retired East Indians, who are to be
+found in considerable force in most of the continental towns frequented
+by English, spoke with much scorn of the disreputable old lawyer and
+indigo-smuggler her father, and of Amory, her first husband, who had
+been mate of the Indiaman in which Miss Snell came out to join her
+father at Calcutta. Neither father nor daughter were in society at
+Calcutta, or had ever been heard of at Government House. Old Sir Jasper
+Rogers, who had been Chief Justice of Calcutta, had once said to his
+wife, that he could tell a queer story about Lady Clavering's first
+husband; but greatly to Lady Rogers's disappointment, and that of the
+young ladies his daughters, the old judge could never be got to reveal
+that mystery.
+
+They were all, however, glad enough to go to Lady Clavering's parties,
+when her ladyship took the Hotel Bouilli in the Rue Grenelle at Paris,
+and blazed out in the polite world there in the winter of 183-. The
+Faubourg St. Germain took her up. Viscount Bagwig, our excellent
+embassador, 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. Any body (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 Barbarosa, 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 odor in France, Lady Budelight put her down in
+her subscription-list for the Rev. J. Ramshorn, who had had a vision
+which ordered him to convert the Pope of Rome. And more than this, and
+for the benefit of the worldly, her ladyship gave the best dinners, and
+the grandest balls and suppers, which were known at Paris during that
+season.
+
+And it was during this time, that the good-natured lady must have
+arranged matters with her husband's creditors in England, for Sir
+Francis re-appeared in his native country, without fear of arrest; was
+announced in the Morning Post, and the county paper, as having taken up
+his residence at Mivart's Hotel; and one day the anxious old housekeeper
+at Clavering House beheld a carriage and four horses drive up the long
+avenue, and stop before the moss-grown steps in front of the vast
+melancholy portico.
+
+Three gentlemen were in the carriage--an open one. On the back seat was
+our old acquaintance, Mr. Tatham of Chatteries, while in the places
+of honor sate a handsome and portly gentleman enveloped in mustaches,
+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, had nimbly jumped out of it.
+
+They walked up the great moss-grown steps to the hall-door, and a
+foreign attendant, with ear-rings, 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 aid-de-camp, and Smart, the keeper, appeared, bowing humbly.
+
+Smart, the keeper, pulled the wisp of hay-colored hair which adorned
+his sunburned 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 courtesy. Little Polly, her aid-de-camp, made a
+courtesy, and several rapid bows likewise; and Mrs. Blenkinsop, with a
+great deal of emotion, quavered out, "Welcome to Clavering, Sir Francis.
+It du my poor eyes good to see one of the family once more."
+
+The speech and the greetings were all addressed to the grand gentleman
+in fur and braiding, who wore his hat so magnificently on one side, and
+twirled his mustaches so royally. But he burst out laughing, and said,
+"You've saddled the wrong horse, old lady--I'm not Sir Francis Clavering
+what's come to revisit the halls of my ancestors. Friends and vassals!
+behold your rightful lord!"
+
+And he pointed his hand toward the pale, languid gentleman, who said,
+"Don't be an ass, Ned."
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Blenkinsop, I'm Sir Francis Clavering; I recollect you quite
+well. Forgot me, I suppose?--How-dy-do?" and he took the old lady's
+trembling hand; and nodded in her astonished face, in a not unkind
+manner.
+
+Mrs. Blenkinsop declared upon her conscience that she would have known
+Sir Francis any where, that he was the very image of Sir Francis his
+father, and of Sir John who had gone before.
+
+"O yes--thanky--of course--very much obliged--and that sort of thing,"
+Sir Francis said, looking vacantly about the hall. "Dismal old place,
+ain't it Ned? Never saw it but once, when my governor quarreled with my
+gwandfather, in the year twenty-thwee."
+
+"Dismal?--beautiful!--the Castle of Otranto!--the Mysteries of Udolpho,
+by Jove!" said the individual addressed as Ned. "What a fire-place! You
+might roast an elephant in it. Splendid carved gallery! Inigo Jones, by
+Jove! I'd lay five to two it's Inigo Jones."
+
+"The upper part by Inigo Jones; the lower was altered by the eminent
+Dutch architect, Vanderputty, in George the First his time, by Sir
+Richard, fourth baronet," said the housekeeper.
+
+"O, indeed," said the baronet. "Gad, Ned, you know every thing."
+
+"I know a few things, Frank," Ned answered. "I know that's not a Snyders
+over the mantel-piece--bet you three to one it's a copy. We'll restore
+it, my boy. A lick of varnish, and it will come out wonderfully, sir.
+That old fellow in the red gown, I suppose, is Sir Richard."
+
+"Sheriff of the county, and sate in parliament in the reign of Queen
+Anne," said the housekeeper, wondering at the stranger's knowledge;
+"that on the right is Theodosia, wife of Harbottle, second baronet, by
+Lely, represented in the character of Venus, the Goddess of Beauty--her
+son Gregory, the third baronet, by her side, as Cupid, God of Love, with
+a bow and arrows; that on the next panel, is Sir Rupert, made a knight
+banneret by Charles the First, and whose property was confuscated by
+Oliver Cromwell."
+
+"Thank you--needn't go on, Mrs. Blenkinsop," said the baronet. "We'll
+walk about the place ourselves. Frosch, give me a cigar. Have a cigar,
+Mr. Tatham?"
+
+Little Mr. Tatham tried a cigar which Sir Francis's courier handed to
+him, and over which the lawyer spluttered fearfully, "Needn't come with
+us, Mrs. Blenkinsop. What's-his-name--you--Smart--feed the horses and
+wash their mouths. Shan't stay long. Come along, Strong,--I know the
+way; I was here in twenty-thwee, at the end of my gwandfather's time."
+And Sir Francis and Captain Strong, for such was the style and title of
+Sir Francis's friend, passed out of the hall into the reception-rooms,
+leaving the discomfited Mrs. Blenkinsop to disappear by a side-door,
+which led to her apartments, now the only habitable rooms in the
+long-uninhabited mansion.
+
+It was a place so big that no tenant could afford to live in it; and Sir
+Francis and his friend walked through room after room, admiring their
+vastness, and dreary and deserted grandeur. On the right of the hall
+door were the saloons and drawing-rooms, and on the other side the oak
+room, the parlor, 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 bed-rooms were approached,
+and of which many were of stately proportions and exhibited marks of
+splendor. 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 not so airy or so clean as stables are now.
+
+Up and down the house the two gentlemen wandered, the owner of the
+mansion being very silent and resigned about the pleasure of possessing
+it; whereas, the captain, his friend, examined the premises with so
+much interest and eagerness, that you would have thought he was the
+master, and the other the indifferent spectator of the place. "I see
+capabilities in it--capabilities in it, sir," cried the captain. "Gad,
+sir, leave it to me, and I'll make it the pride of the country, at a
+small expense. What a theater 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 parlor
+with the tapestry in your second salon in the Rue de Grenelle, and
+furnish the oak room with the Moyen-age cabinets and the armor. Armor
+looks splendid against black oak, and there's a Venice glass in the Quai
+Voltaire, which will suit that high mantle-piece to an inch, sir. The
+long saloon, white and crimson of course; the drawing-room yellow satin;
+and the little drawing-room light blue, with lace over--hay?"
+
+"I recollect my old governor caning me in that little room," Sir Francis
+said, sententiously; "he always hated me, my old governor."
+
+"Chintz is the dodge, I suppose, for my lady's rooms--the suite in
+the landing, to the south, the bed-room, the sitting-room, and the
+dressing-room. We'll throw a conservatory out, over the balcony. Where
+will you have your rooms?"
+
+"Put mine in the north wing," said the baronet, with a yawn, "and out
+of the reach of Miss Amory's confounded piano. I can't bear it. She's
+scweeching from morning till night."
+
+The captain burst out laughing. He settled the whole further arrangements
+of the house in the course of their walk through it; and, the promenade
+ended, they went into the steward's room, now inhabited by Mrs.
+Blenkinsop, and where Mr. Tatham was sitting, poring over a plan of the
+estate, and the old housekeeper had prepared a collation in honor of her
+lord and master.
+
+Then they inspected the kitchen and stables, about both of which Sir
+Francis was rather interested, and Captain Strong was for examining the
+gardens: but the baronet said, "D---- the gardens, and that sort of
+thing!" and finally, he drove away from the house as unconcernedly as he
+had entered it; and that night the people of Clavering learned that Sir
+Francis Clavering had paid a visit to the Park, and was coming to live
+in the county.
+
+When this fact came to be known at Chatteries, 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 vicinage,
+farmers, tradesmen, and factory people--all the population in and round
+about the little place. The news was brought to Fairoaks, and received
+by the ladies there, and by Mr. Pen, with some excitement. "Mrs. Pybus
+says there is a very pretty girl in the family, Arthur," Laura said, who
+was as kind and thoughtful upon this point as women generally are: "a
+Miss Amory, Lady Clavering's daughter by her first marriage. Of course,
+you will fall in love with her as soon as she arrives."
+
+Helen cried out, "Don't talk nonsense, Laura." Pen laughed, and said,
+"Well, there is the young Sir Francis for you."
+
+"He is but four years old," Miss Laura replied. "But I shall console
+myself with that handsome officer, Sir Francis's friend. He was at
+church last Sunday, in the Clavering pew, and his mustaches were
+beautiful."
+
+Indeed, the number of Sir Francis's family (whereof the members have all
+been mentioned in the above paragraphs) was pretty soon known in his
+town, and every thing 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 Chatteries and London; and numerous as
+the vans were, there was not one but Captain Glanders knew what it
+contained, and escorted the baggage up to the Park House.
+
+He and Captain Edward Strong had formed an intimate acquaintance
+by this time. The younger captain occupied those very lodgings at
+Clavering, which the peaceful Smirke had previously tenanted, and was
+deep in the good graces of Madame Fribsby, his landlady; and of the
+whole town, indeed. The captain was splendid in person and raiment;
+fresh-colored, blue-eyed, black-whiskered, broad-chested, athletic--a
+slight tendency to fullness did not take away from the comeliness of his
+jolly figure--a braver soldier never presented a broader chest to the
+enemy. As he strode down Clavering High-street, his hat on one side, his
+cane clanking on the pavement, or waving round him in the execution of
+military cuts and soldatesque manoeuvres--his jolly laughter ringing
+through the otherwise silent street--he was as welcome as sunshine to
+the place, and a comfort to every inhabitant in it.
+
+On the first market-day he knew every pretty girl in the market: he
+joked with all the women; had a word with the farmers about their stock,
+and dined at the Agricultural Ordinary at the Clavering Arms, where he
+set them all dying with laughing by his fun and jokes. "Tu be sure he be
+a vine feller, 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 run in a little brandy, unexcised by kings, from
+Baymouth, or the fishing villages along the coast.
+
+He had tried to live at the great house first; but it was so dull he
+couldn't stand it. "I am a creature born for society," he told Captain
+Glanders. "I'm down here to see Clavering's house set in order; for
+between ourselves, Frank has no energy, sir, no energy; he's not the
+chest for it, sir (and he threw out his own trunk as he spoke); but I
+must have social intercourse. Old Mrs. Blenkinsop goes to bed at seven,
+and takes Polly with her. There was nobody but me and the Ghost for the
+first two nights at the great house, and I own it, sir, I like company.
+Most old soldiers do."
+
+Glanders asked Strong where he had served? Captain Strong curled his
+mustache, and said with a laugh, that the other might almost ask where
+he had _not_ served. "I began, sir, as cadet of Hungarian Uhlans, and
+when the war of Greek independence broke out, quitted that service
+in consequence of a quarrel with my governor, and was one of seven
+who escaped from Missolonghi, and was blown up in one of Botzaris's
+fireships, at the age of seventeen. I'll show you my Cross of the
+Redeemer, if you'll come over to my lodgings and take a glass of grog
+with me, captain, this evening. I've a few of those baubles in my desk.
+I've the White Eagle of Poland; Skrzynecki gave it me" (he pronounced
+Skrzynecki's name with wonderful accuracy and gusto); "upon the field
+of Ostrolenka, I was a lieutenant of the fourth regiment, sir, and we
+marched through Diebitsch's lines--bang thro' 'em into Prussia, sir,
+without firing a shot. Ah, captain, that was a mismanaged business.
+I received this wound by the side of the king before Oporto--where he
+would have pounded the stock-jobbing Pedroites, had Bourmont followed my
+advice; and I served in Spain with the king's troops, until the death of
+my dear friend, Zumalacarreguy, when I saw the game was over, and hung
+up my toasting iron, captain. Alava offered me a regiment, the Queen's
+Muleteros; but I couldn't--damme, I couldn't--and now, sir, you know Ned
+Strong--the Chevalier Strong they call me abroad--as well as he knows
+himself."
+
+In this way almost every body in Clavering came to know Ned Strong. He
+told Madame Fribsby, he told the landlord of the George, he told Baker
+at the reading-rooms, he told Mrs. Glanders, and the young ones, at
+dinner: and, finally, he told Mr. Arthur Pendennis, who, yawning into
+Clavering one day, found the Chevalier Strong in company with Captain
+Glanders; and who was delighted with his new acquaintance.
+
+Before many days were over, Captain Strong was as much at home in
+Helen's drawing-room as he was in Madame Fribsby's first floor; and
+made the lonely house very gay with his good humor and ceaseless flow
+of talk. The two women had never before seen such a man. He had a
+thousand stories about battles and dangers to interest them--about Greek
+captives, Polish beauties, and Spanish nuns. He could sing scores of
+songs, in half a dozen languages, and would sit down to the piano and
+troll them off in a rich manly voice. Both the ladies pronounced him to
+be delightful--and so he was; though, indeed, they had not had much
+choice of man's society as yet, having seen in the course of their lives
+but few persons, except old Portman and the major, and Mr. Pen, who was
+a genius, to be sure; but then your geniuses are somewhat flat and moody
+at home.
+
+And Captain Strong acquainted his new friends at Fairoaks, not only with
+his own biography, but with the whole history of the family now coming
+to Clavering. It was he who had made the marriage between his friend
+Frank and the widow Amory. She wanted rank, and he wanted money. What
+match could be more suitable? He organized it; he made those two people
+happy. There was no particular romantic attachment between them; the
+widow was not of an age or a person for romance, and Sir Francis, if he
+had his game at billiards, and his dinner, cared for little besides. But
+they were as happy as people could be. Clavering would return to his
+native place and country, his wife's fortune would pay his encumbrances
+off, and his son and heir would be one of the first men in the county.
+
+"And Miss Amory?" Laura asked. Laura was uncommonly curious about Miss
+Amory.
+
+Strong laughed. "Oh, Miss Amory is a muse--Miss Amory is a mystery--Miss
+Amory is a _femme incomprise_." "What is that?" asked simple Mrs.
+Pendennis--but the chevalier gave her no answer; perhaps could not give
+her one. "Miss Amory paints, Miss Amory writes poems, Miss Amory composes
+music, Miss Amory rides like Diana Vernon. Miss Amory is a paragon, in
+a word."
+
+"I hate clever women," said Pen.
+
+"Thank you," said Laura. For her part she was sure she should be charmed
+with Miss Amory, and quite longed to have such a friend. And with this
+she looked Pen full in the face, as if every word the little hypocrite
+said was gospel truth.
+
+Thus, an intimacy was arranged and prepared beforehand between the
+Fairoaks family and their wealthy neighbors at the Park; and Pen and
+Laura were to the full as eager for their arrivals, 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 among them, and is remembered
+by his rural entertainers for years after he has left them, and
+forgotten them very likely--floated far away from them on the vast
+London sea. But the islanders remember long after the mariner has sailed
+away, and can tell you what he said, and what he wore, and how he looked
+and how he laughed. In fine, a new arrival is an event in the country,
+not to be understood by us, who don't and had rather not, know who lives
+next door.
+
+When the painters and upholsterers had done their work in the house, and
+so beautified it, under Captain Strong's superintendence, that he might
+well be proud of his taste, that gentleman announced that he should go
+to London, where the whole family had arrived by this time, and should
+speedily return to establish them in their renovated mansion.
+
+Detachments of domestics preceded them. Carriages came down by sea, and
+were brought over from Baymouth by horses which had previously arrived
+under the care of grooms and coachmen. One day the "Alacrity" coach
+brought down on its roof two large and melancholy men, who were dropped
+at the park lodge with their trunks, and who were Messieurs Frederic and
+James, metropolitan footmen, who had no objection to the country, and
+brought with them state and other suits of the Clavering uniform.
+
+On another day, the mail deposited at the gate a foreign gentleman,
+adorned with many ringlets and chains. He made a great riot at the lodge
+gate to the keeper's wife (who, being a West-country woman, did not
+understand his English or his Gascon French), because there was no
+carriage in waiting to drive him to the house, a mile off, and because
+he could not walk entire leagues in his fatigued state and varnished
+boots. This was Monsieur Alcide Mirobolant, formerly Chef of his
+Highness the Duc de Borodino, of H. Eminence Cardinal Beccafico, and at
+present Chef of the bouche of Sir Francis Clavering, Baronet:--Monsieur
+Mirobolant's library, pictures, and piano, had arrived previously in
+charge of the intelligent young Englishman, his aid-de-camp. He was,
+moreover, aided by a professed female cook, likewise from London, who
+had inferior females under her orders.
+
+He did not dine in the steward's room, but took his nutriment in solitude
+in his own apartments, where a female servant was affected to his
+private use. It was a grand sight to behold him in his dressing-gown
+composing a _menu_. He always sate down and played the piano for some
+time before that. If interrupted, he remonstrated pathetically with his
+little maid. Every great artist, he said, had need of solitude to
+perfectionate his works.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But we are advancing matters, in the fullness of our love and respect
+for Monsieur Mirobolant, and bringing him prematurely on the stage.
+
+The Chevalier Strong had a hand in the engagement of all the London
+domestics, and, indeed, seemed to be the master of the house. There were
+those among them who said he was the house-steward, only he dined with
+the family. Howbeit, he knew how to make himself respected, and two of
+by no means the least comfortable rooms of the house were assigned to
+his particular use.
+
+He was walking upon the terrace finally upon the eventful day, when,
+amid an immense jangling of bells from Clavering Church, where the flag
+was flying, an open carriage and one of those traveling chariots or
+family arks, which only English philo-progenitiveness 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.
+Two 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 tall 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-humored countenance, which waggled and nodded very
+graciously: Master Francis Clavering, who was holding his mamma's skirt
+(and who stopped the procession to look at the largest footman, whose
+appearance seemed to strike the young gentleman), and Miss Blandy,
+governess to Master Francis, and Miss Amory, her ladyship's daughter,
+giving her arm to Captain Strong. It was summer, but fires of welcome
+were crackling in the great hall chimney, and in the rooms which the
+family were to occupy.
+
+Monsieur Mirobolant had looked at the procession from one of the
+lime-trees in the avenue. "Elle est la," he said, laying his jeweled
+hand on his richly-embroidered velvet waistcoat with glass buttons. "Je
+t'ai vue, je te bénis, O ma sylphide, O mon ange!" and he dived into the
+thicket, and made his way back to his furnaces and saucepans.
+
+The next Sunday the same party which had just made its appearance at
+Clavering Park, came and publicly took possession of the ancient pew in
+the church, where so many of the baronet's ancestors had prayed, and
+were now kneeling in effigy. There was such a run to see the new folks,
+that the Low Church was deserted, to the disgust of its pastor; and as
+the state barouche, with the grays 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 every body, and saluted for all the company--the country
+people vowed my lady was not handsome, to be sure, but pronounced her
+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 color of the rainbow flaming
+on her person. Miss Amory appeared meek and dove-color like a vestal
+virgin--while Master Francis was in the costume then prevalent of Rob
+Roy Macgregor, a celebrated Highland outlaw. The baronet was not more
+animated than ordinarily--there was a happy vacuity about him which
+enabled him to face a dinner, a death, a church, a marriage, with the
+same indifferent ease.
+
+A pew for the Clavering servants was filled by these domestics, and the
+enraptured congregation saw the gentlemen from London with "vlower on
+their heeds," and the miraculous coachman with his silver wig, take their
+places in that pew so soon as his horses were put up at the Clavering
+Arms.
+
+In the course of the service, Master Francis began to make such a
+yelling in the pew, that Frederic, the tallest of the footmen, was
+beckoned by his master, and rose and went and carried out Master
+Francis, who roared and beat him on the head, so that the powder flew
+round about, like clouds of incense. Nor was he pacified until placed
+on the box of the carriage, where he played at horses with John's whip.
+
+"You see the little beggar's never been to church before, Miss Bell,"
+the baronet drawled out to a young lady who was visiting him; "no wonder
+he should make a row; I don't go in town neither, but I think it's right
+in the country to give a good example--and that sort of thing."
+
+Miss Bell laughed, and said, "The little boy had not given a
+particularly good example."
+
+"Gad, I don't know, and that sort of thing," said the baronet. "It ain't
+so bad neither. Whenever he wants a thing, Frank always cwies, and
+whenever he cwies he gets it."
+
+Here the child in question began to howl for a dish of sweetmeats, on
+the luncheon table, and making a lunge across the table-cloth, upset a
+glass of wine over the best waistcoat of one of the guests present, Mr.
+Arthur Pendennis, who was greatly annoyed at being made to look foolish,
+and at having his spotless cambric shirt front blotched with wine.
+
+"We do spoil him so," said Lady Clavering to Mrs. Pendennis, fondly
+gazing at the cherub, whose hands and face were now frothed over with
+the species of lather which is inserted in the confection called
+_meringues a la creme_.
+
+"It is very wrong," said Mrs. Pendennis, as if she had never done such a
+thing herself as spoil a child.
+
+"Mamma says she spoils my brother--do you think any thing could. Miss
+Bell? Look at him--isn't he like a little angel?"
+
+"Gad, I was quite wight," said the baronet. "He has cwied, and he has
+got it, you see. Go it, Fwank, old boy."
+
+"Sir Francis is a very judicious parent," Miss Amory whispered. "Don't
+you think so, Miss Bell? I shan't call you Miss Bell--I shall call you
+Laura. I admired you so at church. Your robe was not well made, nor your
+bonnet very fresh. But you have such beautiful gray eyes, and such a
+lovely tint."
+
+"Thank you," said Miss Bell, laughing.
+
+"Your cousin is handsome, and thinks so. He is uneasy _de sa personne_.
+He has not seen the world yet. Has he genius? Has he suffered? A lady,
+a little woman in a rumpled satin and velvet shoes--a Miss Pybus--came
+here and said he has suffered. I, too, have suffered--and you, Laura,
+has your heart ever been touched?"
+
+Laura said "No!" but perhaps blushed a little at the idea of the
+question, so that the other said--
+
+"Ah, Laura! I see it all. It is the beau cousin. Tell me every thing. I
+already love you as a sister."
+
+"You are very kind," said Miss Bell, smiling, "and--and it must be owned
+that it is a very sudden attachment."
+
+"All attachments are so. It is electricity--spontaneity. It is
+instantaneous. I knew I should love you from the moment I saw you. Do
+you not feel it yourself?"
+
+"Not yet," said Laura; "but I dare say I shall if I try."
+
+"Call me by my name, then."
+
+"But I don't know it," Laura cried out.
+
+"My name is Blanche--isn't it a pretty name? Call me by it."
+
+"Blanche--it is very pretty, indeed."
+
+"And while mamma talks with that kind looking lady--what relation is
+she to you? She must have been pretty once, but is rather _passée_;
+she is not well _gantée_, 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 _éprise_ of him? He says you are, but I know better; it is
+the beau cousin. Yes--_il a de beaux yeux_. _Je n'aime pas les blonds
+ordinairement. Car je suis blonde moi--je suis Blanche et blonde_,"--and
+she looked at her face and made a _moue_ in the glass; and never stopped
+for Laura's answer to the questions which she had put.
+
+Blanche was fair and like a sylph. She had fair hair, with green
+reflections in it. But she had dark eyebrows. She had long black
+eyelashes, which vailed beautiful brown eyes. She had such a slim
+waist, that it was a wonder to behold; and such slim little feet, that
+you would have thought the grass would hardly bend under them. Her lips
+were of the color of faint rosebuds, and her voice warbled limpidly over
+a set of the sweetest little pearly teeth ever seen. She showed them
+very often, for they were very pretty. She was very good-natured, and a
+smile not only showed her teeth wonderfully, but likewise exhibited two
+lovely little pink dimples, that nestled in either cheek.
+
+She showed Laura her drawings, which the other thought charming. She
+played her some of her waltzes, with a rapid and brilliant finger, and
+Laura was still more charmed. And she then read her some poems, in
+French and English, likewise of her own composition, and which she kept
+locked in her own book--her own dear little book; it was bound in blue
+velvet with a gilt lock, and on it was printed the title of "Mes
+Larmes."
+
+"Mes Larmes!--isn't it a pretty name?" the young lady continued, who was
+pleased with every thing that she did, and did every thing very well.
+Laura owned that it was. She had never seen any thing like it before;
+any thing 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, "every thing in the room is pretty; and you are the
+prettiest of all." The other smiled, looked in the glass, went up and
+took both of Laura's hands, and kissed them, and sat down to the piano,
+and shook out a little song, as if she had been a nightingale.
+
+This was the first visit paid by Fairoaks to Clavering Park, in return
+for Clavering Park's visit to Fairoaks, in reply to Fairoaks's cards
+left a few days after the arrival of Sir Francis's family. The intimacy
+between the young ladies sprang up like Jack's Bean-stalk to the skies
+in a single night. The large footmen were perpetually walking with
+little rose-colored-pink notes to Fairoaks; where there was a pretty
+housemaid in the kitchen, who might possibly tempt those gentlemen to
+so humble a place. Miss Amory sent music, or Miss Amory sent a new
+novel, or a picture from the "Journal des Modes," to Laura; or my lady's
+compliments arrived with flowers and fruit; or Miss Amory begged and
+prayed Miss Bell to come to dinner; and dear Mrs. Pendennis, if she was
+strong enough; and Mr. Arthur, if a humdrum party were not too stupid
+for him; and would send a pony-carriage for Mrs. Pendennis; and would
+take no denial.
+
+Neither Arthur nor Laura wished to refuse. And Helen, who was, indeed,
+somewhat ailing, was glad that the two should have their pleasure; and
+would look at them fondly, as they set forth, and ask in her heart that
+she might not be called away until those two beings whom she loved best
+in the world should be joined together. As they went out and crossed
+over the bridge, she remembered summer evenings five-and-twenty years
+ago, when she, too, had bloomed in her brief prime of love and
+happiness. It was all over now. The moon was looking from the purpling
+sky, and the stars glittering there, just as they used in the early,
+well-remembered evenings. He was lying dead, far away, with the billows
+rolling between them. Good God! how well she remembered the last look of
+his face as they parted. It looked out at her through the vista of long
+years, as sad and as clear as then.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So Mr. Pen and Miss Laura found the society at Clavering Park an
+uncommonly agreeable resort of summer evenings. Blanche vowed that she
+_raffoled_ of Laura; and, very likely, Mr. Pen was pleased with Blanche.
+His spirits came back; he laughed and rattled till Laura wondered to
+hear him. It was not the same Pen, yawning, in a shooting jacket, in the
+Fairoaks parlor, who appeared, alert and brisk, and smiling and well
+dressed, in Lady Clavering's drawing-room. Sometimes they had music.
+Laura had a sweet contralto voice, and sang with Blanche, who had had
+the best continental instruction, and was charmed to be her friend's
+mistress. Sometimes Mr. Pen joined in these concerts, or oftener looked
+sweet upon Miss Blanche as she sang. Sometimes they had glees, when
+Captain Strong's chest was of vast service, and he boomed out in a
+prodigious bass, of which he was not a little proud.
+
+"Good fellow, Strong--ain't he, Miss Bell?" Sir Francis would say to
+her. "Plays at _écarté_ with Lady Clavering--plays any thing, 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 Laura."
+
+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 humor, in kindness and joviality, in a thousand little
+services by which he made himself agreeable. What gentleman could want
+a better friend than a man who was always in spirits, never in the way
+or out of it, and was ready to execute any commission for his patron,
+whether it was to sing a song or meet a lawyer, to fight a duel or to
+carve a capon?
+
+Although Laura and Pen commonly went to Clavering Park together, yet
+sometimes Mr. Pen took walks there unattended by her, and about which he
+did not tell her. He took to fishing the Brawl, which runs through the
+park, and passes not very far from the garden-wall. And by the oddest
+coincidence, Miss Amory would walk out (having been to look at her
+flowers), and would be quite surprised to see Mr. Pendennis fishing.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 endeavoring to hook? It must be owned, he
+became very fond of that healthful and invigorating pursuit of angling,
+and was whipping the Brawl continually with his fly.
+
+As for Miss Blanche, she had a kind heart; and having, as she owned,
+herself "suffered" a good deal in the course of her brief life and
+experience--why, she could compassionate other susceptible beings
+like Pen, who had suffered too. Her love for Laura and that dear Mrs.
+Pendennis redoubled: if they were not at the Park, she was not easy
+unless she herself was at Fairoaks. She played with Laura; she read
+French and German with Laura; and Mr. Pen read French and German along
+with them. He turned sentimental ballads of Schiller and Göthe into
+English verse for the ladies, and Blanche unlocked "Mes Larmes" for him,
+and imparted to him some of the plaintive outpourings of her own tender
+muse.
+
+It appeared from these poems that this young creature had indeed
+suffered prodigiously. She was familiar with the idea of suicide. Death
+she repeatedly longed for. A faded rose inspired her with such grief
+that you would have thought she must die in pain of it. It was a wonder
+how a young creature (who had had a snug home, or been at a comfortable
+boarding-school, and had no outward grief or hardship to complain of)
+should have suffered so much--should have found the means of getting at
+such an ocean of despair and passion (as a run-away boy who _will_ get
+to sea), and having embarked on it, should survive it. What a talent she
+must have had for weeping to be able to pour out so many of Mes Larmes!
+
+They were not particularly briny, Miss Blanche's tears, that is the
+truth; but Pen, who read her verses, thought them very well for a
+lady--and wrote some verses himself for her. His were very violent and
+passionate, very hot, sweet, and strong: and he not only wrote verses;
+but--O, the villain! O, the deceiver! he altered and adapted former
+poems in his possession, and which had been composed for a certain Miss
+Emily Fotheringay, for the use and to the Christian name of Miss Blanche
+Amory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+A LITTLE INNOCENT.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Every house has its skeleton in it somewhere, and it may be a comfort
+to some unhappy folks to think that the luckiest and most wealthy of
+their neighbors have their miseries and causes of disquiet. Our little
+innocent muse of a Blanche, who sang so nicely and talked so sweetly,
+you would have thought she must have made sunshine where-ever she went,
+was the skeleton, or the misery, or the bore, or the Nemesis of
+Clavering House, and of most of the inhabitants thereof. As one little
+stone in your own shoe or your horse's, suffices to put either to
+torture and to make your journey miserable, so in life a little obstacle
+is sufficient to obstruct your entire progress, and subject you to
+endless annoyance and disquiet. Who would have guessed that such a
+smiling little fairy as Blanche Amory could be the cause of discord in
+any family?
+
+"I say, Strong," one day the baronet said, as the pair were conversing
+after dinner over the billiard-table, and that great unbosomer of
+secrets, a cigar; "I say, Strong, I wish to the doose your wife was
+dead."
+
+"So do I. That's a cannon, by Jove. But she won't; she'll live
+forever--you see if she don't. Why do you wish her off the hooks, Frank,
+my boy?" asked Captain Strong.
+
+"Because then, you might marry Missy. She ain't bad-looking. She'll have
+ten thousand, and that's a good bit of money for such a poor old devil
+as you," drawled out the other gentleman. "And gad, Strong, I hate her
+worse and worse every day. I can't stand her, Strong, by gad, I can't."
+
+"I wouldn't take her at twice the figure," Captain Strong said,
+laughing. "I never saw such a little devil in my life."
+
+"I should like to poison her," said the sententious baronet; "by Jove I
+should."
+
+"Why, what has she been at now?" asked his friend.
+
+"Nothing particular," answered Sir Francis; "only her old tricks. That
+girl has such a knack of making every body miserable that, hang me, it's
+quite surprising. Last night she sent the governess crying away from
+the dinner-table. Afterward, as I was passing Frank's room, I heard the
+poor little beggar howling in the dark, and found his sister had been
+frightening his soul out of his body, by telling him stories about the
+ghost that's in the house. At lunch she gave my lady a turn; and though
+my wife's a fool, she's a good soul--I'm hanged if she ain't."
+
+"What did Missy do to her?" Strong asked.
+
+"Why, hang me, if she didn't begin talking about the late Amory, my
+predecessor," the baronet said, with a grin. "She got some picture out
+of the Keepsake, and said she was sure it was like her dear father. She
+wanted to know where her father's grave was. Hang her father! Whenever
+Miss Amory talks about him, Lady Clavering always bursts out crying;
+and the little devil will talk about him in order to spite her mother.
+To-day when she began, I got in a confounded rage, said I was her
+father, and--and that sort of thing, and then, sir, she took a shy
+at me."
+
+"And what did she say about you, Frank?" Mr. Strong, still laughing,
+inquired of his friend and patron.
+
+"Gad, she said I wasn't her father: that I wasn't fit to comprehend her;
+that her father must have been a man of genius, and fine feelings, and
+that sort of thing: whereas I had married her mother for money."
+
+"Well, didn't you?" asked Strong.
+
+"It don't make it any the pleasanter to hear because it's true, don't
+you know," Sir Francis Clavering answered. "I ain't a literary man and
+that; but I ain't such a fool as she makes me out. I don't know how
+it is, but she always manages to--to put me in the hole, don't you
+understand. She turns all the house round her in her quiet way, and
+with her confounded sentimental airs. I wish she was dead, Ned."
+
+"It was my wife whom you wanted dead just now," Strong said, always in
+perfect good humor; upon which the baronet, with his accustomed candor,
+said, "Well, when people bore my life out, I _do_ wish they were dead,
+and I wish Missy were down a well, with all my heart."
+
+Thus it will be seen from the above report of this candid
+conversation that our accomplished little friend had some peculiarities
+or defects of character which rendered her not very popular. She was
+a young lady of some genius, exquisite sympathies and considerable
+literary attainments, living, like many another genius, with relatives
+who could not comprehend her. Neither her mother nor her step-father
+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 school girl 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 every body 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 candor on her part to affect a
+cheerfulness which she did not feel, or pretend a respect for those
+toward whom it was quite impossible she should entertain any reverence?
+If a poetess may not bemoan her lot, of what earthly use is her lyre?
+Blanche struck hers only to the saddest of tunes; and sang elegies over
+her dead hopes, dirges over her early frost-nipt buds of affection, as
+became such a melancholy fate and muse.
+
+Her actual distresses, as we have said, had not been, up to the present
+time, very considerable; but her griefs lay, like those of most of us,
+in her own soul--that being sad and habitually dissatisfied, what wonder
+that she should weep? So Mes Larmes dribbled out of her eyes any day at
+command: she could furnish an unlimited supply of tears, and her faculty
+of shedding them increased by practice. For sentiment is like another
+complaint mentioned by Horace, as increasing by self-indulgence (I am
+sorry to say, ladies, that the complaint in question is called the
+dropsy), and the more you cry, the more you will be able and desirous
+to do so.
+
+Missy had begun to gush at a very early age. Lamartine was her favorite
+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 sympathized 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 favorite, 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 burned nose, or torn head of hair,
+and no eyes at all, that takes the first place in Miss's affection, and
+is dandled and caressed in her arms.
+
+As novelists are supposed to know every thing, 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 toward 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 Elysées
+which, as every body knows, is next door to Monsieur Rogron's (Chevalier
+of the Legion of Honor) pension for young gentlemen, a correspondence,
+by letter, took place between the _séduisante Miss Betsi_ and two young
+gentlemen of the College of Charlemagne, who were pensioners of the
+Chevalier Rogron.
+
+In the above paragraph our young friend has been called by a Christian
+name, different to that tinder 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 step-father, held in terror over her, was the threat to
+call her publicly by her name of Betsy, by which menace he sometimes
+managed to keep the young rebel in order.
+
+We have spoken just now of children's dolls, and of the manner in
+which those little people take up and neglect their darling toys, and
+very likely this history will show that Miss Blanche assumed and put
+away her live dolls with a similar girlish inconstancy. She had had
+hosts of dear, dear, darling friends ere now, and had quite a little
+museum of locks of hair in her treasure-chest, which she had gathered in
+the course of her sentimental progress. Some dear friends had married:
+some had gone to other schools: one beloved sister she had lost from
+the pension, and found again, O, horror! her darling, her Léocadie,
+keeping the books in her father's shop, a grocer in the Rue du Bac:
+in fact, she had met with a number of disappointments, estrangements,
+disillusionments, as she called them in her pretty French jargon, and
+had seen and suffered a great deal, for so young a woman. But it is
+the lot of sensibility to suffer, and of confiding tenderness to be
+deceived, and she felt that she was only undergoing the penalties of
+genius, in these pangs and disappointments of her young career.
+
+Meanwhile, she managed to make the honest lady, her mother, as
+uncomfortable as circumstances would permit; and caused her worthy
+step-father to wish she was dead. With the exception of Captain Strong,
+whose invincible good humor was proof against her sarcasms, the little
+lady ruled the whole house with her tongue. If Lady Clavering talked
+about sparrowgrass instead of asparagus, or called an object a hobject,
+as this unfortunate lady would sometimes do, Missy calmly corrected her,
+and frightened the good soul, her mother, into errors only the more
+frequent as she grew more nervous under her daughter's eye.
+
+It is not to be supposed, considering the vast interest which the
+arrival of the family at Clavering Park inspired in the inhabitants
+of the little town, that Madame Fribsby alone, of all the folks in
+Clavering, should have remained unmoved and incurious. At the first
+appearance of the Park family in church, madame noted every article of
+toilet which the ladies wore, from their bonnets to their brodequins,
+and took a survey of the attire of the ladies' maids in the pew allotted
+to them. We fear that Doctor Portman's sermon, though it was one of his
+oldest and most valued compositions, had little effect upon Madame
+Fribsby on that day. In a very few days afterward, 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 favorably received,
+as she was happy to hear, by those ladies.
+
+Mrs. Bonner, Lady Clavering's lady, became soon a great frequenter of
+Madame Fribsby's drawing-room, and partook of many entertainments at the
+milliner's expense. A meal of green tea, scandal, hot Sally-Lunn cakes,
+and a little novel reading, were always at the service of Mrs. Bonner,
+whenever she was free to pass an evening in the town. And she found much
+more time for these pleasures than her junior officer, Miss Amory's
+maid, who seldom could be spared for a holiday, and was worked as hard
+as any factory girl by that inexorable little muse, her mistress.
+
+The muse loved to be dressed becomingly, and, having a lively fancy and
+a poetic desire for change, was for altering her attire every day. Her
+maid, having a taste in dress-making--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 remodeling Miss
+Amory's habiliments; and rose very early and went to bed very late, in
+obedience to the untiring caprices of her little task-mistress. 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 can not get on without it;
+and as her father was a cripple incapable of work, and her return home
+would only increase the burthen and add to the misery of the family,
+poor Pincott was fain to stay where she could maintain herself, and
+spare a little relief to her parents.
+
+Our muse, with the candor 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 sniveling 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 favorite 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 a blessing upon her attendant, she would turn round and go to
+sleep.
+
+The muse might lie in bed as long as she chose of a morning, and
+availed herself of that privilege; but Pincott had to rise very early
+indeed to get her mistress's task done; and had to appear next day with
+the same red eyes and the same wan face, which displeased Miss Amory
+by their want of gayety, 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 dependents so, but it may be that
+there are such, and that the tyranny which they exercise over their
+subordinates, and the pangs which they can manage to inflict with a soft
+voice, and a well-bred simper, are as cruel as those which a slave-driver
+administers with an oath and a whip.
+
+But Blanche was a muse--a delicate little creature, quite tremulous
+with excitability, whose eyes filled with tears at the smallest emotion;
+and who knows, but that it was the very fineness of her feelings which
+caused them to be _froisséd_ so easily? You crush a butterfly by merely
+touching it. Vulgar people have no idea of the sensibility of a muse.
+
+So little Pincott being occupied all day and night in stitching,
+hemming, ripping, combing, ironing, crimping, for her mistress; in
+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 soirées, nor indeed was she much missed, or considered
+of sufficient consequence to appear at their entertainments.
+
+But there was another person connected with the Clavering establishment,
+who became a constant guest of our friend, the milliner. This was the
+chief of the kitchen, Monsieur Mirobolant, with whom Madame Fribsby soon
+formed an intimacy.
+
+Not having been accustomed to the appearance or society of persons
+of the French nation, the rustic inhabitants of Clavering were not so
+favorably 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 favorite costume,
+namely, his light green frock or paletot, his crimson velvet waistcoat,
+with blue glass buttons, his pantalon Ecossais, of a very large and
+decided check pattern, his orange satin neckcloth, and his jean-boots,
+with tips of shiny leather--these, with a gold embroidered cap, and a
+richly-gilt cane, or other varieties of ornament of a similar tendency,
+formed his usual holiday costume, in which he flattered himself there
+was nothing remarkable (unless, indeed, the beauty of his person should
+attract observation), and in which he considered that he exhibited the
+appearance of a gentleman of good Parisian ton.
+
+He walked then down the street, grinning and ogling every woman he met,
+with glances, which he meant should kill them outright, and peered over
+the railings, and in at the windows, where females were, in the tranquil
+summer evening. But Betsy, Mrs. Pybus's maid, shrank back with a Lor
+bless us, as Alcide ogled her over the laurel bush; the Miss Bakers, and
+their mamma, stared with wonder; and presently a crowd began to follow
+the interesting foreigner, of ragged urchins and children, who left
+their dirt-pies in the street to pursue him.
+
+For some time he thought that admiration was the cause which led
+these persons in his wake, and walked on, pleased himself that he
+could so easily confer on others so much harmless pleasure. But the
+little children and dirt-pie manufacturers were presently succeeded
+by followers of a larger growth, and a number of lads and girls from
+the factory being let loose at this hour, joined the mob, and began
+laughing, jeering, hooting, and calling opprobrious names at the
+Frenchman. Some cried out, "Frenchy! Frenchy!" some exclaimed "Frogs!"
+one asked for a lock of his hair, which was long and in richly-flowing
+ringlets; and at length the poor artist began to perceive that he was
+an object of derision rather than of respect to the rude, grinning mob.
+
+It was at this juncture that Madame Fribsby spied the unlucky gentleman
+with the train at his heels, and heard the scornful shouts with which
+they assailed him. She ran out of her room, and across the street to the
+persecuted foreigner; she held out her hand, and, addressing him in his
+own language, invited him into her abode; and when she had housed him
+fairly within her door, she stood bravely at the threshold before the
+gibing factory girls and boys, and said they were a pack of cowards to
+insult a poor man who could not speak their language, and was alone
+and without protection. The little crowd, with some ironical cheers and
+hooting, nevertheless felt the force of Madame Fribsby's vigorous
+allocution, and retreated before her; for the old lady was rather
+respected in the place, and her oddity and her kindness had made her
+many friends there.
+
+Poor Mirobolant was grateful indeed to hear the language of his
+country ever so ill spoken. Frenchmen pardon our faults in their
+language much more readily than we excuse their bad English; and will
+face our blunders throughout a long conversation, without the least
+propensity to grin. The rescued artist vowed that Madame Fribsby was his
+guardian angel, and that he had not as yet met with such suavity and
+politeness among _les Anglaises_. He was as courteous and complimentary
+to her as if it was the fairest and noblest of ladies whom he was
+addressing: for Alcide Mirobolant paid homage, after his fashion, to all
+womankind, and never dreamed of a distinction of ranks in the realms of
+beauty, as his phrase was.
+
+A cream, flavored with pine-apple--a mayonnaise of lobster, which he
+flattered himself was not unworthy of his hand, or of her to whom he had
+the honor to offer it as an homage, and a box of preserved fruits of
+Provence, were brought by one of the chef's aids-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 _grossièreté_ 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 chef
+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 Alcide proffered to her, for he persisted in calling her
+"_La respectable Fribsbi_," "_La vertueuse Fribsbi_,"--and in stating
+that he should consider her as his mother, while he hoped she would
+regard him as her son. Ah! it was not very long ago, Fribsby thought,
+that words had been addressed to her in that dear French language,
+indicating a different sort of attachment. And she sighed as she looked
+up at the picture of her Carabineer. For it is surprising how young some
+people's hearts remain when their heads have need of a front or a little
+hair-dye--and, at this moment, Madame Fribsby, as she told young Alcide,
+felt as romantic as a girl of eighteen.
+
+When the conversation took this turn--and at their first intimacy Madame
+Fribsby was rather inclined so to lead it--Alcide always politely
+diverged to another subject: it was as his mother that he persisted
+in considering the good milliner. He would recognize her in no other
+capacity, and with that relationship the gentle lady was forced to
+content herself, when she found how deeply the artist's heart was
+engaged elsewhere.
+
+He was not long before he described to her the subject and origin of his
+passion.
+
+"I declared myself to her," said Alcide, laying his hand on his heart,
+"in a manner which was as novel as I am charmed to think it was
+agreeable. Where can not 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 vail 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 à l'eau_,
+which was ordinarily served at her too simple table, I sent her up a
+little _potage à la Reine--à 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 have designated as _Eperlan à la
+Sainte-Therèse_, and of which my charming Miss partook with pleasure.
+I followed this by two little _entreés_ of sweet-bread and chicken; and
+the only brown thing which I permitted myself in the entertainment was a
+little roast of lamb, which I laid 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 _à la
+Reine Elizabeth_ (who, Madame Fribsbi knows, was a maiden princess); a
+dish of opal-colored plover's eggs, which I called _Nid de tourtereaux
+à 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 à la
+Souveraine de mon Coeur_. And when the ice was brought in--an ice of
+_plombière_ 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 vail 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 I spoke.
+
+"Since that, can I have any reason to doubt that the young artist has
+made some progress in the heart of the English Miss? I am modest, but
+my glass informs me that I am not ill-looking. Other victories have
+convinced me of the fact."
+
+"Dangerous man!" cried the milliner.
+
+"The blond misses of Albion see nothing in the dull inhabitants of
+their brumous isle, which can compare with the ardor 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 can not 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 can
+not 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 Green. The blonde Miss will go. She is fascinated. Her eyes have
+told me so. The white dove wants but the signal to fly."
+
+"Have you any correspondence with her?" asked Fribsby, in amazement, and
+not knowing whether the young lady or the lover might be laboring under
+a romantic delusion.
+
+"I correspond with her by means of my art. She partakes of dishes which
+I make expressly for her. I insinuate to her thus a thousand hints,
+which, as she is perfectly spiritual, she receives. But I want other
+intelligences near her."
+
+"There is Pincott, her maid," said Madame Fribsby, who, by aptitude or
+education, seemed to have some knowledge of affairs of the heart, but
+the great artist's brow darkened at this suggestion.
+
+"Madame," he said, "there are points upon which a gallant man ought to
+silence himself; though, if he break the secret, he may do so with the
+least impropriety to his best friend--his adopted mother. Know then,
+that there is a cause why Miss Pincott should be hostile to me--a cause
+not uncommon with your sex--jealousy."
+
+"Perfidious monster!" said the confidante.
+
+"Ah, no," said the artist, with a deep bass voice, and a tragic accent
+worthy of the Porte St. Martin and his favorite melo-drames. "Not
+perfidious, but fatal. Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To inspire
+hopeless passion is my destiny. I can not 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 can not return? Listen! There
+are others in this family who are similarly unhappy. The governess of
+the young Milor has encountered me in my walks, and looked at me in a
+way which can bear but one interpretation. And Milady herself, who is
+of mature age, but who has oriental blood, has once or twice addressed
+compliments to the lonely artist which can admit of no mistake. I avoid
+the household, I seek solitude, I undergo my destiny. I can marry but
+one, and am resolved it shall be to a lady of your nation. And, if her
+fortune is sufficient, I think Miss would be the person who would be
+most suitable. I wish to ascertain what her means are before I lead her
+to Gretna Grin."
+
+Whether Alcide 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 has had the benefit of much
+French acquaintance, has perhaps met with men among them who fancied
+themselves almost as invincible; and who, if you credit them, have made
+equal havoc in the hearts of _les Anglaises_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND JEALOUSY.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Our readers have already heard Sir Francis Clavering's candid opinion
+of the lady who had given him her fortune and restored him to his native
+country and home, and it must be owned that the baronet was not far
+wrong in his estimate of his wife, and that Lady Clavering was not the
+wisest or the best educated of women. She had had a couple of years'
+education in Europe, in a suburb of London, which she persisted in
+calling Ackney to her dying day, whence she had been summoned to join
+her father at Calcutta at the age of fifteen. And it was on her voyage
+thither, on board the Ramchunder East Indiaman, Captain Bragg, in which
+ship she had two years previously made her journey to Europe, that she
+formed the acquaintance of her first husband, Mr. Amory, who was third
+mate of the vessel in question.
+
+We are not going to enter into the early part of Lady Clavering's
+history, but Captain Bragg, under whose charge Miss Snell went out to
+her father, who was one of the captain's consignees, and part owner
+of the Ramchunder and many other vessels, found reason to put the
+rebellious rascal of a mate in irons, until they reached the Cape, where
+the captain left his officer behind; and finally delivered his ward to
+her father at Calcutta, after a stormy and perilous voyage in which the
+Ramchunder and the cargo and passengers incurred no small danger and
+damage.
+
+Some months afterward 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--quarreling ceaselessly
+with his father-in-law and his wife during the progress of all these
+mercantile transactions and disasters, and ending his career finally
+with a crash which compelled him to leave Calcutta and go to New South
+Wales. It was in the course of these luckless proceedings, that Mr.
+Amory probably made the acquaintance of Sir Jasper Rogers, the respected
+Judge of the Supreme Court of Calcutta, who has been mentioned before:
+and, as the truth must out, it was by making an improper use of his
+father-in-law's name, who could write perfectly well, and had no need of
+an amanuensis, that fortune finally forsook Mr. Amory and caused him to
+abandon all further struggles with her.
+
+Not being in the habit of reading the Calcutta law-reports very
+assiduously, the European public did not know of these facts as well
+as people did in Bengal, and Mrs. Amory and her father, finding her
+residence in India not a comfortable one, it was agreed that the lady
+should return to Europe, whither she came with her little daughter
+Betsy or Blanche, then four years old. They were accompanied by Betsy's
+nurse, who has been presented to the reader in the last chapter as the
+confidential maid of Lady Clavering, Mrs. Bonner: and Captain Bragg took
+a house for them in the near neighborhood of his residence in
+Pocklington-street.
+
+It was a very hard, bitter summer, and the rain, it rained every day
+for some time after Mrs. Amory's arrival. Bragg was very pompous and
+disagreeable, perhaps ashamed, perhaps anxious, to get rid of the
+Indian lady. She believed that all the world in London was talking
+about her husband's disaster, and that the king and queen and the court
+of directors were aware of her unlucky history. She had a good allowance
+from her father; she had no call to live in England; and she determined
+to go abroad. Away she went, then, glad to escape the gloomy
+surveillance of the odious bully, Captain Bragg. People had no objection
+to receive her at the continental towns where she stopped, and at the
+various boarding-houses, where she royally paid her way. She called
+Hackney Ackney, to be sure (though otherwise she spoke English with a
+little foreign twang, very curious and not unpleasant); she dressed
+amazingly; she was conspicuous for her love of eating and drinking,
+and prepared curries and pillaws at every boarding-house which she
+frequented; but her singularities of language and behavior 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 fowls and ham to the picnics than any one else. She
+took endless boxes for the play, and tickets for the masked balls, and
+gave them away to every body. She paid the boarding-house people months
+beforehand; she helped poor shabby mustached 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, portrayed her, with her little boy by her side.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 Elysées. When the Claverings came to England, she of course
+came with them. It was only within a few years, after the death of her
+grandfather, and the birth of her little brother, that she began to
+understand that her position in life was altered, and that Miss Amory,
+nobody's daughter, was a very small personage in a house compared with
+Master Francis Clavering, heir to an ancient baronetcy, and a noble
+estate. But for little Frank, she would have been an heiress, in spite
+of her father: and though she knew, and cared not much about money, of
+which she never had any stint, and though she was a romantic little
+muse, as we have seen, yet she could not reasonably be grateful to the
+persons who had so contributed to change her condition; nor, indeed,
+did she understand what the latter really was, until she had made some
+further progress, and acquired more accurate knowledge in the world.
+
+But this was clear, that her step-father was dull and weak; that mamma
+dropped her H's, and was not refined in manners or appearance; and that
+little Frank was a spoiled quarrelsome urchin, always having his way,
+always treading upon her feet, always upsetting his dinner on her
+dresses, and keeping her out of her inheritance. None of these, as she
+felt, could comprehend her: and her solitary heart naturally pined for
+other attachments, and she sought around her where to bestow the
+precious boon of her unoccupied affection.
+
+This dear girl, then, from want of sympathy, or other cause, made
+herself so disagreeable at home, and frightened her mother, and bored
+her step-father so much, that they were quite as anxious as she could
+be that she should settle for herself in life; and hence Sir Francis
+Clavering's desire expressed to his friend, in the last chapter, that
+Mrs. Strong should die, and that he would take Blanche to himself as
+a second Mrs. Strong.
+
+But as this could not be, any other person was welcome to win her; and
+a smart young fellow, well-looking and well-educated, like our friend
+Arthur Pendennis, was quite free to propose for her if he had a mind,
+and would have been received with open arms by Lady Clavering as a
+son-in-law, had he had the courage to come forward as a competitor for
+Miss Amory's hand.
+
+Mr. Pen, however, besides other drawbacks, chose to entertain an extreme
+diffidence about himself. He was ashamed of his late failures, of his
+idle and nameless condition, of the poverty which he had brought on his
+mother by his folly, and there was as much of vanity as remorse in his
+present state of doubt and distrust. How could he ever hope for such
+a prize as this brilliant Blanche Amory, who lived in a fine park and
+mansion, and was waited on by a score of grand domestics, while a
+maid-servant brought in their meager meal at Fairoaks, and his mother
+was obliged to pinch and manage to make both ends meet? Obstacles seemed
+to him insurmountable, which would have vanished had he marched manfully
+upon them; and he preferred despairing, or dallying with his wishes--or
+perhaps he had not positively shaped them as yet--to attempting to win
+gallantly the object of his desire. Many a young man fails by that species
+of vanity called shyness, who might, for the asking, have his will.
+
+But we do not pretend to say that Pen had, as yet, ascertained his; or
+that he was doing much more than thinking about falling in love. Miss
+Amory was charming and lively. She fascinated and cajoled him by a
+thousand arts or natural graces or flatteries. But there were lurking
+reasons and doubts, besides shyness and vanity, withholding him. In
+spite of her cleverness, and her protestations, and her fascinations,
+Pen's mother had divined the girl, and did not trust her. Mrs. Pendennis
+saw Blanche light-minded and frivolous, detected many wants in her which
+offended the pure and pious-minded lady; a want of reverence for her
+parents, and for things more sacred, Helen thought: worldliness and
+selfishness couched under pretty words and tender expressions. Laura and
+Pen battled these points strongly at first with the widow--Laura being
+as yet enthusiastic about her new friend, and Pen not far-gone enough in
+love to attempt any concealment of his feelings. He would laugh at these
+objections of Helen's, and say, "Psha, mother, you are jealous about
+Laura--all women are jealous."
+
+But when, in the course of a month or two, and by watching the pair
+with that anxiety with which brooding women watch over their sons'
+affections--and in acknowledging which, I have no doubt there is a
+sexual jealousy on the mother's part, and a secret pang--when Helen saw
+that the intimacy appeared to make progress, that the two young people
+were perpetually finding pretexts to meet, and that Miss Blanche was at
+Fairoaks or Mr. Pen at the Park every day, the poor widow's heart began
+to fail her--her darling project seemed to vanish before her; and giving
+way to her weakness, she fairly told Pen one day what her views and
+longings were; that she felt herself breaking, and not long for this
+world, and that she hoped and prayed before she went, that she might see
+her two children one. The late events, Pen's life and career and former
+passion for the actress, had broken the spirit of this tender lady. She
+felt that he had escaped her, and was in the maternal nest no more; and
+she clung with a sickening fondness to Laura, Laura who had been left to
+her by Francis in Heaven.
+
+Pen kissed and soothed her in his grand, patronizing way. He had
+seen something of this, he had long thought his mother wanted to
+make this marriage--did Laura know any thing 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 any thing you told
+her, to be sure. But am I worthy of her?"
+
+"Oh, Pen, you might be," was the widow's reply; not that Mr. Pen
+ever doubted that he was; and a feeling of indefinable pleasure and
+self-complacency came over him as he thought over this proposal, and
+imaged Laura to himself as his memory remembered her for years past,
+always fair and open, kindly and pious, cheerful, tender, and true. He
+looked at her with brightening eyes as she came in from the garden at
+the end of this talk, her cheeks rather flushed, her looks frank and
+smiling--a basket of roses in her hand.
+
+She took the finest of them and brought it to Mrs. Pendennis, who was
+refreshed by the odor and color of these flowers; and hung over her
+fondly, and gave it to her.
+
+"And I might have this prize for the asking!" Pen thought, with a thrill
+of triumph, as he looked at the kindly girl. "Why, she is as beautiful
+and as generous as her roses." The image of the two women remained
+forever after in his mind, and he never recalled it but the tears came
+into his eyes.
+
+Before very many weeks' intimacy with her new acquaintance, however,
+Miss Laura was obliged to give in to Helen's opinion, and own that the
+muse was selfish, unkind, and inconstant. Of course Blanche confided to
+her bosom friend all the little griefs and domestic annoyances; how the
+family could not comprehend her, and she moved among them an isolated
+being; how her poor mamma's education had been neglected, and she was
+forced to blush for her blunders; how Sir Francis was a weak person
+deplorably unintellectual, and only happy when smoking his odious
+cigars; how, since the birth of her little brother, she had seen her
+mother's precious affection, which she valued more than any thing in
+life, estranged from her once darling daughter; how she was alone,
+alone, alone in the world.
+
+But these griefs, real and heart-rending though they might be to a young
+lady of exquisite sensibility, did not convince Laura of the propriety
+of Blanche's conduct in many small incidents of life. Little Frank, for
+instance, might be very provoking, and might have deprived Blanche of
+her mamma's affection, but this was no reason why Blanche should box the
+child's ears because he upset a glass of water over her drawing, and why
+she should call him many opprobrious names in the English and French
+language; and the preference accorded to little Frank was certainly no
+reason why Blanche should give herself imperial airs of command toward
+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 any body'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?
+
+[Illustration][**moved up from 249]
+
+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 humor, 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
+any thing 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! Oh 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 every-day life, she had witnessed at home in the person
+of our young friend Mr. Pen.
+
+But then Pen was different. Pen was a man. It seemed natural, somehow,
+that he should be self-willed, and should have his own way. And under
+his waywardness and selfishness, indeed there was a kind and generous
+heart. O it was hard that such a diamond should be changed away against
+such a false stone as this. In a word, Laura began to be tired of her
+admired Blanche. She had assayed her, and found her not true; and
+her former admiration and delight, which she had expressed with her
+accustomed generous artlessness, gave way to a feeling, which we shall
+not call contempt, but which was very near it; and which caused Laura to
+adopt toward Miss Amory, a grave and tranquil tone of superiority, which
+was at first by no means to the muse's liking. Nobody likes to be found
+out, or having held a high place, to submit to step down.
+
+The consciousness that this event was impending did not serve to
+increase Miss Blanche's good humor, 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
+behavior to the boy's governess; and intolerably cruel to Pincott, her
+attendant. Not venturing to attack her friend (for the little tyrant was
+of a timid feline nature, and only used her claws upon those who were
+weaker than herself) she maltreated all these, and especially poor
+Pincott, who was menial, confidante, companion (slave always), according
+to the caprice of her young mistress.
+
+This girl who had been sitting in the room with the young ladies, being
+driven thence in tears, occasioned by the cruelty of her mistress, and
+raked with a parting sarcasm as she went sobbing from the door, Laura
+fairly broke out into a loud and indignant invective--wondered how one
+so young could forget the deference owing to her elders as well as to
+her inferiors in station; and professing so much sensibility of her own,
+could torture the feelings of others so wantonly. Laura told her friend
+that her conduct was absolutely wicked, and that she ought to ask pardon
+of Heaven on her knees for it. And having delivered herself of a hot
+and voluble speech whereof the delivery astonished the speaker as much
+almost as her auditor, she ran to her bonnet and shawl, and went home
+across the park, in a great flurry and perturbation, and to the surprise
+of Mrs. Pendennis, who had not expected her until night.
+
+Alone with Helen, Laura gave an account of the scene, and gave up her
+friend henceforth. "O mamma," she said, "you were right; Blanche, who
+seems so soft and so kind, is, as you have said, selfish and cruel. She
+who is always speaking of her affections can have no heart. No honest
+girl would afflict a mother so, or torture a dependent; and--and, I give
+her up from this day, and I will have no other friend but you."
+
+On this the two ladies went through the osculatory ceremony which they
+were in the habit of performing, and Mrs. Pendennis got a great secret
+comfort from the little quarrel--for Laura's confession seemed to say,
+"That girl can never be a wife for Pen, for she is light-minded and
+heartless, and quite unworthy of our noble hero. He will be sure to find
+out her unworthiness for his own part, and then he will be saved from
+this flighty creature, and awake out of his delusion."
+
+But Miss Laura did not tell Mrs. Pendennis, perhaps did not acknowledge
+to herself, what had been the real cause of the day's quarrel. Being
+in a very wicked mood, and bent upon mischief every where, the little
+wicked muse of a Blanche had very soon begun her tricks. Her darling
+Laura had come to pass a long day; and as they were sitting in her own
+room together, had chosen to bring the conversation round to the subject
+of Mr. Pen.
+
+"I am afraid he is sadly fickle," Miss Blanche observed; "Mrs. Pybus,
+and many more Clavering people, have told us all about the actress."
+
+"I was quite a child when it happened, and I don't know any thing about
+it," Laura answered, blushing very much.
+
+"He used her very ill," Blanche said, wagging her little head. "He was
+false to her."
+
+"I am sure he was not," Laura cried out; "he acted most generously by
+her: he wanted to give up every thing to marry her. It was she that was
+false to him. He nearly broke his heart about it: he--"
+
+"I thought you didn't know any thing about the story, dearest,"
+interposed Miss Blanche.
+
+"Mamma has said so," said Laura.
+
+"Well, he is very clever," continued the other little dear. "What a
+sweet poet he is! Have you ever read his poems?"
+
+"Only the 'Fisherman and the Diver,' which he translated for us, and his
+prize Poem, which didn't get the prize; and, indeed, I thought it very
+pompous and prosy," Laura said, laughing.
+
+"Has he never written _you_ any poems, then, love?" asked Miss Amory.
+
+"No, my dear," said Miss Bell.
+
+Blanche ran up to her friend, kissed her fondly, called her my dearest
+Laura at least three times, looked her archly in the face, nodded her
+head, and said, "Promise to tell no-o-body, and I will show you
+something."
+
+And tripping across the room daintily, to a little mother-of-pearl
+inlaid desk, she opened it with a silver key, and took out two or three
+papers crumpled and rather stained with green, which she submitted to
+her friend. Laura took them and read them. They were love-verses sure
+enough--something about Undine--about a Naiad--about a river. She looked
+at them for a long time; but, in truth, the lines were not very distinct
+before her eyes.
+
+"And you have answered them, Blanche?" she asked, putting them back.
+
+"O no! not for worlds, dearest," the other said: and when her dearest
+Laura had _quite_ done with the verses, she tripped back, and popped
+them again into the pretty desk.
+
+Then she went to her piano, and sang two or three songs of Rossini,
+whose flourishes of music her flexible little voice could execute to
+perfection, and Laura sate by, vaguely listening, as she performed these
+pieces. What was Miss Bell thinking about the while? She hardly knew;
+but sate there silent as the songs rolled by. After this concert the
+young ladies were summoned to the room where luncheon was served; and
+whither they of course went with their arms round each other's waists.
+
+And it could not have been jealousy or anger on Laura's part which had
+made her silent; for, after they had tripped along the corridor and
+descended the steps, and were about to open the door which leads into
+the hall, Laura paused, and looking her friend kindly and frankly in the
+face, kissed her with a sisterly warmth.
+
+Something occurred after this--Master Frank's manner of eating,
+probably, or mamma's blunders, or Sir Francis smelling of cigars--which
+vexed Miss Blanche, and she gave way to that series of naughtinesses
+whereof we have spoken, and which ended in the above little quarrel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+A HOUSE FULL OF VISITORS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The difference between the girls did not last long. Laura was always
+too eager to forgive and be forgiven, and as for Miss Blanche, her
+hostilities, never very long or durable, had not been provoked by the
+above scene. Nobody cares about being accused of wickedness. No vanity
+is hurt by that sort of charge: Blanche was rather pleased than provoked
+by her friend's indignation, which never would have been raised but for
+a cause which both knew, though neither spoke of.
+
+And so, Laura, with a sigh, was obliged to confess that the romantic
+part of her first friendship was at an end, and that the object of it
+was only worthy of a very ordinary sort of regard.
+
+As for Blanche, she instantly composed a copy of touching verses,
+setting forth her desertion and disenchantment. It was only the old
+story she wrote, of love meeting with coldness, and fidelity returned
+by neglect; and some new neighbors 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 dispatched 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 humor that was by no means
+respectful.
+
+But if Miss Blanche found new female friends to console her, the
+faithful historian is also bound to say, that she discovered some
+acquaintances of the other sex who seemed to give her consolation too.
+If ever this artless young creature met a young man, and had ten
+minutes' conversation with him in a garden walk, in a drawing-room
+window, or in the intervals of a waltz, she confided in him, so to
+speak--made play with her beautiful eyes--spoke in a tone of tender
+interest, and simple and touching appeal, and left him, to perform the
+same pretty little drama in behalf of his successor.
+
+When the Claverings first came down to the Park, there were very few
+audiences before whom Miss Blanche could perform: hence Pen had all the
+benefits of her glances, and confidences, and the drawing-room window,
+or the garden walk all to himself. In the town of Clavering, it has been
+said, there were actually no young men: in the near surrounding country,
+only a curate or two, or a rustic young squire, with large feet, and
+ill-made clothes. To the dragoons quartered at Chatteries the baronet
+made no overtures: it was unluckily his own regiment: he had left
+it on bad terms with some officers of the corps--an ugly business
+about a horse bargain--a disputed play account--blind-Hookey--a white
+feather--who need ask?--it is not our business to inquire too closely
+into the bygones of our characters, except in so far as their previous
+history appertains to the development of this present story.
+
+But the autumn, and the end of the parliamentary session, and the London
+season, brought one or two country families down to their houses, and
+filled tolerably the neighboring little watering-place of Baymouth,
+and opened our friend Mr. Bingley's Theater Royal at Chatteries, 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 Fogys of Drummington: the Squares of Tozely Park;
+the Welbores of The Barrow, &c. 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 neighbors. 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 country before the great people around
+began to call.
+
+But at the end of the season, the Earl of Trehawke, Lord Lieutenant
+of the County, coming to Eyrie Castle, and the Countess Dowager of
+Rockminster, whose son was also a magnate of the land, to occupy a
+mansion on the Marine Parade at Baymouth--these great folks came
+publicly immediately, and in state, to call upon the family of Clavering
+Park; and the carriages of the county families speedily followed in the
+track, which had been left in the avenue by their lordly wheels.
+
+It was then that Mirobolant began to have an opportunity of exercising
+that skill which he possessed, and of forgetting, in the occupations of
+his art, the pangs of love. It was then that the large footmen were too
+much employed at Clavering Park to be able to bring messages, or dally
+over the cup of small beer with the poor little maids at Fairoaks. It
+was then that Blanche found other dear friends than Laura, and other
+places to walk in besides the river side, where Pen was fishing. He came
+day after day, and whipped the stream, but the "fish, fish!" wouldn't do
+their duty, nor the Peri appear. And here, though in strict confidence,
+and with a request that the matter go no further, we may as well allude
+to a delicate business, of which previous hint has been given. Mention
+has been made, in a former page, of a certain hollow tree, at which
+Pen used to take his station when engaged in his passion for Miss
+Fotheringay, and the cavity of which he afterward 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, while 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 any thing--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 humoring you at the same play.
+
+But if a man is balked 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 room-full 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 county, 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
+Chatteries and the episcopal family, who scowled at him, and drew up in
+great dignity when he was presented to them, and they heard his name.
+The Right Reverend prelate had heard it before, and also of the little
+transaction in the dean's garden.
+
+"The bishop says you're a sad young man," good-natured Lady Clavering
+whispered to him. "What have you been a doing of? Nothink, I hope, to
+vex such a dear Mar as yours? How is your dear Mar? Why don't she come
+and see 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 neighbors now. Give my love to her and
+Laurar, and come all to dinner to-morrow."
+
+Mrs. Pendennis was too unwell to come out, but Laura and Pen came, and
+there was a great party, and Pen only got an opportunity of a hurried
+word with Miss Amory. "You never come to the river now," he said.
+
+"I can't," said Blanche, "the house is full of people."
+
+"Undine has left the stream," Mr. Pen went on, choosing to be poetical.
+
+"She never ought to have gone there," Miss Amory answered. "She won't go
+again. It was very foolish: very wrong: it was only play. Besides, you
+have other consolations at home," she added, looking him full in the
+face an instant, and dropping her eyes.
+
+If he wanted her, why did he not speak then? She might have said "Yes"
+even then. But as she spoke of other consolations at home, he thought of
+Laura, so affectionate and so pure, and of his mother at home, who had
+bent her fond heart upon uniting him with her adopted daughter.
+"Blanche!" he began, in a vexed tone--"Miss Amory!"
+
+"Laura is looking at us, Mr. Pendennis," the young lady said. "I must go
+back to the company," and she ran off, leaving Mr. Pendennis to bite his
+nails in perplexity, and to look out into the moonlight in the garden.
+
+Laura indeed was looking at Pen. She was talking with, or appearing to
+listen to the talk of, Mr. Pynsent, Lord Rockminster's son, and grandson
+of the Dowager Lady, who was seated in state in the place of honor,
+gravely receiving Lady Clavering's bad grammar, and patronizing 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 toward 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 practiced in England only, and
+only to perfection by University men--and which seems to say, "Confound
+you--what do you do here?"
+
+"I knew that man at Oxbridge," Mr. Pynsent said to Miss Bell--"a Mr.
+Pendennis, I think."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Bell.
+
+"He seems rather sweet upon Miss Amory," the gentleman went on. Laura
+looked at them, and perhaps thought so too, but said nothing.
+
+"A man of large property in the county, ain't he? He used to talk about
+representing it. He used to speak at the Union. Whereabouts do his
+estates lie?"
+
+Laura smiled. "His estates lie on the other side of the river, near the
+lodge gate. He is my cousin, and I live there."
+
+"Where?" asked Mr. Pynsent, with a laugh.
+
+"Why, on the other side of the river, at Fairoaks," answered Miss Bell.
+
+"Many pheasants there? Cover looks rather good," said the simple
+gentleman.
+
+Laura smiled again. "We have nine hens and a cock, a pig, and an old
+pointer."
+
+"Pendennis don't preserve then?" continued Mr. Pynsent.
+
+"You should come and see him," the girl said, laughing, and greatly
+amused at the notion that her Pen was a great county gentleman, and
+perhaps had given himself out to be such.
+
+"Indeed, I quite long to renew our acquaintance," Mr. Pynsent said,
+gallantly, and with a look which fairly said, "It is you that I would
+like to come and see"--to which look and speech Miss Laura vouchsafed a
+smile, and made a little bow.
+
+Here Blanche came stepping up with her most fascinating smile and ogle,
+and begged dear Laura to come and take the second in a song. Laura was
+ready to do any thing good-natured, and went to the piano; by which Mr.
+Pynsent listened as long as the duet lasted, and until Miss Amory began
+for herself, when he strode away.
+
+"What a nice, frank, amiable, well-bred girl that is, Wagg," said Mr.
+Pynsent to a gentleman who had come over with him from Baymouth--"the
+tall one I mean, with the ringlets and the red lips--monstrous red,
+ain't they?"
+
+"What do you think of the girl of the house?" asked Mr. Wagg.
+
+"I think she's a lean scraggy humbug;" said Mr. Pynsent, with great
+candor. "She drags her shoulders out of her dress: she never lets her
+eyes alone: and she goes simpering and ogling about like a French
+waiting-maid."
+
+"Pynsent, be civil," cried the other, "somebody can hear."
+
+"Oh, it's Pendennis of Boniface," Mr. Pynsent said. "Fine evening, Mr.
+Pendennis; we were just talking of your charming cousin."
+
+"Any relation to my old friend, Major Pendennis?" asked Mr. Wagg.
+
+"His nephew. Had the pleasure of meeting you at Gaunt House," Mr. Pen
+said, with his very best air--the acquaintance between the gentleman was
+made in an instant.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the afternoon of the next day, the two gentleman 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 neighborhood of Miss
+Laura. She was amused by his talk, which was simple, straightforward,
+rather humorous and keen, and interspersed with homely expressions of a
+style which is sometimes called slang. It was the first specimen of a
+young London dandy that Laura had seen or heard: for she had been but a
+chit at the time of Mr. Foker's introduction at Fairoaks, nor indeed was
+that ingenuous gentleman much more than a boy, and his refinement was
+only that of a school and college.
+
+Mr. Wagg, as he entered the Fairoaks premises with his companion, eyed
+and noted every thing. "Old gardener," he said, seeing Mr. John at the
+lodge--"old red livery waistcoat--clothes hanging out to dry on the
+gooseberry bushes--blue aprons, white ducks--gad, they must be young
+Pendennis's white ducks--nobody else wears 'em in the family. Rather
+a shy place for a sucking county member, ay, Pynsent?"
+
+"Snug little crib," said Mr. Pynsent, "pretty cozy little lawn."
+
+"Mr. Pendennis at home, old gentleman?" Mr. Wagg said to the old
+domestic. John answered, "No, Master Pendennis was agone out."
+
+"Are the ladies at home?" asked the younger visitor. Mr. John answered,
+"Yes, they be;" and as the pair walked over the trim gravel, and by
+the neat shrubberies, up the steps to the hall-door, which old John
+opened, Mr. Wagg noted every thing 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 minutiæ attracted Wagg instinctively; he seized them
+in spite of himself.
+
+"Old fellow does all the work," he whispered to Pynsent. "Caleb
+Balderstone. Shouldn't wonder if he's the housemaid." The next minute
+the pair were in the presence of the Fairoaks ladies; in whom Pynsent
+could not help recognizing 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 toward Mr. Wagg, and particular deference to the ladies. If
+there was one thing laughable in Mr. Wagg's eyes, it was poverty. He had
+the soul of a butler who had been brought from his pantry to make fun in
+the drawing-room. His jokes were plenty, and his good-nature thoroughly
+genuine, but he did not seem to understand that a gentleman could wear
+an old coat, or that a lady could be respectable unless she had her
+carriage, or employed a French milliner.
+
+"Charming place, ma'am," said he, bowing to the widow; "noble
+prospect--delightful to us Cockneys, who seldom see any thing but
+Pall-mall." The widow said simply, she had never been in London but once
+in her life--before her son was born.
+
+"Fine village, ma'am, fine village," said Mr. Wagg, "and increasing
+every day. It'll be quite a large town soon. It's not a bad place to
+live in for those who can't get the country, and will repay a visit when
+you honor it."
+
+"My brother, Major Pendennis, has often mentioned your name to us," the
+widow said, "and we have been very much amused by some of your droll
+books, sir," Helen continued, who never could be brought to like Mr.
+Wagg's books, and detested their tone most thoroughly.
+
+"He is my very good friend," Mr. Wagg said, with a low bow, "and
+one of the best known men about town, and where known, ma'am,
+appreciated--I assure you, appreciated. He is with our friend Steyne,
+at Aix-la-Chapelle. Steyne has a touch of the gout, and so, between
+ourselves, has your brother. I am going to Stillbrook for the
+pheasant-shooting, and afterward 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, while 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 be like him.
+
+Mr. Pynsent was in the mean while engaged with Miss Laura. He named
+some of the houses in the neighborhood whither he was going, and hoped
+very much that he should see Miss Bell at some of them. He hoped that
+her aunt would give her a season in London. He said that in the next
+parliament it was probable that he should canvass the county, and he
+hoped to get Pendennis's interest here. He spoke of Pen's triumph as
+an orator at Oxbridge, and asked was he coming into parliament too? He
+talked on very pleasantly, and greatly to Laura's satisfaction, until
+Pen himself appeared, and, as has been said, found these gentlemen.
+
+Pen behaved very courteously to the pair, now that they had 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 fanfaronade, and any other braggadocio speeches or actions which
+he might have made. He suited himself to the tone of the visitors then,
+and talked about Plinlimmon and Magnus Charters, and the old set at
+Oxbridge, with careless familiarity and high-bred ease, as if he lived
+with marquises every day, and a duke was no more to him than a village
+curate.
+
+But at this juncture, and it being then six o'clock in the evening,
+Betsy, the maid, who did not know of the advent of strangers, walked
+into the room without any preliminary but that of flinging the door
+wide open before her, and bearing in her arms a tray, containing three
+tea-cups, a tea-pot, and a plate of thick bread-and-butter. All Pen's
+splendor and magnificence vanished away at this--and he faltered and
+became quite abashed. "What will they think of us?" he thought: and,
+indeed, Wagg thrust his tongue in his cheek, thought the tea infinitely
+contemptible, and leered and winked at Pynsent to that effect.
+
+But to Mr. Pynsent the transaction appeared perfectly simple--there was
+no reason present to his mind why people should not drink tea at six
+if they were minded, as well as at any other hour; and he asked of Mr.
+Wagg, when they went away, "What the devil he was grinning and winking
+at, and what amused him?"
+
+"Didn't you see how the cub was ashamed of the thick bread-and-butter?
+I dare say they're going to have treacle if they are good. I'll take
+an opportunity of telling old Pendennis, when we get back to town," Mr.
+Wagg chuckled out.
+
+"Don't see the fun," said Mr. Pynsent.
+
+"Never thought you did," growled Wagg between his teeth; and they walked
+home rather sulkily.
+
+Wagg told the story at dinner very smartly, with wonderful accuracy
+of observation. He described old John, the clothes that were drying,
+the clogs in the hall, the drawing-room, and its furniture and
+pictures;--"Old man with a beak and bald head--_feu_ Pendennis, I bet
+two to one; sticking-plaster full-length of a youth in a cap and
+gown--the present Marquis of Fairoaks, of course; the widow when young
+in a miniature, Mrs. Mee; she had the gown on when we came, or a dress
+made the year after, and the tips cut off the fingers of her gloves
+which she stitches her son's collars with; and then the sarving maid
+came in with their teas; and so we left the earl and the countess to
+their bread-and-butter."
+
+Blanche, near whom he sate as he told this story, and who adored _les
+hommes d'esprit_, burst out laughing, and called him such an odd, droll
+creature. But Pynsent, who began to be utterly disgusted with him, broke
+out in a loud voice, and said, "I don't know, Mr. Wagg, what sort of
+ladies you are accustomed to meet in your own family, but by gad, as far
+as a first acquaintance can show, I never met two better-bred women in
+my life, and I hope, ma'am! you'll call upon 'em," he added, addressing
+Lady Rockminster, who was seated at Sir Francis Clavering's right hand.
+
+Sir Francis turned to the guest on his left, and whispered, "That's
+what I call a sticker for Wagg." And Lady Clavering, giving the young
+gentleman a delighted tap with her fan, winked her black eyes at him,
+and said, "Mr. Pynsent, you're a good feller."
+
+After the affair with Blanche, a difference ever so slight, a tone
+of melancholy, perhaps a little bitter, might be perceived in Laura's
+converse with her cousin. She seemed to weigh him and find him wanting
+too; the widow saw the girl's clear and honest eyes watching the young
+man at times, and a look of almost scorn pass over her face, as he
+lounged in the room with the women, or lazily sauntered smoking upon the
+lawn, or lolled under a tree there over a book which he was too listless
+to read.
+
+"What has happened between you?" eager-sighted Helen asked of the girl.
+"Something has happened. Has that wicked little Blanche been making
+mischief? Tell me, Laura."
+
+"Nothing has happened at all," Laura said.
+
+"Then why do you look at Pen so?" asked his mother quickly.
+
+"Look at him, dear mother!" said the girl. "We two women are no society
+for him: we don't interest him; we are not clever enough for such a
+genius as Pen. He wastes his life and energies away among us, tied to
+our apron-strings. He interests himself in nothing; he scarcely cares to
+go beyond the garden-gate. Even Captain Glanders and Captain Strong pall
+upon him," she added, with a bitter laugh; "and they are men, you know,
+and our superiors. He will never be happy while he is here. Why, is he
+not facing the world, and without a profession?"
+
+"We have got enough, with great economy," said the widow, her heart
+beginning to beat violently. "Pen has spent nothing for months. I'm
+sure he is very good. I am sure he might be very happy with us."
+
+"Don't agitate yourself so, dear mother," the girl answered. "I don't
+like to see you so. You should not be sad because Pen is unhappy here.
+All men are so. They must work. They must make themselves names and
+a place in the world. Look, the two captains have fought and seen
+battles; that Mr. Pynsent, who came here, and who will be very rich,
+is in a public office; he works very hard, he aspires to a name and a
+reputation. He says Pen was one of the best speakers at Oxbridge, and
+had as great a character for talent as any of the young gentlemen there.
+Pen himself laughs at Mr. Wagg's celebrity (and indeed he is a horrid
+person), and says he is a dunce, and that any body could write his
+books."
+
+"I am sure they are odious and vulgar," interposed the widow.
+
+"Yet he has a reputation.--You see the County Chronicle says,
+'The celebrated Mr. Wagg has been sojourning at Baymouth--let our
+fashionables and eccentrics look out for something from his caustic
+pen.' If Pen can write better than this gentleman, and speak better than
+Mr. Pynsent, why doesn't he? Mamma, he can't make speeches to us; or
+distinguish himself here. He ought to go away, indeed he ought."
+
+"Dear Laura," said Helen, taking the girl's hand. "Is it kind of you to
+hurry him so? I have been waiting. I have been saving up money these
+many months--to--to pay back your advance to us."
+
+"Hush, mother!" Laura cried, embracing her friend hastily. "It was your
+money, not mine. Never speak about that again. How much money have you
+saved?"
+
+Helen said there were more than two hundred pounds at the bank, and that
+she would be enabled to pay off all Laura's money by the end of the next
+year.
+
+"Give it him--let him have the two hundred pounds. Let him go to London
+and be a lawyer: be something, be worthy of his mother--and of mine,
+dearest mamma," said the good girl; upon which, and with her usual
+tenderness and emotion, the fond widow declared that Laura was a
+blessing to her, and the best of girls--and I hope no one in this
+instance will be disposed to contradict her.
+
+The widow and her daughter had more than one conversation on this
+subject; and the elder gave way to the superior reason of the honest
+and stronger minded girl; and, indeed, whenever there was a sacrifice
+to be made on her part, this kind lady was only too eager to make it. But
+she took her own way, and did not lose sight of the end she had in view,
+in imparting these new plans to Pen. One day she told him of these
+projects, and who it was that had formed them; how it was Laura who
+insisted upon his going to London and studying; how it was Laura who
+would not hear of the--the money arrangements when he came back from
+Oxbridge--being settled just then; how it was Laura whom he had to
+thank, if indeed he thought that he ought to go.
+
+At that news Pen's countenance blazed up with pleasure, and he hugged
+his mother to his heart, with an ardor 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! O mother! I have been wearing myself
+away for months here, longing to work, and not knowing how. I've been
+fretting over the thoughts of my shame, and my debts, and my past cursed
+extravagance and follies. I've suffered infernally. My heart has been
+half-broken--never mind about that--if I can get a chance to redeem
+the past, and to do my duty to myself and the best mother in the world,
+indeed, indeed, I will. I'll be worthy of you yet. Heaven bless you!
+God bless Laura! Why isn't she here, that I may go and thank her?"
+Pen went on with more incoherent phrases; paced up and down the room,
+drank glasses of water, jumped about his mother with a thousand
+embraces--began to laugh--began to sing--was happier than she had seen
+him since he was a boy--since he had tasted of the fruit of that awful
+tree of life, which, from the beginning has tempted all mankind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Laura was not at home. Laura was on a visit to the stately Lady
+Rockminster, daughter to my Lord Bareacres, sister to the late Lady
+Pontypool, and by consequence a distant kinswoman of Helen's, as her
+ladyship, who was deeply versed in genealogy, was the first graciously
+to point out to the modest country lady. Mr. Pen was greatly delighted
+at the relationship being acknowledged, though perhaps not over well
+pleased that Lady Rockminster took Miss Bell home with her for a couple
+of days to Baymouth, and did not make the slightest invitation to Mr.
+Arthur Pendennis. There was to be a ball at Baymouth, and it was to be
+Miss Laura's first appearance. The dowager came to fetch her in her
+carriage, and she went off with a white dress in her box, happy and
+blushing like the rose to which Pen compared her.
+
+This was the night of the ball--a public entertainment at the Baymouth
+Hotel. "By Jove!" said Pen, "I'll ride over.--No, I won't ride, but I'll
+go too." His mother was charmed that he should do so; and as he was
+debating about the conveyance in which he should start for Baymouth,
+Captain Strong called opportunely, said he was going himself, and that
+he would put his horse, the Butcher Boy, into the gig, and drive Pen
+over.
+
+When the grand company began to fill the house at Clavering Park, the
+Chevalier Strong, who, as his patron said, was never in the way or out
+of it, seldom intruded himself upon its society, but went elsewhere to
+seek his relaxation. "I've seen plenty of grand dinners in my time," he
+said, "and dined, by Jove, in a company where there was a king and royal
+duke at top and bottom, and every man along the table had six stars
+on his coat; but dammy, Glanders, this finery don't suit me; and the
+English ladies with their confounded buckram airs, and the squires
+with their politics after dinner, send me to sleep--sink me dead if
+they don't. I like a place where I can blow my cigar when the cloth is
+removed, and when I'm thirsty, have my beer in its native pewter." So
+on a gala day at Clavering Park, the chevalier would content himself
+with superintending the arrangements of the table, and drilling the
+major-domo and servants; and having looked over the bill of fare with
+Monsieur Mirobolant, would not care to take the least part in the
+banquet. "Send me up a cutlet and a bottle of claret to my room," this
+philosopher would say, and from the windows of that apartment, which
+commanded the terrace and avenue, he would survey the company as they
+arrived in their carriages, or take a peep at the ladies in the
+hall through an oeil-de-boeuf which commanded it from his corridor.
+And the guests being seated, Strong would cross the park to Captain
+Glanders's cottage at Clavering, or to pay the landlady a visit at the
+Clavering Arms, or to drop in upon Madame Fribsby over her novel and
+tea. Wherever the chevalier went he was welcome, and whenever he came
+away a smell of hot brandy and water lingered behind him.
+
+The Butcher Boy--not the worst horse in Sir Francis's stable--was
+appropriated to Captain Strong's express use; and the old campaigner
+saddled him or brought him home at all hours of the day or night,
+and drove or rode him up and down the country. Where there was a
+public-house with a good tap of beer--where there was a tenant with a
+pretty daughter who played on the piano--to Chatteries, 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 bed-room to dress, they entered the ball-room. The chevalier was
+splendid. He wore three little gold crosses in a brochette on the portly
+breast of his blue coat, and looked like a foreign field-marshal.
+
+The ball was public and all sorts of persons were admitted and
+encouraged to come, young Pynsent having views upon the county, and Lady
+Rockminster being patroness of the ball. There was a quadrille for the
+aristocracy at one end, and select benches for the people of fashion.
+Toward 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
+every body--the wine-merchants', innkeepers', tradesmen's, solicitors',
+squire-farmers' daughters, their sires and brothers, and plunged about
+shaking hands.
+
+"Who is that man with the blue ribbon and the three-pointed star?"
+asked Pen. A gentleman in black with ringlets and a tuft stood gazing
+fiercely about him, with one hand in the arm-hole of his waistcoat and
+the other held his claque.
+
+"By Jupiter, it's Mirobolant!" cried Strong, bursting out laughing.
+"_Bon Jour, Chef!--Bon Jour, chevalier!_"
+
+"_De la croix de Juillet, chevalier_," said the Chef, laying his hand on
+his decoration.
+
+"By Jove, here's some more ribbon!" said Pen, amused.
+
+A man with very black hair and whiskers, dyed evidently with the
+purple of Tyre, with twinkling eyes and white eyelashes, and a thousand
+wrinkles in his face, which was of a strange red color, 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-colored ribbon in his
+button-hole, here came up and nodded familiarly to the chevalier.
+
+The chevalier shook hands. "My friend Mr. Pendennis," Strong said,
+"Colonel Altamont, of the body guard 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 he wanted had entered the room.
+
+Not yet. But the band began presently performing "See the Conquering
+Hero comes," and a host of fashionables--Dowager Countess of
+Rockminster, Mr. Pynsent and Miss Bell, Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., of
+Clavering Park, Lady Clavering and Miss Amory, Sir Horace Fogey, Bart.,
+Lady Fogey, Colonel and Mrs. Higgs, ---- Wagg, Esq. (as the county paper
+afterward described them), entered the room.
+
+Pen rushed by Blanche, ran up to Laura, and seized her hand. "God bless
+you!" he said, "I want to speak to you--I must speak to you--Let me
+dance with you." "Not for three dances, dear Pen," she said, smiling:
+and he fell back, biting his nails with vexation, and forgetting to
+salute Pynsent.
+
+After Lady Rockminster's party, Lady Clavering's followed in the
+procession.
+
+Colonel Altamont eyed it hard, holding a most musky pocket-handkerchief
+up to his face, and bursting with laughter behind it.
+
+"Who's the gal in green along with 'em, cap'n?" he asked of Strong.
+
+"That's Miss Amory, Lady Clavering's daughter," replied the chevalier.
+
+The colonel could hardly contain himself for laughing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+CONTAINS SOME BALL-PRACTICING.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Under some calico draperies in the shady embrasure of a window, Arthur
+Pendennis chose to assume a very gloomy and frowning countenance, and
+to watch Miss Bell dance her first quadrille with Mr. Pynsent for a
+partner. That gentleman was as solemn and severe as Englishmen are upon
+such occasions, and walked through the dance as he would have walked up
+to his pew in church, without a smile upon his face, or allowing any
+outward circumstance to interfere with his attention to the grave duty
+in which he was engaged. But Miss Laura's face was beaming with pleasure
+and good-nature. The lights and the crowd and music excited her. As she
+spread out her white robes, and performed her part of the dance, smiling
+and happy, her brown ringlets flowing back over her fair shoulders from
+her honest rosy face, more than one gentleman in the room admired and
+looked after her: and Lady Fogey, who had a house in London and gave
+herself no small airs of fashion when in the country, asked of Lady
+Rockminster who the young person was, mentioned a reigning beauty in
+London whom, in her ladyship's opinion, Laura was rather like, and
+pronounced that she would "do."
+
+Lady Rockminster would have been very much surprised if any _protégée_
+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 eye-glass. 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 _ton_
+is far better than that of the little pert Miss Amory, who is dancing
+opposite to her.
+
+Miss Blanche was, indeed, the _vis-à-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 patronized her a
+great deal. Her shoulders were the whitest in the whole room: and they
+were never easy in her frock for one single instant: nor were her eyes,
+which rolled about incessantly: nor was her little figure:--it seemed to
+say to all the people, "Come and look at me--not at that pink, healthy,
+bouncing country lass, Miss Bell, who scarcely knew how to dance till
+I taught her. This is the true Parisian manner--this is the prettiest
+little foot in the room, and the prettiest little chaussure, too. Look
+at it, Mr. Pynsent. Look at it, Mr. Pendennis, you who are scowling
+behind the curtain--I know you are longing to dance with me."
+
+Laura went on dancing, and keeping an attentive eye upon Mr. Pen in
+the embrasure of the window. He did not quit that retirement during
+the first quadrille, nor until the second, when the good-natured Lady
+Clavering beckoned to him to come up to her to the dais or place of
+honor where the dowagers were, and whither Pen went blushing and
+exceedingly awkward, as most conceited young fellows are. He performed
+a haughty salutation to Lady Rockminster, who hardly acknowledged his
+bow, and then went and paid his respects to the widow of the late Amory,
+who was splendid in diamonds, velvet, lace, feathers, and all sorts of
+millinery and goldsmith's ware.
+
+Young Mr. Fogey, then in the fifth form at Eton, and ardently expecting
+his beard and his commission in a dragoon regiment, was the second
+partner who was honored 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-humored than ever; and in the midst of her
+laughter caught a sight of Pen, and continued to laugh as he, on his
+side, continued to look absurdly pompous and sulky. The next dance was a
+waltz, and young Fogey thought, with a sigh, that he did not know how to
+waltz, and vowed he would have a master the next holidays.
+
+Mr. Pynsent again claimed Miss Bell's hand for this dance; and Pen
+beheld her in a fury, twirling round the room, her waist encircled by
+the arm of that gentleman. He never used to be angry before when, on
+summer evenings, the chairs and tables being removed, and the governess
+called down stairs 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
+Chatteries. For Captain Broadfoot, though devoting himself with great
+energy to the object in view, could not get round in time: and, not
+having the least ear for music, was unaware that his movements were
+too slow.
+
+So, in the waltz as in the quadrille, Miss Blanche saw that her dear
+friend Laura had the honors 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 to the mercies of that great
+odious man in spurs and a red coat.
+
+"I thought spurs and scarlet were the most fascinating objects in the
+world to young ladies," Pen answered. "I never should have dared to put
+my black coat in competition with that splendid red jacket."
+
+"You are very unkind, and cruel, and sulky, and naughty," said Miss
+Amory, with another shrug of the shoulders. "You had better go away.
+Your cousin is looking at us over Mr. Pynsent's shoulder."
+
+"Will you waltz with me?" said Pen.
+
+"Not this waltz. I can't, having just sent away that great hot Captain
+Broadfoot. Look at Mr. Pynsent, did you ever see such a creature?
+But I will dance the next waltz with you, and the quadrille too. I am
+promised, but I will tell Mr. Poole that I had forgotten my engagement
+to you."
+
+"Women forget very readily," Pendennis said.
+
+"But they always come back, and are very repentant and sorry for what
+they've done," Blanche said. "See, here comes the Poker, and dear Laura
+leaning on him. How pretty she looks!"
+
+Laura came up, and put out her hand to Pen, to whom Pynsent made a sort
+of bow, appearing to be not much more graceful than that domestic
+instrument to which Miss Amory compared him.
+
+But Laura's face was full of kindness. "I am so glad you have come, dear
+Pen," she said. "I can speak to you now. How is mamma? The three dances
+are over, and I am engaged to you for the next, Pen."
+
+"I have just engaged myself to Miss Amory," said Pen; and Miss Amory
+nodded her head, and made her usual little courtesy. "I don't intend
+to give him up, dearest Laura," she said.
+
+"Well, then, he'll waltz with me, dear Blanche," said the other. "Won't
+you, Pen?"
+
+"I promised to waltz with Miss Amory."
+
+"Provoking!" said Laura, and making a courtesy in her turn, she went and
+placed herself under the ample wing of Lady Rockminster.
+
+Pen was delighted with his mischief. The two prettiest girls in the room
+were quarreling 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 toilets of the ladies. One seemed to have a
+bird's nest in her head; another had six pounds of grapes in her hair,
+besides her false pearls. "It's a _coiffure_ of almonds and raisins,"
+said Pen, "and might be served up for dessert." In a word, he was
+exceedingly satirical and amusing.
+
+During the quadrille he carried on this kind of conversation with
+unflinching bitterness and vivacity, and kept Blanche continually
+laughing both at his wickedness and jokes, which were good, and also
+because Laura was again their _vis-à-vis_, and could see and hear how
+merry and confidential they were.
+
+"Arthur is charming to-night," she whispered to Laura, across Cornet
+Perch's shell jacket, as Pen was performing _cavalier seul_ before them,
+drawling through that figure with a thumb in the pocket of each
+waistcoat.
+
+"_Who?_" said Laura.
+
+"Arthur," answered Blanche, in French. "Oh, it's such a pretty name!"
+And now the young ladies went over to Pen's side, and Cornet Perch
+performed a _pas seul_ in his turn. He had no waistcoat pocket to put
+his hands into, and they looked large and swollen as they hung before
+him depending from the tight arms in the jacket.
+
+During the interval between the quadrille and the succeeding waltz, Pen
+did not take any notice of Laura, except to ask her whether her partner,
+Cornet Perch, was an amusing youth, and whether she liked him so well
+as her other partner, Mr. Pynsent. Having planted which two daggers in
+Laura's gentle bosom, Mr. Pendennis proceeded to rattle on with Blanche
+Amory, and to make jokes, good or bad, but which were always loud. Laura
+was at a loss to account for her cousin's sulky behavior, and ignorant
+in what she had offended him; however, she was not angry in her turn at
+Pen's splenetic mood, for she was the most good-natured and forgiving of
+women, and besides, an exhibition of jealousy on a man's part is not
+always disagreeable to a lady.
+
+As Pen would not dance with her, she was glad to take up with the active
+Chevalier Strong, who was a still better performer than Pen; and being
+very fond of dancing, as every brisk and innocent young girl should be,
+when the waltz music began she set off, and chose to enjoy herself with
+all her heart. Captain Broadfoot on this occasion occupied the floor in
+conjunction with a lady of proportions scarcely inferior to his own;
+Miss Roundle, a large young woman in a strawberry-ice colored crape
+dress, the daughter of the lady with the grapes in her head, whose
+bunches Pen had admired.
+
+And now taking his time, and with his fair partner Blanche hanging
+lovingly on the arm which encircled her, Mr. Arthur Pendennis set out
+upon his waltzing career, and felt, as he whirled round to the music,
+that he and Blanche were performing very brilliantly indeed. Very
+likely he looked to see if Miss Bell thought so too; but she did not
+or would not see him, and was always engaged with her partner Captain
+Strong. But Pen's triumph was not destined to last long; and it was
+doomed that poor Blanche was to have yet another discomfiture on that
+unfortunate night. While she and Pen were whirling round as light and
+brisk as a couple of opera-dancers, honest Captain Broadfoot and the
+lady round whose large waist he was clinging, were twisting round very
+leisurely according to their natures, and indeed were in every body's
+way. But they were more in Pendennis's way than in any body's else, for
+he and Blanche, while executing their rapid gyrations, came bolt up
+against the heavy dragoon and his lady, and with such force that the
+center of gravity was lost by all four of the circumvolving bodies;
+Captain Broadfoot and Miss Roundle were fairly upset, as was Pen
+himself, who was less lucky than his partner Miss Amory, who was only
+thrown upon, a bench against a wall.
+
+But Pendennis came fairly down upon the floor, sprawling in the general
+ruin with Broadfoot and Miss Roundle. The captain, though heavy, was
+good-natured, and was the first to burst out into a loud laugh at his
+own misfortune, which nobody therefore heeded. But Miss Amory was savage
+at her mishap; Miss Roundle placed on her _séant_, and looking pitifully
+round, presented an object which very few people could see without
+laughing; and Pen was furious when he heard the people giggling about
+him. He was one of those sarcastic young fellows that did not bear a
+laugh at his own expense, and of all things in the world feared ridicule
+most.
+
+As he got up Laura and Strong were laughing at him; every body was
+laughing; Pynsent and his partner were laughing; and Pen boiled with
+wrath against the pair, and could have stabbed them both on the spot. He
+turned away in a fury from them, and began blundering out apologies to
+Miss Amory. It was the other couple's fault--the woman in pink had done
+it--Pen hoped Miss Amory was not hurt--would she not have the courage to
+take another turn?
+
+Miss Amory in a pet said she _was_ very much hurt indeed, and she would
+not take another turn; and she accepted with great thanks a glass of
+water which a cavalier, who wore a blue ribbon and a three-pointed
+star, rushed to fetch for her when he had seen the deplorable accident.
+She drank the water, smiled upon the bringer gracefully, and turning
+her white shoulder at Mr. Pen in the most marked and haughty manner,
+besought the gentleman with the star to conduct her to her mamma; and
+she held out her hand in order to take his arm.
+
+The man with the star trembled with delight at this mark of her favor;
+he bowed over her hand, pressed it to his coat fervidly, and looked
+round him with triumph.
+
+It was no other than the happy Mirobolant whom Blanche had selected as
+an escort. But the truth is, that the young lady had never fairly looked
+in the artist's face since he had been employed in her mother's family,
+and had no idea but it was a foreign nobleman on whose arm she was
+leaning. As she went off, Pen forgot his humiliation in his surprise,
+and cried out, "By Jove, it's the cook!"
+
+The instant he had uttered the words, he was sorry for having spoken
+them--for it was Blanche who had herself invited Mirobolant to escort
+her, nor could the artist do otherwise than comply with a lady's
+command. Blanche in her flutter did not hear what Arthur said; but
+Mirobolant heard him, and cast a furious glance at him over his
+shoulder, which rather amused Mr. Pen. He was in a mischievous and sulky
+humor; 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 honor at all, did not much enter into the mind of this lofty
+young aristocrat, the apothecary's son.
+
+It had never entered that poor artist's head, that he as a man was not
+equal to any other mortal, or that there was any thing in his position
+so degrading as to prevent him from giving his arm to a lady who asked
+for it. He had seen in the fêtes in his own country fine ladies, not
+certainly demoiselles (but the demoiselle Anglaise he knew was a great
+deal more free than the spinster in France) join in the dance with
+Blaise or Pierre; and he would have taken Blanche up to Lady Clavering,
+and possibly have asked her to dance too, but he heard Pen's
+exclamation, which struck him as if it had shot him, and cruelly
+humiliated and angered him. She did not know what caused him to start,
+and to grind a Gascon oath between his teeth.
+
+But Strong, who was acquainted with the poor fellow's state of mind,
+having had the interesting information from our friend Madame Fribsby,
+was luckily in the way when wanted, and saying something rapidly in
+Spanish, which the other understood, the Chevalier begged Miss Amory to
+come and take an ice before she went back to Lady Clavering. Upon which
+the unhappy Mirobolant relinquished the arm which he had held for a
+minute, and with a most profound and piteous bow, fell back. "Don't you
+know who it is?" Strong asked of Miss Amory, as he led her away. "It is
+the Chef Mirobolant."
+
+"How should I know?" asked Blanche. "He has a _croix_; he is very
+_distingué_; he has beautiful eyes."
+
+"The poor fellow is mad for your _beaux yeux_, I believe," Strong said.
+"He is a very good cook, but he is not quite right in the head."
+
+"What did you say to him in the unknown tongue?" asked Miss Blanche.
+
+"He is a Gascon, and comes from the borders of Spain," Strong answered.
+"I told him he would lose his place if he walked with you."
+
+"Poor Monsieur Mirobolant!" said Blanche.
+
+"Did you see the look he gave Pendennis?"--Strong asked, enjoying the
+idea of the mischief--"I think he would like to run little Pen through
+with one of his spits."
+
+"He is an odious, conceited, clumsy creature, that Mr. Pen," said
+Blanche.
+
+"Broadfoot looked as if he would like to kill him too, so did Pynsent,"
+Strong said. "What ice will you have--water ice or cream ice?"
+
+"Water ice. Who is that odd man staring at me--he is _decoré_ too."
+
+"That is my friend Colonel Altamont, a very queer character, in the
+service of the Nawaub of Lucknow. Hallo! what's that noise! I'll be back
+in an instant," said the chevalier, and sprang out of the room to the
+ball-room, where a scuffle and a noise of high voices was heard.
+
+The refreshment room in which Miss Amory now found herself, was a room
+set apart for the purposes of supper, which Mr. Rincer the landlord had
+provided for those who chose to partake, at the rate of five shillings
+per head. Also, refreshments of a superior class were here ready for
+the ladies and gentlemen of the county families who came to the ball;
+but the commoner sort of persons were kept out of the room by a waiter
+who stood at the portal, and who said that was a select room for Lady
+Clavering and Lady Rockminster's parties, and not to be opened to the
+public till supper-time, which was not to be until past midnight.
+Pynsent, who danced with his constituents' daughters, took them and
+their mammas in for their refreshment there. Strong, who was manager and
+master of the revels wherever he went, had of course the _entrée_--and
+the only person who was now occupying the room, was the gentleman with
+the black wig and the orders in his button-hole; the officer in the
+service of his Highness the Nawaub of Lucknow.
+
+This gentleman had established himself very early in the evening in this
+apartment, where, saying he was confoundedly thirsty, he called for a
+bottle of champagne. At this order, the waiter instantly supposed that
+he had to do with a grandee, and the colonel sate down and began to eat
+his supper and absorb his drink, and enter affably into conversation
+with any body who entered the room.
+
+Sir Francis Clavering and Mr. Wagg found him there; when they left the
+ball-room which they did pretty early--Sir Francis to go and smoke a
+cigar and look at the people gathered outside the ball-room 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 gentleman in so odd a manner, as they passed through the
+"select" room, that Clavering made inquiries of the landlord who he was,
+and hinted a strong opinion that the officer of the Nawaub's service was
+drunk.
+
+Mr. Pynsent, too, had had the honor of a conversation with the servant
+of the Indian potentate. It was Pynsent's cue to speak to every body
+(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 behavior 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 Mrs. Jones, Mrs. R.," and so got off that
+discussion regarding Mr. Pynsent's qualities, into which the Nizam's
+officer appeared inclined to enter.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In fact, if the truth must be told, Mr. Altamont, having remained at
+the buffet almost all night, and employed himself very actively while
+there, had considerably flushed his brain by drinking, and he was still
+going on drinking when Mr. Strong and Miss Amory entered the room.
+
+When the chevalier ran out of the apartment, attracted by the noise in
+the dancing-room, the colonel rose from his chair with his little red
+eyes glowing like coals, and, with rather an unsteady gait, advanced
+toward 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 the glass, she
+beheld this strange man staring at her out of his little red eyes. "Who
+was he? It was quite exciting."
+
+"And so you're Betsy Amory," said he, after gazing at her. "Betsy Amory,
+by Jove!"
+
+"Who--who speaks to me?" said Betsy, alias Blanche.
+
+But the noise in the ball-room is really becoming so loud, that we must
+rush back thither, and see what is the cause of the disturbance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+WHICH IS BOTH QUARRELSOME AND SENTIMENTAL.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Civil war was raging, high words passing, people pushing and squeezing
+together in an unseemly manner, round a window in the corner of the
+ball-room, 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 are the police?" and the like; and a ring of individuals, among
+whom Madame Fribsby was conspicuous, was gathered round Monsieur
+Alcide Mirobolant on the one side; while several gentlemen and ladies
+surrounded our friend Arthur Pendennis on the other. Strong penetrated
+into this assembly, elbowing by Madame Fribsby, who was charmed at the
+chevalier's appearance, and cried, "Save him, save him!" in frantic and
+pathetic accents.
+
+The cause of the disturbance, it appeared, was the angry little chef of
+Sir Francis Clavering's culinary establishment. Shortly after Strong had
+quitted the room, and while 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 behavior to him, which had still further insulted
+his dignity, was endeavoring to get some coolness of body and temper,
+by looking out of window toward the sea, which was sparkling in the
+distance, and murmuring in a wonderful calm--while he was really trying
+to compose himself, and owning to himself, perhaps, that he had acted in
+a very absurd and peevish manner during the night--he felt a hand upon
+his shoulder; and, on looking round, beheld, to his utter surprise and
+horror, that the hand in question belonged to Monsieur Mirobolant, whose
+eyes were glaring out of his pale face and ringlets at Mr. Pen. To be
+tapped on the shoulder by a French cook was a piece of familiarity
+which made the blood of the Pendennises to boil up in the veins of their
+descendant, and he was astounded, almost more than enraged, at such an
+indignity.
+
+"You speak French?" Mirobolant said, in his own language, to Pen.
+
+"What is that to you, pray?" said Pen, in English.
+
+"At any rate, you understand it?" continued the other, with a bow.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Pen, with a stamp of his foot; "I understand it pretty
+well."
+
+"Vous me comprendrez alors, Monsieur Pendennis," replied the other,
+rolling out his _r_ with Gascon force, "quand je vous dis que vous êtes
+un lâche. Monsieur Pendennis--un lâche, entendez-vous?"
+
+"What?" said Pen, starting round on him.
+
+"You understand the meaning of the word and its consequences among men
+of honor?" the artist said, putting his hand on his hip, and staring at
+Pen.
+
+"The consequences are, that I will fling you out of window,
+you--impudent scoundrel," bawled out Mr. Pen; and darting upon the
+Frenchman, he would very likely have put his threat into execution,
+for the window was at hand, and the artist by no means a match for the
+young gentleman--had not Captain Broadfoot and another heavy officer
+flung themselves between the combatants--had not the ladies begun to
+scream--had not the fiddles stopped--had not the crowd of people come
+running in that direction--had not Laura, with a face of great alarm,
+looked over their heads and asked for Heaven's sake what was wrong--had
+not the opportune Strong made his appearance from the refreshment-room,
+and found Alcides grinding his teeth and jabbering oaths in his Gascon
+French, and Pen looking uncommonly wicked, although trying to appear
+as calm as possible, when the ladies and the crowd came up.
+
+"What has happened?" Strong asked of the chef in Spanish.
+
+"I am Chevalier de Juillet," said the other, slapping his breast, "and
+he has insulted me."
+
+"What has he said to you?" asked Strong.
+
+"Il m'a appelé--_Cuisinier_?" hissed out the little Frenchman.
+
+Strong could hardly help laughing. "Come away with me, my 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 among these, gathered round Pen, and
+asked the cause of the disturbance.
+
+Pen did not know. "The man was going to give his arm to a young lady,
+on which I said that he was a cook, and the man called me a coward and
+challenged me to fight. I own I was so surprised and indignant that if
+you, gentlemen, had not stopped me, I should have thrown him out of
+window," Pen said.
+
+"D---- him, serve him right, too--the d-- impudent foreign scoundrel,"
+the gentlemen said.
+
+"I--I'm very sorry if I hurt his feelings, though," Pen added; and Laura
+was glad to hear him say that; although some of the young bucks said,
+"No, hang the fellow--hang those impudent foreigners--little thrashing
+would do them good."
+
+"You will go and shake hands with him before you go to sleep--won't you,
+Pen?" said Laura, coming up to him. "Foreigners may be more susceptible
+than we are, and have different manners. If you hurt a poor man's
+feelings, I am sure you would be the first to ask his pardon. Wouldn't
+you, dear Pen?"
+
+She looked all forgiveness and gentleness, like an angel, as she spoke;
+and Pen took both her hands, and looked into her kind face, and said,
+indeed he would.
+
+"How fond that girl is of me!" he thought, as she stood gazing at him.
+"Shall I speak to her now? No--not now. I must have this absurd business
+with the Frenchman over."
+
+Laura asked--Wouldn't he stop and dance with her? She was as anxious to
+keep him in the room, as he to quit it. "Won't you stop and waltz with
+me, Pen? _I_'m not afraid to waltz with you."
+
+This was an affectionate, but an unlucky speech. Pen saw himself
+prostrate on the ground, having tumbled over Miss Roundle and the
+dragoon, and flung Blanche up against the wall--saw himself on the
+ground, and all the people laughing at him, Laura and Pynsent among
+them.
+
+"I shall never dance again," he replied, with a dark and determined
+face. "Never. I'm surprised you should ask me."
+
+"Is it because you can't get Blanche for a partner?" asked Laura, with
+a wicked, unlucky captiousness.
+
+"Because I don't wish to make a fool of myself, for other people to
+laugh at me," Pen answered--"for _you_ to laugh at me, Laura. I saw you
+and Pynsent. By Jove! no man shall laugh at me."
+
+"Pen, Pen, don't be so wicked!" cried out the poor girl, hurt at the
+morbid perverseness and savage vanity of Pen. He was glaring round in
+the direction of Mr. Pynsent as if he would have liked to engage that
+gentleman as he had done the cook. "Who thinks the worse of you for
+stumbling in a waltz?" If Laura does, we don't. "Why are you so
+sensitive and ready to think evil?"
+
+Here again, by ill luck, Mr. Pynsent came up to Laura, and said, "I have
+it in command from Lady Rockminster to ask whether I may take you in to
+supper?"
+
+"I--I was going in with my cousin," Laura said.
+
+"O--pray no!" said Pen. "You are in such good hands that I can't do
+better than leave you; and I'm going home."
+
+"Good night, Mr. Pendennis," Pynsent said, drily--to which speech (which
+in fact, meant, "Go to the deuce for an insolent, jealous, impertinent
+jackanapes, whose ears I should like to box"), Mr. Pendennis did not
+vouchsafe any reply, except a bow: and, in spite of Laura's imploring
+looks, he left the room.
+
+"How beautifully calm and bright the night outside is!" said Mr. Pynsent;
+"and what a murmur the sea is making! It would be pleasanter to be
+walking on the beach, than in this hot room."
+
+"Very," said Laura.
+
+"What a strange congregation of people," continued Pynsent. "I have
+had to go up and perform the agreeable to most of them--the attorney's
+daughters--the apothecary's wife--I scarcely know whom. There was a man
+in the refreshment room, who insisted upon treating me to champagne--a
+seafaring looking man--extraordinarily dressed, and seeming half tipsy.
+As a public man, one is bound to conciliate all these people, but it
+is a hard task--especially when one would so very much like to be
+elsewhere"--and he blushed rather as he spoke.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Laura--"I--I was not listening.
+Indeed--I was frightened about that quarrel between my cousin and
+that--that--that--French person."
+
+"Your cousin has been rather unlucky to-night," Pynsent said. "There
+are three or four persons whom he has not succeeded in pleasing--Captain
+Broadwood; what is his name--the officer--and the young lady in red with
+whom he danced--and Miss Blanche--and the poor chef--and I don't think
+he seemed particularly pleased with me."
+
+"Didn't he leave me in charge to you?" Laura said, looking up into Mr.
+Pynsent's face, and dropping her eyes instantly, like a guilty little
+story-telling coquette.
+
+"Indeed, I can forgive him a good deal for that," Pynsent eagerly cried
+out, and she took his arm, and he led off his little prize in the
+direction of the supper-room.
+
+She had no great desire for that repast, though it was served in
+Rincer's well known style, as the county paper said, giving an account
+of the entertainment afterward; indeed, she was very _distraite_; and
+exceedingly pained and unhappy about Pen. Captious and quarrelsome;
+jealous and selfish; fickle and violent and unjust when his anger led
+him astray; how could her mother (as indeed Helen had by a thousand
+words and hints) ask her to give her heart to such a man? And suppose
+she were to do so, would it make him happy?
+
+But she got some relief at length, when at the end of half an hour--a
+long half-hour it had seemed to her--a waiter brought her a little note
+in pencil from Pen, who said, "I met Cooky below ready to fight me;
+and I asked his pardon. I'm glad I did it. I wanted to speak to you
+to-night, but will keep what I had to say till you come home. God
+bless you. Dance away all night with Pynsent, and be very happy.
+PEN."--Laura was very thankful for this letter, and to think
+that there was goodness and forgiveness still in her mother's boy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pen went down stairs, his heart reproaching him for his absurd behavior
+to Laura, whose gentle and imploring looks followed and rebuked him; and
+he was scarcely out of the ball-room 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 apologize before _him_. He would
+compromise, and forget his wrath, and make his peace with the Frenchman.
+
+The chevalier was pacing down below in the hall of the inn when Pen
+descended from the ball-room; and he came up to Pen, with all sorts of
+fun and mischief lighting up his jolly face.
+
+"I have got him in the coffee-room," he said, "with a brace of pistols
+and a candle. Or would you like swords on the beach? Mirobolant is a
+dead hand with the foils, and killed four _gardes-du-corps_ with his own
+point in the barricades of July."
+
+"Confound it," said Pen, in a fury, "I can't fight a cook!"
+
+"He is a Chevalier of July," replied the other. "They present arms to
+him in his own country."
+
+"And do you ask me, Captain Strong, to go out with a servant?" Pen asked
+fiercely; "I'll call a policeman for _him_; but--but--"
+
+"You'll invite me to hair triggers?" cried Strong, with a laugh. "Thank
+you for nothing; I was but joking. I came to settle quarrels, not to
+fight them. I have been soothing down Mirobolant; I have told him that
+you did not apply the word 'cook' to him in an offensive sense; that it
+was contrary to all the customs of the country that a hired officer of
+a household, as I called it, should give his arm to the daughter of the
+house." And then he told Pen the grand secret which he had had from
+Madame Fribsby of the violent passion under which the poor artist was
+laboring.
+
+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 any thing 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 "Sincèrement fache d'avoir usé une
+expression qui avoit pu blesser Monsieur Mirobolant, et qu'il donnoit sa
+parole comme un gentlehomme qu'il ne l'avoit jamais, jamais--intendé,"
+said Pen, who made a shot at a French word for "intended," and was
+secretly much pleased with his own fluency and correctness in speaking
+that language.
+
+"Bravo, bravo!" cried Strong, as much amused with Pen's speech as
+pleased by his kind manner. "And the Chevalier Mirobolant of course
+withdraws, and sincerely regrets the expression of which he made use."
+
+"Monsieur Pendennis has disproved my words himself," said Alcide, with
+great politeness; "he has shown that he is a _galant homme_."
+
+And so they shook hands and parted, Arthur in the first place
+dispatching his note to Laura before he and Strong committed themselves
+to the Butcher Boy.
+
+As they drove along, Strong complimented Pen upon his behavior, as well
+as upon his skill in French. "You're a good fellow, Pendennis, and you
+speak French like Chateaubriand, by Jove."
+
+"I've been accustomed to it from my youth upward," said Pen; and Strong
+had the grace not to laugh for five minutes, when he exploded into fits
+of hilarity which Pendennis has never, perhaps, understood up to this
+day.
+
+It was daybreak when they got to the Brawl, where they separated.
+By that time the ball at Baymouth was over too. Madame Fribsby and
+Mirobolant were on their way home in the Clavering fly; Laura was in
+bed, with an easy heart, and asleep at Lady Rockminster's; and the
+Claverings at rest at the inn at Baymouth, where they had quarters for
+the night. A short time after the disturbance between Pen and the chef,
+Blanche had come out of the refreshment-room, looking as pale as a
+lemon-ice. She told her maid, having no other _confidante_ at hand, that
+she had met with the most romantic adventure--the most singular man--one
+who had known the author of her being--her persecuted--her unhappy--her
+heroic--her murdered father; and she began a sonnet to his manes before
+she went to sleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So Pen returned to Fairoaks, in company with his friend the chevalier,
+without having uttered a word of the message which he had been so
+anxious to deliver to Laura at Baymouth. He could wait, however, until
+her return home, which was to take place on the succeeding day. He was
+not seriously jealous of the progress made by Mr. Pynsent in her favor;
+and he felt pretty certain that in this, as in any other family
+arrangement, he had but to ask and have, and Laura, like his mother,
+could refuse him nothing.
+
+When Helen's anxious looks inquired of him what had happened at
+Baymouth, and whether her darling project was fulfilled, Pen, in a gay
+tone, told of the calamity which had befallen; laughingly said, that no
+man could think about declarations under such a mishap, and made light
+of the matter. "There will be plenty of time for sentiment, dear mother,
+when Laura comes back," he said, and he looked in the glass with a
+killing air, and his mother put his hair off his forehead and kissed
+him, and of course thought, for her part, that no woman could resist
+him: and was exceedingly happy that day.
+
+When he was not with her, Mr. Pen occupied himself in packing books and
+portmanteaus, burning and arranging papers, cleaning his gun and putting
+it into its case: in fact, in making dispositions for departure. For
+though he was ready to marry, this gentleman was eager to go to London
+too, rightly considering that at three-and-twenty it was quite time for
+him to begin upon the serious business of life, and to set about making
+a fortune as quickly as possible.
+
+The means to this end he had already shaped out for himself. "I shall
+take chambers," he said, "and enter myself at an Inn of Court. With a
+couple of hundred pounds I shall be able to carry through the first year
+very well; after that I have little doubt my pen will support me, as
+it is doing with several Oxbridge men now in town. I have a tragedy, a
+comedy, and a novel, all nearly finished, and for which I can't fail to
+get a price. And so I shall be able to live pretty well, without drawing
+upon my poor mother, until I have made my way at the bar. Then, some day
+I will come back and make her dear soul happy by marrying Laura. She is
+as good and as sweet-tempered a girl as ever lived, besides being really
+very good-looking, and the engagement will serve to steady me--won't it,
+Ponto?" Thus, smoking his pipe, and talking to his dog as he sauntered
+through the gardens and orchards of the little domain of Fairoaks, this
+young day-dreamer built castles in the air for himself: "Yes, she'll
+steady me, won't she? And you'll miss me when I've gone, won't you, old
+boy?" he asked of Ponto, who quivered his tail and thrust his brown nose
+into his master's fist. Ponto licked his hand and shoe, as they all did
+in that house, and Mr. Pen received their homage as other folks do the
+flattery which they get.
+
+Laura came home rather late in the evening of the second day; and Mr.
+Pynsent, as ill luck would have it, drove her from Clavering. The poor
+girl could not refuse his offer, but his appearance brought a dark cloud
+upon the brow of Arthur Pendennis. Laura saw this, and was pained by
+it; the eager widow, however, was aware of nothing, and being anxious,
+doubtless, that the delicate question should be asked at once, was for
+going to bed very soon after Laura's arrival, and rose for that purpose
+to leave the sofa where she now generally lay, and where Laura would
+come and sit and work or read by her. But when Helen rose, Laura said,
+with a blush and rather an alarmed voice, that she was also very tired
+and wanted to go to bed: so that the widow was disappointed in her
+scheme for that night at least, and Mr. Pen was left another day in
+suspense regarding his fate.
+
+His dignity was offended at being thus obliged to remain in the
+ante-chamber when he wanted an audience. Such, a sultan as he, could not
+afford to be kept waiting. However, he went to bed and slept upon his
+disappointment pretty comfortably, and did not wake until the early
+morning, when he looked up and saw his mother standing in his room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dear Pen, rouse up," said this lady. "Do not be lazy. It is the most
+beautiful morning in the world. I have not been able to sleep since
+daybreak; and Laura has been out for an hour. She is in the garden.
+Every body ought to be in the garden and out on such a morning as this."
+
+Pen laughed. He saw what thoughts were uppermost in the simple woman's
+heart. His good-natured laughter cheered the widow. "Oh you profound
+dissembler," he said, kissing his mother. "Oh you artful creature! Can
+nobody escape from your wicked tricks? and will you make your only son
+your victim?" Helen too laughed, she blushed, she fluttered, and was
+agitated. She was as happy as she could be--a good, tender, match-making
+woman, the dearest project of whose heart was about to be accomplished.
+
+So, after exchanging some knowing looks and hasty words, Helen left
+Arthur; and this young hero, rising from his bed, proceeded to decorate
+his beautiful person, and shave his ambrosial chin; and in half an hour
+he issued out from his apartment into the garden in quest of Laura. His
+reflections as he made his toilet were rather dismal. "I am going to tie
+myself for life," he thought, "to please my mother. Laura is the best
+of women, and--and she has given me her money. I wish to heaven I had
+not received it; I wish I had not this duty to perform just yet. But as
+both the women have set their hearts on the match, why I suppose I must
+satisfy them--and now for it. A man may do worse than make happy two of
+the best creatures in the world." So Pen, now he was actually come to
+the point, felt very grave, and by no means elated, and, indeed, thought
+it was a great sacrifice he was going to perform.
+
+It was Miss Laura's custom, upon her garden excursions, to wear a sort
+of uniform, which, though homely, was thought by many people to be not
+unbecoming. She had a large straw hat, with a streamer of broad ribbon,
+which was useless probably, but the hat sufficiently protected the
+owner's pretty face from the sun. Over her accustomed gown she wore a
+blouse or pinafore, which, being fastened round her little waist by a
+smart belt, looked extremely well, and her hands were guaranteed from
+the thorns of her favorite rose-bushes by a pair of gauntlets, which
+gave this young lady a military and resolute air.
+
+Somehow she had the very same smile with which she had laughed at him on
+the night previous, and the recollection of his disaster again offended
+Pen. But Laura, though she saw him coming down the walk looking so
+gloomy and full of care, accorded to him a smile of the most perfect and
+provoking good-humor, 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 favor, and he continued to regard her with a dismal
+and solemn air.
+
+"Excuse my glove," said Laura, with a laugh, pressing Pen's hand kindly
+with it. "We are not angry again, are we, Pen?"
+
+"Why do you laugh at me?" said Pen. "You did the other night, and made a
+fool of me to the people at Baymouth."
+
+"My dear Arthur, I meant you no wrong," the girl answered. "You and Miss
+Roundle looked so droll as you--as you met with your little accident,
+that I could not make a tragedy of it. Dear Pen, it wasn't a serious
+fall. And, besides, it was Miss Roundle who was the most unfortunate."
+
+"Confound Miss Roundle," bellowed out Pen.
+
+"I'm sure she looked so," said Laura, archly. "You were up in an
+instant; but that poor lady sitting on the ground in her red crape
+dress, and looking about her with that piteous face--can I ever forget
+her?"--and Laura began to make a face in imitation of Miss Roundle's
+under the disaster, but she checked herself repentantly, saying, "Well,
+we must not laugh at her, but I am sure we ought to laugh at you, Pen,
+if you were angry about such a trifle."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"_You_ should not laugh at me, Laura," said Pen, with some bitterness;
+"not you, of all people."
+
+"And why not? Are you such a great man?" asked Laura.
+
+"Ah no, Laura, I'm such a poor one," Pen answered. "Haven't you baited
+me enough already?"
+
+"My dear Pen, and how?" cried Laura. "Indeed, indeed, I didn't think to
+vex you by such a trifle. I thought such a clever man as you could bear
+a harmless little joke from his sister," she said, holding her hand out
+again. "Dear Arthur, if I have hurt you, I beg your pardon."
+
+"It is your kindness that humiliates me more even than your laughter,
+Laura," Pen said. "You are always my superior."
+
+"What! superior to the great Arthur Pendennis? How can it be possible?"
+said Miss Laura, who may have had a little wickedness as well as a great
+deal of kindness in her composition. "You can't mean that any woman is
+your equal?"
+
+"Those who confer benefits should not sneer," said Pen. "I don't like my
+benefactor to laugh at me, Laura; it makes the obligation very hard to
+bear. You scorn me because I have taken your money, and I am worthy to
+be scorned; but the blow is hard coming from you."
+
+"Money! Obligation! For shame, Pen; this is ungenerous," Laura said,
+flushing red. "May not our mother claim every thing 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 every thing
+I have," said Laura; "my life is hers." And the enthusiastic girl looked
+toward the windows of the widow's room, and blessed in her heart the
+kind creature within.
+
+Helen was looking, unseen, out of that window toward which Laura's eyes
+and heart were turned as she spoke, and was watching her two children
+with the deepest interest and emotion, longing and hoping that the
+prayer of her life might be fulfilled: and if Laura had spoken as Helen
+hoped, who knows what temptations Arthur Pendennis might have been
+spared, or what different trials he would have had to undergo? He might
+have remained at Fairoaks all his days, and died a country gentleman.
+But would he have escaped then? Temptation is an obsequious servant that
+has no objection to the country, and we know that it takes up its
+lodging in hermitages as well as in cities; and that in the most remote
+and inaccessible desert it keeps company with the fugitive solitary.
+
+"Is your life my mother's," said Pen, beginning to tremble, and speak in
+a very agitated manner. "You know, Laura, what the great object of hers
+is?" And he took her hand once more.
+
+"What, Arthur?" she said, dropping it, and looking at him, at the window
+again, and then dropping her eyes to the ground, so that they avoided
+Pen's gaze. She, too, trembled, for she felt that the crisis for which
+she had been secretly preparing was come.
+
+"Our mother has one wish above all others in the world, Laura," Pen
+said; "and I think you know it. I own to you that she has spoken to me
+of it; and if you will fulfill 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, while they render me grateful. When I heard from our
+mother what you had done for me: that it was you who armed me and bade
+me go out for one struggle more; I longed to go and throw myself at your
+feet, and say, 'Laura, will you come and share the contest with me? Your
+sympathy will cheer me while it lasts. I shall have one of the tenderest
+and most generous creatures under heaven to aid and bear me company.'
+Will you take me, dear Laura, and make our mother happy?"
+
+"Do you think mamma would be happy if you were otherwise, Arthur?" Laura
+said, in a low sad voice.
+
+"And why should I not be," asked Pen, eagerly, "with so dear a creature
+as you by my side? I have not my first love to give you. I am a broken
+man. But indeed I would love you fondly and truly. I have lost many an
+illusion and ambition, but I am not without hope still. Talents I know I
+have, wretchedly as I have misapplied them; they may serve me yet; they
+would, had I a motive for action. Let me go away, and think that I am
+pledged to return to you. Let me go and work, and hope that you will
+share my success if I gain it. You have given me so much, dear Laura,
+will you take from me nothing?"
+
+"What have you got to give, Arthur?" Laura said, with a grave sadness of
+tone, which made Pen start, and see that his words had committed him.
+Indeed, his declaration had not been such as he would have made it two
+days earlier, when full of hope and gratitude, he had run over to Laura,
+his liberatress, to thank her for his recovered freedom. Had he been
+permitted to speak then, he had spoken, and she, perhaps, had listened
+differently. It would have been a grateful heart asking for hers; not a
+weary one offered to her, to take or to leave. Laura was offended with
+the terms in which Pen offered himself to her. He had, in fact, said
+that he had no love, and yet would take no denial. "I give myself to you
+to please my mother," he had said; "take me, as she wishes that I should
+make this sacrifice." The girl's spirit would brook a husband under no
+such conditions: she was not minded to run forward because Pen chose to
+hold out the handkerchief, and her tone, in reply to Arthur, showed her
+determination to be independent.
+
+"No, Arthur," she said, "our marriage would not make mamma happy, as she
+fancies; for it would not content you very long. I, too, have known what
+her wishes were; for she is too open to conceal any thing she has at
+heart: and once, perhaps, I thought--but that is over now--that I could
+have made you--that it might have been as she wished."
+
+"You have seen somebody else," said Pen, angry at her tone, and
+recalling the incidents of the past days.
+
+"That allusion might have been spared," Laura replied, flinging up her
+head. "A heart which has worn out love at three-and-twenty, as yours
+has, you say, should have survived jealousy too. I do not condescend to
+say whether I have seen or encouraged any other person. I shall neither
+admit the charge, nor deny it: and beg you also to allude to it no
+more."
+
+"I ask your pardon, Laura, if I have offended you: but if I am jealous,
+does it not prove that I have a heart?"
+
+"Not for me, Arthur. Perhaps you think you love me now: but it is only
+for an instant, and because you are foiled. Were there no obstacle, you
+would feel no ardor to overcome it. No, Arthur, you don't love me. You
+would weary of me in three months, as--as you do of most things; and
+mamma, seeing you tired of me, would be more unhappy than at my refusal
+to be yours. Let us be brother and sister, Arthur, as heretofore--but no
+more. You will get over this little disappointment."
+
+"I will try," said Arthur, in a great indignation.
+
+"Have you not tried before?" Laura said, with some anger, for she had
+been angry with Arthur for a very long time, and was now determined, I
+suppose, to speak her mind. "And the next time, Arthur, when you offer
+yourself to a woman, do not say as you have done to me, 'I have no
+heart--I do not love you; but I am ready to marry you because my mother
+wishes for the match.' We require more than this in return for our
+love--that is, I think so. I have had no experience hitherto, and have
+not had the--the practice which you supposed me to have, when you spoke
+but now of my having seen somebody else. Did you tell your first love
+that you had no heart, Arthur? or your second that you did not love her,
+but that she might have you if she liked?"
+
+"What--what do you mean?" asked Arthur, blushing, and still in great
+wrath.
+
+"I mean Blanche Amory, Arthur Pendennis," Laura said, proudly. "It is
+but two months since you were sighing at her feet--making poems to
+her--placing them in hollow trees by the river-side. I knew all. I
+watched you--that is, she showed them to me. Neither one nor the other
+were in earnest perhaps; but it is too soon now, Arthur, to begin a new
+attachment. Go through the time of your--your widowhood at least, and do
+not think of marrying until you are out of mourning."--(Here the girl's
+eyes filled with tears, and she passed her hand across them). "I am
+angry and hurt, and I have no right to be so, and I ask your pardon in
+my turn now, dear Arthur. You had a right to love Blanche. She was a
+thousand times prettier and more accomplished than--than any girl near
+us here; and you could not know that she had no heart; and so you were
+right to leave her too. I ought not to rebuke you about Blanche Amory,
+and because she deceived you. Pardon me, Pen,"--and she held the kind
+hand out to Pen once more.
+
+"We were both jealous," said Pen. "Dear Laura, let us both forgive"--and
+he seized her hand and would have drawn her toward him. He thought that
+she was relenting, and already assumed the airs of a victor.
+
+But she shrank back, and her tears passed away; and she fixed on him a
+look so melancholy, and severe, that the young man in his turn shrank
+before it. "Do not mistake me, Arthur," she said, "it can not 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, honor, and obedience? If ever I say these words, dear Pen,
+I hope to say them in earnest, and by the blessing of God to keep my
+vow. But you--what tie binds you? You do not care about many things
+which we poor women hold sacred. I do not like to think or ask how far
+your incredulity leads you. You offer to marry to please our mother, and
+own that you have no heart to give away? Oh, Arthur, what is it you
+offer me? What a rash compact would you enter into so lightly? A month
+ago, and you would have given yourself to another. I pray you do not
+trifle with your own or others' hearts so recklessly. Go and work; go
+and mend, dear Arthur, for I see your faults, and dare speak of them
+now: go and get fame, as you say that you can, and I will pray for my
+brother, and watch our dearest mother at home."
+
+"Is that your final decision, Laura?" Arthur cried.
+
+"Yes," said Laura, bowing her head; and once more giving him her hand,
+she went away. He saw her pass under the creepers of the little porch,
+and disappear into the house. The curtains of his mother's window fell
+at the same minute, but he did not mark that, or suspect that Helen had
+been witnessing the scene.
+
+Was he pleased, or was he angry at its termination? He had asked her,
+and a secret triumph filled his heart to think that he was still free.
+She had refused him, but did she not love him? That avowal of jealousy
+made him still think that her heart was his own, whatever her lips might
+utter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now we ought, perhaps, to describe another scene which took place
+at Fairoaks, between the widow and Laura, when the latter had to tell
+Helen that she had refused Arthur Pendennis. Perhaps it was the hardest
+task of all which Laura had to go through in this matter: and the one
+which gave her the most pain. But as we do not like to see a good woman
+unjust, we shall not say a word more of the quarrel which now befell
+between Helen and her adopted daughter, or of the bitter tears which the
+poor girl was made to shed. It was the only difference which she and the
+widow had ever had as yet, and the more cruel from this cause. Pen left
+home while it was as yet pending--and Helen, who could pardon almost
+every thing, could not pardon an act of justice in Laura.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+BABYLON.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 toward the fond mother,
+who blessed him when parting, and who, in spite of all his past faults
+and follies, trusts him and loves him still. Blessings be on her! he
+prays, as he looks up to the stars overhead. O heaven, give him strength
+to work, to endure, to be honest, to avoid temptation, to be worthy of
+the loving soul who loves him so entirely! Very likely she is awake,
+too, at that moment, and sending up to the same Father purer prayers
+than his for the welfare of her boy. That woman's love is a talisman by
+which he holds and hopes to get his safety. And Laura's--he would have
+fain carried her affection with him too, but she has denied it, as he is
+not worthy of it. He owns as much with shame and remorse; confesses how
+much better and loftier her nature is than his own--confesses it, and
+yet is glad to be free. "I am not good enough for such a creature," he
+owns to himself. He draws back before her spotless beauty and innocence,
+as from something that scares him. He feels he is not fit for such a
+mate as that; as many a wild prodigal who has been pious and guiltless
+in early days, keeps away from a church which he used to frequent
+once--shunning it, but not hostile to it--only feeling that he has no
+right in that pure place.
+
+With these thoughts to occupy him, Pen did not fall asleep until the
+nipping dawn of an October morning, and woke considerably refreshed when
+the coach stopped at the old breakfasting place at B----, where he had
+had a score of merry meals on his way to and from school and college
+many times since he was a boy. As they left that place, the sun broke
+out brightly, the pace was rapid, the horn blew, the milestones flew by,
+Pen smoked and joked with guard and fellow-passengers and people along
+the familiar road; it grew more busy and animated at every instant; the
+last team of grays came out at H----, and the coach drove into London.
+What young fellow has not felt a thrill as he entered the vast place?
+Hundreds of other carriages, crowded with their thousands of men, were
+hastening to the great city. "Here is my place," thought Pen; "here is
+my battle beginning, in which I must fight and conquer, or fall. I have
+been a boy and a dawdler as yet. Oh, I long, I long to show that I can
+be a man." And from his place on the coach-roof the eager young fellow
+looked down upon the city, with the sort of longing desire which young
+soldiers feel on the eve of a campaign.
+
+As they came along the road, Pen had formed an 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 honor to have seen
+the great Mr. Hurtle, whose works he admired. He believed fondly, as
+yet, in authors, reviewers, and editors of newspapers. Even Wagg, whose
+books did not appear to him to be masterpieces of human intellect, he
+yet secretly revered as a successful writer. He mentioned that he had
+met Wagg in the country, and Doolan told him how that famous novelist
+received three hundred pounds a volume for every one of his novels. Pen
+began to calculate instantly whether he might not make five thousand a
+year.
+
+The very first acquaintance of his own whom Arthur met, as the coach
+pulled up at the Gloster Coffee House, was his old friend Harry Foker,
+who came prancing down Arlington-street behind an enormous cab-horse.
+He had white kid gloves and white reins, and nature had by this time
+decorated him with a considerable tuft on the chin. A very small cab-boy,
+vice Stoopid retired, swung on behind Foker's vehicle; knock-kneed and
+in the tightest leather breeches. Foker looked at the dusty coach, and
+the smoking horses of the "Alacrity" by which he had made journeys in
+former times.--"What, Foker!" cried out Pendennis--"Hullo! Pen, my boy!"
+said the other, and he waved his whip by way of amity and salute to
+Arthur, who was very glad to see his queer friend's kind old face. Mr.
+Doolan had a great respect for Pen who had an acquaintance in such a
+grand cab; and Pen was greatly excited and pleased to be at liberty
+and in London. He asked Doolan to come and dine with him at the Covent
+Garden Coffee House, where he put up: he called a cab and rattled away
+thither in the highest spirits. He was glad to see the bustling waiter
+and polite bowing landlord again; and asked for the landlady, and missed
+the old Boots, and would have liked to shake hands with every body.
+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 theater adjoining.
+
+The lights and the music, the crowd and the gayety, 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 _habitués_
+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 theater, as if he was in a resort of the
+highest fashion. What tired frequenter of the London pavé is there that
+can not 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 Granby 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 favorite of the public, Blenkinsop'--those parts
+in the drama, which are called the heavy fathers, were usually assigned
+to this veteran, who, indeed, acted the heavy father in public, as in
+private life.
+
+At this time, it being about eleven o'clock, Mrs. Pendennis was gone to
+bed at Fairoaks, and wondering whether her dearest Arthur was at rest
+after his journey. At this time Laura, too, was awake. And at this time
+yesterday night, as the coach rolled over silent commons, where cottage
+windows twinkled, and by darkling woods under calm starlit skies, Pen
+was vowing to reform and to resist temptation, and his heart was at
+home.... Meanwhile the farce was going on very successfully, and Mrs.
+Leary, in a hussar jacket and braided pantaloons, was enchanting the
+audience with her archness, her lovely figure, and her delightful
+ballads.
+
+Pen, being new to the town, would have liked to listen to Mrs. Leary
+but the other people in the box did not care about her song or her
+pantaloons, and kept up an incessant chattering. Tiptoff knew where her
+_maillots_ came from. Colchicum saw her when she came out in '14. Miss
+Blenkinsop said she sang out of all tune, to the pain and astonishment
+of Pen, who thought that she was as beautiful as an angel, and that
+she sang like a nightingale; and when Hoppus came on as Sir Harcourt
+Featherby, the young man of the piece, the gentlemen in the box declared
+that Hoppus was getting too stale, and Tiptoff was for flinging Miss
+Blenkinsop's bouquet to him.
+
+"Not for the world," cried the daughter of the veteran Blenkinsop; "Lord
+Colchicum gave it to me."
+
+Pen remembered that nobleman's name, and with a bow and a blush said he
+believed he had to thank Lord Colchicum for having proposed him at the
+Megatherium Club, at the request of his uncle, Major Pendennis.
+
+"What, you're Wigsby's nephew, are you?" said the peer. "I beg your
+pardon, we always call him Wigsby." Pen blushed to hear his venerable
+uncle called by such a familiar name. "We balloted you in last week,
+didn't we? Yes, last Wednesday night. Your uncle wasn't there."
+
+Here was delightful news for Pen! He professed himself very much obliged
+indeed to Lord Colchicum, and made him a handsome speech of thanks, to
+which the other listened, with his double opera-glass up to his eyes.
+Pen was full of excitement at the idea of being a member of this polite
+club.
+
+"Don't be always looking at that box, you naughty creature," cried Miss
+Blenkinsop.
+
+"She's a dev'lish fine woman, that Mirabel," said Tiptoff; "though
+Mirabel was a d--d fool to marry her."
+
+"A stupid old spooney," said the peer.
+
+"Mirabel!" cried out Pendennis.
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed out Harry Foker. "We've heard of her before, haven't
+we, Pen?"
+
+It was Pen's first love. It was Miss Fotheringay. The year before she
+had been led to the altar by Sir Charles Mirabel, G.C.B., and formerly
+envoy to the Court of Pumpernickel, who had taken so active a part in
+the negotiations before the Congress of Swammerdam, and signed, on
+behalf of H.B.M. the peace of Pultusk.
+
+"Emily was always as stupid as an owl," said Miss Blenkinsop.
+
+"Eh! Eh! pas si bête," the old peer said.
+
+"Oh, for shame!" cried the actress, who did not in the least know what
+he meant.
+
+And Pen looked out, and beheld his first love once again--and wondered
+how he ever could have loved her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus, on the very first night of his arrival in London, Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis found himself introduced to a club, to an actress of genteel
+comedy, and a heavy father of the stage, and to a dashing society of
+jovial blades, old and young; for my Lord Colchicum, though stricken in
+years, bald of head, and enfeebled in person, was still indefatigable in
+the pursuit of enjoyment, and it was the venerable viscount's boast that
+he could drink as much claret as the youngest member of the society
+which he frequented. He lived with the youth about town: he gave them
+countless dinners at Richmond and Greenwich: an enlightened patron of
+the drama in all languages, and of the Terpsichorean art, he received
+dramatic professors of all nations at his banquets--English from the
+Covent Garden and Strand houses, Italians from the Haymarket, French
+from their own pretty little theater, 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
+green-room--with the former chiefly, for Viscount Colchicum preferred
+their society, as more polished and gay than that of their male
+brethren.
+
+Pen went the next day and paid his entrance-money at the club, which
+operation carried off exactly one-third of his hundred pounds; and took
+possession of the edifice, and ate his luncheon there with immense
+satisfaction. He plunged into an easy chair in the library, and tried to
+read all the magazines. He wondered whether the members were looking at
+him, and that they could dare to keep on their hats in such fine rooms.
+He sate down and wrote a letter to Fairoaks on the club paper, and said,
+what a comfort this place would be to him after his day's work was
+over. He went over to his uncle's lodgings in Bury-street with some
+considerable tremor, and in compliance with his mother's earnest desire,
+that he should instantly call on Major Pendennis; and was not a little
+relieved to find that the major had not yet returned to town. His
+apartments were blank. Brown hollands covered his library-table, and
+bills and letters lay on the mantle-piece, grimly awaiting the return of
+their owner. The major was on the continent, the landlady of the house
+said, at Badnbadn, with the Marcus of Steyne. Pen left his card upon the
+shelf with the rest. Fairoaks was written on it still.
+
+When the major returned to London, which he did in time for the fogs of
+November, after enjoying which he proposed to spend Christmas with some
+friends in the country, he found another card of Arthur's, on which Lamb
+Court, Temple, was engraved, and a note from that young gentleman and
+from his mother, stating that he was come to town, was entered a member
+of the Upper Temple, and was reading hard for the bar.
+
+Lamb Court, Temple:--where was it? Major Pendennis remembered that
+some ladies of fashion used to talk of dining with Mr. Ayliffe, the
+barrister, who was "in society," and who lived there in the King's
+Bench, of which prison there was probably a branch in the Temple, and
+Ayliffe was very likely an officer. Mr. Deuceace, Lord Crab's son, had
+also lived there, he recollected. He dispatched Morgan to find out where
+Lamb Court was, and to report upon the lodging selected by Mr. Arthur.
+That alert messenger had little difficulty in discovering Mr. Pen's
+abode. Discreet Morgan had in his time traced people far more difficult
+to find than Arthur.
+
+"What sort of a place is it, Morgan?" asked the major, out of the
+bed-curtains in Bury-street the next morning, as the valet was arranging
+his toilet in the deep yellow London fog.
+
+"I should say rayther a shy place," said Mr. Morgan. "The lawyers lives
+there, and has their names on the doors. Mr. Harthur lives three pair
+high, sir. Mr. Warrington live there too, sir."
+
+"Suffolk Warringtons! I shouldn't wonder: a good family," thought the
+major. "The cadets of many of our good families follow the robe as a
+profession. Comfortable rooms, eh?"
+
+"Honly saw the outside of the door, sir, with Mr. Warrington's name and
+Mr. Arthur's painted up, and a piece of paper with 'Back at 6;' but I
+couldn't see no servant, sir."
+
+"Economical at any rate," said the major.
+
+"Very, sir. Three pair, sir. Nasty black staircase as ever I see. Wonder
+how a gentleman can live in such a place."
+
+"Pray, who taught you where gentlemen should or should not live, Morgan.
+Mr. Arthur, sir, is going to study for the bar, sir;" the major said
+with much dignity; and closed the conversation and began to array
+himself, in the yellow fog.
+
+"Boys will be boys," the mollified uncle thought to himself. "He has
+written to me a dev'lish good letter. Colchicum says he has had him to
+dine, and thinks him agentleman like lad. His mother is one of the best
+creatures in the world. If he has sown his wild oats, and will stick to
+his business, he may do well yet. Think of Charley Mirabel, the old fool
+marrying that flame of his! that Fotheringay! He doesn't like to come
+here until I give him leave, and puts it in a very manly, nice way. I
+was deuced angry with him, after his Oxbridge escapades--and showed it,
+too, when he was here before--Gad, I'll go and see him, hang me if I
+don't."
+
+And having ascertained from Morgan that he could reach the Temple
+without much difficulty, and that a city omnibus would put him down
+at the gate, the major one day after breakfast at his club--not the
+Polyanthus, whereof Mr. Pen was just elected a member, but another club:
+for the major was too wise to have a nephew as a constant inmate of any
+house where he was in the habit of passing his time--the major one day
+entered one of those public vehicles, and bade the conductor to put him
+down at the gate of the Upper Temple.
+
+When Major Pendennis reached that dingy portal it was about twelve
+o'clock in the day; and he was directed by a civil personage with a
+badge and a white apron, through some dark alleys, and under various
+melancholy archways into courts each more dismal than the other, until
+finally he reached Lamb Court. If it was dark in Pall Mall, 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
+patronizing manner with the managing clerk of an attorney at the door;
+and in Curling, the wig-maker's melancholy shop, where, from behind the
+feeble glimmer of a couple of lights, large sergeants' and judges' wigs
+were looming drearily, with the blank blocks looking at the lamp-post in
+the court. Two little clerks were playing at toss-halfpenny under that
+lamp. A laundress in pattens passed in at one door, a newspaper boy
+issued from another. A porter, whose white apron was faintly visible,
+paced up and down. It would be impossible to conceive a place more
+dismal, and the major shuddered to think that any one should select such
+a residence. "Good Ged!" he said, "the poor boy mustn't live on here."
+
+The feeble and filthy oil-lamps, with which the stair-cases of the Upper
+Temple are lighted of night, were of course not illuminating the stairs
+by day, and Major Pendennis, having read with difficulty his nephew's
+name under Mr. Warrington's on the wall of No. 6, found still greater
+difficulty in climbing the abominable black stairs, up the banisters of
+which, which contributed their damp exudations to his gloves, he groped
+painfully until he came to the third story. A candle was in the passage
+of one of the two sets of rooms; the doors were open, and the names of
+Mr. Warrington and Mr. A. Pendennis were very clearly visible to the
+major as he went in. An Irish charwoman, with a pail and broom, opened
+the door for the major.
+
+"Is that the beer?" cried out a great voice: "give us hold of it."
+
+The gentleman who was speaking was seated on a table, unshorn and
+smoking a short pipe; in a farther chair sate Pen, with a cigar, and
+his legs near the fire. A little boy, who acted as the clerk of these
+gentlemen, was grinning in the major's face, at the idea of his being
+mistaken for beer. Here, upon the third floor, the rooms were somewhat
+lighter, and the major could see the place.
+
+"Pen, my boy, it's I--it's your uncle," he said, choking with the smoke.
+But as most young men of fashion used the weed, he pardoned the practice
+easily enough.
+
+Mr. Warrington got up from the table, and Pen, in a very perturbed
+manner, from his chair. "Beg your pardon, for mistaking you," said
+Warrington, in a frank, loud voice. "Will you take a cigar, sir? Clear
+those things off the chair, Pidgeon, and pull it round to the fire."
+
+Pen flung his cigar into the grate; and was pleased with the cordiality
+with which his uncle shook him by the hand. As soon as he could speak
+for the stairs and the smoke, the major began to ask Pen very kindly
+about himself and about his mother; for blood is blood, and he was
+pleased once more to see the boy.
+
+Pen gave his news, and then introduced Mr. Warrington--an old Boniface
+man--whose chambers he shared.
+
+The major was quite satisfied when he heard that Mr. Warrington was a
+younger son of Sir Miles Warrington of Suffolk. He had served with an
+uncle of his in India and in New South Wales, years ago.
+
+"Took a sheep-farm there, sir, made a fortune--better thing than law
+or soldiering," Warrington said. "Think I shall go there too." And here
+the expected beer coming in, in a tankard with a glass bottom, Mr.
+Warrington, with a laugh, said he supposed the major would not have any,
+and took a long, deep draught himself, after which he wiped his wrist
+across his beard with great satisfaction. The young man was perfectly
+easy and unembarrassed. He was dressed in a ragged old shooting-jacket,
+and had a bristly blue beard. He was drinking beer like a coal-heaver,
+and yet you couldn't but perceive that he was a gentleman.
+
+When he had sate for a minute or two after his draught he went out of
+the room, leaving it to Pen and his uncle, that they might talk over
+family affairs were they so inclined.
+
+"Rough and ready, your chum seems," the major said. "Somewhat different
+from your dandy friends at Oxbridge."
+
+"Times are altered," Arthur replied, with a blush. "Warrington is only
+just called, and has no business, but he knows law pretty well: and
+until I can afford to read with a pleader, I use his books, and get his
+help."
+
+"Is that one of the books?" the major asked, with a smile. A French
+novel was lying at the foot of Pen's chair.
+
+"This is not a working day, sir," the lad said. "We were out very late
+at a party last night--at Lady Whiston's," Pen added, knowing his
+uncle's weakness. "Every body in town was there except you, sir; Counts,
+Embassadors, Turks, Stars and Garters--I don't know who--it's all in the
+paper--and my name, too," said Pen, with great glee. "I met an old flame
+of mine there, sir," he added, with a laugh. "You know whom I mean,
+sir--Lady Mirabel--to whom I was introduced over again. She shook hands,
+and was gracious enough. I may thank you for being out of that scrape,
+sir. She presented me to the husband, too--an old beau in a star and a
+blonde wig. He does not seem very wise. She has asked me to call on her,
+sir: and I may go now without any fear of losing my heart."
+
+"What, we have had some new loves, have we?" the major asked, in high
+good-humor.
+
+"Some two or three," Mr. Pen said, laughing. "But I don't put on my
+_grand sérieux_ any more, sir. That goes off after the first flame."
+
+"Very right, my dear boy. Flames and darts and passion, and that sort
+of thing, do very well for a lad: and you were but a lad when that
+affair with the Fotheringill--Fotheringay--(what's her name?) came off.
+But a man of the world gives up those follies. You still may do very
+well. You have been hit, but you may recover. You are heir to a little
+independence, which every body 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 many 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. 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 lady-like wife, and a good
+carriage, and a good pair of horses, living in society, and seeing your
+friends, like a gentleman. Would you like to vegetate like your dear
+good mother at Fairoaks? Dammy, sir! life, without money and the best
+society, isn't worth having." It was thus this affectionate uncle spoke,
+and expounded to Pen his simple philosophy.
+
+"What would my mother and Laura say to this, I wonder?" thought the lad.
+Indeed old Pendennis's morals were not their morals, nor was his wisdom
+theirs.
+
+This affecting conversation between uncle and nephew had scarcely
+concluded, when Warrington came out of his bed-room, no longer in rags,
+but dressed like a gentleman, straight and tall, and perfectly frank and
+good-humored. He did the honors 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 mantle-piece, 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 meager 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
+bed-side: where he lay upon straw like Margery Daw, and smoked his pipe,
+and read half through the night his favorite poetry or mathematics.
+
+When he had completed his simple toilet, Mr. Warrington came out of this
+room, and proceeded to the cupboard to search for his breakfast.
+
+"Might I offer you a mutton-chop, sir? We cook 'em ourselves hot and
+hot; and I am teaching Pen the first principles of law, cooking, and
+morality at the same time. He's a lazy beggar, sir, and too much of
+a dandy."
+
+And so saying, Mr. Warrington wiped a gridiron with a piece of paper,
+put it on the fire, and on it two mutton-chops, and took from the
+cupboard a couple of plates and some knives and silver forks, and
+castors.
+
+"Say but a word, Major Pendennis," he said; "there's another chop in the
+cupboard, or Pidgeon shall go out and get you any thing you like."
+
+Major Pendennis sate in wonder and amusement, but he said he had just
+breakfasted, and wouldn't have any lunch. So Warrington cooked the
+chops, and popped them hissing hot upon the plates.
+
+Pen fell to at his chop with a good appetite, after looking up at his
+uncle, and seeing that gentleman was still in good-humor.
+
+"You see, sir," Warrington said, "Mrs. Flanagan isn't here to do 'em,
+and we can't employ the boy, for the little beggar is all day occupied
+cleaning Pen's boots. And now for another swig at the beer. Pen drinks
+tea; it's only fit for old women."
+
+"And so you were at Lady Whiston's last night," the major said, not in
+truth knowing what observation to make to this rough diamond.
+
+"I at Lady Whiston's! not such a flat, sir. I don't care for female
+society. In fact it bores me. I spent my evening philosophically at the
+Back Kitchen."
+
+"The Back Kitchen? indeed!" said the major.
+
+"I see you don't know what it means," Warrington said. "Ask Pen. He was
+there after Lady Whiston's. Tell Major Pendennis about the Back Kitchen,
+Pen--don't be ashamed of yourself."
