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+Project Gutenberg's The History of Pendennis, by William Makepeace Thackeray
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+Title: The History of Pendennis
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7265]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 3, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Tapio Riikonen.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS
+
+by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+
+
+TO DR. JOHN ELLIOTSON
+
+
+My Dear Doctor,
+
+Thirteen months ago, when it seemed likely that this story had come to a
+close, a kind friend brought you to my bedside, whence, in all
+probability, I never should have risen but for your constant watchfulness
+and skill. I like to recall your great goodness and kindness (as well as
+many acts of others, showing quite a surprising friendship and sympathy)
+at that time, when kindness and friendship were most needed and welcome.
+
+And as you would take no other fee but thanks, let me record them here in
+behalf of me and mine, and subscribe myself,
+
+Yours most sincerely and gratefully,
+
+W. M. THACKERAY.
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+If this kind of composition, of which the two years' product is now laid
+before the public, fail in art, as it constantly does and must, it at
+least has the advantage of a certain truth and honesty, which a work more
+elaborate might lose. In his constant communication with the reader, the
+writer is forced into frankness of expression, and to speak out his own
+mind and feelings as they urge him. Many a slip of the pen and the
+printer, many a word spoken in haste, he sees and would recall as he
+looks over his volume. It is a sort of confidential talk between writer
+and reader, which must often be dull, must often flag. In the course of
+his volubility, the perpetual speaker must of necessity lay bare his own
+weaknesses, vanities, peculiarities. And as we judge of a man's
+character, after long frequenting his society, not by one speech, or by
+one mood or opinion, or by one day's talk, but by the tenor of his
+general bearing and conversation; so of a writer, who delivers himself up
+to you perforce unreservedly, you say, Is he honest? Does he tell the
+truth in the main? Does he seem actuated by a desire to find out and
+speak it? Is he a quack, who shams sentiment, or mouths for effect? Does
+he seek popularity by claptraps or other arts? I can no more ignore good
+fortune than any other chance which has befallen me. I have found many
+thousands more readers than I ever looked for. I have no right to say to
+these, You shall not find fault with my art, or fall asleep over my
+pages; but I ask you to believe that this person writing strives to tell
+the truth. If there is not that, there is nothing.
+
+Perhaps the lovers of 'excitement' may care to know, that this book began
+with a very precise plan, which was entirely put aside. Ladies and
+gentlemen, you were to have been treated, and the writer's and the
+publisher's pocket benefited, by the recital of the most active horrors.
+What more exciting than a ruffian (with many admirable virtues) in St.
+Giles's, visited constantly by a young lady from Belgravia? What more
+stirring than the contrasts of society? the mixture of slang and
+fashionable language? the escapes, the battles, the murders? Nay, up to
+nine o'clock this very morning, my poor friend, Colonel Altamont, was
+doomed to execution, and the author only relented when his victim was
+actually at the window.
+
+The 'exciting' plan was laid aside (with a very honourable forbearance on
+the part of the publishers), because, on attempting it, I found that I
+failed from want of experience of my subject; and never having been
+intimate with any convict in my life, and the manners of ruffians and
+gaol-birds being quite unfamiliar to me, the idea of entering into
+competition with M. 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 cannot
+show as they are, with the notorious foibles and selfishness of their
+lives and their education. Since the author of Tom Jones was buried, no
+writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost
+power a MAN. We must drape him, and give him a certain conventional
+simper. Society will not tolerate the Natural in our Art. Many ladies
+have remonstrated and subscribers left me, because, in the course of the
+story, I described a young man resisting and affected by temptation.
+
+My object was to say, that he had the passions to feel, and the manliness
+and generosity to overcome them. You will not hear--it is best to know
+it--what moves in the real world, what passes in society, in the clubs,
+colleges, mess-rooms,--what is the life and talk of your sons. A little
+more frankness than is customary has been attempted in this story; with
+no bad desire on the writer's part, it is hoped, and with no ill
+consequence to any reader. If truth is not always pleasant, at any rate
+truth is best, from whatever chair--from those whence graver writers or
+thinkers argue, as from that at which the story-teller sits as he
+concludes his labour, and bids his kind reader farewell.
+
+Kensington, Nov. 26th, 1850.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER
+      I  Shows how First Love may interrupt Breakfast
+     II  A Pedigree and other Family Matters
+    III  In which Pendennis appears as a very young Man indeed
+     IV  Mrs. Haller
+      V  Mrs. Haller at Home
+     VI  Contains both Love and War
+    VII  In which the Major makes his Appearance
+   VIII  In which Pen is kept waiting at the Door, while the Reader
+         is informed who little Laura was
+     IX  In which the Major opens the Campaign
+      X  Facing the Enemy
+     XI  Negotiation
+    XII  In which a Shooting Match is proposed
+   XIII  A Crisis
+    XIV  In which Miss Fotheringay makes a new Engagement
+     XV  The Happy Village
+    XVI  More Storms in the Puddle
+   XVII  Which concludes the First Part of this History
+  XVIII  Alma Mater
+    XIX  Pendennis of Boniface
+     XX  Rake's Progress
+    XXI  Flight after Defeat
+   XXII  Prodigal's Return
+  XXIII  New Faces
+   XXIV  A Little Innocent
+    XXV  Contains both Love and Jealousy
+   XXVI  A House full of Visitors
+  XXVII  Contains some Ball-practising
+ XXVIII  Which is both Quarrelsome and Sentimental
+   XXIX  Babylon
+    XXX  The Knights of the Temple
+   XXXI  Old and New Acquaintances
+  XXXII  In which the Printer's Devil comes to the Door
+ XXXIII  Which is passed in the Neighbourhood of Ludgate Hill
+  XXXIV  In which the History still hovers about Fleet Street
+   XXXV  Dinner in the Row
+  XXXVI  The Pall Mall Gazette
+ XXXVII  Where Pen appears in Town and Country
+XXXVIII  In which the Sylph reappears
+  XXXIX  In which Colonel Altamont appears and disappears
+     XL  Relates to Mr. Harry Foker's Affairs
+    XLI  Carries the Reader both to Richmond and Greenwich
+   XLII  Contains a Novel Incident
+  XLIII  Alsatia
+   XLIV  In which the Colonel narrates some of his Adventures
+    XLV  A Chapter of Conversations
+   XLVI  Miss Amory's Partners
+  XLVII  Monseigneur s'amuse
+ XLVIII  A Visit of Politeness
+   XLIX  In Shepherd's Inn
+      L  In or near the Temple Garden
+     LI  The Happy Village again
+    LII  Which had very nearly been the last of the Story
+   LIII  A Critical Chapter
+    LIV  Convalescence
+     LV  Fanny's Occupation's gone
+    LVI  In which Fanny engages a new Medical Man
+   LVII  Foreign Ground
+  LVIII  'Fairoaks to let'
+    LIX  Old Friends
+     LX  Explanations
+    LXI  Conversations
+   LXII  The Way of the World
+  LXIII  Which accounts perhaps for Chapter LXII
+   LXIV  Phillis and Corydon
+    LXV  Temptation
+   LXVI  In which Pen begins his Canvass
+  LXVII  In which Pen begins to doubt about his Election
+ LXVIII  In which the Major is bidden to Stand and Deliver
+   LXIX  In which the Major neither yields his Money nor his Life
+    LXX  In which Pendennis counts his Eggs
+   LXXI  Fiat Justitia
+  LXXII  In which the Decks begin to clear
+ LXXIII  Mr. and Mrs. Sam Huxter
+  LXXIV  Shows how Arthur had better have taken a Return Ticket
+   LXXV  A Chapter of Match-making
+  LXXVI  Exeunt Omnes
+
+
+
+ PENDENNIS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Shows how First Love may interrupt Breakfast
+
+
+One fine morning in the full London season, Major Arthur Pendennis came
+over from his lodgings, according to his custom, to breakfast at a
+certain Club in Pall Mall, of which he was a chief ornament. As he was
+one of the finest judges of wine in England, and a man of active,
+dominating, and inquiring spirit, he had been very properly chosen to be
+a member of the Committee of this Club, and indeed was almost the manager
+of the institution; and the stewards and waiters bowed before him as
+reverentially as to a Duke or a Field-Marshal.
+
+At a quarter past ten the Major invariably made his appearance in the
+best blacked boots in all London, with a checked morning cravat that
+never was rumpled until dinner time, a buff waistcoat which bore the
+crown of his sovereign on the buttons, and linen so spotless that Mr.
+Brummel himself asked the name of his laundress, and would probably have
+employed her had not misfortunes compelled that great man to fly the
+country. Pendennis's coat, his white gloves, his whiskers, his very cane,
+were perfect of their kind as specimens of the costume of a military man
+en retraite. At a distance, or seeing his back merely, you would have
+taken him to be not more than thirty years old: it was only by a nearer
+inspection that you saw the factitious nature of his rich brown hair, and
+that there were a few crow's-feet round about the somewhat faded eyes of
+his handsome mottled face. His nose was of the Wellington pattern. His
+hands and wristbands were beautifully long and white. On the latter he
+wore handsome gold buttons given to him by his Royal Highness the Duke of
+York, and on the others more than one elegant ring, the chief and largest
+of them being emblazoned with the famous arms of Pendennis.
+
+He always took possession of the same table in the same corner of the
+room, from which nobody ever now thought of ousting him. One or two mad
+wags and wild fellows had in former days, and in freak or bravado,
+endeavoured twice or thrice to deprive him of this place; but there was a
+quiet dignity in the Major's manner as he took his seat at the next
+table, and surveyed the interlopers, which rendered it impossible for any
+man to sit and breakfast under his eye; and that table--by the fire, and
+yet near the window--became his own. His letters were laid out there in
+expectation of his arrival, and many was the young fellow about town who
+looked with wonder at the number of those notes, and at the seals and
+franks which they bore. If there was any question about etiquette,
+society, who was married to whom, of what age such and such a duke was,
+Pendennis was the man to whom every one appealed. Marchionesses used to
+drive up to the Club, and leave notes for him, or fetch him out. He was
+perfectly affable. The young men liked to walk with him in the Park or
+down Pall Mall; for he touched his hat to everybody, and every other man
+he met was a lord.
+
+The Major sate down at his accustomed table then, and while the waiters
+went to bring him his toast and his hot newspaper, he surveyed his
+letters through his gold double eye-glass. He carried it so gaily, you
+would hardly have known it was spectacles in disguise, and examined one
+pretty note after another, and laid them by in order. There were large
+solemn dinner cards, suggestive of three courses and heavy conversation;
+there were neat little confidential notes, conveying female entreaties;
+there was a note on thick official paper from the Marquis of Steyne,
+telling him to come to Richmond to a little party at the Star and Garter,
+and speak French, which language the Major possessed very perfectly; and
+another from the Bishop of Ealing and Mrs. Trail, requesting the honour
+of Major Pendennis's company at Ealing House, all of which letters
+Pendennis read gracefully, and with the more satisfaction, because
+Glowry, the Scotch surgeon, breakfasting opposite to him, was looking on,
+and hating him for having so many invitations, which nobody ever sent to
+Glowry.
+
+These perused, the Major took out his pocket-book to see on what days he
+was disengaged, and which of these many hospitable calls he could afford
+to accept or decline.
+
+He threw over Cutler, the East India Director, in Baker Street, in order
+to dine with Lord Steyne and the little French party at the Star and
+Garter--the Bishop he accepted, because, though the dinner was slow, he
+liked to dine with bishops--and so went through his list and disposed of
+them according to his fancy or interest. Then he took his breakfast and
+looked over the paper, the gazette, the births and deaths, and the
+fashionable intelligence, to see that his name was down among the guests
+at my Lord So-and-so's 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-bason.
+
+At last it came to be this letter's turn, and the Major broke a seal with
+'Fairoaks' engraved upon it, and 'Clavering St. Mary's' for a postmark.
+It was a double letter, and the Major commenced perusing the envelope
+before he attacked the inner epistle.
+
+"Is it a letter from another Jook," growled Mr. Glowry, inwardly,
+"Pendennis would not be leaving that to the last, I'm thinking."
+
+"My dear Major Pendennis," the letter ran, "I beg and implore you to come
+to me immediately "--very likely, thought Pendennis, and Steyne's dinner
+to-day--"I am in the very greatest grief and perplexity. My dearest boy,
+who has been hitherto everything the fondest mother could wish, is
+grieving me dreadfully. He has formed--I can hardly write it--a passion,
+an infatuation,"--the Major grinned--"for an actress who has been
+performing here. She is at least twelve years older than Arthur--who will
+not be eighteen till next February--and the wretched boy insists upon
+marrying her."
+
+"Hay! What's making Pendennis swear now?"--Mr. Glowry asked of himself,
+for rage and wonder were concentrated in the Major's open mouth, as he
+read this astounding announcement.
+
+"Do, my dear friend," the grief-stricken lady went on, "come to me
+instantly on the receipt of this; and, as Arthur's guardian, entreat,
+command, the wretched child to give up this most deplorable resolution."
+And, after more entreaties to the above effect, the writer concluded by
+signing herself the Major's 'unhappy affectionate sister, Helen
+Pendennis.'
+
+"Fairoaks, Tuesday"--the Major concluded, reading the last words of the
+letter--"A d---d pretty business at Fairoaks, Tuesday; now let us see
+what the boy has to say;" and he took the other letter, which was written
+in a great floundering boy's hand, and sealed with the large signet of
+the Pendennises, even larger than the Major's own, and with supplementary
+wax sputtered all round the seal, in token of the writer's tremulousness
+and agitation.
+
+The epistle ran thus:
+
+"Fairoaks, Monday, Midnight.
+
+"My Dear Uncle,--In informing you of my engagement with Miss Costigan,
+daughter of J. Chesterfield Costigan, Esq., of Costiganstown, but,
+perhaps, better known to you under her professional name of Miss
+Fotheringay, of the Theatres Royal Drury Lane and Crow Street, and of the
+Norwich and Welsh Circuit, I am aware that I make an announcement which
+cannot, according to the present prejudices of society at least, be
+welcome to my family. My dearest mother, on whom, God knows, I would wish
+to inflict no needless pain, is deeply moved and grieved, I am sorry to
+say, by the intelligence which I have this night conveyed to her. I
+beseech you, my dear Sir, to come down and reason with her and console
+her. Although obliged by poverty to earn an honourable maintenance by the
+exercise of her splendid talents, Miss Costigan's family is as ancient
+and noble as our own. When our ancestor, Ralph Pendennis, landed with
+Richard II. in Ireland, my Emily's forefathers were kings of that
+country. I have the information from Mr. Costigan, who, like yourself, is
+a military man.
+
+"It is in vain I have attempted to argue with my dear mother, and prove
+to her that a young lady of irreproachable character and lineage, endowed
+with the most splendid gifts of beauty and genius, who devotes herself to
+the exercise of one of the noblest professions, for the sacred purpose of
+maintaining her family, is a being whom we should all love and reverence,
+rather than avoid;--my poor mother has prejudices which it is impossible
+for my logic to overcome, and refuses to welcome to her arms one who is
+disposed to be her most affectionate daughter through life.
+
+"Although Miss Costigan is some years older than myself, that
+circumstance does not operate as a barrier to my affection, and I am sure
+will not influence its duration. A love like mine, Sir, I feel, is
+contracted once and for ever. As I never had dreamed of love until I saw
+her--I feel now that I shall die without ever knowing another passion. It
+is the fate of my life. It was Miss C.'s own delicacy which suggested
+that the difference of age, which I never felt, might operate as a bar to
+our union. But having loved once, I should despise myself, and be
+unworthy of my name as a gentleman, if I hesitated to abide by my
+passion: if I did not give all where I felt all, and endow the woman who
+loves me fondly with my whole heart and my whole fortune.
+
+"I press for a speedy marriage with my Emily--for why, in truth, should
+it be delayed? A delay implies a doubt, which I cast from me as unworthy.
+It is impossible that my sentiments can change towards Emily--that at any
+age she can be anything but the sole object of my love. Why, then, wait?
+I entreat you, my dear Uncle, to come down and reconcile my dear mother
+to our union, and I address you as a man of the world, qui mores hominum
+multorum vidit et urbes, who will not feel any of the weak scruples and
+fears which agitate a lady who has scarcely ever left her village.
+
+"Pray, come down to us immediately. I am quite confident that--apart from
+considerations of fortune--you will admire and approve of my Emily.--Your
+affectionate Nephew,                            Arthur Pendennis, Jr."
+
+When the Major had concluded the perusal of this letter, his countenance
+assumed an expression of such rage and horror that Glowry, the
+surgeon-official, felt in his pocket for his lancet, which he always
+carried in his card-case, and thought his respected friend was going into
+a fit. The intelligence was indeed sufficient to agitate Pendennis. The
+head of the Pendennises going to marry an actress ten years his senior,--
+a headstrong boy going to plunge into matrimony. "The mother has spoiled
+the young rascal," groaned the Major inwardly, "with her cursed
+sentimentality and romantic rubbish. My nephew marry a tragedy queen!
+Gracious mercy, people will laugh at me so that I shall not dare show my
+head!" And he thought with an inexpressible pang that he must give up
+Lord Steyne's dinner at Richmond, and must lose his rest and pass the
+night in an abominable tight mail-coach, instead of taking pleasure, as
+he had promised himself, in some of the most agreeable and select society
+in England.
+
+And he must not only give up this but all other engagements for some time
+to come. Who knows how long the business might detain him. He quitted his
+breakfast table for the adjoining writing-room, and there ruefully wrote
+off refusals to the Marquis, the Earl, the Bishop, and all his
+entertainers; and he ordered his servant to take places in the mail-coach
+for that evening, of course charging the sum which he disbursed for the
+seats to the account of the widow and the young scapegrace of whom he was
+guardian.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A Pedigree and other Family Matters
+
+
+Early in the Regency of George the Magnificent, there lived in a small
+town in the west of England, called Clavering, a gentleman whose name was
+Pendennis. There were those alive who remembered having seen his name
+painted on a board, which was surmounted by a gilt pestle and mortar over
+the door of a very humble little shop in the city of Bath, where Mr.
+Pendennis exercised the profession of apothecary and surgeon; and where
+he not only attended gentlemen in their sick-rooms, and ladies at the
+most interesting periods of their lives, but would condescend to sell a
+brown-paper plaster to a farmer's wife across the counter,--or to vend
+tooth-brushes, hair-powder, and London perfumery. For these facts a few
+folks at Clavering could vouch, where people's memories were more
+tenacious, perhaps, than they are in a great bustling metropolis.
+
+And yet that little apothecary who sold a stray customer a pennyworth of
+salts, or a more fragrant cake of Windsor soap, was a gentleman of good
+education, and of as old a family as any in the whole county of Somerset.
+He had a Cornish pedigree which carried the Pendennises up to the time of
+the Druids, and who knows how much farther back? They had intermarried
+with the Normans at a very late period of their family existence, and
+they were related to all the great families of Wales and Brittany.
+Pendennis had had a piece of University education too, and might have
+pursued that career with great honour, but that in his second year at
+Cambridge his father died insolvent, and poor Pen was obliged to betake
+himself to the pestle and apron. He always detested the trade, and it was
+only necessity, and the offer of his mother's brother, a London
+apothecary of low family, into which Pendennis's father had demeaned
+himself by marrying, that forced John Pendennis into so odious a calling.
+
+He quickly after his apprenticeship parted from the coarse-minded
+practitioner his relative, and set up for himself at Bath with his modest
+medical ensign. He had for some time a hard struggle with poverty; and it
+was all he could do to keep the shop and its gilt ornaments in decent
+repair, and his bed-ridden mother in comfort: but Lady Ribstone happening
+to be passing to the Rooms with an intoxicated Irish chairman who bumped
+her ladyship up against Pen's very door-post, and drove his chair-pole
+through the handsomest pink bottle in the surgeon's window, alighted
+screaming from her vehicle, and was accommodated with a chair in Mr.
+Pendennis's shop, where she was brought round with cinnamon and
+sal-volatile.
+
+Mr. Pendennis's manners were so uncommonly gentlemanlike and soothing,
+that her ladyship, the wife of Sir Pepin Ribstone, of Codlingbury, in the
+county of Somerset, Bart., appointed her preserver, as she called him,
+apothecary to her person and family, which was very large. Master
+Ribstone coming home for the Christmas holidays from Eton, over-ate
+himself and had a fever, in which Mr. Pendennis treated him with the
+greatest skill and tenderness. In a word, he got the good graces of the
+Codlingbury family, and from that day began to prosper. The good company
+of Bath patronised him, and amongst the ladies especially he was beloved
+and admired. First his humble little shop became a smart one: then he
+discarded the selling of tooth-brushes and perfumery, as unworthy of a
+gentleman of an ancient lineage: then he shut up the shop altogether, and
+only had a little surgery attended by a genteel young man: then he had a
+gig with a man to drive him; and, before her exit from this world, his
+poor old mother had the happiness of seeing from her bedroom window to
+which her chair was rolled, her beloved John step into a close carriage
+of his own, a one-horse carriage it is true, but with the arms of the
+family of Pendennis handsomely emblazoned on the panels. "What would
+Arthur say now?" she asked, speaking of a younger son of hers--"who never
+so much as once came to see my dearest Johnny through all the time of his
+poverty and struggles!"
+
+"Captain Pendennis is with his regiment in India, mother," Mr. Pendennis
+remarked, "and, if you please, I wish you would not call me Johnny before
+the young man--before Mr. Parkins."
+
+Presently the day came when she ceased to call her son by the name of
+Johnny, or by any other title of endearment or affection; and his house
+was very lonely without that kind though querulous voice. He had his
+night-bell altered and placed in the room in which the good old lady had
+grumbled for many a long year, and he slept in the great large bed there.
+He was upwards of forty years old when these events befell; before the
+war was over; before George the Magnificent came to the throne; before
+this history indeed: but what is a gentleman without his pedigree?
+Pendennis, by this time, had his handsomely framed and glazed, and
+hanging up in his drawing-room between the pictures of Codlingbury House
+in Somersetshire, and St. Boniface's College, Cambridge, where he had
+passed the brief and happy days of his early manhood. As for the pedigree
+he had taken it out of a trunk, as Sterne's officer called for his sword,
+now that he was a gentleman and could show it.
+
+About the time of Mrs. Pendennis's demise, another of her son's patients
+likewise died at Bath; that virtuous woman, old Lady Pontypool,
+daughter of Reginald twelfth Earl of Bareacres, and by consequence
+great-grand-aunt to the present Earl, and widow of John second Lord
+Pontypool, and likewise of the Reverend Jonas Wales, of the Armageddon
+Chapel, Clifton. For the last five years of her life her ladyship had
+been attended by Miss Helen Thistlewood, a very distant relative of the
+noble house of Bareacres, before mentioned, and daughter of Lieutenant R.
+Thistlewood, R.N., killed at the battle of Copenhagen. Under Lady
+Pontypool's roof Miss Thistlewood found a comfortable shelter, as far as
+boarding and lodging went, but suffered under such an infernal tyranny as
+only women can inflict on, or bear from, one another: the Doctor, who
+paid his visits to my Lady Pontypool at least twice a day, could not but
+remark the angelical sweetness and kindness with which the young lady
+bore her elderly relative's insults; and it was, as they were going in
+the fourth mourning coach to attend her ladyship's venerated remains to
+Bath Abbey, where they now repose, that he looked at her sweet pale face
+and resolved upon putting a certain question to her, the very nature of
+which made his pulse beat ninety, at least.
+
+He was older than she by more than twenty years, and at no time the most
+ardent of men. Perhaps he had had a love affair in early life which he
+had to strangle--perhaps all early love affairs ought to be strangled or
+drowned, like so many blind kittens: well, at three-and-forty he was a
+collected quiet little gentleman in black stockings with a bald head, and
+a few days after the ceremony he called to see her, and, as he felt her
+pulse, he kept hold of her hand in his, and asked her where she was going
+to live now that the Pontypool family had come down upon the property,
+which was being nailed into boxes, and packed into hampers, and swaddled
+up with haybands, and buried in straw, and locked under three keys in
+green baize plate-chests, and carted away under the eyes of poor Miss
+Helen,--he asked her where she was going to live finally.
+
+Her eyes filled with tears, and she said she did not know. She had a
+little money. The old lady had left her a thousand pounds, indeed; and
+she would go into a boarding-house or into a school: in fine, she did not
+know where.
+
+Then Pendennis, looking into her pale face, and keeping hold of her cold
+little hand, asked her if she would come and live with him? He was old
+compared to--to so blooming a young lady as Miss Thistlewood (Pendennis
+was of the grave old complimentary school of gentlemen and apothecaries),
+but he was of good birth, and, he flattered himself, of good principles
+and temper. His prospects were good, and daily mending. He was alone in
+the world, and had need of a kind and constant companion, whom it would
+be the study of his life to make happy; in a word, he recited to her a
+little speech, which he had composed that morning in bed, and rehearsed
+and perfected in his carriage, as he was coming to wait upon the young
+lady.
+
+Perhaps if he had had an early love-passage, she too had one day hoped
+for a different lot than to be wedded to a little gentleman who rapped
+his teeth and smiled artificially, who was laboriously polite to the
+butler as he slid upstairs into the drawing-room, and profusely civil to
+the lady's-maid, who waited at the bed-room door; for whom her old
+patroness used to ring as for a servant, and who came with even more
+eagerness; who got up stories, as he sent in draughts, for his patient's
+amusement and his own profit: perhaps she would have chosen a different
+man--but she knew, on the other hand, how worthy Pendennis was, how
+prudent, how honourable; how good he had been to his mother, and constant
+in his care of her; and the upshot of this interview was, that she,
+blushing very much, made Pendennis an extremely low curtsey, and asked
+leave to--to consider his very kind proposal.
+
+They were married in the dull Bath season, which was the height of the
+season in London. And Pendennis having previously, through a professional
+friend, M.R.C.S., secured lodgings in Holles Street, Cavendish Square,
+took his wife thither in a chaise and pair; conducted her to the
+theatres, the Parks, and the Chapel Royal; showed her the folks going to
+a drawing-room, and, in a word, gave her all the pleasures of the town.
+He likewise left cards upon Lord Pontypool, upon the Right Honourable the
+Earl of Bareacres, and upon Sir Pepin and Lady Ribstone, his earliest and
+kindest patrons. Bareacres took no notice of the cards. Pontypool called,
+admired Mrs. Pendennis, and said Lady Pontypool would come and see her,
+which her ladyship did, per proxy of John her footman, who brought her
+card, and an invitation to a concert five weeks off. Pendennis was back
+in his little one-horse carriage, dispensing draughts and pills at that
+time: but the Ribstones asked him and Mrs. Pendennis to an entertainment,
+of which Mr. Pendennis bragged to the last day of his life.
+
+The secret ambition of Mr. Pendennis had always been to be a gentleman.
+It takes much time and careful saving for a provincial doctor, whose
+gains are not very large, to lay by enough money wherewith to purchase a
+house and land: but besides our friend's own frugality and prudence,
+fortune aided him considerably in his endeavour, and brought him to the
+point which he so panted to attain. He laid out some money very
+advantageously in the purchase of a house and small estate close upon the
+village of Clavering before mentioned. Words cannot describe, nor did he
+himself ever care to confess to any one, his pride when he found himself
+a real landed proprietor, and could walk over acres of which he was the
+master. A lucky purchase which he had made of shares in a copper-mine
+added very considerably to his wealth, and he realised with great
+prudence while this mine was still at its full vogue. Finally, he sold
+his business at Bath, to Mr. Parkins, for a handsome sum of ready money,
+and for an annuity to be paid to him during a certain number of years
+after he had for ever retired from the handling of the mortar and pestle.
+
+Arthur Pendennis, his son, was eight years old at the time of this event,
+so that it is no wonder that the latter, who left Bath and the surgery so
+young, should forget the existence of such a place almost entirely, and
+that his father's hands had ever been dirtied by the compounding of
+odious pills, or the preparation of filthy plasters. The old man never
+spoke about the shop himself, never alluded to it; called in the medical
+practitioner of Clavering to attend his family when occasion arrived;
+sunk the black breeches and stockings altogether; attended market and
+sessions, and wore a bottle-green coat and brass buttons with drab
+gaiters, just as if he had been an English gentleman all his life. He
+used to stand at his lodge-gate, and see the coaches come in, and bow
+gravely to the guards and coachmen as they touched their hats and drove
+by. It was he who founded the Clavering Book Club: and set up the
+Samaritan Soup and Blanket Society. It was he who brought the mail, which
+used to run through Cacklefield before, away from that village and
+through Clavering. At church he was equally active as a vestryman and a
+worshipper. At market every Thursday, he went from pen to stall, looked
+at samples of oats, and munched corn, felt beasts, punched geese in the
+breast, and weighed them with a knowing air, and did business with the
+farmers at the Clavering Arms, as well as the oldest frequenter of that
+house of call. It was now his shame, as it formerly was his pride, to be
+called Doctor, and those who wished to please him always gave him the
+title of Squire.
+
+Heaven knows where they came from, but a whole range of Pendennis
+portraits presently hung round the Doctor's oak dining-room; Lelys and
+Vandykes he vowed all the portraits to be, and when questioned as to the
+history of the originals, would vaguely say they were 'ancestors of his.'
+You could see by his wife's looks that she disbelieved in these
+genealogical legends, for she generally endeavoured to turn the
+conversation when he commenced them. But his little boy believed them to
+their fullest extent, and Roger Pendennis of Agincourt, Arthur Pendennis
+of Crecy, General Pendennis of Blenheim and Oudenarde, were as real and
+actual beings for this young gentleman as--whom shall we say?--as
+Robinson Crusoe, or Peter Wilkins, or the Seven Champions of Christendom,
+whose histories were in his library.
+
+Pendennis's fortune, which, at the best, was not above eight hundred
+pounds a year, did not, with the best economy and management, permit of
+his living with the great folks of the county; but he had a decent
+comfortable society of the second-best sort. If they were not the roses,
+they lived near the roses, as it were, and had a good deal of the odour
+of genteel life. They had out their plate, and dined each other round in
+the moonlight nights twice a year, coming a dozen miles to these
+festivals; and besides the county, the Pendennises had the society of the
+town of Clavering, as much as, nay, more than they liked: for Mrs. Pybus
+was always poking about Helen's conservatories, and intercepting the
+operation of her soup-tickets and coal-clubs Captain Glanders (H. P.,
+50th Dragoon Guards) was for ever swaggering about the Squire's stables
+and gardens, and endeavouring to enlist him in his quarrels with the
+Vicar, with the Postmaster, with the Reverend F. Wapshot of Clavering
+Grammar School, for overflogging his son, Anglesea Glanders,--with all
+the village in fine. And Pendennis and his wife often blessed themselves,
+that their house of Fairoaks was nearly a mile out of Clavering, or their
+premises would never have been free from the prying eyes and prattle of
+one or other of the male and female inhabitants there.
+
+Fairoaks lawn comes down to the little river Brawl, and on the other side
+were the plantations and woods (as much as were left of them) of
+Clavering Park, Sir Francis Clavering, Bart. The park was let out in
+pasture and fed down by sheep and cattle, when the Pendennises came first
+to live at Fairoaks. Shutters were up in the house; a splendid freestone
+palace, with great stairs, statues, and porticos, whereof you may see a
+picture in the 'Beauties of England and Wales.' Sir Richard Clavering,
+Sir Francis's-grandfather, had commenced the ruin of the family by the
+building of this palace: his successor had achieved the ruin by living in
+it. The present Sir Francis was abroad somewhere; nor could anybody be
+found rich enough to rent that enormous mansion, through the deserted
+rooms, mouldy clanking halls, and dismal galleries of which, Arthur
+Pendennis many a time walked trembling when he was a boy. At sunset, from
+the lawn of Fairoaks, there was a pretty sight: it and the opposite park
+of Clavering were in the habit of putting on a rich golden tinge, which
+became them both wonderfully. The upper windows of the great house flamed
+so as to make your eyes wink; the little river ran off noisily westward,
+and was lost in a sombre wood, behind which the towers of the old abbey
+church of Clavering (whereby that town is called Clavering St. Mary's to
+the present day) rose up in purple splendour. Little Arthur's figure and
+his mother's, cast long blue shadows over the grass; and he would repeat
+in a low voice (for a scene of great natural beauty always moved the boy,
+who inherited this sensibility from his mother) certain lines beginning,
+"These are thy glorious works, Parent of Good; Almighty! thine this
+universal frame," greatly to Mrs. Pendennis's delight. Such walks and
+conversation generally ended in a profusion of filial and maternal
+embraces; for to love and to pray were the main occupations of this dear
+woman's life; and I have often heard Pendennis say in his wild way, that
+he felt that he was sure of going to heaven, for his mother never could
+be happy there without him.
+
+As for John Pendennis, as the father of the family, and that sort of
+thing, everybody had the greatest respect for him: and his orders were
+obeyed like those of the Medes and Persians. His hat was as well brushed,
+perhaps, as that of any man in this empire. His meals were served at the
+same minute every day, and woe to those who came late, as little Pen, a
+disorderly little rascal, sometimes did. Prayers were recited, his
+letters were read, his business dispatched, his stables and garden
+inspected, his hen-houses and kennel, his barn and pigstye visited,
+always at regular hours. After dinner he always had a nap with the Globe
+newspaper on his knee, and his yellow bandanna handkerchief on his face
+(Major Pendennis sent the yellow handkerchiefs from India, and his
+brother had helped in the purchase of his majority, so that they were
+good friends now). And so, as his dinner took place at six o'clock to a
+minute, and the sunset business alluded to may be supposed to have
+occurred at about half-past seven, it is probable that he did not much
+care for the view in front of his lawn windows or take any share in the
+poetry and caresses which were taking place there.
+
+They seldom occurred in his presence. However frisky they were before,
+mother and child were hushed and quiet when Mr. Pendennis walked into the
+drawing-room, his newspaper under his arm. And here, while little Pen,
+buried in a great chair, read all the books of which he could lay hold,
+the Squire perused his own articles in the 'Gardener's Gazette,' or took
+a solemn hand at picquet with Mrs. Pendennis, or an occasional friend
+from the village.
+
+Pendennis usually took care that at least one of his grand dinners should
+take place when his brother, the Major, who, on the return of his
+regiment from India and New South Wales, had sold out and gone upon
+half-pay, came to pay his biennial visit to Fairoaks. "My brother, Major
+Pendennis," was a constant theme of the retired Doctor's conversation.
+All the family delighted in my brother the Major. He was the link which
+bound them to the great world of London, and the fashion. He always
+brought down the last news of the nobility, and was in the constant habit
+of dining with lords and great folks. He spoke of such with soldierlike
+respect and decorum. He would say, "My Lord Bareacres has been good
+enough to invite me to Bareacres for the pheasant shooting," or, "My Lord
+Steyne is so kind as to wish for my presence at Stillbrook for the Easter
+holidays;" and you may be sure the whereabouts of my brother the Major
+was carefully made known by worthy Mr. Pendennis to his friends at the
+Clavering Reading room, at Justice-meetings, or at the County-town. Their
+carriages would come from ten miles round to call upon Major Pendennis in
+his visits to Fairoaks; the fame of his fashion as a man about town was
+established throughout the county. There was a talk of his marrying Miss
+Hunkle, of Lilybank, old Hunkle the Attorney's daughter, with at least
+fifteen hundred a-year to her fortune: but my brother the Major refused
+this negotiation, advantageous as it might seem to most persons. "As a
+bachelor," he said, "nobody cares how poor I am. I have the happiness to
+live with people who are so highly placed in the world, that a few
+hundreds or thousands a year more or less can make no difference in the
+estimation in which they are pleased to hold me. Miss Hunkle, though a
+most respectable lady, is not in possession of either the birth or the
+manners, which would entitle her to be received into the sphere in which
+I have the honour to move. I shall live and die an old bachelor, John:
+and your worthy friend, Miss Hunkle, I have no doubt, will find some more
+worthy object of her affection, than a worn-out old soldier on half-pay."
+Time showed the correctness of the surmise of the old man of the world;
+Miss Hunkle married a young French nobleman, and is now at this moment
+living at Lilybank, under the title of Baroness de Carambole, having been
+separated from her wild young scapegrace of a Baron very shortly after
+their union.
+
+The Major was a great favourite with almost all the little establishment
+of Fairoaks. He was as good-natured as he was well bred, and had a
+sincere liking and regard for his sister-in-law, whom he pronounced, and
+with perfect truth, to be as fine a lady as any in England, and an honour
+to the family. Indeed, Mrs. Pendennis's tranquil beauty, her natural
+sweetness and kindness, and that simplicity and dignity which a perfect
+purity and innocence are sure to bestow upon a handsome woman, rendered
+her quite worthy of her brother's praises. I think it is not national
+prejudice which makes me believe that a high-bred English lady is the
+most complete of all Heaven's subjects in this world. In whom else do you
+see so much grace, and so much virtue; so much faith, and so much
+tenderness; with such a perfect refinement and chastity? And by high-bred
+ladies I don't mean duchesses and countesses. Be they ever so high in
+station, they can be but ladies, and no more. But almost every man who
+lives in the world has the happiness, let us hope, of counting a few such
+persons amongst his circle of acquaintance--women, in whose angelical
+natures, there is something awful, as well as beautiful, to contemplate;
+at whose feet the wildest and fiercest of us must fall down and humble
+ourselves;--in admiration of that adorable purity which never seems to do
+or to think wrong.
+
+Arthur Pendennis had the good fortune to have a mother endowed with these
+happy qualities. During his childhood and youth, the boy thought of her
+as little less than an angel,--as a supernatural being, all wisdom, love,
+and beauty. When her husband drove her into the county town, or to the
+assize balls or concerts there, he would step into the assembly with his
+wife on his arm, and look the great folks in the face, as much as to say,
+"Look at that, my lord; can any of you show me a woman like that?" She
+enraged some country ladies with three times her money, by a sort of
+desperate perfection which they found in her. Miss Pybus said she was
+cold and haughty; Miss Pierce, that she was too proud for her station;
+Mrs. Wapshot, as a doctor of divinity's lady, would have the pas of her,
+who was only the wife of a medical practitioner. In the meanwhile, this
+lady moved through the world quite regardless of all the comments that
+were made in her praise or disfavour. She did not seem to know that she
+was admired or hated for being so perfect: but carried on calmly through
+life, saying her prayers, loving her family, helping her neighbours, and
+doing her duty.
+
+That even a woman should be faultless, however, is an arrangement not
+permitted by nature, which assigns to us mental defects, as it awards to
+us headaches, illnesses, or death; without which the scheme of the world
+could not be carried on,--nay, some of the best qualities of mankind
+could not be brought into exercise. As pain produces or elicits fortitude
+and endurance; difficulty, perseverance; poverty, industry and ingenuity;
+danger, courage and what not; so the very virtues, on the other hand,
+will generate some vices: and, in fine, Mrs. Pendennis had that vice
+which Miss Pybus and Miss Pierce discovered in her, namely, that of
+pride; which did not vest itself so much in her own person, as in that of
+her family. She spoke about Mr. Pendennis (a worthy little gentleman
+enough, but there are others as good as he) with an awful reverence, as
+if he had been the Pope of Rome on his throne, and she a cardinal
+kneeling at his feet, and giving him incense. The Major she held to be a
+sort of Bayard among Majors: and as for her son Arthur she worshipped
+that youth with an ardour which the young scapegrace accepted almost as
+coolly as the statue of the Saint in Saint Peter's receives the rapturous
+osculations which the faithful deliver on his toe.
+
+This unfortunate superstition and idol-worship of this good woman was the
+cause of a great deal of the misfortune which befell the young gentleman
+who is the hero of this history, and deserves therefore to be mentioned
+at the outset of his story.
+
+Arthur Pendennis's schoolfellows at the Greyfriars School state that, as
+a boy, he was in no ways remarkable either as a dunce or as a scholar. He
+did, in fact, just as much as was required of him, and no more. If he was
+distinguished for anything it was for verse-writing: but was his
+enthusiasm ever so great, it stopped when he had composed the number of
+lines demanded by the regulations (unlike young Swettenham, for instance,
+who, with no more of poetry in his composition than Mr. Wakley, yet would
+bring up a hundred dreary hexameters to the master after a half-holiday;
+or young Fluxmore, who not only did his own verses, but all the fifth
+form's besides). He never read to improve himself out of school-hours,
+but, on the contrary, devoured all the novels, plays, and poetry, on
+which he could lay his hands. He never was flogged, but it was a wonder
+how he escaped the whipping-post. When he had money he spent it royally
+in tarts for himself and his friends; he has been known to disburse nine
+and sixpence out of ten shillings awarded to him in a single day. When he
+had no funds he went on tick. When he could get no credit he went
+without, and was almost as happy. He has been known to take a thrashing
+for a crony without saying a word; but a blow, ever so slight from a
+friend, would make him roar. To fighting he was averse from his earliest
+youth, as indeed to physic, the Greek Grammar, or any other exertion, and
+would engage in none of them, except at the last extremity. He seldom if
+ever told lies, and never bullied little boys. Those masters or seniors
+who were kind to him, he loved with boyish ardour. And though the Doctor,
+when he did not know his Horace, or could not construe his Greek play,
+said that that boy Pendennis was a disgrace to the school, a candidate
+for ruin in this world, and perdition in the next; a profligate who would
+most likely bring his venerable father to ruin and his mother to a
+dishonoured grave, and the like--yet as the Doctor made use of these
+compliments to most of the boys in the place (which has not turned out an
+unusual number of felons and pickpockets), little Pen, at first uneasy
+and terrified by these charges, became gradually accustomed to hear them;
+and he has not, in fact, either murdered his parents, or committed any
+act worthy of transportation or hanging up to the present day.
+
+There were many of the upper boys, among the Cistercians with whom
+Pendennis was educated, who assumed all the privileges of men long before
+they quitted that seminary. Many of them, for example, smoked cigars--and
+some had already begun the practice of inebriation. One had fought a duel
+with an Ensign in a marching, in consequence of a row at the theatre--
+another actually kept a buggy and horse at a livery stable in Covent
+Garden, and might be seen driving any Sunday in Hyde Park with a groom
+with squared arms and armorial buttons by his side. Many of the seniors
+were in love, and showed each other in confidence poems addressed to, or
+letters and locks of hair received from, young ladies--but Pen, a modest
+and timid youth, rather envied these than imitated them as yet. He had
+not got beyond the theory as yet--the practice of life was all to come.
+And by the way, ye tender mothers and sober fathers of Christian
+families, a prodigious thing that theory of life is as orally learned at
+a great public school. Why, if you could hear those boys of fourteen who
+blush before mothers and sneak off in silence in the presence of their
+daughters, talking among each other--it would be the women's turn to
+blush then. Before he was twelve years old and if while his mother
+fancied him an angel of candour, little Pen had heard talk enough to make
+him quite awfully wise upon certain points--and so, Madam, has your
+pretty little rosy-cheeked son, who is coming home from school for the
+ensuing Christmas holidays. I don't say that the boy is lost, or that the
+innocence has left him which he had from 'Heaven, which is our home,' but
+that the shades of the prison-house are closing very fast over him, and
+that we are helping as much as possible to corrupt him.
+
+Well--Pen had just made his public appearance in a coat with a tail, or
+cauda virilis, and was looking most anxiously in his little study-glass
+to see if his whiskers were growing, like those of more fortunate youths
+his companions; and, instead of the treble voice with which he used to
+speak and sing (for his singing voice was a very sweet one, and he used
+when little to be made to perform 'Home, sweet Home,' 'My pretty Page,'
+and a French song or two which his mother had taught him, and other
+ballads for the delectation of the senior boys), had suddenly plunged
+into a deep bass diversified by a squeak, which when he was called upon
+to construe in school set the master and scholars laughing he was about
+sixteen years old, in a word, when he was suddenly called away from his
+academic studies.
+
+It was at the close of the forenoon school, and Pen had been unnoticed
+all the previous part of the morning till now, when the Doctor put him on
+to construe in a Greek play. He did not know a word of it, though little
+Timmins, his form-fellow, was prompting him with all his might. Pen had
+made a sad blunder or two when the awful Chief broke out upon him.