+
+So Pen said it was a little eccentric society of men of letters and
+men about town, to which he had been presented; and the major began to
+think that the young fellow had seen a good deal of the world since his
+arrival in London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+THE KNIGHTS OF THE TEMPLE.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Colleges, schools, and inns of court, 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 work-house 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 supply 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 practiced at all.
+
+Old Grump, of the Norfolk Circuit, who had lived for more than thirty
+years in the chambers under those occupied by Warrington and Pendennis,
+and who used to be awakened by the roaring of the shower-baths which
+those gentlemen had erected in their apartments--a part of the contents
+of which occasionally trickled through the roof into Mr. Grump's
+room--declared that the practice was an absurd, newfangled, dandyfied
+folly, and daily cursed the laundress who slopped the staircase by which
+he had to pass. Grump, now much more than half a century old, had indeed
+never used the luxury in question. He had done without water very well,
+and so had our fathers before him. Of all those knights and baronets,
+lords and gentlemen, bearing arms, whose escutcheons are painted upon
+the walls of the famous hall of the Upper Temple, was there no
+philanthropist good-natured enough to devise a set of Hummums for the
+benefit of the lawyers, his fellows and successors? The Temple historian
+makes no mention of such a scheme. There is Pump Court and Fountain
+Court, with their hydraulic apparatus, but one never heard of a bencher
+disporting in the fountain; and can't but think how many a counsel
+learned in the law of old days might have benefited by the pump.
+
+Nevertheless, those venerable Inns which have the Lamb and Flag and
+the Winged Horse for their ensigns, have attractions for persons who
+inhabit them, and a share of rough comforts and freedom, which men
+always remember with pleasure. I don't know whether the student of law
+permits himself the refreshment of enthusiasm, or indulges in poetical
+reminiscences as he passes by historical chambers, and says, "Yonder
+Eldon lived--upon this site Coke mused upon Lyttleton--here Chitty
+toiled--here Barnwell and Alderson joined in their famous labors--here
+Byles composed his great work upon bills, and Smith compiled his
+immortal leading cases--here Gustavus still toils, with Solomon to aid
+him;" but the man of letters can't but love the place which has been
+inhabited by so many of his brethren, or peopled by their creations as
+real to us at this day as the authors whose children they were--and Sir
+Roger de Coverley walking in the Temple Garden, and discoursing with Mr.
+Spectator about the beauties in hoops and patches who are sauntering
+over the grass, is just as lively a figure to me as old Samuel Johnson
+rolling through the fog with the Scotch gentleman at his heels on their
+way to Dr. Goldsmith's chambers in Brick Court; or Harry Fielding, with
+inked ruffles and a wet towel round his head, dashing off articles at
+midnight for the Covent Garden Journal, while the printer's boy is
+asleep in the passage.
+
+If we could but get the history of a single day as it passed in any one
+of those four-storied houses in the dingy court where our friends Pen
+and Warrington dwelt, some Temple Asmodeus might furnish us with a queer
+volume. There may be a great parliamentary counsel on the ground-floor,
+who drives off to Belgravia at dinner time, when his clerk, too, becomes
+a gentleman, and goes away to entertain his friends, and to take his
+pleasure. But a short time since he was hungry and briefless in some
+garret of the Inn; lived by stealthy literature; hoped, and waited, and
+sickened, and no clients came; exhausted his own means and his friends'
+kindness; had to remonstrate humbly with duns, and to implore the
+patience of poor creditors. Ruin seemed to be staring him in the face,
+when, behold, a turn of the wheel of fortune, and the lucky wretch in
+possession of one of those prodigious prizes which are sometimes drawn
+in the great lottery of the Bar. Many a better lawyer than himself does
+not make a fifth part of the income of his clerk, who, a few months
+since, could scarcely get credit for blacking for his master's unpaid
+boots. On the first-floor, perhaps, you will have a venerable man whose
+name is famous, who has lived for half a century in the Inn, whose
+brains are full of books, and whose shelves are stored with classical
+and legal lore. He has lived alone all these fifty years, alone and for
+himself, amassing learning, and compiling a fortune. He comes home now
+at night alone from the club, where he has been dining freely, to the
+lonely chambers where he lives a godless old recluse. When he dies, his
+Inn will erect a tablet to his honor, 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 honors, 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 honors in former days, and had run each other
+hard; and every body said now that the former was wasting his time and
+energies, while 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 any thing but his law-books. All
+was dark outside his reading-lamp. Love, and Nature, and Art (which is
+the expression of our praise and sense of the beautiful world of God),
+were shut out from him. And as he turned off his lonely lamp at night,
+he never thought but that he had spent the day profitably, and went to
+sleep alike thankless and remorseless. But he shuddered when he met his
+old companion Warrington on the stairs, and shunned him as one that was
+doomed to perdition.
+
+It may have been the sight of that cadaverous ambition, and
+self-complacent meanness, which showed itself in Paley's yellow face,
+and twinkled in his narrow eyes, or it may have been a natural appetite
+for pleasure and joviality, of which it must be confessed Mr. Pen was
+exceedingly fond, which deterred that luckless youth from pursuing
+his designs upon the Bench or the Woolsack with the ardor, or rather
+steadiness, which is requisite in gentlemen who would climb to those
+seats of honor. 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 dandyfied 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
+dullness and sameness; and whenever any body 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.
+
+[Illustration][**moved up from 301]
+
+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
+honored 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 gray-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 practiced in their own islands--and many
+gentlemen of the Irish nation, who make a sojourn in Middle Temple Lane
+before they return to the green country of their birth. There were
+little squads of reading students who talked law all dinner-time; there
+were rowing men, whose discourse was of sculling matches, the Red House,
+Vauxhall, and the Opera; there were others great in politics, and
+orators of the students' debating clubs; with all of which sets, except
+the first, whose talk was an almost unknown and a quite uninteresting
+language to him, Mr. Pen made a gradual acquaintance, and had many
+points of sympathy.
+
+The ancient and liberal Inn of the Upper Temple provides in its Hall,
+and for a most moderate price, an excellent wholesome dinner of soup,
+meat, tarts, and port wine or sherry, for the barristers and students
+who attend that place of refection. The parties are arranged in messes
+of four, each of which quarters has its piece of beef or leg of mutton,
+its sufficient apple-pie and its bottle of wine. But the honest habitués
+of the hall, among the lower rank of students, who have a taste for good
+living, have many harmless arts by which they improve their banquet,
+and innocent "dodges" (if we may be permitted to use an excellent
+phrase that has become vernacular since the appearance of the last
+dictionaries) by which they strive to attain for themselves more
+delicate food than the common every-day roast meat of the students'
+tables.
+
+"Wait a bit," said Mr. Lowton, one of these Temple gourmands. "Wait a
+bit," said Mr. Lowton, tugging at Pen's gown--"the tables are very full,
+and there's only three benchers to eat ten side 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, toward the
+benchers' high table, where three old gentlemen were standing up before
+a dozen silver dish-covers, while the clerk was quavering out a grace.
+
+Lowton was great in the conduct of the dinner. His aim was to manage so
+as to be the first, a captain of the mess, and to secure for himself
+the thirteenth glass of the bottle of port wine. Thus he would have the
+command of the joint on which he operated his favorite cuts, and made
+rapid, dexterous appropriations of gravy, which amused Pen infinitely.
+Poor Jack Lowton! thy pleasures in life were very harmless; an eager
+epicure, thy desires did not go beyond eighteen-pence.
+
+Pen was somewhat older than many of his fellow-students, and there was
+that about his style and appearance which, as we have said, was rather
+haughty and impertinent, that stamped him as a man of _ton_--very
+unlike those pale students who were talking law to one another, and
+those ferocious dandies, in rowing shirts and astonishing pins and
+waistcoats, who represented the idle part of the little community. The
+humble and good-natured Lowton had felt attracted by Pen's superior
+looks and presence--and had made acquaintance with him at the mess by
+opening the conversation.
+
+"This is boiled-beef day, I believe, sir," said Lowton to Pen.
+
+"Upon my word, sir, I'm not aware," said Pen, hardly able to contain his
+laughter, but added, "I'm a stranger; this is my first term;" on which
+Lowton began to point out to him the notabilities in the Hall.
+
+"That's Boosey the bencher, the bald one sitting under the picture and
+aving soup; I wonder whether it's turtle? They often ave turtle. Next
+is Balls, the king's counsel, and Swettenham--Hodge and Swettenham, you
+know. That's old Grump, the senior of the bar; they say he's dined here
+forty years. They often send 'em down their fish from the benchers to
+the senior table. Do you see those four fellows seated opposite us?
+Those are regular swells--tip-top fellows, I can tell you--Mr. Trail,
+the Bishop of Ealing's son, Honorable 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 them--a high fellow, too. Ha! ha!" Here
+Lowton burst into a laugh.
+
+"What is it?" said Pen, still amused.
+
+"I say, I like to mess with those chaps," Lowton said, winking his eye
+knowingly, and pouring out his glass of wine.
+
+"And why?" asked Pen.
+
+"Why! they don't come down here to dine, you know, they only make
+believe to dine. _They_ dine here, Law bless you! They go to some of the
+swell clubs, or else to some grand dinner party. You see their names in
+the 'Morning Post' at all the fine parties in London. Why, I bet any
+thing that Ringwood has his cab, or Trail his Brougham (he's a devil
+of a fellow, and makes the bishop's money spin, I can tell you) at the
+corner of Essex-street at this minute. They dine! They won't dine these
+two hours, I dare say."
+
+"But why should you like to mess with them, if they don't eat any
+dinner?" Pen asked, still puzzled. "There's plenty, isn't there?"
+
+"How green you are," said Lowton. "Excuse me, but you _are_ green. They
+don't drink any wine, don't you see, and a fellow gets the bottle to
+himself, if he likes it, when he messes with those three chaps. That's
+why Corkoran got in with 'em."
+
+"Ah, Mr. Lowton, I see you are a sly fellow," Pen said, delighted with
+his acquaintance: on which the other modestly replied, that he had lived
+in London the better part of his life, and of course had his eyes about
+him; and went on with his catalogue to Pen.
+
+"There's a lot of Irish here," he said; "that Corkoran's one, and I
+can't say I like him. You see that handsome chap with the blue neck-cloth
+and pink shirt, and yellow waistcoat, that's another; that's Molloy
+Maloney of Ballymaloney, and nephew to Major-general Sir Hector O'Dowd,
+he, he," Lowton said, trying to imitate the Hibernian accent. "He's
+always bragging about his uncle; and came into Hall in silver-striped
+trowsers the day he had been presented. That other near him, with the
+long black hair, is a tremendous rebel. By Jove, sir, to hear him at
+the Forum it makes your blood freeze; and the next is an Irishman, too,
+Jack Finucane, reporter of a newspaper. They all stick together, those
+Irish. It's your turn to fill your glass. What! you won't have any port?
+Don't like port with your dinner? Here's your health." And this worthy
+man found himself not the less attached to Pendennis because the latter
+disliked port wine at dinner.
+
+It was while Pen was taking his share of one of these dinners, with his
+acquaintance Lowton as the captain of his mess, that there came to join
+them a gentleman in a barrister's gown, who could not find a seat, as
+it appeared, among the persons of his own degree, and who strode over
+the table, and took his seat on the bench where Pen sate. He was dressed
+in old clothes and a faded gown, which hung behind him, and he wore a
+shirt, which, though clean, was extremely ragged, and very different
+to the magnificent pink raiment of Mr. Molloy Maloney, who occupied
+a commanding position in the next mess. In order to notify their
+appearance at dinner, it is the custom of the gentlemen who eat in the
+Upper Temple Hall to write down their names upon slips of paper, which
+are provided for that purpose, with a pencil for each mess. Lowton wrote
+his name first, then came Arthur Pendennis, and the next was that of
+the gentleman in the old clothes. He smiled when he saw Pen's name, and
+looked at him. "We ought to know each other," he said. "We're both
+Boniface men; my name's Warrington."
+
+"Are you St---- Warrington?" Pen said, delighted to see this hero.
+
+Warrington laughed--"Stunning Warrington--yes," he said. "I recollect
+you in your freshman's term. But you appear to have quite cut me out."
+
+"The college talks about you still," said Pen, who had a generous
+admiration for talent and pluck. "The bargeman you thrashed, Bill Simes,
+don't you remember, wants you up again at Oxbridge. The Miss Notleys,
+the haberdashers--"
+
+"Hush!" said Warrington--"glad to make your acquaintance, Pendennis.
+Heard a good deal about you."
+
+The young men were friends immediately, and at once deep in
+college-talk. And Pen, who had been acting rather the fine gentleman on
+a previous day, when he pretended to Lowton that he could not drink port
+wine at dinner, seeing Warrington take his share with a great deal of
+gusto, did not scruple about helping himself any more, rather to the
+disappointment of honest Lowton. When the dinner was over, Warrington
+asked Arthur where he was going.
+
+"I thought of going home to dress, and hear Grisi in Norma," Pen said.
+
+"Are you going to meet any body there?" he asked.
+
+Pen said, "No--only to hear the music, of which he was very fond."
+
+"You had much better come home and smoke a pipe with me," said
+Warrington--"a very short one. Come, I live close by in Lamb Court, and
+we'll talk over Boniface and old times."
+
+They went away; Lowton sighed after them. He knew that 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 among the silent and polite frequenters of the
+Polyanthus.
+
+Ere long Pen gave up the lodgings in St. James's, to which he had
+migrated on quitting his hotel, and found it was much more economical to
+take up his abode with Warrington in Lamb Court, and furnish and occupy
+his friend's vacant room there. For it must be said of Pen, that no man
+was more easily led than he to do a thing, when it was a novelty, or
+when he had a mind to it. And Pidgeon, the youth, and Flanagan, the
+laundress, divided their allegiance now between Warrington and Pen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCES.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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-parlors; honest citizens disporting in the suburbs or on the river;
+and he would have liked to hob and nob with celebrated pick-pockets, 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 neighborhood, and with the frequenters of their
+various parlors, was prodigious. He was the personal friend of the
+landlord and landlady, and welcome to the bar as to the club-room. 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, "ever body 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 gin-and-water better than claret.
+I like a sanded floor in Carnaby Market better than a chalked one in
+Mayfair. I prefer Snobs, I own it." Indeed, this gentleman was a social
+republican; and it never entered his head while conversing with Jack and
+Tom that he was in any respect their better; although, perhaps, the
+deference which they paid him might secretly please him.
+
+Pen followed him then to these various resorts of men with great glee
+and assiduity. But he was considerably younger, and therefore much
+more pompous and stately than Warrington; in fact, a young prince in
+disguise, visiting the poor of his father's kingdom. They respected him
+as a high chap, a fine fellow, a regular young swell. He had somehow
+about him an air of imperious good-humor, 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.
+Among men of ability this assumption and impertinence passes off with
+extreme youth: but it is curious to watch the conceit of a generous and
+clever lad--there is something almost touching in that early exhibition
+of simplicity and folly.
+
+So, after reading pretty hard of a morning, and, I fear, not law merely,
+but politics and general history and literature, which were as necessary
+for the advancement and instruction of a young man as mere dry law,
+after applying with tolerable assiduity to letters, to reviews, to
+elemental books of law, and, above all, to the newspaper, until the hour
+of dinner was drawing nigh, these young gentlemen would sally out upon
+the town with great spirits and appetite, and bent upon enjoying a merry
+night as they had passed a pleasant forenoon. It was a jovial time, that
+of four-and-twenty, when every muscle of mind and body was in healthy
+action, when the world was new as yet, and one moved over it spurred
+onward by good spirits and the delightful capability to enjoy. If ever
+we feel young afterward, 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! Gray hairs have come on like daylight streaming in--daylight
+and a headache with it. Pleasure has gone to bed with the rouge on her
+cheeks. Well, friend, let us walk through the day, sober and sad, but
+friendly.
+
+I wonder what Laura and Helen would have said, could they have seen, as
+they might not unfrequently have done, had they been up and in London,
+in the very early morning, when the bridges began to blush in the
+sunrise, and the tranquil streets of the city to shine in the dawn,
+Mr. Pen and Mr. Warrington rattling over the echoing flags toward the
+Temple, after one of their wild nights of carouse--nights wild, but not
+so wicked as such nights sometimes are, for Warrington was a woman-hater;
+and Pen, as we have said, too lofty to stoop to a vulgar intrigue. Our
+young Prince of Fairoaks never could speak to one of the sex but with
+respectful courtesy, and shrank from a coarse word or gesture with
+instinctive delicacy--for though we have seen him fall in love with a
+fool, as his betters and inferiors have done, and as it is probable
+that he did more than once in his life, yet for the time of the delusion
+it was always as a goddess that he considered her, and chose to wait
+upon her. Men serve women kneeling--when they get on their feet, they
+go away.
+
+That was what on 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 Chatteries Theater, who was now employed
+as piano-forte player, to accompany the eminent lyrical talent which
+nightly delighted the public at the Fielding's Head in Covent Garden:
+and where was held the little club called the Back Kitchen.
+
+Numbers of Pen's friends frequented this very merry meeting. The
+Fielding's Head had been a house of entertainment, almost since the
+time when the famous author of Tom Jones presided as magistrate in
+the neighboring 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 barytone voice. The charms of our
+women, the heroic deeds of our naval and military commanders, are often
+sung in the ballads of this school, and many a time in my youth have I
+admired how Cutts the singer, after he had worked us all up to patriotic
+enthusiasm, by describing the way in which the brave Abercrombie
+received his death-wound, or made us join him in tears, which he shed
+liberally himself, as in faltering accents he told how autumn's falling
+leaf "proclaimed the old man he must die"--how Cutts the singer became
+at once Cutts the landlord, and, before the applause which we were
+making with our fists on his table, in compliment to his heart-stirring
+melody, had died away, was calling, "Now, gentlemen, give your orders,
+the waiter's in the room--John, a champagne cup for Mr. Green. I think,
+sir, you said sausages and mashed potatoes? John, attend on the
+gentleman."
+
+"And I'll thank ye give me a glass of punch too, John, and take care the
+wather boils," a voice would cry not unfrequently, a well-known voice to
+Pen, which made the lad blush and start when he heard it first--that of
+the venerable Captain Costigan; who was now established in London, and
+one of the great pillars of the harmonic meetings at the Fielding's
+Head.
+
+The captain's manners and conversation brought very many young men to
+the place. He was a character, and his fame had begun to spread soon
+after his arrival in the metropolis, and especially after his daughter's
+marriage. He was great in his conversation to the friend for the time
+being (who was the neighbor drinking by his side), about "me daughter."
+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 honor 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 check," 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 honor of an officer and gentleman, he would repee
+the thrifling obligetion.
+
+Sir Charles Mirabel had not that enthusiastic attachment to his
+father-in-law, of which the latter sometimes boasted (although in other
+stages of emotion Cos would inveigh, with tears in his eyes, against the
+ingratitude of the child of his bosom, and the stinginess of the wealthy
+old man who had married her); but the pair had acted not unkindly toward
+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 were 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, any how; and a glass of punch
+will make ye play _con spirito_." For he was lavishly free with his
+money when it came to him, and was scarcely known to button his breeches
+pocket, except when the coin was gone, or sometimes, indeed, when a
+creditor came by.
+
+It was in one of these moments of exultation that Pen found his old
+friend swaggering at the singers' table at the back kitchen of the
+Fielding's Head, and ordering glasses of brandy and water for any of his
+acquaintances who made their appearance in the apartment. Warrington who
+was on confidential terms with the bass singer, made his way up to this
+quarter of the room, and Pen walked at his friend's heels.
+
+Pen started and blushed to see Costigan. He had just come from Lady
+Whiston's party, where he had met and spoken with the captain's daughter
+again, for the first time after very old, old days. He came up with
+out-stretched hand, very kindly and warmly to greet the old man; still
+retaining a strong remembrance, of the time when Costigan's daughter had
+been every thing 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 honors should be paid to the lady toward 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 surely
+be excused for forgetting him; when a man at the actual moment sees
+things double, we may expect that his view of the past will be rather
+muzzy.
+
+Pen saw his condition, and laughed, although, perhaps, he was
+somewhat mortified. "Don't you remember me, captain?" he said. "I am
+Pendennis--Arthur Pendennis of Chatteries."
+
+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, that
+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 honor of making
+meself known to ye, sir, and requesting ye'll take a glass of punch."
+
+"I don't envy Sir Charles Mirabel his father-in-law," thought Pendennis.
+"And how is my old friend, Mr. Bows, captain? Have you any news of him,
+and do you see him still?"
+
+"No doubt he's very well," said the captain, jingling his money, and
+whistling the air of a song--"The Little Doodeen"--for the singing of
+which he was celebrated at the Fielding's Head. "Me dear boy--I've
+forgot your name again--but my name's Costigan, Jack Costigan, and I'd
+loike ye to take as many tumblers of punch in my name as ever ye loike.
+Ye know my name; I'm not ashamed of it." And so the captain went
+maundering on.
+
+"It's pay-day with the general," said Mr. Hodgen, the bass singer, with
+whom Warrington was in deep conversation: "and he's a precious deal more
+than half seas over. He has already tried that 'Little Doodeen' of his,
+and broke it, too, just before I sang 'King Death.' Have you heard
+my new song, 'The Body Snatcher,' Mr. Warrington?--angcored at Saint
+Bartholomew's the other night--composed expressly for me. Per'aps you
+or your friend would like a copy of the song, sir? John, just 'ave the
+kyndness to 'and over a 'Body Snatcher' 'ere, will yer?--There's a
+portrait of me, sir, as I sing it--as the Snatcher--considered rather
+like."
+
+"Thank you," said Warrington; "heard it nine times--know it by heart,
+Hodgen."
+
+Here the gentleman who presided at the piano-forte 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 woefully
+by sitting up so many nights, and spoke with a voice, as it were, at
+once hoarse and faint), and accompanied the singers, or played with
+taste and grace in the intervals of the songs.
+
+Bows had seen and recollected Pen at once when the latter came into the
+room, and had remarked the eager warmth of the young man's recognition
+of Costigan. He now began to play an air, which Pen instantly remembered
+as one which used to be sung by the chorus of villagers in "The
+Stranger," just before Mrs. Haller came in. It shook Pen as he heard it.
+He remembered how his heart used to beat as that air was played, and
+before the divine Emily made her entry. Nobody, save Arthur, took any
+notice of old Bows' playing: it was scarcely heard amid the clatter of
+knives and forks, the calls for poached eggs and kidneys, and the tramp
+of guests and waiters.
+
+Pen went up and kindly shook the player by the hand at the end of his
+performance; and Bows greeted Arthur with great respect and cordiality.
+"What, you haven't forgot the old tune, Mr. Pendennis?" he said; "I
+thought you'd remember it. I take it, it was the first tune of that sort
+you ever heard played--wasn't it, sir? You were quite a young chap then.
+I fear the captain's very bad to-night. He breaks out on a pay-day; and
+I shall have the deuce's own trouble in getting home. We live together.
+We still hang on, sir, in partnership, though Miss Em--though my Lady
+Mirabel has left the firm. And so you remember old times, do you? Wasn't
+she a beauty, sir? Your health and my service to you"--and he took a sip
+at the pewter measure of porter which stood by his side as he played.
+
+Pen had many opportunities of seeing his early acquaintances afterward,
+and of renewing his relations with Costigan and the old musician.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As they sate thus in friendly colloquy, men of all sorts and
+conditions entered and quitted the house of entertainment; and Pen had
+the pleasure of seeing as many different persons of his race, as the
+most eager observer need desire to inspect. Healthy country tradesmen
+and farmers, in London for their business, came and recreated themselves
+with the jolly singing and suppers of the Back Kitchen--squads of young
+apprentices and assistants, the shutters being closed over the scene of
+their labors, came hither, for fresh air doubtless--rakish young medical
+students, gallant, dashing, what is called "loudly" dressed, and (must
+it be owned?) somewhat dirty--were here smoking and drinking, and
+vociferously applauding the songs; young University bucks were to be
+found here, too, with that indescribable genteel simper which is only
+learned at the knees of Alma Mater; and handsome young guardsmen, and
+florid bucks from the St. James's-street Clubs; nay, senators, English
+and Irish; and even members of the House of Peers.
+
+The bass singer had made an immense hit with his song of "The Body
+Snatcher," and the town rushed to listen to it. A 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 humor.
+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' 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.
+
+While Pen and his friend were sitting here together one night, or rather
+morning, two habitués of the house entered almost together. "Mr. Hoolan
+and Mr. Doolan," whispered Warrington to Pen, saluting these gentlemen,
+and in the latter Pen recognized his friend of the Alacrity coach, who
+could not dine with Pen on the day on which the latter had invited him,
+being compelled by his professional duties to decline dinner-engagements
+on Fridays, he had stated, with his compliments to Mr. Pendennis.
+
+Doolan's paper, the Dawn, was lying on the table much bestained by
+porter, and cheek-by-jowl with Hoolan's paper, which we shall call the
+Day; the Dawn was liberal--the Day was ultra-conservative. Many of our
+journals are officered by Irish gentlemen, and their gallant brigade
+does the penning among us, as their ancestors used to transact the
+fighting in Europe; and engage under many a flag, to be good friends
+when the battle is over.
+
+"Kidneys, John, and a glass of stout," says Hoolan. "How are you,
+Morgan? how's Mrs. Doolan?"
+
+"Doing pretty well, thank ye, Mick, my boy--faith she's accustomed to
+it," said Doolan. "How's the lady that owns ye? Maybe I'll step down
+Sunday, and have a glass of punch, Kilburn way."
+
+"Don't bring Patsey with you, Morgan, for Georgy's got the measles,"
+said the friendly Mick, and they straightway fell to talk about matters
+connected with their trade--about the foreign mails--about who was
+correspondent at Paris, and who wrote from Madrid--about the expense
+the Morning Journal was at in sending couriers, about the circulation of
+the Evening Star, and so forth.
+
+Warrington, laughing, took the Dawn which was lying before him, and
+pointed to one of the leading articles in that journal, which commenced
+thus--
+
+"As rogues of note in former days who had some wicked work to
+perform--an enemy to be put out of the way, a quantity of false coin
+to be passed, a lie to be told, or a murder to be done--employed a
+professional perjurer or assassin to do the work, which they were
+themselves too notorious or too cowardly to execute; our notorious
+contemporary, the 'Day,' engages smashers out of doors to utter
+forgeries against individuals, and calls in auxiliary cut-throats to
+murder the reputation of those who offend him. A black vizarded ruffian
+(whom we will unmask), who signs the forged name of Trefoil, is at
+present one of the chief bravoes and bullies in our contemporary's
+establishment. He is the eunuch who brings the bowstring, and strangles
+at the order of the Day. We can convict this cowardly slave, and propose
+to do so. The charge which he has brought against Lord Bangbanagher,
+because he is a liberal Irish peer, and against the Board of Poor Law
+Guardians of the Bangbanagher Union, is," &c.
+
+"How did they like the article at your place, Mick?" asked Morgan, "when
+the captain puts his hand to it he's a tremendous hand at a smasher. He
+wrote the article in two hours--in--whew--you know where, while the boy
+was waiting."
+
+"Our governor thinks the public don't mind a straw about these newspaper
+rows, and has told the docthor to stop answering," said the other. "Them
+two talked it out together in my room. The docthor would have liked a
+turn, for he says it's such easy writing, and requires no reading up of
+a subject; but the governor put a stopper on him."
+
+"The taste for eloquence is going out, Mick," said Morgan.
+
+"'Deed then it is, Morgan," said Mick. "That was fine writing when the
+docthor wrote in the Phaynix, and he and Condy Roony blazed away at each
+other day after day."
+
+"And with powder and shot, too, as well as paper," says Morgan. "Faith,
+the docthor was out twice, and Condy Roony winged his man."
+
+"They are talking about Doctor Boyne and Captain Shandon," Warrington
+said, "who are the two Irish controversialists of the 'Dawn' and the
+'Day,' Dr. Boyne being the Protestant champion, and Captain Shandon the
+liberal orator. They are the best friends in the world, I believe, in
+spite of their newspaper controversies; and though they cry out against
+the English for abusing their country, by Jove they abuse it themselves
+more in a single article than we should take the pains to do in a dozen
+volumes. How are you, Doolan?"
+
+"Your servant, Mr. Warrington--Mr. Pendennis, I am delighted to have the
+honor 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 honor to be sub-editor of the
+Dawn, one of the best written papers of the empire"--and he bowed very
+slightly to Mr. Warrington. His speech was unctuous and measured, his
+courtesy oriental, his tone, when talking with the two Englishmen, quite
+different to that with which he spoke to his comrade.
+
+"Why the devil will the fellow compliment so?" growled Warrington, with
+a sneer which he hardly took the pains to suppress. "Psha--who comes
+here?--all Parnassus is abroad to-night: here's Archer. We shall have
+some fun. Well, Archer, House up?"
+
+"Haven't been there. I have been," said Archer, with an air of mystery,
+"where I was wanted. Get me some supper, John--something substantial. I
+hate your grandees who give you nothing to eat. If it had been at Apsley
+House, it would have been quite different. The duke knows what I like,
+and says to the Groom of the Chambers, 'Martin, you will have some cold
+beef, not too much done, and a pint bottle of pale ale, and some brown
+sherry, ready in my study as usual: Archer is coming here this evening.'
+The duke doesn't eat supper himself, but he likes to see a man enjoy a
+hearty meal, and he knows that I dine early. A man can't live upon air,
+be hanged to him."
+
+"Let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Pendennis," Warrington said,
+with great gravity. "Pen, this is Mr. Archer, whom you have heard me
+talk about. You must know Pen's uncle, the major, Archer, you who know
+every body."
+
+"Dined with him the day before yesterday at Gaunt House," Archer said.
+"We were four--the French embassador, Steyne, and we two commoners."
+
+"Why, my uncle is in Scot--" Pen was going to break out, but Warrington
+pressed his foot under the table as a signal for him to be quiet.
+
+"It was about the same business that I have been to the palace to-night,"
+Archer went on simply, "and where I've been kept four hours, in an
+ante-room, with nothing but yesterday's Times, which I knew by heart,
+as I wrote three of the leading articles myself; and though the lord
+chamberlain came in four times, and once holding the royal teacup and
+saucer in his hand, he did not so much as say to me, 'Archer, will you
+have a cup of tea?'"
+
+"Indeed! what is in the wind now?" asked Warrington--and turning to Pen,
+added, "You know, I suppose, that when there is any thing wrong at
+court, they always send for Archer."
+
+"There is something wrong," said Mr. Archer, "and as the story will be
+all over the town in a day or two I don't mind telling it.--At the last
+Chantilly races, where I rode Brian Boru for my old friend the Duke
+de St. Cloud--the old king said to me, Archer, I'm uneasy about Saint
+Cloud. I have arranged his marriage with the Princess Marie Cunégonde;
+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 humor by winning the race, and a good bit of money into
+the bargain, he said to me, 'Archer, tell the governor I'll think of
+it.'"
+
+"How do you say governor in French," asked Pen, who piqued himself on
+knowing that language.
+
+"Oh, we speak in English--I taught him when we were boys, and I saved
+his life at Twickenham, when he fell out of a punt," Archer said. "I
+shall never forget the queen's looks as I brought him out of the water.
+She gave me this diamond ring, and always calls me Charles to this day."
+
+"Madame Massena must be rather an old woman, Archer," Warrington said.
+
+"Dev'lish old--old enough to be his grandmother; I told him so," Archer
+answered at once. "But those attachments for old women are the deuce and
+all. That's what the king feels: that's what shocks the poor queen so
+much. They went away from Paris last Tuesday night, and are living at
+this present moment at Jaunay's hotel."
+
+"Has there been a private marriage, Archer?" asked Warrington.
+
+"Whether there has or not I don't know," Mr. Archer replied; "all I know
+is that I was kept waiting four hours at the palace; that I never saw a
+man in such a state of agitation as the King of Belgium when he came out
+to speak to me, and that I'm devilish hungry--and here comes some
+supper."
+
+"He has been pretty well to-night," said Warrington, as the pair went
+home together: "but I have known him in much greater force, and keeping
+a whole room in a state of wonder. Put aside his archery practice,
+that man is both able and honest--a good man of business, an excellent
+friend, admirable to his family as husband, father, and son."
+
+"What is it makes him pull the long bow in that wonderful manner?"
+
+"An amiable insanity," answered Warrington. "He never did any body harm
+by his talk, or said evil of any body. He is a stout politician too, and
+would never write a word or do an act against his party, as many of us
+do."
+
+"Of _us_! Who are _we_?" asked Pen. "Of what profession is Mr. Archer?"
+
+"Of the Corporation of Goosequill--of the Press, my boy," said
+Warrington; "of the fourth estate."
+
+"Are you, too, of the craft, then?" Pendennis said.
+
+"We will talk about that another time," answered the other. They were
+passing through the Strand as they talked, and by a newspaper office,
+which was all lighted up and bright. Reporters were coming out of the
+place, or rushing up to it in cabs; there were lamps burning in the
+editors' rooms, and above, where the compositors were at work: the
+windows of the building were in a blaze of gas.
+
+"Look at that, Pen," Warrington said. "There she is--the great
+engine--she never sleeps. She has her embassadors in every quarter of
+the world--her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along
+with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are
+ubiquitous. Yonder journal has an agent, at this minute, giving bribes
+at Madrid; and another inspecting the price of potatoes in Covent
+Garden. Look! here comes the Foreign Express galloping in. They will be
+able to give news to Downing-street to-morrow: funds will rise or fall,
+fortunes be made or lost; Lord B. will get up, and, holding the paper in
+his hand, and seeing the noble marquis in his place, will make a great
+speech; and--and Mr. Doolan will be called away from his supper at the
+Back Kitchen; for he is foreign sub-editor, and sees the mail on the
+newspaper sheet before he goes to his own."
+
+And so talking, the friends turned into their chambers, and the dawn was
+beginning to peep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+IN WHICH THE PRINTER'S DEVIL COMES TO THE DOOR.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 follies 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 bed-room: in fine, he
+was come to the last five-pound note in his pocket-book, and could think
+of no method of providing a successor; for our friend had been bred up
+like a young prince as yet, or as a child in arms whom his mother feeds
+when it cries out.
+
+Warrington did not know what his comrade's means were. An only child,
+with a mother at her country house, and an old dandy of an uncle who
+dined with a great man every day, Pen might have a large bank at his
+command for any thing that the other knew. He had gold chains and a
+dressing-case fit for a lord. His habits were those of an aristocrat--not
+that he was expensive upon any particular point, for he dined and
+laughed over the pint of porter and the plate of beef from the cook's
+shop with perfect content and good appetite--but he could not adopt the
+penny-wise precautions of life. He could not give twopence to a waiter:
+he could not refrain from taking a cab if he had a mind to do so, or if
+it rained, and as surely as he took the cab he overpaid the driver. He
+had a scorn for cleaned gloves and minor economies. Had he been bred to
+ten thousand a year he could scarcely have been more free-handed; and
+for a beggar, with a sad story, or a couple of pretty piteous-faced
+children, he never could resist putting his hand into his pocket. It was
+a sumptuous nature, perhaps, that could not be brought to regard money;
+a natural generosity and kindness; and possibly a petty vanity that was
+pleased with praise, even with the praise of waiters and cabmen. I doubt
+whether the wisest of us know what our own motives are, and whether some
+of the actions of which we are the very proudest will not surprise us
+when we trace them, as we shall one day, to their source.
+
+Warrington then did not know, and Pen had not thought proper to confide
+to his friend, his pecuniary history. That Pen had been wild and
+wickedly extravagant at college, the other was aware; every body at
+college was extravagant and wild; but how great the son's expenses had
+been, and how small the mother's means, were points which had not been
+as yet submitted to Mr. Warrington's examination.
+
+At last the story came out, while Pen was grimly surveying the change
+for the last five-pound note, as it lay upon the tray from the
+public-house by Mr. Warrington's pot of ale.
+
+"It is the last rose of summer," said Pen; "its blooming companions have
+gone long ago; and behold the last one of the garland has shed its
+leaves;" and he told Warrington the whole story, which we know, of his
+mother's means, of his own follies, of Laura's generosity; during which
+time Warrington smoked his pipe and listened intent.
+
+"Impecuniosity will do you good," Pen's friend said, knocking out
+the ashes at the end of the narration; "I don't know any thing more
+wholesome for a man--for an honest man, mind you--for another, the
+medicine loses its effect--than a state of tick. It is an alterative
+and a tonic; it keeps your moral man in a perpetual state of excitement:
+as a man who is riding at a fence, or has his opponent's single stick
+before him, is forced to look his obstacle steadily in the face, and
+braces himself to repulse or overcome it; a little necessity brings out
+your pluck if you have any, and nerves you to grapple with fortune. You
+will discover what a number of things you can do without when you have
+no money to buy them. You won't want new gloves and varnished boots,
+eau de Cologne, and cabs to ride in. You have been bred up as a
+molly-coddle, Pen, and spoilt by the women. A single man who has health
+and brains, and can't find a livelihood in the world, doesn't deserve
+to stay there. Let him pay his last halfpenny and jump over Waterloo
+Bridge. Let him steal a leg of mutton and be transported and get out of
+the country--he is not fit to live in it. Dixi; I have spoken. Give us
+another pull at the pale ale."
+
+"You have certainly spoken; but how is one to live?" said Pen. "There is
+beef and bread in plenty in England, but you must pay for it with work
+or money. And who will take my work? and what work can I do?"
+
+Warrington burst out laughing, "Suppose we advertise in the Times," he
+said, "for an usher's place at a classical and commercial academy--A
+gentleman, B.A. of St. Boniface College, Oxbridge, and who was
+plucked for his degree--"
+
+"Confound you," cried Pen.
+
+"--Wishes to give lessons in classics and mathematics, and the rudiments
+of the French language; he can cut hair, attend to the younger pupils,
+and play a second on the piano with the daughters of the principal.
+Address A. P., Lamb Court, Temple."
+
+"Go on," said Pen, growling.
+
+"Men take to all sorts of professions. Why, there is your friend
+Bloundell-Bloundell is a professional blackleg, and travels the
+continent, where he picks up young gentlemen of fashion and fleeces
+them. There is Bob O'Toole, with whom I was at school, who drives the
+Ballynafad mail now, and carries honest Jack Finucane's own correspondence
+to that city. I know a man, sir, a doctor's son, like--well, don't be
+angry, I meant nothing offensive--a doctor's son, I say, who was walking
+the hospitals here, and quarreled with his governor on questions of
+finance, and what did he do when he came to his last five-pound note?
+he let his mustaches grow, went into a provincial town, where he
+announced himself as Professor Spineto, chiropodist to the Emperor of
+all the Russias, 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 now succeeded
+to his father's gallypots."
+
+"Hang gallypots," cried Pen. "I can't drive a coach, cut corns, or cheat
+at cards. There's nothing else you propose?"
+
+"Yes; there's our own correspondent," Warrington said. "Every man
+has his secrets, look you. Before you told me the story of your
+money-matters, I had no idea but that you were a gentleman of fortune,
+for, with your confounded airs and appearance, any body would suppose
+you to be so. From what you tell me about your mother's income, it is
+clear that you must not lay any more hands on it. You can't go on
+spunging upon the women. You must pay off that trump of a girl. Laura is
+her name?--here is your health, Laura!--and carry a hod rather than ask
+for a shilling from home."
+
+"But how earn one?" asked Pen.
+
+"How do I live, think you?" said the other. "On my younger brother's
+allowance, Pendennis? I have secrets of my own, my boy;" and here
+Warrington's countenance fell. "I made away with that allowance five
+years ago: if I had made away with myself a little time before, it would
+have been better. I have played off my own bat, ever since. I don't want
+much money. When my purse is out, I go to work and fill it, and then lie
+idle like a serpent or an Indian, until I have digested the mass. Look,
+I begin to feel empty," Warrington said, and showed Pen a long lean
+purse, with but a few sovereigns at one end of it.
+
+"But how do you fill it?" said Pen.
+
+"I write," said Warrington. "I don't tell the world that I do so," he
+added, with a blush. "I do not choose that questions should be asked:
+or, perhaps, I am an ass, and don't wish it to be said that George
+Warrington writes for bread. But I write in the Law Reviews: look here,
+these articles are mine." And he turned over some sheets. "I write in
+a newspaper, now and then, of which a friend of mine is editor." And
+Warrington, going with Pendennis to the club one day, called for a
+file of the "Dawn," and pointed with his finger silently to one or
+two articles, which Pen read with delight. He had no difficulty in
+recognizing the style afterward--the strong thoughts and curt periods,
+the sense, the satire, and the scholarship.
+
+"I am not up to this," said Pen, with a genuine admiration of his
+friend's powers. "I know very little about politics or history,
+Warrington; and have but a smattering of letters. I can't fly upon such
+a wing as yours."
+
+"But you can on your own, my boy, which is lighter, and soars higher,
+perhaps," the other said, good-naturedly. "Those little scraps and
+verses which I have seen of yours show me, what is rare in these days,
+a natural gift, sir. You needn't blush, you conceited young jackanapes.
+You have thought so yourself any time these ten years. You have got the
+sacred flame--a little of the real poetical fire, sir, I think; and
+all our oil-lamps are nothing, compared to that, though ever so well
+trimmed. You are a poet, Pen, my boy," and so speaking, Warrington
+stretched out his broad hand, and clapped Pen on the shoulder.
+
+Arthur was so delighted that the tears came into his eyes. "How kind you
+are to me, Warrington!" he said.
+
+"I like you, old boy," said the other. "I was dev'lish lonely in
+chambers, and wanted somebody, and the sight of your honest face somehow
+pleased me. I liked the way you laughed at Lowton--that poor good little
+snob. And, in fine, the reason why I can not tell--but so it is, young
+'un. I'm alone in the world, sir; and I wanted some one to keep me
+company;" and a glance of extreme kindness and melancholy passed out of
+Warrington's dark eyes.
+
+Pen was too much pleased with his own thoughts to perceive the sadness
+of the friend who was complimenting him. "Thank you, Warrington," he
+said, "thank you for your friendship to me, and--and what you say about
+me. I _have_ often thought I was a poet. I will be one--I think I am
+one, as you say so, though the world mayn't. Is it--is it the Ariadne
+in Naxos which you liked (I was only eighteen when I wrote it), or the
+Prize Poem?"
+
+Warrington burst into a roar of laughter. "Why, you 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 Æschylus? 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 out a pretty copy of verses; that's what I think of you."
+
+"By Jove!" said Pen, bouncing up and stamping his foot, "I'll show you
+that I am a better man than you think for."
+
+Warrington only laughed the more, and blew twenty-four puffs rapidly out
+of his pipe by way of reply to Pen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An opportunity for showing his skill presented itself before very
+long. That eminent publisher, Mr. Bacon (formerly Bacon and Bungay)
+of Paternoster Row, besides being the proprietor of the legal Review,
+in which Mr. Warrington wrote, and of other periodicals of note and
+gravity, used to present to the world every year a beautiful gilt volume
+called the Spring Annual, edited by the Lady Violet Lebas, and numbering
+among 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 Honorable 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 first given to the
+world in the Spring Annual, which has since shared the fate of other
+vernal blossoms, and perished out of the world. The book was daintily
+illustrated with pictures of reigning beauties, or other prints of a
+tender and voluptuous character; and, as these plates were prepared long
+beforehand, requiring much time in engraving, it was the eminent poets
+who had to write to the plates, and not the painters who illustrated
+the poems.
+
+One day, just when this volume was on the eve of publication, it chanced
+that Mr. Warrington called in Paternoster Row to talk with Mr. Hack, Mr.
+Bacon's reader and general manager of publications--for Mr. Bacon, not
+having the least taste in poetry or in literature of any kind, wisely
+employed the services of a professional gentleman. Warrington, then,
+going into Mr. Hack's room on business of his own, found that gentleman
+with a bundle of proof plates and sheets of the Spring Annual before
+him, and glanced at some of them.
+
+Percy Popjoy had written some verses to illustrate one of the pictures,
+which was called The Church Porch. A Spanish damsel was hastening to
+church with a large prayer-book; a youth in a cloak was hidden in a
+niche watching this young woman. The picture was pretty; but the great
+genius of Percy Popjoy had deserted him, for he had made the most
+execrable verses which ever were perpetrated by a young nobleman.
+
+Warrington burst out laughing as he read the poem: and Mr. Hack laughed
+too, but with rather a rueful face.--"It won't do," he said, "the public
+won't stand it. Bungay's people are going to bring out a very good book,
+and have set up Miss Bunyan against Lady Violet. We have most titles to
+be sure--but the verses are too bad. Lady Violet herself owns it; she's
+busy with her own poem; what's to be done? We can't lose the plate. The
+governor gave sixty pounds for it?"
+
+"I know a fellow who would do some verses, I think," said Warrington.
+"Let me take the plate home in my pocket: and send to my chambers in the
+morning for the verses. You'll pay well of course."
+
+"Of course," said Mr. Hack; and Warrington, having dispatched his own
+business, went home to Mr. Pen, plate in hand.
+
+"Now, boy, here's a chance for you. Turn me off a copy of verses to
+this."
+
+"What's this? A Church Porch--a lady entering it, and a youth out of a
+wine-shop window ogling her.--What the deuce am I to do with it?"
+
+"Try," said Warrington. "Earn your livelihood for once, you who long so
+to do it."
+
+"Well, I will try," said Pen.
+
+"And I'll go out to dinner," said Warrington, and left Mr. Pen in a
+brown study.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+When Warrington came home that night, at a very late hour, the verses
+were done. "There they are," said Pen. "I've screwed 'em out at last.
+I think they'll do."
+
+"I think they will," said Warrington, after reading them; they ran as
+follows:--
+
+
+The Church Porch.
+
+  Although I enter not,
+  Yet round about the spot
+    Sometimes I hover,
+  And at the sacred gate,
+  With longing eyes I wait,
+    Expectant of her.
+
+  The Minster bell tolls out
+  Above the city's rout
+    And noise and humming:
+  They've stopp'd the chiming bell,
+  I hear the organ's swell--
+    She's coming, she's coming!
+
+  My lady comes at last,
+  Timid and stepping fast,
+    And hastening hither,
+  With modest eyes downcast,
+  She comes--she's here--she's past.
+    May Heaven go with her!
+
+  Kneel undisturb'd, fair saint,
+  Pour out your praise or plaint
+    Meekly and duly.
+  I will not enter there,
+  To sully your pure prayer
+    With thoughts unruly.
+
+  But suffer me to pace
+  Round the forbidden place,
+    Lingering a minute,
+  Like outcast spirits, who wait
+  And see through Heaven's gate
+    Angels within it.
+
+
+"Have you got any more, young fellow?" asked Warrington. "We must make
+them give you a couple of guineas a page; and if the verses are liked,
+why you'll get an entrée into Bacon's magazines, and may turn a decent
+penny."
+
+Pen examined his portfolio and found another ballad which he thought
+might figure with advantage in the Spring Annual, and consigning these
+two precious documents to Warrington, the pair walked from the Temple,
+to the famous haunt of the Muses and their masters, Paternoster Row.
+Bacon's shop was an ancient low-browed building, with a few of the books
+published by the firm displayed in the windows, under a bust of my Lord
+of Verulam, and the name of Mr. Bacon in brass on the private door.
+Exactly opposite to Bacon's house was that of Mr. Bungay, which was
+newly painted and elaborately decorated in the style of the seventeenth
+century, so that you might have fancied stately Mr. Evelyn passing over
+the threshold, or curious Mr. Pepys examining the books in the window.
+Warrington went into the shop of Mr. Bacon, but Pen stayed without.
+It was agreed that his embassador 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; while at the next
+window, portraits of ill-favored individuals, with facsimiles 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; while in the very next window you
+might see "Come out of Rome," a sermon preached at the opening of the
+Shepherd's Bush College, by John Thomas Lord Bishop of Ealing. Scarce
+an opinion but has its expositor and its place of exhibition in this
+peaceful old Paternoster Row, under the toll of the bells of Saint Paul.
+
+Pen looked in at all the windows and shops, as a gentleman who is
+going to have an interview with the dentist, examines the books on the
+waiting-room table. He remembered them afterward. It seemed to him that
+Warrington would never come out; and indeed the latter was engaged for
+some time in pleading his friend's cause.
+
+Pen's natural conceit would have swollen immensely if he could but
+have heard the report which Warrington gave of him. It happened that
+Mr. Bacon himself had occasion to descend to Mr. Hack's room while
+Warrington was talking there, and Warrington knowing Bacon's weaknesses,
+acted upon them with great adroitness in his friend's behalf. In the
+first place, he put on his hat to speak to Bacon, and addressed him
+from the table on which he seated himself. Bacon liked to be treated
+with rudeness by a gentleman, and used to pass it on to his inferiors,
+as boys pass the mark. "What! not know Mr. Pendennis, Mr. Bacon?"
+Warrington said. "You can't live much in the world, or you would know
+him. A man of property in the West, of one of the most ancient families
+in England, related to half the nobility in the empire--he's cousin to
+Lord Pontypool--he was one of the most distinguished men at Oxbridge;
+he dines at Gaunt House every week."
+
+"Law bless me, you don't say so, sir. Well--really--Law bless me now,"
+said Mr. Bacon.
+
+"I have just been showing Mr. Hack some of his verses, which he sat up
+last night, at my request, to write; and Hack talks about giving him a
+copy of the book--the what-d'-you-call-'em."
+
+"Law bless me now, does he? The what-d'-you-call-'em. Indeed!"
+
+"'The Spring Annual' is its name--as payment for these 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 any body, that the men of
+fashion want to be paid."
+
+"That they do, Mr. Warrington, sir," said the publisher.
+
+"I tell you he's a star; he'll make a name, sir. He's a new man, sir."
+
+"They've said that of so many of those young swells, Mr. Warrington,"
+the publisher interposed, with a sigh. "There was Lord Viscount Dodo,
+now; I gave his lordship a good bit of money for his poems, and only
+sold eighty copies. Mr. Popjoy's Hadgincourt, sir, fell dead."
+
+"Well, then, I'll take my man over to Bungay," Warrington said,
+and rose from the table. This threat was too much for Mr. Bacon,
+who was instantly ready to accede to any reasonable proposal of Mr.
+Warrington's, and finally asked his manager what those proposals were.
+When he heard that the negotiation only related as yet to a couple of
+ballads, which Mr. Warrington offered for the Spring Annual, Mr. Bacon
+said, "Law bless you, give him a check directly;" and with this paper
+Warrington went out to his friend, and placed it, grinning, in Pen's
+hands. Pen was as elated as if somebody had left him a fortune. He
+offered Warrington a dinner at Richmond instantly. "What should he go
+and buy for Laura and his mother? He must buy something for them."
+
+"They'll like the book better than any thing else," said Warrington,
+"with the young one's name to the verses, printed among the swells."
+
+"Thank God! thank God!" cried Arthur, "I needn't be a charge upon the
+old mother. I can pay off Laura now. I can get my own living. I can make
+my own way."
+
+"I can marry the grand vizier's daughter; I can purchase a house in
+Belgrave Square; I can build a fine castle in the air!" said Warrington,
+pleased with the other's exultation. "Well, you may get bread and
+cheese, Pen: and I own it tastes well, the bread which you earn
+yourself."
+
+They had a magnum of claret at dinner at the club that day, at Pen's
+charges. It was long since he had indulged in such a luxury, but
+Warrington would not balk him; and they drank together to the health
+of the Spring Annual.
+
+It never rains but it pours, according to the proverb; so very speedily
+another chance occurred, by which Mr. Pen was to be helped in his scheme
+of making a livelihood. Warrington one day threw him a letter across
+the table, which was brought by a printer's boy, "from Captain Shandon,
+sir"--the little emissary said: and then went and fell asleep on his
+accustomed bench in the passage. He paid many a subsequent visit there,
+and brought many a message to Pen.
+
+
+    "_F. P. Tuesday Morning._
+
+    "My Dear Sir,
+
+    "Bungay will be here to-day about the 'Pall-Mall Gazette.' You would
+    be the very man to help us _with a genuine West-end article_--you
+    understand--dashing, trenchant, and d---- aristocratic. Lady Hipshaw
+    will write; but she's not much, you know; and we've two lords, but
+    the less they do the better. We must have you. We'll give you your
+    own terms, and we'll make a hit with the 'Gazette.'
+
+    "Shall B. come and see you, or can you look in upon me here?
+
+    "Ever yours,
+
+    "C. S."
+
+
+"Some more opposition," Warrington said, when Pen had read the note.
+"Bungay and Bacon are at daggers-drawn; each married the sister of the
+other, and they were for some time the closest friends and partners.
+Hack says it was Mrs. Bungay who caused all the mischief between the
+two; whereas Shandon, who reads for Bungay a good deal, says Mrs. Bacon
+did the business; but I don't know which is right, Peachum or Lockit.
+But since they have separated, it is a furious war between the two
+publishers; and no sooner does one bring out a book of travels, or
+poems, a magazine or periodical, quarterly, or monthly, or weekly, or
+annual, but the rival is in the field with something similar. I have
+heard poor Shandon tell with great glee how he made Bungay give a grand
+dinner at Blackwall to all his writers, by saying that Bacon had invited
+his corps to an entertainment at Greenwich. When Bungay engaged your
+celebrated friend Mr. Wagg to edit the 'Londoner,' Bacon straightway
+rushed off and secured Mr. Grindle to give his name to the 'Westminster
+Magazine.' When Bacon brought out his comic Irish novel of 'Barney
+Brallaghan,' off went Bungay to Dublin, and produced his rollicking
+Hibernian story of 'Looney MacTwolter.' When Doctor Hicks brought out
+his 'Wanderings in Mesopotamia,' under Bacon's auspices, Bungay produced
+Professor Sandiman's 'Researches in Zahara;' and Bungay is publishing
+his 'Pall-Mall Gazette' as a counterpoise to Bacon's 'Whitehall Review.'
+Let us go and hear about the 'Gazette.' There may be a place for you in
+it, Pen, my boy. We will go and see Shandon. We are sure to find him at
+home."
+
+"Where does he live?" asked Pen.
+
+"In the Fleet Prison," Warrington said. "And very much at home he is
+there, too. He is the king of the place."
+
+Pen had never seen this scene of London life, and walked with no small
+interest in at the grim gate of that dismal edifice. They went through
+the ante-room, 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. Every body seemed to be busy, humming, and on the move. Pen
+felt as if he choked in the place, and as if the door being locked upon
+him they never would let him out.
+
+They went through a court up a stone staircase, and through passages
+full of people, and noise, and cross lights, and black doors clapping
+and banging; Pen feeling as one does in a feverish morning-dream. At
+last the same little runner who had brought Shandon's note, and had
+followed them down Fleet-street munching apples, and who showed the way
+to the two gentlemen through the prison, said, "This is the captain's
+door," and Mr. Shandon's voice from within bade them enter.
+
+The room, though bare, was not uncheerful. The sun was shining in at the
+window--near which sate a lady at work, who had been gay and beautiful
+once, but in whose faded face kindness and tenderness still beamed.
+Through all his errors and reckless mishaps and misfortunes, this
+faithful creature adored her husband, and thought him the best and
+cleverest, as indeed he was one of the kindest of men. Nothing ever
+seemed to disturb the sweetness of his temper; not debts: not duns:
+not misery: not the bottle: not his wife's unhappy position, or his
+children's ruined chances. He was perfectly fond of wife and children,
+after his fashion: he always had the kindest words and smiles for them,
+and ruined them with the utmost sweetness of temper. He never could
+refuse himself or any man any enjoyment which his money could purchase;
+he would share his last guinea with Jack and Tom, and we may be sure he
+had a score of such retainers. He would sign his name at the back of any
+man's bill, and never pay any debt of his own. He would write on any
+side, and attack himself or another man with equal indifference. He
+was one of the wittiest, the most amiable, and the most incorrigible
+of Irishmen. Nobody could help liking Charley Shandon who saw him once,
+and those whom he ruined could scarcely be angry with him.
+
+When Pen and Warrington arrived, the captain (he had been in an Irish
+militia regiment once, and the title remained with him) was sitting on
+his bed in a torn dressing-gown, with a desk on his knees, at which he
+was scribbling as fast as his rapid pen could write. Slip after slip of
+paper fell off the desk wet on to the ground. A picture of his children
+was hung up over his bed, and the youngest of them was pattering about
+the room.
+
+Opposite the captain sate Mr. Bungay, a portly man of stolid
+countenance, with whom the little child had been trying a conversation.
+
+"Papa's a very clever man," said she; "mamma says so."
+
+"Oh, very," said Mr. Bungay.
+
+"And you're a very rich man, Mr. Bundy," cried the child, who could
+hardly speak plain.
+
+"Mary!" said mamma, from her work.
+
+"Oh, never mind," Bungay roared out with a great laugh; "no harm in
+saying I'm rich--he, he--I am pretty well off, my little dear."
+
+"If you're rich, why don't you take papa out of piz'n?" asked the child.
+
+Mamma at this began to wipe her eyes with the work on which she was
+employed. (The poor lady had hung curtains up in the room, had brought
+the children's picture and placed it there, and had made one or two
+attempts to ornament it.) Mamma began to cry; Mr. Bungay turned red, and
+looked fiercely out of his blood-shot little eyes; Shandon's pen went on,
+and Pen and Warrington arrived with their knock.
+
+Captain Shandon looked up from his work. "How do you do, Mr. Warrington,"
+he said. "I'll speak to you in a minute. Please sit down, gentlemen, if
+you can find places," and away went the pen again.
+
+Warrington pulled forward an old portmanteau--the only available
+seat--and sate down on it with a bow to Mrs. Shandon, and a nod to
+Bungay: the child came and looked at Pen solemnly: and in a couple of
+minutes the swift scribbling ceased; and Shandon, turning the desk over
+on the bed, stooped and picked up the papers.
+
+"I think this will do," said he. "It's the prospectus for the 'Pall-Mall
+Gazette.'"
+
+"And here's the money for it," Mr. Bungay said, laying down a five-pound
+note. "I'm as good as my word, I am. When I say I'll pay, I pay."
+
+"Faith that's more than some of us can say," said Shandon, and he
+eagerly clapped the note into his pocket.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+WHICH IS PASSED IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF LUDGATE HILL.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 defense 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 defense, 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 Douro to the Garonne: it was a gentleman
+who broke the line at Trafalgar, and swept the plain of Waterloo."
+
+Bungay nodded his head in a knowing manner, and winked his eyes when the
+captain came to the Waterloo passage: and Warrington burst out laughing.
+
+"You see how our venerable friend Bungay is affected," Shandon said,
+slily looking up from his papers--"that's your true sort of test. I have
+used the Duke of Wellington and the battle of Waterloo a hundred times:
+and I never knew the Duke to fail."
+
+The captain then went on to confess with much candor, that up to the
+present time the gentlemen of England, confident of their right, and
+careless of those who questioned it, had left the political interest
+of their order as they did the management of their estates, or the
+settlement of their legal affairs, to persons affected to each peculiar
+service, and had permitted their interests to be represented in the
+press by professional proctors and advocates. That time, Shandon
+professed to consider, was now gone by: the gentlemen of England must
+be their own champions: the declared enemies of their order were brave,
+strong, numerous, and uncompromising. They must meet their foes in the
+field: they must not be belied and misrepresented by hireling advocates:
+they must not have Grub-street publishing Gazettes from Whitehall;
+"that's a dig at Bacon's people, Mr. Bungay," said Shandon, turning
+round to the publisher.
+
+Bungay clapped his stick on the floor. "Hang him, pitch into him,
+capting," he said, with exultation: and turning to Warrington, wagged
+his dull head more vehemently than ever, and said, "For a slashing
+article, sir, there's nobody like the capting--no-obody like him."
+
+The prospectus-writer went on to say that some gentlemen, whose names
+were, for obvious reasons, not brought before the public (at which Mr.
+Warrington began to laugh again), had determined to bring forward a
+journal, of which the principles were so and so. "These men are proud
+of their order, and anxious to uphold it," cried out Captain Shandon,
+flourishing his paper with a grin. "They are loyal to their sovereign,
+by faithful conviction and ancestral allegiance; they love their Church,
+where they would have their children worship, and for which their
+forefathers bled; they love their country, and would keep it what the
+gentlemen of England--yes, _the gentlemen of England_ (we'll have that
+in large caps., Bungay, my boy) have made it--the greatest and freest
+in the world: and as the names of some of them are appended to the deed
+which secured our liberties at Runnymede--"
+
+"What's that?" asked Mr. Bungay.
+
+"An ancestor of mine sealed it with his sword-hilt," Pen said, with
+great gravity.
+
+"It's the Habeas Corpus, Mr. Bungay," Warrington said, on which the
+publisher answered, "All right, I dare say," and yawned, though he said,
+"Go on, capting."
+
+--"at Runnymede; they are ready to defend that freedom to-day with sword
+and pen, and now, as then, to rally round the old laws and liberties of
+England."
+
+"Brayvo!" 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 demeanor. So she clambered up on his lap, while her father
+continued to read his programme.
+
+"You were laughing," the captain said to Warrington, "about 'the
+obvious reasons' which I mentioned. Now, I'll show ye what they are,
+ye unbelieving heathen. 'We have said,'" he went on, "'that we can not
+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 can
+not, 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 among our readers,
+because our writers are among them. We address ourselves to the higher
+circles of society: we care not to disown it--the 'Pall Mall Gazette' is
+written by gentlemen for gentlemen; its conductors speak to the classes
+in which they live and were born. The field-preacher has his journal,
+the radical free-thinker has his journal: why should the gentlemen of
+England be unrepresented in the Press?'"
+
+Mr. Shandon then went on with much modesty to descant upon the literary
+and fashionable departments of the "Pall Mall Gazette," which were to
+be conducted by gentlemen of acknowledged reputation; men famous at the
+Universities (at which Mr. Pendennis could scarcely help laughing and
+blushing), known at the Clubs, and of the Society which they described.
+He pointed out delicately to advertisers that there would be no such
+medium as the "Pall Mall Gazette" for giving publicity to their sales;
+and he eloquently called upon the nobility of England, the baronetage of
+England, the revered clergy of England, the bar of England, the matrons,
+the daughters, the homes and hearths of England, to rally round the good
+old cause; and Bungay at the conclusion of the reading woke up from a
+second snooze in which he had indulged himself, and again said it was
+all right.
+
+The reading of the prospectus concluded, the gentlemen present entered
+into some details regarding the political and literary management of the
+paper, and Mr. Bungay sate by listening and nodding his head, as if he
+understood what was the subject of their conversation, and approved of
+their opinions. Bungay's opinions, in truth, were pretty simple. He
+thought the captain could write the best smashing article in England.
+He wanted the opposition house of Bacon smashed, and it was his opinion
+that the captain could do that business. If the captain had written a
+letter of Junius on a sheet of paper, or copied a part of the Church
+Catechism, Mr. Bungay would have been perfectly contented, and have
+considered that the article was a smashing article. And he pocketed the
+papers with the greatest satisfaction: and he not only paid for the MS.,
+as we have seen, but he called little Mary to him, and gave her a penny
+as he went away.
+
+The reading of the manuscript over, the party engaged in general
+conversation, Shandon leading with a jaunty fashionable air in
+compliment to the two guests who sate with him, and 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 was his habit to live among 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 work-box at
+that very day.
+
+Mr. Bungay presently had enough of this talk and got up to take leave,
+whereupon Warrington and Pen rose to depart with the publisher, though
+the latter would have liked to stay to make a further acquaintance with
+this family, who interested him and touched him. He said something about
+hoping for permission to repeat his visit, upon which Shandon, with a
+rueful grin, said he was always to be found at home, and should be
+delighted to see Mr. Pennington.
+
+"I'll see you to my park-gate, gentlemen," said Captain Shandon, seizing
+his hat, in spite of a deprecatory look, and a faint cry of "Charles"
+from Mrs. Shandon. And the captain, in shabby slippers, shuffled out
+before his guests, leading the way through the dismal passages of the
+prison. His hand was already fiddling with his waistcoat pocket, where
+Bungay's five-pound note was, as he took leave of the three gentlemen at
+the wicket; one of them, Mr. Arthur Pendennis, being greatly relieved
+when he was out of the horrid place, and again freely treading the flags
+of Farringdon-street.
+
+Mrs. Shandon sadly went on with her work at the window looking into the
+court. She saw Shandon with a couple of men at his heels run rapidly in
+the direction of the prison tavern. She had hoped to have had him to
+dinner herself that day: there was a piece of meat, and some salad in a
+basin, on the ledge outside of the window of their room, which she had
+expected that she and little Mary were to share with the child's father.
+But there was no chance of that now. He would be in that tavern until
+the hours for closing it; then he would go and play at cards or drink in
+some other man's room, and come back silent, with glazed eyes, reeling a
+little in his walk, that his wife might nurse him. Oh, what varieties of
+pain do we not make our women suffer!
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 comes tripping
+noiselessly into her mother's bed-room, bearing a cup of the consoler
+to the widow who will take no other food. Ruth is busy concocting it for
+her husband, who is coming home from the harvest-field--one could fill a
+page with hints for such pictures; finally, Mrs. Shandon and little Mary
+sit down and drink their tea together, while the captain goes out and
+takes his pleasure. She cares for nothing else but that, when her
+husband is away.
+
+A gentleman with whom we are already slightly acquainted, Mr. Jack
+Finucane, a townsman of Captain Shandon's, found the captain's wife and
+little Mary (for whom Jack always brought a sweetmeat in his pocket)
+over this meal. Jack thought Shandon the greatest of created geniuses;
+had had one or two helps from the good-natured prodigal, who had always
+a kind word, and sometimes a guinea for any friend in need; and never
+missed a day in seeing his patron. He was ready to run Shandon's errands
+and transact his money-business with publishers and newspaper editors,
+duns, creditors, holders of Shandon's acceptances, gentlemen disposed
+to speculate in those securities, and to transact the thousand little
+affairs of an embarrassed Irish gentleman. I never knew an embarrassed
+Irish gentleman yet, but he had an aid-de-camp of his own nation,
+likewise in circumstances of pecuniary discomfort. That aid-de-camp
+has subordinates of his own, who again may have other insolvent
+dependents--all through his life our captain marched at the head of
+a ragged staff, who shared in the rough fortunes of their chieftain.
+
+"He won't have that five-pound note very long, I bet a guinea," Mr.
+Bungay said of the captain, as he and his two companions walked away
+from the prison; and the publisher judged rightly, for when Mrs.
+Shandon came to empty her husband's pockets, she found but a couple of
+shillings, and a few half-pence 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 afterward; so that the night left him as poor as
+the morning had found him.
+
+The publisher and the two gentlemen had had some talk together after
+quitting Shandon, and Warrington reiterated to Bungay what he had said
+to his rival, Bacon, viz., that Pen was a high fellow, of great genius,
+and what was more, well with the great world, and related to "no end"
+of the peerage. Bungay replied that he should be happy to have dealings
+with Mr. Pendennis, and hoped to have the pleasure of seeing both gents
+to cut mutton with him before long; and so, with mutual politeness and
+protestations, they parted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It is hard to see such a man as Shandon," Pen said, musing, and talking
+that night over the sight which he had witnessed, "of accomplishments
+so multifarious, and of such an undoubted talent and humor, an inmate
+of a jail for half his time, and a bookseller's hanger-on when out of
+prison."
+
+"I am a bookseller's hanger-on--you are going to try your paces as
+a hack," Warrington said, with a laugh. "We are all hacks upon some
+road or other. I would rather be myself, than Paley, our neighbor in
+chambers: who has as much enjoyment of his life as a mole. A deuced deal
+of undeserved compassion has been thrown away upon what you call your
+bookseller's drudge."
+
+"Much solitary pipes and ale make a cynic of you," Pen said. "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 labor. It makes me indignant to see a gentleman the serf of
+such a creature as that, of a man who can't speak the language that he
+lives by, who is not fit to black Shandon's boots."
+
+"So you have begun already to gird at the publishers, and to take your
+side among our order. Bravo, Pen, my boy!" Warrington answered, laughing
+still. "What have you got to say against Bungay's relations with
+Shandon? Was it the publisher, think you, who sent the author to prison?
+Is it Bungay who is tippling away the five-pound note which we saw just
+now, or Shandon?"
+
+"Misfortune drives a man into bad company," Pen said. "It is easy to cry
+'Fie!' against a poor fellow who has no society but such as he finds in
+a prison; and no resource except forgetfulness and the bottle. We must
+deal kindly with the eccentricities of genius, and remember that the
+very ardor and enthusiasm of temperament which makes the author
+delightful often leads the man astray."
+
+"A fiddlestick about men of genius!" Warrington cried out, who was
+a very severe moralist upon some points, though possibly a very bad
+practitioner. "I deny that there are so many geniuses as people who
+whimper about the fate of men of letters assert there are. There are
+thousands of clever fellows in the world who could, if they would,
+turn verses, write articles, read books, and deliver a judgment upon
+them; the talk of professional critics and writers is not a whit more
+brilliant, or profound, or amusing, than that of any other society of
+educated people. If a lawyer, or a soldier, or a parson, outruns his
+income, and does not pay his bills, he must go to jail; and an author
+must go, too. If an author fuddles himself, I don't know why he should
+be let off a headache the next morning--if he orders a coat from the
+tailor's, why he shouldn't pay for it."
+
+"I would give him more money to buy coats," said Pen, smiling. "I
+suppose I should like to belong to a well-dressed profession. I protest
+against that wretch of a middle-man whom I see between Genius and his
+great landlord, the Public, and who stops more than half of the
+laborer's earnings and fame."
+
+"I am a prose laborer," Warrington said: "you, my boy, are a poet in a
+small way, and so, I suppose, consider you are authorized 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? Every body who writes his epic, every driveler 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, salable 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 recognize the man of genius in the young man who
+presented himself before him, ragged, gaunt, and hungry. Rags are not
+a proof of genius; whereas capital is absolute, as times go, and is
+perforce the bargain-master. It has a right to deal with the literary
+inventor as with any other;--if I produce a novelty in the book trade,
+I must do the best I can with it; but I can no more force Mr. Murray to
+purchase my book of travels or sermons, than I can compel Mr. Tattersall
+to give me a hundred guineas for my horse. I may have my own ideas of
+the value of my Pegasus, and think him the most wonderful of animals;
+but the dealer has a right to his opinion, too, and may want a lady's
+horse, or a cob for a heavy timid rider, or a sound hack for the road,
+and my beast won't suit him."
+
+"You deal in metaphors, Warrington," Pen said; "but you rightly say
+that you are very prosaic. Poor Shandon! There is something about the
+kindness of that man, and the gentleness of that sweet creature of a
+wife, which touches me profoundly. I like him, I am afraid, better than
+a better man."
+
+"And so do I," Warrington said. "Let us give him the benefit of our
+sympathy, and the pity that is due to his weakness: though I fear that
+sort of kindness would be resented as contempt by a more high-minded
+man. You see he takes his consolation along with his misfortune, and one
+generates the other or balances it, as is the way of the world. He is a
+prisoner, but he is not unhappy."
+
+"His genius sings within his prison bars," Pen said.
+
+"Yes," Warrington said, bitterly; "Shandon accommodates himself to a
+cage pretty well. He ought to be wretched, but he has Jack and Tom to
+drink with, and that consoles him: he might have a high place, but, as
+he can't, why he can drink with Tom and Jack;--he might be providing for
+his wife and children, but Thomas and John have got a bottle of brandy
+which they want him to taste;--he might pay poor Snip, the tailor, the
+twenty pounds which the poor devil wants for his landlord, but John
+and Thomas lay their hands upon his purse;--and so he drinks while
+his tradesman goes to jail and his family to ruin. Let us pity the
+misfortunes of genius, and conspire against the publishing tyrants who
+oppress men of letters."
+
+"What! are you going to have another glass of brandy-and-water?" Pen
+said, with a humorous look. It was at the Back Kitchen that the above
+philosophical conversation took place between the two young men.
+
+Warrington began to laugh as usual. "_Video meliora proboque_--I mean,
+bring it me hot, with sugar, John," he said to the waiter.
+
+"I would have some more, too, only I don't want it," said Pen. "It does
+not seem to me, Warrington, that we are much better than our neighbors."
+And Warrington's last glass having been dispatched, the pair returned to
+their chambers.
+
+They found a couple of notes in the letter-box, on their return, which
+had been sent by their acquaintance of the morning, Mr. Bungay. That
+hospitable gentleman presented his compliments to each of the gentlemen,
+and requested the pleasure of their company at dinner on an early day,
+to meet a few literary friends.
+
+"We shall have a grand spread," said Warrington. "We shall meet all
+Bungay's corps."
+
+"All except poor Shandon," said Pen, nodding a good night to his friend,
+and he went into his own little room. The events and acquaintances of
+the day had excited him a good deal, and he lay for some time awake
+thinking over them, as Warrington's vigorous and regular snore from the
+neighboring apartment pronounced that that gentleman was engaged in deep
+slumber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Is it true, thought Pendennis, lying on his bed and gazing at a bright
+moon without, that lighted up a corner of his dressing-table, and the
+frame of a little sketch of Fairoaks, drawn by Laura, that 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 honor and fame if they could be his. If fortune favors 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 any thing worthy of our name! 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,
+extravagancies, disappointments, of his wayward youth: he got up from
+the bed: threw open the window, and looked out into the night: and then,
+by some impulse, which we hope was a good one, he went up and kissed the
+picture of Fairoaks, and flinging himself down on his knees by the bed,
+remained for some time in that posture of hope and submission. When
+he rose, it was with streaming eyes. He had found himself repeating,
+mechanically, some little words which he had been accustomed to repeat
+as a child at his mother's side, after the saying of which she would
+softly take him to his bed and close the curtains round him, hushing him
+with a benediction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day, Mr. Pidgeon, their attendant, brought in a large brown
+paper parcel, directed to G. Warrington, Esq., with Mr. Trotter's
+compliments, and a note which Warrington read.
+
+"Pen, you beggar!" roared Warrington to Pen, who was in his own room.
+
+"Hullo!" sung out Pen.
+
+"Come here, you're wanted," cried the other, and Pen came out. "What is
+it?" said he.
+
+"_Catch!_" cried Warrington, and flung the parcel at Pen's head, who
+would have been knocked down had he not caught it.
+
+"It's books for review for the 'Pall Mall Gazette': pitch into 'em,"
+Warrington said. As for Pen, he never had been so delighted in his life:
+his hand trembled as he cut the string of the packet, and beheld within
+a smart set of new neat calico-bound books, travels, and novels, and
+poems.
+
+"Sport the oak, Pidgeon," said he. "I'm not at home to any body to-day."
+And he flung into his easy chair, and hardly gave himself time to drink
+his tea, so eager was he to begin to read and to review.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+IN WHICH THE HISTORY STILL HOVERS ABOUT FLEET-STREET
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 the 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 used in former days 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 stair-case 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 honor to his little rooms to be visited by such a lady;
+and as she went down the stair-case with her vail 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 aid-de-camp
+in the newspaper.
+
+He would have sate with Mrs. Shandon as late as the prison hours
+permitted, and had indeed many a time witnessed the putting to bed
+of little Mary, who occupied a crib in the room; and to whose evening
+prayers that God might bless papa, Finucane, although of the Romish
+faith himself, had said Amen with a great deal of sympathy--but he had
+an appointment with Mr. Bungay regarding the affairs of the paper which
+they were to discuss over a quiet dinner. So he went away at six o'clock
+from Mrs. Shandon, but made his accustomed appearance at the Fleet
+Prison next morning, having arrayed himself in his best clothes and
+ornaments, which, though cheap as to cost were very brilliant as to
+color and appearance, and having in his pocket four pounds two shillings,
+being the amount of his week's salary at the Daily Journal, minus two
+shillings expended by him in the purchase of a pair of gloves on his way
+to the prison.
+
+He had cut his mutton with Mr. Bungay, as the latter gentleman phrased
+it, and Mr. Trotter, Bungay's reader and literary man of business, at
+Dick's Coffee-House on the previous day, and entered at large into his
+views respecting the conduct of the "Pall-Mall Gazette." In a masterly
+manner he had pointed out what should be the sub-editorial arrangements
+of the paper: what should be the type for the various articles: who
+should report the markets; who the turf and ring; who the Church
+intelligence; and who the fashionable chit-chat. He was acquainted with
+gentlemen engaged in cultivating these various departments of knowledge,
+and in communicating them afterward 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 afterward owned to his
+subordinate Mr. Trotter, that that Irishman seemed a clever fellow.
+
+And now having succeeded in making this impression upon Mr. Bungay, the
+faithful fellow worked round to the point which he had very near at
+heart, viz., the liberation from prison of his admired friend and chief,
+Captain Shandon. He knew to a shilling the amount of the detainers
+which were against the captain at the porter's lodge of the Fleet; and,
+indeed, professed to know all his debts, though this was impossible, for
+no man in England, certainly not the captain, himself, was acquainted
+with them. He pointed out what Shandon's engagements already were; and
+how much better he would work if removed from confinement; (though this
+Mr. Bungay denied, for, "when the captain's locked up," he said, "we
+are sure to find him at home; whereas, when he's free, you can never
+catch hold of him;") finally, he so worked on Mr. Bungay's feelings,
+by describing Mrs. Shandon pining away in the prison, and the child
+sickening there, that the publisher was induced to promise that, if Mrs.
+Shandon would come to him in the morning, he would see what could be
+done. And the colloquy ending at this time with the second round of
+brandy-and-water, although Finucane, who had four guineas in his pocket,
+would have discharged the tavern reckoning with delight, Bungay said,
+"No, sir,--this is my affair, sir, if you please. James, take the bill,
+and eighteen-pence for yourself," and he handed over the necessary funds
+to the waiter. Thus it Was that Finucane who went to bed at the Temple
+after the dinner at Dick's, found himself actually with his week's
+salary intact upon Saturday morning.
+
+He gave Mrs. Shandon a wink so knowing and joyful, that that kind
+creature knew some good news was in store for her, and hastened to
+get her bonnet and shawl, when Fin asked if he might have the honor of
+taking her a walk, and giving her a little fresh air. And little Mary
+jumped for joy at the idea of this holiday, for Finucane never neglected
+to give her a toy, or to take her to a show, and brought newspaper
+orders in his pocket for all sorts of London diversions to amuse the
+child. Indeed, he loved them with all his heart, and would cheerfully
+have dashed out his rambling brains to do them, or his adored captain,
+a service.
+
+"May I go, Charley? or shall I stay with you, for you're poorly, dear,
+this morning? He's got a headache, Mr. Finucane. He suffers from
+headaches, and I persuaded him to stay in bed," Mrs. Shandon said.
+
+"Go along with you, and Polly. Jack, take care of 'em. Hand me over the
+Burton's Anatomy, and leave me to my abominable devices," Shandon said,
+with perfect good humor. He was writing, and not uncommonly took his
+Greek and Latin quotations (of which he knew the use as a public writer)
+from that wonderful repertory of learning.
+
+So Fin gave his arm to Mrs. Shandon, and Mary went skipping down the
+passages of the prison, and through the gate into the free air. From
+Fleet-street to Paternoster Row is not very far. As the three reached
+Mr. Bungay's shop, Mrs. Bungay was also entering at the private door,
+holding in her hand a paper parcel and a manuscript volume bound in red,
+and, indeed, containing an account of her transactions with the butcher
+in the neighboring market. Mrs. Bungay was in a gorgeous shot silk
+dress, which flamed with red and purple; she wore a yellow shawl, and
+had red flowers inside her bonnet, and a brilliant light blue parasol.
+Mrs. Shandon was in an old black watered silk; her bonnet had never seen
+very brilliant days of prosperity any more than its owner, but she could
+not help looking like a lady, whatever her attire was. The two women
+courtesied to each other, each according to her fashion.
+
+"I hope you're pretty well, mum?" said Mrs. Bungay.
+
+"It's a very fine day," said Mrs. Shandon.
+
+"Won't you step in, mum?" said Mrs. Bungay, looking so hard at the child
+as almost to frighten her.
+
+"I--I came about business with Mr. Bungay--I--I hope he's pretty well?"
+said timid Mrs. Shandon.
+
+"If you go to see him in the counting-house, couldn't you--couldn't you
+leave your little _gurl_ with me?" said Mrs. Bungay, in a deep voice,
+and with a tragic look, as she held out one finger toward the child.
+
+"I want to stay with mamma," cried little Mary, burying her face in her
+mother's dress.
+
+"Go with this lady, Mary, my dear," said the mother.
+
+"I'll show you some pretty pictures," said Mrs. Bungay, with the voice
+of an ogress, "and some nice things besides; look here"--and opening her
+brown paper parcel, Mrs. Bungay displayed some choice sweet biscuits,
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 toward Captain
+Shandon. His impetuous wife had rebuked him on his return home. She
+had ordered that he should give no relief to the captain; he was a
+good-for-nothing fellow, whom no money would help; she disapproved of
+the plan of the "Pall-Mall Gazette," and expected that Bungay would only
+lose his money in it as they were losing over the way (she always called
+her brother's establishment "over the way"), by the "Whitehall Journal."
+Let Shandon stop in prison and do his work; it was the best place for
+him. In vain Finucane pleaded and promised and implored, for his friend
+Bungay had had an hour's lecture in the morning and was inexorable.
+
+But what honest Jack failed to do below stairs in the counting-house,
+the pretty faces and manners of the mother and child were effecting in
+the drawing-room, where they were melting the fierce but really soft
+Mrs. Bungay. There was an artless sweetness in Mrs. Shandon's voice,
+and a winning frankness of manner, which made most people fond of her,
+and pity her: and taking courage by the rugged kindness with which her
+hostess received her, the captain's lady told her story, and described
+her husband's goodness and virtues, and her child's failing health (she
+was obliged to part with two of them, she said, and send them to school,
+for she could not have them in that horrid place)--that Mrs. Bungay,
+though as grim as Lady Macbeth, melted under the influence of the
+simple tale, and said she would go down and speak to Bungay. Now in this
+household to speak was to command, with Mrs. Bungay; and with Bungay, to
+hear was to obey.
+
+It was just when poor Finucane was in despair about his negotiation,
+that the majestic Mrs. Bungay descended upon her spouse, politely
+requested Mr. Finucane to step up to his friends in her drawing-room,
+while she held a few minutes' conversation with Mr. B., and when the
+pair were alone the publisher's better half informed him of her
+intentions toward the captain's lady.
+
+"What's in the wind now, my dear?" Mæcenas asked, surprised at his
+wife's altered tone. "You wouldn't hear of my doing any thing for the
+captain this morning: I wonder what has been a-changing of you."
+
+"The captain 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 her little gurl?"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. B., I saw the little girl."
+
+"And didn't you see how like she was to our angel, Bessy, Mr. B.?"--and
+Mrs. Bungay's thoughts flew back to a period eighteen years back, when
+Bacon and Bungay had just set up in business as small booksellers in a
+country town, and when she had had a child, named Bessy, something like
+the little Mary who had just moved her compassion.
+
+"Well, well, my dear," Mr. Bungay said, seeing the little eyes of his
+wife begin to twinkle and grow red; "the captain ain't in for much.
+There's only a hundred and thirty pound against him. Half the money
+will take him out of the Fleet, Finucane says, and we'll pay him half
+salaries till he has made the account square. When the little 'un said,
+'Why, don't you take Par out of pizn?' I did feel it, Elizabeth, upon my
+honor I did, now." And the upshot of this conversation was, that Mr. and
+Mrs. Bungay both ascended to the drawing-room, and Mr. Bungay made a
+heavy and clumsy speech, in which he announced to Mrs. Shandon, that,
+hearing sixty-five pounds would set her husband free, he was ready to
+advance that sum of money, deducting it from the captain's salary, and
+that he would give it to her on condition that she would personally
+settle with the creditors regarding her husband's liberation.
+
+I think this was the happiest day that Mrs. Shandon and Mr. Finucane had
+had for a long time. "Bedad, Bungay, you're a trump!" roared out Fin,
+in an overpowering brogue and emotion. "Give us your fist, old boy: and
+won't we send the 'Pall-Mall Gazette' up to ten thousand a week, that's
+all!" and he jumped about the room, and tossed up little Mary, with a
+hundred frantic antics.
+
+"If I could drive you any where 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 Mæcenas's wife kept fixed in her great grasp), with the
+delighted Mr. Finucane on the back seat, drove away from Paternoster
+Row, as the owner of the vehicle threw triumphant glances at the
+opposite windows at Bacon's.
+
+"It won't do the captain any good," thought Bungay, going back to his
+desk and accounts, "but Mrs. B. becomes reglar upset when she thinks
+about her misfortune. The child would have been of age yesterday, if
+she'd lived. Bessy told me so:" and he wondered how women did remember
+things.
+
+We are happy to say that Mrs. Shandon sped with very good success upon
+her errand. She who had had to mollify creditors when she had no money
+at all, and only tears and entreaties wherewith to soothe them, found no
+difficulty in making them relent by means of a bribe of ten shillings
+in the pound; and the next Sunday was the last, for some time at least,
+which the captain spent in prison.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+A DINNER IN THE ROW.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Upon the appointed day our two friends made their appearance at Mr.
+Bungay's door in Paternoster Row; not the public entrance through which
+booksellers' boys issued with their sacks full of Bungay's volumes, and
+around which timid aspirants lingered with their virgin manuscripts
+ready for sale to Sultan Bungay, but at the private door of the house,
+whence the splendid Mrs. Bungay would come forth to step into her chaise
+and take her drive, settling herself on the cushions, and casting looks
+of defiance, at Mrs. Bacon's opposite windows--at Mrs. Bacon, who was as
+yet a chaiseless woman.
+
+On such occasions, when very much wroth at her sister-in-law's splendor,
+Mrs. Bacon would fling up the sash of her drawing-room window, and look
+out with her four children at the chaise, as much as to say, "Look at
+these four darlings, Flora Bungay! This is why I can't drive in my
+carriage; you would give a coach and four to have the same reason." And
+it was with these arrows out of her quiver that Emma Bacon shot Flora
+Bungay as she sate in her chariot, envious and childless.
+
+As Pen and Warrington came to Bungay's door, a carriage and a cab drove
+up to Bacon's. Old Dr. Slocum descended heavily from the first; the
+doctor's equipage was as ponderous as his style, but both had a fine
+sonorous effect upon the publishers in the Row. A couple of dazzling
+white waistcoats stepped out of the cab.
+
+Warrington laughed. "You see Bacon has his dinner party too. That is
+Dr. Slocum, author of 'Memoirs of the Poisoners.' You would hardly have
+recognized our friend Hoolan in that gallant white waistcoat. Doolan is
+one of Bungay's men, and, faith, here he comes." Indeed Messrs. Hoolan
+and Doolan had come from the Strand in the same cab, tossing up by the
+way which should pay the shilling; and Mr. D. stepped from the other
+side of the way, arrayed in black, with a large pair of white gloves
+which were spread out on his hands, and which the owner could not help
+regarding with pleasure.
+
+The house porter in an evening coat, and gentlemen with gloves as
+large as Doolan's, but of the famous Berlin web, were in 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
+courtesies to each new comer as he entered the drawing-room, but her
+mind was evidently pre-occupied by extraneous thoughts. The fact is,
+Mrs. Bacon's dinner party was disturbing her, and as soon as she had
+received each individual of her own company, Flora Bungay flew back to
+the embrasure of the window, whence she could rake the carriages of
+Emma Bacon's friends as they came rattling up the Row. The sight of Dr.
+Slocum's large carriage, with the gaunt job-horses, crushed Flora: none
+but hack cabs had driven up to her own door on that day.
+
+They were all literary gentlemen, though unknown as yet to Pen. There
+was Mr. Bole the real editor of the magazine, of which Mr. Wagg was the
+nominal chief; Mr. Trotter, who, from having broken out on the world as
+a poet of a tragic and suicidal cast, had now subsided into one of Mr.
+Bungay's back shops as reader for that gentleman; and Captain Sumph,
+an ex-beau still about town, and related in some indistinct manner to
+Literature and the Peerage. He was said to have written a book once,
+to have been a friend of Lord Byron, to be related to Lord Sumphington;
+in fact, anecdotes of Byron formed his staple, and he seldom spoke but
+with the name of that poet or some of his contemporaries in his mouth,
+as thus: "I remember poor Shelley at school being sent up for good
+for a copy of verses, every line of which I wrote, by Jove;" or,
+"I recollect, when I was at Missolonghi with Byron, offering to bet
+Gamba," and so forth. This gentleman, Pen remarked, was listened to
+with great attention by Mrs. Bungay; his anecdotes of the aristocracy,
+of which he was a middle-aged member, delighted the publisher's lady;
+and he was almost a greater man than the great Mr. Wagg himself in
+her eyes. Had he but come in his own carriage, Mrs. Bungay would have
+made her Bungay purchase any given volume from his pen.
+
+Mr. Bungay went about to his guests as they arrived, and did the honors
+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 honor of
+introducing Mr. Warrington to you. Mr. Warrington, Mrs. Bungay; Mr.
+Pendennis, Mrs. Bungay. Hope you've brought good appetites with you,
+gentlemen. _You_, Doolan, I know ave, for you've always ad a deuce of
+a twist."
+
+"Lor, Bungay!" said Mrs. Bungay.
+
+"Faith, a man must be hard to please, Bungay, who can't eat a good
+dinner in _this_ house," Doolan said, and he winked and stroked his lean
+chops with his large gloves; and made appeals of friendship to Mrs.
+Bungay, which that honest woman refused with scorn from the timid man.
+"She couldn't abide that Doolan," she said in confidence to her friends.
+Indeed, all his flatteries failed to win her.
+
+As they talked, Mrs. Bungay surveying mankind from her window, a
+magnificent vision of an enormous gray 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 Honorable Percy Popjoy's
+quite punctual, I declare," she said, and sailed to the door to be in
+waiting at the nobleman's arrival.
+
+"It's Percy Popjoy," said Pen, looking out of window, and seeing an
+individual, in extremely lacquered boots, descend from the swinging cab:
+and, in fact, it was that young nobleman--Lord Falconet's eldest son,
+as we all very well know, who was come to dine with the publisher--his
+publisher of the Row.
+
+"He was my fag at Eton," Warrington said. "I ought to have licked him a
+little more." He and Pen had had some bouts at the Oxford 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
+humor and fatuity in his round, dimpled face: upon which Nature had
+burst out with a chin-tuft, but, exhausted with the effort, had left
+the rest of the countenance bare of hair.
+
+The temporary groom of the chambers bawled out, "The Honorable Percy
+Popjoy," much to that gentleman's discomposure at hearing his titles
+announced.
+
+"What did the man want to take away my hat for, Bungay?" he asked of
+the publisher. "Can't do without my hat--want it to make my bow to
+Mrs. Bungay. How well you look, Mrs. Bungay, to-day. Haven't seen your
+carriage in the Park: why haven't you been there? I missed you; indeed,
+I did."
+
+"I'm afraid you're a sad quiz," said Mrs. Bungay.
+
+"Quiz! Never made a joke in my--hullo! who's here? How d'ye do,
+Pendennis? How d'ye do, Warrington? These are old friends of mine, Mrs.
+Bungay. I say, how the doose did _you_ come here?" he asked of the two
+young men, turning his lacquered heels upon Mrs. Bungay, who respected
+her husband's two young guests, now that she found they were intimate
+with a lord's son.
+
+"What! do _they_ know him?" she asked rapidly of Mr. B.
+
+"High fellers, I tell you--the young one related to all the nobility,"
+said the publisher; and both ran forward, smiling and bowing, to greet
+almost as great personages as the young lord--no less characters,
+indeed, than the great Mr. Wenham and the great Mr. Wagg, who were now
+announced.
+
+Mr. Wenham entered, wearing the usual demure look and stealthy smile
+with which he commonly surveyed the tips of his neat little shining
+boots, and which he but seldom brought to bear upon the person who
+addressed him. Wagg's white waistcoat, spread out, on the contrary,
+with profuse brilliancy; his burly, red face shone resplendent over it,
+lighted up with the thoughts of good jokes and a good dinner. He liked
+to make his _entrée_ 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 humorist had his share in common
+with the unjocular part of mankind) could altogether keep his humor
+down. Whatever his griefs might be, the thought of a dinner rallied his
+great soul; and when he saw a lord, he saluted him with a pun.
+
+Wenham went up, then, with a smug smile and whisper, to Mrs. Bungay, and
+looked at her from under his eyes, and showed her the tips of his shoes.
+Wagg said she looked charming, and pushed on straight at the young
+nobleman, whom he called Pop; and to whom he instantly related a funny
+story, seasoned with what the French call _gros sel_. He was delighted
+to see Pen, too, and shook hands with him, and slapped him on the back
+cordially; for he was full of spirits and good humor. And he talked in
+a loud voice about their last place and occasion of meeting at Baymouth;
+and asked how their friends of Clavering Park were, and whether Sir
+Francis was not coming to London for the season; and whether Pen had
+been to see Lady Rockminster, who had arrived--fine old lady, Lady
+Rockminster! These remarks Wagg made not for Pen's ear so much as for
+the edification of the company, whom he was glad to inform that he paid
+visits to gentlemen's country seats, and was on intimate terms with the
+nobility.
+
+Wenham also shook hands with our young friend--all of which scenes Mrs.
+Bungay remarked with respectful pleasure, and communicated her ideas to
+Bungay, afterward, regarding the importance of Mr. Pendennis--ideas by
+which Pen profited much more than he was aware.
+
+Pen, who had read, and rather admired some of her works (and expected to
+find in Miss Bunion a person somewhat resembling her own description of
+herself in the "Passion-Flower," in which she stated that her youth
+resembled--
+
+  "A violet, shrinking meanly
+  When blows the March wind keenly
+  A timid fawn, on wild-wood lawn,
+  Where oak-boughs rustle greenly--"
+
+and that her maturer beauty was something very different, certainly, to
+the artless loveliness of her prime, but still exceedingly captivating
+and striking), beheld, rather to his surprise and amusement, a large and
+bony woman in a crumpled satin dress, who came creaking into the room
+with a step as heavy as a grenadier's. Wagg instantly noted the straw
+which she brought in at the rumpled skirt of her dress, and would
+have stooped to pick it up: but Miss Bunion disarmed all criticism by
+observing this ornament herself, and, putting her own large foot upon
+it, so as to separate it from her robe, she stopped and picked up the
+straw, saying to Mrs. Bungay, that she was very sorry to be a little
+late, but that the omnibus was very slow, and what a comfort it was to
+get a ride all the way from Brompton for sixpence. Nobody laughed at the
+poetess's speech, it was uttered so simply. Indeed, the worthy woman had
+not the least notion of being ashamed of an action incidental upon her
+poverty.
+
+"Is that 'Passion-Flowers?'" Pen said to Wenham, by whom he was
+standing. "Why, her picture in the volume represents her as a very
+well-looking young woman."
+
+"You know passion-flowers, like all others, will run to seed," Wenham
+said; "Miss Bunion's portrait was probably painted some years ago."
+
+"Well, I like her for not being ashamed of her poverty."
+
+"So do I," said Mr. Wenham, who would have starved rather than have come
+to dinner in an omnibus, "but I don't think that she need flourish the
+straw about, do you, Mr. Pendennis? My dear Miss Bunion, how do you do?
+I was in a great lady's drawing-room this morning, and every body was
+charmed with your new volume. Those lines on the christening of Lady
+Fanny Fantail brought tears into the Duchess's eyes. I said that I
+thought I should have the pleasure of meeting you to-day, and she begged
+me to thank you, and say how greatly she was pleased."
+
+This history, told in a bland, smiling manner, of a Duchess whom Wenham
+had met that very morning, too, quite put poor Wagg's dowager and
+baronet out of court, and placed Wenham beyond Wagg as a man of fashion.
+Wenham kept this inestimable advantage, and having the conversation to
+himself, ran on with a number of anecdotes regarding the aristocracy.
+He tried to bring Mr. Popjoy into the conversation by making appeals to
+him, and saying, "I was telling your father this morning," or, "I think
+you were present at W. House the other night when the Duke said so
+and so," but Mr. Popjoy would not gratify him by joining in the talk,
+preferring to fall back into the window recess with Mrs. Bungay, and
+watch the cabs that drove up to the opposite door. At least, if he would
+not talk, the hostess hoped that those odious Bacons would see how she
+had secured the noble Percy Popjoy for her party.
+
+And now the bell of Saint Paul's tolled half an hour later than that for
+which Mr. Bungay had invited his party, and it was complete with the
+exception of two guests, who at last made their appearance, and in whom
+Pen was pleased to recognize Captain and Mrs. Shandon.
+
+When these two had made their greetings to the master and mistress of
+the house, and exchanged nods of more or less recognition with most of
+the people present, Pen and Warrington went up and shook hands very
+warmly with Mrs. Shandon, who, perhaps was affected to meet them, and
+think where it was she had seen them but a few days before. Shandon was
+brushed up, and looked pretty smart, in a red velvet waistcoat, and a
+frill, into which his wife had stuck her best brooch. In spite of Mrs.
+Bungay's kindness, perhaps in consequence of it, Mrs. Shandon felt great
+terror and timidity in approaching her: indeed, she was more awful than
+ever in her red satin and bird of paradise, and it was not until she had
+asked in her great voice about the dear little gurl, that the latter was
+somewhat encouraged, and ventured to speak.
+
+"Nice-looking woman," Popjoy whispered to Warrington. "Do introduce
+me to Captain Shandon, Warrington. I'm told he's a tremendous clever
+fellow; and, dammy, I adore intellect, by Jove I do!" This was the
+truth: Heaven had not endowed young Mr. Popjoy with much intellect of
+his own, but had given him a generous faculty for admiring, if not for
+appreciating, the intellect of others. "And introduce me to Miss Bunion.
+I'm told she's very clever too. She's rum to look at, certainly, but
+that don't matter. Dammy, I consider myself a literary man, and I wish
+to know all the clever fellows." So Mr. Popjoy and Mr. Shandon had the
+pleasure of becoming acquainted with one another; and now the doors of
+the adjoining dining-room being flung open, the party entered and took
+their seats at table. Pen found himself next to Bunion on one side, and
+to Mr. Wagg--the truth is, Wagg fled alarmed from the vacant place by
+the poetess, and Pen was compelled to take it.
+
+The gifted being did not talk much during dinner, but Pen remarked that
+she ate, with a vast appetite, and never refused any of the supplies of
+wine which were offered to her by the butler. Indeed, Miss Bunion having
+considered Mr. Pendennis for a minute, who gave himself rather grand
+airs, and who was attired in an extremely fashionable style, with his
+very best chains, shirt studs, and cambric fronts, 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 candor. "I took you for one of the
+little Mayfair dandies," she said to Pen. "You looked as solemn as a
+little undertaker; and as I disliked beyond measure, the odious creature
+who was on the other side of me, I thought it was best to eat my dinner
+and hold my tongue."
+
+"And you did both very well, my dear Miss Bunion," Pen said, with a
+laugh.
+
+"Well, so I do, but I intend to talk to you the next time a great deal:
+for you are neither so solemn, nor so stupid, nor so pert as you look."
+
+"Ah, Miss Bunion, how I pine for that 'next time' to come," Pen said,
+with an air of comical gallantry. But we must return to the day, and the
+dinner at Paternoster Row.
+
+The repast was of the richest description--"What I call of the florid
+Gothic style," Wagg whispered to Pen, who sate beside the humorist, 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 own footboy was lost amidst those large and black-coated
+attendants.
+
+"Look at that _very_ bow-windowed man," Wagg said. "He's an undertaker
+in Amen Corner, and attends funerals and dinners. Cold meat and hot,
+don't you perceive? He's the sham butler here, and I observe, my dear
+Mr. Pendennis, as you will through life, that wherever there is a sham
+butler at a London dinner there is sham wine--this sherry is filthy.
+Bungay, my boy, where did you get this delicious brown sherry?"
+
+"I'm glad you like it, Mr. Wagg; glass with you," said the publisher.
+"It's some I got from Alderman Benning's store, and gave a good figure
+for it, I can tell you. Mr. Pendennis, will you join us? Your 'ealth,
+gentlemen."
+
+"The old rogue, where does he expect to go to? It came from the public
+house," Wagg said. "It requires two men to carry off that sherry, 'tis
+so uncommonly strong. I wish I had a bottle of old Steyne's wine here,
+Pendennis: your uncle and I have had many a one. He sends it about to
+people where he is in the habit of dining. I remember at poor Rawdon
+Crawley's, Sir Pitt Crawley's brother--he was Governor of Coventry
+Island--Steyne's chef always came in the morning, and the butler arrived
+with the champagne from Gaunt House, in the ice-pails ready."
+
+"How good this is!" said Popjoy, good-naturedly. You must have a _cordon
+bleu_ in your kitchen."
+
+"O, yes," Mrs. Bungay said, thinking he spoke of a jack-chain very
+likely.
+
+"I mean a French chef," said the polite guest.
+
+"O, yes, your lordship," again said the lady.
+
+"Does your artist say he's a Frenchman, Mrs. B.?" called out Wagg.
+
+"Well, I'm sure I don't know," answered the publisher's lady.
+
+"Because, if he does, he's a _quizzin yer_," cried Mr. Wagg; but nobody
+saw the pun, which disconcerted somewhat the bashful punster. "The
+dinner is from Grigg's, 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 Sévigné_ is delicious, Mrs. B.,"
+he said, helping himself to a dish which the undertaker handed to him.
+
+"Well, I'm glad you like it," Mrs. Bungay answered, blushing, and
+not knowing whether the name of the dish was actually that which Wagg
+gave to it, but dimly conscious that that individual was quizzing her.
+Accordingly she hated Mr. Wagg with female ardor; and would have deposed
+him from his command over Mr. Bungay's periodical, but that his name was
+great in the trade, and his reputation in the land considerable.
+
+By the displacement of persons, Warrington had found himself on the
+right hand of Mrs. Shandon, who sate in plain black silk and faded
+ornaments by the side of the florid publisher. The sad smile of the lady
+moved his rough heart to pity. Nobody seemed to interest himself about
+her: she sate looking at her husband, who himself seemed rather abashed
+in the presence of some of the company. Wenham and Wagg both knew him and
+his circumstances. He had worked with the latter, and was immeasurably
+his superior in wit, genius, and acquirement; but Wagg's star was
+brilliant in the world, and poor Shandon was unknown there. He could not
+speak before the noisy talk of the coarser and more successful man; but
+drank his wine in silence, and as much of it as the people would give
+him. He was under _surveillance_. Bungay had warned the undertaker not
+to fill the captain's glass too often or too full. It was a melancholy
+precaution that, and the more melancholy that it was necessary. Mrs.
+Shandon, too, cast alarmed glances across the table to see that her
+husband did not exceed.
+
+Abashed by the failure of his first pun, for he was impudent and easily
+disconcerted, Wagg kept his conversation pretty much to Pen during the
+rest of dinner, and of course chiefly spoke about their neighbors. "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 _apropos_--Popjoy permitted the use of his name, and I dare
+say supplied a page here and there--and 'Desperation, or, the Fugitive
+Duchess' made its appearance. The great fun is to examine Popjoy about
+his own work, of which he doesn't know a word.--I say, Popjoy, what a
+capital passage that is in Volume Three--where the cardinal in disguise,
+after being converted by the Bishop of London, proposes marriage to the
+duchess's daughter."
+
+"Glad you like it," Popjoy answered; "it's a favorite bit of my own."
+
+"There's no such thing in the whole book," whispered Wagg to Pen.
+"Invented it myself. Gad! it wouldn't be a bad plot for a high-church
+novel."
+
+"I remember poor Byron, Hobhouse, Trelawney, and myself, dining with
+Cardinal Mezzocaldo, at Rome," Captain Sumph began, "and we had some
+Orvieto wine for dinner, which Byron liked very much. And I remember
+how the cardinal regretted that he was a single man. We went to Civita
+Vecchia two days afterward where Byron's yacht was--and, by Jove, the
+cardinal died within three weeks; and Byron was very sorry, for he
+rather liked him."
+
+"A devilish interesting story, Sumph, indeed," Wagg said.
+
+"You should publish some of those stories, Captain Sumph, you really
+should. Such a volume would make our friend Bungay's fortune," Shandon
+said.
+
+"Why don't you ask Sumph to publish 'em in your new paper--the
+what-d'ye-call'em?--hay, Shandon," bawled out Wagg.
+
+"Why don't you ask him to publish 'em in your old magazine, the
+Thingumbob?" Shandon replied.
+
+"Is there going to be a new paper!" asked Wenham, who knew perfectly
+well; but was ashamed of his connection with the press.
+
+"Bungay going to bring out a paper?" cried Popjoy, who, on the contrary,
+was proud of his literary reputation and acquaintances. "You must employ
+me. Mrs. Bungay, use your influence with him, and make him employ me.
+Prose or verse--what shall it be? Novels, poems, travels, or leading
+articles, begad. Any thing or every thing--only let Bungay pay me, and
+I'm ready--I am now, my dear Mrs. Bungay, begad now."
+
+"It's to be called the 'Small Beer Chronicle,'" growled Wagg, "and little
+Popjoy is to be engaged for the infantine department."
+
+"It is to be called the 'Pall-Mall Gazette,' sir, and we shall be very
+happy to have you with us," Shandon said.
+
+"'Pall-Mall Gazette'--why 'Pall-Mall Gazette?'" asked Wagg.
+
+"Because the editor was born at Dublin, the sub-editor at Cork, because
+the proprietor lives in Paternoster Row, and the paper is published in
+Catherine-street, Strand. Won't that reason suffice you, Wagg?" Shandon
+said; he was getting rather angry. "Every thing must have a name. My dog
+Ponto has got a name. You've got a name, and a name which you deserve,
+more or less, bedad. Why d'ye grudge the name to our paper?"
+
+"By any other name it would smell as sweet," said Wagg.
+
+"I'll have ye remember its name's not what-d'ye-call'em, Mr. Wagg," said
+Shandon. "You know its name well enough, and--and you know mine."
+
+"And I know your address too," said Wagg, but this was spoken in an
+under-tone, and the good-natured Irishman was appeased almost in an
+instant after his ebullition of spleen, and asked Wagg to drink wine
+with him, in a friendly voice.
+
+When the ladies retired from the table, the talk grew louder still; and
+presently Wenham, in a courtly speech, proposed that every body should
+drink to the health of the new Journal, eulogizing highly the talents,
+wit, and learning, of its editor, Captain Shandon. It was his maxim
+never to lose the support of a newspaper man, and in the course of that
+evening, he went round and saluted every literary gentleman present with
+a privy compliment specially addressed to him; informing this one how
+great an impression had been made in Downing-street by his last article,
+and telling that one how profoundly his good friend, the Duke of So and
+So, had been struck by the ability of the late numbers.
+
+The evening came to a close, and in spite of all the precautions to
+the contrary, poor Shandon reeled in his walk, and went home to his new
+lodgings, with his faithful wife by his side, and the cabman on his
+box jeering at him. Wenham had a chariot of his own, which he put at
+Popjoy's seat; and the timid Miss Bunion seeing Mr. Wagg, who was her
+neighbor, about to depart, insisted upon a seat in his carriage, much
+to that gentleman's discomfiture.
+
+Pen and Warrington walked home together in the moonlight. "And now,"
+Warrington said, "that you have seen the men of letters, tell me, was I
+far wrong in saying that there are thousands of people in this town, who
+don't write books, who are, to the full, as clever and intellectual as
+people who do?"
+
+Pen was forced to confess that the literary personages with whom he
+had become acquainted had not said much, in the course of the night's
+conversation, that was worthy to be remembered or quoted. In fact, not
+one word about literature had been said during the whole course of the
+night:--and it may be whispered to those uninitiated people who are
+anxious to know the habits and make the acquaintance of men of letters,
+that there are no race of people who talk about books, or, perhaps, who
+read books, so little as literary men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+THE PALL-MALL GAZETTE.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 among the contributors to its columns. Was there
+any foundation for these rumors? We are not at liberty to say whether
+they were well or ill-founded; but this much we may divulge, that an
+article upon foreign policy, which was generally attributed to a noble
+lord, whose connection with the Foreign Office is very well known, was
+in reality composed by Captain Shandon, in the parlor of the Bear and
+Staff public-house near Whitehall Stairs, whither the printer's boy
+had tracked him, and where a literary ally of his, Mr. Bludyer, had a
+temporary residence; and that a series of papers on finance questions,
+which were universally supposed to be written by a great statesman of
+the House of Commons, were in reality composed by Mr. George Warrington
+of the Upper Temple.
+
+That there may have been some dealings between the "Pall-Mall Gazette"
+and this influential party, is very possible. Percy Popjoy (whose
+father, Lord Falconet, was a member of the party) might be seen not
+unfrequently ascending the stairs to Warrington's chambers; and some
+information appeared in the paper which gave it a character, and could
+only be got from very peculiar sources. Several poems, feeble in
+thought, but loud and vigorous in expression, appeared in the "Pall-Mall
+Gazette," with the signature of "P. P.," and it must be owned that his
+novel was praised in the new journal in a very outrageous manner.
+
+In the political department of the paper Mr. Pen did not take any share;
+but he was a most active literary contributor. The "Pall-Mall Gazette"
+had its offices, as we have heard, in Catherine-street, in the Strand,
+and hither Pen often came with his manuscripts in his pocket, and with
+a great deal of bustle and pleasure; such as a man feels at the outset
+of his literary career, when to see himself in print is still a novel
+sensation, and he yet pleases himself to think that his writings are
+creating some noise in the world.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 any thing
+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
+a 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
+trowsers 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 parlor of the taverns which he frequented, whereas from his
+writing you would have supposed that he dined with embassadors, and that
+his common lounge was the bow-window of White's. Errors of description,
+it is true, occasionally slipped from his pen; but the "Ballinafad
+Sentinel," of which he was own correspondent, suffered by these, not the
+"Pall-Mall Gazette," in which Jack was not permitted to write much, his
+London chiefs thinking that the scissors and the paste were better
+wielded by him than the pen.
+
+Pen took a great deal of pains with the writing of his reviews, and
+having a pretty fair share of desultory reading, acquired in the early
+years of his life, an eager fancy and a keen sense of fun, his articles
+pleased his chief and the public, and he was proud to think that he
+deserved the money which he earned. We may be sure that the "Pall-Mall
+Gazette" was taken in regularly at Fairoaks, and read with delight by
+the two ladies there. It was received at Clavering Park, too, where we
+know there was a young lady of great literary tastes; and old Doctor
+Portman himself, to whom the widow sent her paper after she had got her
+son's articles by heart, signified his approval of Pen's productions,
+saying that the lad had spirit, taste, and fancy, and wrote, if not like
+a scholar, at any rate like a gentleman.
+
+And what was the astonishment and delight of our friend Major Pendennis,
+on walking into one of his clubs, the Regent, where Wenham, Lord
+Falconet, and some other gentlemen of good reputation and fashion were
+assembled, to hear them one day talking over a number of the "Pall-Mall
+Gazette," and of an article which appeared in its columns, making some
+bitter fun of a 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 delighted 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 connections quite below
+his dignity as a major and a gentleman.
+
+But when the oracular Wenham praised the boy's production; when Lord
+Falconet, who had had the news from Percy Popjoy, approved of the genius
+of young Pen; when the great Lord Steyne himself, to whom the major
+referred the article, laughed and sniggered over it, swore it was
+capital, and that the Muffborough would writhe under it, like a whale
+under a harpoon, the major, as in duty bound, began to admire his nephew
+very much, said, "By gad, the young rascal had some stuff in him, and
+would do something; he had always said he would do something;" and with
+a hand quite tremulous with pleasure, the old gentleman sate down to
+write to the widow at Fairoaks all that the great folks had said in
+praise of Pen; and he wrote to the young rascal, too, asking when he
+would come and eat a chop with his old uncle, and saying that he was
+commissioned to take him to dinner at Gaunt House, for Lord Steyne liked
+any body who could entertain him, whether by his folly, wit, or by
+his dullness, by his oddity, affectation, good spirits, or any other
+quality. Pen flung his letter across the table to Warrington: perhaps he
+was disappointed that the other did not seem to be much affected by it.
+
+The courage of young critics is prodigious: they clamber up to the
+judgment-seat, and, with scarce a hesitation, give their opinion
+upon works the most intricate or profound. Had Macaulay's History or
+Herschel's Astronomy been put before Pen at this period, he would have
+looked through the volumes, meditated his opinion over a cigar, and
+signified his august approval of either author, as if the critic had
+been their born superior and indulgent master and patron. By the help
+of the Biographie Universelle or the British Museum, he would be able
+to take a rapid _resume_ of a historical period, and allude to names,
+dates, and facts, in such a masterly, easy way, as to astonish his
+mamma at home, who wondered where her boy could have acquired such a
+prodigious store of reading; and himself, too, when he came to read over
+his articles two or three months after they had been composed, and when
+he had forgotten the subject and the books which he had consulted. At
+that period of his life Mr. Pen owns, that he would not have hesitated,
+at twenty-four hours' notice, to pass an opinion upon the greatest
+scholars, or to give a judgment upon the Encyclopædia. 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 _aid-de-camp_, and was, indeed, better pleased with Pen's light
+and brilliant flashes, than with the heavier metal which his elder
+coadjutor brought to bear.
+
+But though he might justly be blamed on the score of impertinence and a
+certain prematurity of judgment, Mr. Pen was a perfectly honest critic;
+a great deal too candid for Mr. Bungay's purposes, indeed, who grumbled
+sadly at his impartiality. Pen and his chief, the captain, had a dispute
+upon this subject one day. "In the name of common sense, Mr. Pendennis,"
+Shandon asked, "what have you been doing--praising one of Mr. Bacon's
+books? Bungay has been with me in a fury this morning, at seeing a
+laudatory article upon one of the works of the odious firm over the
+way."
+
+Pen's eyes opened with wide astonishment. "Do you mean to say," he
+asked, "that we are to praise no books that Bacon publishes: or that,
+if the books are good, we are to say they are bad?"
+
+"My good young friend--for what do you suppose a benevolent publisher
+undertakes a critical journal, to benefit his rival?" Shandon inquired.
+
+"To benefit himself certainly, but to tell the truth too," Pen
+said--"_ruat cælum_, to tell the truth."
+
+"And my prospectus," said Shandon, with a laugh and a sneer; "do you
+consider that was a work of mathematical accuracy of statement?"
+
+"Pardon me, that is not the question," Pen said; "and I don't think you
+very much care to argue it. I had some qualms of conscience about that
+same prospectus, and debated the matter with my friend Warrington. We
+agreed, however," Pen said, laughing, "that because the prospectus was
+rather declamatory and poetical, and the giant was painted upon the
+show-board rather larger than the original, who was inside the caravan;
+we need not be too scrupulous about this trifling inaccuracy, but might
+do our part of the show, without loss of character or remorse of
+conscience. We are the fiddlers, and play our tunes only; you are the
+showman."
+
+"And leader of the van," said Shandon. "Well I am glad that your
+conscience gave you leave to play for us."
+
+"Yes, but," said Pen, with a fine sense of the dignity of his position,
+"we are all party men in England, and I will stick to my party like a
+Briton. I will be as good-natured as you like to our own side; he is a
+fool who quarrels with his own nest; and I will hit the enemy as hard as
+you like--but with fair play, captain, if you please. One can't tell all
+the truth, I suppose; but one can tell nothing but the truth; and I
+would rather starve, by Jove, and never earn another penny by my pen"
+(this redoubted instrument had now been in use for some six weeks,
+and Pen spoke of it with vast enthusiasm and respect) "than strike an
+opponent an unfair blow, or, if called upon to place him, rank him below
+his honest desert."
+
+"Well, Mr. Pendennis, when we want Bacon smashed, we must get some other
+hammer to do it," Shandon said with fatal good-nature; and very likely
+thought within himself, "A few years hence perhaps the young gentleman
+won't be so squeamish." The veteran Condottiere himself was no longer so
+scrupulous. He had fought and killed on so many a side for many a year
+past, that remorse had long left him. "Gad," said he, "you've a tender
+conscience, Mr. Pendennis. It's the luxury of all novices, and I may
+have had one once myself; but that sort of bloom wears off with the
+rubbing of the world, and I'm not going to the trouble myself of putting
+on an artificial complexion, like our pious friend Wenham, or our model
+of virtue, Wagg."
+
+"I don't know whether some people's hypocrisy is not better, captain,
+than others' cynicism."
+
+"It's more profitable, at any rate," said the captain, biting his
+nails. "That Wenham is as dull a quack as ever quacked: and you see
+the carriage in which he drove to dinner. 'Faith, it'll be a long time
+before Mrs. Shandon will take a drive in her own chariot. God help
+her, poor thing!" And Pen went away from his chief, after their little
+dispute and colloquy, pointing his own moral to the captain's tale,
+and thinking to himself, "Behold this man, stored with genius, wit,
+learning, and a hundred good natural gifts: see how he has wrecked them,
+by paltering with his honesty, and forgetting to respect himself. Wilt
+thou remember thyself, O Pen? thou art conceited enough. Wilt thou
+sell thy honor for a bottle? No, by heaven's grace, we will be honest,
+whatever befalls, and our mouths shall only speak the truth when they
+open."
+
+A punishment, or, at least, a trial, was in store for Mr. Pen. In the
+very next Number of the "Pall-Mall Gazette," Warrington read out, with
+roars of laughter, an article which by no means amused Arthur Pendennis,
+who was himself at work with a criticism for the next week's number of
+the same journal; and in which the Spring Annual was ferociously
+maltreated by some unknown writer. The person of all most cruelly mauled
+was Pen himself. His verses had not appeared with his own name in the
+Spring Annual, but under an assumed signature. As he had refused to
+review the book, Shandon had handed it over to Mr. Bludyer, with
+directions to that author to dispose of it. And he had done so
+effectually. Mr. Bludyer, who was a man of very considerable talent, and
+of a race which, I believe, is quite extinct in the press of our time,
+had a certain notoriety in his profession, and reputation for savage
+humor. 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 book-stall, and purchased a
+pint of brandy with the proceeds of the volume.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+WHERE PEN APPEARS IN TOWN AND COUNTRY.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 labor 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 salable
+property), farewell poetry and aerial flights: Pegasus only rises now
+like Mr. Green's balloon, at periods advertised beforehand, and when
+the spectator's money has been paid. Pegasus trots in harness, over the
+stony pavement, and pulls a cart or a cab behind him. Often Pegasus does
+his work with panting sides and trembling knees, and not seldom gets a
+cut of the whip from his driver.
+
+Do not let us, however, be too prodigal of our pity upon Pegasus. There
+is no reason why this animal should be exempt from labor, or illness,
+or decay, any more than any of the other creatures of God's world. If he
+gets the whip, Pegasus very often deserves it, and I for one am quite
+ready to protest with my friend, George Warrington, against the doctrine
+which some poetical sympathizers are inclined to put forward, viz., that
+men of letters, and what is called genius, are to be exempt from the
+prose duties of this daily, bread-wanting, tax-paying life, and are not
+to be made to work and pay like their neighbors.
+
+Well, then, the "Pall Mall Gazette" being duly established, and Arthur
+Pendennis's merits recognized 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 three-score, 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 theaters
+complained of him woefully, 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 humor and justice, and had not therefore
+an overweening respect for his own works; besides, he had his friend
+Warrington at his elbow--a terrible critic if the young man was disposed
+to be conceited, and more savage over Pen than ever he was to those whom
+he tried at his literary assize.
+
+By these critical labors, 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 labor. 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 labors 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 labors, 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 among
+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, Dr. Portman at their head, called upon Mr. Pen, and treated him
+with marked respect; between mother and son, it was all fondness,
+confidence, and affection. It was the happiest fortnight of the widow's
+whole life; perhaps in the lives of both of them. The holiday was gone
+only too quickly; and Pen was back in the busy world, and the gentle
+widow alone again. She sent Arthur's money to Laura: I don't know why
+this young lady took the opportunity of leaving home when Pen was coming
+thither, or whether he was the more piqued or relieved by her absence.
+
+He was by this time, by his own merits and his uncle's introductions,
+pretty well introduced into London, and known both in literary and
+polite circles. Among 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 can not 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 favorable eye;
+and they reported how they met him at the houses of persons of fashion,
+among 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.
+
+[Illustration][**moved up from 364]
+
+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, where-ever
+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 book-stall, 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. Toward 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 May Fair; 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 few years since--but the time is
+gone, and most of the men. Bludyer will no more bully authors or cheat
+landlords of their score. Shandon, the learned and thriftless, the witty
+and unwise, sleeps his last sleep. They buried honest Doolan the other
+day: never will he cringe or flatter, never pull long-bow or empty
+whisky-noggin any more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The London season was now blooming in its full vigor, 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 bay-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: every body was in town in a word; and, of course, Major Arthur
+Pendennis, who was somebody, was not absent.
+
+With his head tied up in a smart bandana handkerchief, and his meager
+carcass enveloped in a brilliant Turkish dressing-gown, the worthy
+gentleman sate on a certain morning by his fire-side, letting his feet
+gently simmer in a bath, while he took his early cup of tea, and perused
+his "Morning Post." He could not have faced the day without his two
+hours' toilet, without his early cup of tea, without his "Morning Post."
+I suppose nobody in the world except Morgan, not even Morgan's master
+himself, knew how feeble and ancient the major was growing, and what
+numberless little comforts he required.
+
+If men sneer, as our habit is, at the artifices of an old beauty, at
+her paint, perfumes, ringlets; at those innumerable, and to us unknown
+stratagems, with which she is said to remedy the ravages of time, and
+reconstruct the charms whereof years have bereft her; the ladies, it
+is to be presumed, are not on their side altogether ignorant that men
+are vain as well as they, and that the toilets of old bucks are to the
+full as elaborate as their own. How is it that old Blushington keeps
+that constant little rose-tint on his cheeks; and where does old Blondel
+get the preparation which makes his silver hair pass for golden? Have
+you ever seen Lord Hotspur get off his horse when he thinks nobody is
+looking? Taken out of his stirrups, his shiny boots can hardly totter up
+the steps of Hotspur House. He is a dashing young nobleman still as you
+see the back of him in Rotten Row; when you behold him on foot what an
+old, old fellow! Did you ever form to yourself any idea of Dick Lacy
+(Dick has been Dick these sixty years) in a natural state, and without
+his stays? All these men are objects whom the observer of human life
+and manners may contemplate with as much profit as the most elderly
+Belgravian Venus, or inveterate Mayfair Jezebel. An old reprobate
+daddy-long-legs, 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 _roué_ 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 arm-chair, and make a text of him, and preach about him to the
+congregation, could be turned to a wholesome use for once in his life,
+and might be surprised to find that some good thoughts came out of him.
+But, we are wandering from our text, the honest major, who sits all this
+while with his feet cooling in the bath: Morgan takes them out of that
+place of purification, and dries them daintily, and proceeds to set the
+old gentleman on his legs, with waistband and wig, starched cravat, and
+spotless boots and gloves.
+
+It was during these hours of the toilet that Morgan and his employer had
+their confidential conversations, for they did not meet much at other
+times of the day--the major abhorring the society of his own chairs and
+tables in his lodgings; and Morgan, his master's toilet over and letters
+delivered, had his time very much on his own hands.
+
+This spare time the active and well-mannered gentleman bestowed among
+the valets and butlers of the nobility, his acquaintance; and Morgan
+Pendennis, as he was styled, for, by such compound names, gentlemen's
+gentlemen are called in their private circles, was a frequent and
+welcome guest at some of the very highest tables in this town. He was a
+member of two influential clubs in Mayfair and Pimlico; and he was thus
+enabled to know the whole gossip of the town, and entertain his master
+very agreeably during the two hours' toilet conversation. He knew a
+hundred tales and legends regarding persons of the very highest _ton_,
+whose valets canvass their august secrets, just, my dear madam, as our
+own parlor-maids and dependents 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 candor; and the next day her mistress will
+probably know that Captain and Mrs. Jones have been a-quarreling as
+usual. Nothing is secret. Take it as a rule that John knows every thing:
+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 every
+thing, and was at once admirably scandalous and delightfully discreet,
+it is but justice to Morgan to say, that a great deal of his master's
+information was supplied to that worthy man by his valet, who went out
+and foraged knowledge for him. Indeed, what more effectual plan is there
+to get a knowledge of London society, than to begin at the
+foundation--that is, at the kitchen floor?
+
+So Mr. Morgan and his employer conversed as the latter's toilet
+proceeded. There had been a drawing-room on the day previous, and
+the major read among the presentations that of Lady Clavering by Lady
+Rockminster, and of Miss Amory by her mother Lady Clavering; and in a
+further part of the paper their dresses were described, with a precision
+and in a jargon which will puzzle and amuse the antiquary of future
+generations. The sight of these names carried Pendennis back to the
+country.
+
+"How long have the Claverings been in London?" he asked: "pray, Morgan,
+have you seen any of their people?"
+
+"Sir Francis have sent away his foring man, sir," Mr. Morgan replied;
+"and have took a friend of mine as own man, sir. Indeed, he applied on
+my reckmendation. You may recklect Towler, sir--tall, red-aired man--but
+dyes his air. Was groom of the chambers in Lord Levant's famly, till his
+lordship broke hup. It's a fall for Towler, sir; but pore men can't be
+particklar," said the valet, with a pathetic voice.
+
+"Devilish hard on Towler, by gad!" said the major, amused, "and not
+pleasant for Lord Levant--he, he!"
+
+"Always knew it was coming, sir. I spoke to you of it Michaelmas was
+four years: when her ladyship put the diamonds in pawn. It was Towler,
+sir, took 'em in two cabs to Dobree's; and a good deal of the plate went
+the same way. Don't you remember seeing of it at Blackwall, with the
+Levant arms and coronick, and Lord Levant settn oppsit to it at the
+Marquis of Steyne's dinner? Beg your pardon; did I cut you, sir?"
+
+Morgan was now operating upon the major's chin; he continued the
+theme while stropping the skillful razor. "They've took a house in
+Grosvenor-place, and are coming out strong, sir. Her ladyship's going
+to give three parties, besides a dinner a week, sir. Her fortune won't
+stand it--can't stand it."
+
+"Gad, she had a devilish good cook when I was at Fairoaks," the major
+said, with very little compassion for the widow Amory's fortune.
+
+"Mirobblan was his name, sir; Mirobblan's gone away, sir," Morgan said;
+and the major, this time, with hearty sympathy said, "he was devilish
+sorry to lose him."
+
+"There's been a tremenjuous row about that Mosseer Mirobblan," Morgan
+continued. "At a ball at Baymouth, sir, bless his impadence, he
+challenged Mr. Harthur to fight a jewel, sir, which Mr. Harthur was very
+near knocking him down, and pitchin' him out awinder, and serve him
+right; but Chevalier Strong, sir, came up and stopped the shindy--I beg
+pardon, the holtercation, sir--them French cooks has as much pride and
+hinsolence as if they was real gentlemen."
+
+"I heard something of that quarrel," said the major; "but Mirobolant was
+not turned off for that?"
+
+"No, sir; that affair, sir, Mr. Harthur forgave it him, and beaved most
+handsome, was hushed hup: it was about Miss Hamory, sir, that he ad his
+dismissal. Those French fellers, they fancy every body is in love with
+'em; and he climbed up the large grape vine to her winder, sir, and was
+a trying to get in, when he was caught, sir; and Mr. Strong came out,
+and they got the garden-engine and played on him, and there was no end
+of a row, sir."
+
+"Confound his impudence! You don't mean to say Miss Amory encouraged
+him," cried the major, amazed at a peculiar expression in Mr. Morgan's
+countenance.
+
+Morgan resumed his imperturbable demeanor. "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 piano, 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 Fribsby,
+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 Fribsby; and he was nearly
+shot by the keeper in the park."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In the course of that very day, it chanced that the major had stationed
+himself in the great window of Bays's Club, in St. James's-street, at
+the hour in the afternoon when you see a half score of respectable old
+bucks similarly recreating themselves (Bays's is rather an old-fashioned
+place of resort now, and many of its members more than middle-aged; but
+in the time of the prince regent, these old fellows occupied the same
+window, and were some of the very greatest dandies in this empire);
+Major Pendennis was looking from the great window, and spied his nephew
+Arthur walking down the street in company with his friend Mr. Popjoy.
+
+"Look!" said Popjoy to Pen, as they passed, "did you ever pass Bays's
+at four o'clock, without seeing that collection of old fogies? It's a
+regular museum. They ought to be cast in wax, and set up at Madame
+Tussaud's--"
+
+"--In a chamber of old horrors by themselves," Pen said, laughing.
+
+"--In the chamber of horrors! Gad, doosid good!" Pop cried. "They
+_are_ old rogues, most of 'em, and no mistake. There's old Blondel;
+there's my Uncle Colchicum, the most confounded old sinner in Europe;
+there's--hullo! there's somebody rapping the window, and nodding at us."
+
+"It's my uncle, the major," said Pen. "Is he an old sinner, too?"
+
+"Notorious old rogue," Pop said, wagging his head. ("Notowious old
+wogue," he pronounced the words, thereby rendering them much more
+emphatic.) "He's beckoning you in; he wants to speak to you."
+
+"Come in too," Pen said.
+
+"--Can't," replied the other. "Cut uncle Col. two years ago, about
+Mademoiselle Frangipane--Ta, ta," and the young sinner took leave
+of Pen, and the club of the elder criminals, and sauntered into
+Blacquiere's, an adjacent establishment, frequented by reprobates of
+his own age.
+
+Colchicum, Blondel, and the senior bucks had just been conversing about
+the Clavering family, whose appearance in London had formed the subject
+of Major Pendennis's morning conversation with his valet. Mr. Blondel's
+house was next to that of Sir Francis Clavering, in Grosvenor-place:
+giving very good dinners himself, he had remarked some activity in his
+neighbor's kitchen. Sir Francis, indeed, had a new chef, who had come in
+more than once, and dressed Mr. Blondel's dinner for him; that gentleman
+having only a remarkably expert female artist permanently engaged in his
+establishment, and employing such chiefs of note as happened to be free
+on the occasion of his grand banquets. "They go to a devilish expense
+and see devilish bad company as yet, I hear," Mr. Blondel said; "they
+scour the streets, by gad, to get people to dine with 'em. Champignon
+says it breaks his heart to serve up a dinner to their society. What a
+shame it is that those low people should have money at all," cried Mr.
+Blondel, whose grandfather had been a reputable leather-breeches maker,
+and whose father had lent money to the princes.
+
+"I wish I had fallen in with the widow myself," sighed Lord Colchicum,
+"and not been laid up with that confounded gout at Leghorn. I would have
+married the woman myself. I'm told she has six hundred thousand pounds
+in the Threes."
+
+"Not _quite_ so much as that. I knew her family in India," Major
+Pendennis said. "I knew her family in India; her father was an
+enormously rich old indigo-planter; know all about her: Clavering has
+the next estate to ours in the country. Ha! there's my nephew walking
+with--"
+
+"With mine: the infernal young scamp!" said Lord Colchicum, glowering at
+Popjoy out of his heavy eyebrows; and he turned away from the window as
+Major Pendennis tapped upon it.
+
+The major was in high good-humor. 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 their 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 the 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, while that gentleman's other wing was engaged
+with his grace's right), and he wished all Gray Friar's School, all
+Oxbridge University, all Paternoster Row and the temple, and Laura and
+his mother at Fairoaks, could be standing on each side of the street,
+to see the meeting between him and his uncle and the most famous duke
+in Christendom.
+
+"How do, Pendennis? fine day," were his grace's remarkable words, and
+with a nod of his august head he passed on--in a blue frock coat and
+spotless white duck trowsers, in a white stock, with a shining buckle
+behind.
+
+Old Pendennis, whose likeness to his grace has been remarked, began to
+imitate him unconsciously, after they had parted, speaking with curt
+sentences, after the manner of the great man. We have all of us, no
+doubt, met with more than one military officer who has so imitated the
+manner of a certain great captain of the age; and has, perhaps, changed
+his own natural character and disposition, because Fate had endowed him
+with an aquiline nose. In like manner have we not seen many another man
+pride himself on having a tall forehead and a supposed likeness to Mr.
+Canning? many another go through life swelling with self-gratification
+on account of an imagined resemblance (we say "imagined," because that
+any body 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
+lately upon poor Tom Bickerstaff, who having no more imagination
+than Mr. Joseph Hume, looked in the glass and fancied himself like
+Shakspeare? shaved his forehead so as farther to resemble the immortal
+bard, wrote tragedies incessantly, and died perfectly crazy--actually
+perished of his forehead! These or similar freaks of vanity most people
+who have frequented the world must have seen in their experience. Pen
+laughed in his roguish sleeve at the manner in which his uncle began to
+imitate the great man from whom they had just parted: but Mr. Pen was as
+vain in his own way, perhaps, as the elder gentleman, and strutted, with
+a very consequential air of his own, by the major's side.
+
+"Yes, my dear boy," said the old bachelor, as they sauntered through
+the Green Park, where many poor children were disporting happily, and
+errand boys were playing at toss-halfpenny, and black sheep were
+grazing in the sunshine, and an actor was learning his part on a bench,
+and nursery maids and their charges sauntered here and there, and
+several couples were walking in a leisurely manner; "yes, depend on it,
+my boy, for a poor man, there is nothing like having good acquaintances.
+Who were those men, with whom you saw me in the bay-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 up-stairs, at Bays's,
+playing piquet 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 to half-past seven, when he dresses for dinner."
+
+"A very pious manner of spending his time," Pen said, laughing, and
+thinking that his uncle was falling into the twaddling state.
+
+"Gad, sir, that is not the question. A man of his estate may employ
+his time as he chooses. When you are a baronet, a county member, with
+ten thousand acres of the best land in Cheshire, and such a place as
+Trumpington (though he never goes there), you may do as you like."
+
+"And so that was his brougham, sir, was it?" the nephew said, with
+almost a sneer.
+
+"His brougham--O ay, yes!--and that brings me back to my point--revenons
+à nos moutons. Yes, begad! revenons à nos 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 Gray Friars, hey? I'm of
+the opinion of my old friend Leech, of the Forty-fourth; and a devilish
+good shrewd fellow he was, as most Scotchmen are. Gad, sir, Leech used
+to say, 'He was so poor that he couldn't afford to know a poor man.'"
+
+"You don't act up to your principles, uncle," Pen said, good-naturedly.
+
+"Up to my principles; how, sir?" the major asked, rather testily.
+
+"You would have cut me in Saint James's-street, sir," Pen said, "were
+your practice not more benevolent than your theory; you who live with
+dukes and magnates of the land, and would take no notice of a poor devil
+like me." By which speech we may see that Mr. Pen was getting on in the
+world, and could flatter as well as laugh in his sleeve.
+
+Major Pendennis was appeased instantly, and very much pleased. He tapped
+affectionately his nephew's arm on which he was leaning, and said,
+"You, sir, you are my flesh and blood! Hang it, sir, I've been very
+proud of you and very fond of you, but for your confounded follies
+and extravagancies, and wild oats, sir, which I hope you've sown. Yes,
+begad! I hope you've sown 'em; I hope you've sown 'em, begad! My object,
+Arthur, is to make a man of you, to see you well placed in the world,
+as becomes one of your name and my own, sir. You have got yourself a
+little reputation by your literary talents, which I am very far from
+undervaluing, though in my time, begad, poetry and genius and that sort
+of thing were devilish disreputable. There was poor Byron, for instance,
+who ruined himself, and contracted the worst habits by living with
+poets and newspaper-writers, and people of that kind. But the times are
+changed now--there's a run upon literature--clever fellows get into the
+best houses in town, begad! _Tempora mutantur_, sir; and by Jove, I
+suppose whatever is is right, as Shakspeare says."
+
+Pen did not think fit to tell his uncle who was the author who had made
+use of that remarkable phrase, and here descending from the Green Park,
+the pair made their way into Grosvenor-place, and to the door of the
+mansion occupied there by Sir Francis and Lady Clavering.
+
+The dining-room shutters of this handsome mansion were freshly gilded;
+the knockers shone gorgeous upon the newly-painted door; the balcony
+before the drawing-room bloomed with a portable garden of the most
+beautiful plants, and with flowers, white, and pink, and scarlet; the
+windows of the upper room (the sacred chamber and dressing-room of my
+lady, doubtless), and even a pretty little casement of the third story,
+which keen-sighted Mr. Pen presumed to belong to the virgin bed-room of
+Miss Blanche Amory, were similarly adorned with floral ornaments, and
+the whole exterior face of the house presented the most brilliant aspect
+which fresh new paint, shining plate glass, newly cleaned bricks, and
+spotless mortar, could offer to the beholder.
+
+"How Strong must have rejoiced in organizing all this splendor," thought
+Pen. He recognized the chevalier's genius in the magnificence before
+him.
+
+"Lady Clavering is going out for her drive," the major said. "We
+shall only have to leave our pasteboards, Arthur." He used the word
+"pasteboards," having heard it from some of the ingenuous youth of
+the nobility about town, and as a modern phrase suited to Pen's tender
+years. Indeed, as the two gentlemen reached the door, a landau drove up,
+a magnificent yellow carriage, lined with brocade or satin of a faint
+cream color, drawn by wonderful gray 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 splendor 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
+grays--a young man still, but of a solemn countenance, with a laced
+waistcoat and buckles in his shoes--little buckles, unlike those which
+John and Jeames, the footmen, wear, and which we know are large, and
+spread elegantly over the foot.
+
+One of the leaves of the hall door was opened, and John--one of the
+largest of his race--was leaning against the door pillar, with his
+ambrosial hair powdered, his legs crossed; beautiful, silk-stockinged;
+in his hand his cane, gold-headed, _dolichoskion_. Jeames was invisible,
+but near at hand, waiting in the hall, with the gentleman who does not
+wear livery, and ready to fling down the roll of hair-cloth over which
+her ladyship was to step to her carriage. These things and men, the
+which to tell of demands time, are seen in the glance of a practiced
+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, and two
+ladies, attired in the highest style of fashion, and accompanied by a
+third, who carried a Blenheim spaniel, yelping in a light blue ribbon,
+came forth to ascend the carriage.
+
+Miss Amory was the first to enter, which she did with aerial lightness,
+and took the place which she liked best. Lady Clavering next followed,
+but her ladyship was more mature of age and heavy of foot, and one of
+those feet, attired in a green satin boot, with some part of a stocking,
+which was very fine, whatever the ankle might be which it encircled,
+might be seen swaying on the carriage-step, as her ladyship leaned for
+support on the arm of the unbending Jeames, by the enraptured observer
+of female beauty who happened to be passing at the time of this imposing
+ceremonial.
+
+The Pendennises, senior and junior, beheld those charms as they came
+up to the door--the major looking grave and courtly, and Pen somewhat
+abashed at the carriage and its owners; for he thought of sundry little
+passages at Clavering, which made his heart beat rather quick.
+
+At that moment Lady Clavering, looking round, saw the pair--she was on
+the first carriage-step, and would have been in the vehicle in another
+second, but she gave a start backward (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-colored
+gloves, the good-natured woman warmly greeted the major and his nephew.
+
+"Come in both of you. Why haven't you been before? Get out, Blanche,
+and come and see your old friends. O, I'm so glad to see you. We've been
+waitin and waitin for you ever so long. Come in, luncheon ain't gone
+down," cried out this hospitable lady, squeezing Pen's hand in both hers
+(she had dropped the major's after a brief wrench of recognition), and
+Blanche, casting up her eyes toward the chimneys, descended from the
+carriage presently, with a timid, blushing, appealing look, and gave a
+little hand to Major Pendennis.
+
+The companion with the spaniel looked about irresolute, and doubting
+whether she should not take Fido his airing; but she too turned right
+about face and entered the house, after Lady Clavering, her daughter,
+and the two gentlemen. And the carriage, with the prancing grays, was
+left unoccupied, save by the coachman in the silver wig.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+IN WHICH THE SYLPH REAPPEARS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 ciphers 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 favorite, an extraordinary man, who had, it was said,
+embraced Mohammedanism, and undergone a thousand wild and perilous
+adventures, was at present in this country, trying to negotiate with the
+Begum Clavering, the sale of the Nawaub's celebrated nose-ring diamond,
+"the light of the Dewan."
+
+Under the title of the Begum, Lady Clavering's fame began to spread in
+London before she herself descended upon the capital, and as it has
+been the boast of De Lolme, 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 her wealth
+he merits to be. This fact shows our British independence and honest
+feeling--our higher orders are not such mere haughty aristocrats as the
+ignorant represent them: on the contrary, if a man have money they will
+hold out their hands to him, eat his dinners, dance at his balls, marry
+his daughters, or give their own lovely girls to his sons, as affably as
+your commonest roturier would do.
+
+As he had superintended the arrangements of the country mansion, our
+friend, the Chevalier Strong, gave the benefit of his taste and advice
+to the fashionable London upholsterers, who prepared the town house
+for the reception of the Clavering family. In the decoration of this
+elegant abode, honest Strong's soul rejoiced as much as if he had been
+himself its proprietor. He hung and re-hung the pictures, he studied the
+positions of sofas, he had interviews with wine merchants and purveyors
+who were to supply the new establishment; and at the same time the
+baronet's factotum and confidential friend took the opportunity of
+furnishing his own chambers, and stocking his snug little cellar: his
+friends complimented him upon the neatness of the former; and the select
+guests who came in to share Strong's cutlet now found a bottle of
+excellent claret to accompany the meal. The chevalier was now, as he
+said, "in clover:" he had a very comfortable set of rooms in Shepherd's
+Inn. He was waited on by a former Spanish Legionary and comrade of his
+whom he had left at a breach of a Spanish fort, and found at a crossing
+in Tottenham-court Road, and whom he had elevated to the rank of
+body-servant to himself and to the chum who, at present, shared his
+lodgings. This was no other than the favorite of the Nawaub of Lucknow,
+the valiant Colonel Altamont.
+
+No man was less curious, or at any rate, more discreet, than Ned Strong,
+and he did not care to inquire into the mysterious connection which,
+very soon after their first meeting at Baymouth, was established between
+Sir Francis Clavering and the envoy of the Nawaub. The latter knew
+some secret regarding the former, which put Clavering into his power,
+somehow; and Strong, who knew that his patron's early life had been
+rather irregular, and that his career with his regiment in India had not
+been brilliant, supposed that the colonel, who swore he knew Clavering
+well at Calcutta, had some hold upon Sir Francis, to which the latter
+was forced to yield. In truth, Strong had long understood Sir Francis
+Clavering's character, as that of a man utterly weak in purpose, in
+principle, and intellect, a moral and physical trifler and poltroon.
+
+With poor Clavering, his excellency had had one or two interviews after
+their Baymouth meeting, the nature of which conversations the baronet
+did not confide to Strong: although he sent letters to Altamont by that
+gentleman, who was his embassador in all sorts of affairs. On one of
+these occasions the Nawaub's envoy must have been in an exceeding
+ill-humor; for he crushed Clavering's letter in his hand, and said with
+his own particular manner and emphasis:
+
+"A hundred, be hanged. I'll have no more letters nor no more
+shilly-shally. Tell Clavering I'll have a thousand, or by Jove I'll
+split, and burst him all to atoms. Let him give me a thousand, and
+I'll go abroad, and I give you my honor 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 12 o'clock,
+as sure as my name's what it is, I'll have a paragraph in the newspaper
+on Saturday, and next week I'll blow up the whole concern."
+
+Strong carried back these words to his principal, on whom their effect
+was such that actually on the day and hour appointed, the chevalier made
+his appearance once more at Altamont's hotel at Baymouth, with the sum
+of money required. Altamont was a gentleman, he said, and behaved as
+such; he paid his bill at the inn, and the Baymouth paper announced his
+departure on a foreign tour. Strong saw him embark at Dover. "It must
+be forgery at the very least," he thought, "that has put Clavering into
+this fellow's power, and the colonel has got the bill."
+
+Before the year was out, however, this happy country saw the colonel
+once more upon its shores. A confounded run on the red had finished him,
+he said, at Baden Baden: no gentleman could stand against a color
+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
+debtors' jail in Germany, for life, so that he might never be troubled
+again.
+
+These sums for the colonel, Sir Francis was obliged to raise without
+the knowledge of his wife; for though perfectly liberal, nay, sumptuous
+in her expenditure, the good lady had inherited a tolerable aptitude
+for business along with the large fortune of her father, Snell, and gave
+to her husband only such a handsome allowance as she thought befitted
+a gentleman of his rank. Now and again she would give him a present,
+or pay an outstanding gambling debt; but she always exacted a pretty
+accurate account of the moneys so required; and respecting the subsidies
+to the colonel, Clavering fairly told Strong that he _couldn't_ speak to
+his wife.
+
+Part of Mr. Strong's business in life was to procure this money and
+other sums, for his patron. And in the chevalier's apartments, in
+Shepherd's Inn, many negotiations took place between gentlemen of the
+moneyed world and Sir Francis Clavering; and many valuable bank notes
+and pieces of stamped paper were passed between them. When a man has
+been in the habit of getting in debt from his early youth, and of
+exchanging his promises to pay at twelve months against present sums
+of money, it would seem as if no piece of good fortune ever permanently
+benefited him: a little while after the advent of prosperity, the
+money-lender is pretty certain to be in the house again, and the bills
+with the old signature in the market. Clavering found it more convenient
+to see these gentry at Strong's lodgings than at his own; and such was
+the chevalier's friendship for the baronet, that although he did not
+possess a shilling of his own, his name might be seen as the drawer of
+almost all the bills of exchange which Sir Francis Clavering accepted.
+Having drawn Clavering's bills, he got them discounted "in the city."
+When they became due he parleyed with the bill-holders, and gave
+them installments 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 gayety and plenty, and going to sleep
+comfortably; with a bailiff always more or less near, and a rope of debt
+round their necks--the which trifling inconveniences, Ned Strong, the
+old soldier, bore very easily.
+
+But we shall have another opportunity of making acquaintance with these
+and some other interesting inhabitants of Shepherd's Inn, and in the
+mean while are keeping Lady Clavering and her friends too long waiting
+on the door steps of Grosvenor-place.
+
+First they went into the gorgeous dining-room, fitted up, Lady Clavering
+couldn't for goodness gracious tell why, in the middle-aged style,
+"unless," said her good-natured ladyship, laughing, "because me and
+Clavering are middle-aged people;" and here they were offered the
+copious remains of the luncheon of which Lady Clavering and Blanche had
+just partaken. When nobody was near, our little Sylphide, who scarcely
+ate at dinner more than the six grains of rice of Amina, the friend of
+the Ghouls in the Arabian Nights, was most active with her knife and
+fork, and consumed a very substantial portion of mutton cutlets: in
+which piece of hypocrisy it is believed she resembled other young ladies
+of fashion. Pen and his uncle declined the refection, but they admired
+the dining-room with fitting compliments, and pronounced it "very
+chaste," that being the proper phrase. There were, indeed, high-backed
+Dutch chairs of the seventeenth century; there was a sculptured carved
+buffet of the sixteenth; there was a sideboard robbed out of the carved
+work of a church in the Low Countries, and a large brass cathedral
+lamp over the round oak table; there were old family portraits from
+Wardour-street and tapestry from France, bits of armor, double-handed
+swords and battle-axes made of _carton-pierre_, looking-glasses,
+statuettes of saints, and Dresden china--nothing, in a word, could be
+chaster. Behind the dining-room was the library, fitted with busts and
+books all of a size, and wonderful easy chairs, and solemn bronzes in
+the severe classic style. Here it was that, guarded by double doors, Sir
+Francis smoked cigars, and read "Bell's Life in London," and went to
+sleep after dinner, when he was not smoking over the billiard-table at
+his clubs, or punting at the gambling-houses in Saint James's.
+
+But what could equal the chaste splendor of the drawing-rooms? the
+carpets were so magnificently fluffy that your feet 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, marqueterie-tables covered with marvelous
+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 mantle-piece--there
+was, in a word, every thing 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 every body who saw Lady Clavering's
+reception-rooms, was forced to confess that they were most elegant; and
+that the prettiest rooms in London--Lady Harley Quin's, Lady Hanway
+Wardour's, or Mrs. Hodge-Podgson's own, the great Railroad Croesus'
+wife, were not fitted up with a more consummate "chastity."
+
+Poor Lady Clavering, meanwhile, knew little regarding these things, and
+had a sad want of respect for the splendors around her. "I only know
+they cost a precious deal of money, major," she said to her guest, "and
+that I don't advise you to try one of them gossamer gilt chairs: I came
+down on one the night we gave our second dinner party. Why didn't you
+come and see us before? We'd have asked you to it."
+
+"You would have liked to see mamma break a chair, wouldn't you, Mr.
+Pendennis?" dear Blanche said, with a sneer. She was angry because Pen
+was talking and laughing with mamma, because mamma had made a number of
+blunders in describing the house--for a hundred other good reasons.
+
+"I should like to have been by to give Lady Clavering my arm if she had
+need of it," Pen answered, with a bow and a blush.
+
+"_Quel preux chevalier!_" cried the Sylphide, tossing up her little
+head.
+
+"I have a fellow-feeling with those who fall, remember," Pen said. "I
+suffered myself very much from doing so once."
+
+"And you went home to Laura to console you," said Miss Amory.
+
+Pen winced. He did not like the remembrance of the consolation which
+Laura had given to him, nor was he very well pleased to find that his
+rebuff in that quarter was known to the world; so as he had nothing to
+say in reply, he began to be immensely interested in the furniture round
+about him, and to praise Lady Clavering's taste with all his might.
+
+"Me, don't praise me," said honest Lady Clavering, "it's all the
+upholsterer's doings and Captain Strong's, they did it all while we was
+at the Park--and--and--Lady Rockminster has been here and says the
+salongs are very well," said Lady Clavering, with an air and tone of
+great deference.
+
+"My cousin Laura has been staying with her," Pen said.
+
+"It's not the dowager: it is _the_ Lady Rockminster."
+
+"Indeed!" cried Major Pendennis, when he heard this great name of
+fashion "if you have her ladyship's approval, Lady Clavering, you can
+not be far wrong. No, no, you can not be far wrong. Lady Rockminster,
+I should say, Arthur, is the very center of the circle of fashion and
+taste. The rooms _are_ beautiful, indeed!" and the major's voice hushed
+as he spoke of this great lady, and he looked round and surveyed the
+apartments awfully and respectfully, as if he had been at church.
+
+"Yes, Lady Rockminster has took us up," said Lady Clavering.
+
+"Taken us up, mamma," cried Blanche, in a shrill voice.
+
+"Well, taken us up, then," said my lady; "it's very kind of her, and
+I dare say we shall like it when we git used to it, only at first one
+don't fancy being took--well, taken up, at all. She is going to give our
+balls for us; and wants to invite all our dinners. But I won't stand
+that. I will have my old friends and I won't let her send all the cards
+out, and sit mum at the head of my own table. You must come to me,
+Arthur, and major--come, let me see, on the 14th. It ain't one of our
+grand dinners, Blanche," she said, looking round at her daughter, who
+bit her lips and frowned very savagely for a Sylphide.
+
+The major, with a smile and a bow, said he would much rather come to a
+quiet meeting than to a grand dinner. He had had enough of those large
+entertainments, and preferred the simplicity of the home circle.
+
+"I always think a dinner's the best the second day," said Lady Clavering,
+thinking to mend her first speech. "On the 14th we'll be quite a snug
+little party;" at which second blunder, Miss Blanche clasped her hands
+in despair, and said, "O, mamma, _vous êtes 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
+any thing better should offer, he accepted with the blandest air. As for
+Pen, he was not a diner-out of thirty years' standing as yet, and the
+idea of a fine feast in a fine house was still perfectly welcome to him.
+
+"What was that pretty little quarrel which engaged itself between your
+worship and Miss Amory?" the major asked of Pen, as they walked away
+together. "I thought you used to be _au mieux_ in that quarter."
+
+"Used to be," answered Pen, with a dandified air, "is a vague phrase
+regarding a woman. Was and is are two very different terms, sir, as
+regards women's hearts especially."
+
+"Egad, they change as we do," cried the elder. "When we took the Cape of
+Good Hope, I recollect there was a lady who talked of 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 underbred; 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 follow, is ten thousand pound? I would
+scarcely pay that girl's milliner's bill with the interest of the
+money."
+
+"You seem to be a connoisseur in millinery, uncle," Pen said.
+
+"I was, sir, I was," replied the senior; "and the old war-horse, you
+know, never hears the sound of a trumpet, but he begins to he, he!--you
+understand;" and he gave a killing though somewhat superannuated leer
+and bow to a carriage that passed them, and entered the Park.
+
+"Lady Catherine Martingale's carriage," he said; "mons'ous fine
+girls the daughters, though, gad, I remember their mother a thousand
+times handsomer. No, Arthur, my dear fellow, with your person and
+expectations, you ought to make a good coup in marriage some day or
+other; and though I wouldn't have this repeated at Fairoaks, you rogue,
+ha! ha! a reputation for a little wickedness, and for being an _homme
+dangereux_, don't hurt a young fellow with the women. They like it,
+sir--they hate a milksop ... young men must be young men, you know. But
+for marriage," continued the veteran moralist, "that is a very different
+matter. Marry a woman with money. I've told you before, it is as easy to
+get a rich wife as a poor one; and a doosed deal more comfortable to sit
+down to a well-cooked dinner, with your little entrées nicely served,
+than to have nothing but a damned cold leg of mutton between you and
+your wife. We shall have a good dinner on the 14th, when we dine with
+Sir Francis Clavering: stick to that, my boy, in your relations with the
+family. Cultivate 'em, but keep 'em for dining. No more of your youthful
+follies and nonsense about love in a cottage."
+
+"It must be a cottage with a double coach-house, a cottage of gentility,
+sir," said Pen, quoting the hackneyed ballad of the Devil's Walk:
+but his uncle did not know that poem (though, perhaps, he might be
+leading Pen upon the very promenade in question), and went on with his
+philosophical remarks, very much pleased with the aptness of the pupil
+to whom he addressed them. Indeed Arthur Pendennis was a clever fellow,
+who took his color very readily from his neighbor, and found the
+adaptation only too easy.
+
+Warrington, the grumbler, growled out that Pen was becoming such a
+puppy, that soon there would be no bearing him. But the truth is, the
+young man's success and dashing manners pleased his elder companion. He
+liked to see Pen gay and spirited, and brimful of health, and life, and
+hope; as a man who has long since left off being amused with clown and
+harlequin, still gets a pleasure in watching a child at a pantomime.
+Mr. Pen's former sulkiness disappeared with his better fortune: and he
+bloomed as the sun began to shine upon him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+IN WHICH COLONEL ALTAMONT APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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----d house-steward, as he irreverently
+called Strong. But Mr. Welbore Welbore, Clavering's country neighbor 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 whispered to Pen, who regarded
+her with eyes of evident admiration, that he considered her "a stunner."
+She chose to be very gracious to Arthur upon this day, and held out her
+hand most cordially, and talked about dear Fairoaks, and asked for
+dear Laura and his mother, and said she was longing to go back to the
+country, and in fact, was entirely simple, affectionate, and artless.
+
+Harry Foker thought he had never seen any body so amiable and
+delightful. Not accustomed much to the society of ladies, and ordinarily
+being dumb in their presence, he found that he could speak before Miss
+Amory, and became uncommonly lively and talkative, even before the
+dinner was announced and the party descended to the lower rooms. He
+would have longed to give his arm to the fair Blanche, and conduct her
+down the broad carpeted stair; but she fell to the lot of Pen upon this
+occasion, Mr. Foker being appointed to escort Mrs. Welbore Welbore, in
+consequence of his superior rank as an earl's grandson.