+
+"Pendennis, sir," he said, "your idleness is incorrigible and your
+stupidity beyond example. You are a disgrace to your school, and to your
+family, and I have no doubt will prove so in after-life to your country.
+If that vice, sir, which is described to us as the root of all evil, be
+really what moralists have represented (and I have no doubt of the
+correctness of their opinion), for what a prodigious quantity of future
+crime and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed! Miserable
+trifler! A boy who construes de and, instead of de but, at sixteen years
+of age is guilty not merely of folly, and ignorance, and dulness
+inconceivable, but of crime, of deadly crime, of filial ingratitude,
+which I tremble to contemplate. A boy, sir, who does not learn his Greek
+play cheats the parent who spends money for his education. A boy who
+cheats his parent is not very far from robbing or forging upon his
+neighbour. A man who forges on his neighbour pays the penalty of his
+crime at the gallows. And it is not such a one that I pity (for he will
+be deservedly cut off), but his maddened and heart-broken parents, who
+are driven to a premature grave by his crimes, or, if they live, drag on
+a wretched and dishonoured old age. Go on, sir, and I warn you that the
+very next mistake that you make shall subject you to the punishment of
+the rod. Who's that laughing? What ill-conditioned boy is there that
+dares to laugh?" shouted the Doctor.
+
+Indeed, while the master was making this oration, there was a general
+titter behind him in the schoolroom. The orator had his back to the door
+of this ancient apartment, which was open, and a gentleman who was quite
+familiar with the place, for both Major Arthur and Mr. John Pendennis had
+been at the school, was asking the fifth-form boy who sate by the door
+for Pendennis. The lad grinning pointed to the culprit against whom the
+Doctor was pouring out the thunders of his just wrath--Major Pendennis
+could not help laughing. He remembered having stood under that very
+pillar where Pen the younger now stood, and having been assaulted by the
+Doctor's predecessor years and years ago. The intelligence was 'passed
+round' that it was Pendennis's uncle in an instant, and a hundred young
+faces wondering and giggling, between terror and laughter, turned now to
+the new-comer and then to the awful Doctor.
+
+The Major asked the fifth-form boy to carry his card up to the Doctor,
+which the lad did with an arch look. Major Pendennis had written on the
+card, "I must take A. P. home; his father is very ill."
+
+As the Doctor received the card, and stopped his harangue with rather a
+seared look, the laughter of the boys, half constrained until then, burst
+out in a general shout. "Silence!" roared out the Doctor stamping with
+his foot. Pen looked up and saw who was his deliverer; the Major beckoned
+to him gravely with one of his white gloves, and tumbling down his books,
+Pen went across.
+
+The Doctor took out his watch. It was two minutes to one. "We will take
+the Juvenal at afternoon school," he said, nodding to the Captain, and
+all the boys understanding the signal gathered up their books and poured
+out of the hall.
+
+Young Pen saw by his uncle's face that something had happened at home.
+"Is there anything the matter with my mother?" he said. He could hardly
+speak, though, for emotion, and the tears which were ready to start.
+
+"No," said the Major, "but your father's very ill. Go and pack your trunk
+directly; I have got a postchaise at the gate."
+
+Pen went off quickly to his boarding-house to do as his uncle bade him;
+and the Doctor, now left alone in the schoolroom, came out to shake hands
+with his old schoolfellow. You would not have thought it was the same
+man. As Cinderella at a particular hour became, from a blazing and
+magnificent Princess, quite an ordinary little maid in a grey petticoat,
+so, as the clock struck one, all the thundering majesty and awful wrath
+of the schoolmaster disappeared.
+
+"There is nothing serious, I hope," said the Doctor. "It is a pity to
+take the boy away unless there is. He is a very good boy, rather idle and
+unenergetic, but he is a very honest gentlemanlike little fellow, though
+I can't get him to construe as I wish. Won't you come in and have some
+luncheon? My wife will be very happy to see you."
+
+But Major Pendennis declined the luncheon. He said his brother was very
+ill, had had a fit the day before, and it was a great question if they
+should see him alive.
+
+"There's no other son, is there?" said the Doctor. The Major answered
+"No."
+
+"And there's a good eh--a good eh--property I believe?" asked the other
+in an off-hand way.
+
+"H'm--so so," said the Major. Whereupon this colloquy came to an end. And
+Arthur Pendennis got into the postchaise with his uncle never to come
+back to school any more.
+
+As the chaise drove through Clavering, the hostler standing whistling
+under the archway of the Clavering Arms, winked the postilion ominously,
+as much as to say all was over. The gardener's wife came and opened the
+lodge-gates, and let the travellers through with a silent shake of the
+head. All the blinds were down at Fairoaks--the face of the old footman
+was as blank when he let them in. Arthur's face was white too, with
+terror more than with grief. Whatever of warmth and love the deceased man
+might have had, and he adored his wife and loved and admired his son with
+all his heart, he had shut them up within himself; nor had the boy been
+ever able to penetrate that frigid outward barrier. But Arthur had been
+his father's pride and glory through life, and his name the last which
+John Pendennis had tried to articulate whilst he lay with his wife's hand
+clasping his own cold and clammy palm, as the flickering spirit went out
+into the darkness of death, and life and the world passed away from him.
+
+The little girl, whose face had peered for a moment under the blinds as
+the chaise came up, opened the door from the stairs into the hall, and
+taking Arthur's hand silently as he stooped down to kiss her, led him
+upstairs to his mother. Old John opened the dining-room door for the
+Major. The room was darkened with the blinds down, and surrounded by all
+the gloomy pictures of the Pendennises. He drank a glass of wine. The
+bottle had been opened for the Squire four days before. His hat was
+brushed, and laid on the hall table: his newspapers, and his letter-bag,
+with John Pendennis, Esquire, Fairoaks, engraved upon the brass plate,
+were there in waiting. The doctor and the lawyer from Clavering, who had
+seen the chaise pass through, came up in a gig half an hour after the
+Major's arrival, and entered by the back door. The former gave a detailed
+account of the seizure and demise of Mr. Pendennis, enlarged on his
+virtues and the estimation in which the neighbourhood held him; on what a
+loss he would be to the magistrates' bench, the County Hospital, etc.
+Mrs. Pendennis bore up wonderfully, he said, especially since Master
+Arthur's arrival. The lawyer stayed and dined with Major Pendennis, and
+they talked business all the evening. The Major was his brother's
+executor, and joint guardian to the boy with Mrs. Pendennis. Everything
+was left unreservedly to her, except in case of a second marriage,--an
+occasion which might offer itself in the case of so young and handsome a
+woman, Mr. Tatham gallantly said, when different provisions were enacted
+by the deceased. The Major would of course take entire superintendence of
+everything under this most impressive and melancholy occasion. Aware of
+this authority, old John the footman, when he brought Major Pendennis the
+candle to go to bed, followed afterwards with the plate-basket; and the
+next morning brought him the key of the hall clock--the Squire always
+used to wind it up of a Thursday, John said. Mrs. Pendennis's maid
+brought him messages from her mistress. She confirmed the doctor's
+report, of the comfort which Master Arthur's arrival had caused to his
+mother.
+
+What passed between that lady and the boy is not of import. A veil should
+be thrown over those sacred emotions of love and grief. The maternal
+passion is a sacred mystery to me. What one sees symbolised in the Roman
+churches in the image of the Virgin Mother with a bosom bleeding with
+love, I think one may witness (and admire the Almighty bounty for) every
+day. I saw a Jewish lady, only yesterday, with a child at her knee, and
+from whose face towards the child there shone a sweetness so angelical,
+that it seemed to form a sort of glory round both. I protest I could have
+knelt before her too, and adored in her the Divine beneficence in
+endowing us with the maternal storge, which began with our race and
+sanctifies the history of mankind.
+
+So it was with this, in a word, that Mrs. Pendennis comforted herself on
+the death of her husband, whom, however, she always reverenced as the
+best, the most upright, wise, high-minded, accomplished, and awful of
+men. If the women did not make idols of us, and if they saw us as we see
+each other, would life be bearable, or could society go on? Let a man
+pray that none of his womankind should form a just estimation of him. If
+your wife knew you as you are, neighbour, she would not grieve much about
+being your widow, and would let your grave-lamp go out very soon, or
+perhaps not even take the trouble to light it. Whereas Helen Pendennis
+put up the handsomest of memorials to her husband, and constantly renewed
+it with the most precious oil.
+
+As for Arthur Pendennis, after that awful shock which the sight of his
+dead father must have produced on him, and the pity and feeling which
+such an event no doubt occasioned, I am not sure that in the very moment
+of the grief, and as he embraced his mother and tenderly consoled her,
+and promised to love her for ever, there was not springing up in his
+breast a feeling of secret triumph and exultation. He was the chief now
+and lord. He was Pendennis; and all round about him were his servants and
+handmaids. "You'll never send me away," little Laura said, tripping by
+him, and holding his hand. "You won't send me to school, will you,
+Arthur?"
+
+Arthur kissed her and patted her head. No, she shouldn't go to school. As
+for going himself, that was quite out of the question. He had determined
+that that part of his life should not be renewed. In the midst of the
+general grief, and the corpse still lying above, he had leisure to
+conclude that he would have it all holidays for the future, that he
+wouldn't get up till he liked, or stand the bullying of the Doctor any
+more, and had made a hundred of such day-dreams and resolves for the
+future. How one's thoughts will travel! and how quickly our wishes beget
+them! When he with Laura in his hand went into the kitchen on his way to
+the dog-kennel, the fowl-houses, and other his favourite haunts, all the
+servants there assembled in great silence with their friends, and the
+labouring men and their wives, and Sally Potter who went with the
+post-bag to Clavering, and the baker's man from Clavering--all there
+assembled and drinking beer on the melancholy occasion--rose up on his
+entrance and bowed or curtseyed to him. They never used to do so last
+holidays, he felt at once and with indescribable pleasure. The cook cried
+out, "O Lord," and whispered, "How Master Arthur do grow!" Thomas, the
+groom, in the act of drinking, put down the jug alarmed before his
+master. Thomas's master felt the honour keenly. He went through and
+looked at the pointers. As Flora put her nose up to his waistcoat, and
+Ponto, yelling with pleasure, hurtled at his chain, Pen patronised the
+dogs, and said, "Poo Ponto, poo Flora," in his most condescending manner.
+And then he went and looked at Laura's hens, and at the pigs, and at the
+orchard, and at the dairy; perhaps he blushed to think that it was only
+last holidays he had in a manner robbed the great apple-tree, and been
+scolded by the dairymaid for taking cream.
+
+They buried John Pendennis, Esquire, "formerly an eminent medical
+practitioner at Bath, and subsequently an able magistrate, a benevolent
+landlord, and a benefactor to many charities and public institutions in
+this neighbourhood and county," with one of the most handsome funerals
+that had been seen since Sir Roger Clavering was buried here, the clerk
+said, in the abbey church of Clavering St. Mary's. A fair marble slab,
+from which the above inscription is copied, was erected over the
+Fairoaks' pew in the church. On it you may see the Pendennis coat of
+arms, and crest, an eagle looking towards the sun, with the motto 'nec
+tenui penna,' to the present day. Doctor Portman alluded to the deceased
+most handsomely and affectingly, as "our dear departed friend," in his
+sermon next Sunday; and Arthur Pendennis reigned in his stead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+In which Pendennis appears as a very young Man indeed
+
+
+Arthur was about sixteen years old, we have said, when he began to reign;
+in person (for I see that the artist who is to illustrate this book, and
+who makes sad work of the likeness, will never be able to take my friend
+off) he had what his friends would call a dumpy, but his mamma styled a
+neat little figure. His hair was of a healthy brown colour, which looks
+like gold in the sunshine, his face was round, rosy, freckled, and
+good-humoured, his whiskers (when those facial ornaments for which he
+sighed so ardently were awarded to him by nature) were decidedly of a
+reddish hue; in fact, without being a beauty, he had such a frank,
+good-natured kind face, and laughed so merrily at you out of his honest
+blue eyes, that no wonder Mrs. Pendennis thought him the pride of the
+whole county. Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen he rose from five
+feet six to five feet eight inches in height, at which altitude he
+paused. But his mother wondered at it. He was three inches taller than
+his father. Was it possible that any man could grow to be three inches
+taller than Mr. Pendennis?
+
+You may be certain he never went back to school; the discipline of the
+establishment did not suit him, and he liked being at home much better.
+The question of his return was debated, and his uncle was for his going
+back. The Doctor wrote his opinion that it was most important for
+Arthur's success in after-life that he should know a Greek play
+thoroughly, but Pen adroitly managed to hint to his mother what a
+dangerous place Greyfriars was, and what sad wild fellows some of the
+chaps there were, and the timid soul, taking alarm at once, acceded to
+his desire to stay at home.
+
+Then Pen's uncle offered to use his influence with His Royal Highness the
+Commander-in-Chief, who was pleased to be very kind to him, and proposed
+to get Pen a commission in the Foot Guards. Pen's heart leaped at this:
+he had been to hear the band at St. James's play on a Sunday, when he
+went out to his uncle. He had seen Tom Ricketts, of the fourth form, who
+used to wear a jacket and trousers so ludicrously tight, that the elder
+boys could not forbear using him in the quality of a butt or 'cockshy'--
+he had seen this very Ricketts arrayed in crimson and gold, with an
+immense bear-skin cap on his head, staggering under the colours of the
+regiment. Tom had recognised him and gave him a patronising nod. Tom, a
+little wretch whom he had cut over the back with a hockey-stick last
+quarter--and there he was in the centre of the square, rallying round the
+flag of his country, surrounded by bayonets, crossbelts, and scarlet, the
+band blowing trumpets and banging cymbals--talking familiarly to immense
+warriors with tufts to their chins and Waterloo medals. What would not
+Pen have given to wear such epaulettes and enter such a service?
+
+But Helen Pendennis, when this point was proposed to her by her son, put
+on a face full of terror and alarm. She said she "did not quarrel with
+others who thought differently, but that in her opinion a Christian had
+no right to make the army a profession. Mr. Pendennis never, never would
+have permitted his son to be a soldier. Finally, she should be very
+unhappy if he thought of it." Now Pen would have as soon cut off his nose
+and ears as deliberately, and of aforethought malice, made his mother
+unhappy; and, as he was of such a generous disposition that he would give
+away anything to any one, he instantly made a present of his visionary
+red coat and epaulettes and his ardour for military glory to his mother.
+
+She thought him the noblest creature in the world. But Major Pendennis,
+when the offer of the commission was acknowledged and refused, wrote back
+a curt and somewhat angry letter to the widow, and thought his nephew was
+rather a spooney.
+
+He was contented, however, when he saw the boy's performances out hunting
+at Christmas, when the Major came down as usual to Fairoaks. Pen had a
+very good mare, and rode her with uncommon pluck and grace. He took his
+fences with great coolness, and yet with judgment, and without bravado.
+He wrote to the chaps at school about his top-boots, and his feats across
+country. He began to think seriously of a scarlet coat: and his mother
+must own that she thought it would become him remarkably well; though, of
+course, she passed hours of anguish during his absence, and daily
+expected to see him brought home on a shutter.
+
+With these amusements, in rather too great plenty, it must not be
+assumed that Pen neglected his studies altogether. He had a natural taste
+for reading every possible kind of book which did not fall into his
+school-course. It was only when they forced his head into the waters of
+knowledge, that he refused to drink. He devoured all the books at home
+from Inchbald's Theatre to White's Farriery; he ransacked the
+neighbouring book-cases. He found at Clavering an old cargo of French
+novels, which he read with all his might; and he would sit for hours
+perched upon the topmost bar of Doctor Portman's library steps with a
+folio on his knees, whether it were Hakluyt's Travels, Hobbes's
+Leviathan, Augustini Opera, or Chaucer's Poems. He and the Vicar were
+very good friends, and from his Reverence, Pen learned that honest taste
+for port wine which distinguished him through life. And as for that dear
+good woman, Mrs. Portman, who was not in the least jealous, though her
+Doctor avowed himself in love with Mrs. Pendennis, whom he pronounced to
+be by far the finest lady in the county--all her grief was, as she looked
+up fondly at Pen perched on the book-ladder, that her daughter, Minny,
+was too old for him--as indeed she was--Miss Myra Portman being at that
+period only two years younger than Pen's mother, and weighing as much as
+Pen and Mrs. Pendennis together.
+
+Are these details insipid? Look back, good friend, at your own youth, and
+ask how was that? I like to think of a well-nurtured boy, brave and
+gentle, warm-hearted and loving, and looking the world in the face with
+kind honest eyes. What bright colours it wore then, and how you enjoyed
+it! A man has not many years of such time. He does not know them whilst
+they are with him. It is only when they are passed long away that he
+remembers how dear and happy they were.
+
+In order to keep Mr. Pen from indulging in that idleness of which his
+friend the Doctor of the Cistercians had prophesied such awful
+consequences, Mr. Smirke, Dr. Portman's curate, was engaged at a liberal
+salary, to walk or ride over from Clavering and pass several hours daily
+with the young gentleman. Smirke was a man perfectly faultless at a
+tea-table, wore a curl on his fair forehead, and tied his neck-cloth with
+a melancholy grace. He was a decent scholar and mathematician, and taught
+Pen as much as the lad was ever disposed to learn, which was not much.
+For Pen had soon taken the measure of his tutor, who, when he came riding
+into the court-yard at Fairoaks on his pony, turned out his toes so
+absurdly, and left such a gap between his knees and the saddle, that it
+was impossible for any lad endowed with a sense of humour to respect such
+an equestrian. He nearly killed Smirke with terror by putting him on his
+mare, and taking him a ride over a common, where the county fox-hounds
+(then bunted by that staunch old sportsman, Mr. Hardhead, of
+Dumplingbeare) happened to meet. Mr. Smirke, on Pen's mare, Rebecca (she
+was named after Pen's favourite heroine, the daughter of Isaac of York),
+astounded the hounds as much as he disgusted the huntsman, laming one of
+the former by persisting in riding amongst the pack, and receiving a
+speech from the latter, more remarkable for energy of language, than any
+oration he had ever heard since he left the bargemen on the banks of
+Isis.
+
+Smirke confided to his pupil his poems both Latin and English; and
+presented to Mrs. Pendennis a volume of the latter, printed at Clapham,
+his native place. The two read the ancient poets together, and rattled
+through them at a pleasant rate, very different from that steady grubbing
+pace with which the Cistercians used to go over the classic ground,
+scenting out each word as they went, and digging up every root in the
+way. Pen never liked to halt, but made his tutor construe when he was at
+fault, and thus galloped through the Iliad and the Odyssey, the tragic
+playwriters, writers, and the charming wicked Aristophanes (whom he vowed
+to be the greatest poet of all). But he went at such a pace that, though
+he certainly galloped through a considerable extent of the ancient
+country, he clean forgot it in after-life, and had only such a vague
+remembrance of his early classic course as a man has in the House of
+Commons, let us say, who still keeps up two or three quotations; or a
+reviewer who, just for decency's sake, hints at a little Greek. Our
+people are the most prosaic in the world, but the most faithful; and with
+curious reverence we keep up and transmit, from generation to generation,
+the superstition of what we call the education of a gentleman.
+
+Besides the ancient poets, you may be sure Pen read the English with
+great gusto. Smirke sighed and shook his head sadly both about Byron and
+Moore. But Pen was a sworn fire-worshipper and a Corsair; he had them by
+heart, and used to take little Laura into the window and say, "Zuleika, I
+am not thy brother," in tones so tragic that they caused the solemn
+little maid to open her great eyes still wider. She sat, until the proper
+hour for retirement, sewing at Mrs. Pendennis's knee, and listening to
+Pen reading out to her of nights without comprehending one word of what
+he read.
+
+He read Shakspeare to his mother (which she said she liked, but didn't),
+and Byron, and Pope, and his favourite Lalla Rookh, which pleased her
+indifferently. But as for Bishop Heber, and Mrs. Hemans above all,
+this lady used to melt right away, and be absorbed into her
+pocket-handkerchief, when Pen read those authors to her in his kind
+boyish voice. The 'Christian Year' was a book which appeared about that
+time. The son and the mother whispered it to each other with awe--faint,
+very faint, and seldom in after-life Pendennis heard that solemn
+church-music: but he always loved the remembrance of it, and of the times
+when it struck on his heart, and he walked over the fields full of hope
+and void of doubt, as the church-bells rang on Sunday morning.
+
+It was at this period of his existence, that Pen broke out in the Poets'
+Corner of the County Chronicle, with some verses with which he was
+perfectly well satisfied. His are the verses signed 'NEP.,' addressed 'To
+a Tear;' 'On the Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo;' 'To Madame
+Caradori singing at the Assize Meetings;' 'On Saint Bartholomew's Day' (a
+tremendous denunciation of Popery, and a solemn warning to the people of
+England to rally against emancipating the Roman Catholics), etc., etc.--
+all which masterpieces, Mrs. Pendennis no doubt keeps to this day, along
+with his first socks, the first cutting of his hair, his bottle, and
+other interesting relics of his infancy. He used to gallop Rebecca over
+the neighbouring Dumpling Downs, or into the county town, which, if you
+please, we shall call Chatteris, spouting his own poems, and filled with
+quite a Byronic afflatus as he thought.
+
+His genius at this time was of a decidedly gloomy cast. He brought his
+mother a tragedy, in which, though he killed sixteen people before the
+second act, it made her laugh so, that he thrust the masterpiece into the
+fire in a pet. He projected an epic poem in blank verse, 'Cortez, or the
+Conqueror of Mexico, and the Inca's Daughter.' He wrote part of 'Seneca,
+or the Fatal Bath,' and 'Ariadne in Naxos;' classical pieces, with
+choruses and strophes and antistrophes, which sadly puzzled poor Mrs.
+Pendennis; and began a 'History of the Jesuits,' in which he lashed
+that Order with tremendous severity, and warned his Protestant
+fellow-countrymen of their machinations. His loyalty did his mother's
+heart good to witness. He was a staunch, unflinching Church-and-King man
+in those days; and at the election, when Sir Giles Beanfield stood on the
+Blue interest, against Lord Trehawk, Lord Eyrie's son, a Whig and a
+friend of Popery, Arthur Pendennis, with an immense bow for himself,
+which his mother made, and with a blue ribbon for Rebecca, rode alongside
+of the Reverend Doctor Portman, on his grey mare Dowdy, and at the head
+of the Clavering voters, whom the Doctor brought up to plump for the
+Protestant Champion.
+
+On that day Pen made his first speech at the Blue Hotel: and also, it
+appears, for the first time in his life--took a little more wine than was
+good for him. Mercy! what a scene it was at Fairoaks, when he rode back
+at ever so much o'clock at night. What moving about of lanterns in the
+court-yard and stables, though the moon was shining out; what a gathering
+of servants, as Pen came home, clattering over the bridge and up the
+stableyard, with half a score of the Clavering voters yelling after him
+the Blue song of the election.
+
+He wanted them all to come in and have some wine--some very good Madeira
+--some capital Madeira--John, go and get some Madeira,--and there is no
+knowing what the farmers would have done, had not Madam Pendennis made
+her appearance in a white wrapper, with a candle--and scared those
+zealous Blues so by the sight of her pale handsome face, that they
+touched their hats and rode off.
+
+Besides these amusements and occupations in which Mr. Pen indulged, there
+was one which forms the main business and pleasure of youth, if the poets
+tell us aright, whom Pen was always studying; and this young fellow's
+heart was so ardent, and his imagination so eager, that it is not to be
+expected he should long escape the passion to which we allude, and which,
+ladies, you have rightly guessed to be that of Love. Pen sighed for it
+first in secret, and, like the love-sick swain in Ovid, opened his breast
+and said, "Aura, veni." What generous youth is there that has not courted
+some such windy mistress in his time?
+
+Yes, Pen began to feel the necessity of a first love--of a consuming
+passion--of an object on which he could concentrate all those vague
+floating fancies under which he sweetly suffered--of a young lady to whom
+he could really make verses, and whom he could set up and adore, in place
+of those unsubstantial Ianthes and Zuleikas to whom he addressed the
+outpourings of his gushing muse. He read his favourite poems over and
+over again, he called upon Alma Venus the delight of gods and men, he
+translated Anacreon's odes, and picked out passages suitable to his
+complaint from Waller, Dryden, Prior, and the like. Smirke and he were
+never weary, in their interviews, of discoursing about love. The
+faithless tutor entertained him with sentimental conversations in place
+of lectures on algebra and Greek; for Smirke was in love too. Who could
+help it, being in daily intercourse with such a woman? Smirke was madly
+in love (as far as such a mild flame as Mr. Smirke's may be called
+madness) with Mrs. Pendennis. That honest lady, sitting down below stairs
+teaching little Laura to play the piano, or devising flannel petticoats
+for the poor round about her, or otherwise busied with the calm routine
+of her modest and spotless Christian life, was little aware what storms
+were brewing in two bosoms upstairs in the study--in Pen's, as he sate in
+his shooting jacket, with his elbows on the green study-table, and his
+hands clutching his curly brown hair, Homer under his nose,--and in
+worthy Mr. Smirke's, with whom he was reading. Here they would talk about
+Helen and Andromache. "Andromache's like my mother," Pen used to avouch;
+"but I say, Smirke, by Jove I'd cut off my nose to see Helen;" and he
+would spout certain favourite lines which the reader will find in their
+proper place in the third book. He drew portraits of her--they are extant
+still--with straight noses and enormous eyes, and 'Arthur Pendennis
+delineavit et pinxit' gallantly written underneath.
+
+As for Mr. Smirke he naturally preferred Andromache. And in consequence
+he was uncommonly kind to Pen. He gave him his Elzevir Horace, of which
+the boy was fond, and his little Greek Testament which his own mamma at
+Clapham had purchased and presented to him. He bought him a silver
+pencil-case; and in the matter of learning let him do just as much or as
+little as ever he pleased. He always seemed to be on the point of
+unbosoming himself to Pen: nay, he confessed to the latter that he had
+a--an attachment, an ardently cherished attachment, about which Pendennis
+longed to hear, and said, "Tell us, old chap, is she handsome? has she
+got blue eyes or black?" But Doctor Portman's curate, heaving a gentle
+sigh, cast up his eyes to the ceiling, and begged Pen faintly to change
+the conversation. Poor Smirke! He invited Pen to dine at his lodgings
+over Madame Fribsby's, the milliner's, in Clavering; and once when it was
+raining, and Mrs. Pendennis, who had driven in her pony-chaise into
+Clavering with respect to some arrangements, about leaving off mourning
+probably, was prevailed upon to enter the curate's apartments, he sent
+out for pound-cakes instantly. The sofa on which she sate became sacred
+to him from that day: and he kept flowers in the glass which she drank
+from ever after.
+
+As Mrs. Pendennis was never tired of hearing the praises of her son, we
+may be certain that this rogue of a_ tutor neglected no opportunity of
+conversing with her upon that subject. It might be a little tedious to
+him to hear the stories about Pen's generosity, about his bravery in
+fighting the big naughty boy, about his fun and jokes, about his
+prodigious skill in Latin, music, riding, etc., but what price would he
+not pay to be in her company? and the widow, after these conversations,
+thought Mr. Smirke a very pleasing and well-informed man. As for her son,
+she had not settled in her mind whether he was to be Senior Wrangler and
+Archbishop of Canterbury, or Double First Class at Oxford, and Lord
+Chancellor. That all England did not possess his peer, was a fact about
+which there was, in her mind, no manner of question.
+
+A simple person, of inexpensive habits, she began forthwith to save, and,
+perhaps, to be a little parsimonious, in favour of her boy. There were no
+entertainments, of course, at Fairoaks, during the year of her weeds.
+Nor, indeed, did the Doctor's silver dish-covers, of which he was so
+proud, and which were flourished all over with the arms of the
+Pendennises, and surmounted with their crest, come out of the
+plate-chests again for long, long years. The household was diminished,
+and its expenses curtailed. There was a very blank anchorite repast when
+Pen dined from home: and he himself headed the remonstrance from the
+kitchen regarding the deteriorated quality of the Fairoaks beer. She was
+becoming miserly for Pen. Indeed, who ever accused women of being just?
+They are always sacrificing themselves or somebody for somebody else's
+sake.
+
+There happened to be no young woman in the small circle of friends who
+were in the widow's intimacy whom Pendennis could by any possibility
+gratify by endowing her with the inestimable treasure of a heart which he
+was longing to give away. Some young fellows in this predicament bestow
+their young affections upon Dolly, the dairymaid, or cast the eyes of
+tenderness upon Molly, the blacksmith's daughter. Pen thought a Pendennis
+much too grand a personage to stoop so low. He was too high-minded for a
+vulgar intrigue, and, at the idea of an intrigue or a seduction, had he
+ever entertained it, his heart would have revolted as from the notion of
+any act of baseness or dishonour. Miss Minny Portman was too old, too
+large, and too fond of reading 'Rollin's Ancient History.' The Miss
+Boardbacks, Admiral Boardback's daughters (of St. Vincent's, or Fourth of
+June House, as it was called), disgusted Pen with the London airs which
+they brought into the country, from Gloucester Place, where they passed
+the season, and looked down upon Pen as a chit. Captain Glanders's (H.P.,
+50th Dragoon Guards) three girls were in brown-holland pinafores as yet,
+with the ends of their hair-plaits tied up in dirty pink ribbon. Not
+having acquired the art of dancing, the youth avoided such chances as he
+might have had of meeting with the fair sex at the Chatteris' Assemblies;
+in fine, he was not in love, because there was nobody at hand to fall in
+love with. And the young monkey used to ride out, day after day in
+quest, of Dulcinea; and peep into the pony-chaises and gentlefolks'
+carriages, as they drove along the broad turnpike roads, with a heart
+beating within him, and a secret tremor and hope that she might be in
+that yellow postchaise coming swinging up the hill, or one of those three
+girls in beaver bonnets in the back seat of the double gig, which the fat
+old gentleman in black was driving, at four miles an hour. The
+postchaise contained a snuffy old dowager of seventy, with a maid, her
+contemporary. The three girls in the beaver bonnets were no handsomer
+than the turnips that skirted the roadside. Do as he might, and ride
+where he would, the fairy princess that he was to rescue and win, had not
+yet appeared to honest Pen.
+
+Upon these points he did not discourse to his mother. He had a world of
+his own. What generous, ardent, imaginative soul has not a secret
+pleasure-place in which it disports? Let no clumsy prying or dull
+meddling of ours try to disturb it in our children. Actaeon was a brute
+for wanting to push in where Diana was bathing. Leave him occasionally
+alone, my good madam, if you have a poet for a child. Even your admirable
+advice may be a bore sometimes. You are faultless; but it does not follow
+that everybody in your family is to think exactly like yourself. Yonder
+little child may have thoughts too deep even for your great mind, and
+fancies so coy and timid that they will not bare themselves when your
+ladyship sits by.
+
+Helen Pendennis by the force of sheer love divined a great number of her
+son's secrets. But she kept these things in her heart (if we may so
+speak), and did not speak of them. Besides, she had made up her mind that
+he was to marry little Laura, who would be eighteen when Pen was
+six-and-twenty: and had finished his college career, and had made his
+grand tour, and was settled either in London, astonishing all the
+metropolis by his learning and eloquence at the bar, or better still in a
+sweet country parsonage surrounded with hollyhocks and roses, close to a
+delightful romantic ivy-covered church, from the pulpit of which Pen
+would utter the most beautiful sermons ever preached.
+
+While these natural sentiments were waging war and trouble in honest
+Pen's bosom, it chanced one day that he rode into Chatteris, for the
+purpose of carrying to the County Chronicle a tremendous and thrilling
+poem for the next week's paper; and putting up his horse according to
+custom, at the stables of the George Hotel there, he fell in with an old
+acquaintance. A grand black tandem, with scarlet wheels, came rattling
+into the inn yard, as Pen stood there in converse with the hostler about
+Rebecca; and the voice of the driver called out, "Hallo, Pendennis, is
+that you?" in a loud patronising manner. Pen had some difficulty in
+recognising under the broad-brimmed hat and the vast great-coats and
+neckcloths, with which the new-comer was habited, the person and figure
+of his quondam schoolfellow, Mr. Foker.
+
+A year's absence had made no small difference in that gentleman. A youth
+who had been deservedly whipped a few months previously, and who spent
+his pocket-money on tarts and hardbake, now appeared before Pen in one of
+those costumes to which the public consent, that I take to be quite as
+influential in this respect as 'Johnson's Dictionary,' has awarded the
+title of "Swell.' He had a bull-dog between his legs, and in his scarlet
+shawl neckcloth was a pin representing another bull-dog in gold: he wore
+a fur waistcoat laced over with gold chains; a green cutaway coat with
+basket-buttons, and a white upper-coat ornamented with cheese-plate
+buttons, on each of which was engraved some stirring incident of the road
+or the chase; all which ornaments set off this young fellow's figure to
+such advantage, that you would hesitate to say which character in life he
+most resembled, and whether he was a boxer en goguette, or a coachman in
+his gala suit.
+
+"Left that place for good, Pendennis?" Mr. Foker said, descending from
+his landau and giving Pendennis a finger.
+
+"Yes, this year--or more," Pen said.
+
+"Beastly old hole," Mr. Foker remarked. "Hate it. Hate the Doctor: hate
+Towzer, the second master; hate everybody there. Not a fit place for a
+gentleman."
+
+"Not at all," said Pen, with an air of the utmost consequence.
+
+"By gad, sir, I sometimes dream, now, that the Doctor's walking into me,"
+Foker continued (and Pen smiled as he thought that he himself had
+likewise fearful dreams of this nature). "When I think of the diet there,
+by gad, sir, I wonder how I stood it. Mangy mutton, brutal beef; pudding
+on Thursdays and Sundays, and that fit to poison you. Just look at my
+leader--did you ever see a prettier animal? Drove over from Baymouth.
+Came the nine mile in two-and-forty minutes. Not bad going, sir."
+
+"Are you stopping at Baymouth, Foker?" Pendennis asked.
+
+"I'm coaching there," said the other, with a nod.
+
+"What?" asked Pen, and in a tone of such wonder, that Foker burst out
+laughing, and said, "He was blowed if he didn't think Pen was such a flat
+as not to know what coaching meant."
+
+"I'm come down with a coach from Oxford. A tutor, don't you see, old boy?
+He's coaching me, and some other men, for the little go. Me and Spavin
+have the drag between us. And I thought I'd just tool over and go to the
+play. Did you ever see Rowkins do the hornpipe?" and Mr. Foker began to
+perform some steps of that popular dance in the inn yard, looking round
+for the sympathy of his groom and the stable-men.
+
+Pen thought he would like to go to the play too: and could ride home
+afterwards, as there was a moonlight. So he accepted Foker's invitation
+to dinner, and the young men entered the inn together, where Mr. Foker
+stopped at the bar, and called upon Miss Rincer, the landlady's fair
+daughter, who presided there, to give him a glass of 'his mixture.'
+
+Pen and his family had been known at the George ever since they came into
+the country; and Mr. Pendennis's carriages and horses always put up there
+when he paid a visit to the county town. The landlady dropped the heir of
+Fairoaks a very respectful curtsey, and complimented him upon his growth
+and manly appearance, and asked news of the family at Fairoaks, and of
+Doctor Portman and the Clavering people, to all of which questions the
+young gentleman answered with much affability. But he spoke to Mr. and
+Mrs. Rincer with that sort of good nature with which a young Prince
+addresses his father's subjects; never dreaming that those bonnes gens
+were his equals in life.
+
+Mr. Foker's behaviour was quite different. He inquired for Rincer and the
+cold in his nose, told Mrs. Rincer a riddle, asked Miss Rincer when she
+would be ready to marry him, and paid his compliments to Miss Brett, the
+other young lady in the bar, all in a minute of time, and with a
+liveliness and facetiousness which set all these ladies in a giggle; and
+he gave a cluck, expressive of great satisfaction, as he tossed off his
+mixture which Miss Rincer prepared and handed to him.
+
+"Have a drop," said he to Pen, "it's recommended to me by the faculty as
+a what-do-you-call-'em--a stomatic, old boy. Give the young one a glass,
+R., and score it up to yours truly."
+
+Poor Pen took a glass, and everybody laughed at the face which he made as
+he put it down--gin, bitters, and some other cordial was the compound
+with which Mr. Foker was so delighted as to call it by the name of
+Foker's own. As Pen choked, sputtered, and made faces, the other took
+occasion to remark to Mr. Rincer that the young fellow was green, very
+green, but that he would soon form him; and then they proceeded to order
+dinner--which Mr. Foker determined should consist of turtle and venison;
+cautioning the landlady to be very particular about icing the wine.
+
+Then Messrs. Foker and Pen strolled down the High Street together--the
+former having a cigar in his mouth, which he had drawn out of a case
+almost as big as a portmanteau. He went in to replenish it at Mr.
+Lewis's, and talked to that gentleman for a while, sitting down on the
+counter: he then looked in at the fruiterer's, to see the pretty girl
+there, to whom he paid compliments similar to those before addressed to
+the bar at the George; then they passed the County Chronicle office, for
+which Pen had his packet ready, in the shape of 'Lines to Thyrza,' but
+poor Pen did not like to put the letter into the editor's box while
+walking in company with such a fine gentleman as Mr. Foker. They met
+heavy dragoons of the regiment always quartered at Chatteris; and stopped
+and talked about the Baymouth balls, and what a pretty girl was Miss
+Brown, and what a dem fine woman Mrs. Jones was. It was in vain that Pen
+recalled to his own mind what a stupid ass Foker used to be at school--
+how he could scarcely read, how he was not cleanly in his person, and
+notorious for his blunders and dulness. Mr. Foker was no more like a
+gentleman now than in his school days: and yet Pen felt a secret pride in
+strutting down High Street with a young fellow who owned tandems, talked
+to officers, and ordered turtle and champagne for dinner. He listened,
+and with respect too, to Mr. Foker's accounts of what the men did at the
+University of which Mr. F. was an ornament, and encountered a long series
+of stories about boat-racing, bumping, College grass-plats, and
+milk-punch--and began to wish to go up himself to College to a place
+where there were such manly pleasures and enjoyments. Farmer Gurnett, who
+lives close by Fairoaks, riding by at this minute and touching his hat to
+Pen, the latter stopped him, and sent a message to his mother to say that
+he had met with an old schoolfellow, and should dine in Chatteris.
+
+The two young gentlemen continued their walk, and were passing round the
+Cathedral Yard, where they could hear the music of the afternoon service
+(a music which always exceedingly impressed and affected Pen), but
+whither Mr. Foker came for the purpose of inspecting the nursery-maids
+who frequent the Elms Walk there, and who are uncommonly pretty at
+Chatteris, and here they strolled until with a final burst of music the
+small congregation was played out.
+
+Old Doctor Portman was one of the few who came from the venerable gate.
+Spying Pen, he came and shook him by the hand, and eyed with wonder Pen's
+friend, from whose mouth and cigar clouds of fragrance issued, which
+curled round the Doctor's honest face and shovel hat.
+
+"An old schoolfellow of mine, Mr. Foker," said Pen. The Doctor said
+"H'm": and scowled at the cigar. He did not mind a pipe in his study, but
+the cigar was an abomination to the worthy gentleman.
+
+"I came up on Bishop's business," the Doctor said. "We'll ride home,
+Arthur, if you like?"
+
+"I--I'm engaged to my friend here," Pen answered.
+
+"You had better come home with me," said the Doctor.
+
+"His mother knows he's out, sir," Mr. Foker remarked; "don't she,
+Pendennis?"
+
+"But that does not prove that he had not better come home with me," the
+Doctor growled, and he walked off with great dignity.
+
+"Old boy don't like the weed, I suppose," Foker said. "Ha! who's here?--
+here's the General, and Bingley, the manager. How do, Cos? How do,
+Bingley?"
+
+"How does my worthy and gallant young Foker?" said the gentleman
+addressed as the General; and who wore a shabby military cape with a
+mangy collar, and a hat cocked very much over one eye.
+
+"Trust you are very well, my very dear sir," said the other gentleman,
+"and that the Theatre Royal will have the honour of your patronage
+to-night. We perform 'The Stranger,' in which your humble servant
+will---"
+
+"Can't stand you in tights and Hessians, Bingley," young Mr. Foker said.
+On which the General, with the Irish accent, said, "But I think ye'll
+like Miss Fotheringay, in Mrs. Haller, or me name's not Jack Costigan."
+
+Pen looked at these individuals with the greatest interest. He had never
+seen an actor before; and he saw Dr. Portman's red face looking over the
+Doctor's shoulder, as he retreated from the Cathedral Yard, evidently
+quite dissatisfied with the acquaintances into whose hands Pen had
+fallen.
+
+Perhaps it would have been much better for him had he taken the parson's
+advice and company home. But which of us knows his fate?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Mrs. Haller
+
+
+Having returned to the George, Mr. Foker and his guest sate down to a
+handsome repast in the coffee-room; where Mr. Rincer brought in the first
+dish, and bowed as gravely as if he was waiting upon the Lord-Lieutenant
+of the county. Mr. Foker attacked the turtle and venison with as much
+gusto as he had shown the year before, when he used to make feasts off
+ginger-beer and smuggled polonies. Pen could not but respect his
+connoisseurship as he pronounced the champagne to be condemned
+gooseberry, and winked at the port with one eye. The latter he declared
+to be of the right sort; and told the waiters there was no way of
+humbugging him. All these attendants he knew by their Christian names,
+and showed a great interest in their families; and as the London coaches
+drove up, which in those early days used to set off from the George, Mr.
+Foker flung the coffee-room window open, and called the guards and
+coachmen by their Christian names, too, asking about their respective
+families, and imitating with great liveliness and accuracy the tooting of
+the horns as Jem the ostler whipped the horses' cloths off, and the
+carriages drove gaily away.
+
+"A bottle of sherry, a bottle of sham, a bottle of port and a shass
+caffy, it ain't so bad, hay, Pen?" Foker said, and pronounced, after all
+these delicacies and a quantity of nuts and fruit had been dispatched,
+that it was time to "toddle." Pen sprang up with very bright eyes, and a
+flushed face; and they moved off towards the theatre, where they paid
+their money to the wheezy old lady slumbering in the money-taker's box.
+"Mrs. Dropsicum, Bingley's mother-in-law, great in Lady Macbeth," Foker
+said to his companion. Foker knew her, too.
+
+They had almost their choice of places in the boxes of the theatre, which
+was no better filled than country theatres usually are in spite of the
+"universal burst of attraction and galvanic thrills of delight"
+advertised by Bingley in the play-bills. A score or so of people dotted
+the pit-benches, a few more kept a kicking and whistling in the
+galleries, and a dozen others, who came in with free admissions, were in
+the boxes where our young gentlemen sate. Lieutenants Rodgers and
+Podgers, and young Cornet Tidmus, of the Dragoons, occupied a private
+box. The performers acted to them, and these gentlemen seemed to hold
+conversations with the players when not engaged in the dialogue, and
+applauded them by name loudly.
+
+Bingley the manager, who assumed all the chief tragic and comic parts
+except when he modestly retreated to make way for the London stars, who
+came down occasionally to Chatteris, was great in the character of the
+'Stranger.' He was attired in the tight pantaloons and Hessian boots
+which the stage legend has given to that injured man, with a large cloak
+and beaver and a hearse feather in it drooping over his raddled old face,
+and only partially concealing his great buckled brown wig. He had the
+stage jewellery on too, of which he selected the largest and most shiny
+rings for himself, and allowed his little finger to quiver out of his
+cloak with a sham diamond ring covering the first joint of the finger and
+twiddling in the faces of the pit. Bingley made it a favour to the young
+men of his company to go on in light comedy parts with that ring. They
+flattered him by asking its history. The stage has its traditional jewels
+as the Crown and all great families have. This had belonged to George
+Frederick Cooke, who had had it from Mr. Quin, who may have bought it for
+a shilling. Bingley fancied the world was fascinated with its glitter.