+
+But though he was separated from the object of his desire during the
+passage down stairs, the delighted Foker found himself by Miss Amory's
+side at the dinner-table, and flattered himself that he had maneuvered
+very well in securing that happy place. It may be that the move was not
+his, but that it was made by another person. Blanche had thus the two
+young men, one on each side of her, and each tried to render himself
+gallant and agreeable.
+
+Foker's mamma, from her place, surveying her darling boy, was surprised
+at his vivacity. Harry talked constantly to his fair neighbor about the
+topics of the day.
+
+"Seen Taglioni in the Sylphide, Miss Amory? Bring me that souprame of
+Volile again, if you please (this was addressed to the attendant near
+him), very good: can't think where the souprames come from; what becomes
+of the legs of the fowls, I wonder? She's clipping in the Sylphide,
+ain't she?" and he began very kindly to hum the pretty air which
+pervades that prettiest of all ballets, now faded into the past with
+that most beautiful and gracious of all dancers? Will the young folks
+ever see any thing so charming, any thing so classic, any thing like
+Taglioni?
+
+"Miss Amory is a Sylph herself," said Mr. Pen.
+
+"What a delightful tenor voice you have, Mr. Foker," said the young
+lady. "I am sure you have been well taught. I sing a little myself;
+I should like to sing with you."
+
+Pen remembered that words very similar had been addressed to himself by
+the young lady, and that she had liked to sing with him in former days.
+And sneering within himself, he wondered with how many other gentlemen
+she had sung duets since his time? But he did not think fit to put this
+awkward question aloud; and only said, with the very tenderest air which
+he could assume, "I should like to hear you sing again, Miss Blanche.
+I never heard a voice I liked so well as yours, I think."
+
+"I thought you liked Laura's," said Miss Blanche.
+
+"Laura's is a contralto: and that voice is very often out, you know,"
+Pen said, bitterly. "I have heard a great deal of music in London," he
+continued. "I'm tired of those professional people--they sing too loud,
+or I have grown too old or too blasé. One grows old very soon in London,
+Miss Amory. And like all old fellows, I only care for the songs I heard
+in my youth."
+
+"I like English music best. I don't care for foreign songs much. Get me
+some saddle of mutton," said Mr. Foker.
+
+"I adore English ballads, of all things," said Miss Amory.
+
+"Sing me one of the old songs after dinner, will you?" said Pen, with an
+imploring voice.
+
+"Shall I sing you an English song after dinner?" asked the Sylphide,
+turning to Mr. Foker. "I will, if you will promise to come up soon," and
+she gave him a perfect broadside of her eyes.
+
+"_I'll_ come up after dinner, fast enough," he said, simply. "I don't
+care about much wine afterward--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 humor, 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 humor. 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 some little attention paid to him: her politeness to Mr. Foker was
+perhaps a little more encouraging than her kindness to Arthur; but the
+benevolent little creature did her best to make both the gentlemen
+happy. Foker caught her last glance as she rushed out of the door; that
+bright look passed over Mr. Strong's broad white waistcoat, and shot
+straight at Harry Foker's. The door closed on the charmer: he sate down
+with a sigh, and swallowed a bumper of claret.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the dinner at which Pen and his uncle took their places was not one
+of our grand parties, it had been served at a considerably earlier hour
+than those ceremonial banquets of the London season, which custom has
+ordained shall scarcely take place before nine o'clock; and, the company
+being small, and Miss Blanche anxious to betake herself to her piano in
+the drawing-room, giving constant hints to her mother to retreat--Lady
+Clavering made that signal very speedily, so that it was quite
+daylight yet when the ladies reached the upper apartments, from the
+flower-embroidered balconies of which they could command a view of the
+two parks, of the poor couples and children still sauntering in the one,
+and of the equipages of ladies and the horses of dandies passing through
+the arch of the other. The sun, in a word, had not set behind the elms
+of Kensington Gardens, and was still gilding the statue erected by the
+ladies of England in honor of his grace the Duke of Wellington, when
+Lady Clavering and her female friends left the gentlemen drinking wine.
+
+The windows of the dining-room were opened to let in the fresh air,
+and afforded to the passers-by in the street a pleasant, or, perhaps,
+tantalizing 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, "Mi hi, Jim, shouldn't you like to be there, and have a cut of
+that there pine-apple?"--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 gas-man 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 inward 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 St. James's Park, and the sky above, in
+which a star or two was just beginning to twinkle.
+
+Jeames, with folded legs, leaning against the door-pillar of his
+master's abode, looked forth musingly upon the latter tranquil sight;
+while a spectator, clinging to the railings, examined the former scene.
+Policeman X passing, gave his attention to neither, but fixed it upon
+the individual holding by the railings, and gazing into Sir Francis
+Clavering's dining-room, where Strong was laughing and talking away,
+making the conversation for the party.
+
+The man at the railings was very gorgeously attired with chains,
+jewelry, 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 blood-shot eyes in a manner which no sober hat ever could
+assume. His copious black hair was evidently surreptitious, and his
+whiskers of the Tyrian purple.
+
+As Strong's laughter, following after one of his own _gros mots_, came
+ringing out of window, this gentleman without laughed and sniggered
+in the queerest way likewise, and he slapped his thigh, and winked at
+Jeames pensive in the portico, as much as to say, "Plush, my boy, isn't
+that a good story?"
+
+Jeames's attention had been gradually drawn from the moon in the
+heavens to this sublunary scene; and he was puzzled and alarmed by
+the appearance of the man in shiny boots. "A holtercation," he remarked
+afterward in the servants'-hall--a "holtercation with a feller in the
+streets is never no good; and indeed he was not hired for any such
+purpose." So, having surveyed the man for some time, who went on
+laughing, reeling, nodding his head with tipsy knowingness, Jeames
+looked out of the portico, and softly called "Pleaceman," and beckoned
+to that officer.
+
+X marched up resolute, with one Berlin glove stuck in his belt-side,
+and Jeames simply pointed with his index finger to the individual
+who was laughing against the railings. Not one single word more than
+"Pleaceman," did he say, but stood there in the calm summer evening,
+pointing calmly: a grand sight.
+
+X advanced to the individual and said, "Now, sir, will you have the
+kindness to move hon?"
+
+The individual, who was in perfect good humor, did not appear to hear
+one word which Policeman X uttered, but nodded and waggled his grinning
+head at Strong, until his hat almost fell from his head over the area
+railings.
+
+"Now, sir, move on, do you hear?" cries X, in a much more peremptory
+tone, and he touched the stranger gently with one of the fingers
+inclosed in the gauntlets of the Berlin woof.
+
+He of the many rings instantly started, or rather staggered back, into
+what is called an attitude of self-defense, and in that position began
+the operation which is entitled "squaring" at Policeman X, and showed
+himself brave and warlike, if unsteady. "Hullo! keep your hands off a
+gentleman," he said, with an oath which need not be repeated.
+
+"Move on out of this," said X, "and don't be a blocking up the pavement,
+staring into gentlemen's dining-rooms."
+
+"Not stare--ho, ho!--not stare--that is a good one," replied the other,
+with a satiric laugh and sneer. "Who's to prevent me from staring,
+looking at my friends, if I like? not you, old highlows."
+
+"Friends! I dessay. Move on," answered X.
+
+"If you touch me, I'll pitch into you, I will," roared the other. "I
+tell you I know 'em all--that's Sir Francis Clavering, Baronet, M.P.--I
+know him, and he knows me--and that's Strong, and that's the young chap
+that made the row at the ball. I say, Strong, Strong!"
+
+"It's that d---- Altamont," cried Sir Francis within, with a start and a
+guilty look; and Strong also, with a look of annoyance, got up from the
+table, and ran out to the intruder.
+
+A gentleman in a white waistcoat, running out from a dining-room
+bare-headed, a policeman, and an individual decently attired, engaged in
+almost fistycuffs on the pavement, were enough to make a crowd, even in
+that quiet neighborhood, at half-past eight o'clock in the evening, and
+a small mob began to assemble before Sir Francis Clavering's door. "For
+God's sake, come in," Strong said, seizing his acquaintance's arm. "Send
+for a cab, James, if you please," he added, in an under voice to that
+domestic; and carrying the excited gentleman out of the street, the outer
+door was closed upon him, and the small crowd began to move away.
+
+Mr. Strong had intended to convey the stranger into Sir Francis's
+private sitting-room, where the hats of the male guests were awaiting
+them, and having there soothed his friend by bland conversation, to have
+carried him off as soon as the cab arrived; but the new comer was in a
+great state of wrath at the indignity which had been put upon him, and
+when Strong would have led him into the second door, said, in a tipsy
+voice, "_That_ ain't the door: that's the dining-room door, where the
+drink's going on: and I'll go and have some, by Jove; I'll go and have
+some." At this audacity the butler stood aghast in the hall, and placed
+himself before the door: but it opened behind him, and the master of the
+house made his appearance, with anxious looks.
+
+"I _will_ have some--by ---- I will," the intruder was roaring out, as
+Sir Francis came forward. "Hullo! Clavering, I say I'm come to have some
+wine with you; hay! old boy--hay! old corkscrew? Get us a bottle of the
+yellow seal, you old thief: the very best--a hundred rupees a dozen, and
+no mistake."
+
+The host reflected a moment over his company. There is only Welbore,
+Pendennis, and those two lads, he thought; and with a forced laugh and a
+piteous look, he said, "Well, Altamont, come in. I am very glad to see
+you, I'm sure."
+
+Colonel Altamont, for the intelligent reader has doubtless long ere this
+discovered in the stranger His Excellency the Embassador of the Nawaub
+of Lucknow, reeled into the dining-room, with a triumphant look toward
+Jeames, the footman, which seemed to say, "There, sir, what do you think
+of that? _Now_, am I a gentleman or no?" and sank down into the first
+vacant chair. Sir Francis Clavering timidly stammered out the colonel's
+name to his guest Mr. Welbore Welbore, and his excellency began drinking
+wine forthwith, and gazing round upon the company, now with the most
+wonderful frowns, and anon with the blandest smiles, and hiccupped
+remarks encomiastic of the drink which he was imbibing.
+
+"Very singular man. Has resided long in a native court in India,"
+Strong said, with great gravity, the chevalier's presence of mind never
+deserting him; "in those Indian courts they get very singular habits."
+
+"Very," said Major Pendennis, dryly, and wondering what in goodness'
+name was the company into which he had got.
+
+Mr. Foker was pleased with the new comer. "It's the man who would sing
+the Malay song at the Back-Kitchen," he whispered to Pen. "Try this
+pine, sir," he then said to Colonel Altamont; "it's uncommonly fine."
+
+"Pines! I've seen 'em feed pigs on pines," said the colonel.
+
+"All the Nawaub of Lucknow's pigs are fed on pines," Strong whispered to
+Major Pendennis.
+
+"O, of course," the major answered. Sir Francis Clavering was, in the
+mean while, endeavoring to make an excuse to his brother guest, for the
+new comer's condition, and muttered something regarding Altamont, that
+he was an extraordinary character, very eccentric, very--had Indian
+habits--didn't understand the rules of English society; to which old
+Welbore, a shrewd old gentleman, who drank his wine with great
+regularity, said, "that seemed pretty clear."
+
+Then the colonel seeing Pen's honest face, regarded it for a while with
+as much steadiness as became his condition, and said, "I know you, too,
+young fellow. I remember you. Baymouth ball, by Jingo. Wanted to fight
+the Frenchman. _I_ remember you;" and he laughed, and he squared with
+his fists, and seemed hugely amused in the drunken depths of his mind,
+as these recollections passed, or, rather, reeled across it.
+
+"Mr. Pendennis, you remember Colonel Altamont, at Baymouth?" Strong
+said; upon which Pen, bowing rather stiffly, said, "he had the pleasure
+of remembering that circumstance perfectly."
+
+"_What's_ his name?" cried the colonel. Strong named Mr. Pendennis
+again.
+
+"Pendennis!--Pendennis be hanged!" Altamont roared out, to the surprise
+of every one, and thumping with his fist on the table.
+
+"My name is also Pendennis, sir," said the major, whose dignity was
+exceedingly mortified by the evening's events--that he, Major Pendennis,
+should have been asked to such a party, and that a drunken man should
+have been introduced to it. "My name is Pendennis, and I will be obliged
+to you not to curse it too loudly."
+
+The tipsy man turned round to look at him, and as he looked, it appeared
+as if Colonel Altamont suddenly grew sober. He put his hand across his
+forehead, and in doing so, displaced somewhat the black wig which he
+wore; and his eyes stared fiercely at the major, who, in his turn, like
+a resolute old warrior as he was, looked at his opponent very keenly and
+steadily. At the end of the mutual inspection, Altamont began to button
+up his brass-buttoned coat, and rising up from his chair, suddenly,
+and to the company's astonishment, reeled toward the door, and issued
+from it, followed by Strong: all that the latter heard him utter was,
+"Captain Beak! Captain Beak, by jingo!"
+
+There had not passed above a quarter of an hour from his strange
+appearance to his equally sudden departure. The two young men and
+the baronet's other guest wondered at the scene, and could find no
+explanation for it. Clavering seemed exceeding pale and agitated, and
+turned with looks of almost terror toward Major Pendennis. The latter
+had been eying his host keenly for a moment or two. "Do you know him?"
+asked Sir Francis of the major.
+
+"I am sure I have seen the fellow," the major replied, looking as if
+he, too, was puzzled. "Yes, I have it. He was a deserter from the Horse
+Artillery who got into the Nawaub's service. I remember his face quite
+well."
+
+"Oh!" said Clavering, with a sigh which indicated immense relief of
+mind, and the major looked at him with a twinkle of his sharp old eyes.
+The cab which Strong had desired to be called, drove away with the
+chevalier and Colonel Altamont; coffee was brought to the remaining
+gentlemen, and they went up-stairs to the ladies in the drawing-room,
+Foker declaring confidentially to Pen that "this was the rummest go he
+ever saw," which decision Pen said, laughing, "showed great discrimination
+on Mr. Foker's part."
+
+Then, according to her promise, Miss Amory made music for the young men.
+Foker was enraptured with her performance, and kindly joined in the
+airs which she sang, when he happened to be acquainted with them. Pen
+affected to talk aside with others of the party, but Blanche brought him
+quickly to the piano, by singing some of his own words, those which we
+have given in a previous number, indeed, and which the Sylphide had
+herself, she said, set to music. I don't know whether the air was hers,
+or how much of it was arranged for her by Signor Twankidillo, from whom
+she took lessons; but good or bad, original or otherwise, it delighted
+Mr. Pen, who remained by her side, and turned the leaves now for her
+most assiduously. "Gad! how I wish I could write verses like you, Pen,"
+Foker sighed afterward to his companion. "If I could do 'em, wouldn't I,
+that's all? But I never was a dab at writing, you see, and I'm sorry I
+was so idle when I was at school."
+
+No mention was made before the ladies of the curious little scene which
+had been transacted below stairs; although Pen was just on the point of
+describing it to Miss Amory, when that young lady inquired for Captain
+Strong, who she wished should join her in a duet. But chancing to look
+up toward 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 sat silent for the most part, and appeared to be
+listening to the music, and watching the fair young performer.
+
+The hour of departure having arrived, the major rose, regretting that so
+delightful an evening should have passed away so quickly, and addressed
+a particularly fine compliment to Miss Amory upon her splendid talents
+as a singer. "Your daughter, Lady Clavering," he said to that lady,
+"is a perfect nightingale--a perfect nightingale, begad! I have scarcely
+ever heard any thing equal to her, and her pronunciation of every
+language--begad! of every language--seems to me to be perfect; and the
+best houses in London must open before a young lady who has such
+talents, and, allow an old fellow to say, Miss Amory, such a face."
+
+Blanche was as much astonished by these compliments as Pen was to whom
+his uncle, a little time since, had been speaking in very disparaging
+terms of the Sylph. The major and the two young men walked home
+together, after Mr. Foker had placed his mother in her carriage, and
+procured a light for an enormous cigar.
+
+The young gentleman's company or his tobacco did not appear to be
+agreeable to Major Pendennis, who eyed him askance several times, and
+with a look which plainly indicated that he wished Mr. Foker would
+take his leave; but Foker hung on resolutely to the uncle and nephew,
+even until they came to the former's door in Bury-street, where the
+major wished the lads good-night.
+
+"And I say, Pen," he said, in a confidential whisper, calling his nephew
+back, "mind you make a point of calling in Grosvenor-place to-morrow.
+They've been uncommonly civil: mons'ously civil and kind."
+
+Pen promised and wondered, and the major's door having been closed upon
+him by Morgan, Foker took Pen's arm, and walked with him for some time
+silently, puffing his cigar. At last, when they had reached Charing
+Cross on Arthur's way home to the Temple, Harry Foker relieved himself,
+and broke out with that eulogium upon poetry, and those regrets
+regarding a misspent youth which have just been mentioned. And all the
+way along the Strand, and up to the door of Pen's very staircase, in
+Lamb-court, Temple, young Harry Foker did not cease to speak about
+singing and Blanche Amory.
+
+
+END OF VOL. 1.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Pendennis, Volume 1, by 
+William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF PENDENNIS, VOLUME 1 ***
+
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diff --git a/34922-8.zip b/34922-8.zip
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
+    content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
+<meta content="pg2html (binary v0.18)" name="generator" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of
+    The History of Pendennis, Volume 1: His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy,
+    by William Makepeace Thackeray.
+</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+ body { margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; }
+    p { text-indent:   1em;
+        margin-top:    .75em;
+        font-size:     100%;
+        text-align:    justify;
+        margin-bottom: .75em; }
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { text-align: center; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; }
+    .poem { margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left; }
+    .poem .stanza { margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em; }
+    .poem p     { margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em; }
+    .poem p.i2  { margin-left: 1.5em; }
+    .poem p.i4  { margin-left: 2.5em; }
+    .quote { margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-indent: 0em; }
+    .figure { margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; }
+    .figcap { margin-right: 1em; text-indent: 0em; text-align: left; float:left; clear:left; }
+    span.pagenum { display: none!important; position: absolute; left: 1%; right: 91%; font-size: 8pt; color: gray; background-color: inherit; }
+    p.center { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; }
+    .sc { font-variant: small-caps; }
+    a,img { border: none!important; text-decoration: none!important; }
+</style>
+</head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Pendennis, Volume 1, by 
+William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A History of Pendennis, Volume 1
+       His fortunes and misfortunes, his friends and his greatest enemy
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Release Date: January 11, 2011 [EBook #34922]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF PENDENNIS, VOLUME 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Lee Dawei, David Garcia and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from scans of public domain works at the
+University of Michigan's Making of America collection.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page1" name="page1"></a>[pg 1]</span></p>
+
+<a name="h2H_4_0001" id="h2H_4_0001"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h1>
+    THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS.
+<br />
+    <small>HIS FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES, HIS FRIENDS AND HIS GREATEST ENEMY.</small>
+</h1>
+
+<h2>
+<small>BY</small>
+<br />
+WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.
+</h2>
+
+<h3>
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS ON WOOD BY THE AUTHOR.
+</h3>
+
+<h3>
+<small>IN TWO VOLUMES.</small>
+<br />
+VOL. I.
+</h3>
+
+<p class="center">
+NEW YORK:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+HARPER &amp; BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
+<br />
+329 &amp; 331 PEARL STREET,
+<br />
+FRANKLIN SQUARE.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+1858.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page2" name="page2"></a>[pg 2]</span></p>
+
+<p><!--[Blank Page]--></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page3" name="page3"></a>[pg 3]</span></p>
+
+<a name="h2H_4_0002" id="h2H_4_0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    TO DR. JOHN ELLIOTSON.
+</h2>
+<p class="quote">
+  <span class="sc">My Dear Doctor,</span>
+</p>
+<p class="quote">
+  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>
+<hr />
+<p class="quote">
+  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="quote">
+  Yours, most sincerely and gratefully,
+</p>
+<p class="quote">
+  W. M. THACKERAY.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page4" name="page4"></a>[pg 4]</span></p>
+
+<p><!--[Blank Page]--></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page5" name="page5"></a>[pg 5]</span></p>
+
+<a name="h2H_TOC" id="h2H_TOC"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CONTENTS.
+</h2>
+
+<table border="0" align="center" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr><td>   CHAP.                                                                  </td><td align="right">PAGE </td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;1.&mdash;SHOWS HOW FIRST LOVE MAY INTERRUPT BREAKFAST               </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0001">  9  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;2.&mdash;A PEDIGREE AND OTHER FAMILY MATTERS                        </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0002"> 14  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;3.&mdash;IN WHICH PENDENNIS APPEARS AS A VERY YOUNG MAN INDEED      </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0003"> 30  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;4.&mdash;MRS. HALLER                                                </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0004"> 41  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;5.&mdash;MRS. HALLER AT HOME                                        </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0005"> 49  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;6.&mdash;CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND WAR                                 </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0006"> 62  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;7.&mdash;IN WHICH THE MAJOR MAKES HIS APPEARANCE                    </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0007"> 73  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;8.&mdash;IN WHICH PEN IS KEPT WAITING AT THE DOOR, WHILE THE READER
+          IS INFORMED WHO LITTLE LAURA WAS                                        </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0008"> 81  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;9.&mdash;IN WHICH THE MAJOR OPENS THE CAMPAIGN                      </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0009"> 92  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  10.&mdash;FACING THE ENEMY                                              </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0010"> 99  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  11.&mdash;NEGOTIATION                                                   </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0011">105  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  12.&mdash;IN WHICH A SHOOTING MATCH IS PROPOSED                         </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0012">114  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  13.&mdash;A CRISIS                                                      </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0013">122  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  14.&mdash;IN WHICH MISS FOTHERINGAY MAKES A NEW ENGAGEMENT              </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0014">130  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  15.&mdash;THE HAPPY VILLAGE                                             </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0015">137  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  16.&mdash;MORE STORMS IN THE PUDDLE                                     </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0016">147  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  17.&mdash;WHICH CONCLUDES THE FIRST PART OF THIS HISTORY                </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0017">158  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  18.&mdash;ALMA MATER                                                    </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0018">169  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  19.&mdash;PENDENNIS OF BONIFACE                                         </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0019">178  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  20.&mdash;RAKE'S PROGRESS                                               </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0020">191  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  <span class="pagenum"><a id="page6" name="page6"></a>[pg 6]</span>
+          21.&mdash;FLIGHT AFTER DEFEAT                                           </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0021">201  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  22.&mdash;PRODIGAL'S RETURN                                             </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0022">209  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  23.&mdash;NEW FACES                                                     </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0023">217  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  24.&mdash;A LITTLE INNOCENT                                             </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0024">233  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  25.&mdash;CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND JEALOUSY                               </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0025">243  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  26.&mdash;A HOUSE FULL OF VISITORS                                      </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0026">253  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  27.&mdash;CONTAINS SOME BALL PRACTICING                                 </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0027">265  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  28.&mdash;WHICH IS BOTH QUARRELSOME AND SENTIMENTAL                     </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0028">274  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  29.&mdash;BABYLON                                                       </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0029">287  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  30.&mdash;THE KNIGHTS OF THE TEMPLE                                     </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0030">297  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  31.&mdash;OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCES                                     </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0031">306  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  32.&mdash;IN WHICH THE PRINTER'S DEVIL COMES TO THE DOOR                </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0032">317  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  33.&mdash;WHICH IS PASSED IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF LUDGATE HILL           </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0033">329  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  34.&mdash;IN WHICH THE HISTORY STILL HOVERS ABOUT FLEET STREET          </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0034">339  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  35.&mdash;A DINNER IN THE ROW                                           </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0035">345  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  36.&mdash;THE PALL MALL GAZETTE                                         </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0036">355  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  37.&mdash;WHERE PEN APPEARS IN TOWN AND COUNTRY                         </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0037">361  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  38.&mdash;IN WHICH THE SYLPH REAPPEARS                                  </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0038">376  </a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>  39.&mdash;IN WHICH COLONEL ALTAMONT APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS              </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2HCH0039">384  </a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page7" name="page7"></a>[pg 7]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2H_PREF" id="h2H_PREF"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    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 clap-traps 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
+publishers' 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?
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page8" name="page8"></a>[pg 8]</span>
+
+                                        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 honorable 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
+jail-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&mdash;this is an attempt to describe one of
+them, no better nor worse than most educated men&mdash;even these we can not
+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 <span class="sc">Man</span>. We must drape him, and give him a certain conventional
+simper. Society will not tolerate the Natural in our Art. Many ladies
+have remonstrated, and subscribers left me, because, in the course of
+the story, I described a young man resisting and affected by temptation.
+My object was to say, that he had the passions to feel, and the
+manliness and generosity to overcome them. You will not hear&mdash;it is best
+to know it&mdash;what moves in the real world, what passes in society, in
+the clubs, colleges, newsrooms&mdash;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&mdash;from those whence graver
+writers or thinkers argue, as from that at which the story-teller sits
+as he concludes his labor, and bids his kind reader farewell.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="sc">Kensington</span>, <i>Nov. 26th, 1850</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page9" name="page9"></a>[pg 9]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2H_4_0004" id="h2H_4_0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    PENDENNIS.
+</h2>
+<a name="h2HCH0001" id="h2HCH0001"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER I.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    SHOWS HOW FIRST LOVE MAY INTERRUPT BREAKFAST.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0001"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-009.jpg"><img src="images/i-009-s.png" width="132" height="148"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page10" name="page10"></a>[pg 10]</span>
+
+    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 crows'-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,
+endeavored 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&mdash;by the fire
+and yet near the window&mdash;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 every body, 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 gayly, 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 honor 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page11" name="page11"></a>[pg 11]</span>
+
+ and
+Garter&mdash;the bishop he accepted, because, though the dinner was slow he
+liked to dine with bishops&mdash;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-basin.
+</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
+post-mark. 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>"&mdash;very likely, thought Pendennis, and Steyne's
+dinner to-day&mdash;"I am in the very greatest grief and perplexity. My
+dearest boy, who has been hitherto every thing the fondest mother could
+wish, is grieving me <i>dreadfully</i>. He has formed&mdash;I can hardly write
+it&mdash;a passion, an infatuation,"&mdash;the major grinned&mdash;"for an actress
+who has been performing here. She is at least twelve years older than
+Arthur&mdash;who will not be eighteen till next February&mdash;and the wretched
+boy insists upon marrying her."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Hay! What's making Pendennis swear now?"&mdash;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"&mdash;the major concluded, reading the last words of
+the letter&mdash;"A d&mdash;d pretty business at Fairoaks, Tuesday; now let us
+see what the boy has to say;" and he took the other letter, which
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page12" name="page12"></a>[pg 12]</span>
+
+ 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&mdash;
+</p>
+<p class="quote">
+  "<span class="sc">Fairoaks</span>,
+  "<i>Monday, Midnight</i>.
+</p>
+<p class="quote">
+  "<span class="sc">My dear Uncle</span>,
+</p>
+<p class="quote">
+    "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
+    Theaters Royal Drury Lane and Crow-street, and of the Norwich and
+    Welsh Circuit, I am aware that I make an announcement which can not,
+    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 honorable
+    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 class="quote">
+    "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;&mdash;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 class="quote">
+    "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&mdash;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 class="quote">
+    "I press for a speedy marriage with my Emily&mdash;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 toward
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page13" name="page13"></a>[pg 13]</span>
+
+    Emily&mdash;that at any age she can be any thing 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 class="quote">
+    "Pray come down to us immediately. I am quite confident that&mdash;apart
+    from considerations of fortune&mdash;you will admire and approve of
+    my Emily.
+</p>
+<p class="quote">
+  "Your affectionate Nephew.
+</p>
+<p class="quote">
+  "ARTHUR PENDENNIS, <span class="sc">Jr.</span>"
+</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&mdash;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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page14" name="page14"></a>[pg 14]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0002" id="h2HCH0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER II.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    A PEDIGREE AND OTHER FAMILY MATTERS.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0002"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-014.jpg"><img src="images/i-014-s.png" width="147" height="198"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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&mdash;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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page15" name="page15"></a>[pg 15]</span>
+
+  of Wales
+and Britanny. Pendennis had had a piece of University education too, and
+might have pursued that career with great honor, 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 chair man 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 patronized him, and among 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 bed-room
+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&mdash;"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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page16" name="page16"></a>[pg 16]</span>
+
+  lady
+had grumbled for many a long year, and he slept in the great large bed
+there. He was upward 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&mdash;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&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page17" name="page17"></a>[pg 17]</span>
+</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&mdash;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>
+
+<a name="image-0003"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-017.jpg"><img src="images/i-017-s.png" width="166" height="228"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 up stairs 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page18" name="page18"></a>[pg 18]</span>
+
+                                                     chosen a different
+man&mdash;but she knew, on the other hand, how worthy Pendennis was, how
+prudent, how honorable; 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 courtesy, and asked
+leave to&mdash;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 theaters, 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 Honorable 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>
+<hr />
+<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 endeavor, 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 can not 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 realized 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 forever 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page19" name="page19"></a>[pg 19]</span>
+
+         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 worshiper. 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 endeavored 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&mdash;whom shall we say?&mdash;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 odor
+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 forever swaggering about
+the squire's stables and gardens, and endeavoring 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&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page20" name="page20"></a>[pg 20]</span>
+</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 any body be found rich enough to rent that enormous mansion,
+through the deserted rooms, moldy 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 somber 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
+splendor. 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, every body 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 wo 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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page21" name="page21"></a>[pg 21]</span>
+</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>
+<hr />
+<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
+soldier-like 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 honor 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 favorite 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page22" name="page22"></a>[pg 22]</span>
+
+                                                         pronounced,
+and with perfect truth, to be as fine a lady as any in England, and
+an honor 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 among his circle of acquaintance&mdash;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;&mdash;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
+those happy qualities. During his childhood and youth, the boy thought
+of her as little less than an angel&mdash;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 <i>that</i>?" 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 <i>pas</i> of her, who was only the wife of a medical practitioner. In
+the mean while, this lady moved through the world quite regardless of
+all the comments that were made in her praise or disfavor. 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 neighbors, 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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page23" name="page23"></a>[pg 23]</span>
+
+  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
+worshiped that youth with an ardor 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 any thing 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 ardor. 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 dishonored grave,
+and the like&mdash;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 pick-pockets), 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page24" name="page24"></a>[pg 24]</span>
+
+  whom
+Pendennis was educated, who assumed all the privileges of men long
+before they quitted that seminary. Many of them, for example, smoked
+cigars&mdash;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 theater&mdash;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&mdash;but Pen, a modest and timid youth, rather envied these than
+imitated them as yet. He had not got beyond the theory as yet&mdash;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&mdash;it would be the woman's turn to blush then. Before he was twelve
+years old and while his mother fancied him an angel of candor, little
+Pen had heard talk enough to make him quite awfully wise upon certain
+points&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page25" name="page25"></a>[pg 25]</span>
+
+  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 <span class="greek" title="de">&#x03B4;&#x03B5;</span> <i>and</i>, instead of <span class="greek" title="de">&#x03B4;&#x03B5;</span>
+<i>but</i>, at sixteen years of age is guilty not merely of folly, and
+ignorance, and dullness 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 neighbor. A man who forges on his neighbor 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 dishonored 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>
+
+<a name="image-0004"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-025.jpg"><img src="images/i-025-s.png" width="172" height="176"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, while the master was making this oration, there was a general
+titter behind him in the school-room. 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&mdash;Major
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page26" name="page26"></a>[pg 26]</span>
+
+             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 major, 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 any thing the matter with&mdash;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 post-chaise 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 school-room, 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 gray 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&mdash;a good eh&mdash;property I believe?" asked the other,
+in an offhand way.
+</p>
+<p>
+"H'm&mdash;so so," said the major. Whereupon this colloquy came to an
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page27" name="page27"></a>[pg 27]</span>
+
+  end.
+And Arthur Pendennis got into the post-chaise 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 postillion ominously,
+as much as to say all was over. The gardener's wife came and opened the
+lodge-gates, and let the travelers through, with a silent shake of the
+head. All the blinds were down at Fairoaks&mdash;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 harrier. But Arthur had
+been his father's pride and glory through life, and his name the last
+which John Pendennis had tried to articulate while 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
+up-stairs to his mother. Old John opened the drawing-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 neighborhood held him; on
+what a loss he would be to the magistrates' bench, the county hospital,
+&amp;c. Mrs. Pendennis bore up wonderfully, he said, especially since Master
+Arthur's arrival. The lawyer staid 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. Every thing
+was left unreservedly to her, except in case of a second marriage&mdash;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 every thing 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 afterward with the plate-basket; and
+the next morning brought him the key of the hall clock&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page28" name="page28"></a>[pg 28]</span>
+
+  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 vail
+should be thrown over those sacred emotions of love and grief. The
+maternal passion is a sacred mystery to me. What one sees symbolized
+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 toward 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 <i>storgé</i>,
+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, neighbor, 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 forever, 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.
+And 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 his other
+favorite haunts, all the servants there assembled in great silence with
+their friends, and the laboring men and their wives, and Sally Potter
+who went with the post-bag to Clavering, and the baker's man from
+Clavering&mdash;all there assembled and drinking beer on the melancholy
+occasion&mdash;rose
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page29" name="page29"></a>[pg 29]</span>
+
+               up on his entrance and bowed or courtesied 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
+honor 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 patronized 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 dairy-maid
+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 neighborhood 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 toward the sun, with the motto
+"<i>nec tenui pennâ</i>," 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>
+
+<a name="image-0005"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-029.jpg"><img src="images/i-029-s.png" width="113" height="164"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page30" name="page30"></a>[pg 30]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0003" id="h2HCH0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER III.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    IN WHICH PENDENNIS APPEARS AS A VERY YOUNG MAN INDEED.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0006"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-030.jpg"><img src="images/i-030-s.png" width="123" height="216"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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
+color, which looks like gold in the sunshine, his face was round, rosy,
+freckled, and good-humored, 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page31" name="page31"></a>[pg 31]</span>
+
+  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 trowsers so ludicrously tight, that
+the elder boys could not forbear using him in the quality of a butt or
+"cockshy"&mdash;he had seen this very Ricketts arrayed in crimson and gold,
+with an immense bear-skin cap on his head, staggering under the colors
+of the regiment. Tom had recognized him, and gave him a patronizing nod.
+Tom, a little wretch whom he had cut over the back with a hockey-stick
+last quarter&mdash;and there he was in the center of the square, rallying
+round the flag of his country, surrounded by bayonets, cross-belts,
+and scarlet, the band blowing trumpets and banging cymbals&mdash;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 any thing to any one, he instantly made a present of his
+visionary red coat and epaulettes and his ardor 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page32" name="page32"></a>[pg 32]</span>
+
+  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 Theater to White's Farriery; he ransacked the
+neighboring 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 Hackluyt'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&mdash;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&mdash;as indeed she was; Miss Mira 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 colors it wore then, and how you enjoyed
+it! A man has not many years of such time. He does not know them while
+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 humor 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 stanch old sportsman, Mr. Hardhead, of
+Dumplingbeare) happened to meet. Mr. Smirke, on Pen's mare, Rebecca (she
+was named after Pen's favorite 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 among 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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page33" name="page33"></a>[pg 33]</span>
+</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 play-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-worshiper and a Corsair; he had them by
+heart, and used to take little Laura into the window, and say&mdash;"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 favorite 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), &amp;c.,
+&amp;c.&mdash;all which masterpieces Mrs. Pendennis no doubt keeps to this day,
+along with his first socks, the first cutting
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page34" name="page34"></a>[pg 34]</span>
+
+                                              of his hair, his bottle,
+and other interesting relics of his infancy. He used to gallop Rebecca
+over the neighboring Dumpling Downs, or into the county town, which, if
+you please, we shall call Chatteries, 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 his 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 stanch, 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 gray 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 stable-yard, 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&mdash;some very good
+Madeira&mdash;some capital Madeira&mdash;John, go and get some Madeira&mdash;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&mdash;"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&mdash;of a consuming
+passion&mdash;of an object on which he could concentrate all those vague,
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page35" name="page35"></a>[pg 35]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+floating fancies under which he sweetly suffered&mdash;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 favorite 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 up-stairs in the study&mdash;in
+Pen's, as he sat in his shooting jacket, with his elbows on the green
+study-table, and his hands clutching his curly brown hair, Homer under
+his nose&mdash;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 favorite lines which
+the reader will find in their proper place in the third book. He drew
+portraits of her&mdash;they are extant still&mdash;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&mdash;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 poundcakes 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,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page36" name="page36"></a>[pg 36]</span>
+
+  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, &amp;c.&mdash;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 favor 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 dairy-maid, 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 dishonor. 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 Chatteries' Assemblies; in fine, he was not
+in love, because there was nobody at hand to fell 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page37" name="page37"></a>[pg 37]</span>
+
+  along the broad turnpike roads, with a heart heating within him,
+and a secret tremor and hope that <i>she</i> might be in that yellow
+post-chaise 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
+post-chaise 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. Actæon was a brute
+for wanting to push in where Diana was bathing. Leave him occasionally
+alone, my good madame, 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 every body 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 them
+selves 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>
+<hr />
+<p>
+While these natural sentiments were waging war and trouble in honest
+Pen's bosom, it chanced one day that he rode into Chatteries, 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, patronizing manner. Pen had some difficulty in
+recognizing 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page38" name="page38"></a>[pg 38]</span>
+
+  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 cut-away
+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
+<i>en goguette</i>, 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 every body 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&mdash;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>
+"<i>What?</i>" 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
+afterward, 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 respectful courtesy, and complimented him upon his
+growth and manly appearance, and asked news of the family at Fairoaks,
+and of Doctor Portman and the Clavering
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page39" name="page39"></a>[pg 39]</span>
+
+                                        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 behavior 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&mdash;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 every body laughed at the face which he
+made as he put it down.&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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 Chatteries; 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&mdash;how he could scarcely read, how he was not cleanly in his
+person, and notorious for his blunders and dullness. 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&mdash;and began to wish to go up himself to
+College to a place where there
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page40" name="page40"></a>[pg 40]</span>
+
+                               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 Chatteries.
+</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 Chatteries, 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&mdash;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?&mdash;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 Theater Royal will have the honor of your patronage
+to-night. We perform 'The Stranger,' in which your humble servant
+will&mdash;"
+</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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page41" name="page41"></a>[pg 41]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0004" id="h2HCH0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER IV.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    MRS. HALLER.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0007"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-041.jpg"><img src="images/i-041-s.png" width="140" height="172"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 <i>him</i>. 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 gayly 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 toward the theater, where they paid
+their money to the wheezy old lady slumbering in the money taker's
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page42" name="page42"></a>[pg 42]</span>
+
+  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 theater,
+which was no better filled than country theaters 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 Chatteries; 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-jewelry 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 favor
+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&mdash;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. Any body
+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&mdash;any body, 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; eying 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page43" name="page43"></a>[pg 43]</span>
+
+  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&mdash;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&mdash;for
+something man must love."
+</p>
+<p>
+[<i>Enter Tobias</i> (<i>Goll</i>) <i>from the hut</i>]. 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>
+<i>Francis to the Stranger.</i> "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>
+<i>Bingley.</i> "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>
+<i>Francis.</i> "Hope is the nurse of life."
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>Bingley.</i> "And her cradle&mdash;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&mdash;"That's Hicks and Miss Thackthwaite," whispered Foker. "Pretty
+girl, ain't she, Pendennis? But stop&mdash;hurray&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page44" name="page44"></a>[pg 44]</span>
+
+  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
+courtesy. 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 every body 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&mdash;for six-and-twenty she was, though she vows she was
+only nineteen&mdash;in the prime and fullness 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&mdash;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 ear-rings she wore (though the handsomest
+properties in the theater) 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 gayety her hands
+fluttered and waved before her, like&mdash;what shall we say?&mdash;like the snowy
+doves before the chariot of Venus&mdash;it was with these arms and hands that
+she beckoned, repelled, entreated, embraced, her admirers&mdash;no single
+one, for she was armed with her own virtue, and
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page45" name="page45"></a>[pg 45]</span>
+
+                                                with her father's valor,
+whose sword would have leapt from its scabbard at any insult offered to
+his child&mdash;but the whole house; which rose to her, as the phrase was, as
+she courtesied and bowed, and charmed it.
+</p>
+<p>
+Thus she stood for a minute&mdash;complete and beautiful&mdash;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&mdash;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 sympathizing.
+</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, &amp;c., 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 favorite passage "I have a William, too, if he be still
+alive&mdash;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&mdash;to&mdash;their mum-um-<i>other</i>,"&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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, while the children clung to their knees, and
+the countess (Mrs. Bingley) and Baron Steinforth (performed with great
+liveliness and spirit by Garbetts)&mdash;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.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page46" name="page46"></a>[pg 46]</span>
+
+         Pen was not even distinctly aware that the house was calling
+for Miss Fotheringay, nor did the manager seem to comprehend that any
+body else but himself had caused the success of the play. At last he
+understood it&mdash;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 <i>is</i> 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 favorite
+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-Ax," 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 theater and walked frantically about the
+town, he knew not how long; then he mounted at the George and rode
+homeward, 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>
+<hr />
+<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, <i>begins</i> 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 afterward happen to him, poor little Pen
+was not come to this state yet; he tumbled into a sound sleep&mdash;did not
+wake until an early hour in the morning, when the rooks
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page47" name="page47"></a>[pg 47]</span>
+
+                                                        began to caw
+from the little wood beyond his bed-room windows; and&mdash;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: forever 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.&mdash;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, patronizing
+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 Chatteries 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&mdash;he was anxious to
+ride over&mdash;and&mdash;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 stable court. He
+went gently at first, but galloped like a madman as soon as he thought
+he was out of hearing.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page48" name="page48"></a>[pg 48]</span>
+</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 toward
+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 <i>must</i> 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&mdash;both were used to his slipping
+off&mdash;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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page49" name="page49"></a>[pg 49]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0005" id="h2HCH0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER V.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    MRS. HALLER AT HOME.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0008"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-049.jpg"><img src="images/i-049-s.png" width="143" height="213"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 soda-water 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 Chatteries, 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, <i>His</i> 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!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+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
+any thing? There was a very fair tap of ale. Mr. Spavin was enabled to
+know Pendennis's name, on the card which the
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page50" name="page50"></a>[pg 50]</span>
+
+                                             latter took out and laid
+down (perhaps Pen in these days was rather proud of having a card)&mdash;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&mdash;on the Chatteries 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 Chatteries road. About four miles from
+Baymouth, the Clavering road branches off, as every body 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 making a tremendous row the
+night afore, a drinkin and a singin, and wanting to fight Tom the
+post-boy: which I'm thinking he'd have the worst of it," the man added,
+with a grin.&mdash;"Have you carried up your master's hot 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 night-cap.
+</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&mdash;stop&mdash;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 post-boy. 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&mdash;a trunk, the gift
+of a fond mother, without which the young fellow never traveled. It
+contained a prodigious apparatus in plate; a silver dish, a silver mug,
+silver boxes and bottles for all sorts of essences, and a
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page51" name="page51"></a>[pg 51]</span>
+
+                                                          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&mdash;Costigan
+I mean.&mdash;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&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Of the Fotheringay&mdash;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 year since eleven o'clock, sir&mdash;"
+</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.&mdash;He he! I say, Pen, this isn't
+quite like seven o'clock school&mdash;is it, old boy?"&mdash;and the young fellow
+burst out into a boyish laugh of enjoyment. Then he added&mdash;"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 play-ground 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 can not 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&mdash;for the latter was the rank which he
+preferred to assume&mdash;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
+blood-shot eyes of his, as you see gentlemen do to whom reading
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page52" name="page52"></a>[pg 52]</span>
+
+  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-gray hair
+over his pate, and had a couple of wisps 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 honor 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 thayater
+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&mdash;ye were gone. We had a jolly night of
+ut, sir&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;&mdash;, Miss Costigan is well sir," Pen said, flushing up.
+"She&mdash;she gave me greater pleasure, than&mdash;than I&mdash;I&mdash;I ever enjoyed at
+a play. I think, sir&mdash;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 <i>is</i> the finest actress in the world. I've seen the Siddons, sir,
+and the O'Nale.&mdash;They were great, but what were they compared to Miss
+Fotheringay? I do not wish that 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
+colors in the Hundred and Third, would demean himself, by permitting
+his daughter to earn her old father's bread."
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page53" name="page53"></a>[pg 53]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+"There can not be a more honorable duty, surely," Pen said.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Honorable! Bedad, sir, I'd like to see the man who said Jack Costigan
+would consent to any thing dishonorable. 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 marvelous places they find pasture. If Captain
+Costigan, whom I had the honor 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&mdash;he was unable even to think it&mdash;and
+fact and fiction reeled together in his muzzy, whiskified brain.
+</p>
+<p>
+He began life rather brilliantly with a pair of colors, 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 humor, 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 honor 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&mdash;the wind-raising conspiracies, in which he engages with heroes
+as unfortunate as himself&mdash;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 <i>bonâ fide</i> 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page54" name="page54"></a>[pg 54]</span>
+
+    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 behavior before the deviled 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 lazarone basked in it; he prated about his own affairs
+and past splendor, 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 apologized,
+gave a dinner at the Kildare-street, where six of them drank twinty-one
+bottles of claret, &amp;c. 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 Curaçoa, 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&mdash;"See the company I am in&mdash;sure I'll pay you, my boy"&mdash;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 streets 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&mdash;and only served to adawrun
+other qualities which he possessed&mdash;a foin intellect and a
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page55" name="page55"></a>[pg 55]</span>
+
+  generous
+heart"&mdash;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 fevor to enter his humble abode, which was near at
+hand, where the captain would have the honor 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&mdash;for whose talents he had conceived such
+an admiration&mdash;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 center of the universe.
+She was the kernel of the world for Pen. Yesterday, before he knew her,
+seemed a period ever so long ago&mdash;a revolution was between him and that
+time, and a new world about to begin.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+The captain conducted his young friend to that quiet little street in
+Chatteries, 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&mdash;"Whereby the widdy never pressed me for rint when
+not convanient," as he remarked afterward 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&mdash;in
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page56" name="page56"></a>[pg 56]</span>
+
+  her
+room. He saw something black before him, and waving as if making a
+courtesy, 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
+neighborhood, a person of refoined moind, and emiable 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 mantle-piece 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 scepter put into it, the folds of her dress fell
+naturally round her in order, like ladies of honor 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 gray, with
+prodigious long lashes; and as for her mouth, Mr. Pendennis has given
+me subsequently to understand, that it was of a staring red color, 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 honor 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. &mdash;&mdash; the gentleman's very obleging," said Mrs. Haller.
+</p>
+<p>
+"My name is Pendennis," said Pen, blushing. "I&mdash;I&mdash;hope you'll&mdash;you'll
+remember it." His heart thumped so as he made this audacious
+declaration, that he almost choked in uttering it.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page57" name="page57"></a>[pg 57]</span>
+</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, "Rejuced 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 flavor."
+</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 while 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 humor,
+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&mdash;actually
+at dinner with the greatest tragic actress in the world, and her
+father&mdash;with the handsomest woman in all creation&mdash;with his first and
+only love, whom he had adored ever since when?&mdash;ever since yesterday,
+ever since forever. He ate a crust of her making, he poured her out a
+glass of beer, he saw her drink a glass of punch&mdash;just
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page58" name="page58"></a>[pg 58]</span>
+
+                                                        one wine-glass
+full&mdash;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 offense was meant, none
+was taken; but as for Bingley, indeed, she did not value him&mdash;not that
+glass of punch." Pen next tried her on Kotzebue. "Kotzebue? who was
+he?"&mdash;"The author of the play in which she had been performing so
+admirably." "She did not know that&mdash;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
+homeward 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>
+"'Fait, 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 least twenty tickets, I should
+say," cried the daughter, a prudent lass, who always kept her fine eyes
+on the main chance.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page59" name="page59"></a>[pg 59]</span>
+</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 theater 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>
+
+<a name="image-0009"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-059.jpg"><img src="images/i-059-s.png" width="171" height="215"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+"How beautiful she is," thought Pen, cantering homeward. "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 humor she told the story of her comrade,
+Pentweazle, as he was called! There is no humor like Irish humor. 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page60" name="page60"></a>[pg 60]</span>
+
+  my fencing,
+or I shall forget what Angelo taught me. Uncle Arthur always liked me
+to fence&mdash;he says it is the exercise of a gentleman. Hang it. I'll take
+some lessons of Captain Costigan. Go along, Rebecca&mdash;up the hill, old
+lady. Pendennis, Pendennis&mdash;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 any thing astonishingly humorous or intellectual in the
+course of the above interview. She has married, and taken her position
+in the world as a 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 that
+part which concerned herself. A wag once told her that Dante was born
+at Algiers: and asked her&mdash;which Dr. Johnson wrote first, "Irene," or
+"Every Man in his Humor." But she had the best of the joke, for she had
+never heard of Irene, or Every Man in his Humor, or Dante, or perhaps
+Algiers. It was all one to her. She acted what little Bows told
+her&mdash;where he told her to sob, she sobbed&mdash;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&mdash;a beautiful image, and he fell down
+and worshiped 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 toward 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 staid at the cottages on the way,
+and then dawdled with Laura over her lessons&mdash;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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page61" name="page61"></a>[pg 61]</span>
+
+  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 ricketty 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
+reverend friend, Mr. Foker.
+</p>
+<p>
+"A <i>what</i>, Arthur?" asked the lady.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What <i>is</i> 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 Chatteries 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&mdash;and said, "Awake Pendennis, I am here."
+That charming fever&mdash;that delicious longing&mdash;and fire, and uncertainty;
+he hugged them to him&mdash;he would not have lost them for all the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page62" name="page62"></a>[pg 62]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0006" id="h2HCH0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER VI.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND WAR.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0010"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-062.jpg"><img src="images/i-062-s.png" width="189" height="174"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 Chatteries 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 Chatteries for the
+doctoring of his own, and the hire of another animal.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then, and perhaps once in a week, under pretense 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, staid a couple of hours in Chatteries,
+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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page63" name="page63"></a>[pg 63]</span>
+
+              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&mdash;no unlawful attachment, which Pen had formed"&mdash;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&mdash;because&mdash;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 honor
+and mine, and&mdash;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 Theater 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&mdash;suppose we were to go&mdash;Shakspeare you know,
+mother&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page64" name="page64"></a>[pg 64]</span>
+
+                                                           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 his 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?&mdash;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 humor, 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!&mdash;but to go with Mrs. Pendennis in her carriage, and
+sit a whole night by her side!&mdash;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>
+<hr />
+<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.
+Every thing 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 <i>tête-à-tête</i> 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 sympathizing. The fact is, while he was making
+one of his tirades&mdash;and delighted, perhaps, and wondering at his own
+eloquence, the lad would go on for twenty minutes at a time&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page65" name="page65"></a>[pg 65]</span>
+
+ 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&mdash;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&mdash;fine fortune&mdash;drives in her chariot&mdash;splendid park and
+grounds&mdash;Fairoaks Park&mdash;only son&mdash;property all his own at twenty-one&mdash;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 wont have
+any thrifling with his daughter."
+</p>
+<p>
+"No more will his daughter, papa, you may be sure of <i>that</i>," Milly
+said. "A little sip more of the punch&mdash;sure, 'tis beautiful. Ye needn't
+be afraid about the young chap&mdash;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 these 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&mdash;and talked
+to Emily, looking beautiful as she sate at her work&mdash;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&mdash;or the rooks in the
+cathedral elms would make a great noise toward sunset&mdash;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 vail, 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page66" name="page66"></a>[pg 66]</span>
+
+  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
+humor. 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 labors 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 dullness she followed him! She knew
+that he made her: and let herself be made. She was not grateful, or
+ungrateful, or unkind, or ill-humored. 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 theater at Chatteries, 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&mdash;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 country-folks who
+go to a play in state. Samuel, coachman, groom, and gardener
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page67" name="page67"></a>[pg 67]</span>
+
+ 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&mdash;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, while 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 toward 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&mdash;and
+the clergyman, for his part, was exceedingly enthusiastic.
+</p>
+<p>
+When the curtain fell upon that group of slaughtered personages,
+who are dispatched 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&mdash;<i>ils s'agitaient sur leurs bancs</i>&mdash;to borrow a phrase from our
+neighbors. They were led cheering into action by the portly Swallowtail,
+who waved his cap&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page68" name="page68"></a>[pg 68]</span>
+
+  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 <i>beneficiaire</i> forward amidst bursts of enthusiasm&mdash;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>
+
+<a name="image-0011"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-068.jpg"><img src="images/i-068-s.png" width="153" height="188"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+As for Miss Fotheringay and her behavior, 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 favorite 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&mdash;&amp;c. &amp;c.&mdash;in a word&mdash;we refer the reader to page 46.
+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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page69" name="page69"></a>[pg 69]</span>
+</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
+<i>will</i> be the ruin of her"&mdash;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>
+<hr />
+<p>
+It happened two days after the above gayeties that Mr. Dean of
+Chatteries entertained a few select clerical friends at dinner at his
+Deanery House. 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&mdash;the doctor stepped 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 recognizing 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page70" name="page70"></a>[pg 70]</span>
+
+  those
+words which he could withhold no more, and flung himself and his whole
+store of love, and admiration, and ardor, 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, <i>Arthur</i>?" said Miss Fotheringay,
+slowly. He seized her hand madly, and kissed it a thousand times.
+She did not withdraw it. "<i>Does</i> 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
+smiled 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 he 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&mdash;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&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"I say, ma! look up there"&mdash;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&mdash;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 humor. 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 favorite 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, while Pen darted away
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page71" name="page71"></a>[pg 71]</span>
+
+  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&mdash;when Pen took leave of Miss Costigan.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+Pen arrived at home in due time afterward; 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&mdash;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 down stairs 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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;"
+</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&mdash;I will hear no abuse of that lady."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Lady, sir," cried the doctor, "<i>that</i> a lady&mdash;you&mdash;you&mdash;you stand in
+your mother's presence and call that&mdash;that woman a lady!&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"In any body'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
+honor."
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, no, Pen, dearest Pen," cried out Helen in an excess of joy. "I
+told, I told you, doctor, he was not&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page72" name="page72"></a>[pg 72]</span>
+
+  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?&mdash;She maintains her father by her labor."
+</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&mdash;as I do&mdash;yes, as I do"&mdash;(with a
+savage look at the doctor)&mdash;"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&mdash;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 <i>marry</i> 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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page73" name="page73"></a>[pg 73]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0007" id="h2HCH0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER VII.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    IN WHICH THE MAJOR MAKES HIS APPEARANCE.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0012"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-073.jpg"><img src="images/i-073-s.png" width="120" height="124"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 neighbor 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&mdash;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&mdash;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 schoolboys 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 ardor
+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 traveled
+inside
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page74" name="page74"></a>[pg 74]</span>
+
+       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 portress and gardener's wife
+reverentially greeted him; and, still more respectfully, Mr. Morgan,
+his man.
+</p>
+<p>
+Helen was on the lookout 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 his wigs: curling them in private places:
+introducing them mysteriously to his master's room;&mdash;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 fore-finger, as he
+did on this occasion, after saluting his sister-in-law. Laura took the
+finger, trembling, and dropped it&mdash;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
+toward 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.&mdash;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&mdash;"Lead on,
+and say I wait upon my uncle." But he was laughing in
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page75" name="page75"></a>[pg 75]</span>
+
+                                                      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 Dr. 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&mdash;Miss Emily Fotheringay&mdash;Emily, &amp;c., 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, 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&mdash;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 quarreled, 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&mdash;a babyish folly of affection: that can't
+pay coach-hire or afford a decent milliner&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page76" name="page76"></a>[pg 76]</span>
+
+ 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, match-making, in general, formed a great
+part of her thoughts, and I dare say 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 bed-room, 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 honored
+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
+honor, Mrs. Pendennis was willing to bow before her and welcome her,
+and yield her up the first place. But an actress&mdash;a mature woman, who
+had long ceased blushing except with rouge, as she stood under the eager
+glances of thousands of eyes&mdash;an illiterate and ill-bred person, very
+likely, who must have lived with light associates, and have heard
+doubtful conversation&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;she knew an instance in her own
+family&mdash;Laura's poor father was an instance&mdash;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&mdash;rather than balk him, in
+fact&mdash;this lady would have submitted to any sacrifice or personal pain,
+and
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page77" name="page77"></a>[pg 77]</span>
+
+    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
+while he exercised it. In those two days he brought her almost into
+submission, and patronized her very kindly; and he passed one evening
+with the lovely pie-maker at Chatteries, 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&mdash;"I couldn't sleep," he
+said&mdash;"I&mdash;I was&mdash;I was writing."&mdash;And hereupon he flung his arms round
+her neck and said, "O mother! I love her, I love her!"&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page78" name="page78"></a>[pg 78]</span>
+
+  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 very
+roughly&mdash;and I must own unjustly, the other night&mdash;for my dearest boy's
+honor is as high as any mother can desire&mdash;but Pen's answer quite
+frightened me, it was so indignant. Recollect he is a man now; and be
+very&mdash;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. "<i>Bon dieu!</i>"
+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 <i>lettres-de-cachet</i>&mdash;and a Bastile
+for young fellows of family?" The major lived in such good company that
+he might be excused for feeling like an earl.&mdash;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&mdash;"
+</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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page79" name="page79"></a>[pg 79]</span>
+
+ in early life. A young woman with fifteen thousand pounds, niece to an
+earl&mdash;most accomplished creature&mdash;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&mdash;where I had the honor of
+being secretary to Lord Buckley, when commander-in-chief&mdash;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&mdash;the medical profession&mdash;an eligible opportunity
+presented itself. Miss Balls, I remember the name, was daughter of
+an apoth&mdash;a practitioner in very large practice; my brother had very
+nearly succeeded in his suit.&mdash;But difficulties arose: disappointments
+supervened, and&mdash;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.&mdash;Laura's father, my cousin, who&mdash;who was brought up with
+me"&mdash;she added in a low voice, "was an instance of that."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Most injudicious," cut in the major. "I don't know any thing more
+painful than for a man to marry his superior in age or his inferior in
+station. Fancy marrying a woman of a 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 entirely, from the vulgarity of
+their wives' connections. What did Lady Snapperton do last year at her
+<i>déjeuné dansant</i> 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 <i>h</i> 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 toward laughter, but yet
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page80" name="page80"></a>[pg 80]</span>
+
+  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 <i>you</i>, 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&mdash;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 <i>not</i>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;bah, bah!&mdash;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 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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page81" name="page81"></a>[pg 81]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0008" id="h2HCH0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER VIII.
+</h2>
+<p>
+IN WHICH PEN IS KEPT WAITING AT THE DOOR, WHILE THE READER IS INFORMED
+WHO LITTLE LAURA WAS.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0013"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-081.jpg"><img src="images/i-081-s.png" width="154" height="188"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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.&mdash;This gentleman&mdash;whose name was the
+Reverend Francis Bell&mdash;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 fulfill 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 while 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page82" name="page82"></a>[pg 82]</span>
+
+ 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 times during that happy season which she passed at Bath with her
+gouty grandmamma, one day gayly 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-humor; 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&mdash;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 honors, so as to be able to lay them
+at the feet of his beloved Martha.
+</p>
+<p>
+This prize in view made him labor prodigiously. News came, term after
+term, of the honors 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 spring-time of life when he found
+her picking peas in the garden. Having achieved his honors, he relaxed
+in the ardor of his studies, and his judgment and taste also perhaps
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page83" name="page83"></a>[pg 83]</span>
+
+  became cooler. The sunshine of the pea-garden faded away from Miss
+Martha, and poor Bell found himself engaged&mdash;and his hand pledged to
+that bond in a thousand letters&mdash;to a coarse, ill-tempered, ill-favored,
+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&mdash;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?&mdash;had he not shown the picture of the woman to
+whom he was engaged, and with a blush&mdash;her letters, hard, eager, and
+cruel?&mdash;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?&mdash;give his savings to the woman to whom he was bound, and beg
+his release?&mdash;there was time yet&mdash;he temporized. 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&mdash;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&mdash;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 gray
+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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page84" name="page84"></a>[pg 84]</span>
+
+  truly
+yours." She sent him back the other letters, and the lock of his
+hair&mdash;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 every thing. He told her bitterly
+that he did not want <i>her</i> 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 every thing, 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
+child-birth, 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 favorable 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.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page85" name="page85"></a>[pg 85]</span>
+
+  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 <i>cap-à-pié</i>
+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 demeanor, 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-humored natural
+smile in the world, held out his hands to Pen, shook the lad's passive
+fingers gayly, and said, "Well Pen, my boy, tell us all about it."
+</p>
+<p>
+Helen was delighted with the generosity of the major's good humor.
+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
+<i>entrée</i> was altogether balked and ludicrous. He blushed and winced with
+mortified vanity and bewilderment. He felt immensely inclined to begin
+to cry&mdash;"I&mdash;I&mdash;I didn't know that you were come till just now," he said:
+"is&mdash;is&mdash;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 centered; 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;&mdash;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 any body left you some
+money? I don't know that you are worth a shilling in the world."
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page86" name="page86"></a>[pg 86]</span>
+</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 any thing for him. Every
+body 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 any thing," 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&mdash;Miss
+Costigan&mdash;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&mdash;but as one man of the world to another,&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page87" name="page87"></a>[pg 87]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+"What is it?" Arthur asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+"That you will make no private marriage&mdash;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&mdash;on my word of honor, 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&mdash;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&mdash;"of a good
+stock on both sides." The major was greatly pleased with the result of
+his diplomacy&mdash;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
+<i>botte</i> 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 <i>affaire de c[oe]ur</i> 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 any thing 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&mdash;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 honor 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page88" name="page88"></a>[pg 88]</span>
+
+  that did not displease the boy, while it advanced the interests of the
+negotiator, "you must bear in mind that you are throwing yourself away.
+Your mother might submit to your marriage, as she would to any thing
+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 theater 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, <i>entre nous</i>, that my sister had it in her eye to make a
+marriage between you and that little ward of hers&mdash;Flora, Laura&mdash;what's
+her name? And I always determined to do my small endeavor 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&mdash;with your talents, which I suppose are respectable, with
+the friends whom I have the honor to possess, I could have placed you
+in an excellent position&mdash;a remarkable position for a young man of
+such exceeding small means, and had hoped to see you, at least, try
+to restore the honors 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 toward
+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?&mdash;well, not a fair&mdash;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&mdash;down here, <i>mon Dieu!</i> forever" (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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page89" name="page89"></a>[pg 89]</span>
+
+   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 honor, however fatal your
+promise may be. However, promise us on our side, my boy, what I set out
+by entreating you to grant&mdash;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&mdash;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,
+eying 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&mdash;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 humor 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 gayly 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&mdash;conceited&mdash;triumphant&mdash;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 map and drawings, and praised them as
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page90" name="page90"></a>[pg 90]</span>
+
+                                                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 bed time came, mother and son went to
+their several rooms perfectly enchanted with the kind major.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<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
+<i>most beautiful presents</i>. They will always be <i>kept carefully</i>; and
+Miss F. and Captain C. will never forget the <i>delightful evening</i> which
+they passed on <i>Tuesday last</i>.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+No. 2, said&mdash;Dear sir, we shall have a small quiet party of <i>social
+friends</i> at our <i>humble board</i>, next Tuesday evening, at an <i>early tea</i>,
+when I shall wear the <i>beautiful scarf</i> which, with its <i>accompanying
+delightful verses</i>, I shall <i>ever, ever cherish</i>; and papa bids me say
+how happy he will be if you will join "<i>the feast of reason and the
+flow of soul</i>" in our <i>festive little party</i>, as I am sure will be your
+<i>truly grateful</i> <span class="sc">Emily Fotheringay.</span>
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+No. 3 was somewhat more confidential, and showed that matters had
+proceeded rather far. You were <i>odious</i> 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 <i>enchanted</i> with Lydia Languish you scarcely
+once looked at Julia. I could have <i>crushed</i> Bingley, I was so <i>angry</i>.
+I play <i>Ella Rosenberg</i> on Friday: will you come then? <i>Miss Diggle
+performs</i>&mdash;ever your E. F.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+These three letters Mr. Pen used to read at intervals, during the day
+and night, and embrace with that delight and fervor 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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page91" name="page91"></a>[pg 91]</span>
+</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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page92" name="page92"></a>[pg 92]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0009" id="h2HCH0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER IX.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    IN WHICH THE MAJOR OPENS THE CAMPAIGN.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0014"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-092.jpg"><img src="images/i-092-s.png" width="154" height="146"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Let those who have a real heartfelt relish for London society, and
+the privilege of an entrée 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&mdash;his
+newspapers and his mornings&mdash;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&mdash;his quieter little festivals, more select, secret, and
+delightful&mdash;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&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page93" name="page93"></a>[pg 93]</span>
+</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 every body in the
+Peerage, and every body's relations. "My dear boy," he would say, with a
+mournful earnestness and veracity, "you can not 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&mdash;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&mdash;Hobanob's!&mdash;those of
+every well-bred man, as the wretched <i>intru</i> was so exposing himself.
+<i>He</i> will never dine again in South-street. I promise you <i>that</i>."
+</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 neighborhood. 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,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page94" name="page94"></a>[pg 94]</span>
+
+  and that his conduct was perfectly virtuous and respectable. He was
+a man of honor, 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 <i>sur ses terres</i>, 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 honor 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.&mdash;Not if you marry
+a lady, however amiable, whom the country people won't meet.&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;and
+that they were but trivial invitations or answers.
+</p>
+<p>
+"<i>She</i> is cautious enough," the major said, drily. "She is older than
+you, my poor boy;" and then he apologized 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 honor in view&mdash;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 Chatteries,
+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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page95" name="page95"></a>[pg 95]</span>
+
+                                                    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 <i>his</i> 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 honor 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 odor 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 (inclosing to him a sovereign,
+the loan of which the worthy gentleman had need), saying, that one
+day he hoped to sign himself his affectionate son, Arthur Pendennis.
+He was glad to get away from Chatteries that day; from Miss Rouncy the
+<i>confidante</i>; from the old toping father-in-law; from the divine Emily
+herself. "O Emily, Emily," he cried inwardly, as he tattled homeward on
+Rebecca, "you little know what sacrifices I am making for you!&mdash;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 Chatteries 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 <i>him</i>: 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 every body 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 Chatteries, 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.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page96" name="page96"></a>[pg 96]</span>
+
+  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 Chatteries 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 color 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 tooth-pick, and looked over the paper, and
+if any friend asked him to dinner, he staid. 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, traveled 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 mess-room. The
+indefatigable Morgan then put himself in communication with some of the
+inferior actors at the theater, 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 toward persons disposed to treat his daughter
+with freedom. She never came to the theater 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
+hact, 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 unfavorable to her lodger to divulge. She saw nobody; only
+one or two ladies of the theater. 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 down stairs to Mrs. Creed's
+own room.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page97" name="page97"></a>[pg 97]</span>
+</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 pick a hole in poor Miss Fotheringay's reputation.
+</p>
+<p>
+Even about Pen himself, Mrs. Creed's reports were desperately favorable.
+"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 ardor 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 from the d&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;"I am not, of course, a play-going
+man&mdash;but suppose, I say, we go and see her."
+</p>
+<p>
+The major laughed&mdash;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
+Chatteries 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&mdash;an officer of the regiment
+quartered at Chatteries, and a young gentleman whom the doctor thought
+he had somewhere seen. They left them at their meal, however, and
+hastened to the theater. It was Hamlet over again. Shakspeare
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page98" name="page98"></a>[pg 98]</span>
+
+ was
+Article XL. of stout old Dr. 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 courtesies 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 sat 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&mdash;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 theater; the doctor returning to Mrs. Portman,
+who was on a visit at the Deanery, and the major walking home full of
+thought toward the George, where he had bespoken a bed.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page99" name="page99"></a>[pg 99]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0010" id="h2HCH0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER X.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    FACING THE ENEMY.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0015"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-099.jpg"><img src="images/i-099-s.png" width="85" height="150"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Sauntering slowly homeward 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&mdash;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 <i>Globe</i> 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&mdash;and you bear,
+sir, a Rosherville face."
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page100" name="page100"></a>[pg 100]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+"Hullo! I beg your pardon," Mr. Foker said, "I took you"&mdash;he was going
+to say&mdash;"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&mdash;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&mdash;I was always a stupid chap, I was&mdash;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&mdash;"never
+could manage that&mdash;Pendennis could&mdash;he used to do half the chaps'
+verses&mdash;and yet"&mdash;the young gentleman broke out&mdash;"you are his guardian;
+and I hope you will pardon me for saying that I think he is what <i>we</i>
+call a 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&mdash;he would have winked at the
+Duke of Wellington with just as little scruple, for he was in that state
+of absence, candor, and fearlessness, which a man sometimes possesses
+after drinking a couple of bottles of wine&mdash;"You know Arthur's a
+flat&mdash;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&mdash;but pray tell me more.'"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why, sir, see&mdash;it's partly my fault. He went to the play one
+night&mdash;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&mdash;well,
+sir, we went to the play, and Pen was struck all of a heap with Miss
+Fotheringay&mdash;Costigan her real name is&mdash;an uncommon fine gal she
+is too; and the next morning I introduced him to the general, as
+we call her father&mdash;a regular old scamp&mdash;and <i>such</i> a boy for the
+whisky-and-water!&mdash;and he's gone on being intimate there. And he's
+fallen in love with her&mdash;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&mdash;until he was as mad as a hatter.
+Know Sir Derby Oaks? We dined together, and he went
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page101" name="page101"></a>[pg 101]</span>
+
+                                                    to the play; we were
+standing at the door smoking, I remember, when you passed in to dinner."
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0016"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-101.jpg"><img src="images/i-101-s.png" width="162" height="222"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 <i>soupirant</i>?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Another <i>what</i>?" 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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page102" name="page102"></a>[pg 102]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+"Pretty well thank you, sir&mdash;how are you?" Foker replied, imperturbably.
+"I'm not clever, p'raps: but I <i>am</i> 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. "Connection 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 favorably 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&mdash;but he has
+always kept a watchful eye on his daughter, and neither he nor she will
+stand any thing but what's honorable. 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&mdash;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 every thing."
+</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 quarreled, 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page103" name="page103"></a>[pg 103]</span>
+
+                                               spelling when Bows ain't
+by. Rouncy's been settin' her copies lately&mdash;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 handwriting,"
+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 <i>very</i> 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
+<i>me</i> writin' verses to a woman&mdash;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&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"If Pen hadn't <i>what</i>?" cried out the major, in astonishment.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Two thousand a year: hasn't he got two thousand a year?&mdash;the general
+says he has."
+</p>
+<p>
+"My dear friend," shrieked out the major, with an eagerness which
+this gentleman rarely showed, "thank you!&mdash;thank you!&mdash;I begin to see
+now.&mdash;Two thousand a year! Why, his mother has but five hundred a year
+in the world.&mdash;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 honor, he has no more than what I say."
+</p>
+<p>
+"And you ain't going to leave him any thing?"
+</p>
+<p>
+The major had sunk every shilling he could scrape together on 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&mdash;and&mdash;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 Chatteries without a further
+conversation in the morning. And as the major went up to his room, and
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page104" name="page104"></a>[pg 104]</span>
+
+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 sat in confidential conversation in the dean's oak breakfast
+parlor, 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 Mira, 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 in, 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 honor of
+speaking to Captain Costigan.&mdash;My name is Major Pendennis."
+</p>
+<p>
+The captain brought his weapon up to the salute, and said&mdash;"Major, the
+honor is moine; I'm deloighted to see ye."
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page105" name="page105"></a>[pg 105]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0011" id="h2HCH0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XI.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    NEGOTIATION.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0017"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-105.jpg"><img src="images/i-105-s.png" width="105" height="118"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 theater music, in the
+copying of which he had been engaged) looked up eagerly toward the new
+comer as the major of the well-blacked boots entered the apartment
+distributing the most graceful bows to every body present.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Me daughter&mdash;me friend, Mr. Bows&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page106" name="page106"></a>[pg 106]</span>
+
+  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 apologize 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 can not say. But Major Pendennis was a person of honor 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 <i>au pied de la lettre</i>; 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 courtesies.
+</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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page107" name="page107"></a>[pg 107]</span>
+
+  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-humor. 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 Chatteries
+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 <i>épris</i> 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 mantle-piece yonder?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I am very fond of flowers," said Miss Fotheringay, with a languishing
+ogle at Sir Derby Oaks&mdash;but the baronet still scowled sulkily.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Sweets to the sweet&mdash;isn't that the expression of the play?" Mr.
+Pendennis asked, bent upon being good-humored.
+</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 honor 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 toward Sir Derby with gratitude&mdash;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&mdash;Cos, by-by&mdash;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 saber was heard as he strode down the creaking stair;
+and the angry tones of his voice as he cursed little Tom Creed, who
+was
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page108" name="page108"></a>[pg 108]</span>
+
+    disporting in the passage, and whose peg-top Sir Derby kicked away
+with an oath into the street.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0018"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-108.jpg"><img src="images/i-108-s.png" width="206" height="266"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The major did not smile in the least, though he had every reason to be
+amused. "Monstrous handsome young man that&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page109" name="page109"></a>[pg 109]</span>
+</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&mdash;but he
+knew that to receive small kindnesses flatters the donors very much, and
+that people must needs grow well disposed toward you as they give you
+their hospitality.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Some of the old Madara, Milly, love," Costigan said, winking to his
+child&mdash;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>
+While 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&mdash;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"&mdash;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-humored, 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 honor of making
+your acquaintance, and am most sincerely anxious to be your friend."
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page110" name="page110"></a>[pg 110]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+Miss Fotheringay made a low courtesy 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&mdash;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&mdash;a good girl, sir," said the delighted father; "and
+I pledge a toast to her with all my heart. Shall I send to the&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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 wern't an old fellow and a poor one."
+</p>
+<p>
+"And no better man, major, I'm sure," cried Jack, enraptured. "Your
+friendship, sir, delights me. Your admiration for my girl brings tears
+to me eyes&mdash;tears, sir&mdash;manlee tears&mdash;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."&mdash;The captain suited the action
+to the word, and his blood-shot eyes were suffused with water, as he
+addressed the major.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Your sentiments do you honor," 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&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page111" name="page111"></a>[pg 111]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+The major smiled as he recognized a shaft out of his own bow. It
+was he who had set Pen upon the idea of sitting in parliament for the
+neighboring borough&mdash;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 honor 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?&mdash;it is not his habit. Upon my word and honor,
+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&mdash;trust Jack Costigan for that."
+</p>
+<p>
+"My dear Captain Costigan&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;that shall enable
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page112" name="page112"></a>[pg 112]</span>
+
+  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.&mdash;"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 honor of John
+Costigan. If I thought any mortal man meant to do so, be heavens I'd
+have his blood, sir&mdash;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 honor, 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 band-box with; and when I
+have dragged the scoundthrel before the courts of law, and shown up his
+perjury and his dishonor, I have another remedy in yondther mahogany
+case, sir, which shall set me right, sir, with any individual&mdash;ye mark
+me words, Major Pendennis&mdash;with any individual who has counseled your
+nephew to insult a soldier and a gentleman. What? Me daughter to be
+jilted, and me gray hairs dishonored 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 afterward to do me the honor 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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page113" name="page113"></a>[pg 113]</span>
+
+  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 can not 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 honorable 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&mdash;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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page114" name="page114"></a>[pg 114]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0012" id="h2HCH0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XII.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    IN WHICH A SHOOTING MATCH IS PROPOSED.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0019"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-114.jpg"><img src="images/i-114-s.png" width="141" height="202"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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, with 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&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page115" name="page115"></a>[pg 115]</span>
+</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 honor. 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 can not 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&mdash;the only bit of the family plate which the
+captain possessed.
+</p>
+<p>
+Garbetts was dispatched then with this message and letter; and bidding
+Heaven bless 'um, the general squeezed his embassador's hand, and saw
+him depart. Then he took down his venerable and murderous dueling
+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&mdash;as he called
+that blood-shot 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?&mdash;I want to shoot that man that
+has trajuiced me honor, or meself dthrop a victim on the sod."
+</p>
+<p>
+"D&mdash;&mdash; if I carry challenges," Mr. Garbetts replied. "I'm a family man,
+captain, and will have nothing to do with pistols&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page116" name="page116"></a>[pg 116]</span>
+
+  tragedian answered, in a sepulchral voice. "The minion Tatham was
+there, captain."
+</p>
+<p>
+"The cowardly scoundthrel!" roared Costigan. "He's frightened, 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&mdash;"
+</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 humor.
+</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 odor 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&mdash;"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 the 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page117" name="page117"></a>[pg 117]</span>
+
+ 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&mdash;his villainous 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 afterward 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 school-boy," she said.
+"All them children write verses and nonsense."
+</p>
+<p>
+"He's been acting the part of a viper to this fire-side, 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 forever, and who has but five
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page118" name="page118"></a>[pg 118]</span>
+
+                                                          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
+practiced 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&mdash;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:&mdash;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&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page119" name="page119"></a>[pg 119]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes, d&mdash;&mdash; it," said Bows with a bitter curse&mdash;"that are old enough
+and poor enough and fools enough for any thing."
+</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 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?&mdash;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&mdash;the member of Parliament's lady," said Milly, with a
+laugh. "Pretty carriages and horses we should have to ride!&mdash;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>
+"&mdash;As Cr[oe]sus," 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 beefsteak
+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 conversationalist, where poetry,
+literature, or the fine arts were concerned, could talk freely, and with
+good sense, too, in her own family circle. She can not justly be called
+a romantic person: nor were her literary acquirements 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.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page120" name="page120"></a>[pg 120]</span>
+
+               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 <i>ruse</i> 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&mdash;nothing was more easy. "Papa writes to Arthur
+to know what settlements he proposes to make in the 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 inclose a parting line, in which you say you will
+always regard him as a brother;" said Mr. Bows, eying 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
+balked," said Mr. Bows.
+</p>
+<p>
+"'Dad I suppose not," said Cos, rubbing his own.&mdash;"What'll ye do about
+them letters, and verses and pomes, Milly, darling?&mdash;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
+Chatteries Champion, in which Pen had written a copy of flaming verses
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page121" name="page121"></a>[pg 121]</span>
+
+  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 favorable 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&mdash;what watchful nights and lonely fevers might
+they tell of! She tied them up like so much grocery, and sate down and
+made tea afterward with a perfectly placid and contented heart; while
+Pen was yearning after her, ten miles off; and hugging her image to his
+soul.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page122" name="page122"></a>[pg 122]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0013" id="h2HCH0013"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XIII.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    A CRISIS.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0020"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-122.jpg"><img src="images/i-122-s.png" width="135" height="193"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 Chatteries 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 while 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, while 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page123" name="page123"></a>[pg 123]</span>
+
+                       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 days when you kissed those silly letters
+with rapture&mdash;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 <i>me</i>!
+Dare to talk of permitting his damned Costigans to marry with the
+Pendennises! Send me a challenge! If the fellow can get any thing in the
+shape of a genleman to carry it, I have the greatest mind in life not to
+balk him.&mdash;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 behavior, 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 dispatching 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 up stairs and down
+stairs," 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page124" name="page124"></a>[pg 124]</span>
+
+  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&mdash;and said, "O, you're
+busy&mdash;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 <i>you</i> 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 humor, 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 honor 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&mdash;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 patronize the drama.
+</p>
+<p>
+"That Irishman, the actress's father&mdash;the very man. Have not you heard
+what a fool my nephew has made of himself about the girl?"&mdash;Mr. Tatham,
+who never entered the walls of a theater, 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&mdash;Mr. Tatham was a widower&mdash;and kept
+this unfortunate boy from perdition? As for Miss Costigan he would say
+nothing: her profession was sufficient to characterize <i>her</i>. 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&mdash;but the father, Tatham knew personally&mdash;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.&mdash;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&mdash;crying
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page125" name="page125"></a>[pg 125]</span>
+
+  in the shop, sir&mdash;and we have not proceeded against him or the other,
+as neither were worth powder and shot."
+</p>
+<p>
+It was while 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 honor of speaking with Major Pendennis in private?" he
+began&mdash;"I have a few words, for your ear, sir. I am the bearer of a
+mission from my friend Captain Costigan,"&mdash;but here the man with the
+bass voice paused, faltered, and turned pale&mdash;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 altogether 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&mdash;your
+name Tatham?&mdash;very happy to make your acquaintance Mr. Tatham&mdash;may send
+the bailiffs to separate the men;" and Mr. Tatham&mdash;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 humor."
+</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 <i>entrée</i> 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 while Mr. Bows sate opposite to her.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Just done breakfast I see&mdash;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.&mdash;"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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page126" name="page126"></a>[pg 126]</span>
+
+                                               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-humored 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 favor of the major's character for
+veracity and honor, and described him as a tip-top swell, moving in the
+upper circle of society, who would never submit to any deceit&mdash;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.&mdash;Didn't like
+to put <i>my</i> 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"&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;after the little shindy this morning, in which I must say the
+general was wrong, it would look kind, you know.&mdash;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&mdash;"No thank
+you, Mr. F.&mdash;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,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page127" name="page127"></a>[pg 127]</span>
+
+  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 honorable manner Miss
+Costigan would have gone any where&mdash;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, dispatched 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&mdash;Major Pendennis laughed, and cordially held out his hand, which
+the general officer grasped <i>avec effusion</i>, 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>
+<hr />
+<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 every body 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&mdash;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 Chatteries 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page128" name="page128"></a>[pg 128]</span>
+
+                                                      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
+pecuniary 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 inclosed. 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 inclosure 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 anxieties.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What&mdash;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.&mdash;Oh, it's not true, it's not
+true!"&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page129" name="page129"></a>[pg 129]</span>
+</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 honor? Her letters were written by a
+confidante of hers, who writes better than she can&mdash;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"&mdash;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 <i>will</i> 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 Chatteries: 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>
+<hr />
+<p>
+Pen rushed wildly off to Chatteries that day, but in vain attempted to
+see Miss Fotheringay, for whom he left a letter, inclosed to her father.
+The inclosure 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
+Chatteries Theater 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 balked in love besides Mr. Pen? Yes, indeed: but
+few die of the malady.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page130" name="page130"></a>[pg 130]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0014" id="h2HCH0014"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XIV.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    IN WHICH MISS FOTHERINGAY MAKES A NEW ENGAGEMENT.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0021"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-130.jpg"><img src="images/i-130-s.png" width="132" height="210"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 favorite with the people of Chatteries as it was with
+the accomplished actor himself. Scarce any body was in the theater. Poor
+Pen had the boxes almost all to himself, and sate there lonely, with
+blood-shot eyes, leaning over the ledge, and gazing haggardly toward 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 one of them; and only saw Cora whom his soul longed after. He said
+afterward 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 Chatteries
+jail? 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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page131" name="page131"></a>[pg 131]</span>
+</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 entry of these two gentleman into the
+theater. 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 Kean? 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 gray head and a jolly
+shrewd face&mdash;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, jeweled pins and neck-chains. When he took out his
+yellow pocket-hankerchief with his hand that was cased in white kids,
+a delightful odor of musk and bergamot was shaken through the house.
+He was evidently a personage of rank, and it was at him that the little
+Chatteries 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 traveled. He had not been ten minutes in
+the theater 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 favor of the great stage sultan. Pizaro 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page132" name="page132"></a>[pg 132]</span>
+
+                                         Bingley is a monstrous large
+child for his age)&mdash;when Rolla comes staggering with the child to Cora,
+who rushes forward with a shriek, and says&mdash;"O God, there's blood upon
+him!"&mdash;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&mdash;"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 Chatteries theater 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 theater (which,
+if you please, and to injure no present susceptibilities and vested
+interests, we shall call the Museum Theater) 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 any body but himself: the celebrated Mr. and Mrs. Cawdor
+had come out in Mr. Rawhead's tragedy, and in their favorite 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 splendor 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 every body was looking
+out for the day when he should appear in the Gazette.
+</p>
+<p>
+One of the illustrious patrons of the Museum Theater, 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 theater 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 any
+thing occurred there which particularly pleased him, when a new face
+made its appearance among the coryphées, or a fair dancer executed a
+<i>pas</i> with especial grace or agility, Mr. Wenham, Mr. Wagg, or some
+other aid-de-camp of
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page133" name="page133"></a>[pg 133]</span>
+
+                     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 toward the
+stage&mdash;but you could know he was in the house, by the glances which all
+the corps-de-ballet, and all the principal dancers, cast toward 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 Sautarelle, or Mademoiselle de Bondi (known as la petite
+Caoutchouc), 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, courtesied 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 scandalized, 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&mdash;&mdash; it, Wenham, he's your age," said the gentleman behind the
+curtain.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Pour les âmes bien nées, l'amour ne compte pas le nombre des années,"
+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 conservé."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Wenham, you affect me," said the great man, with one of his usual
+oaths. "By &mdash;&mdash; you do. I like to see a fellow preserving all the
+illusions of youth up to our time of life&mdash;and keeping his heart warm
+as yours is. Hang it, sir&mdash;it's a comfort to meet with such a generous,
+candid creature.&mdash;Who's that gal in the second row, with blue ribbons,
+third from the stage?&mdash;fine gal. Yes, you and I are sentimentalists.
+Wagg I don't think so much cares&mdash;it's the stomach rather more than the
+heart with you, eh, Wagg, my boy?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I like every thing that's good," said Mr. Wagg, generously. "Beauty and
+Burgundy, Venus and Venison. I don't say that Venus's
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page134" name="page134"></a>[pg 134]</span>
+
+                                                      turtles are to be
+despised, because they don't cook them at the London Tavern: but&mdash;but
+tell us about old Pendennis, Mr. Wenham," he abruptly concluded&mdash;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 turtles and the London Tavern
+before&mdash;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,'&mdash;he begins," Mr. Wenham read,&mdash;"'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-humored by way of variety, and to do me a service. It is a delicate
+matter, <i>entre nous, une affaire de c[oe]ur</i>. There is a young friend of
+mine who is gone wild about a certain Miss Fotheringay, an actress at
+the theater 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&mdash;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 any thing we have on our scene. <i>I want a London
+engagement for her.</i> Can't you get your friend Dolphin to come and see
+her&mdash;to engage her&mdash;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&mdash;I will promise <i>any thing</i> I can
+in return for your service&mdash;which I shall consider as one of the
+greatest <i>that can be done to me</i>. Do, do this now as a good fellow,
+which <i>I always said you were</i>: and, in return, command yours truly,
+<span class="sc">A. Pendennis</span>.'"
+</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&mdash;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&mdash;when I was in the fifth form at Eton&mdash;a
+market-gardener's daughter&mdash;and swore I'd marry her. I was mad about
+her&mdash;poor Polly!"&mdash;Here he made a pause, and perhaps the past rose
+up to Lord Steyne, and George Gaunt was a boy again, not altogether
+lost.&mdash;"But I say, she must be a fine woman from Pendennis's account.
+Have in Dolphin, and let us hear if he knows any thing of her."
+</p>
+<p>
+At this Wenham sprang out of the box, passed the servitor who
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page135" name="page135"></a>[pg 135]</span>
+
+  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>
+
+<a name="image-0022"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-135.jpg"><img src="images/i-135-s.png" width="199" height="314"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 Coryphées, to grasp that of the new comer. "How
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page136" name="page136"></a>[pg 136]</span>
+
+                                                          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 embassador, and pay his
+personal respects to that great man.
+</p>
+<p>
+The visit to Chatteries was the result of their conversation: and Mr.
+Dolphin wrote to his lordship from that place, and did himself the honor
+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 honor 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
+Chatteries 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.&mdash;Pen in the almost deserted
+boxes, haggard, wretched, and lonely. Nobody cared whether Miss
+Fotheringay was going or staying except those two&mdash;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
+Chatteries bridge in the moonlight, and talked about <i>her</i>. "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'm 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&mdash;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&mdash;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. Same 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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page137" name="page137"></a>[pg 137]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0015" id="h2HCH0015"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XV.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    THE HAPPY VILLAGE.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0023"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-137.jpg"><img src="images/i-137-s.png" width="102" height="167"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 behavior 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 balked in love sometime or other, by fate, and
+circumstance, by the falsehood of woman, 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 per centage 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 a 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page138" name="page138"></a>[pg 138]</span>
+
+                         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 folks' 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
+<i>entrée</i> 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 neighboring 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&mdash;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 bed-room, 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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page139" name="page139"></a>[pg 139]</span>
+
+                                                  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 favorite resort, Pen
+composed a number of poems suitable to his circumstances&mdash;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 afterward&mdash;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 cudgeling his brain to
+find any rhyme for sorrow, beside 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 Chatteries, 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 among the progeny of the Earl of
+Rosherville, as Lady Agnes Milton, still. But his name, wealth, and
+honorable lineage were speedily known about Clavering, where you may be
+sure that poor Pen's little transaction with the Chatteries actress was
+also pretty freely discussed.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<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 among trees and old walls, behind which swells a fair
+back-ground of sunshiny hills that stretch from Clavering westward
+toward the sea&mdash;the place looks so cheery and comfortable that many a
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page140" name="page140"></a>[pg 140]</span>
+
+  traveler's heart must have yearned toward 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.&mdash;It was a Habby once, sir:"&mdash;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.
+</p>
+<p>
+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 gray
+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 Honorable 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. &mdash;&mdash; Wapshot) is; Yew-tree Cottage (Miss Flather); the butcher's
+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 down stairs; and the young ladies' bonnets make a tolerable show
+in the rather vacant aisles. Nobody is in the great pew of the Clavering
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page141" name="page141"></a>[pg 141]</span>
+
+  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&mdash;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 honorable 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 aids-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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page142" name="page142"></a>[pg 142]</span>
+
+                        the play and the rubber&mdash;indeed they could
+scarcely get a table now, so dreadful was the outcry against the
+sport&mdash;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 quarreled in this little place a great
+deal more than neighbors 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
+mustache might be seen at the window; and of course, little Mrs. Pybus,
+who looked at every body'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
+Chatteries. 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 Chatteries. 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 neighbors; and after she
+had been put into possession of Pen's secret by the little scandal at
+Chatteries, 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&mdash;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 Honorable Mrs. Simcoe's
+<i>soirée</i>, 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 Doctor 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 rumor, and groaned in spirit. Well, well&mdash;it
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page143" name="page143"></a>[pg 143]</span>
+
+                                                           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 among 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 <i>lord</i> on his <i>blood-horse</i>, and for whom <i>our</i>
+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&mdash;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>
+<i>&amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.</i>: 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
+neighbor and her children, and an honest, brave lad, impetuous, and
+full of good, and wishing well to every mortal alive, found enemies and
+detractors among people to whom they were superior, and to whom they
+had never done any thing 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 <i>au courant</i>.
+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 forever!" and other sarcastic allusions to late
+transactions, at Fairoaks gate. Another brought a large play-bill from
+Chatteries, 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 neighboring small squire, who lived
+in the doubtful capacity of parlor 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.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page144" name="page144"></a>[pg 144]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+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 &mdash;&mdash; coward insulted me, sir," he said; and the doctor passed over
+the oath, and respected the emotion of the honest, suffering young
+heart.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+Pendennis the elder, who like a real man of the world had a proper and
+constant dread of the opinion of his neighbor, was prodigiously annoyed
+by the absurd little tempest which was blowing in Chatteries, and
+tossing about Master Pen's reputation. Doctor Portman and Captain
+Glanders had to support the charges of the whole Chatteries society
+against the young reprobate, who was looked upon as a monster of crime.
+Pen did not say any thing 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
+moldy 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page145" name="page145"></a>[pg 145]</span>
+
+                                                            Madam
+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 parlor, 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 <i>ennui</i> entirely, when a messenger
+from Mr. Hobnell was at length announced.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0024"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-145.jpg"><img src="images/i-145-s.png" width="168" height="265"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page146" name="page146"></a>[pg 146]</span>
+
+  "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
+among 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 <i>you</i> with the answer&mdash;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. &mdash;&mdash;? 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&mdash;"
+</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&mdash;when I do, I'll remember your kind offer, sir. John,
+show this gentleman down stairs&mdash;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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page147" name="page147"></a>[pg 147]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0016" id="h2HCH0016"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XVI.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    MORE STORMS IN THE PUDDLE.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0025"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-147.jpg"><img src="images/i-147-s.png" width="175" height="157"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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
+behavior. 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 Chatteries for
+a while&mdash;any where 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
+<i>au grand sérieux</i>, 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
+honor, 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>
+"<i>Vous allez trop vite</i>, 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 honor&mdash;old-world notions savoring of
+the camp and pistol a great deal more than our soberer opinions of the
+present day&mdash;"between men of the world I don't say; but between two
+school-boys, this sort of thing is ridiculous, my dear boy&mdash;perfectly
+ridiculous."
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page148" name="page148"></a>[pg 148]</span>
+</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&mdash;I put myself into Foker's hands&mdash;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&mdash;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 Chatteries 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 Chatteries, during a part of the
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page149" name="page149"></a>[pg 149]</span>
+
+  months of August and September, and Miss Fotheringay still continued to
+act, and take farewell of the audiences at the Chatteries Theater 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 favor find any thing
+remarkable in the actress performing on the little Chatteries boards.
+Many a 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 dullness 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 dullness 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 Chatteries 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 favorable 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&mdash;for he could not speak to his mother
+of his loves and disappointments&mdash;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&mdash;and Foker was much too coarse to
+appreciate those refined sentimental secrets&mdash;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 lover without a
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page150" name="page150"></a>[pg 150]</span>
+
+                                                          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-barreled gun. He went into Chatteries 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>
+<hr />
+<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 Madam 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 behavior which flattered his
+hopes. She had praised his sermon 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?&mdash;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 forever&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page151" name="page151"></a>[pg 151]</span>
+
+  nest, whence he is about to take flight into the great world
+beyond&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;Mr. Smirke has a private care watching at his bed side,
+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,
+every body! You and your wife have pressed the same pillow for forty
+years and fancy yourselves united.&mdash;Pshaw, does she cry out when you
+have the gout, or do you lie awake when she has the tooth-ache? 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&mdash;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&mdash;very
+likely she is thinking of fifty years back, and that night when she made
+such an impression, and danced a cotillion with the captain, before your
+father proposed for her; or, what a silly little over-rated creature
+your wife is, and how absurdly you are infatuated about her&mdash;and, as for
+your wife&mdash;O philosophic reader, answer and say&mdash;Do you tell her all?
+Ah, sir&mdash;a distinct universe walks about under your hat and under
+mine&mdash;all things in nature are different to each&mdash;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&mdash;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>
+<hr />
+<p>
+Smirke had one confidante for his passion&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;bought the late Mrs. Harbottle's business for
+a song&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page152" name="page152"></a>[pg 152]</span>
+
+                                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 every thing 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, "<i>Mong cure a boco souffare</i>," she
+said, laying her hand on the part she designated as her cure. "<i>Il est
+more en Espang, Madame</i>," 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 dependent 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. "<i>Etre soul au monde est bien
+ouneeyong</i>," she would say, glancing up at a print of a French carbineer
+in a green coat and brass cuirass which decorated her apartment&mdash;"Depend
+upon it when Master Pendennis goes to college, his ma will find herself
+very lonely. She is quite young yet.&mdash;You wouldn't suppose her to be
+five-and-twenty. <i>Monsieur le Cury, song cure est touchy&mdash;j'ong suis
+sure&mdash;Je conny cela biang&mdash;Ally, Monsieur Smirke.</i>"
+</p>
+<p>
+He softly blushed; he sighed; he hoped; he feared; he doubted; he
+sometimes yielded to the delightful idea&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page153" name="page153"></a>[pg 153]</span>
+
+  (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
+interest in any way&mdash;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 Chatteries, 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&mdash;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 <i>entrée</i> 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 Chatteries, 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&mdash;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,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page154" name="page154"></a>[pg 154]</span>
+
+  affecting Miss Costigan's honor 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&mdash;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, while 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. Every body 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 pretense 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page155" name="page155"></a>[pg 155]</span>
+
+  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&mdash;she would never think of marrying again."
+</p>
+<p>
+"You only think <i>men</i> 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, <i>cadit quæstio</i>," 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&mdash;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 from want of warning on your part, I am sure, that I
+have formed my opinion of most women with whom we are acquainted. Madam
+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&mdash;" 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 had poultry from Livermore's two days
+before)&mdash;"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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page156" name="page156"></a>[pg 156]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+"What is it, my dear John?&mdash;of course I won't," answered the rector's
+lady.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Well then&mdash;I can not say it is a fact, mind&mdash;but if you find that
+Smirke is at this moment&mdash;ay, and has been for years&mdash;engaged to a young
+lady, a Miss&mdash;a Miss Thompson, if you will have the name, who lives
+on Clapham Common&mdash;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.&mdash;"How
+long have you known it?&mdash;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&mdash;and perhaps this is only an
+invention like that other absurd story; at least, Madam 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&mdash;"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>
+"<i>O gracilis puer</i>,"&mdash;cried the doctor.&mdash;"Whither are you bound? I
+wanted you to come home to dinner."
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page157" name="page157"></a>[pg 157]</span>
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0026"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-157.jpg"><img src="images/i-157-s.png" width="216" height="316"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+"I am engaged to dine at&mdash;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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page158" name="page158"></a>[pg 158]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0017" id="h2HCH0017"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XVII.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    WHICH CONCLUDES THE FIRST PART OF THIS HISTORY.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0027"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-158.jpg"><img src="images/i-158-s.png" width="94" height="154"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The curate had gone on his daily errand to Fairoaks, and was up-stairs
+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&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"That <i>I</i>," cried Mrs. Pendennis; "people are very impertinent, I am
+sure. Mr. Smirke came here as Arthur's tutor, and I am surprised that
+any body should dare to speak so&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"'Pon my soul, it is a <i>little</i> 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&mdash;Miss Thompson, of Clapham Common, ever so long:
+and I am delighted, for my part, and on Myra's
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page159" name="page159"></a>[pg 159]</span>
+
+                                               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 behavior
+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 toward the curate;&mdash;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 behavior; 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&mdash;about the fashionable parties in London,
+an account of which he read in the newspapers&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page160" name="page160"></a>[pg 160]</span>
+
+  his sister and little Laura had left the apartment&mdash;"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&mdash;"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&mdash;"toward Myra
+Portman?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Toward Helen Pendennis, if you must know," answered her brother-in-law.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Toward 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&mdash;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 toward 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&mdash;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 while our young poet
+spoke. He had a trick of blushing when in this excited state, and
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page161" name="page161"></a>[pg 161]</span>
+
+  his
+large and honest gray eyes also exhibited proofs of a sensibility so
+genuine, hearty, and manly, that Miss Costigan, if she had a heart, must
+needs have softened toward 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, <i>really</i>, 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 <i>forever</i>," 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!&mdash;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. <i>Nunc vino pellite curas&mdash;cras
+ingens iterabimus æq</i>&mdash;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 Freischütz. 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&mdash;you are taking too much wine, Arthur," Mr. Smirke said,
+softly&mdash;"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&mdash;I say, Smirke, my boy&mdash;let's drink to
+her&mdash;<i>your</i> her, I mean, not mine, for whom I swear I'll care no
+more&mdash;no, not a penny&mdash;no, not a fig&mdash;no, not a glass of wine.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page162" name="page162"></a>[pg 162]</span>
+
+  Tell us
+about the lady, Smirke; I've often seen you sighing about her."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh!" said Smirke&mdash;and his beautiful cambric shirt front and glistening
+studs heaved with the emotion which agitated his gentle and suffering
+bosom.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;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>
+"<i>Do</i> 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."
+</p>
+<p>
+Smirke put down the glass.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I accept the omen," gasped out the blushing curate. "Oh, my dear
+Arthur, you&mdash;you know her&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"What&mdash;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&mdash;sorry I offended you&mdash;but she <i>has</i> got a large waist,
+you know&mdash;devilish large waist," Pen continued&mdash;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 any body at Chatteries or at Clapham? Somebody here? No&mdash;it ain't
+old Pybus? it can't be Miss Rolt at the factory&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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?&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page163" name="page163"></a>[pg 163]</span>
+
+  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&mdash;and it's five hundred
+a year at the very least&mdash;would be settled upon her and&mdash;and&mdash;and you
+at my death&mdash;that is&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"What the deuce do you mean?&mdash;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&mdash;let me be more. Oh, can't you see that the angelic being I
+love&mdash;the purest, the best of women&mdash;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&mdash;she's seven or eight years older than
+you are."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Did <i>you</i> 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, <i>my tutor</i>,
+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&mdash;it's
+a liberty. Mean, indeed!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh 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&mdash;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
+stables, 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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page164" name="page164"></a>[pg 164]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+"I say, Smirke," he said, in an agitated voice, "forgive me if I have
+said any thing harsh&mdash;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 in the lawn waiting until the boy came back&mdash;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 humor 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 out 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>
+<hr />
+<p>
+Before the great Mr. Dolphin quitted Chatteries, 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 honor
+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
+traveling expenses when the time of their departure arrived.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page165" name="page165"></a>[pg 165]</span>
+</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
+Chatteries 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 Chatteries
+Champion, were among 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
+beayved: having been round and paid off all his ticks in Chatteries,
+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 in
+Chatteries, 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 this 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 &mdash;&mdash;
+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 Chatteries men, and then without
+further circumlocution proposed their friend "Captain Costigan."
+</p>
+<p>
+After the enthusiastic cheering which rang through old Chatteries 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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page166" name="page166"></a>[pg 166]</span>
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0028"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-166.jpg"><img src="images/i-166-s.png" width="195" height="283"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 Chatteries she had acquired the skill which
+she was about to exercise in another sphere, and in her name and his
+own, Jack
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page167" name="page167"></a>[pg 167]</span>
+
+          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 Chatteries Theater, and Mr.
+Bingley was about to rise, but was prevented by Captain Costigan, who,
+as long connected with the Chatteries Theater, 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 honor
+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&mdash;it ended. All triumphs
+and all evenings end. And the next day, Miss Costigan having taken leave
+of all her friends, and having been reconciled to Miss Rouncy, to whom
+she left a necklace and a white satin gown&mdash;the next day he and Miss
+Costigan had places in the Competitor coach rolling by the gates of
+Fairoaks Lodge&mdash;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&mdash;and the captain said it was a
+poor place&mdash;and added, "Ye should see Castle Costigan, County Mayo, me
+boy,"&mdash;which Tom said he should like very much to see.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<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 Chatteries 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 bed-room. 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page168" name="page168"></a>[pg 168]</span>
+
+                                                         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 Chatteries. 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 <i>tracasseries</i> 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>
+<hr />
+<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
+afterward 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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page169" name="page169"></a>[pg 169]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0018" id="h2HCH0018"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XVIII.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    ALMA MATER.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0029"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-169.jpg"><img src="images/i-169-s.png" width="127" height="151"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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!&mdash;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 <i>excat</i> 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page170" name="page170"></a>[pg 170]</span>
+
+                       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. <i>We</i> 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 gray 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, &mdash;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 slily 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
+Gray Friars, and renewed acquaintance with some of their old
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page171" name="page171"></a>[pg 171]</span>
+
+  comrades
+there. The boys came crowding up to the cab as it stood by the Gray
+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 Gray Friars, and the
+name of that well known firm is gilded upon innumerable public-house
+signs, tenanted by its vassals in the neighborhood; and the venerable
+junior partner and manager did honor 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 <i>entrée</i> 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 <i>never</i> 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-honored
+joke.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page172" name="page172"></a>[pg 172]</span>
+</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 whooping-cough, his escape
+from drowning, the shocking tyrannies practiced 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&mdash;Lady Agnes, we say, having prattled away for an hour incessantly
+about her son, voted the two Messieurs Pendennis most agreeable men; and
+when the 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&mdash;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 afterward 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&mdash;though
+you oughtn't to blush so, by the way&mdash;and I beseech you, my dear Arthur,
+to remember through life, that with an <i>entrée</i>&mdash;with a good <i>entrée</i>,
+mind&mdash;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 <i>soins</i> 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 <i>very</i> particular in the
+acquaintances which you make. The <i>premier pas</i> in life is the most
+important of all&mdash;did you write to your mother to-day?&mdash;No?&mdash;well, do,
+before you go, and call and ask Mr. Foker for a frank.&mdash;They like
+it.&mdash;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&mdash;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 you on the path, and a
+friendly hand to succor those who fall beside you. May truth guide,
+mercy forgive at the end, and love accompany always. Without that
+lamp how blind the traveler would be, and how black and cheerless
+the journey!
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page173" name="page173"></a>[pg 173]</span>
+</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)&mdash;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 forever stamped in Pen's mind&mdash;the pretty fountain playing
+in the center 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
+awfully in rustling silks; the lines of the surrounding rooms pleasantly
+broken by carved chimneys, gray turrets, and quaint gables&mdash;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 <i>ton</i> 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 honors; 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.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page174" name="page174"></a>[pg 174]</span>
+
+             There is the learned Dr. Griddle, who suffered in Henry
+VIII.'s time, and Archbishop Bush who roasted him&mdash;there is Lord
+Chief Justice Hicks&mdash;the Duke of St. David's, K. G., Chancellor of the
+University and member of this College&mdash;Sprott, the poet, of whose fame
+the college is justly proud&mdash;Doctor Blogg, the late master and friend
+of Doctor Johnson, who visited him at St. Boniface&mdash;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 honors 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 arbor among 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 favorable 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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page175" name="page175"></a>[pg 175]</span>
+
+                                                        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
+Gray 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>
+
+<a name="image-0030"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-175.jpg"><img src="images/i-175-s.png" width="204" height="233"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page176" name="page176"></a>[pg 176]</span>
+
+                                                           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 bed-room 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 in 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!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"Poor old Smirke!" Pen presently laughed out&mdash;"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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page177" name="page177"></a>[pg 177]</span>
+
+  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 afterward 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 book cases 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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page178" name="page178"></a>[pg 178]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0019" id="h2HCH0019"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XIX.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    PENDENNIS OF BONIFACE.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0031"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-178.jpg"><img src="images/i-178-s.png" width="109" height="178"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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.&mdash;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 honor, 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 <i>tu quoque</i>. 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
+neighboring great houses, whereof the families
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page179" name="page179"></a>[pg 179]</span>
+
+                                               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 can not 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 honor 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 neighbors, only that his neighbors are bad, for the most part. Let
+us have the candor 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 trowsers, 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 honors. Pen, although not aware of any lurking
+disease which was likely to endanger 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 Gray Friars; might have
+some stupid humdrum notions about the meter and grammatical construction
+of a passage of Æschylus or Aristophanes, but had no more notion of the
+poetry than Mrs. Binge, his bed-maker; and Pen
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page180" name="page180"></a>[pg 180]</span>
+
+                                               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 staid 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 jewelry. 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 time-piece 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 favor, and of that
+other school watch which has once before been mentioned in this history.
+Our old friend, Rebecca, Pen pronounced to be no longer up to his
+weight, and swapped her away for another and more powerful horse, for
+which he had to pay rather a heavy figure. Mrs. 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 <i>Colorados</i>,
+<i>Afrancesados</i>,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page181" name="page181"></a>[pg 181]</span>
+
+                <i>Telescopios</i>, 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
+favor 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 labors (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)&mdash;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 bed-room 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
+neighboring 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 Molière. 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 <i>he</i>
+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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page182" name="page182"></a>[pg 182]</span>
+
+                                          obedient young gentleman took
+the doctor's advice, and patronized 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 every body
+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 <i>entrée</i> 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&mdash;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 <i>fureur</i> 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page183" name="page183"></a>[pg 183]</span>
+
+  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 marvelous
+what tall copies, and gilding, and marbling, and blind-tooling, the
+booksellers and binders put upon Pen's book-shelves. He had a very
+fair taste in matters of art, and a keen relish for prints of a high
+school&mdash;none of your French opera dancers, or tawdry racing prints, such
+as had delighted the simple eyes of Mr. Spicer, his predecessor&mdash;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, jewelry, 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 splendor. He and his
+polite friends would dress themselves out with as much care in order
+to go and dine at each others' 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 bed-room, 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&mdash;among very young men it is
+considered heroic.&mdash;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 lionize the University, and passed before
+him on the arms of happy gownsmen, and give his opinion upon their
+personal charms, or their toilets, 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page184" name="page184"></a>[pg 184]</span>
+
+                                                   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>
+
+<a name="image-0032"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-184.jpg"><img src="images/i-184-s.png" width="214" height="210"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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&mdash;and Simon, the
+jeweler, 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page185" name="page185"></a>[pg 185]</span>
+
+  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-Morghens, 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 horse-dealer, 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 gentleman, 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 Calender" or "Bell's Life," or cared for any
+manuscript except his greasy little scrawl of a betting-book:&mdash;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 among his acquaintance.
+I found a copy of it lately in a dusty corner of Mr. Pen's book-cases,
+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&mdash;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 lusters!
+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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page186" name="page186"></a>[pg 186]</span>
+
+ through the great mob on the way through life! Are we the same men now
+that wrote those inscriptions&mdash;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 defense
+of suicide and of republicanism in general <i>apropos</i> of the death of
+Roland and the Girondins&mdash;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 &mdash;&mdash; Circuit, who has made a fortune
+in railroad committees, and whose dinners are so good&mdash;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-ax and mangonel! Ply
+battering-ram and hurtling catapult, Jerusalem is ours&mdash;<i>id Deus vult</i>."
+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&mdash;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 frank and false,
+and so 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 honors which
+now are of little worth to him: that had virtue, learning, genius&mdash;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&mdash;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 favorite and leader of young men who
+were much his superiors in wealth and station, he was much too generous
+to endeavor 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 favor with the richest young grandee in the University.
+His name is still remembered at the Union Debating Club, as
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page187" name="page187"></a>[pg 187]</span>
+
+                                                            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
+afterward, 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 honor-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 any thing." He was backed for
+the Greek Ode won by Smith of Trinity; every body was sure he would have
+the Latin hexameter prize which Brown of St. John's, however, carried
+off, and in this way, one university honor 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 honor 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 honor,
+Doctor Portman grew mightily gloomy in his behavior toward Arthur,
+and adopted a sulky grandeur of deportment toward 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 can not stand the doctor's patronizing air,"
+Pen said. "He's too kind to me, a great deal too fatherly. I have seen
+in the world better men than him, and I 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 Doctor 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page188" name="page188"></a>[pg 188]</span>
+
+  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&mdash;Laura had grown to
+be a fine young stripling by this time, graceful and fair, clinging
+round Helen and worshiping 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 connections 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 <i>protégé</i>, 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&mdash;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 neighboring 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page189" name="page189"></a>[pg 189]</span>
+
+                                                   "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 valor, 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 every body 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&mdash;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&mdash;"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&mdash;that Latin I can not
+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&mdash;well,
+we must stop till he gets his wind again. I shall probably go abroad and
+improve my mind with foreign travel. Yes, <i>parly voo's</i> 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&mdash;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&mdash;pay it or not when you like&mdash;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 at
+every thing. I saw you sit down to <i>écarté</i> 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 wont
+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&mdash;the Black's a
+pretty fighter, but, Law bless you, his arm ain't long enough to touch
+Tom&mdash;and I tell you, you're going it with fellers beyond your weight.
+Look here&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page190" name="page190"></a>[pg 190]</span>
+
+  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 traveling 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 <i>écarté</i> can't hurt a man who plays pretty well&mdash;I came away
+fourteen sovereigns richer from Ringwood's supper, and, gad! I wanted the
+money."&mdash;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 favorite.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page191" name="page191"></a>[pg 191]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0020" id="h2HCH0020"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XX.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    RAKE'S PROGRESS.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0033"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-191.jpg"><img src="images/i-191-s.png" width="160" height="150"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 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&mdash;the gentle
+and polite Lord Plinlimmon, the gallant and open-hearted Magnus
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page192" name="page192"></a>[pg 192]</span>
+
+  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 humor. 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 <i>racconteur</i>. Only once or twice during the
+telling of the anecdotes, 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&mdash;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 every body 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 among 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 odor of certain flowers, or the taste of certain dishes, or
+wines, or certain books. We can't tell why&mdash;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 <i>à merveille</i>;
+you did the honors very nicely&mdash;you carved well&mdash;I am glad you learned
+to carve&mdash;it is done on the side-board now in most good houses,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page193" name="page193"></a>[pg 193]</span>
+
+                                                                but
+is still an important point, and may aid you in middle-life&mdash;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&mdash;it sits prettily enough on a young
+patrician in early life, though nothing is so loathsome among persons of
+our rank&mdash;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&mdash;had a special meeting on
+purpose&mdash;he's of an excellent family&mdash;Suffolk Bloundells, descended from
+Richard's Blondel, bear a harp in chief&mdash;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&mdash;a low
+man. I will lay a wager that he left his regiment, which was a good one
+(for not a more respectable man than my friend Lord Martingale never
+sate in a saddle), in bad odor. There is the unmistakable look of slang,
+and bad habits about this Mr. Bloundell. He frequents low gambling
+houses and billiard hells, sir&mdash;he haunts third-rate clubs&mdash;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 jewelry 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 <i>leetle</i> too
+fine, but I don't object to your making a few extra <i>frais</i> when you
+receive friends. Of course you don't do it often, and only those whom it
+is your interest to <i>fêter</i>. The cutlets were excellent, and the
+<i>soufflé</i> 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 <i>gourmandise</i>. 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 <i>roué</i> 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 <i>salmi</i>&mdash;poor boys&mdash;it
+is only when they grow old they know that 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page194" name="page194"></a>[pg 194]</span>
+
+                              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&mdash;a <i>roué</i>, 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
+schoolboys, 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!&mdash;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 ungentlemanlike,
+soon after Mr. Bloundell's arrival at Oxbridge. The young magnates of
+the neighboring 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
+any thing in the captain's disfavor, but hinted to Pen that he had
+better have him for a partner at whist than play against him, and better
+back him at <i>écarté</i> than bet on the other side. "You see, he plays
+better than you do, Pen," was the astute young gentleman's remark: "he
+plays uncommonly well, the captain does;&mdash;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 <i>roué</i> 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 <i>vingt-et-un</i> had been
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page195" name="page195"></a>[pg 195]</span>
+
+  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)&mdash;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 champagne, 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, Seven's 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 <i>vingt-et-un</i>&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page196" name="page196"></a>[pg 196]</span>
+
+  the
+Café 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 <i>coup</i>, 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 <i>her</i>," said he, "you might as well marry
+&mdash;&mdash;," and he named one of the most notorious actresses on the stage.
+"She hadn't a shred of a character." He knew twenty men who were openly
+admirers of her, and named them and the sums each had spent upon her. I
+know no kind of calumny more frightful or frequent than this which takes
+away the character of women, no men more reckless and mischievous than
+those who lightly use it, and no kind of cowards more despicable than
+the people who invent these slanders.
+</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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page197" name="page197"></a>[pg 197]</span>
+
+  of 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
+mustaches, 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
+theaters 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 Theater, 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
+<i>éclat</i>, had come back to shine in London with somewhat diminished
+luster, and now was acting with "ever increasing attraction, &amp;c.,"
+"triumph of the good old British drama," as the play-bills avowed,
+to houses in which there was plenty of room for any body 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 Chatteries. 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
+theater 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 Chatteries,
+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 courtesy, 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 theater 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&mdash;nor did she recognize him. The next
+night he came in late, and staid very quietly for the after-piece, and on
+the third and last night of his stay in London&mdash;why, Taglioni was going
+to dance at the opera&mdash;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 recognize the brogue underneath;
+the accents seemed to him coarse and false. It annoyed
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page198" name="page198"></a>[pg 198]</span>
+
+                                                       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 all 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 honored 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 scandalized 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page199" name="page199"></a>[pg 199]</span>
+
+          frames for his fine prints, coming to Pendennis with a piteous
+tale that her father was ill with the 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 jewelry 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 owed 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 jeweler'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 Saint 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"&mdash;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. Every body knew that Pendennis
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page200" name="page200"></a>[pg 200]</span>
+
+                                                          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&mdash;many a man whom he had treated with scorn in the
+lecture-room or crushed with his eloquence in the debating-club&mdash;many
+of his own set who had not half his brains, but a little regularity and
+constancy of occupation, took high places in the honors or passed with
+decent credit. And where on 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 rumor rushed through the University, that
+Pendennis of Boniface was plucked.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page201" name="page201"></a>[pg 201]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0021" id="h2HCH0021"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXI.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    FLIGHT AFTER DEFEAT.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0034"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-201.jpg"><img src="images/i-201-s.png" width="146" height="167"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Every body 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 our 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 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 us all: if we have only Justice to look
+to, Heaven help us!
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page202" name="page202"></a>[pg 202]</span>
+</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 gentlemanlike 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 <i>bons mots</i> 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 honor. 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, &amp;c., 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 every where 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 any thing that any body chose to say in favor 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page203" name="page203"></a>[pg 203]</span>
+
+                                                    creature so tender.
+And if Pen felt the wrong which he had done too thers, 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 Joe 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 theater 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
+patronized or scorned&mdash;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&mdash;for he had not divested himself of
+his academical garments since the morning&mdash;a postchaise came rattling
+up the road, on the box of which was seated a servant, while 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 homeward 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 toward it.
+</p>
+<p>
+Pen stopped, hesitated&mdash;nodded his head fiercely, and pointed onward,
+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 toward Pen, holding out his hand, and
+grasping Pen's, said, "I say&mdash;hullo, old boy, where are you going, and
+what's the row now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page204" name="page204"></a>[pg 204]</span>
+</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&mdash;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&mdash;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 honor 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-by, Spavin," said he; "I'm very glad you are through. Don't let me
+keep you; I'm in a hurry&mdash;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&mdash;go it leathers!"&mdash;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 rumor prevailed, to the terror of
+Pen's tutor and tradesmen, that Pendennis, maddened at losing his
+degree, had made away with himself&mdash;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 <i>as</i> 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 bed-room, and was carrying in his wig
+to the major.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page205" name="page205"></a>[pg 205]</span>
+</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 into his master's
+apartment.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0035"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-205.jpg"><img src="images/i-205-s.png" width="199" height="265"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The major put his head out of the bed-room door, as soon as he had his
+wig on.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What! examination over? Senior Wrangler, double First Class, hay?" said
+the old gentleman&mdash;"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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page206" name="page206"></a>[pg 206]</span>
+</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 odors 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 <i>should</i> it be?" asked the major, more perplexed.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I have lost every thing, sir," Pen groaned out; "my honor's gone; I'm
+ruined irretrievably; I can't go back to Oxbridge."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Lost your honor?" 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 any body would.
+I have not got my degree. I&mdash;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&mdash;was it done in public, sir?" the major said.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"The&mdash;the plucking?" asked the guardian, looking Pen anxiously in the
+face.
+</p>
+<p>
+Pen perceived the error under which his guardian was laboring, 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 dishonor, as far as he
+saw, and that Pen must try again.
+</p>
+<p>
+"<i>Me</i> 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 into speeches most
+severe upon Pen, which the lad bore, as best he might, without flinching.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page207" name="page207"></a>[pg 207]</span>
+
+  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>
+
+<ul style="list-style-type: none!important;">
+<li>London Tailor. </li>
+<li>Oxbridge do. </li>
+<li>Haberdasher, for shirts and gloves. </li>
+<li>Jeweler. </li>
+<li>College Cook. </li>
+<li>Crump, for desserts. </li>
+<li>Bootmaker. </li>
+<li>Wine Merchant in London. </li>
+<li>Oxbridge do. </li>
+<li>Bill for horses. </li>
+<li>Printseller. </li>
+<li>Books. </li>
+<li>Binding. </li>
+<li>Hairdresser and Perfumery. </li>
+<li>Hotel Bill in London. </li>
+<li>Sundries. </li>
+</ul>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em!important;">
+All which items the reader may fill in at his pleasure&mdash;such accounts
+have been inspected by the parents of many University youth&mdash;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&mdash;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 dishonored, 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.&mdash;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?&mdash;There was nothing for it but to pay.
+Wenham and the others told the major of young men who owed twice as
+much&mdash;five times as much&mdash;as Arthur, and with no means at all to pay.
+The consultations, and calculations, and opinions, comforted the major
+somewhat. After all, <i>he</i> 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page208" name="page208"></a>[pg 208]</span>
+
+                                                            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 every body was looking at him and
+whispering to his neighbor, "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&mdash;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, every body 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>
+<hr />
+<p>
+On the third day there arrived a letter from home; which Pen read in
+his bed-room, and the result of which was that he fell down on his
+knees, with his head in the bed-clothes, and there prayed out his heart,
+and humbled himself; and having gone down stairs and eaten an immense
+breakfast, he sallied forth and took his place at the Bull and Mouth,
+Piccadilly, by the Chatteries coach for that evening.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page209" name="page209"></a>[pg 209]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0022" id="h2HCH0022"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXII.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    PRODIGAL'S RETURN.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0036"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-209.jpg"><img src="images/i-209-s.png" width="120" height="160"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 <i>que voulez-vous?</i> the tooth must be
+taken out, and he has you into the chair, and it is surprising with what
+courage and vigor of wrist he applies the forceps. Perhaps he would not
+be quite so active or eager if it were <i>his</i> tooth; but, in fine, it is
+your duty to have it out. So the doctor, having read the epistle out
+to Mira 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 dispatch, 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?
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page210" name="page210"></a>[pg 210]</span>
+
+                 As for his debts, of course they must be paid;&mdash;his
+debts!&mdash;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 toward 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 courtesy 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 vails 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 dare say 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 imagination: if her mouth was rather large (as Miss Piminy
+avers, who, but for her known appetite, one would think could not
+swallow any thing larger than a button) every body allowed that her
+smile was charming, and showed off a set of pearly teeth, while her
+voice was so low and sweet, that to hear it was like listening to sweet
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page211" name="page211"></a>[pg 211]</span>
+
+  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 <i>her</i> 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&mdash;as you do." "As <i>I</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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page212" name="page212"></a>[pg 212]</span>
+
+  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 neighbors 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 <i>you</i> 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 characterizes not a few of their sex.
+Whence came all this 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 behavior 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&mdash;such affection as women, whose hearts are disengaged,
+are apt to bestow upon the near female friend. It was devotion&mdash;it was
+passion&mdash;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 can not feel them. These women were made for our
+comfort and delectation, gentlemen&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page213" name="page213"></a>[pg 213]</span>
+
+                                               him; very likely some of
+the odious tutors and masters were jealous of him, and had favorites
+of their own whom they wanted to put over his head. <i>Other</i> 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 fervor 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&mdash;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 <i>instantly</i>, 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&mdash;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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page214" name="page214"></a>[pg 214]</span>
+
+  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 any body.
+</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&mdash;only
+I wouldn't&mdash;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
+into the bank at Chatteries for me, and which doesn't belong to me a
+bit. Now, to-morrow we will go to Chatteries, and see that nice old Mr.
+Rowdy, with the bald head and ask him for it&mdash;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 any body, 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&mdash;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&mdash;in
+whose honor 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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page215" name="page215"></a>[pg 215]</span>
+
+  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>
+<hr />
+<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 Chatteries 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 check, 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 had 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 succor. 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 any body 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. 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page216" name="page216"></a>[pg 216]</span>
+
+                                                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&mdash;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&mdash;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 fore-finger 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&mdash;about the Spanish legion&mdash;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&mdash;he should go to London&mdash;he should be freed from the dull society
+of two poor women. It <i>was</i> dull&mdash;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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page217" name="page217"></a>[pg 217]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0023" id="h2HCH0023"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXIII.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    NEW FACES.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0037"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-217.jpg"><img src="images/i-217-s.png" width="142" height="158"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 Chatteries 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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page218" name="page218"></a>[pg 218]</span>
+
+                                                           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, traveling in Italy had seen them. Clavering
+occupied the Poggi Palace at Florence, gave parties, and lived
+comfortably&mdash;but could never come to England. Another year&mdash;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 rumors 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 splendor 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 <i>coup</i> 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 rumor, something very splendid indeed.
+</p>
+<p>
+Before this time there had been, not rumors unfavorable 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page219" name="page219"></a>[pg 219]</span>
+
+             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
+embassador, 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&mdash;people, in a word, renowned for austerity, and
+of quite a dazzling moral purity:&mdash;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. Any body (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 Barbarosa, 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 odor 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 re-appeared 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&mdash;an open one. On the back seat was
+our old acquaintance, Mr. Tatham of Chatteries, while in the places
+of honor sate a handsome and portly gentleman enveloped in mustaches,
+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, had nimbly jumped out of it.
+</p>
+<p>
+They walked up the great moss-grown steps to the hall-door, and a
+foreign attendant, with ear-rings, 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page220" name="page220"></a>[pg 220]</span>
+
+      resounded presently upon the marble pavement of the hall within;
+and the doors opened, and, finally, Mrs. Blenkinsop, the housekeeper,
+Polly, her aid-de-camp, and Smart, the keeper, appeared, bowing humbly.
+</p>
+<p>
+Smart, the keeper, pulled the wisp of hay-colored hair which adorned
+his sunburned 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 courtesy. Little Polly, her aid-de-camp, made a
+courtesy, 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 mustaches so royally. But he burst out laughing, and said,
+"You've saddled the wrong horse, old lady&mdash;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 toward 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?&mdash;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 any where, that he was the very image of Sir Francis his
+father, and of Sir John who had gone before.
+</p>
+<p>
+"O yes&mdash;thanky&mdash;of course&mdash;very much obliged&mdash;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 quarreled with my
+gwandfather, in the year twenty-thwee."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Dismal?&mdash;beautiful!&mdash;the Castle of Otranto!&mdash;the Mysteries of Udolpho,
+by Jove!" said the individual addressed as Ned. "What a fire-place! 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 every thing."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I know a few things, Frank," Ned answered. "I know that's not a Snyders
+over the mantel-piece&mdash;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&mdash;her
+son Gregory, the third baronet, by her side, as Cupid, God of Love,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page221" name="page221"></a>[pg 221]</span>
+
+  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&mdash;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&mdash;you&mdash;Smart&mdash;feed the horses and
+wash their mouths. Shan't stay long. Come along, Strong,&mdash;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 parlor, 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 bed-rooms were approached,
+and of which many were of stately proportions and exhibited marks of
+splendor. 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 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&mdash;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 theater 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 parlor
+with the tapestry in your second salon in the Rue de Grenelle, and
+furnish the oak room with the Moyen-age cabinets and the armor. Armor
+looks splendid against black oak, and there's a Venice glass in the Quai
+Voltaire, which will suit that high mantle-piece to an inch, sir. The
+long saloon, white and crimson of course; the drawing-room
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page222" name="page222"></a>[pg 222]</span>
+
+                                                           yellow satin;
+and the little drawing-room light blue, with lace over&mdash;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&mdash;the suite in
+the landing, to the south, the bed-room, 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 honor 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&mdash;&mdash; 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 Chatteries, 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 vicinage,
+farmers, tradesmen, and factory people&mdash;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 mustaches 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 every thing 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page223" name="page223"></a>[pg 223]</span>
+
+                                     there. Loads upon loads of furniture
+arrived in numberless vans from Chatteries and London; and numerous as
+the vans were, 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-colored, blue-eyed, black-whiskered, broad-chested, athletic&mdash;a
+slight tendency to fullness did not take away from the comeliness of his
+jolly figure&mdash;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 man[oe]uvres&mdash;his jolly laughter ringing
+through the otherwise silent street&mdash;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 feller, 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 run 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 <i>not</i> 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page224" name="page224"></a>[pg 224]</span>
+
+  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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;damme, I couldn't&mdash;and now, sir, you know Ned
+Strong&mdash;the Chevalier Strong they call me abroad&mdash;as well as he knows
+himself."
+</p>
+<p>
+In this way almost every body 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 humor 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&mdash;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&mdash;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 organized 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&mdash;Miss Amory is a mystery&mdash;Miss
+Amory is a <i>femme incomprise</i>." "What is that?" asked simple Mrs.
+Pendennis&mdash;but the chevalier gave her no answer;
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page225" name="page225"></a>[pg 225]</span>
+
+                                                 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 neighbors at the Park; and Pen and
+Laura were to the full as eager for their arrivals, 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 among them, and is remembered
+by his rural entertainers for years after he has left them, and
+forgotten them very likely&mdash;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 H. Eminence Cardinal Beccafico, and at
+present Chef of the bouche of Sir Francis Clavering, Baronet:&mdash;Monsieur
+Mirobolant's library, pictures, and piano, had arrived previously in
+charge of the intelligent young Englishman, his aid-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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page226" name="page226"></a>[pg 226]</span>
+
+  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 <i>menu</i>. 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>
+
+<a name="image-0038"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-226.jpg"><img src="images/i-226-s.png" width="238" height="268"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+But we are advancing matters, in the fullness 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page227" name="page227"></a>[pg 227]</span>
+
+                                                 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,
+amid an immense jangling of bells from Clavering Church, where the flag
+was flying, an open carriage and one of those traveling chariots or
+family arks, which only English philo-progenitiveness could invent,
+drove rapidly with foaming horses through the park gates, and up to the
+steps of the hall. The two <i>battans</i> of the sculptured door flew open.
+Two 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 tall 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-humored 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 jeweled
+hand on his richly-embroidered velvet waistcoat with glass buttons. "Je
+t'ai vue, je te bénis, 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 grays 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 every body, and saluted for all the company&mdash;the country
+people vowed my lady was not handsome, to be sure, but pronounced her
+uncommon fine dressed, as indeed she was&mdash;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 color of the rainbow flaming
+on her person. Miss Amory appeared meek and dove-color like a vestal
+virgin&mdash;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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page228" name="page228"></a>[pg 228]</span>
+
+   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&mdash;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, fondly
+gazing at the cherub, whose hands and face were now frothed over with
+the species of lather which is inserted in the confection called
+<i>meringues a la creme</i>.
+</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&mdash;do you think any thing could. Miss
+Bell? Look at him&mdash;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&mdash;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 gray 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 <i>de sa personne</i>.
+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&mdash;a Miss Pybus&mdash;came
+here and said he has suffered. I, too, have suffered&mdash;and you, Laura,
+has your heart ever been touched?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Laura said "No!" but perhaps blushed a little at the idea of the
+question, so that the other said&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page229" name="page229"></a>[pg 229]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ah, Laura! I see it all. It is the beau cousin. Tell me every thing. I
+already love you as a sister."
+</p>
+<p>
+"You are very kind," said Miss Bell, smiling, "and&mdash;and it must be owned
+that it is a very sudden attachment."
+</p>
+<p>
+"All attachments are so. It is electricity&mdash;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 dare say 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&mdash;isn't it a pretty name? Call me by it."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Blanche&mdash;it is very pretty, indeed."
+</p>
+<p>
+"And while mamma talks with that kind looking lady&mdash;what relation is
+she to you? She must have been pretty once, but is rather <i>passée</i>;
+she is not well <i>gantée</i>, but she has a pretty hand&mdash;and while mamma
+talks to her, come with me to my own room&mdash;my own, own room. It's a
+darling room, though that horrid creature, Captain Strong, did arrange
+it. Are you <i>éprise</i> of him? He says you are, but I know better; it is
+the beau cousin. Yes&mdash;<i>il a de beaux yeux</i>. <i>Je n'aime pas les blonds
+ordinairement. Car je suis blonde moi&mdash;je suis Blanche et blonde</i>,"&mdash;and
+she looked at her face and made a <i>moue</i> 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 vailed beautiful brown eyes. She had such a slim
+waist, that it was a wonder to behold; and such slim little feet, that
+you would have thought the grass would hardly bend under them. Her lips
+were of the color 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&mdash;her own dear little book; it was bound in blue
+velvet with a gilt lock, and on it was printed the title of "Mes
+Larmes."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Mes Larmes!&mdash;isn't it a pretty name?" the young lady continued, who was
+pleased with every thing that she did, and did every thing very well.
+Laura owned that it was. She had never seen any thing like it before;
+any thing 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, "every thing in the room is pretty; and you are the
+prettiest of all." The other smiled, looked in the glass, went
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page230" name="page230"></a>[pg 230]</span>
+
+                                                               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-colored-pink notes to Fairoaks; where there was a pretty
+housemaid 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>
+<hr />
+<p>
+So Mr. Pen and Miss Laura found the society at Clavering Park an
+uncommonly agreeable resort of summer evenings. Blanche vowed that she
+<i>raffoled</i> 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 parlor, 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&mdash;ain't he, Miss Bell?" Sir Francis would say to
+her. "Plays at <i>écarté</i> with Lady Clavering&mdash;plays any thing, 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,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page231" name="page231"></a>[pg 231]</span>
+
+                                                            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 Laura."
+</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&mdash;in good humor, 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>
+
+<a name="image-0039"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-231.jpg"><img src="images/i-231-s.png" width="228" height="248"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page232" name="page232"></a>[pg 232]</span>
+</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 endeavoring 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&mdash;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 Göthe 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&mdash;should have found the means of getting at
+such an ocean of despair and passion (as a run-away boy who <i>will</i> 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&mdash;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&mdash;O, the villain! O, the deceiver! he altered and adapted former
+poems in his possession, and which had been composed for a certain Miss
+Emily Fotheringay, for the use and to the Christian name of Miss Blanche
+Amory.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page233" name="page233"></a>[pg 233]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0024" id="h2HCH0024"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXIV.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    A LITTLE INNOCENT.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0040"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-233.jpg"><img src="images/i-233-s.png" width="124" height="150"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Every house has its skeleton in it somewhere, and it may be a comfort
+to some unhappy folks to think that the luckiest and most wealthy of
+their neighbors have their miseries and causes of disquiet. Our little
+innocent muse of a 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
+forever&mdash;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. "And gad, Strong, I hate her
+worse and worse every day. I can't stand her, Strong, by gad, I can't."
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page234" name="page234"></a>[pg 234]</span>
+</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 every body miserable that, hang me, it's
+quite surprising. Last night she sent the governess crying away from
+the dinner-table. Afterward, 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&mdash;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.
+To-day when she began, I got in a confounded rage, said I was her
+father, and&mdash;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&mdash;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 humor; upon which the baronet, with his accustomed candor,
+said, "Well, when people bore my life out, I <i>do</i> 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 step-father
+were persons of a literary turn. Bell's life and the Racing Calendar
+were the extent
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page235" name="page235"></a>[pg 235]</span>
+
+                of the baronet's reading, and Lady Clavering still wrote
+like a school girl 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 every body 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 candor on her part to affect a
+cheerfulness which she did not feel, or pretend a respect for those
+toward 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&mdash;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 favorite
+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 sympathized 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&mdash;the fiery
+Stenio&mdash;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 favorite, 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 burned nose, or torn head 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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page236" name="page236"></a>[pg 236]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+As novelists are supposed to know every thing, 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 toward 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&mdash;(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 Elysées
+which, as every body knows, is next door to Monsieur Rogron's (Chevalier
+of the Legion of Honor) pension for young gentlemen, a correspondence,
+by letter, took place between the <i>séduisante Miss Betsi</i> 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 tinder 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&mdash;but assumed the name of Blanche of her own
+will and fantasy, and crowned herself with it; and the weapon which the
+baronet, her step-father, 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 Léocadie,
+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
+step-father to wish she was dead. With the exception of Captain Strong,
+whose invincible good humor 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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page237" name="page237"></a>[pg 237]</span>
+</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
+toilet which the ladies wore, from their bonnets to their brodequins,
+and took a survey of the attire of the ladies' maids in the pew allotted
+to them. We fear that Doctor Portman's sermon, though it was one of his
+oldest and most valued compositions, had little effect upon Madame
+Fribsby on that day. In a very few days afterward, 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 favorably 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 dress-making&mdash;to which art she had been an
+apprentice at Paris, before she entered into Miss Blanche's service
+there&mdash;was kept from morning till night altering and remodeling Miss
+Amory's habiliments; and rose very early and went to bed very late, in
+obedience to the untiring caprices of her little task-mistress. 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 can not 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 candor 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 sniveling 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page238" name="page238"></a>[pg 238]</span>
+
+  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 favorite 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 a 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 gayety, 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 dependents 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&mdash;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 <i>froisséd</i> 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; in
+reading to her when in bed&mdash;for the girl was mistress of the two
+languages, and had a sweet voice and manner&mdash;could take no share in
+Madame Fribsby's soirées, 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
+favorably 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 favorite costume,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page239" name="page239"></a>[pg 239]</span>
+
+  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&mdash;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
+hooting, 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 <i>les Anglaises</i>. He was as courteous and complimentary
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page240" name="page240"></a>[pg 240]</span>
+
+  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, flavored with pine-apple&mdash;a mayonnaise of lobster, which he
+flattered himself was not unworthy of his hand, or of her to whom he had
+the honor to offer it as an homage, and a box of preserved fruits of
+Provence, were brought by one of the chef's aids-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&mdash;her suavity would ever
+contrast in memory with the <i>grossièreté</i> 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 chef
+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 Alcide proffered to her, for he persisted in calling her
+"<i>La respectable Fribsbi</i>," "<i>La vertueuse Fribsbi</i>,"&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;and at their first intimacy Madame
+Fribsby was rather inclined so to lead it&mdash;Alcide always politely
+diverged to another subject: it was as his mother that he persisted
+in considering the good milliner. He would recognize 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 can not love penetrate, respectable Madame Fribsbi?
+Cupid is the father of invention!&mdash;I inquired of the domestics what were
+the <i>plats</i> 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 vail of the maiden is white; the wreath of roses which she
+wears is white. I determined that my dinner should be as spotless
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page241" name="page241"></a>[pg 241]</span>
+
+  as the
+snow. At her accustomed hour, and instead of the rude <i>gigot à l'eau</i>,
+which was ordinarily served at her too simple table, I sent her up a
+little <i>potage à la Reine&mdash;à la Reine Blanche</i> I called it&mdash;as white
+as her own tint&mdash;and confectioned with the most fragrant cream and
+almonds. I then offered up at her shrine a <i>filet de merlan à l'Agnes</i>,
+and a delicate <i>plat</i>, which I have designated as <i>Eperlan à la
+Sainte-Therèse</i>, and of which my charming Miss partook with pleasure.
+I followed this by two little <i>entreés</i> of sweet-bread and chicken; and
+the only brown thing which I permitted myself in the entertainment was a
+little roast of lamb, which I laid 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 <i>à la
+Reine Elizabeth</i> (who, Madame Fribsbi knows, was a maiden princess); a
+dish of opal-colored plover's eggs, which I called <i>Nid de tourtereaux
+à la Roucoule</i>; placing in the midst of them two of those tender
+volatiles, billing each other, and confectioned with butter; a basket
+containing little <i>gateaux</i> 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 <i>Ambroisie de Calypso à la
+Souveraine de mon C[oe]ur</i>. And when the ice was brought in&mdash;an ice of
+<i>plombière</i> and cherries&mdash;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 vail 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&mdash;I heard miss speak of me&mdash;I heard her say, 'Tell
+Monsieur Mirobolant that we thank him&mdash;we admire him&mdash;we love him!'
+My feet almost failed me as I 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 ardor 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&mdash;the poesy of my art can not be understood by these carnivorous
+insularies. No&mdash;the men are odious, but the women&mdash;the women! I own,
+dear Fribsbi, are seducing! I have vowed to marry one; and as I can
+not 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 Green. The blonde Miss will go. She is fascinated.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page242" name="page242"></a>[pg 242]</span>
+
+                                                          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 laboring 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&mdash;his adopted mother. Know then,
+that there is a cause why Miss Pincott should be hostile to me&mdash;a cause
+not uncommon with your sex&mdash;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 Porte St. Martin and his favorite melo-drames. "Not
+perfidious, but fatal. Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To inspire
+hopeless passion is my destiny. I can not 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 can not 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 Alcide 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 has had the benefit of much
+French acquaintance, has perhaps met with men among them who fancied
+themselves almost as invincible; and who, if you credit them, have made
+equal havoc in the hearts of <i>les Anglaises</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page243" name="page243"></a>[pg 243]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0025" id="h2HCH0025"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXV.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND JEALOUSY.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0041"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-243.jpg"><img src="images/i-243-s.png" width="155" height="198"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page244" name="page244"></a>[pg 244]</span>
+
+  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 afterward Amory made his appearance at Calcutta, having
+worked his way out before the mast from the Cape&mdash;married the rich
+attorney's daughter in spite of that old speculator&mdash;set up as indigo
+planter and failed&mdash;set up as agent and failed again&mdash;set up as editor
+of the "Sunderbund Pilot" and failed again&mdash;quarreling 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 neighborhood 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 behavior 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page245" name="page245"></a>[pg 245]</span>
+
+                                                          three times
+more champagne and fowls and ham to the picnics than any one else. She
+took endless boxes for the play, and tickets for the masked balls, and
+gave them away to every body. She paid the boarding-house people months
+beforehand; she helped poor shabby mustached 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&mdash;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, portrayed her, with her little boy by her side.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0042"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-245.jpg"><img src="images/i-245-s.png" width="190" height="177"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 Elysées. 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page246" name="page246"></a>[pg 246]</span>
+
+                                                   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 step-father 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 step-father 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, while a
+maid-servant brought in their meager meal at Fairoaks, and his mother
+was obliged to pinch and manage to make both ends meet? Obstacles seemed
+to him insurmountable, which would have vanished had he marched manfully
+upon them; and he preferred despairing, or dallying with his wishes&mdash;or
+perhaps he had not positively shaped them as yet&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page247" name="page247"></a>[pg 247]</span>
+
+    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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;and in acknowledging which, I have no doubt there is a
+sexual jealousy on the mother's part, and a secret pang&mdash;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&mdash;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, patronizing way. He had
+seen something of this, he had long thought his mother wanted to
+make this marriage&mdash;did Laura know any thing of it? (Not she&mdash;Mrs.
+Pendennis said&mdash;not for worlds would she have breathed a word of it to
+Laura)&mdash;"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&mdash;and as for
+Laura, who knows that she would have me. She would do any thing you told
+her, to be sure. But am I worthy of her?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, 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&mdash;a basket of roses in her hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+She took the finest of them and brought it to Mrs. Pendennis, who
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page248" name="page248"></a>[pg 248]</span>
+
+   was
+refreshed by the odor and color 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
+forever 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 any thing 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 toward
+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 any body'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?&mdash;what person, perhaps, that has not so disappointed others in his
+turn?
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0043"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-249.jpg"><img src="images/i-249-s.png" width="217" height="254"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 humor, 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page249" name="page249"></a>[pg 249]</span>
+
+                                                             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
+any thing 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! Oh let
+me, let me love you! the world will prove to you as false as 'tis to
+others, but <i>I</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&mdash;not quite her first,
+however&mdash;something like this selfishness and waywardness, something like
+this contrast between practice and poetry, between grand versified
+aspirations and
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page250" name="page250"></a>[pg 250]</span>
+
+                every-day 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 toward 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 humor, 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
+behavior 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&mdash;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 dependent; and&mdash;and,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page251" name="page251"></a>[pg 251]</span>
+
+                                                                  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&mdash;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 every where, 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 any thing 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 every thing to marry her. It was she that was
+false to him. He nearly broke his heart about it: he&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I thought you didn't know any thing 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 <i>you</i> 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&mdash;something about Undine&mdash;about a Naiad&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page252" name="page252"></a>[pg 252]</span>
+</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 <i>quite</i> 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&mdash;Master Frank's manner of eating,
+probably, or mamma's blunders, or Sir Francis smelling of cigars&mdash;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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page253" name="page253"></a>[pg 253]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0026" id="h2HCH0026"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXVI.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    A HOUSE FULL OF VISITORS.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0044"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-253.jpg"><img src="images/i-253-s.png" width="135" height="183"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 neighbors 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 dispatched to Fairoaks to be at the orders
+of the ladies there. Blanche adopted a sweet look of suffering
+martyrdom
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page254" name="page254"></a>[pg 254]</span>
+
+          when Laura came to see her. The other laughed at her friend's
+sentimental mood, and treated it with a good humor 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&mdash;made play with her beautiful eyes&mdash;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 Chatteries the baronet
+made no overtures: it was unluckily his own regiment: he had left
+it on bad terms with some officers of the corps&mdash;an ugly business
+about a horse bargain&mdash;a disputed play account&mdash;blind-Hookey&mdash;a white
+feather&mdash;who need ask?&mdash;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 country families down to their houses, and
+filled tolerably the neighboring little watering-place of Baymouth,
+and opened our friend Mr. Bingley's Theater Royal at Chatteries, 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 Fogys of Drummington: the Squares of Tozely Park;
+the Welbores of The Barrow, &amp;c. All sorts of stories were current among
+these folks regarding the family at Clavering;&mdash;indeed, nobody ought to
+say that people in the country have no imagination, who heard them talk
+about new neighbors. 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 country before the great people around
+began to call.
+</p>
+<p>
+But at the end of the season, the Earl of Trehawke, 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&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page255" name="page255"></a>[pg 255]</span>
+</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 afterward 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, while 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 any thing&mdash;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 humoring you at the same play.
+</p>
+<p>
+But if a man is balked 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:&mdash;at any rate he
+was bent upon having an explanation. One day he went to the Hall, and
+there was a room-full 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 county, 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
+Chatteries and the episcopal family, who scowled at him,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page256" name="page256"></a>[pg 256]</span>
+
+                                                         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 see 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 neighbors 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&mdash;"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 honor,
+gravely receiving Lady Clavering's bad grammar, and patronizing 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 toward 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 practiced in England only, and
+only to perfection by University men&mdash;and which seems to say, "Confound
+you&mdash;what do you do here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I knew that man at Oxbridge," Mr. Pynsent said to Miss Bell&mdash;"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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page257" name="page257"></a>[pg 257]</span>
+</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"&mdash;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 any thing 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&mdash;"the
+tall one I mean, with the ringlets and the red lips&mdash;monstrous red,
+ain't they?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"What do you think of the girl of the house?" asked Mr. Wagg.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I think she's a lean scraggy humbug;" said Mr. Pynsent, with great
+candor. "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&mdash;the acquaintance between the gentleman was
+made in an instant.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+In the afternoon of the next day, the two gentleman 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 neighborhood
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page258" name="page258"></a>[pg 258]</span>
+
+  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 every thing. "Old gardener," he said, seeing Mr. John at the
+lodge&mdash;"old red livery waistcoat&mdash;clothes hanging out to dry on the
+gooseberry bushes&mdash;blue aprons, white ducks&mdash;gad, they must be young
+Pendennis's white ducks&mdash;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 cozy 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 every thing 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 minutiæ 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 recognizing 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 toward 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&mdash;delightful to us Cockneys, who seldom see any thing but
+Pall-mall." The widow said simply, she had never been in London but once
+in her life&mdash;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 honor it."
+</p>
+<p>
+"My brother, Major Pendennis, has often mentioned your name to
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page259" name="page259"></a>[pg 259]</span>
+
+   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&mdash;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 afterward 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, while 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 be like him.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mr. Pynsent was in the mean while engaged with Miss Laura. He named
+some of the houses in the neighborhood 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 had 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&mdash;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 fanfaronade, 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
+splendor and magnificence vanished away at this&mdash;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&mdash;there
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page260" name="page260"></a>[pg 260]</span>
+
+  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; and 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;&mdash;"Old man with a beak and bald head&mdash;<i>feu</i> Pendennis, I bet
+two to one; sticking-plaster full-length of a youth in a cap and
+gown&mdash;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; and 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 <i>les
+hommes d'esprit</i>, 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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page261" name="page261"></a>[pg 261]</span>
+</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 any body could write his
+books."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I am sure they are odious and vulgar," interposed the widow.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yet he has a reputation.&mdash;You see the County Chronicle says,
+'The celebrated Mr. Wagg has been sojourning at Baymouth&mdash;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&mdash;to&mdash;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&mdash;let him have the two hundred pounds. Let him go to London
+and be a lawyer: be something, be worthy of his mother&mdash;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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page262" name="page262"></a>[pg 262]</span>
+
+  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&mdash;the money arrangements when he came back from
+Oxbridge&mdash;being settled just then; how it was Laura whom he had to
+thank, if indeed he thought that he ought to go.
+</p>
+<p>
+At that news Pen's countenance blazed up with pleasure, and he hugged
+his mother to his heart, with an ardor 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! O 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&mdash;never mind about that&mdash;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&mdash;began to laugh&mdash;began to sing&mdash;was happier than she had seen
+him since he was a boy&mdash;since he had tasted of the fruit of that awful
+tree of life, which, from the beginning has tempted all mankind.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<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 the first 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&mdash;a public entertainment at the Baymouth
+Hotel. "By Jove!" said Pen, "I'll ride over.&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page263" name="page263"></a>[pg 263]</span>
+
+  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&mdash;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 [oe]il-de-b[oe]uf 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&mdash;not the worst horse in Sir Francis's stable&mdash;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&mdash;where there was a tenant with a
+pretty daughter who played on the piano&mdash;to Chatteries, to the play,
+or the barracks&mdash;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 bed-room to dress, they entered the ball-room. 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.
+Toward 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
+every body&mdash;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?"
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page264" name="page264"></a>[pg 264]</span>
+
+  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 held his claque.
+</p>
+<p>
+"By Jupiter, it's Mirobolant!" cried Strong, bursting out laughing.
+"<i>Bon Jour, Chef!&mdash;Bon Jour, chevalier!</i>"
+</p>
+<p>
+"<i>De la croix de Juillet, chevalier</i>," 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 color, 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-colored 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 body guard 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 he 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&mdash;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, &mdash;&mdash; Wagg, Esq. (as the county paper
+afterward 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&mdash;I must speak to you&mdash;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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page265" name="page265"></a>[pg 265]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0027" id="h2HCH0027"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXVII.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    CONTAINS SOME BALL-PRACTICING.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0045"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-265.jpg"><img src="images/i-265-s.png" width="130" height="196"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 <i>protégée</i>
+of hers would not "do," and wondered at Lady Fogey's impudence in
+judging upon the point at all. She surveyed Laura with
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page266" name="page266"></a>[pg 266]</span>
+
+                                                        majestic glances
+through her eye-glass. 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 <i>ton</i> is
+far better than that of the little pert Miss Amory, who is dancing
+opposite to her.
+</p>
+<p>
+Miss Blanche was, indeed, the <i>vis-à-vis</i> 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 patronized 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:&mdash;it seemed to
+say to all the people, "Come and look at me&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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
+honor 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 honored 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-humored 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 down stairs 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.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page267" name="page267"></a>[pg 267]</span>
+
+                                                              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
+Chatteries. 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 honors 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 to 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 great hot 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 you 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 courtesy. "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 courtesy 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 quarreling about him. He flattered himself he had punished
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page268" name="page268"></a>[pg 268]</span>
+
+                                                                 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&mdash;the
+heavy dragoons in their tight jackets&mdash;the country dandies in their
+queer attire&mdash;the strange toilets 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 <i>coiffure</i> 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 <i>vis-à-vis</i>, 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 <i>cavalier seul</i> before them,
+drawling through that figure with a thumb in the pocket of each
+waistcoat.
+</p>
+<p>
+"<i>Who?</i>" 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 <i>pas seul</i> 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 behavior, 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 colored 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page269" name="page269"></a>[pg 269]</span>
+
+  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 every body's
+way. But they were more in Pendennis's way than in any body's else, for
+he and Blanche, while executing their rapid gyrations, came bolt up
+against the heavy dragoon and his lady, and with such force that the
+center 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 <i>séant</i>, 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; every body 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&mdash;the woman in pink had done
+it&mdash;Pen hoped Miss Amory was not hurt&mdash;would she not have the courage to
+take another turn?
+</p>
+<p>
+Miss Amory in a pet said she <i>was</i> 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 favor;
+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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page270" name="page270"></a>[pg 270]</span>
+
+                                                       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&mdash;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
+humor; 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 honor 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 any thing 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 <i>croix</i>; he is very
+<i>distingué</i>; he has beautiful eyes."
+</p>
+<p>
+"The poor fellow is mad for your <i>beaux yeux</i>, 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?"&mdash;Strong asked, enjoying the
+idea of the mischief&mdash;"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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page271" name="page271"></a>[pg 271]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+"Broadfoot looked as if he would like to kill him too, so did Pynsent,"
+Strong said. "What ice will you have&mdash;water ice or cream ice?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Water ice. Who is that odd man staring at me&mdash;he is <i>decoré</i> 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
+ball-room, 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 <i>entrée</i>&mdash;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 any body who entered the room.
+</p>
+<p>
+Sir Francis Clavering and Mr. Wagg found him there; when they left the
+ball-room which they did pretty early&mdash;Sir Francis to go and smoke a
+cigar and look at the people gathered outside the ball-room 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 gentleman 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 honor of a conversation with the servant
+of the Indian potentate. It was Pynsent's cue to speak to every body
+(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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page272" name="page272"></a>[pg 272]</span>
+
+                                                   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 behavior 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&mdash;yes, ma'am, did
+you say tea? Cup a tea for Mrs. 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>
+
+<a name="image-0046"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-272.jpg"><img src="images/i-272-s.png" width="214" height="253"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In fact, if the truth must be told, Mr. Altamont, having remained at
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page273" name="page273"></a>[pg 273]</span>
+
+  the buffet almost all night, and employed himself very actively while
+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
+toward 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 the 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&mdash;who speaks to me?" said Betsy, alias Blanche.
+</p>
+<p>
+But the noise in the ball-room is really becoming so loud, that we must
+rush back thither, and see what is the cause of the disturbance.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page274" name="page274"></a>[pg 274]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0028" id="h2HCH0028"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXVIII.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    WHICH IS BOTH QUARRELSOME AND SENTIMENTAL.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0047"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-274.jpg"><img src="images/i-274-s.png" width="136" height="155"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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
+ball-room, 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 are the police?" and the like; and a ring of individuals, among
+whom Madame Fribsby was conspicuous, was gathered round Monsieur
+Alcide Mirobolant on the one side; while 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 while 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 behavior to him, which had still further insulted
+his dignity, was endeavoring to get some coolness of body and temper,
+by looking out of window toward the sea, which was sparkling in the
+distance, and murmuring in a wonderful calm&mdash;while 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&mdash;he felt a hand upon
+his shoulder; and, on looking round, beheld, to his
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page275" name="page275"></a>[pg 275]</span>
+
+                                                    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 <i>r</i> with Gascon force, "quand je vous dis que vous êtes
+un lâche. Monsieur Pendennis&mdash;un lâche, 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 honor?" 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&mdash;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&mdash;had not Captain Broadfoot and another heavy officer
+flung themselves between the combatants&mdash;had not the ladies begun to
+scream&mdash;had not the fiddles stopped&mdash;had not the crowd of people come
+running in that direction&mdash;had not Laura, with a face of great alarm,
+looked over their heads and asked for Heaven's sake what was wrong&mdash;had
+not the opportune Strong made his appearance from the refreshment-room,
+and found Alcides grinding his teeth and jabbering oaths in his Gascon
+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 appelé&mdash;<i>Cuisinier</i>?" hissed out the little Frenchman.
+</p>
+<p>
+Strong could hardly help laughing. "Come away with me, my poor
+chevalier," he said. "We must not quarrel before ladies. Come away; I
+will carry your message to Mr. Pendennis.&mdash;The poor fellow is not right
+in his head," he whispered to one or two people about him;&mdash;and others,
+and anxious Laura's face visible among 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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page276" name="page276"></a>[pg 276]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+"D&mdash;&mdash; him, serve him right, too&mdash;the d&mdash; impudent foreign scoundrel,"
+the gentlemen said.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I&mdash;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&mdash;hang those impudent foreigners&mdash;little thrashing
+would do them good."
+</p>
+<p>
+"You will go and shake hands with him before you go to sleep&mdash;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&mdash;not now. I must have this absurd business
+with the Frenchman over."
+</p>
+<p>
+Laura asked&mdash;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>I</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&mdash;saw himself on the
+ground, and all the people laughing at him, Laura and Pynsent among
+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&mdash;"for <i>you</i> 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&mdash;I was going in with my cousin," Laura said.
+</p>
+<p>
+"O&mdash;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&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page277" name="page277"></a>[pg 277]</span>
+</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&mdash;the attorney's
+daughters&mdash;the apothecary's wife&mdash;I scarcely know whom. There was a man
+in the refreshment room, who insisted upon treating me to champagne&mdash;a
+seafaring looking man&mdash;extraordinarily dressed, and seeming half tipsy.
+As a public man, one is bound to conciliate all these people, but it
+is a hard task&mdash;especially when one would so very much like to be
+elsewhere"&mdash;and he blushed rather as he spoke.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I beg your pardon," said Laura&mdash;"I&mdash;I was not listening.
+Indeed&mdash;I was frightened about that quarrel between my cousin and
+that&mdash;that&mdash;that&mdash;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&mdash;Captain
+Broadwood; what is his name&mdash;the officer&mdash;and the young lady in red with
+whom he danced&mdash;and Miss Blanche&mdash;and the poor chef&mdash;and I don't think
+he seemed 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 afterward; indeed, she was very <i>distraite</i>; 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&mdash;a
+long half-hour it had seemed to her&mdash;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.
+<span class="sc">Pen</span>."&mdash;Laura was very thankful for this letter, and to think
+that there was goodness and forgiveness still in her mother's boy.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+Pen went down stairs, his heart reproaching him for his absurd behavior
+to Laura, whose gentle and imploring looks followed and rebuked him; and
+he was scarcely out of the ball-room door but he longed to turn
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page278" name="page278"></a>[pg 278]</span>
+
+                                                                back
+and ask her pardon. But he remembered that he had left her with that
+confounded Pynsent. He could not apologize before <i>him</i>. 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 ball-room; 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 <i>gardes-du-corps</i> 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 for <i>him</i>; but&mdash;but&mdash;"
+</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
+laboring.
+</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 any thing 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 "Sincèrement fache d'avoir usé une
+expression qui avoit pu blesser Monsieur Mirobolant, et qu'il donnoit sa
+parole comme un gentlehomme qu'il ne l'avoit jamais, jamais&mdash;intendé,"
+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 <i>galant homme</i>."
+</p>
+<p>
+And so they shook hands and parted, Arthur in the first place
+dispatching 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 behavior,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page279" name="page279"></a>[pg 279]</span>
+
+                                                                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 upward," 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 <i>confidante</i> at hand, that
+she had met with the most romantic adventure&mdash;the most singular man&mdash;one
+who had known the author of her being&mdash;her persecuted&mdash;her unhappy&mdash;her
+heroic&mdash;her murdered father; and she began a sonnet to his manes before
+she went to sleep.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<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 favor;
+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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page280" name="page280"></a>[pg 280]</span>
+
+                                                          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&mdash;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>
+<hr />
+<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.
+Every body 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&mdash;a good, tender, match-making
+woman, the dearest project of whose heart was about to be accomplished.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page281" name="page281"></a>[pg 281]</span>
+</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 toilet were rather dismal. "I am going to tie
+myself for life," he thought, "to please my mother. Laura is the best
+of women, and&mdash;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&mdash;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 favorite 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-humor, and went to meet him, holding one of the gauntlets
+to him, so that he might shake it if he liked&mdash;and Mr. Pen condescended
+to do so. His face, however, did not lose its tragic expression in
+consequence of this favor, 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&mdash;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&mdash;can I ever forget
+her?"&mdash;and Laura began to make a face in imitation of Miss Roundle's
+under the disaster, but she checked herself repentantly, saying, "Well,
+we
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page282" name="page282"></a>[pg 282]</span>
+
+   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>
+
+<a name="image-0048"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-282.jpg"><img src="images/i-282-s.png" width="189" height="266"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+"<i>You</i> 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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page283" name="page283"></a>[pg 283]</span>
+</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 every thing 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&mdash;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&mdash;it's unworthy of you to take it so! If my brother may
+not share with me my superfluity, who may?&mdash;mine?&mdash;I tell you it was not
+mine; it was all mamma's to do with as she chose, and so is every thing
+I have," said Laura; "my life is hers." And the enthusiastic girl looked
+toward 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 toward 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 fulfill 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,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page284" name="page284"></a>[pg 284]</span>
+
+  dear
+Laura, shame me, while 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, dear Laura,
+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 any thing she has at
+heart: and once, perhaps, I thought&mdash;but that is over now&mdash;that I could
+have made you&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page285" name="page285"></a>[pg 285]</span>
+</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 ardor to overcome it. No, Arthur, you don't love me. You
+would weary of me in three months, as&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;that is, I think so. I have had no experience hitherto, and have
+not had the&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;making poems to
+her&mdash;placing them in hollow trees by the river-side. I knew all. I
+watched you&mdash;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&mdash;your widowhood at least, and do
+not think of marrying until you are out of mourning."&mdash;(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&mdash;than any girl near
+us here; and you could not 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,"&mdash;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"&mdash;and
+he seized her hand and would have drawn her toward 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 can not 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page286" name="page286"></a>[pg 286]</span>
+
+                                                  exchange to a woman
+for her love, honor, 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&mdash;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>
+<hr />
+<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 while it was as yet pending&mdash;and Helen, who could pardon almost
+every thing, could not pardon an act of justice in Laura.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page287" name="page287"></a>[pg 287]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0029" id="h2HCH0029"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXIX.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    BABYLON.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0049"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-287.jpg"><img src="images/i-287-s.png" width="125" height="182"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 toward 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page288" name="page288"></a>[pg 288]</span>
+
+                                his safety. And Laura's&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;shunning it, but not hostile to it&mdash;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&mdash;&mdash;, 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 grays came out at H&mdash;&mdash;, 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 an 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 honor 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page289" name="page289"></a>[pg 289]</span>
+
+         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.&mdash;"What, Foker!" cried out Pendennis&mdash;"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 every body.
+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 theater adjoining.
+</p>
+<p>
+The lights and the music, the crowd and the gayety, 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 <i>habitués</i>
+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 theater, as if he was in a resort of the
+highest fashion. What tired frequenter of the London pavé is there that
+can not 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 Granby 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'&mdash;'the useful
+Blenkinsop'&mdash;'that old favorite of the public, Blenkinsop'&mdash;those parts
+in the drama, which are called the heavy fathers, were usually
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page290" name="page290"></a>[pg 290]</span>
+
+                                                               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
+<i>maillots</i> 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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page291" name="page291"></a>[pg 291]</span>
+
+                                                              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 bête," 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&mdash;and wondered
+how he ever could have loved her.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<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&mdash;English from the
+Covent Garden and Strand houses, Italians from the Haymarket, French
+from their own pretty little theater, 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
+green-room&mdash;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 mantle-piece, 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page292" name="page292"></a>[pg 292]</span>
+
+                                                                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:&mdash;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 Crab's son, had
+also lived there, he recollected. He dispatched 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 toilet 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 live 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 dev'lish good letter. Colchicum says he has had him to
+dine, and thinks him agentleman like 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&mdash;and showed it,
+too, when he was here before&mdash;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&mdash;not the
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page293" name="page293"></a>[pg 293]</span>
+
+    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&mdash;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 Mall, what was it
+in Lamb Court? Candles were burning in many of the rooms there&mdash;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
+patronizing manner with the managing clerk of an attorney at the door;
+and in Curling, the wig-maker's melancholy shop, where, from behind the
+feeble glimmer of a couple of lights, large sergeants' 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 stair-cases of the Upper
+Temple are lighted of night, 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 the place.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Pen, my boy, it's I&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page294" name="page294"></a>[pg 294]</span>
+
+    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&mdash;an old Boniface
+man&mdash;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&mdash;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 coal-heaver,
+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&mdash;at Lady Whiston's," Pen added, knowing his
+uncle's weakness. "Every body in town was there except you, sir; Counts,
+Embassadors, Turks, Stars and Garters&mdash;I don't know who&mdash;it's all in the
+paper&mdash;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&mdash;Lady Mirabel&mdash;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&mdash;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-humor.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page295" name="page295"></a>[pg 295]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+"Some two or three," Mr. Pen said, laughing. "But I don't put on my
+<i>grand sérieux</i> 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&mdash;Fotheringay&mdash;(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 hit, but you may recover. You are heir to a little
+independence, which every body fancies is a doosid deal more. You have
+a good name, good wits, good manners, and a good person&mdash;and, begad!
+I don't see why you shouldn't many a woman with money&mdash;get into
+Parliament&mdash;distinguish yourself, and&mdash;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. 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 lady-like 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 bed-room, no longer in rags,
+but dressed like a gentleman, straight and tall, and perfectly frank and
+good-humored. He did the honors 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&mdash;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 mantle-piece, 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 meager 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page296" name="page296"></a>[pg 296]</span>
+
+                                              heap of books by the
+bed-side: where he lay upon straw like Margery Daw, and smoked his pipe,
+and read half through the night his favorite poetry or mathematics.
+</p>
+<p>
+When he had completed his simple toilet, 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 any thing 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-humor.
+</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&mdash;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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page297" name="page297"></a>[pg 297]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0030" id="h2HCH0030"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXX.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    THE KNIGHTS OF THE TEMPLE.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0050"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-297.jpg"><img src="images/i-297-s.png" width="188" height="189"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Colleges, schools, and inns of court, 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 work-house 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 supply 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page298" name="page298"></a>[pg 298]</span>
+
+    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 practiced 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&mdash;a part of the contents
+of which occasionally trickled through the roof into Mr. Grump's
+room&mdash;declared that the practice was an absurd, newfangled, dandyfied
+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&mdash;upon this site Coke mused upon Lyttleton&mdash;here Chitty
+toiled&mdash;here Barnwell and Alderson joined in their famous labors&mdash;here
+Byles composed his great work upon bills, and Smith compiled his
+immortal leading cases&mdash;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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page299" name="page299"></a>[pg 299]</span>
+
+    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 honor, 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 honors, 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&mdash;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 honors in former days, and had run
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page300" name="page300"></a>[pg 300]</span>
+
+                                                              each other
+hard; and every body said now that the former was wasting his time and
+energies, while 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&mdash;he had no time, and no eyes for any thing 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 ardor, or rather
+steadiness, which is requisite in gentlemen who would climb to those
+seats of honor. 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 dandyfied 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
+dullness and sameness; and whenever any body 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>
+
+<a name="image-0051"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-301.jpg"><img src="images/i-301-s.png" width="220" height="264"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page301" name="page301"></a>[pg 301]</span>
+
+    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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page302" name="page302"></a>[pg 302]</span>
+
+            judges of the law and portraits of royal personages who have
+honored 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 gray-headed
+attorneys who were proceeding to take the superior dignity&mdash;dandies and
+men-about-town who wished, for some reason, to be barristers of seven
+years' standing&mdash;swarthy, black-eyed natives of the Colonies, who came
+to be called here before they practiced in their own islands&mdash;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 quarters has its piece of beef or leg of mutton,
+its sufficient apple-pie and its bottle of wine. But the honest habitués
+of the hall, among 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&mdash;"the tables are very full,
+and there's only three benchers to eat ten side dishes&mdash;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, toward 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 favorite 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 <i>ton</i>&mdash;very
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page303" name="page303"></a>[pg 303]</span>
+
+    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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;tip-top fellows, I can tell you&mdash;Mr. Trail,
+the Bishop of Ealing's son, Honorable Fred. Ringwood, Lord Cinqbar's
+brother, you know. <i>He'll</i> have a good place, I bet any money; and Bob
+Suckling, who's always with them&mdash;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. <i>They</i> 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 any
+thing 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 <i>are</i> 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page304" name="page304"></a>[pg 304]</span>
+
+                                                                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
+trowsers 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, among the persons of his own degree, and who strode over
+the table, and took his seat 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&mdash;&mdash; Warrington?" Pen said, delighted to see this hero.
+</p>
+<p>
+Warrington laughed&mdash;"Stunning Warrington&mdash;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&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Hush!" said Warrington&mdash;"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 any body there?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+Pen said, "No&mdash;only to hear the music, of which he was very fond."
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page305" name="page305"></a>[pg 305]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+"You had much better come home and smoke a pipe with me," said
+Warrington&mdash;"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 that 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 among 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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page306" name="page306"></a>[pg 306]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0031" id="h2HCH0031"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXXI.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCES.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0052"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-306.jpg"><img src="images/i-306-s.png" width="128" height="182"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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&mdash;so he beheld coalheavers in their tap-rooms; boxers in their
+inn-parlors; honest citizens disporting in the suburbs or on the river;
+and he would have liked to hob and nob with celebrated pick-pockets, 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 neighborhood, and with the frequenters of their
+various parlors, was prodigious. He was the personal friend of the
+landlord and landlady, and welcome to the bar as to the club-room. 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, "ever body 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page307" name="page307"></a>[pg 307]</span>
+
+    greatest character in history. I like gin-and-water better 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-humor, 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.
+Among 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&mdash;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
+onward by good spirits and the delightful capability to enjoy. If ever
+we feel young afterward, 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! Gray hairs have come on like daylight streaming in&mdash;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 toward the
+Temple, after one of their wild nights of carouse&mdash;nights wild, but not
+so wicked as such nights sometimes are, for Warrington was a
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page308" name="page308"></a>[pg 308]</span>
+
+                                                             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&mdash;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&mdash;when they get on their feet, they
+go away.
+</p>
+<p>
+That was what on acquaintance of Pen's said to him in his hard, homely
+way; an old friend with whom he had fallen in again in London&mdash;no other
+than honest Mr. Bows of the Chatteries Theater, who was now employed
+as piano-forte 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 neighboring 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&mdash;such as "The Good Old English
+Gentleman," "Dear Tom, this Brown Jug," and so forth&mdash;songs in which
+pathos and hospitality are blended, and the praises of good liquor and
+the social affections are chanted in a barytone 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"&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page309" name="page309"></a>[pg 309]</span>
+</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 neighbor drinking by his side), about "me daughter."
+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 honor 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 check," 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 honor 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 toward
+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 were 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 <i>that</i> 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, any how; and a glass of punch
+will make ye play <i>con spirito</i>." 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
+out-stretched hand, very kindly and warmly to greet the old man; still
+retaining a strong remembrance, of the time when Costigan's daughter had
+been every thing 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page310" name="page310"></a>[pg 310]</span>
+
+                                               to another, yet he always
+respected the place where Love had dwelt, and, like the Sultan of
+Turkey, desired that honors should be paid to the lady toward whom he
+had once thrown the royal pocket-handkerchief.
+</p>
+<p>
+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 surely
+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&mdash;Arthur Pendennis of Chatteries."
+</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&mdash;how was his fawther, no, his mother, and his
+guardian, the general, the major. "I preshoom, from your apparance, that
+you've come into your prawpertee; and, bedad, yee'll spend it like a man
+of spirit&mdash;I'll go bail for <i>that</i>. 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&mdash;and, be heavens! <i>you</i> 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.&mdash;Your
+friend? I've seen him before. Permit me to have the honor 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&mdash;"The Little Doodeen"&mdash;for the singing of
+which he was celebrated at the Fielding's Head. "Me dear boy&mdash;I've
+forgot your name again&mdash;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?&mdash;angcored
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page311" name="page311"></a>[pg 311]</span>
+
+                                                          at Saint
+Bartholomew's the other night&mdash;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?&mdash;There's a
+portrait of me, sir, as I sing it&mdash;as the Snatcher&mdash;considered rather
+like."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Thank you," said Warrington; "heard it nine times&mdash;know it by heart,
+Hodgen."
+</p>
+<p>
+Here the gentleman who presided at the piano-forte 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 woefully
+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' playing: it was scarcely heard amid 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&mdash;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&mdash;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"&mdash;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 acquaintances afterward,
+and of renewing his relations with Costigan and the old musician.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<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&mdash;squads of young
+apprentices and assistants, the shutters being closed over the scene of
+their labors, came hither, for fresh air doubtless&mdash;rakish young medical
+students,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page312" name="page312"></a>[pg 312]</span>
+
+          gallant, dashing, what is called "loudly" dressed, and (must
+it be owned?) somewhat dirty&mdash;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. A 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 humor.
+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' 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>
+While Pen and his friend were sitting here together one night, or rather
+morning, two habitués of the house entered almost together. "Mr. Hoolan
+and Mr. Doolan," whispered Warrington to Pen, saluting these gentlemen,
+and in the latter Pen recognized 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&mdash;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&mdash;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, Morgan, for Georgy's got the measles,"
+said the friendly Mick, and they straightway fell to talk about matters
+connected with their trade&mdash;about the foreign mails&mdash;about who was
+correspondent at Paris, and who wrote from Madrid&mdash;about the expense
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page313" name="page313"></a>[pg 313]</span>
+
+    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&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"As rogues of note in former days who had some wicked work to
+perform&mdash;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&mdash;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," &amp;c.
+</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&mdash;in&mdash;whew&mdash;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&mdash;Mr. Pendennis, I am delighted to have the
+honor 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.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page314" name="page314"></a>[pg 314]</span>
+
+                                                        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 honor to be sub-editor of the
+Dawn, one of the best written papers of the empire"&mdash;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&mdash;who comes
+here?&mdash;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&mdash;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
+every body."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Dined with him the day before yesterday at Gaunt House," Archer said.
+"We were four&mdash;the French embassador, Steyne, and we two commoners."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why, my uncle is in Scot&mdash;" 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
+ante-room, 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&mdash;and turning to Pen,
+added, "You know, I suppose, that when there is any thing 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.&mdash;At the last
+Chantilly races, where I rode Brian Boru for my old friend the Duke de
+St. Cloud&mdash;the old king said to me, Archer, I'm uneasy
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page315" name="page315"></a>[pg 315]</span>
+
+                                                       about Saint
+Cloud. I have arranged his marriage with the Princess Marie Cunégonde;
+the peace of Europe depends upon it&mdash;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 humor 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&mdash;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&mdash;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 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&mdash;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&mdash;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 any body harm
+by his talk, or said evil of any body. 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 <i>us</i>! Who are <i>we</i>?" asked Pen. "Of what profession is Mr. Archer?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Of the Corporation of Goosequill&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page316" name="page316"></a>[pg 316]</span>
+
+                                                             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&mdash;the great
+engine&mdash;she never sleeps. She has her embassadors in every quarter of
+the world&mdash;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&mdash;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, and the dawn was
+beginning to peep.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page317" name="page317"></a>[pg 317]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0032" id="h2HCH0032"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXXII.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    IN WHICH THE PRINTER'S DEVIL COMES TO THE DOOR.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0053"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-317.jpg"><img src="images/i-317-s.png" width="105" height="218"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 follies 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 bed-room: 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 any thing that the other knew. He had gold chains and a
+dressing-case fit for a lord. His habits were those of an aristocrat&mdash;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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page318" name="page318"></a>[pg 318]</span>
+
+                        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; every body 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 any thing more
+wholesome for a man&mdash;for an honest man, mind you&mdash;for another, the
+medicine loses its effect&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;A
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page319" name="page319"></a>[pg 319]</span>
+
+    gentleman, B.A. of St. Boniface College, Oxbridge, and who was
+plucked for his degree&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Confound you," cried Pen.
+</p>
+<p>
+"&mdash;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&mdash;well, don't be
+angry, I meant nothing offensive&mdash;a doctor's son, I say, who was walking
+the hospitals here, and quarreled with his governor on questions of
+finance, and what did he do when he came to his last five-pound note?
+he let his mustaches grow, went into a provincial town, where he
+announced himself as Professor Spineto, chiropodist to the Emperor of
+all the Russias, 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 now 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, any body 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?&mdash;here is your health, Laura!&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page320" name="page320"></a>[pg 320]</span>
+
+                                                               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
+recognizing the style afterward&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;that poor good little
+snob. And, in fine, the reason why I can not tell&mdash;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&mdash;and what you say about
+me. I <i>have</i> often thought I was a poet. I will be one&mdash;I think I am
+one, as you say so, though the world mayn't. Is it&mdash;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, you young goose," he
+yelled out&mdash;"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 Æschylus? 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page321" name="page321"></a>[pg 321]</span>
+
+                                                   magazine article, and
+turn out 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>
+<hr />
+<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
+among 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&mdash;the Honorable Percy Popjoy, whose chivalrous ballads
+have obtained him such a reputation&mdash;Bedwin Sands's Eastern Ghazuls,
+and many more of the works of our young nobles, were first 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&mdash;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.&mdash;"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&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page322" name="page322"></a>[pg 322]</span>
+</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 dispatched 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&mdash;a lady entering it, and a youth out of a
+wine-shop window ogling her.&mdash;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>
+
+<a name="image-0054"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-322.jpg"><img src="images/i-322-s.png" width="156" height="220"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page323" name="page323"></a>[pg 323]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+"I think they will," said Warrington, after reading them; they ran as
+follows:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+
+<h3>The Church Porch.</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i2">   Although I enter not, </p>
+<p class="i2">   Yet round about the spot </p>
+<p class="i4">     Sometimes I hover, </p>
+<p class="i2">   And at the sacred gate, </p>
+<p class="i2">   With longing eyes I wait, </p>
+<p class="i4">     Expectant of her. </p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i2">   The Minster bell tolls out </p>
+<p class="i2">   Above the city's rout </p>
+<p class="i4">     And noise and humming: </p>
+<p class="i2">   They've stopp'd the chiming bell, </p>
+<p class="i2">   I hear the organ's swell&mdash; </p>
+<p class="i4">     She's coming, she's coming! </p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i2">   My lady comes at last, </p>
+<p class="i2">   Timid and stepping fast, </p>
+<p class="i4">     And hastening hither, </p>
+<p class="i2">   With modest eyes downcast, </p>
+<p class="i2">   She comes&mdash;she's here&mdash;she's past. </p>
+<p class="i4">     May Heaven go with her! </p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i2">   Kneel undisturb'd, fair saint, </p>
+<p class="i2">   Pour out your praise or plaint </p>
+<p class="i4">     Meekly and duly. </p>
+<p class="i2">   I will not enter there, </p>
+<p class="i2">   To sully your pure prayer </p>
+<p class="i4">     With thoughts unruly. </p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i2">   But suffer me to pace </p>
+<p class="i2">   Round the forbidden place, </p>
+<p class="i4">     Lingering a minute, </p>
+<p class="i2">   Like outcast spirits, who wait </p>
+<p class="i2">   And see through Heaven's gate </p>
+<p class="i4">     Angels within it. </p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<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 entrée 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.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page324" name="page324"></a>[pg 324]</span>
+
+                                                  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 embassador 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; while at the next
+window, portraits of ill-favored individuals, with facsimiles 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; while 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 afterward. 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 while
+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&mdash;he's cousin to
+Lord Pontypool&mdash;he was one of the most
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page325" name="page325"></a>[pg 325]</span>
+
+                                       distinguished men at Oxbridge;
+he dines at Gaunt House every week."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Law bless me, you don't say so, sir. Well&mdash;really&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;as payment for these 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 any body, 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 any thing 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 balk him; and they drank together to the health
+of the Spring Annual.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page326" name="page326"></a>[pg 326]</span>
+</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"&mdash;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 class="quote">
+    "<i>F. P. Tuesday Morning.</i><br />
+    "<span class="sc">My Dear Sir</span>,
+</p>
+<p class="quote">
+    "Bungay will be here to-day about the 'Pall-Mall Gazette.' You would
+    be the very man to help us <i>with a genuine West-end article</i>&mdash;you
+    understand&mdash;dashing, trenchant, and d&mdash;&mdash; 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 class="quote">
+    "Shall B. come and see you, or can you look in upon me here?
+</p>
+<p class="quote">
+    "Ever yours,<br />
+    "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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page327" name="page327"></a>[pg 327]</span>
+</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 ante-room, 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&mdash;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. Every body 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&mdash;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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page328" name="page328"></a>[pg 328]</span>
+</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&mdash;he, he&mdash;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 blood-shot 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&mdash;the only available
+seat&mdash;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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page329" name="page329"></a>[pg 329]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0033" id="h2HCH0033"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXXIII.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    WHICH IS PASSED IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF LUDGATE HILL.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0055"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-329.jpg"><img src="images/i-329-s.png" width="159" height="180"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 defense 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 defense, 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page330" name="page330"></a>[pg 330]</span>
+
+                                                        enemy a nation
+ever met: it was because we were headed by gentlemen that the Eagles
+retreated before us from the Douro 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&mdash;"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 candor, 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.
+</p>
+<p>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;yes, <i>the gentlemen of England</i> (we'll have that
+in large caps., Bungay, my boy) have made it&mdash;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&mdash;"
+</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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page331" name="page331"></a>[pg 331]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+&mdash;"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>
+"Brayvo!" 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 demeanor. So she clambered up on his lap, while 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 can not
+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 can
+not, by any possibility, be made public&mdash;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 among our readers,
+because our writers are among them. We address ourselves to the higher
+circles of society: we care not to disown it&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page332" name="page332"></a>[pg 332]</span>
+
+                                                                  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 who, by their
+appearance and manner, he presumed to be persons of the <i>beau monde</i>.
+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 was his habit to live among 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 work-box 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page333" name="page333"></a>[pg 333]</span>
+
+                                                               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 in his walk, that his wife might nurse him. Oh, what varieties of
+pain do we not make our women suffer!
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0056"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-333.jpg"><img src="images/i-333-s.png" width="210" height="258"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page334" name="page334"></a>[pg 334]</span>
+
+                                                                  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 comes tripping
+noiselessly into her mother's bed-room, 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&mdash;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 aid-de-camp of his own nation,
+likewise in circumstances of pecuniary discomfort. That aid-de-camp
+has subordinates of his own, who again may have other insolvent
+dependents&mdash;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 half-pence 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 afterward; 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page335" name="page335"></a>[pg 335]</span>
+
+                                                          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>
+<hr />
+<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 humor, an inmate
+of a jail for half his time, and a bookseller's hanger-on when out of
+prison."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I am a bookseller's hanger-on&mdash;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 neighbor 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," Pen said. "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 labor. 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 among our order. Bravo, Pen, my 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 ardor 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 jail; 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&mdash;if he orders a coat from the
+tailor's, why he shouldn't pay for it."
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page336" name="page336"></a>[pg 336]</span>
+</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
+laborer's earnings and fame."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I am a prose laborer," Warrington said: "you, my boy, are a poet in a
+small way, and so, I suppose, consider you are authorized 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? Every body who writes his epic, every driveler who
+can or can't spell, and produces his novel or his tragedy&mdash;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, salable 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 recognize 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;&mdash;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 is 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;&mdash;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;&mdash;he might pay poor
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page337" name="page337"></a>[pg 337]</span>
+
+                                                 Snip, the tailor, the
+twenty pounds which the poor devil wants for his landlord, but John
+and Thomas lay their hands upon his purse;&mdash;and so he drinks while
+his tradesman goes to jail 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 Back Kitchen that the above
+philosophical conversation took place between the two young men.
+</p>
+<p>
+Warrington began to laugh as usual. "<i>Video meliora proboque</i>&mdash;I mean,
+bring it me hot, with sugar, John," he said to the 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 neighbors."
+And Warrington's last glass having been dispatched, 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 the pleasure of their company at dinner on an early day,
+to meet a few literary friends.
+</p>
+<p>
+"We shall have a grand spread," said 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
+neighboring apartment pronounced that that gentleman was engaged in deep
+slumber.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<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, that hung over his
+drawers&mdash;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 honor and fame if they could be his. If fortune favors 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 any thing worthy of our name! and you, Laura,
+you won't scorn me as the worthless idler and spendthrift, when you
+see that I&mdash;when I have achieved a&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page338" name="page338"></a>[pg 338]</span>
+
+                                       errors and idleness, the passions,
+extravagancies, 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>
+<hr />
+<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. "What is
+it?" said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+"<i>Catch!</i>" 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 any body 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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page339" name="page339"></a>[pg 339]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0034" id="h2HCH0034"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXXIV.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    IN WHICH THE HISTORY STILL HOVERS ABOUT FLEET-STREET
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0057"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-339.jpg"><img src="images/i-339-s.png" width="78" height="70"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 the 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 used in former days 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 stair-case 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 honor to his little rooms to be visited by such a lady;
+and as she went down the stair-case with her vail 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 aid-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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page340" name="page340"></a>[pg 340]</span>
+
+                                                              as to
+color 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 afterward to the public&mdash;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 afterward 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,&mdash;this is my affair, sir, if you please. James, take the bill,
+and eighteen-pence 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page341" name="page341"></a>[pg 341]</span>
+
+    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 honor 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 humor. 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 neighboring market. Mrs. Bungay was in a gorgeous shot silk
+dress, which flamed with red and purple; she wore a yellow shawl, and
+had red flowers inside her bonnet, and a brilliant light blue parasol.
+Mrs. Shandon was in an old black watered silk; her bonnet had never seen
+very brilliant days of prosperity any more than its owner, but she could
+not help looking like a lady, whatever her attire was. The two women
+courtesied 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&mdash;I came about business with Mr. Bungay&mdash;I&mdash;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&mdash;couldn't you
+leave your little <i>gurl</i> with me?" said Mrs. Bungay, in a deep voice,
+and with a tragic look, as she held out one finger toward 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"&mdash;and opening her
+brown paper parcel, Mrs. Bungay displayed some choice sweet biscuits,
+such as her Bungay loved after his wine. Little Mary
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page342" name="page342"></a>[pg 342]</span>
+
+                                                     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>
+
+<a name="image-0058"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-342.jpg"><img src="images/i-342-s.png" width="209" height="258"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page343" name="page343"></a>[pg 343]</span>
+
+                                                               port,
+and two large glasses of brandy-and-water, had warmed his soul into
+enthusiasm, and made him generous in his promises toward 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)&mdash;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 toward the captain's lady.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What's in the wind now, my dear?" Mæcenas asked, surprised at his
+wife's altered tone. "You wouldn't hear of my doing any thing for the
+captain this morning: I wonder what has been a-changing of you."
+</p>
+<p>
+"The captain 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&mdash;and, O
+Marmaduke! didn't you remark her 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.?"&mdash;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 just moved her compassion.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page344" name="page344"></a>[pg 344]</span>
+</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 pizn?' I did feel it, Elizabeth, upon my
+honor 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 any where in my carriage, Mrs. Shandon&mdash;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&mdash;and the two ladies, with little Mary between them
+(whose tiny hand Mæcenas'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. Bessy 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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page345" name="page345"></a>[pg 345]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0035" id="h2HCH0035"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXXV.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    A DINNER IN THE ROW.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0059"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-345.jpg"><img src="images/i-345-s.png" width="110" height="120"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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&mdash;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 splendor,
+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
+recognized 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page346" name="page346"></a>[pg 346]</span>
+
+                                       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 in 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
+courtesies 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 suicidal cast, had now subsided into one of Mr.
+Bungay's back shops as reader for that gentleman; and Captain Sumph,
+an ex-beau still 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 honors
+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 honor of
+introducing Mr. Warrington to you. Mr. Warrington, Mrs. Bungay; Mr.
+Pendennis, Mrs. Bungay. Hope you've brought good appetites with you,
+gentlemen. <i>You</i>, 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 <i>this</i> house," Doolan said, and he winked and stroked his lean
+chops with his large gloves; and made appeals of friendship to
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page347" name="page347"></a>[pg 347]</span>
+
+  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 gray 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&mdash;these bright things were
+revealed to the delighted Mrs. Bungay. "The Honorable 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&mdash;Lord Falconet's eldest son,
+as we all very well know, who was come to dine with the publisher&mdash;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 Oxford 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
+humor 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 Honorable 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&mdash;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&mdash;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 <i>you</i> 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 <i>they</i> know him?" she asked rapidly of Mr. B.
+</p>
+<p>
+"High fellers, I tell you&mdash;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&mdash;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,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page348" name="page348"></a>[pg 348]</span>
+
+    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 <i>entrée</i> 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 humorist had his share in common
+with the unjocular part of mankind) could altogether keep his humor
+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 <i>gros sel</i>. 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 humor. 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&mdash;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&mdash;all of which scenes Mrs.
+Bungay remarked with respectful pleasure, and communicated her ideas to
+Bungay, afterward, regarding the importance of Mr. Pendennis&mdash;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&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i2">   "A violet, shrinking meanly </p>
+<p class="i2">   When blows the March wind keenly </p>
+<p class="i2">   A timid fawn, on wild-wood lawn, </p>
+<p class="i2">   Where oak-boughs rustle greenly&mdash;" </p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em!important;">
+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 stopped 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page349" name="page349"></a>[pg 349]</span>
+
+      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 every body 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 recognize 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page350" name="page350"></a>[pg 350]</span>
+
+                                        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&mdash;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, 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 candor. "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&mdash;"What I call of the florid
+Gothic style," Wagg whispered to Pen, who sate beside the humorist, 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 own footboy was lost amidst those large and black-coated
+attendants.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Look at that <i>very</i> 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page351" name="page351"></a>[pg 351]</span>
+
+                                                     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&mdash;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&mdash;he was Governor of Coventry
+Island&mdash;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 <i>cordon
+bleu</i> 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 <i>quizzin yer</i>," cried Mr. Wagg; but nobody
+saw the pun, which disconcerted somewhat the bashful punster. "The
+dinner is from Grigg's, in St. Paul's churchyard; so is Bacon's," he
+whispered Pen. "Bungay writes to give half-a-crown a head more than
+Bacon,&mdash;so does Bacon. They would poison each other's ices if they
+could get near them; and as for the made-dishes&mdash;they are poison.
+This&mdash;hum&mdash;ha&mdash;this <i>Brimborion a la Sévigné</i> 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 ardor; 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,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page352" name="page352"></a>[pg 352]</span>
+
+                                                  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 <i>surveillance</i>. 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 neighbors. "This
+is one of Bungay's grand field-days," he said. "We are all Bungavians
+here.&mdash;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 <i>apropos</i>&mdash;Popjoy permitted the use of his name, and I dare
+say supplied a page here and there&mdash;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.&mdash;I say, Popjoy, what a
+capital passage that is in Volume Three&mdash;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 favorite 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 afterward where Byron's yacht was&mdash;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&mdash;the
+what-d'ye-call'em?&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page353" name="page353"></a>[pg 353]</span>
+
+                                                       him employ me.
+Prose or verse&mdash;what shall it be? Novels, poems, travels, or leading
+articles, begad. Any thing or every thing&mdash;only let Bungay pay me, and
+I'm ready&mdash;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'&mdash;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. "Every thing must have a name. My dog
+Ponto has got a name. You've got a name, and a name which you deserve,
+more or less, bedad. 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&mdash;and you know mine."
+</p>
+<p>
+"And I know your address too," said Wagg, but this was spoken in an
+under-tone, 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 every body should
+drink to the health of the new Journal, eulogizing 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
+neighbor, 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page354" name="page354"></a>[pg 354]</span>
+
+    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:&mdash;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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page355" name="page355"></a>[pg 355]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0036" id="h2HCH0036"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXXVI.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    THE PALL-MALL GAZETTE.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0060"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-355.jpg"><img src="images/i-355-s.png" width="151" height="114"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 among the contributors to its columns. Was there
+any foundation for these rumors? We are not at liberty to say whether
+they were well or ill-founded; but this much we may divulge, that an
+article upon foreign policy, which was generally attributed to a noble
+lord, whose connection with the Foreign Office is very well known, was
+in reality composed by Captain Shandon, in the parlor 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 gave it 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page356" name="page356"></a>[pg 356]</span>
+
+                                                               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>
+
+<a name="image-0061"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-356.jpg"><img src="images/i-356-s.png" width="228" height="298"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 any thing
+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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page357" name="page357"></a>[pg 357]</span>
+
+                                                     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
+a 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
+trowsers and dingy shirt sleeves, cheerfully describing and arranging
+the most brilliant <i>fêtes</i> 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 parlor of the taverns which he frequented, whereas from his
+writing you would have supposed that he dined with embassadors, 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 a 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 delighted 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 gentleman-like; and
+the unfortunate subject of the criticism was scarified and laughed at
+during the operation. Wenham's bilious countenance
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page358" name="page358"></a>[pg 358]</span>
+
+                                                   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 connections 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
+any body who could entertain him, whether by his folly, wit, or by
+his dullness, 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 <i>resume</i> 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 an opinion upon the greatest
+scholars, or to give a judgment upon the Encyclopædia. 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page359" name="page359"></a>[pg 359]</span>
+
+      <i>aid-de-camp</i>, 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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;"<i>ruat cælum</i>, 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&mdash;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;
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page360" name="page360"></a>[pg 360]</span>
+
+                                                       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 honor 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
+humor. 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 book-stall, and purchased a
+pint of brandy with the proceeds of the volume.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page361" name="page361"></a>[pg 361]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0037" id="h2HCH0037"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXXVII.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    WHERE PEN APPEARS IN TOWN AND COUNTRY.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0062"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-361.jpg"><img src="images/i-361-s.png" width="152" height="197"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 labor 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 salable
+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.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page362" name="page362"></a>[pg 362]</span>
+
+                                                                  There
+is no reason why this animal should be exempt from labor, or illness,
+or decay, any more than any of the other creatures of God's world. If he
+gets the whip, Pegasus very often deserves it, and I for one am quite
+ready to protest with my friend, George Warrington, against the doctrine
+which some poetical sympathizers are inclined to put forward, viz., that
+men of letters, and what is called genius, are to be exempt from the
+prose duties of this daily, bread-wanting, tax-paying life, and are not
+to be made to work and pay like their neighbors.
+</p>
+<p>
+Well, then, the "Pall Mall Gazette" being duly established, and Arthur
+Pendennis's merits recognized 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 three-score, 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 theaters
+complained of him woefully, 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 humor and justice, and had not therefore
+an overweening respect for his own works; besides, he had his friend
+Warrington at his elbow&mdash;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 labors, 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 labor. 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 labors 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page363" name="page363"></a>[pg 363]</span>
+
+                                                            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 labors, 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 among
+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, Dr. 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. Among 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 can not 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 favorable eye;
+and they reported how they met him at the houses of persons of fashion,
+among 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>
+
+<a name="image-0063"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-364.jpg"><img src="images/i-364-s.png" width="198" height="255"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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, where-ever
+he went. He would breakfast, for instance, at Mr. Plover's of a
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page364" name="page364"></a>[pg 364]</span>
+
+                                                                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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page365" name="page365"></a>[pg 365]</span>
+
+    the volumes would sell them at his accustomed book-stall, 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. Toward 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 May Fair; 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 few years since&mdash;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>
+<hr />
+<p>
+The London season was now blooming in its full vigor, 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 bay-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: every body 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 meager
+carcass enveloped in a brilliant Turkish dressing-gown, the worthy
+gentleman sate on a certain morning by his fire-side, letting his feet
+gently simmer in a bath, while 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page366" name="page366"></a>[pg 366]</span>
+
+    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-long-legs, 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&mdash;who has given up beauty, but
+still talks about it as wickedly as the youngest <i>roué</i> in company&mdash;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 arm-chair, 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&mdash;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 <i>ton</i>,
+whose valets canvass their august secrets, just, my dear madam, as our
+own parlor-maids and dependents in the kitchen discuss our characters,
+our stinginess and generosity, our pecuniary means or embarrassments,
+and our little domestic or connubial tiffs and quarrels.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page367" name="page367"></a>[pg 367]</span>
+
+                                                         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 candor; and the next day her mistress will
+probably know that Captain and Mrs. Jones have been a-quarreling as
+usual. Nothing is secret. Take it as a rule that John knows every thing:
+and as in our humble world so in the greatest: a duke is no more a hero
+to his <i>valet-de-chambre</i> 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 every
+thing, 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&mdash;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 day previous, 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.
+</p>
+<p>
+"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&mdash;tall, red-aired man&mdash;but
+dyes his air. Was groom of the chambers in Lord Levant's famly, 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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page368" name="page368"></a>[pg 368]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+"Devilish hard on Towler, by gad!" said the major, amused, "and not
+pleasant for Lord Levant&mdash;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 stropping the skillful 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&mdash;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>
+"Mirobblan was his name, sir; Mirobblan'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 Mirobblan," Morgan
+continued. "At a ball at Baymouth, sir, bless his impadence, he
+challenged Mr. Harthur to fight a jewel, sir, which Mr. Harthur was very
+near knocking him down, and pitchin' him out awinder, and serve him
+right; but Chevalier Strong, sir, came up and stopped the shindy&mdash;I beg
+pardon, the holtercation, sir&mdash;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, Mr. Harthur forgave it him, and beaved most
+handsome, was hushed hup: it was about Miss Hamory, sir, that he ad his
+dismissal. Those French fellers, they fancy every body 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 demeanor. "Know nothing about it, sir.
+Servants don't know them kind of things the least. Most probbly there
+was nothing in it&mdash;so many lies is told about families&mdash;Marobblan went
+away, bag and baggage, saucepans, and piano, and all&mdash;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 Fribsby,
+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 Fribsby; and he was nearly
+shot by the keeper in the park."
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page369" name="page369"></a>[pg 369]</span>
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0064"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/i-369.jpg"><img src="images/i-369-s.png" width="204" height="306"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 St. 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,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page370" name="page370"></a>[pg 370]</span>
+
+                                                   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&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"&mdash;In a chamber of old horrors by themselves," Pen said, laughing.
+</p>
+<p>
+"&mdash;In the chamber of horrors! Gad, doosid good!" Pop cried. "They
+<i>are</i> 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&mdash;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>
+"&mdash;Can't," replied the other. "Cut uncle Col. two years ago, about
+Mademoiselle Frangipane&mdash;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
+neighbor'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 <i>quite</i> 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page371" name="page371"></a>[pg 371]</span>
+
+    the next estate to ours in the country. Ha! there's my nephew walking
+with&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"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-humor. 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 their 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 the 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, while that gentleman's other wing was engaged
+with his grace's right), and he wished all Gray Friar's 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&mdash;in a blue frock coat and
+spotless white duck trowsers, 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
+any body should be <i>really</i> 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
+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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page372" name="page372"></a>[pg 372]</span>
+
+                                     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 bay-window at Bays's?
+Two were peers of the realm. Hobananob <i>will</i> 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&mdash;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 up-stairs, at Bays's,
+playing piquet 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 to 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&mdash;O ay, yes!&mdash;and that brings me back to my point&mdash;revenons
+à nos moutons. Yes, begad! revenons à nos 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. <i>Sic vos non vobis</i>, as we used to say at Gray 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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page373" name="page373"></a>[pg 373]</span>
+</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 extravagancies, and wild oats, sir, which I hope you've sown. Yes,
+begad! 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&mdash;there's a run upon literature&mdash;clever fellows get into the
+best houses in town, begad! <i>Tempora mutantur</i>, 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 bed-room 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 organizing all this splendor," thought
+Pen. He recognized 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 color, drawn by wonderful gray horses, with flaming ribbons, and
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page374" name="page374"></a>[pg 374]</span>
+
+    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 splendor 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
+grays&mdash;a young man still, but of a solemn countenance, with a laced
+waistcoat and buckles in his shoes&mdash;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&mdash;one of the
+largest of his race&mdash;was leaning against the door pillar, with his
+ambrosial hair powdered, his legs crossed; beautiful, silk-stockinged;
+in his hand his cane, gold-headed, <i>dolichoskion</i>. 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 practiced
+eye: and, in fact, the major and Pen had scarcely crossed the street,
+when the second <i>battant</i> 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, and 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&mdash;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, saw the pair&mdash;she was on
+the first carriage-step, and would have been in the vehicle in another
+second, but she gave a start backward (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-colored
+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,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page375" name="page375"></a>[pg 375]</span>
+
+                                                            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 toward 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 grays, was
+left unoccupied, save by the coachman in the silver wig.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page376" name="page376"></a>[pg 376]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0038" id="h2HCH0038"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    IN WHICH THE SYLPH REAPPEARS.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0065"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-376.jpg"><img src="images/i-376-s.png" width="150" height="191"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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 ciphers 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 favorite, an extraordinary man, who had, it was said,
+embraced Mohammedanism, 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 De Lolme, 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page377" name="page377"></a>[pg 377]</span>
+
+    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 her wealth
+he merits to be. This fact shows our British independence and honest
+feeling&mdash;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 favorite 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 connection 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 embassador in all sorts of affairs. On
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page378" name="page378"></a>[pg 378]</span>
+
+                                                              one of
+these occasions the Nawaub's envoy must have been in an exceeding
+ill-humor; 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 honor 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 12 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 color
+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
+debtors' jail 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 <i>couldn't</i> 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page379" name="page379"></a>[pg 379]</span>
+
+                                                                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 installments 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&mdash;so there are
+hundreds of gallant spirits in this town, walking about in good spirits,
+dining every day in tolerable gayety and plenty, and going to sleep
+comfortably; with a bailiff always more or less near, and a rope of debt
+round their necks&mdash;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
+mean while 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 armor, double-handed
+swords and battle-axes made of <i>carton-pierre</i>, looking-glasses,
+statuettes of saints, and Dresden china&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page380" name="page380"></a>[pg 380]</span>
+
+                                                              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 splendor of the drawing-rooms? the
+carpets were so magnificently fluffy that your feet 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, marqueterie-tables covered with marvelous
+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 mantle-piece&mdash;there
+was, in a word, every thing 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 every body who saw Lady Clavering's
+reception-rooms, was forced to confess that they were most elegant; and
+that the prettiest rooms in London&mdash;Lady Harley Quin's, Lady Hanway
+Wardour's, or Mrs. Hodge-Podgson's own, the great Railroad Cr[oe]sus'
+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 splendors 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&mdash;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>
+"<i>Quel preux chevalier!</i>" 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.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page381" name="page381"></a>[pg 381]</span>
+</p>
+<p>
+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>
+"Me, 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&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;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 <i>the</i> 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 can
+not be far wrong. No, no, you can not be far wrong. Lady Rockminster,
+I should say, Arthur, is the very center of the circle of fashion and
+taste. The rooms <i>are</i> 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&mdash;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&mdash;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, <i>vous êtes incorrigible</i>." 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
+<i>him</i> 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
+any thing 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>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page382" name="page382"></a>[pg 382]</span>
+</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 be <i>au mieux</i> 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 of 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 underbred; and her character
+is somewhat&mdash;never mind what. But don't think of her; ten thousand pound
+won't do for you. What, my good follow, 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!&mdash;you
+understand;" and he gave a killing though 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 <i>homme
+dangereux</i>, don't hurt a young fellow with the women. They like it,
+sir&mdash;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 entrées 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 color very readily from his neighbor, and found the
+adaptation only too easy.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page383" name="page383"></a>[pg 383]</span>
+</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>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page384" name="page384"></a>[pg 384]</span>
+</p>
+<a name="h2HCH0039" id="h2HCH0039"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XXXIX.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    IN WHICH COLONEL ALTAMONT APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS.
+</h3>
+
+<a name="image-0066"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figcap">
+<a href="images/i-384.jpg"><img src="images/i-384-s.png" width="171" height="236"
+alt="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<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&mdash;&mdash;d house-steward, as he irreverently
+called Strong. But Mr. Welbore Welbore, Clavering's country neighbor 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page385" name="page385"></a>[pg 385]</span>
+
+                                                  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 whispered 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 any body so amiable and
+delightful. Not accustomed much to the society of ladies, and ordinarily
+being dumb in 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 down stairs, the delighted Foker found himself by Miss Amory's
+side at the dinner-table, and flattered himself that he had maneuvered
+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 neighbor 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 any thing so charming, any thing so classic, any thing 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page386" name="page386"></a>[pg 386]</span>
+
+                                                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&mdash;they sing too loud,
+or I have grown too old or too blasé. 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>I'll</i> come up after dinner, fast enough," he said, simply. "I don't
+care about much wine afterward&mdash;I take my whack at dinner&mdash;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&mdash;my habits are simple&mdash;and
+when I'm pleased I'm generally in a good humor, ain't I, Pen?&mdash;that
+jelly, if you please&mdash;not that one, the other with the cherries inside.
+How the doose <i>do</i> they get those cherries inside the jellies?" In this
+way the artless youth prattled on; and Miss Amory listened to him with
+inexhaustible good humor. 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 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>
+<hr />
+<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&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page387" name="page387"></a>[pg 387]</span>
+
+                                                           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 honor 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,
+tantalizing view of six gentlemen in white waistcoats, with a quantity
+of decanters and a variety of fruits before them&mdash;little boys, as they
+passed and jumped up at the area-railings, and took a peep, said to one
+another, "Mi hi, Jim, shouldn't you like to be there, and have a cut of
+that there pine-apple?"&mdash;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 gas-man 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 inward 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 St. 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;
+while 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 railings was very gorgeously attired with chains,
+jewelry, 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 blood-shot 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 <i>gros mots</i>, 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page388" name="page388"></a>[pg 388]</span>
+
+    heavens to this sublunary scene; and he was puzzled and alarmed by
+the appearance of the man in shiny boots. "A holtercation," he remarked
+afterward in the servants'-hall&mdash;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 humor, 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
+inclosed 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-defense, 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&mdash;ho, ho!&mdash;not stare&mdash;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&mdash;that's Sir Francis Clavering, Baronet, M.P.&mdash;I
+know him, and he knows me&mdash;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&mdash;&mdash; 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
+bare-headed, a policeman, and an individual decently attired, engaged in
+almost fistycuffs on the pavement, were enough to make a crowd, even in
+that quiet neighborhood, 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page389" name="page389"></a>[pg 389]</span>
+
+                                                 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, "<i>That</i> 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 <i>will</i> have some&mdash;by &mdash;&mdash; 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&mdash;hay! old corkscrew? Get us a bottle of the
+yellow seal, you old thief: the very best&mdash;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 Embassador of the Nawaub
+of Lucknow, reeled into the dining-room, with a triumphant look toward
+Jeames, the footman, which seemed to say, "There, sir, what do you think
+of that? <i>Now</i>, 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, dryly, 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>
+"O, of course," the major answered. Sir Francis Clavering was, in the
+mean while, endeavoring to make an excuse to his brother guest, for the
+new comer's condition, and muttered something regarding Altamont,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page390" name="page390"></a>[pg 390]</span>
+
+                                                                  that
+he was an extraordinary character, very eccentric, very&mdash;had Indian
+habits&mdash;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>I</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>
+"<i>What's</i> his name?" cried the colonel. Strong named Mr. Pendennis
+again.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Pendennis!&mdash;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&mdash;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 toward 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 exceeding pale and agitated, and
+turned with looks of almost terror toward Major Pendennis. The latter
+had been eying 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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page391" name="page391"></a>[pg 391]</span>
+
+    gentlemen, and they went up-stairs 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 afterward 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 toward 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 sat 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&mdash;a perfect nightingale, begad! I have scarcely
+ever heard any thing equal to her, and her pronunciation of every
+language&mdash;begad! of every language&mdash;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
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page392" name="page392"></a>[pg 392]</span>
+
+    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>
+<center>
+END OF VOL. 1.
+</center>
+
+
+<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Pendennis, Volume 1, by 
+William Makepeace Thackeray
+
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@@ -0,0 +1,18590 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Pendennis, Volume 1, by
+William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A History of Pendennis, Volume 1
+       His fortunes and misfortunes, his friends and his greatest enemy
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Release Date: January 11, 2011 [EBook #34922]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF PENDENNIS, VOLUME 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Lee Dawei, David Garcia and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from scans of public domain works at the
+University of Michigan's Making of America collection.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS.
+
+HIS FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES, HIS FRIENDS AND HIS GREATEST ENEMY.
+
+BY
+
+WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS ON WOOD BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+NEW YORK:
+
+  HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
+  329 & 331 PEARL STREET,
+  FRANKLIN SQUARE.
+
+1858.
+
+
+
+
+TO DR. JOHN ELLIOTSON.
+
+
+  My Dear Doctor,
+
+  Thirteen months ago, when it seemed likely that this story had
+  come to a close, a kind friend brought you to my bedside, whence,
+  in all probability, I never should have risen but for your constant
+  watchfulness and skill. I like to recall your great goodness and
+  kindness (as well as many acts of others, showing quite a surprising
+  friendship and sympathy) at that time, when kindness and friendship
+  were most needed and welcome.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  And as you would take no other fee but thanks, let me record them
+  here in behalf of me and mine, and subscribe myself,
+
+  Yours, most sincerely and gratefully,
+
+  W. M. THACKERAY.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+   CHAP.                                                              PAGE
+
+   1.--SHOWS HOW FIRST LOVE MAY INTERRUPT BREAKFAST                     9
+
+   2.--A PEDIGREE AND OTHER FAMILY MATTERS                             14
+
+   3.--IN WHICH PENDENNIS APPEARS AS A VERY YOUNG MAN INDEED           30
+
+   4.--MRS. HALLER                                                     41
+
+   5.--MRS. HALLER AT HOME                                             49
+
+   6.--CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND WAR                                      62
+
+   7.--IN WHICH THE MAJOR MAKES HIS APPEARANCE                         73
+
+   8.--IN WHICH PEN IS KEPT WAITING AT THE DOOR, WHILE THE READER
+       IS INFORMED WHO LITTLE LAURA WAS                                81
+
+   9.--IN WHICH THE MAJOR OPENS THE CAMPAIGN                           92
+
+  10.--FACING THE ENEMY                                                99
+
+  11.--NEGOTIATION                                                    105
+
+  12.--IN WHICH A SHOOTING MATCH IS PROPOSED                          114
+
+  13.--A CRISIS                                                       122
+
+  14.--IN WHICH MISS FOTHERINGAY MAKES A NEW ENGAGEMENT               130
+
+  15.--THE HAPPY VILLAGE                                              137
+
+  16.--MORE STORMS IN THE PUDDLE                                      147
+
+  17.--WHICH CONCLUDES THE FIRST PART OF THIS HISTORY                 158
+
+  18.--ALMA MATER                                                     169
+
+  19.--PENDENNIS OF BONIFACE                                          178
+
+  20.--RAKE'S PROGRESS                                                191
+
+  21.--FLIGHT AFTER DEFEAT                                            201
+
+  22.--PRODIGAL'S RETURN                                              209
+
+  23.--NEW FACES                                                      217
+
+  24.--A LITTLE INNOCENT                                              233
+
+  25.--CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND JEALOUSY                                243
+
+  26.--A HOUSE FULL OF VISITORS                                       253
+
+  27.--CONTAINS SOME BALL PRACTICING                                  265
+
+  28.--WHICH IS BOTH QUARRELSOME AND SENTIMENTAL                      274
+
+  29.--BABYLON                                                        287
+
+  30.--THE KNIGHTS OF THE TEMPLE                                      297
+
+  31.--OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCES                                      306
+
+  32.--IN WHICH THE PRINTER'S DEVIL COMES TO THE DOOR                 317
+
+  33.--WHICH IS PASSED IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF LUDGATE HILL            329
+
+  34.--IN WHICH THE HISTORY STILL HOVERS ABOUT FLEET STREET           339
+
+  35.--A DINNER IN THE ROW                                            345
+
+  36.--THE PALL MALL GAZETTE                                          355
+
+  37.--WHERE PEN APPEARS IN TOWN AND COUNTRY                          361
+
+  38.--IN WHICH THE SYLPH REAPPEARS                                   376
+
+  39.--IN WHICH COLONEL ALTAMONT APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS               384
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+If this kind of composition, of which the two years' product is now laid
+before the public, fail in art, as it constantly does and must, it at
+least has the advantage of a certain truth and honesty, which a work
+more elaborate might lose. In his constant communication with the
+reader, the writer is forced into frankness of expression, and to speak
+out his own mind and feelings as they urge him. Many a slip of the pen
+and the printer, many a word spoken in haste, he sees and would recall
+as he looks over his volume. It is a sort of confidential talk between
+writer and reader, which must often be dull, must often flag. In the
+course of his volubility, the perpetual speaker must of necessity lay
+bare his own weaknesses, vanities, peculiarities. And as we judge of a
+man's character, after long frequenting his society, not by one speech,
+or by one mood or opinion, or by one day's talk, but by the tenor of his
+general bearing and conversation; so of a writer, who delivers himself
+up to you perforce unreservedly, you say, Is he honest? Does he tell the
+truth in the main? Does he seem actuated by a desire to find out and
+speak it? Is he a quack, who shams sentiment, or mouths for effect? Does
+he seek popularity by clap-traps or other arts? I can no more ignore
+good fortune than any other chance which has befallen me. I have found
+many thousands more readers than I ever looked for. I have no right to
+say to these, You shall not find fault with my Art, or fall asleep over
+my pages; but I ask you to believe that this person writing strives to
+tell the truth. If there is not that, there is nothing.
+
+Perhaps the lovers of "excitement" may care to know, that this book
+began with a very precise plan, which was entirely put aside. Ladies and
+gentlemen, you were to have been treated, and the writer's and the
+publishers' pocket benefited, by the recital of the most active horrors.
+What more exciting than a ruffian (with many admirable virtues) in St.
+Giles's, visited constantly by a young lady from Belgravia? What more
+stirring than the contrasts of society? the mixture of slang and
+fashionable language? the escapes, the battles, the murders? Nay, up to
+nine o'clock this very morning, my poor friend, Colonel Altamont, was
+doomed to execution, and the author only relented when his victim was
+actually at the window.
+
+The "exciting" plan was laid aside (with a very honorable 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
+jail-birds being quite unfamiliar to me, the idea of entering into
+competition with M. Eugene Sue was abandoned. To describe a real rascal,
+you must make him so horrible that he would be too hideous to show; and
+unless the painter paints him fairly, I hold he has no right to show him
+at all.
+
+Even the gentlemen of our age--this is an attempt to describe one of
+them, no better nor worse than most educated men--even these we can not
+show as they are, with the notorious foibles and selfishness of their
+lives and their education. Since the author of Tom Jones was buried, no
+writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict, to his utmost
+power, a MAN. We must drape him, and give him a certain conventional
+simper. Society will not tolerate the Natural in our Art. Many ladies
+have remonstrated, and subscribers left me, because, in the course of
+the story, I described a young man resisting and affected by temptation.
+My object was to say, that he had the passions to feel, and the
+manliness and generosity to overcome them. You will not hear--it is best
+to know it--what moves in the real world, what passes in society, in
+the clubs, colleges, newsrooms--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 labor, and bids his kind reader farewell.
+
+Kensington, _Nov. 26th, 1850_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PENDENNIS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+SHOWS HOW FIRST LOVE MAY INTERRUPT BREAKFAST.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+One fine morning in the full London season, Major Arthur Pendennis
+came over from his lodgings, according to his custom, to breakfast at
+a certain club in Pall Mall, of which he was a chief ornament. As he
+was one of the finest judges of wine in England, and a man of active,
+dominating, and inquiring spirit, he had been very properly chosen to be
+a member of the committee of this club and indeed was almost the manager
+of the institution; and the stewards and waiters bowed before him as
+reverentially as to a duke or a field-marshal.
+
+At a quarter past ten the major invariably made his appearance in the
+best blacked boots in all London, with a checked morning cravat that
+never was rumpled until dinner time, a buff waistcoat which bore the
+crown of his sovereign on the buttons, and linen so spotless that Mr.
+Brummel himself asked the name of his laundress, and would probably have
+employed her, had not misfortunes compelled that great man to fly the
+country. Pendennis's coat, his white gloves, his whiskers, his very
+cane, were perfect of their kind as specimens of the costume of a
+military man _en retraite_. At a distance, or seeing his back merely,
+you would have taken him to be not more than thirty years old: it was
+only by a nearer inspection that you saw the factitious nature of his
+rich brown hair, and that there were a few crows'-feet round about the
+somewhat faded eyes of his handsome mottled face. His nose was of the
+Wellington pattern. His hands and wristbands were beautifully long and
+white. On the latter he wore handsome gold buttons given to him by his
+Royal Highness the Duke of York, and on the others more than one elegant
+ring, the chief and largest of them being emblazoned with the famous
+arms of Pendennis.
+
+He always took possession of the same table in the same corner of the
+room, from which nobody ever now thought of ousting him. One or two
+mad wags and wild fellows had in former days, and in freak or bravado,
+endeavored 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 every body, and every other
+man he met was a lord.
+
+The major sate down at his accustomed table then, and while the waiters
+went to bring him his toast and his hot newspaper, he surveyed his
+letters through his gold double eye-glass. He carried it so gayly, 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 honor of Major Pendennis's company at Ealing House,
+all of which letters Pendennis read gracefully, and with the more
+satisfaction, because Glowry, the Scotch surgeon, breakfasting opposite
+to him, was looking on, and hating him for having so many invitations,
+which nobody ever sent to Glowry.
+
+These perused, the major took out his pocket-book to see on what days he
+was disengaged, and which of these many hospitable calls he could afford
+to accept or decline.
+
+He threw over Cutler, the East India Director, in Baker-street, in order
+to dine with Lord Steyne and the little French party at the Star and
+Garter--the bishop he accepted, because, though the dinner was slow he
+liked to dine with bishops--and so went through his list and disposed
+of them according to his fancy or interest. Then he took his breakfast
+and looked over the paper, the gazette, the births and deaths, and the
+fashionable intelligence, to see that his name was down among the guests
+at my Lord So-and-so's fete, and in the intervals of these occupations
+carried on cheerful conversation with his acquaintances about the room.
+
+Among the letters which formed Major Pendennis's budget for that morning
+there was only one unread, and which lay solitary and apart from all the
+fashionable London letters, with a country postmark and a homely seal.
+The superscription was in a pretty, delicate female hand, and though
+marked "Immediate" by the fair writer, with a strong dash of anxiety
+under the word, yet the major had, for reasons of his own, neglected up
+to the present moment his humble rural petitioner, who to be sure could
+hardly hope to get a hearing among so many grand folks who attended his
+levee. The fact was, this was a letter from a female relative of
+Pendennis, and while the grandees of her brother's acquaintance were
+received and got their interview, and drove off, as it were, the patient
+country letter remained for a long time waiting for an audience in the
+ante-chamber under the slop-basin.
+
+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
+post-mark. It was a double letter, and the major commenced perusing the
+envelope before he attacked the inner epistle.
+
+"Is it a letter from another _Jook_?" growled Mr. Glowry, inwardly,
+"Pendennis would not be leaving that to the last, I'm thinking."
+
+"My dear Major Pendennis," the letter ran, "I beg and implore you to
+come to me _immediately_"--very likely, thought Pendennis, and Steyne's
+dinner to-day--"I am in the very greatest grief and perplexity. My
+dearest boy, who has been hitherto every thing the fondest mother could
+wish, is grieving me _dreadfully_. He has formed--I can hardly write
+it--a passion, an infatuation,"--the major grinned--"for an actress
+who has been performing here. She is at least twelve years older than
+Arthur--who will not be eighteen till next February--and the wretched
+boy insists upon marrying her."
+
+"Hay! What's making Pendennis swear now?"--Mr. Glowry asked of himself,
+for rage and wonder were concentrated in the major's open mouth, as he
+read this astounding announcement.
+
+"Do, my dear friend," the grief-stricken lady went on, "come to me
+instantly on the receipt of this; and, as Arthur's guardian, entreat,
+command, the wretched child to give up this most deplorable resolution."
+And, after more entreaties to the above effect, the writer concluded
+by signing herself the major's "unhappy affectionate sister, Helen
+Pendennis."
+
+"Fairoaks, Tuesday"--the major concluded, reading the last words of
+the letter--"A d--d pretty business at Fairoaks, Tuesday; now let us
+see what the boy has to say;" and he took the other letter, which was
+written in a great floundering boy's hand, and sealed with the large
+signet of the Pendennises, even larger than the major's own, and with
+supplementary wax sputtered all round the seal, in token of the writer's
+tremulousness and agitation.
+
+The epistle ran thus--
+
+
+  "Fairoaks,
+  "_Monday, Midnight_.
+
+  "My dear Uncle,
+
+    "In informing you of my engagement with Miss Costigan, daughter of
+    J. Chesterfield Costigan Esq., of Costiganstown, but, perhaps, better
+    known to you under her professional name of Miss Fotheringay, of the
+    Theaters Royal Drury Lane and Crow-street, and of the Norwich and
+    Welsh Circuit, I am aware that I make an announcement which can not,
+    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 honorable
+    maintenance by the exercise of her splendid talents, Miss Costigan's
+    family is as ancient and noble as our own. When our ancestor, Ralph
+    Pendennis, landed with Richard II. in Ireland, my Emily's forefathers
+    were kings of that country. I have the information from Mr. Costigan,
+    who, like yourself, is a military man.
+
+    "It is in vain I have attempted to argue with my dear mother, and
+    prove to her that a young lady of irreproachable character and
+    lineage, endowed with the most splendid gifts of beauty and genius,
+    who devotes herself to the exercise of one of the noblest professions,
+    for the sacred purpose of maintaining her family, is a being whom we
+    should all love and reverence, rather than avoid;--my poor mother
+    has prejudices which it is impossible for my logic to overcome, and
+    refuses to welcome to her arms one who is disposed to be her most
+    affectionate daughter through life.
+
+    "Although Miss Costigan is some years older than myself, that
+    circumstance does not operate as a barrier to my affection, and I am
+    sure will not influence its duration. A love like mine, sir, I feel,
+    is contracted once and for ever. As I never had dreamed of love until
+    I saw her--I feel now that I shall die without ever knowing another
+    passion. It is the fate of my life. It was Miss C.'s own delicacy
+    which suggested that the difference of age, which I never felt, might
+    operate as a bar to our union. But having loved once, I should despise
+    myself, and be unworthy of my name as a gentleman, if I hesitated
+    to abide by my passion: if I did not give all where I felt all, and
+    endow the woman who loves me fondly with my whole heart and my whole
+    fortune.
+
+    "I press for a speedy marriage with my Emily--for why, in truth,
+    should it be delayed? A delay implies a doubt, which I cast from me
+    as unworthy. It is impossible that my sentiments can change toward
+    Emily--that at any age she can be any thing but the sole object of
+    my love. Why, then, wait? I entreat you, my dear uncle, to come down
+    and reconcile my dear mother to our union, and I address you as a man
+    of the world, _qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes_, who will
+    not feel any of the weak scruples and fears which agitate a lady who
+    has scarcely ever left her village.
+
+    "Pray come down to us immediately. I am quite confident that--apart
+    from considerations of fortune--you will admire and approve of
+    my Emily.
+
+  "Your affectionate Nephew.
+
+  "ARTHUR PENDENNIS, Jr."
+
+
+When the major had concluded the perusal of this letter, his
+countenance assumed an expression of such rage and horror that Glowry
+the surgeon-official, felt in his pocket for his lancet, which he always
+carried in his card-case, and thought his respected friend was going
+into a fit. The intelligence was indeed sufficient to agitate Pendennis.
+The head of the Pendennises going to marry an actress ten years his
+senior--a headstrong boy going to plunge into matrimony. "The mother has
+spoiled the young rascal," groaned the major inwardly, "with her cursed
+sentimentality and romantic rubbish. My nephew marry a tragedy queen!
+Gracious mercy, people will laugh at me so that I shall not dare show
+my head!" And he thought with an inexpressible pang that he must give
+up Lord Steyne's dinner at Richmond, and must lose his rest and pass the
+night in an abominable tight mail-coach, instead of taking pleasure,
+as he had promised himself, in some of the most agreeable and select
+society in England.
+
+And he must not only give up this but all other engagements for some
+time to come. Who knows how long the business might detain him. He
+quitted his breakfast table for the adjoining writing-room, and there
+ruefully wrote off refusals to the marquis, the earl, the bishop, and
+all his entertainers; and he ordered his servant to take places in
+the mail-coach for that evening, of course charging the sum which he
+disbursed for the seats to the account of the widow and the young
+scapegrace of whom he was guardian.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+A PEDIGREE AND OTHER FAMILY MATTERS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Early in the Regency of George the Magnificent, there lived in a small
+town in the west of England, called Clavering, a gentleman whose name
+was Pendennis. There were those alive who remembered having seen his
+name painted on a board, which was surmounted by a gilt pestle and
+mortar over the door of a very humble little shop in the city of Bath,
+where Mr. Pendennis exercised the profession of apothecary and surgeon;
+and where he not only attended gentlemen in their sick-rooms, and ladies
+at the most interesting periods of their lives, but would condescend to
+sell a brown-paper plaster to a farmer's wife across the counter--or to
+vend tooth-brushes, hair-powder, and London perfumery. For these facts
+a few folks at Clavering could vouch, where people's memories were more
+tenacious, perhaps, than they are in a great bustling metropolis.
+
+And yet that little apothecary who sold a stray customer a pennyworth
+of salts, or a more fragrant cake of Windsor soap, was a gentleman of
+good education, and of as old a family as any in the whole county of
+Somerset. He had a Cornish pedigree which carried the Pendennises up to
+the time of the Druids--and who knows how much farther back? They had
+intermarried with the Normans at a very late period of their family
+existence, and they were related to all the great families of Wales
+and Britanny. Pendennis had had a piece of University education too, and
+might have pursued that career with great honor, but that in his second
+year at Cambridge his father died insolvent, and poor Pen was obliged
+to betake himself to the pestle and apron. He always detested the trade,
+and it was only necessity, and the offer of his mother's brother, a
+London apothecary of low family, into which Pendennis's father had
+demeaned himself by marrying, that forced John Pendennis into so odious
+a calling.
+
+He quickly after his apprenticeship parted from the coarse-minded
+practitioner, his relative, and set up for himself at Bath with his
+modest medical ensign. He had for some time a hard struggle with
+poverty; and it was all he could do to keep the shop and its gilt
+ornaments in decent repair, and his bed-ridden mother in comfort: but
+Lady Ribstone, happening to be passing to the Rooms with an intoxicated
+Irish chair man who bumped her ladyship up against Pen's very door-post,
+and drove his chair-pole through the handsomest pink-bottle in the
+surgeon's window, alighted screaming from her vehicle, and was
+accommodated with a chair in Mr. Pendennis's shop, where she was
+brought round with cinnamon and sal-volatile.
+
+Mr. Pendennis's manners were so uncommonly gentlemanlike and soothing,
+that her ladyship, the wife of Sir Pepin Ribstone, of Codlingbury, in
+the county of Somerset, Bart., appointed her preserver, as she called
+him, apothecary to her person and family, which was very large. Master
+Ribstone coming home for the Christmas holidays from Eton, over-ate
+himself and had a fever, in which Mr. Pendennis treated him with the
+greatest skill and tenderness. In a word, he got the good graces of the
+Codlingbury family, and from that day began to prosper. The good company
+of Bath patronized him, and among 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 bed-room
+window to which her chair was rolled, her beloved John step into a
+close carriage of his own, a one-horse carriage it is true, but with
+the arms of the family of Pendennis handsomely emblazoned on the panels.
+"What would Arthur say now?" she asked, speaking of a younger son of
+hers--"who never so much as once came to see my dearest Johnny through
+all the time of his poverty and struggles!"
+
+"Captain Pendennis is with his regiment in India, mother," Mr. Pendennis
+remarked, "and, if you please, I wish you would not call me Johnny
+before the young man--before Mr. Parkins."
+
+Presently the day came when she ceased to call her son by the name of
+Johnny, or by any other title of endearment or affection; and his house
+was very lonely without that kind though querulous voice. He had his
+night-bell altered and placed in the room in which the good old lady
+had grumbled for many a long year, and he slept in the great large bed
+there. He was upward of forty years old when these events befell; before
+the war was over; before George the Magnificent came to the throne;
+before this history indeed: but what is a gentleman without his
+pedigree? Pendennis, by this time, had his handsomely framed and glazed,
+and hanging up in his drawing-room between the pictures of Codlingbury
+House in Somersetshire, and St. Boniface's College, Cambridge, where he
+had passed the brief and happy days of his early manhood. As for the
+pedigree he had taken it out of a trunk, as Sterne's officer called for
+his sword, now that he was a gentleman and could show it.
+
+About the time of Mrs. Pendennis's demise, another of her son's patients
+likewise died at Bath; that virtuous woman, old Lady Pontypool, daughter
+of Reginald twelfth Earl of Bareacres, and by consequence great grand
+aunt to the present earl, and widow of John second Lord Pontypool, and
+likewise of the Reverend Jonas Wales, of the Armageddon Chapel, Clifton.
+For the last five years of her life her ladyship had been attended by
+Miss Helen Thistlewood, a very distant relative of the noble house of
+Bareacres, before mentioned, and daughter of Lieutenant R. Thistlewood,
+R. N., killed at the battle of Copenhagen. Under Lady Pontypool's roof
+Miss Thistlewood found a comfortable shelter, as far as boarding and
+lodging went, but suffered under such an infernal tyranny as only women
+can inflict on, or bear from, one another; the doctor, who paid his
+visits to my Lady Pontypool at least twice a day, could not but remark
+the angelical sweetness and kindness with which the young lady bore her
+elderly relative's insults; and it was, as they were going in the fourth
+mourning coach to attend her ladyship's venerated remains to Bath Abbey,
+where they now repose, that he looked at her sweet pale face, and
+resolved upon putting a certain question to her, the very nature of
+which made his pulse beat ninety, at least.
+
+He was older than she by more than twenty years, and at no time the most
+ardent of men. Perhaps he had had a love affair in early life which he
+had to strangle--perhaps all early love affairs ought to be strangled or
+drowned, like so many blind kittens: well, at three-and-forty he was a
+collected quiet little gentleman in black stockings, with a bald head,
+and a few days after the ceremony he called to see her, and, as he felt
+her pulse, he kept hold of her hand in his, and asked her where she
+was going to live now that the Pontypool family had come down upon the
+property, which was being nailed into boxes, and packed into hampers,
+and swaddled up with haybands, and buried in straw, and locked under
+three keys in green-baize plate-chests, and carted away under the eyes
+of poor Miss Helen--he asked her where she was going to live finally.
+
+Her eyes filled with tears, and she said she did not know. She had a
+little money. The old lady had left her a thousand pounds, indeed; and
+she would go into a boarding-house or into a school; in fine, she did
+not know where.
+
+Then Pendennis, looking into her pale face, and keeping hold of her
+cold little hand, asked her if she would come and live with him? He
+was old compared to--to so blooming a young lady as Miss Thistlewood
+(Pendennis was of the grave old complimentary school of gentlemen and
+apothecaries), but he was of good birth, and, he flattered himself,
+of good principles and temper. His prospects were good, and daily
+mending. He was alone in the world, and had need of a kind and constant
+companion, whom it would be the study of his life to make happy; in a
+word, he recited to her a little speech, which he had composed that
+morning in bed, and rehearsed and perfected in his carriage, as he was
+coming to wait upon the young lady.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 up stairs 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 honorable; 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 courtesy, and asked
+leave to--to consider his very kind proposal.
+
+They were married in the dull Bath season, which was the height
+of the season in London. And Pendennis having previously, through
+a professional friend, M.R.C.S., secured lodgings in Holles-street,
+Cavendish Square, took his wife thither in a chaise and pair; conducted
+her to the theaters, 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 Honorable the Earl of Bareacres, and upon Sir Pepin and Lady
+Ribstone, his earliest and kindest patrons. Bareacres took no notice
+of the cards. Pontypool called, admired Mrs. Pendennis, and said Lady
+Pontypool would come and see her, which her ladyship did, per proxy of
+John her footman, who brought her card, and an invitation to a concert
+five weeks off. Pendennis was back in his little one-horse carriage,
+dispensing draughts and pills at that time: but the Ribstones asked him
+and Mrs. Pendennis to an entertainment, of which Mr. Pendennis bragged
+to the last day of his life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The secret ambition of Mr. Pendennis had always been to be a gentleman.
+It takes much time and careful saving for a provincial doctor, whose
+gains are not very large, to lay by enough money wherewith to purchase
+a house and land: but besides our friend's own frugality and prudence,
+fortune aided him considerably in his endeavor, 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 can not 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 realized 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 forever retired from the handling of the mortar and
+pestle.
+
+Arthur Pendennis, his son, was eight years old at the time of this
+event, so that it is no wonder that the latter, who left Bath and the
+surgery so young, should forget the existence of such a place almost
+entirely, and that his father's hands had ever been dirtied by the
+compounding of odious pills, or the preparation of filthy plasters. The
+old man never spoke about the shop himself, never alluded to it; called
+in the medical practitioner of Clavering to attend his family when
+occasion arrived; sunk the black breeches and stockings altogether;
+attended market and sessions, and wore a bottle-green coat and brass
+buttons with drab gaiters, just as if he had been an English gentleman
+all his life. He used to stand at his lodge-gate, and see the coaches
+come in, and bow gravely to the guards and coachmen as they touched
+their hats and drove by. It was he who founded the Clavering Book Club;
+and set up the Samaritan Soup and Blanket Society. It was he who brought
+the mail, which used to run through Cacklefield before, away from that
+village and through Clavering. At church he was equally active as a
+vestryman and a worshiper. At market every Thursday, he went from pen
+to stall, looked at samples of oats, and munched corn, felt beasts,
+punched geese in the breast, and weighed them with a knowing air, and
+did business with the farmers at the Clavering Arms, as well as the
+oldest frequenter of that house of call. It was now his shame, as it
+formerly was his pride, to be called doctor, and those who wished to
+please him always gave him the title of squire.
+
+Heaven knows where they came from, but a whole range of Pendennis
+portraits presently hung round the doctor's oak dining-room; Lelys and
+Vandykes he vowed all the portraits to be, and when questioned as to
+the history of the originals, would vaguely say they were "ancestors
+of his." You could see by his wife's looks that she disbelieved in
+these genealogical legends, for she generally endeavored to turn the
+conversation when he commenced them. But his little boy believed them to
+their fullest extent, and Roger Pendennis of Agincourt, Arthur Pendennis
+of Crecy, General Pendennis of Blenheim and Oudenarde, were as real
+and actual beings for this young gentleman as--whom shall we say?--as
+Robinson Crusoe, or Peter Wilkins, or the Seven Champions of
+Christendom, whose histories were in his library.
+
+Pendennis's fortune, which, at the best, was not above eight hundred
+pounds a year, did not, with the best economy and management, permit
+of his living with the great folks of the county; but he had a decent
+comfortable society of the second-best sort. If they were not the roses,
+they lived near the roses, as it were, and had a good deal of the odor
+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 forever swaggering about
+the squire's stables and gardens, and endeavoring to enlist him in
+his quarrels with the vicar, with the postmaster, with the Reverend F.
+Wapshot of Clavering Grammar School, for overflogging his son, Anglesea
+Glanders--with all the village, in fine. And Pendennis and his wife
+often blessed themselves, that their house of Fairoaks was nearly a
+mile out of Clavering, or their premises would never have been free
+from the prying eyes and prattle of one or other of the male and
+female inhabitants there.
+
+Fairoaks lawn comes down to the little river Brawl, and on the other
+side were the plantations and woods (as much as were left of them) of
+Clavering Park, Sir Francis Clavering, Bart. The park was let out in
+pasture and fed down by sheep and cattle, when the Pendennises came
+first to live at Fairoaks. Shutters were up in the house; a splendid
+freestone palace, with great stairs, statues, and porticos, whereof you
+may see a picture in the "Beauties of England and Wales." Sir Richard
+Clavering, Sir Francis's grandfather, had commenced the ruin of the
+family by the building of this palace; his successor had achieved the
+ruin by living in it. The present Sir Francis was abroad somewhere;
+nor could any body be found rich enough to rent that enormous mansion,
+through the deserted rooms, moldy 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 somber 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
+splendor. Little Arthur's figure and his mother's, cast long blue
+shadows over the grass; and he would repeat in a low voice (for a scene
+of great natural beauty always moved the boy, who inherited this
+sensibility from his mother) certain lines beginning, "These are thy
+glorious works, Parent of Good; Almighty! thine this universal frame,"
+greatly to Mrs. Pendennis's delight. Such walks and conversation
+generally ended in a profusion of filial and maternal embraces; for to
+love and to pray were the main occupations of this dear woman's life;
+and I have often heard Pendennis say in his wild way, that he felt that
+he was sure of going to heaven, for his mother never could be happy
+there without him.
+
+As for John Pendennis, as the father of the family, and that sort of
+thing, every body 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 wo to those who came late,
+as little Pen, a disorderly little rascal, sometimes did. Prayers were
+recited, his letters were read, his business dispatched, his stables
+and garden inspected, his hen-houses and kennel, his barn and pigstye
+visited, always at regular hours. After dinner he always had a nap with
+the Globe newspaper on his knee, and his yellow bandanna handkerchief on
+his face (Major Pendennis sent the yellow handkerchiefs from India, and
+his brother had helped in the purchase of his majority, so that they
+were good friends now). And so, as his dinner took place at six o'clock
+to a minute, and the sunset business alluded to may be supposed to have
+occurred at about half-past seven, it is probable that he did not much
+care for the view in front of his lawn windows, or take any share in the
+poetry and caresses which were taking place there.
+
+They seldom occurred in his presence. However frisky they were before,
+mother and child were hushed and quiet when Mr. Pendennis walked into
+the drawing room, his newspaper under his arm. And here, while little
+Pen, buried in a great chair, read all the books of which he could lay
+hold, the squire perused his own articles in the "Gardener's Gazette,"
+or took a solemn hand at picquet with Mrs. Pendennis, or an occasional
+friend from the village.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pendennis usually took care that at least one of his grand dinners
+should take place when his brother, the major, who, on the return of
+his regiment from India and New South Wales, had sold out and gone upon
+half-pay, came to pay his biennial visit to Fairoaks. "My brother, Major
+Pendennis," was a constant theme of the retired doctor's conversation.
+All the family delighted in my brother the major. He was the link which
+bound them to the great world of London, and the fashion. He always
+brought down the last news of the nobility, and was in the constant
+habit of dining with lords and great folks. He spoke of such with
+soldier-like 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 honor to move. I shall live and
+die an old bachelor, John: and your worthy friend, Miss Hunkle, I have
+no doubt, will find some more worthy object of her affection, than a
+worn-out old soldier on half-pay." Time showed the correctness of the
+surmise of the old man of the world; Miss Hunkle married a young French
+nobleman, and is now at this moment living at Lilybank, under the title
+of Baroness de Carambole, having been separated from her wild young
+scapegrace of a baron very shortly after their union.
+
+The major was a great favorite 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 honor 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 among his circle of acquaintance--women in whose
+angelical natures, there is something awful as well as beautiful, to
+contemplate; at whose feet the wildest and fiercest of us must fall down
+and humble ourselves;--in admiration of that adorable purity which never
+seems to do or to think wrong.
+
+Arthur Pendennis had the good fortune to have a mother endowed with
+those 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 mean while, this lady moved through the world quite regardless of
+all the comments that were made in her praise or disfavor. 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 neighbors, and doing her duty.
+
+That even a woman should be faultless, however, is an arrangement not
+permitted by nature, which assigns to us mental defects, as it awards
+to us headaches, illnesses, or death; without which, the scheme of
+the world could not be carried on--nay, some of the best qualities of
+mankind could not be brought into exercise. As pain produces or elicits
+fortitude and endurance; difficulty, perseverance; poverty, industry and
+ingenuity; danger, courage and what not; so the very virtues, on the
+other hand, will generate some vices: and, in fine, Mrs. Pendennis had
+that vice which Miss Pybus and Miss Pierce discovered in her, namely,
+that of pride; which did not vest itself so much in her own person, as
+in that of her family. She spoke about Mr. Pendennis (a worthy little
+gentleman enough, but there are others as good as he) with an awful
+reverence, as if he had been the Pope of Rome on his throne, and she
+a cardinal kneeling at his feet and giving him incense. The major she
+held to be a sort of Bayard among majors: and as for her son, Arthur, she
+worshiped that youth with an ardor which the young scapegrace accepted
+almost as coolly as the statue of the saint in Saint Peter's receives
+the rapturous osculations which the faithful deliver on his toe.
+
+This unfortunate superstition and idol-worship of this good woman was
+the cause of a great deal of the misfortune which befell the young
+gentleman who is the hero of this history, and deserves therefore to
+be mentioned at the outset of his story.
+
+Arthur Pendennis's schoolfellows at the Greyfriars School state that,
+as a boy, he was in no ways remarkable either as a dunce or as a scholar.
+He did, in fact, just as much as was required of him, and no more. If
+he was distinguished for any thing 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 ardor. 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 dishonored 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 pick-pockets), little Pen, at first uneasy and terrified by
+these charges, became gradually accustomed to hear them; and he has not,
+in fact, either murdered his parents, or committed any act worthy of
+transportation or hanging up to the present day.
+
+There were many of the upper boys, among the Cistercians with whom
+Pendennis was educated, who assumed all the privileges of men long
+before they quitted that seminary. Many of them, for example, smoked
+cigars--and some had already begun the practice of inebriation. One had
+fought a duel with an ensign in a marching regiment in consequence of a
+row at the theater--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 woman's turn to blush then. Before he was twelve
+years old and while his mother fancied him an angel of candor, little
+Pen had heard talk enough to make him quite awfully wise upon certain
+points--and so, madam, has your pretty little rosy-cheeked son, who
+is coming home from school for the ensuing Christmas holidays. I don't
+say that the boy is lost, or that the innocence has left him which
+he had from "Heaven, which is our home," but that the shades of the
+prison-house are closing very fast over him, and that we are helping
+as much as possible to corrupt him.
+
+Well--Pen had just made his public appearance in a coat with a tail, or
+cauda-virilis, and was looking most anxiously in his little study-glass
+to see if his whiskers were growing, like those of more fortunate youths
+his companions; and, instead of the treble voice with which he used to
+speak and sing (for his singing voice was a very sweet one, and he used
+when little to be made to perform "Home, sweet Home," "My pretty Page,"
+and a French song or two which his mother had taught him, and other
+ballads for the delectation of the senior boys), had suddenly plunged
+into a deep bass diversified by a squeak, which, when he was called upon
+to construe in school, set the master and scholars laughing--he was
+about sixteen years old, in a word, when he was suddenly called away
+from his academic studies.
+
+It was at the close of the forenoon school, and Pen had been unnoticed
+all the previous part of the morning till now, when the doctor put him
+on to construe in a Greek play. He did not know a word of it, though
+little Timmins, his form-fellow, was prompting him with all his might.
+Pen had made a sad blunder or two--when the awful chief broke out upon
+him.
+
+"Pendennis, sir," he said, "your idleness is incorrigible, and your
+stupidity beyond example. You are a disgrace to your school, and to your
+family, and I have no doubt will prove so in after-life to your country.
+If that vice, sir, which is described to us as the root of all evil, be
+really what moralists have represented (and I have no doubt of the
+correctness of their opinion), for what a prodigious quantity of future
+crime and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed! Miserable
+trifler! A boy who construes [Greek: de] _and_, instead of [Greek: de]
+_but_, at sixteen years of age is guilty not merely of folly, and
+ignorance, and dullness 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 neighbor. A man who forges on his neighbor 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 dishonored 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Indeed, while the master was making this oration, there was a general
+titter behind him in the school-room. The orator had his back to the
+door of this ancient apartment, which was open, and a gentleman who
+was quite familiar with the place, for both Major Arthur and Mr. John
+Pendennis had been at the school, was asking the fifth form boy who
+sate by the door for Pendennis. The lad grinning pointed to the culprit
+against whom the doctor was pouring out the thunders of his just
+wrath--Major Pendennis could not help laughing. He remembered having
+stood under that very pillar where Pen the younger now stood, and having
+been assaulted by the doctor's predecessor, years and years ago. The
+intelligence was "passed round" that it was Pendennis's uncle in an
+instant, and a hundred young faces wondering and giggling, between
+terror and laughter, turned now to the new comer and then to the awful
+doctor.
+
+The major asked the fifth-form boy to carry his card up to the doctor,
+which the lad did with an arch look. Major Pendennis had written on the
+card, "I must take A. P. home; his father is very ill."
+
+As the doctor received the card, and stopped his harangue with rather
+a scared look, the laughter of the boys, half constrained until then,
+burst out in a general shout. "Silence!" roared out the doctor, stamping
+with his foot. Pen looked up and saw who was his deliverer; the major
+beckoned to him gravely with one of his white gloves, and tumbling down
+his books, Pen went across.
+
+The doctor took out his watch. It was two minutes to one. "We will take
+the Juvenal at afternoon school," he said, nodding to the major, and all
+the boys, understanding the signal, gathered up their books and poured
+out of the hall.
+
+Young Pen saw by his uncle's face that something had happened at home.
+"Is there any thing the matter with--my mother?" he said. He could
+hardly speak, though, for emotion, and the tears which were ready
+to start.
+
+"No," said the major, "but your father's very ill. Go and pack your
+trunk directly; I have got a post-chaise at the gate."
+
+Pen went off quickly to his boarding-house to do as his uncle bade him;
+and the doctor, now left alone in the school-room, 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 gray petticoat,
+so, as the clock struck one, all the thundering majesty and awful wrath
+of the schoolmaster disappeared.
+
+"There is nothing serious, I hope," said the doctor. "It is a pity to
+take the boy away unless there is. He is a very good boy, rather idle
+and unenergetic, but he is a very honest, gentlemanlike little fellow,
+though I can't get him to construe as I wish. Won't you come in and
+have some luncheon? My wife will be very happy to see you."
+
+But Major Pendennis declined the luncheon. He said his brother was very
+ill, had had a fit the day before, and it was a great question if they
+should see him alive.
+
+"There's no other son, is there?" said the doctor. The major answered
+"No."
+
+"And there's a good eh--a good eh--property I believe?" asked the other,
+in an offhand way.
+
+"H'm--so so," said the major. Whereupon this colloquy came to an end.
+And Arthur Pendennis got into the post-chaise with his uncle never to
+come back to school any more.
+
+As the chaise drove through Clavering, the hostler standing whistling
+under the archway of the Clavering Arms, winked the postillion ominously,
+as much as to say all was over. The gardener's wife came and opened the
+lodge-gates, and let the travelers 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 harrier. But Arthur had
+been his father's pride and glory through life, and his name the last
+which John Pendennis had tried to articulate while he lay with his
+wife's hand clasping his own cold and clammy palm, as the flickering
+spirit went out into the darkness of death, and life and the world
+passed away from him.
+
+The little girl, whose face had peered for a moment under the blinds as
+the chaise came up, opened the door from the stairs into the hall, and
+taking Arthur's hand silently as he stooped down to kiss her, led him
+up-stairs to his mother. Old John opened the drawing-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 neighborhood held him; on
+what a loss he would be to the magistrates' bench, the county hospital,
+&c. Mrs. Pendennis bore up wonderfully, he said, especially since Master
+Arthur's arrival. The lawyer staid 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. Every thing
+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 every thing 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 afterward with the plate-basket; and
+the next morning brought him the key of the hall clock--the squire
+always used to wind it up of a Thursday, John said. Mrs. Pendennis's
+maid brought him messages from her mistress. She confirmed the doctor's
+report, of the comfort which Master Arthur's arrival had caused to his
+mother.
+
+What passed between that lady and the boy is not of import. A vail
+should be thrown over those sacred emotions of love and grief. The
+maternal passion is a sacred mystery to me. What one sees symbolized
+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 toward the child there shone a
+sweetness so angelical, that it seemed to form a sort of glory round
+both. I protest I could have knelt before her too, and adored in her
+the Divine beneficence in endowing us with the maternal _storge_,
+which began with our race and sanctifies the history of mankind.
+
+So it was with this, in a word, that Mrs. Pendennis comforted herself on
+the death of her husband, whom, however, she always reverenced as the
+best, the most upright, wise, high-minded, accomplished, and awful of
+men. If the women did not make idols of us, and if they saw us as we see
+each other, would life be bearable, or could society go on? Let a man
+pray that none of his womankind should form a just estimation of him.
+If your wife knew you as you are, neighbor, she would not grieve much
+about being your widow, and would let your grave-lamp go out very
+soon, or perhaps not even take the trouble to light it. Whereas Helen
+Pendennis put up the handsomest of memorials to her husband, and
+constantly renewed it with the most precious oil.
+
+As for Arthur Pendennis, after that awful shock which the sight of his
+dead father must have produced on him, and the pity and feeling which
+such an event no doubt occasioned, I am not sure that in the very moment
+of the grief, and as he embraced his mother and tenderly consoled her,
+and promised to love her forever, there was not springing up in his
+breast a feeling of secret triumph and exultation. He was the chief now
+and lord. He was Pendennis; and all round about him were his servants
+and handmaids. "You'll never send me away," little Laura said, tripping
+by him, and holding his hand. "You won't send me to school, will you,
+Arthur?"
+
+Arthur kissed her and patted her head. No, she shouldn't go to school.
+And 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 his other
+favorite haunts, all the servants there assembled in great silence with
+their friends, and the laboring 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 courtesied 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
+honor 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 patronized 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 dairy-maid
+for taking cream.
+
+They buried John Pendennis, Esquire, "formerly an eminent medical
+practitioner at Bath, and subsequently an able magistrate, a benevolent
+landlord, and a benefactor to many charities and public institutions in
+this neighborhood 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 toward 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+IN WHICH PENDENNIS APPEARS AS A VERY YOUNG MAN INDEED.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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
+color, which looks like gold in the sunshine, his face was round, rosy,
+freckled, and good-humored, his whiskers (when those facial ornaments
+for which he sighed so ardently were awarded to him by nature) were
+decidedly of a reddish hue; in fact, without being a beauty, he had such
+a frank, good-natured, kind face, and laughed so merrily at you out of
+his honest blue eyes, that no wonder Mrs. Pendennis thought him the
+pride of the whole county. Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen he
+rose from five feet six to five feet eight inches in height, at which
+altitude he paused. But his mother wondered at it. He was three inches
+taller than his father. Was it possible that any man could grow to be
+three inches taller than Mr. Pendennis?
+
+You may be certain he never went back to school; the discipline of the
+establishment did not suit him, and he liked being at home much better.
+The question of his return was debated, and his uncle was for his
+going back. The doctor wrote his opinion that it was most important
+for Arthur's success in after-life that he should know a Greek play
+thoroughly, but Pen adroitly managed to hint to his mother what a
+dangerous place Greyfriars was, and what sad wild fellows some of the
+chaps there were, and the timid soul, taking alarm at once, acceded
+to his desire to stay at home.
+
+Then Pen's uncle offered to use his influence with His Royal Highness
+the commander-in-chief, who was pleased to be very kind to him, and
+proposed to get Pen a commission in the Foot Guards. Pen's heart leaped
+at this: he had been to hear the band at St. James's play on a Sunday,
+when he went out to his uncle. He had seen Tom Ricketts, of the fourth
+form, who used to wear a jacket and trowsers 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 colors
+of the regiment. Tom had recognized him, and gave him a patronizing nod.
+Tom, a little wretch whom he had cut over the back with a hockey-stick
+last quarter--and there he was in the center of the square, rallying
+round the flag of his country, surrounded by bayonets, cross-belts,
+and scarlet, the band blowing trumpets and banging cymbals--talking
+familiarly to immense warriors with tufts to their chins and Waterloo
+medals. What would not Pen have given to wear such epaulettes and enter
+such a service?
+
+But Helen Pendennis, when this point was proposed to her by her son, put
+on a face full of terror and alarm. She said "she did not quarrel with
+others who thought differently, but that in her opinion a Christian had
+no right to make the army a profession. Mr. Pendennis never, never would
+have permitted his son to be a soldier. Finally, she should be very
+unhappy if he thought of it." Now, Pen would have as soon cut off his
+nose and ears as deliberately, and of aforethought malice, made his
+mother unhappy; and, as he was of such a generous disposition that he
+would give away any thing to any one, he instantly made a present of his
+visionary red coat and epaulettes and his ardor for military glory to
+his mother.
+
+She thought him the noblest creature in the world. But Major Pendennis,
+when the offer of the commission was acknowledged and refused, wrote
+back a curt and somewhat angry letter to the widow, and thought his
+nephew was rather a spooney.
+
+He was contented, however, when he saw the boy's performances out
+hunting at Christmas, when the major came down as usual to Fairoaks.
+Pen had a very good mare, and rode her with uncommon pluck and grace.
+He took his fences with great coolness, and yet with judgment, and
+without bravado. He wrote to the chaps at school about his top-boots,
+and his feats across country. He began to think seriously of a scarlet
+coat: and his mother must own that she thought it would become him
+remarkably well; though, of course, she passed hours of anguish during
+his absence, and daily expected to see him brought home on a shutter.
+
+With these amusements, in rather too great plenty, it must not be
+assumed that Pen neglected his studies altogether. He had a natural
+taste for reading every possible kind of book which did not fall into
+his school-course. It was only when they forced his head into the waters
+of knowledge that he refused to drink. He devoured all the books at
+home, from Inchbald's Theater to White's Farriery; he ransacked the
+neighboring 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 Hackluyt'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 Mira Portman
+being at that period only two years younger than Pen's mother, and
+weighing as much as Pen and Mrs. Pendennis together.
+
+Are these details insipid? Look back, good friend, at your own youth,
+and ask how was that? I like to think of a well-nurtured boy, brave and
+gentle, warm-hearted and loving, and looking the world in the face with
+kind, honest eyes. What bright colors it wore then, and how you enjoyed
+it! A man has not many years of such time. He does not know them while
+they are with him. It is only when they are passed long away that he
+remembers how dear and happy they were.
+
+In order to keep Mr. Pen from indulging in that idleness of which
+his friend the doctor of the Cistercians had prophesied such awful
+consequences, Mr. Smirke, Dr. Portman's curate, was engaged at a liberal
+salary, to walk or ride over from Clavering, and pass several hours
+daily with the young gentleman. Smirke was a man perfectly faultless at
+a tea-table, wore a curl on his fair forehead, and tied his neck-cloth
+with a melancholy grace. He was a decent scholar and mathematician, and
+taught Pen as much as the lad was ever disposed to learn, which was not
+much. For Pen had soon taken the measure of his tutor, who, when he came
+riding into the court-yard at Fairoaks on his pony, turned out his toes
+so absurdly, and left such a gap between his knees and the saddle, that
+it was impossible for any lad endowed with a sense of humor 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 stanch old sportsman, Mr. Hardhead, of
+Dumplingbeare) happened to meet. Mr. Smirke, on Pen's mare, Rebecca (she
+was named after Pen's favorite 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 among the pack, and receiving a
+speech from the latter, more remarkable for energy of language, than any
+oration he had ever heard since he left the bargemen on the banks of
+Isis.
+
+Smirke confided to his pupil his poems both Latin and English; and
+presented to Mrs. Pendennis a volume of the latter, printed at Clapham,
+his native place. The two read the ancient poets together, and rattled
+through them at a pleasant rate, very different from that steady
+grubbing pace with which the Cistercians used to go over the classic
+ground, scenting out each word as they went, and digging up every root
+in the way. Pen never liked to halt, but made his tutor construe when he
+was at fault, and thus galloped through the Iliad and the Odyssey, the
+tragic play-writers, and the charming wicked Aristophanes (whom he vowed
+to be the greatest poet of all). But he went at such a pace that, though
+he certainly galloped through a considerable extent of the ancient
+country, he clean forgot it in after-life, and had only such a vague
+remembrance of his early classic course as a man has in the House of
+Commons, let us say, who still keeps up two or three quotations; or a
+reviewer who, just for decency's sake, hints at a little Greek. Our
+people are the most prosaic in the world, but the most faithful; and
+with curious reverence we keep up and transmit, from generation to
+generation, the superstition of what we call the education of a
+gentleman.
+
+Besides the ancient poets you may be sure Pen read the English with
+great gusto. Smirke sighed and shook his head sadly both about Byron and
+Moore. But Pen was a sworn fire-worshiper and a Corsair; he had them by
+heart, and used to take little Laura into the window, and say--"Zuleika,
+I am not thy brother," in tones so tragic that they caused the solemn
+little maid to open her great eyes still wider. She sat until the proper
+hour for retirement, sewing at Mrs. Pendennis's knee, and listening to
+Pen reading out to her of nights, without comprehending one word of what
+he read.
+
+He read Shakspeare to his mother (which she said she liked, but didn't),
+and Byron, and Pope, and his favorite Lalla Rookh, which pleased
+her indifferently. But as for Bishop Heber, and Mrs. Hemans above
+all, this lady used to melt right away, and be absorbed into her
+pocket-handkerchief, when Pen read those authors to her in his kind,
+boyish voice. The "Christian Year" was a book which appeared about that
+time. The son and the mother whispered it to each other with awe: faint,
+very faint, and seldom in after-life Pendennis heard that solemn church
+music: but he always loved the remembrance of it, and of the times when
+it struck on his heart, and he walked over the fields full of hope and
+void of doubt, as the church bells rang on Sunday morning.
+
+It was at this period of his existence, that Pen broke out in the poets'
+corner of the County Chronicle, with some verses with which he was
+perfectly well satisfied. His are the verses signed "NEP.," addressed
+"To a Tear;" "On the Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo;" "To Madame
+Caradori singing at the Assize Meetings;" "On Saint Bartholomew's Day"
+(a tremendous denunciation of Popery, and a solemn warning to the people
+of England to rally against emancipating the Roman Catholics), &c.,
+&c.--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 neighboring Dumpling Downs, or into the county town, which, if
+you please, we shall call Chatteries, spouting his own poems, and filled
+with quite a Byronic afflatus, as he thought.
+
+His genius at this time was of a decidedly gloomy cast. He brought his
+mother a tragedy, in which, though he killed sixteen people before the
+second act, it made her laugh so, that he thrust his 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 stanch, 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 gray mare Dowdy, and
+at the head of the Clavering voters, whom the doctor brought up to
+plump for the Protestant champion.
+
+On that day Pen made his first speech at the Blue Hotel; and also, it
+appears, for the first time in his life, took a little more wine than
+was good for him. Mercy! what a scene it was at Fairoaks, when he rode
+back at ever so much o'clock at night. What moving about of lanterns in
+the court-yard and stables, though the moon was shining out; what a
+gathering of servants, as Pen came home, clattering over the bridge and
+up the stable-yard, with half-a-score of the Clavering voters yelling
+after him the Blue song of the election.
+
+He wanted them all to come in and have some wine--some very good
+Madeira--some capital Madeira--John, go and get some Madeira--and there
+is no knowing what the farmers would have done, had not Madam Pendennis
+made her appearance in a white wrapper, with a candle, and scared those
+zealous Blues so by the sight of her pale, handsome face, that they
+touched their hats, and rode off.
+
+Besides these amusements and occupations in which Mr. Pen indulged,
+there was one which forms the main business and pleasure of youth, if
+the poets tell us aright, whom Pen was always studying; and this young
+fellow's heart was so ardent, and his imagination so eager, that it is
+not to be expected he should long escape the passion to which we allude,
+and which, ladies, you have rightly guessed to be that of Love. Pen
+sighed for it first in secret, and, like the love-sick swain in Ovid,
+opened his breast, and said--"Aura, veni." What generous youth is there
+that has not courted some such windy mistress in his time?
+
+Yes, Pen began to feel the necessity of a first love--of a consuming
+passion--of an object on which he could concentrate all those vague,
+floating fancies under which he sweetly suffered--of a young lady to
+whom he could really make verses, and whom he could set up and adore, in
+place of those unsubstantial Ianthes and Zuleikas to whom he addressed
+the outpourings of his gushing muse. He read his favorite 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 up-stairs in the study--in
+Pen's, as he sat 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 favorite lines which
+the reader will find in their proper place in the third book. He drew
+portraits of her--they are extant still--with straight noses and
+enormous eyes, and "Arthur Pendennis delineavit et pinxit" gallantly
+written underneath.
+
+As for Mr. Smirke he naturally preferred Andromache. And in consequence
+he was uncommonly kind to Pen. He gave him his Elzevir Horace, of which
+the boy was fond, and his little Greek Testament which his own mamma
+at Clapham had purchased and presented to him. He bought him a silver
+pencil case; and in the matter of learning let him do just as much or
+as little as ever he pleased. He always seemed to be on the point of
+unbosoming himself to Pen: nay, he confessed to the latter that he
+had a--an attachment, an ardently cherished attachment, about which
+Pendennis longed to hear, and said, "Tell us, old chap, is she handsome?
+has she got blue eyes or black?" But Doctor Portman's curate, heaving a
+gentle sigh, cast up his eyes to the ceiling, and begged Pen, faintly,
+to change the conversation. Poor Smirke! He invited Pen to dine at
+his lodgings over Madame Fribsby's, the milliner's, in Clavering, and
+once when it was raining, and Mrs. Pendennis, who had driven in her
+pony-chaise into Clavering with respect to some arrangements, about
+leaving off mourning probably, was prevailed upon to enter the curate's
+apartments, he sent out for poundcakes instantly. The sofa on which she
+sate became sacred to him from that day: and he kept flowers in the
+glass which she drank from ever after.
+
+As Mrs. Pendennis was never tired of hearing the praises of her son,
+we may be certain that this rogue of a tutor neglected no opportunity
+of conversing with her upon that subject. It might be a little tedious
+to him to hear the stories about Pen's generosity, about his bravery
+in fighting the big naughty boy, about his fun and jokes, about his
+prodigious skill in Latin, music, riding, &c.--but what price would he
+not pay to be in her company? and the widow, after these conversations,
+thought Mr. Smirke a very pleasing and well-informed man. As for her son
+she had not settled in her mind, whether he was to be Senior Wrangler
+and Archbishop of Canterbury, or Double First Class at Oxford, and Lord
+Chancellor. That all England did not possess his peer, was a fact about
+which there was, in her mind, no manner of question.
+
+A simple person of inexpensive habits, she began forthwith to save,
+and, perhaps, to be a little parsimonious, in favor of her boy. There
+were no entertainments, of course, at Fairoaks, during the year of
+her weeds. Nor, indeed, did the doctor's silver dish-covers, of which
+he was so proud, and which were flourished all over with the arms of
+the Pendennises, and surmounted with their crest, come out of the
+plate-chests again for long, long years. The household was diminished,
+and its expenses curtailed. There was a very blank anchorite repast
+when Pen dined from home: and he himself headed the remonstrance from
+the kitchen regarding the deteriorated quality of the Fairoaks beer.
+She was becoming miserly for Pen. Indeed, who ever accused women of
+being just? They are always sacrificing themselves or somebody for
+somebody else's sake.
+
+There happened to be no young woman in the small circle of friends who
+were in the widow's intimacy whom Pendennis could by any possibility
+gratify by endowing her with the inestimable treasure of a heart which
+he was longing to give away. Some young fellows in this predicament
+bestow their young affections upon Dolly, the dairy-maid, 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 dishonor. 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 Chatteries' Assemblies; in fine, he was not
+in love, because there was nobody at hand to fell 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 heating within him,
+and a secret tremor and hope that _she_ might be in that yellow
+post-chaise 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
+post-chaise contained a snuffy old dowager of seventy, with a maid,
+her contemporary. The three girls in the beaver bonnets were no
+handsomer than the turnips that skirted the roadside. Do as he might,
+and ride where he would, the fairy princess that he was to rescue and
+win, had not yet appeared to honest Pen.
+
+Upon these points he did not discourse to his mother. He had a world
+of his own. What generous, ardent, imaginative soul has not a secret
+pleasure-place in which it disports? Let no clumsy prying or dull
+meddling of ours try to disturb it in our children. Actaeon was a brute
+for wanting to push in where Diana was bathing. Leave him occasionally
+alone, my good madame, 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 every body 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 them
+selves when your ladyship sits by.
+
+Helen Pendennis by the force of sheer love divined a great number of
+her son's secrets. But she kept these things in her heart (if we may so
+speak), and did not speak of them. Besides, she had made up her mind
+that he was to marry little Laura, who would be eighteen when Pen was
+six-and-twenty: and had finished his college career, and had made his
+grand tour, and was settled either in London, astonishing all the
+metropolis by his learning and eloquence at the bar, or, better still,
+in a sweet country parsonage surrounded with hollyhocks and roses, close
+to a delightful romantic ivy-covered church, from the pulpit of which
+Pen would utter the most beautiful sermons ever preached.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While these natural sentiments were waging war and trouble in honest
+Pen's bosom, it chanced one day that he rode into Chatteries, 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, patronizing manner. Pen had some difficulty in
+recognizing under the broad-brimmed hat and the vast great coats and
+neckcloths, with which the new comer was habited, the person and figure
+of his quondam schoolfellow, Mr. Foker.
+
+A year's absence had made no small difference in that gentleman. A youth
+who had been deservedly whipped a few months previously, and who spent
+his pocket-money on tarts and hardbake, now appeared before Pen in one
+of those costumes to which the public consent, that I take to be quite
+as influential in this respect as "Johnson's Dictionary," has awarded
+the title of "Swell." He had a bull-dog between his legs, and in his
+scarlet shawl neckcloth was a pin representing another bull-dog in gold:
+he wore a fur waistcoat laced over with gold chains; a green cut-away
+coat with basket-buttons, and a white upper-coat ornamented with
+cheese-plate buttons, on each of which was engraved some stirring
+incident of the road or the chase; all which ornaments set off this
+young fellow's figure to such advantage, that you would hesitate to say
+which character in life he most resembled, and whether he was a boxer
+_en goguette_, or a coachman in his gala suit.
+
+"Left that place for good, Pendennis?" Mr. Foker said, descending from
+his landau, and giving Pendennis a finger.
+
+"Yes, this year or more," Pen said.
+
+"Beastly old hole," Mr. Foker remarked. "Hate it. Hate the doctor: hate
+Towzer, the second master; hate every body there. Not a fit place for a
+gentleman."
+
+"Not at all," said Pen with an air of the utmost consequence.
+
+"By gad, sir, I sometimes dream, now, that the doctor's walking into
+me," Foker continued (and Pen smiled as he thought that he himself had
+likewise fearful dreams of this nature). "When I think of the diet
+there, by gad, sir, I wonder how I stood it. Mangy mutton, brutal beef,
+pudding on Thursdays and Sundays, and that fit to poison you. Just look
+at my leader--did you ever see a prettier animal? Drove over from
+Baymouth. Came the nine mile in two-and-forty minutes. Not bad going,
+sir."
+
+"Are you stopping at Baymouth, Foker?" Pendennis asked.
+
+"I'm coaching there," said the other, with a nod.
+
+"_What?_" asked Pen, and in a tone of such wonder, that Foker burst out
+laughing, and said, "He was blowed if he didn't think Pen was such a
+flat as not to know what coaching meant."
+
+"I'm come down with a coach from Oxford. A tutor, don't you see, old
+boy? He's coaching me, and some other men, for the little go. Me and
+Spavin have the drag between us. And I thought I'd just tool over, and
+go to the play. Did you ever see Rowkins do the hornpipe?" and Mr. Foker
+began to perform some steps of that popular dance in the inn yard,
+looking round for the sympathy of his groom and the stable men.
+
+Pen thought he would like to go to the play too: and could ride home
+afterward, as there was a moonlight. So he accepted Foker's invitation
+to dinner, and the young men entered the inn together, where Mr. Foker
+stopped at the bar, and called upon Miss Rincer, the landlady's fair
+daughter, who presided there, to give him a glass of "his mixture."
+
+Pen and his family had been known at the George ever since they came
+into the country; and Mr. Pendennis's carriages and horses always put up
+there when he paid a visit to the county town. The landlady dropped the
+heir of Fairoaks a respectful courtesy, and complimented him upon his
+growth and manly appearance, and asked news of the family at Fairoaks,
+and of Doctor Portman and the Clavering people, to all of which questions
+the young gentleman answered with much affability. But he spoke to Mr.
+and Mrs. Rincer with that sort of good nature with which a young prince
+addresses his father's subjects; never dreaming that those "bonnes gens"
+were his equals in life.
+
+Mr. Foker's behavior was quite different. He inquired for Rincer and the
+cold in his nose, told Mrs. Rincer a riddle, asked Miss Rincer when she
+would be ready to marry him, and paid his compliments to Miss Brett,
+the other young lady in the bar, all in a minute of time, and with a
+liveliness and facetiousness which set all these ladies in a giggle; and
+he gave a cluck, expressive of great satisfaction as he tossed off his
+mixture which Miss Rincer prepared and handed to him.
+
+"Have a drop," said he to Pen, "it's recommended to me by the faculty as
+a what-do-you-call-'em--a stomatic, old boy. Give the young one a glass,
+R, and score it up to yours truly."
+
+Poor Pen took a glass, and every body laughed at the face which he
+made as he put it down.--Gin, bitters, and some other cordial, was the
+compound with which Mr. Foker was so delighted as to call it by the name
+of Foker's own. As Pen choked, sputtered, and made faces, the other took
+occasion to remark to Mr. Rincer that the young fellow was green, very
+green, but that he would soon form him; and then they proceeded to order
+dinner--which Mr. Foker determined should consist of turtle and venison;
+cautioning the landlady to be very particular about icing the wine.
+
+Then Messrs. Foker and Pen strolled down the High-street together--the
+former having a cigar in his mouth, which he had drawn out of a case
+almost as big as a portmanteau. He went in to replenish it at Mr.
+Lewis's, and talked to that gentleman for a while, sitting down on the
+counter; he then looked in at the fruiterer's, to see the pretty girl
+there, to whom he paid compliments similar to those before addressed to
+the bar at the George; then they passed the County Chronicle office, for
+which Pen had his packet ready, in the shape of "Lines to Thyrza," but
+poor Pen did not like to put the letter into the editor's box while
+walking in company with such a fine gentleman as Mr. Foker. They met
+heavy dragoons of the regiment always quartered at Chatteries; 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 dullness. 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 Chatteries.
+
+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 Chatteries, and here they strolled until with a final burst of music
+the small congregation was played out.
+
+Old Doctor Portman was one of the few who came from the venerable gate.
+Spying Pen, he came and shook him by the hand, and eyed with wonder
+Pen's friend, from whose mouth and cigar clouds of fragrance issued,
+which curled round the doctor's honest face and shovel hat.
+
+"An old schoolfellow of mine, Mr. Foker," said Pen. The doctor said
+"H'm": and scowled at the cigar. He did not mind a pipe in his study,
+but the cigar was an abomination to the worthy gentleman.
+
+"I came up on Bishop's business," the doctor said. "We'll ride home,
+Arthur, if you like?"
+
+"I--I'm engaged to my friend here," Pen answered.
+
+"You had better come home with me," said the doctor.
+
+"His mother knows he's out, sir," Mr. Foker remarked; "don't she,
+Pendennis?"
+
+"But that does not prove that he had not better come home with me," the
+doctor growled, and he walked off with great dignity.
+
+"Old boy don't like the weed, I suppose," Foker said. "Ha! who's
+here?--here's the general, and Bingley, the manager. How do, Cos? How
+do, Bingley?"
+
+"How does my worthy and gallant young Foker?" said the gentleman
+addressed as the general; and who wore a shabby military cape with
+a mangy collar, and a hat cocked very much over one eye.
+
+"Trust you are very well, my very dear sir," said the other gentleman,
+"and that the Theater Royal will have the honor of your patronage
+to-night. We perform 'The Stranger,' in which your humble servant
+will--"
+
+"Can't stand you in tights and Hessians, Bingley," young Mr. Foker said.
+On which the general, with the Irish accent, said, "But I think ye'll
+like Miss Fotheringay, in Mrs. Haller, or me name's not Jack Costigan."
+
+Pen looked at these individuals with the greatest interest. He had never
+seen an actor before; and he saw Dr. Portman's red face looking over the
+doctor's shoulder, as he retreated from the Cathedral Yard, evidently
+quite dissatisfied with the acquaintances into whose hands Pen had
+fallen.
+
+Perhaps it would have been much better for him had he taken the parson's
+advice and company home. But which of us knows his fate?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MRS. HALLER.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 gayly away.
+
+"A bottle of sherry, a bottle of sham, a bottle of port and a shass
+caffy, it ain't so bad, hay, Pen?" Foker said, and pronounced, after all
+these delicacies and a quantity of nuts and fruit had been dispatched,
+that it was time to "toddle." Pen sprang up with very bright eyes, and
+a flushed face; and they moved off toward the theater, where they paid
+their money to the wheezy old lady slumbering in the money taker's box.
+"Mrs. Dropsicum, Bingley's mother-in-law, great in Lady Macbeth," Foker
+said to his companion. Foker knew her, too.
+
+They had almost their choice of places in the boxes of the theater,
+which was no better filled than country theaters usually are, in spite
+of the "universal burst of attraction and galvanic thrills of delight"
+advertised by Bingley in the play-bills. A score or so of people
+dotted the pit-benches, a few more kept a kicking and whistling in the
+galleries, and a dozen others, who came in with free admissions, were
+in the boxes where our young gentlemen sate. Lieutenants Rodgers and
+Podgers, and young Cornet Tidmus, of the Dragoons, occupied a private
+box. The performers acted to them, and these gentlemen seemed to hold
+conversations with the players when not engaged in the dialogue, and
+applauded them by name loudly.
+
+Bingley the manager, who assumed all the chief tragic and comic parts
+except when he modestly retreated to make way for the London stars, who
+came down occasionally to Chatteries; 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-jewelry 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 favor
+to the young men of his company to go on in light comedy parts with
+that ring. They flattered him by asking its history. The stage has its
+traditional jewels as the crown and all great families have. This had
+belonged to George Frederick Cooke, who had had it from Mr. Quin, who
+may have bought it for a shilling. Bingley fancied the world was
+fascinated with its glitter.
+
+He was reading out of the stage-book--that wonderful stage-book which
+is not bound like any other book in the world, but is rouged and tawdry
+like the hero or heroine who holds it; and who holds it as people never
+do hold books; and points with his finger to a passage, and wags his
+head ominously at the audience, and then lifts up eyes and finger to
+the ceiling professing to derive some intense consolation from the
+work, between which and heaven there is a strong affinity. Any body
+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--any body, I say, who has seen the
+great X. over a sham book has indeed had a great pleasure and an abiding
+matter for thought.
+
+Directly the Stranger saw the young men, he acted at them; eying them
+solemnly over his gilt volume as he lay on the stage-bank showing his
+hand, his ring, and his Hessians. He calculated the effect that every
+one of these ornaments would produce upon his victims; he was determined
+to fascinate them, for he knew they had paid their money; and he saw
+their families coming in from the country and filling the cane chairs
+in his boxes.
+
+As he lay on the bank reading, his servant, Francis, made remarks upon
+his master.
+
+"Again reading," said Francis, "thus it is, from morn to night. To him
+nature has no beauty--life no charm. For three years I have never seen
+him smile" (the gloom of Bingley's face was fearful to witness during
+these comments of the faithful domestic). "Nothing diverts him. O, if
+he would but attach himself to any living thing, were it an animal--for
+something man must love."
+
+[_Enter Tobias_ (_Goll_) _from the hut_]. He cries, "O, how refreshing,
+after seven long weeks, to feel these warm sunbeams once again. Thanks,
+bounteous heaven, for the joy I taste!" He presses his cap between his
+hands, looks up and prays. The Stranger eyes him attentively.
+
+_Francis to the Stranger._ "This old man's share of earthly happiness
+can be but little. Yet mark how grateful he is for his portion of it."
+
+_Bingley._ "Because though old, he is but a child in the leading-string
+of hope." (He looks steadily at Foker, who, however, continues to suck
+the top of his stick in an unconcerned manner.)
+
+_Francis._ "Hope is the nurse of life."
+
+_Bingley._ "And her cradle--is the grave."
+
+The stranger uttered this with the moan of a bassoon in agony, and
+fixed his eyes on Pendennis so steadily, that the poor lad was quite
+put out of countenance. He thought the whole house must be looking at
+him; and cast his eyes down. As soon as ever he raised them Bingley's
+were at him again. All through the scene the manager played at him.
+When he was about to do a good action, and sent off Francis with his
+book, so that that domestic should not witness the deed of benevolence
+which he meditated, Bingley marked the page carefully, so that he might
+continue the perusal of the volume off the stage if he liked. But all
+was done in the direct face of Pendennis, whom the manager was bent upon
+subjugating. How relieved the lad was when the scene ended, and Foker,
+tapping with his cane, cried out, "Bravo Bingley!"
+
+"Give him a hand, Pendennis; you know every chap likes a hand,"
+Mr. Foker said; and the good-natured young gentleman, and Pendennis
+laughing, and the dragoons in the opposite box, began clapping hands
+to the best of their power.
+
+A chamber in Wintersen Castle closed over Tobias's hut and the Stranger
+and his boots; and servants appeared bustling about with chairs and
+tables--"That's Hicks and Miss Thackthwaite," whispered Foker. "Pretty
+girl, ain't she, Pendennis? But stop--hurray--bravo! here's the
+Fotheringay."
+
+The pit thrilled and thumped its umbrellas; a volley of applause was
+fired from the gallery: the dragoon officers and Foker clapped their
+hands furiously: you would have thought the house was full, so loud
+were their plaudits. The red face and ragged whiskers of Mr. Costigan
+were seen peering from the side-scene. Pen's eyes opened wide and
+bright, as Mrs. Haller entered with a downcast look, then rallying at
+the sound of the applause, swept the house with a grateful glance,
+and, folding her hands across her breast, sank down in a magnificent
+courtesy. 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 every body else, and old Mr. Bows, the little
+first fiddler of the orchestra (which was this night increased by a
+detachment of the band of the Dragoons, by the kind permission of
+Colonel Swallowtail), looked up from the desk where he was perched,
+with his crutch beside him, and smiled at the enthusiasm of the lad.
+
+Those who have only seen Miss Fotheringay in later days, since her
+marriage and introduction into London life, have little idea how
+beautiful a creature she was at the time when our friend Pen first set
+eyes on her: and I warn my reader, as beforehand, that the pencil which
+illustrates this work (and can draw an ugly face tolerably well, but is
+sadly put out when it tries to delineate a beauty) can give no sort of
+notion of her. She was of the tallest of women, and at her then age of
+six-and-twenty--for six-and-twenty she was, though she vows she was
+only nineteen--in the prime and fullness 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 ear-rings she wore (though the handsomest
+properties in the theater) 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 gayety 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 valor,
+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 courtesied and bowed, and charmed it.
+
+Thus she stood for a minute--complete and beautiful--as Pen stared at
+her. "I say, Pen, isn't she a stunner?" asked Mr. Foker.
+
+"Hush!" Pen said. "She's speaking."
+
+She began her business in a deep sweet voice. Those who know the
+play of the "Stranger," are aware that the remarks made by the various
+characters are not valuable in themselves, either for their sound sense,
+their novelty of observation, or their poetic fancy. In fact, if a man
+were to say it was a stupid play he would not be far wrong. Nobody ever
+talked so. If we meet idiots in life, as will happen, it is a great
+mercy that they do not use such absurdly fine words. The Stranger's
+talk is sham, like the book he reads, and the hair he wears, and the
+bank he sits on, and the diamond ring he makes play with--but, in the
+midst of the balderdash, there runs that reality of love, children, and
+forgiveness of wrong, which will be listened to wherever it is preached,
+and sets all the world sympathizing.
+
+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, &c., 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 favorite passage "I have a William, too, if he be still
+alive--Ah, yes, if he be still alive. His little sisters, too! Why,
+Fancy, dost thou rack me so? Why dost thou image my poor children
+fainting in sickness, and crying to--to--their mum-um-_other_,"--when
+she came to this passage little Bows buried his face in his blue cotton
+handkerchief, after crying out "Bravo."
+
+All the house was affected. Foker, for his part, taking out a large
+yellow bandanna, wept piteously. As for Pen, he was gone too far for
+that. He followed the woman about and about--when she was off the stage,
+it and the house were blank; the lights and the red officers reeled
+wildly before his sight. He watched her at the side-scene--where she
+stood waiting to come on the stage, and where her father took off her
+shawl; when the reconciliation arrived, and she flung herself down on
+Mr. Bingley's shoulders, while 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 any
+body else but himself had caused the success of the play. At last he
+understood it--stepped back with a grin, and presently appeared with
+Mrs. Haller on his arm. How beautiful she looked! Her hair had fallen
+down, the officers threw her flowers. She clutched them to her heart.
+She put back her hair, and smiled all round. Her eyes met Pen's. Down
+went the curtain again: and she was gone. Not one note could he hear
+of the overture which the brass band of the Dragoons blew by kind
+permission of Colonel Swallowtail.
+
+"She _is_ a crusher, ain't she now?" Mr. Foker asked of his companion.
+
+Pen did not know exactly what Foker said, and answered vaguely. He could
+not tell the other what he felt; he could not have spoken, just then, to
+any mortal. Besides, Pendennis did not quite know what he felt yet; it
+was something overwhelming, maddening, delicious; a fever of wild joy
+and undefined longing.
+
+And now Rowkins and Miss Thackthwaite came on to dance the favorite
+double hornpipe, and Foker abandoned himself to the delights of this
+ballet, just as he had to the tears of the tragedy, a few minutes
+before. Pen did not care for it, or indeed think about the dance, except
+to remember that that woman was acting with her in the scene where she
+first came in. It was a mist before his eyes. At the end of the dance he
+looked at his watch and said it was time for him to go.
+
+"Hang it, stay to see The Bravo of the Battle-Ax," Foker said,
+"Bingley's splendid in it; he wears red tights, and has to carry Mrs. B.
+over the Pine-bridge of the Cataract, only she's too heavy. It's great
+fun, do stop."
+
+Pen looked at the bill with one lingering fond hope that Miss
+Fotheringay's name might be hidden somewhere in the list of the actors
+of the after-piece, but there was no such name. Go he must. He had a
+long ride home. He squeezed Foker's hand. He was choking to speak, but
+he couldn't. He quitted the theater and walked frantically about the
+town, he knew not how long; then he mounted at the George and rode
+homeward, and Clavering clock sang out one as he came into the yard at
+Fairoaks. The lady of the house might have been awake, but she only
+heard him from the passage outside his room as he dashed into bed and
+pulled the clothes over his head.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pen had not been in the habit of passing wakeful nights, so he at once
+fell off into a sound sleep. Even in later days, and with a great deal
+of care and other thoughtful matter to keep him awake, a man, from long
+practice or fatigue or resolution, _begins_ by going to sleep as usual:
+and gets a nap in advance of Anxiety. But she soon comes up with him and
+jogs his shoulder, and says "Come, my man, no more of this laziness, you
+must wake up and have a talk with me." Then they fall to together in the
+midnight. Well, whatever might afterward 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 bed-room windows; and--at that very
+instant and as his eyes started open, the beloved image was in his mind.
+"My dear boy," he heard her say, "you were in a sound sleep, and I would
+not disturb you: but I have been close by your pillow all this while:
+and I don't intend that you shall leave me. I am Love! I bring with me
+fever and passion: wild longing, maddening desire; restless craving and
+seeking. Many a long day ere this I heard you calling out for me; and
+behold now I am come."
+
+Was Pen frightened at the summons? Not he. He did not know what was
+coming: it was all wild pleasure and delight as yet. And as, when three
+years previously, and on entering the fifth form at the Cistercians, his
+father had made him a present of a gold watch, which the boy took from
+under his pillow and examined on the instant of waking: forever rubbing
+and polishing it up in private, and retiring into corners to listen to
+its ticking: so the young man exulted over his new delight; felt in his
+waistcoat pocket to see that it was safe; wound it up at nights, and at
+the very first moment of waking hugged it and looked at it.--By the way,
+that first watch of Pen's was a showy ill manufactured piece: it never
+went well from the beginning, and was always getting out of order. And
+after putting it aside into a drawer and forgetting it for some time,
+he swapped it finally away for a more useful time-keeper.
+
+Pen felt himself to be ever so many years older since yesterday. There
+was no mistake about it now. He was as much in love as the best hero in
+the best romance he ever read. He told John to bring his shaving water
+with the utmost confidence. He dressed himself in some of his finest
+clothes that morning: and came splendidly down to breakfast, patronizing
+his mother and little Laura, who had been strumming her music lesson for
+hours before; and who after he had read the prayers (of which he did not
+heed one single syllable) wondered at his grand appearance, and asked
+him to tell her what the play was about.
+
+Pen laughed, and declined to tell Laura what the play was about. In
+fact, it was quite as well that she should not know. Then she asked him
+why he had got on his fine pin and beautiful new waistcoat?
+
+Pen blushed, and told his mother that the old schoolfellow with whom
+he had dined at Chatteries was reading with a tutor at Baymouth, a very
+learned man; and as he was himself to go to College, and as there were
+several young men pursuing their studies at Baymouth--he was anxious to
+ride over--and--and just see what the course of their reading was.
+
+Laura made a long face. Helen Pendennis looked hard at her son, troubled
+more than ever with the vague doubt and terror which had been haunting
+her ever since the last night, when Farmer Gurnett brought back the news
+that Pen would not return home to dinner. Arthur's eyes defied her. She
+tried to console herself, and drive off her fears. The boy had never
+told her an untruth. Pen conducted himself during breakfast in a very
+haughty and supercilious manner; and, taking leave of the elder and
+younger lady, was presently heard riding out of the stable court. He
+went gently at first, but galloped like a madman as soon as he thought
+he was out of hearing.
+
+Smirke, thinking of his own affairs, and softly riding with his toes
+out, to give Pen his three hours' reading at Fairoaks, met his pupil,
+who shot by him like the wind. Smirke's pony shied, as the other
+thundered past him; the gentle curate went over his head among the
+stinging nettles in the hedge. Pen laughed as they met, pointed toward
+the Baymouth road, and was gone half a mile in that direction before
+poor Smirke had picked himself up.
+
+Pen had resolved in his mind that he _must_ see Foker, that morning, he
+must hear about her; know about her; be with somebody who knew her; and
+honest Smirke, for his part, sitting up among the stinging-nettles, as
+his pony cropped quietly in the hedge, thought dismally to himself,
+ought he to go to Fairoaks now that his pupil was evidently gone away
+for the day. Yes, he thought he might go too. He might go and ask Mrs.
+Pendennis when Arthur would be back; and hear Miss Laura her Watts's
+Catechism. He got up on the little pony--both were used to his slipping
+off--and advanced upon the house from which his scholar had just rushed
+away in a whirlwind.
+
+Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little; and the curate had
+tumbled over head and heels in pursuit of it, and Pen had started in the
+first heat of the mad race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MRS. HALLER AT HOME.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 soda-water 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 Chatteries, who was smoking, and teaching a little dog,
+a friend of his, tricks with a bit of biscuit.
+
+Pen's healthy red face fresh from the gallop, compared oddly, with the
+waxy, debauched little features of Foker's chum; the latter remarked it.
+"Who's that man?" he thought, "he looks as fresh as a bean, _His_ hand
+don't shake of a morning, I'd bet five to one."
+
+Foker had not come home at all. Here was a disappointment!--
+
+Mr. Spavin could not say when his friend would return. Sometimes he
+stopped a day, sometimes a week. Of what college was Pen? Would he have
+any thing? There was a very fair tap of ale. Mr. Spavin was enabled to
+know Pendennis's name, on the card which the latter took out and laid
+down (perhaps Pen in these days was rather proud of having a card)--and
+so the young men took leave.
+
+Then Pen went down the rock, and walked about on the sand, biting his
+nails by the shore of the much sounding sea. It stretched before him
+bright and immeasurable. The blue waters came rolling into the bay,
+foaming and roaring hoarsely: Pen looked them in the face, with blank
+eyes, hardly regarding them. What a tide there was pouring into the
+lad's own mind at the time, and what a little power had he to check it!
+Pen flung stones into the sea, but it still kept coming on. He was in
+a rage at not seeing Foker. He wanted to see Foker. He must see Foker.
+"Suppose I go on--on the Chatteries 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 Chatteries road. About four miles from
+Baymouth, the Clavering road branches off, as every body knows, and the
+mare naturally was for taking that turn, but, cutting her over the
+shoulder, Pen passed the turning, and rode on to the turnpike without
+seeing any sign of the black tandem and red wheels.
+
+As he was at the turnpike, he might as well go on: that was quite clear.
+So Pen rode to the George, and the hostler told him that Mr Foker was
+there sure enough, and that "he'd been a making a tremendous row the
+night afore, a drinkin and a singin, and wanting to fight Tom the
+post-boy: which I'm thinking he'd have the worst of it," the man added,
+with a grin.--"Have you carried up your master's hot water to shave
+with?" he added, in a very satirical manner, to Mr. Foker's domestic,
+who here came down the yard bearing his master's clothes, most
+beautifully brushed and arranged. "Show Mr. Pendennis up to 'un," and
+Pen followed the man at last to the apartment, where, in the midst of
+an immense bed, Mr. Harry Foker lay reposing.
+
+The feather bed and bolsters swelled up all round Mr. Foker, so that you
+could hardly see his little sallow face and red silk night-cap.
+
+"Hullo!" said Pen.
+
+"Who goes there? brother, quickly tell!" sang out the voice from the
+bed. "What! Pendennis again? Is your mamma acquainted with your absence?
+Did you sup with us last night? No--stop--who supped with us last night,
+Stoopid?"
+
+"There was the three officers, sir, and Mr. Bingley, sir, and Mr.
+Costigan, sir," the man answered, who received all Mr. Foker's remarks
+with perfect gravity.
+
+"Ah yes: the cup and merry jest went round. We chanted: and I remember
+I wanted to fight a post-boy. Did I thrash him, Stoopid?"
+
+"No, sir. Fight didn't come off, sir," said Stoopid, still with perfect
+gravity. He was arranging Mr. Foker's dressing-case--a trunk, the gift
+of a fond mother, without which the young fellow never traveled. It
+contained a prodigious apparatus in plate; a silver dish, a silver mug,
+silver boxes and bottles for all sorts of essences, and a choice of
+razors ready against the time when Mr. Foker's beard should come.
+
+"Do it some other day," said the young fellow, yawning and throwing up
+his little lean arms over his head. "No, there was no fight; but there
+was chanting. Bingley chanted, I chanted, the general chanted--Costigan
+I mean.--Did you ever hear him sing 'The Little Pig under the Bed,'
+Pen?"
+
+"The man we met yesterday," said Pen, all in a tremor, "the father of--"
+
+"Of the Fotheringay--the very man. Ain't she a Venus, Pen?"
+
+"Please sir, Mr. Costigan's in the sittin-room, sir, and says, sir, you
+asked him to breakfast, sir. Called five times, sir; but wouldn't wake
+you on no account; and has been year since eleven o'clock, sir--"
+
+"How much is it now?"
+
+"One, sir."
+
+"What would the best of mothers say," cried the little sluggard, "if she
+saw me in bed at this hour? She sent me down here with a grinder. She
+wants me to cultivate my neglected genus.--He he! I say, Pen, this isn't
+quite like seven o'clock school--is it, old boy?"--and the young fellow
+burst out into a boyish laugh of enjoyment. Then he added--"Go in and
+talk to the general whilst I dress. And I say, Pendennis, ask him to
+sing you 'The Little Pig under the Bed;' it's capital." Pen went off in
+great perturbation, to meet Mr. Costigan, and Mr. Foker commenced his
+toilet.
+
+Of Mr. Foker's two grandfathers, the one from whom he inherited a
+fortune, was a brewer; the other was an earl, who endowed him with the
+most doting mother in the world. The Fokers had been at the Cistercian
+school, from father to son; at which place, our friend whose name could
+be seen over the play-ground 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 can not be
+acquired by leaving school and entering at college as a fellow commoner;
+but he was now (in his own peculiar manner) as great a dandy as he
+before had been a slattern, and when he entered his sitting-room to join
+his two guests, arrived scented and arrayed in fine linen, and perfectly
+splendid in appearance.
+
+General or Captain Costigan--for the latter was the rank which he
+preferred to assume--was seated in the window with the newspaper held
+before him at arm's length. The captain's eyes were somewhat dim; and
+he was spelling the paper with the help of his lips as well as of those
+blood-shot 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-gray hair
+over his pate, and had a couple of wisps of the same falling down on
+each side of his face. Much whisky had spoiled what complexion Mr.
+Costigan may have possessed in his youth. His once handsome face had now
+a copper tinge. He wore a very high stock, scarred and stained in many
+places; and a dress-coat tightly buttoned up in those parts where the
+buttons had not parted company from the garment.
+
+"The young gentleman to whom I had the honor 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 thayater
+last night during me daughter's perfawrumance; and missed ye on my
+return. I did but conduct her home, sir, for Jack Costigan, though poor,
+is a gentleman; and when I reintered the house to pay me respects to me
+joyous young friend Mr. Foker--ye were gone. We had a jolly night of
+ut, sir--Mr. Foker, the three gallant young dragoons, and your 'umble
+servant. Gad, sir, it put me in mind of one of our old nights when I
+bore His Majesty's commission in the Foighting Hundtherd and Third."
+And he pulled out an old snuff-box, which he presented with a stately
+air to his new acquaintance.
+
+Arthur was a great deal too much flurried to speak. This shabby-looking
+buck was--was her father. The captain was perfumed with the recollections
+of the last night's cigars, and pulled and twisted the tuft on his chin
+as jauntily as any young dandy.
+
+"I hope, Miss F----, Miss Costigan is well sir," Pen said, flushing up.
+"She--she gave me greater pleasure, than--than I--I--I ever enjoyed at
+a play. I think, sir--I think she's the finest actress in the world,"
+he gasped out.
+
+"Your hand, young man! for ye speak from your heart," cried the
+captain. "Thank ye, sir, an old soldier and a fond father thanks ye.
+She _is_ the finest actress in the world. I've seen the Siddons, sir,
+and the O'Nale.--They were great, but what were they compared to Miss
+Fotheringay? I do not wish that 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
+colors in the Hundred and Third, would demean himself, by permitting
+his daughter to earn her old father's bread."
+
+"There can not be a more honorable duty, surely," Pen said.
+
+"Honorable! Bedad, sir, I'd like to see the man who said Jack Costigan
+would consent to any thing dishonorable. I have a heart, sir, though
+I am poor; I like a man who has a heart. You have; I read it in your
+honest face and steady eye. And would you believe it?" he added, after
+a pause, and with a pathetic whisper, "that that Bingley, who has made
+his fortune by me child, gives her but two guineas a week, out of which
+she finds herself in dresses, and which, added to me own small means
+makes our all?"
+
+Now the captain's means were so small as to be, it may be said, quite
+invisible. But nobody knows how the wind is tempered to shorn Irish
+lambs, and in what marvelous places they find pasture. If Captain
+Costigan, whom I had the honor to know, would but have told his history,
+it would have been a great moral story. But he neither would have told
+it if he could, nor could if he would; for the captain was not only
+unaccustomed to tell the truth--he was unable even to think it--and
+fact and fiction reeled together in his muzzy, whiskified brain.
+
+He began life rather brilliantly with a pair of colors, 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 humor, those wonderful
+Irish ballads which are so mirthful and so melancholy: and was always
+the first himself to cry at their pathos. Poor Cos! he was at once brave
+and maudlin, humorous and an idiot; always good-natured, and sometimes
+almost trustworthy. Up to the last day of his life he would drink with
+any man, and back any man's bill: and his end was in a spunging-house,
+where the sheriff's officer who took him, was fond of him.
+
+In his brief morning of life, Cos formed the delight of regimental
+messes, and had the honor of singing his songs, bacchanalian and
+sentimental, at the tables of the most illustrious generals and
+commanders-in-chief, in the course of which period he drank three
+times as much claret as was good for him, and spent his doubtful
+patrimony. What became of him subsequently to his retirement from the
+army, is no affair of ours. I take it, no foreigner understands the life
+of an Irish gentleman without money, the way in which he manages to keep
+afloat--the wind-raising conspiracies, in which he engages with heroes
+as unfortunate as himself--the means by which he contrives, during most
+days of the week, to get his portion of whisky-and-water: all these are
+mysteries to us inconceivable: but suffice it to say, that through all
+the storms of life Jack had floated somehow, and the lamp of his nose
+had never gone out.
+
+Before he and Pen had had a half hour's conversation, the captain
+managed to extract a couple of sovereigns from the young gentleman for
+tickets for his daughter's benefit, which was to take place speedily,
+and was not a _bona fide_ transaction such as that of the last year,
+when poor Miss Fotheringay had lost fifteen shillings by her venture,
+but was an arrangement with the manager, by which the lady was to have
+the sale of a certain number of tickets, keeping for herself a large
+portion of the sum for which they were sold.
+
+Pen had but two pounds in his purse, and he handed them over to the
+captain for the tickets; he would have been afraid to offer more, lest
+he should offend the latter's delicacy. Costigan scrawled him an order
+for a box, lightly slipped the sovereigns into his waistcoat, and
+slapped his hand over the place where they lay. They seemed to warm his
+old sides.
+
+"Faith, sir," said he, "the bullion's scarcer with me than it used to
+be, as is the case with many a good fellow. I won six hundthred of 'em
+in a single night, sir, when me kind friend, His Royal Highness the Duke
+of Kent, was in Gibralther." And he straightway poured out to Pen a
+series of stories regarding the claret drunk, the bets made, the races
+ridden by the garrison there, with which he kept the young gentleman
+amused until the arrival of their host and his breakfast.
+
+Then it was good to see the captain's behavior before the deviled 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 lazarone basked in it; he prated about his own affairs
+and past splendor, 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 apologized,
+gave a dinner at the Kildare-street, where six of them drank twinty-one
+bottles of claret, &c. 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 am in--sure I'll pay you, my boy"--and they
+parted finally with Mr. Foker at a billiard-room, where the latter had
+a particular engagement with some gentlemen of Colonel Swallowtail's
+regiment.
+
+Pen and the shabby captain still walked the streets together; the
+captain, in his sly way, making inquiries about Mr. Foker's fortune
+and station in life. Pen told him how Foker's father was a celebrated
+brewer, and his mother was Lady Agnes Milton, Lord Rosherville's
+daughter. The captain broke out into a strain of exaggerated compliment
+and panegyric about Mr. Foker, whose "native aristocracie," he said,
+"could be seen with the twinkling of an oi--and only served to adawrun
+other qualities which he possessed--a foin intellect and a generous
+heart"--in not one word of which speech did the captain accurately
+believe.
+
+Pen walked on, listening to his companion's prate, wondering, amused,
+and puzzled. It had not as yet entered into the boy's head to disbelieve
+any statement that was made to him; and being of a candid nature
+himself, he took naturally for truth what other people told him.
+Costigan had never had a better listener, and was highly flattered by
+the attentiveness and modest bearing of the young man.
+
+So much pleased was he with the young gentleman, so artless, honest,
+and cheerful did Pen seem to be, that the captain finally made him an
+invitation, which he very seldom accorded to young men, and asked Pen if
+he would do him the fevor to enter his humble abode, which was near at
+hand, where the captain would have the honor of inthrojuicing his young
+friend to his daughther, Miss Fotheringay?
+
+Pen was so delightfully shocked at this invitation, and was so stricken
+down by the happiness thus suddenly offered to him, that he thought he
+should have dropped from the captain's arm at first, and trembled lest
+the other should discover his emotion. He gasped out a few incoherent
+words, indicative of the high gratification he should have in being
+presented to the lady for whose--for whose talents he had conceived such
+an admiration--such an extreme admiration, and followed the captain,
+scarcely knowing whither that gentleman led him. He was going to see
+her! He was going to see her! In her was the center of the universe.
+She was the kernel of the world for Pen. Yesterday, before he knew her,
+seemed a period ever so long ago--a revolution was between him and that
+time, and a new world about to begin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The captain conducted his young friend to that quiet little street in
+Chatteries, 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 afterward to Pen, winking knowingly,
+and laying a finger on his nose.
+
+Pen tumbled down the step, and as he followed his companion up the
+creaking old stair, his knees trembled under him. He could hardly see
+when he entered, following the captain, and stood in the room--in her
+room. He saw something black before him, and waving as if making a
+courtesy, 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
+neighborhood, a person of refoined moind, and emiable manners, a sincare
+lover of poethry, and a man possest of a feeling and affectionate
+heart."
+
+"It is very fine weather," Miss Fotheringay said, in an Irish accent,
+and with a deep, rich, melancholy voice.
+
+"Very," said Mr. Pendennis. In this romantic way their conversation
+began, and he found himself seated on a chair, and having leisure to
+look at the young lady.
+
+She looked still handsomer off the stage than before the lamps. All her
+attitudes were naturally grand and majestical. If she went and stood up
+against the mantle-piece 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 scepter put into it, the folds of her dress fell
+naturally round her in order, like ladies of honor 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 gray, with
+prodigious long lashes; and as for her mouth, Mr. Pendennis has given
+me subsequently to understand, that it was of a staring red color, with
+which the most brilliant geranium, sealing-wax, or guardsman's coat,
+could not vie.
+
+"And very warm," continued this empress and Queen of Sheba.
+
+Mr. Pen again assented, and the conversation rolled on in this manner.
+She asked Costigan whether he had had a pleasant evening at the George,
+and he recounted the supper and the tumblers of punch. Then the father
+asked her how she had been employing the morning.
+
+"Bows came," said she, "at ten, and we studied Ophalia. It's for the
+twenty-fourth, when I hope, sir, we shall have the honor of seeing ye."
+
+"Indeed, indeed, you will," Mr. Pendennis cried, wondering that she
+should say "Ophalia," and speak with an Irish inflection of voice
+naturally, who had not the least Hibernian accent on the stage.
+
+"I've secured 'um for your benefit, dear," said the captain, tapping his
+waistcoat pocket, wherein lay Pen's sovereigns, and winking at Pen with
+one eye, at which the boy blushed.
+
+"Mr. ---- the gentleman's very obleging," said Mrs. Haller.
+
+"My name is Pendennis," said Pen, blushing. "I--I--hope you'll--you'll
+remember it." His heart thumped so as he made this audacious
+declaration, that he almost choked in uttering it.
+
+"Pendennis," she answered slowly, and looking him full in the eyes, with
+a glance so straight, so clear, so bright, so killing, with a voice so
+sweet, so round, so low, that the word and the glance shot Pen through
+and through, and perfectly transfixed him with pleasure.
+
+"I never knew the name was so pretty before," Pen said.
+
+"'Tis a very pretty name," Ophelia said. "Pentweazle's not a pretty
+name. Remember, papa, when we were on the Norwich Circuit, Young
+Pentweazle, who used to play second old men, and married Miss Rancy, the
+Columbine; they're both engaged in London now, at the Queen's, and get
+five pounds a week. Pentweazle wasn't his real name. 'Twas Judkin gave
+it him, I don't know why. His name was Harrington; that is, his real
+name was Potts; fawther a clergyman, very respectable. Harrington was in
+London, and got in debt. Ye remember, he came out in Falkland, to Mrs.
+Bunce's Julia."
+
+"And a pretty Julia she was," the captain interposed; "a woman of fifty,
+and a mother of ten children. 'Tis you ought to have been Julia, or my
+name's not Jack Costigan."
+
+"I didn't take the leading business then," Miss Fotheringay said,
+modestly; "I wasn't fit for't till Bows taught me."
+
+"True for you, my dear," said the captain: and bending to Pendennis, he
+added, "Rejuced in circumstances, sir, I was for some time a fencing
+master in Dublin (there's only three men in the empire could touch me
+with the foil once, but Jack Costigan's getting old and stiff now, sir);
+and my daughter had an engagement at the thayater there; and 'twas there
+that my friend, Mr. Bows, who saw her capabilities, and is an uncommon
+'cute man, gave her lessons in the dramatic art, and made her what ye
+see. What have ye done since Bows went, Emily?"
+
+"Sure, I've made a pie," Emily said, with perfect simplicity. She,
+pronounced it "poy."
+
+"If ye'll try it at four o'clock, sir, say the word," said Costigan,
+gallantly. "That girl, sir, makes the best veal and ham pie in England,
+and I think I can promise ye a glass of punch of the right flavor."
+
+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 while 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 humor,
+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 forever. He ate a crust of her making, he poured her out a
+glass of beer, he saw her drink a glass of punch--just one wine-glass
+full--out of the tumbler which she mixed for her papa. She was perfectly
+good-natured, and offered to mix one for Pendennis too. It was
+prodigiously strong; Pen had never in his life drunk so much spirits and
+water. Was it the punch, or the punch-maker who intoxicated him?
+
+During dinner, when the captain, whom his daughter treated most
+respectfully, ceased prattling about himself and his adventures, Pen
+tried to engage the Fotheringay in conversation about poetry and about
+her profession. He asked her what she thought of Ophelia's madness, and
+whether she was in love with Hamlet or not? "In love with such a little
+ojous wretch as that stunted manager of a Bingley?" She bristled with
+indignation at the thought. Pen explained it was not of her he spoke,
+but of Ophelia of the play. "Oh, indeed; if no offense was meant, none
+was taken; but as for Bingley, indeed, she did not value him--not that
+glass of punch." Pen next tried her on Kotzebue. "Kotzebue? who was
+he?"--"The author of the play in which she had been performing so
+admirably." "She did not know that--the man's name at the beginning
+of the book was Thompson," she said. Pen laughed at her adorable
+simplicity. He told her of the melancholy fate of the author of the
+play, and how Sand had killed him. It was for the first time in her life
+that Miss Costigan had ever heard of Mr. Kotzebue's existence, but she
+looked as if she was very much interested, and her sympathy sufficed for
+honest Pen.
+
+And in the midst of this simple conversation, the hour and a quarter
+which poor Pen could afford to allow himself, passed away only too
+quickly; and he had taken leave, he was gone, and away on his rapid road
+homeward on the back of Rebecca. She was called upon to show her mettle
+in the three journeys which she made that day.
+
+"What was that he was talking about, the madness of Hamlet, and the
+theory of the great German critic on the subject?" Emily asked of her
+father.
+
+"'Deed then I don't know, Milly dear," answered the captain. "We'll ask
+Bows when he comes."
+
+"Anyhow, he's a nice, fair-spoken, pretty young man," the lady said:
+"how many tickets did he take of you?"
+
+"'Fait, then, he took six, and gev me two guineas, Milly," the captain
+said, "I suppose them young chaps is not too flush of coin."
+
+"He's full of book-learning," Miss Fotheringay continued. "Kotzebue! He,
+he, what a droll name indeed, now; and the poor fellow killed by Sand,
+too! Did ye ever hear such a thing? I'll ask Bows about it, papa, dear."
+
+"A queer death, sure enough," ejaculated the captain, and changed
+the painful theme. "'Tis an elegant mare the young gentleman rides,"
+Costigan went on to say; "and a grand breakfast, intirely, that young
+Mister Foker gave us."
+
+"He's good for two private boxes, and at least twenty tickets, I should
+say," cried the daughter, a prudent lass, who always kept her fine eyes
+on the main chance.
+
+"I'll go bail of that," answered the papa; and so their conversation
+continued awhile, until the tumbler of punch was finished; and their
+hour of departure soon came, too; for at half past six Miss Fotheringay
+was to appear at the theater 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"How beautiful she is," thought Pen, cantering homeward. "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 humor she told the story of her comrade,
+Pentweazle, as he was called! There is no humor like Irish humor. Her
+father is rather tedious, but thoroughly amiable; and how fine of him,
+giving lessons in fencing after he quitted the army, where he was the
+pet of the Duke of Kent! Fencing! I should like to continue my fencing,
+or I shall forget what Angelo taught me. Uncle Arthur always liked me
+to fence--he says it is the exercise of a gentleman. Hang it. I'll take
+some lessons of Captain Costigan. Go along, Rebecca--up the hill, old
+lady. Pendennis, Pendennis--how she spoke the word! Emily, Emily! how
+good, how noble, how beautiful, how perfect, she is!"
+
+Now the reader, who has had the benefit of overhearing the entire
+conversation which Pen had with Miss Fotheringay, can judge for himself
+about the powers of her mind, and may perhaps be disposed to think that
+she has not said any thing astonishingly humorous or intellectual in the
+course of the above interview. She has married, and taken her position
+in the world as a 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 that
+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 Humor." But she had the best of the joke, for she had
+never heard of Irene, or Every Man in his Humor, or Dante, or perhaps
+Algiers. It was all one to her. She acted what little Bows told
+her--where he told her to sob, she sobbed--where he told her to laugh,
+she laughed. She gave the tirade or the repartee without the slightest
+notion of its meaning. She went to church and goes every Sunday, with a
+reputation perfectly intact, and was (and is) as guiltless of sense as
+of any other crime.
+
+But what did our Pen know of these things? He saw a pair of bright
+eyes, and he believed in them--a beautiful image, and he fell down
+and worshiped 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 toward 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 staid at the cottages on the way,
+and then dawdled with Laura over her lessons--and then looked at Mrs.
+Pendennis's gardens and improvements until he had perfectly bored out
+that lady: and he had taken his leave at the very last minute without
+that invitation to dinner which he fondly expected.
+
+Pen was full of kindness and triumph. "What, picked up and sound?" he
+cried out, laughing. "Come along back, old fellow, and eat my dinner--I
+have had mine: but we will have a bottle of the old wine and drink her
+health, Smirke."
+
+Poor Smirke turned the pony's head round, and jogged along with Arthur.
+His mother was charmed to see him in such high spirits, and welcomed Mr.
+Smirke for his sake, when Arthur said he had forced the curate back to
+dine. He gave a most ludicrous account of the play of the night before,
+and of the acting of Bingley the Manager, in his ricketty Hessians, and
+the enormous Mrs. Bingley as the Countess, in rumpled green satin and a
+Polish cap: he mimicked them, and delighted his mother and little Laura,
+who clapped her hands with pleasure.
+
+"And Mrs. Haller?" said Mrs. Pendennis.
+
+"She's a stunner, ma'am," Pen said, laughing, and using the words of his
+reverend friend, Mr. Foker.
+
+"A _what_, Arthur?" asked the lady.
+
+"What _is_ a stunner, Arthur?" cried Laura, in the same voice.
+
+So he gave them a queer account of Mr. Foker, and how he used to be
+called Vats and Grains, and by other contumelious names at school, and
+how he was now exceedingly rich, and a Fellow Commoner at St. Boniface.
+But gay and communicative as he was, Mr. Pen did not say one syllable
+about his ride to Chatteries that day, or about the new friends whom he
+had made there.
+
+When the two ladies retired, Pen, with flashing eyes, filled up two
+great bumpers of Madeira, and looking Smirke full in the face said,
+"Here's to her!"
+
+"Here's to her," said the curate with a sigh, lifting the glass: and
+emptying it, so that his face was a little pink when he put it down.
+
+Pen had even less sleep that night than on the night before. In
+the morning, and almost before dawn, he went out and saddled that
+unfortunate Rebecca himself, and rode her on the Downs like mad.
+Again Love had roused him--and said, "Awake Pendennis, I am here."
+That charming fever--that delicious longing--and fire, and uncertainty;
+he hugged them to him--he would not have lost them for all the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND WAR.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 Chatteries 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 Chatteries for the
+doctoring of his own, and the hire of another animal.
+
+Then, and perhaps once in a week, under pretense 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, staid a couple of hours in Chatteries,
+and returned on the Rival which left for London at ten at night.
+Once his secret was nearly lost by Smirke's simplicity, of whom Mrs.
+Pendennis asked whether they had read a great deal the night before,
+or a question to that effect. Smirke was about to tell the truth, that
+he had never seen Mr. Pen at all, when the latter's boot-heel came
+grinding down on Mr. Smirke's toe under the table, and warned the curate
+not to betray him.
+
+They had had conversations on the tender subject of course. It is good
+sport (if you are not yourself engaged in the conversation) to hear two
+men in love talk. There must be a confidant and depositary somewhere.
+When informed, under the most solemn vows of secrecy, of Pen's condition
+of mind, the curate said, with no small tremor, "that he hoped it was no
+unworthy object--no unlawful attachment, which Pen had formed"--for if
+so, the poor fellow felt it would be his duty to break his vow and
+inform Pen's mother, and then there would be a quarrel, he felt, with
+sickening apprehension, and he would never again have a chance of seeing
+what he most liked in the world.