+
+He was reading out of the stage-book--that wonderful stage-book which is
+not bound like any other book in the world, but is rouged and tawdry like
+the hero or heroine who holds it; and who holds it as people never do
+hold books: and points with his finger to a passage, and wags his head
+ominously at the audience, and then lifts up eyes and finger to the
+ceiling professing to derive some intense consolation from the work
+between which and heaven there is a strong affinity. Anybody who has ever
+seen one of our great light comedians, X., in a chintz dressing-gown,
+such as nobody ever wore, and representing himself to the public as a
+young nobleman in his apartments, and whiling away the time with light
+literature until his friend Sir Harry shall arrive, or his father shall
+come down to breakfast--anybody, I say, who has seen the great X. over a
+sham book has indeed had a great pleasure and an abiding matter for
+thought.
+
+Directly the Stranger saw the young men, he acted at them; eyeing them
+solemnly over his gilt volume as he lay on the stage-bank showing his
+hand, his ring, and his Hessians. He calculated the effect that every one
+of these ornaments would produce upon his victims: he was determined to
+fascinate them, for he knew they had paid their money; and he saw their
+families coming in from the country and filling the cane chairs in his
+boxes.
+
+As he lay on the bank reading, his servant, Francis, made remarks upon
+his master.
+
+"Again reading," said Francis, "thus it is, from morn to night. To him
+nature has no beauty--life no charm. For three years I have never seen
+him smile" (the gloom of Bingley's face was fearful to witness during
+these comments of the faithful domestic). "Nothing diverts him. O, if he
+would but attach himself to any living thing, were it an animal--for
+something man must love."
+
+[Enter Tobias (Goll) from the hut.] He cries, "O, how refreshing, after
+seven long weeks, to feel these warm sunbeams once again. Thanks,
+bounteous heaven, for the joy I taste!" He presses his cap between his
+hands, looks up and prays. The Stranger eyes him attentively.
+
+Francis to the Stranger. "This old man's share of earthly happiness can
+be but little. Yet mark how grateful he is for his portion of it."
+
+Bingley. "Because though old, he is but a child in the leading-string of
+hope." (He looks steadily at Foker, who, however, continues to suck the
+top of his stick in an unconcerned manner.)
+
+Francis. "Hope is the nurse of life."
+
+Bingley. "And her cradle--is the grave."
+
+The Stranger uttered this with the moan of a bassoon in agony, and fixed
+his eyes on Pendennis so steadily, that the poor lad was quite put out of
+countenance. He thought the whole house must be looking at him; and cast
+his eyes down. As soon as ever he raised them Bingley's were at him
+again. All through the scene the manager played at him. When he was about
+to do a good action, and sent off Francis with his book, so that that
+domestic should not witness the deed of benevolence which he meditated,
+Bingley marked the page carefully, so that he might continue the perusal
+of the volume off the stage if he liked. But all was done in the direct
+face of Pendennis, whom the manager was bent upon subjugating. How
+relieved the lad was when the scene ended, and Foker, tapping with his
+cane, cried out "Bravo, Bingley!"
+
+"Give him a hand, Pendennis; you know every chap likes a hand," Mr. Foker
+said; and the good-natured young gentleman, and Pendennis laughing, and
+the dragoons in the opposite box, began clapping hands to the best of
+their power.
+
+A chamber in Wintersen Castle closed over Tobias's hut and the Stranger
+and his boots; and servants appeared bustling about with chairs and
+tables--"That's Hicks and Miss Thackthwaite," whispered Foker. "Pretty
+girl, ain't she, Pendennis? But stop--hurray--bravo! here's the
+Fotheringay."
+
+The pit thrilled and thumped its umbrellas; a volley of applause was
+fired from the gallery: the Dragoon officers and Foker clapped their
+hands furiously: you would have thought the house was full, so loud were
+their plaudits. The red face and ragged whiskers of Mr. Costigan were
+seen peering from the side-scene. Pen's eyes opened wide and bright as
+Mrs. Haller entered with a downcast look, then rallying at the sound of
+the applause, swept the house with a grateful glance, and, folding her
+hands across her breast, sank down in a magnificent curtsey. More
+applause, more umbrellas; Pen this time, flaming with wine and
+enthusiasm, clapped hands and sang "bravo" louder than all. Mrs. Haller
+saw him, and everybody else, and old Mr. Bows, the little first fiddler
+of the orchestra (which was this night increased by a detachment of the
+band of the Dragoons, by the kind permission of Colonel Swallowtail),
+looked up from the desk where he was perched, with his crutch beside him,
+and smiled at the enthusiasm of the lad.
+
+Those who have only seen Miss Fotheringay in later days, since her
+marriage and introduction into London life, have little idea how
+beautiful a creature she was at the time when our friend Pen first set
+eyes on her: and I warn my reader, as beforehand, that the pencil which
+illustrates this work (and can draw an ugly face tolerably well, but is
+sadly put out when it tries to delineate a beauty) can give no sort of
+notion of her. She was of the tallest of women, and at her then age of
+six-and-twenty-for six-and-twenty she was, though she vows she was only
+nineteen--in the prime and fulness of her beauty. Her forehead was vast,
+and her black hair waved over it with a natural ripple (that beauties of
+late days have tried to imitate with the help of the crimping-irons), and
+was confined in shining and voluminous braids at the back of a neck such
+as you see on the shoulders of the Louvre Venus--that delight of gods and
+men. Her eyes, when she lifted them up to gaze on you, and ere she
+dropped their purple deep-fringed lids, shone with tenderness and mystery
+unfathomable. Love and Genius seemed to look out from them and then
+retire coyly, as if ashamed to have been seen at the lattice. Who could
+have had such a commanding brow but a woman of high intellect? She never
+laughed (indeed her teeth were not good), but a smile of endless
+tenderness and sweetness played round her beautiful lips, and in the
+dimples of her cheeks and her lovely chin. Her nose defied description in
+those days. Her ears were like two little pearl shells, which the
+earrings she wore (though the handsomest properties in the theatre) only
+insulted. She was dressed in long flowing robes of black, which she
+managed and swept to and fro with wonderful grace, and out of the folds
+of which you only saw her sandals occasionally; they were of rather a
+large size; but Pen thought them as ravishing as the slippers of
+Cinderella. But it was her hand and arm that this magnificent creature
+most excelled in, and somehow you could never see her but through them.
+They surrounded her. When she folded them over her bosom in resignation;
+when she dropped them in mute agony, or raised them in superb command;
+when in sportive gaiety her hands fluttered and waved before her, like
+what shall we say?--like the snowy doves before the chariot of Venus--it
+was with these arms and hands that she beckoned, repelled, entreated,
+embraced, her admirers--no single one, for she was armed with her own
+virtue, and with her father's valour, whose sword would have leapt from
+its scabbard at any insult offered to his child--but the whole house;
+which rose to her, as the phrase was, as she curtseyed and bowed, and
+charmed it.
+
+Thus she stood for a minute--complete and beautiful--as Pen stared at
+her. "I say, Pen, isn't she a stunner?" asked Mr. Foker.
+
+"Hush!" Pen said, "she's speaking."
+
+She began her business in a deep sweet voice. Those who know the play of
+the 'Stranger,' are aware that the remarks made by the various characters
+are not valuable in themselves, either for their sound sense, their
+novelty of observation, or their poetic fancy. In fact, if a man were to
+say it was a stupid play, he would not be far wrong. Nobody ever talked
+so. If we meet idiots in life, as will happen, it is a great mercy that
+they do not use such absurdly fine words. The Stranger's talk is sham,
+like the book he reads and the hair he wears, and the bank he sits on,
+and the diamond ring he makes play with--but, in the midst of the
+balderdash, there runs that reality of love, children, and forgiveness of
+wrong, which will be listened to wherever it is preached, and sets all
+the world sympathising.
+
+With what smothered sorrow, with what gushing pathos, Mrs. Haller
+delivered her part! At first, when as Count Wintersen's housekeeper, and
+preparing for his Excellency's arrival, she has to give orders about the
+beds and furniture, and the dinner, etc., to be got ready, she did so
+with the calm agony of despair. But when she could get rid of the stupid
+servants and give vent to her feelings to the pit and the house, she
+overflowed to each individual as if he were her particular confidant, and
+she was crying out her griefs on his shoulder: the little fiddler in the
+orchestra (whom she did not seem to watch, though he followed her
+ceaselessly) twitched, twisted, nodded, pointed about, and when she came
+to the favourite passage, "I have a William too, if he be still alive--
+Ah, yes, if he be still alive. His little sisters, too! Why, Fancy, dost
+thou rack me so? Why dost thou image my poor children fainting in
+sickness, and crying to--to--their mum--um--other," when she came to this
+passage little Bows buried his face in his blue cotton handkerchief,
+after crying out "Bravo."
+
+All the house was affected. Foker, for his part, taking out a large
+yellow bandanna, wept piteously. As for Pen, he was gone too far for
+that. He followed the woman about and about--when she was off the stage,
+it and the house were blank; the lights and the red officers, reeled
+wildly before his sight. He watched her at the side-scene--where she
+stood waiting to come on the stage, and where her father took off her
+shawl: when the reconciliation arrived, and she flung herself down on Mr.
+Bingley's shoulders, whilst the children clung to their knees, and the
+Countess (Mrs. Bingley) and Baron Steinforth (performed with great
+liveliness and spirit by Garbetts)--while the rest of the characters
+formed a group round them, Pen's hot eyes only saw Fotheringay,
+Fotheringay. The curtain fell upon him like a pall. He did not hear a
+word of what Bingley said, who came forward to announce the play for the
+next evening, and who took the tumultuous applause, as usual, for
+himself. Pen was not even distinctly aware that the house was calling for
+Miss Fotheringay, nor did the manager seem to comprehend that anybody
+else but himself had caused the success of the play. At last he
+understood it--stepped back with a grin, and presently appeared with Mrs.
+Haller on his arm. How beautiful she looked! Her hair had fallen down,
+the officers threw her flowers. She clutched them to her heart. She put
+back her hair, and smiled all round. Her eyes met Pen's. Down went the
+curtain again: and she was gone. Not one note could he hear of the
+overture which the brass band of the dragoons blew by kind permission of
+Colonel Swallowtail.
+
+"She is a crusher, ain't she now!" Mr. Foker asked of his companion.
+
+Pen did not know exactly what Foker said, and answered vaguely. He could
+not tell the other what he felt; he could not have spoken, just then, to
+any mortal. Besides, Pendennis did not quite know what he felt yet; it
+was something overwhelming, maddening, delicious; a fever of wild joy and
+undefined longing.
+
+And now Rowkins and Miss Thackthwaite came on to dance the favourite
+double hornpipe, and Foker abandoned himself to the delights of this
+ballet, just as he had to the tears of the tragedy, a few minutes before.
+Pen did not care for it, or indeed think about the dance, except to
+remember that that woman was acting with her in the scene where she first
+came in. It was a mist before his eyes. At the end of the dance he looked
+at his watch and said it was time for him to go.
+
+"Hang it, stay to see The Bravo of the Battle-Axe," Foker said,
+"Bingley's splendid in it; he wears red tights, and has to carry Mrs. B.
+over the Pine-bridge of the Cataract, only she's too heavy. It's great
+fun, do stop."
+
+Pen looked at the bill with one lingering fond hope that Miss
+Fotheringay's name might be hidden, somewhere, in the list of the actors
+of the after-piece, but there was no such name. Go he must. He had a long
+ride home. He squeezed Foker's hand. He was choking to speak, but he
+couldn't. He quitted the theatre and walked frantically about the town,
+he knew not how long; then he mounted at the George and rode homewards,
+and Clavering clock sang out one as he came into the yard at Fairoaks.
+The lady of the house might have been awake, but she only heard him from
+the passage outside his room as he dashed into bed and pulled the clothes
+over his head.
+
+Pen had not been in the habit of passing wakeful nights, so he at once
+fell off into a sound sleep. Even in later days and with a great deal of
+care and other thoughtful matter to keep him awake, a man from long
+practice or fatigue or resolution begins by going to sleep as usual: and
+gets a nap in advance of Anxiety. But she soon comes up with him and jogs
+his shoulder, and says, "Come, my man, no more of this laziness, you must
+wake up and have a talk with me." Then they fall to together in the
+midnight. Well, whatever might afterwards happen to him, poor little Pen
+was not come to this state yet; he tumbled into a sound sleep--did not
+wake until an early hour in the morning, when the rooks began to caw from
+the little wood beyond his bedroom windows; and--at that very instant and
+as his eyes started open, the beloved image was in his mind. "My dear
+boy," he heard her say, "you were in a sound sleep and I would not
+disturb you: but I have been close by your pillow all this while: and I
+don't intend that you shall leave me. I am Love! I bring with me fever
+and passion: wild longing, maddening desire; restless craving and
+seeking. Many a long day ere this I heard you calling out for me; and
+behold now I am come."
+
+Was Pen frightened at the summons? Not he. He did not know what was
+coming: it was all wild pleasure and delight as yet. And as, when three
+years previously, and on entering the fifth form at the Cistercians, his
+father had made him a present of a gold watch which the boy took from
+under his pillow and examined on the instant of waking: for ever rubbing
+and polishing it up in private and retiring into corners to listen to its
+ticking: so the young man exulted over his new delight; felt in his
+waistcoat pocket to see that it was safe; wound it up at nights, and at
+the very first moment of waking hugged it and looked at it.--By the way,
+that first watch of Pen's was a showy ill-manufactured piece: it never
+went well from the beginning, and was always getting out of order. And
+after putting it aside into a drawer and forgetting it for some time, he
+swapped it finally away for a more useful time-keeper.
+
+Pen felt himself to be ever so many years older since yesterday. There
+was no mistake about it now. He was as much in love as the best hero in
+the best romance he ever read. He told John to bring his shaving water
+with the utmost confidence. He dressed himself in some of his finest
+clothes that morning: and came splendidly down to breakfast, patronising
+his mother and little Laura, who had been strumming her music lesson for
+hours before; and who after he had read the prayers (of which he did not
+heed one single syllable) wondered at his grand appearance, and asked him
+to tell her what the play was about?
+
+Pen laughed and declined to tell Laura what the play was about. In fact
+it was quite as well that she should not know. Then she asked him why he
+had got on his fine pin and beautiful new waistcoat?
+
+Pen blushed and told his mother that the old schoolfellow with whom he
+had dined at Chatteris was reading with a tutor at Baymouth, a very
+learned man; and as he was himself to go to College, and as there were
+several young men pursuing their studies at Baymouth--he was anxious to
+ride over-and-and just see what the course of their reading was.
+
+Laura made a long face. Helen Pendennis looked hard at her son, troubled
+more than ever with the vague doubt and terror which had been haunting
+her ever since the last night, when Farmer Gurnett brought back the news
+that Pen would not return home to dinner. Arthur's eyes defied her. She
+tried to console herself, and drive off her fears. The boy had never told
+her an untruth. Pen conducted himself during breakfast in a very haughty
+and supercilious manner; and, taking leave of the elder and younger lady,
+was presently heard riding out of the stablecourt. He went gently at
+first, but galloped like a madman as soon as he thought that he was out
+of hearing.
+
+Smirke, thinking of his own affairs, and softly riding with his toes out,
+to give Pen his three hours' reading at Fairoaks, met his pupil, who shot
+by him like the wind. Smirke's pony shied, as the other thundered past
+him; the gentle curate went over his head among the stinging-nettles in
+the hedge. Pen laughed as they met, pointed towards the Baymouth road,
+and was gone half a mile in that direction before poor Smirke had picked
+himself up.
+
+Pen had resolved in his mind that he must see Foker that morning; he must
+hear about her; know about her; be with somebody who knew her; and honest
+Smirke, for his part, sitting up among the stinging-nettles, as his pony
+cropped quietly in the hedge, thought dismally to himself, ought he to go
+to Fairoaks now that his pupil was evidently gone away for the day. Yes,
+he thought he might go, too. He might go and ask Mrs. Pendennis when
+Arthur would be back; and hear Miss Laura her Watts's Catechism. He got
+up on the little pony--both were used to his slipping off--and advanced
+upon the house from which his scholar had just rushed away in a
+whirlwind.
+
+Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little; and the curate had
+tumbled over head and heels in pursuit of it, and Pen had started in the
+first heat of the mad race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Mrs. Haller at Home
+
+
+Without slackening her pace, Rebecca the mare galloped on to Baymouth,
+where Pen put her up at the inn stables, and ran straightway to Mr.
+Foker's lodgings, which he knew from the direction given to him by that
+gentleman on the previous day. On reaching these apartments, which were
+over a chemist's shop whose stock of cigars and sodawater went off
+rapidly by the kind patronage of his young inmates, Pen only found Mr.
+Spavin, Foker's friend, and part owner of the tandem which the latter had
+driven into Chatteris, who was smoking, and teaching a little dog, a
+friend of his, tricks with a bit of biscuit.
+
+Pen's healthy red face, fresh from the gallop, compared oddly with the
+waxy debauched little features of Foker's chum; the latter remarked it.
+"Who's that man?" he thought, "he looks as fresh as a bean. His hand
+don't shake of a morning, I'd bet five to one."
+
+Foker had not come home at all. Here was a disappointment!--Mr. Spavin
+could not say when his friend would return. Sometimes he stopped a day,
+sometimes a week. Of what college was Pen? Would he have anything? There
+was a very fair tap of ale. Mr. Spavin was enabled to know Pendennis's
+name, on the card which the latter took out and laid down (perhaps Pen in
+these days was rather proud of having a card)--and so the young men took
+leave.
+
+Then Pen went down the rock, and walked about on the sand, biting his
+nails by the shore of the much-sounding sea. It stretched before him
+bright and immeasurable. The blue waters came rolling into the bay,
+foaming and roaring hoarsely: Pen looked them in the face with blank
+eyes, hardly regarding them. What a tide there was pouring into the lad's
+own mind at the time, and what a little power had he to check it! Pen
+flung stones into the sea, but it still kept coming on. He was in a rage
+at not seeing Foker. He wanted to see Foker. He must see Foker. "Suppose
+I go on--on the Chatteris road, just to see if I can meet him," Pen
+thought. Rebecca was saddled in another half hour, and galloping on the
+grass by the Chatteris road. About four miles from Baymouth, the
+Clavering road branches off, as everybody knows, and the mare naturally
+was for taking that turn, but, cutting her over the shoulder, Pen passed
+the turning, and rode on to the turnpike without seeing any sign of the
+black tandem and red wheels.
+
+As he was at the turnpike he might as well go on: that was quite clear.
+So Pen rode to the George, and the hostler told him that Mr. Foker was
+there sure enough, and that "he'd been a makin a tremendous row the night
+afore, a drinkin and a singin, and wanting to fight Tom the postboy:
+which I'm thinking he'd have had the worst of it," the man added, with a
+grin. "Have you carried up your master's 'ot water to shave with?" he
+added, in a very satirical manner, to Mr. Foker's domestic, who here came
+down the yard bearing his master's clothes, most beautifully brushed and
+arranged. "Show Mr. Pendennis up to 'un," and Pen followed the man at
+last to the apartment, where, in the midst of an immense bed, Mr. Harry
+Foker lay reposing.
+
+The feather bed and bolsters swelled up all round Mr. Foker, so that you
+could hardly see his little sallow face and red silk nightcap.
+
+"Hullo!" said Pen.
+
+"Who goes there? brother, quickly tell!" sang out the voice from the bed.
+"What! Pendennis again? Is your Mamma acquainted with your absence? Did
+you sup with us last night? No stop--who supped with us last night,
+Stoopid?"
+
+"There was the three officers, sir, and Mr. Bingley, sir, and Mr.
+Costigan, sir," the man answered, who received all Mr. Foker's remarks
+with perfect gravity.
+
+"Ah yes: the cup and merry jest went round. We chanted and I remember I
+wanted to fight a postboy. Did I thrash him, Stoopid?"
+
+"No, sir. Fight didn't come off, sir," said Stoopid, still with perfect
+gravity. He was arranging Mr. Foker's dressing-case--a trunk, the gift of
+a fond mother, without which the young fellow never travelled. It
+contained a prodigious apparatus in plate; a silver dish, a silver mug,
+silver boxes and bottles for all sorts of essences, and a choice of
+razors ready against the time when Mr. Foker's beard should come.
+
+"Do it some other day," said the young fellow, yawning and throwing up
+his little lean arms over his head. "No, there was no fight; but there
+was chanting. Bingley chanted, I chanted, the General chanted--Costigan I
+mean.--Did you ever hear him sing 'The Little Pig under the Bed,' Pen?"
+
+"The man we met yesterday," said Pen, all in a tremor, "the father
+of---"
+
+"Of the Fotheringay,--the very man. Ain't she a Venus, Pen?"
+
+"Please sir, Mr. Costigan's in the sittin-room, sir, and says, sir, you
+asked him to breakfast, sir. Called five times, sir; but wouldn't wake
+you on no account; and has been here since eleven o'clock, sir---"
+
+"How much is it now?"
+
+"One, sir."
+
+"What would the best of mothers say," cried the little sluggard, "if she
+saw me in bed at this hour? She sent me down here with a grinder. She
+wants me to cultivate my neglected genus--He, be! I say, Pen, this isn't
+quite like seven o'clock school,--is it, old boy?"--and the young fellow
+burst out into a boyish laugh of enjoyment. Then he added--"Go in and
+talk to the General whilst I dress. And I say, Pendennis, ask him to sing
+you 'The Little Pig under the Bed;' it's capital." Pen went off in great
+perturbation, to meet Mr. Costigan, and Mr. Foker commenced his toilet.
+
+Of Mr. Foker's two grandfathers, the one from whom he inherited a fortune
+was a brewer; the other was an earl, who endowed him with the most doting
+mother in the world. The Fokers had been at the Cistercian school from
+father to son; at which place, our friend, whose name could be seen over
+the playground wall, on a public-house sign, under which 'Foker's Entire'
+was painted, had been dreadfully bullied on account of his trade, his
+uncomely countenance, his inaptitude for learning and cleanliness, his
+gluttony and other weak points. But those who know how a susceptible
+youth, under the tyranny of his schoolfellows, becomes silent and a
+sneak, may understand how in a very few months after his liberation from
+bondage, he developed himself as he had done; and became the humorous,
+the sarcastic, the brilliant Foker, with whom we have made acquaintance.
+A dunce he always was, it is true; for learning cannot be acquired by
+leaving school and entering at college as a fellow-commoner; but he was
+now (in his own peculiar manner) as great a dandy as he before had been a
+slattern, and when he entered his sitting-room to join his two guests,
+arrived scented and arrayed in fine linen, and perfectly splendid in
+appearance.
+
+General or Captain Costigan--for the latter was the rank which he
+preferred to assume--was seated in the window with the newspaper held
+before him at arm's length. The Captain's eyes were somewhat dim; and he
+was spelling the paper, with the help of his lips, as well as of those
+bloodshot eyes of his, as you see gentlemen do to whom reading is a rare
+and difficult occupation. His hat was cocked very much on one ear; and as
+one of his feet lay up in the window-seat, the observer of such matters
+might remark, by the size and shabbiness of the boots which the Captain
+wore, that times did not go very well with him. Poverty seems as if it
+were disposed, before it takes possession of a man entirely, to attack
+his extremities first: the coverings of his head, feet, and hands are its
+first prey. All these parts of the Captain's person were particularly
+rakish and shabby. As soon as he saw Pen he descended from the
+window-seat and saluted the new-comer, first in a military manner, by
+conveying a couple of his fingers (covered with a broken black glove) to
+his hat, and then removing that ornament altogether. The Captain was
+inclined to be bald, but he brought a quantity of lank iron-grey hair
+over his pate, and had a couple of whisps of the same falling down on
+each side of his face. Much whisky had spoiled what complexion Mr.
+Costigan may have possessed in his youth. His once handsome face had now
+a copper tinge. He wore a very high stock, scarred and stained in many
+places; and a dress-coat tightly buttoned up in those parts where the
+buttons had not parted company from the garment.
+
+"The young gentleman to whom I had the honour to be introjuiced yesterday
+in the Cathadral Yard," said the Captain, with a splendid bow and wave of
+his hat. "I hope I see you well, sir. I marked ye in the thayatre last
+night during me daughter's perfawrumance; and missed ye on my return. I
+did but conduct her home, sir, for Jack Costigan, though poor, is a
+gentleman; and when I reintered the house to pay me respects to me joyous
+young friend, Mr. Foker--ye were gone. We had a jolly night of ut, sir--
+Mr. Foker, the three gallant young dragoons, and your 'umble servant.
+Gad, sir, it put me in mind of one of our old nights when I bore His
+Majesty's commission in the Foighting Hundtherd and Third." And he pulled
+out an old snuff box, which he presented with a stately air to his new
+acquaintance.
+
+Arthur was a great deal too much flurried to speak. This shabby-looking
+buck was--was her father. The Captain was perfumed with the recollections
+of the last night's cigars, and pulled and twisted the tuft on his chin
+as jauntily as any young dandy.
+
+"I hope, Miss F--, Miss Costigan is well, sir," Pen said, flushing up.
+"She--she gave me greater pleasure, than--than I--I--I ever enjoyed at a
+play. I think, sir--I think she's the finest actress in the world," he
+gasped out.
+
+"Your hand, young man! for ye speak from your heart," cried the Captain.
+"Thank ye, sir, an old soldier and a fond father thanks ye. She is the
+finest actress in the world. I've seen the Siddons, sir, and the O'Nale--
+they were great, but what were they compared to Miss Fotheringay? I do
+not wish she should ashume her own name while on the stage. Me family,
+sir, are proud people; and the Costigans of Costiganstown think that an
+honest man, who has borne Her Majesty's colours in the Hundred and Third,
+would demean himself, by permitting his daughter to earn her old father's
+bread."
+
+"There cannot be a more honourable duty, surely," Pen said.
+
+"Honourable! Bedad, sir, I'd like to see the man who said Jack Costigan
+would consent to anything dishonourable. I have a heart, sir, though I am
+poor; I like a man who has a heart. You have: I read it in your honest
+face and steady eye. And would you believe it"? he added, after a pause,
+and with a pathetic whisper, "that that Bingley who has made his fortune
+by me child, gives her but two guineas a week: out of which she finds
+herself in dresses, and which, added to me own small means, makes our
+all?"
+
+Now the Captain's means were so small as to be, it may be said, quite
+invisible. But nobody knows how the wind is tempered to shorn Irish
+lambs, and in what marvellous places they find pasture. If Captain
+Costigan, whom I had the honour to know, would but have told his history,
+it would have been a great moral story. But he neither would have told it
+if he could, nor could if he would; for the Captain was not only
+unaccustomed to tell the truth,--he was unable even to think it--and fact
+and fiction reeled together in his muzzy, whiskified brain.
+
+He began life rather brilliantly with a pair of colours, a fine person
+and legs, and one of the most beautiful voices in the world. To his
+latest day he sang with admirable pathos and humour those wonderful Irish
+ballads which are so mirthful and so melancholy: and was always the first
+himself to cry at their pathos. Poor Cos! he was at once brave and
+maudlin, humorous and an idiot; always good-natured, and sometimes almost
+trustworthy. Up to the last day of his life he would drink with any man,
+and back any man's bill: and his end was in a spunging-house, where the
+sheriff's officer, who took him, was fond of him.
+
+In his brief morning of life, Cos formed the delight of regimental
+messes, and had the honour of singing his songs, bacchanalian and
+sentimental, at the tables of the most illustrious generals and
+commanders-in-chief, in the course of which period he drank three times
+as much claret as was good for him, and spent his doubtful patrimony.
+What became of him subsequently to his retirement from the army, is no
+affair of ours. I take it, no foreigner understands the life of an Irish
+gentleman without money, the way in which he manages to keep afloat--the
+wind-raising conspiracies, in which he engages with heroes as unfortunate
+as himself--the means by which he contrives, during most days of the
+week, to get his portion of whisky-and-water: all these are mysteries to
+us inconceivable: but suffice it to say, that through all the storms of
+life Jack had floated somehow, and the lamp of his nose had never gone
+out.
+
+Before he and Pen had had a half-hour's conversation, the Captain managed
+to extract a couple of sovereigns from the young gentleman for tickets
+for his daughter's benefit, which was to take place speedily; and was not
+a bona fide transaction such as that of the last year, when poor Miss
+Fotheringay had lost fifteen shillings by her venture; but was an
+arrangement with the manager, by which the lady was to have the sale of a
+certain number of tickets, keeping for herself a large portion of the sum
+for which they were sold.
+
+Pen had but two pounds in his purse, and he handed them over to the
+Captain for the tickets; he would have been afraid to offer more lest he
+should offend the latter's delicacy. Costigan scrawled him an order for a
+box, lightly slipped the sovereigns into his waistcoat, and slapped his
+hand over the place where they lay. They seemed to warm his old sides.
+
+"Faith, sir," said he, "the bullion's scarcer with me than it used to be,
+as is the case with many a good fellow. I won six hundthred of 'em in a
+single night, sir, when me kind friend, His Royal Highness the Duke of
+Kent, was in Gibralther." And he straightway poured out to Pen a series
+of stories regarding the claret drunk, the bets made, the races ridden by
+the garrison there, with which he kept the young gentleman amused until
+the arrival of their host and his breakfast.
+
+Then it was good to see the Captain's behaviour before the devilled
+turkey and the mutton chops! His stories poured forth unceasingly, and
+his spirits rose as he chatted to the young men. When he got a bit of
+sunshine, the old lazzarone basked in it; he prated about his own affairs
+and past splendour, and all the lords, generals, and Lord-Lieutenants he
+had ever known. He described the death of his darling Bessie, the late
+Mrs. Costigan, and the challenge he had sent to Captain Shanty Clancy, of
+the Slashers, for looking rude at Miss Fotheringay as she was on her kyar
+in the Phaynix; and then he described how the Captain apologised, gave a
+dinner at the Kildare Street, where six of them drank twinty-one bottles
+of claret, etc. He announced that to sit with two such noble and generous
+young fellows was the happiness and pride of an old soldier's existence;
+and having had a second glass of Curacoa, was so happy that he began to
+cry. Altogether we should say that the Captain was not a man of much
+strength of mind, or a very eligible companion for youth; but there are
+worse men, holding much better places in life, and more dishonest, who
+have never committed half so many rogueries as he. They walked out, the
+Captain holding an arm of each of his dear young friends, and in a
+maudlin state of contentment. He winked at one or two tradesmen's shops
+where, possibly, he owed a bill, as much as to say, "See the company I'm
+in--sure I'll pay you, my boy,"--and they parted finally with Mr. Foker
+at a billiard-room, where the latter had a particular engagement with
+some gentlemen of Colonel Swallowtail's regiment.
+
+Pen and the shabby Captain still walked the street together; the Captain,
+in his sly way, making inquiries about Mr. Foker's fortune and station in
+life. Pen told him how Foker's father was a celebrated brewer, and his
+mother was Lady Agnes Milton, Lord Rosherville's daughter. The Captain
+broke out into a strain of exaggerated compliment and panegyric about Mr.
+Foker, whose "native aristocracie," he said, "could be seen with the
+twinkling of an oi--and only served to adawrun other qualities which he
+possessed, a foin intellect and a generous heart,"--in not one word of
+which speech did the Captain accurately believe.
+
+Pen walked on, listening to his companion's prate, wondering, amused, and
+puzzled. It had not as yet entered into the boy's head to disbelieve any
+statement that was made to him; and being of a candid nature himself, he
+took naturally for truth what other people told him. Costigan had never
+had a better listener, and was highly flattered by the attentiveness and
+modest bearing of the young man.
+
+So much pleased was he with the young gentleman, so artless, honest, and
+cheerful did Pen seem to be, that the Captain finally made him an
+invitation, which he very seldom accorded to young men, and asked Pen if
+he would do him the fever to enter his humble abode, which was near at
+hand, where the Captain would have the honour of inthrojuicing his young
+friend to his daughther, Miss Fotheringay?
+
+Pen was so delightfully shocked at this invitation, and was so stricken
+down by the happiness thus suddenly offered to him, that he thought he
+should have dropped from the Captain's arm at first, and trembled lest
+the other should discover his emotion. He gasped out a few incoherent
+words, indicative of the high gratification he should have in being
+presented to the lady for whose--for whose talents he had conceived such
+an admiration--such an extreme admiration; and followed the Captain,
+scarcely knowing whither that gentleman led him. He was going to see her!
+He was going to see her! In her was the centre of the universe. She was
+the kernel of the world for Pen. Yesterday, before he knew her, seemed a
+period ever so long ago--a revolution was between him and that time, and
+a new world about to begin.
+
+The Captain conducted his young friend to that quiet little street in
+Chatteris, which is called Prior's Lane, which lies in the ecclesiastical
+quarter of the town, close by Dean's Green and the canons' houses, and is
+overlooked by the enormous towers of the cathedral; there the Captain
+dwelt modestly in the first floor of a low gabled house, on the door of
+which was the brass plate of 'Creed, Tailor and Robe-maker.' Creed was
+dead, however. His widow was a pew-opener in the cathedral hard by; his
+eldest son was a little scamp of a choir-boy, who played toss-halfpenny,
+led his little brothers into mischief, and had a voice as sweet as an
+angel. A couple of the latter were sitting on the door-step, down which
+you went into the passage of the house; and they jumped up with great
+alacrity to meet their lodger, and plunged wildly, and rather to Pen's
+surprise, at the swallow-tails of the Captain's dress-coat; for the truth
+is, that the good-natured gentleman, when he was in cash, generally
+brought home an apple or a piece of gingerbread for these children.
+"Whereby the widdy never pressed me for rint when not convanient," as he
+remarked afterwards to Pen, winking knowingly, and laying a finger on his
+nose.
+
+Pen tumbled down the step, and as he followed his companion up the
+creaking old stair, his knees trembled under him. He could hardly see
+when he entered, following the Captain, and stood in the room--in her
+room. He saw something black before him, and waving as if making a
+curtsey, and heard, but quite indistinctly, Costigan making a speech over
+him, in which the Captain, with his usual magniloquence, expressed to "me
+child" his wish to make her known to "his dear and admirable young
+friend, Mr. Awther Pindinnis, a young gentleman of property in the
+neighbourhood, a person of refoined moind, and enviable manners, a
+sincare lover of poethry, and a man possest of a feeling and affectionate
+heart."
+
+"It is very fine weather," Miss Fotheringay said, in an Irish accent, and
+with a deep rich melancholy voice.
+
+"Very," said Mr. Pendennis. In this romantic way their conversation
+began; and he found himself seated on a chair, and having leisure to look
+at the young lady.
+
+She looked still handsomer off the stage, than before the lamps. All her
+attitudes were naturally grand and majestical. If she went and stood up
+against the mantelpiece her robe draped itself classically round her; her
+chin supported itself on her hand, the other lines of her form arranged
+themselves in full harmonious undulations--she looked like a Muse in
+contemplation. If she sate down on a cane-bottomed chair, her arm rounded
+itself over the back of the seat, her hand seemed as if it ought to have
+a sceptre put into it, the folds of her dress fell naturally round her in
+order, like ladies of honour round a throne, and she looked like an
+empress. All her movements were graceful and imperial. In the morning you
+could see her hair was blue-black, her complexion of dazzling fairness,
+with the faintest possible blush flickering, as it were, in her cheek.
+Her eyes were grey, with prodigious long lashes; and as for her mouth,
+Mr. Pendennis has given me subsequently to understand, that it was of a
+staring red colour, with which the most brilliant geranium, sealing-wax,
+or Guardsman's coat, could not vie.
+
+"And very warm," continued this empress and Queen of Sheba.
+
+Mr. Pen again assented, and the conversation rolled on in this manner.
+She asked Costigan whether he had had a pleasant evening at the George,
+and he recounted the supper and the tumblers of punch. Then the father
+asked her how she had been employing the morning.
+
+"Bows came," said she, "at ten, and we studied Ophalia. It's for the
+twenty-fourth, when I hope, sir, we shall have the honour of seeing ye."
+
+"Indeed, indeed, you will," Mr. Pendennis cried; wondering that she
+should say 'Ophalia,' and speak with an Irish inflection of voice
+naturally, who had not the least Hibernian accent on the stage.
+
+"I've secured 'um for your benefit, dear," said the Captain, tapping his
+waistcoat pocket, wherein lay Pen's sovereigns, and winking at Pen, with
+one eye, at which the boy blushed.
+
+"Mr---the gentleman's very obleging," said Mrs. Haller.
+
+"My name is Pendennis," said Pen, blushing. "I--I--hope you'll--you'll
+remember it." His heart thumped so as he made this audacious declaration,
+that he almost choked in uttering it.
+
+"Pendennis"--she answered slowly, and looking him full in the eyes, with
+a glance, so straight, so clear, so bright, so killing, with a voice so
+sweet, so round, so low, that the word and the glance shot Pen through
+and through, and perfectly transfixed him with pleasure.
+
+"I never knew the name was so pretty before," Pen said.
+
+"'Tis a very pretty name," Ophelia said. "Pentweazle's not a pretty name.
+Remember, papa, when we were on the Norwich Circuit, Young Pentweazle,
+who used to play second old men, and married Miss Rancy, the Columbine;
+they're both engaged in London now, at the Queen's, and get five pounds a
+week. Pentweazle wasn't his real name. 'Twas Judkin gave it him, I don't
+know why. His name was Harrington; that is, his real name was Potts;
+fawther a clergyman, very respectable. Harrington was in London, and got
+in debt. Ye remember; he came out in Falkland, to Mrs. Bunce's Julia."
+
+"And a pretty Julia she was," the Captain interposed; "a woman of fifty,
+and a mother of ten children. 'Tis you ought to have been Julia, or my
+name's not Jack Costigan."
+
+"I didn't take the leading business then," Miss Fotheringay said
+modestly; "I wasn't fit for't till Bows taught me."
+
+"True for you, my dear," said the Captain: and bending to Pendennis,
+he added, "Rejuiced in circumstances, sir, I was for some time a
+fencing-master in Dublin (there's only three men in the empire could
+touch me with the foil once, but Jack Costigan's getting old and stiff
+now, sir), and my daughter had an engagement at the thayater there; and
+'twas there that my friend, Mr. Bows, who saw her capabilities, and is an
+uncommon 'cute man, gave her lessons in the dramatic art, and made her
+what ye see. What have ye done since Bows went, Emily?"
+
+"Sure, I've made a pie," Emily said, with perfect simplicity. She
+pronounced it "Poy."
+
+"If ye'll try it at four o'clock, sir, say the word," said Costigan
+gallantly. "That girl, sir, makes the best veal and ham pie in England,
+and I think I can promise ye a glass of punch of the right flavour."
+
+Pen had promised to be at home to dinner at six o'clock, but the rascal
+thought he could accommodate pleasure and duty in this point, and was
+only too eager to accept this invitation. He looked on with delight and
+wonder whilst Ophelia busied herself about the room, and prepared for the
+dinner. She arranged the glasses, and laid and smoothed the little cloth,
+all which duties she performed with a quiet grace and good humour, which
+enchanted her guest more and more. The "poy" arrived from the baker's in
+the hands of one of the little choir-boy's brothers at the proper hour:
+and at four o'clock Pen found himself at dinner--actually at dinner with
+the greatest tragic actress in the world, and her father--with the
+handsomest woman in all creation--with his first and only love, whom he
+had adored ever since when?--ever since yesterday, ever since for ever.
+He ate a crust of her making, he poured her out a glass of beer, he saw
+her drink a glass of punch--just one wine-glass full--out of the tumbler
+which she mixed for her papa. She was perfectly good-natured, and offered
+to mix one for Pendennis too. It was prodigiously strong; Pen had never
+in his life drunk so much spirits and water. Was it the punch, or the
+punch-maker who intoxicated him?
+
+During dinner, when the Captain, whom his daughter treated most
+respectfully, ceased prattling about himself and his adventures, Pen
+tried to engage the Fotheringay in conversation about poetry and about
+her profession. He asked her what she thought of Ophelia's madness, and
+whether she was in love with Hamlet or not? "In love with such a little
+ojous wretch as that stunted manager of a Bingley?" She bristled with
+indignation at the thought. Pen explained it was not of her he spoke, but
+of Ophelia of the play. "Oh, indeed; if no offence was meant, none was
+taken: but as for Bingley, indeed, she did not value him--not that glass
+of punch." Pen next tried her on Kotzebue. "Kotzebue? who was he?"--"The
+author of the play in which she had been performing so admirably." "She
+did not know that--the man's name at the beginning of the book was
+Thompson," she said. Pen laughed at her adorable simplicity. He told her
+of the melancholy fate of the author of the play, and how Sand had killed
+him. It was for the first time in her life that Miss Costigan had ever
+heard of Mr. Kotzebue's existence, but she looked as if she was very much
+interested, and her sympathy sufficed for honest Pen.
+
+And in the midst of this simple conversation, the hour and a quarter
+which poor Pen could afford to allow himself, passed away only too
+quickly; and he had taken leave, he was gone, and away on his rapid road
+homewards on the back of Rebecca. She was called upon to show her mettle
+in the three journeys which she made that day.
+
+"What was that he was talking about, the madness of Hamlet, and the
+theory of the great German critic on the subject?" Emily asked of her
+father.
+
+"'Deed then I don't know, Milly dear," answered the Captain. "We'll ask
+Bows when he comes."
+
+"Anyhow, he's a nice, fair-spoken pretty young man," the lady said: "how
+many tickets did he take of you?"
+
+"Faith, then, he took six, and gev me two guineas, Milly," the Captain
+said. "I suppose them young chaps is not too flush of coin."
+
+"He's full of book-learning," Miss Fotheringay continued. "Kotzebue! He,
+he, what a droll name indeed, now; and the poor fellow killed by Sand,
+too! Did ye ever hear such a thing? I'll ask Bows about it, papa, dear."
+
+"A queer death, sure enough," ejaculated the Captain, and changed the
+painful theme. "'Tis an elegant mare the young gentleman rides," Costigan
+went on to say; "and a grand breakfast, intirely, that young Mister Foker
+gave us."
+
+"He's good for two private boxes, and at leest twenty tickets, I should
+say," cried the daughter, a prudent lass, who always kept her fine eyes
+on the main chance.
+
+"I'll go bail of that," answered the papa, and so their conversation
+continued awhile, until the tumbler of punch was finished; and their hour
+of departure soon came, too; for at half-past six Miss Fotheringay was to
+appear at the theatre again, whither her father always accompanied her;
+and stood, as we have seen, in the side-scene watching her, and drank
+spirits-and-water in the green-room with the company there.
+
+"How beautiful she is," thought Pen, cantering homewards. "How simple and
+how tender! How charming it is to see a woman of her commanding genius
+busying herself with the delightful, though humble, offices of domestic
+life, cooking dishes to make her old father comfortable, and brewing
+drink for him with her delicate fingers! How rude it was of me to begin
+to talk about professional matters, and how well she turned the
+conversation! By the way, she talked about professional matters herself;
+but then with what fun and humour she told the story of her comrade,
+Pentweazle, as he was called! There is no humour like Irish humour. Her
+father is rather tedious, but thoroughly amiable; and how fine of him,
+giving lessons in fencing after he quitted the army, where he was the pet
+of the Duke of Kent! Fencing! I should like to continue my fencing, or I
+shall forget what Angelo taught me. Uncle Arthur always liked me to fence
+--he says it is the exercise of a gentleman. Hang it. I'll take some
+lessons of Captain Costigan. Go along, Rebecca--up the hill, old lady.
+Pendennis, Pendennis--how she spoke the word! Emily, Emily! how good, how
+noble, how beautiful, how perfect, she is!"