+
+"Unlawful, unworthy!" Pen bounced out at the curate's question. "She is
+as pure as she is beautiful; I would give my heart to no other woman.
+I keep the matter a secret in my family, because--because--there are
+reasons of a weighty nature which I am not at liberty to disclose. But
+any man who breathes a word against her purity insults both her honor
+and mine, and--and dammy, I won't stand it."
+
+Smirke, with a faint laugh, only said, "Well, well, don't call me out,
+Arthur, for you know I can't fight;" but by this compromise the wretched
+curate was put more than ever into the power of his pupil, and the Greek
+and mathematics suffered correspondingly.
+
+If the reverend gentleman had had much discernment, and looked into the
+poet's corner of the County Chronicle, as it arrived in the Wednesday's
+bag, he might have seen "Mrs. Haller," "Passion and Genius," "Lines
+to Miss Fotheringay, of the Theater Royal," appearing every week; and
+other verses of the most gloomy, thrilling, and passionate cast. But
+as these poems were no longer signed NEP. by their artful composer, but
+subscribed EROS; neither the tutor nor Helen, the good soul, who cut all
+her son's verses out of the paper, knew that Nep. was no other than that
+flaming Eros, who sang so vehemently the character of the new actress.
+
+"Who is the lady," at last asked Mrs. Pendennis, "whom your rival is
+always singing in the County Chronicle. He writes something like you,
+dear Pen, but yours is much the best. Have you seen Miss Fotheringay?"
+
+Pen said yes, he had; that night he went to see the "Stranger," she
+acted Mrs. Haller. By the way she was going to have a benefit, and
+was to appear in Ophelia--suppose we were to go--Shakspeare you know,
+mother--we can get horses from the Clavering Arms. Little Laura sprang
+up with delight, she longed for a play.
+
+Pen introduced "Shakspeare you know," because the deceased Pendennis,
+as became a man of his character, professed an uncommon respect for the
+bard of Avon, in whose works he safely said there was more poetry than
+in all "Johnson's Poets" put together. And though Mr. Pendennis did not
+much read the works in question, yet he enjoined Pen to peruse them, and
+often said what pleasure he should have, when the boy was of a proper
+age, in taking him and his mother to see some good plays of the immortal
+poet.
+
+The ready tears welled up in the kind mother's eyes as she remembered
+these speeches of the man who was gone. She kissed her son fondly, and
+said she would go. Laura jumped for joy. Was Pen happy?--was he ashamed?
+As he held his mother to him, he longed to tell her all, but he kept his
+counsel. He would see how his mother liked her; the play should be the
+thing, and he would try his mother like Hamlet's.
+
+Helen, in her good humor, asked Mr. Smirke to be of the party. That
+ecclesiastic had been bred up by a fond parent at Clapham, who had an
+objection to dramatic entertainments, and he had never yet seen a play.
+But, Shakspeare!--but to go with Mrs. Pendennis in her carriage, and
+sit a whole night by her side!--he could not resist the idea of so much
+pleasure, and made a feeble speech, in which he spoke of temptation and
+gratitude, and finally accepted Mrs. Pendennis's most kind offer. As he
+spoke he gave her a look, which made her exceedingly uncomfortable. She
+had seen that look more than once, of late, pursuing her. He became more
+positively odious every day in the widow's eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We are not going to say a great deal about Pen's courtship of
+Miss Fotheringay, for the reader has already had a specimen of her
+conversation, much of which need surely not be reported. Pen sate with
+her hour after hour, and poured forth all his honest boyish soul to her.
+Every thing 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 sympathizing. The fact is, while he was making
+one of his tirades--and delighted, perhaps, and wondering at his own
+eloquence, the lad would go on for twenty minutes at a time--the lovely
+Emily, who could not comprehend a tenth part of his talk, had leisure to
+think about her own affairs, and would arrange, in her own mind how they
+should dress the cold mutton, or how she would turn the black satin,
+or make herself out of her scarf a bonnet like Miss Thackthwaite's new
+one, and so forth. Pen spouted Byron and Moore; passion and poetry: her
+business was to throw up her eyes, or fixing them for a moment on his
+face, to cry, "Oh, 'tis beautiful! Ah, how exquisite! Repeat those
+lines again." And off the boy went, and she returned to her own simple
+thoughts about the turned gown, or the hashed mutton.
+
+In fact Pen's passion was not long a secret from the lovely Emily or
+her father. Upon his second visit, his admiration was quite evident
+to both of them, and on his departure the old gentleman said to his
+daughter, as he winked at her over his glass of grog, "Faith, Milly
+darling, I think ye've hooked that chap."
+
+"Pooh, 'tis only a boy, papa dear," Milly remarked. "Sure he's but
+a child." Pen would have been very much pleased if he had heard that
+phrase--he was galloping home wild with pleasure, and shouting out her
+name as he rode.
+
+"Ye've hooked 'um any how," said the captain, "and let me tell ye he's
+not a bad fish. I asked Tom at the George, and Flint, the grocer, where
+his mother dales--fine fortune--drives in her chariot--splendid park and
+grounds--Fairoaks Park--only son--property all his own at twenty-one--ye
+might go further and not fare so well, Miss Fotheringay."
+
+"Them boys are mostly talk," said Milly, seriously. "Ye know at Dublin
+how ye went on about young Poldoody, and I've a whole desk full of
+verses he wrote me when he was in Trinity College; but he went abroad,
+and his mother married him to an Englishwoman."
+
+"Lord Poldoody was a young nobleman; and in them it's natural: and ye
+weren't in the position in which ye are now, Milly dear. But ye mustn't
+encourage this young chap too much, for, bedad, Jack Costigan wont have
+any thrifling with his daughter."
+
+"No more will his daughter, papa, you may be sure of _that_," Milly
+said. "A little sip more of the punch--sure, 'tis beautiful. Ye needn't
+be afraid about the young chap--I think I'm old enough to take care of
+myself, Captain Costigan."
+
+So Pen used to come day after day, rushing in and galloping away, and
+growing more wild about the girl with every visit. Sometimes the captain
+was present at their meetings; but having a perfect confidence in his
+daughter, he was more often inclined to leave the young couple to
+themselves, and cocked his hat over his eye, and strutted off on some
+errand when Pen entered. How delightful these 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
+to 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 toward sunset--or the sound of
+the organ and the choristers would come over the quiet air, and gently
+hush Pen's talking.
+
+By the way, it must be said, that Miss Fotheringay, in a plain shawl
+and a close bonnet and vail, went to church every Sunday of her life,
+accompanied by her indefatigable father, who gave the responses in
+a very rich and fine brogue, joined in the psalms and chanting, and
+behaved in the most exemplary manner.
+
+Little Bows, the house-friend of the family, was exceedingly wroth at
+the notion of Miss Fotheringay's marriage with a stripling seven or
+eight years her junior. Bows, who was a cripple, and owned that he was
+a little more deformed even than Bingley the manager, so that he could
+not appear on the stage, was a singular wild man of no small talents and
+humor. 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 labors of the day over, she
+went to bed and snored as resolutely and as regularly as a porter.
+
+Bows then, was indignant at the notion that his pupil should throw her
+chances away in life by bestowing her hand upon a little country squire.
+As soon as a London manager saw her, he prophesied that she would get
+a London engagement, and a great success. The misfortune was that the
+London managers had seen her. She had played in London three years
+before, and failed from utter stupidity. Since then it was that Bows
+had taken her in hand and taught her part after part. How he worked
+and screamed, and twisted, and repeated lines over and over again, and
+with what indomitable patience and dullness she followed him! She knew
+that he made her: and let herself be made. She was not grateful, or
+ungrateful, or unkind, or ill-humored. She was only stupid; and Pen
+was madly in love with her.
+
+The post-horses from the Clavering Arms arrived in due time, and carried
+the party to the theater at Chatteries, 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 country-folks who
+go to a play in state. Samuel, coachman, groom, and gardener to Mr.
+Pendennis took his place in the pit, where Mr. Foker's man was also
+visible. It was dotted with non-commissioned officers of the Dragoons,
+whose band, by kind permission of Colonel Swallowtail, were as usual
+in the orchestra; and that corpulent and distinguished warrior himself,
+with his Waterloo medal and a number of his young men, made a handsome
+show in the boxes.
+
+"Who is that odd-looking person bowing to you, Arthur?" Mrs. Pendennis
+asked of her son.
+
+Pen blushed a great deal. "His name is Captain Costigan, ma'am," he
+said--a "Peninsular officer." In fact, it was the captain in a new
+shoot of clothes, as he called them, and with a large pair of white
+kid gloves, one of which he waved to Pendennis, while he laid the other
+sprawling over his heart and coat buttons. Pen did not say any more.
+And how was Mrs. Pendennis to know that Mr. Costigan was the father
+of Miss Fotheringay?
+
+Mr. Hornbull, from London, was the Hamlet of the night, Mr. Bingley
+modestly contenting himself with the part of Horatio, and reserving his
+chief strength for William in "Black-Eyed Susan," which was the second
+piece.
+
+We have nothing to do with the play: except to say, that Ophelia looked
+lovely, and performed with admirable wild pathos: laughing, weeping,
+gazing wildly, waving her beautiful white arms, and flinging about her
+snatches of flowers and songs with the most charming madness. What an
+opportunity her splendid black hair had of tossing over her shoulders!
+She made the most charming corpse ever seen; and while Hamlet and
+Laertes were battling in her grave, she was looking out from the back
+scenes with some curiosity toward Pen's box, and the family party
+assembled in it.
+
+There was but one voice in her praise there. Mrs. Pendennis was in
+ecstasies with her beauty. Little Laura was bewildered by the piece,
+and the Ghost, and the play within the play (during which, as Hamlet
+lay at Ophelia's knee, Pen felt that he would have liked to strangle Mr.
+Hornbull), but cried out great praises of that beautiful young creature.
+Pen was charmed with the effect which she produced on his mother--and
+the clergyman, for his part, was exceedingly enthusiastic.
+
+When the curtain fell upon that group of slaughtered personages,
+who are dispatched 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
+neighbors. They were led cheering into action by the portly Swallowtail,
+who waved his cap--the non-commissioned officers in the pit, of course,
+gallantly following their chiefs. There was a roar of bravos rang
+through the house: Pen bellowing with the loudest, "Fotheringay,
+Fotheringay!" and Messrs. Spavin and Foker giving the view halloo
+from their box. Even Mrs. Pendennis began to wave about her
+pocket-handkerchief, and little Laura danced, laughed, clapped, and
+looked up at Pen with wonder.
+
+Hornbull led the _beneficiaire_ forward amidst bursts of enthusiasm--and
+she looked so handsome and radiant, with her hair still over her
+shoulders, that Pen hardly could contain himself for rapture; and he
+leaned over his mother's chair and shouted, and hurrayed and waved his
+hat. It was all he could do to keep his secret from Helen, and not say,
+"Look! That's the woman! Isn't she peerless? I tell you I love her." But
+he disguised these feelings under an enormous bellowing and hurraying.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+As for Miss Fotheringay and her behavior, 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 favorite 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--&c. &c.--in a word--we refer the reader to page 46.
+Twinkling in her breast poor old Pen saw a locket which he had bought of
+Mr. Nathan in High-street, with the last shilling he was worth and a
+sovereign borrowed from Smirke.
+
+"Black-Eyed Susan" followed, at which sweet story our gentle-hearted
+friends were exceedingly charmed and affected: and in which Susan, with
+a russet gown and a pink ribbon in her cap, looked to the full as lovely
+as Ophelia. Bingley was great in William. Goll, as the admiral, looked
+like the figure-head of a seventy-four; and Garbetts, as Captain
+Boldweather, a miscreant who forms a plan for carrying off Black-eyed
+Susan, and, waving an immense cocked hat, says, "Come what may, he
+_will_ be the ruin of her"--all these performed their parts with their
+accustomed talent; and it was with a sincere regret that all our friends
+saw the curtain drop down and end that pretty and tender story.
+
+If Pen had been alone with his mother in the carriage as they went home,
+he would have told her all that night; but he sate on the box in the
+moonshine smoking a cigar by the side of Smirke, who warmed himself with
+a comforter. Mr. Foker's tandem and lamps whirled by the sober old
+Clavering posters, as they were a couple of miles on their road home,
+and Mr. Spavin saluted Mrs. Pendennis's carriage with some considerable
+variations of Rule Britannia on the key-bugle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It happened two days after the above gayeties that Mr. Dean of
+Chatteries entertained a few select clerical friends at dinner at his
+Deanery House. 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 stepped out of the French windows of the
+dining-room into the lawn, which skirts that apartment, and left the
+other white neckcloths to gird at my lord bishop. Then the doctor went
+up and offered Mrs. Dean his arm, and they sauntered over the ancient
+velvet lawn, which had been mowed and rolled for immemorial deans, in
+that easy, quiet, comfortable manner, in which people of middle age and
+good temper walk after a good dinner, in a calm golden summer evening,
+when the sun has but just sunk behind the enormous cathedral-towers, and
+the sickle-shaped moon is growing every instant brighter in the heavens.
+
+Now at the end of the dean's garden, there is, as we have stated, Mrs.
+Creed's house, and the windows of the first-floor room were open to
+admit the pleasant summer air. A young lady of six-and-twenty, whose
+eyes were perfectly wide open, and a luckless boy of eighteen, blind
+with love and infatuation, were in that chamber together; in which
+persons, as we have before seen them in the same place, the reader
+will have no difficulty in recognizing Mr. Arthur Pendennis and Miss
+Costigan.
+
+The poor boy had taken the plunge. Trembling with passionate emotion,
+his heart beating and throbbing fiercely, tears rushing forth in spite
+of him, his voice almost choking with feeling, poor Pen had said those
+words which he could withhold no more, and flung himself and his whole
+store of love, and admiration, and ardor, at the feet of this mature
+beauty. Is he the first who has done so? Have none before or after
+him staked all their treasure of life, as a savage does his land and
+possessions against a draught of the fair-skins' fire-water, or a couple
+of bauble eyes?
+
+"Does your mother know of this, _Arthur_?" said Miss Fotheringay,
+slowly. He seized her hand madly, and kissed it a thousand times.
+She did not withdraw it. "_Does_ the old lady know it?" Miss Costigan
+thought to herself "well, perhaps she may," and then she remembered what
+a handsome diamond cross Mrs. Pendennis had on the night of the play,
+and thought, "sure 'twill go in the family."
+
+"Calm yourself, dear Arthur," she said, in her low rich voice, and
+smiled sweetly and gravely upon him. Then, with her disengaged hand,
+she put the hair lightly off his throbbing forehead. He was in such a
+rapture and whirl of happiness that he could hardly speak. At last he
+gasped out, "My mother has seen you, and admires you beyond measure.
+She will learn to love you soon: who can do otherwise? She will love
+you because I do."
+
+"'Deed then, I think you do," said Miss Costigan, perhaps with a sort
+of pity for Pen.
+
+Think he did! Of course here Mr. Pen went off into a rhapsody through
+which, as we have perfect command over our own feelings, we have no
+reason to follow the lad. Of course, love, truth, and eternity were
+produced; and words were tried but found impossible to plumb the
+tremendous depth of his affection. This speech, we say, is no business
+of ours. It was most likely not very wise, but what right have we to
+overhear? Let the poor boy fling out his simple heart at the woman's
+feet, and deal gently with him. It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but
+to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of
+us can't; and are proud of our impotence too.
+
+At the end of his speech Pen again kissed the imperial hand with
+rapture--and I believe it was at this very moment, and while Mrs. Dean
+and Doctor Portman were engaged in conversation, that young Master
+Ridley Roset, her son, pulled his mother by the back of her capacious
+dress, and said--
+
+"I say, ma! look up there"--and he waggled his innocent head.
+
+That was, indeed, a view from the dean's garden such as seldom is seen
+by deans--or is written in chapters. There was poor Pen performing a
+salute upon the rosy fingers of his charmer, who received the embrace
+with perfect calmness and good humor. 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 favorite and
+dear pupil Pen, he stood mute with rage and wonder.
+
+Mrs. Haller spied the party below at the same moment, and gave a start
+and a laugh. "Sure there's somebody in the dean's garden," she cried
+out; and withdrew with perfect calmness, while Pen darted away with his
+face glowing like coals. The garden party had re-entered the house when
+he ventured to look out again. The sickle moon was blazing bright in
+the heavens then, the stars were glittering, the bell of the cathedral
+tolling nine, the dean's guests (all save one, who had called for his
+horse Dumpling, and ridden off early) were partaking of tea and buttered
+cakes in Mrs. Dean's drawing-room--when Pen took leave of Miss Costigan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pen arrived at home in due time afterward; and was going to slip off to
+bed, for the poor lad was greatly worn and agitated, and his high-strung
+nerves had been at almost a maddening pitch--when a summons came to him
+by John, the old footman, whose countenance bore a very ominous look,
+that his mother must see him below.
+
+On this he tied on his neckcloth again, and went down stairs to the
+drawing-room. There sate not only his mother, but her friend, the
+Reverend Doctor Portman. Helen's face looked very pale by the light of
+the lamp--the doctor's was flushed, on the contrary, and quivering with
+anger and emotion.
+
+Pen saw at once that there was a crisis, and that there had been a
+discovery. "Now for it," he thought.
+
+"Where have you been, Arthur?" Helen said, in a trembling voice.
+
+"How can you look that--that dear lady, and a Christian clergyman in the
+face, sir?" bounced out the doctor, in spite of Helen's pale, appealing
+looks. "Where has he been? Where his mother's son should have been
+ashamed to go. For your mother's an angel, sir, an angel. How dare you
+bring pollution into her house, and make that spotless creature wretched
+with the thoughts of your crime?"
+
+"Sir!" said Pen.
+
+"Don't deny it, sir," roared the doctor. "Don't add lies, sir, to your
+other infamy. I saw you myself, sir. I saw you from the dean's garden.
+I saw you kissing the hand of that infernal painted--"
+
+"Stop," Pen said, clapping his fist on the table, till the lamp
+flickered up and shook, "I am a very young man, but you will please to
+remember that I am a gentleman--I will hear no abuse of that lady."
+
+"Lady, sir," cried the doctor, "_that_ a lady--you--you--you stand in
+your mother's presence and call that--that woman a lady!--"
+
+"In any body'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
+honor."
+
+"No, no, Pen, dearest Pen," cried out Helen in an excess of joy. "I
+told, I told you, doctor, he was not--not what you thought;" and the
+tender creature coming trembling forward flung herself on Pen's
+shoulder.
+
+Pen felt himself a man, and a match for all the doctors in doctordom.
+He was glad this explanation had come. "You saw how beautiful she was,"
+he said to his mother, with a soothing, protecting air, like Hamlet
+with Gertrude in the play. "I tell you, dear mother, she is as good.
+When you know her you will say so. She is of all, except you, the
+simplest, the kindest, the most affectionate of women. Why should she
+not be on the stage?--She maintains her father by her labor."
+
+"Drunken old reprobate," growled the doctor, but Pen did not hear or
+heed.
+
+"If you could see, as I have, how orderly her life is, how pure and
+pious her whole conduct, you would--as I do--yes, as I do"--(with a
+savage look at the doctor)--"spurn the slanderer who dared to do her
+wrong. Her father was an officer, and distinguished himself in Spain.
+He was a friend of His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, and is
+intimately known to the Duke of Wellington, and some of the first
+officers of our army. He has met my uncle Arthur at Lord Hill's, he
+thinks. His own family is one of the most ancient and respectable in
+Ireland, and indeed is as good as our own. The--the Costigans, were
+kings of Ireland."
+
+"Why, God bless my soul," shrieked out the doctor, hardly knowing
+whether to burst with rage or laughter, "you don't mean to say you
+want to _marry_ her?"
+
+Pen put on his most princely air. "What else, Dr. Portman," he said,
+"do you suppose would be my desire?"
+
+Utterly foiled in his attack, and knocked down by this sudden lunge of
+Pen's, the doctor could only gasp out, "Mrs. Pendennis, ma'am, send for
+the major."
+
+"Send for the major? with all my heart," said Arthur, Prince of
+Pendennis and Grand Duke of Fairoaks, with a most superb wave of the
+hand. And the colloquy terminated by the writing of those two letters
+which were laid on Major Pendennis's breakfast-table, in London, at
+the commencement of Prince Arthur's most veracious history.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+IN WHICH THE MAJOR MAKES HIS APPEARANCE.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 neighbor 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 ardor
+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 traveled
+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 portress and gardener's wife
+reverentially greeted him; and, still more respectfully, Mr. Morgan,
+his man.
+
+Helen was on the lookout 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 his wigs: curling them in private places:
+introducing them mysteriously to his master's room;--nor without his
+head of hair would the major care to show himself to any member of
+his family or any acquaintance. He went to his apartment then, and
+supplied these deficiencies; he groaned and moaned, and wheezed, and
+cursed Morgan through his toilet, as an old buck will, who has been
+up all night with a rheumatism, and has a long duty to perform. And
+finally being belted, curled, and set straight, he descended upon the
+drawing-room, with a grave, majestic air, such as befitted one who was
+at once a man of business and a man of fashion.
+
+Pen was not there, however, only Helen, and little Laura sewing at her
+knees; and to whom he never presented more than a fore-finger, 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
+toward her as she came running.
+
+She ran up and put her hand into his. "Come in, Pen," she said, "there's
+somebody come; uncle Arthur's come."
+
+"He is, is he?" said Pen, and she felt him grasp her little hand. He
+looked round at Smirke with uncommon fierceness, as much as to say, I
+am ready for him or any man.--Mr. Smirke cast up his eyes as usual and
+heaved a gentle sigh.
+
+"Lead on, Laura," Pen said, with a half fierce half comic air--"Lead on,
+and say I wait upon my uncle." But he was laughing in order to hide a
+great anxiety: and was screwing his courage inwardly to face the ordeal
+which he knew was now before him.
+
+Pen had taken Smirke into his confidence in the last two days, and
+after the outbreak attendant on the discovery of Dr. 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, &c., 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, half convinced Mr. Smirke
+that the arrangement proposed by Mr. Pen was a very feasible and prudent
+one and that it would be a great comfort to have Emily settled at
+Fairoaks, Captain Costigan in the yellow room, established for life
+there, and Pen married at eighteen.
+
+And it is a fact that in these two days, the boy had almost talked over
+his mother too; had parried all her objections one after another with
+that indignant good sense which is often the perfection of absurdity and
+had brought her almost to acquiesce in the belief that if the marriage
+was doomed in heaven, why doomed it was--that if the young woman was a
+good person, it was all that she, for her part, had to ask; and rather
+to dread the arrival of the guardian uncle who, she foresaw, would
+regard Mr. Pen's marriage in a manner very different to that simple,
+romantic, honest, and utterly absurd way, in which the widow was already
+disposed to look at questions of this sort.
+
+For as in the old allegory of the gold and silver shield, about which
+the two knights quarreled, each is right according to the point from
+which he looks: so about marriage; the question whether it is foolish
+or good, wise or otherwise, depends upon the point of view from which
+you regard it. If it means a snug house in Belgravia, and pretty little
+dinner parties, and a pretty little brougham to drive in the Park, and
+a decent provision, not only for the young people, but for the little
+Belgravians to come; and if these are the necessaries of life (and they
+are with many honest people), to talk of any other arrangement is an
+absurdity: of love in lodgings--a babyish folly of affection: that can't
+pay coach-hire or afford a decent milliner--as mere wicked balderdash
+and childish romance. If, on the other hand your opinion is that people,
+not with an assured subsistence, but with a fair chance to obtain it,
+and with the stimulus of hope, health, and strong affection, may take
+the chance of fortune for better or worse, and share its good or its
+evil together, the polite theory then becomes an absurdity in its turn:
+worse than an absurdity, a blasphemy almost, and doubt of Providence;
+and a man who waits to make his chosen woman happy, until he can drive
+her to church in a neat little carriage with a pair of horses, is no
+better than a coward or a trifler, who is neither worthy of love nor
+of fortune.
+
+I don't say that the town folks are not right, but Helen Pendennis was
+a country bred woman, and the book of life, as she interpreted it, told
+her a different story to that page which is read in cities. Like most
+soft and sentimental women, match-making, in general, formed a great
+part of her thoughts, and I dare say 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 bed-room, 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 honored
+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
+honor, Mrs. Pendennis was willing to bow before her and welcome her,
+and yield her up the first place. But an actress--a mature woman, who
+had long ceased blushing except with rouge, as she stood under the eager
+glances of thousands of eyes--an illiterate and ill-bred person, very
+likely, who must have lived with light associates, and have heard
+doubtful conversation--Oh! it was hard that such a one should be chosen,
+and that the matron should be deposed to give place to such a Sultana.
+
+All these doubts the widow laid before Pen during the two days which
+had of necessity to elapse ere the uncle came down; but he met them
+with that happy frankness and ease which a young gentleman exhibits
+at his time of life, and routed his mother's objections with infinite
+satisfaction to himself. Miss Costigan was a paragon of virtue and
+delicacy; she was as sensitive as the most timid maiden; she was as pure
+as the unsullied snow; she had the finest manners, the most graceful wit
+and genius, the most charming refinement and justness of appreciation in
+all matters of taste; she had the most admirable temper and devotion to
+her father, a good old gentleman of high family and fallen fortunes, who
+had lived, however, with the best society in Europe: he was in no hurry,
+and could afford to wait any time--till he was one-and-twenty. But he
+felt (and here his face assumed an awful and harrowing solemnity) that
+he was engaged in the one only passion of his life, and that DEATH alone
+could close it.
+
+Helen told him, with a sad smile and shake of the head, that people
+survived these passions, and as for long engagements contracted
+between very young men and old women--she knew an instance in her own
+family--Laura's poor father was an instance--how fatal they were.
+
+Mr. Pen, however, was resolved that death must be his doom in case of
+disappointment, and rather than this--rather than balk him, in
+fact--this lady would have submitted to any sacrifice or personal pain,
+and would have gone down on her knees and have kissed the feet of a
+Hottentot daughter-in-law.
+
+Arthur knew his power over the widow, and the young tyrant was touched
+while he exercised it. In those two days he brought her almost into
+submission, and patronized her very kindly; and he passed one evening
+with the lovely pie-maker at Chatteries, in which he bragged of his
+influence over his mother; and he spent the other night in composing a
+most flaming and conceited copy of verses to his divinity, in which he
+vowed, like Montrose, that he would make her famous with his sword and
+glorious by his pen, and that he would love her as no mortal woman had
+been adored since the creation of womankind.
+
+It was on that night, long after midnight, that wakeful Helen, passing
+stealthily by her son's door, saw a light streaming through the chink of
+the door into the dark passage, and heard Pen tossing and tumbling, and
+mumbling verses in his bed. She waited outside for a while, anxiously
+listening to him. In infantile fevers and early boyish illnesses, many a
+night before, the kind soul had so kept watch. She turned the lock very
+softly now, and went in so gently, that Pen for a moment did not see
+her. His face was turned from her. His papers on his desk were scattered
+about, and more were lying on the bed round him. He was biting a pencil
+and thinking of rhymes and all sorts of follies and passions. He was
+Hamlet jumping into Ophelia's grave; he was the Stranger taking Mrs.
+Haller to his arms, beautiful Mrs. Haller with the raven ringlets
+falling over her shoulders. Despair and Byron, Thomas Moore and all the
+Loves of the Angels, Waller and Herrick, Beranger and all the love-songs
+he had ever read, were working and seething in this young gentleman's
+mind, and he was at the very height and paroxysm of the imaginative
+frenzy, when his mother found him.
+
+"Arthur," said the mother's soft silver voice: and he started up and
+turned round. He clutched some of the papers and pushed them under the
+pillow.
+
+"Why don't you go to sleep, my dear?" she said, with a sweet tender
+smile, and sate down on the bed and took one of his hot hands.
+
+Pen looked at her wildly for an instant--"I couldn't sleep," he
+said--"I--I was--I was writing."--And hereupon he flung his arms round
+her neck and said, "O mother! I love her, I love her!"--How could such a
+kind soul as that help soothing and pitying him? The gentle creature did
+her best: and thought with a strange wonderment and tenderness, that it
+was only yesterday that he was a child in that bed: and how she used to
+come and say her prayers over it before he woke upon holiday mornings.
+
+They were very grand verses, no doubt, although Miss Fotheringay did
+not understand them; but old Cos, with a wink and a knowing finger
+on his nose, said, "Put them up with th' other letthers, Milly
+darling. Poldoody's pomes was nothing to this." So Milly locked up
+the manuscripts.
+
+When, then, the major being dressed and presentable, presented himself
+to Mrs. Pendennis, he found in the course of ten minutes' colloquy that
+the poor widow was not merely distressed at the idea of the marriage
+contemplated by Pen, but actually more distressed at thinking that the
+boy himself was unhappy about it, and that his uncle and he should have
+any violent altercation on the subject. She besought Major Pendennis
+to be very gentle with Arthur: "He has a very high spirit, and will
+not brook unkind words," she hinted. "Dr. Portman spoke to him very
+roughly--and I must own unjustly, the other night--for my dearest boy's
+honor is as high as any mother can desire--but Pen's answer quite
+frightened me, it was so indignant. Recollect he is a man now; and be
+very--very cautious," said the widow, laying a fair long hand on the
+major's sleeve.
+
+He took it up, kissed it gallantly, and looked in her alarmed face with
+wonder, and a scorn which he was too polite to show. "_Bon dieu!_"
+thought the old negotiator, "the boy has actually talked the woman
+round, and she'd get him a wife as she would a toy, if master cried for
+it. Why are there no such things as _lettres-de-cachet_--and a Bastile
+for young fellows of family?" The major lived in such good company that
+he might be excused for feeling like an earl.--He kissed the widow's
+timid hand, pressed it in both his, and laid it down on the table with
+one of his own over it, as he smiled and looked her in the face.
+
+"Confess," said he, "now that you are thinking how you possibly can make
+it up to your conscience to let the boy have his own way."
+
+She blushed, and was moved, in the usual manner of females. "I am
+thinking that he is very unhappy; and I am too--"
+
+"To contradict him or to let him have his own wish?" asked the other;
+and added, with great comfort to his inward self, "I'm d--d if he
+shall."
+
+"To think that he should have formed so foolish and cruel and fatal an
+attachment," the widow said, "which can but end in pain whatever be the
+issue."
+
+"The issue shan't be marriage, my dear sister," the major said,
+resolutely. "We're not going to have a Pendennis, the head of the house,
+marry a strolling mountebank from a booth. No, no, we won't marry into
+Greenwich Fair, ma'am."
+
+"If the match is broken suddenly off," the widow interposed, "I don't
+know what may be the consequence. I know Arthur's ardent temper,
+the intensity of his affections, the agony of his pleasures and
+disappointments, and I tremble at this one, if it must be. Indeed,
+indeed, it must not come on him too suddenly."
+
+"My dear madam," the major said, with an air of the deepest
+commiseration, "I've no doubt Arthur will have to suffer confoundedly
+before he gets over the little disappointment. But is he, think you,
+the only person who has been so rendered miserable?"
+
+"No, indeed," said Helen, holding down her eyes. She was thinking of her
+own case, and was at that moment seventeen again, and most miserable.
+
+"I, myself," whispered her brother-in-law, "have undergone a disappointment
+in early life. A young woman with fifteen thousand pounds, niece to an
+earl--most accomplished creature--a third of her money would have run up
+my promotion in no time, and I should have been a lieutenant-colonel
+at thirty: but it might not be. I was but a penniless lieutenant: her
+parents interfered, and I embarked for India--where I had the honor of
+being secretary to Lord Buckley, when commander-in-chief--without her.
+What happened? We returned our letters, sent back our locks of hair
+(the major here passed his fingers through his wig), we suffered, but we
+recovered. She is now a baronet's wife with thirteen grown-up children:
+altered, it is true, in person; but her daughters remind me of what she
+was, and the third is to be presented early next week."
+
+Helen did not answer. She was still thinking of old times. I suppose if
+one lives to be a hundred, there are certain passages of one's early
+life whereof the recollection will always carry us back to youth again,
+and that Helen was thinking of one of these.
+
+"Look at my own brother, my dear creature," the major continued
+gallantly: "he himself, you know, had a little disappointment when
+he started in the--the medical profession--an eligible opportunity
+presented itself. Miss Balls, I remember the name, was daughter of
+an apoth--a practitioner in very large practice; my brother had very
+nearly succeeded in his suit.--But difficulties arose: disappointments
+supervened, and--and I am sure he had no reason to regret the
+disappointment, which gave him this hand," said the major, and he once
+more politely pressed Helen's fingers.
+
+"Those marriages between people of such different rank and age," said
+Helen, "are sad things. I have known them produce a great deal of
+unhappiness.--Laura's father, my cousin, who--who was brought up with
+me"--she added in a low voice, "was an instance of that."
+
+"Most injudicious," cut in the major. "I don't know any thing more
+painful than for a man to marry his superior in age or his inferior in
+station. Fancy marrying a woman of a 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 entirely, from the vulgarity of
+their wives' connections. What did Lady Snapperton do last year at her
+_dejeune dansant_ after the Bohemian Ball? She told Lord Brouncker
+that he might bring his daughters or send them with a proper chaperon,
+but that she would not receive Lady Brouncker: who was a druggist's
+daughter, or some such thing, and as Tom Wagg remarked of her, never
+wanted medicine certainly, for she never had an _h_ in her life. Good
+Ged, what would have been the trifling pang of a separation in the
+first instance to the enduring infliction of a constant misalliance
+and intercourse with low people?"
+
+"What, indeed!" said Helen, dimly disposed toward laughter, but yet
+checking the inclination, because she remembered in what prodigious
+respect her deceased husband held Major Pendennis and his stories of the
+great world.
+
+"Then this fatal woman is ten years older than that silly young
+scapegrace of an Arthur. What happens in such cases, my dear creature?
+I don't mind telling _you_, now we are alone: that in the highest state
+of society, misery, undeviating misery, is the result. Look at Lord
+Clodworthy come into a room with his wife--why, good Ged, she looks like
+Clodworthy's mother. What's the case between Lord and Lady Willowbank,
+whose love match was notorious? He has already cut her down twice when
+she has hanged herself out of jealousy for Mademoiselle de Sainte
+Cunegonde, the dancer; and mark my words, good Ged, one day he'll _not_
+cut the old woman down. No, my dear madam, you are not in the world, but
+I am: you are a little romantic and sentimental (you know you are--women
+with those large beautiful eyes always are); you must leave this matter
+to my experience. Marry this woman! Marry at eighteen an actress of
+thirty--bah, bah!--I would as soon he sent into the kitchen and married
+the cook."
+
+"I know the evils of premature engagements," sighed out Helen: and as
+she made this allusion no less than thrice in the course of the above
+conversation, and seems to be so oppressed with the notion of long
+engagements and unequal marriages, and as the circumstance we have to
+relate will explain what perhaps some persons are anxious to know,
+namely, who little Laura is, who has appeared more than once before
+us, it will be as well to clear up these points in another chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+IN WHICH PEN IS KEPT WAITING AT THE DOOR, WHILE THE READER IS INFORMED
+WHO LITTLE LAURA WAS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Once upon a time, then, there was a young gentleman of Cambridge
+University who came to pass the long vacation at the village where
+young Helen Thistlewood was living with her mother, the widow of the
+lieutenant slain at Copenhagen.--This gentleman--whose name was the
+Reverend Francis Bell--was nephew to Mrs. Thistlewood, and by consequence,
+own cousin to Miss Helen, so that it was very right that he should take
+lodgings in his aunt's house, who lived in a very small way; and there
+he passed the long vacation, reading with three or four pupils who
+accompanied him to the village. Mr. Bell was fellow of a college, and
+famous in the University for his learning and skill as a tutor.
+
+His two kinswomen understood pretty early that the reverend gentleman
+was engaged to be married, and was only waiting for a college living
+to enable him to fulfill 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 while under Mr. Coacher's roof,
+indeed, and when only a boy of seventeen or eighteen years of age, that
+the impetuous young Bell had flung himself at the feet of Miss Martha
+Coacher, whom he was helping to pick peas in the garden. On his knees,
+before those peas and her, he pledged himself to an endless affection.
+
+Miss Coacher was by many years the young fellow's senior; and her
+own heart had been lacerated by many previous disappointments in the
+matrimonial line. No less than three pupils of her father had trifled
+with those young affections. The apothecary of the village had
+despicably jilted her. The dragoon officer, with whom she had danced so
+many times during that happy season which she passed at Bath with her
+gouty grandmamma, one day gayly 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-humor; at the end of
+his speech she said, "Law, Bell, I'm sure you are too young to think of
+such things;" but intimated that she too would revolve them in her own
+virgin bosom. She could not refer Mr. Bell to her mamma, for Mr. Coacher
+was a widower, and being immersed in his books, was of course unable
+to take the direction of so frail and wondrous an article as a lady's
+heart, which Miss Martha had to manage for herself.
+
+A lock of her hair, tied up in a piece of blue ribbon, conveyed to the
+happy Bell the result of the Vestal's conference with herself. Thrice
+before had she snipt off one of her auburn ringlets, and given them
+away. The possessors were faithless, but the hair had grown again; and
+Martha had indeed occasion to say that men were deceivers, when she
+handed over this token of love to the simple boy.
+
+Number 6, however, was an exception to former passions--Francis Bell was
+the most faithful of lovers. When his time arrived to go to college, and
+it became necessary to acquaint Mr. Coacher of the arrangements that had
+been made, the latter cried, "God bless my soul, I hadn't the least idea
+what was going on!" as was indeed very likely, for he had been taken in
+three times before in precisely a similar manner; and Francis went to
+the University resolved to conquer honors, so as to be able to lay them
+at the feet of his beloved Martha.
+
+This prize in view made him labor prodigiously. News came, term after
+term, of the honors he won. He sent the prize-books for his college
+essays to old Coacher, and his silver declamation cup to Miss Martha.
+In due season he was high among the Wranglers, and a fellow of his
+college; and during all the time of these transactions a constant tender
+correspondence was kept up with Miss Coacher, to whose influence, and
+perhaps with justice, he attributed the successes which he had won.
+
+By the time, however, when the Rev. Francis Bell, M.A., and fellow and
+tutor of his college, was twenty-six years of age, it happened that Miss
+Coacher was thirty-four, nor had her charms, her manners, or her temper
+improved since that sunny day in the spring-time of life when he found
+her picking peas in the garden. Having achieved his honors, he relaxed
+in the ardor of his studies, and his judgment and taste 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-favored,
+ill-mannered, middle-aged woman.
+
+It was in consequence of one of many altercations (in which Martha's
+eloquence shone, and in which therefore she was frequently pleased
+to indulge) that Francis refused to take his pupils to Bearleader's
+Green, where Mr. Coacher's living was, and where Bell was in the
+habit of spending the summer; and he bethought him that he would pass
+the vacation at his aunt's village, which he had not seen for many
+years--not since little Helen was a girl and used to sit on his knee.
+Down then he came and lived with them. Helen was grown a beautiful
+young woman now. The cousins were nearly four months together, from June
+to October. They walked in the summer evenings; they met in the early
+morn. They read out of the same book when the old lady dozed at night
+over the candles. What little Helen knew, Frank taught her. She sang to
+him: she gave her artless heart to him. She was aware of all his story.
+Had he made any secret?--had he not shown the picture of the woman to
+whom he was engaged, and with a blush--her letters, hard, eager, and
+cruel?--The days went on and on, happier and closer, with more kindness,
+more confidence, and more pity. At last one morning in October came when
+Francis went back to college, and the poor girl felt that her tender
+heart was gone with him.
+
+Frank too wakened up from the delightful midsummer-dream to the
+horrible reality of his own pain. He gnashed and tore at the chain
+which bound him. He was frantic to break it and be free. Should he
+confess?--give his savings to the woman to whom he was bound, and beg
+his release?--there was time yet--he temporized. No living might fall in
+for years to come. The cousins went on corresponding sadly and fondly:
+the betrothed woman, hard, jealous, and dissatisfied, complaining
+bitterly, and with reason, of her Francis's altered tone.
+
+At last things came to a crisis, and the new attachment was discovered.
+Francis owned it, cared not to disguise it, rebuked Martha with her
+violent temper and angry imperiousness, and, worst of all, with her
+inferiority and her age.
+
+Her reply was, that if he did not keep his promise she would carry his
+letters into every court in the kingdom--letters in which his love was
+pledged to her ten thousand times; and, after exposing him to the world
+as the perjurer and traitor he was, she would kill herself.
+
+Frank had one more interview with Helen, whose mother was dead then, and
+who was living companion with old Lady Pontypool--one more interview,
+where it was resolved that he was to do his duty; that is, to redeem his
+vow; that is, to pay a debt cozened from him by a sharper; that is, to
+make two honest people miserable. So the two judged their duty to be,
+and they parted.
+
+The living fell in only too soon; but yet Frank Bell was quite a gray
+and worn-out man when he was inducted into it, Helen wrote him a letter
+on his marriage, beginning "My dear cousin," and ending "always truly
+yours." She sent him back the other letters, and the lock of his
+hair--all but a small piece. She had it in her desk when she was talking
+to the major.
+
+Bell lived for three or four years in his living, at the end of which
+time, the Chaplainship of Coventry Island falling vacant, Frank applied
+for it privately, and having procured it, announced the appointment to
+his wife. She objected, as she did to every thing. He told her bitterly
+that he did not want _her_ to come: so she went. Bell went out in
+Governor Crawley's time, and was very intimate with that gentleman in
+his later years. And it was in Coventry Island, years after his own
+marriage, and five years after he had heard of the birth of Helen's
+boy, that his own daughter was born.
+
+She was not the daughter of the first Mrs. Bell, who died of island
+fever very soon after Helen Pendennis and her husband, to whom Helen had
+told every thing, 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
+child-birth, Bell gave up too: sending his little girl home to Helen
+Pendennis and her husband, with a parting prayer that they would
+befriend her.
+
+The little thing came to Fairoaks from Bristol, which is not very far
+off, dressed in black, and in company of a soldier's wife, her nurse,
+at parting from whom she wept bitterly. But she soon dried up her grief
+under Helen's motherly care.
+
+Round her neck she had a locket with hair, which Helen had given, ah,
+how many years ago! to poor Francis, dead and buried. This child was all
+that was left of him, and she cherished, as so tender a creature would,
+the legacy which he had bequeathed to her. The girl's name, as his dying
+letter stated, was Helen Laura. But John Pendennis, though he accepted
+the trust, was always rather jealous of the orphan; and gloomily
+ordered that she should be called by her own mother's name; and not
+by that first one which her father had given her. She was afraid of
+Mr. Pendennis, to the last moment of his life. And it was only when her
+husband was gone that Helen dared openly to indulge in the tenderness
+which she felt for the little girl.
+
+Thus it was that Laura Bell became Mrs. Pendennis's daughter. Neither
+her husband nor that gentleman's brother, the major, viewed her with
+very favorable eyes. She reminded the first of circumstances in his
+wife's life which he was forced to accept, but would have forgotten much
+more willingly: and as for the second, how could he regard her? She was
+neither related to his own family of Pendennis, nor to any nobleman
+in this empire, and she had but a couple of thousand pounds for her
+fortune.
+
+And now let Mr. Pen come in, who has been waiting all this while.
+
+Having strung up his nerves, and prepared himself, without at the door,
+for the meeting, he came to it, determined to face the awful uncle. He
+had settled in his mind that the encounter was to be a fierce one, and
+was resolved on bearing it through with all the courage and dignity of
+the famous family which he represented. And he flung open the door and
+entered with the most severe and warlike expression, armed _cap-a-pie_
+as it were, with lance couched and plumes displayed, and glancing at
+his adversary, as if to say, "Come on, I'm ready."
+
+The old man of the world, as he surveyed the boy's demeanor, 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-humored natural
+smile in the world, held out his hands to Pen, shook the lad's passive
+fingers gayly, and said, "Well Pen, my boy, tell us all about it."
+
+Helen was delighted with the generosity of the major's good humor.
+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 balked and ludicrous. He blushed and winced with
+mortified vanity and bewilderment. He felt immensely inclined to begin
+to cry--"I--I--I didn't know that you were come till just now," he said:
+"is--is--town very full, I suppose?"
+
+If Pen could hardly gulp his tears down, it was all the major could do
+to keep from laughter. He turned round and shot a comical glance at
+Mrs. Pendennis, who too felt that the scene was at once ridiculous and
+sentimental. And so, having nothing to say, she went up and kissed Mr.
+Pen: as he thought of her tenderness and soft obedience to his wishes,
+it is very possible too the boy was melted.
+
+"What a couple of fools they are," thought the old guardian. "If I
+hadn't come down, she would have driven over in state to pay a visit
+and give her blessing to the young lady's family."
+
+"Come, come," said he still grinning at the couple, "let us have as
+little sentiment as possible, and Pen, my good fellow, tell us the
+whole story."
+
+Pen got back at once to his tragic and heroical air. "The story is,
+sir," said he, "as I have written it to you before. I have made the
+acquaintance of a most beautiful and most virtuous lady; of a high
+family, although in reduced circumstances: I have found the woman
+in whom I know that the happiness of my life is centered; I feel
+that I never, never can think about any woman but her. I am aware of
+the difference of our ages and other difficulties in my way. But my
+affection was so great that I felt I could surmount all these;--that
+we both could: and she has consented to unite her lot with mine, and
+to accept my heart and my fortune."
+
+"How much is that, my boy?" said the major. "Has any body left you some
+money? I don't know that you are worth a shilling in the world."
+
+"You know what I have is his," cried out Mrs. Pendennis.
+
+"Good heavens, madam, hold your tongue!" was what the guardian was
+disposed to say; but he kept his temper, not without a struggle. "No
+doubt, no doubt," he said. "You would sacrifice any thing for him. Every
+body knows that. But it is, after all, then, your fortune which Pen is
+offering to the young lady; and of which he wishes to take possession
+at eighteen."
+
+"I know my mother will give me any thing," Pen said, looking rather
+disturbed.
+
+"Yes, my good fellow, but there is reason in all things. If your mother
+keeps the house, it is but fair that she should select her company.
+When you give her house over her head, and transfer her banker's
+account to yourself for the benefit of Miss What-d'-you-call-'em--Miss
+Costigan--don't you think you should at least have consulted my sister
+as one of the principal parties in the transaction? I am speaking to
+you, you see, without the least anger or assumption of authority, such
+as the law and your father's will give me over you for three years to
+come--but as one man of the world to another,--and I ask you, if you
+think that, because you can do what you like with your mother, therefore
+you have a right to do so! As you are her dependent, would it not have
+been more generous to wait before you took this step, and at least to
+have paid her the courtesy to ask her leave?"
+
+Pen held down his head, and began dimly to perceive that the action on
+which he had prided himself as a most romantic, generous instance of
+disinterested affection, was perhaps a very selfish and headstrong piece
+of folly.
+
+"I did it in a moment of passion," said Pen, floundering; "I was not
+aware what I was going to say or to do" (and in this he spoke with
+perfect sincerity). "But now it is said, and I stand to it. No; I
+neither can nor will recall it. I'll die rather than do so. And I--I
+don't want to burthen my mother," he continued. "I'll work for myself.
+I'll go on the stage and act with her. She--she says I should do well
+there."
+
+"But will she take you on those terms?" the major interposed. "Mind, I
+do not say that Miss Costigan is not the most disinterested of women:
+but, don't you suppose, now, fairly, that your position as a young
+gentleman of ancient birth and decent expectations, forms a part of
+the cause why she finds your addresses welcome?"
+
+"I'll die, I say, rather than forfeit my pledge to her," said Pen,
+doubling his fists and turning red.
+
+"Who asks you, my dear friend?" answered the imperturbable guardian. "No
+gentleman breaks his word, of course, when it has been given freely. But
+after all, you can wait. You owe something to your mother, something to
+your family--something to me as your father's representative."
+
+"Oh, of course," Pen said, feeling rather relieved.
+
+"Well, as you have pledged your word to her, give us another, will you,
+Arthur?"
+
+"What is it?" Arthur asked.
+
+"That you will make no private marriage--that you won't be taking a trip
+to Scotland, you understand."
+
+"That would be a falsehood. Pen never told his mother a falsehood,"
+Helen said.
+
+Pen hung down his head again, and his eyes filled with tears of shame.
+Had not this whole intrigue been a falsehood to that tender and
+confiding creature who was ready to give up all for his sake? He gave
+his uncle his hand.
+
+"No, sir--on my word of honor, as a gentleman," he said, "I will never
+marry without my mother's consent!" and giving Helen a bright parting
+look of confidence and affection unchangeable, the boy went out of the
+drawing-room into his own study.
+
+"He's an angel--he's an angel," the mother cried out, in one of her
+usual raptures.
+
+"He comes of a good stock, ma'am," said her brother-in-law--"of a good
+stock on both sides." The major was greatly pleased with the result of
+his diplomacy--so much so, that he once more saluted the tips of Mrs.
+Pendennis's glove, and dropping the curt, manly, and straightforward
+tone in which he had conducted the conversation with the lad, assumed
+a certain drawl which he always adopted when he was most conceited and
+fine.
+
+"My dear creature," said he, in that his politest tone, "I think it
+certainly as well that I came down, and I flatter myself that last
+_botte_ was a successful one. I tell you how I came to think of it.
+Three years ago my kind friend Lady Ferrybridge sent for me in the
+greatest state of alarm about her son Gretna, whose affair you remember,
+and implored me to use my influence with the young gentleman, who was
+engaged in an _affaire de coeur_ with a Scotch clergyman's daughter,
+Miss MacToddy. I implored, I entreated gentle measures. But Lord
+Ferrybridge was furious, and tried the high hand. Gretna was sulky and
+silent, and his parents thought they had conquered. But what was the
+fact, my dear creature? The young people had been married for three
+months before Lord Ferrybridge knew any thing about it. And that was
+why I extracted the promise from Master Pen."
+
+"Arthur would never have done so," Mrs. Pendennis said.
+
+"He hasn't--that is one comfort," answered the brother-in-law.
+
+Like a wary and patient man of the world, Major Pendennis did not press
+poor Pen any farther for the moment, but hoped the best from time, and
+that the young fellow's eyes would be opened before long to see the
+absurdity of which he was guilty. And having found out how keen the
+boy's point of honor 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, while it advanced the interests of the
+negotiator, "you must bear in mind that you are throwing yourself away.
+Your mother might submit to your marriage, as she would to any thing
+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 theater 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 endeavor 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 honor 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 honors 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 toward
+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!_ forever" (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 honor, however fatal your
+promise may be. However, promise us on our side, my boy, what I set out
+by entreating you to grant--that there shall be nothing clandestine,
+that you will pursue your studies, that you will only visit your
+interesting friend at proper intervals. Do you write to her much?"
+
+Pen blushed and said, "Why, yes, he had written."
+
+"I suppose verses, eh! as well as prose? I was a dab at verses myself. I
+recollect when I first joined, I used to write verses for the fellows in
+the regiment; and did some pretty things in that way. I was talking to
+my old friend General Hobbler about some lines I dashed off for him in
+the year 1806, when we were at the Cape, and, Gad, he remembered every
+line of them still; for he'd used 'em so often, the old rogue, and had
+actually tried 'em on Mrs. Hobbler, sir--who brought him sixty thousand
+pounds. I suppose you've tried verses, eh, Pen?"
+
+Pen blushed again, and said, "Why, yes, he had written verses."
+
+"And does the fair one respond in poetry or prose?" asked the major,
+eying his nephew with the queerest expression, as much as to say,
+"O Moses and green spectacles! what a fool the boy is."
+
+Pen blushed again. She had written, but not in verse, the young lover
+owned, and he gave his breast-pocket the benefit of a squeeze with his
+left arm, which the major remarked, according to his wont.
+
+"You have got the letters there, I see," said the old campaigner,
+nodding at Pen, and pointing to his own chest (which was manfully wadded
+with cotton by Mr. Stultz). "You know you have. I would give twopence to
+see 'em."
+
+"Why," said Pen, twiddling the stalks of the strawberries, "I--I," but
+this sentence never finished; for Pen's face was so comical and
+embarrassed, as the major watched it, that the elder could contain his
+gravity no longer, and burst into a fit of laughter, in which chorus Pen
+himself was obliged to join after a minute: when he broke out fairly
+into a guffaw.
+
+It sent them with great good humor into Mrs. Pendennis's drawing-room.
+She was pleased to hear them laughing in the hall as they crossed it.
+
+"You sly rascal!" said the major, putting his arm gayly on Pen's
+shoulder, and giving a playful push at the boy's breast-pocket. He
+felt the papers crackling there, sure enough. The young fellow was
+delighted--conceited--triumphant--and, in one word, a spoony.
+
+The pair came to the tea-table in the highest spirits. The major's
+politeness was beyond expression. He had never tasted such good tea, and
+such bread was only to be had in the country. He asked Mrs. Pendennis
+for one of her charming songs. He then made Pen sing, and was delighted
+and astonished at the beauty of the boy's voice: he made his nephew
+fetch his map 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 bed time came, mother and son went to
+their several rooms perfectly enchanted with the kind major.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they had reached those apartments, I suppose Helen took to her
+knees as usual: and Pen read over his letters before going to bed just
+as if he didn't know every word of them by heart already. In truth,
+there were but three of those documents: and to learn their contents
+required no great effort of memory.
+
+In No. 1, Miss Fotheringay presents grateful compliments to Mr.
+Pendennis, and in her papa's name and her own begs to thank him for his
+_most beautiful presents_. They will always be _kept carefully_; and
+Miss F. and Captain C. will never forget the _delightful evening_ which
+they passed on _Tuesday last_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. 2, said--Dear sir, we shall have a small quiet party of _social
+friends_ at our _humble board_, next Tuesday evening, at an _early tea_,
+when I shall wear the _beautiful scarf_ which, with its _accompanying
+delightful verses_, I shall _ever, ever cherish_; and papa bids me say
+how happy he will be if you will join "_the feast of reason and the
+flow of soul_" in our _festive little party_, as I am sure will be your
+_truly grateful_ Emily Fotheringay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. 3 was somewhat more confidential, and showed that matters had
+proceeded rather far. You were _odious_ yesterday night, the letter
+said, Why did you not come to the stage-door? Papa could not escort me
+on account of his eye; he had an accident, and fell down over a loose
+carpet on the stair on Sunday night. I saw you looking at Miss Diggle
+all night; and you were so _enchanted_ with Lydia Languish you scarcely
+once looked at Julia. I could have _crushed_ Bingley, I was so _angry_.
+I play _Ella Rosenberg_ on Friday: will you come then? _Miss Diggle
+performs_--ever your E. F.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These three letters Mr. Pen used to read at intervals, during the day
+and night, and embrace with that delight and fervor which such beautiful
+compositions surely warranted. A thousand times at least he had kissed
+fondly the musky satin paper, made sacred to him by the hand of Emily
+Fotheringay. This was all he had in return for his passion and flames,
+his vows and protests, his rhymes and similes, his wakeful nights and
+endless thoughts, his fondness, fears, and folly. The young wiseacre had
+pledged away his all for this: signed his name to endless promissory
+notes, conferring his heart upon the bearer; bound himself for life, and
+got back twopence as an equivalent. For Miss Costigan was a young lady
+of such perfect good conduct and self-command, that she never would have
+thought of giving more, and reserved the treasures of her affection
+until she could transfer them lawfully at church.
+
+Howbeit, Mr. Pen was content with what tokens of regard he had got, and
+mumbled over his three letters in a rapture of high spirits, and went to
+sleep delighted with his kind old uncle from London, who must evidently
+yield to his wishes in time; and, in a word, in a preposterous state of
+contentment with himself and all the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+IN WHICH THE MAJOR OPENS THE CAMPAIGN.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Let those who have a real heartfelt relish for London society, and
+the privilege of an entree into its most select circles, admit that
+Major Pendennis was a man of no ordinary generosity and affection,
+in the sacrifice which he now made. He gave up London in May--his
+newspapers and his mornings--his afternoons from club to club, his little
+confidential visits to my ladies, his rides in Rotten Row, his dinners
+and his stall at the opera, his rapid escapades to Fulham or Richmond on
+Saturdays and Sundays, his bow from my Lord Duke or my Lord Marquis at
+the great London entertainments, and his name in the Morning Post of the
+succeeding day--his quieter little festivals, more select, secret, and
+delightful--all these he resigned to lock himself into a lone little
+country house, with a simple widow and a greenhorn of a son, a mawkish
+curate, and a little girl of ten years of age.
+
+He made the sacrifice, and it was the greater that few knew the extent
+of it. His letters came down franked from town, and he showed the
+invitations to Helen with a sigh. It was beautiful and tragical to
+see him refuse one party after another--at least to those who could
+understand, as Helen didn't, the melancholy grandeur of his self-denial.
+Helen did not, or only smiled at the awful pathos with which the major
+spoke of the Court Guide in general: but young Pen looked with great
+respect at the great names upon the superscriptions of his uncle's
+letters, and listened to the major's stories about the fashionable
+world with constant interest and sympathy.
+
+The elder Pendennis's rich memory was stored with thousands of these
+delightful tales, and he poured them into Pen's willing ear with
+unfailing eloquence. He knew the name and pedigree of every body in the
+Peerage, and every body's relations. "My dear boy," he would say, with a
+mournful earnestness and veracity, "you can not begin your genealogical
+studies too early; I wish to Heavens you would read in Debrett every
+day. Not so much the historical part (for the pedigrees, between
+ourselves, are many of them very fabulous, and there are few families
+that can show such a clear descent as our own) as the account of family
+alliances, and who is related to whom. I have known a man's career in
+life blasted, by ignorance on this important, this all-important
+subject. Why, only last month, at dinner at my Lord Hobanob's, a young
+man, who has lately been received among us, young Mr. Suckling (author
+of a work, I believe), began to speak lightly of Admiral Bowser's
+conduct for ratting to ministers, in what I must own is the most
+audacious manner. But who do you think sate next and opposite to
+this Mr. Suckling? Why--why, next to him was Lady Grampound Bowser's
+daughter, and opposite to him was Lord Grampound Bowser's son-in-law.
+The infatuated young man went on cutting his jokes at the admiral's
+expense, fancying that all the world was laughing with him, and I
+leave you to imagine Lady Hobanob's feelings--Hobanob's!--those of
+every well-bred man, as the wretched _intru_ was so exposing himself.
+_He_ will never dine again in South-street. I promise you _that_."
+
+With such discourses the major entertained his nephew, as he paced the
+terrace in front of the house for his two hours' constitutional walk, or
+as they sate together after dinner over their wine. He grieved that Sir
+Francis Clavering had not come down to the park, to live in it since his
+marriage, and to make a society for the neighborhood. He mourned that
+Lord Eyrie was not in the country, that he might take Pen and present
+him to his lordship. "He has daughters," the major said. "Who knows? you
+might have married Lady Emily or Lady Barbara Trehawk: but all those
+dreams are over; my poor fellow, you must lie on the bed which you have
+made for yourself."
+
+These things to hear did young Pendennis seriously incline. They are
+not so interesting in print as when delivered orally; but the major's
+anecdotes of the great George, of the royal dukes, of the statesmen,
+beauties, and fashionable ladies of the day, filled young Pen's soul
+with longing and wonder; and he found the conversations with his
+guardian, which sadly bored and perplexed poor Mrs. Pendennis, for
+his own part, never tedious.
+
+It can't be said that Mr. Pen's new guide, philosopher and friend,
+discoursed him on the most elevated subjects, or treated the subjects
+which he chose in the most elevated manner. But his morality, such as
+it was, was consistent. It might not, perhaps, tend to a man's progress
+in another world, but it was pretty well calculated to advance his
+interests in this: and then it must be remembered, that the major never
+for one instant doubted that his views were the only views practicable,
+and that his conduct was perfectly virtuous and respectable. He was
+a man of honor, in a word; and had his eyes, what he called, open. He
+took pity on this young greenhorn of a nephew, and wanted to open his
+eyes too.
+
+No man, for instance, went more regularly to church, when in the
+country, than the old bachelor. "It don't matter so much in town, Pen,"
+he said, "for there the women go, and the men are not missed. But when
+a gentleman is _sur ses terres_, he must give an example to the country
+people; and if I could turn a tune, I even think I should sing. The Duke
+of Saint David's, whom I have the honor of knowing, always sings in
+the country, and let me tell you, it has a doosed fine effect from the
+family pew. And you are somebody down here. As long as the Claverings
+are away you are the first man in the parish; and as good as any. You
+might represent the town if you played your cards well. Your poor dear
+father would have done so had he lived; so might you.--Not if you marry
+a lady, however amiable, whom the country people won't meet.--Well,
+well: it's a painful subject. Let us change it, my boy." But if Major
+Pendennis changed the subject once, he recurred to it a score of times
+in the day; and the moral of his discourse always was, that Pen was
+throwing himself away. Now it does not require much coaxing or wheedling
+to make a simple boy believe that he is a very fine fellow.
+
+Pen took his uncle's counsels to heart. He was glad enough, we have
+said, to listen to his elder's talk. The conversation of Captain
+Costigan became by no means pleasant to him, and the idea of that tipsy
+old father-in-law haunted him with terror. He couldn't bring that man,
+unshaven and reeking of punch, to associate with his mother. Even about
+Emily--he faltered when the pitiless guardian began to question him.
+"Was she accomplished?" He was obliged to own, no. "Was she clever?"
+Well, she had a very good average intellect: but he could not absolutely
+say she was clever. "Come, let us see some of her letters." So Pen
+confessed that he had but those three of which we have made mention--and
+that they were but trivial invitations or answers.
+
+"_She_ is cautious enough," the major said, drily. "She is older than
+you, my poor boy;" and then he apologized 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 honor in view--for
+Arthur was ready to flame up in indignation whenever Miss Costigan's
+honesty was doubted, and swore that he would never have her name
+mentioned lightly, and never, never would part from her.
+
+He repeated this to his uncle and his friends at home, and also, it must
+be confessed, to Miss Fotheringay and the amiable family at Chatteries,
+with whom he still continued to spend some portion of his time. Miss
+Emily was alarmed when she heard of the arrival of Pen's guardian, and
+rightly conceived that the major came down with hostile intentions to
+herself. "I suppose ye intend to leave me, now your grand relation, has
+come down from town. He'll carry ye off, and you'll forget your poor
+Emily, Mr. Arthur!"
+
+Forget her! In her presence, in that of Miss Rouncy, the Columbine and
+Milly's confidential friend, of the company, in the presence of the
+captain himself, Pen swore he never could think of any other woman but
+his beloved Miss Fotheringay; and the captain, looking up at his foils,
+which were hung as a trophy on the wall of the room where Pen and he
+used to fence, grimly said, he would not advoise any man to meddle
+rashly with the affections of _his_ darling child; and would never
+believe his gallant young Arthur, whom he treated as his son, whom he
+called his son, would ever be guilty of conduct so revolting to every
+idaya of honor and humanity.
+
+He went up and embraced Pen after speaking. He cried, and wiped
+his eye with one large dirty hand as he clasped Pen with the other.
+Arthur shuddered in that grasp, and thought of his uncle at home.
+His father-in-law looked unusually dirty and shabby; the odor 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 (inclosing to him a sovereign,
+the loan of which the worthy gentleman had need), saying, that one
+day he hoped to sign himself his affectionate son, Arthur Pendennis.
+He was glad to get away from Chatteries 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 tattled homeward on
+Rebecca, "you little know what sacrifices I am making for you!--for you
+who are always so cold, so cautious, so mistrustful;" and he thought of
+a character in Pope to whom he had often involuntarily compared her.
+
+Pen never rode over to Chatteries 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 every body knew whence he came, and appeared quite
+guilty before his mother and guardian, over their books or their game
+at picquet.
+
+Once having walked out half a mile, to the Fairoaks Inn, beyond the
+lodge gates, to be in readiness for the Competitor coach, which changed
+horses there, to take a run for Chatteries, a man on the roof touched
+his hat to the young gentleman: it was his uncle's man, Mr. Morgan,
+who was going on a message for his master, and had been took up at the
+lodge, as he said. And Mr. Morgan came back by the Rival, too; so that
+Pen had the pleasure of that domestic's company both ways. Nothing was
+said at home. The lad seemed to have every decent liberty; and yet he
+felt himself dimly watched and guarded, and that there were eyes upon
+him even in the presence of his Dulcinea.
+
+In fact, Pen's suspicions were not unfounded, and his guardian had sent
+forth to gather all possible information regarding the lad and his
+interesting young friend. The discreet and ingenious Mr. Morgan, a
+London confidential valet, whose fidelity could be trusted, had been
+to Chatteries 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 color 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 tooth-pick, and looked over the paper, and
+if any friend asked him to dinner, he staid. 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, traveled in
+charge of the dressing-case.
+
+From the servants of the officers at the barracks Mr. Morgan found
+that the captain had so frequently and outrageously inebriated himself
+there, that Colonel Swallowtail had forbidden him the mess-room. The
+indefatigable Morgan then put himself in communication with some of the
+inferior actors at the theater, 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 toward persons disposed to treat his daughter
+with freedom. She never came to the theater 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
+hact, and was uncommon delighted with the performance, besides thinking
+her a most splendid woman.
+
+Mrs. Creed, the pew-opener, confirmed these statements to Doctor
+Portman, who examined her personally, and threatened her with the
+terrors of the Church, one day after afternoon service. Mrs. Creed had
+nothing unfavorable to her lodger to divulge. She saw nobody; only
+one or two ladies of the theater. 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 down stairs to Mrs. Creed's
+own room.
+
+The doctor and the major consulting together as they often did, groaned
+in spirit over that information. Major Pendennis openly expressed his
+disappointment; and, I believe the divine himself was ill-pleased at
+not being able to pick a hole in poor Miss Fotheringay's reputation.
+
+Even about Pen himself, Mrs. Creed's reports were desperately favorable.
+"Whenever he come," Mrs. Creed said, "she always have me or one of the
+children with her. And Mrs. Creed, marm, says she, if you please marm,
+you'll on no account leave the room when that young gentleman's here.
+And many's the time I've seen him a lookin' as if he wished I was away,
+poor young man: and he took to coming in service-time, when I wasn't at
+home, of course: but she always had one of the boys up if her pa wasn't
+at home, or old Mr. Bowser with her a teaching of her her lesson, or one
+of the young ladies of the theayter."
+
+It was all true: whatever encouragements might have been given him
+before he avowed his passion, the prudence of Miss Emily was prodigious
+after Pen had declared himself: and the poor fellow chafed against her
+hopeless reserve, which maintained his ardor as it excited his anger.
+
+The major surveyed the state of things with a sigh. "If it were but a
+temporary liaison," the excellent man said, "one could bear it. A young
+fellow must sow his wild oats and that sort of thing. But a virtuous
+attachment is the deuce. It comes from the d--d romantic notions boys
+get from being brought up by women."
+
+"Allow me to say, major, that you speak a little too like a man of
+the world," replied the doctor. "Nothing can be more desirable for Pen
+than a virtuous attachment for a young lady of his own rank and with
+a corresponding fortune--this present infatuation, of course, I must
+deplore as sincerely as you do. If I were his guardian I should command
+him to give it up."
+
+"The very means, I tell you, to make him marry to-morrow. We have got
+time from him, that is all, and we must do our best with that."
+
+"I say, major," said the doctor, at the end of the conversation in which
+the above subject was discussed--"I am not, of course, a play-going
+man--but suppose, I say, we go and see her."
+
+The major laughed--he had been a fortnight at Fairoaks, and strange to
+say, had not thought of that. "Well," he said, "why not? After all, it
+is not my niece, but Miss Fotheringay the actress, and we have as good
+a right as any other of the public to see her if we pay our money." So
+upon a day when it was arranged that Pen was to dine at home, and pass
+the evening with his mother, the two elderly gentlemen drove over to
+Chatteries in the doctor's chaise, and there, like a couple of jolly
+bachelors, dined at the George Inn, before proceeding to the play.
+
+Only two other guests were in the room--an officer of the regiment
+quartered at Chatteries, and a young gentleman whom the doctor thought
+he had somewhere seen. They left them at their meal, however, and
+hastened to the theater. It was Hamlet over again. Shakspeare was
+Article XL. of stout old Dr. Portman's creed, to which he always made
+a point of testifying publicly at least once in a year.
+
+We have described the play before, and how those who saw Miss
+Fotheringay perform in Ophelia saw precisely the same thing on one
+night as on another. Both the elderly gentlemen looked at her with
+extraordinary interest, thinking how very much young Pen was charmed
+with her.
+
+"Gad," said the major, between his teeth, as he surveyed her, when she
+was called forward as usual, and swept her courtesies to the scanty
+audience, "the young rascal has not made a bad choice."
+
+The doctor applauded her loudly and loyally. "Upon my word," said he,
+"she is a very clever actress; and I must say, major, she is endowed
+with very considerable personal attractions."
+
+"So that young officer thinks in the stage-box," Major Pendennis
+answered, and he pointed out to Doctor Portman's attention the young
+dragoon of the George Coffee-room, who sat 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 theater; the doctor returning to Mrs. Portman,
+who was on a visit at the Deanery, and the major walking home full of
+thought toward the George, where he had bespoken a bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+FACING THE ENEMY.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Sauntering slowly homeward Major Pendennis reached the George presently,
+and found Mr. Morgan his faithful valet, awaiting him at the door of the
+George Inn, who stopped his master as he was about to take a candle to
+go to bed, and said, with his usual air of knowing deference, "I think,
+sir, if you would go into the coffee-room, there's a young gentleman
+there as you would like to see."
+
+"What, is Mr. Arthur here?" the major said, in great anger.
+
+"No, sir--but his great friend, Mr. Foker, sir. Lady Hagnes Foker's
+son is here, sir. He's been asleep in the coffee-room since he took his
+dinner, and has just rung for his coffee, sir. And I think, p'raps, you
+might like to git into conversation with him," the valet said, opening
+the coffee-room door.
+
+The major entered; and there indeed was Mr. Foker, the only occupant of
+the place. He was rubbing his eyes, and sate before a table decorated
+with empty decanters and relics of dessert. He had intended to go to the
+play too, but sleep had overtaken him after a copious meal, and he had
+flung up his legs on the bench, and indulged in a nap instead of the
+dramatic amusement. The major was meditating how to address the young
+man, but the latter prevented him that trouble.
+
+"Like to look at the evening paper, sir?" said Mr. Foker, who was always
+communicative and affable; and he took up the _Globe_ from his table,
+and offered it to the new comer.
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," said the major, with a grateful bow
+and smile. "If I don't mistake the family likeness, I have the pleasure
+of speaking to Mr. Henry Foker, Lady Agnes Foker's son. I have the
+happiness to name her ladyship among my acquaintances--and you bear,
+sir, a Rosherville face."
+
+"Hullo! I beg your pardon," Mr. Foker said, "I took you"--he was going
+to say--"I took you for a commercial gent." But he stopped that phrase.
+"To whom have I the pleasure of speaking?" he added.
+
+"To a relative of a friend and schoolfellow of yours--Arthur Pendennis,
+my nephew, who has often spoken to me about you in terms of great
+regard. I am Major Pendennis, of whom you may have heard him speak. May
+I take my soda-water at your table? I have had the pleasure of sitting
+at your grandfather's."
+
+"Sir, you do me proud," said Mr. Foker, with much courtesy. "And so you
+are Arthur Pendennis's uncle, are you?"
+
+"And guardian," added the major.
+
+"He's as good a fellow as ever stepped, sir," said Mr. Foker.
+
+"I am glad you think so."
+
+"And clever, too--I was always a stupid chap, I was--but you see, sir,
+I know 'em when they are clever, and like 'em of that sort.
+
+"You show your taste and your modesty, too," said the major. "I have
+heard Arthur repeatedly speak of you, and he said your talents were
+very good."
+
+"I'm not good at the books," Mr. Foker said, wagging his head--"never
+could manage that--Pendennis could--he used to do half the chaps'
+verses--and yet"--the young gentleman broke out--"you are his guardian;
+and I hope you will pardon me for saying that I think he is what _we_
+call a flat," the candid young gentleman said.
+
+The major found himself on the instant in the midst of a most
+interesting and confidential conversation. "And how is Arthur a flat?"
+he asked, with a smile.
+
+"You know," Foker answered, winking at him--he would have winked at the
+Duke of Wellington with just as little scruple, for he was in that state
+of absence, candor, and fearlessness, which a man sometimes possesses
+after drinking a couple of bottles of wine--"You know Arthur's a
+flat--about women I mean."
+
+"He is not the first of us, my dear Mr. Harry," answered the major.
+"I have heard something of this--but pray tell me more.'"
+
+"Why, sir, see--it's partly my fault. He went to the play one
+night--for you see I'm down here readin' for my little-go during the
+Long, only I come over from Baymouth pretty often in my drag--well,
+sir, we went to the play, and Pen was struck all of a heap with Miss
+Fotheringay--Costigan her real name is--an uncommon fine gal she
+is too; and the next morning I introduced him to the general, as
+we call her father--a regular old scamp--and _such_ a boy for the
+whisky-and-water!--and he's gone on being intimate there. And he's
+fallen in love with her--and I'm blessed if he hasn't proposed to
+her," Foker said, slapping his hand on the table, until all the
+dessert began to jingle.
+
+"What! you know it too?" asked the major.
+
+"Know it! don't I? and many more too. We were talking about it at mess,
+yesterday, and chaffing Derby Oaks--until he was as mad as a hatter.
+Know Sir Derby Oaks? We dined together, and he went to the play; we were
+standing at the door smoking, I remember, when you passed in to dinner."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I remember Sir Thomas Oaks, his father, before he was a baronet or
+a knight; he lived in Cavendish-square, and was Physician to Queen
+Charlotte."
+
+"The young one is making the money spin, I can tell you," Mr. Foker
+said.
+
+"And is Sir Derby Oaks," the major said, with great delight and anxiety,
+"another _soupirant_?"
+
+"Another _what_?" inquired Mr. Foker.
+
+"Another admirer of Miss Fotheringay?"
+
+"Lord bless you! we call him, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Pen,
+Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. But, mind you, nothing wrong! No,
+no! Miss F. is a deal too wide awake for that, Major Pendennis. She
+plays one off against the other. What you call two strings to her bow."
+
+"I think you seem tolerably wide awake, too, Mr. Foker," Pendennis said,
+laughing.
+
+"Pretty well thank you, sir--how are you?" Foker replied, imperturbably.
+"I'm not clever, p'raps: but I _am_ rather downy; and partial friends
+say I know what's o'clock tolerably well. Can I tell you the time of day
+in any way?"
+
+"Upon my word," the major answered, quite delighted, "I think you may
+be of very great service to me. You are a young man of the world, and
+with such one likes to deal. And as such I need not inform you that our
+family is by no means delighted at this absurd intrigue in which Arthur
+is engaged."
+
+"I should rather think not," said Mr. Foker. "Connection not eligible.
+Too much beer drunk on the premises. No Irish need apply. That I take
+to be your meaning."
+
+The major said it was, exactly; though in truth he did not quite
+understand what Mr. Foker's meaning was: and he proceeded to examine his
+new acquaintance regarding the amiable family into which his nephew
+proposed to enter, and soon got from the candid witness a number of
+particulars regarding the house of Costigan.
+
+We must do Mr. Foker the justice to say that he spoke most favorably 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 any thing but what's honorable. Pen's attentions to her are talked
+about in the whole Company, and I hear all about them from a young lady
+who used to be very intimate with her, and with whose family I sometimes
+take tea in a friendly way. Miss Rouncy says, Sir Derby Oaks has been
+hanging about Miss Fotheringay ever since his regiment has been down
+here; but Pen has come in and cut him out lately, which has made the
+baronet so mad, that he has been very near on the point of proposing
+too. Wish he would; and you'd see which of the two Miss Fotheringay
+would jump at."
+
+"I thought as much," the major said. "You give me a great deal of
+pleasure, Mr. Foker. I wish I could have seen you before."
+
+"Didn't like to put in my oar," replied the other. "Don't speak till I'm
+asked, when, if there's no objections, I speak pretty freely. Heard your
+man had been hankering about my servant--didn't know myself what was
+going on until Miss Fotheringay and Miss Rouncy had the row about the
+ostrich feathers, when Miss R. told me every thing."
+
+"Miss Rouncy, I gather, was the confidante of the other."
+
+"Confidant? I believe you. Why she's twice as clever a girl as
+Fotheringay, and literary and that, while Miss Foth can't do much more
+than read."
+
+"She can write," said the major, remembering Pen's breast pocket.
+
+Foker broke out into a sardonic "He, he! Rouncy writes her letters," he
+said; "every one of 'em; and since they've quarreled, she don't know how
+the deuce to get on. Miss Rouncy is an uncommon pretty hand, whereas the
+old one makes dreadful work of the writing and spelling when Bows ain't
+by. Rouncy's been settin' her copies lately--she writes a beautiful
+hand, Rouncy does."
+
+"I suppose you know it pretty well," said the major archly: upon which
+Mr. Foker winked at him again.
+
+"I would give a great deal to have a specimen of her handwriting,"
+continued Major Pendennis, "I dare say you could give me one."
+
+"No, no, that would be too bad," Foker replied. "Perhaps I oughtn't to
+have said as much as I have. Miss F.'s writin' ain't so _very_ bad, I
+dare say; only she got Miss R. to write the first letter, and has gone
+on ever since. But you mark my word, that till they are friends again
+the letters will stop."
+
+"I hope they will never be reconciled," the major said, with great
+sincerity; "and I can't tell you how delighted I am to have had the good
+fortune of making your acquaintance. You must feel, my dear sir, as a
+man of the world, how fatal to my nephew's prospects in life is this
+step which he contemplates, and how eager we all must be to free him
+from this absurd engagement."
+
+"He has come out uncommon strong," said Mr. Foker; "I have seen his
+verses; Rouncy copied 'em. And I said to myself when I saw 'em, 'Catch
+_me_ writin' verses to a woman--that's all.'"
+
+"He has made a fool of himself, as many a good fellow has before him.
+How can we make him see his folly and cure it? I am sure you will give
+us what aid you can in extricating a generous young man from such a pair
+of schemers as this father and daughter seem to be. Love on the lady's
+side is out of the question."
+
+"Love, indeed!" Foker said. "If Pen hadn't two thousand a year when he
+came of age--"
+
+"If Pen hadn't _what_?" cried out the major, in astonishment.
+
+"Two thousand a year: hasn't he got two thousand a year?--the general
+says he has."
+
+"My dear friend," shrieked out the major, with an eagerness which
+this gentleman rarely showed, "thank you!--thank you!--I begin to see
+now.--Two thousand a year! Why, his mother has but five hundred a year
+in the world.--She is likely to live to eighty, and Arthur has not a
+shilling but what she can allow him."
+
+"What! he ain't rich then?" Foker asked.
+
+"Upon my honor, he has no more than what I say."
+
+"And you ain't going to leave him any thing?"
+
+The major had sunk every shilling he could scrape together on annuity,
+and of course was going to leave Pen nothing; but he did not tell Foker
+this. "How much do you think a major on half-pay can save?" he asked.
+"If these people have been looking at him as a fortune, they are utterly
+mistaken--and--and you have made me the happiest man in the world."
+
+"Sir to you," said Mr. Foker, politely, and when they parted for the
+night they shook hands with the greatest cordiality; the younger
+gentleman promising the elder not to leave Chatteries without a further
+conversation in the morning. And as the major went up to his room, and
+Mr. Foker smoked his cigar against the door pillars of the George, Pen,
+very likely, ten miles off, was lying in bed kissing the letter from his
+Emily.
+
+The next morning before Mr. Foker drove off in his drag, the insinuating
+major had actually got a letter of Miss Rouncy's in his own pocket-book.
+Let it be a lesson to women how they write. And in very high spirits
+Major Pendennis went to call upon Doctor Portman at the Deanery, and
+told him what happy discoveries he had made on the previous night.
+As they sat in confidential conversation in the dean's oak breakfast
+parlor, they could look across the lawn and see Captain Costigan's
+window, at which poor Pen had been only too visible some three weeks
+since. The doctor was most indignant against Mrs. Creed the landlady,
+for her duplicity, in concealing Sir Derby Oaks's constant visits to her
+lodgers, and threatened to excommunicate her out of the cathedral. But
+the wary major thought that all things were for the best; and, having
+taken counsel with himself over night, felt himself quite strong enough
+to go and face Captain Costigan.
+
+"I'm going to fight the dragon," he said, with a laugh, to Doctor
+Portman.
+
+"And I shrive you, sir, and bid good fortune go with you," answered the
+doctor. Perhaps he and Mrs. Portman and Miss Mira, as they sate with
+their friend the dean's lady, in her drawing-room, looked up more than
+once at the enemy's window to see if they could perceive any signs of
+the combat.
+
+The major walked round, according to the directions given him, and soon
+found Mrs. Creed's little door. He passed in, and as he ascended to
+Captain Costigan's apartment, he could hear a stamping of feet, and a
+great shouting of "Ha, ha!" within.
+
+"It's Sir Derby Oaks taking his fencing lesson," said the child, who
+piloted Major Pendennis. "He takes it Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays."
+
+The major knocked, and at length a tall gentleman came forth, with a
+foil and mask in one hand, and a fencing glove on the other.
+
+Pendennis made him a deferential bow. "I believe I have the honor of
+speaking to Captain Costigan.--My name is Major Pendennis."
+
+The captain brought his weapon up to the salute, and said--"Major, the
+honor is moine; I'm deloighted to see ye."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+NEGOTIATION.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 theater music, in the
+copying of which he had been engaged) looked up eagerly toward the new
+comer as the major of the well-blacked boots entered the apartment
+distributing the most graceful bows to every body present.
+
+"Me daughter--me friend, Mr. Bows--me gallant young pupil and friend, I
+may call 'um, Sir Derby Oaks," said Costigan splendidly waving his hand,
+and pointing each of these individuals to the major's attention. "In one
+moment, meejor, I'm your humble servant," and to dash into the little
+adjoining chamber where he slept, to give a twist to his lank hair with
+his hair-brush (a wonderful and ancient piece), to tear off his old
+stock and put on a new one which Emily had constructed for him, and to
+assume a handsome clean collar, and the new coat which had been ordered
+upon the occasion of Miss Fotheringay's benefit, was with the still
+active Costigan the work of a minute.
+
+After him, Sir Derby entered, and presently emerged from the same
+apartment, where he also cased himself in his little shell-jacket, which
+fitted tightly upon the young officer's big person; and which he, and
+Miss Fotheringay, and poor Pen too, perhaps, admired prodigiously.
+
+Meanwhile conversation was engaged between the actress and the
+new comer; and the usual remarks about the weather had been interchanged
+before Costigan re-entered in his new "shoot," as he called it.
+
+"I needn't apologize to ye, meejor," he said, in his richest and most
+courteous manner, "for receiving ye in me shirt-sleeves."
+
+"An old soldier can't be better employed than in teaching a young one
+the use of his sword," answered the major, gallantly. "I remember in old
+times hearing that you could use yours pretty well, Captain Costigan."
+
+"What, ye've heard of Jack Costigan, major," said the other, greatly.
+
+The major had, indeed; he had pumped his nephew concerning his new
+friend, the Irish officer; and whether he had no other knowledge of the
+captain than what he had thus gained, or whether he actually remembered
+him, we can not say. But Major Pendennis was a person of honor and
+undoubted veracity, and said that he perfectly well recollected meeting
+Mr. Costigan, and hearing him sing, at Sir Richard Strachan's table at
+Walcheren.
+
+At this information, and the bland and cordial manner in which it was
+conveyed, Bows looked up, entirely puzzled. "But we will talk of these
+matters another time," the major continued, perhaps not wishing to
+commit himself; "it is to Miss Fotheringay that I came to pay my
+respects to-day;" and he performed another bow for her, so courtly and
+gracious, that if she had been a duchess he could not have made it more
+handsome.
+
+"I had heard of your performances from my nephew, madam," the major
+said, "who raves about you, as I believe you know pretty well. But
+Arthur is but a boy, and a wild enthusiastic young fellow, whose
+opinions one must not take _au pied de la lettre_; and I confess I was
+anxious to judge for myself. Permit me to say your performance delighted
+and astonished me. I have seen our best actresses, and, on my word,
+I think you surpass them all. You are as majestic as Mrs. Siddons."
+
+"Faith, I always said so," Costigan said, winking at his daughter;
+"Major take a chair." Milly rose at this hint, took an unripped satin
+garment off the only vacant seat, and brought the latter to Major
+Pendennis with one of her finest courtesies.
+
+"You are as pathetic as Miss O'Neill," he continued, bowing and seating
+himself; "your snatches of song reminded me of Mrs. Jordan in her best
+time, when we were young men, Captain Costigan; and your manner reminded
+me of Mars. Did you ever see the Mars, Miss Fotheringay?"
+
+"There was two Mahers in Crow-street," remarked Miss Emily; "Fanny was
+well enough, but Biddy was no great things."
+
+"Sure, the major means the god of war, Milly, my dear," interposed the
+parent.
+
+"It is not that Mars I meant, though Venus, I suppose, may be pardoned
+for thinking about him;" the major replied, with a smile directed in
+full to Sir Derby Oaks, who now re-entered in his shell-jacket, but
+the lady did not understand the words of which he made use, nor did the
+compliment at all pacify Sir Derby, who, probably, did not understand it
+either, and at any rate received it with great sulkiness and stiffness;
+scowling uneasily at Miss Fotheringay, with an expression which seemed
+to ask, "What the deuce does this man here?"
+
+Major Pendennis was not in the least annoyed by the gentleman's
+ill-humor. On the contrary, it delighted him. "So," thought he, "a rival
+is in the field;" and he offered up vows that Sir Derby might be, not
+only a rival, but a winner too, in this love-match in which he and Pen
+were engaged.
+
+"I fear I interrupted your fencing lesson; but my stay in Chatteries
+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 mantle-piece yonder?"
+
+"I am very fond of flowers," said Miss Fotheringay, with a languishing
+ogle at Sir Derby Oaks--but the baronet still scowled sulkily.
+
+"Sweets to the sweet--isn't that the expression of the play?" Mr.
+Pendennis asked, bent upon being good-humored.
+
+"'Pon my life, I don't know. Very likely it is. I ain't much of a
+literary man," answered Sir Derby.
+
+"Is it possible?" the major continued, with an air of surprise. "You
+don't inherit your father's love of letters, then, Sir Derby? He was a
+remarkably fine scholar, and I had the honor of knowing him very well."
+
+"Indeed," said the other, and gave a sulky wag of his head.
+
+"He saved my life," continued Pendennis.
+
+"Did he now?" cried Miss Fotheringay, rolling her eyes first upon the
+major with surprise, then toward Sir Derby with gratitude--but the
+latter was proof against those glances; and far from appearing to
+be pleased that the apothecary, his father, should have saved Major
+Pendennis's life, the young man actually looked as if he wished the
+event had turned the other way.
+
+"My father, I believe, was a very good doctor," the young gentleman
+said, by way of reply. "I'm not in that line myself. I wish you good
+morning, sir. I've got an appointment--Cos, by-by--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 saber 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The major did not smile in the least, though he had every reason to be
+amused. "Monstrous handsome young man that--as fine a looking soldier
+as ever I saw," he said to Costigan.
+
+"A credit to the army and to human nature in general," answered
+Costigan. "A young man of refoined manners, polite affabilitee, and
+princely fortune. His table is sumptuous: he's adawr'd in the regiment:
+and he rides sixteen stone."
+
+"A perfect champion," said the major, laughing. "I have no doubt all the
+ladies admire him."
+
+"He's very well in spite of his weight, now he's young," said Milly;
+"but he's no conversation."
+
+"He's best on horseback," Mr. Bows said: on which Milly replied,
+that the baronet had ridden third in the steeple-chase on his horse
+Tareaways, and the major began to comprehend that the young lady herself
+was not of a particular genius, and to wonder how she should be so
+stupid and act so well.
+
+Costigan, with Irish hospitality, of course pressed refreshment upon his
+guest: and the major, who was no more hungry than you are after a Lord
+Mayor's dinner, declared that he should like a biscuit and a glass of
+wine above all things, as he felt quite faint from long fasting--but he
+knew that to receive small kindnesses flatters the donors very much, and
+that people must needs grow well disposed toward you as they give you
+their hospitality.
+
+"Some of the old Madara, Milly, love," Costigan said, winking to his
+child--and that lady, turning to her father a glance of intelligence,
+went out of the room, and down the stair, where she softly summoned
+her little emissary Master Tommy Creed; and giving him a piece of
+money, ordered him to go buy a pint of Madara wine at the Grapes, and
+sixpennyworth of sorted biscuits at the baker's, and to return in a
+hurry, when he might have two biscuits for himself.
+
+While Tommy Creed was gone on this errand, Miss Costigan sate below with
+Mrs. Creed, telling her landlady how Mr. Arthur Pendennis's uncle, the
+major, was above stairs; a nice, soft-spoken old gentleman: that butter
+wouldn't melt in his mouth; and how Sir Derby had gone out of the room
+in a rage of jealousy, and thinking what must be done to pacify both of
+them.
+
+"She keeps the keys of the cellar, major," said Mr. Costigan, as the
+girl left the room.
+
+"Upon my word you have a very beautiful butler," answered Pendennis,
+gallantly, "and I don't wonder at the young fellows raving about her.
+When we were of their age, Captain Costigan, I think plainer women would
+have done our business."
+
+"Faith, and ye may say that, sir--and lucky is the man who gets her. Ask
+me friend Bob Bows here whether Miss Fotheringay's moind is not even
+shuparior to her person, and whether she does not possess a cultiveated
+intellect, a refoined understanding, and an emiable disposition?"
+
+"O, of course," said Mr. Bows, rather drily. "Here comes Hebe blushing
+from the cellar. Don't you think it is time to go to rehearsal, Miss
+Hebe? You will be fined if you are later"--and he gave the young lady a
+look, which intimated that they had much better leave the room and the
+two elders together.
+
+At this order Miss Hebe took up her bonnet and shawl, looking uncommonly
+pretty, good-humored, and smiling; and Bows gathered up his roll of
+papers, and hobbled across the room for his hat and cane.
+
+"Must you go?" said the major. "Can't you give us a few minutes more,
+Miss Fotheringay? Before you leave us, permit an old fellow to shake you
+by the hand, and believe that I am proud to have had the honor of making
+your acquaintance, and am most sincerely anxious to be your friend."
+
+Miss Fotheringay made a low courtesy at the conclusion of this gallant
+speech, and the major followed her retreating steps to the door, where
+he squeezed her hand with the kindest and most paternal pressure. Bows
+was puzzled with this exhibition of cordiality: "The lad's relatives
+can't be really wanting to marry him to her," he thought--and so they
+departed.
+
+"Now for it," thought Major Pendennis: and as for Mr. Costigan he
+profited instantaneously by his daughter's absence to drink up the rest
+of the wine; and tossed off one bumper after another of the Madeira from
+the Grapes, with an eager, shaking hand. The major came up to the table,
+and took up his glass and drained it with a jovial smack. If it had been
+Lord Steyne's particular, and not public-house Cape, he could not have
+appeared to relish it more.
+
+"Capital Madeira, Captain Costigan," he said. "Where do you get it? I
+drink the health of that charming creature in a bumper. Faith, captain,
+I don't wonder that the men are wild about her. I never saw such eyes in
+my life, or such a grand manner. I am sure she is as intellectual as she
+is beautiful; and I have no doubt she's as good as she is clever."
+
+"A good girl, sir--a good girl, sir," said the delighted father; "and
+I pledge a toast to her with all my heart. Shall I send to the--to the
+cellar for another pint? It's handy by. No? Well, indeed, sir, ye may
+say she is a good girl, and the pride and glory of her father--honest
+old Jack Costigan. The man who gets her will have a jew'l to a wife,
+sir; and I drink his health, sir, and ye know who I mean, major."
+
+"I am not surprised at young or old falling in love with her," said the
+major, "and frankly must tell you, that though I was very angry with my
+poor nephew Arthur, when I heard of the boy's passion--now I have seen
+the lady I can pardon him any extent of it. By George, I should like to
+enter for the race myself, if I wern't an old fellow and a poor one."
+
+"And no better man, major, I'm sure," cried Jack, enraptured. "Your
+friendship, sir, delights me. Your admiration for my girl brings tears
+to me eyes--tears, sir--manlee tears--and when she leaves me humble home
+for your own more splendid mansion, I hope she'll keep a place for her
+poor old father, poor old Jack Costigan."--The captain suited the action
+to the word, and his blood-shot eyes were suffused with water, as he
+addressed the major.
+
+"Your sentiments do you honor," the other said. "But, Captain Costigan,
+I can't help smiling at one thing you have just said."
+
+"And what's that, sir?" asked Jack, who was at a too heroic and
+sentimental pitch to descend from it.
+
+"You were speaking about our splendid mansion--my sister's house, I
+mean."
+
+"I mane the park and mansion of Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, of Fairoaks
+Park, whom I hope to see a Mimber of Parliament for his native town of
+Clavering, when he is of ege to take that responsible stetion," cried
+the captain, with much dignity.
+
+The major smiled as he recognized a shaft out of his own bow. It
+was he who had set Pen upon the idea of sitting in parliament for the
+neighboring borough--and the poor lad had evidently been bragging on the
+subject to Costigan and the lady of his affections. "Fairoaks Park, my
+dear sir," he said. "Do you know our history? We are of excessively
+ancient family certainly, but I began life with scarce enough money to
+purchase my commission, and my eldest brother was a country apothecary;
+who made every shilling he died possessed of out of his pestle and
+mortar."
+
+"I have consented to waive that objection, sir," said Costigan
+majestically, "in consideration of the known respectability of your
+family."
+
+"Curse your impudence," thought the major; but he only smiled and bowed.
+
+"The Costigans, too, have met with misfortunes; and our house of Castle
+Costigan is by no manes what it was. I have known very honest men
+apothecaries, sir, and there's some in Dublin that has had the honor of
+dining at the Lord Leftenant's teeble."
+
+"You are very kind to give us the benefit of your charity," the major
+continued: "but permit me to say that is not the question. You spoke
+just now of my little nephew as heir of Fairoaks Park, and I don't know
+what besides."
+
+"Funded property, I've no doubt, meejor, and something handsome
+eventually from yourself."
+
+"My good sir, I tell you the boy is the son of a country apothecary,"
+cried out Major Pendennis; "and that when he comes of age he won't have
+a shilling."
+
+"Pooh, major, you're laughing at me," said Mr. Costigan, "me young
+friend, I make no doubt, is heir to two thousand pounds a year."
+
+"Two thousand fiddlesticks! I beg your pardon, my dear sir; but has the
+boy been humbugging you?--it is not his habit. Upon my word and honor,
+as a gentleman and an executor to my brother's will too, he left little
+more than five hundred a year behind him."
+
+"And with aconomy, a handsome sum of money too, sir," the captain
+answered. "Faith, I've known a man drink his clar't, and drive his
+coach-and-four on five hundred a year and strict aconomy, in Ireland,
+sir. We'll manage on it, sir--trust Jack Costigan for that."
+
+"My dear Captain Costigan--I give you my word that my brother did not
+leave a shilling to his son Arthur."
+
+"Are ye joking with me, Meejor Pendennis?" cried Jack Costigan. "Are ye
+thrifling with the feelings of a father and a gentleman?"
+
+"I am telling you the honest truth," said Major Pendennis. "Every
+shilling my brother had, he left to his widow: with a partial reversion,
+it is true, to the boy. But she is a young woman, and may marry if he
+offends her--or she may outlive him, for she comes of an uncommonly
+long-lived family. And I ask you, as a gentleman and a man of the world,
+what allowance can my sister, Mrs. Pendennis, make to her son out of
+five hundred a year, which is all her fortune--that shall enable him
+to maintain himself and your daughter in the rank befitting such an
+accomplished young lady?"
+
+"Am I to understand, sir, that the young gentleman, your nephew, and
+whom I have fosthered and cherished as the son of me bosom, is an
+imposther who has been thrifling with the affections of me beloved
+child?" exclaimed the general, with an outbreak of wrath.--"Have you
+yourself been working upon the feelings of the young man's susceptible
+nature to injuice him to break off an engagement, and with it me adored
+Emily's heart? Have a care, sir, how you thrifle with the honor of John
+Costigan. If I thought any mortal man meant to do so, be heavens I'd
+have his blood, sir--were he old or young."
+
+"Mr. Costigan!" cried out the major.
+
+"Mr. Costigan can protect his own and his daughter's honor, 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 band-box with; and when I
+have dragged the scoundthrel before the courts of law, and shown up his
+perjury and his dishonor, 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 counseled your
+nephew to insult a soldier and a gentleman. What? Me daughter to be
+jilted, and me gray hairs dishonored by an apothecary's son. By the
+laws of heaven, sir, I should like to see the man that shall do it."
+
+"I am to understand, then, that you threaten in the first place to
+publish the letters of a boy of eighteen to a woman of eight-and-twenty:
+and afterward to do me the honor of calling me out," the major said,
+still with perfect coolness.
+
+"You have described my intentions with perfect accuracy, Meejor
+Pendennis," answered the captain, as he pulled his ragged whiskers over
+his chin.
+
+"Well, well; these shall be the subjects of future arrangements, but
+before we come to powder and ball, my good sir--do have the kindness to
+think with yourself in what earthly way I have injured you? I have told
+you that my nephew is dependent upon his mother, who has scarcely more
+than five hundred a year."
+
+"I have my own opinion of the correctness of that assertion," said the
+captain.
+
+"Will you go to my sister's lawyers, Messrs. Tatham here, and satisfy
+yourself?"
+
+"I decline to meet those gentlemen," said the captain, with rather a
+disturbed air. "If it be as you say, I have been athrociously deceived
+by some one, and on that person I'll be revenged."
+
+"Is it my nephew?" cried the major, starting up and putting on his hat.
+"Did he ever tell you that his property was two thousand a year? If he
+did, I'm mistaken in the boy. To tell lies has not been a habit in our
+family, Mr. Costigan, and I don't think my brother's son has learned
+it as yet. Try and consider whether you have not deceived yourself; or
+adopted extravagant reports from hearsay. As for me, sir, you are at
+liberty to understand that I am not afraid of all the Costigans in
+Ireland and know quite well how to defend myself against any threats
+from any quarter. I come here as the boy's guardian to protest against
+a marriage, most absurd and unequal, that can not 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 honorable young lady), as
+the friend of my own family; and prevent the marriage I will, sir, by
+every means in my power. There, I have said my say, sir."
+
+"But I have not said mine, Major Pendennis--and ye shall hear more from
+me," Mr. Costigan said, with a look of tremendous severity.
+
+"'Sdeath, sir, what do you mean?" the major asked, turning round on the
+threshold of the door, and looking the intrepid Costigan in the face.
+
+"Ye said, in the coorse of conversation, that ye were at the George
+Hotel, I think," Mr. Costigan said, in a stately manner. "A friend shall
+wait upon ye there before ye leave town, sir."
+
+"Let him make haste, Mr. Costigan," cried out the major, almost beside
+himself with rage. "I wish you a good morning, sir." And Captain
+Costigan, bowed a magnificent bow of defiance to Major Pendennis over
+the landing-place as the latter retreated down the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+IN WHICH A SHOOTING MATCH IS PROPOSED.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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, with whom and Mr. Costigan there was a
+considerable intimacy. They were the chief ornaments of the convivial
+club held at the Magpie Hotel; they helped each other in various bill
+transactions in which they had been engaged, with the mutual loan of
+each other's valuable signatures. They were friends, in fine: although
+Mr. Garbetts seldom called at Costigan's house, being disliked by Miss
+Fotheringay, of whom in her turn Mrs. Garbetts was considerably jealous.
+The truth is, that Garbetts had paid his court to Miss Fotheringay
+and been refused by her, before he offered his hand to Mrs. G. Their
+history, however, forms no part of our present scheme--suffice it,
+Mr. Garbetts was called in by Captain Costigan immediately after his
+daughter and Mr. Bows had quitted the house, as a friend proper to be
+consulted at the actual juncture. He was a large man, with a loud voice
+and fierce aspect, who had the finest legs of the whole company, and
+could break a poker in mere sport across his stalwart arm.
+
+"Run, Tommy," said Mr. Costigan to the little messenger, "and fetch Mr.
+Garbetts from his lodgings over the tripe shop, ye know, and tell 'em to
+send two glasses of whisky-and-water, hot, from the Grapes." So Tommy
+went his way; and presently Mr. Garbetts and the whisky came.
+
+Captain Costigan did not disclose to him the whole of the previous
+events, of which the reader is in possession; but, with the aid of the
+spirits-and-water, he composed a letter of a threatening nature to Major
+Pendennis's address, in which he called upon that gentleman to offer no
+hindrance to the marriage projected between Mr. Arthur Pendennis and his
+daughter, Miss Fotheringay, and to fix an early day for its celebration:
+or, in any other case, to give him the satisfaction which was usual
+between gentlemen of honor. 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 can not give, for reasons
+which shall be specified presently; but it was, no doubt, couched in the
+captain's finest style, and sealed elaborately with the great silver
+seal of the Costigans--the only bit of the family plate which the
+captain possessed.
+
+Garbetts was dispatched then with this message and letter; and bidding
+Heaven bless 'um, the general squeezed his embassador's hand, and saw
+him depart. Then he took down his venerable and murderous dueling
+pistols, with flint locks, that had done the business of many a pretty
+fellow in Dublin: and having examined these, and seen that they were in
+a satisfactory condition, he brought from the drawer all Pen's letters
+and poems which he kept there, and which he always read before he
+permitted his Emily to enjoy their perusal.
+
+In a score of minutes Garbetts came back, with an anxious and
+crestfallen countenance.
+
+"Ye've seen 'um?" the captain said.
+
+"Why, yes," said Garbetts.
+
+"And when is it for?" asked Costigan, trying the lock of one of the
+ancient pistols, and bringing it to a level with his oi--as he called
+that blood-shot orb.
+
+"When is what for?" asked Mr. Garbetts.
+
+"The meeting, my dear fellow?"
+
+"You don't mean to say, you mean mortal combat, captain," Garbetts said,
+aghast.
+
+"What the devil else do I mean, Garbetts?--I want to shoot that man that
+has trajuiced me honor, or meself dthrop a victim on the sod."
+
+"D---- if I carry challenges," Mr. Garbetts replied. "I'm a family man,
+captain, and will have nothing to do with pistols--take back your
+letter;" and, to the surprise and indignation of Captain Costigan, his
+emissary flung the letter down with its great sprawling superscription
+and blotched seal.
+
+"Ye don't mean to say ye saw 'um and didn't give 'um the letter?" cried
+out the captain, in a fury.
+
+"I saw him, but I could not have speech with him, captain," said Mr.
+Garbetts.
+
+"And why the devil not?" asked the other.
+
+"There was one there I cared not to meet, nor would you," the
+tragedian answered, in a sepulchral voice. "The minion Tatham was
+there, captain."
+
+"The cowardly scoundthrel!" roared Costigan. "He's frightened, already
+going to swear the peace against me."
+
+"I'll have nothing to do with the fighting, mark that," the tragedian
+doggedly said, "and I wish I'd not seen Tatham neither, nor that bit
+of--"
+
+"Hold your tongue, Bob Acres. It's my belief ye're no better than a
+coward," said Captain Costigan, quoting Sir Lucius O'Trigger, which
+character he had performed with credit, both off and on the stage, and
+after some more parley between the couple they separated in not very
+good humor.
+
+Their colloquy has been here condensed, as the reader knows the main
+point upon which it turned. But the latter will now see how it is
+impossible to give a correct account of the letter which the captain
+wrote to Major Pendennis, as it was never opened at all by that
+gentleman.
+
+When Miss Costigan came home from rehearsal, which she did in the
+company of the faithful Mr. Bows, she found her father pacing up and
+down their apartment in a great state of agitation, and in the midst of
+a powerful odor of spirits-and-water, which, as it appeared, had not
+succeeded in pacifying his disordered mind. The Pendennis papers were on
+the table surrounding the empty goblets and now useless teaspoon which
+had served to hold and mix the captain's liquor and his friend's. As
+Emily entered he seized her in his arms, and cried out "Prepare yourself
+me child, me blessed child," in a voice of agony, and with eyes brimful
+of tears.
+
+"Ye're tipsy again, papa," Miss Fotheringay said, pushing back her sire.
+"Ye promised me ye wouldn't take spirits before dinner."
+
+"It's to forget me sorrows, me poor girl, that I've taken just a drop,"
+cried the bereaved father--"it's to drown me care that I drain the
+bowl."
+
+"Your care takes a deal of drowning, captain dear," said Bows, mimicking
+his friend's accent; "what has happened? Has the soft-spoken gentleman
+in the wig been vexing you?"
+
+"The oily miscreant! I'll have his blood!" roared Cos. Miss Milly, it
+must be premised, had fled to her room out of his embrace, and was
+taking off her bonnet and shawl there.
+
+"I thought he meant mischief. He was so uncommon civil," the other said.
+"What has he come to say?"
+
+"O Bows! He has overwhellum'd me," the captain said. "There's a hellish
+conspiracy on foot against me poor girl; and it's me opinion that both
+them Pendennises, nephew and uncle, is two infernal thrators and
+scoundthrels, who should be conshumed from off the face of the earth."
+
+"What is it? What has happened?" said Mr. Bows, growing rather excited.
+
+Costigan then told him the major's statement that the young Pendennis
+had not two thousand, nor two hundred pounds a year; and expressed his
+fury that he should have permitted such an impostor to coax and wheedle
+his innocent girl, and that he should have nourished such a viper in his
+own personal bosom. "I have shaken the reptile from me, however," said
+Costigan; "and as for his uncle, I'll have such a revenge on that old
+man, as shall make 'um rue the day he ever insulted a Costigan."
+
+"What do you mean, general?" said Bows.
+
+"I mean to have his life, Bows--his villainous skulking life, my boy;"
+and he rapped upon the battered old pistol-case in an ominous and savage
+manner. Bows had often heard him appeal to that box of death, with which
+he proposed to sacrifice his enemies; but the captain did not tell him
+that he had actually written and sent a challenge to Major Pendennis,
+and Mr. Bows therefore rather disregarded the pistols in the present
+instance.
+
+At this juncture Miss Fotheringay returned to the common sitting-room
+from her private apartment, looking perfectly healthy, happy, and
+unconcerned, a striking and wholesome contrast to her father, who was in
+a delirious tremor of grief, anger, and other agitation. She brought in
+a pair of ex-white satin shoes with her, which she proposed to rub as
+clean as might be with bread-crumb; intending to go mad with them upon
+next Tuesday evening in Ophelia, in which character she was to reappear
+on that night.
+
+She looked at the papers on the table; stopped, as if she was going to
+ask a question, but thought better of it, and going to the cupboard,
+selected an eligible piece of bread wherewith she might operate on the
+satin slippers: and afterward coming back to the table, seated herself
+there commodiously with the shoes, and then asked her father, in her
+honest, Irish brogue, "What, have ye got them letthers, and pothry, and
+stuff, of Master Arthur's out for, pa? Sure ye don't want to be reading
+over that nonsense."
+
+"O Emilee!" cried the captain, "that boy whom I loved as the boy of mee
+bosom is only a scoundthrel, and a deceiver, mee poor girl;" and he
+looked in the most tragical way at Mr. Bows, opposite: who, in his turn,
+gazed somewhat anxiously at Miss Costigan.
+
+"He! pooh! Sure the poor lad's as simple as a school-boy," she said.
+"All them children write verses and nonsense."
+
+"He's been acting the part of a viper to this fire-side, and a traitor
+in this familee," cried the captain. "I tell ye he's no better than an
+impostor."
+
+"What has the poor fellow done, papa?" asked Emily.
+
+"Done? He has deceived us in the most athrocious manner," Miss Emily's
+papa said. "He has thrifled with your affections, and outraged my own
+fine feelings. He has represented himself as a man of property, and it
+turruns out that he is no betther than a beggar. Haven't I often told ye
+he had two thousand a year? He's a pauper, I tell ye, Miss Costigan; a
+depindent upon the bountee of his mother; a good woman, who may marry
+again, who's likely to live forever, and who has but five hundred a year.
+How dar he ask ye to marry into a family which has not the means of
+providing for ye? Ye've been grossly deceived and put upon, Milly, and
+it's my belief, his old ruffian of an uncle in a wig is in the plot
+against us."
+
+"That soft old gentleman? What has he been doing, papa?" continued Emily
+still imperturbable.
+
+Costigan informed Milly, that when she was gone, Major Pendennis told
+him, in his double-faced Pall Mall polite manner, that young Arthur had
+no fortune at all, that the major had asked him (Costigan) to go to the
+lawyers ("wherein he knew the scoundthrels have a bill of mine, and I
+can't meet them," the captain parenthetically remarked), and see the
+lad's father's will: and finally that an infernal swindle had been
+practiced upon him by the pair, and that he was resolved either on a
+marriage, or on the blood of both of them.
+
+Milly looked very grave and thoughtful, rubbing the white satin shoes.
+"Sure, if he's no money, there's no use marrying him, papa," she said
+sententiously.
+
+"Why did the villain say he was a man of prawpertee?" asked Costigan.
+
+"The poor fellow always said he was poor," answered the girl. "'Twas you
+would have it he was rich, papa--and made me agree to take him."
+
+"He should have been explicit and told us his income, Milly," answered
+the father. "A young fellow who rides a blood mare, and makes presents
+of shawls and bracelets, is an impostor, if he has no money:--and as for
+his uncle, bedad, I'll pull off his wig whenever I see 'um. Bows, here,
+shall take a message to him and tell him so. Either it's a marriage, or
+he meets me in the field like a man, or I tweak 'um on the nose in front
+of his hotel or in the gravel walks of Fairoaks Park before all the
+county, bedad."
+
+"Bedad you may send somebody else with the message," said Bows,
+laughing. "I'm a fiddler not a fighting man, captain."
+
+"Pooh, you've no spirit, sir," roared the general. "I'll be my own
+second, if no one will stand by and see me injured. And I'll take my
+case of pistols and shoot 'um in the coffee-room of the George."
+
+"And so poor Arthur has no money?" sighed out Miss Costigan, rather
+plaintively. "Poor lad, he was a good lad too: wild and talking
+nonsense, with his verses and pothry and that, but a brave, generous
+boy, and indeed I liked him--and he liked me too," she added, rather
+softly, and rubbing away at the shoe.
+
+"Why don't you marry him if you like him so?" Mr. Bows said, rather
+savagely. "He is not more than ten years younger than you are. His
+mother may relent, and you might go and live and have enough at Fairoaks
+Park. Why not go and be a lady? I could go on with the fiddle, and the
+general live on his half-pay. Why don't you marry him? You know he likes
+you."
+
+"There's others that likes me as well, Bows, that has no money and
+that's old enough," Miss Milly said sententiously.
+
+"Yes, d---- it," said Bows with a bitter curse--"that are old enough
+and poor enough and fools enough for any thing."
+
+"There's old fools and young fools too. You've often said so, you silly
+man," the imperious beauty said, with a conscious glance at the old
+gentleman. "If Pendennis has not enough money to live upon, it's folly
+to talk about marrying him; and that's the long and short of it."
+
+"And the boy?" said Mr. Bows. "By Jove! you throw a man away like an old
+glove, Miss Costigan."
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Bows," said Miss Fotheringay, placidly,
+rubbing the second shoe. "If he had had half of two thousand a year that
+papa gave him, or the half of that, I would marry him. But what is the
+good of taking on with a beggar? We're poor enough already. There's no
+use in my going to live with an old lady that's testy and cross, maybe,
+and would grudge me every morsel of meat. (Sure, it's near dinner time,
+and Suky not laid the cloth yet), and then," added Miss Costigan, quite
+simply, "suppose there was a family?--why, papa, we shouldn't be as well
+off as we are now."
+
+"'Deed then, you would not Milly dear," answered the father.
+
+"And there's an end to all the fine talk about Mrs. Arthur Pendennis
+of Fairoaks Park--the member of Parliament's lady," said Milly, with a
+laugh. "Pretty carriages and horses we should have to ride!--that you
+were always talking about, papa! But it's always the same. If a man
+looked at me, you fancied he was going to marry me; and if he had a good
+coat, you fancied he was as rich as Crazes."
+
+"--As Croesus," said Mr. Bows.
+
+"Well, call 'um what ye like. But it's a fact now that papa has married
+me these eight years a score of times. Wasn't I to be my Lady Poldoody
+of Oystherstown castle? Then there was the navy captain at Portsmouth,
+and the old surgeon at Norwich, and the Methodist preacher here last
+year, and who knows how many more? Well, I bet a penny, with all your
+scheming, I shall die Milly Costigan, at last. So poor little Arthur
+has no money? Stop and take dinner, Bows; we've a beautiful beefsteak
+pudding."
+
+"I wonder whether she is on with Sir Derby Oaks," thought Bows, whose
+eyes and thoughts were always watching her. "The dodges of women beat
+all comprehension; and I am sure she wouldn't let the lad off so easily
+if she had not some other scheme on hand."
+
+It will have been perceived that Miss Fotheringay, though silent in
+general, and by no means brilliant as a conversationalist, where poetry,
+literature, or the fine arts were concerned, could talk freely, and with
+good sense, too, in her own family circle. She can not justly be called
+a romantic person: nor were her literary acquirements great: she never
+opened a Shakspeare from the day she left the stage, nor, indeed,
+understood it during all the time she adorned the boards: but about a
+pudding, a piece of needle-work, or her own domestic affairs, she was
+as good a judge as could be found; and not being misled by a strong
+imagination or a passionate temper, was better enabled to keep her
+judgment cool. When, over their dinner, Costigan tried to convince himself
+and the company, that the major's statement regarding Pen's finances was
+unworthy of credit, and a mere _ruse_ upon the old hypocrite's part, so
+as to induce them, on their side, to break off the match, Miss Milly
+would not, for a moment, admit the possibility of deceit on the side of
+the adversary: and pointed out clearly that it was her father who had
+deceived himself, and not poor little Pen, who had tried to take them
+in. As for that poor lad, she said she pitied him with all her heart.
+And she ate an exceedingly good dinner, to the admiration of Mr. Bows,
+who had a remarkable regard and contempt for this woman, during, and
+after which repast, the party devised upon the best means of bringing
+this love matter to a close. As for Costigan, his idea of tweaking the
+major's nose vanished with his supply of after-dinner whisky-and-water;
+and he was submissive to his daughter, and ready for any plan on which
+she might decide, in order to meet the crisis which she saw was at hand.
+
+The captain, who, as long as he had a notion that he was wronged, was
+eager to face and demolish both Pen and his uncle, perhaps shrank from
+the idea of meeting the former, and asked "what the juice they were to
+say to the lad if he remained steady to his engagement, and they broke
+from theirs?" "What? don't you know how to throw a man over?" said Bows;
+"ask a woman to tell you?" and Miss Fotheringay showed how this feat was
+to be done simply enough--nothing was more easy. "Papa writes to Arthur
+to know what settlements he proposes to make in the event of a marriage;
+and asks what his means are. Arthur writes back and says what he's got,
+and you'll find it's as the major says, I'll go bail. Then papa writes
+and says it's not enough, and the match had best be at an end."
+
+"And, of course, you inclose a parting line, in which you say you will
+always regard him as a brother;" said Mr. Bows, eying her in his
+scornful way.
+
+"Of course, and so I shall," answered Miss Fotheringay. "He's a most
+worthy young man I'm sure. I'll thank ye hand me the salt. Them filberts
+is beautiful."
+
+"And there will be no noses pulled, Cos, my boy? I'm sorry you're
+balked," said Mr. Bows.
+
+"'Dad I suppose not," said Cos, rubbing his own.--"What'll ye do about
+them letters, and verses and pomes, Milly, darling?--Ye must send 'em
+back."
+
+"Wigsby would give a hundred pound for 'em," Bows said, with a sneer.
+
+"'Deed, then he would," said Captain Costigan, who was easily led.
+
+"Papa!" said Miss Milly, "ye wouldn't be for not sending the poor boy
+his letters back? Them letters and pomes is mine. They were very long
+and full of all sorts of nonsense, and Latin and things I couldn't
+understand the half of; indeed I've not read 'em all; but we'll send 'em
+back to him when the proper time comes." And going to a drawer, Miss
+Fotheringay took out from it a number of the County Chronicle and
+Chatteries 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 favorable printed notices of her performances),
+she wrapped up Pen's letters, poems, passions, and fancies, and tied
+them with a piece of string neatly, as she would a parcel of sugar.
+
+Nor was she in the least moved while performing this act. What hours the
+boy had passed over those papers! What love and longing: what generous
+faith and manly devotion--what watchful nights and lonely fevers might
+they tell of! She tied them up like so much grocery, and sate down and
+made tea afterward with a perfectly placid and contented heart; while
+Pen was yearning after her, ten miles off; and hugging her image to his
+soul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+A CRISIS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 Chatteries another day,
+being anxious to have some talk with Messrs. Tatham, the lawyers, whom
+he would meet that afternoon: but no mention was made of the transaction
+in which the writer had been engaged during the morning. Indeed the note
+was written at the pause after the first part of the engagement, and
+when the major had decidedly had the worst of the battle.
+
+Pen did not care somehow to go into the town while 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, while 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 days when you kissed those silly letters
+with rapture--lived upon six absurd lines for a week, and until the
+reactionary period came, when you were restless and miserable until
+you got a fresh supply of folly.
+
+That is why we decline to publish any of the letters and verses which
+Mr. Pen wrote at this period of his life, out of mere regard for the
+young fellow's character. They are too spooney and wild. Young ladies
+ought not to be called upon to read them in cold blood. Bide your time
+young women; perhaps you will get and write them on your own account
+soon. Meanwhile we will respect Mr. Pen's first outpourings, and keep
+them tied up in the newspapers with Miss Fotheringay's string, and
+sealed with Captain Costigan's great silver seal.
+
+The major came away from his interview with Captain Costigan in a
+state of such concentrated fury as rendered him terrible to approach!
+"The impudent bog-trotting scamp," he thought, "dare to threaten _me_!
+Dare to talk of permitting his damned Costigans to marry with the
+Pendennises! Send me a challenge! If the fellow can get any thing in the
+shape of a genleman to carry it, I have the greatest mind in life not to
+balk 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 behavior, but stated that the affair was a very ugly
+and disagreeable one, and that it was by no means over yet.
+
+He enjoined Doctor and Mrs. Portman to say nothing about the business at
+Fairoaks; whither he contented himself with dispatching 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 up stairs and down
+stairs," as that gentleman observed to Mr. Foker's man, in whose company
+he partook of dinner in the servants' room of the George.
+
+The servant carried the news to his master; and Mr. Foker having
+finished his breakfast about this time, it being two o'clock in the
+afternoon, remembered that he was anxious to know the result of the
+interview between his two friends, and having inquired the number of the
+major's sitting-room, went over in his brocade dressing-gown, and
+knocked for admission.
+
+Major Pendennis had some business, as he had stated, respecting a lease
+of the widow's, about which he was desirous of consulting old Mr.
+Tatham, the lawyer, who had been his brother's man of business, and who
+had a branch-office at Clavering, where he and his son attended market
+and other days three or four in the week. This gentleman and his client
+were now in consultation when Mr. Foker showed his grand dressing-gown
+and embroidered skull-cap at Major Pendennis's door.
+
+Seeing the major engaged with papers and red-tape, and an old man with a
+white head, the modest youth was for drawing back--and said, "O, you're
+busy--call again another time." But Mr. Pendennis wanted to see him,
+and begged him, with a smile, to enter: whereupon Mr. Foker took off
+the embroidered tarboosh or fez (it had been worked by the fondest of
+mothers), and advanced, bowing to the gentlemen, and smiling on them
+graciously. Mr. Tatham had never seen so splendid an apparition before
+as this brocaded youth, who seated himself in an arm chair, spreading
+out his crimson skirts, and looking with exceeding kindness and
+frankness on the other two tenants of the room. "You seem to like my
+dressing-gown, sir," he said to Mr. Tatham. "A pretty thing, isn't it?
+Neat, but not in the least gaudy. And how do _you_ do? Major Pendennis,
+sir, and how does the world treat you?"
+
+There was that in Foker's manner and appearance which would have put
+an Inquisitor into good humor, and it smoothed the wrinkles under
+Pendennis's head of hair.
+
+"I have had an interview with that Irishman (you may speak before my
+friend, Mr. Tatham here, who knows all the affairs of the family), and
+it has not, I own, been very satisfactory. He won't believe that my
+nephew is poor: he says we are both liars; he did me the honor to hint
+that I was a coward, as I took leave. And I thought when you knocked at
+the door, that you might be the gentleman whom I expect with a challenge
+from Mr. Costigan--that is how the world treats me, Mr. Foker."
+
+"You don't mean that Irishman, the actress's father?" cried Mr. Tatham,
+who was a dissenter himself, and did not patronize the drama.
+
+"That Irishman, the actress's father--the very man. Have not you heard
+what a fool my nephew has made of himself about the girl?"--Mr. Tatham,
+who never entered the walls of a theater, had heard nothing: and Major
+Pendennis had to recount the story of his nephew's loves to the lawyer,
+Mr. Foker coming in with appropriate comments in his usual familiar
+language.
+
+Tatham was lost in wonder at the narrative. Why had not Mrs. Pendennis
+married a serious man, he thought--Mr. Tatham was a widower--and kept
+this unfortunate boy from perdition? As for Miss Costigan he would say
+nothing: her profession was sufficient to characterize _her_. Mr. Foker
+here interposed to say he had known some uncommon good people in the
+booths, as he called the temple of the muses. Well, it might be so, Mr.
+Tatham hoped so--but the father, Tatham knew personally--a man of the
+worst character, a wine-bibber and an idler in taverns and
+billiard-rooms, and a notorious insolvent. "I can understand the reason,
+major," he said, "why the fellow would not come to my office to
+ascertain the truth of the statements which you made him.--We have a
+writ out against him and another disreputable fellow, one of the
+play-actors, for a bill given to Mr. Skinner of this city, a most
+respectable grocer and wine and spirit merchant, and a member of the
+Society of Friends. This Costigan came crying to Mr. Skinner--crying
+in the shop, sir--and we have not proceeded against him or the other,
+as neither were worth powder and shot."
+
+It was while Mr. Tatham was engaged in telling this story that a third
+knock came to the door, and there entered an athletic gentleman in a
+shabby braided frock, bearing in his hand a letter with a large blotched
+red seal.
+
+"Can I have the honor of speaking with Major Pendennis in private?" he
+began--"I have a few words, for your ear, sir. I am the bearer of a
+mission from my friend Captain Costigan,"--but here the man with the
+bass voice paused, faltered, and turned pale--he caught sight of the red
+and well-remembered face of Mr. Tatham.
+
+"Hullo, Garbetts, speak up!" cried Mr. Foker, delighted.
+
+"Why, bless my soul, it is the other party to the bill!" said Mr. Tatham.
+"I say, sir; stop, I say." But Garbetts, with a face as blank as
+Macbeth's when Banquo's ghost appears upon him, gasped some inarticulate
+words, and fled out of the room.
+
+The major's gravity was also altogether upset, and he burst out
+laughing. So did Mr. Foker, who said, "By Jove, it was a good 'un."
+So did the attorney, although by profession a serious man.
+
+"I don't think there'll be any fight, major," young Foker said; and
+began mimicking the tragedian. "If there is, the old gentleman--your
+name Tatham?--very happy to make your acquaintance Mr. Tatham--may send
+the bailiffs to separate the men;" and Mr. Tatham--promised to do so.
+The major was by no means sorry at the ludicrous issue of the quarrel.
+"It seems to me, sir," he said to Mr. Foker, "that you always arrive to
+put me into good humor."
+
+Nor was this the only occasion on which Mr. Foker this day was destined
+to be of service to the Pendennis family. We have said that he had
+the _entree_ of Captain Costigan's lodgings, and in the course of the
+afternoon he thought he would pay the general a visit, and hear from his
+own lips what had occurred in the conversation, in the morning, with Mr.
+Pendennis. Captain Costigan was not at home. He had received permission,
+nay, encouragement from his daughter, to go to the convivial club at
+the Magpie Hotel, where no doubt he was bragging at that moment of his
+desire to murder a certain ruffian; for he was not only brave, but he
+knew it too, and liked to take out his courage, and, as it were, give
+it an airing in company.
+
+Costigan then was absent, but Miss Fotheringay was at home washing the
+tea-cups while Mr. Bows sate opposite to her.
+
+"Just done breakfast I see--how do?" said Mr. Foker, popping in his
+little funny head.
+
+"Get out you funny little man," cried Miss Fotheringay.
+
+"You mean come in," answered the other.--"Here we are!" and entering the
+room he folded his arms and began twirling his head round and round with
+immense rapidity, like Harlequin in the Pantomime when he first issues
+from his cocoon or envelope. Miss Fotheringay laughed with all her
+heart: a wink of Foker's would set her off laughing, when the bitterest
+joke Bows ever made could not get a smile from her, or the finest of poor
+Pen's speeches would only puzzle her. At the end of the harlequinade he
+sank down on one knee and kissed her hand. "You're the drollest little
+man," she said, and gave him a great good-humored slap. Pen used to
+tremble as he kissed her hand. Pen would have died of a slap.
+
+These preliminaries over, the three began to talk; Mr. Foker amused his
+companions by recounting to them the scene which he had just witnessed
+of the discomfiture of Mr. Garbetts, by which they learned, for the
+first time, how far the general had carried his wrath against Major
+Pendennis. Foker spoke strongly in favor of the major's character for
+veracity and honor, and described him as a tip-top swell, moving in the
+upper circle of society, who would never submit to any deceit--much more
+to deceive such a charming young woman as Miss Foth.
+
+He touched delicately upon the delicate marriage question, though he
+couldn't help showing that he held Pen rather cheap. In fact, he had a
+perhaps just contempt for Mr. Pen's high flown sentimentality; his own
+weakness, as he thought, not lying that way. "I knew it wouldn't do,
+Miss Foth," said he, nodding his little head. "Couldn't do.--Didn't like
+to put _my_ hand into the bag, but knew it couldn't do. He's too young
+for you: too green: a deal too green: and he turns out to be poor as
+Job. Can't have him at no price, can she, Mr. Bo?"
+
+"Indeed he's a nice poor boy," said the Fotheringay, rather sadly.
+
+"Poor little beggar," said Bows, with his hands in his pockets, and
+stealing up a queer look at Miss Fotheringay. Perhaps he thought and
+wondered at the way in which women play with men, and coax them and win
+them and drop them.
+
+But Mr. Bows had not the least objection to acknowledge that he thought
+Miss Fotheringay was perfectly right in giving up Mr. Arthur Pendennis,
+and that in his idea the match was always an absurd one: and Miss
+Costigan owned that she thought so herself, only she couldn't send away
+two thousand a year. "It all comes of believing papa's silly stories,"
+she said; "faith, I'll choose for meself another time"--and very likely
+the large image of Lieutenant Sir Derby Oaks entered into her mind at
+that instant.
+
+After praising Major Pendennis, whom Miss Costigan declared to be a
+proper gentleman entirely, smelling of lavender, and as neat as a
+pin--and who was pronounced by Mr. Bows to be the right sort of fellow,
+though rather too much of an old buck, Mr. Foker suddenly bethought him
+to ask the pair to come and meet the major that very evening at dinner
+at his apartment at the George. "He agreed to dine with me, and I think
+after the--after the little shindy this morning, in which I must say the
+general was wrong, it would look kind, you know.--I know the major fell
+in love with you Miss Foth: he said so."
+
+"So she may be Mrs. Pendennis still," Bows said, with a sneer--"No thank
+you, Mr. F.--I've dined."
+
+"Sure, that was at three o'clock," said Miss Costigan, who had an honest
+appetite, "and I can't go without you."
+
+"We'll have lobster salad and Champagne," said the little monster, who
+could not construe a line of Latin, or do a sum beyond the Rule of
+Three. Now, for lobster-salad and Champagne in an honorable manner Miss
+Costigan would have gone any where--and Major Pendennis actually found
+himself at seven o'clock, seated at a dinner-table in company with Mr.
+Bows, a professional fiddler, and Miss Costigan, whose father had wanted
+to blow his brains out a few hours before.
+
+To make the happy meeting complete, Mr. Foker, who knew Costigan's
+haunts, dispatched Stoopid to the club at the Magpie, where the general
+was in the act of singing a pathetic song, and brought him off to
+supper. To find his daughter and Bows seated at the board was a surprise
+indeed--Major Pendennis laughed, and cordially held out his hand, which
+the general officer grasped _avec effusion_, as the French say. In fact,
+he was considerably inebriated, and had already been crying over his own
+song before he joined the little party at the George. He burst into
+tears more than once, during the entertainment, and called the major his
+dearest friend. Stoopid and Mr. Foker walked home with him; the major
+gallantly giving his arm to Miss Costigan. He was received with great
+friendliness when he called the next day, when many civilities passed
+between the gentlemen. On taking leave he expressed his anxious desire
+to serve Miss Costigan on any occasion in which he could be useful to
+her, and he shook hands with Mr. Foker most cordially and gratefully,
+and said that gentleman had done him the very greatest service.
+
+"All right," said Mr. Foker: and they parted with mutual esteem.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On his return to Fairoaks the next day, Major Pendennis did not say what
+had happened to him on the previous night, or allude to the company in
+which he had passed it. But he engaged Mr. Smirke to stop to dinner; and
+any person accustomed to watch his manner might have remarked that there
+was something constrained in his hilarity and talkativeness, and that
+he was unusually gracious and watchful in his communications with his
+nephew. He gave Pen an emphatic God-bless-you, when the lad went to bed;
+and as they were about to part for the night, he seemed as if he was
+going to say something to Mrs. Pendennis, but he bethought him that if
+he spoke he might spoil her night's rest, and allowed her to sleep in
+peace.
+
+The next morning he was down in the breakfast-room earlier than was his
+custom, and saluted every body 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 Chatteries the day before.
+
+He told little Laura to go away, which the child did, having a thorough
+dislike to him; and as the door closed on her, he took Mrs. Pendennis's
+hand, and giving her a look full of meaning, pointed to the letter under
+the newspaper which Pen was pretending to read. "Will you come into the
+drawing-room?" he said. "I want to speak to you." And she followed him,
+wondering, into the hall.
+
+"What is it?" she said, nervously.
+
+"The affair is at an end," Major Pendennis said. "He has a letter there
+giving him his dismissal. I dictated it myself yesterday. There are a
+few lines from the lady, too, bidding him farewell. It is all over."
+
+Helen ran back to the dining-room, her brother following. Pen had jumped
+at his letter the instant they were gone. He was reading it, with a
+stupefied face. It stated what the major had said, that Mr. Costigan
+was most gratified for the kindness with which Arthur had treated
+his daughter, but that he was only now made aware of Mr. Pendennis's
+pecuniary circumstances. They were such that marriage was at present out
+of the question, and considering the great disparity in the age of the
+two, a future union was impossible. Under these circumstances, and
+with the deepest regret and esteem for him, Mr. Costigan bade Arthur
+farewell, and suggested that he should cease visiting, for some time
+at least, at his house.
+
+A few lines from Miss Costigan were inclosed. She acquiesced in the
+decision of her papa. She pointed out that she was many years older
+than Arthur, and that an engagement was not to be thought of. She would
+always be grateful for his kindness to her, and hoped to keep his
+friendship. But at present, and until the pain of the separation should
+be over, she entreated they should not meet.
+
+Pen read Costigan's letter and its inclosure 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 anxieties.
+
+"What--what is this?" Pen said. "It's some joke. This is not her
+writing. This is some servant's writing. Who's playing these tricks upon
+me?"
+
+"It comes under her father's envelope," the major said. "Those letters
+you had before were not in her hand: that is hers."
+
+"How do you know?" said Pen, very fiercely.
+
+"I saw her write it," the uncle answered, as the boy started up; and his
+mother, coming forward, took his hand. He put her away.
+
+"How came you to see her? How came you between me and her? What
+have I ever done to you that you should.--Oh, it's not true, it's not
+true!"--Pen broke out with a wild execration. "She can't have done it of
+her own accord. She can't mean it. She's pledged to me. Who has told her
+lies to break her from me?"
+
+"Lies are not told in the family, Arthur," Major Pendennis replied.
+"I told her the truth, which was, that you had no money to maintain her,
+for her foolish father had represented you to be rich. And when she
+knew how poor you were, she withdrew at once, and without any persuasion
+of mine. She was quite right. She is ten years older than you are.
+She is perfectly unfitted to be your wife, and knows it. Look at
+that handwriting, and ask yourself, is such a woman fitted to be the
+companion of your mother?"
+
+"I will know from herself if it is true," Arthur said, crumpling up the
+paper.
+
+"Won't you take my word of honor? Her letters were written by a
+confidante of hers, who writes better than she can--look here. Here's
+one from the lady to your friend, Mr. Foker. You have seen her with Miss
+Costigan, as whose amanuensis she acted"--the major said, with ever so
+little of a sneer, and laid down a certain billet which Mr. Foker had
+given to him.
+
+"It's not that," said Pen, burning with shame and rage. "I suppose what
+you say is true, sir, but I'll hear it from herself."
+
+"Arthur!" appealed his mother.
+
+"I _will_ see her," said Arthur. "I'll ask her to marry me, once more.
+I will. No one shall prevent me."
+
+"What, a woman who spells affection with one f? Nonsense, sir. Be a man,
+and remember that your mother is a lady. She was never made to associate
+with that tipsy old swindler or his daughter. Be a man, and forget her,
+as she does you."
+
+"Be a man and comfort your mother, my Arthur," Helen said, going and
+embracing him: and seeing that the pair were greatly moved, Major
+Pendennis went out of the room and shut the door upon them, wisely
+judging that they were best alone.
+
+He had won a complete victory. He actually had brought away Pen's
+letters in his portmanteau from Chatteries: having complimented Mr.
+Costigan, when he returned them, by giving him the little promissory
+note which had disquieted himself and Mr. Garbetts; and for which the
+major settled with Mr. Tatham.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pen rushed wildly off to Chatteries that day, but in vain attempted to
+see Miss Fotheringay, for whom he left a letter, inclosed to her father.
+The inclosure was returned by Mr. Costigan, who begged that all
+correspondence might end; and after one or two further attempts of the
+lad's, the indignant general desired that their acquaintance might
+cease. He cut Pen in the street. As Arthur and Foker were pacing the
+Castle walk, one day, they came upon Emily on her father's arm. She
+passed without any nod of recognition. Foker felt poor Pen trembling
+on his arm.
+
+His uncle wanted him to travel, to quit the country for a while, and
+his mother urged him, too: for he was growing very ill, and suffered
+severely. But he refused, and said point blank he would not go. He would
+not obey in this instance: and his mother was too fond and his uncle too
+wise to force him. Whenever Miss Fotheringay acted he rode over to the
+Chatteries Theater 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 balked in love besides Mr. Pen? Yes, indeed: but
+few die of the malady.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+IN WHICH MISS FOTHERINGAY MAKES A NEW ENGAGEMENT.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 favorite with the people of Chatteries as it was with
+the accomplished actor himself. Scarce any body was in the theater. Poor
+Pen had the boxes almost all to himself, and sate there lonely, with
+blood-shot eyes, leaning over the ledge, and gazing haggardly toward 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 one of them; and only saw Cora whom his soul longed after. He said
+afterward 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 Chatteries
+jail? There he sate then, miserable, and gazing at her. And she took no
+more notice of him than he did of the rest of the house.
+
+The Fotheringay was uncommonly handsome, in a white raiment and leopard
+skin, with a sun upon her breast, and fine tawdry bracelets on her
+beautiful glancing arms. She spouted to admiration the few words of her
+part, and looked it still better. The eyes, which had overthrown Pen's
+soul, rolled and gleamed as lustrous as ever; but it was not to him that
+they were directed that night. He did not know to whom, or remark a
+couple of gentlemen, in the box next to him, upon whom Miss
+Fotheringay's glances were perpetually shining.
+
+Nor had Pen noticed the extraordinary change which had taken place on
+the stage a short time after entry of these two gentleman into the
+theater. There were so few people in the house, that the first act
+of the play languished entirely, and there had been some question of
+returning the money, as upon that other unfortunate night when poor Pen
+had been driven away. The actors were perfectly careless about their
+parts, and yawned through the dialogue, and talked loud to each other
+in the intervals. Even Bingley was listless, and Mrs. B. in Elvira
+spoke under her breath.
+
+How came it that all of a sudden Mrs. Bingley began to raise her voice
+and bellow like a bull of Bashan? Whence was it that Bingley, flinging
+off his apathy, darted about the stage and yelled like Kean? Why did
+Garbetts and Rowkins and Miss Rouncy try, each of them the force of
+their charms or graces, and act and swagger and scowl and spout their
+very loudest at the two gentlemen in box No. 3?
+
+One was a quiet little man in black, with a gray 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, jeweled pins and neck-chains. When he took out his
+yellow pocket-hankerchief with his hand that was cased in white kids,
+a delightful odor of musk and bergamot was shaken through the house.
+He was evidently a personage of rank, and it was at him that the little
+Chatteries company was acting.
+
+He was, in a word, no other than Mr. Dolphin, the great manager from
+London, accompanied by his faithful friend and secretary Mr. William
+Minns: without whom he never traveled. He had not been ten minutes in
+the theater 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 favor of the great stage sultan. Pizaro never got a hand from him.
+Bingley yelled, and Mrs. Bingley bellowed, and the manager only took
+snuff out of his great gold box. It was only in the last scene, when
+Rolla comes in staggering with the infant (Bingley is not so strong as
+he was, and his fourth son Master Talma Bingley is a monstrous large
+child for his age)--when Rolla comes staggering with the child to Cora,
+who rushes forward with a shriek, and says--"O God, there's blood upon
+him!"--that the London manager clapped his hands, and broke out with an
+enthusiastic bravo.
+
+Then having concluded his applause, Mr. Dolphin gave his secretary a
+slap on the shoulder, and said "By Jove, Billy, she'll do!"
+
+"Who taught her that dodge?" said old Billy, who was a sardonic old
+gentleman--"I remember her at the Olympic, and hang me if she could say
+Bo to a goose."
+
+It was little Mr. Bows in the orchestra who had taught her the 'dodge'
+in question. All the company heard the applause, and, as the curtain
+went down, came round her, and congratulated and hated Miss Fotheringay.
+
+Now Mr. Dolphin's appearance in the remote little Chatteries theater 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 theater (which,
+if you please, and to injure no present susceptibilities and vested
+interests, we shall call the Museum Theater) 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 any body but himself: the celebrated Mr. and Mrs. Cawdor
+had come out in Mr. Rawhead's tragedy, and in their favorite 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 splendor 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 every body was looking
+out for the day when he should appear in the Gazette.
+
+One of the illustrious patrons of the Museum Theater, 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 theater 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 any
+thing 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 aid-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 toward 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 toward 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 Sautarelle, or Mademoiselle de Bondi (known as la petite
+Caoutchouc), 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, courtesied and smiled, especially to those hands, before they
+walked up the stage again, panting and happy.
+
+One night this great prince surrounded by a few choice friends was in
+his box at the Museum, and they were making such a noise and laughter
+that the pit was scandalized, and many indignant voices were bawling
+out silence so loudly, that Wagg wondered the police did not interfere
+to take the rascals out. Wenham was amusing the party in the box
+with extracts from a private letter which he had received from Major
+Pendennis, whose absence in the country at the full London season had
+been remarked, and of course deplored, by his friends.
+
+"The secret is out," said Mr. Wenham, "There's a woman in the case."
+
+"Why d---- it, Wenham, he's your age," said the gentleman behind the
+curtain.
+
+"Pour les ames bien nees, l'amour ne compte pas le nombre des annees,"
+said Mr. Wenham, with a gallant air. "For my part I hope to be a victim
+till I die, and to break my heart every year of my life." The meaning of
+which sentence was, "My lord, you need not talk; I'm three years younger
+than you, and twice as well conserve."
+
+"Wenham, you affect me," said the great man, with one of his usual
+oaths. "By ---- you do. I like to see a fellow preserving all the
+illusions of youth up to our time of life--and keeping his heart warm
+as yours is. Hang it, sir--it's a comfort to meet with such a generous,
+candid creature.--Who's that gal in the second row, with blue ribbons,
+third from the stage?--fine gal. Yes, you and I are sentimentalists.
+Wagg I don't think so much cares--it's the stomach rather more than the
+heart with you, eh, Wagg, my boy?"
+
+"I like every thing that's good," said Mr. Wagg, generously. "Beauty and
+Burgundy, Venus and Venison. I don't say that Venus's turtles are to be
+despised, because they don't cook them at the London Tavern: but--but
+tell us about old Pendennis, Mr. Wenham," he abruptly concluded--for his
+joke flagged just then, as he saw that his patron was not listening. In
+fact, Steyne's glasses were up, and he was examining some object on the
+stage.
+
+"Yes, I've heard that joke about Venus's turtles and the London Tavern
+before--you begin to fail, my poor Wagg. If you don't mind I shall be
+obliged to have a new Jester," Lord Steyne said, laying down his glass.
+"Go on, Wenham, about old Pendennis."
+
+"'Dear Wenham,'--he begins," Mr. Wenham read,--"'as you have had my
+character in your hands for the last three weeks, and no doubt have torn
+me to shreds, according to your custom, I think you can afford to be
+good-humored 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 theater 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 any thing 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 _any thing_ I can
+in return for your service--which I shall consider as one of the
+greatest _that can be done to me_. Do, do this now as a good fellow,
+which _I always said you were_: and, in return, command yours truly,
+A. Pendennis.'"
+
+"It's a clear case," said Mr. Wenham, having read this letter; "old
+Pendennis is in love."
+
+"And wants to get the woman up to London--evidently," continued Mr.
+Wagg.
+
+"I should like to see Pendennis on his knees, with the rheumatism," said
+Mr. Wenham.
+
+"Or accommodating the beloved object with a lock of his hair," said
+Wagg.
+
+"Stuff," said the great man. "He has relations in the country, hasn't
+he? He said something about a nephew, whose interest could return
+a member. It is the nephew's affair, depend on it. The young one is
+in a scrape. I was myself--when I was in the fifth form at Eton--a
+market-gardener's daughter--and swore I'd marry her. I was mad about
+her--poor Polly!"--Here he made a pause, and perhaps the past rose
+up to Lord Steyne, and George Gaunt was a boy again, not altogether
+lost.--"But I say, she must be a fine woman from Pendennis's account.
+Have in Dolphin, and let us hear if he knows any thing of her."
+
+At this Wenham sprang out of the box, passed the servitor who waited at
+the door communicating with the stage, and who saluted Mr. Wenham with
+profound respect; and the latter emissary, pushing on, and familiar
+with the place, had no difficulty in finding out the manager, who was
+employed, as he not unfrequently was, in swearing and cursing the ladies
+of the corps-de-ballet for not doing their duty.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 embassador, and pay his
+personal respects to that great man.
+
+The visit to Chatteries was the result of their conversation: and Mr.
+Dolphin wrote to his lordship from that place, and did himself the honor
+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 honor of appearing before a
+London audience, and his noble and enlightened patron the Marquess of
+Steyne.
+
+Pen read the announcement of Miss Fotheringay's engagement in the
+Chatteries paper, where he had so often praised her charms. The editor
+made very handsome mention of her talent and beauty, and prophesied her
+success in the metropolis. Bingley, the manager, began to advertise
+"The last night of Miss Fotheringay's engagement." Poor Pen and Sir
+Derby Oaks were very constant at the play: Sir Derby in the stage-box,
+throwing bouquets and getting glances.--Pen in the almost deserted
+boxes, haggard, wretched, and lonely. Nobody cared whether Miss
+Fotheringay was going or staying except those two--and perhaps one
+more, which was Mr. Bows of the orchestra.
+
+He came out of his place one night, and went into the house to the box
+where Pen was; and he held out his hand to him, and asked him to come
+and walk. They walked down the street together: and went and sate upon
+Chatteries 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'm older and know her
+better. She has no more heart than the stone you are leaning on; and it
+or you or I might fall into the water, and never come up again, and she
+wouldn't care. Yes--she would care for me, because she wants me to teach
+her; and she won't be able to get on without me, and will be forced to
+send for me from London. But she wouldn't if she didn't want me. She has
+no heart and no head, and no sense, and no feelings, and no griefs or
+cares, whatever. I was going to say no pleasures--but the fact is, she
+does like her dinner, and she is pleased when people admire her."
+
+"And you do?" said Pen, interested out of himself, and wondering at the
+crabbed, homely little old man.
+
+"It's a habit, like taking snuff, or drinking drams," said the other,
+"I've been taking her these five years, and can't do without, her. It
+was I made her. If she doesn't send for me, I shall follow her: but I
+know she'll send for me. She wants me. Same day she'll marry, and fling
+me over, as I do the end of this cigar."
+
+The little flaming spark dropped into the water below, and disappeared;
+and Pen, as he rode home that night, actually thought about somebody but
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE HAPPY VILLAGE.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 behavior or to put any restraint on his nephew's
+actions, but he managed nevertheless to keep the lad constantly under
+his eye or those of his agents, and young Arthur's comings and goings
+were quite well known to his vigilant guardian.
+
+I suppose there is scarcely any man who reads this or any other
+novel but has been balked in love sometime or other, by fate, and
+circumstance, by the falsehood of woman, 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 per centage 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 a quarter of him may be said
+to have perished; and that is no small portion. He has come back to his
+old size subsequently; perhaps is bigger than ever: very likely some new
+affection has closed round his heart and ribs and made them comfortable,
+and young Pen is a man who will console himself like the rest of us. We
+say this lest the ladies should be disposed to deplore him prematurely,
+or be seriously uneasy with regard to his complaint. His mother was, but
+what will not a maternal fondness fear or invent? "Depend on it, my dear
+creature," Major Pendennis would say gallantly to her, "the boy will
+recover. As soon as we get her out of the country we will take him
+somewhere, and show him a little life. Meantime make yourself easy about
+him. Half a fellow's pangs at losing a woman result from vanity more
+than affection. To be left by a woman is the deuce and all, to be sure;
+but look how easily we leave 'em."
+
+Mrs. Pendennis did not know. This sort of knowledge had by no means come
+within the simple lady's scope. Indeed she did not like the subject or
+to talk of it: her heart had had its own little private misadventure and
+she had borne up against it and cured it; and perhaps she had not much
+patience with other folks' passions, except, of course, Arthur's whose
+sufferings she made her own, feeling indeed, very likely, in many of the
+boy's illnesses and pains a great deal more than Pen himself endured.
+And she watched him through this present grief with a jealous silent
+sympathy; although, as we have said, he did not talk to her of his
+unfortunate condition.
+
+The major must be allowed to have had not a little merit and
+forbearance, and to have exhibited a highly creditable degree of family
+affection. The life at Fairoaks was uncommonly dull to a man who had the
+_entree_ of half the houses in London, and was in the habit of making
+his bow in three or four drawing-rooms of a night. A dinner with Doctor
+Portman or a neighboring 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 bed-room, which he sedulously studied. It is thus a well-regulated
+man will accommodate himself to circumstances, and show himself calmly
+superior to fortune.
+
+Pen sometimes took the box at backgammon of a night, or would listen to
+his mother's simple music of summer evenings--but he was very restless
+and wretched in spite of all; and has been known to be up before the
+early daylight even: and down at a carp-pond in Clavering Park, a dreary
+pool with innumerable-whispering rushes and green alders, where a
+milkmaid drowned herself in the baronet's grandfather's time, and her
+ghost was said to walk still. But Pen did not drown himself, as perhaps
+his mother fancied might be his intention. He liked to go and fish
+there, and think and think at leisure, as the float quivered in the
+little eddies of the pond, and the fish flapped about him. If he got a
+bite he was excited enough: and in this way occasionally brought home,
+carps, tenches, and eels, which the major cooked in the continental
+fashion.
+
+By this pond, and under a tree, which was his favorite 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 afterward--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 cudgeling his brain to
+find any rhyme for sorrow, beside 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 Chatteries, her rider gesticulating wildly on
+her back, and astonishing carters and turnpikemen as he passed, crying
+out the name of the false one.
+
+Mr. Foker became a very frequent and welcome visitor at Fairoaks during
+this period, where his good spirits and oddities always amused the major
+and Pendennis, while they astonished the widow and little Laura not a
+little. His tandem made a great sensation in Clavering market-place;
+where he upset a market stall, and cut Mrs. Pybus's poodle over the
+shaven quarters, and drank a glass of raspberry bitters at the Clavering
+Arms. All the society in the little place heard who he was, and looked
+out his name in their Peerages. He was so young, and their books so old,
+that his name did not appear in many of their volumes; and his mamma,
+now quite an antiquated lady, figured among the progeny of the Earl of
+Rosherville, as Lady Agnes Milton, still. But his name, wealth, and
+honorable lineage were speedily known about Clavering, where you may be
+sure that poor Pen's little transaction with the Chatteries actress was
+also pretty freely discussed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Looking at the little old town of Clavering St. Mary from the London
+road as it runs by the lodge at Fairoaks, and seeing the rapid and
+shining Brawl winding down from the town and skirting the woods of
+Clavering Park, and the ancient church tower and peaked roofs of the
+houses rising up among trees and old walls, behind which swells a fair
+back-ground of sunshiny hills that stretch from Clavering westward
+toward the sea--the place looks so cheery and comfortable that many a
+traveler's heart must have yearned toward it from the coach-top, and he
+must have thought that it was in such a calm friendly nook he would like
+to shelter at the end of life's struggle. Tom Smith who used to drive
+the Alacrity coach, would often point to a tree near the river, from
+which a fine view of the church and town was commanded, and inform his
+companion on the box that "Artises come and take hoff the Church from
+that there tree.--It was a Habby once, sir:"--and indeed a pretty view
+it is, which I recommend to Mr. Stanfield or Mr. Roberts, for their next
+tour.
+
+Like Constantinople seen from the Bosphorus; like Mrs. Rougemont viewed
+in her box from the opposite side of the house; like many an object
+which we pursue in life, and admire before we have attained it;
+Clavering is rather prettier at a distance than it is on a closer
+acquaintance. The town so cheerful of aspect a few furlongs off, looks
+very blank and dreary. Except on market days there is nobody in the
+streets.
+
+The clack of a pair of pattens echoes through half the place, and you
+may hear the creaking of the rusty old ensign at the Clavering Arms,
+without being disturbed by any other noise. There has not been a ball
+in the assembly rooms since the Clavering volunteers gave one to their
+colonel, the old Sir Francis Clavering; and the stables which once held
+a great part of that brilliant, but defunct regiment, are now cheerless
+and empty, except on Thursdays, when the farmers put up there, and their
+tilted carts and gigs make a feeble show of liveliness in the place, or
+on petty sessions, when the magistrates attend in what used to be the
+old card-room.
+
+On the south side of the market rises up the church, with its great gray
+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 Honorable Mrs. Simcoe)
+incumbent and architect of the Chapel of Ease in the lower town, thinks
+them the abomination of desolation.
+
+The rectory is a stout broad-shouldered brick house, of the reign of
+Anne. It communicates with the church and market by different gates,
+and stands at the opening of Yew-tree Lane, where the Grammar School
+(Rev. ---- Wapshot) is; Yew-tree Cottage (Miss Flather); the butcher's
+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 down stairs; and the young ladies' bonnets make a tolerable show
+in the rather vacant aisles. Nobody is in the great pew of the Clavering
+family except the statues of defunct baronets and their ladies: there
+is Sir Poyntz Clavering, knight and baronet, kneeling in a square
+beard opposite his wife in a ruff; a very fat lady, the Dame Rebecca
+Clavering, in alto-relievo, is borne up to Heaven by two little
+blue-veined angels, who seem to have a severe task--and so forth. How
+well, in after life, Pen remembered those effigies, and how often in
+youth he scanned them as the doctor was grumbling the sermon from the
+pulpit, and Smirke's mild head and forehead curl peered over the great
+prayer-book in the desk!
+
+The Fairoaks folks were constant at the old church; their servants
+had a pew, so had the doctor's, so had Wapshot's, and those of Misses
+Finucane's establishment, three maids and a very nice looking young man
+in a livery. The Wapshot family were numerous and faithful. Glanders and
+his children regularly came to church: so did one of the apothecaries.
+Mrs. Pybus went, turn and turn about, to the Low Town church, and to the
+Abbey: the Charity School and their families of course came; Wapshot's
+boys made a good cheerful noise, scuffling with their feet as they
+marched into church and up the organ-loft stair, and blowing their noses
+a good deal during the service. To be brief, the congregation looked as
+decent as might be in these bad times. The Abbey Church was furnished
+with a magnificent screen, and many hatchments and heraldic tombstones.
+The doctor spent a great part of his income in beautifying his darling
+place; he had endowed it with a superb painted window, bought in the
+Netherlands, and an organ grand enough for a cathedral.
+
+But in spite of organ and window, in consequence of the latter very
+likely, which had come out of a papistical place of worship and was
+blazoned all over with idolatry, Clavering New Church prospered
+scandalously in the teeth of orthodoxy; and many of the doctor's
+congregation deserted to Mr. Simcoe and the honorable 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 aids-de-camp. Ah, it was a hard burthen for the doctor's
+lady to bear, to behold her husband's congregation dwindling away; to
+give the precedence on the few occasions when they met to a notorious
+low-churchman's wife who was the daughter of an Irish Peer; to know that
+there was a party in Clavering, their own town of Clavering, on which
+her doctor spent a great deal more than his professional income, who
+held him up to odium because he played a rubber at whist; and pronounced
+him to be a heathen because he went to the play. In her grief she
+besought him to give up the play and the rubber--indeed they could
+scarcely get a table now, so dreadful was the outcry against the
+sport--but the doctor declared that he would do what he thought right,
+and what the great and good George the Third did (whose chaplain he had
+been): and as for giving up whist because those silly folks cried out
+against it, he would play dummy to the end of his days with his wife and
+Myra, rather than yield to their despicable persecutions.
+
+Of the two families, owners of the factory (which had spoiled the Brawl
+as a trout-stream and brought all the mischief into the town), the
+senior partner, Mr. Rolt, went to Ebenezer; the junior, Mr. Barker, to
+the New Church. In a word, people quarreled in this little place a great
+deal more than neighbors 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
+mustache might be seen at the window; and of course, little Mrs. Pybus,
+who looked at every body's letters as the post brought them (for the
+Clavering reading room, as every one knows, used to be held at Baker's
+Library, London-street formerly Hog Lane), and read every advertisement
+in the paper.
+
+It may be imagined how great a sensation was created in this amiable
+little community when the news reached it of Mr. Pen's love-passages at
+Chatteries. 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 Chatteries. They always hated him and called
+him Lord Pendennis, because he did not wear corduroys as they did, and
+rode a horse, and gave himself the airs of a buck.
+
+And if the truth must be told, it was Mrs. Portman herself who was the
+chief narrator of the story of Pen's loves. Whatever tales this candid
+woman heard, she was sure to impart them to her neighbors; and after she
+had been put into possession of Pen's secret by the little scandal at
+Chatteries, 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 Honorable Mrs. Simcoe's
+_soiree_, at the factory; nay, through the mill itself the tale was
+current in a few hours, and young Arthur Pendennis's madness, was in
+every mouth.