+
+Now the reader, who has had the benefit of overhearing the entire
+conversation which Pen had with Miss Fotheringay, can judge for himself
+about the powers of her mind, and may perhaps be disposed to think that
+she has not said anything astonishingly humorous or intellectual in the
+course of the above interview. She has married, and taken her position in
+the world as the most spotless and irreproachable lady since, and I have
+had the pleasure of making her acquaintance: and must certainly own,
+against my friend Pen's opinion, that his adored Emily is not a clever
+woman. The truth is, she had not only never heard of Kotzebue, but she
+had never heard of Farquhar, or Congreve, or any dramatist in whose plays
+she had not a part: and of these dramas she only knew the part which
+concerned herself. A wag once told her that Dante was born at Algiers:
+and asked her,--which Dr. Johnson wrote first, 'Irene,' or 'Every Man in
+his Humour.' But she had the best of the joke, for she had never heard of
+Irene or Every Man in his Humour, or Dante, or perhaps Algiers. It was
+all one to her. She acted what little Bows told her--where he told her to
+sob, she sobbed--where he told her to laugh, she laughed. She gave the
+tirade or the repartee without the slightest notion of its meaning. She
+went to church and goes every Sunday, with a reputation perfectly intact,
+and was (and is) as guiltless of sense as of any other crime.
+
+But what did our Pen know of these things? He saw a pair of bright eyes,
+and he believed in them--a beautiful image, and he fell down and
+worshipped it. He supplied the meaning which her words wanted; and
+created the divinity which he loved. Was Titania the first who fell in
+love with an ass, or Pygmalion the only artist who has gone crazy about a
+stone? He had found her; he had found what his soul thirsted after. He
+flung himself into the stream and drank with all his might. Let those say
+who have been thirsty once how delicious that first draught is. As he
+rode down the avenue towards home--Pen shrieked with laughter as he saw
+the Reverend Mr. Smirke once more coming demurely away from Fairoaks on
+his pony. Smirke had dawdled and stayed at the cottages on the way, and
+then dawdled with Laura over her lessons--and then looked at Mrs.
+Pendennis's gardens and improvements until he had perfectly bored out
+that lady: and he had taken his leave at the very last minute without
+that invitation to dinner which he fondly expected.
+
+Pen was full of kindness and triumph. "What, picked up and sound?" he
+cried out laughing. "Come along back, old fellow, and eat my dinner--I
+have had mine: but we will have a bottle of the old wine and drink her
+health, Smirke."
+
+Poor Smirke turned the pony's head round, and jogged along with Arthur.
+His mother was charmed to see him in such high spirits, and welcomed Mr.
+Smirke for his sake, when Arthur said he had forced the curate back to
+dine. He gave a most ludicrous account of the play of the night before,
+and of the acting of Bingley the Manager, in his rickety Hessians, and
+the enormous Mrs. Bingley as the Countess, in rumpled green satin and a
+Polish cap; he mimicked them, and delighted his mother and little Laura,
+who clapped her hands with pleasure.
+
+"And Mrs. Haller?" said Mrs. Pendennis.
+
+"She's a stunner, ma'am," Pen said, laughing, and using the words of his
+revered friend, Mr. Foker.
+
+"A what, Arthur?" asked the lady.
+
+"What is a stunner, Arthur?" cried Laura, in the same voice.
+
+So he gave them a queer account of Mr. Foker, and how he used to be
+called Vats and Grains, and by other contumelious names at school: and
+how he was now exceedingly rich, and a Fellow Commoner at St. Boniface.
+But gay and communicative as he was, Mr. Pen did not say one syllable
+about his ride to Chatteris that day, or about the new friends whom he
+had made there.
+
+When the two ladies retired, Pen, with flashing eyes, filled up two great
+bumpers of Madeira, and looking Smirke full in the face said, "Here's to
+her!"
+
+"Here's to her," said the curate with a sigh, lifting the glass and
+emptying it, so that his face was a little pink when he put it down.
+
+Pen had even less sleep that night than on the night before. In the
+morning, and almost before dawn, he went out and saddled that unfortunate
+Rebecca himself, and rode her on the Downs like mad. Again Love had
+roused him--and said, "Awake, Pendennis, I am here." That charming fever
+--that delicious longing--and fire, and uncertainty; he hugged them to
+him--be would not have lost them for all the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Contains both Love and War
+
+
+Cicero and Euripides did not occupy Mr. Pen much for some time after
+this, and honest Mr. Smirke had a very easy time with his pupil. Rebecca
+was the animal who suffered most in the present state of Pen's mind, for,
+besides those days when he could publicly announce his intention of going
+to Chatteris to take a fencing-lesson, and went thither with the
+knowledge of his mother, whenever he saw three hours clear before him,
+the young rascal made a rush for the city, and found his way to Prior's
+Lane. He was as frantic with vexation when Rebecca went lame, as Richard
+at Bosworth, when his horse was killed under him: and got deeply into the
+books of the man who kept the hunting-stables at Chatteris for the
+doctoring of his own, and the hire of another animal.
+
+Then, and perhaps once in a week, under pretence of going to read a Greek
+play with Smirke, this young reprobate set off so as to be in time for
+the Competitor down coach, stayed a couple of hours in Chatteris, and
+returned on the Rival which left for London at ten at night. Once his
+secret was nearly lost by Smirke's simplicity, of whom Mrs. Pendennis
+asked whether they had read a great deal the night before, or a question
+to that effect. Smirke was about to tell the truth, that he had never
+seen Mr. Pen at all, when the latter's boot-heel came grinding down on
+Mr. Smirke's toe under the table, and warned the curate not to betray
+him.
+
+They had had conversations on the tender subject, of course. It is good
+sport (if you are not yourself engaged in the conversation) to hear two
+men in love talk. There must be a confidant and depositary somewhere.
+When informed, under the most solemn vows of secrecy, of Pen's condition
+of mind, the curate said, with no small tremor, "that he hoped it was no
+unworthy object--no unlawful attachment, which Pen had formed"--for if
+so, the poor fellow felt it would be his duty to break his vow and inform
+Pen's mother, and then there would be a quarrel, he felt, with sickening
+apprehension, and he would never again have a chance of seeing what he
+most liked in the world.
+
+"Unlawful, unworthy!" Pen bounced out at the curate's question. "She is
+as pure as she is beautiful; I would give my heart to no other woman. I
+keep the matter a secret in my family, because--because--there are
+reasons of a weighty nature which I am not at liberty to disclose. But
+any man who breathes a word against her purity insults both her honour
+and mine, and--and dammy, I won't stand it."
+
+Smirke, with a faint laugh, only said, "Well, well, don't call me out,
+Arthur, for you know I can't fight;" but by this compromise the wretched
+curate was put more than ever into the power of his pupil, and the Greek
+and mathematics suffered correspondingly.
+
+If the reverend gentleman had had much discernment, and looked into the
+Poet's Corner of the County Chronicle, as it arrived in the Wednesday's
+bag, he might have seen 'Mrs. Haller,' 'Passion and Genius,' 'Lines to
+Miss Fotheringay, of the Theatre Royal,' appearing every week; and other
+verses of the most gloomy, thrilling, and passionate cast. But as these
+poems were no longer signed NEP by their artful composer, but subscribed
+EROS, neither the tutor nor Helen, the good soul, who cut all her son's
+verses out of the paper, knew that Nep was no other than that flaming
+Eros, who sang so vehemently the character of the new actress.
+
+"Who is the lady," at last asked Mrs. Pendennis, "whom your rival is
+always singing in the County Chronicle? He writes something like you,
+dear Pen, but yours is much the best. Have you seen Miss Fotheringay?"
+
+Pen said yes, he had; that night he went to see the "Stranger," she acted
+Mrs. Haller. By the way, she was going to have a benefit, and was to
+appear in Ophelia--suppose we were to go--Shakspeare, you know, mother--
+we can get horses from the Clavering Arms. Little Laura sprang up with
+delight, she longed for a play.
+
+Pen introduced "Shakspeare, you know," because the deceased Pendennis, as
+became a man of his character, professed an uncommon respect for the bard
+of Avon, in whose works he safely said there was more poetry than in all
+'Johnson's Poets' put together. And though Mr. Pendennis did not much
+read the works in question, yet he enjoined Pen to peruse them, and often
+said what pleasure he should have, when the boy was of a proper age, in
+taking him and mother to see some good plays of the immortal poet.
+
+The ready tears welled up in the kind mother's eyes as she remembered
+these speeches of the man who was gone. She kissed her son fondly, and
+said she would go. Laura jumped for joy. Was Pen happy?--was he ashamed?
+As he held his mother to him, he longed to tell her all, but he kept his
+counsel. He would see how his mother liked her; the play should be the
+thing, and he would try his mother like Hamlet's.
+
+Helen, in her good humour, asked Mr. Smirke to be of the party. That
+ecclesiastic had been bred up by a fond parent at Clapham, who had an
+objection to dramatic entertainments, and he had never yet seen a play.
+But, Shakspeare!--but to go with Mrs. Pendennis in her carriage, and sit
+a whole night by her side!--he could not resist the idea of so much
+pleasure, and made a feeble speech, in which he spoke of temptation and
+gratitude, and finally accepted Mrs. Pendennis's most kind offer. As he
+spoke he gave her a look, which made her exceedingly uncomfortable. She
+had seen that look more than once, of late, pursuing her. He became more
+positively odious every day in the widow's eyes.
+
+We are not going to say a great deal about Pen's courtship of Miss
+Fotheringay, for the reader has already had a specimen of her
+conversation, much of which need surely not be reported. Pen sate with
+her hour after hour, and poured forth all his honest boyish soul to her.
+Everything he knew, or hoped, or felt, or had read, or fancied, he told
+to her. He never tired of talking and longing. One after another, as his
+thoughts rose in his hot eager brain, he clothed them in words, and told
+them to her. Her part of the tete-a-tete was not to talk, but to appear
+as if she understood what Pen talked (a difficult matter, for the young
+fellow blurted out no small quantity of nonsense), and to look
+exceedingly handsome and sympathising. The fact is, whilst he was making
+one of his tirades--and delighted, perhaps, and wondering at his own
+eloquence, the lad would go on for twenty minutes at a time--the lovely
+Emily, who could not comprehend a tenth part of his talk, had leisure to
+think about her own affairs, and would arrange in her own mind how they
+should dress the cold mutton, or how she would turn the black satin, or
+make herself out of her scarf a bonnet like Miss Thackthwaite's new one,
+and so forth. Pen spouted Byron and Moore; passion and poetry: her
+business was to throw up her eyes, or fixing them for a moment on his
+face, to cry, "Oh, 'tis beautiful! Ah, how exquisite! Repeat those lines
+again." And off the boy went, and she returned to her own simple thoughts
+about the turned gown, or the hashed mutton.
+
+In fact Pen's passion was not long a secret from the lovely Emily or her
+father. Upon his second visit, his admiration was quite evident to both
+of them, and on his departure the old gentleman said to his daughter, as
+he winked at her over his glass of grog, "Faith, Milly darling, I think
+ye've hooked that chap."
+
+"Pooh, 'tis only a boy, papa dear," Milly remarked. "Sure he's but a
+child." Pen would have been very much pleased if he had heard that
+phrase--he was galloping home wild with pleasure, and shouting out her
+name as he rode.
+
+"Ye've hooked 'um any how," said the Captain, "and let me tell ye he's
+not a bad fish. I asked Tom at the George, and Flint, the grocer, where
+his mother dales--fine fortune--drives in her chariot--splendid park and
+grounds--Fairoaks Park--only son--property all his own at twenty-one--ye
+might go further and not fare so well, Miss Fotheringay."
+
+"Them boys are mostly talk," said Milly, seriously. "Ye know at Dublin
+how ye went on about young Poldoody, and I've a whole desk full of verses
+he wrote me when he was in Trinity College; but he went abroad, and his
+mother married him to an Englishwoman."
+
+"Lord Poldoody was a young nobleman; and in them it's natural: and ye
+weren't in the position in which ye are now, Milly dear. But ye mustn't
+encourage this young chap too much, for, bedad, Jack Costigan won't have
+any thrilling with his daughter."
+
+"No more will his daughter, papa, you may be sure of that," Milly said.
+"A little sip more of the punch,--sure, 'tis beautiful. Ye needn't be
+afraid about the young chap--I think I'm old enough to take care of
+myself, Captain Costigan."
+
+So Pen used to come day after day, rushing in and galloping away, and
+growing more wild about the girl with every visit. Sometimes the Captain
+was present at their meetings; but having a perfect confidence in his
+daughter, he was more often inclined to leave the young couple to
+themselves, and cocked his hat over his eye, and strutted off on some
+errand when Pen entered. How delightful those interviews were! The
+Captain's drawing-room was a low wainscoted room, with a large window
+looking into the Dean's garden. There Pen sate and talked--and talked--
+Emily, looking beautiful as she sate at her work--looking beautiful and
+calm, and the sunshine came streaming in at the great windows, and
+lighted up her superb face and form. In the midst of the conversation,
+the great bell would begin to boom, and he would pause smiling, and be
+silent until the sound of the vast music died away--or the rooks in the
+cathedral elms would make a great noise towards sunset--or the sound of
+the organ and the choristers would come over the quiet air, and gently
+hush Pen's talking.
+
+By the way, it must be said that Miss Fotheringay, in a plain shawl and a
+close bonnet and veil, went to church every Sunday of her life,
+accompanied by her indefatigable father, who gave the responses in a very
+rich and fine brogue, joined in the psalms and chanting, and behaved in
+the most exemplary manner.
+
+Little Bows, the house-friend of the family, was exceedingly wroth at the
+notion of Miss Fotheringay's marriage with a stripling seven or eight
+years her junior. Bows, who was a cripple, and owned that he was a little
+more deformed even than Bingley the manager, so that he could not appear
+on the stage, was a singular wild man of no small talents and humour.
+Attracted first by Miss Fotheringay's beauty, he began to teach her how
+to act. He shrieked out in his cracked voice the parts, and his pupil
+learned them from his lips by rote, and repeated them in her full rich
+tones. He indicated the attitudes, and set and moved those beautiful arms
+of hers. Those who remember this grand actress on the stage can recall
+how she used always precisely the same gestures, looks, and tones; how
+she stood on the same plank of the stage in the same position, rolled her
+eyes at the same instant and to the same degree, and wept with precisely
+the same heart-rending pathos and over the same pathetic syllable. And
+after she had come out trembling with emotion before the audience, and
+looking so exhausted and tearful that you fancied she would faint with
+sensibility, she would gather up her hair the instant she was behind the
+curtain, and go home to a mutton-chop and a glass of brown stout; and the
+harrowing labours of the day over, she went to bed and snored as
+resolutely and as regularly as a porter.
+
+Bows then was indignant at the notion that his pupil should throw her
+chances away in life by bestowing her hand upon a little country squire.
+As soon as a London manager saw her he prophesied that she would get a
+London engagement, and a great success. The misfortune was that the
+London managers had seen her. She had played in London three years
+before, and failed from utter stupidity. Since then it was that Bows had
+taken her in hand and taught her part after part. How he worked and
+screamed, and twisted, and repeated lines over and over again, and with
+what indomitable patience and dulness she followed him! She knew that he
+made her: and let herself be made. She was not grateful, or ungrateful,
+or unkind, or ill-humoured. She was only stupid; and Pen was madly in
+love with her.
+
+The post-horses from the Clavering Arms arrived in due time, and carried
+the party to the theatre at Chatteris, where Pen was gratified in
+perceiving that a tolerably large audience was assembled. The young
+gentlemen from Baymouth had a box, in the front of which sate Mr. Foker
+and his friend Mr. Spavin, splendidly attired in the most full-blown
+evening costume. They saluted Pen in a cordial manner, and examined his
+party, of which they approved, for little Laura was a pretty little
+red-cheeked girl with a quantity of shining brown ringlets, and Mrs.
+Pendennis, dressed in black velvet with the diamond cross which she
+sported on great occasions, looked uncommonly handsome and majestic.
+Behind these sate Mr. Arthur, and the gentle Smirke with the curl
+reposing on his fair forehead, and his white tie in perfect order. He
+blushed to find himself in such a place--but how happy was he to be
+there! He and Mrs. Pendennis brought books of 'Hamlet' with them to
+follow the tragedy, as is the custom of honest countryfolks who go to a
+play in state. Samuel, coachman, groom, and gardener to Mr. Pendennis,
+took his place in the pit, where Mr. Foker's man was also visible. It was
+dotted with non-commissioned officers of the Dragoons, whose band, by
+kind permission of Colonel Swallowtail, were, as usual, in the orchestra;
+and that corpulent and distinguished warrior himself, with his Waterloo
+medal and a number of his young men, made a handsome show in the boxes.
+
+"Who is that odd-looking person bowing to you, Arthur?" Mrs. Pendennis
+asked of her son.
+
+Pen blushed a great deal. "His name is Captain Costigan, ma'am," he said
+--"a Peninsular officer." In fact it was the Captain in a new shoot of
+clothes, as he called them, and with a large pair of white kid gloves,
+one of which he waved to Pendennis, whilst he laid the other sprawling
+over his heart and coat-buttons. Pen did not say any more. And how was
+Mrs. Pendennis to know that Mr. Costigan was the father of Miss
+Fotheringay?
+
+Mr. Hornbull, from London, was the Hamlet of the night, Mr. Bingley
+modestly contenting himself with the part of Horatio, and reserving his
+chief strength for William in 'Black-Eyed Susan,' which was the second
+piece.
+
+We have nothing to do with the play: except to say that Ophelia looked
+lovely, and performed with admirable wild pathos laughing, weeping,
+gazing wildly, waving her beautiful white arms, and flinging about her
+snatches of flowers and songs with the most charming madness. What an
+opportunity her splendid black hair had of tossing over her shoulders!
+She made the most charming corpse ever seen; and while Hamlet and Laertes
+were battling in her grave, she was looking out from the back scenes with
+some curiosity towards Pen's box, and the family party assembled in it.
+
+There was but one voice in her praise there. Mrs. Pendennis was in
+ecstasies with her beauty. Little Laura was bewildered by the piece, and
+the Ghost, and the play within the play (during which, as Hamlet lay at
+Ophelia's knee, Pen felt that he would have liked to strangle Mr.
+Hornbull), but cried out great praises of that beautiful young creature.
+Pen was charmed with the effect which she produced on his mother--and the
+clergyman, for his part, was exceedingly enthusiastic.
+
+When the curtain fell upon that group of slaughtered personages, who are
+despatched so suddenly at the end of 'Hamlet,' and whose demise
+astonished poor little Laura not a little, there was an immense shouting
+and applause from all quarters of the house; the intrepid Smirke,
+violently excited, clapped his hands, and cried out "Bravo, Bravo," as
+loud as the Dragoon officers themselves. These were greatly moved,--ils
+s'agitaient sur leurs bancs,--to borrow a phrase from our neighbours.
+They were led cheering into action by the portly Swallowtail, who waved
+his cap--the non-commissioned officers in the pit, of course, gallantly
+following their chiefs. There was a roar of bravos rang through the
+house; Pen bellowing with the loudest, "Fotheringay! Fotheringay!" and
+Messrs. Spavin and Foker giving the view-halloo from their box. Even Mrs.
+Pendennis began to wave about her pocket-handkerchief, and little Laura
+danced, laughed, clapped, and looked up at Pen with wonder.
+
+Hornbull led the beneficiaire forward, amidst bursts of enthusiasm--and
+she looked so handsome and radiant, with her hair still over her
+shoulders, that Pen hardly could contain himself for rapture: and he
+leaned over his mother's chair, and shouted, and hurrayed, and waved his
+hat. It was all he could do to keep his secret from Helen, and not say,
+"Look! That's the woman! Isn't she peerless? I tell you I love her." But
+he disguised these feelings under an enormous bellowing and hurraying.
+
+As for Miss Fotheringay and her behaviour, the reader is referred to a
+former page for an account of that. She went through precisely the same
+business. She surveyed the house all round with glances of gratitude; and
+trembled, and almost sank with emotion, over her favourite trap-door. She
+seized the flowers (Foker discharged a prodigious bouquet at her, and
+even Smirke made a feeble shy with a rose, and blushed dreadfully when it
+fell into the pit). She seized the flowers and pressed them to her
+swelling heart--etc., etc.--in a word--we refer the reader to earlier
+pages. Twinkling in her breast poor old Pen saw a locket which he had
+bought of Mr. Nathan in High Street, with the last shilling he was worth,
+and a sovereign borrowed from Smirke.
+
+'Black-Eyed Susan' followed, at which sweet story our gentle-hearted
+friends were exceedingly charmed and affected: and in which Susan, with a
+russet gown and a pink ribbon in her cap, looked to the full as lovely as
+Ophelia. Bingley was great in William. Goll, as the Admiral, looked like
+the figure-head of a seventy-four; and Garbetts, as Captain Boldweather,
+a miscreant who forms a plan for carrying off Black-eyed Susan, and
+waving an immense cocked hat says, "Come what may, he will be the ruin of
+her"--all these performed their parts with their accustomed talent; and
+it was with a sincere regret that all our friends saw the curtain drop
+down and end that pretty and tender story.
+
+If Pen had been alone with his mother in the carriage as they went home,
+he would have told her all, that night; but he sate on the box in the
+moonshine smoking a cigar by the side of Smirke, who warmed himself with
+a comforter. Mr. Foker's tandem and lamps whirled by the sober old
+Clavering posters as they were a couple of miles on their road home, and
+Mr. Spavin saluted Mrs. Pendennis's carriage with some considerable
+variations of Rule Britannia on the key-bugle.
+
+It happened two days after the above gaieties that Mr. Dean of Chatteris
+entertained a few select clerical friends at dinner at his Deanery Home.
+That they drank uncommonly good port wine, and abused the Bishop over
+their dessert, are very likely matters: but with such we have nothing at
+present to do. Our friend Doctor Portman, of Clavering, was one of the
+Dean's guests, and being a gallant man, and seeing from his place at the
+mahogany the Dean's lady walking up and down the grass, with her children
+sporting around her, and her pink parasol over her lovely head--the
+Doctor stept out of the French windows of the dining-room into the lawn,
+which skirts that apartment, and left the other white neckcloths to gird
+at my lord Bishop. Then the Doctor went up and offered Mrs. Dean his arm,
+and they sauntered over the ancient velvet lawn, which had been mowed and
+rolled for immemorial Deans, in that easy, quiet, comfortable manner, in
+which people of middle age and good temper walk after a good dinner, in a
+calm golden summer evening, when the sun has but just sunk behind the
+enormous cathedral-towers, and the sickle-shaped moon is growing every
+instant brighter in the heavens.
+
+Now at the end of the Dean's garden there is, as we have stated, Mrs.
+Creed's house, and the windows of the first-floor room were open to admit
+the pleasant summer air. A young lady of six-and-twenty, whose eyes were
+perfectly wide open, and a luckless boy of eighteen, blind with love and
+infatuation, were in that chamber together; in which persons, as we have
+before seen them in the same place, the reader will have no difficulty in
+recognising Mr. Arthur Pendennis and Miss Costigan.
+
+The poor boy had taken the plunge. Trembling with passionate emotion, his
+heart beating and throbbing fiercely, tears rushing forth in spite of
+him, his voice almost choking with feeling, poor Pen had said those words
+which he could withhold no more, and flung himself and his whole store of
+love, and admiration, and ardour at the feet of this mature beauty. Is he
+the first who has done so? Have none before or after him staked all their
+treasure of life, as a savage does his land and possessions against a
+draught of the fair-skins' fire-water, or a couple of bauble eyes?
+
+"Does your mother know of this, Arthur?" said Miss Fotheringay, slowly.
+He seized her hand madly and kissed it a thousand times. She did not
+withdraw it. "Does the old lady know it?" Miss Costigan thought to
+herself, "well, perhaps she may," and then she remembered what a handsome
+diamond cross Mrs. Pendennis had on the night of the play, and thought,
+"Sure 'twill go in the family."
+
+"Calm yourself, dear Arthur," she said, in her low rich voice, and
+sniffled sweetly and gravely upon him. Then, with her disengaged hand,
+she put the hair lightly off his throbbing forehead. He was in such a
+rapture and whirl of happiness that he could hardly speak. At last he
+gasped out, "My mother has seen you, and admires you beyond measure. She
+will learn to love you soon: who can do otherwise? She will love you
+because I do."
+
+"'Deed then, I think you do," said Miss Costigan, perhaps with a sort of
+pity for Pen.
+
+Think she did! Of course here Mr. Pen went off into a rhapsody through
+which, as we have perfect command over our own feelings, we have no
+reason to follow the lad. Of course, love, truth, and eternity were
+produced: and words were tried but found impossible to plumb the
+tremendous depth of his affection. This speech, we say, is no business of
+ours. It was most likely not very wise, but what right have we to
+overhear? Let the poor boy fling out his simple heart at the woman's
+feet, and deal gently with him. It is best to love wisely, no doubt: but
+to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of
+us can't: and are proud of our impotence too.
+
+At the end of his speech Pen again kissed the imperial hand with rapture
+--and I believe it was at this very moment, and while Mrs. Dean and
+Doctor Portman were engaged in conversation, that young Master Ridley
+Roset, her son, pulled his mother by the back of her capacious dress and
+said--
+
+"I say, ma! look up there"--and he waggled his innocent head.
+
+That was, indeed, a view from the Dean's garden such as seldom is seen by
+Deans--or is written in Chapters. There was poor Pen performing a salute
+upon the rosy fingers of his charmer, who received the embrace with
+perfect calmness and good humour. Master Ridley looked up and grinned,
+little Miss Rosa looked at her brother, and opened the mouth of
+astonishment. Mrs. Dean's countenance defied expression, and as for Dr.
+Portman, when he beheld the scene, and saw his prime favourite and dear
+pupil Pen, he stood mute with rage and wonder.
+
+Mrs. Haller spied the party below at the same moment, and gave a start
+and a laugh. "Sure there's somebody in the Dean's garden," she cried out;
+and withdrew with perfect calmness, whilst Pen darted away with his face
+glowing like coals. The garden party had re-entered the house when he
+ventured to look out again. The sickle moon was blazing bright in the
+heavens then, the stars were glittering, the bell of the cathedral
+tolling nine, the Dean's guests (all save one, who had called for his
+horse Dumpling, and ridden off early) were partaking of tea and buttered
+cakes in Mrs. Dean's drawing-room--when Pen took leave of Miss Costigan.
+
+Pen arrived at home in due time afterwards, and was going to slip off to
+bed, for the poor lad was greatly worn and agitated, and his high-strung
+nerves had been at almost a maddening pitch when a summons came to him by
+John the old footman, whose countenance bore a very ominous look, that
+his mother must see him below.
+
+On this he tied on his neckcloth again, and went downstairs to the
+drawing-room. There sate not only his mother, but her friend, the
+Reverend Doctor Portman. Helen's face looked very pale by the light of
+the lamp--the Doctor's was flushed, on the contrary, and quivering with
+anger and emotion.
+
+Pen saw at once that there was a crisis, and that there had been a
+discovery. "Now for it," he thought.
+
+"Where have you been, Arthur?" Helen said in a trembling voice.
+
+"How can you look that--that dear lady, and a Christian clergyman in the
+face, sir?" bounced out the Doctor, in spite of Helen's pale, appealing
+looks. "Where has he been? Where his mother's son should have been
+ashamed to go. For your mother's an angel, sir, an angel. How dare you
+bring pollution into her house, and make that spotless creature wretched
+with the thoughts of your crime?"
+
+"Sir!" said Pen.
+
+"Don't deny it, sir," roared the Doctor. "Don't add lies, sir, to your
+other infamy. I saw you myself, sir. I saw you from the Dean's garden. I
+saw you kissing the hand of that infernal painted---"
+
+"Stop," Pen said, clapping his fist on the table, till the lamp flickered
+up and shook, "I am a very young man, but you will please to remember
+that I am a gentleman--I will hear no abuse of that lady."
+
+"Lady, sir," cried the Doctor, "that a lady--you--you--you stand in your
+mother's presence and call that--that woman a lady!---"
+
+"In anybody's presence," shouted out Pen. "She is worthy of any place.
+She is as pure as any woman. She is as good as she is beautiful. If any
+man but you insulted her, I would tell him what I thought; but as you are
+my oldest friend, I suppose you have the privilege to doubt of my
+honour."
+
+"No, no, Pen, dearest Pen," cried out Helen in an excess of joy. "I told,
+I told you, Doctor, he was not--not what you thought:" and the tender
+creature coming trembling forward flung herself on Pen's shoulder.
+
+Pen felt himself a man, and a match for all the Doctors in Doctordom. He
+was glad this explanation had come. "You saw how beautiful she was," he
+said to his mother, with a soothing, protecting air, like Hamlet with
+Gertrude in the play. "I tell you, dear mother, she is as good. When you
+know her you will say so. She is of all, except you, the simplest, the
+kindest, the most affectionate of women. Why should she not be on the
+stage?--She maintains her father by her labour."
+
+"Drunken old reprobate," growled the Doctor, but Pen did not hear or
+heed.
+
+"If you could see, as I have, how orderly her life is, how pure and pious
+her whole conduct, you would--as I do--yes, as I do"--(with a savage look
+at the Doctor)--"spurn the slanderer who dared to do her wrong. Her
+father was an officer, and distinguished himself in Spain. He was a
+friend of His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, and is intimately known to
+the Duke of Wellington, and some of the first officers of our army. He
+has met my uncle Arthur at Lord Hill's, he thinks. His own family is one
+of the most ancient and respectable in Ireland, and indeed is as good as
+our own. The Costigans were kings of Ireland."
+
+"Why, God bless my soul," shrieked out the Doctor, hardly knowing whether
+to burst with rage or laughter, "you don't mean to say you want to marry
+her?"
+
+Pen put on his most princely air. "What else, Dr. Portman," he said, "do
+you suppose would be my desire?"
+
+Utterly foiled in his attack, and knocked down by this sudden lunge of
+Pen's, the Doctor could only gasp out, "Mrs. Pendennis, ma'am, send for
+the Major."
+
+"Send for the Major? with all my heart," said Arthur Prince of Pendennis
+and Grand Duke of Fairoaks, with a most superb wave of the hand. And the
+colloquy terminated by the writing of those two letters which were laid
+on Major Pendennis's breakfast-table, in London, at the commencement of
+Prince Arthur's most veracious history.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+In which the Major makes his Appearance
+
+
+Our acquaintance, Major Arthur Pendennis, arrived in due time at
+Fairoaks, after a dreary night passed in the mail-coach, where a stout
+fellow-passenger, swelling preternaturally with great-coats, had crowded
+him into a corner, and kept him awake by snoring indecently; where a
+widow lady, opposite, had not only shut out the fresh air by closing all
+the windows of the vehicle, but had filled the interior with fumes of
+Jamaica rum and water, which she sucked perpetually from a bottle in her
+reticule; where, whenever he caught a brief moment of sleep, the twanging
+of the horn at the turnpike-gates, or the scuffling of his huge neighbour
+wedging him closer and closer, or the play of the widow's feet on his own
+tender toes, speedily woke up the poor gentleman to the horrors and
+realities of life--a life which has passed away now and become
+impossible, and only lives in fond memories. Eight miles an hour, for
+twenty or five-and-twenty hours, a tight mail-coach, a hard seat, a gouty
+tendency, a perpetual change of coachmen grumbling because you did not
+fee them enough, a fellow-passenger partial to spirits-and-water,--who
+has not borne with these evils in the jolly old times? and how could
+people travel under such difficulties? And yet they did, and were merry
+too. Next the widow, and by the side of the Major's servant on the roof,
+were a couple of school-boys going home for the midsummer holidays, and
+Major Pendennis wondered to see them sup at the inn at Bagshot, where
+they took in a cargo of ham, eggs, pie, pickles, tea, coffee, and boiled
+beef, which surprised the poor Major, sipping a cup of very feeble tea,
+and thinking with a tender dejection that Lord Steyne's dinner was coming
+off at that very moment. The ingenuous ardour of the boys, however,
+amused the Major, who was very good-natured, and he became the more
+interested when he found that the one who travelled inside with him was a
+lord's son, whose noble father Pendennis, of course, had met in the world
+of fashion which he frequented. The little lord slept all night through,
+in spite of the squeezing, and the horn-blowing, and the widow; and he
+looked as fresh as paint (and, indeed; pronounced himself to be so) when
+the Major, with a yellow face, a bristly beard, a wig out of curl, and
+strong rheumatic griefs shooting through various limbs of his uneasy
+body, descended at the little lodge-gate at Fairoaks, where the porteress
+and gardener's wife reverentially greeted him, and, still more
+respectfully, Mr. Morgan, his man.
+
+Helen was on the look-out for this expected guest, and saw him from her
+window. But she did not come forward immediately to greet him. She knew
+the Major did not like to be seen at a surprise, and required a little
+preparation before he cared to be visible. Pen, when a boy, had incurred
+sad disgrace by carrying off from the Major's dressing-table a little
+morocco box, which it must be confessed contained the Major's back teeth,
+which he naturally would leave out of his jaws in a jolting mail-coach,
+and without which he would not choose to appear. Morgan, his man, made a
+mystery of mystery of his wigs: curling them in private places:
+introducing them mysteriously to his master's room;--nor without his head
+of hair would the Major care to show himself to any member of his family,
+or any acquaintance. He went to his apartment then and supplied these
+deficiencies; he groaned, and moaned, and wheezed, and cursed Morgan
+through his toilet, as an old buck will, who has been up all night with a
+rheumatism, and has a long duty to perform. And finally being belted,
+curled, and set straight, he descended upon the drawing-room, with a
+grave majestic air, such as befitted one who was at once a man of
+business and a man of fashion.
+
+Pen was not there, however; only Helen, and little Laura sewing at her
+knees; and to whom he never presented more than a forefinger, as he did
+on this occasion after saluting his sister-in-law. Laura took the finger
+trembling and dropped it--and then fled out of the room. Major Pendennis
+did not want to keep her, or indeed to have her in the house at all, and
+had his private reason for disapproving of her: which we may mention on
+some future occasion. Meanwhile Laura disappeared and wandered about the
+premises seeking for Pen: whom she presently found in the orchard, pacing
+up and down a walk there in earnest conversation with Mr. Smirke. He was
+so occupied that he did not hear Laura's clear voice singing out, until
+Smirke pulled him by the coat and pointed towards her as she came
+running.
+
+She ran up and put her hand into his. "Come in, Pen," she said, "there's
+somebody come; uncle Arthur's come."
+
+"He is, is he?" said Pen, and she felt him grasp her little hand. He
+looked round at Smirke with uncommon fierceness, as much as to say, I am
+ready for him or any man.--Mr. Smirke cast up his eyes as usual and
+heaved a gentle sigh.
+
+"Lead on, Laura," Pen said, with a half fierce, half comic air--"Lead on,
+and say I wait upon my uncle." But he was laughing in order to hide a
+great anxiety: and was screwing his courage inwardly to face the ordeal
+which he knew was now before him.
+
+Pen had taken Smirke into his confidence in the last two days, and after
+the outbreak attendant on the discovery of Doctor Portman, and during
+every one of those forty-eight hours which he had passed in Mr. Smirke's
+society, had done nothing but talk to his tutor about Miss Fotheringay--
+Miss Emily Fotheringay--Emily, etc., to all which talk Smirke listened
+without difficulty, for he was in love himself, most anxious in all
+things to propitiate Pen, and indeed very much himself enraptured by the
+personal charms of this goddess, whose like, never having been before at
+a theatrical representation, he had not beheld until now. Pen's fire and
+volubility, his hot eloquence and rich poetical tropes and figures, his
+manly heart, kind, ardent, and hopeful, refusing to see any defects in
+the person he loved, any difficulties in their position that he might not
+overcome, had half convinced Mr. Smirke that the arrangement proposed by
+Mr. Pen was a very feasible and prudent one, and that it would be a great
+comfort to have Emily settled at Fairoaks, Captain Costigan in the yellow
+room, established for life there, and Pen married at eighteen.
+
+And it is a fact that in these two days the boy had almost talked over
+his mother, too; had parried all her objections one after another with
+that indignant good sense which is often the perfection of absurdity; and
+had brought her almost to acquiesce in the belief that if the marriage
+was doomed in heaven, why doomed it was--that if the young woman was a
+good person, it was all that she for her part had to ask; and rather to
+dread the arrival of the guardian uncle who she foresaw would regard Mr.
+Pen's marriage in a manner very different to that simple, romantic,
+honest, and utterly absurd way in which the widow was already disposed to
+look at questions of this sort.
+
+For as in the old allegory of the gold and silver shield, about which
+the two knights quarrelled, each is right according to the point from
+which he looks: so about marriage; the question whether it is foolish or
+good, wise or otherwise, depends upon the point of view from which you
+regard it. If it means a snug house in Belgravia, and pretty little
+dinner-parties, and a pretty little brougham to drive in the Park, and a
+decent provision not only for the young people, but for the little
+Belgravians to come; and if these are the necessaries of life (and they
+are with many honest people), to talk of any other arrangement is an
+absurdity: of love in lodgings--a babyish folly of affection: that can't
+pay coach-hire or afford a decent milliner--as mere wicked balderdash and
+childish romance. If on the other hand your opinion is that people, not
+with an assured subsistence, but with a fair chance to obtain it, and
+with the stimulus of hope, health, and strong affection, may take the
+chance of Fortune for better or worse, and share its good or its evil
+together, the polite theory then becomes an absurdity in its turn: worse
+than an absurdity, a blasphemy almost, and doubt of Providence; and a man
+who waits to make his chosen woman happy, until he can drive her to
+church in a neat little carriage with a pair of horses, is no better than
+a coward or a trifler, who is neither worthy of love nor of fortune.
+
+I don't say that the town folks are not right, but Helen Pendennis was a
+country-bred woman, and the book of life, as she interpreted it, told her
+a different story to that page which is read in cities. Like most soft
+and sentimental women, matchmaking, in general, formed a great part of
+her thoughts, and I daresay she had begun to speculate about her son's
+falling in love and marrying long before the subject had ever entered
+into the brains of the young gentleman. It pleased her (with that dismal
+pleasure which the idea of sacrificing themselves gives to certain women)
+to think of the day when she would give up all to Pen, and he should
+bring his wife home, and she would surrender the keys and the best
+bedroom, and go and sit at the side of the table, and see him happy. What
+did she want in life, but to see the lad prosper? As an empress certainly
+was not too good for him, and would be honoured by becoming Mrs. Pen; so
+if he selected humble Esther instead of Queen Vashti, she would be
+content with his lordship's choice. Never mind how lowly or poor the
+person might be who was to enjoy that prodigious honour, Mrs. Pendennis
+was willing to bow before her and welcome her, and yield her up the first
+place. But an actress--a mature woman, who had long ceased blushing
+except with rouge, as she stood under the eager glances of thousands of
+eyes--an illiterate and ill-bred person, very likely, who must have lived
+with light associates, and have heard doubtful conversation--Oh! it was
+hard that such a one should be chosen, and that the matron should be
+deposed to give place to such a Sultana.
+
+All these doubts the widow laid before Pen during the two days which had
+of necessity to elapse ere the uncle came down; but he met them with that
+happy frankness and ease which a young gentleman exhibits at his time of
+life, and routed his mother's objections with infinite satisfaction to
+himself. Miss Costigan was a paragon of virtue and delicacy; she was as
+sensitive as the most timid maiden; she was as pure as the unsullied
+snow; she had the finest manners, the most graceful wit and genius, the
+most charming refinement and justness of appreciation in all matters of
+taste; she had the most admirable temper and devotion to her father, a
+good old gentleman of high family and fallen fortunes, who had lived,
+however, with the best society in Europe: he was in no hurry, and could
+afford to wait any time,--till he was one-and-twenty. But he felt (and
+here his face assumed an awful and harrowing solemnity) that he was
+engaged in the one only passion of his life, and that DEATH alone could
+close it.
+
+Helen told him, with a sad smile and shake of the head, that people
+survived these passions, and as for long engagements contracted between
+very young men and old women--she knew an instance in her own family--
+Laura's poor father was an instance--how fatal they were.
+
+Mr. Pen, however, was resolved that death must be his doom in case of
+disappointment, and rather than this--rather than baulk him, in fact--
+this lady would have submitted to any sacrifice or personal pain, and
+would have gone down on her knees and have kissed the feet of a Hottentot
+daughter-in-law.
+
+Arthur knew his power over the widow, and the young tyrant was touched
+whilst he exercised it. In those two days he brought her almost into
+submission, and patronised her very kindly; and he passed one evening
+with the lovely pie-maker at Chatteris, in which he bragged of his
+influence over his mother; and he spent the other night in composing a
+most flaming and conceited copy of verses to his divinity, in which he
+vowed, like Montrose, that he would make her famous with his sword and
+glorious by his pen, and that he would love her as no mortal woman had
+been adored since the creation of womankind.
+
+It was on that night, long after midnight, that wakeful Helen, passing
+stealthily by her son's door, saw a light streaming through the chink of
+the door into the dark passage, and heard Pen tossing and tumbling, and
+mumbling verses in his bed. She waited outside for a while, anxiously
+listening to him. In infantile fevers and early boyish illnesses, many a
+night before, the kind soul had so kept watch. She turned the lock very
+softly now, and went in so gently, that Pen for a moment did not see her.
+His face was turned from her. His papers on his desk were scattered
+about, and more were lying on the bed round him. He was biting a pencil
+and thinking of rhymes and all sorts of follies and passions. He was
+Hamlet jumping into Ophelia's grave: he was the Stranger taking Mrs.
+Haller to his arms, beautiful Mrs. Haller, with the raven ringlets
+falling over her shoulders. Despair and Byron, Thomas Moore and all the
+Loves of the Angels, Waller and Herrick, Beranger and all the love-songs
+he had ever read, were working and seething in this young gentleman's
+mind, and he was at the very height and paroxysm of the imaginative
+frenzy when his mother found him.
+
+"Arthur," said the mother's soft silver voice: and he started up and
+turned round. He clutched some of the papers and pushed them under the
+pillow.
+
+"Why don't you go to sleep, my dear?" she said, with a sweet tender
+smile, and sate down on the bed and took one of his hot hands.
+
+Pen looked at her wildly for an instant--"I couldn't sleep," he said--"
+I--I was--I was writing."--And hereupon he flung his arms round her neck
+and said, "O mother! I love her, I love her!"--How could such a kind soul
+as that help soothing and pitying him? The gentle creature did her best:
+and thought with a strange wonderment and tenderness that it was only
+yesterday that he was a child in that bed; and how she used to come and
+say her prayers over it before he woke upon holiday mornings.
+
+They were very grand verses, no doubt, although Miss Fotheringay did not
+understand them; but old Cos, with a wink and a knowing finger on his
+nose, said, "Put them up with th' other letthers, Milly darling.
+Poldoody's pomes was nothing to this." So Milly locked up the
+manuscripts.
+
+When then, the Major being dressed and presentable, presented himself to
+Mrs. Pendennis, he found in the course of ten minutes' colloquy that the
+poor widow was not merely distressed at the idea of the marriage
+contemplated by Pen, but actually more distressed at thinking that the
+boy himself was unhappy about it, and that his uncle and he should have
+any violent altercation on the subject. She besought Major Pendennis to
+be very gentle with Arthur: "He has a very high spirit, and will not
+brook unkind words," she hinted. "Dr. Portman spoke to him rather
+roughly--and I must own unjustly, the other night--for my dearest boy's
+honour is as high as any mother can desire--but Pen's answer quite
+frightened me, it was so indignant. Recollect he is a man now; and be
+very--very cautious," said the widow, laying a fair long hand on the
+Major's sleeve.
+
+He took it up, kissed it gallantly and looked in her alarmed face with
+wonder, and a scorn which he was too polite to show. "Bon Dieu!" thought
+the old negotiator, "the boy has actually talked the woman round, and
+she'd get him a wife as she would a toy if Master cried for it. Why are
+there no such things as lettres-de-cachet--and a Bastille for young
+fellows of family?" The Major lived in such good company that he might be
+excused for feeling like an Earl.--He kissed the widow's timid hand,
+pressed it in both his, and laid it down on the table with one of his own
+over it, as he smiled and looked her in the face.
+
+"Confess," said he, "now, that you are thinking how you possibly can make
+it up to your conscience to let the boy have his own way."
+
+She blushed and was moved in the usual manner of females. "I am thinking
+that he is very unhappy--and I am too----"
+
+"To contradict him or to let him have his own wish?" asked the other; and
+added, with great comfort to his inward self, "I'm d----d if he shall."