+
+All Doctor 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 rumor, 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 among any folks in our country, and assuredly we have enough
+of it, there is no pride more deep-seated than that of twopenny old
+gentlewomen in small towns. "Gracious goodness," the cry was, "how
+infatuated the mother is about that pert and headstrong boy, who gives
+himself the airs of a _lord_ on his _blood-horse_, and for whom _our_
+society is not good enough, and who would marry an odious painted
+actress off a booth, where very likely he wants to rant himself. If
+dear, good Mr. Pendennis had been alive this scandal would never have
+happened."
+
+No more it would, very likely, nor should we have been occupied in
+narrating Pen's history. It was true that he gave himself airs to the
+Clavering folks. Naturally haughty and frank, their cackle and small
+talk and small dignities bored him, and he showed a contempt which he
+could not conceal. The doctor and the curate were the only people Pen
+cared for in the place--even Mrs. Portman shared in the general distrust
+of him, and of his mother, the widow, who kept herself aloof from the
+village society, and was sneered at accordingly, because she tried,
+forsooth, to keep her head up with the great county families. She,
+indeed! Mrs. Barker at the factory has four times the butcher's meat
+that goes up to Fairoaks, with all their fine airs.
+
+_&c. &c. &c._: 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
+neighbor and her children, and an honest, brave lad, impetuous, and
+full of good, and wishing well to every mortal alive, found enemies and
+detractors among people to whom they were superior, and to whom they
+had never done any thing like harm. The Clavering curs were yelping all
+round the house of Fairoaks, and delighted to pull Pen down.
+
+Doctor Portman and Smirke were both cautious of informing the widow
+of the constant outbreak of calumny which was pursuing poor Pen,
+though Glanders, who was a friend of the house, kept him _au courant_.
+It may be imagined what his indignation was; was there any man in the
+village whom he could call to account? Presently some wags began to
+chalk up "Fotheringay forever!" and other sarcastic allusions to late
+transactions, at Fairoaks gate. Another brought a large play-bill from
+Chatteries, 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 neighboring small squire, who lived
+in the doubtful capacity of parlor boarder with Mr. Wapshot, flung
+himself into a theatrical attitude near a newly-made grave, and began
+repeating Hamlet's verses over Ophelia, with a hideous leer at Pen.
+
+The young fellow was so enraged that he rushed at Hobnell Major with a
+shriek very much resembling an oath, cut him furiously across the face
+with the riding-whip which he carried, flung it away, calling upon the
+cowardly villain to defend himself, and in another minute knocked the
+bewildered young ruffian into the grave which was just waiting for a
+different lodger.
+
+Then with his fists clenched, and his face quivering with passion and
+indignation, he roared out to Mr. Hobnell's gaping companions, to know
+if any of the blackguards would come on? But they held back with a
+growl, and retreated as Doctor Portman came up to his wicket, and Mr.
+Hobnell, with his nose and lip bleeding piteously, emerged from the
+grave.
+
+Pen, looking death and defiance at the lads, who retreated toward their
+side of the churchyard, walked back again through the doctor's wicket,
+and was interrogated by that gentleman. The young fellow was so agitated
+he could scarcely speak. His voice broke into a sob, as he answered.
+"The ---- coward insulted me, sir," he said; and the doctor passed over
+the oath, and respected the emotion of the honest, suffering young
+heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pendennis the elder, who like a real man of the world had a proper and
+constant dread of the opinion of his neighbor, was prodigiously annoyed
+by the absurd little tempest which was blowing in Chatteries, and
+tossing about Master Pen's reputation. Doctor Portman and Captain
+Glanders had to support the charges of the whole Chatteries society
+against the young reprobate, who was looked upon as a monster of crime.
+Pen did not say any thing about the churchyard scuffle at home; but went
+over to Baymouth, and took counsel with his friend Harry Foker, Esq.,
+who drove over his drag presently to the Clavering Arms, whence he sent
+Stoopid with a note to Thomas Hobnell, Esq., at the Rev. J. Wapshot's,
+and a civil message to ask when he should wait upon that gentleman.
+
+Stoopid brought back word that the note had been opened by Mr. Hobnell,
+and read to half-a-dozen of the big boys, on whom it seemed to make a
+great impression; and that after consulting together, and laughing, Mr.
+Hobnell said he would send an answer "arter arternoon school, which the
+bell was a ringing; and Mr. Wapshot he came out in his Master's gownd."
+Stoopid was learned in academical costume, having attended Mr. Foker at
+St. Boniface.
+
+Mr. Foker went out to see the curiosities of Clavering, meanwhile; but
+not having a taste for architecture, Doctor Portman's fine church did
+not engage his attention much, and he pronounced the tower to be as
+moldy 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 Madam
+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 parlor, 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It was no other than Mr. Wapshot himself, who came with an air of great
+indignation, and holding Pen's missive in his hand, asked Mr. Foker
+"how dared he bring such an unchristian message as a challenge to a
+boy of his school?"
+
+In fact Pen had written a note to his adversary of the day before,
+telling him that if after the chastisement which his insolence richly
+deserved, he felt inclined to ask the reparation which was usually given
+among gentlemen, Mr. Arthur Pendennis's friend, Mr. Henry Foker, was
+empowered to make any arrangements for the satisfaction of Mr. Hobnell.
+
+"And so he sent _you_ with the answer--did he, sir?" Mr. Foker said,
+surveying the schoolmaster in his black coat and clerical costume.
+
+"If he had accepted this wicked challenge, I should have flogged him,"
+Mr. Wapshot said, and gave Mr. Foker a glance which seemed to say, "and
+I should like very much to flog you, too."
+
+"Uncommon kind of you, sir, I'm sure," said Pen's emissary. "I told my
+principal that I didn't think the other man would fight," he continued,
+with a great air of dignity. "He prefers being flogged to fighting, sir,
+I dare say. May I offer you any refreshment, Mr. ----? I haven't the
+advantage of your name."
+
+"My name is Wapshot, sir, and I am master of the grammar school of this
+town, sir," cried the other: "and I want no refreshment, sir, I thank
+you, and have no desire to make your acquaintance, sir."
+
+"I didn't seek yours, sir, I'm sure," replied Mr. Foker. "In affairs
+of this sort, you see, I think it is a pity that the clergy should be
+called in, but there's no accounting for tastes, sir."
+
+"I think it's a pity that boys should talk about committing murder, sir,
+as lightly as you do," roared the schoolmaster; "and if I had you in my
+school--"
+
+"I dare say you would teach me better, sir," Mr. Foker said, with a bow.
+"Thank you, sir. I've finished my education, sir, and ain't a going back
+to school, sir--when I do, I'll remember your kind offer, sir. John,
+show this gentleman down stairs--and, of course, as Mr. Hobnell likes
+being thrashed, we can have no objection, sir, and we shall be very
+happy to accommodate him, whenever he comes our way."
+
+And with this, the young fellow bowed the elder gentleman out of the
+room, and sate down and wrote a note off to Pen, in which he informed
+the latter, that Mr. Hobnell was not disposed to fight, and proposed
+to put up with the caning which Pen had administered to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+MORE STORMS IN THE PUDDLE.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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
+behavior. 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 Chatteries for
+a while--any where removed from the woman who had brought him into so
+much trouble.
+
+Pen, when remonstrated with by this fond parent, and angrily rebuked by
+the doctor for his violence and ferocious intentions, took the matter
+_au grand serieux_, with the happy conceit and gravity of youth: said
+that he himself was very sorry for the affair, that the insult had come
+upon him without the slightest provocation on his part; that he would
+permit no man to insult him upon this head without vindicating his own
+honor, and appealing with great dignity to his uncle, asked whether he
+could have acted otherwise as a gentleman, than as he did in resenting
+the outrage offered to him, and in offering satisfaction to the person
+chastised?
+
+"_Vous allez trop vite_, my good sir," said the uncle, rather
+puzzled, for he had been indoctrinating his nephew with some of his
+own notions upon the point of honor--old-world notions savoring 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
+school-boys, this sort of thing is ridiculous, my dear boy--perfectly
+ridiculous."
+
+"It is extremely wicked, and unlike my son," said Mrs. Pendennis, with
+tears in her eyes; and bewildered with the obstinacy of the boy.
+
+Pen kissed her, and said with great pomposity, "Women, dear mother,
+don't understand these matters--I put myself into Foker's hands--I had
+no other course to pursue."
+
+Major Pendennis grinned and shrugged his shoulders. The young ones were
+certainly making great progress, he thought. Mrs. Pendennis declared
+that that Foker was a wicked horrid little wretch, and was sure that he
+would lead her dear boy into mischief, if Pen went to the same college
+with him. "I have a great mind not to let him go at all," she said: and
+only that she remembered that the lad's father had always destined him
+for the college in which he had had his own brief education, very likely
+the fond mother would have put a veto upon his going to the University.
+
+That he was to go, and at the next October term, had been arranged
+between all the authorities who presided over the lad's welfare. Foker
+had promised to introduce him to the right set; and Major Pendennis laid
+great store upon Pen's introduction into college life and society by
+this admirable young gentleman. "Mr. Foker knows the very best young men
+now at the University," the major said, "and Pen will form acquaintances
+there who will be of the greatest advantage through life to him. The
+young Marquis of Plinlimmon is there, eldest son of the Duke of Saint
+David's--Lord Magnus Charters is there, Lord Runnymede's son; and a
+first cousin of Mr. Foker (Lady Runnymede, my dear, was Lady Agatha
+Milton, you of course remember), Lady Agnes will certainly invite him to
+Logwood; and far from being alarmed at his intimacy with her son, who is
+a singular and humorous, but most prudent and amiable young man, to
+whom, I am sure, we are under every obligation for his admirable conduct
+in the affair of the Fotheringay marriage, I look upon it as one of the
+very luckiest things which could have happened to Pen, that he should
+have formed an intimacy with this most amusing young gentleman."
+
+Helen sighed, she supposed the major knew best. Mr. Foker had been
+very kind in the wretched business with Miss Costigan, certainly, and
+she was grateful to him. But she could not feel otherwise than a dim
+presentiment of evil; and all these quarrels, and riots, and worldliness,
+scared her about the fate of her boy.
+
+Doctor Portman was decidedly of opinion that Pen should go to college.
+He hoped the lad would read, and have a moderate indulgence of the best
+society too. He was of opinion that Pen would distinguish himself:
+Smirke spoke very highly of his proficiency: the doctor himself had
+heard him construe, and thought he acquitted himself remarkably well.
+That he should go out of Chatteries was a great point, at any rate, and
+Pen, who was distracted from his private grief by the various rows and
+troubles which had risen round about him, gloomily said he would obey.
+
+There were assizes, races, and the entertainments, and the flux of
+company consequent upon them, at Chatteries, 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 Chatteries Theater 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 favor find any thing
+remarkable in the actress performing on the little Chatteries boards.
+Many a 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 dullness 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 dullness is a much finer gift than we
+give it credit for being, and that some people are very lucky whom
+Nature has endowed with a good store of that great anodyne.
+
+Pen used to go drearily in and out from the play at Chatteries 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 favorable turn had occurred in Pen's malady. It was the violent
+efflux of versification, among other symptoms, which gave Pen's guardian
+and physician satisfaction. He might be heard spouting verses in the
+shrubbery walks, or muttering them between his teeth as he sat with
+the home party of evenings. One day prowling about the house in Pen's
+absence, the major found a great book full of verses in the lad's study.
+They were in English, and in Latin; quotations from the classic authors
+were given in the scholastic manner in the foot-notes. He can't be very
+bad, wisely thought the Pall Mall Philosopher: and he made Pen's mother
+remark (not, perhaps, without a secret feeling of disappointment, for
+she loved romance like other soft women), that the young gentleman
+during the last fortnight came home quite hungry to dinner at night,
+and also showed a very decent appetite at the breakfast table in the
+morning. "Gad, I wish I could," said the major, thinking ruefully of his
+dinner pills. "The boy begins to sleep well, depend upon that." It was
+cruel, but it was true.
+
+Having no other soul to confide in--for he could not speak to his mother
+of his loves and disappointments--his uncle treated them in a scornful
+and worldly tone, which, though carefully guarded and polite, yet jarred
+greatly on the feelings of Mr. Pen--and Foker was much too coarse to
+appreciate those refined sentimental secrets--the lad's friendship for
+the curate redoubled, or rather, he was never tired of having Smirke for
+a listener on that one subject. What is a lover without a confidant?
+Pen employed Mr. Smirke, as Corydon does the elm-tree, to cut out his
+mistress's name upon. He made him echo with the name of the beautiful
+Amaryllis. When men have left off playing the tune, they do not care
+much for the pipe: but Pen thought he had a great friendship for Smirke,
+because he could sigh out his loves and griefs into his tutor's ears;
+and Smirke had his own reasons for always being ready at the lad's call.
+
+Pen's affection gushed out in a multitude of sonnets to the friend
+of his heart, as he styled the curate, which the other received with
+great sympathy. He plied Smirke with Latin Sapphics and Alcaics. The
+love-songs multiplied under his fluent pen; and Smirke declared and
+believed that they were beautiful. On the other hand, Pen expressed
+a boundless gratitude to think that Heaven should have sent him
+such a friend at such a moment. He presented his tutor with his best
+bound books, and his gold guard chain, and wanted him to take his
+double-barreled gun. He went into Chatteries and got a gold pencil-case
+on credit (for he had no money, and indeed was still in debt to Smirke
+for some of the Fotheringay presents), which he presented to Smirke,
+with an inscription indicative of his unalterable and eternal regard
+for the curate; who of course was pleased with every mark of the boy's
+attachment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The poor curate was naturally very much dismayed at the contemplated
+departure of his pupil. When Arthur should go, Smirke's occupation and
+delight would go too. What pretext could he find for a daily visit to
+Fairoaks, and that kind word or glance from the lady there, which was as
+necessary to the curate as the frugal dinner which Madam 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 behavior which flattered his
+hopes. She had praised his sermon 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 forever--and within that door
+lay all the world for Mr. Smirke.
+
+Thus, oh friendly readers, we see how every man in the world, has his
+own private griefs and business, by which he is more cast down or
+occupied than by the affairs or sorrows of any other person. While Mrs.
+Pendennis is disquieting herself about losing her son and that anxious
+hold she has had of him, as long as he has remained in the mother's
+nest, whence he is about to take flight into the great world
+beyond--while the major's great soul chafes and frets, inwardly vexed as
+he thinks what great parties are going on in London, and that he might
+be sunning himself in the glances of dukes and duchesses, but for those
+cursed affairs which keep him in a wretched little country hole--while
+Pen is tossing between his passion and a more agreeable sensation,
+unacknowledged yet, but swaying him considerably, namely, his longing to
+see the world--Mr. Smirke has a private care watching at his bed side,
+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,
+every body! You and your wife have pressed the same pillow for forty
+years and fancy yourselves united.--Pshaw, does she cry out when you
+have the gout, or do you lie awake when she has the tooth-ache? 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 cotillion with the captain, before your
+father proposed for her; or, what a silly little over-rated creature
+your wife is, and how absurdly you are infatuated about her--and, as for
+your wife--O philosophic reader, answer and say--Do you tell her all?
+Ah, sir--a distinct universe walks about under your hat and under
+mine--all things in nature are different to each--the woman we look
+at has not the same features, the dish we eat from has not the same
+taste to the one and the other--you and I are but a pair of infinite
+isolations, with some fellow-islands a little more or less near to us.
+Let us return, however, to the solitary Smirke.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Smirke had one confidante for his passion--that most injudicious woman,
+Madame Fribsby. How she became Madame Fribsby, nobody knows; she had
+left Clavering to go to a milliner's in London as Miss Fribsby--she
+pretended that she had got the rank in Paris during her residence in
+that city. But how could the French king, were he ever so much disposed,
+give her any such title? We shall not inquire into this mystery,
+however. Suffice to say, she went away from home a bouncing young lass;
+she returned a rather elderly character, with a Madonna front and a
+melancholy countenance--bought the late Mrs. Harbottle's business for
+a song--took her elderly mother to live with her; was very good to the
+poor, was constant at church, and had the best of characters. But there
+was no one in all Clavering, not Mrs. Portman herself, who read so many
+novels as Madame Fribsby. She had plenty of time for this amusement,
+for, in truth, very few people besides the folks at the Rectory and
+Fairoaks employed her; and by a perpetual perusal of such works (which
+were by no means so moral or edifying in the days of which we write, as
+they are at present), she had got to be so absurdly sentimental, that in
+her eyes life was nothing but an immense love-match; and she never could
+see two people together, but she fancied they were dying for one
+another.
+
+On the day after Mrs. Pendennis's visit to the curate, which we have
+recorded many pages back, Madame Fribsby settled in her mind that Mr.
+Smirke must be in love with the widow, and did every thing in her power
+to encourage this passion on both sides. Mrs. Pendennis she very seldom
+saw, indeed, except in public, and in her pew at church. That lady had
+very little need of millinery, or made most of her own dresses and caps;
+but on the rare occasions when Madame Fribsby received visits from
+Mrs. Pendennis, or paid her respects at Fairoaks, she never failed to
+entertain the widow with praises of the curate, pointing out what an
+angelical man he was, how gentle, how studious, how lonely; and she
+would wonder that no lady would take pity upon him.
+
+Helen laughed at these sentimental remarks, and wondered that madame
+herself did not compassionate her lodger, and console him. Madame
+Fribsby shook her Madonna front, "_Mong cure a boco souffare_," she
+said, laying her hand on the part she designated as her cure. "_Il 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 dependent on the
+house of Pendennis. Nor were madame's constant allusions to the curate
+particularly agreeable to her. It required a very ingenious sentimental
+turn indeed to find out that the widow had a secret regard for Mr.
+Smirke, to which pernicious error, however, Madame Fribsby persisted
+in holding.
+
+Her lodger was very much more willing to talk on this subject with his
+soft-hearted landlady. Every time after that she praised the curate to
+Mrs. Pendennis, she came away from the latter with the notion that the
+widow herself had been praising him. "_Etre soul au monde est bien
+ouneeyong_," 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'ong suis
+sure--Je conny cela biang--Ally, Monsieur Smirke._"
+
+He softly blushed; he sighed; he hoped; he feared; he doubted; he
+sometimes yielded to the delightful idea--his pleasure was to sit
+in Madame Fribsby's apartment, and talk upon the subject, where, as
+the greater part of the conversation was carried on in French by the
+milliner, and her old mother was deaf, that retired old individual
+(who had once been a housekeeper, wife and widow of a butler in the
+Clavering family), could understand scarce one syllable of their talk.
+
+Thus it was, that when Major Pendennis announced to his nephew's tutor
+that the young fellow would go to college in October, and that Mr.
+Smirke's valuable services would no longer be needful to his pupil, for
+which services the major, who spoke as grandly as a lord, professed
+himself exceedingly grateful, and besought Mr. Smirke to command his
+interest in any way--thus it was, that the curate felt that the critical
+moment was come for him, and was racked and tortured by those severe
+pangs which the occasion warranted.
+
+Madame Fribsby had, of course, taken the strongest interest in the
+progress of Mr. Pen's love affair with Miss Fotheringay. She had been
+over to Chatteries, and having seen that actress perform, had pronounced
+that she was old and overrated: and had talked over Master Pen's passion
+in her shop many and many a time to the half-dozen old maids, and old
+women in male clothes, who are to be found in little country towns,
+and who formed the genteel population of Clavering. Captain Glanders,
+H.P., had pronounced that Pen was going to be a devil of a fellow,
+and had begun early; Mrs. Glanders had told him to check his horrid
+observations, and to respect his own wife, if he pleased. She said it
+would be a lesson to Helen for her pride and absurd infatuation about
+that boy. Mrs. Pybus said many people were proud of very small things,
+and for her part, she didn't know why an apothecary's wife should give
+herself such airs. Mrs. Wapshot called her daughters away from that
+side of the street, one day when Pen, on Rebecca, was stopping at the
+saddler's, to get a new lash to his whip--one and all of these people
+had made visits of curiosity to Fairoaks, and had tried to condole with
+the widow, or bring the subject of the Fotheringay affair on the tapis,
+and had been severally checked by the haughty reserve of Mrs. Pendennis,
+supported by the frigid politeness of the major her brother.
+
+These rebuffs, however, did not put an end to the gossip, and slander
+went on increasing about the unlucky Fairoaks family. Glanders (H.P.),
+a retired cavalry officer, whose half-pay and large family compelled
+him to fuddle himself with brandy-and-water instead of claret, after
+he quitted the dragoons, had the occasional _entree_ at Fairoaks, and
+kept his friend the major there informed of all the stories which were
+current at Clavering. Mrs. Pybus had taken an inside place by the coach
+to Chatteries, and gone to the George on purpose to get the particulars.
+Mrs. Speers's man had treated Mr. Foker's servant to drink at Baymouth
+for a similar purpose. It was said that Pen had hanged himself for
+despair in the orchard, and that his uncle had cut him down; that, on
+the contrary, it was Miss Costigan who was jilted, and not young Arthur;
+and that the affair had only been hushed up by the payment of a large
+sum of money, the exact amount of which there were several people in
+Clavering could testify--the sum of course varying according to the
+calculation of the individual narrator of the story.
+
+Pen shook his mane and raged like a furious lion when these scandals,
+affecting Miss Costigan's honor 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, while he sate
+sulking, Achilles-like in his tent, for the loss of his ravished
+Briseis?
+
+After the affair with Hobnell, Pen was pronounced to be a murderer as
+well as a profligate, and his name became a name of terror and a byword
+in Clavering. But this was not all; he was not the only one of the
+family about whom the village began to chatter, and his unlucky mother
+was the next to become a victim to their gossip.
+
+"It is all settled," said Mrs. Pybus to Mrs. Speers, "the boy is to go
+to college, and then the widow is to console herself."
+
+"He's been there every day, in the most open manner, my dear," continued
+Mrs. Speers.
+
+"Enough to make poor Mr. Pendennis turn in his grave," said Mrs.
+Wapshot.
+
+"She never liked him, that we know," says No. 1.
+
+"Married him for his money. Every body knows that; was a penniless
+hanger-on of Lady Pontypool's," says No. 2.
+
+"It's rather too open, though, to encourage a lover under pretense of
+having a tutor for your son," cried No. 3.
+
+"Hush! here comes Mrs. Portman," some one said; as the good rector's
+wife entered Madame Fribsby's shop, to inspect her monthly book of
+fashions just arrived from London. And the fact is, that Madame Fribsby
+had been able to hold out no longer; and one day, after she and her
+lodger had been talking of Pen's approaching departure, and the curate
+had gone off to give one of his last lessons to that gentleman, Madame
+Fribsby had communicated to Mrs. Pybus, who happened to step in with
+Mrs. Speers, her strong suspicion, her certainty almost, that there was
+an attachment between a certain clerical gentleman and a certain lady,
+whose naughty son was growing quite unmanageable, and that a certain
+marriage would take place pretty soon.
+
+Mrs. Portman saw it all, of course, when the matter was mentioned. What
+a sly fox that curate was! He was low-church, and she never liked him.
+And to think of Mrs. Pendennis taking a fancy to him after she had been
+married to such a man as Mr. Pendennis! She could hardly stay five
+minutes at Madame Fribsby's, so eager was she to run to the Rectory and
+give Doctor Portman the news.
+
+When Doctor Portman heard this piece of intelligence, he was in such
+a rage with his curate, that his first movement was to break with
+Mr. Smirke, and to beg him to transfer his services to some other
+parish. "That milksop of a creature pretend to be worthy of such a woman
+as Mrs. Pendennis," broke out the doctor: "where will impudence stop
+next?"
+
+"She is much too old for Mr. Smirke," Mrs. Portman remarked: "why, poor
+dear Mrs. Pendennis might be his mother almost."
+
+"You always choose the most charitable reason, Betsy," cried the rector.
+"A matron with a son grown up--she would never think of marrying again."
+
+"You only think _men_ should marry again, Doctor Portman," answered his
+lady, bridling up.
+
+"You stupid old woman," said the doctor, "when I am gone, you shall
+marry whomsoever you like. I will leave orders in my will, my dear, to
+that effect: and I'll bequeath a ring to my successor, and my ghost
+shall come and dance at your wedding."
+
+"It is cruel for a clergyman to talk so," the lady answered, with a
+ready whimper: but these little breezes used to pass very rapidly over
+the surface of the doctor's domestic bliss; and were followed by a great
+calm and sunshine. The doctor adopted a plan for soothing Mrs. Portman's
+ruffled countenance, which has a great effect when it is tried between a
+worthy couple who are sincerely fond of one another; and which I think
+becomes "John Anderson" at three-score, just as much as it used to do
+when he was a black haired young Jo of five-and-twenty.
+
+"Hadn't you better speak to Mr. Smirke, John?" Mrs. Portman asked.
+
+"When Pen goes to college, _cadit quaestio_," replied the rector,
+"Smirke's visits at Fairoaks will cease of themselves, and there will be
+no need to bother the widow. She has trouble enough on her hands, with
+the affairs of that silly young scapegrace, without being pestered by
+the tittle-tattle of this place. It is all an invention, of that fool,
+Fribsby."
+
+"Against whom I always warned you--you know I did, my dear John,"
+interposed Mrs. Portman.
+
+"That you did; you very often do, my love," the doctor answered, with a
+laugh. "It is not from want of warning on your part, I am sure, that I
+have formed my opinion of most women with whom we are acquainted. Madam
+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 had poultry from Livermore's two days
+before)--"and as for Mr. Smirke, my dear Betsy, will you promise me that
+you will never breathe to any mortal what I am going to tell you as a
+profound secret?"
+
+"What is it, my dear John?--of course I won't," answered the rector's
+lady.
+
+"Well then--I can not say it is a fact, mind--but if you find that
+Smirke is at this moment--ay, and has been for years--engaged to a young
+lady, a Miss--a Miss Thompson, if you will have the name, who lives
+on Clapham Common--yes, on Clapham Common, not far from Mrs. Smirke's
+house, what becomes of your story then about Smirke and Mrs. Pendennis?"
+
+"Why did you not tell me this before?" asked the doctor's wife.--"How
+long have you known it?--How we all of us have been deceived in that
+man!"
+
+"Why should I meddle in other folks' business, my dear?" the doctor
+answered. "I know how to keep a secret--and perhaps this is only an
+invention like that other absurd story; at least, Madam Portman, I
+should never have told you this but for the other, which I beg you to
+contradict whenever you hear it." And so saying the doctor went away to
+his study, and Mrs. Portman, seeing that the day was a remarkably fine
+one, thought she would take advantage of the weather and pay a few
+visits.
+
+The doctor looking out of his study window saw the wife of his
+bosom presently issue forth, attired in her best. She crossed the
+market-place, saluting the market-women right and left, and giving a
+glance at the grocery and general emporium at the corner: then entering
+London-street (formerly Hog Lane), she stopped for a minute at Madame
+Fribsby's window, and looking at the fashions which hung up there,
+seemed hesitating whether she should enter; but she passed on, and never
+stopped again until she came to Mrs. Pybus's little green gate and
+garden, through which she went to that lady's cottage.
+
+There, of course, her husband lost sight of Mrs. Portman. "Oh, what a
+long bow I have pulled," he said inwardly--"Goodness forgive me! and
+shot my own flesh and blood. There must be no more tattling and scandal
+about that house. I must stop it, and speak to Smirke. I'll ask him to
+dinner this very day."
+
+Having a sermon to compose, the doctor sat down to that work, and was so
+engaged in the composition, that he had not concluded it until near five
+o'clock in the afternoon: when he stepped over to Mr. Smirke's lodgings,
+to put his hospitable intentions, regarding that gentleman, into effect.
+He reached Madame Fribsby's door, just as the curate issued from it.
+
+Mr. Smirke was magnificently dressed, and as he turned out his toes he
+showed a pair of elegant open-worked silk stockings and glossy pumps.
+His white cravat was arranged in a splendid stiff tie, and his gold
+shirt studs shone on his spotless linen. His hair was curled round his
+fair temples. Had he borrowed Madame Fribsby's irons to give that curly
+grace? His white cambric pocket handkerchief was scented with the most
+delicious Eau-de-Cologne.
+
+"_O gracilis puer_,"--cried the doctor.--"Whither are you bound? I
+wanted you to come home to dinner."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I am engaged to dine at--at Fairoaks," said Mr. Smirke, blushing
+faintly and whisking the scented pocket-handkerchief, and his pony being
+in waiting, he mounted and rode away simpering down the street. No
+accident befell him that day, and he arrived with his tie in the very
+best order at Mrs. Pendennis's house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+WHICH CONCLUDES THE FIRST PART OF THIS HISTORY.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The curate had gone on his daily errand to Fairoaks, and was up-stairs
+in Pen's study pretending to read with his pupil, in the early part of
+that very afternoon when Mrs. Portman after transacting business with
+Mrs. Pybus had found the weather so exceedingly fine that she pursued
+her walk as far as Fairoaks, in order to pay a visit to her dear friend
+there. In the course of their conversation, the rector's lady told
+Mrs. Pendennis and the major a very great secret about the curate, Mr.
+Smirke, which was no less than that he had an attachment, a very old
+attachment, which he had long kept quite private.
+
+"And on whom is it that Mr. Smirke has bestowed his heart?" asked Mrs.
+Pendennis, with a superb air, but rather an inward alarm.
+
+"Why, my dear," the other lady answered, "when he first came and used to
+dine at the Rectory, people said we wanted him for Myra, and we were
+forced to give up asking him. Then they used to say he was smitten in
+another quarter; but I always contradicted it, for my part, and said
+that you--"
+
+"That _I_," cried Mrs. Pendennis; "people are very impertinent, I am
+sure. Mr. Smirke came here as Arthur's tutor, and I am surprised that
+any body should dare to speak so--"
+
+"'Pon my soul, it is a _little_ too much," the major said, laying down
+the newspaper and the double eye-glass.
+
+"I've no patience with that Mrs. Pybus," Helen continued, indignantly.
+
+"I told her there was no truth in it," Mrs. Portman said. "I always said
+so, my dear: and now it comes out that my demure gentleman has been
+engaged to a young lady--Miss Thompson, of Clapham Common, ever so long:
+and I am delighted, for my part, and on Myra's account, too, for an
+unmarried curate is always objectionable about one's house: and of
+course it is strictly private, but I thought I would tell you, as it
+might remove unpleasantnesses. But mind: not one word, if you please,
+about the story."
+
+Mrs. Pendennis said, with perfect sincerity, that she was exceedingly
+glad to hear the news: and hoped Mr. Smirke, who was a very kind
+and amiable man, would have a deserving wife: and when her visitor
+went away, Helen and her brother talked of the matter with great
+satisfaction, the kind lady rebuking herself for her haughty behavior
+to Mr. Smirke, whom she had avoided of late, instead of being grateful
+to him for his constant attention to Arthur.
+
+"Gratitude to this kind of people," the major said, "is very well; but
+familiarity is out of the question. This gentleman gives his lessons
+and receives his money like any other master. You are too humble, my
+good soul. There must be distinctions in ranks, and that sort of thing.
+I told you before, you were too kind to Mr. Smirke."
+
+But Helen did not think so; and now that Arthur was going away, and she
+bethought her how very polite Mr. Smirke had been; how he had gone on
+messages for her; how he had brought books and copied music; how he had
+taught Laura so many things, and given her so many kind presents, her
+heart smote her on account of her ingratitude toward the curate;--so
+much so, that when he came down from study with Pen, and was hankering
+about the hall previous to his departure, she went out and shook hands
+with him with rather a blushing face, and begged him to come into her
+drawing-room, where she said they now never saw him. And as there was to
+be rather a good dinner that day, she invited Mr. Smirke to partake of
+it; and we may be sure that he was too happy to accept such a delightful
+summons.
+
+Eased, by the above report, of all her former doubts and misgivings
+regarding the curate, Helen was exceedingly kind and gracious to Mr.
+Smirke during dinner, redoubling her attentions, perhaps because Major
+Pendennis was very high and reserved with his nephew's tutor. When
+Pendennis asked Smirke to drink wine, he addressed him as if he was a
+sovereign speaking to a petty retainer, in a manner so condescending,
+that even Pen laughed at it, although quite ready, for his part, to be
+as conceited as most young men are.
+
+But Smirke did not care for the impertinences of the major so long as he
+had his hostess's kind behavior; and he passed a delightful time by her
+side at table, exerting all his powers of conversation to please her,
+talking in a manner both clerical and worldly, about the Fancy Bazaar,
+and the Great Missionary Meeting, about the last new novel, and the
+bishop's excellent sermon--about the fashionable parties in London,
+an account of which he read in the newspapers--in fine, he neglected
+no art, by which a college divine who has both sprightly and serious
+talents, a taste for the genteel, an irreproachable conduct, and a
+susceptible heart, will try and make himself agreeable to the person
+on whom he has fixed his affections.
+
+Major Pendennis came yawning out of the dining-room very soon
+after his sister and little Laura had left the apartment--"What an
+unsufferable bore that man is, and how he did talk!" the major said.
+
+"He has been very good to Arthur, who is very fond of him," Mrs.
+Pendennis said--"I wonder who the Miss Thompson is whom he is going
+to marry."
+
+"I always thought the fellow was looking in another direction," said
+the major.
+
+"And in what?" asked Mrs. Pendennis, quite innocently--"toward Myra
+Portman?"
+
+"Toward Helen Pendennis, if you must know," answered her brother-in-law.
+
+"Toward me! impossible!" Helen said, who knew perfectly well that such
+had been the case. "His marriage will be a very happy thing. I hope
+Arthur will not take too much wine."
+
+Now Arthur flushed with a good deal of pride at the privilege of having
+the keys of the cellar, and remembering that a very few more dinners
+would probably take place which he and his dear friend Smirke could
+share, had brought up a liberal supply of claret for the company's
+drinking, and when the elders with little Laura left him, he and the
+curate began to pass the wine very freely.
+
+One bottle speedly yielded up the ghost, another shed more than half
+its blood, before the two topers had been much more than half an hour
+together--Pen, with a hollow laugh and voice, had drunk off one bumper
+to the falsehood of women, and had said sardonically, that wine, at any
+rate, was a mistress who never deceived, and was sure to give a man a
+welcome.
+
+Smirke gently said that he knew for his part some women who were all
+truth and tenderness; and casting up his eyes toward the ceiling, and
+heaving a sigh as if evoking some being dear and unmentionable, he took
+up his glass and drained it, and the rosy liquor began to suffuse his
+face.
+
+Pen trolled over some verses he had been making that morning, in which
+he informed himself that the woman who had slighted his passion could
+not be worthy to win it: that he was awaking from love's mad fever, and,
+of course, under these circumstances, proceeded to leave her, and to
+quit a heartless deceiver: that a name which had one day been famous in
+the land, might again be heard in it: and, that though he never should
+be the happy and careless boy he was but a few months since, or his
+heart be what it had been ere passion had filled it and grief had
+well-nigh killed it; that though to him personally death was as welcome
+as life, and that he would not hesitate to part with the latter, but for
+the love of one kind being whose happiness depended on his own--yet he
+hoped to show he was a man worthy of his race, and that one day the
+false one should be brought to know how great was the treasure and noble
+the heart which she had flung away.
+
+Pen, we say, who was a very excitable person, rolled out these verses in
+his rich, sweet voice, which trembled with emotion while our young poet
+spoke. He had a trick of blushing when in this excited state, and his
+large and honest gray eyes also exhibited proofs of a sensibility so
+genuine, hearty, and manly, that Miss Costigan, if she had a heart, must
+needs have softened toward him; and very likely she was, as he said,
+altogether unworthy of the affection which he lavished upon her.
+
+The sentimental Smirke was caught by the emotion which agitated his
+young friend. He grasped Pen's hand over the dessert dishes and wine
+glasses. He said the verses were beautiful: that Pen was a poet, a great
+poet, and likely by heaven's permission to run a great career in the
+world. "Go on and prosper, dear Arthur," he cried; "the wounds under
+which at present you suffer are only temporary, and the very grief you
+endure will cleanse and strengthen your heart. I have always prophesied
+the greatest and brightest things of you, as soon as you have corrected
+some failings and weaknesses of character, which at present belong to
+you. But you will get over these, my boy; you will get over these; and
+when you are famous and celebrated, as I know you will be, will you
+remember your old tutor and the happy early days of your youth?"
+
+Pen swore he would: with another shake of the hand across the glasses
+and apricots. "I shall never forget how kind you have been to me,
+Smirke," he said. "I don't know what I should have done without you.
+You are my best friend."
+
+"Am I, _really_, Arthur?" said Smirke, looking through his spectacles;
+and his heart began to beat so that he thought Pen must almost hear it
+throbbing.
+
+"My best friend, my friend _forever_," Pen said. "God bless you, old
+boy," and he drank up the last glass of the second bottle of the famous
+wine which his father had laid in, which his uncle had bought, which
+Lord Levant had imported, and which now, like a slave indifferent, was
+ministering pleasure to its present owner, and giving its young master
+delectation.
+
+"We'll have another bottle, old boy," Pen said, "by Jove we will.
+Hurray!--claret goes for nothing. My uncle was telling me that he
+saw Sheridan drink five bottles at Brookes's, besides a bottle of
+Maraschino. This is some of the finest wine in England, he says. So it
+is, by Jove. There's nothing like it. _Nunc vino pellite curas--cras
+ingens iterabimus aeq_--fill your glass, Old Smirke, a hogshead of it
+won't do you any harm." And Mr. Pen began to sing the drinking song out
+of Der Freischuetz. The dining-room windows were open, and his mother was
+softly pacing on the lawn outside, while little Laura was looking at the
+sunset. The sweet fresh notes of the boy's voice came to the widow. It
+cheered her kind heart to hear him sing.
+
+"You--you are taking too much wine, Arthur," Mr. Smirke said,
+softly--"you are exciting yourself."
+
+"No," said Pen, "women give headaches, but this don't. Fill your glass,
+old fellow, and let's drink--I say, Smirke, my boy--let's drink to
+her--_your_ her, I mean, not mine, for whom I swear I'll care no
+more--no, not a penny--no, not a fig--no, not a glass of wine. Tell
+us about the lady, Smirke; I've often seen you sighing about her."
+
+"Oh!" said Smirke--and his beautiful cambric shirt front and glistening
+studs heaved with the emotion which agitated his gentle and suffering
+bosom.
+
+"Oh--what a sigh!" Pen cried, growing very hilarious; "fill, my boy, and
+drink the toast, you can't refuse a toast, no gentleman refuses a toast.
+Here's her health, and good luck to you, and may she soon be Mrs.
+Smirke."
+
+"_Do_ you say so?" Smirke said, all of a tremble. "Do you really say so,
+Arthur?"
+
+"Say so; of course, I say so. Down with it. Here's Mrs. Smirke's good
+health: hip, hip, hurray!"
+
+Smirke convulsively gulped down his glass of wine, and Pen waved his
+over his head, cheering so as to make his mother and Laura wonder on the
+lawn, and his uncle, who was dozing over the paper in the drawing-room,
+start, and say to himself, "that boy's drinking too much."
+
+Smirke put down the glass.
+
+"I accept the omen," gasped out the blushing curate. "Oh, my dear
+Arthur, you--you know her--"
+
+"What--Myra Portman? I wish you joy: she's got a dev'lish large waist;
+but I wish you joy, old fellow."
+
+"Oh, Arthur!" groaned the curate again, and nodded his head, speechless.
+
+"Beg your pardon--sorry I offended you--but she _has_ got a large waist,
+you know--devilish large waist," Pen continued--the third bottle
+evidently beginning to act upon the young gentleman.
+
+"It's not Miss Portman," the other said, in a voice of agony.
+
+"Is it any body at Chatteries or at Clapham? Somebody here? No--it ain't
+old Pybus? it can't be Miss Rolt at the factory--she's only fourteen."
+
+"It's somebody rather older than I am, Pen," the curate cried, looking
+up at his friend, and then guiltily casting his eyes down into his
+plate.
+
+Pen burst out laughing. "It's Madame Fribsby, by Jove, it's Madame
+Fribsby. Madame Frib, by the immortal gods!"
+
+The curate could contain no more. "O Pen," he cried, "how can you
+suppose that any of those--of those more than ordinary beings you have
+named, could have an influence upon this heart, when I have been daily
+in the habit of contemplating perfection! I may be insane, I may be
+madly ambitious, I may be presumptuous--but for two years my heart has
+been filled by one image, and has known no other idol. Haven't I loved
+you as a son, Arthur?--say, hasn't Charles Smirke loved you as a son?"
+
+"Yes, old boy, you've been very good to me," Pen said, whose liking,
+however, for his tutor was not by any means of the filial kind.
+
+"My means," rushed on Smirke, "are at present limited, I own, and my
+mother is not so liberal as might be desired; but what she has will
+be mine at her death. Were she to hear of my marrying a lady of rank
+and good fortune, my mother would be liberal, I am sure she would be
+liberal. Whatever I have or subsequently inherit--and it's five hundred
+a year at the very least--would be settled upon her and--and--and you
+at my death--that is--"
+
+"What the deuce do you mean?--and what have I to do with your money?"
+cried out Pen, in a puzzle.
+
+"Arthur, Arthur!" exclaimed the other wildly; "You say I am your dearest
+friend--let me be more. Oh, can't you see that the angelic being I
+love--the purest, the best of women--is no other than your dear, dear
+angel of a mother."
+
+"My mother!" cried out Arthur, jumping up, and sober in a minute. "Pooh!
+damn it, Smirke, you must be mad--she's seven or eight years older than
+you are."
+
+"Did _you_ find that any objection," cried Smirke piteously, and
+alluding, of course, to the elderly subject of Pen's own passion.
+
+The lad felt the hint, and blushed quite red. "The cases are not
+similar, Smirke," he said, "and the allusion might have been spared.
+A man may forget his own rank and elevate any woman to it; but allow
+me to say our positions are very different."
+
+"How do you mean, dear Arthur?" the curate interposed sadly, cowering as
+he felt that his sentence was about to be read.
+
+"Mean?" said Arthur. "I mean what I say. My tutor, I say, _my tutor_,
+has no right to ask a lady of my mother's rank of life to marry him.
+It's a breach of confidence. I say it's a liberty you take, Smirke--it's
+a liberty. Mean, indeed!"
+
+"Oh Arthur!" the curate began to cry, with clasped hands, and a scared
+face, but Arthur gave another stamp with his foot, and began to pull at
+the bell. "Don't let's have any more of this. We'll have some coffee, if
+you please," he said, with a majestic air: and the old butler entering
+at the summons, Arthur bade him to serve that refreshment.
+
+John said he had just carried coffee into the drawing-room, where his
+uncle was asking for Master Arthur, and the old man gave a glance
+of wonder at the three empty claret-bottles. Smirke said he thought
+he'd--he'd rather not go into the drawing-room, on which Arthur
+haughtily said, "As you please," and called for Mr. Smirke's horse to
+be brought round. The poor fellow said he knew the way to the stable
+and would get his pony himself, and he went into the hall and sadly put
+on his coat and hat.
+
+Pen followed him out uncovered. Helen was still walking up and down the
+soft lawn as the sun was setting, and the curate took off his hat and
+bowed by way of farewell, and passed on to the door leading to the
+stable-court by which the pair disappeared. Smirke knew the way to the
+stables, as he said, well enough. He fumbled at the girths of the saddle
+which Pen fastened for him, and put on the bridle and led the pony into
+the yard. The boy was touched by the grief which appeared in the other's
+face as he mounted. Pen held out his hand, and Smirke wrung it silently.
+
+"I say, Smirke," he said, in an agitated voice, "forgive me if I have
+said any thing harsh--for you have always been very, very kind to me.
+But it can't be, old fellow, it can't be. Be a man. God bless you."
+
+Smirke nodded his head silently, and rode out of the lodge gate; and Pen
+looked after him for a couple of minutes, until he disappeared down the
+road, and the clatter of the pony's hoofs died away. Helen was still
+lingering in the lawn waiting until the boy came back--she put his
+hair off his forehead and kissed it fondly. She was afraid he had been
+drinking too much wine. Why had Mr. Smirke gone away without any tea?
+
+He looked at her with a kind humor 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 out Major Pendennis, "your coffee is getting quite cold."
+
+When Laura was gone to bed, Pen, who was big with his secret, burst
+out with it, and described the dismal but ludicrous scene which had
+occurred. Helen heard of it with many blushes, which became her pale
+face very well, and a perplexity which Arthur roguishly enjoyed.
+
+"Confound the fellow's impudence," Major Pendennis said, as he took his
+candle, "where will the assurance of these people stop?" Pen and his
+mother had a long talk that night, full of love, confidence, and
+laughter, and the boy somehow slept more soundly and woke up more easily
+than he had done for many months before.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before the great Mr. Dolphin quitted Chatteries, 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 honor
+in the least call upon him to accomplish that threat.
+
+When Miss Costigan had seen all the outstanding bills paid to the
+uttermost shilling, she handed over the balance to her father, who broke
+out into hospitalities to all his friends, gave the little Creeds more
+apples and gingerbread, than he had ever bestowed upon them, so that the
+widow Creed ever after held the memory of her lodger in veneration, and
+the young ones wept bitterly when he went away; and in a word, managed
+the money so cleverly that it was entirely expended before many days,
+and that he was compelled to draw upon Mr. Dolphin for a sum to pay for
+traveling expenses when the time of their departure arrived.
+
+There was held at an inn in that county town a weekly meeting of a
+festive, almost a riotous character, of a society of gentlemen who
+called themselves the Buccaneers. Some of the choice spirits of
+Chatteries 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 Chatteries
+Champion, were among the crew of the Buccaneers, whom also Bingley the
+manager liked to join of a Saturday evening, whenever he received
+permission from his lady.
+
+Costigan had been also an occasional Buccaneer. But a want of
+punctuality of payments had of late somewhat excluded him from the
+society, where he was subject to disagreeable remarks from the landlord,
+who said that a Buccaneer who didn't pay his shot was utterly unworthy
+to be a Marine Bandit. But when it became known to the 'Ears, as the
+clubbists called themselves familiarly, that Miss Fotheringay had made
+a splendid engagement, a great revolution of feeling took place in the
+club regarding Captain Costigan. Solly, mine host of the Grapes, (and
+I need not say as worthy a fellow as ever stood behind a bar), told
+the gents in the Buccaneers' room one night how noble the captain had
+beayved: having been round and paid off all his ticks in Chatteries,
+including his score of three pound fourteen here, and pronounced that
+Cos was a good feller, a gentleman at bottom, and he, Solly, had always
+said so, and finally worked upon the feelings of the Buccaneers to give
+the captain a dinner.
+
+The banquet took place on the last night of Costigan's stay in
+Chatteries, 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 this 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 Chatteries men, and then without
+further circumlocution proposed their friend "Captain Costigan."
+
+After the enthusiastic cheering which rang through old Chatteries had
+subsided, Captain Costigan rose in reply, and made a speech of twenty
+minutes, in which he was repeatedly overcome by his emotions.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 Chatteries she had acquired the skill which
+she was about to exercise in another sphere, and in her name and his
+own, Jack Costigan thanked and blessed them. The gallant officer's speech
+was received with tremendous cheers.
+
+Mr. Hicks, Croupier, in a brilliant and energetic manner, proposed Miss
+Fotheringay's health.
+
+Captain Costigan returned thanks in a speech full of feeling and
+eloquence.
+
+Mr. Jubber proposed the Drama and the Chatteries Theater, and Mr.
+Bingley was about to rise, but was prevented by Captain Costigan, who,
+as long connected with the Chatteries Theater, 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 honor
+of dining with His Royal Highness and the Duke of Kent many times; and
+the former had justly been named the friend of the soldier. (Cheers.)
+
+The army was then proposed, and Captain Costigan returned thanks. In
+the course of the night he sang his well known songs, "The Deserter,"
+"The Shan Van Voght," "The Little Pig under the Bed," and "The Vale of
+Avoca." The evening was a great triumph for him--it ended. All triumphs
+and all evenings end. And the next day, Miss Costigan having taken leave
+of all her friends, and having been reconciled to Miss Rouncy, to whom
+she left a necklace and a white satin gown--the next day he and Miss
+Costigan had places in the Competitor coach rolling by the gates of
+Fairoaks Lodge--and Pendennis never saw them.
+
+Tom Smith, the coachman, pointed out Fairoaks to Mr. Costigan, who sate
+on the box smelling of rum-and-water--and the captain said it was a
+poor place--and added, "Ye should see Castle Costigan, County Mayo, me
+boy,"--which Tom said he should like very much to see.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were gone and Pen had never seen them! He only knew of their
+departure by its announcement in the county paper the next day and
+straight galloped over to Chatteries 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 bed-room. It was
+swept out and prepared for new comers. The glass which had reflected her
+fair face was shining ready for her successor. The curtains lay square
+folded on the little bed: he flung himself down and buried his head on
+the vacant pillow.
+
+Laura had netted a purse into which his mother had put some sovereigns,
+and Pen had found it on his dressing-table that very morning. He gave
+one to the little servant who had been used to wait upon the Costigans,
+and another to the children, because they said they were very fond of
+her. It was but a few months back, yet what years ago it seemed since
+he had first entered that room! He felt that it was all done. The very
+missing her at the coach had something fatal in it. Blank, weary,
+utterly wretched and lonely the poor lad felt.
+
+His mother saw she was gone by his look when he came home. He was eager
+to fly too now, as were other folks round about Chatteries. Poor Smirke
+wanted to go away from the sight of the syren widow. Foker began to
+think he had had enough of Baymouth, and that a few supper parties at
+Saint Boniface would not be unpleasant. And Major Pendennis longed to be
+off, and have a little pheasant-shooting at Stillbrook, and get rid of
+all annoyances and _tracasseries_ of the village. The widow and Laura
+nervously set about the preparation for Pen's kit, and filled trunks
+with his books and linen. Helen wrote cards with the name of Arthur
+Pendennis, Esq., which were duly nailed on the boxes; and at which both
+she and Laura looked with tearful, wistful eyes. It was not until long,
+long after he was gone, that Pen remembered how constant and tender the
+affection of these women had been, and how selfish his own conduct was.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A night soon comes, when the mail, with echoing horn and blazing lamps,
+stops at the lodge-gate of Fairoaks, and Pen's trunks and his uncle's
+are placed on the roof of the carriage, into which the pair presently
+afterward enter. Helen and Laura are standing by the evergreens of the
+shrubbery, their figures lighted up by the coach lamps; the guard cries,
+All right: in another instant the carriage whirls onward; the lights
+disappear, and Helen's heart and prayers go with them. Her sainted
+benedictions follow the departing boy. He has left the home-nest in
+which he has been chafing, and whither, after his very first flight, he
+returned bleeding and wounded; he is eager to go forth again, and try
+his restless wings.
+
+How lonely the house looks without him! The corded trunks and book-boxes
+are there in his empty study. Laura asks leave to come and sleep in
+Helen's room: and when she has cried herself to sleep there, the mother
+goes softly into Pen's vacant chamber, and kneels down by the bed, on
+which the moon is shining, and there prays for her boy, as mothers only
+know how to plead. He knows that her pure blessings are following him,
+as he is carried miles away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+ALMA MATER.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 _excat_ somehow, and was bent on a day's lark in London: he never
+stopped rattling and talking from the commencement of the journey until
+its close (which was a great deal too soon for me, for I never was tired
+of listening to the honest young fellow's jokes and cheery laughter);
+and when we arrived at the terminus nothing would satisfy him but a
+Hansom cab, so that he might get into town the quicker, and plunge into
+the pleasures awaiting him there. Away the young lad went whirling, with
+joy lighting up his honest face; and as for the reader's humble servant,
+having but a small carpet-bag, I got up on the outside of the omnibus,
+and sate there very contentedly between a Jew-pedlar smoking bad cigars,
+and a gentleman's servant taking care of a poodle-dog, until we got
+our fated complement of passengers and boxes, when the coachman drove
+leisurely away. _We_ weren't in a hurry to get to town. Neither one of
+us was particularly eager about rushing into that near smoking Babylon,
+or thought of dining at the club that night, or dancing at the Casino.
+Yet a few years more, and my young friend of the railroad will be not
+a whit more eager.
+
+There were no railroads made when Arthur Pendennis went to the famous
+University of Oxbridge; but he drove thither in a well appointed coach,
+filled inside and out with dons, gownsmen, young freshmen about to
+enter, and their guardians, who were conducting them to the University.
+A fat old gentleman, in gray stockings, from the City, who sate by Major
+Pendennis inside the coach, having his pale-faced son opposite, was
+frightened beyond measure, when he heard that the coach had been driven
+for a couple of stages by young Mr. Foker, of Saint Boniface College,
+who was the friend of all men, including coachmen, and could drive as
+well as Tom Hicks himself. Pen sate on the roof, examining coach,
+passengers, and country, with great delight and curiosity. His heart
+jumped with pleasure as the famous University came in view, and the
+magnificent prospect of venerable towers and pinnacles, tall elms and
+shining river, spread before him.
+
+Pen had passed a few days with his uncle at the major's lodgings,
+in Bury-street, before they set out for Oxbridge. Major Pendennis
+thought that the lad's wardrobe wanted renewal; and Arthur was by
+no means averse to any plan which was to bring him new coats and
+waistcoats. There was no end to the sacrifices which the self-denying
+uncle made in the youth's behalf. London was awfully lonely. The Pall
+Mall pavement was deserted; the very red jackets had gone out of town.
+There was scarce a face to be seen in the bow windows of the clubs.
+The major conducted his nephew into one or two of those desert
+mansions, and wrote down the lad's name on the candidate-list of one
+of them; and Arthur's pleasure at this compliment on his guardian's
+part was excessive. He read in the parchment volume his name and titles,
+as "Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, of Fairoaks Lodge, --shire, and Saint
+Boniface College, Oxbridge; proposed by Major Pendennis, and seconded by
+Viscount Colchicum," with a thrill of intense gratification. "You will
+come in for ballot in about three years, by which time you will have
+taken your degree," the guardian said. Pen longed for the three years to
+be over, and surveyed the stucco-halls, and vast libraries, and drawing
+rooms, as already his own property. The major laughed slily 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
+Gray Friars, and renewed acquaintance with some of their old comrades
+there. The boys came crowding up to the cab as it stood by the Gray
+Friars gates, where they were entering, and admired the chestnut horse,
+and the tights and livery and gravity of Stoopid, the tiger. The bell
+for afternoon-school rang as they were swaggering about the play ground
+talking to their old cronies. The awful doctor passed into school with
+his grammar in his hand. Foker slunk away uneasily at his presence, but
+Pen went up blushing, and shook the dignitary by the hand. He laughed as
+he thought that well-remembered Latin Grammar had boxed his ears many a
+time. He was generous, good-natured, and, in a word, perfectly conceited
+and satisfied with himself.
+
+Then they drove to the parental brew-house. Foker's Entire is composed
+in an enormous pile of buildings, not far from the Gray Friars, and the
+name of that well known firm is gilded upon innumerable public-house
+signs, tenanted by its vassals in the neighborhood; and the venerable
+junior partner and manager did honor to the young lord of the vats,
+and his friend, and served them with silver flagons of brown stout, so
+strong, that you would have thought, not only the young men, but the
+very horse Mr. Harry Foker drove, was affected by the potency of the
+drink, for he rushed home to the west-end of the town at a rapid pace,
+which endangered the pie-stalls and the women on the crossings, and
+brought the cab-steps into collision with the posts at the street
+corners, and caused Stoopid to swing fearfully on his board behind.
+
+The major was quite pleased when Pen was with his young acquaintance;
+listened to Mr. Foker's artless stories with the greatest interest,
+gave the two boys a fine dinner at a Covent Garden Coffee-house, whence
+they proceeded to the play; but was above all happy when Mr. and
+Lady Agnes Foker, who happened to be in London, requested the pleasure
+of Major Pendennis and Mr. Arthur Pendennis's company at dinner in
+Grosvenor-street. "Having obtained the _entree_ into Lady Agnes Foker's
+house," he said to Pen with an affectionate solemnity which befitted the
+importance of the occasion, "it behoves you, my dear boy, to keep it.
+You must mind and _never_ neglect to call in Grosvenor-street when you
+come to London. I recommend you to read up carefully, in Debrett, the
+alliances and genealogy of the Earls of Rosherville, and if you can, to
+make some trifling allusions to the family, something historical, neat,
+and complimentary, and that sort of thing, which you, who have a poetic
+fancy, can do pretty well. Mr. Foker himself is a worthy man, though not
+of high extraction or indeed much education. He always makes a point of
+having some of the family porter served round after dinner, which you
+will on no account refuse, and which I shall drink myself, though all
+beer disagrees with me confoundedly." And the heroic martyr did actually
+sacrifice himself, as he said he would, on the day when the dinner took
+place, and old Mr. Foker at the head of his table, made his usual joke
+about Foker's Entire. We should all of us, I am sure, have liked to see
+the major's grin, when the worthy old gentleman made his time-honored
+joke.
+
+Lady Agnes, who, wrapped up in Harry, was the fondest of mothers, and
+one of the most good-natured though not the wisest of women, received
+her son's friend with great cordiality: and astonished Pen by accounts
+of the severe course of studies which her darling boy was pursuing, and
+which she feared might injure his dear health. Foker the elder burst
+into a horse-laugh at some of these speeches, and the heir of the house
+winked his eye very knowingly at his friend. And Lady Agnes then going
+through her son's history from the earliest time, and recounting his
+miraculous sufferings in the measles and whooping-cough, his escape
+from drowning, the shocking tyrannies practiced 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 the pheasants came with the second course, which the major praised
+as the very finest birds he ever saw, her ladyship said they came from
+Logwood (as the major knew perfectly well) and hoped that they would
+both pay her a visit there--at Christmas, or when dear Harry was at
+home for the vacations.
+
+"God bless you, my dear boy," Pendennis said to Arthur, as they were
+lighting their candles in Bury-street afterward to go to bed. "You
+made that little allusion to Agincourt, where one of the Roshervilles
+distinguished himself, very neatly and well, although Lady Agnes did not
+quite understand it; but it was exceedingly well for a beginner--though
+you oughtn't to blush so, by the way--and I beseech you, my dear Arthur,
+to remember through life, that with an _entree_--with a good _entree_,
+mind--it is just as easy for you to have good society as bad, and that
+it costs a man, when properly introduced, no more trouble or _soins_ to
+keep a good footing in the best houses in London than to dine with a
+lawyer in Bedford-square. Mind this when you are at Oxbridge pursuing
+your studies, and for Heaven's sake be _very_ particular in the
+acquaintances which you make. The _premier pas_ in life is the most
+important of all--did you write to your mother to-day?--No?--well, do,
+before you go, and call and ask Mr. Foker for a frank.--They like
+it.--Good night. God bless you."
+
+Pen wrote a droll account of his doings in London, and the play, and the
+visit to the old Friars, and the brewery, and the party at Mr. Foker's,
+to his dearest mother, who was saying her prayers at home in the lonely
+house at Fairoaks, her heart full of love and tenderness unutterable for
+the boy: and she and Laura read that letter and those which followed,
+many, many times, and brooded over them as women do. It was the first
+step in life that Pen was making--Ah! what a dangerous journey it
+is, and how the bravest may stumble and the strongest fail. Brother
+wayfarer! may you have a kind arm to support you on the path, and a
+friendly hand to succor those who fall beside you. May truth guide,
+mercy forgive at the end, and love accompany always. Without that
+lamp how blind the traveler would be, and how black and cheerless
+the journey!
+
+So the coach drove up to that ancient and comfortable inn the
+Trencher, which stands in Main-street Oxbridge, and Pen with delight
+and eagerness remarked, for the first time, gownsmen going about,
+chapel bells clinking (bells in Oxbridge are ringing from morning-tide
+till even-song)--towers and pinnacles rising calm and stately over
+the gables and antique house-roofs of the homely, busy city. Previous
+communications had taken place between Dr. Portman on Pen's part, and
+Mr. Buck, Tutor of Boniface, on whose side Pen was entered; and as soon
+as Major Pendennis had arranged his personal appearance, so that it
+should make a satisfactory impression upon Pen's tutor, the pair walked
+down Main-street, and passed the great gate and belfry-tower of Saint
+George's College, and so came, as they were directed, to Saint Boniface:
+where again Pen's heart began to beat as they entered at the wicket of
+the venerable ivy-mantled gate of the college. It is surmounted with an
+ancient dome almost covered with creepers, and adorned with the effigy
+of the saint from whom the house takes its name, and many coats-of-arms
+of its royal and noble benefactors.
+
+The porter pointed out a queer old tower at the corner of the
+quadrangle, by which Mr. Buck's rooms were approached, and the two
+gentlemen walked across the square, the main features of which, were
+at once and forever stamped in Pen's mind--the pretty fountain playing
+in the center 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
+awfully in rustling silks; the lines of the surrounding rooms pleasantly
+broken by carved chimneys, gray turrets, and quaint gables--all these
+Mr. Pen's eyes drank in with an eagerness which belongs to first
+impressions; and Major Pendennis surveyed with that calmness which
+belongs to a gentleman who does not care for the picturesque, and whose
+eyes have been somewhat dimmed by the constant glare of the pavement of
+Pall Mall.
+
+Saint George's is the great college of the University of Oxbridge, with
+its four vast quadrangles, and its beautiful hall and gardens, and the
+Georgians, as the men are called, wear gowns of a peculiar cut, and give
+themselves no small airs of superiority over all other young men. Little
+Saint Boniface is but a petty hermitage in comparison of the huge
+consecrated pile alongside of which it lies. But considering its size it
+has always kept an excellent name in the University. Its _ton_ is very
+good; the best families of certain counties have time out of mind sent
+up their young men to Saint Boniface; the college livings are remarkably
+good, the fellowships easy; the Boniface men had had more than their
+fair share of University honors; 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 Dr. 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 St. 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 honors in the
+other University of Camford) and the wine in the fellows' room has long
+been famed for its excellence and abundance.
+
+Into this certainly not the least snugly sheltered arbor among the
+groves of Academe, Pen now found his way, leaning on his uncle's arm,
+and they speedily reached Mr. Buck's rooms, and were conducted into the
+apartment of that courteous gentleman.
+
+He had received previous information from Dr. Portman regarding Pen,
+with respect to whose family, fortune, and personal merits the honest
+doctor had spoken with no small enthusiasm. Indeed Portman had described
+Arthur to the tutor "as a young gentleman of some fortune and landed
+estate, of one of the most ancient families in the kingdom, and
+possessing such a character and genius as were sure, under the proper
+guidance, to make him a credit to the college and the University." Under
+such recommendations the tutor was, of course, most cordial to the young
+freshman and his guardian, invited the latter to dine in hall, where he
+would have the satisfaction of seeing his nephew wear his gown and eat
+his dinner for the first time, and requested the pair to take wine at
+his rooms after hall, and in consequence of the highly favorable report
+he had received of Mr. Arthur Pendennis, said he should be happy to give
+him the best set of rooms to be had in college--a gentleman-pensioner's
+set, indeed, which were just luckily vacant. So they parted until
+dinner-time, which was very near at hand, and Major Pendennis pronounced
+Mr. Buck to be uncommonly civil indeed. Indeed when a college magnate
+takes the trouble to be polite, there is no man more splendidly
+courteous. Immersed in their books and excluded from the world by the
+gravity of their occupations, these reverend men assume a solemn
+magnificence of compliment in which they rustle and swell as in their
+grand robes of state. Those silks and brocades are not put on for all
+comers or every day.
+
+When the two gentlemen had taken leave of the tutor in his study, and
+had returned to Mr. Buck's ante-room, or lecture-room, a very handsome
+apartment, turkey-carpeted, and hung with excellent prints and richly
+framed pictures, they found the tutor's servant already in waiting
+there, accompanied by a man with a bag full of caps and a number of
+gowns, from which Pen might select a cap and gown for himself, and the
+servant, no doubt, would get a commission proportionable to the service
+done by him. Mr. Pen was all in a tremor of pleasure as the bustling
+tailor tried on a gown and pronounced that it was an excellent fit; and
+then he put the pretty college cap on, in rather a dandified manner and
+somewhat on one side, as he had seen Fiddicombe, the youngest master at
+Gray 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Then Davis, the skip or attendant, led the way, keys in hand, across the
+quadrangle, the major and Pen following him, the latter blushing, and
+pleased with his new academical habiliments, across the quadrangle to
+the rooms which were destined for the freshman; and which were vacated
+by the retreat of the gentleman-pensioner, Mr. Spicer. The rooms were
+very comfortable, with large cross beams, high wainscots and small
+windows in deep embrasures. Mr. Spicer's furniture was there, and to be
+sold at a valuation, and Major Pendennis agreed on his nephew's behalf
+to take the available part of it, laughingly, however, declining (as,
+indeed, Pen did for his own part), six sporting prints, and four groups
+of opera-dancers with gauze draperies, which formed the late occupant's
+pictorial collection.
+
+Then they went to hall, where Pen sate down and ate his commons with his
+brother freshmen, and the major took his place at the high-table along
+with the college dignitaries and other fathers or guardians of youth,
+who had come up with their sons to Oxbridge; and after hall they went
+to Mr. Buck's to take wine: and after wine to chapel, where the major
+sate with great gravity in the upper place, having a fine view of the
+Master in his carved throne or stall under the organ-loft, where that
+gentleman, the learned Doctor Donne, sate magnificent, with his great
+prayer-book before him, an image of statuesque piety and rigid devotion.
+All the young freshmen behaved with gravity and decorum, but Pen was
+shocked to see that atrocious little Foker, who came in very late,
+and half-a-dozen of his comrades in the gentlemen-pensioners' seats,
+giggling and talking as if they had been in so many stalls at the opera.
+But these circumstances, it must be remembered, took place some years
+back, when William the Fourth was king. Young men are much better
+behaved now, and besides, Saint Boniface was rather a fast college.
+
+Pen could hardly sleep at night in his bed-room 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 in the mire! that there was a time in his life,
+and that but a few months back, when he was willing to take Costigan
+for his father-in-law!--
+
+"Poor old Smirke!" Pen presently laughed out--"well, I'll write and try
+and console the poor old boy. He won't die of his passion, ha, ha!" The
+major, had he been awake, might have heard a score of such ejaculations
+uttered by Pen as he lay awake and restless through the first night of
+his residence at Oxbridge.
+
+It would, perhaps, have been better for a youth, the battle of whose
+life was going to begin on the morrow, to have passed the eve in a
+different sort of vigil: but the world had got hold of Pen in the
+shape of his selfish old Mentor; and those who have any interest in
+his character, must have perceived ere now, that this lad was very
+weak as well as very impetuous, very vain as well as very frank, and
+if of a generous disposition, not a little selfish in the midst of
+his profuseness, and also rather fickle, as all eager pursuers of
+self-gratification are.
+
+The six months' passion had aged him very considerably. There was
+an immense gulf between Pen the victim of love, and Pen the innocent
+boy of eighteen, sighing after it: and so Arthur Pendennis had all the
+experience and superiority, besides that command which afterward conceit
+and imperiousness of disposition gave him over the young men with whom
+he now began to live.
+
+He and his uncle passed the morning with great satisfaction in making
+purchases for the better comfort of the apartments which the lad was
+about to occupy. Mr. Spicer's china and glass was in a dreadfully
+dismantled condition, his lamps smashed, and his book cases by no means
+so spacious as those shelves which would be requisite to receive the
+contents of the boxes which were lying in the hall at Fairoaks, and
+which were addressed to Arthur in the hand of poor Helen.
+
+The boxes arrived in a few days, that his mother had packed with so
+much care. Pen was touched as he read the superscriptions in the dear
+well-known hand, and he arranged in their proper places all the books,
+his old friends, and all the linen and table-cloths which Helen had
+selected from the family stock, and all the jam-pots which little Laura
+had bound in straw, and the hundred simple gifts of home. Pen had
+another Alma Mater now. But it is not all children who take to her
+kindly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+PENDENNIS OF BONIFACE.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 honor, 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 _tu 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
+neighboring great houses, whereof the families were not gone abroad, and
+where good shooting and company was to be had.
+
+A quarter of the space which custom has awarded to works styled the
+Serial Nature, has been assigned to the account of one passage in Pen's
+career, and it is manifest that the whole of his adventures can not 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 honor 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 neighbors, only that his neighbors are bad, for the most part. Let
+us have the candor to own as much at least. Can you point out ten
+spotless men of your acquaintance? Mine is pretty large, but I can't
+find ten saints in the list.
+
+During the first term of Mr. Pen's academical life, he attended
+classical and mathematical lectures with tolerable assiduity; but
+discovering, before very long time, that he had little taste or genius
+for the pursuing of the exact sciences, and being, perhaps, rather
+annoyed that one or two very vulgar young men, who did not even use
+straps to their trowsers, so as to cover the abominably thick and
+coarse shoes and stockings which they wore, beat him completely in the
+lecture-room, he gave up his attendance at that course, and announced to
+his fond parent that he proposed to devote himself exclusively to the
+cultivation of Greek and Roman literature.
+
+Mrs. Pendennis was, for her part, quite satisfied that her darling boy
+should pursue that branch of learning for which he had the greatest
+inclination; and only besought him not to ruin his health by too much
+study, for she had heard the most melancholy stories of young students
+who, by over fatigue, had brought on brain-fevers and perished untimely
+in the midst of their university career. And Pen's health, which was
+always delicate, was to be regarded, as she justly said, beyond all
+considerations or vain honors. Pen, although not aware of any lurking
+disease which was likely to endanger his life, yet kindly promised his
+mamma not to sit up reading too late of nights, and stuck to his word in
+this respect with a great deal more tenacity of resolution than he
+exhibited upon some other occasions, when, perhaps, he was a little
+remiss.
+
+Presently he began too to find that he learned little good in the
+classical lecture. His fellow-students there were too dull, as in
+mathematics they were too learned for him. Mr. Buck, the tutor, was no
+better a scholar than many a fifth-form boy at Gray Friars; might have
+some stupid humdrum notions about the meter and grammatical construction
+of a passage of AEschylus or Aristophanes, but had no more notion of the
+poetry than Mrs. Binge, his bed-maker; and Pen grew weary of hearing the
+dull students and tutor blunder through a few lines of a play, which he
+could read in a tenth part of the time which they gave to it. After all,
+private reading, as he began to perceive, was the only study which was
+really profitable to a man; and he announced to his mamma, that he
+should read by himself a great deal more, and in public a great deal
+less. That excellent woman knew no more about Homer than she did about
+algebra, but she was quite contented with Pen's arrangements regarding
+his course of studies, and felt perfectly confident that her dear boy
+would get the place which he merited.
+
+Pen did not come home until after Christmas, a little to the fond
+mother's disappointment, and Laura's, who was longing for him to make a
+fine snow fortification, such as he had made three winters before. But
+he was invited to Logwood, Lady Agnes Foker's, where there were private
+theatricals, and a gay Christmas party of very fine folks, some of them
+whom Major Pendennis would, on no account, have his nephew neglect.
+However, he staid at home for the last three weeks of the vacation,
+and Laura had the opportunity of remarking what a quantity of fine new
+clothes he brought with him, and his mother admired his improved
+appearance and manly and decided tone.
+
+He did not come home at Easter; but when he arrived for the long
+vacation, he brought more smart clothes: appearing in the morning in
+wonderful shooting-jackets, with remarkable buttons; and in the evening
+in gorgeous velvet waistcoats, with richly-embroidered cravats, and
+curious linen. And as she pried about his room, she saw, oh, such a
+beautiful dressing-case, with silver mountings, and a quantity of lovely
+rings and jewelry. 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 time-piece 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 favor, and of that
+other school watch which has once before been mentioned in this history.
+Our old friend, Rebecca, Pen pronounced to be no longer up to his
+weight, and swapped her away for another and more powerful horse, for
+which he had to pay rather a heavy figure. Mrs. Pendennis gave the boy
+the money for the new horse; and Laura cried when Rebecca was fetched
+away.
+
+Also Pen brought a large box of cigars, branded _Colorados_,
+_Afrancesados_, _Telescopios_, Fudson, Oxford-street, or by some such
+strange titles, and began to consume these not only about the stables
+and green-houses, where they were very good for Helen's plants, but in
+his own study, of which practice his mother did not at first approve.
+But he was at work upon a prize-poem, he said, and could not compose
+without his cigar, and quoted the late lamented Lord Byron's lines in
+favor 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 labors (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 bed-room which was adjacent, and
+actually put the cigar into his mouth and lighted the match at which he
+kindled it. Pen laughed, and kissed his mother's hand as it hung fondly
+over the back of the sofa. "Dear old mother," he said, "if I were to
+tell you to burn the house down, I think you would do it." And it is
+very likely that Mr. Pen was right, and that the foolish woman would
+have done almost as much for him as he said.
+
+Besides the works of English "light literature" which this diligent
+student devoured, he brought down boxes of the light literature of the
+neighboring country of France: into the leaves of which when Helen
+dipped, she read such things as caused her to open her eyes with wonder.
+But Pen showed her that it was not he who made the books, though
+it was absolutely necessary that he should keep up his French by an
+acquaintance with the most celebrated writers of the day, and that it
+was as clearly his duty to read the eminent Paul de Kock, as to study
+Swift or Moliere. And Mrs. Pendennis yielded with a sigh of perplexity.
+But Miss Laura was warned off the books, both by his anxious mother, and
+that rigid moralist Mr. Arthur Pendennis himself, who, however _he_
+might be called upon to study every branch of literature in order to
+form his mind and to perfect his style, would by no means prescribe such
+a course of reading to a young lady whose business in life was very
+different.
+
+In the course of this long vacation Mr. Pen drank up the bin of
+claret which his father had laid in, and of which we have heard the son
+remark, that there was not a headache in a hogshead; and this wine being
+exhausted, he wrote for a further supply to "his wine merchants,"
+Messrs. Binney and Latham of Mark Lane, London: from whom, indeed, old
+Doctor Portman had recommended Pen to get a supply of port and sherry on
+going to college. "You will have, no doubt, to entertain your young
+friends at Boniface with wine parties," the honest rector had remarked
+to the lad. "They used to be customary at college in my time, and I
+would advise you to employ an honest and respectable house in London for
+your small stock of wine, rather than to have recourse to the Oxbridge
+tradesmen, whose liquor, if I remember rightly, was both deleterious in
+quality and exorbitant in price." And the obedient young gentleman took
+the doctor's advice, and patronized Messrs. Binney and Latham at the
+rector's suggestion.
+
+So when he wrote orders for a stock of wine to be sent down to the
+cellars at Fairoaks, he hinted that Messrs. B. and L. might send in his
+university account for wine at the same time with the Fairoaks bill.
+The poor widow was frightened at the amount. But Pen laughed at her
+old-fashioned views, said that the bill was moderate, that every body
+drank claret and champagne now, and, finally, the widow paid, feeling
+dimly, that the expenses of her household were increasing considerably,
+and that her narrow income would scarce suffice to meet them. But they
+were only occasional. Pen merely came home for a few weeks at the
+vacation. Laura and she might pinch when he was gone. In the brief time
+he was with them ought they not to make him happy?
+
+Arthur's own allowances were liberal all this time; indeed, much more
+so than those of the sons of far more wealthy men. Years before, the
+thrifty and affectionate John Pendennis, whose darling project it had
+ever been to give his son a university education, and those advantages
+of which his own father's extravagance had deprived him, had begun
+laying by a store of money which he called Arthur's Education Fund. Year
+after year in his book his executors found entries of sums vested as
+A. E. F., and during the period subsequent to her husband's decease,
+and before Pen's entry at college, the widow had added sundry sums
+to this fund, so that when Arthur went up to Oxbridge it reached no
+inconsiderable amount. Let him be liberally allowanced, was Major
+Pendennis's maxim. Let him make his first _entree_ into the world as a
+gentleman, and take his place with men of good rank and station: after
+giving it to him, it will be his own duty to hold it. There is no such
+bad policy as stinting a boy--or putting him on a lower allowance than
+his fellows. Arthur will have to face the world and fight for himself
+presently. Meanwhile we shall have procured for him good friends,
+gentlemanly habits, and have him well backed and well trained against
+the time when the real struggle comes. And these liberal opinions the
+major probably advanced, both because they were just, and because he
+was not dealing with his own money.
+
+Thus young Pen, the only son of an estated country gentleman, with a
+good allowance, and a gentlemanlike bearing and person, looked to be
+a lad of much more consequence than he was really; and was held by
+the Oxbridge authorities, tradesmen, and undergraduates, as quite a
+young buck and member of the aristocracy. His manner was frank, brave,
+and perhaps a little impertinent, as becomes a high-spirited youth. He
+was perfectly generous and free-handed with his money, which seemed
+pretty plentiful. He loved joviality, and had a good voice for a song.
+Boat-racing had not risen in Pen's time to the _fureur_ which, as we are
+given to understand, it has since attained in the University; and riding
+and tandem-driving were the fashions of the ingenuous youth. Pen rode
+well to hounds, appeared in pink, as became a young buck, and not
+particularly extravagant in equestrian or any other amusement, yet
+managed to run up a fine bill at Nile's the livery stable-keeper, and
+in a number of other quarters. In fact, this lucky young gentleman had
+almost every taste to a considerable degree. He was very fond of books
+of all sorts: Doctor Portman had taught him to like rare editions, and
+his own taste led him to like beautiful bindings. It was marvelous
+what tall copies, and gilding, and marbling, and blind-tooling, the
+booksellers and binders put upon Pen's book-shelves. 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, jewelry, 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 splendor. He and his
+polite friends would dress themselves out with as much care in order
+to go and dine at each others' rooms, as other folks would who were
+going to enslave a mistress. They said he used to wear rings over
+his kid gloves, which he always denies; but what follies will not youth
+perpetrate with its own admirable gravity and simplicity? That he took
+perfumed baths is a truth; and he used to say that he took them after
+meeting certain men of a very low set in hall.
+
+In Pen's second year, when Miss Fotheringay made her chief hit in
+London, and scores of prints were published of her, Pen had one of these
+hung in his bed-room, 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 lionize the University, and passed before
+him on the arms of happy gownsmen, and give his opinion upon their
+personal charms, or their toilets, 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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
+jeweler, was known to sell no less than two gross of Pendennis pins,
+from a pattern which the young gentleman had selected in his shop.
+
+Now if any person with an arithmetical turn of mind will take the
+trouble to calculate what a sum of money it would cost a young man to
+indulge freely in all the above propensities which we have said Mr.
+Pen possessed, it will be seen that a young fellow, with such liberal
+tastes and amusements, must needs in the course of two or three years
+spend or owe a very handsome sum of money. We have said our friend Pen
+had not a calculating turn. No one propensity of his was outrageously
+extravagant; and it is certain that Paddington's tailor's account;
+Guttlebury's cook's bill for dinners; Dillon Tandy's bill with Finn, the
+print-seller, for Raphael-Morghens, 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 horse-dealer, 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 gentleman, 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 Calender" or "Bell's Life," or cared for any
+manuscript except his greasy little scrawl of a betting-book:--our
+Catholic-minded young friend occupied himself in every one of the
+branches of science or pleasure above-mentioned, and distinguished
+himself tolerably in each.
+
+Hence young Pen got a prodigious reputation in the University, and was
+hailed as a sort of Crichton; and as for the English verse prize, in
+competition for which we have seen him busily engaged at Fairoaks, Jones
+of Jesus carried it that year certainly, but the undergraduates thought
+Pen's a much finer poem, and he had his verses printed at his own
+expense, and distributed in gilt morocco covers among his acquaintance.
+I found a copy of it lately in a dusty corner of Mr. Pen's book-cases,
+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 lusters!
+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 defense
+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-ax 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 frank and false,
+and so 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 honors which
+now are of little worth to him: that had virtue, learning, genius--every
+faculty and endowment which might secure love, admiration and worldly
+fame: an obscure and solitary churchyard contains the grave of many fond
+hopes, and the pathetic stone which bids them farewell--I saw the sun
+shining on it in the fall of last year, and heard the sweet village
+choir raising anthems round about. What boots whether it be Westminster
+or a little country spire which covers your ashes, or if, a few days
+sooner or later, the world forgets you?
+
+Amidst these friends then, and a host more, Pen passed more than two
+brilliant and happy years of his life. He had his fill of pleasure and
+popularity. No dinner or supper party was complete without him; and
+Pen's jovial wit, and Pen's songs, and dashing courage, and frank and
+manly bearing, charmed all the undergraduates, and even disarmed the
+tutors who cried out at his idleness, and murmured about his extravagant
+way of life. Though he became the favorite and leader of young men who
+were much his superiors in wealth and station, he was much too generous
+to endeavor 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 favor 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
+afterward, and he became a Liberal of the most violent order. He avowed
+himself a Dantonist and asserted that Louis the Sixteenth was served
+right. And as for Charles the First, he vowed that he would chop off
+that monarch's head with his own right hand were he then in the room at
+the Union Debating Club, and had Cromwell no other executioner for the
+traitor. He and Lord Magnus Charters, the Marquis of Runnymede's son,
+before-mentioned, were the most truculent republicans of their day.
+
+There are reputations of this sort made quite independent of the
+collegiate hierarchy, in the republic of gownsmen. A man may be famous
+in the honor-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 any thing." He was backed for
+the Greek Ode won by Smith of Trinity; every body was sure he would have
+the Latin hexameter prize which Brown of St. John's, however, carried
+off, and in this way, one university honor 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 honor which Oxbridge
+was capable of awarding.
+
+As vacation after vacation and term after term passed away without the
+desired news that Pen had sate for any scholarship or won any honor,
+Doctor Portman grew mightily gloomy in his behavior toward Arthur,
+and adopted a sulky grandeur of deportment toward 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 can not stand the doctor's patronizing air,"
+Pen said. "He's too kind to me, a great deal too fatherly. I have seen
+in the world better men than him, and I 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 Doctor Portman, and was afraid to go to the
+Rectory when Arthur was at home.
+
+One Sunday in the last long vacation, the wretched boy pushed his
+rebellious spirit so far as not to go to church, and he was seen at
+the gate of the Clavering Arms, smoking a cigar, in the face of the
+congregation as it issued from St. Mary's. There was an awful sensation
+in the village-society, Portman prophesied Pen's ruin after that, and
+groaned in spirit over the rebellious young prodigal.
+
+So did Helen tremble in her heart, and little Laura--Laura had grown to
+be a fine young stripling by this time, graceful and fair, clinging
+round Helen and worshiping her, with a passionate affection. Both of
+these women felt that their boy was changed. He was no longer the
+artless Pen of old days, so brave, so artless, so impetuous, and tender.
+His face looked careworn and haggard, his voice had a deeper sound, and
+tones more sarcastic. Care seemed to be pursuing him; but he only
+laughed when his mother questioned him, and parried her anxious queries
+with some scornful jest. Nor did he spend much of his vacations at home;
+he went on visits to one great friend or another, and scared the quiet
+pair at Fairoaks, by stories of great houses whither he had been
+invited, and by talking of lords without their titles.
+
+Honest Harry Foker, who had been the means of introducing Arthur
+Pendennis to that set of young men at the University, from whose
+society and connections Arthur's uncle expected that the lad would
+get so much benefit; who had called for Arthur's first song at his first
+supper-party; and who had presented him at the Barmecide Club where none
+but the very best men of Oxbridge were admitted (it consisted in Pen's
+time of six noblemen, eight gentlemen-pensioners, and twelve of the most
+select commoners of the University), soon found himself left far behind
+by the young freshman in the fashionable world of Oxbridge, and being a
+generous and worthy fellow, without a spark of envy in his composition,
+was exceedingly pleased at the success of his young _protege_, and
+admired Pen quite as much as any of the other youth did. It was he
+who followed Pen now, and quoted his sayings; learned his songs, and
+retailed them at minor supper-parties, and was never weary of hearing
+them from the gifted young poet's own mouth--for a good deal of the
+time which Mr. Pen might have employed much more advantageously
+in the pursuit of the regular scholastic studies was given up to the
+composition of secular ballads, which he sang about at parties according
+to university wont.
+
+It had been as well for Arthur if the honest Foker had remained for
+some time at college, for, with all his vivacity, he was a prudent
+young man, and often curbed Pen's propensity to extravagance: but Foker's
+collegiate career did not last very long after Arthur's entrance at
+Boniface. Repeated differences with the university authorities caused
+Mr. Foker to quit Oxbridge in an untimely manner. He would persist in
+attending races on the neighboring 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 valor, yet these
+feats rather injured than served Foker, whom the proctor knew very well
+and who was taken with the brush in his hand, and who was summarily
+convened and sent down from the University.
+
+The tutor wrote a very kind and feeling letter to Lady Agnes on the
+subject, stating that every body was fond of the youth; that he never
+meant harm to any mortal creature; that he, for his own part, would have
+been delighted to pardon the harmless little boyish frolic, had not its
+unhappy publicity rendered it impossible to look the freak over; and
+breathing the most fervent wishes for the young fellow's welfare--wishes
+no doubt sincere, for Foker, as we know, came of a noble family on his
+mother's side, and on the other was heir to a great number of thousand
+pounds a year.
+
+"It don't matter," said Foker, talking over the matter with Pen--"a
+little sooner or a little later, what is the odds? I should have been
+plucked for my little-go again, I know I should--that Latin I can not
+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 at
+every thing. 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 wont
+play with 'em. You're no match for 'em. You ain't up to their weight.
+It's like little Black Strap standing up to Tom Spring--the Black's a
+pretty fighter, but, Law bless you, his arm ain't long enough to touch
+Tom--and I tell you, you're going it with fellers beyond your weight.
+Look here--If you'll promise me never to bet nor touch a box nor a card,
+I'll let you off the two ponies."
+
+But Pen, laughingly, said, "that though it wasn't convenient to him
+to pay the two ponies at that moment, he by no means wished to be let
+off any just debts he owed;" and he and Foker parted, not without many
+dark forebodings on the latter's part with regard to his friend, who,
+Harry thought, was traveling speedily on the road to ruin.
+
+"One must do at Rome as Rome does," Pen said, in a dandified manner,
+jingling some sovereigns in his waistcoat-pocket. "A little quiet
+play at _ecarte_ can't hurt a man who plays pretty well--I came away
+fourteen sovereigns richer from Ringwood's supper, and, gad! I wanted the
+money."--And he walked off, after having taken leave of poor Foker, who
+went away without any beat of drum, or offer to drive the coach out of
+Oxbridge, to superintend a little dinner which he was going to give at
+his own rooms in Boniface, about which dinners, the cook of the college,
+who had a great respect for Mr. Pendennis, always took especial pains
+for his young favorite.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+RAKE'S PROGRESS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 victory elsewhere.
+
+In Pen's second year Major Pendennis paid a brief visit to his nephew,
+and was introduced to several of Pen's university friends--the gentle
+and polite Lord Plinlimmon, the gallant and open-hearted Magnus Charters,
+the sly and witty Harland; the intrepid Ringwood, who was called Rupert
+in the Union Debating Club, from his opinions and the bravery of his
+blunders; Broadbent, styled Barebones Broadbent from the republican
+nature of his opinions (he was of a dissenting family from Bristol and a
+perfect Boanerges of debate); Mr. Bloundell-Bloundell, finally, who had
+at once taken his place among the select of the University.
+
+Major Pendennis, though he did not understand Harland's Greek quotations,
+or quite appreciate Broadbent's thick shoes and dingy hands, was
+nevertheless delighted with the company assembled round his nephew, and
+highly approved of all the young men with the exception of that one who
+gave himself the greatest airs in the society, and affected most to have
+the manners of a man of the world.
+
+As he and Pen sate at breakfast on the morning after the party in the
+rooms of the latter, the major gave his opinions regarding the young
+men, with whom he was in the greatest good humor. 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 _racconteur_. Only once or twice during the
+telling of the anecdotes, 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 every body knew old Pen, regular old trencherman at Gaunt
+House, notorious old bore, regular old fogy.
+
+Major Pendennis, on his side, liked Mr. Bloundell not a whit. These
+sympathies are pretty sure to be mutual among 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 odor of certain flowers, or the taste of certain dishes, or
+wines, or certain books. We can't tell why--but, as a general rule, all
+the reasons in the world will not make us love Dr. Fell, and as sure as
+we dislike him, we may be sure that he dislikes us.
+
+So the major said, "Pen, my boy, your dinner went off _a merveille_;
+you did the honors very nicely--you carved well--I am glad you learned
+to carve--it is done on the side-board now in most good houses, but
+is still an important point, and may aid you in middle-life--young
+Lord Plinlimmon is a very amiable young man, quite the image of his
+dear mother (whom I knew as Lady Aquila Brownbill); and Lord Magnus's
+republicanism will wear off--it sits prettily enough on a young
+patrician in early life, though nothing is so loathsome among persons of
+our rank--Mr. Broadbent seems to have much eloquence and considerable
+reading; your friend Foker is always delightful: but your acquaintance,
+Mr. Bloundell, struck me as in all respects a most ineligible young man.
+
+"Bless my soul, sir, Bloundell-Bloundell!" cried Pen, laughing; "Why,
+sir, he's the most popular man of the University. We elected him
+of the Barmecides the first week he came up--had a special meeting on
+purpose--he's of an excellent family--Suffolk Bloundells, descended from
+Richard's Blondel, bear a harp in chief--and motto O Mong Roy."
+
+"A man may have a very good coat-of-arms, and be a tiger, my boy," the
+major said, chipping his egg; "that man is a tiger, mark my word--a low
+man. I will lay a wager that he left his regiment, which was a good one
+(for not a more respectable man than my friend Lord Martingale never
+sate in a saddle), in bad odor. 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 jewelry 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 _feter_. The cutlets were excellent, and the
+_souffle_ uncommonly light and good. The third bottle of champagne was
+not necessary; but you have a good income, and as long as you keep
+within it, I shall not quarrel with you, my dear boy."
+
+Poor Pen! the worthy uncle little knew how often those dinners took
+place, while the reckless young Amphitryon delighted to show his
+hospitality and skill in _gourmandise_. There is no art, than that
+(so long to learn, so difficult to acquire, so impossible and beyond
+the means of many unhappy people!) about which boys are more anxious to
+have an air of knowingness. A taste and knowledge of wines and cookery
+appears to them to be the sign of an accomplished _roue_ and manly
+gentleman. I like to see them wink at a glass of claret, as if they had
+an intimate acquaintance with it, and discuss a _salmi_--poor boys--it
+is only when they grow old they know that they know nothing of the
+science, when perhaps their conscience whispers them that the science
+is in itself little worth, and that a leg of mutton and content is
+as good as the dinners of pontiffs. But little Pen, in his character
+of admirable Crichton, thought it necessary to be a great judge and
+practitioner of dinners; we have just said how the college-cook
+respected him, and shall soon have to deplore that that worthy man so
+blindly trusted our Pen. In the third year of the lad's residence at
+Oxbridge, his staircase was by no means encumbered with dish-covers
+and desserts, and waiters carrying in dishes, and skips opening iced
+champagne; crowds of different sorts of attendants, with faces sulky or
+piteous, hung about the outer oak, and assailed the unfortunate lad as
+he issued out of his den.
+
+Nor did his guardian's advice take any effect, or induce Mr. Pen to
+avoid the society of the disreputable Mr. Bloundell. What young men like
+in their companions is, what had got Pen a great part of his own repute
+and popularity, a real or supposed knowledge of life. A man who has seen
+the world, or can speak of it with a knowing air--a _roue_, or Lovelace,
+who has his adventures to relate, is sure of an admiring audience among
+boys. It is hard to confess, but so it is. We respect that sort of
+prowess. From our school-days we have been taught to admire it. Are
+there five in the hundred, out of the hundreds and hundreds of English
+school-boys, brought up at our great schools and colleges, that must not
+own at one time of their lives to having read and liked Don Juan? Awful
+propagation of evil!--The idea of it should make the man tremble who
+holds the pen, lest untruth, or impurity, or unjust anger, or unjust
+praise escape it.
+
+One such diseased creature as this is enough to infect a whole colony,
+and the tutors of Boniface began to find the moral tone of their college
+lowered, and their young men growing unruly and almost ungentleman-like,
+soon after Mr. Bloundell's arrival at Oxbridge. The young magnates of
+the neighboring 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
+any thing in the captain's disfavor, 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 uncommonly well, the captain does;--and Pen, I wouldn't take the
+odds too freely from him, if I was you. I don't think he's too flush
+of money, the captain ain't." But beyond these dark suggestions and
+generalities, the cautious Foker could not be got to speak.
+
+Not that his advice would have had more weight with a headstrong young
+man, than advice commonly has with a lad who is determined on pursuing
+his own way. Pen's appetite for pleasure was insatiable, and he rushed
+at it wherever it presented itself with an eagerness which bespoke
+his fiery constitution and youthful health. He called taking pleasure
+"seeing life," and quoted well-known maxims from Terence, from Horace,
+from Shakspeare, to show that one should do all that might become a man.
+He bade fair to be utterly used up and a _roue_ in a few years, if he
+were to continue at the pace at which he was going.
+
+One night after a supper-party in college, at which Pen and Macheath had
+been present, and at which a little quiet _vingt-et-un_ had been played,
+(an amusement much pleasanter to men in their second and third year than
+the boisterous custom of singing songs, which bring the proctors about
+the rooms, and which have grown quite stale by this time, every man
+having expended his budget)--as the men had taken their caps and were
+going away, after no great losses or winnings on any side, Mr. Bloundell
+playfully took up a green wine-glass from the supper-table, which had
+been destined to contain iced champagne, 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, Seven's the main,
+and whisking the ivory cubes gently on the table, swept them up lightly
+again from the cloth, and repeated this process two or three times. The
+other men looked on, Pen, of course, among the number, who had never
+used the dice as yet, except to play a humdrum game of backgammon at
+home.
+
+Mr. Bloundell, who had a good voice, began to troll out the chorus from
+Robert the Devil, an opera then in great vogue, in which chorus many of
+the men joined, especially Pen, who was in very high spirits, having won
+a good number of shillings and half-crowns at the _vingt-et-un_--and
+presently, instead of going home, most of the party were seated round
+the table playing at dice, the green glass going round from hand to hand
+until Pen finally shivered it, after throwing six mains.
+
+From that night Pen plunged into the delights of the game of hazard, as
+eagerly as it was his custom to pursue any new pleasure. Dice can be
+played of mornings as well as after dinner or supper. Bloundell would
+come into Pen's rooms after breakfast, and it was astonishing how quick
+the time passed as the bones were rattling. They had little quiet
+parties with closed doors, and Bloundell devised a box lined with felt,
+so that the dice should make no noise, and their tell-tale rattle not
+bring the sharp-eared tutors up to the rooms. Bloundell, Ringwood,
+and Pen were once very nearly caught by Mr. Buck, who, passing in the
+Quadrangle, thought he heard the words "Two to one on the caster,"
+through Pen's open window; but when the tutor got into Arthur's rooms
+he found the lads with three Homers before them, and Pen said, he was
+trying to coach the two other men, and asked Mr. Buck with great gravity
+what was the present condition of the River Scamander, and whether it
+was navigable or no?
+
+Mr. Arthur Pendennis did not win much money in these transactions with
+Mr. Bloundell, or indeed gain good of any kind except a knowledge of the
+odds at hazard, which he might have learned out of books.
+
+Captain Macheath had other accomplishments which he exercised for Pen's
+benefit. The captain's stories had a great and unfortunate charm for
+Arthur, who was never tired of hearing Bloundell's histories of garrison
+conquests, and of his feats in country-quarters. He had been at Paris,
+and had plenty of legends about the Palais Royal, and the Salon, and
+Frascati's. He had gone to the Salon one night, after a dinner at the
+Cafe de Paris, "when we were all devilishly cut by Jove; and on waking
+in the morning in my own rooms, I found myself with twelve thousand
+francs under my pillow, and a hundred and forty-nine Napoleons in one
+of my boots. Wasn't that a _coup_, hay?" the captain said. Pen's eyes
+glistened with excitement as he heard this story. He respected the man
+who could win such a sum of money. He sighed, and said it would set
+him all right. Macheath laughed, and told him to drink another drop of
+Maraschino. "I could tell you stories much more wonderful than that," he
+added; and so indeed the captain could have done, without any further
+trouble than that of invention, with which portion of the poetic faculty
+nature had copiously endowed him.
+
+He laughed to scorn Pen's love for Miss Fotheringay, when he came to
+hear of that amour from Arthur, as he pretty soon did, for, we have
+said, Pen was not averse to telling the story now to his confidential
+friends, and he and they were rather proud of the transaction. But
+Macheath took away all Pen's conceit on this head, not by demonstrating
+the folly of the lad's passion for an uneducated woman much his senior
+in years, but by exposing his absurd desire of gratifying his passion
+in a legitimate way. "Marry _her_," said he, "you might as well marry
+----," and he named one of the most notorious actresses on the stage.
+"She hadn't a shred of a character." He knew twenty men who were openly
+admirers of her, and named them and the sums each had spent upon her. I
+know no kind of calumny more frightful or frequent than this which takes
+away the character of women, no men more reckless and mischievous than
+those who lightly use it, and no kind of cowards more despicable than
+the people who invent these slanders.
+
+Is it, or not, a misfortune that a man, himself of a candid disposition,
+and disposed, like our friend Pen, to blurt out the truth on all
+occasions, begins life by believing all that is said to him? Would it be
+better for a lad to be less trustful, and so less honest? It requires no
+small experience of the world to know that a man, who has no especial
+reason thereto, is telling you lies. I am not sure whether it is not
+best to go on being duped for a certain time. At all events, our honest
+Pen had a natural credulity, which enabled him to accept all statements
+which were made to him, and he took every one of Captain Macheath's
+figments as if they had been the most unquestioned facts of history.
+
+So Bloundell's account about Miss Fotheringay pained and mortified Pen
+exceedingly. If he had been ashamed of his passion before--what were
+his feelings regarding it now, when the object of so much pure flame
+and adoration turned out to be only a worthless impostor, an impostor
+detected by all but him? It never occurred to Pen to doubt the fact, or
+to question whether the stories of a man who, like his new friend, never
+spoke well of any woman, were likely to be true.
+
+One Easter vacation, when Pen had announced to his mother and uncle his
+intention not to go down, but stay at Oxbridge and read, Mr. Pen was
+nevertheless induced to take a brief visit to London in company with his
+friend Mr. Bloundell. They put up at a hotel in Covent Garden, where
+Bloundell had a tick, as he called it, and took the pleasures of 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
+mustaches, 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
+theaters 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 Theater, 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
+luster, and now was acting with "ever increasing attraction, &c.,"
+"triumph of the good old British drama," as the play-bills avowed,
+to houses in which there was plenty of room for any body who wanted
+to see her.
+
+It was not the first time Pen had seen her since that memorable day when
+the two had parted in Chatteries. 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
+theater 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 Chatteries,
+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 courtesy, 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 theater 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 recognize him. The next
+night he came in late, and staid very quietly for the after-piece, and on
+the third and last night of his stay in London--why, Taglioni was going
+to dance at the opera--Taglioni! and there was to be Don Giovanni, which
+he admired of all things in the world; so Mr. Pen went to Don Giovanni
+and Taglioni.
+
+This time the illusion about her was quite gone. She was not less
+handsome, but she was not the same, somehow. The light was gone out of
+her eyes which used to flash there, or Pen's no longer were dazzled by
+it. The rich voice spoke as of old, yet it did not make Pen's bosom
+thrill as formerly. He thought he could recognize the brogue underneath;
+the accents seemed to him coarse and false. It annoyed him to hear the
+same emphasis on the same words only uttered a little louder; worse than
+this, it annoyed him to think that he should ever have mistaken that
+loud imitation for genius, or melted at those mechanical sobs and sighs.
+He felt that it was in another life almost, that it was another man who
+had so madly loved her. He was ashamed and bitterly humiliated, and very
+lonely. Ah, poor Pen! the delusion is better than the truth sometimes,
+and fine dreams than dismal waking.
+
+They went and had an uproarious supper that night, and Mr. Pen had a
+fine headache the next morning, with which he went back to Oxbridge,
+having spent all his ready money.
+
+As all this narrative is taken from Pen's own confessions, so that the
+reader may be assured of the truth of every word of it, and as Pen
+himself never had any accurate notion of the manner in which he spent
+his money, and plunged himself in much deeper pecuniary difficulties,
+during his luckless residence at Oxbridge University, it is, of course
+impossible for me to give any accurate account of all 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 honored with his
+patronage at the outset of his career. Even Finch, the money-lender,
+to whom Bloundell introduced him, and with whom he had various
+transactions, in which the young rascal's signature appeared upon
+stamped paper, treated him, according to Pen's own account, with
+forbearance, and never mulcted him of more than a hundred per cent. The
+old college-cook, his fervent admirer, made him a private bill, offered
+to send him in dinners up to the very last, and never would have pressed
+his account to his dying day. There was that kindness and frankness
+about Arthur Pendennis, which won most people who came in contact with
+him, and which, if it rendered him an easy prey to rogues, got him,
+perhaps, more goodwill than he merited from many honest men. It was
+impossible to resist his good nature, or, in his worst moments, not
+to hope for his rescue from utter ruin.
+
+At the time of his full career of University pleasure, he would
+leave the gayest party to go and sit with a sick friend. He never
+knew the difference between small and great in the treatment of his
+acquaintances, however much the unlucky lad's tastes, which were of the
+sumptuous order, led him to prefer good society; he was only too ready
+to share his guinea with a poor friend, and when he got money, had an
+irresistible propensity for paying, which he never could conquer through
+life.
+
+In his third year at College, the duns began to gather awfully round
+about him, and there was a levee at his oak which scandalized 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 the 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 jewelry except two
+old gold sleeve-buttons, which had belonged to his father, and rushed
+with the proceeds to Frodsham's shop, where, with tears in his eyes,
+and the deepest repentance and humility, he asked the poor tradesman's
+pardon.
+
+This, young gentlemen, is not told as an instance of Pen's virtue, but
+rather of his weakness. It would have been much more virtuous to have
+had no prints at all. He still owed 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 jeweler's account, so that she was in
+the end the sufferer by the lad's impertinent fancies and follies. We
+are not presenting Pen to you as a hero or a model, only as a lad, who,
+in the midst of a thousand vanities and weaknesses, has as yet some
+generous impulses, and is not altogether dishonest.
+
+We have said it was to the scandal of Mr. Buck the tutor that Pen's
+extravagances became known: from the manner in which he entered college,
+the associates he kept, and the introductions of Doctor Portman and the
+major, Buck for a long time thought that his pupil was a man of large
+property, and wondered rather that he only wore a plain gown. Once on
+going up to London to the levee with an address from his Majesty's Loyal
+University of Oxbridge, Buck had seen Major Pendennis at Saint James's
+in conversation with two knights of the garter, in the carriage of one
+of whom the dazzled tutor saw the major whisked away after the levee. He
+asked Pen to wine the instant he came back, let him off from chapels and
+lectures more than ever, and felt perfectly sure that he was a young
+gentleman of large estate.
+
+Thus, he was thunderstruck when he heard the truth, and received a
+dismal confession from Pen. His University debts were large, and the
+tutor had nothing to do, and of course Pen did not acquaint him, with
+his London debts. What man ever does tell all when pressed by his
+friends about his liabilities? The tutor learned enough to know that Pen
+was poor, that he had spent a handsome, almost a magnificent allowance,
+and had raised around him such a fine crop of debts, as it would be very
+hard work for any man to mow down; for there is no plant that grows so
+rapidly when once it has taken root.
+
+Perhaps it was because she was so tender and good that Pen was terrified
+lest his mother should know of his sins. "I can't bear to break it to
+her," he said to the tutor in an agony of grief, "O! sir, I've been a
+villain to her"--and he repented, and he wished he had the time to come
+over again, and he asked himself, "Why, why did his uncle insist upon
+the necessity of living with great people, and in how much did all his
+grand acquaintance profit him?"
+
+They were not shy, but Pen thought they were, and slunk from them
+during his last terms at college. He was as gloomy as a death's-head at
+parties, which he avoided of his own part, or to which his young friends
+soon ceased to invite him. Every body knew that Pendennis was "hard up."
+That man Bloundell, who could pay nobody, and who was obliged to go down
+after three terms, was his ruin, the men said. His melancholy figure
+might be seen shirking about the lonely quadrangles in his battered old
+cap and torn gown, and he who had been the pride of the University but a
+year before, the man whom all the young ones loved to look at, was now
+the object of conversation at freshmen's wine parties, and they spoke
+of him with wonder and awe.
+
+At last came the Degree examinations. Many a young man of his year
+whose hob-nailed shoes Pen had derided, and whose face or coat he
+had caricatured--many a man whom he had treated with scorn in the
+lecture-room or crushed with his eloquence in the debating-club--many
+of his own set who had not half his brains, but a little regularity and
+constancy of occupation, took high places in the honors or passed with
+decent credit. And where on 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 rumor rushed through the University, that
+Pendennis of Boniface was plucked.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+FLIGHT AFTER DEFEAT.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Every body 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 our 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 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 us all: if we have only Justice to look
+to, Heaven help us!
+
+During the latter part of Pen's residence at the University of Oxbridge,
+his uncle's partiality had greatly increased for the lad. The major was
+proud of Arthur, who had high spirits, frank manners, a good person,
+and high gentlemanlike 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 fetes, partly to joke
+him and partly to do him honor. 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, &c., 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 fete 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 every where 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 any thing that any body chose to say in favor of her son.
+
+And all this pride and affection of uncle and mother had been trampled
+down by Pen's wicked extravagance and idleness! I don't envy Pen's
+feelings (as the phrase is), as he thought of what he had done. He had
+slept and the tortoise had won the race. He had marred at its outset
+what might have been a brilliant career. He had dipped ungenerously into
+a generous mother's purse; basely and recklessly spilt her little cruse.
+O! it was a coward hand that could strike and rob a creature so tender.
+And if Pen felt the wrong which he had done too thers, 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 Joe 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 theater 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
+patronized or scorned--how could he bear to look any of them in the face
+now? He rushed to his rooms, into which he shut himself, and there he
+penned a letter to his tutor, full of thanks, regards, remorse, and
+despair, requesting that his name might be taken off the college books,
+and intimating a wish and expectation that death would speedily end the
+woes of the disgraced Arthur Pendennis.
+
+Then he slunk out scarcely knowing whither he went, but mechanically
+taking the unfrequented little lanes by the backs of the colleges, until
+he cleared the University precincts, and got down to the banks of the
+Camisis river, now deserted, but so often alive with the boat-races, and
+the crowds of cheering gownsmen, he wandered on and on, until he found
+himself at some miles' distance from Oxbridge, or rather was found by
+some acquaintances leaving that city.
+
+As Pen went up a hill, a drizzling January rain beating in his face, and
+his ragged gown flying behind him--for he had not divested himself of
+his academical garments since the morning--a postchaise came rattling
+up the road, on the box of which was seated a servant, while 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 homeward in triumph in his yellow postchaise. He caught a sight
+of the figure, madly gesticulating as he worked up the hill, and of poor
+Pen's pale and ghastly face as the chaise whirled by him.
+
+"Wo!" roared Mr. Spavin to the postboy, and the horses stopped in their
+mad career, and the carriage pulled up some fifty yards before Pen. He
+presently heard his own name shouted, and beheld the upper half of the
+body of Mr. Spavin thrust out of the side-window of the vehicle, and
+beckoning Pen vehemently toward it.
+
+Pen stopped, hesitated--nodded his head fiercely, and pointed onward,
+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 toward Pen, holding out his hand, and
+grasping Pen's, said, "I say--hullo, old boy, where are you going, and
+what's the row now?"
+
+"I'm going where I deserve to go," said Pen, with an imprecation.
+
+"This ain't the way," said Mr. Spavin, smiling. "This is the Fenbury
+road. I say, Pen, don't take on because you are plucked. It's nothing
+when you are used to it. I've been plucked three times, old boy--and
+after the first time I didn't care. Glad it's over, though. You'll have
+better luck next time."
+
+Pen looked at his early acquaintance--who had been plucked, who had been
+rusticated, who had only, after repeated failures, learned to read and
+write correctly, and who, in spite of all these drawbacks, had attained
+the honor of a degree. "This man has passed," he thought, "and I have
+failed!" It was almost too much for him to bear.
+
+"Good-by, Spavin," said he; "I'm very glad you are through. Don't let me
+keep you; I'm in a hurry--I'm going to town to-night."
+
+"Gammon," said Mr. Spavin. "This ain't the way to town; this is the
+Fenbury road, I tell you."
+
+"I was just going to turn back," Pen said.
+
+"All the coaches are full with the men going down," Spavin said. Pen
+winced. "You'd not get a place for a ten-pound note. Get into my yellow;
+I'll drop you at Mudford, where you have a chance of the Fenbury mail.
+I'll lend you a hat and a coat; I've got lots. Come along; jump in,
+old boy--go it leathers!"--and in this way Pen found himself in Mr.
+Spavin's postchaise, and rode with that gentleman as far as the Ram Inn
+at Mudford, fifteen miles from Oxbridge; where the Fenbury mail changed
+horses, and where Pen got a place on to London.
+
+The next day there was an immense excitement in Boniface College,
+Oxbridge, where, for some time, a rumor prevailed, to the terror of
+Pen's tutor and tradesmen, that Pendennis, maddened at losing his
+degree, had made away with himself--a battered cap, in which his name
+was almost discernible, together with a seal bearing his crest of an
+eagle looking at a now extinct sun, had been found three miles on the
+Fenbury road, near a mill-stream; and, for four-and-twenty hours, it was
+supposed that poor Pen had flung himself into the stream, until letters
+arrived from him, bearing the London post-mark.
+
+The mail reached London at the dreary hour of five; and he hastened to
+the inn at Covent Garden, at which he was accustomed to put up, where
+the ever-wakeful porter admitted him, and showed him to a bed. Pen
+looked hard at the man, and wondered whether Boots knew he was plucked?
+When in bed he could not sleep there. He tossed about until the
+appearance of the dismal London daylight, when he sprang up desperately,
+and walked off to his uncle's lodgings in Bury-street; where the maid
+who was scouring the steps, looked up suspiciously at him, as he came
+with an unshaven face, and yesterday's linen. He thought she knew of his
+mishap, too.
+
+"Good evens! Mr. Harthur, what _as_ appened, sir?" Mr. Morgan, the
+valet, asked, who had just arranged the well-brushed clothes and shiny
+boots at the door of his master's bed-room, and was carrying in his wig
+to the major.
+
+"I want to see my uncle," he cried, in a ghastly voice, and flung
+himself down on a chair.
+
+Morgan backed before the pale and desperate-looking young man, with
+terrified and wondering glances, and disappeared into his master's
+apartment.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The major put his head out of the bed-room door, as soon as he had his
+wig on.
+
+"What! examination over? Senior Wrangler, double First Class, hay?" said
+the old gentleman--"I'll come directly;" and the head disappeared.
+
+"They don't know what has happened," groaned Pen; "what will they say
+when they know all?"
+
+Pen had been standing with his back to the window, and to such a dubious
+light as Bury-street enjoys of a foggy January morning, so that his
+uncle could not see the expression of the young man's countenance, or
+the looks of gloom and despair which even Mr. Morgan had remarked.
+
+But when the major came out of his dressing-room, neat and radiant, and
+preceded by faint odors from Delcroix's shop, from which emporium Major
+Pendennis's wig and his pocket-handkerchief got their perfume, he held
+out one of his hands to Pen, and was about addressing him in his cheery
+high-toned voice, when he caught sight of the boy's face at length, and
+dropping his hand, said, "Good God! Pen, what's the matter?"
+
+"You'll see it in the papers, at breakfast, sir," Pen said.
+
+"See what?"
+
+"My name isn't there, sir."
+
+"Hang it, why _should_ it be?" asked the major, more perplexed.
+
+"I have lost every thing, sir," Pen groaned out; "my honor's gone; I'm
+ruined irretrievably; I can't go back to Oxbridge."
+
+"Lost your honor?" screamed out the major. "Heaven alive! you don't mean
+to say you have shown the white feather?"
+
+Pen laughed bitterly at the word feather, and repeated it. "No, it isn't
+that, sir. I'm not afraid of being shot; I wish to God any body would.
+I have not got my degree. I--I'm plucked, sir."
+
+The major had heard of plucking, but in a very vague and cursory way,
+and concluded that it was some ceremony performed corporally upon
+rebellious University youth. "I wonder you can look me in the face after
+such a disgrace, sir," he said; "I wonder you submitted to it as a
+gentleman."
+
+"I couldn't help it, sir. I did my classical papers well enough: it was
+those infernal mathematics, which I have always neglected."
+
+"Was it--was it done in public, sir?" the major said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"The--the plucking?" asked the guardian, looking Pen anxiously in the
+face.
+
+Pen perceived the error under which his guardian was laboring, 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 dishonor, as far as he
+saw, and that Pen must try again.
+
+"_Me_ again at Oxbridge," Pen thought, "after such a humiliation as
+that!" He felt that, except he went down to burn the place, he could not
+enter it.
+
+But it was when he came to tell his uncle of his debts that the other
+felt surprise and anger most keenly, and broke out into speeches most
+severe upon Pen, which the lad bore, as best he might, without flinching.
+He had determined to make a clean breast, and had formed a full, true,
+and complete list of all his bills and liabilities at the University,
+and in London, They consisted of various items, such as
+
+  London Tailor.
+  Oxbridge do.
+  Haberdasher, for shirts and gloves.
+  Jeweler.
+  College Cook.
+  Crump, for desserts.
+  Bootmaker.
+  Wine Merchant in London.
+  Oxbridge do.
+  Bill for horses.
+  Printseller.
+  Books.
+  Binding.
+  Hairdresser and Perfumery.
+  Hotel Bill in London.
+  Sundries.
+
+All which items the reader may fill in at his pleasure--such accounts
+have been inspected by the parents of many University youth--and it
+appeared that Mr. Pen's bills in all amounted to about seven hundred
+pounds; and, furthermore, it was calculated that he had had more than
+twice that sum of ready money during his stay at Oxbridge. This sum he
+had spent, and for it had to show--what?
+
+"You need not press a man who is down, sir," Pen said to his uncle
+gloomily. "I know very well, sir, how wicked and idle I have been. My
+mother won't like to see me dishonored, sir," he continued, with his
+voice failing; "and I know she will pay these accounts. But I shall ask
+her for no more money."
+
+"As you like, sir," the major said. "You are of age, and my hands are
+washed of your affairs. But you can't live without money, and have no
+means of making it that I see, though you have a fine talent in spending
+it, and it is my belief that you will proceed as you have begun, and
+ruin your mother before you are five years older.--Good morning; it is
+time for me to go to breakfast. My engagements won't permit me to see
+you much during the time that you stay in London. I presume that you
+will acquaint your mother with the news which you have just conveyed
+to me."
+
+And pulling on his hat, and trembling in his limbs somewhat, Major
+Pendennis walked out of his lodgings before his nephew, and went
+ruefully off to take his accustomed corner at the club. He saw the
+Oxbridge examination-lists in the morning papers, and read over the
+names, not understanding the business, with mournful accuracy. He
+consulted various old fogies of his acquaintance, in the course of the
+day, at his clubs; Wenham, a dean, various civilians; and, as it is
+called, "took their opinion," showing to some of them the amount of his
+nephew's debts, which he had dotted down on the back of a card, and
+asking what was to be done, and whether such debts were not monstrous,
+preposterous? What was to be done?--There was nothing for it but to pay.
+Wenham and the others told the major of young men who owed twice as
+much--five times as much--as Arthur, and with no means at all to pay.
+The consultations, and calculations, and opinions, comforted the major
+somewhat. After all, _he_ was not to pay.
+
+But he thought bitterly of the many plans he had formed to make a man of
+his nephew, of the sacrifices which he had made, and of the manner in
+which he was disappointed. And he wrote off a letter to Doctor Portman,
+informing him of the direful events which had taken place, and begging
+the doctor to break them to Helen. For the orthodox old gentleman,
+preserved the regular routine in all things, and was of opinion that it
+was more correct to "break" a piece of bad news to a person by means of
+a (possibly maladroit and unfeeling) messenger, than to convey it simply
+to its destination by a note. So the major wrote to Doctor Portman, and
+then went out to dinner, one of the saddest men in any London
+dining-room that day.
+
+Pen, too, wrote his letter, and skulked about London streets for
+the rest of the day, fancying that every body was looking at him and
+whispering to his neighbor, "That is Pendennis of Boniface, who was
+plucked yesterday." His letter to his mother was full of tenderness and
+remorse: he wept the bitterest tears over it--and the repentance and
+passion soothed him to some degree.
+
+He saw a party of roaring young blades from Oxbridge in the coffee-room
+of his hotel, and slunk away from them, and paced the streets. He
+remembers, he says, the prints which he saw hanging up at Ackermann's
+window in the rain, and a book which he read at a stall near the Temple:
+at night he went to the pit of the play, and saw Miss Fotheringay, but
+he doesn't in the least recollect in what piece.
+
+On the second day there came a kind letter from his tutor, containing
+many grave and appropriate remarks upon the event which had befallen
+him, but strongly urging Pen not to take his name off the University
+books, and to retrieve a disaster which, every body knew, was owing
+to his own carelessness alone, and which he might repair by a month's
+application. He said he had ordered Pen's skip to pack up some trunks of
+the young gentleman's wardrobe, which duly arrived, with fresh copies of
+all Pen's bills laid on the top.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the third day there arrived a letter from home; which Pen read in
+his bed-room, and the result of which was that he fell down on his
+knees, with his head in the bed-clothes, and there prayed out his heart,
+and humbled himself; and having gone down stairs and eaten an immense
+breakfast, he sallied forth and took his place at the Bull and Mouth,
+Piccadilly, by the Chatteries coach for that evening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+PRODIGAL'S RETURN.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 into the chair, and it is surprising with what
+courage and vigor 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 Mira 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 dispatch, and strode over to Fairoaks
+to break the intelligence to the widow.
+
+She had the news already. She had read Pen's letter, and it had relieved
+her somehow. A gloomy presentiment of evil had been hanging over her for
+many, many months past. She knew the worst now, and her darling boy was
+come back to her repentant and tender-hearted. Did she want more? All
+that the rector could say (and his remarks were both dictated by common
+sense, and made respectable by antiquity) could not bring Helen to feel
+any indignation or particular unhappiness, except that the boy should be
+unhappy. What was this degree that they made such an outcry about, and
+what good would it do Pen? Why did Doctor Portman and his uncle insist
+upon sending the boy to a place where there was so much temptation to be
+risked, and so little good to be won? Why didn't they leave him at home
+with his mother? As for his debts, of course they must be paid;--his
+debts!--wasn't his father's money all his, and hadn't he a right to
+spend it. In this way the widow met the virtuous doctor, and all the
+arrows of his indignation somehow took no effect upon her gentle bosom.
+
+For some time past, an agreeable practice, known since times ever
+so ancient, by which brothers and sisters are wont to exhibit their
+affection toward 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 courtesy and a proffered hand, and with
+a great blush which rose up to the cheek, just upon the very spot which
+young Pen had been used to salute.
+
+I am not good at descriptions of female beauty; and, indeed, do not care
+for it in the least (thinking that goodness and virtue are, of course,
+far more advantageous to a young lady than any mere fleeting charms of
+person and face), and so shall not attempt any particular delineation
+of Miss Laura Bell at the age of sixteen years. At that age she had
+attained her present altitude of five feet four inches, so that she was
+called tall and gawky by some, and a Maypole by others, of her own sex,
+who prefer littler women. But if she was a Maypole, she had beautiful
+roses about her head, and it is a fact that many swains were disposed
+to dance round her. She was ordinarily pale, with a faint rose tinge
+in her cheeks; but they flushed up in a minute when occasion called,
+and continued so blushing ever so long, the roses remaining after the
+emotion had passed away which had summoned those pretty flowers into
+existence. Her eyes have been described as very large from her earliest
+childhood, and retained that characteristic in later life. Good-natured
+critics (always females) said that she was in the habit of making play
+with those eyes, and ogling the gentlemen and ladies in her company; but
+the fact is, that nature had made them so to shine and to look, and they
+could no more help so looking and shining than one star can help being
+brighter than another. It was doubtless to mitigate their brightness
+that Miss Laura's eyes were provided with two pairs of vails 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 dare say that
+to see her asleep would have been a pretty sight.
+
+As for her complexion, that was nearly as brilliant as Lady Mantrap's,
+and without the powder which her ladyship uses. Her nose must be left to
+the reader's imagination: if her mouth was rather large (as Miss Piminy
+avers, who, but for her known appetite, one would think could not
+swallow any thing larger than a button) every body allowed that her
+smile was charming, and showed off a set of pearly teeth, while her
+voice was so low and sweet, that to hear it was like listening to sweet
+music. Because she is in the habit of wearing very long dresses, people
+of course say that her feet are not small: but it may be, that they are
+of the size becoming her figure, and it does not follow, because Mrs.
+Pincher is always putting _her_ foot out, that all other ladies should
+be perpetually bringing theirs on the tapis. In fine, Miss Laura Bell,
+at the age of sixteen, was a sweet young lady. Many thousands of such
+are to be found, let us hope, in this country, where there is no lack of
+goodness, and modesty, and purity, and beauty.
+
+Now, Miss Laura, since she had learned to think for herself (and in the
+past two years her mind and her person had both developed themselves
+considerably), had only been half pleased with Pen's general conduct
+and bearing. His letters to his mother at home had become of late very
+rare and short. It was in vain that the fond widow urged how constant
+Arthur's occupations and studies were, and how many his engagements.
+"It is better that he should lose a prize," Laura said, "than forget
+his mother: and indeed, mamma, I don't see that he gets many prizes. Why
+doesn't he come home and stay with you, instead of passing his vacations
+at his great friends' fine houses? There is nobody there will love him
+half so much as--as you do." "As _I_ do only, Laura," sighed out Mrs.
+Pendennis. Laura declared stoutly that she did not love Pen a bit, when
+he did not do his duty to his mother: nor would she be convinced by
+any of Helen's fond arguments, that the boy must make his way in the
+world; that his uncle was most desirous that Pen should cultivate the
+acquaintance of persons who were likely to befriend him in life; that
+men had a thousand ties and calls which women could not understand,
+and so forth. Perhaps Helen no more believed in these excuses than her
+adopted daughter did; but she tried to believe that she believed them,
+and comforted herself with the maternal infatuation. And that is a point
+whereon, I suppose, many a gentleman has reflected, that, do what we
+will, we are pretty sure of the woman's love that once has been ours;
+and that that untiring tenderness and forgiveness never fail us.
+
+Also, there had been that freedom, not to say audacity, in Arthur's
+latter talk and ways, which had shocked and displeased Laura. Not that
+he ever offended her by rudeness, or addressed to her a word which
+she ought not to hear, for Mr. Pen was a gentleman, and by nature and
+education polite to every woman, high and low; but he spoke lightly and
+laxly of women in general; was less courteous in his actions than in his
+words--neglectful in sundry ways, and in many of the little offices of
+life. It offended Miss Laura that he should smoke his horrid pipes in
+the house; that he should refuse to go to church with his mother, or on
+walks or visits with her, and be found yawning over his novel in his
+dressing-gown, when the gentle widow returned from those duties. The
+hero of Laura's early infancy, about whom she had passed so many, many
+nights talking with Helen (who recited endless stories of the boy's
+virtues, and love, and bravery, when he was away at school), was a
+very different person from the young man whom now she knew; bold and
+brilliant, sarcastic and defiant, seeming to scorn the simple occupations
+or pleasures, or even devotions, of the women with whom he lived, and
+whom he quitted on such light pretexts.
+
+The Fotheringay affair, too, when Laura came to hear of it (which she
+did first by some sarcastic allusions of Major Pendennis, when on a
+visit to Fairoaks, and then from their neighbors at Clavering, who had
+plenty of information to give her on this head), vastly shocked and
+outraged Miss Laura. A Pendennis fling himself away on such a woman as
+that! Helen's boy galloping away from home, day after day, to fall on
+his knees to an actress, and drink with her horrid father! A good son
+want to bring such a man and such a woman into his house, and set her
+over his mother! "I would have run away, mamma; I would, if I had had
+to walk barefoot through the snow," Laura said.
+
+"And _you_ would have left me too, then?" Helen answered; on which,
+of course, Laura withdrew her previous observation, and the two women
+rushed into each other's embraces, with that warmth which belonged to
+both their natures, and which characterizes not a few of their sex.
+Whence came all this 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 behavior to the doctor, and since the wretch had smoked
+cigars in church-time: perhaps, finally, she was jealous: but this is
+a vice in which, it is said, the ladies very seldom indulge.
+
+Albeit she was angry with Pen; against his mother she had no such
+feeling; but devoted herself to Helen with the utmost force of her
+girlish affection--such affection as women, whose hearts are disengaged,
+are apt to bestow upon the near female friend. It was devotion--it was
+passion--it was all sorts of fondness and folly; it was a profusion of
+caresses, tender epithets and endearments, such as it does not become
+sober historians with beards to narrate. Do not let us men despise these
+instincts because we can not feel them. These women were made for our
+comfort and delectation, gentlemen--with all the rest of the minor
+animals.
+
+But as soon as Miss Laura heard that Pen was unfortunate and unhappy,
+all her wrath against him straightway vanished, and gave place to the
+most tender and unreasonable compassion. He was the Pen of old days
+once more restored to her, the frank and affectionate, the generous and
+tender-hearted. She at once took side with Helen against Doctor Portman,
+when he outcried at the enormity of Pen's transgressions. Debts? what
+were his debts? they were a trifle; he had been thrown into expensive
+society by his uncle's order, and of course was obliged to live in
+the same manner as the young gentlemen whose company he frequented.
+Disgraced by not getting his degree? the poor boy was ill when he went
+in for the examinations; he couldn't think of his mathematics and stuff
+on account of those very debts which oppressed him; very likely some of
+the odious tutors and masters were jealous of him, and had favorites
+of their own whom they wanted to put over his head. _Other_ people
+disliked him, and were cruel to him, and were unfair to him, she was
+very sure. And so, with flushing cheeks and eyes bright with anger, this
+young creature reasoned; and she went up and seized Helen's hand, and
+kissed her in the doctor's presence, and her looks braved the doctor,
+and seemed to ask how he dared to say a word against her darling
+mother's Pen?
+
+When that divine took his leave, not a little discomfited and amazed at
+the pertinacious obstinacy of the women, Laura repeated her embraces
+and arguments with tenfold fervor to Helen, who felt that there was a
+great deal of cogency in most of the latter. There must be some jealousy
+against Pen. She felt quite sure that he had offended some of the
+examiners, who had taken a mean revenge of him--nothing more likely.
+Altogether, the announcement of the misfortune vexed these two ladies
+very little indeed. Pen, who was plunged in his shame and grief in
+London, and torn with great remorse, for thinking of his mother's
+sorrow, would have wondered, had he seen how easily she bore the
+calamity. Indeed, calamity is welcome to women if they think it will
+bring truant affection home again: and if you have reduced your mistress
+to a crust, depend upon it that she won't repine, and only take a very
+little bit of it for herself, provided you will eat the remainder in her
+company.
+
+And directly the doctor was gone, Laura ordered fires to be lighted
+in Mr. Arthur's rooms, and his bedding to be aired; and had these
+preparations completed by the time Helen had finished a most tender and
+affectionate letter to Pen: when the girl, smiling fondly, took her
+mamma by the hand, and led her into those apartments where the fires
+were blazing so cheerfully, and there the two kind creatures sate down
+on the bed, and talked about Pen ever so long. Laura added a postscript
+to Helen's letter, in which she called him her dearest Pen, and bade him
+come home _instantly_, with two of the handsomest dashes under the word,
+and be happy with his mother and his affectionate sister Laura.
+
+In the middle of the night--as these two ladies, after reading their
+Bibles a great deal during the evening, and after taking just a look
+into Pen's room as they passed to their own--in the middle of the night,
+I say, Laura, whose head not unfrequently chose to occupy that pillow
+which the nightcap of the late Pendennis had been accustomed to press,
+cried out, suddenly, "Mamma, are you awake?"
+
+Helen stirred and said, "Yes, I'm awake." The truth is, though she had
+been lying quite still and silent, she had not been asleep one instant,
+but had been looking at the night-lamp in the chimney, and had been
+thinking of Pen for hours and hours.
+
+Then Miss Laura (who had been acting with similar hypocrisy, and lying,
+occupied with her own thoughts, as motionless as Helen's brooch, with
+Pen's and Laura's hair in it, on the frilled white pincushion on the
+dressing-table) began to tell Mrs. Pendennis of a notable plan which
+she had been forming in her busy little brains; and by which all Pen's
+embarrassments would be made to vanish in a moment, and without the
+least trouble to any body.
+
+"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
+into the bank at Chatteries for me, and which doesn't belong to me a
+bit. Now, to-morrow we will go to Chatteries, 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 any body, and then we will live happy
+ever after."
+
+What Helen replied to this speech need not be repeated, as the widow's
+answer was made up of a great number of incoherent ejaculations,
+embraces, and other irrelative matter. But the two women slept well
+after that talk; and when the night-lamp went out with a splutter, and
+the sun rose gloriously over the purple hills, and the birds began
+to sing and pipe cheerfully amidst the leafless trees and glistening
+evergreens on Fairoaks lawn, Helen woke too, and, as she looked at the
+sweet face of the girl, sleeping beside her, her lips parted with a
+smile, blushes on her cheeks, her spotless bosom heaving and falling
+with gentle undulations, as if happy dreams were sweeping over it--Pen's
+mother felt happy and grateful beyond all power of words, save such as
+pious women offer up to the Beneficent Dispenser of love and mercy--in
+whose honor a chorus of such praises is constantly rising up all round
+the world.
+
+Although it was January, and rather cold weather, so sincere was Mr.
+Pen's remorse, and so determined his plans of economy, that he would not
+take an inside place in the coach, but sate up behind with his friend
+the guard, who remembered his former liberality, and lent him plenty of
+great coats. Perhaps it was the cold that made his knees tremble as he
+got down at the lodge gate, or it may be that he was agitated at the
+notion of seeing the kind creature for whose love he had made so selfish
+a return. Old John was in waiting to receive his master's baggage, but
+he appeared in a fustian jacket, and no longer wore his livery of drab
+and blue. "I'se garner and stable man, and lives in the ladge now," this
+worthy man remarked, with a grin of welcome to Pen, and something of
+a blush; but instantly as Pen turned the corner of the shrubbery and
+was out of eye-shot of the coach, Helen made her appearance, her face
+beaming with love and forgiveness--for forgiving is what some women love
+best of all.
+
+We may be sure that the widow, having a certain other object in view,
+had lost no time in writing off to Pen an account of the noble, the
+magnanimous, the magnificent offer of Laura, filling up her letter with
+a profusion of benedictions upon both her children. It was probably the
+knowledge of this money-obligation which caused Pen to blush very much
+when he saw Laura, who was in waiting in the hall, and who this time,
+and for this time only, broke through the little arrangement of which we
+have spoken, as having subsisted between her and Arthur for the last few
+years; but the truth is, there has been a great deal too much said about
+kissing in the present chapter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So the prodigal came home, and the fatted calf was killed for him, and
+he was made as happy as two simple women could make him. No allusions
+were made to the Oxbridge mishap, or questions asked as to his farther
+proceedings, for some time. But Pen debated these anxiously in his own
+mind and up in his own room, where he passed much time in cogitation.
+
+A few days after he came home, he rode to Chatteries 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 check, which she, and possibly Pen himself, thought
+was an act of uncommon virtue and self-denial, but which Laura
+pronounced to be only strict justice.
+
+He had 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 succor. He was wild to find some means of repaying her.
+
+He left off drinking wine, and betook himself, but with great
+moderation, to the refreshment of whisky-and-water. He gave up cigar
+smoking; but it must be confessed that of late years he had liked pipes
+and tobacco as well or even better, so that this sacrifice was not a
+very severe one.
+
+He fell asleep a great deal after dinner, when he joined the ladies
+in the drawing-room, and was certainly very moody and melancholy. He
+watched the coaches with great interest, walked in to read the papers at
+Clavering assiduously, dined with any body who would ask him (and the
+widow was glad that he should have any entertainment in their solitary
+place), and played a good deal at cribbage with Captain Glanders.
+
+He avoided Dr. Portman, who, in his turn, whenever Pen passed, gave him
+very severe looks from under his shovel-hat. He went to church with his
+mother, however, very regularly, and read prayers for her at home to the
+little household. Always humble, it was greatly diminished now: a couple
+of maids did the work of the house of Fairoaks; the silver dish-covers
+never saw the light at all. John put on his livery to go to church, and
+assert his dignity on Sundays, but it was only for form's sake. He was
+gardener and out-door man, vice Upton resigned. There was but little
+fire in Fairoaks kitchen, and John and the maids drank their evening
+beer there by the light of a single candle. All this was Mr. Pen's doing,
+and the state of things did not increase his cheerfulness.
+
+For some time Pen said no power on earth could induce him to go back
+to Oxbridge again after his failure there; but one day, Laura said to
+him with many blushes, that she thought as some sort of reparation, of
+punishment on himself for his--for his idleness, he ought to go back and
+get his degree, if he could fetch it by doing so; and so back Mr. Pen
+went.
+
+A plucked man is a dismal being in a University; belonging to no set
+of men there, and owned by no one. Pen felt himself plucked indeed of
+all the fine feathers which he had won during his brilliant years, and
+rarely appeared out of his college; regularly going to morning chapel,
+and shutting himself up in his rooms of nights, away from the noise and
+suppers of the undergraduates. There were no duns about his door, they
+were all paid--scarcely any cards were left there. The men of his
+year had taken their degrees, and were gone. He went into a second
+examination, and passed with perfect ease. He was somewhat more easy
+in his mind when he appeared in his bachelor's gown.
+
+On his way back from Oxbridge he paid a visit to his uncle in London;
+but the old gentleman received him with very cold looks, and would
+scarcely give him his fore-finger to shake. He called a second time,
+but Morgan, the valet, said his master was from home.
+
+Pen came back to Fairoaks, and to his books and to his idleness, and
+loneliness and despair. He commenced several tragedies, and wrote many
+copies of verses of a gloomy cast. He formed plans of reading, and broke
+them. He thought about enlisting--about the Spanish legion--about a
+profession. He chafed against his captivity, and cursed the idleness
+which had caused it. Helen said he was breaking his heart, and was sad
+to see his prostration. As soon as they could afford it, he should go
+abroad--he should go to London--he should be freed from the dull society
+of two poor women. It _was_ dull--very, certainly. The tender widow's
+habitual melancholy seemed to deepen into a sadder gloom; and Laura saw
+with alarm that the dear friend became every year more languid and
+weary, and that her pale cheek grew more wan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+NEW FACES.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The inmates of Fairoaks were drowsily pursuing this humdrum existence
+while the great house upon the hill, on the other side of the River
+Brawl, was shaking off the slumber in which it had lain during the lives
+of two generations of masters, and giving extraordinary signs of renewed
+liveliness.
+
+Just about the time of Pen's little mishap, and when he was so absorbed
+in the grief occasioned by that calamity as to take no notice of events
+which befell persons less interesting to himself than Arthur Pendennis,
+an announcement appeared in the provincial journals which caused no
+small sensation in the county at least, and in all the towns, villages,
+halls and mansions, and parsonages for many miles round Clavering Park.
+At Clavering Market, at Cackleby Fair; at Chatteries Sessions; on
+Gooseberry Green, as the squire's carriage met the vicar's one-horse
+contrivance, and the inmates of both vehicles stopped on the road to
+talk; at Tinkleton Church gate, as the bell was tolling in the sunshine,
+and the white smocks and scarlet cloaks came trooping over the green
+common, to Sunday worship; in a hundred societies round about--the word
+was, that Clavering Park was to be inhabited again.
+
+Some five years before, the county papers had advertised the marriage at
+Florence, at the British Legation, of Francis Clavering, Esq., only son
+of Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., of Clavering Park, with Jemima Augusta,
+daughter of Samuel Snell, of Calcutta, Esq., and widow of the late J.
+Amory, Esq. At that time the legend in the county was that Clavering,
+who had been ruined for many a year, had married a widow from India with
+some money. Some of the county folks caught a sight of the newly-married
+pair. The Kickleburys, traveling 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 rumors of them came, as it were by gusts, to Clavering's
+ancestral place.
+
+Their last place of abode was Paris, where they appear to have lived in
+great fashion and splendor after the news of the death of Samuel Snell,
+Esq., of Calcutta, reached his orphan daughter in Europe.
+
+Of Sir Francis Clavering's antecedents little can be said that would be
+advantageous to that respected baronet. The son of an outlaw, living
+in a dismal old chateau near Bruges, this gentleman had made a feeble
+attempt to start in life with a commission in a dragoon regiment, and
+had broken down almost at the outset. Transactions at the gambling-table
+had speedily effected his ruin; after a couple of years in the army he
+had been forced to sell out, had passed some time in Her Majesty's
+prison of the Fleet, and had then shipped over to Ostend to join the
+gouty exile, his father. And in Belgium, France, and Germany, for some
+years, this decayed and abortive prodigal might be seen lurking about
+billiard-rooms and watering-places, punting at gambling-houses, dancing
+at boarding-house balls, and riding steeple-chases on other folks'
+horses.
+
+It was at a boarding-house at Lausanne, that Francis Clavering made what
+he called the lucky _coup_ of marrying the widow Amory, very lately
+returned from Calcutta. His father died soon after, by consequence of
+whose demise his wife became Lady Clavering. The title so delighted Mr.
+Snell of Calcutta, that he doubled his daughter's allowance; and dying
+himself soon after, left a fortune to her and her children, the amount
+of which was, if not magnified by rumor, something very splendid indeed.
+
+Before this time there had been, not rumors unfavorable to Lady
+Clavering's reputation, but unpleasant impressions regarding her
+ladyship. The best English people abroad were shy of making her
+acquaintance; her manners were not the most refined; her origin was
+lamentably low and doubtful. The retired East Indians, who are to be
+found in considerable force in most of the continental towns frequented
+by English, spoke with much scorn of the disreputable old lawyer and
+indigo-smuggler her father, and of Amory, her first husband, who had
+been mate of the Indiaman in which Miss Snell came out to join her
+father at Calcutta. Neither father nor daughter were in society at
+Calcutta, or had ever been heard of at Government House. Old Sir Jasper
+Rogers, who had been Chief Justice of Calcutta, had once said to his
+wife, that he could tell a queer story about Lady Clavering's first
+husband; but greatly to Lady Rogers's disappointment, and that of the
+young ladies his daughters, the old judge could never be got to reveal
+that mystery.
+
+They were all, however, glad enough to go to Lady Clavering's parties,
+when her ladyship took the Hotel Bouilli in the Rue Grenelle at Paris,
+and blazed out in the polite world there in the winter of 183-. The
+Faubourg St. Germain took her up. Viscount Bagwig, our excellent
+embassador, 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. Any body (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 Barbarosa, 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 odor in France, Lady Budelight put her down in
+her subscription-list for the Rev. J. Ramshorn, who had had a vision
+which ordered him to convert the Pope of Rome. And more than this, and
+for the benefit of the worldly, her ladyship gave the best dinners, and
+the grandest balls and suppers, which were known at Paris during that
+season.
+
+And it was during this time, that the good-natured lady must have
+arranged matters with her husband's creditors in England, for Sir
+Francis re-appeared in his native country, without fear of arrest; was
+announced in the Morning Post, and the county paper, as having taken up
+his residence at Mivart's Hotel; and one day the anxious old housekeeper
+at Clavering House beheld a carriage and four horses drive up the long
+avenue, and stop before the moss-grown steps in front of the vast
+melancholy portico.
+
+Three gentlemen were in the carriage--an open one. On the back seat was
+our old acquaintance, Mr. Tatham of Chatteries, while in the places
+of honor sate a handsome and portly gentleman enveloped in mustaches,
+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, had nimbly jumped out of it.
+
+They walked up the great moss-grown steps to the hall-door, and a
+foreign attendant, with ear-rings, 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 aid-de-camp, and Smart, the keeper, appeared, bowing humbly.
+
+Smart, the keeper, pulled the wisp of hay-colored hair which adorned
+his sunburned 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 courtesy. Little Polly, her aid-de-camp, made a
+courtesy, and several rapid bows likewise; and Mrs. Blenkinsop, with a
+great deal of emotion, quavered out, "Welcome to Clavering, Sir Francis.
+It du my poor eyes good to see one of the family once more."
+
+The speech and the greetings were all addressed to the grand gentleman
+in fur and braiding, who wore his hat so magnificently on one side, and
+twirled his mustaches so royally. But he burst out laughing, and said,
+"You've saddled the wrong horse, old lady--I'm not Sir Francis Clavering
+what's come to revisit the halls of my ancestors. Friends and vassals!
+behold your rightful lord!"
+
+And he pointed his hand toward the pale, languid gentleman, who said,
+"Don't be an ass, Ned."
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Blenkinsop, I'm Sir Francis Clavering; I recollect you quite
+well. Forgot me, I suppose?--How-dy-do?" and he took the old lady's
+trembling hand; and nodded in her astonished face, in a not unkind
+manner.
+
+Mrs. Blenkinsop declared upon her conscience that she would have known
+Sir Francis any where, that he was the very image of Sir Francis his
+father, and of Sir John who had gone before.
+
+"O yes--thanky--of course--very much obliged--and that sort of thing,"
+Sir Francis said, looking vacantly about the hall. "Dismal old place,
+ain't it Ned? Never saw it but once, when my governor quarreled with my
+gwandfather, in the year twenty-thwee."
+
+"Dismal?--beautiful!--the Castle of Otranto!--the Mysteries of Udolpho,
+by Jove!" said the individual addressed as Ned. "What a fire-place! You
+might roast an elephant in it. Splendid carved gallery! Inigo Jones, by
+Jove! I'd lay five to two it's Inigo Jones."
+
+"The upper part by Inigo Jones; the lower was altered by the eminent
+Dutch architect, Vanderputty, in George the First his time, by Sir
+Richard, fourth baronet," said the housekeeper.
+
+"O, indeed," said the baronet. "Gad, Ned, you know every thing."
+
+"I know a few things, Frank," Ned answered. "I know that's not a Snyders
+over the mantel-piece--bet you three to one it's a copy. We'll restore
+it, my boy. A lick of varnish, and it will come out wonderfully, sir.
+That old fellow in the red gown, I suppose, is Sir Richard."
+
+"Sheriff of the county, and sate in parliament in the reign of Queen
+Anne," said the housekeeper, wondering at the stranger's knowledge;
+"that on the right is Theodosia, wife of Harbottle, second baronet, by
+Lely, represented in the character of Venus, the Goddess of Beauty--her
+son Gregory, the third baronet, by her side, as Cupid, God of Love, with
+a bow and arrows; that on the next panel, is Sir Rupert, made a knight
+banneret by Charles the First, and whose property was confuscated by
+Oliver Cromwell."
+
+"Thank you--needn't go on, Mrs. Blenkinsop," said the baronet. "We'll
+walk about the place ourselves. Frosch, give me a cigar. Have a cigar,
+Mr. Tatham?"
+
+Little Mr. Tatham tried a cigar which Sir Francis's courier handed to
+him, and over which the lawyer spluttered fearfully, "Needn't come with
+us, Mrs. Blenkinsop. What's-his-name--you--Smart--feed the horses and
+wash their mouths. Shan't stay long. Come along, Strong,--I know the
+way; I was here in twenty-thwee, at the end of my gwandfather's time."
+And Sir Francis and Captain Strong, for such was the style and title of
+Sir Francis's friend, passed out of the hall into the reception-rooms,
+leaving the discomfited Mrs. Blenkinsop to disappear by a side-door,
+which led to her apartments, now the only habitable rooms in the
+long-uninhabited mansion.
+
+It was a place so big that no tenant could afford to live in it; and Sir
+Francis and his friend walked through room after room, admiring their
+vastness, and dreary and deserted grandeur. On the right of the hall
+door were the saloons and drawing-rooms, and on the other side the oak
+room, the parlor, 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 bed-rooms were approached,
+and of which many were of stately proportions and exhibited marks of
+splendor. 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 not so airy or so clean as stables are now.
+
+Up and down the house the two gentlemen wandered, the owner of the
+mansion being very silent and resigned about the pleasure of possessing
+it; whereas, the captain, his friend, examined the premises with so
+much interest and eagerness, that you would have thought he was the
+master, and the other the indifferent spectator of the place. "I see
+capabilities in it--capabilities in it, sir," cried the captain. "Gad,
+sir, leave it to me, and I'll make it the pride of the country, at a
+small expense. What a theater 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 parlor
+with the tapestry in your second salon in the Rue de Grenelle, and
+furnish the oak room with the Moyen-age cabinets and the armor. Armor
+looks splendid against black oak, and there's a Venice glass in the Quai
+Voltaire, which will suit that high mantle-piece to an inch, sir. The
+long saloon, white and crimson of course; the drawing-room yellow satin;
+and the little drawing-room light blue, with lace over--hay?"
+
+"I recollect my old governor caning me in that little room," Sir Francis
+said, sententiously; "he always hated me, my old governor."
+
+"Chintz is the dodge, I suppose, for my lady's rooms--the suite in
+the landing, to the south, the bed-room, the sitting-room, and the
+dressing-room. We'll throw a conservatory out, over the balcony. Where
+will you have your rooms?"
+
+"Put mine in the north wing," said the baronet, with a yawn, "and out
+of the reach of Miss Amory's confounded piano. I can't bear it. She's
+scweeching from morning till night."
+
+The captain burst out laughing. He settled the whole further arrangements
+of the house in the course of their walk through it; and, the promenade
+ended, they went into the steward's room, now inhabited by Mrs.
+Blenkinsop, and where Mr. Tatham was sitting, poring over a plan of the
+estate, and the old housekeeper had prepared a collation in honor of her
+lord and master.
+
+Then they inspected the kitchen and stables, about both of which Sir
+Francis was rather interested, and Captain Strong was for examining the
+gardens: but the baronet said, "D---- the gardens, and that sort of
+thing!" and finally, he drove away from the house as unconcernedly as he
+had entered it; and that night the people of Clavering learned that Sir
+Francis Clavering had paid a visit to the Park, and was coming to live
+in the county.
+
+When this fact came to be known at Chatteries, 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 vicinage,
+farmers, tradesmen, and factory people--all the population in and round
+about the little place. The news was brought to Fairoaks, and received
+by the ladies there, and by Mr. Pen, with some excitement. "Mrs. Pybus
+says there is a very pretty girl in the family, Arthur," Laura said, who
+was as kind and thoughtful upon this point as women generally are: "a
+Miss Amory, Lady Clavering's daughter by her first marriage. Of course,
+you will fall in love with her as soon as she arrives."
+
+Helen cried out, "Don't talk nonsense, Laura." Pen laughed, and said,
+"Well, there is the young Sir Francis for you."
+
+"He is but four years old," Miss Laura replied. "But I shall console
+myself with that handsome officer, Sir Francis's friend. He was at
+church last Sunday, in the Clavering pew, and his mustaches were
+beautiful."
+
+Indeed, the number of Sir Francis's family (whereof the members have all
+been mentioned in the above paragraphs) was pretty soon known in his
+town, and every thing 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 Chatteries and London; and numerous as
+the vans were, there was not one but Captain Glanders knew what it
+contained, and escorted the baggage up to the Park House.
+
+He and Captain Edward Strong had formed an intimate acquaintance
+by this time. The younger captain occupied those very lodgings at
+Clavering, which the peaceful Smirke had previously tenanted, and was
+deep in the good graces of Madame Fribsby, his landlady; and of the
+whole town, indeed. The captain was splendid in person and raiment;
+fresh-colored, blue-eyed, black-whiskered, broad-chested, athletic--a
+slight tendency to fullness did not take away from the comeliness of his
+jolly figure--a braver soldier never presented a broader chest to the
+enemy. As he strode down Clavering High-street, his hat on one side, his
+cane clanking on the pavement, or waving round him in the execution of
+military cuts and soldatesque manoeuvres--his jolly laughter ringing
+through the otherwise silent street--he was as welcome as sunshine to
+the place, and a comfort to every inhabitant in it.
+
+On the first market-day he knew every pretty girl in the market: he
+joked with all the women; had a word with the farmers about their stock,
+and dined at the Agricultural Ordinary at the Clavering Arms, where he
+set them all dying with laughing by his fun and jokes. "Tu be sure he be
+a vine feller, 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 run in a little brandy, unexcised by kings, from
+Baymouth, or the fishing villages along the coast.
+
+He had tried to live at the great house first; but it was so dull he
+couldn't stand it. "I am a creature born for society," he told Captain
+Glanders. "I'm down here to see Clavering's house set in order; for
+between ourselves, Frank has no energy, sir, no energy; he's not the
+chest for it, sir (and he threw out his own trunk as he spoke); but I
+must have social intercourse. Old Mrs. Blenkinsop goes to bed at seven,
+and takes Polly with her. There was nobody but me and the Ghost for the
+first two nights at the great house, and I own it, sir, I like company.
+Most old soldiers do."
+
+Glanders asked Strong where he had served? Captain Strong curled his
+mustache, and said with a laugh, that the other might almost ask where
+he had _not_ served. "I began, sir, as cadet of Hungarian Uhlans, and
+when the war of Greek independence broke out, quitted that service
+in consequence of a quarrel with my governor, and was one of seven
+who escaped from Missolonghi, and was blown up in one of Botzaris's
+fireships, at the age of seventeen. I'll show you my Cross of the
+Redeemer, if you'll come over to my lodgings and take a glass of grog
+with me, captain, this evening. I've a few of those baubles in my desk.
+I've the White Eagle of Poland; Skrzynecki gave it me" (he pronounced
+Skrzynecki's name with wonderful accuracy and gusto); "upon the field
+of Ostrolenka, I was a lieutenant of the fourth regiment, sir, and we
+marched through Diebitsch's lines--bang thro' 'em into Prussia, sir,
+without firing a shot. Ah, captain, that was a mismanaged business.
+I received this wound by the side of the king before Oporto--where he
+would have pounded the stock-jobbing Pedroites, had Bourmont followed my
+advice; and I served in Spain with the king's troops, until the death of
+my dear friend, Zumalacarreguy, when I saw the game was over, and hung
+up my toasting iron, captain. Alava offered me a regiment, the Queen's
+Muleteros; but I couldn't--damme, I couldn't--and now, sir, you know Ned
+Strong--the Chevalier Strong they call me abroad--as well as he knows
+himself."
+
+In this way almost every body in Clavering came to know Ned Strong. He
+told Madame Fribsby, he told the landlord of the George, he told Baker
+at the reading-rooms, he told Mrs. Glanders, and the young ones, at
+dinner: and, finally, he told Mr. Arthur Pendennis, who, yawning into
+Clavering one day, found the Chevalier Strong in company with Captain
+Glanders; and who was delighted with his new acquaintance.
+
+Before many days were over, Captain Strong was as much at home in
+Helen's drawing-room as he was in Madame Fribsby's first floor; and
+made the lonely house very gay with his good humor and ceaseless flow
+of talk. The two women had never before seen such a man. He had a
+thousand stories about battles and dangers to interest them--about Greek
+captives, Polish beauties, and Spanish nuns. He could sing scores of
+songs, in half a dozen languages, and would sit down to the piano and
+troll them off in a rich manly voice. Both the ladies pronounced him to
+be delightful--and so he was; though, indeed, they had not had much
+choice of man's society as yet, having seen in the course of their lives
+but few persons, except old Portman and the major, and Mr. Pen, who was
+a genius, to be sure; but then your geniuses are somewhat flat and moody
+at home.
+
+And Captain Strong acquainted his new friends at Fairoaks, not only with
+his own biography, but with the whole history of the family now coming
+to Clavering. It was he who had made the marriage between his friend
+Frank and the widow Amory. She wanted rank, and he wanted money. What
+match could be more suitable? He organized it; he made those two people
+happy. There was no particular romantic attachment between them; the
+widow was not of an age or a person for romance, and Sir Francis, if he
+had his game at billiards, and his dinner, cared for little besides. But
+they were as happy as people could be. Clavering would return to his
+native place and country, his wife's fortune would pay his encumbrances
+off, and his son and heir would be one of the first men in the county.
+
+"And Miss Amory?" Laura asked. Laura was uncommonly curious about Miss
+Amory.
+
+Strong laughed. "Oh, Miss Amory is a muse--Miss Amory is a mystery--Miss
+Amory is a _femme incomprise_." "What is that?" asked simple Mrs.
+Pendennis--but the chevalier gave her no answer; perhaps could not give
+her one. "Miss Amory paints, Miss Amory writes poems, Miss Amory composes
+music, Miss Amory rides like Diana Vernon. Miss Amory is a paragon, in
+a word."
+
+"I hate clever women," said Pen.
+
+"Thank you," said Laura. For her part she was sure she should be charmed
+with Miss Amory, and quite longed to have such a friend. And with this
+she looked Pen full in the face, as if every word the little hypocrite
+said was gospel truth.
+
+Thus, an intimacy was arranged and prepared beforehand between the
+Fairoaks family and their wealthy neighbors at the Park; and Pen and
+Laura were to the full as eager for their arrivals, 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 among them, and is remembered
+by his rural entertainers for years after he has left them, and
+forgotten them very likely--floated far away from them on the vast
+London sea. But the islanders remember long after the mariner has sailed
+away, and can tell you what he said, and what he wore, and how he looked
+and how he laughed. In fine, a new arrival is an event in the country,
+not to be understood by us, who don't and had rather not, know who lives
+next door.
+
+When the painters and upholsterers had done their work in the house, and
+so beautified it, under Captain Strong's superintendence, that he might
+well be proud of his taste, that gentleman announced that he should go
+to London, where the whole family had arrived by this time, and should
+speedily return to establish them in their renovated mansion.
+
+Detachments of domestics preceded them. Carriages came down by sea, and
+were brought over from Baymouth by horses which had previously arrived
+under the care of grooms and coachmen. One day the "Alacrity" coach
+brought down on its roof two large and melancholy men, who were dropped
+at the park lodge with their trunks, and who were Messieurs Frederic and
+James, metropolitan footmen, who had no objection to the country, and
+brought with them state and other suits of the Clavering uniform.
+
+On another day, the mail deposited at the gate a foreign gentleman,
+adorned with many ringlets and chains. He made a great riot at the lodge
+gate to the keeper's wife (who, being a West-country woman, did not
+understand his English or his Gascon French), because there was no
+carriage in waiting to drive him to the house, a mile off, and because
+he could not walk entire leagues in his fatigued state and varnished
+boots. This was Monsieur Alcide Mirobolant, formerly Chef of his
+Highness the Duc de Borodino, of H. Eminence Cardinal Beccafico, and at
+present Chef of the bouche of Sir Francis Clavering, Baronet:--Monsieur
+Mirobolant's library, pictures, and piano, had arrived previously in
+charge of the intelligent young Englishman, his aid-de-camp. He was,
+moreover, aided by a professed female cook, likewise from London, who
+had inferior females under her orders.
+
+He did not dine in the steward's room, but took his nutriment in solitude
+in his own apartments, where a female servant was affected to his
+private use. It was a grand sight to behold him in his dressing-gown
+composing a _menu_. He always sate down and played the piano for some
+time before that. If interrupted, he remonstrated pathetically with his
+little maid. Every great artist, he said, had need of solitude to
+perfectionate his works.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But we are advancing matters, in the fullness of our love and respect
+for Monsieur Mirobolant, and bringing him prematurely on the stage.