+
+"To think that he should have formed so foolish and cruel and fatal an
+attachment," the widow said, "which can but end in pain whatever be the
+issue."
+
+"The issue shan't be marriage, my dear sister," the Major said
+resolutely. "We're not going to have a Pendennis, the head of the house,
+marry a strolling mountebank from a booth. No, no, we won't marry into
+Greenwich Fair, ma'am."
+
+"If the match is broken suddenly off," the widow interposed, "I don't
+know what may be the consequence. I know Arthur's ardent temper, the
+intensity of his affections, the agony of his pleasures and
+disappointments, and I tremble at this one if it must be. Indeed, indeed,
+it must not come on him too suddenly."
+
+"My dear madam," the Major said, with an air of the deepest commiseration
+"I've no doubt Arthur will have to suffer confoundedly before he gets
+over the little disappointment. But is he, think you, the only person who
+has been so rendered miserable?"
+
+"No, indeed," said Helen, holding down her eyes. She was thinking of her
+own case, and was at that moment seventeen again--and most miserable.
+
+"I, myself," whispered her brother-in-law, "have undergone a
+disappointment in early life. A young woman with fifteen thousand
+pounds, niece to an Earl--most accomplished creature--a third of her
+money would have run up my promotion in no time, and I should have been
+a lieutenant--colonel at thirty: but it might not be. I was but a
+penniless lieutenant: her parents interfered: and I embarked for India,
+where I had the honour of being secretary to Lord Buckley, when
+commander-in-Chief without her. What happened? We returned our letters,
+sent back our locks of hair (the Major here passed his fingers through
+his wig), we suffered--but we recovered. She is now a baronet's wife with
+thirteen grown-up children; altered, it is true, in person; but her
+daughters remind me of what she was, and the third is to be presented
+early next week."
+
+Helen did not answer. She was still thinking of old times. I suppose if
+one lives to be a hundred: there are certain passages of one's early life
+whereof the recollection will always carry us back to youth again, and
+that Helen was thinking of one of these.
+
+"Look at my own brother, my dear creature," the Major continued
+gallantly: "he himself, you know, had a little disappointment when he
+started in the--the medical profession--an eligible opportunity presented
+itself. Miss Balls, I remember the name, was daughter of an apoth--a
+practitioner in very large practice; my brother had very nearly succeeded
+in his suit.--But difficulties arose: disappointments supervened, and--
+and I am sure he had no reason to regret the disappointment, which gave
+him this hand," said the Major, and he once more politely pressed Helen's
+fingers.
+
+"Those marriages between people of such different rank and age," said
+Helen, "are sad things. I have known them produce a great deal of
+unhappiness.--Laura's father, my cousin, who--who was brought up with
+me"--she added, in a low voice, "was an instance of that."
+
+"Most injudicious," cut in the Major. "I don't know anything more painful
+than for a man to marry his superior in age or his inferior in station.
+Fancy marrying a woman of low rank of life, and having your house filled
+with her confounded tag-rag-and-bobtail of relations! Fancy your wife
+attached to a mother who dropped her h's, or called Maria Marire! How are
+you to introduce her into society? My dear Mrs. Pendennis, I will name no
+names, but in the very best circles of London society I have seen men
+suffering the most excruciating agony, I have known them to be cut, to be
+lost utterly, from the vulgarity of their wives' connections. What did
+Lady Snapperton do last year at her dejeune dansant after the Bohemian
+Ball? She told Lord Brouncker that he might bring his daughters or send
+them with a proper chaperon, but that she would not receive Lady
+Brouncker who was a druggist's daughter, or some such thing, and as Tom
+Wagg remarked of her, never wanted medicine certainly, for she never had
+an h in her life. Good Ged, what would have been the trifling pang of a
+separation in the first instance to the enduring infliction of a constant
+misalliance and intercourse with low people?"
+
+"What, indeed!" said Helen, dimly disposed towards laughter, but yet
+checking the inclination, because she remembered in what prodigious
+respect her deceased husband held Major Pendennis and his stories of the
+great world.
+
+"Then this fatal woman is ten years older than that silly young
+scapegrace of an Arthur. What happens in such cases, my dear creature? I
+don't mind telling you, now we are alone that in the highest state of
+society, misery, undeviating misery, is the result. Look at Lord
+Clodworthy come into a room with his wife--why, good Ged, she looks like
+Clodworthy's mother. What's the case between Lord and Lady Willowbank,
+whose love match was notorious? He has already cut her down twice when
+she has hanged herself out of jealousy for Mademoiselle de Sainte
+Cunegonde, the dancer; and mark my words, good Ged, one day he'll not cut
+the old woman down. No, my dear madam, you are not in the world, but I
+am: you are a little romantic and sentimental (you know you are--women
+with those large beautiful eyes always are); you must leave this matter
+to my experience. Marry this woman! Marry at eighteen an actress of
+thirty--bah bah!--I would as soon he sent into the kitchen and married
+the cook."
+
+"I know the evils of premature engagements," sighed out Helen: and as she
+has made this allusion no less than thrice in the course of the above
+conversation, and seems to be so oppressed with the notion of long
+engagements and unequal marriages, and as the circumstance we have to
+relate will explain what perhaps some persons are anxious to know, namely
+who little Laura is, who has appeared more than once before us, it will
+be as well to clear up these points in another chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+In which Pen is kept waiting at the Door, while the Reader is informed
+who little Laura was.
+
+
+Once upon a time, then, there was a young gentleman of Cambridge
+University who came to pass the long vacation at the village where young
+Helen Thistlewood was living with her mother, the widow of the lieutenant
+slain at Copenhagen. This gentleman, whose name was the Reverend Francis
+Bell, was nephew to Mrs. Thistlewood, and by consequence, own cousin to
+Miss Helen, so that it was very right that he should take lodgings in his
+aunt's house, who lived in a very small way; and there he passed the long
+vacation, reading with three or four pupils who accompanied him to the
+village. Mr. Bell was fellow of a college, and famous in the University
+for his learning and skill as a tutor.
+
+His two kinswomen understood pretty early that the reverend gentleman was
+engaged to be married, and was only waiting for a college living to
+enable him to fulfil his engagement. His intended bride was the daughter
+of another parson, who had acted as Mr. Bell's own private tutor in
+Bell's early life, and it was whilst under Mr. Coacher's roof, indeed,
+and when only a boy of seventeen or eighteen years of age, that the
+impetuous young Bell had flung himself at the feet of Miss Martha
+Coacher, whom he was helping to pick peas in the garden. On his knees,
+before those peas and her, he pledged himself to an endless affection.
+
+Miss Coacher was by many years the young fellow's senior and her own
+heart had been lacerated by many previous disappointments in the
+matrimonial line. No less than three pupils of her father had trifled
+with those young affections. The apothecary of the village had despicably
+jilted her. The dragoon officer, with whom she had danced so many many
+times during that happy season which she passed at Bath with her gouty
+grandmamma, one day gaily shook his bridle-rein and galloped away never
+to return. Wounded by the shafts of repeated ingratitude, can it be
+wondered at that the heart of Martha Coacher should pant to find rest
+somewhere? She listened to the proposals of the gawky gallant honest boy,
+with great kindness and good-humour; at the end of his speech she said,
+"Law, Bell, I'm sure you are too young to think of such things;" but
+intimated that she too would revolve them in her own virgin bosom. She
+could not refer Mr. Bell to her mamma, for Mr. Coacher was a widower, and
+being immersed in his books, was of course unable to take the direction
+of so frail and wondrous an article as a lady's heart, which Miss Martha
+had to manage for herself.
+
+A lock of her hair, tied up in a piece of blue ribbon, conveyed to the
+happy Bell the result of the Vestal's conference with herself. Thrice
+before had she snipt off one of her auburn ringlets, and given them away.
+The possessors were faithless, but the hair had grown again: and Martha
+had indeed occasion to say that men were deceivers when she handed over
+this token of love to the simple boy.
+
+Number 6, however, was an exception to former passions--Francis Bell was
+the most faithful of lovers. When his time arrived to go to college, and
+it became necessary to acquaint Mr. Coacher of the arrangements that had
+been made, the latter cried, "God bless my soul, I hadn't the least idea
+what was going on;" as was indeed very likely, for he had been taken in
+three times before in precisely a similar manner; and Francis went to the
+University resolved to conquer honours, so as to be able to lay them at
+the feet of his beloved Martha.
+
+This prize in view made him labour prodigiously. News came, term after
+term, of the honours he won. He sent the prize-books for his college
+essays to old Coacher, and his silver declamation cup to Miss Martha. In
+due season he was high among the Wranglers, and a fellow of his college;
+and during all the time of these transactions a constant tender
+correspondence was kept up with Miss Coacher, to whose influence, and
+perhaps with justice, he attributed the successes which he had won.
+
+By the time, however, when the Rev. Francis Bell, M.A., and Fellow and
+Tutor of his College, was twenty-six years of age, it happened that Miss
+Coacher was thirty-four, nor had her charms, her manners, or her temper
+improved since that sunny day in the springtime of life when he found her
+picking peas in the garden. Having achieved his honours he relaxed in the
+ardour of his studies, and his judgment and tastes also perhaps became
+cooler. The sunshine of the pea-garden faded away from Miss Martha, and
+poor Bell found himself engaged--and his hand pledged to that bond in a
+thousand letters--to a coarse, ill-tempered, ill-favoured, ill-mannered,
+middle-aged woman.
+
+It was in consequence of one of many altercations (in which Martha's
+eloquence shone, and in which therefore she was frequently pleased to
+indulge) that Francis refused to take his pupils to Bearleader's Green,
+where Mr. Coacher's living was, and where Bell was in the habit of
+spending the summer: and he bethought him that he would pass the vacation
+at his aunt's village, which he had not seen for many years--not since
+little Helen was a girl and used to sit on his knee. Down then he came
+and lived with them. Helen was grown a beautiful young woman now. The
+cousins were nearly four months together, from June to October. They
+walked in the summer evenings: they met in the early morn. They read out
+of the same book when the old lady dozed at night over the candles. What
+little Helen knew, Frank taught her. She sang to him: she gave her
+artless heart to him. She was aware of all his story. Had he made any
+secret?--had he not shown the picture of the woman to whom he was
+engaged, and with a blush,--her letters, hard, eager, and cruel?--The
+days went on and on, happier and closer, with more kindness, more
+confidence, and more pity. At last one morning in October came, when
+Francis went back to college, and the poor girl felt that her tender
+heart was gone with him.
+
+Frank too wakened up from the delightful midsummer dream to the horrible
+reality of his own pain. He gnashed and tore at the chain which bound
+him. He was frantic to break it and be free. Should he confess?--give his
+savings to the woman to whom he was bound, and beg his release?--there
+was time yet--he temporised. No living might fall in for years to come.
+The cousins went on corresponding sadly and fondly: the betrothed woman,
+hard, jealous, and dissatisfied, complaining bitterly, and with reason,
+of her Francis's altered tone.
+
+At last things came to a crisis, and the new attachment was discovered.
+Francis owned it, cared not to disguise it, rebuked Martha with her
+violent temper and angry imperiousness, and, worst of all, with her
+inferiority and her age.
+
+Her reply was, that if he did not keep his promise she would carry his
+letters into every court in the kingdom--letters in which his love was
+pledged to her ten thousand times; and, after exposing him to the world
+as the perjurer and traitor he was, she would kill herself.
+
+Frank had one more interview with Helen, whose mother was dead then, and
+who was living companion with old Lady Pontypool,--one more interview,
+where it was resolved that he was to do his duty; that is, to redeem his
+vow; that is, to pay a debt cozened from him by a sharper; that is, to
+make two honest people miserable. So the two judged their duty to be, and
+they parted.
+
+The living fell in only too soon; but yet Frank Bell was quite a grey and
+worn-out man when he was inducted into it. Helen wrote him a letter on
+his marriage, beginning "My dear Cousin," and ending "always truly
+yours." She sent him back the other letters, and the lock of his hair--
+all but a small piece. She had it in her desk when she was talking to the
+Major.
+
+Bell lived for three or four years in his living, at the end of which
+time, the Chaplainship of Coventry Island falling vacant, Frank applied
+for it privately, and having procured it, announced the appointment to
+his wife. She objected, as she did to everything. He told her bitterly
+that he did not want her to come: so she went. Bell went out in Governor
+Crawley's time, and was very intimate with that gentleman in his later
+years. And it was in Coventry Island, years after his own marriage, and
+five years after he had heard of the birth of Helen's boy, that his own
+daughter was born.
+
+She was not the daughter of the first Mrs. Bell, who died of island fever
+very soon after Helen Pendennis and her husband, to whom Helen had told
+everything, wrote to inform Bell of the birth of their child. "I was old,
+was I?" said Mrs. Bell the first; "I was old, and her inferior, was I?
+but I married you, Mr. Bell, and kept you from marrying her?" and
+hereupon she died. Bell married a colonial lady, whom be loved fondly.
+But he was not doomed to prosper in love; and, this lady dying in
+childbirth, Bell gave up too: sending his little girl home to Helen
+Pendennis and her husband, with a parting prayer that they would befriend
+her.
+
+The little thing came to Fairoaks from Bristol, which is not very far
+off, dressed in black, and in company of a soldier's wife, her nurse, at
+parting from whom she wept bitterly. But she soon dried up her grief
+under Helen's motherly care.
+
+Round her neck she had a locket with hair, which Helen had given, ah how
+many years ago! to poor Francis, dead and buried. This child was all that
+was left of him, and she cherished, as so tender a creature would, the
+legacy which he had bequeathed to her. The girl's name, as his dying
+letter stated, was Helen Laura. But John Pendennis, though he accepted
+the trust, was always rather jealous of the orphan; and gloomily ordered
+that she should be called by her own mother's name; and not by that first
+one which her father had given her. She was afraid of Mr. Pendennis, to
+the last moment of his life. And it was only when her husband was gone
+that Helen dared openly to indulge in the tenderness which she felt for
+the little girl.
+
+Thus it was that Laura Bell became Mrs. Pendennis's daughter. Neither her
+husband nor that gentleman's brother, the Major, viewed her with very
+favourable eyes. She reminded the first of circumstances in his wife's
+life which he was forced to accept, but would have forgotten much more
+willingly and as for the second, how could he regard her? She was
+neither related to his own family of Pendennis, nor to any nobleman in
+this empire, and she had but a couple of thousand pounds for her fortune.
+
+And now let Mr. Pen come in, who has been waiting all this while.
+
+Having strung up his nerves, and prepared himself, without at the door,
+for the meeting, he came to it, determined to face the awful uncle. He
+had settled in his mind that the encounter was to be a fierce one, and
+was resolved on bearing it through with all the courage and dignity of
+the famous family which he represented. And he flung open the door and
+entered with the most severe and warlike expression, armed cap-a-pie as
+it were, with lance couched and plumes displayed, and glancing at his
+adversary, as if to say, "Come on, I'm ready."
+
+The old man of the world, as he surveyed the boy's demeanour, could
+hardly help a grin at his admirable pompous simplicity. Major Pendennis
+too had examined his ground; and finding that the widow was already half
+won over to the enemy, and having a shrewd notion that threats and tragic
+exhortations would have no effect upon the boy, who was inclined to be
+perfectly stubborn and awfully serious, the Major laid aside the
+authoritative manner at once, and with the most good-humoured natural
+smile in the world, held out his hands to Pen, shook the lad's passive
+fingers gaily, and said, "Well, Pen, my boy, tell us all about it."
+
+Helen was delighted with the generosity of the Major's good-humour. On
+the contrary, it quite took aback and disappointed poor Pen, whose nerves
+were strung up for a tragedy, and who felt that his grand entree was
+altogether baulked and ludicrous. He blushed and winced with mortified
+vanity and bewilderment. He felt immensely inclined to begin to cry--"I--
+I--I didn't know that you were come till just now," he said: "is--is--
+town very full, I suppose?"
+
+If Pen could hardly gulp his tears down, it was all the Major could do to
+keep from laughter. He turned round and shot a comical glance at Mrs.
+Pendennis, who too felt that the scene was at once ridiculous and
+sentimental. And so, having nothing to say, she went up and kissed Mr.
+Pen: as he thought of her tenderness and soft obedience to his wishes, it
+is very possible too the boy was melted.
+
+"What a couple of fools they are," thought the old guardian. "If I hadn't
+come down, she would have driven over in state to pay a visit and give
+her blessing to the young lady's family."
+
+"Come, come," said he, still grinning at the couple, "let us have as
+little sentiment as possible, and, Pen, my good fellow, tell us the whole
+story."
+
+Pen got back at once to his tragic and heroical air. "The story is, sir,"
+said he, "as I have written it to you before. I have made the
+acquaintance of a most beautiful and most virtuous lady; of a high
+family, although in reduced circumstances: I have found the woman in whom
+I know that the happiness of my life is centred; I feel that I never,
+never can think about any woman but her. I am aware of the difference of
+our ages and other difficulties in my way. But my affection was so great
+that I felt I could surmount all these; that we both could: and she has
+consented to unite her lot with mine, and to accept my heart and my
+fortune."
+
+"How much is that, my boy?" said the Major. "Has anybody left you some
+money? I don't know that you are worth a shilling in the world."
+
+"You know what I have is his," cried out Mrs. Pendennis.
+
+"Good heavens, madam, hold your tongue!" was what the guardian was
+disposed to say; but he kept his temper, not without a struggle. "No
+doubt, no doubt," he said. "You would sacrifice anything for him.
+Everybody knows that. But it is, after all then, your fortune which Pen
+is offering to the young lady; and of which he wishes to take possession
+at eighteen."
+
+"I know my mother will give me anything," Pen said, looking rather
+disturbed.
+
+"Yes, my good fellow, but there is reason in all things. If your mother
+keeps the house, it is but fair that she should select her company. When
+you give her house over her head, and transfer her banker's account to
+yourself for the benefit of Miss What-d'-you-call-'em--Miss Costigan--
+don't you think you should at least have consulted my sister as one of
+the principal parties in the transaction? I am speaking to you, you see,
+without the least anger or assumption of authority, such as the law and
+your father's will give me over you for three years to come--but as one
+man of the world to another,--and I ask you, if you think that, because
+you can do what you like with your mother, therefore you have a right to
+do so? As you are her dependent, would it not have been more generous to
+wait before you took this step, and at least to have paid her the
+courtesy to ask her leave?"
+
+Pen held down his head, and began dimly to perceive that the action on
+which he had prided himself as a most romantic, generous instance of
+disinterested affection, was perhaps a very selfish and headstrong piece
+of folly.
+
+"I did it in a moment of passion," said Pen, floundering; "I was not
+aware what I was going to say or to do" (and in this he spoke with
+perfect sincerity) "But now it is said, and I stand to it. No; I neither
+can nor will recall it. I'll die rather than do so. And I--I don't want
+to burthen my mother," he continued. "I'll work for myself. I'll go on
+the stage, and act with her. She--she says I should do well there."
+
+"But will she take you on those terms?" the Major interposed. "Mind, I do
+not say that Miss Costigan is not the most disinterested of women: but,
+don't you suppose now, fairly, that your position as a young gentleman of
+ancient birth and decent expectations forms a part of the cause why she
+finds your addresses welcome?"
+
+"I'll die, I say, rather than forfeit my pledge to her," said Pen,
+doubling his fists and turning red.
+
+"Who asks you, my dear friend?" answered the imperturbable guardian. "No
+gentleman breaks his word, of course, when it has been given freely. But
+after all, you can wait. You owe something to your mother, something to
+your family--something to me as your father's representative."
+
+"Oh, of course," Pen said, feeling rather relieved.
+
+"Well, as you have pledged your word to her, give us another, will you
+Arthur?"
+
+"What is it?" Arthur asked.
+
+"That you will make no private marriage--that you won't be taking a trip
+to Scotland, you understand."
+
+"That would be a falsehood. Pen never told his mother a falsehood," Helen
+said.
+
+Pen hung down his head again, and his eyes filled with tears of shame.
+Had not this whole intrigue been a falsehood to that tender and confiding
+creature who was ready to give up all for his sake? He gave his uncle his
+hand.
+
+"No, sir--on my word of honour, as a gentleman," he said, "I will never
+marry without my mother's consent!" and giving Helen a bright parting
+look of confidence and affection unchangeable, the boy went out of the
+drawing-room into his own study.
+
+"He's an angel--he's an angel," the mother cried out in one of her usual
+raptures.
+
+"He comes of a good stock, ma'am," said her brother-in-law--"of a good
+stock on both sides." The Major was greatly pleased with the result of
+his diplomacy--so much so, that he once more saluted the tips of Mrs.
+Pendennis's glove, and dropping the curt, manly, and straightforward tone
+in which he had conducted the conversation with the lad, assumed a
+certain drawl which he always adopted when he was most conceited and
+fine.
+
+"My dear creature," said he, in that his politest tone, "I think it
+certainly as well that I came down, and I flatter myself that last botte
+was a successful one. I tell you how I came to think of it. Three years
+ago my kind friend Lady Ferrybridge sent for me in the greatest state of
+alarm about her son Gretna, whose affair you remember, and implored me to
+use my influence with the young gentleman, who was engaged in an affaire
+de coeur with a Scotch clergyman's daughter, Miss MacToddy. I implored, I
+entreated gentle measures. But Lord Ferrybridge was furious, and tried
+the high hand. Gretna was sulky and silent, and his parents thought they
+had conquered. But what was the fact, my dear creature? The young people
+had been married for three months before Lord Ferrybridge knew anything
+about it. And that was why I extracted the promise from Master Pen."
+
+"Arthur would never have done so," Mrs. Pendennis said.
+
+"He hasn't,--that is one comfort," answered the brother-in-law.
+
+Like a wary and patient man of the world, Major Pendennis did not press
+poor Pen any farther for the moment, but hoped the best from time, and
+that the young fellow's eyes would be opened before long to see the
+absurdity of which he was guilty. And having found out how keen the boy's
+point of honour was, he worked kindly upon that kindly feeling with great
+skill, discoursing him over their wine after dinner, and pointing out to
+Pen the necessity of a perfect uprightness and openness in all his
+dealings, and entreating that his communications with his interesting
+young friend (as the Major politely called Miss Fotheringay) should be
+carried on with the knowledge, if not approbation, of Mrs. Pendennis.
+"After all, Pen," the Major said, with a convenient frankness that did
+not displease the boy, whilst it advanced the interests of the
+negotiator, "you must bear in mind that you are throwing yourself away.
+Your mother may submit to your marriage as she would to anything else you
+desired, if you did but cry long enough for it: but be sure of this, that
+it can never please her. You take a young woman off the boards of a
+country theatre and prefer her, for such is the case, to one of the
+finest ladies in England. And your mother will submit to your choice, but
+you can't suppose that she will be happy under it. I have often fancied,
+entre nous, that my sister had it in her eye to make a marriage between
+you and that little ward of hers--Flora, Laura--what's her name? And I
+always determined to do my small endeavour to prevent any such match. The
+child has but two thousand pounds, I am given to understand. It is only
+with the utmost economy and care that my sister can provide for the
+decent maintenance of her house, and for your appearance and education as
+a gentleman; and I don't care to own to you that I had other and much
+higher views for you. With your name and birth, sir--with your talents,
+which I suppose are respectable, with the friends whom I have the honour
+to possess, I could have placed you in an excellent position--a
+remarkable position for a young man of such exceeding small means, and
+had hoped to see you, at least, try to restore the honours of our name.
+Your mother's softness stopped one prospect, or you might have been a
+general, like our gallant ancestor who fought at Ramillies and
+Malplaquet. I had another plan in view: my excellent and kind friend,
+Lord Bagwig, who is very well disposed towards me, would, I have little
+doubt, have attached you to his mission at Pumpernickel, and you might
+have advanced in the diplomatic service. But, pardon me for recurring to
+the subject; how is a man to serve a young gentleman of eighteen, who
+proposes to marry a lady of thirty, whom he has selected from a booth in
+a fair?--well, not a fair,--a barn. That profession at once is closed to
+you. The public service is closed to you. Society is closed to you. You
+see, my good friend, to what you bring yourself. You may get on at the
+bar to be sure, where I am given to understand that gentlemen of merit
+occasionally marry out of their kitchens; but in no other profession. Or
+you may come and live down here--down here, mon Dieu! for ever" (said the
+Major, with a dreary shrug, as he thought with inexpressible fondness of
+Pall Mall), "where your mother will receive the Mrs. Arthur that is to
+be, with perfect kindness; where the good people of the county won't
+visit you; and where, by Gad, sir, I shall be shy of visiting you myself,
+for I'm a plain-spoken man, and I own to you that I like to live with
+gentlemen for my companions; where you will have to live, with
+rum-and-water--drinking gentlemen--farmers, and drag through your life
+the young husband of an old woman, who, if she doesn't quarrel with your
+mother, will at least cost that lady her position in society, and drag
+her down into that dubious caste into which you must inevitably fall. It
+is no affair of mine, my good sir. I am not angry. Your downfall will not
+hurt me farther than that it will extinguish the hopes I had of seeing my
+family once more taking its place in the world. It is only your mother
+and yourself that will be ruined. And I pity you both from my soul. Pass
+the claret: it is some I sent to your poor father; I remember I bought it
+at poor Lord Levant's sale. But of course," added the Major, smacking the
+wine, "having engaged yourself, you will do what becomes you as a man of
+honour, however fatal your promise may be. However, promise us on our
+side, my boy, what I set out by entreating you to grant,--that there
+shall be nothing clandestine, that you will pursue your studies, that you
+will only visit your interesting friend at proper intervals.  Do you
+write to her much?"
+
+Pen blushed and said, "Why, yes, he had written."
+
+"I suppose verses, eh! as well as prose? I was a dab at verses myself. I
+recollect when I first joined, I used to write verses for the fellows in
+the regiment; and did some pretty things in that way. I was talking to my
+old friend General Hobbler about some lines I dashed off for him in the
+year 1806, when we were at the Cape, and, Gad, he remembered every line
+of them still; for he'd used 'em so often, the old rogue, and had
+actually tried 'em on Mrs. Hobbler, sir--who brought him sixty thousand
+pounds. I suppose you've tried verses, eh, Pen?"
+
+Pen blushed again, and said, "Why, yes, he had written verses."
+
+"And does the fair one respond in poetry or prose?" asked the Major,
+eyeing his nephew with the queerest expression, as much as to say, "O
+Moses and Green Spectacles! what a fool the boy is."
+
+Pen blushed again. She had written, but not in verse, the young lover
+owned, and he gave his breast-pocket the benefit of a squeeze with his
+left arm, which the Major remarked, according to his wont.
+
+"You have got the letters there, I see," said the old campaigner, nodding
+at Pen and pointing to his own chest (which was manfully wadded with
+cotton by Mr. Stultz). "You know you have. I would give twopence to see
+'em."
+
+"Why," said Pen, twiddling the stalks of the strawberries, "I--I," but
+this sentence never finished; for Pen's face was so comical and
+embarrassed, as the Major watched it, that the elder could contain his
+gravity no longer, and burst into a fit of laughter, in which chorus Pen
+himself was obliged to join after a minute: when he broke out fairly into
+a guffaw.
+
+It sent them with great good-humour into Mrs. Pendennis's drawing-room.
+She was pleased to hear them laughing in the hall as they crossed it.
+
+"You sly rascal!" said the Major, putting his arm gaily on Pen's
+shoulder, and giving a playful push at the boy's breast-pocket. He felt
+the papers crackling there sure enough. The young fellow was delighted--
+conceited--triumphant--and in one word, a spoony.
+
+The pair came to the tea-table in the highest spirits. The Major's
+politeness was beyond expression. He had never tasted such good tea, and
+such bread was only to be had in the country. He asked Mrs. Pendennis for
+one of her charming songs. He then made Pen sing, and was delighted and
+astonished at the beauty of the boy's voice: he made his nephew fetch his
+maps and drawings, and praised them as really remarkable works of talent
+in a young fellow: he complimented him on his French pronunciation: he
+flattered the simple boy as adroitly as ever lover flattered a mistress:
+and when bedtime came, mother and son went to their several rooms
+perfectly enchanted with the kind Major.
+
+When they had reached those apartments, I suppose Helen took to her knees
+as usual: and Pen read over his letters before going to bed: just as if
+he didn't know every word of them by heart already. In truth there were
+but three of those documents and to learn their contents required no
+great effort of memory.
+
+In No. 1, Miss Fotheringay presents grateful compliments to Mr.
+Pendennis, and in her papa's name and her own begs to thank him for his
+most beautiful presents. They will always be kept carefully; and Miss F.
+and Captain C. will never forget the delightful evening which they passed
+on Tuesday last.
+
+No. 2 said--Dear Sir, we shall have a small quiet party of social friends
+at our humble board, next Tuesday evening, at an early tea, when I shall
+wear the beautiful scarf which, with its accompanying delightful verses,
+I shall ever, ever cherish: and papa bids me say how happy he will be if
+you will join 'the feast of reason and the flow of soul' in our festive
+little party, as I am sure will be your truly grateful Emily Fotheringay.
+
+No. 3 was somewhat more confidential, and showed that matters had
+proceeded rather far. You were odious yesterday night, the letter said.
+Why did you not come to the stage-door? Papa could not escort me on
+account of his eye; he had an accident, and fell down over a loose carpet
+on the stair on Sunday night. I saw you looking at Miss Diggle all night;
+and you were so enchanted with Lydia Languish you scarcely once looked
+at Julia. I could have crushed Bingley, I was so angry. I play Ella
+Rosenberg on Friday: will you come then? Miss Diggle performs--ever
+your E. F.
+
+These three letters Mr. Pen used to read at intervals, during the day and
+night, and embrace with that delight and fervour which such beautiful
+compositions surely warranted. A thousand times at least he had kissed
+fondly the musky satin paper, made sacred to him by the hand of Emily
+Fotheringay. This was all he had in return for his passion and flames,
+his vows and protests, his rhymes and similes, his wakeful nights and
+endless thoughts, his fondness, fears and folly. The young wiseacre had
+pledged away his all for this: signed his name to endless promissory
+notes, conferring his heart upon the bearer: bound himself for life, and
+got back twopence as an equivalent. For Miss Costigan was a young lady of
+such perfect good-conduct and self-command, that she never would have
+thought of giving more, and reserved the treasures of her affection until
+she could transfer them lawfully at church.
+
+Howbeit, Mr. Pen was content with what tokens of regard he had got, and
+mumbled over his three letters in a rapture of high spirits, and went to
+sleep delighted with his kind old uncle from London, who must evidently
+yield to his wishes in time; and, in a word, in a preposterous state of
+contentment with himself and all the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+In which the Major opens the Campaign
+
+
+Let those who have a real and heartfelt relish for London society and the
+privilege of an entree into its most select circles, admit that Major
+Pendennis was a man of no ordinary generosity and affection, in the
+sacrifice which he now made. He gave up London in May,--his newspapers
+and his mornings--his afternoons from club to club, his little
+confidential visits to my Ladies, his rides in Rotten Row, his dinners,
+and his stall at the Opera, his rapid escapades to Fulham or Richmond on
+Saturdays and Sundays, his bow from my Lord Duke or my Lord Marquis at
+the great London entertainments, and his name in the Morning Post of the
+succeeding day,--his quieter little festivals, more select, secret, and
+delightful--all these he resigned to lock himself into a lone little
+country house, with a simple widow and a greenhorn of a son, a mawkish
+curate, and a little girl of ten years of age.
+
+He made the sacrifice, and it was the greater that few knew the extent of
+it. His letters came down franked from town, and he showed the
+invitations to Helen with a sigh. It was beautiful and tragical to see
+him refuse one party after another--at least to those who could
+understand, as Helen didn't, the melancholy grandeur of his self-denial.
+Helen did not, or only smiled at the awful pathos with which the Major
+spoke of the Court Guide in general: but young Pen looked with great
+respect at the great names upon the superscriptions of his uncle's
+letters, and listened to the Major's stories about the fashionable world
+with constant interest and sympathy.
+
+The elder Pendennis's rich memory was stored with thousands of these
+delightful tales, and he poured them into Pen's willing ear with
+unfailing eloquence. He knew the name and pedigree of everybody in the
+Peerage, and everybody's relations. "My dear boy," he would say, with a
+mournful earnestness and veracity, "you cannot begin your genealogical
+studies too early; I wish to Heavens you would read in Debrett every day.
+Not so much the historical part (for the pedigrees, between ourselves,
+are many of them very fabulous, and there are few families that can show
+such a clear descent as our own) as the account of family alliances, and
+who is related to whom. I have known a man's career in life blasted by
+ignorance on this important, this all-important subject. Why, only last
+month, at dinner at my Lord Hobanob's, a young man, who has lately been
+received among us, young Mr. Suckling (author of a work, I believe),
+began to speak lightly of Admiral Bowser's conduct for ratting to
+Ministers, in what I must own is the most audacious manner. But who do
+you think sate next and opposite to this Mr. Suckling? Why--why, next to
+him was Lady Grampound Bowser's daughter, and opposite to him was Lord
+Grampound Bowser's son-in-law. The infatuated young man went on cutting
+his jokes at the Admiral's expense, fancying that all the world was
+laughing with him, and I leave you to imagine Lady Hobanob's feelings--
+Hobanob's!--those of every well-bred man, as the wretched intru was so
+exposing himself. He will never dine again in South Street. I promise you
+that."
+
+With such discourses the Major entertained his nephew, as he paced the
+terrace in front of the house for his two hours' constitutional walk, or
+as they sate together after dinner over their wine. He grieved that Sir
+Francis Clavering had not come down to the park, to live in it since his
+marriage, and to make a society for the neighbourhood. He mourned that
+Lord Eyrie was not in the country, that he might take Pen and present him
+to his lordship. "He has daughters," the Major said. "Who knows? you
+might have married Lady Emily or Lady Barbara Trehawk; but all those
+dreams are over; my poor fellow, you must lie on the bed which you have
+made for yourself."
+
+These things to hear did young Pendennis seriously incline. They are not
+so interesting in print as when delivered orally; but the Major's
+anecdotes of the great George, of the Royal Dukes, of the statesmen,
+beauties, and fashionable ladies of the day, filled young Pen's soul with
+longing and wonder; and he found the conversations with his guardian,
+which sadly bored and perplexed poor Mrs. Pendennis, for his own part
+never tedious.
+
+It can't be said that Mr. Pen's new guide, philosopher, and friend
+discoursed him on the most elevated subjects, or treated the subjects
+which he chose in the most elevated manner. But his morality, such as it
+was, was consistent. It might not, perhaps, tend to a man's progress in
+another world, but it was pretty well calculated to advance his interests
+in this; and then it must be remembered that the Major never for one
+instant doubted that his views were the only views practicable, and that
+his conduct was perfectly virtuous and respectable. He was a man of
+honour, in a word: and had his eyes, what he called, open. He took pity
+on this young greenhorn of a nephew, and wanted to open his eyes too.
+
+No man, for instance, went more regularly to church when in the country
+than the old bachelor. "It don't matter so much in town, Pen," he said,
+"for there the women go and the men are not missed. But when a gentleman
+is sur ses terres, he must give an example to the country people: and if
+I could turn a tune, I even think I should sing. The Duke of Saint
+David's, whom I have the honour of knowing, always sings in the country,
+and let me tell you, it has a doosed fine effect from the family pew. And
+you are somebody down here. As long as the Claverings are away you are
+the first man in the parish: and as good as any. You might represent the
+town if you played your cards well. Your poor dear father would have done
+so had he lived; so might you.--Not if you marry a lady, however amiable,
+whom the country people won't meet.--Well, well: it's a painful subject.
+Let us change it, my boy." But if Major Pendennis changed the subject
+once he recurred to it a score of times in the day: and the moral of his
+discourse always was, that Pen was throwing himself away. Now it does not
+require much coaxing or wheedling to make a simple boy believe that he is
+a very fine fellow.
+
+Pen took his uncle's counsels to heart. He was glad enough, we have said,
+to listen to his elder's talk. The conversation of Captain Costigan
+became by no means pleasant to him, and the idea of that tipsy old
+father-in-law haunted him with terror. He couldn't bring that man,
+unshaven and reeking of punch, to associate with his mother. Even about
+Emily--he faltered when the pitiless guardian began to question him. "Was
+she accomplished?" He was obliged to own, no. "Was she clever?" Well, she
+had a very good average intellect: but he could not absolutely say she
+was clever. "Come, let us see some of her letters." So Pen confessed that
+he had but those three of which we have made mention--and that they were
+but trivial invitations or answers.
+
+"She is cautious enough," the Major said, drily. "She is older than you,
+my poor boy;" and then he apologised with the utmost frankness and
+humility, and flung himself upon Pen's good feelings, begging the lad to
+excuse a fond old uncle, who had only his family's honour in view--for
+Arthur was ready to flame up in indignation whenever Miss Costigan's
+honesty was doubted, and swore that he would never have her name
+mentioned lightly, and never, never would part from her.
+
+He repeated this to his uncle and his friends at home, and also, it must
+be confessed, to Miss Fotheringay and the amiable family, at Chatteris,
+with whom he still continued to spend some portion of his time. Miss
+Emily was alarmed when she heard of the arrival of Pen's guardian, and
+rightly conceived that the Major came down with hostile intentions to
+herself. "I suppose ye intend to leave me, now your grand relation has
+come down from town. He'll carry ye off, and you'll forget your poor
+Emily, Mr. Arthur!"
+
+Forget her! In her presence, in that of Miss Rouncy, the Columbine and
+Milly's confidential friend of the Company, in the presence of the
+Captain himself, Pen swore he never could think of any other woman but
+his beloved Miss Fotheringay; and the Captain, looking up at his foils
+which were hung as a trophy on the wall of the room where Pen and he used
+to fence, grimly said, he would not advoise any man to meddle rashly with
+the affections of his darling child; and would never believe his gallant
+young Arthur, whom he treated as his son, whom he called his son, would
+ever be guilty of conduct so revolting to every idaya of honour and
+humanity.
+
+He went up and embraced Pen after speaking. He cried, and wiped his eye
+with one large dirty hand as he clasped Pen with the other. Arthur
+shuddered in that grasp, and thought of his uncle at home. His
+father-in-law looked unusually dirty and shabby; the odour of
+whisky-and-water was even more decided than in common. How was he to
+bring that man and his mother together? He trembled when he thought that
+he had absolutely written to Costigan (enclosing to him a sovereign, the
+loan of which the worthy gentleman had need), and saying that one day he
+hoped to sign himself his affectionate son, Arthur Pendennis. He was glad
+to get away from Chatteris that day; from Miss Rouncy the confidante;
+from the old toping father-in-law; from the divine Emily herself. "O,
+Emily, Emily," he cried inwardly, as he rattled homewards on Rebecca,
+"you little know what sacrifices I am making for you!--for you who are
+always so cold, so cautious, so mistrustful;" and he thought of a
+character in Pope to whom he had often involuntarily compared her.
+
+Pen never rode over to Chatteris upon a certain errand, but the Major
+found out on what errand the boy had been. Faithful to his plan, Major
+Pendennis gave his nephew no let or hindrance; but somehow the constant
+feeling that the senior's eye was upon him, an uneasy shame attendant
+upon that inevitable confession which the evening's conversation would be
+sure to elicit in the most natural simple manner, made Pen go less
+frequently to sigh away his soul at the feet of his charmer than he had
+been wont to do previous to his uncle's arrival. There was no use trying
+to deceive him; there was no pretext of dining with Smirke, or reading
+Greek plays with Foker; Pen felt, when he returned from one of his flying
+visits, that everybody knew whence he came, and appeared quite guilty
+before his mother and guardian, over their books or their game at
+picquet.
+
+Once having walked out half a mile, to the Fairoaks Inn, beyond the Lodge
+gates, to be in readiness for the Competitor coach, which changed horses
+there, to take a run for Chatteris, a man on the roof touched his hat to
+the young gentleman: it was his uncle's man, Mr. Morgan, who was going on
+a message for his master, and had been took up at the Lodge, as he said.
+And Mr. Morgan came back by the Rival, too; so that Pen had the pleasure
+of that domestic's company both ways. Nothing was said at home. The lad
+seemed to have every decent liberty; and yet he felt himself dimly
+watched and guarded, and that there were eyes upon him even in the
+presence of his Dulcinea.
+
+In fact, Pen's suspicions were not unfounded, and his guardian had sent
+forth to gather all possible information regarding the lad and his
+interesting young friend. The discreet and ingenious Mr. Morgan, a London
+confidential valet, whose fidelity could be trusted, had been to
+Chatteris more than once, and made every inquiry regarding the past
+history and present habits of the Captain and his daughter. He delicately
+cross-examined the waiters, the ostlers, and all the inmates of the bar
+at the George, and got from them what little they knew respecting the
+worthy Captain. He was not held in very great regard there, as it
+appeared. The waiters never saw the colour of his money, and were warned
+not to furnish the poor gentleman with any liquor for which some other
+party was not responsible. He swaggered sadly about the coffee-room
+there, consumed a toothpick, and looked over the paper, and if any friend
+asked him to dinner he stayed. Morgan heard at the George of Pen's
+acquaintance with Mr. Foker, and he went over to Baymouth to enter into
+relations with that gentleman's man; but the young student was gone to a
+Coast Regatta, and his servant, of course, travelled in charge of the
+dressing-case.
+
+From the servants of the officers at the barracks Mr. Morgan found that
+the Captain had so frequently and outrageously inebriated himself there,
+that Colonel Swallowtail had forbidden him the messroom. The
+indefatigable Morgan then put himself in communication with some of the
+inferior actors at the theatre, and pumped them over their cigars and
+punch, and all agreed that Costigan was poor, shabby, and given to debt
+and to drink. But there was not a breath upon the reputation of Miss
+Fotheringay: her father's courage was reported to have displayed itself
+on more than one occasion towards persons disposed to treat his daughter
+with freedom. She never came to the theatre but with her father: in his
+most inebriated moments, that gentleman kept a watch over her; finally
+Mr. Morgan, from his own experience added that he had been to see her
+act, and was uncommon delighted with the performance, besides thinking
+her a most splendid woman.
+
+Mrs. Creed, the pew-opener, confirmed these statements to Doctor Portman,
+who examined her personally, and threatened her with the terrors of the
+Church one day after afternoon service. Mrs. Creed had nothing
+unfavourable to her lodger to divulge. She saw nobody; only one or two
+ladies of the theatre. The Captain did intoxicate himself sometimes, and
+did not always pay his rent regularly, but he did when he had money, or
+rather Miss Fotheringay did. Since the young gentleman from Clavering had
+been and took lessons in fencing, one or two more had come from the
+barracks; Sir Derby Oaks, and his young friend, Mr. Foker, which was
+often together; and which was always driving over from Baymouth in the
+tandem. But on the occasions of the lessons, Miss F. was very seldom
+present, and generally came downstairs to Mrs. Creed's own room.
+
+The Doctor and the Major consulting together as they often did, groaned
+in spirit over that information. Major Pendennis openly expressed his
+disappointment; and, I believe, the Divine himself was ill pleased at not
+being able to jack a hole in poor Miss Fotheringay's reputation.
+
+Even about Pen himself, Mrs. Creed's reports were desperately favourable.
+"Whenever he come," Mrs. Creed said, "She always have me or one of the
+children with her. And Mrs. Creed, marm, says she, if you please, marm,
+you'll on no account leave the room when that young gentleman's here. And
+many's the time I've seen him a lookin' as if he wished I was away, poor
+young man: and he took to coming in service-time, when I wasn't at home,
+of course: but she always had one of the boys up if her Pa wasn't at
+home, or old Mr. Bowser with her a teaching of her her lesson, or one of
+the young ladies of the theayter."
+
+It was all true: whatever encouragements might have been given him before
+he avowed his passion, the prudence of Miss Emily was prodigious after
+Pen had declared himself: and the poor fellow chafed against her hopeless
+reserve, which maintained his ardour as it excited his anger.
+
+The Major surveyed the state of things with a sigh. "If it were but a
+temporary liaison," the excellent man said, "one could bear it. A young
+fellow must sow his wild oats, and that sort of thing. But a virtuous
+attachment is the deuce. It comes of the d----d romantic notions boys get
+from being brought up by women."
+
+"Allow me to say, Major, that you speak a little too like a man of the
+world," replied the Doctor. "Nothing can be more desirable for Pen than a
+virtuous attachment for a young lady of his own rank and with a
+corresponding fortune--this present infatuation, of course, I must
+deplore as sincerely as you do. If I were his guardian I should command
+him to give it up."
+
+"The very means, I tell you, to make him marry to-morrow. We have got
+time from him, that is all, and we must do our best with that.
+
+"I say, Major," said the Doctor, at the end of the conversation in which
+the above subject was discussed--"I am not, of course, a play-going man--
+but suppose, I say, we go and see her."
+
+The Major laughed--he had been a fortnight at Fairoaks, and strange to
+say, had not thought of that. "Well," he said, "why not? After all, it is
+not my niece, but Miss Fotheringay the actress, and we have as good a
+right as any other of the public to see her if we pay our money." So upon
+a day when it was arranged that Pen was to dine at home, and pass the
+evening with his mother, the two elderly gentlemen drove over to
+Chatteris in the Doctor's chaise, and there, like a couple of jolly
+bachelors, dined at the George Inn, before proceeding to the play.
+
+Only two other guests were in the room,--an officer of the regiment
+quartered at Chatteris, and a young gentleman whom the Doctor thought he
+had somewhere seen. They left them at their meal, however, and hastened
+to the theatre. It was Hamlet over again. Shakspeare was Article XL. of
+stout old Doctor Portman's creed, to which he always made a point of
+testifying publicly at least once in a year.
+
+We have described the play before, and how those who saw Miss Fotheringay
+perform in Ophelia saw precisely the same thing on one night as on
+another. Both the elderly gentlemen looked at her with extraordinary
+interest, thinking how very much young Pen was charmed with her.
+
+"Gad," said the Major, between his teeth, as he surveyed her when she was
+called forward as usual, and swept her curtsies to the scanty audience,
+"the young rascal has not made a bad choice."
+
+The Doctor applauded her loudly and loyally. "Upon my word," said he,
+"She is a very clever actress; and I must say, Major, she is endowed with
+very considerable personal attractions."
+
+"So that young officer thinks in the stage-box," Major Pendennis
+answered, and he pointed out to Doctor Portman's attention the young
+dragoon of the George Coffee-room, who sate in the box in question, and
+applauded with immense enthusiasm. She looked extremely sweet upon him
+too, thought the Major: but that's their way--and he shut up his natty
+opera-glass and pocketed it, as if he wished to see no more that night.
+Nor did the Doctor, of course, propose to stay for the after-piece, so
+they rose and left the theatre; the Doctor returning to Mrs. Portman, who
+was on a visit at the Deanery, and the Major walking home full of thought
+towards the George, where he had bespoken a bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Facing the Enemy
+
+
+Sauntering slowly homewards, Major Pendennis reached the George
+presently, and found Mr. Morgan, his faithful valet, awaiting him at the
+door of the George Inn, who stopped his master as he was about to take a
+candle to go to bed, and said, with his usual air of knowing deference,
+"I think, sir, if you would go into the coffee-room, there's a young
+gentleman there as you would like to see."
+
+"What, is Mr. Arthur here?" the Major said, in great anger.
+
+"No, sir--but his great friend, Mr. Foker, sir. Lady Hagnes Foker's son
+is here, sir. He's been asleep in the coffee-room since he took his
+dinner, and has just rung for his coffee, sir. And I think, p'raps, you
+might like to git into conversation with him," the valet said, opening
+the coffee-room door.
+
+The Major entered; and there indeed was Mr. Foker, the only occupant of
+the place. He was rubbing his eyes, and sate before a table rated with
+empty decanters and relics of dessert. He had intended to go to the play
+too, but sleep had overtaken him after a copious meal, and he had flung
+up his legs on the bench, and indulged in a nap instead of the dramatic
+amusement. The Major was meditating how to address the young man, but the
+latter prevented him that trouble.
+
+"Like to look at the evening paper, sir?" said Mr. Foker, who was always
+communicative and affable; and he took up the Globe from his table, and
+offered it to the new-comer.
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," said the Major, with a grateful bow and
+smile. "If I don't mistake the family likeness, I have the pleasure of
+speaking to Mr. Henry Foker, Lady Agnes Foker's son. I have the happiness
+to name her ladyship among my acquaintances--and you bear, sir, a
+Rosherville face."
+
+"Hullo! I beg your pardon," Mr. Foker said, "I took you,"--he was going
+to say--"I took you for a commercial gent." But he stopped that phrase.
+"To whom have I the pleasure of speaking?" he added.
+
+"To a relative of a friend and schoolfellow of yours--Arthur Pendennis,
+my nephew, who has often spoken to me about you in terms of great regard.
+I am Major Pendennis, of whom you may have heard him speak. May I take my
+soda-water at your table? I have had the pleasure of sitting at your
+grandfather's."
+
+"Sir, you do me proud," said Mr. Foker, with much courtesy. "And so you
+are Arthur Pendennis's uncle, are you?"
+
+"And guardian," added the Major.
+
+"He's as good a fellow as ever stepped, sir," said Mr. Foker.
+
+"I am glad you think so."
+
+"And clever, too--I was always a stupid chap, I was--but you see, sir, I
+know 'em when they are clever, and like 'em of that sort."
+
+"You show your taste and your modesty, too," said the Major. "I have
+heard Arthur repeatedly speak of you, and he said your talents were very
+good."
+
+"I'm not good at the books," Mr. Foker said, wagging his head--"never
+could manage that--Pendennis could--he used to do half the chaps' verses
+--and yet"--the young gentleman broke out, "you are his guardian; and I
+hope you will pardon me for saying that I think he's what we call flat,"
+the candid young gentleman said.
+
+The Major found himself on the instant in the midst of a most interesting
+and confidential conversation. "And how is Arthur a flat?" he asked, with
+a smile.
+
+"You know," Foker answered, winking at him--he would have winked at the
+Duke of Wellington with just as little scruple, for he was in that state
+of absence, candour, and fearlessness which a man sometimes possesses
+after drinking a couple of bottles of wine--"You know Arthur's a flat,--
+about women I mean."
+
+"He is not the first of us, my dear Mr. Harry," answered the Major. "I
+have heard something of this--but pray tell me more."
+
+"Why, sir, you see--it's partly my fault. He went to the play one night--
+for you see I'm down here readin' for my little go during the Long, only
+I come over from Baymouth pretty often in my drag--well, sir, we went to
+the play, and Pen was struck all of a heap with Miss Fotheringay--
+Costigan her real name is--an uncommon fine gal she is too; and the next
+morning I introduced him to the General, as we call her father--a regular
+old scamp and such a boy for the whisky-and-water!--and he's gone on
+being intimate there. And he's fallen in love with her--and I'm blessed
+if he hasn't proposed to her," Foker said, slapping his hand on the
+table, until all the dessert began to jingle.
+
+"What! you know it too?" asked the Major.
+
+"Know it! don't I? and many more too. We were talking about it at mess,
+yesterday, and chaffing Derby Oaks--until he was as mad as a hatter. Know
+Sir Derby Oaks? We dined together, and he went to the play: we were
+standing at the door smoking, I remember, when you passed in to dinner."
+
+"I remember Sir Thomas Oaks, his father, before he was a Baronet or a
+Knight; he lived in Cavendish-square, and was physician to Queen
+Charlotte."
+
+"The young one is making the money spin, I can tell you," Mr. Foker said.
+
+"And is Sir Derby Oaks," the Major said, with great delight and anxiety,
+"another soupirant?"
+
+"Another what?" inquired Mr. Foker.
+
+"Another admirer of Miss Fotheringay?"
+
+"Lord bless you! we call him Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Pen
+Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. But mind you, nothing wrong! No, no!
+Miss F. is a deal too wide-awake for that, Major Pendennis. She plays one
+off against the other. What you call two strings to her bow."
+
+"I think you seem tolerably wide-awake, too, Mr. Foker, Pendennis said,
+laughing.
+
+"Pretty well, thank you, sir--how are you?" Foker replied, imperturbably.
+"I'm not clever, p'raps: but I am rather downy; and partial friends say I
+know what's o'clock tolerably well. Can I tell you the time of day in any
+way?"
+
+"Upon my word," the Major answered, quite delighted, "I think you may be
+of very great service to me. You are a young man of the world, and with
+such one likes to deal. And as such I need not inform you that our family
+is by no means delighted at this absurd intrigue in which Arthur is
+engaged."
+
+"I should rather think not," said Mr. Foker. "Connexion not eligible. Too
+much beer drunk on the premises. No Irish need apply. That I take to be
+your meaning."
+
+The Major said it was, exactly; though in truth he did not quite
+understand what Mr. Foker's meaning was: and he proceeded to examine his
+new acquaintance regarding the amiable family into which his nephew
+proposed to enter, and soon got from the candid witness a number of
+particulars regarding the House of Costigan.
+
+We must do Mr. Foker the justice to say that he spoke most favourably of
+Mr. and Miss Costigan's moral character. "You see," said he, "I think the
+General is fond of the jovial bowl, and if I wanted to be very certain of
+my money, it isn't in his pocket I'd invest it--but he has always kept a
+watchful eye on his daughter, and neither he nor she will stand anything
+but what's honourable. Pen's attentions to her are talked about in the
+whole Company, and I hear all about them from a young lady who used to be
+very intimate with her, and with whose family I sometimes take tea in a
+friendly way. Miss Rouncy says, Sir Derby Oaks has been hanging about
+Miss Fotheringay ever since his regiment has been down here; but Pen has
+come in and cut him out lately, which has made the Baronet so mad, that
+he has been very near on the point of proposing too. Wish he would; and
+you'd see which of the two Miss Fotheringay would jump at."
+
+"I thought as much," the Major said. "You give me a great deal of
+pleasure, Mr. Foker. I wish I could have seen you before."
+
+"Didn't like to put in my oar," replied the other. "Don't speak till I'm
+asked, when, if there's no objections, I speak pretty freely. Heard your
+man had been hankering about my servant--didn't know myself what was
+going on until Miss Fotheringay and Miss Rouncy had the row about the
+ostrich feathers, when Miss R. told me everything."
+
+"Miss Rouncy, I gather, was the confidante of the other."
+
+"Confidant? I believe you. Why, she's twice as clever a girl as
+Fotheringay, and literary and that, while Miss Foth can't do much more
+than read."
+
+"She can write," said the Major, remembering Pen's breast-pocket.
+
+Foker broke out into a sardonic "He, he! Rouncy writes her letters," he
+said; "every one of 'em; and since they've quarrelled, she don't know how
+the deuce to get on. Miss Rouncy is an uncommon pretty hand, whereas the
+old one makes dreadful work of the writing and spelling when Bows ain't
+by. Rouncy's been settin' her copies lately--she writes a beautiful hand,
+Rouncy does."
+
+"I suppose you know it pretty well," said the Major archly upon which Mr.
+Foker winked at him again.
+
+"I would give a great deal to have a specimen of her hand-writing,"
+continued Major Pendennis, "I dare say you could give me one."
+
+"No, no, that would be too bad," Foker replied. "Perhaps I oughtn't to
+have said as much as I have. Miss F.'s writin' ain't so very bad, I dare
+say; only she got Miss R. to write the first letter, and has gone on ever
+since. But you mark my word, that till they are friends again the letters
+will stop."
+
+"I hope they will never be reconciled," the Major said with great
+sincerity; "and I can't tell you how delighted I am to have had the good
+fortune of making your acquaintance. You must feel, my dear sir, as a man
+of the world, how fatal to my nephew's prospects in life is this step
+which he contemplates, and how eager we all must be to free him from this
+absurd engagement."
+
+"He has come out uncommon strong," said Mr. Foker; "I have seen his
+verses; Rouncy copied 'em. And I said to myself when I saw 'em, 'Catch me
+writin' verses to a woman,--that's all.'"
+
+"He has made a fool of himself, as many a good fellow has before him. How
+can we make him see his folly, and cure it? I am sure you will give us
+what aid you can in extricating a generous young man from such a pair of
+schemers as this father and daughter seem to be. Love on the lady's side
+is out of the question."
+
+"Love, indeed!" Foker said. "If Pen hadn't two thousand a year when he
+came of age----"
+
+"If Pen hadn't what?" cried out the Major in astonishment.
+
+"Two thousand a year: hasn't he got two thousand a year?--the General
+says he has."
+
+"My dear friend," shrieked out the Major, with an eagerness which this
+gentleman rarely showed, "thank you!--thank you!--I begin to see now.--
+Two thousand a year! Why, his mother has but five hundred a year in the
+world.--She is likely to live to eighty, and Arthur has not a shilling
+but what she can allow him."
+
+"What! he ain't rich then?" Foker asked.
+
+"Upon my honour he has no more than what I say."
+
+"And you ain't going to leave him anything?"
+
+The Major had sunk every shilling he could scrape together on an annuity,
+and of course was going to leave Pen nothing; but he did not tell Foker
+this. "How much do you think a Major on half-pay can save?" he asked. "If
+these people have been looking at him as a fortune, they are utterly
+mistaken-and-and you have made me the happiest man in the world."
+
+"Sir to you," said Mr. Foker, politely, and when they parted for the
+night they shook hands with the greatest cordiality; the younger
+gentleman promising the elder not to leave Chatteris without a further
+conversation in the morning. And as the Major went up to his room, and
+Mr. Foker smoked his cigar against the door pillars of the George, Pen,
+very likely, ten miles off; was lying in bed kissing the letter from his
+Emily.
+
+The next morning, before Mr. Foker drove off in his drag, the insinuating
+Major had actually got a letter of Miss Rouncy's in his own pocket-book.
+Let it be a lesson to women how they write. And in very high spirits
+Major Pendennis went to call upon Doctor Portman at the Deanery, and told
+him what happy discoveries he had made on the previous night. As they
+sate in confidential conversation in the Dean's oak breakfast-parlour
+they could look across the lawn and see Captain Costigan's window, at
+which poor Pen had been only too visible some three weeks since. The
+Doctor was most indignant against Mrs. Creed, the landlady, for her
+duplicity, in concealing Sir Derby Oaks's constant visits to her lodgers,
+and threatened to excommunicate her out of the Cathedral. But the wary
+Major thought that all things were for the best; and, having taken
+counsel with himself over night, felt himself quite strong enough to go
+and face Captain Costigan.
+
+"I'm going to fight the dragon," he said, with a laugh, to Doctor
+Portman.
+
+"And I shrive you, sir, and bid good fortune go with you," answered the
+Doctor. Perhaps he and Mrs. Portman and Miss Myra, as they sate with
+their friend, the Dean's lady, in her drawing-room, looked up more than
+once at the enemy's window to see if they could perceive any signs of the
+combat.
+
+The Major walked round, according to the directions given him, and soon
+found Mrs. Creed's little door. He passed it, and as he ascended to
+Captain Costigan's apartment, he could hear a stamping of feet, and a
+great shouting of "Ha, ha!" within.
+
+"It's Sir Derby Oaks taking his fencing lesson," said the child, who
+piloted Major Pendennis. "He takes it Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays."
+
+The Major knocked, and at length a tall gentleman came forth, with a foil
+and mask in one hand, and a fencing glove on the other.
+
+Pendennis made him a deferential bow. "I believe I have the honour of
+speaking to Captain Costigan--My name is Major Pendennis."
+
+The Captain brought his weapon up to the salute, and said, "Major, the
+honer is moine; I'm deloighted to see ye."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Negotiation
+
+
+The Major and Captain Costigan were old soldiers and accustomed to face
+the enemy, so we may presume that they retained their presence of mind
+perfectly; but the rest of the party assembled in Cos's sitting-room
+were, perhaps, a little flurried at Pendennis's apparition. Miss
+Fotheringay's slow heart began to beat no doubt, for her cheek flushed up
+with a great healthy blush, as Lieutenant Sir Derby Oaks looked at her
+with a scowl. The little crooked old man in the window-seat, who had been
+witnessing the fencing-match between the two gentlemen (whose stamping
+and jumping had been such as to cause him to give up all attempts to
+continue writing the theatre music, in the copying of which he had been
+engaged) looked up eagerly towards the new-comer as the Major of the
+well-blacked boots entered the apartment distributing the most graceful
+bows to everybody present.
+
+"Me daughter--me friend, Mr. Bows--me gallant young pupil and friend, I
+may call 'um, Sir Derby Oaks," said Costigan, splendidly waving his hand,
+and pointing each of these individuals to the Major's attention. "In one
+moment, Meejor, I'm your humble servant," and to dash into the little
+adjoining chamber where he slept, to give a twist to his lank hair with
+his hair-brush (a wonderful and ancient piece), to tear off his old stock
+and put on a new one which Emily had constructed for him, and to assume a
+handsome clean collar, and the new coat which had been ordered upon the
+occasion of Miss Fotheringay's benefit, was with the still active
+Costigan the work of a minute.
+
+After him Sir Derby entered, and presently emerged from the same
+apartment, where he also cased himself in his little shell-jacket, which
+fitted tightly upon the young officer's big person; and which he, and
+Miss Fotheringay, and poor Pen too, perhaps, admired prodigiously.
+
+Meanwhile conversation was engaged between the actress and the new-comer;
+and the usual remarks about the weather had been interchanged before
+Costigan re-entered in his new 'Shoot,' as he called it.
+
+"I needn't apologoise to ye, Meejor," he said, in his richest and most
+courteous manner, "for receiving ye in me shirt-sleeves."
+
+"An old soldier can't be better employed than in teaching a young one the
+use of his sword," answered the Major, gallantly. "I remember in old
+times hearing that you could use yours pretty well, Captain Costigan."
+
+"What, ye've heard of Jack Costigan, Major," said the other, greatly.
+
+The Major had, indeed; he had pumped his nephew concerning his new
+friend, the Irish officer; and whether he had no other knowledge of the
+Captain than what he had thus gained, or whether he actually remembered
+him, we cannot say. But Major Pendennis was a person of honour and
+undoubted veracity, and said that he perfectly well recollected meeting
+Mr. Costigan, and hearing him sing at Sir Richard Strachan's table at
+Walcheren.
+
+At this information, and the bland and cordial manner in which it was
+conveyed, Bows looked up, entirely puzzled. "But we will talk of these
+matters another time," the Major continued, perhaps not wishing to commit
+himself; "it is to Miss Fotheringay that I came to pay my respects
+to-day;" and he performed another bow for her, so courtly and gracious,
+that if she had been a duchess he could not have made it more handsome.
+
+"I had heard of your performances from my nephew, madam," the Major said,
+"who raves about you, as I believe you know pretty well. But Arthur is
+but a boy, and a wild enthusiastic young fellow, whose opinions one must
+not take au pied de la lettre; and I confess I was anxious to judge for
+myself. Permit me to say your performance delighted and astonished me. I
+have seen our best actresses, and, on my word, I think you surpass them
+all. You are as majestic as Mrs. Siddons."
+
+"Faith, I always said so," Costigan said, winking at his daughter;
+"Major, take a chair." Milly rose at this hint, took an uuripped satin
+garment off the only vacant seat, and brought the latter to Major
+Pendennis with one of her finest curtseys.
+
+"You are as pathetic as Miss O'Neill," he continued, bowing and seating
+himself; "your snatches of song reminded me of Mrs. Jordan in her best
+time, when we were young men, Captain Costigan; and your manner reminded
+me of Mars. Did you ever see the Mars, Miss Fotheringay?"
+
+"There was two Mahers in Crow Street," remarked Miss Emily; "Fanny was
+well enough, but Biddy was no great things."
+
+"Sure, the Major means the god of war, Milly, my dear," interposed the
+parent.
+
+"It is not that Mars I meant, though Venus, I suppose, may be pardoned
+for thinking about him," the Major replied with a smile directed in full
+to Sir Derby Oaks, who now re-entered in his shell-jacket; but the lady
+did not understand the words of which he made use, nor did the compliment
+at all pacify Sir Derby, who, probably, did not understand it either, and
+at any rate received it with great sulkiness and stiffness, scowling
+uneasily at Miss Fotheringay, with an expression which seemed to ask what
+the deuce does this man here?
+
+Major Pendennis was not in the least annoyed by the gentleman's
+ill-humour. On the contrary, it delighted him. "So," thought he, "a rival
+is in the field;" and he offered up vows that Sir Derby might be, not
+only a rival, but a winner too, in this love-match in which he and Pen
+were engaged.
+
+"I fear I interrupted your fencing lesson; but my stay in Chatteris
+is very short, and I was anxious to make myself known to my old
+fellow-campaigner Captain Costigan, and to see a lady nearer who had
+charmed me so much from the stage. I was not the only man epris last
+night, Miss Fotheringay (if I must call you so, though your own family
+name is a very ancient and noble one). There was a reverend friend of
+mine, who went home in raptures with Ophelia; and I saw Sir Derby Oaks
+fling a bouquet which no actress ever merited better. I should have
+brought one myself, had I known what I was going to see. Are not those
+the very flowers in a glass of water on the mantelpiece yonder?"
+
+"I am very fond of flowers," said Miss Fotheringay, with a languishing
+ogle at Sir Derby Oaks--but the Baronet still scowled sulkily.
+
+"Sweets to the sweet--isn't that the expression of the play?" Mr.
+Pendennis asked, bent upon being good-humoured.
+
+"'Pon my life, I don't know. Very likely it is. I ain't much of a
+literary man," answered Sir Derby.
+
+"Is it possible?" the Major continued, with an air of surprise. You don't
+inherit your father's love of letters, then, Sir Derby? He was a
+remarkably fine scholar, and I had the honour of knowing him very well."
+
+"Indeed," said the other, and gave a sulky wag of his head.
+
+"He saved my life," continued Pendennis.
+
+"Did he now?" cried Miss Fotheringay, rolling her eyes first upon the
+Major with surprise, then towards Sir Derby with gratitude--but the
+latter was proof against those glances: and far from appearing to be
+pleased that the Apothecary, his father, should have saved Major
+Pendennis's life, the young man actually looked as if he wished the event
+had turned the other way.
+
+"My father, I believe, was a very good doctor," the young gentleman said
+by way of reply. "I'm not in that line myself. I wish you good morning,
+sir. I've got an appointment--Cos, bye-bye--Miss Fotheringay, good
+morning." And, in spite of the young lady's imploring looks and appealing
+smiles, the Dragoon bowed stiffly out of the room, and the clatter of his
+sabre was heard as he strode down the creaking stair; and the angry tones
+of his voice as he cursed little Tom Creed, who was disporting in the
+passage, and whose peg-top Sir Derby kicked away with an oath into the
+street.
+
+The Major did not smile in the least, though he had every reason to be
+amused. "Monstrous handsome young man that--as fine a looking soldier as
+ever I saw," he said to Costigan.
+
+"A credit to the army and to human nature in general," answered Costigan.
+"A young man of refoined manners, polite affabilitee, and princely
+fortune. His table is sumptuous: he's adawr'd in the regiment: and he
+rides sixteen stone."
+
+"A perfect champion," said the Major, laughing. "I have no doubt all the
+ladies admire him."
+
+"He's very well, in spite of his weight, now he's young," said Milly;
+"but he's no conversation."
+
+"He's best on horseback," Mr. Bows said; on which Milly replied, that the
+Baronet had ridden third in the steeple-chase on his horse Tareaways, and
+the Major began to comprehend that the young lady herself was not of a
+particular genius, and to wonder how she should be so stupid and act so
+well.
+
+Costigan, with Irish hospitality, of course pressed refreshment upon his
+guest: and the Major, who was no more hungry than you are after a Lord
+Mayor's dinner, declared that he should like a biscuit and a glass of
+wine above all things, as he felt quite faint from long fasting--but he
+knew that to receive small kindnesses flatters the donors very much, and
+that people must needs grow well disposed towards you as they give you
+their hospitality.
+
+"Some of the old Madara, Milly, love," Costigan said, winking to his
+child--and that lady, turning to her father a glance of intelligence,
+went out of the room, and down the stair, where she softly summoned her
+little emissary Master Tommy Creed: and giving him a piece of money,
+ordered him to go buy a pint of Madara wine at the Grapes, and
+sixpennyworth of sorted biscuits at the baker's, and to return in a
+hurry, when he might have two biscuits for himself.
+
+Whilst Tommy Creed was gone on this errand, Miss Costigan sate below with
+Mrs. Creed, telling her landlady how Mr. Arthur Pendennis's uncle, the
+Major, was above-stairs; a nice, soft-spoken old gentleman; that butter
+wouldn't melt in his mouth: and how Sir Derby had gone out of the room in
+a rage of jealousy, and thinking what must be done to pacify both of
+them.
+
+"She keeps the keys of the cellar, Major," said Mr. Costigan, as the girl
+left the room.
+
+"Upon my word you have a very beautiful butler," answered Pendennis,
+gallantly, "and I don't wonder at the young fellows raving about her.
+When we were of their age, Captain Costigan, I think plainer women would
+have done our business."
+
+"Faith, and ye may say that, sir--and lucky is the man who gets her. Ask
+me friend Bob Bows here whether Miss Fotheringay's moind is not even
+shuparior to her person, and whether she does not possess a cultiveated
+intellect, a refoined understanding, and an emiable disposition?"
+
+"O of course," said Mr. Bows, rather drily. "Here comes Hebe blushing
+from the cellar. Don't you think it is time to go to rehearsal, Miss
+Hebe? You will be fined if you are later"--and he gave the young lady a
+look, which intimated that they had much better leave the room and the
+two elders together.
+
+At this order Miss Hebe took up her bonnet and shawl, looking uncommonly
+pretty, good-humoured, and smiling: and Bows gathered up his roll of
+papers, and hobbled across the room for his hat and cane.
+
+"Must you go?" said the Major. "Can't you give us a few minutes more,
+Miss Fotheringay? Before you leave us, permit an old fellow to shake you
+by the hand, and believe that I am proud to have had the honour of making
+your acquaintance, and am most sincerely anxious to be your friend."
+
+Miss Fotheringay made a low curtsey at the conclusion of this gallant
+speech, and the Major followed her retreating steps to the door, where he
+squeezed her hand with the kindest and most paternal pressure. Bows was
+puzzled with this exhibition of cordiality: "The lad's relatives can't be
+really wanting to marry him to her," he thought--and so they departed.
+
+"Now for it," thought Major Pendennis; and as for Mr. Costigan he
+profited instantaneously by his daughter's absence to drink up the rest
+of the wine; and tossed off one bumper after another of the Madeira from
+the Grapes, with an eager shaking hand. The Major came up to the table,
+and took up his glass and drained it with a jovial smack. If it had been
+Lord Steyne's particular, and not public-house Cape, he could not have
+appeared to relish it more.
+
+"Capital Madeira, Captain Costigan," he said. "Where do you get it? I
+drink the health of that charming creature in a bumper. Faith, Captain, I
+don't wonder that the men are wild about her. I never saw such eyes in my
+life, or such a grand manner. I am sure she is as intellectual as she is
+beautiful; and I have no doubt she's as good as she is clever."
+
+"A good girl, sir,--a good girl, sir," said the delighted father; "and I
+pledge a toast to her with all my heart. Shall I send to the--to the
+cellar for another pint? It's handy by. No? Well, indeed sir, ye may say
+she is a good girl, and the pride and glory of her father--honest old
+Jack Costigan. The man who gets her will have a jew'l to a wife, sir; and
+I drink his health, sir, and ye know who I mean, Major."
+
+"I am not surprised at young or old falling in love with her," said the
+Major, "and frankly must tell you, that though I was very angry with my
+poor nephew Arthur, when I heard of the boy's passion--now I have seen
+the lady I can pardon him any extent of it. By George, I should like to
+enter for the race myself, if I weren't an old fellow and a poor one."
+
+"And no better man, Major, I'm sure," cried Jack enraptured.
+
+"Your friendship, sir, delights me. Your admiration for my girl brings
+tears to me eyes--tears, sir--manlee tears--and when she leaves me humble
+home for your own more splendid mansion, I hope she'll keep a place for
+her poor old father, poor old Jack Costigan."--The Captain suited the
+action to the word, and his bloodshot eyes were suffused with water, as
+he addressed the Major.
+
+"Your sentiments do you honour," the other said. "But, Captain Costigan,
+I can't help smiling at one thing you have just said."
+
+"And what's that, sir?" asked Jack, who was at a too heroic and
+sentimental pitch to descend from it. You were speaking about our
+splendid mansion--my sister's house, I mean.
+
+"I mane the park and mansion of Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, of Fairoaks
+Park, whom I hope to see a Mimber of Parliament for his native town of
+Clavering, when he is of ege to take that responsible stetion," cried the
+Captain with much dignity.
+
+The Major smiled as he recognised a shaft of his own bow. It was he who
+had set Pen upon the idea of sitting in Parliament for the neighbouring
+borough--and the poor lad had evidently been bragging on the subject to
+Costigan and the lady of his affections. "Fairoaks Park, my dear sir," he
+said. "Do you know our history? We are of excessively ancient family
+certainly, but I began life with scarce enough money to purchase my
+commission, and my eldest brother was a country apothecary: who made
+every shilling he died possessed of out of his pestle and mortar."
+
+"I have consented to waive that objection, sir," said Costigan
+majestically, "in consideration of the known respectability of your
+family."
+
+"Curse your impudence," thought the Major; but he only smiled and bowed.
+
+"The Costigans, too, have met with misfortunes; and our house of Castle
+Costigan is by no manes what it was. I have known very honest men
+apothecaries, sir, and there's some in Dublin that has had the honour of
+dining at the Lord Leftenant's teeble."
+
+"You are very kind to give us the benefit of your charity," the Major
+continued: "but permit me to say that is not the question. You spoke just
+now of my little nephew as heir of Fairoaks Park and I don't know what
+besides."
+
+"Funded property, I've no doubt, Meejor, and something handsome
+eventually from yourself."
+
+"My good sir, I tell you the boy is the son of a country apothecary,"
+cried out Major Pendennis; "and that when he comes of age he won't have a
+shilling."
+
+"Pooh, Major, you're laughing at me," said Mr. Costigan, "me young
+friend, I make no doubt, is heir to two thousand pounds a year."
+
+"Two thousand fiddlesticks! I beg your pardon, my dear sir; but has the
+boy been humbugging you?--it is not his habit. Upon my word and honour,
+as a gentleman and an executor to my brother's will too, he left little
+more than five hundred a year behind him."
+
+"And with aconomy, a handsome sum of money too, sir," the Captain
+answered. "Faith, I've known a man drink his clar't, and drive his
+coach-and-four on five hundred a year and strict aconomy, in Ireland,
+sir. We'll manage on it, sir--trust Jack Costigan for that."
+
+"My dear Captain Costigan--I give you my word that my brother did not
+leave a shilling to his son Arthur."
+
+"Are ye joking with me, Meejor Pendennis?" cried Jack Costigan. "Are ye
+thrifling with the feelings of a father and a gentleman?"
+
+"I am telling you the honest truth," said Major Pendennis. "Every
+shilling my brother had, he left to his widow: with a partial reversion,
+it is true, to the boy. But she is a young woman, and may marry if he
+offends her--or she may outlive him, for she comes of an uncommonly
+long-lived family. And I ask you, as a gentleman and a man of the world,
+what allowance can my sister, Mrs. Pendennis, make to her son out of five
+hundred a year, which is all her fortune,--that shall enable him to
+maintain himself and your daughter in the rank befitting such an
+accomplished young lady?"
+
+"Am I to understand, sir, that the young gentleman, your nephew, and whom
+I have fosthered and cherished as the son of me bosom, is an imposther
+who has been thrifling with the affections of me beloved child?"
+exclaimed the General, with an outbreak of wrath.--"Have you yourself
+been working upon the feelings of the young man's susceptible nature to
+injuice him to break off an engagement, and with it me adored Emily's
+heart? Have a care, sir, how you thrifle with the honour of John
+Costigan. If I thought any mortal man meant to do so, be heavens I'd have
+his blood, sir--were he old or young."
+
+"Mr. Costigan!" cried out the Major.
+
+"Mr. Costigan can protect his own and his daughter's honour, and will,
+sir," said the other. "Look at that chest of dthrawers, it contains heaps
+of letthers that that viper has addressed to that innocent child. There's
+promises there, sir, enough to fill a bandbox with; and when I have
+dragged the scoundthrel before the Courts of Law, and shown up his
+perjury and his dishonour, I have another remedy in yondther mahogany
+case, sir, which shall set me right, sir, with any individual--ye mark me
+words, Major Pendennis--with any individual who has counselled your
+nephew to insult a soldier and a gentleman. What? Me daughter to be
+jilted, and me grey hairs dishonoured by an apothecary's son. By the laws
+of Heaven, Sir, I should like to see the man that shall do it."
+
+"I am to understand then that you threaten in the first place to publish
+the letters of a boy of eighteen to a woman of eight-and-twenty: and
+afterwards to do me the honour of calling me out," the Major said, still
+with perfect coolness.
+
+"You have described my intentions with perfect accuracy, Meejor
+Pendennis," answered the Captain, as he pulled his ragged whiskers over
+his chin.
+
+"Well, well; these shall be the subjects of future arrangements, but
+before we come to powder and ball, my good sir,--do have the kindness to
+think with yourself in what earthly way I have injured you? I have told
+you that my nephew is dependent upon his mother, who has scarcely more
+than five hundred a year."
+
+"I have my own opinion of the correctness of that assertion," said the
+Captain.
+
+"Will you go to my sister's lawyers, Messrs. Tatham here, and satisfy
+yourself?"
+
+"I decline to meet those gentlemen," said the Captain, with rather a
+disturbed air. "If it be as you say, I have been athrociously deceived by
+some one, and on that person I'll be revenged."
+
+"Is it my nephew?" cried the Major, starting up and putting on his hat.
+"Did he ever tell you that his property was two thousand a year? If he
+did, I'm mistaken in the boy. To tell lies has not been a habit in our
+family, Mr. Costigan, and I don't think my brother's son has learned it
+as yet. Try and consider whether you have not deceived yourself; or
+adopted extravagant reports from hearsay--As for me, sir, you are at
+liberty to understand that I am not afraid of all the Costigans in
+Ireland, and know quite well how to defend myself against any threats
+from any quarter. I come here as the boy's guardian to protest against a
+marriage, most absurd and unequal, that cannot but bring poverty and
+misery with it: and in preventing it I conceive I am quite as much your
+daughter's friend (who I have no doubt is an honourable young lady) as
+the friend of my own family: and prevent the marriage I will, sir, by
+every means in my power. There, I have said my say, sir."
+
+"But I have not said mine, Major Pendennis--and ye shall hear more from
+me," Mr. Costigan said, with a look of tremendous severity.
+
+"'Sdeath, sir, what do you mean?" the Major asked, turning round on the
+threshold of the door, and looking the intrepid Costigan in the face.
+
+"Ye said, in the coorse of conversation, that ye were at the George
+Hotel, I think," Mr. Costigan said in a stately manner. "A friend shall
+wait upon ye there before ye leave town, sir."
+
+"Let him make haste, Mr. Costigan," cried out the Major, almost beside
+himself with rage. "I wish you a good morning, sir." And Captain Costigan
+bowed a magnificent bow of defiance to Major Pendennis over the
+landing-place as the latter retreated down the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+In which a Shooting Match is proposed
+
+
+Early mention has been made in this history of Mr. Garbetts, Principal
+Tragedian, a promising and athletic young actor, of jovial habits and
+irregular inclinations, between whom and Mr. Costigan there was a
+considerable intimacy. They were the chief ornaments of the convivial
+club held at the Magpie Hotel; they helped each other in various bill
+transactions in which they had been engaged, with the mutual loan of each
+other's valuable signatures. They were friends, in fine: although Mr.
+Garbetts seldom called at Costigan's house, being disliked by Miss
+Fotheringay, of whom in her turn Mrs. Garbetts was considerably jealous.
+The truth is, that Garbetts had paid his court to Miss Fotheringay and
+been refused by her, before he offered his hand to Mrs. G. Their history,
+however, forms no part of our present scheme--suffice it, Mr. Garbetts
+was called in by Captain Costigan immediately after his daughter and Mr.
+Bows had quitted the house, as a friend proper to be consulted at the
+actual juncture. He was a large man, with a loud voice and fierce aspect,
+who had the finest legs of the whole company, and could break a poker in
+mere sport across his stalwart arm.
+
+"Run, Tommy," said Mr. Costigan to the little messenger, "and fetch Mr.
+Garbetts from his lodgings over the tripe shop, ye know, and tell 'em to
+send two glasses of whisky-and-water, hot, from the Grapes." So Tommy
+went his way; and presently Mr. Garbetts and the whisky came.
+
+Captain Costigan did not disclose to him the whole of the previous
+events, of which the reader is in possession; but, with the aid of the
+spirits-and-water, he composed a letter of a threatening nature to Major
+Pendennis's address, in which he called upon that gentleman to offer no
+hindrance to the marriage projected between Mr. Arthur Pendennis and his
+daughter, Miss Fotheringay, and to fix an early day for its celebration:
+or, in any other case, to give him the satisfaction which was usual
+between gentlemen of honour. And should Major Pendennis be disinclined to
+this alternative, the Captain hinted, that he would force him to accept
+by the use of a horsewhip, which he should employ upon the Major's
+person. The precise terms of this letter we cannot give, for reasons
+which shall be specified presently; but it was, no doubt, couched in the
+Captain's finest style, and sealed elaborately with the great silver seal
+of the Costigans--the only bit of the family plate which the Captain
+possessed.
+
+Garbetts was despatched then with this message and letter; and bidding
+Heaven bless 'um the General squeezed his ambassador's hand, and saw him
+depart. Then he took down his venerable and murderous duelling-pistols,
+with flint locks, that had done the business of many a pretty fellow in
+Dublin: and having examined these, and seen that they were in a
+satisfactory condition, he brought from the drawer all Pen's letters and
+poems which he kept there, and which he always read before he permitted
+his Emily to enjoy their perusal.
+
+In a score of minutes Garbetts came back with an anxious and crestfallen
+countenance.
+
+"Ye've seen 'um?" the Captain said.
+
+"Why, yes," said Garbetts.
+
+"And when is it for?" asked Costigan, trying the lock of one of the
+ancient pistols, and bringing it to a level with his oi--as he called
+that bloodshot orb.
+
+"When is what for?" asked Mr. Garbetts.
+
+"The meeting, my dear fellow?"
+
+"You don't mean to say, you mean mortal combat, Captain," Garbetts said,
+aghast.
+
+"What the devil else do I mean, Garbetts?--I want to shoot that man that
+has trajuiced me honor, or meself dthrop a victim on the sod."
+
+"D--- if I carry challenges," Mr. Garbetts replied. "I'm a family man,
+Captain, and will have nothing to do with pistols--take back your
+letter;" and, to the surprise and indignation of Captain Costigan, his
+emissary flung the letter down, with its great sprawling superscription
+and blotched seal.
+
+"Ye don't mean to say ye saw 'um and didn't give 'um the letter?" cried
+out the Captain in a fury.
+
+"I saw him, but I could not have speech with him, Captain," said Mr.
+Garbetts.
+
+"And why the devil not?" asked the other.
+
+"There was one there I cared not to meet, nor would you," the tragedian
+answered in a sepulchral voice. "The minion Tatham was there, Captain."
+
+"The cowardly scoundthrel!" roared Costigan. "He's frightened, and
+already going to swear the peace against me."
+
+"I'll have nothing to do with the fighting, mark that," the tragedian
+doggedly said, "and I wish I'd not seen Tatham neither, nor that bit
+of----"
+
+"Hold your tongue, Bob Acres. It's my belief ye're no better than a
+coward," said Captain Costigan, quoting Sir Lucius O'Trigger, which
+character he had performed with credit, both off and on the stage, and
+after some more parley between the couple they separated in not very good
+humour.
+
+Their colloquy has been here condensed, as the reader knows the main
+point upon which it turned. But the latter will now see how it is
+impossible to give a correct account of the letter which the Captain
+wrote to Major Pendennis, as it was never opened at all by that
+gentleman.
+
+When Miss Costigan came home from rehearsal, which she did in the company
+of the faithful Mr. Bows, she found her father pacing up and down their
+apartment in a great state of agitation, and in the midst of a powerful
+odour of spirits-and-water, which, as it appeared, had not succeeded in
+pacifying his disordered mind. The Pendennis papers were on the table
+surrounding the empty goblets and now useless teaspoon which had served
+to hold and mix the Captain's liquor and his friend's. As Emily entered
+he seized her in his arms, and cried out, "Prepare yourself, me child, me
+blessed child," in a voice of agony, and with eyes brimful of tears.
+
+"Ye're tipsy again, Papa," Miss Fotheringay said, pushing back her sire.
+"Ye promised me ye wouldn't take spirits before dinner."
+
+"It's to forget me sorrows, me poor girl, that I've taken just a drop,"
+cried the bereaved father--"it's to drown me care that I drain the bowl."
+
+"Your care takes a deal of drowning, Captain dear," said Bows, mimicking
+his friend's accent; "what has happened? Has that soft-spoken gentleman
+in the wig been vexing you?"
+
+"The oily miscreant! I'll have his blood!" roared Cos. Miss Milly, it
+must be premised, had fled to her room out of his embrace, and was taking
+off her bonnet and shawl there.
+
+"I thought he meant mischief. He was so uncommon civil," the other said.
+"What has he come to say?"
+
+"O Bows! He has overwhellum'd me," the Captain said. "There's a hellish
+conspiracy on foot against me poor girl; and it's me opinion that both
+them Pendennises, nephew and uncle, is two infernal thrators and
+scoundthrels, who should be conshumed from off the face of the earth."
+
+"What is it? What has happened?" said Mr. Bows, growing rather excited.
+
+Costigan then told him the Major's statement that the young Pendennis had
+not two thousand, nor two hundred pounds a year; and expressed his fury
+that he should have permitted such an impostor to coax and wheedle his
+innocent girl, and that he should have nourished such a viper in his own
+personal bosom. "I have shaken the reptile from me, however," said
+Costigan; "and as for his uncle, I'll have such a revenge on that old
+man, as shall make 'um rue the day he ever insulted a Costigan."
+
+"What do you mean, General?" said Bows.
+
+"I mean to have his life, Bows--his villanous, skulking life, my boy;"
+and he rapped upon the battered old pistol-case in an ominous and savage
+manner. Bows had often heard him appeal to that box of death, with which
+he proposed to sacrifice his enemies; but the Captain did not tell him
+that he had actually written and sent a challenge to Major Pendennis, and
+Mr. Bows therefore rather disregarded the pistols in the present
+instance.
+
+At this juncture Miss Fotheringay returned to the common sitting-room
+from her private apartment, looking perfectly healthy, happy, and
+unconcerned, a striking and wholesome contrast to her father, who was in
+a delirious tremor of grief, anger, and other agitation. She brought in a
+pair of ex-white satin shoes with her, which she proposed to rub as clean
+as might be with bread-crumb: intending to go mad with them upon next
+Tuesday evening in Ophelia, in which character she was to reappear on
+that night.
+
+She looked at the papers on the table; stopped as if she was going to ask
+a question, but thought better of it, and going to the cupboard, selected
+an eligible piece of bread wherewith she might operate on the satin
+slippers: and afterwards coming back to the table, seated herself there
+commodiously with the shoes, and then asked her father, in her honest,
+Irish brogue, "What have ye got them letthers, and pothry, and stuff, of
+Master Arthur's out for, Pa? Sure ye don't want to be reading over that
+nonsense."
+
+"O Emilee!" cried the Captain, "that boy whom I loved as the boy of mee
+bosom is only a scoundthrel, and a deceiver, mee poor girl:" and he
+looked in the most tragical way at Mr. Bows, opposite; who, in his turn,
+gazed somewhat anxiously at Miss Costigan.
+
+"He! pooh! Sure the poor lad's as simple as a schoolboy," she said. "All
+them children write verses and nonsense."