+
+The Chevalier Strong had a hand in the engagement of all the London
+domestics, and, indeed, seemed to be the master of the house. There were
+those among them who said he was the house-steward, only he dined with
+the family. Howbeit, he knew how to make himself respected, and two of
+by no means the least comfortable rooms of the house were assigned to
+his particular use.
+
+He was walking upon the terrace finally upon the eventful day, when,
+amid an immense jangling of bells from Clavering Church, where the flag
+was flying, an open carriage and one of those traveling chariots or
+family arks, which only English philo-progenitiveness 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.
+Two 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 tall 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-humored countenance, which waggled and nodded very
+graciously: Master Francis Clavering, who was holding his mamma's skirt
+(and who stopped the procession to look at the largest footman, whose
+appearance seemed to strike the young gentleman), and Miss Blandy,
+governess to Master Francis, and Miss Amory, her ladyship's daughter,
+giving her arm to Captain Strong. It was summer, but fires of welcome
+were crackling in the great hall chimney, and in the rooms which the
+family were to occupy.
+
+Monsieur Mirobolant had looked at the procession from one of the
+lime-trees in the avenue. "Elle est la," he said, laying his jeweled
+hand on his richly-embroidered velvet waistcoat with glass buttons. "Je
+t'ai vue, je te benis, O ma sylphide, O mon ange!" and he dived into the
+thicket, and made his way back to his furnaces and saucepans.
+
+The next Sunday the same party which had just made its appearance at
+Clavering Park, came and publicly took possession of the ancient pew in
+the church, where so many of the baronet's ancestors had prayed, and
+were now kneeling in effigy. There was such a run to see the new folks,
+that the Low Church was deserted, to the disgust of its pastor; and as
+the state barouche, with the grays 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 every body, and saluted for all the company--the country
+people vowed my lady was not handsome, to be sure, but pronounced her
+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 color of the rainbow flaming
+on her person. Miss Amory appeared meek and dove-color like a vestal
+virgin--while Master Francis was in the costume then prevalent of Rob
+Roy Macgregor, a celebrated Highland outlaw. The baronet was not more
+animated than ordinarily--there was a happy vacuity about him which
+enabled him to face a dinner, a death, a church, a marriage, with the
+same indifferent ease.
+
+A pew for the Clavering servants was filled by these domestics, and the
+enraptured congregation saw the gentlemen from London with "vlower on
+their heeds," and the miraculous coachman with his silver wig, take their
+places in that pew so soon as his horses were put up at the Clavering
+Arms.
+
+In the course of the service, Master Francis began to make such a
+yelling in the pew, that Frederic, the tallest of the footmen, was
+beckoned by his master, and rose and went and carried out Master
+Francis, who roared and beat him on the head, so that the powder flew
+round about, like clouds of incense. Nor was he pacified until placed
+on the box of the carriage, where he played at horses with John's whip.
+
+"You see the little beggar's never been to church before, Miss Bell,"
+the baronet drawled out to a young lady who was visiting him; "no wonder
+he should make a row; I don't go in town neither, but I think it's right
+in the country to give a good example--and that sort of thing."
+
+Miss Bell laughed, and said, "The little boy had not given a
+particularly good example."
+
+"Gad, I don't know, and that sort of thing," said the baronet. "It ain't
+so bad neither. Whenever he wants a thing, Frank always cwies, and
+whenever he cwies he gets it."
+
+Here the child in question began to howl for a dish of sweetmeats, on
+the luncheon table, and making a lunge across the table-cloth, upset a
+glass of wine over the best waistcoat of one of the guests present, Mr.
+Arthur Pendennis, who was greatly annoyed at being made to look foolish,
+and at having his spotless cambric shirt front blotched with wine.
+
+"We do spoil him so," said Lady Clavering to Mrs. Pendennis, fondly
+gazing at the cherub, whose hands and face were now frothed over with
+the species of lather which is inserted in the confection called
+_meringues a la creme_.
+
+"It is very wrong," said Mrs. Pendennis, as if she had never done such a
+thing herself as spoil a child.
+
+"Mamma says she spoils my brother--do you think any thing could. Miss
+Bell? Look at him--isn't he like a little angel?"
+
+"Gad, I was quite wight," said the baronet. "He has cwied, and he has
+got it, you see. Go it, Fwank, old boy."
+
+"Sir Francis is a very judicious parent," Miss Amory whispered. "Don't
+you think so, Miss Bell? I shan't call you Miss Bell--I shall call you
+Laura. I admired you so at church. Your robe was not well made, nor your
+bonnet very fresh. But you have such beautiful gray eyes, and such a
+lovely tint."
+
+"Thank you," said Miss Bell, laughing.
+
+"Your cousin is handsome, and thinks so. He is uneasy _de sa personne_.
+He has not seen the world yet. Has he genius? Has he suffered? A lady,
+a little woman in a rumpled satin and velvet shoes--a Miss Pybus--came
+here and said he has suffered. I, too, have suffered--and you, Laura,
+has your heart ever been touched?"
+
+Laura said "No!" but perhaps blushed a little at the idea of the
+question, so that the other said--
+
+"Ah, Laura! I see it all. It is the beau cousin. Tell me every thing. I
+already love you as a sister."
+
+"You are very kind," said Miss Bell, smiling, "and--and it must be owned
+that it is a very sudden attachment."
+
+"All attachments are so. It is electricity--spontaneity. It is
+instantaneous. I knew I should love you from the moment I saw you. Do
+you not feel it yourself?"
+
+"Not yet," said Laura; "but I dare say I shall if I try."
+
+"Call me by my name, then."
+
+"But I don't know it," Laura cried out.
+
+"My name is Blanche--isn't it a pretty name? Call me by it."
+
+"Blanche--it is very pretty, indeed."
+
+"And while mamma talks with that kind looking lady--what relation is
+she to you? She must have been pretty once, but is rather _passee_;
+she is not well _gantee_, but she has a pretty hand--and while mamma
+talks to her, come with me to my own room--my own, own room. It's a
+darling room, though that horrid creature, Captain Strong, did arrange
+it. Are you _eprise_ of him? He says you are, but I know better; it is
+the beau cousin. Yes--_il a de beaux yeux_. _Je n'aime pas les blonds
+ordinairement. Car je suis blonde moi--je suis Blanche et blonde_,"--and
+she looked at her face and made a _moue_ in the glass; and never stopped
+for Laura's answer to the questions which she had put.
+
+Blanche was fair and like a sylph. She had fair hair, with green
+reflections in it. But she had dark eyebrows. She had long black
+eyelashes, which vailed beautiful brown eyes. She had such a slim
+waist, that it was a wonder to behold; and such slim little feet, that
+you would have thought the grass would hardly bend under them. Her lips
+were of the color of faint rosebuds, and her voice warbled limpidly over
+a set of the sweetest little pearly teeth ever seen. She showed them
+very often, for they were very pretty. She was very good-natured, and a
+smile not only showed her teeth wonderfully, but likewise exhibited two
+lovely little pink dimples, that nestled in either cheek.
+
+She showed Laura her drawings, which the other thought charming. She
+played her some of her waltzes, with a rapid and brilliant finger, and
+Laura was still more charmed. And she then read her some poems, in
+French and English, likewise of her own composition, and which she kept
+locked in her own book--her own dear little book; it was bound in blue
+velvet with a gilt lock, and on it was printed the title of "Mes
+Larmes."
+
+"Mes Larmes!--isn't it a pretty name?" the young lady continued, who was
+pleased with every thing that she did, and did every thing very well.
+Laura owned that it was. She had never seen any thing like it before;
+any thing 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, "every thing in the room is pretty; and you are the
+prettiest of all." The other smiled, looked in the glass, went up and
+took both of Laura's hands, and kissed them, and sat down to the piano,
+and shook out a little song, as if she had been a nightingale.
+
+This was the first visit paid by Fairoaks to Clavering Park, in return
+for Clavering Park's visit to Fairoaks, in reply to Fairoaks's cards
+left a few days after the arrival of Sir Francis's family. The intimacy
+between the young ladies sprang up like Jack's Bean-stalk to the skies
+in a single night. The large footmen were perpetually walking with
+little rose-colored-pink notes to Fairoaks; where there was a pretty
+housemaid in the kitchen, who might possibly tempt those gentlemen to
+so humble a place. Miss Amory sent music, or Miss Amory sent a new
+novel, or a picture from the "Journal des Modes," to Laura; or my lady's
+compliments arrived with flowers and fruit; or Miss Amory begged and
+prayed Miss Bell to come to dinner; and dear Mrs. Pendennis, if she was
+strong enough; and Mr. Arthur, if a humdrum party were not too stupid
+for him; and would send a pony-carriage for Mrs. Pendennis; and would
+take no denial.
+
+Neither Arthur nor Laura wished to refuse. And Helen, who was, indeed,
+somewhat ailing, was glad that the two should have their pleasure; and
+would look at them fondly, as they set forth, and ask in her heart that
+she might not be called away until those two beings whom she loved best
+in the world should be joined together. As they went out and crossed
+over the bridge, she remembered summer evenings five-and-twenty years
+ago, when she, too, had bloomed in her brief prime of love and
+happiness. It was all over now. The moon was looking from the purpling
+sky, and the stars glittering there, just as they used in the early,
+well-remembered evenings. He was lying dead, far away, with the billows
+rolling between them. Good God! how well she remembered the last look of
+his face as they parted. It looked out at her through the vista of long
+years, as sad and as clear as then.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So Mr. Pen and Miss Laura found the society at Clavering Park an
+uncommonly agreeable resort of summer evenings. Blanche vowed that she
+_raffoled_ of Laura; and, very likely, Mr. Pen was pleased with Blanche.
+His spirits came back; he laughed and rattled till Laura wondered to
+hear him. It was not the same Pen, yawning, in a shooting jacket, in the
+Fairoaks parlor, who appeared, alert and brisk, and smiling and well
+dressed, in Lady Clavering's drawing-room. Sometimes they had music.
+Laura had a sweet contralto voice, and sang with Blanche, who had had
+the best continental instruction, and was charmed to be her friend's
+mistress. Sometimes Mr. Pen joined in these concerts, or oftener looked
+sweet upon Miss Blanche as she sang. Sometimes they had glees, when
+Captain Strong's chest was of vast service, and he boomed out in a
+prodigious bass, of which he was not a little proud.
+
+"Good fellow, Strong--ain't he, Miss Bell?" Sir Francis would say to
+her. "Plays at _ecarte_ with Lady Clavering--plays any thing, 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 Laura."
+
+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 humor, in kindness and joviality, in a thousand little
+services by which he made himself agreeable. What gentleman could want
+a better friend than a man who was always in spirits, never in the way
+or out of it, and was ready to execute any commission for his patron,
+whether it was to sing a song or meet a lawyer, to fight a duel or to
+carve a capon?
+
+Although Laura and Pen commonly went to Clavering Park together, yet
+sometimes Mr. Pen took walks there unattended by her, and about which he
+did not tell her. He took to fishing the Brawl, which runs through the
+park, and passes not very far from the garden-wall. And by the oddest
+coincidence, Miss Amory would walk out (having been to look at her
+flowers), and would be quite surprised to see Mr. Pendennis fishing.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 endeavoring to hook? It must be owned, he
+became very fond of that healthful and invigorating pursuit of angling,
+and was whipping the Brawl continually with his fly.
+
+As for Miss Blanche, she had a kind heart; and having, as she owned,
+herself "suffered" a good deal in the course of her brief life and
+experience--why, she could compassionate other susceptible beings
+like Pen, who had suffered too. Her love for Laura and that dear Mrs.
+Pendennis redoubled: if they were not at the Park, she was not easy
+unless she herself was at Fairoaks. She played with Laura; she read
+French and German with Laura; and Mr. Pen read French and German along
+with them. He turned sentimental ballads of Schiller and Goethe into
+English verse for the ladies, and Blanche unlocked "Mes Larmes" for him,
+and imparted to him some of the plaintive outpourings of her own tender
+muse.
+
+It appeared from these poems that this young creature had indeed
+suffered prodigiously. She was familiar with the idea of suicide. Death
+she repeatedly longed for. A faded rose inspired her with such grief
+that you would have thought she must die in pain of it. It was a wonder
+how a young creature (who had had a snug home, or been at a comfortable
+boarding-school, and had no outward grief or hardship to complain of)
+should have suffered so much--should have found the means of getting at
+such an ocean of despair and passion (as a run-away boy who _will_ get
+to sea), and having embarked on it, should survive it. What a talent she
+must have had for weeping to be able to pour out so many of Mes Larmes!
+
+They were not particularly briny, Miss Blanche's tears, that is the
+truth; but Pen, who read her verses, thought them very well for a
+lady--and wrote some verses himself for her. His were very violent and
+passionate, very hot, sweet, and strong: and he not only wrote verses;
+but--O, the villain! O, the deceiver! he altered and adapted former
+poems in his possession, and which had been composed for a certain Miss
+Emily Fotheringay, for the use and to the Christian name of Miss Blanche
+Amory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+A LITTLE INNOCENT.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Every house has its skeleton in it somewhere, and it may be a comfort
+to some unhappy folks to think that the luckiest and most wealthy of
+their neighbors have their miseries and causes of disquiet. Our little
+innocent muse of a Blanche, who sang so nicely and talked so sweetly,
+you would have thought she must have made sunshine where-ever she went,
+was the skeleton, or the misery, or the bore, or the Nemesis of
+Clavering House, and of most of the inhabitants thereof. As one little
+stone in your own shoe or your horse's, suffices to put either to
+torture and to make your journey miserable, so in life a little obstacle
+is sufficient to obstruct your entire progress, and subject you to
+endless annoyance and disquiet. Who would have guessed that such a
+smiling little fairy as Blanche Amory could be the cause of discord in
+any family?
+
+"I say, Strong," one day the baronet said, as the pair were conversing
+after dinner over the billiard-table, and that great unbosomer of
+secrets, a cigar; "I say, Strong, I wish to the doose your wife was
+dead."
+
+"So do I. That's a cannon, by Jove. But she won't; she'll live
+forever--you see if she don't. Why do you wish her off the hooks, Frank,
+my boy?" asked Captain Strong.
+
+"Because then, you might marry Missy. She ain't bad-looking. She'll have
+ten thousand, and that's a good bit of money for such a poor old devil
+as you," drawled out the other gentleman. "And gad, Strong, I hate her
+worse and worse every day. I can't stand her, Strong, by gad, I can't."
+
+"I wouldn't take her at twice the figure," Captain Strong said,
+laughing. "I never saw such a little devil in my life."
+
+"I should like to poison her," said the sententious baronet; "by Jove I
+should."
+
+"Why, what has she been at now?" asked his friend.
+
+"Nothing particular," answered Sir Francis; "only her old tricks. That
+girl has such a knack of making every body miserable that, hang me, it's
+quite surprising. Last night she sent the governess crying away from
+the dinner-table. Afterward, as I was passing Frank's room, I heard the
+poor little beggar howling in the dark, and found his sister had been
+frightening his soul out of his body, by telling him stories about the
+ghost that's in the house. At lunch she gave my lady a turn; and though
+my wife's a fool, she's a good soul--I'm hanged if she ain't."
+
+"What did Missy do to her?" Strong asked.
+
+"Why, hang me, if she didn't begin talking about the late Amory, my
+predecessor," the baronet said, with a grin. "She got some picture out
+of the Keepsake, and said she was sure it was like her dear father. She
+wanted to know where her father's grave was. Hang her father! Whenever
+Miss Amory talks about him, Lady Clavering always bursts out crying;
+and the little devil will talk about him in order to spite her mother.
+To-day when she began, I got in a confounded rage, said I was her
+father, and--and that sort of thing, and then, sir, she took a shy
+at me."
+
+"And what did she say about you, Frank?" Mr. Strong, still laughing,
+inquired of his friend and patron.
+
+"Gad, she said I wasn't her father: that I wasn't fit to comprehend her;
+that her father must have been a man of genius, and fine feelings, and
+that sort of thing: whereas I had married her mother for money."
+
+"Well, didn't you?" asked Strong.
+
+"It don't make it any the pleasanter to hear because it's true, don't
+you know," Sir Francis Clavering answered. "I ain't a literary man and
+that; but I ain't such a fool as she makes me out. I don't know how
+it is, but she always manages to--to put me in the hole, don't you
+understand. She turns all the house round her in her quiet way, and
+with her confounded sentimental airs. I wish she was dead, Ned."
+
+"It was my wife whom you wanted dead just now," Strong said, always in
+perfect good humor; upon which the baronet, with his accustomed candor,
+said, "Well, when people bore my life out, I _do_ wish they were dead,
+and I wish Missy were down a well, with all my heart."
+
+Thus it will be seen from the above report of this candid
+conversation that our accomplished little friend had some peculiarities
+or defects of character which rendered her not very popular. She was
+a young lady of some genius, exquisite sympathies and considerable
+literary attainments, living, like many another genius, with relatives
+who could not comprehend her. Neither her mother nor her step-father
+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 school girl 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 every body 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 candor on her part to affect a
+cheerfulness which she did not feel, or pretend a respect for those
+toward whom it was quite impossible she should entertain any reverence?
+If a poetess may not bemoan her lot, of what earthly use is her lyre?
+Blanche struck hers only to the saddest of tunes; and sang elegies over
+her dead hopes, dirges over her early frost-nipt buds of affection, as
+became such a melancholy fate and muse.
+
+Her actual distresses, as we have said, had not been, up to the present
+time, very considerable; but her griefs lay, like those of most of us,
+in her own soul--that being sad and habitually dissatisfied, what wonder
+that she should weep? So Mes Larmes dribbled out of her eyes any day at
+command: she could furnish an unlimited supply of tears, and her faculty
+of shedding them increased by practice. For sentiment is like another
+complaint mentioned by Horace, as increasing by self-indulgence (I am
+sorry to say, ladies, that the complaint in question is called the
+dropsy), and the more you cry, the more you will be able and desirous
+to do so.
+
+Missy had begun to gush at a very early age. Lamartine was her favorite
+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 sympathized 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 favorite, 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 burned nose, or torn head of hair,
+and no eyes at all, that takes the first place in Miss's affection, and
+is dandled and caressed in her arms.
+
+As novelists are supposed to know every thing, 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 toward 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 every body knows, is next door to Monsieur Rogron's (Chevalier
+of the Legion of Honor) pension for young gentlemen, a correspondence,
+by letter, took place between the _seduisante Miss Betsi_ and two young
+gentlemen of the College of Charlemagne, who were pensioners of the
+Chevalier Rogron.
+
+In the above paragraph our young friend has been called by a Christian
+name, different to that tinder 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 step-father, held in terror over her, was the threat to
+call her publicly by her name of Betsy, by which menace he sometimes
+managed to keep the young rebel in order.
+
+We have spoken just now of children's dolls, and of the manner in
+which those little people take up and neglect their darling toys, and
+very likely this history will show that Miss Blanche assumed and put
+away her live dolls with a similar girlish inconstancy. She had had
+hosts of dear, dear, darling friends ere now, and had quite a little
+museum of locks of hair in her treasure-chest, which she had gathered in
+the course of her sentimental progress. Some dear friends had married:
+some had gone to other schools: one beloved sister she had lost from
+the pension, and found again, O, horror! her darling, her Leocadie,
+keeping the books in her father's shop, a grocer in the Rue du Bac:
+in fact, she had met with a number of disappointments, estrangements,
+disillusionments, as she called them in her pretty French jargon, and
+had seen and suffered a great deal, for so young a woman. But it is
+the lot of sensibility to suffer, and of confiding tenderness to be
+deceived, and she felt that she was only undergoing the penalties of
+genius, in these pangs and disappointments of her young career.
+
+Meanwhile, she managed to make the honest lady, her mother, as
+uncomfortable as circumstances would permit; and caused her worthy
+step-father to wish she was dead. With the exception of Captain Strong,
+whose invincible good humor was proof against her sarcasms, the little
+lady ruled the whole house with her tongue. If Lady Clavering talked
+about sparrowgrass instead of asparagus, or called an object a hobject,
+as this unfortunate lady would sometimes do, Missy calmly corrected her,
+and frightened the good soul, her mother, into errors only the more
+frequent as she grew more nervous under her daughter's eye.
+
+It is not to be supposed, considering the vast interest which the
+arrival of the family at Clavering Park inspired in the inhabitants
+of the little town, that Madame Fribsby alone, of all the folks in
+Clavering, should have remained unmoved and incurious. At the first
+appearance of the Park family in church, madame noted every article of
+toilet which the ladies wore, from their bonnets to their brodequins,
+and took a survey of the attire of the ladies' maids in the pew allotted
+to them. We fear that Doctor Portman's sermon, though it was one of his
+oldest and most valued compositions, had little effect upon Madame
+Fribsby on that day. In a very few days afterward, 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 favorably received,
+as she was happy to hear, by those ladies.
+
+Mrs. Bonner, Lady Clavering's lady, became soon a great frequenter of
+Madame Fribsby's drawing-room, and partook of many entertainments at the
+milliner's expense. A meal of green tea, scandal, hot Sally-Lunn cakes,
+and a little novel reading, were always at the service of Mrs. Bonner,
+whenever she was free to pass an evening in the town. And she found much
+more time for these pleasures than her junior officer, Miss Amory's
+maid, who seldom could be spared for a holiday, and was worked as hard
+as any factory girl by that inexorable little muse, her mistress.
+
+The muse loved to be dressed becomingly, and, having a lively fancy and
+a poetic desire for change, was for altering her attire every day. Her
+maid, having a taste in dress-making--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 remodeling Miss
+Amory's habiliments; and rose very early and went to bed very late, in
+obedience to the untiring caprices of her little task-mistress. 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 can not get on without it;
+and as her father was a cripple incapable of work, and her return home
+would only increase the burthen and add to the misery of the family,
+poor Pincott was fain to stay where she could maintain herself, and
+spare a little relief to her parents.
+
+Our muse, with the candor 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 sniveling 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 favorite 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 a blessing upon her attendant, she would turn round and go to
+sleep.
+
+The muse might lie in bed as long as she chose of a morning, and
+availed herself of that privilege; but Pincott had to rise very early
+indeed to get her mistress's task done; and had to appear next day with
+the same red eyes and the same wan face, which displeased Miss Amory
+by their want of gayety, 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 dependents so, but it may be that
+there are such, and that the tyranny which they exercise over their
+subordinates, and the pangs which they can manage to inflict with a soft
+voice, and a well-bred simper, are as cruel as those which a slave-driver
+administers with an oath and a whip.
+
+But Blanche was a muse--a delicate little creature, quite tremulous
+with excitability, whose eyes filled with tears at the smallest emotion;
+and who knows, but that it was the very fineness of her feelings which
+caused them to be _froissed_ so easily? You crush a butterfly by merely
+touching it. Vulgar people have no idea of the sensibility of a muse.
+
+So little Pincott being occupied all day and night in stitching,
+hemming, ripping, combing, ironing, crimping, for her mistress; in
+reading to her when in bed--for the girl was mistress of the two
+languages, and had a sweet voice and manner--could take no share in
+Madame Fribsby's soirees, nor indeed was she much missed, or considered
+of sufficient consequence to appear at their entertainments.
+
+But there was another person connected with the Clavering establishment,
+who became a constant guest of our friend, the milliner. This was the
+chief of the kitchen, Monsieur Mirobolant, with whom Madame Fribsby soon
+formed an intimacy.
+
+Not having been accustomed to the appearance or society of persons
+of the French nation, the rustic inhabitants of Clavering were not so
+favorably 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 favorite costume,
+namely, his light green frock or paletot, his crimson velvet waistcoat,
+with blue glass buttons, his pantalon Ecossais, of a very large and
+decided check pattern, his orange satin neckcloth, and his jean-boots,
+with tips of shiny leather--these, with a gold embroidered cap, and a
+richly-gilt cane, or other varieties of ornament of a similar tendency,
+formed his usual holiday costume, in which he flattered himself there
+was nothing remarkable (unless, indeed, the beauty of his person should
+attract observation), and in which he considered that he exhibited the
+appearance of a gentleman of good Parisian ton.
+
+He walked then down the street, grinning and ogling every woman he met,
+with glances, which he meant should kill them outright, and peered over
+the railings, and in at the windows, where females were, in the tranquil
+summer evening. But Betsy, Mrs. Pybus's maid, shrank back with a Lor
+bless us, as Alcide ogled her over the laurel bush; the Miss Bakers, and
+their mamma, stared with wonder; and presently a crowd began to follow
+the interesting foreigner, of ragged urchins and children, who left
+their dirt-pies in the street to pursue him.
+
+For some time he thought that admiration was the cause which led
+these persons in his wake, and walked on, pleased himself that he
+could so easily confer on others so much harmless pleasure. But the
+little children and dirt-pie manufacturers were presently succeeded
+by followers of a larger growth, and a number of lads and girls from
+the factory being let loose at this hour, joined the mob, and began
+laughing, jeering, hooting, and calling opprobrious names at the
+Frenchman. Some cried out, "Frenchy! Frenchy!" some exclaimed "Frogs!"
+one asked for a lock of his hair, which was long and in richly-flowing
+ringlets; and at length the poor artist began to perceive that he was
+an object of derision rather than of respect to the rude, grinning mob.
+
+It was at this juncture that Madame Fribsby spied the unlucky gentleman
+with the train at his heels, and heard the scornful shouts with which
+they assailed him. She ran out of her room, and across the street to the
+persecuted foreigner; she held out her hand, and, addressing him in his
+own language, invited him into her abode; and when she had housed him
+fairly within her door, she stood bravely at the threshold before the
+gibing factory girls and boys, and said they were a pack of cowards to
+insult a poor man who could not speak their language, and was alone
+and without protection. The little crowd, with some ironical cheers and
+hooting, nevertheless felt the force of Madame Fribsby's vigorous
+allocution, and retreated before her; for the old lady was rather
+respected in the place, and her oddity and her kindness had made her
+many friends there.
+
+Poor Mirobolant was grateful indeed to hear the language of his
+country ever so ill spoken. Frenchmen pardon our faults in their
+language much more readily than we excuse their bad English; and will
+face our blunders throughout a long conversation, without the least
+propensity to grin. The rescued artist vowed that Madame Fribsby was his
+guardian angel, and that he had not as yet met with such suavity and
+politeness among _les Anglaises_. He was as courteous and complimentary
+to her as if it was the fairest and noblest of ladies whom he was
+addressing: for Alcide Mirobolant paid homage, after his fashion, to all
+womankind, and never dreamed of a distinction of ranks in the realms of
+beauty, as his phrase was.
+
+A cream, flavored with pine-apple--a mayonnaise of lobster, which he
+flattered himself was not unworthy of his hand, or of her to whom he had
+the honor to offer it as an homage, and a box of preserved fruits of
+Provence, were brought by one of the chef's aids-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 chef
+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 Alcide proffered to her, for he persisted in calling her
+"_La respectable Fribsbi_," "_La vertueuse Fribsbi_,"--and in stating
+that he should consider her as his mother, while he hoped she would
+regard him as her son. Ah! it was not very long ago, Fribsby thought,
+that words had been addressed to her in that dear French language,
+indicating a different sort of attachment. And she sighed as she looked
+up at the picture of her Carabineer. For it is surprising how young some
+people's hearts remain when their heads have need of a front or a little
+hair-dye--and, at this moment, Madame Fribsby, as she told young Alcide,
+felt as romantic as a girl of eighteen.
+
+When the conversation took this turn--and at their first intimacy Madame
+Fribsby was rather inclined so to lead it--Alcide always politely
+diverged to another subject: it was as his mother that he persisted
+in considering the good milliner. He would recognize her in no other
+capacity, and with that relationship the gentle lady was forced to
+content herself, when she found how deeply the artist's heart was
+engaged elsewhere.
+
+He was not long before he described to her the subject and origin of his
+passion.
+
+"I declared myself to her," said Alcide, laying his hand on his heart,
+"in a manner which was as novel as I am charmed to think it was
+agreeable. Where can not 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 vail 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 a l'Agnes_,
+and a delicate _plat_, which I have designated as _Eperlan a la
+Sainte-Therese_, and of which my charming Miss partook with pleasure.
+I followed this by two little _entrees_ of sweet-bread and chicken; and
+the only brown thing which I permitted myself in the entertainment was a
+little roast of lamb, which I laid 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-colored 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 vail 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 I spoke.
+
+"Since that, can I have any reason to doubt that the young artist has
+made some progress in the heart of the English Miss? I am modest, but
+my glass informs me that I am not ill-looking. Other victories have
+convinced me of the fact."
+
+"Dangerous man!" cried the milliner.
+
+"The blond misses of Albion see nothing in the dull inhabitants of
+their brumous isle, which can compare with the ardor 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 can not 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 can
+not 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 Green. The blonde Miss will go. She is fascinated. Her eyes have
+told me so. The white dove wants but the signal to fly."
+
+"Have you any correspondence with her?" asked Fribsby, in amazement, and
+not knowing whether the young lady or the lover might be laboring under
+a romantic delusion.
+
+"I correspond with her by means of my art. She partakes of dishes which
+I make expressly for her. I insinuate to her thus a thousand hints,
+which, as she is perfectly spiritual, she receives. But I want other
+intelligences near her."
+
+"There is Pincott, her maid," said Madame Fribsby, who, by aptitude or
+education, seemed to have some knowledge of affairs of the heart, but
+the great artist's brow darkened at this suggestion.
+
+"Madame," he said, "there are points upon which a gallant man ought to
+silence himself; though, if he break the secret, he may do so with the
+least impropriety to his best friend--his adopted mother. Know then,
+that there is a cause why Miss Pincott should be hostile to me--a cause
+not uncommon with your sex--jealousy."
+
+"Perfidious monster!" said the confidante.
+
+"Ah, no," said the artist, with a deep bass voice, and a tragic accent
+worthy of the Porte St. Martin and his favorite melo-drames. "Not
+perfidious, but fatal. Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To inspire
+hopeless passion is my destiny. I can not 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 can not return? Listen! There
+are others in this family who are similarly unhappy. The governess of
+the young Milor has encountered me in my walks, and looked at me in a
+way which can bear but one interpretation. And Milady herself, who is
+of mature age, but who has oriental blood, has once or twice addressed
+compliments to the lonely artist which can admit of no mistake. I avoid
+the household, I seek solitude, I undergo my destiny. I can marry but
+one, and am resolved it shall be to a lady of your nation. And, if her
+fortune is sufficient, I think Miss would be the person who would be
+most suitable. I wish to ascertain what her means are before I lead her
+to Gretna Grin."
+
+Whether Alcide 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 has had the benefit of much
+French acquaintance, has perhaps met with men among them who fancied
+themselves almost as invincible; and who, if you credit them, have made
+equal havoc in the hearts of _les Anglaises_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND JEALOUSY.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Our readers have already heard Sir Francis Clavering's candid opinion
+of the lady who had given him her fortune and restored him to his native
+country and home, and it must be owned that the baronet was not far
+wrong in his estimate of his wife, and that Lady Clavering was not the
+wisest or the best educated of women. She had had a couple of years'
+education in Europe, in a suburb of London, which she persisted in
+calling Ackney to her dying day, whence she had been summoned to join
+her father at Calcutta at the age of fifteen. And it was on her voyage
+thither, on board the Ramchunder East Indiaman, Captain Bragg, in which
+ship she had two years previously made her journey to Europe, that she
+formed the acquaintance of her first husband, Mr. Amory, who was third
+mate of the vessel in question.
+
+We are not going to enter into the early part of Lady Clavering's
+history, but Captain Bragg, under whose charge Miss Snell went out to
+her father, who was one of the captain's consignees, and part owner
+of the Ramchunder and many other vessels, found reason to put the
+rebellious rascal of a mate in irons, until they reached the Cape, where
+the captain left his officer behind; and finally delivered his ward to
+her father at Calcutta, after a stormy and perilous voyage in which the
+Ramchunder and the cargo and passengers incurred no small danger and
+damage.
+
+Some months afterward 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--quarreling ceaselessly
+with his father-in-law and his wife during the progress of all these
+mercantile transactions and disasters, and ending his career finally
+with a crash which compelled him to leave Calcutta and go to New South
+Wales. It was in the course of these luckless proceedings, that Mr.
+Amory probably made the acquaintance of Sir Jasper Rogers, the respected
+Judge of the Supreme Court of Calcutta, who has been mentioned before:
+and, as the truth must out, it was by making an improper use of his
+father-in-law's name, who could write perfectly well, and had no need of
+an amanuensis, that fortune finally forsook Mr. Amory and caused him to
+abandon all further struggles with her.
+
+Not being in the habit of reading the Calcutta law-reports very
+assiduously, the European public did not know of these facts as well
+as people did in Bengal, and Mrs. Amory and her father, finding her
+residence in India not a comfortable one, it was agreed that the lady
+should return to Europe, whither she came with her little daughter
+Betsy or Blanche, then four years old. They were accompanied by Betsy's
+nurse, who has been presented to the reader in the last chapter as the
+confidential maid of Lady Clavering, Mrs. Bonner: and Captain Bragg took
+a house for them in the near neighborhood of his residence in
+Pocklington-street.
+
+It was a very hard, bitter summer, and the rain, it rained every day
+for some time after Mrs. Amory's arrival. Bragg was very pompous and
+disagreeable, perhaps ashamed, perhaps anxious, to get rid of the
+Indian lady. She believed that all the world in London was talking
+about her husband's disaster, and that the king and queen and the court
+of directors were aware of her unlucky history. She had a good allowance
+from her father; she had no call to live in England; and she determined
+to go abroad. Away she went, then, glad to escape the gloomy
+surveillance of the odious bully, Captain Bragg. People had no objection
+to receive her at the continental towns where she stopped, and at the
+various boarding-houses, where she royally paid her way. She called
+Hackney Ackney, to be sure (though otherwise she spoke English with a
+little foreign twang, very curious and not unpleasant); she dressed
+amazingly; she was conspicuous for her love of eating and drinking,
+and prepared curries and pillaws at every boarding-house which she
+frequented; but her singularities of language and behavior 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 fowls and ham to the picnics than any one else. She
+took endless boxes for the play, and tickets for the masked balls, and
+gave them away to every body. She paid the boarding-house people months
+beforehand; she helped poor shabby mustached 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, portrayed her, with her little boy by her side.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Missy followed her mamma in most of her peregrinations, and so learned a
+deal of life. She had a governess for some time; and after her mother's
+second marriage, the benefit of Madame de Caramel's select pension in
+the Champs Elysees. When the Claverings came to England, she of course
+came with them. It was only within a few years, after the death of her
+grandfather, and the birth of her little brother, that she began to
+understand that her position in life was altered, and that Miss Amory,
+nobody's daughter, was a very small personage in a house compared with
+Master Francis Clavering, heir to an ancient baronetcy, and a noble
+estate. But for little Frank, she would have been an heiress, in spite
+of her father: and though she knew, and cared not much about money, of
+which she never had any stint, and though she was a romantic little
+muse, as we have seen, yet she could not reasonably be grateful to the
+persons who had so contributed to change her condition; nor, indeed,
+did she understand what the latter really was, until she had made some
+further progress, and acquired more accurate knowledge in the world.
+
+But this was clear, that her step-father was dull and weak; that mamma
+dropped her H's, and was not refined in manners or appearance; and that
+little Frank was a spoiled quarrelsome urchin, always having his way,
+always treading upon her feet, always upsetting his dinner on her
+dresses, and keeping her out of her inheritance. None of these, as she
+felt, could comprehend her: and her solitary heart naturally pined for
+other attachments, and she sought around her where to bestow the
+precious boon of her unoccupied affection.
+
+This dear girl, then, from want of sympathy, or other cause, made
+herself so disagreeable at home, and frightened her mother, and bored
+her step-father so much, that they were quite as anxious as she could
+be that she should settle for herself in life; and hence Sir Francis
+Clavering's desire expressed to his friend, in the last chapter, that
+Mrs. Strong should die, and that he would take Blanche to himself as
+a second Mrs. Strong.
+
+But as this could not be, any other person was welcome to win her; and
+a smart young fellow, well-looking and well-educated, like our friend
+Arthur Pendennis, was quite free to propose for her if he had a mind,
+and would have been received with open arms by Lady Clavering as a
+son-in-law, had he had the courage to come forward as a competitor for
+Miss Amory's hand.
+
+Mr. Pen, however, besides other drawbacks, chose to entertain an extreme
+diffidence about himself. He was ashamed of his late failures, of his
+idle and nameless condition, of the poverty which he had brought on his
+mother by his folly, and there was as much of vanity as remorse in his
+present state of doubt and distrust. How could he ever hope for such
+a prize as this brilliant Blanche Amory, who lived in a fine park and
+mansion, and was waited on by a score of grand domestics, while a
+maid-servant brought in their meager meal at Fairoaks, and his mother
+was obliged to pinch and manage to make both ends meet? Obstacles seemed
+to him insurmountable, which would have vanished had he marched manfully
+upon them; and he preferred despairing, or dallying with his wishes--or
+perhaps he had not positively shaped them as yet--to attempting to win
+gallantly the object of his desire. Many a young man fails by that species
+of vanity called shyness, who might, for the asking, have his will.
+
+But we do not pretend to say that Pen had, as yet, ascertained his; or
+that he was doing much more than thinking about falling in love. Miss
+Amory was charming and lively. She fascinated and cajoled him by a
+thousand arts or natural graces or flatteries. But there were lurking
+reasons and doubts, besides shyness and vanity, withholding him. In
+spite of her cleverness, and her protestations, and her fascinations,
+Pen's mother had divined the girl, and did not trust her. Mrs. Pendennis
+saw Blanche light-minded and frivolous, detected many wants in her which
+offended the pure and pious-minded lady; a want of reverence for her
+parents, and for things more sacred, Helen thought: worldliness and
+selfishness couched under pretty words and tender expressions. Laura and
+Pen battled these points strongly at first with the widow--Laura being
+as yet enthusiastic about her new friend, and Pen not far-gone enough in
+love to attempt any concealment of his feelings. He would laugh at these
+objections of Helen's, and say, "Psha, mother, you are jealous about
+Laura--all women are jealous."
+
+But when, in the course of a month or two, and by watching the pair
+with that anxiety with which brooding women watch over their sons'
+affections--and in acknowledging which, I have no doubt there is a
+sexual jealousy on the mother's part, and a secret pang--when Helen saw
+that the intimacy appeared to make progress, that the two young people
+were perpetually finding pretexts to meet, and that Miss Blanche was at
+Fairoaks or Mr. Pen at the Park every day, the poor widow's heart began
+to fail her--her darling project seemed to vanish before her; and giving
+way to her weakness, she fairly told Pen one day what her views and
+longings were; that she felt herself breaking, and not long for this
+world, and that she hoped and prayed before she went, that she might see
+her two children one. The late events, Pen's life and career and former
+passion for the actress, had broken the spirit of this tender lady. She
+felt that he had escaped her, and was in the maternal nest no more; and
+she clung with a sickening fondness to Laura, Laura who had been left to
+her by Francis in Heaven.
+
+Pen kissed and soothed her in his grand, patronizing way. He had
+seen something of this, he had long thought his mother wanted to
+make this marriage--did Laura know any thing 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 any thing you told
+her, to be sure. But am I worthy of her?"
+
+"Oh, Pen, you might be," was the widow's reply; not that Mr. Pen
+ever doubted that he was; and a feeling of indefinable pleasure and
+self-complacency came over him as he thought over this proposal, and
+imaged Laura to himself as his memory remembered her for years past,
+always fair and open, kindly and pious, cheerful, tender, and true. He
+looked at her with brightening eyes as she came in from the garden at
+the end of this talk, her cheeks rather flushed, her looks frank and
+smiling--a basket of roses in her hand.
+
+She took the finest of them and brought it to Mrs. Pendennis, who was
+refreshed by the odor and color of these flowers; and hung over her
+fondly, and gave it to her.
+
+"And I might have this prize for the asking!" Pen thought, with a thrill
+of triumph, as he looked at the kindly girl. "Why, she is as beautiful
+and as generous as her roses." The image of the two women remained
+forever after in his mind, and he never recalled it but the tears came
+into his eyes.
+
+Before very many weeks' intimacy with her new acquaintance, however,
+Miss Laura was obliged to give in to Helen's opinion, and own that the
+muse was selfish, unkind, and inconstant. Of course Blanche confided to
+her bosom friend all the little griefs and domestic annoyances; how the
+family could not comprehend her, and she moved among them an isolated
+being; how her poor mamma's education had been neglected, and she was
+forced to blush for her blunders; how Sir Francis was a weak person
+deplorably unintellectual, and only happy when smoking his odious
+cigars; how, since the birth of her little brother, she had seen her
+mother's precious affection, which she valued more than any thing in
+life, estranged from her once darling daughter; how she was alone,
+alone, alone in the world.
+
+But these griefs, real and heart-rending though they might be to a young
+lady of exquisite sensibility, did not convince Laura of the propriety
+of Blanche's conduct in many small incidents of life. Little Frank, for
+instance, might be very provoking, and might have deprived Blanche of
+her mamma's affection, but this was no reason why Blanche should box the
+child's ears because he upset a glass of water over her drawing, and why
+she should call him many opprobrious names in the English and French
+language; and the preference accorded to little Frank was certainly no
+reason why Blanche should give herself imperial airs of command toward
+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 any body'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?
+
+[Illustration][**moved up from 249]
+
+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 humor, 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
+any thing 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! Oh 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 every-day life, she had witnessed at home in the person
+of our young friend Mr. Pen.
+
+But then Pen was different. Pen was a man. It seemed natural, somehow,
+that he should be self-willed, and should have his own way. And under
+his waywardness and selfishness, indeed there was a kind and generous
+heart. O it was hard that such a diamond should be changed away against
+such a false stone as this. In a word, Laura began to be tired of her
+admired Blanche. She had assayed her, and found her not true; and
+her former admiration and delight, which she had expressed with her
+accustomed generous artlessness, gave way to a feeling, which we shall
+not call contempt, but which was very near it; and which caused Laura to
+adopt toward Miss Amory, a grave and tranquil tone of superiority, which
+was at first by no means to the muse's liking. Nobody likes to be found
+out, or having held a high place, to submit to step down.
+
+The consciousness that this event was impending did not serve to
+increase Miss Blanche's good humor, 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
+behavior to the boy's governess; and intolerably cruel to Pincott, her
+attendant. Not venturing to attack her friend (for the little tyrant was
+of a timid feline nature, and only used her claws upon those who were
+weaker than herself) she maltreated all these, and especially poor
+Pincott, who was menial, confidante, companion (slave always), according
+to the caprice of her young mistress.
+
+This girl who had been sitting in the room with the young ladies, being
+driven thence in tears, occasioned by the cruelty of her mistress, and
+raked with a parting sarcasm as she went sobbing from the door, Laura
+fairly broke out into a loud and indignant invective--wondered how one
+so young could forget the deference owing to her elders as well as to
+her inferiors in station; and professing so much sensibility of her own,
+could torture the feelings of others so wantonly. Laura told her friend
+that her conduct was absolutely wicked, and that she ought to ask pardon
+of Heaven on her knees for it. And having delivered herself of a hot
+and voluble speech whereof the delivery astonished the speaker as much
+almost as her auditor, she ran to her bonnet and shawl, and went home
+across the park, in a great flurry and perturbation, and to the surprise
+of Mrs. Pendennis, who had not expected her until night.
+
+Alone with Helen, Laura gave an account of the scene, and gave up her
+friend henceforth. "O mamma," she said, "you were right; Blanche, who
+seems so soft and so kind, is, as you have said, selfish and cruel. She
+who is always speaking of her affections can have no heart. No honest
+girl would afflict a mother so, or torture a dependent; and--and, I give
+her up from this day, and I will have no other friend but you."
+
+On this the two ladies went through the osculatory ceremony which they
+were in the habit of performing, and Mrs. Pendennis got a great secret
+comfort from the little quarrel--for Laura's confession seemed to say,
+"That girl can never be a wife for Pen, for she is light-minded and
+heartless, and quite unworthy of our noble hero. He will be sure to find
+out her unworthiness for his own part, and then he will be saved from
+this flighty creature, and awake out of his delusion."
+
+But Miss Laura did not tell Mrs. Pendennis, perhaps did not acknowledge
+to herself, what had been the real cause of the day's quarrel. Being
+in a very wicked mood, and bent upon mischief every where, the little
+wicked muse of a Blanche had very soon begun her tricks. Her darling
+Laura had come to pass a long day; and as they were sitting in her own
+room together, had chosen to bring the conversation round to the subject
+of Mr. Pen.
+
+"I am afraid he is sadly fickle," Miss Blanche observed; "Mrs. Pybus,
+and many more Clavering people, have told us all about the actress."
+
+"I was quite a child when it happened, and I don't know any thing about
+it," Laura answered, blushing very much.
+
+"He used her very ill," Blanche said, wagging her little head. "He was
+false to her."
+
+"I am sure he was not," Laura cried out; "he acted most generously by
+her: he wanted to give up every thing to marry her. It was she that was
+false to him. He nearly broke his heart about it: he--"
+
+"I thought you didn't know any thing about the story, dearest,"
+interposed Miss Blanche.
+
+"Mamma has said so," said Laura.
+
+"Well, he is very clever," continued the other little dear. "What a
+sweet poet he is! Have you ever read his poems?"
+
+"Only the 'Fisherman and the Diver,' which he translated for us, and his
+prize Poem, which didn't get the prize; and, indeed, I thought it very
+pompous and prosy," Laura said, laughing.
+
+"Has he never written _you_ any poems, then, love?" asked Miss Amory.
+
+"No, my dear," said Miss Bell.
+
+Blanche ran up to her friend, kissed her fondly, called her my dearest
+Laura at least three times, looked her archly in the face, nodded her
+head, and said, "Promise to tell no-o-body, and I will show you
+something."
+
+And tripping across the room daintily, to a little mother-of-pearl
+inlaid desk, she opened it with a silver key, and took out two or three
+papers crumpled and rather stained with green, which she submitted to
+her friend. Laura took them and read them. They were love-verses sure
+enough--something about Undine--about a Naiad--about a river. She looked
+at them for a long time; but, in truth, the lines were not very distinct
+before her eyes.
+
+"And you have answered them, Blanche?" she asked, putting them back.
+
+"O no! not for worlds, dearest," the other said: and when her dearest
+Laura had _quite_ done with the verses, she tripped back, and popped
+them again into the pretty desk.
+
+Then she went to her piano, and sang two or three songs of Rossini,
+whose flourishes of music her flexible little voice could execute to
+perfection, and Laura sate by, vaguely listening, as she performed these
+pieces. What was Miss Bell thinking about the while? She hardly knew;
+but sate there silent as the songs rolled by. After this concert the
+young ladies were summoned to the room where luncheon was served; and
+whither they of course went with their arms round each other's waists.
+
+And it could not have been jealousy or anger on Laura's part which had
+made her silent; for, after they had tripped along the corridor and
+descended the steps, and were about to open the door which leads into
+the hall, Laura paused, and looking her friend kindly and frankly in the
+face, kissed her with a sisterly warmth.
+
+Something occurred after this--Master Frank's manner of eating,
+probably, or mamma's blunders, or Sir Francis smelling of cigars--which
+vexed Miss Blanche, and she gave way to that series of naughtinesses
+whereof we have spoken, and which ended in the above little quarrel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+A HOUSE FULL OF VISITORS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The difference between the girls did not last long. Laura was always
+too eager to forgive and be forgiven, and as for Miss Blanche, her
+hostilities, never very long or durable, had not been provoked by the
+above scene. Nobody cares about being accused of wickedness. No vanity
+is hurt by that sort of charge: Blanche was rather pleased than provoked
+by her friend's indignation, which never would have been raised but for
+a cause which both knew, though neither spoke of.
+
+And so, Laura, with a sigh, was obliged to confess that the romantic
+part of her first friendship was at an end, and that the object of it
+was only worthy of a very ordinary sort of regard.
+
+As for Blanche, she instantly composed a copy of touching verses,
+setting forth her desertion and disenchantment. It was only the old
+story she wrote, of love meeting with coldness, and fidelity returned
+by neglect; and some new neighbors 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 dispatched 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 humor that was by no means
+respectful.
+
+But if Miss Blanche found new female friends to console her, the
+faithful historian is also bound to say, that she discovered some
+acquaintances of the other sex who seemed to give her consolation too.
+If ever this artless young creature met a young man, and had ten
+minutes' conversation with him in a garden walk, in a drawing-room
+window, or in the intervals of a waltz, she confided in him, so to
+speak--made play with her beautiful eyes--spoke in a tone of tender
+interest, and simple and touching appeal, and left him, to perform the
+same pretty little drama in behalf of his successor.
+
+When the Claverings first came down to the Park, there were very few
+audiences before whom Miss Blanche could perform: hence Pen had all the
+benefits of her glances, and confidences, and the drawing-room window,
+or the garden walk all to himself. In the town of Clavering, it has been
+said, there were actually no young men: in the near surrounding country,
+only a curate or two, or a rustic young squire, with large feet, and
+ill-made clothes. To the dragoons quartered at Chatteries the baronet
+made no overtures: it was unluckily his own regiment: he had left
+it on bad terms with some officers of the corps--an ugly business
+about a horse bargain--a disputed play account--blind-Hookey--a white
+feather--who need ask?--it is not our business to inquire too closely
+into the bygones of our characters, except in so far as their previous
+history appertains to the development of this present story.
+
+But the autumn, and the end of the parliamentary session, and the London
+season, brought one or two country families down to their houses, and
+filled tolerably the neighboring little watering-place of Baymouth,
+and opened our friend Mr. Bingley's Theater Royal at Chatteries, 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 Fogys of Drummington: the Squares of Tozely Park;
+the Welbores of The Barrow, &c. 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 neighbors. 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 country before the great people around
+began to call.
+
+But at the end of the season, the Earl of Trehawke, Lord Lieutenant
+of the County, coming to Eyrie Castle, and the Countess Dowager of
+Rockminster, whose son was also a magnate of the land, to occupy a
+mansion on the Marine Parade at Baymouth--these great folks came
+publicly immediately, and in state, to call upon the family of Clavering
+Park; and the carriages of the county families speedily followed in the
+track, which had been left in the avenue by their lordly wheels.
+
+It was then that Mirobolant began to have an opportunity of exercising
+that skill which he possessed, and of forgetting, in the occupations of
+his art, the pangs of love. It was then that the large footmen were too
+much employed at Clavering Park to be able to bring messages, or dally
+over the cup of small beer with the poor little maids at Fairoaks. It
+was then that Blanche found other dear friends than Laura, and other
+places to walk in besides the river side, where Pen was fishing. He came
+day after day, and whipped the stream, but the "fish, fish!" wouldn't do
+their duty, nor the Peri appear. And here, though in strict confidence,
+and with a request that the matter go no further, we may as well allude
+to a delicate business, of which previous hint has been given. Mention
+has been made, in a former page, of a certain hollow tree, at which
+Pen used to take his station when engaged in his passion for Miss
+Fotheringay, and the cavity of which he afterward 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, while 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 any thing--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 humoring you at the same play.
+
+But if a man is balked 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 room-full 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 county, 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
+Chatteries and the episcopal family, who scowled at him, and drew up in
+great dignity when he was presented to them, and they heard his name.
+The Right Reverend prelate had heard it before, and also of the little
+transaction in the dean's garden.
+
+"The bishop says you're a sad young man," good-natured Lady Clavering
+whispered to him. "What have you been a doing of? Nothink, I hope, to
+vex such a dear Mar as yours? How is your dear Mar? Why don't she come
+and see 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 neighbors now. Give my love to her and
+Laurar, and come all to dinner to-morrow."
+
+Mrs. Pendennis was too unwell to come out, but Laura and Pen came, and
+there was a great party, and Pen only got an opportunity of a hurried
+word with Miss Amory. "You never come to the river now," he said.
+
+"I can't," said Blanche, "the house is full of people."
+
+"Undine has left the stream," Mr. Pen went on, choosing to be poetical.
+
+"She never ought to have gone there," Miss Amory answered. "She won't go
+again. It was very foolish: very wrong: it was only play. Besides, you
+have other consolations at home," she added, looking him full in the
+face an instant, and dropping her eyes.
+
+If he wanted her, why did he not speak then? She might have said "Yes"
+even then. But as she spoke of other consolations at home, he thought of
+Laura, so affectionate and so pure, and of his mother at home, who had
+bent her fond heart upon uniting him with her adopted daughter.
+"Blanche!" he began, in a vexed tone--"Miss Amory!"
+
+"Laura is looking at us, Mr. Pendennis," the young lady said. "I must go
+back to the company," and she ran off, leaving Mr. Pendennis to bite his
+nails in perplexity, and to look out into the moonlight in the garden.
+
+Laura indeed was looking at Pen. She was talking with, or appearing to
+listen to the talk of, Mr. Pynsent, Lord Rockminster's son, and grandson
+of the Dowager Lady, who was seated in state in the place of honor,
+gravely receiving Lady Clavering's bad grammar, and patronizing 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 toward 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 practiced in England only, and
+only to perfection by University men--and which seems to say, "Confound
+you--what do you do here?"
+
+"I knew that man at Oxbridge," Mr. Pynsent said to Miss Bell--"a Mr.
+Pendennis, I think."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Bell.
+
+"He seems rather sweet upon Miss Amory," the gentleman went on. Laura
+looked at them, and perhaps thought so too, but said nothing.
+
+"A man of large property in the county, ain't he? He used to talk about
+representing it. He used to speak at the Union. Whereabouts do his
+estates lie?"
+
+Laura smiled. "His estates lie on the other side of the river, near the
+lodge gate. He is my cousin, and I live there."
+
+"Where?" asked Mr. Pynsent, with a laugh.
+
+"Why, on the other side of the river, at Fairoaks," answered Miss Bell.
+
+"Many pheasants there? Cover looks rather good," said the simple
+gentleman.
+
+Laura smiled again. "We have nine hens and a cock, a pig, and an old
+pointer."
+
+"Pendennis don't preserve then?" continued Mr. Pynsent.
+
+"You should come and see him," the girl said, laughing, and greatly
+amused at the notion that her Pen was a great county gentleman, and
+perhaps had given himself out to be such.
+
+"Indeed, I quite long to renew our acquaintance," Mr. Pynsent said,
+gallantly, and with a look which fairly said, "It is you that I would
+like to come and see"--to which look and speech Miss Laura vouchsafed a
+smile, and made a little bow.
+
+Here Blanche came stepping up with her most fascinating smile and ogle,
+and begged dear Laura to come and take the second in a song. Laura was
+ready to do any thing good-natured, and went to the piano; by which Mr.
+Pynsent listened as long as the duet lasted, and until Miss Amory began
+for herself, when he strode away.
+
+"What a nice, frank, amiable, well-bred girl that is, Wagg," said Mr.
+Pynsent to a gentleman who had come over with him from Baymouth--"the
+tall one I mean, with the ringlets and the red lips--monstrous red,
+ain't they?"
+
+"What do you think of the girl of the house?" asked Mr. Wagg.
+
+"I think she's a lean scraggy humbug;" said Mr. Pynsent, with great
+candor. "She drags her shoulders out of her dress: she never lets her
+eyes alone: and she goes simpering and ogling about like a French
+waiting-maid."
+
+"Pynsent, be civil," cried the other, "somebody can hear."
+
+"Oh, it's Pendennis of Boniface," Mr. Pynsent said. "Fine evening, Mr.
+Pendennis; we were just talking of your charming cousin."
+
+"Any relation to my old friend, Major Pendennis?" asked Mr. Wagg.
+
+"His nephew. Had the pleasure of meeting you at Gaunt House," Mr. Pen
+said, with his very best air--the acquaintance between the gentleman was
+made in an instant.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the afternoon of the next day, the two gentleman 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 neighborhood of Miss
+Laura. She was amused by his talk, which was simple, straightforward,
+rather humorous and keen, and interspersed with homely expressions of a
+style which is sometimes called slang. It was the first specimen of a
+young London dandy that Laura had seen or heard: for she had been but a
+chit at the time of Mr. Foker's introduction at Fairoaks, nor indeed was
+that ingenuous gentleman much more than a boy, and his refinement was
+only that of a school and college.
+
+Mr. Wagg, as he entered the Fairoaks premises with his companion, eyed
+and noted every thing. "Old gardener," he said, seeing Mr. John at the
+lodge--"old red livery waistcoat--clothes hanging out to dry on the
+gooseberry bushes--blue aprons, white ducks--gad, they must be young
+Pendennis's white ducks--nobody else wears 'em in the family. Rather
+a shy place for a sucking county member, ay, Pynsent?"
+
+"Snug little crib," said Mr. Pynsent, "pretty cozy little lawn."
+
+"Mr. Pendennis at home, old gentleman?" Mr. Wagg said to the old
+domestic. John answered, "No, Master Pendennis was agone out."
+
+"Are the ladies at home?" asked the younger visitor. Mr. John answered,
+"Yes, they be;" and as the pair walked over the trim gravel, and by
+the neat shrubberies, up the steps to the hall-door, which old John
+opened, Mr. Wagg noted every thing that he saw; the barometer and the
+letter-bag, the umbrellas and the ladies' clogs, Pen's hats and tartan
+wrapper, and old John opening the drawing-room door, to introduce the
+new comers. Such minutiae attracted Wagg instinctively; he seized them
+in spite of himself.
+
+"Old fellow does all the work," he whispered to Pynsent. "Caleb
+Balderstone. Shouldn't wonder if he's the housemaid." The next minute
+the pair were in the presence of the Fairoaks ladies; in whom Pynsent
+could not help recognizing 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 toward Mr. Wagg, and particular deference to the ladies. If
+there was one thing laughable in Mr. Wagg's eyes, it was poverty. He had
+the soul of a butler who had been brought from his pantry to make fun in
+the drawing-room. His jokes were plenty, and his good-nature thoroughly
+genuine, but he did not seem to understand that a gentleman could wear
+an old coat, or that a lady could be respectable unless she had her
+carriage, or employed a French milliner.
+
+"Charming place, ma'am," said he, bowing to the widow; "noble
+prospect--delightful to us Cockneys, who seldom see any thing but
+Pall-mall." The widow said simply, she had never been in London but once
+in her life--before her son was born.
+
+"Fine village, ma'am, fine village," said Mr. Wagg, "and increasing
+every day. It'll be quite a large town soon. It's not a bad place to
+live in for those who can't get the country, and will repay a visit when
+you honor it."
+
+"My brother, Major Pendennis, has often mentioned your name to us," the
+widow said, "and we have been very much amused by some of your droll
+books, sir," Helen continued, who never could be brought to like Mr.
+Wagg's books, and detested their tone most thoroughly.
+
+"He is my very good friend," Mr. Wagg said, with a low bow, "and
+one of the best known men about town, and where known, ma'am,
+appreciated--I assure you, appreciated. He is with our friend Steyne,
+at Aix-la-Chapelle. Steyne has a touch of the gout, and so, between
+ourselves, has your brother. I am going to Stillbrook for the
+pheasant-shooting, and afterward 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, while 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 be like him.
+
+Mr. Pynsent was in the mean while engaged with Miss Laura. He named
+some of the houses in the neighborhood whither he was going, and hoped
+very much that he should see Miss Bell at some of them. He hoped that
+her aunt would give her a season in London. He said that in the next
+parliament it was probable that he should canvass the county, and he
+hoped to get Pendennis's interest here. He spoke of Pen's triumph as
+an orator at Oxbridge, and asked was he coming into parliament too? He
+talked on very pleasantly, and greatly to Laura's satisfaction, until
+Pen himself appeared, and, as has been said, found these gentlemen.
+
+Pen behaved very courteously to the pair, now that they had 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 fanfaronade, and any other braggadocio speeches or actions which
+he might have made. He suited himself to the tone of the visitors then,
+and talked about Plinlimmon and Magnus Charters, and the old set at
+Oxbridge, with careless familiarity and high-bred ease, as if he lived
+with marquises every day, and a duke was no more to him than a village
+curate.
+
+But at this juncture, and it being then six o'clock in the evening,
+Betsy, the maid, who did not know of the advent of strangers, walked
+into the room without any preliminary but that of flinging the door
+wide open before her, and bearing in her arms a tray, containing three
+tea-cups, a tea-pot, and a plate of thick bread-and-butter. All Pen's
+splendor and magnificence vanished away at this--and he faltered and
+became quite abashed. "What will they think of us?" he thought: and,
+indeed, Wagg thrust his tongue in his cheek, thought the tea infinitely
+contemptible, and leered and winked at Pynsent to that effect.
+
+But to Mr. Pynsent the transaction appeared perfectly simple--there was
+no reason present to his mind why people should not drink tea at six
+if they were minded, as well as at any other hour; and he asked of Mr.
+Wagg, when they went away, "What the devil he was grinning and winking
+at, and what amused him?"
+
+"Didn't you see how the cub was ashamed of the thick bread-and-butter?
+I dare say they're going to have treacle if they are good. I'll take
+an opportunity of telling old Pendennis, when we get back to town," Mr.
+Wagg chuckled out.
+
+"Don't see the fun," said Mr. Pynsent.
+
+"Never thought you did," growled Wagg between his teeth; and they walked
+home rather sulkily.
+
+Wagg told the story at dinner very smartly, with wonderful accuracy
+of observation. He described old John, the clothes that were drying,
+the clogs in the hall, the drawing-room, and its furniture and
+pictures;--"Old man with a beak and bald head--_feu_ Pendennis, I bet
+two to one; sticking-plaster full-length of a youth in a cap and
+gown--the present Marquis of Fairoaks, of course; the widow when young
+in a miniature, Mrs. Mee; she had the gown on when we came, or a dress
+made the year after, and the tips cut off the fingers of her gloves
+which she stitches her son's collars with; and then the sarving maid
+came in with their teas; and so we left the earl and the countess to
+their bread-and-butter."
+
+Blanche, near whom he sate as he told this story, and who adored _les
+hommes d'esprit_, burst out laughing, and called him such an odd, droll
+creature. But Pynsent, who began to be utterly disgusted with him, broke
+out in a loud voice, and said, "I don't know, Mr. Wagg, what sort of
+ladies you are accustomed to meet in your own family, but by gad, as far
+as a first acquaintance can show, I never met two better-bred women in
+my life, and I hope, ma'am! you'll call upon 'em," he added, addressing
+Lady Rockminster, who was seated at Sir Francis Clavering's right hand.
+
+Sir Francis turned to the guest on his left, and whispered, "That's
+what I call a sticker for Wagg." And Lady Clavering, giving the young
+gentleman a delighted tap with her fan, winked her black eyes at him,
+and said, "Mr. Pynsent, you're a good feller."
+
+After the affair with Blanche, a difference ever so slight, a tone
+of melancholy, perhaps a little bitter, might be perceived in Laura's
+converse with her cousin. She seemed to weigh him and find him wanting
+too; the widow saw the girl's clear and honest eyes watching the young
+man at times, and a look of almost scorn pass over her face, as he
+lounged in the room with the women, or lazily sauntered smoking upon the
+lawn, or lolled under a tree there over a book which he was too listless
+to read.
+
+"What has happened between you?" eager-sighted Helen asked of the girl.
+"Something has happened. Has that wicked little Blanche been making
+mischief? Tell me, Laura."
+
+"Nothing has happened at all," Laura said.
+
+"Then why do you look at Pen so?" asked his mother quickly.
+
+"Look at him, dear mother!" said the girl. "We two women are no society
+for him: we don't interest him; we are not clever enough for such a
+genius as Pen. He wastes his life and energies away among us, tied to
+our apron-strings. He interests himself in nothing; he scarcely cares to
+go beyond the garden-gate. Even Captain Glanders and Captain Strong pall
+upon him," she added, with a bitter laugh; "and they are men, you know,
+and our superiors. He will never be happy while he is here. Why, is he
+not facing the world, and without a profession?"
+
+"We have got enough, with great economy," said the widow, her heart
+beginning to beat violently. "Pen has spent nothing for months. I'm
+sure he is very good. I am sure he might be very happy with us."
+
+"Don't agitate yourself so, dear mother," the girl answered. "I don't
+like to see you so. You should not be sad because Pen is unhappy here.
+All men are so. They must work. They must make themselves names and
+a place in the world. Look, the two captains have fought and seen
+battles; that Mr. Pynsent, who came here, and who will be very rich,
+is in a public office; he works very hard, he aspires to a name and a
+reputation. He says Pen was one of the best speakers at Oxbridge, and
+had as great a character for talent as any of the young gentlemen there.
+Pen himself laughs at Mr. Wagg's celebrity (and indeed he is a horrid
+person), and says he is a dunce, and that any body could write his
+books."
+
+"I am sure they are odious and vulgar," interposed the widow.
+
+"Yet he has a reputation.--You see the County Chronicle says,
+'The celebrated Mr. Wagg has been sojourning at Baymouth--let our
+fashionables and eccentrics look out for something from his caustic
+pen.' If Pen can write better than this gentleman, and speak better than
+Mr. Pynsent, why doesn't he? Mamma, he can't make speeches to us; or
+distinguish himself here. He ought to go away, indeed he ought."
+
+"Dear Laura," said Helen, taking the girl's hand. "Is it kind of you to
+hurry him so? I have been waiting. I have been saving up money these
+many months--to--to pay back your advance to us."
+
+"Hush, mother!" Laura cried, embracing her friend hastily. "It was your
+money, not mine. Never speak about that again. How much money have you
+saved?"
+
+Helen said there were more than two hundred pounds at the bank, and that
+she would be enabled to pay off all Laura's money by the end of the next
+year.
+
+"Give it him--let him have the two hundred pounds. Let him go to London
+and be a lawyer: be something, be worthy of his mother--and of mine,
+dearest mamma," said the good girl; upon which, and with her usual
+tenderness and emotion, the fond widow declared that Laura was a
+blessing to her, and the best of girls--and I hope no one in this
+instance will be disposed to contradict her.
+
+The widow and her daughter had more than one conversation on this
+subject; and the elder gave way to the superior reason of the honest
+and stronger minded girl; and, indeed, whenever there was a sacrifice
+to be made on her part, this kind lady was only too eager to make it. But
+she took her own way, and did not lose sight of the end she had in view,
+in imparting these new plans to Pen. One day she told him of these
+projects, and who it was that had formed them; how it was Laura who
+insisted upon his going to London and studying; how it was Laura who
+would not hear of the--the money arrangements when he came back from
+Oxbridge--being settled just then; how it was Laura whom he had to
+thank, if indeed he thought that he ought to go.
+
+At that news Pen's countenance blazed up with pleasure, and he hugged
+his mother to his heart, with an ardor 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! O mother! I have been wearing myself
+away for months here, longing to work, and not knowing how. I've been
+fretting over the thoughts of my shame, and my debts, and my past cursed
+extravagance and follies. I've suffered infernally. My heart has been
+half-broken--never mind about that--if I can get a chance to redeem
+the past, and to do my duty to myself and the best mother in the world,
+indeed, indeed, I will. I'll be worthy of you yet. Heaven bless you!
+God bless Laura! Why isn't she here, that I may go and thank her?"
+Pen went on with more incoherent phrases; paced up and down the room,
+drank glasses of water, jumped about his mother with a thousand
+embraces--began to laugh--began to sing--was happier than she had seen
+him since he was a boy--since he had tasted of the fruit of that awful
+tree of life, which, from the beginning has tempted all mankind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Laura was not at home. Laura was on a visit to the stately Lady
+Rockminster, daughter to my Lord Bareacres, sister to the late Lady
+Pontypool, and by consequence a distant kinswoman of Helen's, as her
+ladyship, who was deeply versed in genealogy, was the first graciously
+to point out to the modest country lady. Mr. Pen was greatly delighted
+at the relationship being acknowledged, though perhaps not over well
+pleased that Lady Rockminster took Miss Bell home with her for a couple
+of days to Baymouth, and did not make the slightest invitation to Mr.
+Arthur Pendennis. There was to be a ball at Baymouth, and it was to be
+Miss Laura's first appearance. The dowager came to fetch her in her
+carriage, and she went off with a white dress in her box, happy and
+blushing like the rose to which Pen compared her.
+
+This was the night of the ball--a public entertainment at the Baymouth
+Hotel. "By Jove!" said Pen, "I'll ride over.--No, I won't ride, but I'll
+go too." His mother was charmed that he should do so; and as he was
+debating about the conveyance in which he should start for Baymouth,
+Captain Strong called opportunely, said he was going himself, and that
+he would put his horse, the Butcher Boy, into the gig, and drive Pen
+over.
+
+When the grand company began to fill the house at Clavering Park, the
+Chevalier Strong, who, as his patron said, was never in the way or out
+of it, seldom intruded himself upon its society, but went elsewhere to
+seek his relaxation. "I've seen plenty of grand dinners in my time," he
+said, "and dined, by Jove, in a company where there was a king and royal
+duke at top and bottom, and every man along the table had six stars
+on his coat; but dammy, Glanders, this finery don't suit me; and the
+English ladies with their confounded buckram airs, and the squires
+with their politics after dinner, send me to sleep--sink me dead if
+they don't. I like a place where I can blow my cigar when the cloth is
+removed, and when I'm thirsty, have my beer in its native pewter." So
+on a gala day at Clavering Park, the chevalier would content himself
+with superintending the arrangements of the table, and drilling the
+major-domo and servants; and having looked over the bill of fare with
+Monsieur Mirobolant, would not care to take the least part in the
+banquet. "Send me up a cutlet and a bottle of claret to my room," this
+philosopher would say, and from the windows of that apartment, which
+commanded the terrace and avenue, he would survey the company as they
+arrived in their carriages, or take a peep at the ladies in the
+hall through an oeil-de-boeuf which commanded it from his corridor.
+And the guests being seated, Strong would cross the park to Captain
+Glanders's cottage at Clavering, or to pay the landlady a visit at the
+Clavering Arms, or to drop in upon Madame Fribsby over her novel and
+tea. Wherever the chevalier went he was welcome, and whenever he came
+away a smell of hot brandy and water lingered behind him.
+
+The Butcher Boy--not the worst horse in Sir Francis's stable--was
+appropriated to Captain Strong's express use; and the old campaigner
+saddled him or brought him home at all hours of the day or night,
+and drove or rode him up and down the country. Where there was a
+public-house with a good tap of beer--where there was a tenant with a
+pretty daughter who played on the piano--to Chatteries, 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 bed-room to dress, they entered the ball-room. The chevalier was
+splendid. He wore three little gold crosses in a brochette on the portly
+breast of his blue coat, and looked like a foreign field-marshal.
+
+The ball was public and all sorts of persons were admitted and
+encouraged to come, young Pynsent having views upon the county, and Lady
+Rockminster being patroness of the ball. There was a quadrille for the
+aristocracy at one end, and select benches for the people of fashion.
+Toward 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
+every body--the wine-merchants', innkeepers', tradesmen's, solicitors',
+squire-farmers' daughters, their sires and brothers, and plunged about
+shaking hands.
+
+"Who is that man with the blue ribbon and the three-pointed star?"
+asked Pen. A gentleman in black with ringlets and a tuft stood gazing
+fiercely about him, with one hand in the arm-hole of his waistcoat and
+the other held his claque.
+
+"By Jupiter, it's Mirobolant!" cried Strong, bursting out laughing.
+"_Bon Jour, Chef!--Bon Jour, chevalier!_"
+
+"_De la croix de Juillet, chevalier_," said the Chef, laying his hand on
+his decoration.
+
+"By Jove, here's some more ribbon!" said Pen, amused.
+
+A man with very black hair and whiskers, dyed evidently with the
+purple of Tyre, with twinkling eyes and white eyelashes, and a thousand
+wrinkles in his face, which was of a strange red color, 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-colored ribbon in his
+button-hole, here came up and nodded familiarly to the chevalier.
+
+The chevalier shook hands. "My friend Mr. Pendennis," Strong said,
+"Colonel Altamont, of the body guard 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 he wanted had entered the room.
+
+Not yet. But the band began presently performing "See the Conquering
+Hero comes," and a host of fashionables--Dowager Countess of
+Rockminster, Mr. Pynsent and Miss Bell, Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., of
+Clavering Park, Lady Clavering and Miss Amory, Sir Horace Fogey, Bart.,
+Lady Fogey, Colonel and Mrs. Higgs, ---- Wagg, Esq. (as the county paper
+afterward described them), entered the room.
+
+Pen rushed by Blanche, ran up to Laura, and seized her hand. "God bless
+you!" he said, "I want to speak to you--I must speak to you--Let me
+dance with you." "Not for three dances, dear Pen," she said, smiling:
+and he fell back, biting his nails with vexation, and forgetting to
+salute Pynsent.
+
+After Lady Rockminster's party, Lady Clavering's followed in the
+procession.
+
+Colonel Altamont eyed it hard, holding a most musky pocket-handkerchief
+up to his face, and bursting with laughter behind it.
+
+"Who's the gal in green along with 'em, cap'n?" he asked of Strong.
+
+"That's Miss Amory, Lady Clavering's daughter," replied the chevalier.
+
+The colonel could hardly contain himself for laughing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+CONTAINS SOME BALL-PRACTICING.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Under some calico draperies in the shady embrasure of a window, Arthur
+Pendennis chose to assume a very gloomy and frowning countenance, and
+to watch Miss Bell dance her first quadrille with Mr. Pynsent for a
+partner. That gentleman was as solemn and severe as Englishmen are upon
+such occasions, and walked through the dance as he would have walked up
+to his pew in church, without a smile upon his face, or allowing any
+outward circumstance to interfere with his attention to the grave duty
+in which he was engaged. But Miss Laura's face was beaming with pleasure
+and good-nature. The lights and the crowd and music excited her. As she
+spread out her white robes, and performed her part of the dance, smiling
+and happy, her brown ringlets flowing back over her fair shoulders from
+her honest rosy face, more than one gentleman in the room admired and
+looked after her: and Lady Fogey, who had a house in London and gave
+herself no small airs of fashion when in the country, asked of Lady
+Rockminster who the young person was, mentioned a reigning beauty in
+London whom, in her ladyship's opinion, Laura was rather like, and
+pronounced that she would "do."
+
+Lady Rockminster would have been very much surprised if any _protegee_
+of hers would not "do," and wondered at Lady Fogey's impudence in
+judging upon the point at all. She surveyed Laura with majestic glances
+through her eye-glass. 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 _ton_
+is far better than that of the little pert Miss Amory, who is dancing
+opposite to her.
+
+Miss Blanche was, indeed, the _vis-a-vis_ of Miss Laura, and smiled most
+killingly upon her dearest friend, and nodded to her, and talked to her,
+when they met during the quadrille evolutions, and patronized her a
+great deal. Her shoulders were the whitest in the whole room: and they
+were never easy in her frock for one single instant: nor were her eyes,
+which rolled about incessantly: nor was her little figure:--it seemed to
+say to all the people, "Come and look at me--not at that pink, healthy,
+bouncing country lass, Miss Bell, who scarcely knew how to dance till
+I taught her. This is the true Parisian manner--this is the prettiest
+little foot in the room, and the prettiest little chaussure, too. Look
+at it, Mr. Pynsent. Look at it, Mr. Pendennis, you who are scowling
+behind the curtain--I know you are longing to dance with me."
+
+Laura went on dancing, and keeping an attentive eye upon Mr. Pen in
+the embrasure of the window. He did not quit that retirement during
+the first quadrille, nor until the second, when the good-natured Lady
+Clavering beckoned to him to come up to her to the dais or place of
+honor where the dowagers were, and whither Pen went blushing and
+exceedingly awkward, as most conceited young fellows are. He performed
+a haughty salutation to Lady Rockminster, who hardly acknowledged his
+bow, and then went and paid his respects to the widow of the late Amory,
+who was splendid in diamonds, velvet, lace, feathers, and all sorts of
+millinery and goldsmith's ware.
+
+Young Mr. Fogey, then in the fifth form at Eton, and ardently expecting
+his beard and his commission in a dragoon regiment, was the second
+partner who was honored 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-humored than ever; and in the midst of her
+laughter caught a sight of Pen, and continued to laugh as he, on his
+side, continued to look absurdly pompous and sulky. The next dance was a
+waltz, and young Fogey thought, with a sigh, that he did not know how to
+waltz, and vowed he would have a master the next holidays.
+
+Mr. Pynsent again claimed Miss Bell's hand for this dance; and Pen
+beheld her in a fury, twirling round the room, her waist encircled by
+the arm of that gentleman. He never used to be angry before when, on
+summer evenings, the chairs and tables being removed, and the governess
+called down stairs 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
+Chatteries. For Captain Broadfoot, though devoting himself with great
+energy to the object in view, could not get round in time: and, not
+having the least ear for music, was unaware that his movements were
+too slow.
+
+So, in the waltz as in the quadrille, Miss Blanche saw that her dear
+friend Laura had the honors 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 to the mercies of that great
+odious man in spurs and a red coat.
+
+"I thought spurs and scarlet were the most fascinating objects in the
+world to young ladies," Pen answered. "I never should have dared to put
+my black coat in competition with that splendid red jacket."
+
+"You are very unkind, and cruel, and sulky, and naughty," said Miss
+Amory, with another shrug of the shoulders. "You had better go away.
+Your cousin is looking at us over Mr. Pynsent's shoulder."
+
+"Will you waltz with me?" said Pen.
+
+"Not this waltz. I can't, having just sent away that great hot Captain
+Broadfoot. Look at Mr. Pynsent, did you ever see such a creature?
+But I will dance the next waltz with you, and the quadrille too. I am
+promised, but I will tell Mr. Poole that I had forgotten my engagement
+to you."
+
+"Women forget very readily," Pendennis said.
+
+"But they always come back, and are very repentant and sorry for what
+they've done," Blanche said. "See, here comes the Poker, and dear Laura
+leaning on him. How pretty she looks!"
+
+Laura came up, and put out her hand to Pen, to whom Pynsent made a sort
+of bow, appearing to be not much more graceful than that domestic
+instrument to which Miss Amory compared him.
+
+But Laura's face was full of kindness. "I am so glad you have come, dear
+Pen," she said. "I can speak to you now. How is mamma? The three dances
+are over, and I am engaged to you for the next, Pen."
+
+"I have just engaged myself to Miss Amory," said Pen; and Miss Amory
+nodded her head, and made her usual little courtesy. "I don't intend
+to give him up, dearest Laura," she said.
+
+"Well, then, he'll waltz with me, dear Blanche," said the other. "Won't
+you, Pen?"
+
+"I promised to waltz with Miss Amory."
+
+"Provoking!" said Laura, and making a courtesy in her turn, she went and
+placed herself under the ample wing of Lady Rockminster.
+
+Pen was delighted with his mischief. The two prettiest girls in the room
+were quarreling 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 toilets of the ladies. One seemed to have a
+bird's nest in her head; another had six pounds of grapes in her hair,
+besides her false pearls. "It's a _coiffure_ of almonds and raisins,"
+said Pen, "and might be served up for dessert." In a word, he was
+exceedingly satirical and amusing.
+
+During the quadrille he carried on this kind of conversation with
+unflinching bitterness and vivacity, and kept Blanche continually
+laughing both at his wickedness and jokes, which were good, and also
+because Laura was again their _vis-a-vis_, and could see and hear how
+merry and confidential they were.
+
+"Arthur is charming to-night," she whispered to Laura, across Cornet
+Perch's shell jacket, as Pen was performing _cavalier seul_ before them,
+drawling through that figure with a thumb in the pocket of each
+waistcoat.
+
+"_Who?_" said Laura.
+
+"Arthur," answered Blanche, in French. "Oh, it's such a pretty name!"
+And now the young ladies went over to Pen's side, and Cornet Perch
+performed a _pas seul_ in his turn. He had no waistcoat pocket to put
+his hands into, and they looked large and swollen as they hung before
+him depending from the tight arms in the jacket.
+
+During the interval between the quadrille and the succeeding waltz, Pen
+did not take any notice of Laura, except to ask her whether her partner,
+Cornet Perch, was an amusing youth, and whether she liked him so well
+as her other partner, Mr. Pynsent. Having planted which two daggers in
+Laura's gentle bosom, Mr. Pendennis proceeded to rattle on with Blanche
+Amory, and to make jokes, good or bad, but which were always loud. Laura
+was at a loss to account for her cousin's sulky behavior, and ignorant
+in what she had offended him; however, she was not angry in her turn at
+Pen's splenetic mood, for she was the most good-natured and forgiving of
+women, and besides, an exhibition of jealousy on a man's part is not
+always disagreeable to a lady.
+
+As Pen would not dance with her, she was glad to take up with the active
+Chevalier Strong, who was a still better performer than Pen; and being
+very fond of dancing, as every brisk and innocent young girl should be,
+when the waltz music began she set off, and chose to enjoy herself with
+all her heart. Captain Broadfoot on this occasion occupied the floor in
+conjunction with a lady of proportions scarcely inferior to his own;
+Miss Roundle, a large young woman in a strawberry-ice colored crape
+dress, the daughter of the lady with the grapes in her head, whose
+bunches Pen had admired.
+
+And now taking his time, and with his fair partner Blanche hanging
+lovingly on the arm which encircled her, Mr. Arthur Pendennis set out
+upon his waltzing career, and felt, as he whirled round to the music,
+that he and Blanche were performing very brilliantly indeed. Very
+likely he looked to see if Miss Bell thought so too; but she did not
+or would not see him, and was always engaged with her partner Captain
+Strong. But Pen's triumph was not destined to last long; and it was
+doomed that poor Blanche was to have yet another discomfiture on that
+unfortunate night. While she and Pen were whirling round as light and
+brisk as a couple of opera-dancers, honest Captain Broadfoot and the
+lady round whose large waist he was clinging, were twisting round very
+leisurely according to their natures, and indeed were in every body's
+way. But they were more in Pendennis's way than in any body's else, for
+he and Blanche, while executing their rapid gyrations, came bolt up
+against the heavy dragoon and his lady, and with such force that the
+center of gravity was lost by all four of the circumvolving bodies;
+Captain Broadfoot and Miss Roundle were fairly upset, as was Pen
+himself, who was less lucky than his partner Miss Amory, who was only
+thrown upon, a bench against a wall.
+
+But Pendennis came fairly down upon the floor, sprawling in the general
+ruin with Broadfoot and Miss Roundle. The captain, though heavy, was
+good-natured, and was the first to burst out into a loud laugh at his
+own misfortune, which nobody therefore heeded. But Miss Amory was savage
+at her mishap; Miss Roundle placed on her _seant_, and looking pitifully
+round, presented an object which very few people could see without
+laughing; and Pen was furious when he heard the people giggling about
+him. He was one of those sarcastic young fellows that did not bear a
+laugh at his own expense, and of all things in the world feared ridicule
+most.
+
+As he got up Laura and Strong were laughing at him; every body was
+laughing; Pynsent and his partner were laughing; and Pen boiled with
+wrath against the pair, and could have stabbed them both on the spot. He
+turned away in a fury from them, and began blundering out apologies to
+Miss Amory. It was the other couple's fault--the woman in pink had done
+it--Pen hoped Miss Amory was not hurt--would she not have the courage to
+take another turn?
+
+Miss Amory in a pet said she _was_ very much hurt indeed, and she would
+not take another turn; and she accepted with great thanks a glass of
+water which a cavalier, who wore a blue ribbon and a three-pointed
+star, rushed to fetch for her when he had seen the deplorable accident.
+She drank the water, smiled upon the bringer gracefully, and turning
+her white shoulder at Mr. Pen in the most marked and haughty manner,
+besought the gentleman with the star to conduct her to her mamma; and
+she held out her hand in order to take his arm.
+
+The man with the star trembled with delight at this mark of her favor;
+he bowed over her hand, pressed it to his coat fervidly, and looked
+round him with triumph.
+
+It was no other than the happy Mirobolant whom Blanche had selected as
+an escort. But the truth is, that the young lady had never fairly looked
+in the artist's face since he had been employed in her mother's family,
+and had no idea but it was a foreign nobleman on whose arm she was
+leaning. As she went off, Pen forgot his humiliation in his surprise,
+and cried out, "By Jove, it's the cook!"
+
+The instant he had uttered the words, he was sorry for having spoken
+them--for it was Blanche who had herself invited Mirobolant to escort
+her, nor could the artist do otherwise than comply with a lady's
+command. Blanche in her flutter did not hear what Arthur said; but
+Mirobolant heard him, and cast a furious glance at him over his
+shoulder, which rather amused Mr. Pen. He was in a mischievous and sulky
+humor; 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 honor at all, did not much enter into the mind of this lofty
+young aristocrat, the apothecary's son.
+
+It had never entered that poor artist's head, that he as a man was not
+equal to any other mortal, or that there was any thing 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 fetes in his own country fine ladies, not
+certainly demoiselles (but the demoiselle Anglaise he knew was a great
+deal more free than the spinster in France) join in the dance with
+Blaise or Pierre; and he would have taken Blanche up to Lady Clavering,
+and possibly have asked her to dance too, but he heard Pen's
+exclamation, which struck him as if it had shot him, and cruelly
+humiliated and angered him. She did not know what caused him to start,
+and to grind a Gascon oath between his teeth.
+
+But Strong, who was acquainted with the poor fellow's state of mind,
+having had the interesting information from our friend Madame Fribsby,
+was luckily in the way when wanted, and saying something rapidly in
+Spanish, which the other understood, the Chevalier begged Miss Amory to
+come and take an ice before she went back to Lady Clavering. Upon which
+the unhappy Mirobolant relinquished the arm which he had held for a
+minute, and with a most profound and piteous bow, fell back. "Don't you
+know who it is?" Strong asked of Miss Amory, as he led her away. "It is
+the Chef Mirobolant."
+
+"How should I know?" asked Blanche. "He has a _croix_; he is very
+_distingue_; he has beautiful eyes."
+
+"The poor fellow is mad for your _beaux yeux_, I believe," Strong said.
+"He is a very good cook, but he is not quite right in the head."
+
+"What did you say to him in the unknown tongue?" asked Miss Blanche.
+
+"He is a Gascon, and comes from the borders of Spain," Strong answered.
+"I told him he would lose his place if he walked with you."
+
+"Poor Monsieur Mirobolant!" said Blanche.
+
+"Did you see the look he gave Pendennis?"--Strong asked, enjoying the
+idea of the mischief--"I think he would like to run little Pen through
+with one of his spits."
+
+"He is an odious, conceited, clumsy creature, that Mr. Pen," said
+Blanche.
+
+"Broadfoot looked as if he would like to kill him too, so did Pynsent,"
+Strong said. "What ice will you have--water ice or cream ice?"
+
+"Water ice. Who is that odd man staring at me--he is _decore_ too."
+
+"That is my friend Colonel Altamont, a very queer character, in the
+service of the Nawaub of Lucknow. Hallo! what's that noise! I'll be back
+in an instant," said the chevalier, and sprang out of the room to the
+ball-room, where a scuffle and a noise of high voices was heard.
+
+The refreshment room in which Miss Amory now found herself, was a room
+set apart for the purposes of supper, which Mr. Rincer the landlord had
+provided for those who chose to partake, at the rate of five shillings
+per head. Also, refreshments of a superior class were here ready for
+the ladies and gentlemen of the county families who came to the ball;
+but the commoner sort of persons were kept out of the room by a waiter
+who stood at the portal, and who said that was a select room for Lady
+Clavering and Lady Rockminster's parties, and not to be opened to the
+public till supper-time, which was not to be until past midnight.
+Pynsent, who danced with his constituents' daughters, took them and
+their mammas in for their refreshment there. Strong, who was manager and
+master of the revels wherever he went, had of course the _entree_--and
+the only person who was now occupying the room, was the gentleman with
+the black wig and the orders in his button-hole; the officer in the
+service of his Highness the Nawaub of Lucknow.
+
+This gentleman had established himself very early in the evening in this
+apartment, where, saying he was confoundedly thirsty, he called for a
+bottle of champagne. At this order, the waiter instantly supposed that
+he had to do with a grandee, and the colonel sate down and began to eat
+his supper and absorb his drink, and enter affably into conversation
+with any body who entered the room.
+
+Sir Francis Clavering and Mr. Wagg found him there; when they left the
+ball-room which they did pretty early--Sir Francis to go and smoke a
+cigar and look at the people gathered outside the ball-room 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 gentleman in so odd a manner, as they passed through the
+"select" room, that Clavering made inquiries of the landlord who he was,
+and hinted a strong opinion that the officer of the Nawaub's service was
+drunk.
+
+Mr. Pynsent, too, had had the honor of a conversation with the servant
+of the Indian potentate. It was Pynsent's cue to speak to every body
+(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 behavior 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 Mrs. Jones, Mrs. R.," and so got off that
+discussion regarding Mr. Pynsent's qualities, into which the Nizam's
+officer appeared inclined to enter.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In fact, if the truth must be told, Mr. Altamont, having remained at
+the buffet almost all night, and employed himself very actively while
+there, had considerably flushed his brain by drinking, and he was still
+going on drinking when Mr. Strong and Miss Amory entered the room.
+
+When the chevalier ran out of the apartment, attracted by the noise in
+the dancing-room, the colonel rose from his chair with his little red
+eyes glowing like coals, and, with rather an unsteady gait, advanced
+toward 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 the glass, she
+beheld this strange man staring at her out of his little red eyes. "Who
+was he? It was quite exciting."
+
+"And so you're Betsy Amory," said he, after gazing at her. "Betsy Amory,
+by Jove!"
+
+"Who--who speaks to me?" said Betsy, alias Blanche.
+
+But the noise in the ball-room is really becoming so loud, that we must
+rush back thither, and see what is the cause of the disturbance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+WHICH IS BOTH QUARRELSOME AND SENTIMENTAL.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Civil war was raging, high words passing, people pushing and squeezing
+together in an unseemly manner, round a window in the corner of the
+ball-room, 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 are the police?" and the like; and a ring of individuals, among
+whom Madame Fribsby was conspicuous, was gathered round Monsieur
+Alcide Mirobolant on the one side; while several gentlemen and ladies
+surrounded our friend Arthur Pendennis on the other. Strong penetrated
+into this assembly, elbowing by Madame Fribsby, who was charmed at the
+chevalier's appearance, and cried, "Save him, save him!" in frantic and
+pathetic accents.
+
+The cause of the disturbance, it appeared, was the angry little chef of
+Sir Francis Clavering's culinary establishment. Shortly after Strong had
+quitted the room, and while 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 behavior to him, which had still further insulted
+his dignity, was endeavoring to get some coolness of body and temper,
+by looking out of window toward the sea, which was sparkling in the
+distance, and murmuring in a wonderful calm--while he was really trying
+to compose himself, and owning to himself, perhaps, that he had acted in
+a very absurd and peevish manner during the night--he felt a hand upon
+his shoulder; and, on looking round, beheld, to his utter surprise and
+horror, that the hand in question belonged to Monsieur Mirobolant, whose
+eyes were glaring out of his pale face and ringlets at Mr. Pen. To be
+tapped on the shoulder by a French cook was a piece of familiarity
+which made the blood of the Pendennises to boil up in the veins of their
+descendant, and he was astounded, almost more than enraged, at such an
+indignity.
+
+"You speak French?" Mirobolant said, in his own language, to Pen.
+
+"What is that to you, pray?" said Pen, in English.
+
+"At any rate, you understand it?" continued the other, with a bow.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Pen, with a stamp of his foot; "I understand it pretty
+well."
+
+"Vous me comprendrez alors, Monsieur Pendennis," replied the other,
+rolling out his _r_ with Gascon force, "quand je vous dis que vous etes
+un lache. Monsieur Pendennis--un lache, entendez-vous?"
+
+"What?" said Pen, starting round on him.
+
+"You understand the meaning of the word and its consequences among men
+of honor?" the artist said, putting his hand on his hip, and staring at
+Pen.
+
+"The consequences are, that I will fling you out of window,
+you--impudent scoundrel," bawled out Mr. Pen; and darting upon the
+Frenchman, he would very likely have put his threat into execution,
+for the window was at hand, and the artist by no means a match for the
+young gentleman--had not Captain Broadfoot and another heavy officer
+flung themselves between the combatants--had not the ladies begun to
+scream--had not the fiddles stopped--had not the crowd of people come
+running in that direction--had not Laura, with a face of great alarm,
+looked over their heads and asked for Heaven's sake what was wrong--had
+not the opportune Strong made his appearance from the refreshment-room,
+and found Alcides grinding his teeth and jabbering oaths in his Gascon
+French, and Pen looking uncommonly wicked, although trying to appear
+as calm as possible, when the ladies and the crowd came up.
+
+"What has happened?" Strong asked of the chef in Spanish.
+
+"I am Chevalier de Juillet," said the other, slapping his breast, "and
+he has insulted me."
+
+"What has he said to you?" asked Strong.
+
+"Il m'a appele--_Cuisinier_?" hissed out the little Frenchman.
+
+Strong could hardly help laughing. "Come away with me, my 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 among these, gathered round Pen, and
+asked the cause of the disturbance.
+
+Pen did not know. "The man was going to give his arm to a young lady,
+on which I said that he was a cook, and the man called me a coward and
+challenged me to fight. I own I was so surprised and indignant that if
+you, gentlemen, had not stopped me, I should have thrown him out of
+window," Pen said.
+
+"D---- him, serve him right, too--the d-- impudent foreign scoundrel,"
+the gentlemen said.
+
+"I--I'm very sorry if I hurt his feelings, though," Pen added; and Laura
+was glad to hear him say that; although some of the young bucks said,
+"No, hang the fellow--hang those impudent foreigners--little thrashing
+would do them good."
+
+"You will go and shake hands with him before you go to sleep--won't you,
+Pen?" said Laura, coming up to him. "Foreigners may be more susceptible
+than we are, and have different manners. If you hurt a poor man's
+feelings, I am sure you would be the first to ask his pardon. Wouldn't
+you, dear Pen?"
+
+She looked all forgiveness and gentleness, like an angel, as she spoke;
+and Pen took both her hands, and looked into her kind face, and said,
+indeed he would.
+
+"How fond that girl is of me!" he thought, as she stood gazing at him.
+"Shall I speak to her now? No--not now. I must have this absurd business
+with the Frenchman over."
+
+Laura asked--Wouldn't he stop and dance with her? She was as anxious to
+keep him in the room, as he to quit it. "Won't you stop and waltz with
+me, Pen? _I_'m not afraid to waltz with you."
+
+This was an affectionate, but an unlucky speech. Pen saw himself
+prostrate on the ground, having tumbled over Miss Roundle and the
+dragoon, and flung Blanche up against the wall--saw himself on the
+ground, and all the people laughing at him, Laura and Pynsent among
+them.
+
+"I shall never dance again," he replied, with a dark and determined
+face. "Never. I'm surprised you should ask me."
+
+"Is it because you can't get Blanche for a partner?" asked Laura, with
+a wicked, unlucky captiousness.
+
+"Because I don't wish to make a fool of myself, for other people to
+laugh at me," Pen answered--"for _you_ to laugh at me, Laura. I saw you
+and Pynsent. By Jove! no man shall laugh at me."
+
+"Pen, Pen, don't be so wicked!" cried out the poor girl, hurt at the
+morbid perverseness and savage vanity of Pen. He was glaring round in
+the direction of Mr. Pynsent as if he would have liked to engage that
+gentleman as he had done the cook. "Who thinks the worse of you for
+stumbling in a waltz?" If Laura does, we don't. "Why are you so
+sensitive and ready to think evil?"
+
+Here again, by ill luck, Mr. Pynsent came up to Laura, and said, "I have
+it in command from Lady Rockminster to ask whether I may take you in to
+supper?"
+
+"I--I was going in with my cousin," Laura said.
+
+"O--pray no!" said Pen. "You are in such good hands that I can't do
+better than leave you; and I'm going home."
+
+"Good night, Mr. Pendennis," Pynsent said, drily--to which speech (which
+in fact, meant, "Go to the deuce for an insolent, jealous, impertinent
+jackanapes, whose ears I should like to box"), Mr. Pendennis did not
+vouchsafe any reply, except a bow: and, in spite of Laura's imploring
+looks, he left the room.
+
+"How beautifully calm and bright the night outside is!" said Mr. Pynsent;
+"and what a murmur the sea is making! It would be pleasanter to be
+walking on the beach, than in this hot room."
+
+"Very," said Laura.
+
+"What a strange congregation of people," continued Pynsent. "I have
+had to go up and perform the agreeable to most of them--the attorney's
+daughters--the apothecary's wife--I scarcely know whom. There was a man
+in the refreshment room, who insisted upon treating me to champagne--a
+seafaring looking man--extraordinarily dressed, and seeming half tipsy.
+As a public man, one is bound to conciliate all these people, but it
+is a hard task--especially when one would so very much like to be
+elsewhere"--and he blushed rather as he spoke.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Laura--"I--I was not listening.
+Indeed--I was frightened about that quarrel between my cousin and
+that--that--that--French person."
+
+"Your cousin has been rather unlucky to-night," Pynsent said. "There
+are three or four persons whom he has not succeeded in pleasing--Captain
+Broadwood; what is his name--the officer--and the young lady in red with
+whom he danced--and Miss Blanche--and the poor chef--and I don't think
+he seemed particularly pleased with me."
+
+"Didn't he leave me in charge to you?" Laura said, looking up into Mr.
+Pynsent's face, and dropping her eyes instantly, like a guilty little
+story-telling coquette.
+
+"Indeed, I can forgive him a good deal for that," Pynsent eagerly cried
+out, and she took his arm, and he led off his little prize in the
+direction of the supper-room.
+
+She had no great desire for that repast, though it was served in
+Rincer's well known style, as the county paper said, giving an account
+of the entertainment afterward; indeed, she was very _distraite_; and
+exceedingly pained and unhappy about Pen. Captious and quarrelsome;
+jealous and selfish; fickle and violent and unjust when his anger led
+him astray; how could her mother (as indeed Helen had by a thousand
+words and hints) ask her to give her heart to such a man? And suppose
+she were to do so, would it make him happy?
+
+But she got some relief at length, when at the end of half an hour--a
+long half-hour it had seemed to her--a waiter brought her a little note
+in pencil from Pen, who said, "I met Cooky below ready to fight me;
+and I asked his pardon. I'm glad I did it. I wanted to speak to you
+to-night, but will keep what I had to say till you come home. God
+bless you. Dance away all night with Pynsent, and be very happy.
+PEN."--Laura was very thankful for this letter, and to think
+that there was goodness and forgiveness still in her mother's boy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pen went down stairs, his heart reproaching him for his absurd behavior
+to Laura, whose gentle and imploring looks followed and rebuked him; and
+he was scarcely out of the ball-room 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 apologize before _him_. He would
+compromise, and forget his wrath, and make his peace with the Frenchman.
+
+The chevalier was pacing down below in the hall of the inn when Pen
+descended from the ball-room; and he came up to Pen, with all sorts of
+fun and mischief lighting up his jolly face.
+
+"I have got him in the coffee-room," he said, "with a brace of pistols
+and a candle. Or would you like swords on the beach? Mirobolant is a
+dead hand with the foils, and killed four _gardes-du-corps_ with his own
+point in the barricades of July."
+
+"Confound it," said Pen, in a fury, "I can't fight a cook!"
+
+"He is a Chevalier of July," replied the other. "They present arms to
+him in his own country."
+
+"And do you ask me, Captain Strong, to go out with a servant?" Pen asked
+fiercely; "I'll call a policeman for _him_; but--but--"
+
+"You'll invite me to hair triggers?" cried Strong, with a laugh. "Thank
+you for nothing; I was but joking. I came to settle quarrels, not to
+fight them. I have been soothing down Mirobolant; I have told him that
+you did not apply the word 'cook' to him in an offensive sense; that it
+was contrary to all the customs of the country that a hired officer of
+a household, as I called it, should give his arm to the daughter of the
+house." And then he told Pen the grand secret which he had had from
+Madame Fribsby of the violent passion under which the poor artist was
+laboring.
+
+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 any thing 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 gentlehomme qu'il ne l'avoit jamais, jamais--intende,"
+said Pen, who made a shot at a French word for "intended," and was
+secretly much pleased with his own fluency and correctness in speaking
+that language.
+
+"Bravo, bravo!" cried Strong, as much amused with Pen's speech as
+pleased by his kind manner. "And the Chevalier Mirobolant of course
+withdraws, and sincerely regrets the expression of which he made use."
+
+"Monsieur Pendennis has disproved my words himself," said Alcide, with
+great politeness; "he has shown that he is a _galant homme_."
+
+And so they shook hands and parted, Arthur in the first place
+dispatching his note to Laura before he and Strong committed themselves
+to the Butcher Boy.
+
+As they drove along, Strong complimented Pen upon his behavior, as well
+as upon his skill in French. "You're a good fellow, Pendennis, and you
+speak French like Chateaubriand, by Jove."
+
+"I've been accustomed to it from my youth upward," said Pen; and Strong
+had the grace not to laugh for five minutes, when he exploded into fits
+of hilarity which Pendennis has never, perhaps, understood up to this
+day.
+
+It was daybreak when they got to the Brawl, where they separated.
+By that time the ball at Baymouth was over too. Madame Fribsby and
+Mirobolant were on their way home in the Clavering fly; Laura was in
+bed, with an easy heart, and asleep at Lady Rockminster's; and the
+Claverings at rest at the inn at Baymouth, where they had quarters for
+the night. A short time after the disturbance between Pen and the chef,
+Blanche had come out of the refreshment-room, looking as pale as a
+lemon-ice. She told her maid, having no other _confidante_ at hand, that
+she had met with the most romantic adventure--the most singular man--one
+who had known the author of her being--her persecuted--her unhappy--her
+heroic--her murdered father; and she began a sonnet to his manes before
+she went to sleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So Pen returned to Fairoaks, in company with his friend the chevalier,
+without having uttered a word of the message which he had been so
+anxious to deliver to Laura at Baymouth. He could wait, however, until
+her return home, which was to take place on the succeeding day. He was
+not seriously jealous of the progress made by Mr. Pynsent in her favor;
+and he felt pretty certain that in this, as in any other family
+arrangement, he had but to ask and have, and Laura, like his mother,
+could refuse him nothing.
+
+When Helen's anxious looks inquired of him what had happened at
+Baymouth, and whether her darling project was fulfilled, Pen, in a gay
+tone, told of the calamity which had befallen; laughingly said, that no
+man could think about declarations under such a mishap, and made light
+of the matter. "There will be plenty of time for sentiment, dear mother,
+when Laura comes back," he said, and he looked in the glass with a
+killing air, and his mother put his hair off his forehead and kissed
+him, and of course thought, for her part, that no woman could resist
+him: and was exceedingly happy that day.
+
+When he was not with her, Mr. Pen occupied himself in packing books and
+portmanteaus, burning and arranging papers, cleaning his gun and putting
+it into its case: in fact, in making dispositions for departure. For
+though he was ready to marry, this gentleman was eager to go to London
+too, rightly considering that at three-and-twenty it was quite time for
+him to begin upon the serious business of life, and to set about making
+a fortune as quickly as possible.
+
+The means to this end he had already shaped out for himself. "I shall
+take chambers," he said, "and enter myself at an Inn of Court. With a
+couple of hundred pounds I shall be able to carry through the first year
+very well; after that I have little doubt my pen will support me, as
+it is doing with several Oxbridge men now in town. I have a tragedy, a
+comedy, and a novel, all nearly finished, and for which I can't fail to
+get a price. And so I shall be able to live pretty well, without drawing
+upon my poor mother, until I have made my way at the bar. Then, some day
+I will come back and make her dear soul happy by marrying Laura. She is
+as good and as sweet-tempered a girl as ever lived, besides being really
+very good-looking, and the engagement will serve to steady me--won't it,
+Ponto?" Thus, smoking his pipe, and talking to his dog as he sauntered
+through the gardens and orchards of the little domain of Fairoaks, this
+young day-dreamer built castles in the air for himself: "Yes, she'll
+steady me, won't she? And you'll miss me when I've gone, won't you, old
+boy?" he asked of Ponto, who quivered his tail and thrust his brown nose
+into his master's fist. Ponto licked his hand and shoe, as they all did
+in that house, and Mr. Pen received their homage as other folks do the
+flattery which they get.
+
+Laura came home rather late in the evening of the second day; and Mr.
+Pynsent, as ill luck would have it, drove her from Clavering. The poor
+girl could not refuse his offer, but his appearance brought a dark cloud
+upon the brow of Arthur Pendennis. Laura saw this, and was pained by
+it; the eager widow, however, was aware of nothing, and being anxious,
+doubtless, that the delicate question should be asked at once, was for
+going to bed very soon after Laura's arrival, and rose for that purpose
+to leave the sofa where she now generally lay, and where Laura would
+come and sit and work or read by her. But when Helen rose, Laura said,
+with a blush and rather an alarmed voice, that she was also very tired
+and wanted to go to bed: so that the widow was disappointed in her
+scheme for that night at least, and Mr. Pen was left another day in
+suspense regarding his fate.
+
+His dignity was offended at being thus obliged to remain in the
+ante-chamber when he wanted an audience. Such, a sultan as he, could not
+afford to be kept waiting. However, he went to bed and slept upon his
+disappointment pretty comfortably, and did not wake until the early
+morning, when he looked up and saw his mother standing in his room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dear Pen, rouse up," said this lady. "Do not be lazy. It is the most
+beautiful morning in the world. I have not been able to sleep since
+daybreak; and Laura has been out for an hour. She is in the garden.
+Every body ought to be in the garden and out on such a morning as this."
+
+Pen laughed. He saw what thoughts were uppermost in the simple woman's
+heart. His good-natured laughter cheered the widow. "Oh you profound
+dissembler," he said, kissing his mother. "Oh you artful creature! Can
+nobody escape from your wicked tricks? and will you make your only son
+your victim?" Helen too laughed, she blushed, she fluttered, and was
+agitated. She was as happy as she could be--a good, tender, match-making
+woman, the dearest project of whose heart was about to be accomplished.
+
+So, after exchanging some knowing looks and hasty words, Helen left
+Arthur; and this young hero, rising from his bed, proceeded to decorate
+his beautiful person, and shave his ambrosial chin; and in half an hour
+he issued out from his apartment into the garden in quest of Laura. His
+reflections as he made his toilet were rather dismal. "I am going to tie
+myself for life," he thought, "to please my mother. Laura is the best
+of women, and--and she has given me her money. I wish to heaven I had
+not received it; I wish I had not this duty to perform just yet. But as
+both the women have set their hearts on the match, why I suppose I must
+satisfy them--and now for it. A man may do worse than make happy two of
+the best creatures in the world." So Pen, now he was actually come to
+the point, felt very grave, and by no means elated, and, indeed, thought
+it was a great sacrifice he was going to perform.
+
+It was Miss Laura's custom, upon her garden excursions, to wear a sort
+of uniform, which, though homely, was thought by many people to be not
+unbecoming. She had a large straw hat, with a streamer of broad ribbon,
+which was useless probably, but the hat sufficiently protected the
+owner's pretty face from the sun. Over her accustomed gown she wore a
+blouse or pinafore, which, being fastened round her little waist by a
+smart belt, looked extremely well, and her hands were guaranteed from
+the thorns of her favorite rose-bushes by a pair of gauntlets, which
+gave this young lady a military and resolute air.
+
+Somehow she had the very same smile with which she had laughed at him on
+the night previous, and the recollection of his disaster again offended
+Pen. But Laura, though she saw him coming down the walk looking so
+gloomy and full of care, accorded to him a smile of the most perfect and
+provoking good-humor, 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 favor, and he continued to regard her with a dismal
+and solemn air.
+
+"Excuse my glove," said Laura, with a laugh, pressing Pen's hand kindly
+with it. "We are not angry again, are we, Pen?"
+
+"Why do you laugh at me?" said Pen. "You did the other night, and made a
+fool of me to the people at Baymouth."
+
+"My dear Arthur, I meant you no wrong," the girl answered. "You and Miss
+Roundle looked so droll as you--as you met with your little accident,
+that I could not make a tragedy of it. Dear Pen, it wasn't a serious
+fall. And, besides, it was Miss Roundle who was the most unfortunate."
+
+"Confound Miss Roundle," bellowed out Pen.
+
+"I'm sure she looked so," said Laura, archly. "You were up in an
+instant; but that poor lady sitting on the ground in her red crape
+dress, and looking about her with that piteous face--can I ever forget
+her?"--and Laura began to make a face in imitation of Miss Roundle's
+under the disaster, but she checked herself repentantly, saying, "Well,
+we must not laugh at her, but I am sure we ought to laugh at you, Pen,
+if you were angry about such a trifle."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"_You_ should not laugh at me, Laura," said Pen, with some bitterness;
+"not you, of all people."
+
+"And why not? Are you such a great man?" asked Laura.
+
+"Ah no, Laura, I'm such a poor one," Pen answered. "Haven't you baited
+me enough already?"
+
+"My dear Pen, and how?" cried Laura. "Indeed, indeed, I didn't think to
+vex you by such a trifle. I thought such a clever man as you could bear
+a harmless little joke from his sister," she said, holding her hand out
+again. "Dear Arthur, if I have hurt you, I beg your pardon."
+
+"It is your kindness that humiliates me more even than your laughter,
+Laura," Pen said. "You are always my superior."
+
+"What! superior to the great Arthur Pendennis? How can it be possible?"
+said Miss Laura, who may have had a little wickedness as well as a great
+deal of kindness in her composition. "You can't mean that any woman is
+your equal?"
+
+"Those who confer benefits should not sneer," said Pen. "I don't like my
+benefactor to laugh at me, Laura; it makes the obligation very hard to
+bear. You scorn me because I have taken your money, and I am worthy to
+be scorned; but the blow is hard coming from you."
+
+"Money! Obligation! For shame, Pen; this is ungenerous," Laura said,
+flushing red. "May not our mother claim every thing 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 every thing
+I have," said Laura; "my life is hers." And the enthusiastic girl looked
+toward the windows of the widow's room, and blessed in her heart the
+kind creature within.
+
+Helen was looking, unseen, out of that window toward which Laura's eyes
+and heart were turned as she spoke, and was watching her two children
+with the deepest interest and emotion, longing and hoping that the
+prayer of her life might be fulfilled: and if Laura had spoken as Helen
+hoped, who knows what temptations Arthur Pendennis might have been
+spared, or what different trials he would have had to undergo? He might
+have remained at Fairoaks all his days, and died a country gentleman.
+But would he have escaped then? Temptation is an obsequious servant that
+has no objection to the country, and we know that it takes up its
+lodging in hermitages as well as in cities; and that in the most remote
+and inaccessible desert it keeps company with the fugitive solitary.
+
+"Is your life my mother's," said Pen, beginning to tremble, and speak in
+a very agitated manner. "You know, Laura, what the great object of hers
+is?" And he took her hand once more.
+
+"What, Arthur?" she said, dropping it, and looking at him, at the window
+again, and then dropping her eyes to the ground, so that they avoided
+Pen's gaze. She, too, trembled, for she felt that the crisis for which
+she had been secretly preparing was come.
+
+"Our mother has one wish above all others in the world, Laura," Pen
+said; "and I think you know it. I own to you that she has spoken to me
+of it; and if you will fulfill 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, while they render me grateful. When I heard from our
+mother what you had done for me: that it was you who armed me and bade
+me go out for one struggle more; I longed to go and throw myself at your
+feet, and say, 'Laura, will you come and share the contest with me? Your
+sympathy will cheer me while it lasts. I shall have one of the tenderest
+and most generous creatures under heaven to aid and bear me company.'
+Will you take me, dear Laura, and make our mother happy?"
+
+"Do you think mamma would be happy if you were otherwise, Arthur?" Laura
+said, in a low sad voice.
+
+"And why should I not be," asked Pen, eagerly, "with so dear a creature
+as you by my side? I have not my first love to give you. I am a broken
+man. But indeed I would love you fondly and truly. I have lost many an
+illusion and ambition, but I am not without hope still. Talents I know I
+have, wretchedly as I have misapplied them; they may serve me yet; they
+would, had I a motive for action. Let me go away, and think that I am
+pledged to return to you. Let me go and work, and hope that you will
+share my success if I gain it. You have given me so much, dear Laura,
+will you take from me nothing?"
+
+"What have you got to give, Arthur?" Laura said, with a grave sadness of
+tone, which made Pen start, and see that his words had committed him.
+Indeed, his declaration had not been such as he would have made it two
+days earlier, when full of hope and gratitude, he had run over to Laura,
+his liberatress, to thank her for his recovered freedom. Had he been
+permitted to speak then, he had spoken, and she, perhaps, had listened
+differently. It would have been a grateful heart asking for hers; not a
+weary one offered to her, to take or to leave. Laura was offended with
+the terms in which Pen offered himself to her. He had, in fact, said
+that he had no love, and yet would take no denial. "I give myself to you
+to please my mother," he had said; "take me, as she wishes that I should
+make this sacrifice." The girl's spirit would brook a husband under no
+such conditions: she was not minded to run forward because Pen chose to
+hold out the handkerchief, and her tone, in reply to Arthur, showed her
+determination to be independent.
+
+"No, Arthur," she said, "our marriage would not make mamma happy, as she
+fancies; for it would not content you very long. I, too, have known what
+her wishes were; for she is too open to conceal any thing she has at
+heart: and once, perhaps, I thought--but that is over now--that I could
+have made you--that it might have been as she wished."
+
+"You have seen somebody else," said Pen, angry at her tone, and
+recalling the incidents of the past days.
+
+"That allusion might have been spared," Laura replied, flinging up her
+head. "A heart which has worn out love at three-and-twenty, as yours
+has, you say, should have survived jealousy too. I do not condescend to
+say whether I have seen or encouraged any other person. I shall neither
+admit the charge, nor deny it: and beg you also to allude to it no
+more."
+
+"I ask your pardon, Laura, if I have offended you: but if I am jealous,
+does it not prove that I have a heart?"
+
+"Not for me, Arthur. Perhaps you think you love me now: but it is only
+for an instant, and because you are foiled. Were there no obstacle, you
+would feel no ardor to overcome it. No, Arthur, you don't love me. You
+would weary of me in three months, as--as you do of most things; and
+mamma, seeing you tired of me, would be more unhappy than at my refusal
+to be yours. Let us be brother and sister, Arthur, as heretofore--but no
+more. You will get over this little disappointment."
+
+"I will try," said Arthur, in a great indignation.
+
+"Have you not tried before?" Laura said, with some anger, for she had
+been angry with Arthur for a very long time, and was now determined, I
+suppose, to speak her mind. "And the next time, Arthur, when you offer
+yourself to a woman, do not say as you have done to me, 'I have no
+heart--I do not love you; but I am ready to marry you because my mother
+wishes for the match.' We require more than this in return for our
+love--that is, I think so. I have had no experience hitherto, and have
+not had the--the practice which you supposed me to have, when you spoke
+but now of my having seen somebody else. Did you tell your first love
+that you had no heart, Arthur? or your second that you did not love her,
+but that she might have you if she liked?"
+
+"What--what do you mean?" asked Arthur, blushing, and still in great
+wrath.
+
+"I mean Blanche Amory, Arthur Pendennis," Laura said, proudly. "It is
+but two months since you were sighing at her feet--making poems to
+her--placing them in hollow trees by the river-side. I knew all. I
+watched you--that is, she showed them to me. Neither one nor the other
+were in earnest perhaps; but it is too soon now, Arthur, to begin a new
+attachment. Go through the time of your--your widowhood at least, and do
+not think of marrying until you are out of mourning."--(Here the girl's
+eyes filled with tears, and she passed her hand across them). "I am
+angry and hurt, and I have no right to be so, and I ask your pardon in
+my turn now, dear Arthur. You had a right to love Blanche. She was a
+thousand times prettier and more accomplished than--than any girl near
+us here; and you could not know that she had no heart; and so you were
+right to leave her too. I ought not to rebuke you about Blanche Amory,
+and because she deceived you. Pardon me, Pen,"--and she held the kind
+hand out to Pen once more.
+
+"We were both jealous," said Pen. "Dear Laura, let us both forgive"--and
+he seized her hand and would have drawn her toward him. He thought that
+she was relenting, and already assumed the airs of a victor.
+
+But she shrank back, and her tears passed away; and she fixed on him a
+look so melancholy, and severe, that the young man in his turn shrank
+before it. "Do not mistake me, Arthur," she said, "it can not 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, honor, and obedience? If ever I say these words, dear Pen,
+I hope to say them in earnest, and by the blessing of God to keep my
+vow. But you--what tie binds you? You do not care about many things
+which we poor women hold sacred. I do not like to think or ask how far
+your incredulity leads you. You offer to marry to please our mother, and
+own that you have no heart to give away? Oh, Arthur, what is it you
+offer me? What a rash compact would you enter into so lightly? A month
+ago, and you would have given yourself to another. I pray you do not
+trifle with your own or others' hearts so recklessly. Go and work; go
+and mend, dear Arthur, for I see your faults, and dare speak of them
+now: go and get fame, as you say that you can, and I will pray for my
+brother, and watch our dearest mother at home."
+
+"Is that your final decision, Laura?" Arthur cried.
+
+"Yes," said Laura, bowing her head; and once more giving him her hand,
+she went away. He saw her pass under the creepers of the little porch,
+and disappear into the house. The curtains of his mother's window fell
+at the same minute, but he did not mark that, or suspect that Helen had
+been witnessing the scene.
+
+Was he pleased, or was he angry at its termination? He had asked her,
+and a secret triumph filled his heart to think that he was still free.
+She had refused him, but did she not love him? That avowal of jealousy
+made him still think that her heart was his own, whatever her lips might
+utter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now we ought, perhaps, to describe another scene which took place
+at Fairoaks, between the widow and Laura, when the latter had to tell
+Helen that she had refused Arthur Pendennis. Perhaps it was the hardest
+task of all which Laura had to go through in this matter: and the one
+which gave her the most pain. But as we do not like to see a good woman
+unjust, we shall not say a word more of the quarrel which now befell
+between Helen and her adopted daughter, or of the bitter tears which the
+poor girl was made to shed. It was the only difference which she and the
+widow had ever had as yet, and the more cruel from this cause. Pen left
+home while it was as yet pending--and Helen, who could pardon almost
+every thing, could not pardon an act of justice in Laura.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+BABYLON.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 toward the fond mother,
+who blessed him when parting, and who, in spite of all his past faults
+and follies, trusts him and loves him still. Blessings be on her! he
+prays, as he looks up to the stars overhead. O heaven, give him strength
+to work, to endure, to be honest, to avoid temptation, to be worthy of
+the loving soul who loves him so entirely! Very likely she is awake,
+too, at that moment, and sending up to the same Father purer prayers
+than his for the welfare of her boy. That woman's love is a talisman by
+which he holds and hopes to get his safety. And Laura's--he would have
+fain carried her affection with him too, but she has denied it, as he is
+not worthy of it. He owns as much with shame and remorse; confesses how
+much better and loftier her nature is than his own--confesses it, and
+yet is glad to be free. "I am not good enough for such a creature," he
+owns to himself. He draws back before her spotless beauty and innocence,
+as from something that scares him. He feels he is not fit for such a
+mate as that; as many a wild prodigal who has been pious and guiltless
+in early days, keeps away from a church which he used to frequent
+once--shunning it, but not hostile to it--only feeling that he has no
+right in that pure place.
+
+With these thoughts to occupy him, Pen did not fall asleep until the
+nipping dawn of an October morning, and woke considerably refreshed when
+the coach stopped at the old breakfasting place at B----, where he had
+had a score of merry meals on his way to and from school and college
+many times since he was a boy. As they left that place, the sun broke
+out brightly, the pace was rapid, the horn blew, the milestones flew by,
+Pen smoked and joked with guard and fellow-passengers and people along
+the familiar road; it grew more busy and animated at every instant; the
+last team of grays came out at H----, and the coach drove into London.
+What young fellow has not felt a thrill as he entered the vast place?
+Hundreds of other carriages, crowded with their thousands of men, were
+hastening to the great city. "Here is my place," thought Pen; "here is
+my battle beginning, in which I must fight and conquer, or fall. I have
+been a boy and a dawdler as yet. Oh, I long, I long to show that I can
+be a man." And from his place on the coach-roof the eager young fellow
+looked down upon the city, with the sort of longing desire which young
+soldiers feel on the eve of a campaign.
+
+As they came along the road, Pen had formed an 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 honor to have seen
+the great Mr. Hurtle, whose works he admired. He believed fondly, as
+yet, in authors, reviewers, and editors of newspapers. Even Wagg, whose
+books did not appear to him to be masterpieces of human intellect, he
+yet secretly revered as a successful writer. He mentioned that he had
+met Wagg in the country, and Doolan told him how that famous novelist
+received three hundred pounds a volume for every one of his novels. Pen
+began to calculate instantly whether he might not make five thousand a
+year.
+
+The very first acquaintance of his own whom Arthur met, as the coach
+pulled up at the Gloster Coffee House, was his old friend Harry Foker,
+who came prancing down Arlington-street behind an enormous cab-horse.
+He had white kid gloves and white reins, and nature had by this time
+decorated him with a considerable tuft on the chin. A very small cab-boy,
+vice Stoopid retired, swung on behind Foker's vehicle; knock-kneed and
+in the tightest leather breeches. Foker looked at the dusty coach, and
+the smoking horses of the "Alacrity" by which he had made journeys in
+former times.--"What, Foker!" cried out Pendennis--"Hullo! Pen, my boy!"
+said the other, and he waved his whip by way of amity and salute to
+Arthur, who was very glad to see his queer friend's kind old face. Mr.
+Doolan had a great respect for Pen who had an acquaintance in such a
+grand cab; and Pen was greatly excited and pleased to be at liberty
+and in London. He asked Doolan to come and dine with him at the Covent
+Garden Coffee House, where he put up: he called a cab and rattled away
+thither in the highest spirits. He was glad to see the bustling waiter
+and polite bowing landlord again; and asked for the landlady, and missed
+the old Boots, and would have liked to shake hands with every body.
+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 theater adjoining.
+
+The lights and the music, the crowd and the gayety, 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 theater, as if he was in a resort of the
+highest fashion. What tired frequenter of the London pave is there that
+can not 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 Granby 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 favorite of the public, Blenkinsop'--those parts
+in the drama, which are called the heavy fathers, were usually assigned
+to this veteran, who, indeed, acted the heavy father in public, as in
+private life.
+
+At this time, it being about eleven o'clock, Mrs. Pendennis was gone to
+bed at Fairoaks, and wondering whether her dearest Arthur was at rest
+after his journey. At this time Laura, too, was awake. And at this time
+yesterday night, as the coach rolled over silent commons, where cottage
+windows twinkled, and by darkling woods under calm starlit skies, Pen
+was vowing to reform and to resist temptation, and his heart was at
+home.... Meanwhile the farce was going on very successfully, and Mrs.
+Leary, in a hussar jacket and braided pantaloons, was enchanting the
+audience with her archness, her lovely figure, and her delightful
+ballads.
+
+Pen, being new to the town, would have liked to listen to Mrs. Leary
+but the other people in the box did not care about her song or her
+pantaloons, and kept up an incessant chattering. Tiptoff knew where her
+_maillots_ came from. Colchicum saw her when she came out in '14. Miss
+Blenkinsop said she sang out of all tune, to the pain and astonishment
+of Pen, who thought that she was as beautiful as an angel, and that
+she sang like a nightingale; and when Hoppus came on as Sir Harcourt
+Featherby, the young man of the piece, the gentlemen in the box declared
+that Hoppus was getting too stale, and Tiptoff was for flinging Miss
+Blenkinsop's bouquet to him.
+
+"Not for the world," cried the daughter of the veteran Blenkinsop; "Lord
+Colchicum gave it to me."
+
+Pen remembered that nobleman's name, and with a bow and a blush said he
+believed he had to thank Lord Colchicum for having proposed him at the
+Megatherium Club, at the request of his uncle, Major Pendennis.
+
+"What, you're Wigsby's nephew, are you?" said the peer. "I beg your
+pardon, we always call him Wigsby." Pen blushed to hear his venerable
+uncle called by such a familiar name. "We balloted you in last week,
+didn't we? Yes, last Wednesday night. Your uncle wasn't there."
+
+Here was delightful news for Pen! He professed himself very much obliged
+indeed to Lord Colchicum, and made him a handsome speech of thanks, to
+which the other listened, with his double opera-glass up to his eyes.
+Pen was full of excitement at the idea of being a member of this polite
+club.
+
+"Don't be always looking at that box, you naughty creature," cried Miss
+Blenkinsop.
+
+"She's a dev'lish fine woman, that Mirabel," said Tiptoff; "though
+Mirabel was a d--d fool to marry her."
+
+"A stupid old spooney," said the peer.
+
+"Mirabel!" cried out Pendennis.
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed out Harry Foker. "We've heard of her before, haven't
+we, Pen?"
+
+It was Pen's first love. It was Miss Fotheringay. The year before she
+had been led to the altar by Sir Charles Mirabel, G.C.B., and formerly
+envoy to the Court of Pumpernickel, who had taken so active a part in
+the negotiations before the Congress of Swammerdam, and signed, on
+behalf of H.B.M. the peace of Pultusk.
+
+"Emily was always as stupid as an owl," said Miss Blenkinsop.
+
+"Eh! Eh! pas si bete," the old peer said.
+
+"Oh, for shame!" cried the actress, who did not in the least know what
+he meant.
+
+And Pen looked out, and beheld his first love once again--and wondered
+how he ever could have loved her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus, on the very first night of his arrival in London, Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis found himself introduced to a club, to an actress of genteel
+comedy, and a heavy father of the stage, and to a dashing society of
+jovial blades, old and young; for my Lord Colchicum, though stricken in
+years, bald of head, and enfeebled in person, was still indefatigable in
+the pursuit of enjoyment, and it was the venerable viscount's boast that
+he could drink as much claret as the youngest member of the society
+which he frequented. He lived with the youth about town: he gave them
+countless dinners at Richmond and Greenwich: an enlightened patron of
+the drama in all languages, and of the Terpsichorean art, he received
+dramatic professors of all nations at his banquets--English from the
+Covent Garden and Strand houses, Italians from the Haymarket, French
+from their own pretty little theater, 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
+green-room--with the former chiefly, for Viscount Colchicum preferred
+their society, as more polished and gay than that of their male
+brethren.
+
+Pen went the next day and paid his entrance-money at the club, which
+operation carried off exactly one-third of his hundred pounds; and took
+possession of the edifice, and ate his luncheon there with immense
+satisfaction. He plunged into an easy chair in the library, and tried to
+read all the magazines. He wondered whether the members were looking at
+him, and that they could dare to keep on their hats in such fine rooms.
+He sate down and wrote a letter to Fairoaks on the club paper, and said,
+what a comfort this place would be to him after his day's work was
+over. He went over to his uncle's lodgings in Bury-street with some
+considerable tremor, and in compliance with his mother's earnest desire,
+that he should instantly call on Major Pendennis; and was not a little
+relieved to find that the major had not yet returned to town. His
+apartments were blank. Brown hollands covered his library-table, and
+bills and letters lay on the mantle-piece, grimly awaiting the return of
+their owner. The major was on the continent, the landlady of the house
+said, at Badnbadn, with the Marcus of Steyne. Pen left his card upon the
+shelf with the rest. Fairoaks was written on it still.
+
+When the major returned to London, which he did in time for the fogs of
+November, after enjoying which he proposed to spend Christmas with some
+friends in the country, he found another card of Arthur's, on which Lamb
+Court, Temple, was engraved, and a note from that young gentleman and
+from his mother, stating that he was come to town, was entered a member
+of the Upper Temple, and was reading hard for the bar.
+
+Lamb Court, Temple:--where was it? Major Pendennis remembered that
+some ladies of fashion used to talk of dining with Mr. Ayliffe, the
+barrister, who was "in society," and who lived there in the King's
+Bench, of which prison there was probably a branch in the Temple, and
+Ayliffe was very likely an officer. Mr. Deuceace, Lord Crab's son, had
+also lived there, he recollected. He dispatched Morgan to find out where
+Lamb Court was, and to report upon the lodging selected by Mr. Arthur.
+That alert messenger had little difficulty in discovering Mr. Pen's
+abode. Discreet Morgan had in his time traced people far more difficult
+to find than Arthur.
+
+"What sort of a place is it, Morgan?" asked the major, out of the
+bed-curtains in Bury-street the next morning, as the valet was arranging
+his toilet in the deep yellow London fog.
+
+"I should say rayther a shy place," said Mr. Morgan. "The lawyers lives
+there, and has their names on the doors. Mr. Harthur lives three pair
+high, sir. Mr. Warrington live there too, sir."
+
+"Suffolk Warringtons! I shouldn't wonder: a good family," thought the
+major. "The cadets of many of our good families follow the robe as a
+profession. Comfortable rooms, eh?"
+
+"Honly saw the outside of the door, sir, with Mr. Warrington's name and
+Mr. Arthur's painted up, and a piece of paper with 'Back at 6;' but I
+couldn't see no servant, sir."
+
+"Economical at any rate," said the major.
+
+"Very, sir. Three pair, sir. Nasty black staircase as ever I see. Wonder
+how a gentleman can live in such a place."
+
+"Pray, who taught you where gentlemen should or should not live, Morgan.
+Mr. Arthur, sir, is going to study for the bar, sir;" the major said
+with much dignity; and closed the conversation and began to array
+himself, in the yellow fog.
+
+"Boys will be boys," the mollified uncle thought to himself. "He has
+written to me a dev'lish good letter. Colchicum says he has had him to
+dine, and thinks him agentleman like lad. His mother is one of the best
+creatures in the world. If he has sown his wild oats, and will stick to
+his business, he may do well yet. Think of Charley Mirabel, the old fool
+marrying that flame of his! that Fotheringay! He doesn't like to come
+here until I give him leave, and puts it in a very manly, nice way. I
+was deuced angry with him, after his Oxbridge escapades--and showed it,
+too, when he was here before--Gad, I'll go and see him, hang me if I
+don't."
+
+And having ascertained from Morgan that he could reach the Temple
+without much difficulty, and that a city omnibus would put him down
+at the gate, the major one day after breakfast at his club--not the
+Polyanthus, whereof Mr. Pen was just elected a member, but another club:
+for the major was too wise to have a nephew as a constant inmate of any
+house where he was in the habit of passing his time--the major one day
+entered one of those public vehicles, and bade the conductor to put him
+down at the gate of the Upper Temple.
+
+When Major Pendennis reached that dingy portal it was about twelve
+o'clock in the day; and he was directed by a civil personage with a
+badge and a white apron, through some dark alleys, and under various
+melancholy archways into courts each more dismal than the other, until
+finally he reached Lamb Court. If it was dark in Pall Mall, 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
+patronizing manner with the managing clerk of an attorney at the door;
+and in Curling, the wig-maker's melancholy shop, where, from behind the
+feeble glimmer of a couple of lights, large sergeants' and judges' wigs
+were looming drearily, with the blank blocks looking at the lamp-post in
+the court. Two little clerks were playing at toss-halfpenny under that
+lamp. A laundress in pattens passed in at one door, a newspaper boy
+issued from another. A porter, whose white apron was faintly visible,
+paced up and down. It would be impossible to conceive a place more
+dismal, and the major shuddered to think that any one should select such
+a residence. "Good Ged!" he said, "the poor boy mustn't live on here."
+
+The feeble and filthy oil-lamps, with which the stair-cases of the Upper
+Temple are lighted of night, were of course not illuminating the stairs
+by day, and Major Pendennis, having read with difficulty his nephew's
+name under Mr. Warrington's on the wall of No. 6, found still greater
+difficulty in climbing the abominable black stairs, up the banisters of
+which, which contributed their damp exudations to his gloves, he groped
+painfully until he came to the third story. A candle was in the passage
+of one of the two sets of rooms; the doors were open, and the names of
+Mr. Warrington and Mr. A. Pendennis were very clearly visible to the
+major as he went in. An Irish charwoman, with a pail and broom, opened
+the door for the major.
+
+"Is that the beer?" cried out a great voice: "give us hold of it."
+
+The gentleman who was speaking was seated on a table, unshorn and
+smoking a short pipe; in a farther chair sate Pen, with a cigar, and
+his legs near the fire. A little boy, who acted as the clerk of these
+gentlemen, was grinning in the major's face, at the idea of his being
+mistaken for beer. Here, upon the third floor, the rooms were somewhat
+lighter, and the major could see the place.
+
+"Pen, my boy, it's I--it's your uncle," he said, choking with the smoke.
+But as most young men of fashion used the weed, he pardoned the practice
+easily enough.
+
+Mr. Warrington got up from the table, and Pen, in a very perturbed
+manner, from his chair. "Beg your pardon, for mistaking you," said
+Warrington, in a frank, loud voice. "Will you take a cigar, sir? Clear
+those things off the chair, Pidgeon, and pull it round to the fire."
+
+Pen flung his cigar into the grate; and was pleased with the cordiality
+with which his uncle shook him by the hand. As soon as he could speak
+for the stairs and the smoke, the major began to ask Pen very kindly
+about himself and about his mother; for blood is blood, and he was
+pleased once more to see the boy.
+
+Pen gave his news, and then introduced Mr. Warrington--an old Boniface
+man--whose chambers he shared.
+
+The major was quite satisfied when he heard that Mr. Warrington was a
+younger son of Sir Miles Warrington of Suffolk. He had served with an
+uncle of his in India and in New South Wales, years ago.
+
+"Took a sheep-farm there, sir, made a fortune--better thing than law
+or soldiering," Warrington said. "Think I shall go there too." And here
+the expected beer coming in, in a tankard with a glass bottom, Mr.
+Warrington, with a laugh, said he supposed the major would not have any,
+and took a long, deep draught himself, after which he wiped his wrist
+across his beard with great satisfaction. The young man was perfectly
+easy and unembarrassed. He was dressed in a ragged old shooting-jacket,
+and had a bristly blue beard. He was drinking beer like a coal-heaver,
+and yet you couldn't but perceive that he was a gentleman.
+
+When he had sate for a minute or two after his draught he went out of
+the room, leaving it to Pen and his uncle, that they might talk over
+family affairs were they so inclined.
+
+"Rough and ready, your chum seems," the major said. "Somewhat different
+from your dandy friends at Oxbridge."
+
+"Times are altered," Arthur replied, with a blush. "Warrington is only
+just called, and has no business, but he knows law pretty well: and
+until I can afford to read with a pleader, I use his books, and get his
+help."
+
+"Is that one of the books?" the major asked, with a smile. A French
+novel was lying at the foot of Pen's chair.
+
+"This is not a working day, sir," the lad said. "We were out very late
+at a party last night--at Lady Whiston's," Pen added, knowing his
+uncle's weakness. "Every body in town was there except you, sir; Counts,
+Embassadors, Turks, Stars and Garters--I don't know who--it's all in the
+paper--and my name, too," said Pen, with great glee. "I met an old flame
+of mine there, sir," he added, with a laugh. "You know whom I mean,
+sir--Lady Mirabel--to whom I was introduced over again. She shook hands,
+and was gracious enough. I may thank you for being out of that scrape,
+sir. She presented me to the husband, too--an old beau in a star and a
+blonde wig. He does not seem very wise. She has asked me to call on her,
+sir: and I may go now without any fear of losing my heart."
+
+"What, we have had some new loves, have we?" the major asked, in high
+good-humor.
+
+"Some two or three," Mr. Pen said, laughing. "But I don't put on my
+_grand serieux_ any more, sir. That goes off after the first flame."
+
+"Very right, my dear boy. Flames and darts and passion, and that sort
+of thing, do very well for a lad: and you were but a lad when that
+affair with the Fotheringill--Fotheringay--(what's her name?) came off.
+But a man of the world gives up those follies. You still may do very
+well. You have been hit, but you may recover. You are heir to a little
+independence, which every body 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 many 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. 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 lady-like wife, and a good
+carriage, and a good pair of horses, living in society, and seeing your
+friends, like a gentleman. Would you like to vegetate like your dear
+good mother at Fairoaks? Dammy, sir! life, without money and the best
+society, isn't worth having." It was thus this affectionate uncle spoke,
+and expounded to Pen his simple philosophy.
+
+"What would my mother and Laura say to this, I wonder?" thought the lad.
+Indeed old Pendennis's morals were not their morals, nor was his wisdom
+theirs.
+
+This affecting conversation between uncle and nephew had scarcely
+concluded, when Warrington came out of his bed-room, no longer in rags,
+but dressed like a gentleman, straight and tall, and perfectly frank and
+good-humored. He did the honors 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 mantle-piece, 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 meager 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
+bed-side: where he lay upon straw like Margery Daw, and smoked his pipe,
+and read half through the night his favorite poetry or mathematics.
+
+When he had completed his simple toilet, Mr. Warrington came out of this
+room, and proceeded to the cupboard to search for his breakfast.
+
+"Might I offer you a mutton-chop, sir? We cook 'em ourselves hot and
+hot; and I am teaching Pen the first principles of law, cooking, and
+morality at the same time. He's a lazy beggar, sir, and too much of
+a dandy."
+
+And so saying, Mr. Warrington wiped a gridiron with a piece of paper,
+put it on the fire, and on it two mutton-chops, and took from the
+cupboard a couple of plates and some knives and silver forks, and
+castors.
+
+"Say but a word, Major Pendennis," he said; "there's another chop in the
+cupboard, or Pidgeon shall go out and get you any thing you like."
+
+Major Pendennis sate in wonder and amusement, but he said he had just
+breakfasted, and wouldn't have any lunch. So Warrington cooked the
+chops, and popped them hissing hot upon the plates.
+
+Pen fell to at his chop with a good appetite, after looking up at his
+uncle, and seeing that gentleman was still in good-humor.
+
+"You see, sir," Warrington said, "Mrs. Flanagan isn't here to do 'em,
+and we can't employ the boy, for the little beggar is all day occupied
+cleaning Pen's boots. And now for another swig at the beer. Pen drinks
+tea; it's only fit for old women."
+
+"And so you were at Lady Whiston's last night," the major said, not in
+truth knowing what observation to make to this rough diamond.
+
+"I at Lady Whiston's! not such a flat, sir. I don't care for female
+society. In fact it bores me. I spent my evening philosophically at the
+Back Kitchen."
+
+"The Back Kitchen? indeed!" said the major.
+
+"I see you don't know what it means," Warrington said. "Ask Pen. He was
+there after Lady Whiston's. Tell Major Pendennis about the Back Kitchen,
+Pen--don't be ashamed of yourself."
+
+So Pen said it was a little eccentric society of men of letters and
+men about town, to which he had been presented; and the major began to
+think that the young fellow had seen a good deal of the world since his
+arrival in London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+THE KNIGHTS OF THE TEMPLE.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Colleges, schools, and inns of court, 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 work-house 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 supply 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 practiced at all.
+
+Old Grump, of the Norfolk Circuit, who had lived for more than thirty
+years in the chambers under those occupied by Warrington and Pendennis,
+and who used to be awakened by the roaring of the shower-baths which
+those gentlemen had erected in their apartments--a part of the contents
+of which occasionally trickled through the roof into Mr. Grump's
+room--declared that the practice was an absurd, newfangled, dandyfied
+folly, and daily cursed the laundress who slopped the staircase by which
+he had to pass. Grump, now much more than half a century old, had indeed
+never used the luxury in question. He had done without water very well,
+and so had our fathers before him. Of all those knights and baronets,
+lords and gentlemen, bearing arms, whose escutcheons are painted upon
+the walls of the famous hall of the Upper Temple, was there no
+philanthropist good-natured enough to devise a set of Hummums for the
+benefit of the lawyers, his fellows and successors? The Temple historian
+makes no mention of such a scheme. There is Pump Court and Fountain
+Court, with their hydraulic apparatus, but one never heard of a bencher
+disporting in the fountain; and can't but think how many a counsel
+learned in the law of old days might have benefited by the pump.
+
+Nevertheless, those venerable Inns which have the Lamb and Flag and
+the Winged Horse for their ensigns, have attractions for persons who
+inhabit them, and a share of rough comforts and freedom, which men
+always remember with pleasure. I don't know whether the student of law
+permits himself the refreshment of enthusiasm, or indulges in poetical
+reminiscences as he passes by historical chambers, and says, "Yonder
+Eldon lived--upon this site Coke mused upon Lyttleton--here Chitty
+toiled--here Barnwell and Alderson joined in their famous labors--here
+Byles composed his great work upon bills, and Smith compiled his
+immortal leading cases--here Gustavus still toils, with Solomon to aid
+him;" but the man of letters can't but love the place which has been
+inhabited by so many of his brethren, or peopled by their creations as
+real to us at this day as the authors whose children they were--and Sir
+Roger de Coverley walking in the Temple Garden, and discoursing with Mr.
+Spectator about the beauties in hoops and patches who are sauntering
+over the grass, is just as lively a figure to me as old Samuel Johnson
+rolling through the fog with the Scotch gentleman at his heels on their
+way to Dr. Goldsmith's chambers in Brick Court; or Harry Fielding, with
+inked ruffles and a wet towel round his head, dashing off articles at
+midnight for the Covent Garden Journal, while the printer's boy is
+asleep in the passage.
+
+If we could but get the history of a single day as it passed in any one
+of those four-storied houses in the dingy court where our friends Pen
+and Warrington dwelt, some Temple Asmodeus might furnish us with a queer
+volume. There may be a great parliamentary counsel on the ground-floor,
+who drives off to Belgravia at dinner time, when his clerk, too, becomes
+a gentleman, and goes away to entertain his friends, and to take his
+pleasure. But a short time since he was hungry and briefless in some
+garret of the Inn; lived by stealthy literature; hoped, and waited, and
+sickened, and no clients came; exhausted his own means and his friends'
+kindness; had to remonstrate humbly with duns, and to implore the
+patience of poor creditors. Ruin seemed to be staring him in the face,
+when, behold, a turn of the wheel of fortune, and the lucky wretch in
+possession of one of those prodigious prizes which are sometimes drawn
+in the great lottery of the Bar. Many a better lawyer than himself does
+not make a fifth part of the income of his clerk, who, a few months
+since, could scarcely get credit for blacking for his master's unpaid
+boots. On the first-floor, perhaps, you will have a venerable man whose
+name is famous, who has lived for half a century in the Inn, whose
+brains are full of books, and whose shelves are stored with classical
+and legal lore. He has lived alone all these fifty years, alone and for
+himself, amassing learning, and compiling a fortune. He comes home now
+at night alone from the club, where he has been dining freely, to the
+lonely chambers where he lives a godless old recluse. When he dies, his
+Inn will erect a tablet to his honor, 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 honors, 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 honors in former days, and had run each other
+hard; and every body said now that the former was wasting his time and
+energies, while 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 any thing but his law-books. All
+was dark outside his reading-lamp. Love, and Nature, and Art (which is
+the expression of our praise and sense of the beautiful world of God),
+were shut out from him. And as he turned off his lonely lamp at night,
+he never thought but that he had spent the day profitably, and went to
+sleep alike thankless and remorseless. But he shuddered when he met his
+old companion Warrington on the stairs, and shunned him as one that was
+doomed to perdition.
+
+It may have been the sight of that cadaverous ambition, and
+self-complacent meanness, which showed itself in Paley's yellow face,
+and twinkled in his narrow eyes, or it may have been a natural appetite
+for pleasure and joviality, of which it must be confessed Mr. Pen was
+exceedingly fond, which deterred that luckless youth from pursuing
+his designs upon the Bench or the Woolsack with the ardor, or rather
+steadiness, which is requisite in gentlemen who would climb to those
+seats of honor. 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 dandyfied 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
+dullness and sameness; and whenever any body 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.
+
+[Illustration][**moved up from 301]
+
+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
+honored 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 gray-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 practiced in their own islands--and many
+gentlemen of the Irish nation, who make a sojourn in Middle Temple Lane
+before they return to the green country of their birth. There were
+little squads of reading students who talked law all dinner-time; there
+were rowing men, whose discourse was of sculling matches, the Red House,
+Vauxhall, and the Opera; there were others great in politics, and
+orators of the students' debating clubs; with all of which sets, except
+the first, whose talk was an almost unknown and a quite uninteresting
+language to him, Mr. Pen made a gradual acquaintance, and had many
+points of sympathy.
+
+The ancient and liberal Inn of the Upper Temple provides in its Hall,
+and for a most moderate price, an excellent wholesome dinner of soup,
+meat, tarts, and port wine or sherry, for the barristers and students
+who attend that place of refection. The parties are arranged in messes
+of four, each of which quarters 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, among the lower rank of students, who have a taste for good
+living, have many harmless arts by which they improve their banquet,
+and innocent "dodges" (if we may be permitted to use an excellent
+phrase that has become vernacular since the appearance of the last
+dictionaries) by which they strive to attain for themselves more
+delicate food than the common every-day roast meat of the students'
+tables.
+
+"Wait a bit," said Mr. Lowton, one of these Temple gourmands. "Wait a
+bit," said Mr. Lowton, tugging at Pen's gown--"the tables are very full,
+and there's only three benchers to eat ten side 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, toward the
+benchers' high table, where three old gentlemen were standing up before
+a dozen silver dish-covers, while the clerk was quavering out a grace.
+
+Lowton was great in the conduct of the dinner. His aim was to manage so
+as to be the first, a captain of the mess, and to secure for himself
+the thirteenth glass of the bottle of port wine. Thus he would have the
+command of the joint on which he operated his favorite cuts, and made
+rapid, dexterous appropriations of gravy, which amused Pen infinitely.
+Poor Jack Lowton! thy pleasures in life were very harmless; an eager
+epicure, thy desires did not go beyond eighteen-pence.
+
+Pen was somewhat older than many of his fellow-students, and there was
+that about his style and appearance which, as we have said, was rather
+haughty and impertinent, that stamped him as a man of _ton_--very
+unlike those pale students who were talking law to one another, and
+those ferocious dandies, in rowing shirts and astonishing pins and
+waistcoats, who represented the idle part of the little community. The
+humble and good-natured Lowton had felt attracted by Pen's superior
+looks and presence--and had made acquaintance with him at the mess by
+opening the conversation.
+
+"This is boiled-beef day, I believe, sir," said Lowton to Pen.
+
+"Upon my word, sir, I'm not aware," said Pen, hardly able to contain his
+laughter, but added, "I'm a stranger; this is my first term;" on which
+Lowton began to point out to him the notabilities in the Hall.
+
+"That's Boosey the bencher, the bald one sitting under the picture and
+aving soup; I wonder whether it's turtle? They often ave turtle. Next
+is Balls, the king's counsel, and Swettenham--Hodge and Swettenham, you
+know. That's old Grump, the senior of the bar; they say he's dined here
+forty years. They often send 'em down their fish from the benchers to
+the senior table. Do you see those four fellows seated opposite us?
+Those are regular swells--tip-top fellows, I can tell you--Mr. Trail,
+the Bishop of Ealing's son, Honorable 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 them--a high fellow, too. Ha! ha!" Here
+Lowton burst into a laugh.
+
+"What is it?" said Pen, still amused.
+
+"I say, I like to mess with those chaps," Lowton said, winking his eye
+knowingly, and pouring out his glass of wine.
+
+"And why?" asked Pen.
+
+"Why! they don't come down here to dine, you know, they only make
+believe to dine. _They_ dine here, Law bless you! They go to some of the
+swell clubs, or else to some grand dinner party. You see their names in
+the 'Morning Post' at all the fine parties in London. Why, I bet any
+thing that Ringwood has his cab, or Trail his Brougham (he's a devil
+of a fellow, and makes the bishop's money spin, I can tell you) at the
+corner of Essex-street at this minute. They dine! They won't dine these
+two hours, I dare say."
+
+"But why should you like to mess with them, if they don't eat any
+dinner?" Pen asked, still puzzled. "There's plenty, isn't there?"
+
+"How green you are," said Lowton. "Excuse me, but you _are_ green. They
+don't drink any wine, don't you see, and a fellow gets the bottle to
+himself, if he likes it, when he messes with those three chaps. That's
+why Corkoran got in with 'em."
+
+"Ah, Mr. Lowton, I see you are a sly fellow," Pen said, delighted with
+his acquaintance: on which the other modestly replied, that he had lived
+in London the better part of his life, and of course had his eyes about
+him; and went on with his catalogue to Pen.
+
+"There's a lot of Irish here," he said; "that Corkoran's one, and I
+can't say I like him. You see that handsome chap with the blue neck-cloth
+and pink shirt, and yellow waistcoat, that's another; that's Molloy
+Maloney of Ballymaloney, and nephew to Major-general Sir Hector O'Dowd,
+he, he," Lowton said, trying to imitate the Hibernian accent. "He's
+always bragging about his uncle; and came into Hall in silver-striped
+trowsers the day he had been presented. That other near him, with the
+long black hair, is a tremendous rebel. By Jove, sir, to hear him at
+the Forum it makes your blood freeze; and the next is an Irishman, too,
+Jack Finucane, reporter of a newspaper. They all stick together, those
+Irish. It's your turn to fill your glass. What! you won't have any port?
+Don't like port with your dinner? Here's your health." And this worthy
+man found himself not the less attached to Pendennis because the latter
+disliked port wine at dinner.
+
+It was while Pen was taking his share of one of these dinners, with his
+acquaintance Lowton as the captain of his mess, that there came to join
+them a gentleman in a barrister's gown, who could not find a seat, as
+it appeared, among the persons of his own degree, and who strode over
+the table, and took his seat on the bench where Pen sate. He was dressed
+in old clothes and a faded gown, which hung behind him, and he wore a
+shirt, which, though clean, was extremely ragged, and very different
+to the magnificent pink raiment of Mr. Molloy Maloney, who occupied
+a commanding position in the next mess. In order to notify their
+appearance at dinner, it is the custom of the gentlemen who eat in the
+Upper Temple Hall to write down their names upon slips of paper, which
+are provided for that purpose, with a pencil for each mess. Lowton wrote
+his name first, then came Arthur Pendennis, and the next was that of
+the gentleman in the old clothes. He smiled when he saw Pen's name, and
+looked at him. "We ought to know each other," he said. "We're both
+Boniface men; my name's Warrington."
+
+"Are you St---- Warrington?" Pen said, delighted to see this hero.
+
+Warrington laughed--"Stunning Warrington--yes," he said. "I recollect
+you in your freshman's term. But you appear to have quite cut me out."
+
+"The college talks about you still," said Pen, who had a generous
+admiration for talent and pluck. "The bargeman you thrashed, Bill Simes,
+don't you remember, wants you up again at Oxbridge. The Miss Notleys,
+the haberdashers--"
+
+"Hush!" said Warrington--"glad to make your acquaintance, Pendennis.
+Heard a good deal about you."
+
+The young men were friends immediately, and at once deep in
+college-talk. And Pen, who had been acting rather the fine gentleman on
+a previous day, when he pretended to Lowton that he could not drink port
+wine at dinner, seeing Warrington take his share with a great deal of
+gusto, did not scruple about helping himself any more, rather to the
+disappointment of honest Lowton. When the dinner was over, Warrington
+asked Arthur where he was going.
+
+"I thought of going home to dress, and hear Grisi in Norma," Pen said.
+
+"Are you going to meet any body there?" he asked.
+
+Pen said, "No--only to hear the music, of which he was very fond."
+
+"You had much better come home and smoke a pipe with me," said
+Warrington--"a very short one. Come, I live close by in Lamb Court, and
+we'll talk over Boniface and old times."
+
+They went away; Lowton sighed after them. He knew that 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 among the silent and polite frequenters of the
+Polyanthus.
+
+Ere long Pen gave up the lodgings in St. James's, to which he had
+migrated on quitting his hotel, and found it was much more economical to
+take up his abode with Warrington in Lamb Court, and furnish and occupy
+his friend's vacant room there. For it must be said of Pen, that no man
+was more easily led than he to do a thing, when it was a novelty, or
+when he had a mind to it. And Pidgeon, the youth, and Flanagan, the
+laundress, divided their allegiance now between Warrington and Pen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCES.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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-parlors; honest citizens disporting in the suburbs or on the river;
+and he would have liked to hob and nob with celebrated pick-pockets, 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 neighborhood, and with the frequenters of their
+various parlors, was prodigious. He was the personal friend of the
+landlord and landlady, and welcome to the bar as to the club-room. 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, "ever body 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 gin-and-water better than claret.
+I like a sanded floor in Carnaby Market better than a chalked one in
+Mayfair. I prefer Snobs, I own it." Indeed, this gentleman was a social
+republican; and it never entered his head while conversing with Jack and
+Tom that he was in any respect their better; although, perhaps, the
+deference which they paid him might secretly please him.
+
+Pen followed him then to these various resorts of men with great glee
+and assiduity. But he was considerably younger, and therefore much
+more pompous and stately than Warrington; in fact, a young prince in
+disguise, visiting the poor of his father's kingdom. They respected him
+as a high chap, a fine fellow, a regular young swell. He had somehow
+about him an air of imperious good-humor, 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.
+Among men of ability this assumption and impertinence passes off with
+extreme youth: but it is curious to watch the conceit of a generous and
+clever lad--there is something almost touching in that early exhibition
+of simplicity and folly.
+
+So, after reading pretty hard of a morning, and, I fear, not law merely,
+but politics and general history and literature, which were as necessary
+for the advancement and instruction of a young man as mere dry law,
+after applying with tolerable assiduity to letters, to reviews, to
+elemental books of law, and, above all, to the newspaper, until the hour
+of dinner was drawing nigh, these young gentlemen would sally out upon
+the town with great spirits and appetite, and bent upon enjoying a merry
+night as they had passed a pleasant forenoon. It was a jovial time, that
+of four-and-twenty, when every muscle of mind and body was in healthy
+action, when the world was new as yet, and one moved over it spurred
+onward by good spirits and the delightful capability to enjoy. If ever
+we feel young afterward, 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! Gray hairs have come on like daylight streaming in--daylight
+and a headache with it. Pleasure has gone to bed with the rouge on her
+cheeks. Well, friend, let us walk through the day, sober and sad, but
+friendly.
+
+I wonder what Laura and Helen would have said, could they have seen, as
+they might not unfrequently have done, had they been up and in London,
+in the very early morning, when the bridges began to blush in the
+sunrise, and the tranquil streets of the city to shine in the dawn,
+Mr. Pen and Mr. Warrington rattling over the echoing flags toward the
+Temple, after one of their wild nights of carouse--nights wild, but not
+so wicked as such nights sometimes are, for Warrington was a woman-hater;
+and Pen, as we have said, too lofty to stoop to a vulgar intrigue. Our
+young Prince of Fairoaks never could speak to one of the sex but with
+respectful courtesy, and shrank from a coarse word or gesture with
+instinctive delicacy--for though we have seen him fall in love with a
+fool, as his betters and inferiors have done, and as it is probable
+that he did more than once in his life, yet for the time of the delusion
+it was always as a goddess that he considered her, and chose to wait
+upon her. Men serve women kneeling--when they get on their feet, they
+go away.
+
+That was what on 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 Chatteries Theater, who was now employed
+as piano-forte player, to accompany the eminent lyrical talent which
+nightly delighted the public at the Fielding's Head in Covent Garden:
+and where was held the little club called the Back Kitchen.
+
+Numbers of Pen's friends frequented this very merry meeting. The
+Fielding's Head had been a house of entertainment, almost since the
+time when the famous author of Tom Jones presided as magistrate in
+the neighboring 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 barytone voice. The charms of our
+women, the heroic deeds of our naval and military commanders, are often
+sung in the ballads of this school, and many a time in my youth have I
+admired how Cutts the singer, after he had worked us all up to patriotic
+enthusiasm, by describing the way in which the brave Abercrombie
+received his death-wound, or made us join him in tears, which he shed
+liberally himself, as in faltering accents he told how autumn's falling
+leaf "proclaimed the old man he must die"--how Cutts the singer became
+at once Cutts the landlord, and, before the applause which we were
+making with our fists on his table, in compliment to his heart-stirring
+melody, had died away, was calling, "Now, gentlemen, give your orders,
+the waiter's in the room--John, a champagne cup for Mr. Green. I think,
+sir, you said sausages and mashed potatoes? John, attend on the
+gentleman."