+
+"He's been acting the part of a viper to this fireside, and a traitor in
+this familee," cried the Captain. "I tell ye he's no better than an
+impostor."
+
+"What has the poor fellow done, Papa?" asked Emily.
+
+"Done? He has deceived us in the most athrocious manner," Miss Emily's
+papa said. "He has thrifled with your affections, and outraged my own
+fine feelings. He has represented himself as a man of property, and it
+turruns out that he is no betther than a beggar. Haven't I often told ye
+he had two thousand a year? He's a pauper, I tell ye, Miss Costigan; a
+depindent upon the bountee of his mother; a good woman, who may marry
+again, who's likely to live for ever, and who has but five hundred a
+year. How dar he ask ye to marry into a family which has not the means of
+providing for ye? Ye've been grossly deceived and put upon, Milly, and
+it's my belief his old ruffian of an uncle in a wig is in the plot
+against us."
+
+"That soft old gentleman? What has he been doing, Papa?" continued Emily,
+still imperturbable.
+
+Costigan informed Milly, that when she was gone, Major Pendennis told him
+in his double-faced Pall Mall polite manner, that young Arthur had no
+fortune at all, that the Major had asked him (Costigan) to go to the
+lawyers ("wherein he knew the scoundthrels have a bill of mine, and I
+can't meet them," the Captain parenthetically remarked), and see the
+lad's father's will and finally, that an infernal swindle had been
+practised upon him by the pair, and that he was resolved either on a
+marriage, or on the blood of both of them.
+
+Milly looked very grave and thoughtful, rubbing the white satin shoes.
+"Sure, if he's no money, there's no use marrying him, Papa," she said
+sententiously.
+
+"Why did the villain say he was a man of prawpertee?" asked Costigan.
+
+"The poor fellow always said he was poor," answered the girl. "'Twas you
+would have it he was rich, Papa--and made me agree to take him."
+
+"He should have been explicit and told us his income, Milly," answered
+the father. "A young fellow who rides a blood mare, and makes presents of
+shawls and bracelets, is an impostor if he has no money;--and as for his
+uncle, bedad I'll pull off his wig whenever I see 'um. Bows, here, shall
+take a message to him and tell him so. Either it's a marriage, or he
+meets me in the field like a man, or I tweak 'um on the nose in front of
+his hotel or in the gravel walks of Fairoaks Park before all the county,
+bedad."
+
+"Bedad, you may send somebody else with the message," said Bows,
+laughing. "I'm a fiddler, not a fighting man, Captain."
+
+"Pooh, you've no spirit, sir," roared the General. "I'll be my own
+second, if no one will stand by and see me injured. And I'll take my case
+of pistols and shoot 'um in the Coffee-room of the George."
+
+"And so poor Arthur has no money?" sighed out Miss Costigan, rather
+plaintively. "Poor lad, he was a good lad too: wild and talking nonsense,
+with his verses and pothry and that, but a brave, generous boy, and
+indeed I liked him--and he liked me too," she added, rather softly, and
+rubbing away at the shoe.
+
+"Why don't you marry him if you like him so?" Mr. Bows said, rather
+savagely. "He is not more than ten years younger than you are. His mother
+may relent, and you might go and live and have enough at Fairoaks Park.
+Why not go and be a lady? I could go on with the fiddle, and the General
+live on his half-pay. Why don't you marry him? You know he likes you."
+
+"There's others that likes me as well, Bows, that has no money and that's
+old enough," Miss Milly said sententiously.
+
+"Yes, d--- it," said Bows, with a bitter curse--"that are old enough and
+poor enough and fools enough for anything."
+
+"There's old fools, and young fools too. You've often said so you silly
+man," the imperious beauty said, with a conscious glance at the old
+gentleman. "If Pendennis has not enough money to live upon, it's folly to
+talk about marrying him: and that's the long and short of it."
+
+"And the boy?" said Mr. Bows. "By Jove! you throw a man away like an old
+glove, Miss Costigan."
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Bows," said Miss Fotheringay, placidly,
+rubbing the second shoe. "If he had had half of the two thousand a year
+that Papa gave him, or the half of that, I would marry him. But what is
+the good of taking on with a beggar? We're poor enough already. There's
+no use in my going to live with an old lady that's testy and cross,
+maybe, and would grudge me every morsel of meat." (Sure, it's near dinner
+time, and Suky not laid the cloth yet.) "And then," added Miss Costigan
+quite simply, "suppose there was a family?--why, Papa, we shouldn't be as
+well off as we are now."
+
+"'Deed, then, you would not, Milly dear," answered the father.
+
+"And there's an end to all the fine talk about Mrs. Arthur Pendennis of
+Fairoaks Park--the member of Parliament's lady," said Milly, with a
+laugh. "Pretty carriages and horses we should have to ride!--that you
+were always talking about, Papa! But it's always the same. If a man
+looked at me, you fancied he was going to marry me; and if he had a good
+coat, you fancied he was as rich as Crazes."
+
+"--As Croesus," said Mr. Bows.
+
+"Well, call 'um what ye like. But it's a fact now that Papa has married
+me these eight years a score of times. Wasn't I to be my Lady Poldoody of
+Oystherstown Castle? Then there was the Navy Captain at Portsmouth, and
+the old surgeon at Norwich, and the Methodist preacher here last year,
+and who knows how many more? Well, I bet a penny, with all your scheming,
+I shall die Milly Costigan at last. So poor little Arthur has no money?
+Stop and take dinner, Bows; we've a beautiful beef-steak pudding."
+
+"I wonder whether she is on with Sir Derby Oaks," thought Bows, whose
+eyes and thoughts were always watching her. "The dodges of women beat all
+comprehension; and I am sure she wouldn't let the lad off so easily, if
+she had not some other scheme on hand."
+
+It will have been perceived that Miss Fotheringay, though silent in
+general, and by no means brilliant as a conversationist, where poetry,
+literature, or the fine arts were concerned, could talk freely, and with
+good sense, too, in her own family circle. She cannot justly be called a
+romantic person: nor were her literary acquirement great: she never
+opened a Shakspeare from the day she left the stage, nor, indeed,
+understood it during all the time she adorned the boards: but about a
+pudding, a piece of needle-work, or her own domestic affairs, she was as
+good a judge as could be found; and not being misled by a strong
+imagination or a passionate temper, was better enabled to keep her
+judgment cool. When, over their dinner, Costigan tried to convince
+himself and the company, that the Major's statement regarding Pen's
+finances was unworthy of credit, and a mere ruse upon the old hypocrite's
+part so as to induce them, on their side, to break off the match, Miss
+Milly would not, for a moment, admit the possibility of deceit on the
+side of the adversary: and pointed out clearly that it was her father who
+had deceived himself, and not poor little Pen who had tried to take them
+in. As for that poor lad, she said she pitied him with all her heart. And
+she ate an exceedingly good dinner; to the admiration of Mr. Bows, who
+had a remarkable regard and contempt for this woman, during and after
+which repast, the party devised upon the best means of bringing this
+love-matter to a close. As for Costigan, his idea of tweaking the Major's
+nose vanished with his supply of after-dinner whisky-and-water; and he
+was submissive to his daughter, and ready for any plan on which she might
+decide, in order to meet the crisis which she saw was at hand.
+
+The Captain, who, as long as he had a notion that he was wronged, was
+eager to face and demolish both Pen and his uncle, perhaps shrank from
+the idea of meeting the former, and asked "what the juice they were to
+say to the lad if he remained steady to his engagement, and they broke
+from theirs?" "What? don't you know how to throw a man over?" said Bows;
+"ask a woman to tell you?" and Miss Fotheringay showed how this feat was
+to be done simply enough--nothing was more easy. "Papa writes to Arthur
+to know what settlements he proposes to make in event of a marriage; and
+asks what his means are. Arthur writes back and says what he's got, and
+you'll find it's as the Major says, I'll go bail. Then papa writes, and
+says it's not enough, and the match had best be at an end."
+
+"And, of course, you enclose a parting line, in which you say you will
+always regard him as a brother," said Mr. Bows, eyeing her in his
+scornful way.
+
+"Of course, and so I shall," answered Miss Fotheringay. "He's a most
+worthy young man, I'm sure. I'll thank ye hand me the salt. Them filberts
+is beautiful."
+
+"And there will be no noses pulled, Cos, my boy? I'm sorry you're
+baulked," said Mr. Bows.
+
+"Dad, I suppose not," said Cos, rubbing his own.--"What'll ye do about
+them letters, and verses, and pomes, Milly, darling?--Ye must send 'em
+back."
+
+"Wigsby would give a hundred pound for 'em," Bows said, with a sneer.
+
+"'Deed, then, he would," said Captain Costigan, who was easily led.
+
+"Papa!" said Miss Milly.--"Ye wouldn't be for not sending the poor boy
+his letters back? Them letters and pomes is mine. They were very long,
+and full of all sorts of nonsense, and Latin, and things I couldn't
+understand the half of; indeed I've not read 'em all; but we'll send 'em
+back to him when the proper time comes." And going to a drawer, Miss
+Fotheringay took out from it a number of the County Chronicle and
+Chatteris Champion, in which Pen had written a copy of flaming verses
+celebrating her appearance in the character of Imogen, and putting by the
+leaf upon which the poem appeared (for, like ladies of her profession,
+she kept the favourable printed notices of her performances), she wrapped
+up Pen's letters, poems, passions, and fancies, and tied them with a
+piece of string neatly, as she would a parcel of sugar.
+
+Nor was she in the least moved while performing this act. What hours the
+boy had passed over those papers! What love and longing: what generous
+faith and manly devotion--what watchful nights and lonely fevers might
+they tell of! She tied them up like so much grocery, and sate down and
+made tea afterwards with a perfectly placid and contented heart: while
+Pen was yearning after her ten miles off: and hugging her image to his
+soul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A Crisis
+
+
+Meanwhile they were wondering at Fairoaks that the Major had not
+returned. Dr. Portman and his lady, on their way home to Clavering,
+stopped at Helen's lodge-gate, with a brief note for her from Major
+Pendennis, in which he said he should remain at Chatteris another day,
+being anxious to have some talk with Messrs. Tatham, the lawyers, whom he
+would meet that afternoon; but no mention was made of the transaction in
+which the writer had been engaged during the morning. Indeed the note was
+written at the pause after the first part of the engagement, and when the
+Major had decidedly had the worst of the battle.
+
+Pen did not care somehow to go into the town whilst his uncle was there.
+He did not like to have to fancy that his guardian might be spying at him
+from that abominable Dean's grass-plat, whilst he was making love in Miss
+Costigan's drawing-room; and the pleasures of a walk (a delight which he
+was very rarely permitted to enjoy) would have been spoiled if he had met
+the man of the polished boots on that occasion. His modest love could not
+show in public by any outward signs, except the eyes (with which the poor
+fellow ogled and gazed violently to be sure), but it was dumb in the
+presence of third parties; and so much the better, for of all the talk
+which takes place in this world, that of love-makers is surely, to the
+uninitiated, the most silly. It is the vocabulary without the key; it is
+the lamp without the flame. Let the respected reader look or think over
+some old love-letters that he (or she) has had and forgotten, and try
+them over again. How blank and meaningless they seem! What glamour of
+infatuation was it which made that nonsense beautiful? One wonders that
+such puling and trash could ever have made one happy. And yet there were
+dates when you kissed those silly letters with rapture--lived upon six
+absurd lines for a week, and until the reactionary period came, when you
+were restless and miserable until you got a fresh supply of folly.
+
+That is why we decline to publish any of the letters and verses which Mr.
+Pen wrote at this period of his life, out of mere regard for the young
+fellow's character. They are too spooney and wild. Young ladies ought not
+to be called upon to read them in cold blood. Bide your time, young
+women; perhaps you will get and write them on your own account soon.
+Meanwhile we will respect Mr. Pen's first outpourings, and keep them tied
+up in the newspapers with Miss Fotheringay's string, and sealed with
+Captain Costigan's great silver seal.
+
+The Major came away from his interview with Captain Costigan in a state
+of such concentrated fury as rendered him terrible to approach! "The
+impudent bog-trotting scamp," he thought, "dare to threaten me! Dare to
+talk of permitting his damned Costigans to marry with the Pendennises!
+Send me a challenge! If the fellow can get anything in the shape of a
+gentleman to carry it, I have the greatest mind in life not to baulk
+him.--Psha! what would people say if I were to go out with a tipsy
+mountebank, about a row with an actress in a barn!" So when the Major saw
+Dr. Portman, who asked anxiously regarding the issue of his battle with
+the dragon, Mr. Pendennis did not care to inform the divine of the
+General's insolent behaviour, but stated that the affair was a very ugly
+and disagreeable one, and that it was by no means over yet.
+
+He enjoined Doctor and Mrs. Portman to say nothing about the business at
+Fairoaks; whither he contented himself with despatching the note we have
+before mentioned. And then he returned to his hotel, where he vented his
+wrath upon Mr. Morgan his valet, "dammin and cussin upstairs and
+downstairs," as that gentleman observed to Mr. Foker's man, in whose
+company he partook of dinner in the servants' room of the George.
+
+The servant carried the news to his master; and Mr. Foker having finished
+his breakfast about this time, it being two o'clock in the afternoon,
+remembered that he was anxious to know the result of the interview
+between his two friends, and having inquired the number of the Major's
+sitting-room, went over in his brocade dressing-gown, and knocked for
+admission.
+
+Major Pendennis had some business, as he had stated, respecting a lease
+of the widow's, about which he was desirous of consulting old Mr. Tatham,
+the lawyer, who had been his brother's man of business, and who had a
+branch-office at Clavering, where he and his son attended market and
+other days three or four in the week. This gentleman and his client were
+now in consultation when Mr. Foker showed his grand dressing-gown and
+embroidered skull-cap at Major Pendennis's door.
+
+Seeing the Major engaged with papers and red-tape, and an old man with a
+white head, the modest youth was for drawing back--and said, "O, you're
+busy--call again another time." But Mr. Pendennis wanted to see him, and
+begged him, with a smile, to enter: whereupon Mr. Foker took off the
+embroidered tarboosh or fez (it had been worked by the fondest of
+mothers) and advanced, bowing to the gentlemen and smiling on them
+graciously. Mr. Tatham had never seen so splendid an apparition before as
+this brocaded youth, who seated himself in an arm-chair, spreading out
+his crimson skirts, and looking with exceeding kindness and frankness on
+the other two tenants of the room. "You seem to like my dressing-gown,
+sir," he said to Mr. Tatham. "A pretty thing, isn't it? Neat, but not in
+the least gaudy. And how do you do, Major Pendennis, sir, and how does
+the world treat you?"
+
+There was that in Foker's manner and appearance which would have put an
+Inquisitor into good humour, and it smoothed the wrinkles under
+Pendennis's head of hair.
+
+"I have had an interview with that Irishman (you may speak before my
+friend, Mr. Tatham here, who knows all the affairs of the family), and it
+has not, I own, been very satisfactory. He won't believe that my nephew
+is poor: he says we are both liars: he did me the honour to hint that I
+was a coward, as I took leave. And I thought when you knocked at the
+door, that you might be the gentleman whom I expect with a challenge from
+Mr. Costigan--that is how the world treats me, Mr. Foker."
+
+"You don't mean that Irishman, the actress's father?" cried Mr. Tatham,
+who was a dissenter himself, and did not patronise the drama.
+
+"That Irishman, the actress's father--the very man. Have not you heard
+what a fool my nephew has made of himself about the girl?"--Mr. Tatham,
+who never entered the walls of a theatre, had heard nothing: and Major
+Pendennis had to recount the story of his nephew's loves to the lawyer,
+Mr. Foker coming in with appropriate comments in his usual familiar
+language.
+
+Tatham was lost in wonder at the narrative. Why had not Mrs. Pendennis
+married a serious man, he thought--Mr. Tatham was a widower--and kept
+this unfortunate boy from perdition? As for Mr. Costigan's daughter, he
+would say nothing: her profession was sufficient to characterise her. Mr.
+Foker here interposed to say he had known some uncommon good people in
+the booths, as he called the Temple of the Muses. Well, it might be so,
+Mr. Tatham hoped so--but the father, Tatham knew personally--a man of
+the worst character, a wine-bibber and an idler in taverns and
+billiard-rooms, and a notorious insolvent. "I can understand the reason,
+Major," he said, "why the fellow would not come to my office to ascertain
+the truth of the statements which you made him.--We have a writ out
+against him and another disreputable fellow, one of the play-actors, for
+a bill given to Mr. Skinner of this city, a most respectable Grocer and
+Wine and Spirit Merchant, and a Member of the Society of Friends. This
+Costigan came crying to Mr. Skinner,--crying in the shop, sir,--and we
+have not proceeded against him or the other, as neither were worth powder
+and shot."
+
+It was whilst Mr. Tatham was engaged in telling this story that a third
+knock came to the door, and there entered an athletic gentleman in a
+shabby braided frock, bearing in his hand a letter with a large blotched
+red seal.
+
+"Can I have the honour of speaking with Major Pendennis in private?" he
+began--"I have a few words for your ear, sir. I am the bearer of a
+mission from my friend Captain Costigan,"--but here the man with the bass
+voice paused, faltered, and turned pale--he caught sight of the red and
+well-remembered face of Mr. Tatham.
+
+"Hullo, Garbetts, speak up!" cried Mr. Foker, delighted.
+
+"Why, bless my soul, it is the other party to the bill!" said Mr. Tatham.
+"I say, sir; stop I say." But Garbetts, with a face as blank as Macbeth's
+when Banquo's ghost appears upon him, gasped some inarticulate words, and
+fled out of the room.
+
+The Major's gravity was also entirely upset, and he burst out laughing.
+So did Mr. Foker, who said, "By Jove, it was a good 'un." So did the
+attorney, although by profession a serious man.
+
+"I don't think there'll be any fight, Major," young Foker said; and began
+mimicking the tragedian. "If there is, the old gentleman--your name
+Tatham?--very happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Tatham--may send the
+bailiffs to separate the men;" and Mr. Tatham promised to do so. The
+Major was by no means sorry at the ludicrous issue of the quarrel. "It
+seems to me, sir," he said to Mr. Foker, "that you always arrive to put
+me into good-humour."
+
+Nor was this the only occasion on which Mr. Foker this day was destined
+to be of service to the Pendennis family. We have said that he had the
+entree of Captain Costigan's lodgings, and in the course of the afternoon
+he thought he would pay the General a visit, and hear from his own lips
+what had occurred in the conversation, in the morning, with Mr.
+Pendennis. Captain Costigan was not at home. He had received permission,
+nay, encouragement from his daughter, to go to the convivial club at the
+Magpie Hotel, where no doubt he was bragging at that moment of his desire
+to murder a certain ruffian; for he was not only brave, but he knew it
+too, and liked to take out his courage, and, as it were, give it an
+airing in company.
+
+Costigan then was absent, but Miss Fotheringay was at home washing the
+tea-cups whilst Mr. Bows sate opposite to her.
+
+"Just done breakfast I see--how do?" said Mr. Foker, popping in his
+little funny head.
+
+"Get out, you funny little man," cried Miss Fotheringay.
+
+"You mean come in, answered the other.--Here we are!" and entering the
+room he folded his arms and began twirling his head round and round with
+immense rapidity, like Harlequin in the Pantomime when he first issues
+from his cocoon or envelope. Miss Fotheringay laughed with all her heart:
+a wink of Foker's would set her off laughing, when the bitterest joke
+Bows ever made could not get a smile from her, or the finest of poor
+Pen's speeches would only puzzle her. At the end of the harlequinade he
+sank down on one knee and kissed her hand. "You're the drollest little
+man," she said, and gave him a great good-humoured slap. Pen used to
+tremble as he kissed her hand. Pen would have died of a slap.
+
+These preliminaries over, the three began to talk; Mr. Foker amused his
+companions by recounting to them the scene which he had just witnessed of
+the discomfiture of Mr. Garbetts, by which they learned, for the first
+time, how far the General had carried his wrath against Major Pendennis.
+Foker spoke strongly in favour of the Major's character for veracity and
+honour, and described him as a tip-top swell, moving in the upper-circle
+of society, who would never submit to any deceit--much more to deceive
+such a charming young woman as Miss Foth.
+
+He touched delicately upon the delicate marriage question, though he
+couldn't help showing that he held Pen rather cheap. In fact, he had a
+perhaps just contempt for Mr. Pen's high-flown sentimentality; his own
+weakness, as he thought, not lying that way. "I knew it wouldn't do, Miss
+Foth," said he, nodding his little head. "Couldn't do. Didn't like to put
+my hand into the bag, but knew it couldn't do. He's too young for you:
+too green: a deal too green: and he turns out to be poor as Job. Can't
+have him at no price, can she, Mr. Bo?"
+
+"Indeed he's a nice poor boy," said the Fotheringay rather sadly.
+
+"Poor little beggar," said Bows, with his hands in his pockets, and
+stealing up a queer look at Miss Fotheringay. Perhaps he thought and
+wondered at the way in which women play with men, and coax them and win
+them and drop them.
+
+But Mr. Bows had not the least objection to acknowledge that he thought
+Miss Fotheringay was perfectly right in giving up Mr. Arthur Pendennis,
+and that in his idea the match was always an absurd one: and Miss
+Costigan owned that she thought so herself, only she couldn't send away
+two thousand a year. "It all comes of believing Papa's silly stories,"
+she said; "faith I'll choose for meself another time"--and very likely
+the large image of Lieutenant Sir Derby Oaks entered into her mind at
+that instant.
+
+After praising Major Pendennis, whom Miss Costigan declared to be a
+proper gentleman entirely, smelling of lavender, and as neat as a pin,--
+and who was pronounced by Mr. Bows to be the right sort of fellow, though
+rather too much of an old buck, Mr. Foker suddenly bethought him to ask
+the pair to come and meet the Major that very evening at dinner at his
+apartment at the George. "He agreed to dine with me, and I think after
+the--after the little shindy this morning, in which I must say the
+General was wrong, it would look kind, you know.--I know the Major fell
+in love with you, Miss Foth: he said so."
+
+"So she may be Mrs. Pendennis still," Bows said with a sneer--"No, thank
+you, Mr. F.--I've dined."
+
+"Sure, that was at three o'clock," said Miss Costigan, who had an honest
+appetite, "and I can't go without you."
+
+"We'll have lobster-salad and champagne," said the little monster, who
+could not construe a line of Latin, or do a sum beyond the Rule of Three.
+Now, for lobster-salad and champagne in an honourable manner, Miss
+Costigan would have gone anywhere--and Major Pendennis actually found
+himself at seven o'clock seated at a dinner-table in company with Mr.
+Bows, a professional fiddler, and Miss Costigan, whose father had wanted
+to blow his brains out a few hours before.
+
+To make the happy meeting complete, Mr. Foker, who knew Costigan's
+haunts, despatched Stoopid to the club at the Magpie, where the General
+was in the act of singing a pathetic song, and brought him off to supper.
+To find his daughter and Bows seated at the board was a surprise indeed--
+Major Pendennis laughed, and cordially held out his hand, which the
+General Officer grasped avec effusion as the French say. In fact he was
+considerably inebriated, and had already been crying over his own song
+before he joined the little party at the George. He burst into tears more
+than once, during the entertainment, and called the Major his dearest
+friend. Stoopid and Mr. Foker walked home with him: the Major gallantly
+giving his arm to Miss Costigan. He was received with great friendliness
+when he called the next day, when many civilities passed between the
+gentlemen. On taking leave he expressed his anxious desire to serve Miss
+Costigan on any occasion in which he could be useful to her, and he shook
+hands with Mr. Foker most cordially and gratefully, and said that
+gentleman had done him the very greatest service.
+
+"All right," said Mr. Foker: and they parted with mutual esteem.
+
+On his return to Fairoaks the next day, Major Pendennis did not say what
+had happened to him on the previous night, or allude to the company in
+which he had passed it. But he engaged Mr. Smirke to stop to dinner; and
+any person accustomed to watch his manner might have remarked that there
+was something constrained in his hilarity and talkativeness, and that he
+was unusually gracious and watchful in his communications with his
+nephew. He gave Pen an emphatic God-bless-you when the lad went to bed;
+and as they were about to part for the night, he seemed as if he was
+going to say something to Mrs. Pendennis, but he bethought him that if he
+spoke he might spoil her night's rest, and allowed her to sleep in peace.
+
+The next morning he was down in the breakfast-room earlier than was his
+custom, and saluted everybody there with great cordiality. The post used
+to arrive commonly about the end of this meal. When John, the old
+servant, entered, and discharged the bag of its letters and papers, the
+Major looked hard at Pen as the lad got his--Arthur blushed, and put his
+letter down. He knew the hand, it was that of old Costigan, and he did
+not care to read it in public. Major Pendennis knew the letter, too. He
+had put it into the post himself in Chatteris the day before.
+
+He told little Laura to go away, which the child did, having a thorough
+dislike to him; and as the door closed on her, he took Mrs. Pendennis's
+hand, and giving her a look full of meaning, pointed to the letter under
+the newspaper which Pen was pretending to read. "Will you come into the
+drawing-room?" he said. "I want to speak to you." And she followed him,
+wondering, into the hall.
+
+"What is it?" she said nervously.
+
+"The affair is at an end," Major Pendennis said. "He has a letter there
+giving him his dismissal. I dictated it myself yesterday. There are a few
+lines from the lady, too, bidding him farewell. It is all over."
+
+Helen ran back to the dining-room, her brother following. Pen had jumped
+at his letter the instant they were gone. He was reading it with a
+stupefied face. It stated what the Major had said, that Mr. Costigan was
+most gratified for the kindness with which Arthur had treated his
+daughter, but that he was only now made aware of Mr. Pendennis's
+peecupiary circumstances. They were such that marriage was at present out
+of the question, and considering the great disparity in the age of the
+two, a future union was impossible. Under these circumstances, and with
+the deepest regret and esteem for him, Mr. Costigan bade Arthur farewell,
+and suggested that he should cease visiting, for some time at least, at
+his house.
+
+A few lines from Miss Costigan were enclosed. She acquiesced in the
+decision of her Papa. She pointed out that she was many years older than
+Arthur, and that an engagement was not to be thought of. She would always
+be grateful for his kindness to her, and hoped to keep his friendship.
+But at present, and until the pain of the separation should be over, she
+entreated they should not meet.
+
+Pen read Costigan's letter and its enclosure mechanically, hardly knowing
+what was before his eyes. He looked up wildly, and saw his mother and
+uncle regarding him with sad faces. Helen's, indeed, was full of tender
+maternal anxiety.
+
+"What--what is this?" Pen said. "It's some joke. This is not her writing.
+This is some servant's writing. Who's playing these tricks upon me?"
+
+"It comes under her father's envelope," the Major said. "Those letters
+you had before were not in her hand: that is hers."
+
+"How do you know?" said Pen very fiercely.
+
+"I saw her write it," the uncle answered, as the boy started up; and his
+mother, coming forward, took his hand. He put her away.
+
+"How came you to see her? How came you between me and her? What have I
+ever done to you that you should--Oh, it's not true! it's not true!"--Pen
+broke out with a wild execration. "She can't have done it of her own
+accord. She can't mean it. She's pledged to me. Who has told her lies to
+break her from me?"
+
+"Lies are not told in the family, Arthur," Major Pendennis replied. "I
+told her the truth, which was, that you had no money to maintain her, for
+her foolish father had represented you to be rich. And when she knew how
+poor you were, she withdrew at once, and without any persuasion of mine.
+She was quite right. She is ten years older than you are. She is
+perfectly unfitted to be your wife, and knows it. Look at that
+handwriting, and ask yourself, is such a woman fitted to be the companion
+of your mother?"
+
+"I will know from herself if it is true," Arthur said, crumpling up the
+paper.
+
+"Won't you take my word of honour? Her letters were written by a
+confidant of hers, who writes better than she can--look here. Here's one
+from the lady to your friend, Mr. Foker. You have seen her with Miss
+Costigan, as whose amanuensis she acted"--the Major said, with ever so
+little of a sneer, and laid down a certain billet which Mr. Foker had
+given to him.
+
+"It's not that," said Pen, burning with shame and rage. "I suppose what
+you say is true, sir, but I'll hear it from herself."
+
+"Arthur!" appealed his mother.
+
+"I will see her," said Arthur. "I'll ask her to marry me, once more. I
+will. No one shall prevent me."
+
+"What, a woman who spells affection with one f? Nonsense, sir. Be a man,
+and remember that your mother is a lady. She was never made to associate
+with that tipsy old swindler or his daughter. Be a man and forget her, as
+she does you."
+
+"Be a man and comfort your mother, my Arthur," Helen said, going and
+embracing him: and seeing that the pair were greatly moved, Major
+Pendennis went out of the room and shut the door upon them, wisely
+judging that they were best alone.
+
+He had won a complete victory. He actually had brought away Pen's letters
+in his portmanteau from Chatteris: having complimented Mr. Costigan, when
+he returned them, by giving him the little promissory note which had
+disquieted himself and Mr. Garbetts; and for which the Major settled with
+Mr. Tatham.
+
+Pen rushed wildly off to Chatteris that day, but in vain attempted to see
+Miss Fotheringay, for whom he left a letter, enclosed to her father. The
+enclosure was returned by Mr. Costigan, who begged that all
+correspondence might end; and after one or two further attempts of the
+lad's, the indignant General desired that their acquaintance might cease.
+He cut Pen in the street. As Arthur and Foker were pacing the Castle
+walk, one day, they came upon Emily on her father's arm. She passed
+without any nod of recognition. Foker felt poor Pen trembling on his arm.
+
+His uncle wanted him to travel, to quit the country for a while, and his
+mother urged him too: for he was growing very ill, and suffered severely.
+But he refused, and said point-blank he would not go. He would not obey
+in this instance: and his mother was too fond, and his uncle too wise to
+force him. Whenever Miss Fotheringay acted, he rode over to the Chatteris
+Theatre and saw her. One night there were so few people in the house that
+the Manager returned the money. Pen came home and went to bed at eight
+o'clock, and had a fever. If this continues, his mother will be going
+over and fetching the girl, the Major thought, in despair. As for Pen, he
+thought he should die. We are not going to describe his feelings, or give
+a dreary journal of his despair and passion. Have not other gentlemen
+been baulked in love besides Mr. Pen? Yes, indeed: but few die of the
+malady.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+In which Miss Fotheringay makes a new Engagement
+
+
+Within a short period of the events above narrated, Mr. Manager Bingley
+was performing his famous character of 'Rolla,' in 'Pizarro,' to a house
+so exceedingly thin, that it would appear as if the part of Rolla was by
+no means such a favourite with the people of Chatteris as it was with the
+accomplished actor himself. Scarce anybody was in the theatre. Poor Pen
+had the boxes almost all to himself, and sate there lonely, with
+bloodshot eyes, leaning over the ledge, and gazing haggardly towards the
+scene, when Cora came in. When she was not on the stage he saw nothing.
+Spaniards and Peruvians, processions and battles, priests and virgins of
+the sun, went in and out, and had their talk, but Arthur took no note of
+any of them; and only saw Cora whom his soul longed after. He said
+afterwards that he wondered he had not taken a pistol to shoot her, so
+mad was he with love, and rage, and despair; and had it not been for his
+mother at home, to whom he did not speak about his luckless condition,
+but whose silent sympathy and watchfulness greatly comforted the simple
+half heart-broken fellow, who knows but he might have done something
+desperate, and have ended his days prematurely in front of Chatteris
+gaol? There he sate then, miserable, and gazing at her. And she took no
+more notice of him than he did of the rest of the house.
+
+The Fotheringay was uncommonly handsome, in a white raiment and leopard
+skin, with a sun upon her breast, and fine tawdry bracelets on her
+beautiful glancing arms. She spouted to admiration the few words of her
+part, and looked it still better. The eyes, which had overthrown Pen's
+soul, rolled and gleamed as lustrous as ever; but it was not to him that
+they were directed that night. He did not know to whom, or remark a
+couple of gentlemen, in the box next to him, upon whom Miss Fotheringay's
+glances were perpetually shining.
+
+Nor had Pen noticed the extraordinary change which had taken place on the
+stage a short time after the entry of these two gentlemen into the
+theatre. There were so few people in the house, that the first act of the
+play languished entirely, and there had been some question of returning
+the money, as upon that other unfortunate night when poor Pen had been
+driven away. The actors were perfectly careless about their parts, and
+yawned through the dialogue, and talked loud to each other in the
+intervals. Even Bingley was listless, and Mrs. B. in Elvira spoke under
+her breath.
+
+How came it that all of a sudden Mrs. Bingley began to raise her voice
+and bellow like a bull of Bashan? Whence was it that Bingley, flinging
+off his apathy, darted about the stage and yelled like Dean? Why did
+Garbetts and Rowkins and Miss Rouncy try, each of them, the force of
+their charms or graces, and act and swagger and scowl and spout their
+very loudest at the two gentlemen in box No. 3?
+
+One was a quiet little man in black, with a grey head and a jolly
+shrewd face--the other was in all respects a splendid and remarkable
+individual. He was a tall and portly gentleman with a hooked nose and a
+profusion of curling brown hair and whiskers; his coat was covered with
+the richest frogs-braiding and velvet. He had under-waistcoats, many
+splendid rings, jewelled pins and neck-chains. When he took out his
+yellow pocket-handkerchief with his hand that was cased in white kids, a
+delightful odour of musk and bergamot was shaken through the house. He
+was evidently a personage of rank, and it was at him that the little
+Chatteris company was acting.
+
+He was, in a word, no other than Mr. Dolphin, the great manager from
+London, accompanied by his faithful friend and secretary Mr. William
+Minns: without whom he never travelled. He had not been ten minutes in
+the theatre before his august presence there was perceived by Bingley and
+the rest: and they all began to act their best and try to engage his
+attention. Even Miss Fotheringay's dull heart, which was disturbed at
+nothing, felt perhaps a flutter, when she came in presence of the famous
+London Impresario. She had not much to do in her part, but to look
+handsome, and stand in picturesque attitudes encircling her child and she
+did this work to admiration. In vain the various actors tried to win the
+favour of the great stage Sultan. Pizarro never got a hand from him.
+Bingley yelled, and Mrs. Bingley bellowed, and the Manager only took
+snuff out of his great gold box. It was only in the last scene, when
+Rolla comes in staggering with the infant (Bingley is not so strong as he
+was and his fourth son Master Talma Bingley is a monstrous large child
+for his age)--when Rolla comes staggering with the child to Cora, who
+rushes forward with a shriek, and says--"O God, there's blood upon him!"
+--that the London manager clapped his hands, and broke out with an
+enthusiastic bravo.
+
+Then having concluded his applause, Mr. Dolphin gave his secretary a slap
+on the shoulder, and said, "By Jove, Billy, she'll do!"
+
+"Who taught her that dodge?" said old Billy, who was a sardonic old
+gentleman. "I remember her at the Olympic, and hang me if she could say
+Bo to a goose."
+
+It was little Mr. Bows in the orchestra who had taught her the 'dodge' in
+question. All the company heard the applause, and, as the curtain went
+down, came round her and congratulated and hated Miss Fotheringay.
+
+Now Mr. Dolphin's appearance in the remote little Chatteris theatre may
+be accounted for in this manner. In spite of all his exertions, and the
+perpetual blazes of triumph, coruscations of talent, victories of good
+old English comedy, which his play-bills advertised, his theatre (which,
+if you please, and to injure no present susceptibilities and vested
+interests, we shall call the Museum Theatre) by no means prospered, and
+the famous Impresario found himself on the verge of ruin. The great
+Hubbard had acted legitimate drama for twenty nights, and failed to
+remunerate anybody but himself: the celebrated Mr. and Mrs. Cawdor had
+come out in Mr. Rawhead's tragedy, and in their favourite round of
+pieces, and had not attracted the public. Herr Garbage's lions and tigers
+had drawn for a little time, until one of the animals had bitten a piece
+out of the Herr's shoulder; when the Lord Chamberlain interfered, and put
+a stop to this species of performance: and the grand Lyrical Drama,
+though brought out with unexampled splendour and success, with Monsieur
+Poumons as first tenor, and an enormous orchestra, had almost crushed
+poor Dolphin in its triumphant progress: so that great as his genius and
+resources were, they seemed to be at an end. He was dragging on his
+season wretchedly with half salaries, small operas, feeble old comedies,
+and his ballet company; and everybody was looking out for the day when he
+should appear in the Gazette.
+
+One of the illustrious patrons of the Museum Theatre, and occupant of the
+great proscenium-box, was a gentleman whose name has been mentioned in a
+previous history; that refined patron of the arts, and enlightened lover
+of music and the drama, the Most Noble the Marquis of Steyne. His
+lordship's avocations as a statesman prevented him from attending the
+playhouse very often, or coming very early. But he occasionally appeared
+at the theatre in time for the ballet, and was always received with the
+greatest respect by the Manager, from whom he sometimes condescended to
+receive a visit in his box. It communicated with the stage, and when
+anything occurred there which particularly pleased him, when a new face
+made its appearance among the coryphees, or a fair dancer executed a pas
+with especial grace or agility, Mr. Wenham, Mr. Wagg, or some other
+aide-de-camp of the noble Marquis, would be commissioned to go behind the
+scenes, and express the great man's approbation, or make the inquiries
+which were prompted by his lordship's curiosity, or his interest in the
+dramatic art. He could not be seen by the audience, for Lord Steyne sate
+modestly behind a curtain, and looked only towards the stage--but you
+could know he was in the house, by the glances which all the
+corps-de-ballet, and all the principal dancers, cast towards his box. I
+have seen many scores of pairs of eyes (as in the Palm Dance in the
+ballet of Cook at Otaheite, where no less than a hundred-and-twenty
+lovely female savages in palm leaves and feather aprons, were made to
+dance round Floridor as Captain Cook) ogling that box as they performed
+before it, and have often wondered to remark the presence of mind of
+Mademoiselle Sauterelle, or Mademoiselle de Bondi (known as la petite
+Caoutchoue), who, when actually up in the air quivering like so many
+shuttlecocks, always kept their lovely eyes winking at that box in which
+the great Steyne sate. Now and then you would hear a harsh voice from
+behind the curtain cry, "Brava, Brava," or a pair of white gloves wave
+from it, and begin to applaud. Bondi, or Sauterelle, when they came down
+to earth, curtsied and smiled, especially to those hands, before they
+walked up the stage again, panting and happy.
+
+One night this great Prince surrounded by a few choice friends was in his
+box at the Museum, and they were making such a noise and laughter that
+the pit was scandalised, and many indignant voices were bawling out
+silence so loudly, that Wagg wondered the police did not interfere to
+take the rascals out. Wenham was amusing the party in the box with
+extracts from a private letter which he had received from Major
+Pendennis, whose absence in the country at the full London season had
+been remarked, and of course deplored by his friends.
+
+"The secret is out," said Mr. Wenham, "there's a woman in the case."
+
+"Why, d--- it, Wenham, he's your age," said the gentleman behind the
+curtain.
+
+"Pour les ames bien nees, l'amour ne compte pas le nombre des annees,"
+said Mr. Wenham, with a gallant air. "For my part, I hope to be a victim
+till I die, and to break my heart every year of my life." The meaning of
+which sentence was, "My lord, you need not talk; I'm three years younger
+than you, and twice as well conserve."
+
+"Wenham, you affect me," said the great man, with one of his usual oaths.
+"By --- you do. I like to see a fellow preserving all the illusions of
+youth up to our time of life--and keeping his heart warm as yours is.
+Hang it, sir, it's a comfort to meet with such a generous, candid
+creature.--Who's that gal in the second row, with blue ribbons, third
+from the stage--fine gal. Yes, you and I are sentimentalists. Wagg I
+don't think so much cares--it's the stomach rather more than the heart
+with you, eh, Wagg, my boy?"
+
+"I like everything that's good," said Mr. Wagg, generously. "Beauty and
+Burgundy, Venus and Venison. I don't say that Venus's turtles are to be
+despised, because they don't cook them at the London Tavern: but--but
+tell us about old Pendennis, Mr. Wenham," he abruptly concluded--for his
+joke flagged just then, as he saw that his patron was not listening. In
+fact, Steyne's glasses were up, and he was examining some object on the
+stage.
+
+"Yes, I've heard that joke about Venus's turtle and the London Tavern
+before--you begin to fail, my poor Wagg. If you don't mind I shall be
+obliged to have a new Jester," Lord Steyne said, laying down his glass.
+"Go on, Wenham, about old Pendennis."
+
+"Dear Wenham,"--he begins, Mr. Wenham read,--"as you have had my
+character in your hands for the last three weeks, and no doubt have torn
+me to shreds, according to your custom, I think you can afford to be
+good-humoured by way of variety, and to do me a service. It is a delicate
+matter, entre nous, une affaire de coeur. There is a young friend of mine
+who is gone wild about a certain Miss Fotheringay, an actress at the
+theatre here, and I must own to you, as handsome a woman, and, as it
+appears to me, as good an actress as ever put on rouge. She does Ophelia,
+Lady Teazle, Mrs. Haller--that sort of thing. Upon my word, she is as
+splendid as Georges in her best days, and as far as I know, utterly
+superior to anything we have on our scene. I want a London engagement for
+her. Can't you get your friend Dolphin to come and see her--to engage
+her--to take her out of this place? A word from a noble friend of ours
+(you understand) would be invaluable, and if you could get the Gaunt
+House interest for me--I will promise anything I can in return for your
+service--which I shall consider one of the greatest that can be done to
+me. Do, do this now as a good fellow, which I always said you were: and
+in return, command yours truly,           A. Pendennis."
+
+"It's a clear case," said Mr. Wenham, having read this letter; "old
+Pendennis is in love."
+
+"And wants to get the woman up to London--evidently," continued Mr. Wagg.
+
+"I should like to see Pendennis on his knees, with the rheumatism," said
+Mr. Wenham.
+
+"Or accommodating the beloved object with a lock of his hair," said Wagg.
+
+"Stuff." said the great man. "He has relations in the country, hasn't he?
+He said something about a nephew, whose interest could return a member.
+It is the nephew's affair, depend on it. The young one is in a scrape. I
+was myself--when I was in the fifth form at Eton--a market-gardener's
+daughter--and swore I'd marry her. I was mad about her--poor Polly!"--
+here he made a pause, and perhaps the past rose up to Lord Steyne, and
+George Gaunt was a boy again not altogether lost.--"But I say, she must
+be a fine woman from Pendennis's account. Have in Dolphin, and let us
+hear if he knows anything of her."
+
+At this Wenham sprang out of the box, passed the servitor who waited at
+the door communicating with the stage, and who saluted Mr. Wenham with
+profound respect; and the latter emissary, pushing on and familiar with
+the place, had no difficulty in finding out the manager, who was
+employed, as he not unfrequently was, in swearing and cursing the ladies
+of the corps-de-ballet for not doing their duty.
+
+The oaths died away on Mr. Dolphin's lips, as soon as he saw Mr. Wenham;
+and he drew off the hand which was clenched in the face of one of the
+offending coryphees, to grasp that of the new-comer. "How do, Mr. Wenham?
+How's his lordship to-night? Looks uncommonly well," said the manager
+smiling, as if he had never been out of temper in his life; and he was
+only too delighted to follow Lord Steyne's ambassador, and pay his
+personal respects to that great man.
+
+The visit to Chatteris was the result of their conversation: and Mr.
+Dolphin wrote to his lordship from that place, and did himself the honour
+to inform the Marquess of Steyne, that he had seen the lady about whom
+his lordship had spoken, that he was as much struck by her talents as he
+was by her personal appearance, and that he had made an engagement with
+Miss Fotheringay, who would soon have the honour of appearing before a
+London audience, and his noble and enlightened patron the Marquess of
+Steyne.
+
+Pen read the announcement of Miss Fotheringay's engagement in the
+Chatteris paper, where he had so often praised her charms. The Editor
+made very handsome mention of her talent and beauty, and prophesied her
+success in the metropolis. Bingley, the manager, began to advertise "The
+last night of Miss Fotheringay's engagement." Poor Pen and Sir Derby Oaks
+were very constant at the play: Sir Derby in the stage-box, throwing
+bouquets and getting glances.--Pen in the almost deserted boxes, haggard,
+wretched and lonely. Nobody cared whether Miss Fotheringay was going or
+staying except those two--and perhaps one more, which was Mr. Bows of the
+orchestra.