+
+"And I'll thank ye give me a glass of punch too, John, and take care the
+wather boils," a voice would cry not unfrequently, a well-known voice to
+Pen, which made the lad blush and start when he heard it first--that of
+the venerable Captain Costigan; who was now established in London, and
+one of the great pillars of the harmonic meetings at the Fielding's
+Head.
+
+The captain's manners and conversation brought very many young men to
+the place. He was a character, and his fame had begun to spread soon
+after his arrival in the metropolis, and especially after his daughter's
+marriage. He was great in his conversation to the friend for the time
+being (who was the neighbor drinking by his side), about "me daughter."
+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 honor 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 check," 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 honor of an officer and gentleman, he would repee
+the thrifling obligetion.
+
+Sir Charles Mirabel had not that enthusiastic attachment to his
+father-in-law, of which the latter sometimes boasted (although in other
+stages of emotion Cos would inveigh, with tears in his eyes, against the
+ingratitude of the child of his bosom, and the stinginess of the wealthy
+old man who had married her); but the pair had acted not unkindly toward
+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 were 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, any how; and a glass of punch
+will make ye play _con spirito_." For he was lavishly free with his
+money when it came to him, and was scarcely known to button his breeches
+pocket, except when the coin was gone, or sometimes, indeed, when a
+creditor came by.
+
+It was in one of these moments of exultation that Pen found his old
+friend swaggering at the singers' table at the back kitchen of the
+Fielding's Head, and ordering glasses of brandy and water for any of his
+acquaintances who made their appearance in the apartment. Warrington who
+was on confidential terms with the bass singer, made his way up to this
+quarter of the room, and Pen walked at his friend's heels.
+
+Pen started and blushed to see Costigan. He had just come from Lady
+Whiston's party, where he had met and spoken with the captain's daughter
+again, for the first time after very old, old days. He came up with
+out-stretched hand, very kindly and warmly to greet the old man; still
+retaining a strong remembrance, of the time when Costigan's daughter had
+been every thing 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 honors should be paid to the lady toward 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 surely
+be excused for forgetting him; when a man at the actual moment sees
+things double, we may expect that his view of the past will be rather
+muzzy.
+
+Pen saw his condition, and laughed, although, perhaps, he was
+somewhat mortified. "Don't you remember me, captain?" he said. "I am
+Pendennis--Arthur Pendennis of Chatteries."
+
+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, that
+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 honor of making
+meself known to ye, sir, and requesting ye'll take a glass of punch."
+
+"I don't envy Sir Charles Mirabel his father-in-law," thought Pendennis.
+"And how is my old friend, Mr. Bows, captain? Have you any news of him,
+and do you see him still?"
+
+"No doubt he's very well," said the captain, jingling his money, and
+whistling the air of a song--"The Little Doodeen"--for the singing of
+which he was celebrated at the Fielding's Head. "Me dear boy--I've
+forgot your name again--but my name's Costigan, Jack Costigan, and I'd
+loike ye to take as many tumblers of punch in my name as ever ye loike.
+Ye know my name; I'm not ashamed of it." And so the captain went
+maundering on.
+
+"It's pay-day with the general," said Mr. Hodgen, the bass singer, with
+whom Warrington was in deep conversation: "and he's a precious deal more
+than half seas over. He has already tried that 'Little Doodeen' of his,
+and broke it, too, just before I sang 'King Death.' Have you heard
+my new song, 'The Body Snatcher,' Mr. Warrington?--angcored at Saint
+Bartholomew's the other night--composed expressly for me. Per'aps you
+or your friend would like a copy of the song, sir? John, just 'ave the
+kyndness to 'and over a 'Body Snatcher' 'ere, will yer?--There's a
+portrait of me, sir, as I sing it--as the Snatcher--considered rather
+like."
+
+"Thank you," said Warrington; "heard it nine times--know it by heart,
+Hodgen."
+
+Here the gentleman who presided at the piano-forte 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 woefully
+by sitting up so many nights, and spoke with a voice, as it were, at
+once hoarse and faint), and accompanied the singers, or played with
+taste and grace in the intervals of the songs.
+
+Bows had seen and recollected Pen at once when the latter came into the
+room, and had remarked the eager warmth of the young man's recognition
+of Costigan. He now began to play an air, which Pen instantly remembered
+as one which used to be sung by the chorus of villagers in "The
+Stranger," just before Mrs. Haller came in. It shook Pen as he heard it.
+He remembered how his heart used to beat as that air was played, and
+before the divine Emily made her entry. Nobody, save Arthur, took any
+notice of old Bows' playing: it was scarcely heard amid the clatter of
+knives and forks, the calls for poached eggs and kidneys, and the tramp
+of guests and waiters.
+
+Pen went up and kindly shook the player by the hand at the end of his
+performance; and Bows greeted Arthur with great respect and cordiality.
+"What, you haven't forgot the old tune, Mr. Pendennis?" he said; "I
+thought you'd remember it. I take it, it was the first tune of that sort
+you ever heard played--wasn't it, sir? You were quite a young chap then.
+I fear the captain's very bad to-night. He breaks out on a pay-day; and
+I shall have the deuce's own trouble in getting home. We live together.
+We still hang on, sir, in partnership, though Miss Em--though my Lady
+Mirabel has left the firm. And so you remember old times, do you? Wasn't
+she a beauty, sir? Your health and my service to you"--and he took a sip
+at the pewter measure of porter which stood by his side as he played.
+
+Pen had many opportunities of seeing his early acquaintances afterward,
+and of renewing his relations with Costigan and the old musician.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As they sate thus in friendly colloquy, men of all sorts and
+conditions entered and quitted the house of entertainment; and Pen had
+the pleasure of seeing as many different persons of his race, as the
+most eager observer need desire to inspect. Healthy country tradesmen
+and farmers, in London for their business, came and recreated themselves
+with the jolly singing and suppers of the Back Kitchen--squads of young
+apprentices and assistants, the shutters being closed over the scene of
+their labors, came hither, for fresh air doubtless--rakish young medical
+students, gallant, dashing, what is called "loudly" dressed, and (must
+it be owned?) somewhat dirty--were here smoking and drinking, and
+vociferously applauding the songs; young University bucks were to be
+found here, too, with that indescribable genteel simper which is only
+learned at the knees of Alma Mater; and handsome young guardsmen, and
+florid bucks from the St. James's-street Clubs; nay, senators, English
+and Irish; and even members of the House of Peers.
+
+The bass singer had made an immense hit with his song of "The Body
+Snatcher," and the town rushed to listen to it. A 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 humor.
+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' 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.
+
+While 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 recognized his friend of the Alacrity coach, who
+could not dine with Pen on the day on which the latter had invited him,
+being compelled by his professional duties to decline dinner-engagements
+on Fridays, he had stated, with his compliments to Mr. Pendennis.
+
+Doolan's paper, the Dawn, was lying on the table much bestained by
+porter, and cheek-by-jowl with Hoolan's paper, which we shall call the
+Day; the Dawn was liberal--the Day was ultra-conservative. Many of our
+journals are officered by Irish gentlemen, and their gallant brigade
+does the penning among us, as their ancestors used to transact the
+fighting in Europe; and engage under many a flag, to be good friends
+when the battle is over.
+
+"Kidneys, John, and a glass of stout," says Hoolan. "How are you,
+Morgan? how's Mrs. Doolan?"
+
+"Doing pretty well, thank ye, Mick, my boy--faith she's accustomed to
+it," said Doolan. "How's the lady that owns ye? Maybe I'll step down
+Sunday, and have a glass of punch, Kilburn way."
+
+"Don't bring Patsey with you, Morgan, for Georgy's got the measles,"
+said the friendly Mick, and they straightway fell to talk about matters
+connected with their trade--about the foreign mails--about who was
+correspondent at Paris, and who wrote from Madrid--about the expense
+the Morning Journal was at in sending couriers, about the circulation of
+the Evening Star, and so forth.
+
+Warrington, laughing, took the Dawn which was lying before him, and
+pointed to one of the leading articles in that journal, which commenced
+thus--
+
+"As rogues of note in former days who had some wicked work to
+perform--an enemy to be put out of the way, a quantity of false coin
+to be passed, a lie to be told, or a murder to be done--employed a
+professional perjurer or assassin to do the work, which they were
+themselves too notorious or too cowardly to execute; our notorious
+contemporary, the 'Day,' engages smashers out of doors to utter
+forgeries against individuals, and calls in auxiliary cut-throats to
+murder the reputation of those who offend him. A black vizarded ruffian
+(whom we will unmask), who signs the forged name of Trefoil, is at
+present one of the chief bravoes and bullies in our contemporary's
+establishment. He is the eunuch who brings the bowstring, and strangles
+at the order of the Day. We can convict this cowardly slave, and propose
+to do so. The charge which he has brought against Lord Bangbanagher,
+because he is a liberal Irish peer, and against the Board of Poor Law
+Guardians of the Bangbanagher Union, is," &c.
+
+"How did they like the article at your place, Mick?" asked Morgan, "when
+the captain puts his hand to it he's a tremendous hand at a smasher. He
+wrote the article in two hours--in--whew--you know where, while the boy
+was waiting."
+
+"Our governor thinks the public don't mind a straw about these newspaper
+rows, and has told the docthor to stop answering," said the other. "Them
+two talked it out together in my room. The docthor would have liked a
+turn, for he says it's such easy writing, and requires no reading up of
+a subject; but the governor put a stopper on him."
+
+"The taste for eloquence is going out, Mick," said Morgan.
+
+"'Deed then it is, Morgan," said Mick. "That was fine writing when the
+docthor wrote in the Phaynix, and he and Condy Roony blazed away at each
+other day after day."
+
+"And with powder and shot, too, as well as paper," says Morgan. "Faith,
+the docthor was out twice, and Condy Roony winged his man."
+
+"They are talking about Doctor Boyne and Captain Shandon," Warrington
+said, "who are the two Irish controversialists of the 'Dawn' and the
+'Day,' Dr. Boyne being the Protestant champion, and Captain Shandon the
+liberal orator. They are the best friends in the world, I believe, in
+spite of their newspaper controversies; and though they cry out against
+the English for abusing their country, by Jove they abuse it themselves
+more in a single article than we should take the pains to do in a dozen
+volumes. How are you, Doolan?"
+
+"Your servant, Mr. Warrington--Mr. Pendennis, I am delighted to have the
+honor 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 honor to be sub-editor of the
+Dawn, one of the best written papers of the empire"--and he bowed very
+slightly to Mr. Warrington. His speech was unctuous and measured, his
+courtesy oriental, his tone, when talking with the two Englishmen, quite
+different to that with which he spoke to his comrade.
+
+"Why the devil will the fellow compliment so?" growled Warrington, with
+a sneer which he hardly took the pains to suppress. "Psha--who comes
+here?--all Parnassus is abroad to-night: here's Archer. We shall have
+some fun. Well, Archer, House up?"
+
+"Haven't been there. I have been," said Archer, with an air of mystery,
+"where I was wanted. Get me some supper, John--something substantial. I
+hate your grandees who give you nothing to eat. If it had been at Apsley
+House, it would have been quite different. The duke knows what I like,
+and says to the Groom of the Chambers, 'Martin, you will have some cold
+beef, not too much done, and a pint bottle of pale ale, and some brown
+sherry, ready in my study as usual: Archer is coming here this evening.'
+The duke doesn't eat supper himself, but he likes to see a man enjoy a
+hearty meal, and he knows that I dine early. A man can't live upon air,
+be hanged to him."
+
+"Let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Pendennis," Warrington said,
+with great gravity. "Pen, this is Mr. Archer, whom you have heard me
+talk about. You must know Pen's uncle, the major, Archer, you who know
+every body."
+
+"Dined with him the day before yesterday at Gaunt House," Archer said.
+"We were four--the French embassador, Steyne, and we two commoners."
+
+"Why, my uncle is in Scot--" Pen was going to break out, but Warrington
+pressed his foot under the table as a signal for him to be quiet.
+
+"It was about the same business that I have been to the palace to-night,"
+Archer went on simply, "and where I've been kept four hours, in an
+ante-room, with nothing but yesterday's Times, which I knew by heart,
+as I wrote three of the leading articles myself; and though the lord
+chamberlain came in four times, and once holding the royal teacup and
+saucer in his hand, he did not so much as say to me, 'Archer, will you
+have a cup of tea?'"
+
+"Indeed! what is in the wind now?" asked Warrington--and turning to Pen,
+added, "You know, I suppose, that when there is any thing wrong at
+court, they always send for Archer."
+
+"There is something wrong," said Mr. Archer, "and as the story will be
+all over the town in a day or two I don't mind telling it.--At the last
+Chantilly races, where I rode Brian Boru for my old friend the Duke
+de St. 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 humor by winning the race, and a good bit of money into
+the bargain, he said to me, 'Archer, tell the governor I'll think of
+it.'"
+
+"How do you say governor in French," asked Pen, who piqued himself on
+knowing that language.
+
+"Oh, we speak in English--I taught him when we were boys, and I saved
+his life at Twickenham, when he fell out of a punt," Archer said. "I
+shall never forget the queen's looks as I brought him out of the water.
+She gave me this diamond ring, and always calls me Charles to this day."
+
+"Madame Massena must be rather an old woman, Archer," Warrington said.
+
+"Dev'lish old--old enough to be his grandmother; I told him so," Archer
+answered at once. "But those attachments for old women are the deuce and
+all. That's what the king feels: that's what shocks the poor queen so
+much. They went away from Paris last Tuesday night, and are living at
+this present moment at Jaunay's hotel."
+
+"Has there been a private marriage, Archer?" asked Warrington.
+
+"Whether there has or not I don't know," Mr. Archer replied; "all I know
+is that I was kept waiting four hours at the palace; that I never saw a
+man in such a state of agitation as the King of Belgium when he came out
+to speak to me, and that I'm devilish hungry--and here comes some
+supper."
+
+"He has been pretty well to-night," said Warrington, as the pair went
+home together: "but I have known him in much greater force, and keeping
+a whole room in a state of wonder. Put aside his archery practice,
+that man is both able and honest--a good man of business, an excellent
+friend, admirable to his family as husband, father, and son."
+
+"What is it makes him pull the long bow in that wonderful manner?"
+
+"An amiable insanity," answered Warrington. "He never did any body harm
+by his talk, or said evil of any body. He is a stout politician too, and
+would never write a word or do an act against his party, as many of us
+do."
+
+"Of _us_! Who are _we_?" asked Pen. "Of what profession is Mr. Archer?"
+
+"Of the Corporation of Goosequill--of the Press, my boy," said
+Warrington; "of the fourth estate."
+
+"Are you, too, of the craft, then?" Pendennis said.
+
+"We will talk about that another time," answered the other. They were
+passing through the Strand as they talked, and by a newspaper office,
+which was all lighted up and bright. Reporters were coming out of the
+place, or rushing up to it in cabs; there were lamps burning in the
+editors' rooms, and above, where the compositors were at work: the
+windows of the building were in a blaze of gas.
+
+"Look at that, Pen," Warrington said. "There she is--the great
+engine--she never sleeps. She has her embassadors in every quarter of
+the world--her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along
+with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are
+ubiquitous. Yonder journal has an agent, at this minute, giving bribes
+at Madrid; and another inspecting the price of potatoes in Covent
+Garden. Look! here comes the Foreign Express galloping in. They will be
+able to give news to Downing-street to-morrow: funds will rise or fall,
+fortunes be made or lost; Lord B. will get up, and, holding the paper in
+his hand, and seeing the noble marquis in his place, will make a great
+speech; and--and Mr. Doolan will be called away from his supper at the
+Back Kitchen; for he is foreign sub-editor, and sees the mail on the
+newspaper sheet before he goes to his own."
+
+And so talking, the friends turned into their chambers, and the dawn was
+beginning to peep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+IN WHICH THE PRINTER'S DEVIL COMES TO THE DOOR.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 follies 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 bed-room: in fine, he
+was come to the last five-pound note in his pocket-book, and could think
+of no method of providing a successor; for our friend had been bred up
+like a young prince as yet, or as a child in arms whom his mother feeds
+when it cries out.
+
+Warrington did not know what his comrade's means were. An only child,
+with a mother at her country house, and an old dandy of an uncle who
+dined with a great man every day, Pen might have a large bank at his
+command for any thing that the other knew. He had gold chains and a
+dressing-case fit for a lord. His habits were those of an aristocrat--not
+that he was expensive upon any particular point, for he dined and
+laughed over the pint of porter and the plate of beef from the cook's
+shop with perfect content and good appetite--but he could not adopt the
+penny-wise precautions of life. He could not give twopence to a waiter:
+he could not refrain from taking a cab if he had a mind to do so, or if
+it rained, and as surely as he took the cab he overpaid the driver. He
+had a scorn for cleaned gloves and minor economies. Had he been bred to
+ten thousand a year he could scarcely have been more free-handed; and
+for a beggar, with a sad story, or a couple of pretty piteous-faced
+children, he never could resist putting his hand into his pocket. It was
+a sumptuous nature, perhaps, that could not be brought to regard money;
+a natural generosity and kindness; and possibly a petty vanity that was
+pleased with praise, even with the praise of waiters and cabmen. I doubt
+whether the wisest of us know what our own motives are, and whether some
+of the actions of which we are the very proudest will not surprise us
+when we trace them, as we shall one day, to their source.
+
+Warrington then did not know, and Pen had not thought proper to confide
+to his friend, his pecuniary history. That Pen had been wild and
+wickedly extravagant at college, the other was aware; every body at
+college was extravagant and wild; but how great the son's expenses had
+been, and how small the mother's means, were points which had not been
+as yet submitted to Mr. Warrington's examination.
+
+At last the story came out, while Pen was grimly surveying the change
+for the last five-pound note, as it lay upon the tray from the
+public-house by Mr. Warrington's pot of ale.
+
+"It is the last rose of summer," said Pen; "its blooming companions have
+gone long ago; and behold the last one of the garland has shed its
+leaves;" and he told Warrington the whole story, which we know, of his
+mother's means, of his own follies, of Laura's generosity; during which
+time Warrington smoked his pipe and listened intent.
+
+"Impecuniosity will do you good," Pen's friend said, knocking out
+the ashes at the end of the narration; "I don't know any thing more
+wholesome for a man--for an honest man, mind you--for another, the
+medicine loses its effect--than a state of tick. It is an alterative
+and a tonic; it keeps your moral man in a perpetual state of excitement:
+as a man who is riding at a fence, or has his opponent's single stick
+before him, is forced to look his obstacle steadily in the face, and
+braces himself to repulse or overcome it; a little necessity brings out
+your pluck if you have any, and nerves you to grapple with fortune. You
+will discover what a number of things you can do without when you have
+no money to buy them. You won't want new gloves and varnished boots,
+eau de Cologne, and cabs to ride in. You have been bred up as a
+molly-coddle, Pen, and spoilt by the women. A single man who has health
+and brains, and can't find a livelihood in the world, doesn't deserve
+to stay there. Let him pay his last halfpenny and jump over Waterloo
+Bridge. Let him steal a leg of mutton and be transported and get out of
+the country--he is not fit to live in it. Dixi; I have spoken. Give us
+another pull at the pale ale."
+
+"You have certainly spoken; but how is one to live?" said Pen. "There is
+beef and bread in plenty in England, but you must pay for it with work
+or money. And who will take my work? and what work can I do?"
+
+Warrington burst out laughing, "Suppose we advertise in the Times," he
+said, "for an usher's place at a classical and commercial academy--A
+gentleman, B.A. of St. Boniface College, Oxbridge, and who was
+plucked for his degree--"
+
+"Confound you," cried Pen.
+
+"--Wishes to give lessons in classics and mathematics, and the rudiments
+of the French language; he can cut hair, attend to the younger pupils,
+and play a second on the piano with the daughters of the principal.
+Address A. P., Lamb Court, Temple."
+
+"Go on," said Pen, growling.
+
+"Men take to all sorts of professions. Why, there is your friend
+Bloundell-Bloundell is a professional blackleg, and travels the
+continent, where he picks up young gentlemen of fashion and fleeces
+them. There is Bob O'Toole, with whom I was at school, who drives the
+Ballynafad mail now, and carries honest Jack Finucane's own correspondence
+to that city. I know a man, sir, a doctor's son, like--well, don't be
+angry, I meant nothing offensive--a doctor's son, I say, who was walking
+the hospitals here, and quarreled with his governor on questions of
+finance, and what did he do when he came to his last five-pound note?
+he let his mustaches grow, went into a provincial town, where he
+announced himself as Professor Spineto, chiropodist to the Emperor of
+all the Russias, 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 now succeeded
+to his father's gallypots."
+
+"Hang gallypots," cried Pen. "I can't drive a coach, cut corns, or cheat
+at cards. There's nothing else you propose?"
+
+"Yes; there's our own correspondent," Warrington said. "Every man
+has his secrets, look you. Before you told me the story of your
+money-matters, I had no idea but that you were a gentleman of fortune,
+for, with your confounded airs and appearance, any body would suppose
+you to be so. From what you tell me about your mother's income, it is
+clear that you must not lay any more hands on it. You can't go on
+spunging upon the women. You must pay off that trump of a girl. Laura is
+her name?--here is your health, Laura!--and carry a hod rather than ask
+for a shilling from home."
+
+"But how earn one?" asked Pen.
+
+"How do I live, think you?" said the other. "On my younger brother's
+allowance, Pendennis? I have secrets of my own, my boy;" and here
+Warrington's countenance fell. "I made away with that allowance five
+years ago: if I had made away with myself a little time before, it would
+have been better. I have played off my own bat, ever since. I don't want
+much money. When my purse is out, I go to work and fill it, and then lie
+idle like a serpent or an Indian, until I have digested the mass. Look,
+I begin to feel empty," Warrington said, and showed Pen a long lean
+purse, with but a few sovereigns at one end of it.
+
+"But how do you fill it?" said Pen.
+
+"I write," said Warrington. "I don't tell the world that I do so," he
+added, with a blush. "I do not choose that questions should be asked:
+or, perhaps, I am an ass, and don't wish it to be said that George
+Warrington writes for bread. But I write in the Law Reviews: look here,
+these articles are mine." And he turned over some sheets. "I write in
+a newspaper, now and then, of which a friend of mine is editor." And
+Warrington, going with Pendennis to the club one day, called for a
+file of the "Dawn," and pointed with his finger silently to one or
+two articles, which Pen read with delight. He had no difficulty in
+recognizing the style afterward--the strong thoughts and curt periods,
+the sense, the satire, and the scholarship.
+
+"I am not up to this," said Pen, with a genuine admiration of his
+friend's powers. "I know very little about politics or history,
+Warrington; and have but a smattering of letters. I can't fly upon such
+a wing as yours."
+
+"But you can on your own, my boy, which is lighter, and soars higher,
+perhaps," the other said, good-naturedly. "Those little scraps and
+verses which I have seen of yours show me, what is rare in these days,
+a natural gift, sir. You needn't blush, you conceited young jackanapes.
+You have thought so yourself any time these ten years. You have got the
+sacred flame--a little of the real poetical fire, sir, I think; and
+all our oil-lamps are nothing, compared to that, though ever so well
+trimmed. You are a poet, Pen, my boy," and so speaking, Warrington
+stretched out his broad hand, and clapped Pen on the shoulder.
+
+Arthur was so delighted that the tears came into his eyes. "How kind you
+are to me, Warrington!" he said.
+
+"I like you, old boy," said the other. "I was dev'lish lonely in
+chambers, and wanted somebody, and the sight of your honest face somehow
+pleased me. I liked the way you laughed at Lowton--that poor good little
+snob. And, in fine, the reason why I can not tell--but so it is, young
+'un. I'm alone in the world, sir; and I wanted some one to keep me
+company;" and a glance of extreme kindness and melancholy passed out of
+Warrington's dark eyes.
+
+Pen was too much pleased with his own thoughts to perceive the sadness
+of the friend who was complimenting him. "Thank you, Warrington," he
+said, "thank you for your friendship to me, and--and what you say about
+me. I _have_ often thought I was a poet. I will be one--I think I am
+one, as you say so, though the world mayn't. Is it--is it the Ariadne
+in Naxos which you liked (I was only eighteen when I wrote it), or the
+Prize Poem?"
+
+Warrington burst into a roar of laughter. "Why, you 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 out a pretty copy of verses; that's what I think of you."
+
+"By Jove!" said Pen, bouncing up and stamping his foot, "I'll show you
+that I am a better man than you think for."
+
+Warrington only laughed the more, and blew twenty-four puffs rapidly out
+of his pipe by way of reply to Pen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An opportunity for showing his skill presented itself before very
+long. That eminent publisher, Mr. Bacon (formerly Bacon and Bungay)
+of Paternoster Row, besides being the proprietor of the legal Review,
+in which Mr. Warrington wrote, and of other periodicals of note and
+gravity, used to present to the world every year a beautiful gilt volume
+called the Spring Annual, edited by the Lady Violet Lebas, and numbering
+among 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 Honorable 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 first given to the
+world in the Spring Annual, which has since shared the fate of other
+vernal blossoms, and perished out of the world. The book was daintily
+illustrated with pictures of reigning beauties, or other prints of a
+tender and voluptuous character; and, as these plates were prepared long
+beforehand, requiring much time in engraving, it was the eminent poets
+who had to write to the plates, and not the painters who illustrated
+the poems.
+
+One day, just when this volume was on the eve of publication, it chanced
+that Mr. Warrington called in Paternoster Row to talk with Mr. Hack, Mr.
+Bacon's reader and general manager of publications--for Mr. Bacon, not
+having the least taste in poetry or in literature of any kind, wisely
+employed the services of a professional gentleman. Warrington, then,
+going into Mr. Hack's room on business of his own, found that gentleman
+with a bundle of proof plates and sheets of the Spring Annual before
+him, and glanced at some of them.
+
+Percy Popjoy had written some verses to illustrate one of the pictures,
+which was called The Church Porch. A Spanish damsel was hastening to
+church with a large prayer-book; a youth in a cloak was hidden in a
+niche watching this young woman. The picture was pretty; but the great
+genius of Percy Popjoy had deserted him, for he had made the most
+execrable verses which ever were perpetrated by a young nobleman.
+
+Warrington burst out laughing as he read the poem: and Mr. Hack laughed
+too, but with rather a rueful face.--"It won't do," he said, "the public
+won't stand it. Bungay's people are going to bring out a very good book,
+and have set up Miss Bunyan against Lady Violet. We have most titles to
+be sure--but the verses are too bad. Lady Violet herself owns it; she's
+busy with her own poem; what's to be done? We can't lose the plate. The
+governor gave sixty pounds for it?"
+
+"I know a fellow who would do some verses, I think," said Warrington.
+"Let me take the plate home in my pocket: and send to my chambers in the
+morning for the verses. You'll pay well of course."
+
+"Of course," said Mr. Hack; and Warrington, having dispatched his own
+business, went home to Mr. Pen, plate in hand.
+
+"Now, boy, here's a chance for you. Turn me off a copy of verses to
+this."
+
+"What's this? A Church Porch--a lady entering it, and a youth out of a
+wine-shop window ogling her.--What the deuce am I to do with it?"
+
+"Try," said Warrington. "Earn your livelihood for once, you who long so
+to do it."
+
+"Well, I will try," said Pen.
+
+"And I'll go out to dinner," said Warrington, and left Mr. Pen in a
+brown study.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+When Warrington came home that night, at a very late hour, the verses
+were done. "There they are," said Pen. "I've screwed 'em out at last.
+I think they'll do."
+
+"I think they will," said Warrington, after reading them; they ran as
+follows:--
+
+
+The Church Porch.
+
+  Although I enter not,
+  Yet round about the spot
+    Sometimes I hover,
+  And at the sacred gate,
+  With longing eyes I wait,
+    Expectant of her.
+
+  The Minster bell tolls out
+  Above the city's rout
+    And noise and humming:
+  They've stopp'd the chiming bell,
+  I hear the organ's swell--
+    She's coming, she's coming!
+
+  My lady comes at last,
+  Timid and stepping fast,
+    And hastening hither,
+  With modest eyes downcast,
+  She comes--she's here--she's past.
+    May Heaven go with her!
+
+  Kneel undisturb'd, fair saint,
+  Pour out your praise or plaint
+    Meekly and duly.
+  I will not enter there,
+  To sully your pure prayer
+    With thoughts unruly.
+
+  But suffer me to pace
+  Round the forbidden place,
+    Lingering a minute,
+  Like outcast spirits, who wait
+  And see through Heaven's gate
+    Angels within it.
+
+
+"Have you got any more, young fellow?" asked Warrington. "We must make
+them give you a couple of guineas a page; and if the verses are liked,
+why you'll get an entree into Bacon's magazines, and may turn a decent
+penny."
+
+Pen examined his portfolio and found another ballad which he thought
+might figure with advantage in the Spring Annual, and consigning these
+two precious documents to Warrington, the pair walked from the Temple,
+to the famous haunt of the Muses and their masters, Paternoster Row.
+Bacon's shop was an ancient low-browed building, with a few of the books
+published by the firm displayed in the windows, under a bust of my Lord
+of Verulam, and the name of Mr. Bacon in brass on the private door.
+Exactly opposite to Bacon's house was that of Mr. Bungay, which was
+newly painted and elaborately decorated in the style of the seventeenth
+century, so that you might have fancied stately Mr. Evelyn passing over
+the threshold, or curious Mr. Pepys examining the books in the window.
+Warrington went into the shop of Mr. Bacon, but Pen stayed without.
+It was agreed that his embassador 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; while at the next
+window, portraits of ill-favored individuals, with facsimiles 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; while in the very next window you
+might see "Come out of Rome," a sermon preached at the opening of the
+Shepherd's Bush College, by John Thomas Lord Bishop of Ealing. Scarce
+an opinion but has its expositor and its place of exhibition in this
+peaceful old Paternoster Row, under the toll of the bells of Saint Paul.
+
+Pen looked in at all the windows and shops, as a gentleman who is
+going to have an interview with the dentist, examines the books on the
+waiting-room table. He remembered them afterward. It seemed to him that
+Warrington would never come out; and indeed the latter was engaged for
+some time in pleading his friend's cause.
+
+Pen's natural conceit would have swollen immensely if he could but
+have heard the report which Warrington gave of him. It happened that
+Mr. Bacon himself had occasion to descend to Mr. Hack's room while
+Warrington was talking there, and Warrington knowing Bacon's weaknesses,
+acted upon them with great adroitness in his friend's behalf. In the
+first place, he put on his hat to speak to Bacon, and addressed him
+from the table on which he seated himself. Bacon liked to be treated
+with rudeness by a gentleman, and used to pass it on to his inferiors,
+as boys pass the mark. "What! not know Mr. Pendennis, Mr. Bacon?"
+Warrington said. "You can't live much in the world, or you would know
+him. A man of property in the West, of one of the most ancient families
+in England, related to half the nobility in the empire--he's cousin to
+Lord Pontypool--he was one of the most distinguished men at Oxbridge;
+he dines at Gaunt House every week."
+
+"Law bless me, you don't say so, sir. Well--really--Law bless me now,"
+said Mr. Bacon.
+
+"I have just been showing Mr. Hack some of his verses, which he sat up
+last night, at my request, to write; and Hack talks about giving him a
+copy of the book--the what-d'-you-call-'em."
+
+"Law bless me now, does he? The what-d'-you-call-'em. Indeed!"
+
+"'The Spring Annual' is its name--as payment for these 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 any body, that the men of
+fashion want to be paid."
+
+"That they do, Mr. Warrington, sir," said the publisher.
+
+"I tell you he's a star; he'll make a name, sir. He's a new man, sir."
+
+"They've said that of so many of those young swells, Mr. Warrington,"
+the publisher interposed, with a sigh. "There was Lord Viscount Dodo,
+now; I gave his lordship a good bit of money for his poems, and only
+sold eighty copies. Mr. Popjoy's Hadgincourt, sir, fell dead."
+
+"Well, then, I'll take my man over to Bungay," Warrington said,
+and rose from the table. This threat was too much for Mr. Bacon,
+who was instantly ready to accede to any reasonable proposal of Mr.
+Warrington's, and finally asked his manager what those proposals were.
+When he heard that the negotiation only related as yet to a couple of
+ballads, which Mr. Warrington offered for the Spring Annual, Mr. Bacon
+said, "Law bless you, give him a check directly;" and with this paper
+Warrington went out to his friend, and placed it, grinning, in Pen's
+hands. Pen was as elated as if somebody had left him a fortune. He
+offered Warrington a dinner at Richmond instantly. "What should he go
+and buy for Laura and his mother? He must buy something for them."
+
+"They'll like the book better than any thing else," said Warrington,
+"with the young one's name to the verses, printed among the swells."
+
+"Thank God! thank God!" cried Arthur, "I needn't be a charge upon the
+old mother. I can pay off Laura now. I can get my own living. I can make
+my own way."
+
+"I can marry the grand vizier's daughter; I can purchase a house in
+Belgrave Square; I can build a fine castle in the air!" said Warrington,
+pleased with the other's exultation. "Well, you may get bread and
+cheese, Pen: and I own it tastes well, the bread which you earn
+yourself."
+
+They had a magnum of claret at dinner at the club that day, at Pen's
+charges. It was long since he had indulged in such a luxury, but
+Warrington would not balk him; and they drank together to the health
+of the Spring Annual.
+
+It never rains but it pours, according to the proverb; so very speedily
+another chance occurred, by which Mr. Pen was to be helped in his scheme
+of making a livelihood. Warrington one day threw him a letter across
+the table, which was brought by a printer's boy, "from Captain Shandon,
+sir"--the little emissary said: and then went and fell asleep on his
+accustomed bench in the passage. He paid many a subsequent visit there,
+and brought many a message to Pen.
+
+
+    "_F. P. Tuesday Morning._
+
+    "My Dear Sir,
+
+    "Bungay will be here to-day about the 'Pall-Mall Gazette.' You would
+    be the very man to help us _with a genuine West-end article_--you
+    understand--dashing, trenchant, and d---- aristocratic. Lady Hipshaw
+    will write; but she's not much, you know; and we've two lords, but
+    the less they do the better. We must have you. We'll give you your
+    own terms, and we'll make a hit with the 'Gazette.'
+
+    "Shall B. come and see you, or can you look in upon me here?
+
+    "Ever yours,
+
+    "C. S."
+
+
+"Some more opposition," Warrington said, when Pen had read the note.
+"Bungay and Bacon are at daggers-drawn; each married the sister of the
+other, and they were for some time the closest friends and partners.
+Hack says it was Mrs. Bungay who caused all the mischief between the
+two; whereas Shandon, who reads for Bungay a good deal, says Mrs. Bacon
+did the business; but I don't know which is right, Peachum or Lockit.
+But since they have separated, it is a furious war between the two
+publishers; and no sooner does one bring out a book of travels, or
+poems, a magazine or periodical, quarterly, or monthly, or weekly, or
+annual, but the rival is in the field with something similar. I have
+heard poor Shandon tell with great glee how he made Bungay give a grand
+dinner at Blackwall to all his writers, by saying that Bacon had invited
+his corps to an entertainment at Greenwich. When Bungay engaged your
+celebrated friend Mr. Wagg to edit the 'Londoner,' Bacon straightway
+rushed off and secured Mr. Grindle to give his name to the 'Westminster
+Magazine.' When Bacon brought out his comic Irish novel of 'Barney
+Brallaghan,' off went Bungay to Dublin, and produced his rollicking
+Hibernian story of 'Looney MacTwolter.' When Doctor Hicks brought out
+his 'Wanderings in Mesopotamia,' under Bacon's auspices, Bungay produced
+Professor Sandiman's 'Researches in Zahara;' and Bungay is publishing
+his 'Pall-Mall Gazette' as a counterpoise to Bacon's 'Whitehall Review.'
+Let us go and hear about the 'Gazette.' There may be a place for you in
+it, Pen, my boy. We will go and see Shandon. We are sure to find him at
+home."
+
+"Where does he live?" asked Pen.
+
+"In the Fleet Prison," Warrington said. "And very much at home he is
+there, too. He is the king of the place."
+
+Pen had never seen this scene of London life, and walked with no small
+interest in at the grim gate of that dismal edifice. They went through
+the ante-room, 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. Every body seemed to be busy, humming, and on the move. Pen
+felt as if he choked in the place, and as if the door being locked upon
+him they never would let him out.
+
+They went through a court up a stone staircase, and through passages
+full of people, and noise, and cross lights, and black doors clapping
+and banging; Pen feeling as one does in a feverish morning-dream. At
+last the same little runner who had brought Shandon's note, and had
+followed them down Fleet-street munching apples, and who showed the way
+to the two gentlemen through the prison, said, "This is the captain's
+door," and Mr. Shandon's voice from within bade them enter.
+
+The room, though bare, was not uncheerful. The sun was shining in at the
+window--near which sate a lady at work, who had been gay and beautiful
+once, but in whose faded face kindness and tenderness still beamed.
+Through all his errors and reckless mishaps and misfortunes, this
+faithful creature adored her husband, and thought him the best and
+cleverest, as indeed he was one of the kindest of men. Nothing ever
+seemed to disturb the sweetness of his temper; not debts: not duns:
+not misery: not the bottle: not his wife's unhappy position, or his
+children's ruined chances. He was perfectly fond of wife and children,
+after his fashion: he always had the kindest words and smiles for them,
+and ruined them with the utmost sweetness of temper. He never could
+refuse himself or any man any enjoyment which his money could purchase;
+he would share his last guinea with Jack and Tom, and we may be sure he
+had a score of such retainers. He would sign his name at the back of any
+man's bill, and never pay any debt of his own. He would write on any
+side, and attack himself or another man with equal indifference. He
+was one of the wittiest, the most amiable, and the most incorrigible
+of Irishmen. Nobody could help liking Charley Shandon who saw him once,
+and those whom he ruined could scarcely be angry with him.
+
+When Pen and Warrington arrived, the captain (he had been in an Irish
+militia regiment once, and the title remained with him) was sitting on
+his bed in a torn dressing-gown, with a desk on his knees, at which he
+was scribbling as fast as his rapid pen could write. Slip after slip of
+paper fell off the desk wet on to the ground. A picture of his children
+was hung up over his bed, and the youngest of them was pattering about
+the room.
+
+Opposite the captain sate Mr. Bungay, a portly man of stolid
+countenance, with whom the little child had been trying a conversation.
+
+"Papa's a very clever man," said she; "mamma says so."
+
+"Oh, very," said Mr. Bungay.
+
+"And you're a very rich man, Mr. Bundy," cried the child, who could
+hardly speak plain.
+
+"Mary!" said mamma, from her work.
+
+"Oh, never mind," Bungay roared out with a great laugh; "no harm in
+saying I'm rich--he, he--I am pretty well off, my little dear."
+
+"If you're rich, why don't you take papa out of piz'n?" asked the child.
+
+Mamma at this began to wipe her eyes with the work on which she was
+employed. (The poor lady had hung curtains up in the room, had brought
+the children's picture and placed it there, and had made one or two
+attempts to ornament it.) Mamma began to cry; Mr. Bungay turned red, and
+looked fiercely out of his blood-shot little eyes; Shandon's pen went on,
+and Pen and Warrington arrived with their knock.
+
+Captain Shandon looked up from his work. "How do you do, Mr. Warrington,"
+he said. "I'll speak to you in a minute. Please sit down, gentlemen, if
+you can find places," and away went the pen again.
+
+Warrington pulled forward an old portmanteau--the only available
+seat--and sate down on it with a bow to Mrs. Shandon, and a nod to
+Bungay: the child came and looked at Pen solemnly: and in a couple of
+minutes the swift scribbling ceased; and Shandon, turning the desk over
+on the bed, stooped and picked up the papers.
+
+"I think this will do," said he. "It's the prospectus for the 'Pall-Mall
+Gazette.'"
+
+"And here's the money for it," Mr. Bungay said, laying down a five-pound
+note. "I'm as good as my word, I am. When I say I'll pay, I pay."
+
+"Faith that's more than some of us can say," said Shandon, and he
+eagerly clapped the note into his pocket.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+WHICH IS PASSED IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF LUDGATE HILL.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 defense 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 defense, 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 Douro to the Garonne: it was a gentleman
+who broke the line at Trafalgar, and swept the plain of Waterloo."
+
+Bungay nodded his head in a knowing manner, and winked his eyes when the
+captain came to the Waterloo passage: and Warrington burst out laughing.
+
+"You see how our venerable friend Bungay is affected," Shandon said,
+slily looking up from his papers--"that's your true sort of test. I have
+used the Duke of Wellington and the battle of Waterloo a hundred times:
+and I never knew the Duke to fail."
+
+The captain then went on to confess with much candor, that up to the
+present time the gentlemen of England, confident of their right, and
+careless of those who questioned it, had left the political interest
+of their order as they did the management of their estates, or the
+settlement of their legal affairs, to persons affected to each peculiar
+service, and had permitted their interests to be represented in the
+press by professional proctors and advocates. That time, Shandon
+professed to consider, was now gone by: the gentlemen of England must
+be their own champions: the declared enemies of their order were brave,
+strong, numerous, and uncompromising. They must meet their foes in the
+field: they must not be belied and misrepresented by hireling advocates:
+they must not have Grub-street publishing Gazettes from Whitehall;
+"that's a dig at Bacon's people, Mr. Bungay," said Shandon, turning
+round to the publisher.
+
+Bungay clapped his stick on the floor. "Hang him, pitch into him,
+capting," he said, with exultation: and turning to Warrington, wagged
+his dull head more vehemently than ever, and said, "For a slashing
+article, sir, there's nobody like the capting--no-obody like him."
+
+The prospectus-writer went on to say that some gentlemen, whose names
+were, for obvious reasons, not brought before the public (at which Mr.
+Warrington began to laugh again), had determined to bring forward a
+journal, of which the principles were so and so. "These men are proud
+of their order, and anxious to uphold it," cried out Captain Shandon,
+flourishing his paper with a grin. "They are loyal to their sovereign,
+by faithful conviction and ancestral allegiance; they love their Church,
+where they would have their children worship, and for which their
+forefathers bled; they love their country, and would keep it what the
+gentlemen of England--yes, _the gentlemen of England_ (we'll have that
+in large caps., Bungay, my boy) have made it--the greatest and freest
+in the world: and as the names of some of them are appended to the deed
+which secured our liberties at Runnymede--"
+
+"What's that?" asked Mr. Bungay.
+
+"An ancestor of mine sealed it with his sword-hilt," Pen said, with
+great gravity.
+
+"It's the Habeas Corpus, Mr. Bungay," Warrington said, on which the
+publisher answered, "All right, I dare say," and yawned, though he said,
+"Go on, capting."
+
+--"at Runnymede; they are ready to defend that freedom to-day with sword
+and pen, and now, as then, to rally round the old laws and liberties of
+England."
+
+"Brayvo!" 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 demeanor. So she clambered up on his lap, while her father
+continued to read his programme.
+
+"You were laughing," the captain said to Warrington, "about 'the
+obvious reasons' which I mentioned. Now, I'll show ye what they are,
+ye unbelieving heathen. 'We have said,'" he went on, "'that we can not
+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 can
+not, 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 among our readers,
+because our writers are among them. We address ourselves to the higher
+circles of society: we care not to disown it--the 'Pall Mall Gazette' is
+written by gentlemen for gentlemen; its conductors speak to the classes
+in which they live and were born. The field-preacher has his journal,
+the radical free-thinker has his journal: why should the gentlemen of
+England be unrepresented in the Press?'"
+
+Mr. Shandon then went on with much modesty to descant upon the literary
+and fashionable departments of the "Pall Mall Gazette," which were to
+be conducted by gentlemen of acknowledged reputation; men famous at the
+Universities (at which Mr. Pendennis could scarcely help laughing and
+blushing), known at the Clubs, and of the Society which they described.
+He pointed out delicately to advertisers that there would be no such
+medium as the "Pall Mall Gazette" for giving publicity to their sales;
+and he eloquently called upon the nobility of England, the baronetage of
+England, the revered clergy of England, the bar of England, the matrons,
+the daughters, the homes and hearths of England, to rally round the good
+old cause; and Bungay at the conclusion of the reading woke up from a
+second snooze in which he had indulged himself, and again said it was
+all right.
+
+The reading of the prospectus concluded, the gentlemen present entered
+into some details regarding the political and literary management of the
+paper, and Mr. Bungay sate by listening and nodding his head, as if he
+understood what was the subject of their conversation, and approved of
+their opinions. Bungay's opinions, in truth, were pretty simple. He
+thought the captain could write the best smashing article in England.
+He wanted the opposition house of Bacon smashed, and it was his opinion
+that the captain could do that business. If the captain had written a
+letter of Junius on a sheet of paper, or copied a part of the Church
+Catechism, Mr. Bungay would have been perfectly contented, and have
+considered that the article was a smashing article. And he pocketed the
+papers with the greatest satisfaction: and he not only paid for the MS.,
+as we have seen, but he called little Mary to him, and gave her a penny
+as he went away.
+
+The reading of the manuscript over, the party engaged in general
+conversation, Shandon leading with a jaunty fashionable air in
+compliment to the two guests who sate with him, and 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 was his habit to live among 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 work-box at
+that very day.
+
+Mr. Bungay presently had enough of this talk and got up to take leave,
+whereupon Warrington and Pen rose to depart with the publisher, though
+the latter would have liked to stay to make a further acquaintance with
+this family, who interested him and touched him. He said something about
+hoping for permission to repeat his visit, upon which Shandon, with a
+rueful grin, said he was always to be found at home, and should be
+delighted to see Mr. Pennington.
+
+"I'll see you to my park-gate, gentlemen," said Captain Shandon, seizing
+his hat, in spite of a deprecatory look, and a faint cry of "Charles"
+from Mrs. Shandon. And the captain, in shabby slippers, shuffled out
+before his guests, leading the way through the dismal passages of the
+prison. His hand was already fiddling with his waistcoat pocket, where
+Bungay's five-pound note was, as he took leave of the three gentlemen at
+the wicket; one of them, Mr. Arthur Pendennis, being greatly relieved
+when he was out of the horrid place, and again freely treading the flags
+of Farringdon-street.
+
+Mrs. Shandon sadly went on with her work at the window looking into the
+court. She saw Shandon with a couple of men at his heels run rapidly in
+the direction of the prison tavern. She had hoped to have had him to
+dinner herself that day: there was a piece of meat, and some salad in a
+basin, on the ledge outside of the window of their room, which she had
+expected that she and little Mary were to share with the child's father.
+But there was no chance of that now. He would be in that tavern until
+the hours for closing it; then he would go and play at cards or drink in
+some other man's room, and come back silent, with glazed eyes, reeling a
+little in his walk, that his wife might nurse him. Oh, what varieties of
+pain do we not make our women suffer!
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 comes tripping
+noiselessly into her mother's bed-room, bearing a cup of the consoler
+to the widow who will take no other food. Ruth is busy concocting it for
+her husband, who is coming home from the harvest-field--one could fill a
+page with hints for such pictures; finally, Mrs. Shandon and little Mary
+sit down and drink their tea together, while the captain goes out and
+takes his pleasure. She cares for nothing else but that, when her
+husband is away.
+
+A gentleman with whom we are already slightly acquainted, Mr. Jack
+Finucane, a townsman of Captain Shandon's, found the captain's wife and
+little Mary (for whom Jack always brought a sweetmeat in his pocket)
+over this meal. Jack thought Shandon the greatest of created geniuses;
+had had one or two helps from the good-natured prodigal, who had always
+a kind word, and sometimes a guinea for any friend in need; and never
+missed a day in seeing his patron. He was ready to run Shandon's errands
+and transact his money-business with publishers and newspaper editors,
+duns, creditors, holders of Shandon's acceptances, gentlemen disposed
+to speculate in those securities, and to transact the thousand little
+affairs of an embarrassed Irish gentleman. I never knew an embarrassed
+Irish gentleman yet, but he had an aid-de-camp of his own nation,
+likewise in circumstances of pecuniary discomfort. That aid-de-camp
+has subordinates of his own, who again may have other insolvent
+dependents--all through his life our captain marched at the head of
+a ragged staff, who shared in the rough fortunes of their chieftain.
+
+"He won't have that five-pound note very long, I bet a guinea," Mr.
+Bungay said of the captain, as he and his two companions walked away
+from the prison; and the publisher judged rightly, for when Mrs.
+Shandon came to empty her husband's pockets, she found but a couple of
+shillings, and a few half-pence 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 afterward; so that the night left him as poor as
+the morning had found him.
+
+The publisher and the two gentlemen had had some talk together after
+quitting Shandon, and Warrington reiterated to Bungay what he had said
+to his rival, Bacon, viz., that Pen was a high fellow, of great genius,
+and what was more, well with the great world, and related to "no end"
+of the peerage. Bungay replied that he should be happy to have dealings
+with Mr. Pendennis, and hoped to have the pleasure of seeing both gents
+to cut mutton with him before long; and so, with mutual politeness and
+protestations, they parted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It is hard to see such a man as Shandon," Pen said, musing, and talking
+that night over the sight which he had witnessed, "of accomplishments
+so multifarious, and of such an undoubted talent and humor, an inmate
+of a jail for half his time, and a bookseller's hanger-on when out of
+prison."
+
+"I am a bookseller's hanger-on--you are going to try your paces as
+a hack," Warrington said, with a laugh. "We are all hacks upon some
+road or other. I would rather be myself, than Paley, our neighbor in
+chambers: who has as much enjoyment of his life as a mole. A deuced deal
+of undeserved compassion has been thrown away upon what you call your
+bookseller's drudge."
+
+"Much solitary pipes and ale make a cynic of you," Pen said. "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 labor. It makes me indignant to see a gentleman the serf of
+such a creature as that, of a man who can't speak the language that he
+lives by, who is not fit to black Shandon's boots."
+
+"So you have begun already to gird at the publishers, and to take your
+side among our order. Bravo, Pen, my boy!" Warrington answered, laughing
+still. "What have you got to say against Bungay's relations with
+Shandon? Was it the publisher, think you, who sent the author to prison?
+Is it Bungay who is tippling away the five-pound note which we saw just
+now, or Shandon?"
+
+"Misfortune drives a man into bad company," Pen said. "It is easy to cry
+'Fie!' against a poor fellow who has no society but such as he finds in
+a prison; and no resource except forgetfulness and the bottle. We must
+deal kindly with the eccentricities of genius, and remember that the
+very ardor and enthusiasm of temperament which makes the author
+delightful often leads the man astray."
+
+"A fiddlestick about men of genius!" Warrington cried out, who was
+a very severe moralist upon some points, though possibly a very bad
+practitioner. "I deny that there are so many geniuses as people who
+whimper about the fate of men of letters assert there are. There are
+thousands of clever fellows in the world who could, if they would,
+turn verses, write articles, read books, and deliver a judgment upon
+them; the talk of professional critics and writers is not a whit more
+brilliant, or profound, or amusing, than that of any other society of
+educated people. If a lawyer, or a soldier, or a parson, outruns his
+income, and does not pay his bills, he must go to jail; and an author
+must go, too. If an author fuddles himself, I don't know why he should
+be let off a headache the next morning--if he orders a coat from the
+tailor's, why he shouldn't pay for it."
+
+"I would give him more money to buy coats," said Pen, smiling. "I
+suppose I should like to belong to a well-dressed profession. I protest
+against that wretch of a middle-man whom I see between Genius and his
+great landlord, the Public, and who stops more than half of the
+laborer's earnings and fame."
+
+"I am a prose laborer," Warrington said: "you, my boy, are a poet in a
+small way, and so, I suppose, consider you are authorized 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? Every body who writes his epic, every driveler 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, salable 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 recognize the man of genius in the young man who
+presented himself before him, ragged, gaunt, and hungry. Rags are not
+a proof of genius; whereas capital is absolute, as times go, and is
+perforce the bargain-master. It has a right to deal with the literary
+inventor as with any other;--if I produce a novelty in the book trade,
+I must do the best I can with it; but I can no more force Mr. Murray to
+purchase my book of travels or sermons, than I can compel Mr. Tattersall
+to give me a hundred guineas for my horse. I may have my own ideas of
+the value of my Pegasus, and think him the most wonderful of animals;
+but the dealer has a right to his opinion, too, and may want a lady's
+horse, or a cob for a heavy timid rider, or a sound hack for the road,
+and my beast won't suit him."
+
+"You deal in metaphors, Warrington," Pen said; "but you rightly say
+that you are very prosaic. Poor Shandon! There is something about the
+kindness of that man, and the gentleness of that sweet creature of a
+wife, which touches me profoundly. I like him, I am afraid, better than
+a better man."
+
+"And so do I," Warrington said. "Let us give him the benefit of our
+sympathy, and the pity that is due to his weakness: though I fear that
+sort of kindness would be resented as contempt by a more high-minded
+man. You see he takes his consolation along with his misfortune, and one
+generates the other or balances it, as is the way of the world. He is a
+prisoner, but he is not unhappy."
+
+"His genius sings within his prison bars," Pen said.
+
+"Yes," Warrington said, bitterly; "Shandon accommodates himself to a
+cage pretty well. He ought to be wretched, but he has Jack and Tom to
+drink with, and that consoles him: he might have a high place, but, as
+he can't, why he can drink with Tom and Jack;--he might be providing for
+his wife and children, but Thomas and John have got a bottle of brandy
+which they want him to taste;--he might pay poor Snip, the tailor, the
+twenty pounds which the poor devil wants for his landlord, but John
+and Thomas lay their hands upon his purse;--and so he drinks while
+his tradesman goes to jail and his family to ruin. Let us pity the
+misfortunes of genius, and conspire against the publishing tyrants who
+oppress men of letters."
+
+"What! are you going to have another glass of brandy-and-water?" Pen
+said, with a humorous look. It was at the Back Kitchen that the above
+philosophical conversation took place between the two young men.
+
+Warrington began to laugh as usual. "_Video meliora proboque_--I mean,
+bring it me hot, with sugar, John," he said to the waiter.
+
+"I would have some more, too, only I don't want it," said Pen. "It does
+not seem to me, Warrington, that we are much better than our neighbors."
+And Warrington's last glass having been dispatched, the pair returned to
+their chambers.
+
+They found a couple of notes in the letter-box, on their return, which
+had been sent by their acquaintance of the morning, Mr. Bungay. That
+hospitable gentleman presented his compliments to each of the gentlemen,
+and requested the pleasure of their company at dinner on an early day,
+to meet a few literary friends.
+
+"We shall have a grand spread," said Warrington. "We shall meet all
+Bungay's corps."
+
+"All except poor Shandon," said Pen, nodding a good night to his friend,
+and he went into his own little room. The events and acquaintances of
+the day had excited him a good deal, and he lay for some time awake
+thinking over them, as Warrington's vigorous and regular snore from the
+neighboring apartment pronounced that that gentleman was engaged in deep
+slumber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Is it true, thought Pendennis, lying on his bed and gazing at a bright
+moon without, that lighted up a corner of his dressing-table, and the
+frame of a little sketch of Fairoaks, drawn by Laura, that 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 honor and fame if they could be his. If fortune favors 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 any thing worthy of our name! 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,
+extravagancies, disappointments, of his wayward youth: he got up from
+the bed: threw open the window, and looked out into the night: and then,
+by some impulse, which we hope was a good one, he went up and kissed the
+picture of Fairoaks, and flinging himself down on his knees by the bed,
+remained for some time in that posture of hope and submission. When
+he rose, it was with streaming eyes. He had found himself repeating,
+mechanically, some little words which he had been accustomed to repeat
+as a child at his mother's side, after the saying of which she would
+softly take him to his bed and close the curtains round him, hushing him
+with a benediction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day, Mr. Pidgeon, their attendant, brought in a large brown
+paper parcel, directed to G. Warrington, Esq., with Mr. Trotter's
+compliments, and a note which Warrington read.
+
+"Pen, you beggar!" roared Warrington to Pen, who was in his own room.
+
+"Hullo!" sung out Pen.
+
+"Come here, you're wanted," cried the other, and Pen came out. "What is
+it?" said he.
+
+"_Catch!_" cried Warrington, and flung the parcel at Pen's head, who
+would have been knocked down had he not caught it.
+
+"It's books for review for the 'Pall Mall Gazette': pitch into 'em,"
+Warrington said. As for Pen, he never had been so delighted in his life:
+his hand trembled as he cut the string of the packet, and beheld within
+a smart set of new neat calico-bound books, travels, and novels, and
+poems.
+
+"Sport the oak, Pidgeon," said he. "I'm not at home to any body to-day."
+And he flung into his easy chair, and hardly gave himself time to drink
+his tea, so eager was he to begin to read and to review.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+IN WHICH THE HISTORY STILL HOVERS ABOUT FLEET-STREET
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 the 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 used in former days 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 stair-case 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 honor to his little rooms to be visited by such a lady;
+and as she went down the stair-case with her vail 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 aid-de-camp
+in the newspaper.
+
+He would have sate with Mrs. Shandon as late as the prison hours
+permitted, and had indeed many a time witnessed the putting to bed
+of little Mary, who occupied a crib in the room; and to whose evening
+prayers that God might bless papa, Finucane, although of the Romish
+faith himself, had said Amen with a great deal of sympathy--but he had
+an appointment with Mr. Bungay regarding the affairs of the paper which
+they were to discuss over a quiet dinner. So he went away at six o'clock
+from Mrs. Shandon, but made his accustomed appearance at the Fleet
+Prison next morning, having arrayed himself in his best clothes and
+ornaments, which, though cheap as to cost were very brilliant as to
+color and appearance, and having in his pocket four pounds two shillings,
+being the amount of his week's salary at the Daily Journal, minus two
+shillings expended by him in the purchase of a pair of gloves on his way
+to the prison.
+
+He had cut his mutton with Mr. Bungay, as the latter gentleman phrased
+it, and Mr. Trotter, Bungay's reader and literary man of business, at
+Dick's Coffee-House on the previous day, and entered at large into his
+views respecting the conduct of the "Pall-Mall Gazette." In a masterly
+manner he had pointed out what should be the sub-editorial arrangements
+of the paper: what should be the type for the various articles: who
+should report the markets; who the turf and ring; who the Church
+intelligence; and who the fashionable chit-chat. He was acquainted with
+gentlemen engaged in cultivating these various departments of knowledge,
+and in communicating them afterward 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 afterward owned to his
+subordinate Mr. Trotter, that that Irishman seemed a clever fellow.
+
+And now having succeeded in making this impression upon Mr. Bungay, the
+faithful fellow worked round to the point which he had very near at
+heart, viz., the liberation from prison of his admired friend and chief,
+Captain Shandon. He knew to a shilling the amount of the detainers
+which were against the captain at the porter's lodge of the Fleet; and,
+indeed, professed to know all his debts, though this was impossible, for
+no man in England, certainly not the captain, himself, was acquainted
+with them. He pointed out what Shandon's engagements already were; and
+how much better he would work if removed from confinement; (though this
+Mr. Bungay denied, for, "when the captain's locked up," he said, "we
+are sure to find him at home; whereas, when he's free, you can never
+catch hold of him;") finally, he so worked on Mr. Bungay's feelings,
+by describing Mrs. Shandon pining away in the prison, and the child
+sickening there, that the publisher was induced to promise that, if Mrs.
+Shandon would come to him in the morning, he would see what could be
+done. And the colloquy ending at this time with the second round of
+brandy-and-water, although Finucane, who had four guineas in his pocket,
+would have discharged the tavern reckoning with delight, Bungay said,
+"No, sir,--this is my affair, sir, if you please. James, take the bill,
+and eighteen-pence for yourself," and he handed over the necessary funds
+to the waiter. Thus it Was that Finucane who went to bed at the Temple
+after the dinner at Dick's, found himself actually with his week's
+salary intact upon Saturday morning.
+
+He gave Mrs. Shandon a wink so knowing and joyful, that that kind
+creature knew some good news was in store for her, and hastened to
+get her bonnet and shawl, when Fin asked if he might have the honor of
+taking her a walk, and giving her a little fresh air. And little Mary
+jumped for joy at the idea of this holiday, for Finucane never neglected
+to give her a toy, or to take her to a show, and brought newspaper
+orders in his pocket for all sorts of London diversions to amuse the
+child. Indeed, he loved them with all his heart, and would cheerfully
+have dashed out his rambling brains to do them, or his adored captain,
+a service.
+
+"May I go, Charley? or shall I stay with you, for you're poorly, dear,
+this morning? He's got a headache, Mr. Finucane. He suffers from
+headaches, and I persuaded him to stay in bed," Mrs. Shandon said.
+
+"Go along with you, and Polly. Jack, take care of 'em. Hand me over the
+Burton's Anatomy, and leave me to my abominable devices," Shandon said,
+with perfect good humor. He was writing, and not uncommonly took his
+Greek and Latin quotations (of which he knew the use as a public writer)
+from that wonderful repertory of learning.
+
+So Fin gave his arm to Mrs. Shandon, and Mary went skipping down the
+passages of the prison, and through the gate into the free air. From
+Fleet-street to Paternoster Row is not very far. As the three reached
+Mr. Bungay's shop, Mrs. Bungay was also entering at the private door,
+holding in her hand a paper parcel and a manuscript volume bound in red,
+and, indeed, containing an account of her transactions with the butcher
+in the neighboring market. Mrs. Bungay was in a gorgeous shot silk
+dress, which flamed with red and purple; she wore a yellow shawl, and
+had red flowers inside her bonnet, and a brilliant light blue parasol.
+Mrs. Shandon was in an old black watered silk; her bonnet had never seen
+very brilliant days of prosperity any more than its owner, but she could
+not help looking like a lady, whatever her attire was. The two women
+courtesied to each other, each according to her fashion.
+
+"I hope you're pretty well, mum?" said Mrs. Bungay.
+
+"It's a very fine day," said Mrs. Shandon.
+
+"Won't you step in, mum?" said Mrs. Bungay, looking so hard at the child
+as almost to frighten her.
+
+"I--I came about business with Mr. Bungay--I--I hope he's pretty well?"
+said timid Mrs. Shandon.
+
+"If you go to see him in the counting-house, couldn't you--couldn't you
+leave your little _gurl_ with me?" said Mrs. Bungay, in a deep voice,
+and with a tragic look, as she held out one finger toward the child.
+
+"I want to stay with mamma," cried little Mary, burying her face in her
+mother's dress.
+
+"Go with this lady, Mary, my dear," said the mother.
+
+"I'll show you some pretty pictures," said Mrs. Bungay, with the voice
+of an ogress, "and some nice things besides; look here"--and opening her
+brown paper parcel, Mrs. Bungay displayed some choice sweet biscuits,
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 toward Captain
+Shandon. His impetuous wife had rebuked him on his return home. She
+had ordered that he should give no relief to the captain; he was a
+good-for-nothing fellow, whom no money would help; she disapproved of
+the plan of the "Pall-Mall Gazette," and expected that Bungay would only
+lose his money in it as they were losing over the way (she always called
+her brother's establishment "over the way"), by the "Whitehall Journal."
+Let Shandon stop in prison and do his work; it was the best place for
+him. In vain Finucane pleaded and promised and implored, for his friend
+Bungay had had an hour's lecture in the morning and was inexorable.
+
+But what honest Jack failed to do below stairs in the counting-house,
+the pretty faces and manners of the mother and child were effecting in
+the drawing-room, where they were melting the fierce but really soft
+Mrs. Bungay. There was an artless sweetness in Mrs. Shandon's voice,
+and a winning frankness of manner, which made most people fond of her,
+and pity her: and taking courage by the rugged kindness with which her
+hostess received her, the captain's lady told her story, and described
+her husband's goodness and virtues, and her child's failing health (she
+was obliged to part with two of them, she said, and send them to school,
+for she could not have them in that horrid place)--that Mrs. Bungay,
+though as grim as Lady Macbeth, melted under the influence of the
+simple tale, and said she would go down and speak to Bungay. Now in this
+household to speak was to command, with Mrs. Bungay; and with Bungay, to
+hear was to obey.
+
+It was just when poor Finucane was in despair about his negotiation,
+that the majestic Mrs. Bungay descended upon her spouse, politely
+requested Mr. Finucane to step up to his friends in her drawing-room,
+while she held a few minutes' conversation with Mr. B., and when the
+pair were alone the publisher's better half informed him of her
+intentions toward the captain's lady.
+
+"What's in the wind now, my dear?" Maecenas asked, surprised at his
+wife's altered tone. "You wouldn't hear of my doing any thing for the
+captain this morning: I wonder what has been a-changing of you."
+
+"The captain 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 her little gurl?"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. B., I saw the little girl."
+
+"And didn't you see how like she was to our angel, Bessy, Mr. B.?"--and
+Mrs. Bungay's thoughts flew back to a period eighteen years back, when
+Bacon and Bungay had just set up in business as small booksellers in a
+country town, and when she had had a child, named Bessy, something like
+the little Mary who had just moved her compassion.
+
+"Well, well, my dear," Mr. Bungay said, seeing the little eyes of his
+wife begin to twinkle and grow red; "the captain ain't in for much.
+There's only a hundred and thirty pound against him. Half the money
+will take him out of the Fleet, Finucane says, and we'll pay him half
+salaries till he has made the account square. When the little 'un said,
+'Why, don't you take Par out of pizn?' I did feel it, Elizabeth, upon my
+honor I did, now." And the upshot of this conversation was, that Mr. and
+Mrs. Bungay both ascended to the drawing-room, and Mr. Bungay made a
+heavy and clumsy speech, in which he announced to Mrs. Shandon, that,
+hearing sixty-five pounds would set her husband free, he was ready to
+advance that sum of money, deducting it from the captain's salary, and
+that he would give it to her on condition that she would personally
+settle with the creditors regarding her husband's liberation.
+
+I think this was the happiest day that Mrs. Shandon and Mr. Finucane had
+had for a long time. "Bedad, Bungay, you're a trump!" roared out Fin,
+in an overpowering brogue and emotion. "Give us your fist, old boy: and
+won't we send the 'Pall-Mall Gazette' up to ten thousand a week, that's
+all!" and he jumped about the room, and tossed up little Mary, with a
+hundred frantic antics.
+
+"If I could drive you any where in my carriage, Mrs. Shandon--I'm
+sure it's quite at your service," Mrs. Bungay said, looking out at a
+one-horsed vehicle which had just driven up, and in which this lady took
+the air considerably--and the two ladies, with little Mary between them
+(whose tiny hand Maecenas's wife kept fixed in her great grasp), with the
+delighted Mr. Finucane on the back seat, drove away from Paternoster
+Row, as the owner of the vehicle threw triumphant glances at the
+opposite windows at Bacon's.
+
+"It won't do the captain any good," thought Bungay, going back to his
+desk and accounts, "but Mrs. B. becomes reglar upset when she thinks
+about her misfortune. The child would have been of age yesterday, if
+she'd lived. Bessy told me so:" and he wondered how women did remember
+things.
+
+We are happy to say that Mrs. Shandon sped with very good success upon
+her errand. She who had had to mollify creditors when she had no money
+at all, and only tears and entreaties wherewith to soothe them, found no
+difficulty in making them relent by means of a bribe of ten shillings
+in the pound; and the next Sunday was the last, for some time at least,
+which the captain spent in prison.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+A DINNER IN THE ROW.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Upon the appointed day our two friends made their appearance at Mr.
+Bungay's door in Paternoster Row; not the public entrance through which
+booksellers' boys issued with their sacks full of Bungay's volumes, and
+around which timid aspirants lingered with their virgin manuscripts
+ready for sale to Sultan Bungay, but at the private door of the house,
+whence the splendid Mrs. Bungay would come forth to step into her chaise
+and take her drive, settling herself on the cushions, and casting looks
+of defiance, at Mrs. Bacon's opposite windows--at Mrs. Bacon, who was as
+yet a chaiseless woman.
+
+On such occasions, when very much wroth at her sister-in-law's splendor,
+Mrs. Bacon would fling up the sash of her drawing-room window, and look
+out with her four children at the chaise, as much as to say, "Look at
+these four darlings, Flora Bungay! This is why I can't drive in my
+carriage; you would give a coach and four to have the same reason." And
+it was with these arrows out of her quiver that Emma Bacon shot Flora
+Bungay as she sate in her chariot, envious and childless.
+
+As Pen and Warrington came to Bungay's door, a carriage and a cab drove
+up to Bacon's. Old Dr. Slocum descended heavily from the first; the
+doctor's equipage was as ponderous as his style, but both had a fine
+sonorous effect upon the publishers in the Row. A couple of dazzling
+white waistcoats stepped out of the cab.
+
+Warrington laughed. "You see Bacon has his dinner party too. That is
+Dr. Slocum, author of 'Memoirs of the Poisoners.' You would hardly have
+recognized our friend Hoolan in that gallant white waistcoat. Doolan is
+one of Bungay's men, and, faith, here he comes." Indeed Messrs. Hoolan
+and Doolan had come from the Strand in the same cab, tossing up by the
+way which should pay the shilling; and Mr. D. stepped from the other
+side of the way, arrayed in black, with a large pair of white gloves
+which were spread out on his hands, and which the owner could not help
+regarding with pleasure.
+
+The house porter in an evening coat, and gentlemen with gloves as
+large as Doolan's, but of the famous Berlin web, were in 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
+courtesies to each new comer as he entered the drawing-room, but her
+mind was evidently pre-occupied by extraneous thoughts. The fact is,
+Mrs. Bacon's dinner party was disturbing her, and as soon as she had
+received each individual of her own company, Flora Bungay flew back to
+the embrasure of the window, whence she could rake the carriages of
+Emma Bacon's friends as they came rattling up the Row. The sight of Dr.
+Slocum's large carriage, with the gaunt job-horses, crushed Flora: none
+but hack cabs had driven up to her own door on that day.
+
+They were all literary gentlemen, though unknown as yet to Pen. There
+was Mr. Bole the real editor of the magazine, of which Mr. Wagg was the
+nominal chief; Mr. Trotter, who, from having broken out on the world as
+a poet of a tragic and suicidal cast, had now subsided into one of Mr.
+Bungay's back shops as reader for that gentleman; and Captain Sumph,
+an ex-beau still about town, and related in some indistinct manner to
+Literature and the Peerage. He was said to have written a book once,
+to have been a friend of Lord Byron, to be related to Lord Sumphington;
+in fact, anecdotes of Byron formed his staple, and he seldom spoke but
+with the name of that poet or some of his contemporaries in his mouth,
+as thus: "I remember poor Shelley at school being sent up for good
+for a copy of verses, every line of which I wrote, by Jove;" or,
+"I recollect, when I was at Missolonghi with Byron, offering to bet
+Gamba," and so forth. This gentleman, Pen remarked, was listened to
+with great attention by Mrs. Bungay; his anecdotes of the aristocracy,
+of which he was a middle-aged member, delighted the publisher's lady;
+and he was almost a greater man than the great Mr. Wagg himself in
+her eyes. Had he but come in his own carriage, Mrs. Bungay would have
+made her Bungay purchase any given volume from his pen.
+
+Mr. Bungay went about to his guests as they arrived, and did the honors
+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 honor of
+introducing Mr. Warrington to you. Mr. Warrington, Mrs. Bungay; Mr.
+Pendennis, Mrs. Bungay. Hope you've brought good appetites with you,
+gentlemen. _You_, Doolan, I know ave, for you've always ad a deuce of
+a twist."
+
+"Lor, Bungay!" said Mrs. Bungay.
+
+"Faith, a man must be hard to please, Bungay, who can't eat a good
+dinner in _this_ house," Doolan said, and he winked and stroked his lean
+chops with his large gloves; and made appeals of friendship to Mrs.
+Bungay, which that honest woman refused with scorn from the timid man.
+"She couldn't abide that Doolan," she said in confidence to her friends.
+Indeed, all his flatteries failed to win her.
+
+As they talked, Mrs. Bungay surveying mankind from her window, a
+magnificent vision of an enormous gray 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 Honorable Percy Popjoy's
+quite punctual, I declare," she said, and sailed to the door to be in
+waiting at the nobleman's arrival.
+
+"It's Percy Popjoy," said Pen, looking out of window, and seeing an
+individual, in extremely lacquered boots, descend from the swinging cab:
+and, in fact, it was that young nobleman--Lord Falconet's eldest son,
+as we all very well know, who was come to dine with the publisher--his
+publisher of the Row.
+
+"He was my fag at Eton," Warrington said. "I ought to have licked him a
+little more." He and Pen had had some bouts at the Oxford 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
+humor and fatuity in his round, dimpled face: upon which Nature had
+burst out with a chin-tuft, but, exhausted with the effort, had left
+the rest of the countenance bare of hair.
+
+The temporary groom of the chambers bawled out, "The Honorable Percy
+Popjoy," much to that gentleman's discomposure at hearing his titles
+announced.
+
+"What did the man want to take away my hat for, Bungay?" he asked of
+the publisher. "Can't do without my hat--want it to make my bow to
+Mrs. Bungay. How well you look, Mrs. Bungay, to-day. Haven't seen your
+carriage in the Park: why haven't you been there? I missed you; indeed,
+I did."
+
+"I'm afraid you're a sad quiz," said Mrs. Bungay.
+
+"Quiz! Never made a joke in my--hullo! who's here? How d'ye do,
+Pendennis? How d'ye do, Warrington? These are old friends of mine, Mrs.
+Bungay. I say, how the doose did _you_ come here?" he asked of the two
+young men, turning his lacquered heels upon Mrs. Bungay, who respected
+her husband's two young guests, now that she found they were intimate
+with a lord's son.
+
+"What! do _they_ know him?" she asked rapidly of Mr. B.
+
+"High fellers, I tell you--the young one related to all the nobility,"
+said the publisher; and both ran forward, smiling and bowing, to greet
+almost as great personages as the young lord--no less characters,
+indeed, than the great Mr. Wenham and the great Mr. Wagg, who were now
+announced.
+
+Mr. Wenham entered, wearing the usual demure look and stealthy smile
+with which he commonly surveyed the tips of his neat little shining
+boots, and which he but seldom brought to bear upon the person who
+addressed him. Wagg's white waistcoat, spread out, on the contrary,
+with profuse brilliancy; his burly, red face shone resplendent over it,
+lighted up with the thoughts of good jokes and a good dinner. He liked
+to make his _entree_ into a drawing-room with a laugh, and, when he
+went away at night, to leave a joke exploding behind him. No personal
+calamities or distresses (of which that humorist had his share in common
+with the unjocular part of mankind) could altogether keep his humor
+down. Whatever his griefs might be, the thought of a dinner rallied his
+great soul; and when he saw a lord, he saluted him with a pun.
+
+Wenham went up, then, with a smug smile and whisper, to Mrs. Bungay, and
+looked at her from under his eyes, and showed her the tips of his shoes.
+Wagg said she looked charming, and pushed on straight at the young
+nobleman, whom he called Pop; and to whom he instantly related a funny
+story, seasoned with what the French call _gros sel_. He was delighted
+to see Pen, too, and shook hands with him, and slapped him on the back
+cordially; for he was full of spirits and good humor. And he talked in
+a loud voice about their last place and occasion of meeting at Baymouth;
+and asked how their friends of Clavering Park were, and whether Sir
+Francis was not coming to London for the season; and whether Pen had
+been to see Lady Rockminster, who had arrived--fine old lady, Lady
+Rockminster! These remarks Wagg made not for Pen's ear so much as for
+the edification of the company, whom he was glad to inform that he paid
+visits to gentlemen's country seats, and was on intimate terms with the
+nobility.
+
+Wenham also shook hands with our young friend--all of which scenes Mrs.
+Bungay remarked with respectful pleasure, and communicated her ideas to
+Bungay, afterward, regarding the importance of Mr. Pendennis--ideas by
+which Pen profited much more than he was aware.
+
+Pen, who had read, and rather admired some of her works (and expected to
+find in Miss Bunion a person somewhat resembling her own description of
+herself in the "Passion-Flower," in which she stated that her youth
+resembled--
+
+  "A violet, shrinking meanly
+  When blows the March wind keenly
+  A timid fawn, on wild-wood lawn,
+  Where oak-boughs rustle greenly--"
+
+and that her maturer beauty was something very different, certainly, to
+the artless loveliness of her prime, but still exceedingly captivating
+and striking), beheld, rather to his surprise and amusement, a large and
+bony woman in a crumpled satin dress, who came creaking into the room
+with a step as heavy as a grenadier's. Wagg instantly noted the straw
+which she brought in at the rumpled skirt of her dress, and would
+have stooped to pick it up: but Miss Bunion disarmed all criticism by
+observing this ornament herself, and, putting her own large foot upon
+it, so as to separate it from her robe, she stopped and picked up the
+straw, saying to Mrs. Bungay, that she was very sorry to be a little
+late, but that the omnibus was very slow, and what a comfort it was to
+get a ride all the way from Brompton for sixpence. Nobody laughed at the
+poetess's speech, it was uttered so simply. Indeed, the worthy woman had
+not the least notion of being ashamed of an action incidental upon her
+poverty.
+
+"Is that 'Passion-Flowers?'" Pen said to Wenham, by whom he was
+standing. "Why, her picture in the volume represents her as a very
+well-looking young woman."
+
+"You know passion-flowers, like all others, will run to seed," Wenham
+said; "Miss Bunion's portrait was probably painted some years ago."
+
+"Well, I like her for not being ashamed of her poverty."
+
+"So do I," said Mr. Wenham, who would have starved rather than have come
+to dinner in an omnibus, "but I don't think that she need flourish the
+straw about, do you, Mr. Pendennis? My dear Miss Bunion, how do you do?
+I was in a great lady's drawing-room this morning, and every body was
+charmed with your new volume. Those lines on the christening of Lady
+Fanny Fantail brought tears into the Duchess's eyes. I said that I
+thought I should have the pleasure of meeting you to-day, and she begged
+me to thank you, and say how greatly she was pleased."
+
+This history, told in a bland, smiling manner, of a Duchess whom Wenham
+had met that very morning, too, quite put poor Wagg's dowager and
+baronet out of court, and placed Wenham beyond Wagg as a man of fashion.
+Wenham kept this inestimable advantage, and having the conversation to
+himself, ran on with a number of anecdotes regarding the aristocracy.
+He tried to bring Mr. Popjoy into the conversation by making appeals to
+him, and saying, "I was telling your father this morning," or, "I think
+you were present at W. House the other night when the Duke said so
+and so," but Mr. Popjoy would not gratify him by joining in the talk,
+preferring to fall back into the window recess with Mrs. Bungay, and
+watch the cabs that drove up to the opposite door. At least, if he would
+not talk, the hostess hoped that those odious Bacons would see how she
+had secured the noble Percy Popjoy for her party.
+
+And now the bell of Saint Paul's tolled half an hour later than that for
+which Mr. Bungay had invited his party, and it was complete with the
+exception of two guests, who at last made their appearance, and in whom
+Pen was pleased to recognize Captain and Mrs. Shandon.
+
+When these two had made their greetings to the master and mistress of
+the house, and exchanged nods of more or less recognition with most of
+the people present, Pen and Warrington went up and shook hands very
+warmly with Mrs. Shandon, who, perhaps was affected to meet them, and
+think where it was she had seen them but a few days before. Shandon was
+brushed up, and looked pretty smart, in a red velvet waistcoat, and a
+frill, into which his wife had stuck her best brooch. In spite of Mrs.
+Bungay's kindness, perhaps in consequence of it, Mrs. Shandon felt great
+terror and timidity in approaching her: indeed, she was more awful than
+ever in her red satin and bird of paradise, and it was not until she had
+asked in her great voice about the dear little gurl, that the latter was
+somewhat encouraged, and ventured to speak.
+
+"Nice-looking woman," Popjoy whispered to Warrington. "Do introduce
+me to Captain Shandon, Warrington. I'm told he's a tremendous clever
+fellow; and, dammy, I adore intellect, by Jove I do!" This was the
+truth: Heaven had not endowed young Mr. Popjoy with much intellect of
+his own, but had given him a generous faculty for admiring, if not for
+appreciating, the intellect of others. "And introduce me to Miss Bunion.
+I'm told she's very clever too. She's rum to look at, certainly, but
+that don't matter. Dammy, I consider myself a literary man, and I wish
+to know all the clever fellows." So Mr. Popjoy and Mr. Shandon had the
+pleasure of becoming acquainted with one another; and now the doors of
+the adjoining dining-room being flung open, the party entered and took
+their seats at table. Pen found himself next to Bunion on one side, and
+to Mr. Wagg--the truth is, Wagg fled alarmed from the vacant place by
+the poetess, and Pen was compelled to take it.
+
+The gifted being did not talk much during dinner, but Pen remarked that
+she ate, with a vast appetite, and never refused any of the supplies of
+wine which were offered to her by the butler. Indeed, Miss Bunion having
+considered Mr. Pendennis for a minute, who gave himself rather grand
+airs, and who was attired in an extremely fashionable style, with his
+very best chains, shirt studs, and cambric fronts, 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 candor. "I took you for one of the
+little Mayfair dandies," she said to Pen. "You looked as solemn as a
+little undertaker; and as I disliked beyond measure, the odious creature
+who was on the other side of me, I thought it was best to eat my dinner
+and hold my tongue."
+
+"And you did both very well, my dear Miss Bunion," Pen said, with a
+laugh.
+
+"Well, so I do, but I intend to talk to you the next time a great deal:
+for you are neither so solemn, nor so stupid, nor so pert as you look."
+
+"Ah, Miss Bunion, how I pine for that 'next time' to come," Pen said,
+with an air of comical gallantry. But we must return to the day, and the
+dinner at Paternoster Row.
+
+The repast was of the richest description--"What I call of the florid
+Gothic style," Wagg whispered to Pen, who sate beside the humorist, 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 own footboy was lost amidst those large and black-coated
+attendants.
+
+"Look at that _very_ bow-windowed man," Wagg said. "He's an undertaker
+in Amen Corner, and attends funerals and dinners. Cold meat and hot,
+don't you perceive? He's the sham butler here, and I observe, my dear
+Mr. Pendennis, as you will through life, that wherever there is a sham
+butler at a London dinner there is sham wine--this sherry is filthy.
+Bungay, my boy, where did you get this delicious brown sherry?"
+
+"I'm glad you like it, Mr. Wagg; glass with you," said the publisher.
+"It's some I got from Alderman Benning's store, and gave a good figure
+for it, I can tell you. Mr. Pendennis, will you join us? Your 'ealth,
+gentlemen."
+
+"The old rogue, where does he expect to go to? It came from the public
+house," Wagg said. "It requires two men to carry off that sherry, 'tis
+so uncommonly strong. I wish I had a bottle of old Steyne's wine here,
+Pendennis: your uncle and I have had many a one. He sends it about to
+people where he is in the habit of dining. I remember at poor Rawdon
+Crawley's, Sir Pitt Crawley's brother--he was Governor of Coventry
+Island--Steyne's chef always came in the morning, and the butler arrived
+with the champagne from Gaunt House, in the ice-pails ready."
+
+"How good this is!" said Popjoy, good-naturedly. You must have a _cordon
+bleu_ in your kitchen."
+
+"O, yes," Mrs. Bungay said, thinking he spoke of a jack-chain very
+likely.
+
+"I mean a French chef," said the polite guest.
+
+"O, yes, your lordship," again said the lady.
+
+"Does your artist say he's a Frenchman, Mrs. B.?" called out Wagg.
+
+"Well, I'm sure I don't know," answered the publisher's lady.
+
+"Because, if he does, he's a _quizzin yer_," cried Mr. Wagg; but nobody
+saw the pun, which disconcerted somewhat the bashful punster. "The
+dinner is from Grigg's, in St. Paul's churchyard; so is Bacon's," he
+whispered Pen. "Bungay writes to give half-a-crown a head more than
+Bacon,--so does Bacon. They would poison each other's ices if they
+could get near them; and as for the made-dishes--they are poison.
+This--hum--ha--this _Brimborion a la Sevigne_ is delicious, Mrs. B.,"
+he said, helping himself to a dish which the undertaker handed to him.
+
+"Well, I'm glad you like it," Mrs. Bungay answered, blushing, and
+not knowing whether the name of the dish was actually that which Wagg
+gave to it, but dimly conscious that that individual was quizzing her.
+Accordingly she hated Mr. Wagg with female ardor; and would have deposed
+him from his command over Mr. Bungay's periodical, but that his name was
+great in the trade, and his reputation in the land considerable.
+
+By the displacement of persons, Warrington had found himself on the
+right hand of Mrs. Shandon, who sate in plain black silk and faded
+ornaments by the side of the florid publisher. The sad smile of the lady
+moved his rough heart to pity. Nobody seemed to interest himself about
+her: she sate looking at her husband, who himself seemed rather abashed
+in the presence of some of the company. Wenham and Wagg both knew him and
+his circumstances. He had worked with the latter, and was immeasurably
+his superior in wit, genius, and acquirement; but Wagg's star was
+brilliant in the world, and poor Shandon was unknown there. He could not
+speak before the noisy talk of the coarser and more successful man; but
+drank his wine in silence, and as much of it as the people would give
+him. He was under _surveillance_. Bungay had warned the undertaker not
+to fill the captain's glass too often or too full. It was a melancholy
+precaution that, and the more melancholy that it was necessary. Mrs.
+Shandon, too, cast alarmed glances across the table to see that her
+husband did not exceed.
+
+Abashed by the failure of his first pun, for he was impudent and easily
+disconcerted, Wagg kept his conversation pretty much to Pen during the
+rest of dinner, and of course chiefly spoke about their neighbors. "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 _apropos_--Popjoy permitted the use of his name, and I dare
+say supplied a page here and there--and 'Desperation, or, the Fugitive
+Duchess' made its appearance. The great fun is to examine Popjoy about
+his own work, of which he doesn't know a word.--I say, Popjoy, what a
+capital passage that is in Volume Three--where the cardinal in disguise,
+after being converted by the Bishop of London, proposes marriage to the
+duchess's daughter."
+
+"Glad you like it," Popjoy answered; "it's a favorite bit of my own."
+
+"There's no such thing in the whole book," whispered Wagg to Pen.
+"Invented it myself. Gad! it wouldn't be a bad plot for a high-church
+novel."
+
+"I remember poor Byron, Hobhouse, Trelawney, and myself, dining with
+Cardinal Mezzocaldo, at Rome," Captain Sumph began, "and we had some
+Orvieto wine for dinner, which Byron liked very much. And I remember
+how the cardinal regretted that he was a single man. We went to Civita
+Vecchia two days afterward where Byron's yacht was--and, by Jove, the
+cardinal died within three weeks; and Byron was very sorry, for he
+rather liked him."
+
+"A devilish interesting story, Sumph, indeed," Wagg said.
+
+"You should publish some of those stories, Captain Sumph, you really
+should. Such a volume would make our friend Bungay's fortune," Shandon
+said.
+
+"Why don't you ask Sumph to publish 'em in your new paper--the
+what-d'ye-call'em?--hay, Shandon," bawled out Wagg.
+
+"Why don't you ask him to publish 'em in your old magazine, the
+Thingumbob?" Shandon replied.
+
+"Is there going to be a new paper!" asked Wenham, who knew perfectly
+well; but was ashamed of his connection with the press.
+
+"Bungay going to bring out a paper?" cried Popjoy, who, on the contrary,
+was proud of his literary reputation and acquaintances. "You must employ
+me. Mrs. Bungay, use your influence with him, and make him employ me.
+Prose or verse--what shall it be? Novels, poems, travels, or leading
+articles, begad. Any thing or every thing--only let Bungay pay me, and
+I'm ready--I am now, my dear Mrs. Bungay, begad now."
+
+"It's to be called the 'Small Beer Chronicle,'" growled Wagg, "and little
+Popjoy is to be engaged for the infantine department."
+
+"It is to be called the 'Pall-Mall Gazette,' sir, and we shall be very
+happy to have you with us," Shandon said.
+
+"'Pall-Mall Gazette'--why 'Pall-Mall Gazette?'" asked Wagg.
+
+"Because the editor was born at Dublin, the sub-editor at Cork, because
+the proprietor lives in Paternoster Row, and the paper is published in
+Catherine-street, Strand. Won't that reason suffice you, Wagg?" Shandon
+said; he was getting rather angry. "Every thing must have a name. My dog
+Ponto has got a name. You've got a name, and a name which you deserve,
+more or less, bedad. Why d'ye grudge the name to our paper?"
+
+"By any other name it would smell as sweet," said Wagg.
+
+"I'll have ye remember its name's not what-d'ye-call'em, Mr. Wagg," said
+Shandon. "You know its name well enough, and--and you know mine."
+
+"And I know your address too," said Wagg, but this was spoken in an
+under-tone, and the good-natured Irishman was appeased almost in an
+instant after his ebullition of spleen, and asked Wagg to drink wine
+with him, in a friendly voice.
+
+When the ladies retired from the table, the talk grew louder still; and
+presently Wenham, in a courtly speech, proposed that every body should
+drink to the health of the new Journal, eulogizing highly the talents,
+wit, and learning, of its editor, Captain Shandon. It was his maxim
+never to lose the support of a newspaper man, and in the course of that
+evening, he went round and saluted every literary gentleman present with
+a privy compliment specially addressed to him; informing this one how
+great an impression had been made in Downing-street by his last article,
+and telling that one how profoundly his good friend, the Duke of So and
+So, had been struck by the ability of the late numbers.
+
+The evening came to a close, and in spite of all the precautions to
+the contrary, poor Shandon reeled in his walk, and went home to his new
+lodgings, with his faithful wife by his side, and the cabman on his
+box jeering at him. Wenham had a chariot of his own, which he put at
+Popjoy's seat; and the timid Miss Bunion seeing Mr. Wagg, who was her
+neighbor, about to depart, insisted upon a seat in his carriage, much
+to that gentleman's discomfiture.
+
+Pen and Warrington walked home together in the moonlight. "And now,"
+Warrington said, "that you have seen the men of letters, tell me, was I
+far wrong in saying that there are thousands of people in this town, who
+don't write books, who are, to the full, as clever and intellectual as
+people who do?"
+
+Pen was forced to confess that the literary personages with whom he
+had become acquainted had not said much, in the course of the night's
+conversation, that was worthy to be remembered or quoted. In fact, not
+one word about literature had been said during the whole course of the
+night:--and it may be whispered to those uninitiated people who are
+anxious to know the habits and make the acquaintance of men of letters,
+that there are no race of people who talk about books, or, perhaps, who
+read books, so little as literary men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+THE PALL-MALL GAZETTE.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 among the contributors to its columns. Was there
+any foundation for these rumors? We are not at liberty to say whether
+they were well or ill-founded; but this much we may divulge, that an
+article upon foreign policy, which was generally attributed to a noble
+lord, whose connection with the Foreign Office is very well known, was
+in reality composed by Captain Shandon, in the parlor of the Bear and
+Staff public-house near Whitehall Stairs, whither the printer's boy
+had tracked him, and where a literary ally of his, Mr. Bludyer, had a
+temporary residence; and that a series of papers on finance questions,
+which were universally supposed to be written by a great statesman of
+the House of Commons, were in reality composed by Mr. George Warrington
+of the Upper Temple.
+
+That there may have been some dealings between the "Pall-Mall Gazette"
+and this influential party, is very possible. Percy Popjoy (whose
+father, Lord Falconet, was a member of the party) might be seen not
+unfrequently ascending the stairs to Warrington's chambers; and some
+information appeared in the paper which gave it a character, and could
+only be got from very peculiar sources. Several poems, feeble in
+thought, but loud and vigorous in expression, appeared in the "Pall-Mall
+Gazette," with the signature of "P. P.," and it must be owned that his
+novel was praised in the new journal in a very outrageous manner.
+
+In the political department of the paper Mr. Pen did not take any share;
+but he was a most active literary contributor. The "Pall-Mall Gazette"
+had its offices, as we have heard, in Catherine-street, in the Strand,
+and hither Pen often came with his manuscripts in his pocket, and with
+a great deal of bustle and pleasure; such as a man feels at the outset
+of his literary career, when to see himself in print is still a novel
+sensation, and he yet pleases himself to think that his writings are
+creating some noise in the world.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 any thing
+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
+a 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
+trowsers and dingy shirt sleeves, cheerfully describing and arranging
+the most brilliant _fetes_ 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 parlor of the taverns which he frequented, whereas from his
+writing you would have supposed that he dined with embassadors, and that
+his common lounge was the bow-window of White's. Errors of description,
+it is true, occasionally slipped from his pen; but the "Ballinafad
+Sentinel," of which he was own correspondent, suffered by these, not the
+"Pall-Mall Gazette," in which Jack was not permitted to write much, his
+London chiefs thinking that the scissors and the paste were better
+wielded by him than the pen.
+
+Pen took a great deal of pains with the writing of his reviews, and
+having a pretty fair share of desultory reading, acquired in the early
+years of his life, an eager fancy and a keen sense of fun, his articles
+pleased his chief and the public, and he was proud to think that he
+deserved the money which he earned. We may be sure that the "Pall-Mall
+Gazette" was taken in regularly at Fairoaks, and read with delight by
+the two ladies there. It was received at Clavering Park, too, where we
+know there was a young lady of great literary tastes; and old Doctor
+Portman himself, to whom the widow sent her paper after she had got her
+son's articles by heart, signified his approval of Pen's productions,
+saying that the lad had spirit, taste, and fancy, and wrote, if not like
+a scholar, at any rate like a gentleman.
+
+And what was the astonishment and delight of our friend Major Pendennis,
+on walking into one of his clubs, the Regent, where Wenham, Lord
+Falconet, and some other gentlemen of good reputation and fashion were
+assembled, to hear them one day talking over a number of the "Pall-Mall
+Gazette," and of an article which appeared in its columns, making some
+bitter fun of a 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 delighted 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 connections quite below
+his dignity as a major and a gentleman.
+
+But when the oracular Wenham praised the boy's production; when Lord
+Falconet, who had had the news from Percy Popjoy, approved of the genius
+of young Pen; when the great Lord Steyne himself, to whom the major
+referred the article, laughed and sniggered over it, swore it was
+capital, and that the Muffborough would writhe under it, like a whale
+under a harpoon, the major, as in duty bound, began to admire his nephew
+very much, said, "By gad, the young rascal had some stuff in him, and
+would do something; he had always said he would do something;" and with
+a hand quite tremulous with pleasure, the old gentleman sate down to
+write to the widow at Fairoaks all that the great folks had said in
+praise of Pen; and he wrote to the young rascal, too, asking when he
+would come and eat a chop with his old uncle, and saying that he was
+commissioned to take him to dinner at Gaunt House, for Lord Steyne liked
+any body who could entertain him, whether by his folly, wit, or by
+his dullness, by his oddity, affectation, good spirits, or any other
+quality. Pen flung his letter across the table to Warrington: perhaps he
+was disappointed that the other did not seem to be much affected by it.
+
+The courage of young critics is prodigious: they clamber up to the
+judgment-seat, and, with scarce a hesitation, give their opinion
+upon works the most intricate or profound. Had Macaulay's History or
+Herschel's Astronomy been put before Pen at this period, he would have
+looked through the volumes, meditated his opinion over a cigar, and
+signified his august approval of either author, as if the critic had
+been their born superior and indulgent master and patron. By the help
+of the Biographie Universelle or the British Museum, he would be able
+to take a rapid _resume_ of a historical period, and allude to names,
+dates, and facts, in such a masterly, easy way, as to astonish his
+mamma at home, who wondered where her boy could have acquired such a
+prodigious store of reading; and himself, too, when he came to read over
+his articles two or three months after they had been composed, and when
+he had forgotten the subject and the books which he had consulted. At
+that period of his life Mr. Pen owns, that he would not have hesitated,
+at twenty-four hours' notice, to pass an 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 _aid-de-camp_, and was, indeed, better pleased with Pen's light
+and brilliant flashes, than with the heavier metal which his elder
+coadjutor brought to bear.
+
+But though he might justly be blamed on the score of impertinence and a
+certain prematurity of judgment, Mr. Pen was a perfectly honest critic;
+a great deal too candid for Mr. Bungay's purposes, indeed, who grumbled
+sadly at his impartiality. Pen and his chief, the captain, had a dispute
+upon this subject one day. "In the name of common sense, Mr. Pendennis,"
+Shandon asked, "what have you been doing--praising one of Mr. Bacon's
+books? Bungay has been with me in a fury this morning, at seeing a
+laudatory article upon one of the works of the odious firm over the
+way."
+
+Pen's eyes opened with wide astonishment. "Do you mean to say," he
+asked, "that we are to praise no books that Bacon publishes: or that,
+if the books are good, we are to say they are bad?"
+
+"My good young friend--for what do you suppose a benevolent publisher
+undertakes a critical journal, to benefit his rival?" Shandon inquired.
+
+"To benefit himself certainly, but to tell the truth too," Pen
+said--"_ruat caelum_, to tell the truth."
+
+"And my prospectus," said Shandon, with a laugh and a sneer; "do you
+consider that was a work of mathematical accuracy of statement?"
+
+"Pardon me, that is not the question," Pen said; "and I don't think you
+very much care to argue it. I had some qualms of conscience about that
+same prospectus, and debated the matter with my friend Warrington. We
+agreed, however," Pen said, laughing, "that because the prospectus was
+rather declamatory and poetical, and the giant was painted upon the
+show-board rather larger than the original, who was inside the caravan;
+we need not be too scrupulous about this trifling inaccuracy, but might
+do our part of the show, without loss of character or remorse of
+conscience. We are the fiddlers, and play our tunes only; you are the
+showman."
+
+"And leader of the van," said Shandon. "Well I am glad that your
+conscience gave you leave to play for us."
+
+"Yes, but," said Pen, with a fine sense of the dignity of his position,
+"we are all party men in England, and I will stick to my party like a
+Briton. I will be as good-natured as you like to our own side; he is a
+fool who quarrels with his own nest; and I will hit the enemy as hard as
+you like--but with fair play, captain, if you please. One can't tell all
+the truth, I suppose; but one can tell nothing but the truth; and I
+would rather starve, by Jove, and never earn another penny by my pen"
+(this redoubted instrument had now been in use for some six weeks,
+and Pen spoke of it with vast enthusiasm and respect) "than strike an
+opponent an unfair blow, or, if called upon to place him, rank him below
+his honest desert."
+
+"Well, Mr. Pendennis, when we want Bacon smashed, we must get some other
+hammer to do it," Shandon said with fatal good-nature; and very likely
+thought within himself, "A few years hence perhaps the young gentleman
+won't be so squeamish." The veteran Condottiere himself was no longer so
+scrupulous. He had fought and killed on so many a side for many a year
+past, that remorse had long left him. "Gad," said he, "you've a tender
+conscience, Mr. Pendennis. It's the luxury of all novices, and I may
+have had one once myself; but that sort of bloom wears off with the
+rubbing of the world, and I'm not going to the trouble myself of putting
+on an artificial complexion, like our pious friend Wenham, or our model
+of virtue, Wagg."
+
+"I don't know whether some people's hypocrisy is not better, captain,
+than others' cynicism."
+
+"It's more profitable, at any rate," said the captain, biting his
+nails. "That Wenham is as dull a quack as ever quacked: and you see
+the carriage in which he drove to dinner. 'Faith, it'll be a long time
+before Mrs. Shandon will take a drive in her own chariot. God help
+her, poor thing!" And Pen went away from his chief, after their little
+dispute and colloquy, pointing his own moral to the captain's tale,
+and thinking to himself, "Behold this man, stored with genius, wit,
+learning, and a hundred good natural gifts: see how he has wrecked them,
+by paltering with his honesty, and forgetting to respect himself. Wilt
+thou remember thyself, O Pen? thou art conceited enough. Wilt thou
+sell thy honor for a bottle? No, by heaven's grace, we will be honest,
+whatever befalls, and our mouths shall only speak the truth when they
+open."
+
+A punishment, or, at least, a trial, was in store for Mr. Pen. In the
+very next Number of the "Pall-Mall Gazette," Warrington read out, with
+roars of laughter, an article which by no means amused Arthur Pendennis,
+who was himself at work with a criticism for the next week's number of
+the same journal; and in which the Spring Annual was ferociously
+maltreated by some unknown writer. The person of all most cruelly mauled
+was Pen himself. His verses had not appeared with his own name in the
+Spring Annual, but under an assumed signature. As he had refused to
+review the book, Shandon had handed it over to Mr. Bludyer, with
+directions to that author to dispose of it. And he had done so
+effectually. Mr. Bludyer, who was a man of very considerable talent, and
+of a race which, I believe, is quite extinct in the press of our time,
+had a certain notoriety in his profession, and reputation for savage
+humor. 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 book-stall, and purchased a
+pint of brandy with the proceeds of the volume.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+WHERE PEN APPEARS IN TOWN AND COUNTRY.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 labor 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 salable
+property), farewell poetry and aerial flights: Pegasus only rises now
+like Mr. Green's balloon, at periods advertised beforehand, and when
+the spectator's money has been paid. Pegasus trots in harness, over the
+stony pavement, and pulls a cart or a cab behind him. Often Pegasus does
+his work with panting sides and trembling knees, and not seldom gets a
+cut of the whip from his driver.
+
+Do not let us, however, be too prodigal of our pity upon Pegasus. There
+is no reason why this animal should be exempt from labor, or illness,
+or decay, any more than any of the other creatures of God's world. If he
+gets the whip, Pegasus very often deserves it, and I for one am quite
+ready to protest with my friend, George Warrington, against the doctrine
+which some poetical sympathizers are inclined to put forward, viz., that
+men of letters, and what is called genius, are to be exempt from the
+prose duties of this daily, bread-wanting, tax-paying life, and are not
+to be made to work and pay like their neighbors.
+
+Well, then, the "Pall Mall Gazette" being duly established, and Arthur
+Pendennis's merits recognized 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 three-score, 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 theaters
+complained of him woefully, 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 humor and justice, and had not therefore
+an overweening respect for his own works; besides, he had his friend
+Warrington at his elbow--a terrible critic if the young man was disposed
+to be conceited, and more savage over Pen than ever he was to those whom
+he tried at his literary assize.
+
+By these critical labors, 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 labor. 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 labors 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 labors, 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 among
+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, Dr. Portman at their head, called upon Mr. Pen, and treated him
+with marked respect; between mother and son, it was all fondness,
+confidence, and affection. It was the happiest fortnight of the widow's
+whole life; perhaps in the lives of both of them. The holiday was gone
+only too quickly; and Pen was back in the busy world, and the gentle
+widow alone again. She sent Arthur's money to Laura: I don't know why
+this young lady took the opportunity of leaving home when Pen was coming
+thither, or whether he was the more piqued or relieved by her absence.
+
+He was by this time, by his own merits and his uncle's introductions,
+pretty well introduced into London, and known both in literary and
+polite circles. Among 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 can not 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 favorable eye;
+and they reported how they met him at the houses of persons of fashion,
+among 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.
+
+[Illustration][**moved up from 364]
+
+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, where-ever
+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 book-stall, 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. Toward 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 May Fair; 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 few years since--but the time is
+gone, and most of the men. Bludyer will no more bully authors or cheat
+landlords of their score. Shandon, the learned and thriftless, the witty
+and unwise, sleeps his last sleep. They buried honest Doolan the other
+day: never will he cringe or flatter, never pull long-bow or empty
+whisky-noggin any more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The London season was now blooming in its full vigor, 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 bay-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: every body was in town in a word; and, of course, Major Arthur
+Pendennis, who was somebody, was not absent.
+
+With his head tied up in a smart bandana handkerchief, and his meager
+carcass enveloped in a brilliant Turkish dressing-gown, the worthy
+gentleman sate on a certain morning by his fire-side, letting his feet
+gently simmer in a bath, while he took his early cup of tea, and perused
+his "Morning Post." He could not have faced the day without his two
+hours' toilet, without his early cup of tea, without his "Morning Post."
+I suppose nobody in the world except Morgan, not even Morgan's master
+himself, knew how feeble and ancient the major was growing, and what
+numberless little comforts he required.
+
+If men sneer, as our habit is, at the artifices of an old beauty, at
+her paint, perfumes, ringlets; at those innumerable, and to us unknown
+stratagems, with which she is said to remedy the ravages of time, and
+reconstruct the charms whereof years have bereft her; the ladies, it
+is to be presumed, are not on their side altogether ignorant that men
+are vain as well as they, and that the toilets of old bucks are to the
+full as elaborate as their own. How is it that old Blushington keeps
+that constant little rose-tint on his cheeks; and where does old Blondel
+get the preparation which makes his silver hair pass for golden? Have
+you ever seen Lord Hotspur get off his horse when he thinks nobody is
+looking? Taken out of his stirrups, his shiny boots can hardly totter up
+the steps of Hotspur House. He is a dashing young nobleman still as you
+see the back of him in Rotten Row; when you behold him on foot what an
+old, old fellow! Did you ever form to yourself any idea of Dick Lacy
+(Dick has been Dick these sixty years) in a natural state, and without
+his stays? All these men are objects whom the observer of human life
+and manners may contemplate with as much profit as the most elderly
+Belgravian Venus, or inveterate Mayfair Jezebel. An old reprobate
+daddy-long-legs, 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 arm-chair, and make a text of him, and preach about him to the
+congregation, could be turned to a wholesome use for once in his life,
+and might be surprised to find that some good thoughts came out of him.
+But, we are wandering from our text, the honest major, who sits all this
+while with his feet cooling in the bath: Morgan takes them out of that
+place of purification, and dries them daintily, and proceeds to set the
+old gentleman on his legs, with waistband and wig, starched cravat, and
+spotless boots and gloves.
+
+It was during these hours of the toilet that Morgan and his employer had
+their confidential conversations, for they did not meet much at other
+times of the day--the major abhorring the society of his own chairs and
+tables in his lodgings; and Morgan, his master's toilet over and letters
+delivered, had his time very much on his own hands.
+
+This spare time the active and well-mannered gentleman bestowed among
+the valets and butlers of the nobility, his acquaintance; and Morgan
+Pendennis, as he was styled, for, by such compound names, gentlemen's
+gentlemen are called in their private circles, was a frequent and
+welcome guest at some of the very highest tables in this town. He was a
+member of two influential clubs in Mayfair and Pimlico; and he was thus
+enabled to know the whole gossip of the town, and entertain his master
+very agreeably during the two hours' toilet conversation. He knew a
+hundred tales and legends regarding persons of the very highest _ton_,
+whose valets canvass their august secrets, just, my dear madam, as our
+own parlor-maids and dependents 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 candor; and the next day her mistress will
+probably know that Captain and Mrs. Jones have been a-quarreling as
+usual. Nothing is secret. Take it as a rule that John knows every thing:
+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 every
+thing, and was at once admirably scandalous and delightfully discreet,
+it is but justice to Morgan to say, that a great deal of his master's
+information was supplied to that worthy man by his valet, who went out
+and foraged knowledge for him. Indeed, what more effectual plan is there
+to get a knowledge of London society, than to begin at the
+foundation--that is, at the kitchen floor?
+
+So Mr. Morgan and his employer conversed as the latter's toilet
+proceeded. There had been a drawing-room on the day previous, and
+the major read among the presentations that of Lady Clavering by Lady
+Rockminster, and of Miss Amory by her mother Lady Clavering; and in a
+further part of the paper their dresses were described, with a precision
+and in a jargon which will puzzle and amuse the antiquary of future
+generations. The sight of these names carried Pendennis back to the
+country.
+
+"How long have the Claverings been in London?" he asked: "pray, Morgan,
+have you seen any of their people?"
+
+"Sir Francis have sent away his foring man, sir," Mr. Morgan replied;
+"and have took a friend of mine as own man, sir. Indeed, he applied on
+my reckmendation. You may recklect Towler, sir--tall, red-aired man--but
+dyes his air. Was groom of the chambers in Lord Levant's famly, till his
+lordship broke hup. It's a fall for Towler, sir; but pore men can't be
+particklar," said the valet, with a pathetic voice.
+
+"Devilish hard on Towler, by gad!" said the major, amused, "and not
+pleasant for Lord Levant--he, he!"
+
+"Always knew it was coming, sir. I spoke to you of it Michaelmas was
+four years: when her ladyship put the diamonds in pawn. It was Towler,
+sir, took 'em in two cabs to Dobree's; and a good deal of the plate went
+the same way. Don't you remember seeing of it at Blackwall, with the
+Levant arms and coronick, and Lord Levant settn oppsit to it at the
+Marquis of Steyne's dinner? Beg your pardon; did I cut you, sir?"
+
+Morgan was now operating upon the major's chin; he continued the
+theme while stropping the skillful razor. "They've took a house in
+Grosvenor-place, and are coming out strong, sir. Her ladyship's going
+to give three parties, besides a dinner a week, sir. Her fortune won't
+stand it--can't stand it."
+
+"Gad, she had a devilish good cook when I was at Fairoaks," the major
+said, with very little compassion for the widow Amory's fortune.
+
+"Mirobblan was his name, sir; Mirobblan's gone away, sir," Morgan said;
+and the major, this time, with hearty sympathy said, "he was devilish
+sorry to lose him."
+
+"There's been a tremenjuous row about that Mosseer Mirobblan," Morgan
+continued. "At a ball at Baymouth, sir, bless his impadence, he
+challenged Mr. Harthur to fight a jewel, sir, which Mr. Harthur was very
+near knocking him down, and pitchin' him out awinder, and serve him
+right; but Chevalier Strong, sir, came up and stopped the shindy--I beg
+pardon, the holtercation, sir--them French cooks has as much pride and
+hinsolence as if they was real gentlemen."
+
+"I heard something of that quarrel," said the major; "but Mirobolant was
+not turned off for that?"
+
+"No, sir; that affair, sir, Mr. Harthur forgave it him, and beaved most
+handsome, was hushed hup: it was about Miss Hamory, sir, that he ad his
+dismissal. Those French fellers, they fancy every body is in love with
+'em; and he climbed up the large grape vine to her winder, sir, and was
+a trying to get in, when he was caught, sir; and Mr. Strong came out,
+and they got the garden-engine and played on him, and there was no end
+of a row, sir."
+
+"Confound his impudence! You don't mean to say Miss Amory encouraged
+him," cried the major, amazed at a peculiar expression in Mr. Morgan's
+countenance.
+
+Morgan resumed his imperturbable demeanor. "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 piano, 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 Fribsby,
+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 Fribsby; and he was nearly
+shot by the keeper in the park."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In the course of that very day, it chanced that the major had stationed
+himself in the great window of Bays's Club, in St. James's-street, at
+the hour in the afternoon when you see a half score of respectable old
+bucks similarly recreating themselves (Bays's is rather an old-fashioned
+place of resort now, and many of its members more than middle-aged; but
+in the time of the prince regent, these old fellows occupied the same
+window, and were some of the very greatest dandies in this empire);
+Major Pendennis was looking from the great window, and spied his nephew
+Arthur walking down the street in company with his friend Mr. Popjoy.
+
+"Look!" said Popjoy to Pen, as they passed, "did you ever pass Bays's
+at four o'clock, without seeing that collection of old fogies? It's a
+regular museum. They ought to be cast in wax, and set up at Madame
+Tussaud's--"
+
+"--In a chamber of old horrors by themselves," Pen said, laughing.
+
+"--In the chamber of horrors! Gad, doosid good!" Pop cried. "They
+_are_ old rogues, most of 'em, and no mistake. There's old Blondel;
+there's my Uncle Colchicum, the most confounded old sinner in Europe;
+there's--hullo! there's somebody rapping the window, and nodding at us."
+
+"It's my uncle, the major," said Pen. "Is he an old sinner, too?"
+
+"Notorious old rogue," Pop said, wagging his head. ("Notowious old
+wogue," he pronounced the words, thereby rendering them much more
+emphatic.) "He's beckoning you in; he wants to speak to you."
+
+"Come in too," Pen said.
+
+"--Can't," replied the other. "Cut uncle Col. two years ago, about
+Mademoiselle Frangipane--Ta, ta," and the young sinner took leave
+of Pen, and the club of the elder criminals, and sauntered into
+Blacquiere's, an adjacent establishment, frequented by reprobates of
+his own age.
+
+Colchicum, Blondel, and the senior bucks had just been conversing about
+the Clavering family, whose appearance in London had formed the subject
+of Major Pendennis's morning conversation with his valet. Mr. Blondel's
+house was next to that of Sir Francis Clavering, in Grosvenor-place:
+giving very good dinners himself, he had remarked some activity in his
+neighbor's kitchen. Sir Francis, indeed, had a new chef, who had come in
+more than once, and dressed Mr. Blondel's dinner for him; that gentleman
+having only a remarkably expert female artist permanently engaged in his
+establishment, and employing such chiefs of note as happened to be free
+on the occasion of his grand banquets. "They go to a devilish expense
+and see devilish bad company as yet, I hear," Mr. Blondel said; "they
+scour the streets, by gad, to get people to dine with 'em. Champignon
+says it breaks his heart to serve up a dinner to their society. What a
+shame it is that those low people should have money at all," cried Mr.
+Blondel, whose grandfather had been a reputable leather-breeches maker,
+and whose father had lent money to the princes.
+
+"I wish I had fallen in with the widow myself," sighed Lord Colchicum,
+"and not been laid up with that confounded gout at Leghorn. I would have
+married the woman myself. I'm told she has six hundred thousand pounds
+in the Threes."
+
+"Not _quite_ so much as that. I knew her family in India," Major
+Pendennis said. "I knew her family in India; her father was an
+enormously rich old indigo-planter; know all about her: Clavering has
+the next estate to ours in the country. Ha! there's my nephew walking
+with--"
+
+"With mine: the infernal young scamp!" said Lord Colchicum, glowering at
+Popjoy out of his heavy eyebrows; and he turned away from the window as
+Major Pendennis tapped upon it.
+
+The major was in high good-humor. 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 their 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 the 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, while that gentleman's other wing was engaged
+with his grace's right), and he wished all Gray Friar's School, all
+Oxbridge University, all Paternoster Row and the temple, and Laura and
+his mother at Fairoaks, could be standing on each side of the street,
+to see the meeting between him and his uncle and the most famous duke
+in Christendom.
+
+"How do, Pendennis? fine day," were his grace's remarkable words, and
+with a nod of his august head he passed on--in a blue frock coat and
+spotless white duck trowsers, in a white stock, with a shining buckle
+behind.
+
+Old Pendennis, whose likeness to his grace has been remarked, began to
+imitate him unconsciously, after they had parted, speaking with curt
+sentences, after the manner of the great man. We have all of us, no
+doubt, met with more than one military officer who has so imitated the
+manner of a certain great captain of the age; and has, perhaps, changed
+his own natural character and disposition, because Fate had endowed him
+with an aquiline nose. In like manner have we not seen many another man
+pride himself on having a tall forehead and a supposed likeness to Mr.
+Canning? many another go through life swelling with self-gratification
+on account of an imagined resemblance (we say "imagined," because that
+any body 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
+lately upon poor Tom Bickerstaff, who having no more imagination
+than Mr. Joseph Hume, looked in the glass and fancied himself like
+Shakspeare? shaved his forehead so as farther to resemble the immortal
+bard, wrote tragedies incessantly, and died perfectly crazy--actually
+perished of his forehead! These or similar freaks of vanity most people
+who have frequented the world must have seen in their experience. Pen
+laughed in his roguish sleeve at the manner in which his uncle began to
+imitate the great man from whom they had just parted: but Mr. Pen was as
+vain in his own way, perhaps, as the elder gentleman, and strutted, with
+a very consequential air of his own, by the major's side.
+
+"Yes, my dear boy," said the old bachelor, as they sauntered through
+the Green Park, where many poor children were disporting happily, and
+errand boys were playing at toss-halfpenny, and black sheep were
+grazing in the sunshine, and an actor was learning his part on a bench,
+and nursery maids and their charges sauntered here and there, and
+several couples were walking in a leisurely manner; "yes, depend on it,
+my boy, for a poor man, there is nothing like having good acquaintances.
+Who were those men, with whom you saw me in the bay-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 up-stairs, at Bays's,
+playing piquet 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 to half-past seven, when he dresses for dinner."
+
+"A very pious manner of spending his time," Pen said, laughing, and
+thinking that his uncle was falling into the twaddling state.
+
+"Gad, sir, that is not the question. A man of his estate may employ
+his time as he chooses. When you are a baronet, a county member, with
+ten thousand acres of the best land in Cheshire, and such a place as
+Trumpington (though he never goes there), you may do as you like."
+
+"And so that was his brougham, sir, was it?" the nephew said, with
+almost a sneer.
+
+"His brougham--O ay, yes!--and that brings me back to my point--revenons
+a nos moutons. Yes, begad! revenons a nos 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 Gray Friars, hey? I'm of
+the opinion of my old friend Leech, of the Forty-fourth; and a devilish
+good shrewd fellow he was, as most Scotchmen are. Gad, sir, Leech used
+to say, 'He was so poor that he couldn't afford to know a poor man.'"
+
+"You don't act up to your principles, uncle," Pen said, good-naturedly.
+
+"Up to my principles; how, sir?" the major asked, rather testily.
+
+"You would have cut me in Saint James's-street, sir," Pen said, "were
+your practice not more benevolent than your theory; you who live with
+dukes and magnates of the land, and would take no notice of a poor devil
+like me." By which speech we may see that Mr. Pen was getting on in the
+world, and could flatter as well as laugh in his sleeve.
+
+Major Pendennis was appeased instantly, and very much pleased. He tapped
+affectionately his nephew's arm on which he was leaning, and said,
+"You, sir, you are my flesh and blood! Hang it, sir, I've been very
+proud of you and very fond of you, but for your confounded follies
+and extravagancies, and wild oats, sir, which I hope you've sown. Yes,
+begad! I hope you've sown 'em; I hope you've sown 'em, begad! My object,
+Arthur, is to make a man of you, to see you well placed in the world,
+as becomes one of your name and my own, sir. You have got yourself a
+little reputation by your literary talents, which I am very far from
+undervaluing, though in my time, begad, poetry and genius and that sort
+of thing were devilish disreputable. There was poor Byron, for instance,
+who ruined himself, and contracted the worst habits by living with
+poets and newspaper-writers, and people of that kind. But the times are
+changed now--there's a run upon literature--clever fellows get into the
+best houses in town, begad! _Tempora mutantur_, sir; and by Jove, I
+suppose whatever is is right, as Shakspeare says."
+
+Pen did not think fit to tell his uncle who was the author who had made
+use of that remarkable phrase, and here descending from the Green Park,
+the pair made their way into Grosvenor-place, and to the door of the
+mansion occupied there by Sir Francis and Lady Clavering.
+
+The dining-room shutters of this handsome mansion were freshly gilded;
+the knockers shone gorgeous upon the newly-painted door; the balcony
+before the drawing-room bloomed with a portable garden of the most
+beautiful plants, and with flowers, white, and pink, and scarlet; the
+windows of the upper room (the sacred chamber and dressing-room of my
+lady, doubtless), and even a pretty little casement of the third story,
+which keen-sighted Mr. Pen presumed to belong to the virgin bed-room of
+Miss Blanche Amory, were similarly adorned with floral ornaments, and
+the whole exterior face of the house presented the most brilliant aspect
+which fresh new paint, shining plate glass, newly cleaned bricks, and
+spotless mortar, could offer to the beholder.
+
+"How Strong must have rejoiced in organizing all this splendor," thought
+Pen. He recognized the chevalier's genius in the magnificence before
+him.
+
+"Lady Clavering is going out for her drive," the major said. "We
+shall only have to leave our pasteboards, Arthur." He used the word
+"pasteboards," having heard it from some of the ingenuous youth of
+the nobility about town, and as a modern phrase suited to Pen's tender
+years. Indeed, as the two gentlemen reached the door, a landau drove up,
+a magnificent yellow carriage, lined with brocade or satin of a faint
+cream color, drawn by wonderful gray 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 splendor 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
+grays--a young man still, but of a solemn countenance, with a laced
+waistcoat and buckles in his shoes--little buckles, unlike those which
+John and Jeames, the footmen, wear, and which we know are large, and
+spread elegantly over the foot.
+
+One of the leaves of the hall door was opened, and John--one of the
+largest of his race--was leaning against the door pillar, with his
+ambrosial hair powdered, his legs crossed; beautiful, silk-stockinged;
+in his hand his cane, gold-headed, _dolichoskion_. Jeames was invisible,
+but near at hand, waiting in the hall, with the gentleman who does not
+wear livery, and ready to fling down the roll of hair-cloth over which
+her ladyship was to step to her carriage. These things and men, the
+which to tell of demands time, are seen in the glance of a practiced
+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, and two
+ladies, attired in the highest style of fashion, and accompanied by a
+third, who carried a Blenheim spaniel, yelping in a light blue ribbon,
+came forth to ascend the carriage.
+
+Miss Amory was the first to enter, which she did with aerial lightness,
+and took the place which she liked best. Lady Clavering next followed,
+but her ladyship was more mature of age and heavy of foot, and one of
+those feet, attired in a green satin boot, with some part of a stocking,
+which was very fine, whatever the ankle might be which it encircled,
+might be seen swaying on the carriage-step, as her ladyship leaned for
+support on the arm of the unbending Jeames, by the enraptured observer
+of female beauty who happened to be passing at the time of this imposing
+ceremonial.
+
+The Pendennises, senior and junior, beheld those charms as they came
+up to the door--the major looking grave and courtly, and Pen somewhat
+abashed at the carriage and its owners; for he thought of sundry little
+passages at Clavering, which made his heart beat rather quick.
+
+At that moment Lady Clavering, looking round, saw the pair--she was on
+the first carriage-step, and would have been in the vehicle in another
+second, but she gave a start backward (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-colored
+gloves, the good-natured woman warmly greeted the major and his nephew.
+
+"Come in both of you. Why haven't you been before? Get out, Blanche,
+and come and see your old friends. O, I'm so glad to see you. We've been
+waitin and waitin for you ever so long. Come in, luncheon ain't gone
+down," cried out this hospitable lady, squeezing Pen's hand in both hers
+(she had dropped the major's after a brief wrench of recognition), and
+Blanche, casting up her eyes toward the chimneys, descended from the
+carriage presently, with a timid, blushing, appealing look, and gave a
+little hand to Major Pendennis.
+
+The companion with the spaniel looked about irresolute, and doubting
+whether she should not take Fido his airing; but she too turned right
+about face and entered the house, after Lady Clavering, her daughter,
+and the two gentlemen. And the carriage, with the prancing grays, was
+left unoccupied, save by the coachman in the silver wig.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+IN WHICH THE SYLPH REAPPEARS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 ciphers 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 favorite, an extraordinary man, who had, it was said,
+embraced Mohammedanism, and undergone a thousand wild and perilous
+adventures, was at present in this country, trying to negotiate with the
+Begum Clavering, the sale of the Nawaub's celebrated nose-ring diamond,
+"the light of the Dewan."
+
+Under the title of the Begum, Lady Clavering's fame began to spread in
+London before she herself descended upon the capital, and as it has
+been the boast of De Lolme, 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 her wealth
+he merits to be. This fact shows our British independence and honest
+feeling--our higher orders are not such mere haughty aristocrats as the
+ignorant represent them: on the contrary, if a man have money they will
+hold out their hands to him, eat his dinners, dance at his balls, marry
+his daughters, or give their own lovely girls to his sons, as affably as
+your commonest roturier would do.
+
+As he had superintended the arrangements of the country mansion, our
+friend, the Chevalier Strong, gave the benefit of his taste and advice
+to the fashionable London upholsterers, who prepared the town house
+for the reception of the Clavering family. In the decoration of this
+elegant abode, honest Strong's soul rejoiced as much as if he had been
+himself its proprietor. He hung and re-hung the pictures, he studied the
+positions of sofas, he had interviews with wine merchants and purveyors
+who were to supply the new establishment; and at the same time the
+baronet's factotum and confidential friend took the opportunity of
+furnishing his own chambers, and stocking his snug little cellar: his
+friends complimented him upon the neatness of the former; and the select
+guests who came in to share Strong's cutlet now found a bottle of
+excellent claret to accompany the meal. The chevalier was now, as he
+said, "in clover:" he had a very comfortable set of rooms in Shepherd's
+Inn. He was waited on by a former Spanish Legionary and comrade of his
+whom he had left at a breach of a Spanish fort, and found at a crossing
+in Tottenham-court Road, and whom he had elevated to the rank of
+body-servant to himself and to the chum who, at present, shared his
+lodgings. This was no other than the favorite of the Nawaub of Lucknow,
+the valiant Colonel Altamont.
+
+No man was less curious, or at any rate, more discreet, than Ned Strong,
+and he did not care to inquire into the mysterious connection which,
+very soon after their first meeting at Baymouth, was established between
+Sir Francis Clavering and the envoy of the Nawaub. The latter knew
+some secret regarding the former, which put Clavering into his power,
+somehow; and Strong, who knew that his patron's early life had been
+rather irregular, and that his career with his regiment in India had not
+been brilliant, supposed that the colonel, who swore he knew Clavering
+well at Calcutta, had some hold upon Sir Francis, to which the latter
+was forced to yield. In truth, Strong had long understood Sir Francis
+Clavering's character, as that of a man utterly weak in purpose, in
+principle, and intellect, a moral and physical trifler and poltroon.
+
+With poor Clavering, his excellency had had one or two interviews after
+their Baymouth meeting, the nature of which conversations the baronet
+did not confide to Strong: although he sent letters to Altamont by that
+gentleman, who was his embassador in all sorts of affairs. On one of
+these occasions the Nawaub's envoy must have been in an exceeding
+ill-humor; for he crushed Clavering's letter in his hand, and said with
+his own particular manner and emphasis:
+
+"A hundred, be hanged. I'll have no more letters nor no more
+shilly-shally. Tell Clavering I'll have a thousand, or by Jove I'll
+split, and burst him all to atoms. Let him give me a thousand, and
+I'll go abroad, and I give you my honor 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 12 o'clock,
+as sure as my name's what it is, I'll have a paragraph in the newspaper
+on Saturday, and next week I'll blow up the whole concern."
+
+Strong carried back these words to his principal, on whom their effect
+was such that actually on the day and hour appointed, the chevalier made
+his appearance once more at Altamont's hotel at Baymouth, with the sum
+of money required. Altamont was a gentleman, he said, and behaved as
+such; he paid his bill at the inn, and the Baymouth paper announced his
+departure on a foreign tour. Strong saw him embark at Dover. "It must
+be forgery at the very least," he thought, "that has put Clavering into
+this fellow's power, and the colonel has got the bill."
+
+Before the year was out, however, this happy country saw the colonel
+once more upon its shores. A confounded run on the red had finished him,
+he said, at Baden Baden: no gentleman could stand against a color
+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
+debtors' jail in Germany, for life, so that he might never be troubled
+again.
+
+These sums for the colonel, Sir Francis was obliged to raise without
+the knowledge of his wife; for though perfectly liberal, nay, sumptuous
+in her expenditure, the good lady had inherited a tolerable aptitude
+for business along with the large fortune of her father, Snell, and gave
+to her husband only such a handsome allowance as she thought befitted
+a gentleman of his rank. Now and again she would give him a present,
+or pay an outstanding gambling debt; but she always exacted a pretty
+accurate account of the moneys so required; and respecting the subsidies
+to the colonel, Clavering fairly told Strong that he _couldn't_ speak to
+his wife.
+
+Part of Mr. Strong's business in life was to procure this money and
+other sums, for his patron. And in the chevalier's apartments, in
+Shepherd's Inn, many negotiations took place between gentlemen of the
+moneyed world and Sir Francis Clavering; and many valuable bank notes
+and pieces of stamped paper were passed between them. When a man has
+been in the habit of getting in debt from his early youth, and of
+exchanging his promises to pay at twelve months against present sums
+of money, it would seem as if no piece of good fortune ever permanently
+benefited him: a little while after the advent of prosperity, the
+money-lender is pretty certain to be in the house again, and the bills
+with the old signature in the market. Clavering found it more convenient
+to see these gentry at Strong's lodgings than at his own; and such was
+the chevalier's friendship for the baronet, that although he did not
+possess a shilling of his own, his name might be seen as the drawer of
+almost all the bills of exchange which Sir Francis Clavering accepted.
+Having drawn Clavering's bills, he got them discounted "in the city."
+When they became due he parleyed with the bill-holders, and gave
+them installments 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 gayety and plenty, and going to sleep
+comfortably; with a bailiff always more or less near, and a rope of debt
+round their necks--the which trifling inconveniences, Ned Strong, the
+old soldier, bore very easily.
+
+But we shall have another opportunity of making acquaintance with these
+and some other interesting inhabitants of Shepherd's Inn, and in the
+mean while are keeping Lady Clavering and her friends too long waiting
+on the door steps of Grosvenor-place.
+
+First they went into the gorgeous dining-room, fitted up, Lady Clavering
+couldn't for goodness gracious tell why, in the middle-aged style,
+"unless," said her good-natured ladyship, laughing, "because me and
+Clavering are middle-aged people;" and here they were offered the
+copious remains of the luncheon of which Lady Clavering and Blanche had
+just partaken. When nobody was near, our little Sylphide, who scarcely
+ate at dinner more than the six grains of rice of Amina, the friend of
+the Ghouls in the Arabian Nights, was most active with her knife and
+fork, and consumed a very substantial portion of mutton cutlets: in
+which piece of hypocrisy it is believed she resembled other young ladies
+of fashion. Pen and his uncle declined the refection, but they admired
+the dining-room with fitting compliments, and pronounced it "very
+chaste," that being the proper phrase. There were, indeed, high-backed
+Dutch chairs of the seventeenth century; there was a sculptured carved
+buffet of the sixteenth; there was a sideboard robbed out of the carved
+work of a church in the Low Countries, and a large brass cathedral
+lamp over the round oak table; there were old family portraits from
+Wardour-street and tapestry from France, bits of armor, double-handed
+swords and battle-axes made of _carton-pierre_, looking-glasses,
+statuettes of saints, and Dresden china--nothing, in a word, could be
+chaster. Behind the dining-room was the library, fitted with busts and
+books all of a size, and wonderful easy chairs, and solemn bronzes in
+the severe classic style. Here it was that, guarded by double doors, Sir
+Francis smoked cigars, and read "Bell's Life in London," and went to
+sleep after dinner, when he was not smoking over the billiard-table at
+his clubs, or punting at the gambling-houses in Saint James's.
+
+But what could equal the chaste splendor of the drawing-rooms? the
+carpets were so magnificently fluffy that your feet 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, marqueterie-tables covered with marvelous
+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 mantle-piece--there
+was, in a word, every thing 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 every body who saw Lady Clavering's
+reception-rooms, was forced to confess that they were most elegant; and
+that the prettiest rooms in London--Lady Harley Quin's, Lady Hanway
+Wardour's, or Mrs. Hodge-Podgson's own, the great Railroad Croesus'
+wife, were not fitted up with a more consummate "chastity."
+
+Poor Lady Clavering, meanwhile, knew little regarding these things, and
+had a sad want of respect for the splendors around her. "I only know
+they cost a precious deal of money, major," she said to her guest, "and
+that I don't advise you to try one of them gossamer gilt chairs: I came
+down on one the night we gave our second dinner party. Why didn't you
+come and see us before? We'd have asked you to it."
+
+"You would have liked to see mamma break a chair, wouldn't you, Mr.
+Pendennis?" dear Blanche said, with a sneer. She was angry because Pen
+was talking and laughing with mamma, because mamma had made a number of
+blunders in describing the house--for a hundred other good reasons.
+
+"I should like to have been by to give Lady Clavering my arm if she had
+need of it," Pen answered, with a bow and a blush.
+
+"_Quel preux chevalier!_" cried the Sylphide, tossing up her little
+head.
+
+"I have a fellow-feeling with those who fall, remember," Pen said. "I
+suffered myself very much from doing so once."
+
+"And you went home to Laura to console you," said Miss Amory.
+
+Pen winced. He did not like the remembrance of the consolation which
+Laura had given to him, nor was he very well pleased to find that his
+rebuff in that quarter was known to the world; so as he had nothing to
+say in reply, he began to be immensely interested in the furniture round
+about him, and to praise Lady Clavering's taste with all his might.
+
+"Me, don't praise me," said honest Lady Clavering, "it's all the
+upholsterer's doings and Captain Strong's, they did it all while we was
+at the Park--and--and--Lady Rockminster has been here and says the
+salongs are very well," said Lady Clavering, with an air and tone of
+great deference.
+
+"My cousin Laura has been staying with her," Pen said.
+
+"It's not the dowager: it is _the_ Lady Rockminster."
+
+"Indeed!" cried Major Pendennis, when he heard this great name of
+fashion "if you have her ladyship's approval, Lady Clavering, you can
+not be far wrong. No, no, you can not be far wrong. Lady Rockminster,
+I should say, Arthur, is the very center of the circle of fashion and
+taste. The rooms _are_ beautiful, indeed!" and the major's voice hushed
+as he spoke of this great lady, and he looked round and surveyed the
+apartments awfully and respectfully, as if he had been at church.
+
+"Yes, Lady Rockminster has took us up," said Lady Clavering.
+
+"Taken us up, mamma," cried Blanche, in a shrill voice.
+
+"Well, taken us up, then," said my lady; "it's very kind of her, and
+I dare say we shall like it when we git used to it, only at first one
+don't fancy being took--well, taken up, at all. She is going to give our
+balls for us; and wants to invite all our dinners. But I won't stand
+that. I will have my old friends and I won't let her send all the cards
+out, and sit mum at the head of my own table. You must come to me,
+Arthur, and major--come, let me see, on the 14th. It ain't one of our
+grand dinners, Blanche," she said, looking round at her daughter, who
+bit her lips and frowned very savagely for a Sylphide.
+
+The major, with a smile and a bow, said he would much rather come to a
+quiet meeting than to a grand dinner. He had had enough of those large
+entertainments, and preferred the simplicity of the home circle.
+
+"I always think a dinner's the best the second day," said Lady Clavering,
+thinking to mend her first speech. "On the 14th we'll be quite a snug
+little party;" at which second blunder, Miss Blanche clasped her hands
+in despair, and said, "O, mamma, _vous etes incorrigible_." Major
+Pendennis vowed that he liked snug dinners of all things in the world,
+and confounded her ladyship's impudence for daring to ask such a man as
+_him_ to a second day's dinner. But he was a man of an economical turn
+of mind, and bethinking himself that he could throw over these people if
+any thing better should offer, he accepted with the blandest air. As for
+Pen, he was not a diner-out of thirty years' standing as yet, and the
+idea of a fine feast in a fine house was still perfectly welcome to him.
+
+"What was that pretty little quarrel which engaged itself between your
+worship and Miss Amory?" the major asked of Pen, as they walked away
+together. "I thought you used to be _au mieux_ in that quarter."
+
+"Used to be," answered Pen, with a dandified air, "is a vague phrase
+regarding a woman. Was and is are two very different terms, sir, as
+regards women's hearts especially."
+
+"Egad, they change as we do," cried the elder. "When we took the Cape of
+Good Hope, I recollect there was a lady who talked of 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 underbred; 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 follow, is ten thousand pound? I would
+scarcely pay that girl's milliner's bill with the interest of the
+money."
+
+"You seem to be a connoisseur in millinery, uncle," Pen said.
+
+"I was, sir, I was," replied the senior; "and the old war-horse, you
+know, never hears the sound of a trumpet, but he begins to he, he!--you
+understand;" and he gave a killing though somewhat superannuated leer
+and bow to a carriage that passed them, and entered the Park.
+
+"Lady Catherine Martingale's carriage," he said; "mons'ous fine
+girls the daughters, though, gad, I remember their mother a thousand
+times handsomer. No, Arthur, my dear fellow, with your person and
+expectations, you ought to make a good coup in marriage some day or
+other; and though I wouldn't have this repeated at Fairoaks, you rogue,
+ha! ha! a reputation for a little wickedness, and for being an _homme
+dangereux_, don't hurt a young fellow with the women. They like it,
+sir--they hate a milksop ... young men must be young men, you know. But
+for marriage," continued the veteran moralist, "that is a very different
+matter. Marry a woman with money. I've told you before, it is as easy to
+get a rich wife as a poor one; and a doosed deal more comfortable to sit
+down to a well-cooked dinner, with your little entrees nicely served,
+than to have nothing but a damned cold leg of mutton between you and
+your wife. We shall have a good dinner on the 14th, when we dine with
+Sir Francis Clavering: stick to that, my boy, in your relations with the
+family. Cultivate 'em, but keep 'em for dining. No more of your youthful
+follies and nonsense about love in a cottage."
+
+"It must be a cottage with a double coach-house, a cottage of gentility,
+sir," said Pen, quoting the hackneyed ballad of the Devil's Walk:
+but his uncle did not know that poem (though, perhaps, he might be
+leading Pen upon the very promenade in question), and went on with his
+philosophical remarks, very much pleased with the aptness of the pupil
+to whom he addressed them. Indeed Arthur Pendennis was a clever fellow,
+who took his color very readily from his neighbor, and found the
+adaptation only too easy.
+
+Warrington, the grumbler, growled out that Pen was becoming such a
+puppy, that soon there would be no bearing him. But the truth is, the
+young man's success and dashing manners pleased his elder companion. He
+liked to see Pen gay and spirited, and brimful of health, and life, and
+hope; as a man who has long since left off being amused with clown and
+harlequin, still gets a pleasure in watching a child at a pantomime.
+Mr. Pen's former sulkiness disappeared with his better fortune: and he
+bloomed as the sun began to shine upon him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+IN WHICH COLONEL ALTAMONT APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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----d house-steward, as he irreverently
+called Strong. But Mr. Welbore Welbore, Clavering's country neighbor 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 whispered to Pen, who regarded
+her with eyes of evident admiration, that he considered her "a stunner."
+She chose to be very gracious to Arthur upon this day, and held out her
+hand most cordially, and talked about dear Fairoaks, and asked for
+dear Laura and his mother, and said she was longing to go back to the
+country, and in fact, was entirely simple, affectionate, and artless.
+
+Harry Foker thought he had never seen any body so amiable and
+delightful. Not accustomed much to the society of ladies, and ordinarily
+being dumb in their presence, he found that he could speak before Miss
+Amory, and became uncommonly lively and talkative, even before the
+dinner was announced and the party descended to the lower rooms. He
+would have longed to give his arm to the fair Blanche, and conduct her
+down the broad carpeted stair; but she fell to the lot of Pen upon this
+occasion, Mr. Foker being appointed to escort Mrs. Welbore Welbore, in
+consequence of his superior rank as an earl's grandson.
+
+But though he was separated from the object of his desire during the
+passage down stairs, the delighted Foker found himself by Miss Amory's
+side at the dinner-table, and flattered himself that he had maneuvered
+very well in securing that happy place. It may be that the move was not
+his, but that it was made by another person. Blanche had thus the two
+young men, one on each side of her, and each tried to render himself
+gallant and agreeable.
+
+Foker's mamma, from her place, surveying her darling boy, was surprised
+at his vivacity. Harry talked constantly to his fair neighbor about the
+topics of the day.
+
+"Seen Taglioni in the Sylphide, Miss Amory? Bring me that souprame of
+Volile again, if you please (this was addressed to the attendant near
+him), very good: can't think where the souprames come from; what becomes
+of the legs of the fowls, I wonder? She's clipping in the Sylphide,
+ain't she?" and he began very kindly to hum the pretty air which
+pervades that prettiest of all ballets, now faded into the past with
+that most beautiful and gracious of all dancers? Will the young folks
+ever see any thing so charming, any thing so classic, any thing like
+Taglioni?
+
+"Miss Amory is a Sylph herself," said Mr. Pen.
+
+"What a delightful tenor voice you have, Mr. Foker," said the young
+lady. "I am sure you have been well taught. I sing a little myself;
+I should like to sing with you."
+
+Pen remembered that words very similar had been addressed to himself by
+the young lady, and that she had liked to sing with him in former days.
+And sneering within himself, he wondered with how many other gentlemen
+she had sung duets since his time? But he did not think fit to put this
+awkward question aloud; and only said, with the very tenderest air which
+he could assume, "I should like to hear you sing again, Miss Blanche.
+I never heard a voice I liked so well as yours, I think."
+
+"I thought you liked Laura's," said Miss Blanche.
+
+"Laura's is a contralto: and that voice is very often out, you know,"
+Pen said, bitterly. "I have heard a great deal of music in London," he
+continued. "I'm tired of those professional people--they sing too loud,
+or I have grown too old or too blase. One grows old very soon in London,
+Miss Amory. And like all old fellows, I only care for the songs I heard
+in my youth."
+
+"I like English music best. I don't care for foreign songs much. Get me
+some saddle of mutton," said Mr. Foker.
+
+"I adore English ballads, of all things," said Miss Amory.
+
+"Sing me one of the old songs after dinner, will you?" said Pen, with an
+imploring voice.
+
+"Shall I sing you an English song after dinner?" asked the Sylphide,
+turning to Mr. Foker. "I will, if you will promise to come up soon," and
+she gave him a perfect broadside of her eyes.
+
+"_I'll_ come up after dinner, fast enough," he said, simply. "I don't
+care about much wine afterward--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 humor, 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 humor. 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 some little attention paid to him: her politeness to Mr. Foker was
+perhaps a little more encouraging than her kindness to Arthur; but the
+benevolent little creature did her best to make both the gentlemen
+happy. Foker caught her last glance as she rushed out of the door; that
+bright look passed over Mr. Strong's broad white waistcoat, and shot
+straight at Harry Foker's. The door closed on the charmer: he sate down
+with a sigh, and swallowed a bumper of claret.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the dinner at which Pen and his uncle took their places was not one
+of our grand parties, it had been served at a considerably earlier hour
+than those ceremonial banquets of the London season, which custom has
+ordained shall scarcely take place before nine o'clock; and, the company
+being small, and Miss Blanche anxious to betake herself to her piano in
+the drawing-room, giving constant hints to her mother to retreat--Lady
+Clavering made that signal very speedily, so that it was quite
+daylight yet when the ladies reached the upper apartments, from the
+flower-embroidered balconies of which they could command a view of the
+two parks, of the poor couples and children still sauntering in the one,
+and of the equipages of ladies and the horses of dandies passing through
+the arch of the other. The sun, in a word, had not set behind the elms
+of Kensington Gardens, and was still gilding the statue erected by the
+ladies of England in honor of his grace the Duke of Wellington, when
+Lady Clavering and her female friends left the gentlemen drinking wine.
+
+The windows of the dining-room were opened to let in the fresh air,
+and afforded to the passers-by in the street a pleasant, or, perhaps,
+tantalizing 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, "Mi hi, Jim, shouldn't you like to be there, and have a cut of
+that there pine-apple?"--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 gas-man 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 inward 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 St. James's Park, and the sky above, in
+which a star or two was just beginning to twinkle.
+
+Jeames, with folded legs, leaning against the door-pillar of his
+master's abode, looked forth musingly upon the latter tranquil sight;
+while a spectator, clinging to the railings, examined the former scene.
+Policeman X passing, gave his attention to neither, but fixed it upon
+the individual holding by the railings, and gazing into Sir Francis
+Clavering's dining-room, where Strong was laughing and talking away,
+making the conversation for the party.
+
+The man at the railings was very gorgeously attired with chains,
+jewelry, 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 blood-shot eyes in a manner which no sober hat ever could
+assume. His copious black hair was evidently surreptitious, and his
+whiskers of the Tyrian purple.
+
+As Strong's laughter, following after one of his own _gros mots_, came
+ringing out of window, this gentleman without laughed and sniggered
+in the queerest way likewise, and he slapped his thigh, and winked at
+Jeames pensive in the portico, as much as to say, "Plush, my boy, isn't
+that a good story?"
+
+Jeames's attention had been gradually drawn from the moon in the
+heavens to this sublunary scene; and he was puzzled and alarmed by
+the appearance of the man in shiny boots. "A holtercation," he remarked
+afterward in the servants'-hall--a "holtercation with a feller in the
+streets is never no good; and indeed he was not hired for any such
+purpose." So, having surveyed the man for some time, who went on
+laughing, reeling, nodding his head with tipsy knowingness, Jeames
+looked out of the portico, and softly called "Pleaceman," and beckoned
+to that officer.
+
+X marched up resolute, with one Berlin glove stuck in his belt-side,
+and Jeames simply pointed with his index finger to the individual
+who was laughing against the railings. Not one single word more than
+"Pleaceman," did he say, but stood there in the calm summer evening,
+pointing calmly: a grand sight.
+
+X advanced to the individual and said, "Now, sir, will you have the
+kindness to move hon?"
+
+The individual, who was in perfect good humor, did not appear to hear
+one word which Policeman X uttered, but nodded and waggled his grinning
+head at Strong, until his hat almost fell from his head over the area
+railings.
+
+"Now, sir, move on, do you hear?" cries X, in a much more peremptory
+tone, and he touched the stranger gently with one of the fingers
+inclosed in the gauntlets of the Berlin woof.
+
+He of the many rings instantly started, or rather staggered back, into
+what is called an attitude of self-defense, and in that position began
+the operation which is entitled "squaring" at Policeman X, and showed
+himself brave and warlike, if unsteady. "Hullo! keep your hands off a
+gentleman," he said, with an oath which need not be repeated.
+
+"Move on out of this," said X, "and don't be a blocking up the pavement,
+staring into gentlemen's dining-rooms."
+
+"Not stare--ho, ho!--not stare--that is a good one," replied the other,
+with a satiric laugh and sneer. "Who's to prevent me from staring,
+looking at my friends, if I like? not you, old highlows."
+
+"Friends! I dessay. Move on," answered X.
+
+"If you touch me, I'll pitch into you, I will," roared the other. "I
+tell you I know 'em all--that's Sir Francis Clavering, Baronet, M.P.--I
+know him, and he knows me--and that's Strong, and that's the young chap
+that made the row at the ball. I say, Strong, Strong!"
+
+"It's that d---- Altamont," cried Sir Francis within, with a start and a
+guilty look; and Strong also, with a look of annoyance, got up from the
+table, and ran out to the intruder.
+
+A gentleman in a white waistcoat, running out from a dining-room
+bare-headed, a policeman, and an individual decently attired, engaged in
+almost fistycuffs on the pavement, were enough to make a crowd, even in
+that quiet neighborhood, at half-past eight o'clock in the evening, and
+a small mob began to assemble before Sir Francis Clavering's door. "For
+God's sake, come in," Strong said, seizing his acquaintance's arm. "Send
+for a cab, James, if you please," he added, in an under voice to that
+domestic; and carrying the excited gentleman out of the street, the outer
+door was closed upon him, and the small crowd began to move away.
+
+Mr. Strong had intended to convey the stranger into Sir Francis's
+private sitting-room, where the hats of the male guests were awaiting
+them, and having there soothed his friend by bland conversation, to have
+carried him off as soon as the cab arrived; but the new comer was in a
+great state of wrath at the indignity which had been put upon him, and
+when Strong would have led him into the second door, said, in a tipsy
+voice, "_That_ ain't the door: that's the dining-room door, where the
+drink's going on: and I'll go and have some, by Jove; I'll go and have
+some." At this audacity the butler stood aghast in the hall, and placed
+himself before the door: but it opened behind him, and the master of the
+house made his appearance, with anxious looks.
+
+"I _will_ have some--by ---- I will," the intruder was roaring out, as
+Sir Francis came forward. "Hullo! Clavering, I say I'm come to have some
+wine with you; hay! old boy--hay! old corkscrew? Get us a bottle of the
+yellow seal, you old thief: the very best--a hundred rupees a dozen, and
+no mistake."
+
+The host reflected a moment over his company. There is only Welbore,
+Pendennis, and those two lads, he thought; and with a forced laugh and a
+piteous look, he said, "Well, Altamont, come in. I am very glad to see
+you, I'm sure."
+
+Colonel Altamont, for the intelligent reader has doubtless long ere this
+discovered in the stranger His Excellency the Embassador of the Nawaub
+of Lucknow, reeled into the dining-room, with a triumphant look toward
+Jeames, the footman, which seemed to say, "There, sir, what do you think
+of that? _Now_, am I a gentleman or no?" and sank down into the first
+vacant chair. Sir Francis Clavering timidly stammered out the colonel's
+name to his guest Mr. Welbore Welbore, and his excellency began drinking
+wine forthwith, and gazing round upon the company, now with the most
+wonderful frowns, and anon with the blandest smiles, and hiccupped
+remarks encomiastic of the drink which he was imbibing.
+
+"Very singular man. Has resided long in a native court in India,"
+Strong said, with great gravity, the chevalier's presence of mind never
+deserting him; "in those Indian courts they get very singular habits."
+
+"Very," said Major Pendennis, dryly, and wondering what in goodness'
+name was the company into which he had got.
+
+Mr. Foker was pleased with the new comer. "It's the man who would sing
+the Malay song at the Back-Kitchen," he whispered to Pen. "Try this
+pine, sir," he then said to Colonel Altamont; "it's uncommonly fine."
+
+"Pines! I've seen 'em feed pigs on pines," said the colonel.
+
+"All the Nawaub of Lucknow's pigs are fed on pines," Strong whispered to
+Major Pendennis.
+
+"O, of course," the major answered. Sir Francis Clavering was, in the
+mean while, endeavoring to make an excuse to his brother guest, for the
+new comer's condition, and muttered something regarding Altamont, that
+he was an extraordinary character, very eccentric, very--had Indian
+habits--didn't understand the rules of English society; to which old
+Welbore, a shrewd old gentleman, who drank his wine with great
+regularity, said, "that seemed pretty clear."
+
+Then the colonel seeing Pen's honest face, regarded it for a while with
+as much steadiness as became his condition, and said, "I know you, too,
+young fellow. I remember you. Baymouth ball, by Jingo. Wanted to fight
+the Frenchman. _I_ remember you;" and he laughed, and he squared with
+his fists, and seemed hugely amused in the drunken depths of his mind,
+as these recollections passed, or, rather, reeled across it.
+
+"Mr. Pendennis, you remember Colonel Altamont, at Baymouth?" Strong
+said; upon which Pen, bowing rather stiffly, said, "he had the pleasure
+of remembering that circumstance perfectly."
+
+"_What's_ his name?" cried the colonel. Strong named Mr. Pendennis
+again.
+
+"Pendennis!--Pendennis be hanged!" Altamont roared out, to the surprise
+of every one, and thumping with his fist on the table.
+
+"My name is also Pendennis, sir," said the major, whose dignity was
+exceedingly mortified by the evening's events--that he, Major Pendennis,
+should have been asked to such a party, and that a drunken man should
+have been introduced to it. "My name is Pendennis, and I will be obliged
+to you not to curse it too loudly."
+
+The tipsy man turned round to look at him, and as he looked, it appeared
+as if Colonel Altamont suddenly grew sober. He put his hand across his
+forehead, and in doing so, displaced somewhat the black wig which he
+wore; and his eyes stared fiercely at the major, who, in his turn, like
+a resolute old warrior as he was, looked at his opponent very keenly and
+steadily. At the end of the mutual inspection, Altamont began to button
+up his brass-buttoned coat, and rising up from his chair, suddenly,
+and to the company's astonishment, reeled toward the door, and issued
+from it, followed by Strong: all that the latter heard him utter was,
+"Captain Beak! Captain Beak, by jingo!"
+
+There had not passed above a quarter of an hour from his strange
+appearance to his equally sudden departure. The two young men and
+the baronet's other guest wondered at the scene, and could find no
+explanation for it. Clavering seemed exceeding pale and agitated, and
+turned with looks of almost terror toward Major Pendennis. The latter
+had been eying his host keenly for a moment or two. "Do you know him?"
+asked Sir Francis of the major.
+
+"I am sure I have seen the fellow," the major replied, looking as if
+he, too, was puzzled. "Yes, I have it. He was a deserter from the Horse
+Artillery who got into the Nawaub's service. I remember his face quite
+well."
+
+"Oh!" said Clavering, with a sigh which indicated immense relief of
+mind, and the major looked at him with a twinkle of his sharp old eyes.
+The cab which Strong had desired to be called, drove away with the
+chevalier and Colonel Altamont; coffee was brought to the remaining
+gentlemen, and they went up-stairs to the ladies in the drawing-room,
+Foker declaring confidentially to Pen that "this was the rummest go he
+ever saw," which decision Pen said, laughing, "showed great discrimination
+on Mr. Foker's part."
+
+Then, according to her promise, Miss Amory made music for the young men.
+Foker was enraptured with her performance, and kindly joined in the
+airs which she sang, when he happened to be acquainted with them. Pen
+affected to talk aside with others of the party, but Blanche brought him
+quickly to the piano, by singing some of his own words, those which we
+have given in a previous number, indeed, and which the Sylphide had
+herself, she said, set to music. I don't know whether the air was hers,
+or how much of it was arranged for her by Signor Twankidillo, from whom
+she took lessons; but good or bad, original or otherwise, it delighted
+Mr. Pen, who remained by her side, and turned the leaves now for her
+most assiduously. "Gad! how I wish I could write verses like you, Pen,"
+Foker sighed afterward to his companion. "If I could do 'em, wouldn't I,
+that's all? But I never was a dab at writing, you see, and I'm sorry I
+was so idle when I was at school."
+
+No mention was made before the ladies of the curious little scene which
+had been transacted below stairs; although Pen was just on the point of
+describing it to Miss Amory, when that young lady inquired for Captain
+Strong, who she wished should join her in a duet. But chancing to look
+up toward 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 sat silent for the most part, and appeared to be
+listening to the music, and watching the fair young performer.
+
+The hour of departure having arrived, the major rose, regretting that so
+delightful an evening should have passed away so quickly, and addressed
+a particularly fine compliment to Miss Amory upon her splendid talents
+as a singer. "Your daughter, Lady Clavering," he said to that lady,
+"is a perfect nightingale--a perfect nightingale, begad! I have scarcely
+ever heard any thing equal to her, and her pronunciation of every
+language--begad! of every language--seems to me to be perfect; and the
+best houses in London must open before a young lady who has such
+talents, and, allow an old fellow to say, Miss Amory, such a face."
+
+Blanche was as much astonished by these compliments as Pen was to whom
+his uncle, a little time since, had been speaking in very disparaging
+terms of the Sylph. The major and the two young men walked home
+together, after Mr. Foker had placed his mother in her carriage, and
+procured a light for an enormous cigar.
+
+The young gentleman's company or his tobacco did not appear to be
+agreeable to Major Pendennis, who eyed him askance several times, and
+with a look which plainly indicated that he wished Mr. Foker would
+take his leave; but Foker hung on resolutely to the uncle and nephew,
+even until they came to the former's door in Bury-street, where the
+major wished the lads good-night.
+
+"And I say, Pen," he said, in a confidential whisper, calling his nephew
+back, "mind you make a point of calling in Grosvenor-place to-morrow.
+They've been uncommonly civil: mons'ously civil and kind."
+
+Pen promised and wondered, and the major's door having been closed upon
+him by Morgan, Foker took Pen's arm, and walked with him for some time
+silently, puffing his cigar. At last, when they had reached Charing
+Cross on Arthur's way home to the Temple, Harry Foker relieved himself,
+and broke out with that eulogium upon poetry, and those regrets
+regarding a misspent youth which have just been mentioned. And all the
+way along the Strand, and up to the door of Pen's very staircase, in
+Lamb-court, Temple, young Harry Foker did not cease to speak about
+singing and Blanche Amory.
+
+
+END OF VOL. 1.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Pendennis, Volume 1, by
+William Makepeace Thackeray
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