+
+He came out of his place one night, and went into the house to the box
+where Pen was; and he held out his hand to him, and asked him to come and
+walk. They walked down the street together; and went and sate upon
+Chatteris bridge in the moonlight, and talked about Her. "We may sit on
+the same bridge," said he; "we have been in the same boat for a long
+time. You are not the only man who has made a fool of himself about that
+woman. And I have less excuse than you, because I am older and know her
+better. She has no more heart than the stone you are leaning on; and it
+or you or I might fall into the water, and never come up again, and she
+wouldn't care. Yes--she would care for me, because she wants me to teach
+her: and she won't be able to get on without me, and will be forced to
+send for me from London. But she wouldn't if she didn't want me. She has
+no heart and no head, and no sense, and no feelings, and no griefs or
+cares, whatever. I was going to say no pleasures--but the fact is, she
+does like her dinner, and she is pleased when people admire her."
+
+"And you do?" said Pen, interested out of himself, and wondering at the
+crabbed homely little old man.
+
+"It's a habit, like taking snuff, or drinking drams," said the other.
+"I've been taking her these five years, and can't do without her. It was
+I made her. If she doesn't send for me, I shall follow her: but I know
+she'll send for me. She wants me. Some day she'll marry, and fling me
+over, as I do the end of this cigar."
+
+The little flaming spark dropped into the water below, and disappeared;
+and Pen, as he rode home that night, actually thought about somebody but
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The happy Village
+
+
+Until the enemy had retired altogether from before the place, Major
+Pendennis was resolved to keep his garrison in Fairoaks. He did not
+appear to watch Pen's behaviour or to put any restraint on his nephew's
+actions, but he managed nevertheless to keep the lad constantly under his
+eye or those of his agents, and young Arthur's comings and goings were
+quite well known to his vigilant guardian.
+
+I suppose there is scarcely any man who reads this or any other novel but
+has been baulked in love some time or the other, by fate and
+circumstance, by falsehood of women, or his own fault. Let that worthy
+friend recall his own sensations under the circumstances, and apply them
+as illustrative of Mr. Pen's anguish. Ah! what weary nights and sickening
+fevers! Ah! what mad desires dashing up against some rock of obstruction
+or indifference, and flung back again from the unimpressionable granite!
+If a list could be made this very night in London of the groans,
+thoughts, imprecations of tossing lovers, what a catalogue it would be! I
+wonder what a percentage of the male population of the metropolis will be
+lying awake at two or three o'clock to-morrow morning, counting the hours
+as they go by knelling drearily, and rolling from left to right,
+restless, yearning and heart-sick? What a pang it is! I never knew a man
+die of love certainly, but I have known a twelve-stone man go down to
+nine-stone five under a disappointed passion, so that pretty nearly
+quarter of him may be said to have perished: and that is no small
+portion. He has come back to his old size subsequently; perhaps is bigger
+than ever: very likely some new affection has closed round his heart and
+ribs and made them comfortable, and young Pen is a man who will console
+himself like the rest of us. We say this lest the ladies should be
+disposed to deplore him prematurely, or be seriously uneasy with regard
+to his complaint. His mother was, but what will not a maternal fondness
+fear or invent? "Depend on it, my dear creature," Major Pendennis would
+say gallantly to her, "the boy will recover. As soon as we get her out of
+the country we will take him somewhere, and show him a little life.
+Meantime make yourself easy about him. Half a fellow's pangs at losing a
+woman result from vanity more than affection. To be left by a woman is
+the deuce and all, to be sure; but look how easily we leave 'em."
+
+Mrs. Pendennis did not know. This sort of knowledge had by no means come
+within the simple lady's scope. Indeed she did not like the subject or to
+talk of it: her heart had had its own little private misadventure and she
+had borne up against it and cured it: and perhaps she had not much
+patience with other folk's passions, except, of course, Arthur's, whose
+sufferings she made her own, feeling indeed very likely in many of the
+boy's illnesses and pains a great deal more than Pen himself endured. And
+she watched him through this present grief with a jealous silent
+sympathy; although, as we have said, he did not talk to her of his
+unfortunate condition.
+
+The Major must be allowed to have had not a little merit and forbearance,
+and to have exhibited a highly creditable degree of family affection. The
+life at Fairoaks was uncommonly dull to a man who had the entree of half
+the houses in London, and was in the habit of making his bow in three or
+four drawing-rooms of a night. A dinner with Doctor Portman or a
+neighbouring Squire now and then; a dreary rubber at backgammon with the
+widow, who did her utmost to amuse him; these were the chief of his
+pleasures. He used to long for the arrival of the bag with the letters,
+and he read every word of the evening paper. He doctored himself too,
+assiduously,--a course of quiet living would suit him well, he thought,
+after the London banquets. He dressed himself laboriously every morning
+and afternoon: he took regular exercise up and down the terrace walk.
+Thus with his cane, his toilet, his medicine-chest, his backgammon-box,
+and his newspaper, this worthy and worldly philosopher fenced himself
+against ennui; and if he did not improve each shining hour, like the bees
+by the widow's garden wall, Major Pendennis made one hour after another
+pass as he could, and rendered his captivity just tolerable. After this
+period it was remarked that he was fond of bringing round the
+conversation to the American war, the massacre of Wyoming and the
+brilliant actions of Saint Lucie, the fact being that he had a couple of
+volumes of the 'Annual Register' in his bedroom, which he sedulously
+studied. It is thus a well-regulated man will accommodate himself to
+circumstances, and show himself calmly superior to fortune.
+
+Pen sometimes took the box at backgammon of a night, or would listen to
+his mother's simple music of summer evenings--but he was very restless
+and wretched in spite of all: and has been known to be up before the
+early daylight even; and down at a carp-pond in Clavering Park, a dreary
+pool with innumerable whispering rushes and green alders, where a
+milkmaid drowned herself in the Baronet's grandfather's time, and her
+ghost was said to walk still. But Pen did not drown himself, as perhaps
+his mother fancied might be his intention. He liked to go and fish there,
+and think and think at leisure, as the float quivered in the little
+eddies of the pond, and the fish flapped about him. If he got a bite he
+was excited enough: and in this way occasionally brought home carps,
+tenches, and eels, which the Major cooked in the Continental fashion.
+
+By this pond, and under a tree, which was his favourite resort, Pen
+composed a number of poems suitable to his circumstances over which
+verses he blushed in after days, wondering how he could ever have
+invented such rubbish. And as for the tree, why it is in a hollow of this
+very tree, where he used to put his tin-box of ground-bait, and other
+fishing commodities, that he afterwards--but we are advancing matters.
+Suffice it to say, he wrote poems and relieved himself very much. When a
+man's grief or passion is at this point, it may be loud, but it is not
+very severe. When a gentleman is cudgelling his brain to find any rhyme
+for sorrow, besides borrow and to-morrow, his woes are nearer at an end
+than he thinks for. So were Pen's. He had his hot and cold fits, his days
+of sullenness and peevishness, and of blank resignation and despondency,
+and occasional mad paroxysms of rage and longing, in which fits Rebecca
+would be saddled and galloped fiercely about the country, or into
+Chatteris, her rider gesticulating wildly on her back, and astonishing
+carters and turnpikemen as he passed, crying out the name of the false
+one.
+
+Mr. Foker became a very frequent and welcome visitor at Fairoaks during
+this period, where his good spirits and oddities always amused the Major
+and Pendennis, while they astonished the widow and little Laura not a
+little. His tandem made a great sensation in Clavering market-place;
+where he upset a market stall, and cut Mrs. Pybus's poodle over the
+shaven quarters, and drank a glass of raspberry bitters at the Clavering
+Arms. All the society in the little place heard who he was, and looked
+out his name in their Peerages. He was so young, and their books so old,
+that his name did not appear in many of their volumes; and his mamma, now
+quite an antiquated lady, figured amongst the progeny of the Earl of
+Rosherville, as Lady Agnes Milton still. But his name, wealth, and
+honourable lineage were speedily known about Clavering, where you may be
+sure that poor Pen's little transaction with the Chatteris actress was
+also pretty freely discussed.
+
+Looking at the little old town of Clavering St. Mary from the London road
+as it runs by the lodge at Fairoaks, and seeing the rapid and shining
+Brawl winding down from the town and skirting the woods of Clavering
+Park, and the ancient church tower and peaked roofs of the houses rising
+up amongst trees and old walls, behind which swells a fair background of
+sunshiny hills that stretch from Clavering westwards towards the sea--the
+place looks so cheery and comfortable that many a traveller's heart must
+have yearned towards it from the coach-top, and he must have thought that
+it was in such a calm friendly nook he would like to shelter at the end
+of life's struggle. Tom Smith, who used to drive the Alacrity coach,
+would often point to a tree near the river, from which a fine view of the
+church and town was commanded, and inform his companion on the box that
+"Artises come and take hoff the Church from that there tree--It was a
+Habby once, sir:"--and indeed a pretty view it is, which I recommend to
+Mr. Stanfield or Mr. Roberts, for their next tour.
+
+Like Constantinople seen from the Bosphorus; like Mrs. Rougemont viewed
+in her box from the opposite side of the house; like many an object which
+we pursue in life, and admire before we have attained it; Clavering is
+rather prettier at a distance than it is on a closer acquaintance. The
+town so cheerful of aspect a few furlongs off, looks very blank and
+dreary. Except on market days there is nobody in the streets. The clack
+of a pair of pattens echoes through half the place, and you may hear the
+creaking of the rusty old ensign at the Clavering Arms, without being
+disturbed by any other noise. There has not been a ball in the Assembly
+Rooms since the Clavering volunteers gave one to their Colonel, the old
+Sir Francis Clavering; and the stables which once held a great part of
+that brilliant, but defunct regiment, are now cheerless and empty, except
+on Thursdays, when the farmers put up there, and their tilted carts and
+gigs make a feeble show of liveliness in the place, or on Petty Sessions,
+when the magistrates attend in what used to be the old card-room.
+
+On the south side of the market rises up the church, with its great grey
+towers, of which the sun illuminates the delicate carving; deepening the
+shadows of the huge buttresses, and gilding the glittering windows and
+flaming vanes. The image of the Patroness of the Church was wrenched out
+of the porch centuries ago: such of the statues of saints as were within
+reach of stones and hammer at that period of pious demolition, are maimed
+and headless, and of those who were out of fire, only Doctor Portman
+knows the names and history, for his curate, Smirke, is not much of an
+antiquarian, and Mr. Simcoe (husband of the Honourable Mrs. Simcoe),
+incumbent and architect of the Chapel of Ease in the lower town, thinks
+them the abomination of desolation.
+
+The Rectory is a stout broad-shouldered brick house, of the reign of
+Anne. It communicates with the church and market by different gates,
+and stands at the opening of Yew-tree Lane, where the Grammar School
+(Rev. ---- Wapshot) is; Yew-tree Cottage (Miss Flather); the butchers'
+slaughtering-house, an old barn or brew-house of the Abbey times, and the
+Misses Finucane's establishment for young ladies. The two schools had
+their pews in the loft on each side of the organ, until the Abbey Church
+getting rather empty, through the falling-off of the congregation, who
+were inveigled to the Heresy-shop in the lower town, the Doctor induced
+the Misses Finucane to bring their pretty little flock downstairs; and
+the young ladies' bonnets make a tolerable show in the rather vacant
+aisles. Nobody is in the great pew of the Clavering family, except the
+statues of defunct baronets and their ladies: there is Sir Poyntz
+Clavering, Knight and Baronet, kneeling in a square beard opposite his
+wife in a ruff: a very fat lady, the Dame Rebecca Clavering, in
+alto-relievo, is borne up to Heaven by two little blue-veined angels, who
+seem to have a severe task--and so forth. How well in after life Pen
+remembered those effigies, and how often in youth he scanned them as the
+Doctor was grumbling the sermon from the pulpit, and Smirke's mild head
+and forehead curl peered over the great prayer-book in the desk!
+
+The Fairoaks folks were constant at the old church; their servants had a
+pew, so had the Doctor's, so had Wapshot's, and those of Misses
+Finucane's establishment, three maids and a very nice-looking young man
+in a livery. The Wapshot Family were numerous and faithful. Glanders and
+his children regularly came to church: so did one of the apothecaries.
+Mrs. Pybus went, turn and turn about, to the Low Town church, and to the
+Abbey: the Charity School and their families of course came; Wapshot's
+boys made a good cheerful noise, scuffling with their feet as they
+marched into church and up the organ-loft stair, and blowing their noses
+a good deal during the service. To be brief, the congregation looked as
+decent as might be in these bad times. The Abbey Church was furnished
+with a magnificent screen, and many hatchments and heraldic tombstones.
+The Doctor spent a great part of his income in beautifying his darling
+place; he had endowed it with a superb painted window, bought in the
+Netherlands, and an organ grand enough for a cathedral.
+
+But in spite of organ and window, in consequence of the latter very
+likely, which had come out of a Papistical place of worship and was
+blazoned all over with idolatry, Clavering New Church prospered
+scandalously in the teeth of Orthodoxy; and many of the Doctor's
+congregation deserted to Mr. Simcoe and the honourable woman his wife.
+Their efforts had thinned the very Ebenezer hard by them, which building
+before Simcoe's advent used to be so full, that you could see the backs
+of the congregation squeezing out of the arched windows thereof. Mr.
+Simcoe's tracts fluttered into the doors of all the Doctor's cottages,
+and were taken as greedily as honest Mrs. Portman's soup, with the
+quality of which the graceless people found fault. With the folks at the
+Ribbon Factory situated by the weir on the Brawl side, and round which
+the Low Town had grown, Orthodoxy could make no way at all. Quiet Miss
+Myra was put out of court by impetuous Mrs. Simcoe and her female
+aides-de-camp. Ah, it was a hard burthen for the Doctor's lady to
+bear, to behold her husband's congregation dwindling away; to give
+the precedence on the few occasions when they met to a notorious
+low-churchman's wife who was the daughter of an Irish Peer; to know that
+there was a party in Clavering, their own town of Clavering, on which her
+Doctor spent a great deal more than his professional income, who held him
+up to odium because he played a rubber at whist; and pronounced him to be
+a Heathen because he went to the play. In her grief she besought him to
+give up the play and the rubber,--indeed they could scarcely get a table
+now, so dreadful was the outcry against the sport,--but the Doctor
+declared that he would do what he thought right, and what the great and
+good George the Third did (whose Chaplain he had been): and as for giving
+up whist because those silly folks cried out against it, he would play
+dummy to the end of his days with his wife and Myra, rather than yield to
+their despicable persecutions.
+
+Of the two families, owners of the Factory (which had spoiled the Brawl
+as a trout-stream and brought all the mischief into the town), the senior
+partner, Mr. Rolt, went to Ebenezer; the junior, Mr. Barker, to the New
+Church. In a word, people quarrelled in this little place a great deal
+more than neighbours do in London; and in the Book Club, which the
+prudent and conciliating Pendennis had set up, and which ought to have
+been a neutral territory, they bickered so much that nobody scarcely was
+ever seen in the reading-room, except Smirke, who, though he kept up a
+faint amity with the Simcoe faction, had still a taste for magazines and
+light worldly literature; and old Glanders, whose white head and grizzly
+moustache might be seen at the window; and of course, little Mrs. Pybus,
+who looked at everybody's letters as the Post brought them (for the
+Clavering Reading-room, as every one knows, used to be held at Baker's
+Library, London Street, formerly Hog Lane), and read every advertisement
+in the paper.
+
+It may be imagined how great a sensation was created in this amiable
+little community when the news reached it of Mr. Pen's love-passages at
+Chatteris. It was carried from house to house, and formed the subject of
+talk at high-church, low-church, and no-church tables; it was canvassed
+by the Misses Finucane and their teachers, and very likely debated by the
+young ladies in the dormitories for what we know; Wapshot's big boys had
+their version of the story, and eyed Pen curiously as he sate in his pew
+at church, or raised the finger of scorn at him as he passed through
+Chatteris. They always hated him and called him Lord Pendennis, because
+he did not wear corduroys as they did, and rode a horse, and gave himself
+the airs of a buck.
+
+And if the truth must be told, it was Mrs. Portman herself who was the
+chief narrator of the story of Pen's loves. Whatever tales this candid
+woman heard, she was sure to impart them to her neighbours; and after she
+had been put into possession of Pen's secret by the little scandal at
+Chatteris, poor Doctor Portman knew that it would next day be about the
+parish of which he was the Rector. And so indeed it was; the whole
+society there had the legend--at the news-room, at the milliner's, at the
+shoe-shop, and the general warehouse at the corner of the market; at Mrs.
+Pybus's, at the Glanders's, at the Honourable Mrs. Simcoe's soiree, at
+the Factory; nay, through the mill itself the tale was current in a few
+hours, and young Arthur Pendennis's madness was in every mouth.
+
+All Dr. Portman's acquaintances barked out upon him when he walked the
+street the next day. The poor divine knew that his Betsy was the author
+of the rumour, and groaned in spirit. Well, well,--it must have come in a
+day or two, and it was as well that the town should have the real story.
+What the Clavering folks thought of Mrs. Pendennis for spoiling her son,
+and of that precocious young rascal of an Arthur for daring to propose to
+a play-actress, need not be told here. If pride exists amongst any folks
+in our country, and assuredly we have enough of it, there is no pride
+more deep-seated than that of twopenny old gentlewomen in small towns.
+"Gracious goodness," the cry was, "how infatuated the mother is about
+that pert and headstrong boy who gives himself the airs of a lord on his
+blood-horse, and for whom our society is not good enough, and who would
+marry an odious painted actress off a booth, where very likely he wants
+to rant himself. If dear good Mr. Pendennis had been alive this scandal
+would never have happened."
+
+No more it would, very likely, nor should we have been occupied in
+narrating Pen's history. It was true that he gave himself airs to the
+Clavering folks. Naturally haughty and frank, their cackle and small talk
+and small dignities bored him, and he showed a contempt which he could
+not conceal. The Doctor and the Curate were the only people Pen cared for
+in the place--even Mrs. Portman shared in the general distrust of him,
+and of his mother, the widow, who kept herself aloof from the village
+society, and was sneered at accordingly, because she tried, forsooth, to
+keep her head up with the great County families. She, indeed! Mrs. Barker
+at the Factory has four times the butcher's meat that goes up to
+Fairoaks, with all their fine airs.
+
+Etc. etc. etc.: let the reader fill up these details according to his
+liking and experience of village scandal. They will suffice to show how
+it was that a good woman occupied solely in doing her duty to her
+neighbour and her children, and an honest, brave lad, impetuous, and full
+of good, and wishing well to every mortal alive found enemies and
+detractors amongst people to whom they were superior, and to whom they
+had never done anything like harm. The Clavering curs were yelping all
+round the house of Fairoaks, and delighted to pull Pen down.
+
+Doctor Portman and Smirke were both cautious of informing the widow of
+the constant outbreak of calumny which was pursuing poor Pen, though
+Glanders, who was a friend of the house, kept him au courant. It may be
+imagined what his indignation was: was there any man in the village whom
+be could call to account? Presently some wags began to chalk up
+'Fotheringay for ever!' and other sarcastic allusions to late
+transactions, at Fairoaks' gate. Another brought a large playbill from
+Chatteris, and wafered it there one night. On one occasion Pen, riding
+through the Lower Town, fancied he heard the Factory boys jeer him; and
+finally going through the Doctor's gate into the churchyard, where some
+of Wapshot's boys were lounging, the biggest of them, a young gentleman
+about twenty years of age, son of a neighbouring small Squire, who lived
+in the doubtful capacity of parlour-boarder with Mr. Wapshot, flung
+himself into a theatrical attitude near a newly-made grave, and began
+repeating Hamlet's verses over Ophelia, with a hideous leer at Pen. The
+young fellow was so enraged that he rushed at Hobnell Major with a shriek
+very much resembling an oath, cut him furiously across the face with the
+riding-whip which he carried, flung it away, calling upon the cowardly
+villain to defend himself, and in another minute knocked the bewildered
+young ruffian into the grave which was just waiting for a different
+lodger.
+
+Then with his fists clenched, and his face quivering with passion and
+indignation, he roared out to Mr. Hobnell's gaping companions, to know if
+any of the blackguards would come on? But they held back with a growl,
+and retreated as Doctor Portman came up to his wicket, and Mr. Hobnell,
+with his nose and lip bleeding piteously, emerged from the grave.
+
+Pen, looking death and defiance at the lads, who retreated towards' their
+side of the churchyard, walked back again through the Doctor's wicket,
+and was interrogated by that gentleman. The young fellow was so agitated
+he could scarcely speak. His voice broke into a sob as he answered. "The
+---- coward insulted me, sir," he said; and the Doctor passed over the
+oath, and respected the emotion of the honest suffering young heart.
+
+Pendennis the elder, who like a real man of the world had a proper and
+constant dread of the opinion of his neighbour, was prodigiously annoyed
+by the absurd little tempest which was blowing in Chatteris, and tossing
+about Master Pen's reputation. Doctor Portman and Captain Glanders had to
+support the charges of the whole Chatteris society against the young
+reprobate, who was looked upon as a monster of crime. Pen did not say
+anything about the churchyard scuffle at home; but went over to Baymouth,
+and took counsel with his friend Harry Foker, Esq., who drove over his
+drag presently to the Clavering Arms, whence he sent Stoopid with a note
+to Thomas Hobnell, Esq., at the Rev. J. Wapshot's, and a civil message to
+ask when he should wait upon that gentleman.
+
+Stoopid brought back word that the note had been opened by Mr. Hobnell,
+and read to half a dozen of the big boys, on whom it seemed to make a
+great impression; and that after consulting together, and laughing, Mr.
+Hobnell said he would send an answer "arter arternoon school, which the
+bell was a-ringing: and Mr. Wapshot he came out in his Master's gownd."
+Stoopid was learned in academical costume, having attended Mr. Foker at
+St. Boniface.
+
+Mr. Foker went out to see the curiosities of Clavering meanwhile; but
+not having a taste for architecture, Doctor Portman's fine church did not
+engage his attention much and he pronounced the tower to be as mouldy as
+an old Stilton cheese. He walked down the street and looked at the few
+shops there; he saw Captain Glanders at the window of the Reading-room,
+and having taken a good stare at that gentleman, he wagged his head at
+him in token of satisfaction; he inquired the price of meat at the
+butcher's with an air of the greatest interest, and asked "when was next
+killing day?" he flattened his little nose against Madame Fribsby's
+window to see if haply there was a pretty workwoman in her premises; but
+there was no face more comely than the doll's or dummy's wearing the
+French cap in the window, only that of Madame Fribsby herself, dimly
+visible in the parlour, reading a novel. That object was not of
+sufficient interest to keep Mr. Foker very long in contemplation, and so
+having exhausted the town and the inn stables, in which there were no
+cattle, save the single old pair of posters that earned a scanty
+livelihood by transporting the gentry round about to the county dinners,
+Mr. Foker was giving himself up to ennui entirely, when a messenger from
+Mr. Hobnell was at length announced.
+
+It was no other than Mr. Wapshot himself, who came with an air of great
+indignation, and holding Pen's missive in his hand, asked Mr. Foker "how
+dared he bring such an unchristian message as a challenge to a boy of his
+school?"
+
+In fact Pen had written a note to his adversary of the day before,
+telling him that if after the chastisement which his insolence richly
+deserved, he felt inclined to ask the reparation which was usually given
+amongst gentlemen, Mr. Arthur Pendennis's friend, Mr. Henry Foker, was
+empowered to make any arrangements for the satisfaction of Mr. Hobnell.
+
+"And so he sent you with the answer--did he, sir?" Mr. Foker said,
+surveying the Schoolmaster in his black coat and clerical costume.
+
+"If he had accepted this wicked challenge, I should have flogged him,"
+Mr. Wapshot said, and gave Mr. Foker a glance which seemed to say, "and I
+should like very much to flog you too."
+
+"Uncommon kind of you, sir, I'm sure," said Pen's emissary. "I told my
+principal that I didn't think the other man would fight," he continued
+with a great air of dignity. "He prefers being flogged to fighting, sir,
+I dare say. May I offer you any refreshment, Mr.? I haven't the advantage
+of your name."
+
+"My name is Wapshot, sir, and I am Master of the Grammar School of this
+town, sir," cried the other: "and I want no refreshment, sir, I thank
+you, and have no desire to make your acquaintance, sir."
+
+"I didn't seek yours, sir, I'm sure," replied Mr. Foker. "In affairs of
+this sort, you see, I think it is a pity that the clergy should be called
+in, but there's no accounting for tastes, sir."
+
+"I think it's a pity that boys should talk about committing murder, sir,
+as lightly as you do," roared the Schoolmaster; "and if I had you in my
+school----"
+
+"I dare say you would teach me better, sir," Mr. Foker said, with a bow.
+"Thank you, sir. I've finished my education, sir, and ain't a-going back
+to school, sir--when I do, I'll remember your kind offer, sir. John, show
+this gentleman downstairs--and, of course, as Mr. Hobnell likes being
+thrashed, we can have no objection, sir, and we shall be very happy to
+accommodate him, whenever he comes our way."
+
+And with this, the young fellow bowed the elder gentleman out of the
+room, and sate down and wrote a note off to Pen, in which he informed the
+latter that Mr. Hobnell was not disposed to fight, and proposed to put up
+with the caning which Pen had administered to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+More Storms in the Puddle
+
+
+Pen's conduct in this business of course was soon made public, and
+angered his friend Doctor Portman not a little: while it only amused
+Major Pendennis. As for the good Mrs. Pendennis, she was almost
+distracted when she heard of the squabble, and of Pen's unchristian
+behaviour. All sorts of wretchedness, discomfort, crime, annoyance,
+seemed to come out of this transaction in which the luckless boy had
+engaged; and she longed more than ever to see him out of Chatteris for a
+while,--anywhere removed from the woman who had brought him into so much
+trouble.
+
+Pen when remonstrated with by this fond parent, and angrily rebuked by
+the Doctor for his violence and ferocious intentions, took the matter au
+grand serieux, with the happy conceit and gravity of youth: said that he
+himself was very sorry for the affair, that the insult had come upon him
+without the slightest provocation on his part; that he would permit no
+man to insult him upon this head without vindicating his own honour, and
+appealing with great dignity to his uncle, asked whether he could have
+acted otherwise as a gentleman, than as he did in resenting the outrage
+offered to him, and in offering satisfaction to the person chastised?
+
+"Vous allez trop vite, my good sir," said the uncle, rather puzzled, for
+he had been indoctrinating his nephew with some of his own notions upon
+the point of honour--old-world notions savouring of the camp and pistol a
+great deal more than our soberer opinions of the present day--"between
+men of the world I don't say; but between two schoolboys, this sort of
+thing is ridiculous, my dear boy--perfectly ridiculous."
+
+"It is extremely wicked, and unlike my son," said Mrs. Pendennis, with
+tears in her eyes, and bewildered with the obstinacy of the boy.
+
+Pen kissed her, and said with great pomposity, "Women, dear mother, don't
+understand these matters--I put myself into Foker's hands--I had no other
+course to pursue."
+
+Major Pendennis grinned and shrugged his shoulders. The young ones were
+certainly making great progress, he thought. Mrs. Pendennis declared that
+that Foker was a wicked horrid little wretch, and was sure that he would
+lead her dear boy into mischief, if Pen went to the same College with
+him. "I have a great mind not to let him go at all," she said: and only
+that she remembered that the lad's father had always destined him for the
+College in which he had had his own brief education, very likely the fond
+mother would have put a veto upon his going to the University.
+
+That he was to go, and at the next October term, had been arranged
+between all the authorities who presided over the lad's welfare. Foker
+had promised to introduce him to the right set; and Major Pendennis laid
+great store upon Pen's introduction into College life and society by this
+admirable young gentleman. "Mr. Foker knows the very best young men now
+at the University," the Major said, "and Pen will form acquaintances
+there who will be of the greatest advantage through life to him. The
+young Marquis of Plinlimmon is there, eldest son of the Duke of Saint
+David's--Lord Magnus Charters is there, Lord Runnymede's son, and a first
+cousin of Mr. Foker (Lady Runnymede, my dear, was Lady Agatha Milton, you
+of course remember); Lady Agnes will certainly invite him to Logwood; and
+far from being alarmed at his intimacy with her son, who is a singular
+and humorous, but most prudent and amiable young man, to whom, I am sure,
+we are under every obligation for his admirable conduct in the affair of
+the Fotheringay marriage, I look upon it as one of the very luckiest
+things which could have happened to Pen, that he should have formed an
+intimacy with this most amusing young gentleman."
+
+Helen sighed, she supposed the Major knew best. Mr. Foker had been very
+kind in the wretched business with Miss Costigan, certainly, and she was
+grateful to him. But she could not feel otherwise than a dim presentiment
+of evil; and all these quarrels, and riots, and worldliness, scared her
+about the fate of her boy.
+
+Doctor Portman was decidedly of opinion that Pen should go to College. He
+hoped the lad would read, and have a moderate indulgence of the best
+society too. He was of opinion that Pen would distinguish himself: Smirke
+spoke very highly of his proficiency: the Doctor himself had heard him
+construe, and thought he acquitted himself remarkably well. That he
+should go out of Chatteris was a great point at any rate; and Pen, who
+was distracted from his private grief by the various rows and troubles
+which had risen round about him, gloomily said he would obey.
+
+There were assizes, races, and the entertainments and the flux of company
+consequent upon them, at Chatteris, during a part of the months of August
+and September, and Miss Fotheringay still continued to act, and take
+farewell of the audiences at the Chatteris Theatre during that time.
+Nobody seemed to be particularly affected by her presence, or her
+announced departure, except those persons whom we have named; nor could
+the polite county folks, who had houses in London, and very likely
+admired the Fotheringay prodigiously in the capital, when they had been
+taught to do so by the Fashion which set in in her favour, find anything
+remarkable in the actress performing on the little Chatteris boards. Many
+genius and many a quack, for that matter, has met with a similar fate
+before and since Miss Costigan's time. This honest woman meanwhile bore
+up against the public neglect, and any other crosses or vexations which
+she might have in life, with her usual equanimity; and ate, drank, acted,
+slept, with that regularity and comfort which belongs to people of her
+temperament. What a deal of grief, care, and other harmful excitement
+does a healthy dulness and cheerful insensibility avoid! Nor do I mean to
+say that Virtue is not Virtue because it is never tempted to go astray;
+only that dulness is a much finer gift than we give it credit for being;
+and that some people are very lucky whom Nature has endowed with a good
+store of that great anodyne.
+
+Pen used to go drearily in and out from the play at Chatteris during this
+season, and pretty much according to his fancy. His proceedings tortured
+his mother not a little, and her anxiety would have led her often to
+interfere, had not the Major constantly checked, and at the same time
+encouraged her; for the wily man of the world fancied he saw that a
+favourable turn had occurred in Pen's malady. It was the violent efflux
+of versification, among other symptoms, which gave Pen's guardian and
+physician satisfaction. He might be heard spouting verses in the
+shrubbery walks, or muttering them between his teeth as he sat with the
+home party of evenings. One day prowling about the house in Pen's
+absence, the Major found a great book full of verses in the lad's study.
+They were in English, and in Latin; quotations from the classic authors
+were given in the scholastic manner in the foot-notes. He can't be very
+bad, wisely thought the Pall-Mall Philosopher: and he made Pen's mother
+remark (not, perhaps, without a secret feeling of disappointment, for she
+loved romance like other soft women), that the young gentleman during the
+last fortnight came home quite hungry to dinner at night, and also showed
+a very decent appetite at the breakfast-table in the morning. "Gad, I
+wish I could," said the Major, thinking ruefully of his dinner pills.
+"The boy begins to sleep well, depend upon that." It was cruel, but it
+was true.
+
+Having no other soul to confide in--for he could not speak to his mother
+of his loves and disappointments--his uncle treated them in a scornful
+and worldly tone, which, though carefully guarded and polite, yet jarred
+greatly on the feelings of Mr. Pen--and Foker was much too coarse to
+appreciate those refined sentimental secrets--the lad's friendship for
+the Curate redoubled, or rather, he was never tired of having Smirke for
+a listener on that one subject. What is a lovee without a confidant? Pen
+employed Mr. Smirke, as Corydon does the elm-tree, to cut out his
+mistress's name upon. He made him echo with the name of the beautiful
+Amaryllis. When men have left off playing the tune, they do not care much
+for the pipe: but Pen thought he had a great friendship for Smirke,
+because he could sigh out his loves and griefs into his tutor's ears; and
+Smirke had his own reasons for always being ready at the lad's call.
+
+Pen's affection gushed out in a multitude of sonnets to the friend of his
+heart, as he styled the Curate, which the other received with great
+sympathy. He plied Smirke with Latin Sapphics and Alcaics. The love-songs
+multiplied under his fluent pen; and Smirke declared and believed that
+they were beautiful. On the other hand, Pen expressed a boundless
+gratitude to think that Heaven should have sent him such a friend at such
+a moment. He presented his tutor with his best-bound books, and his gold
+guard-chain, and wanted him to take his double-barrelled gun. He went
+into Chatteris and got a gold pencil-case on credit (for he had no money,
+and indeed was still in debt to Smirke for some of the Fotheringay
+presents), which he presented to Smirke, with an inscription indicative
+of his unalterable and eternal regard for the Curate; who of course was
+pleased with every mark of the boy's attachment.
+
+The poor Curate was naturally very much dismayed at the contemplated
+departure of his pupil. When Arthur should go, Smirke's occupation and
+delight would go too. What pretext could he find for a daily visit to
+Fairoaks and that kind word or glance from the lady there, which was as
+necessary to the Curate as the frugal dinner which Madame Fribsby served
+him? Arthur gone, he would only be allowed to make visits like any other
+acquaintance: little Laura could not accommodate him by learning the
+Catechism more than once a week: he had curled himself like ivy round
+Fairoaks: he pined at the thought that he must lose his hold of the
+place. Should he speak his mind and go down on his knees to the widow? He
+thought over any indications in her behaviour which flattered his hopes.
+She had praised his sermons three weeks before: she had thanked him
+exceedingly for his present of a melon, for a small dinner-party which
+Mrs. Pendennis gave: she said she should always be grateful to him for
+his kindness to Arthur, and when he declared that there were no bounds to
+his love and affection for that dear boy, she had certainly replied in a
+romantic manner, indicating her own strong gratitude and regard to all
+her son's friends. Should he speak out?--or should he delay? If be spoke
+and she refused him, it was awful to think that the gate of Fairoaks
+might be shut upon him for ever--and within that door lay all the world
+for Mr. Smirke.
+
+Thus, oh friendly readers, we see how every man in the world has his own
+private griefs and business, by which he is more cast down or occupied
+than by the affairs or sorrows of any other person. While Mrs. Pendennis
+is disquieting herself about losing her son, and that anxious hold she
+has had of him, as long as he has remained in the mother's nest, whence
+he is about to take flight into the great world beyond--while the Major's
+great soul chafes and frets, inwardly vexed as he thinks what great
+parties are going on in London, and that he might be sunning himself in
+the glances of Dukes and Duchesses, but for those cursed affairs which
+keep him in a wretched little country hole--while Pen is tossing between
+his passion and a more agreeable sensation, unacknowledged yet, but
+swaying him considerably, namely, his longing to see the world--Mr.
+Smirke has a private care watching at his bedside, and sitting behind him
+on his pony; and is no more satisfied than the rest of us. How lonely we
+are in the world; how selfish and secret, everybody! You and your wife
+have pressed the same pillow for forty years and fancy yourselves united.
+Psha, does she cry out when you have the gout, or do you lie awake when
+she has the toothache? Your artless daughter, seemingly all innocence and
+devoted to her mamma and her piano-lesson, is thinking of neither, but of
+the young Lieutenant with whom she danced at the last ball--the honest
+frank boy just returned from school is secretly speculating upon the
+money you will give him, and the debts he owes the tart-man. The old
+grandmother crooning in the corner and bound to another world within a
+few months, has some business or cares which are quite private and her
+own--very likely she is thinking of fifty years back, and that night when
+she made such an impression, and danced a cotillon with the Captain
+before your father proposed for her: or, what a silly little overrated
+creature your wife is, and how absurdly you are infatuated about her--
+and, as for your wife--O philosophic reader, answer and say,--Do you tell
+her all? Ah, sir--a distinct universe walks about under your hat and
+under mine--all things in nature are different to each--the woman we look
+at has not the same features, the dish we eat from has not the same taste
+to the one and the other--you and I are but a pair of infinite
+isolations, with some fellow-islands a little more or less near to us.
+Let us return, however, to the solitary Smirke.
+
+Smirke had one confidante for his passion--that most injudicious woman,
+Madame Fribsby. How she became Madame Fribsby, nobody knows: she had left
+Clavering to go to a milliner's in London as Miss Fribsby--she pretended
+that she had got the rank in Paris during her residence in that city. But
+how could the French king, were he ever so much disposed, give her any
+such title? We shall not inquire into this mystery, however. Suffice to
+say, she went away from home a bouncing young lass; she returned a rather
+elderly character, with a Madonna front and a melancholy countenance--
+bought the late Mrs. Harbottle's business for a song--took her elderly
+mother to live with her; was very good to the poor, was constant at
+church, and had the best of characters. But there was no one in all
+Clavering, not Mrs. Portman herself, who read so many novels as Madame
+Fribsby. She had plenty of time for this amusement, for, in truth, very
+few people besides the folks at the Rectory and Fairoaks employed her;
+and by a perpetual perusal of such works (which were by no means so moral
+or edifying in the days of which we write, as they are at present) she
+had got to be so absurdly sentimental, that in her eyes life was nothing
+but an immense love-match; and she never could see two people together,
+but she fancied they were dying for one another.
+
+On the day after Mrs. Pendennis's visit to the Curate, which we have
+recorded many pages back, Madame Fribsby settled in her mind that Mr.
+Smirke must be in love with the widow, and did everything in her power to
+encourage this passion on both sides. Mrs. Pendennis she very seldom saw,
+indeed, except in public, and in her pew at church. That lady had very
+little need of millinery, or made most of her own dresses and caps; but
+on the rare occasions when Madame Fribsby received visits from Mrs.
+Pendennis or paid her respects at Fairoaks, she never failed to entertain
+the widow with praises of the Curate, pointing out what an angelical man
+he was, how gentle, how studious, how lonely; and she would wonder that
+no lady would take pity upon him.
+
+Helen laughed at these sentimental remarks, and wondered that Madame
+herself did not compassionate her lodger, and console him. Madame Fribsby
+shook her Madonna front, "Mong cure a boco souffare," she said, laying
+her hand on the part she designated as her cure. "It est more en Espang,
+Madame," she said with a sigh. She was proud of her intimacy with the
+French language, and spoke it with more volubility than correctness. Mrs.
+Pendennis did not care to penetrate the secrets of this wounded heart:
+except to her few intimates she was a reserved and it may be a very proud
+woman; she looked upon her son's tutor merely as an attendant on that
+young Prince, to be treated with respect as a clergyman certainly, but
+with proper dignity as a dependant on the house of Pendennis. Nor were
+Madame's constant allusions to the Curate particularly agreeable to her.
+It required a very ingenious sentimental turn indeed to find out that the
+widow had a secret regard for Mr. Smirke, to which pernicious error
+however Madame Fribsby persisted in holding.
+
+Her lodger was very much more willing to talk on this subject with his
+soft-hearted landlady. Every time after that she praised the Curate to
+Mrs. Pendennis, she came away from the latter with the notion that the
+widow herself had been praising him. "Etre soul au monde est bien
+ouneeyoung," she would say, glancing up at a print of a French carbineer
+in a green coat and brass cuirass which decorated her apartment--"Depend
+upon it when Master Pendennis goes to College, his Ma will find herself
+very lonely. She is quite young yet.--You wouldn't suppose her to be
+five-and-twenty. Monsieur le Cury, song cure est touchy--j'ang suis sure
+--Je conny cela biang--Ally Monsieur Smirke."
+
+He softly blushed; he sighed; he hoped; he feared; he doubted; he
+sometimes yielded to the delightful idea--his pleasure was to sit in
+Madame Fribsby's apartment, and talk upon the subject, where, as the
+greater part of the conversation was carried on in French by the
+Milliner, and her old mother was deaf, that retired old individual (who
+had once been a housekeeper, wife and widow of a butler in the Clavering
+family) could understand scarce one syllable of their talk.
+
+Thus it was, that when Major Pendennis announced to his nephew's tutor
+that the young fellow would go to College in October, and that Mr.
+Smirke's valuable services would no longer be needful to his pupil, for
+which services the Major, who spoke as grandly as a lord, professed
+himself exceedingly grateful, and besought Mr. Smirke to command his
+interests in any way--thus it was, that the Curate felt that the critical
+moment was come for him, and was racked and tortured by those severe
+pangs which the occasion warranted.
+
+Madame Fribsby had, of course, taken the strongest interest in the
+progress of Mr. Pen's love affair with Miss Fotheringay. She had been
+over to Chatteris, and having seen that actress perform, had pronounced
+that she was old and overrated: and had talked over Master Pen's passion
+in her shop many and many a time to the half-dozen old maids, and old
+women in male clothes, who are to be found in little country towns, and
+who formed the genteel population of Clavering. Captain Glanders, H.P.,
+had pronounced that Pen was going to be a devil of a fellow, and had
+begun early: Mrs. Glanders had told him to check his horrid observations,
+and to respect his own wife, if he pleased. She said it would be a lesson
+to Helen for her pride and absurd infatuation about that boy. Mrs. Pybus
+said many people were proud of very small things, and for her part, she
+didn't know why an apothecary's wife should give herself such airs. Mrs.
+Wapshot called her daughters away from that side of the street, one day
+when Pen, on Rebecca, was stopping at the saddler's, to get a new lash to
+his whip--one and all of these people had made visits of curiosity to
+Fairoaks, and had tried to condole with the widow, or bring the subject
+of the Fotheringay affair on the tapis, and had been severally checked by
+the haughty reserve of Mrs. Pendennis, supported by the frigid politeness
+of the Major her brother.
+
+These rebuffs, however, did not put an end to the gossip, and slander
+went on increasing about the unlucky Fairoaks' family. Glanders (H.P.), a
+retired cavalry officer, whose half-pay and large family compelled him to
+fuddle himself with brandy-and-water instead of claret after he quitted
+the Dragoons, had the occasional entree at Fairoaks, and kept his friend
+the Major there informed of all the stories which were current at
+Clavering. Mrs. Pybus had taken an inside place by the coach to
+Chatteris, and gone to the George on purpose to get the particulars. Mrs.
+Speers's man, had treated Mr. Foker's servant to drink at Baymouth for a
+similar purpose. It was said that Pen had hanged himself for despair in
+the orchard, and that his uncle had cut him down; that, on the contrary,
+it was Miss Costigan who was jilted, and not young Arthur; and that the
+affair had only been hushed up by the payment of a large sum of money,
+the exact amount of which there were several people in Clavering could
+testify--the sum of course varying according to the calculation of the
+individual narrator of the story.
+
+Pen shook his mane and raged like a furious lion when these scandals,
+affecting Miss Costigan's honour and his own, came to his ears. Why was
+not Pybus a man (she had whiskers enough), that he might call her out and
+shoot her? Seeing Simcoe pass by, Pen glared at him so from his saddle on
+Rebecca, and clutched his whip in a manner so menacing, that that
+clergyman went home and wrote a sermon, or thought over a sermon (for he
+delivered oral testimony at great length), in which he spoke of Jezebel,
+theatrical entertainments (a double cut this--for Doctor Portman, the
+Rector of the old church, was known to frequent such), and of youth going
+to perdition, in a manner which made it clear to every capacity that Pen
+was the individual meant, and on the road alluded to. What stories more
+were there not against young Pendennis, whilst he sate sulking,
+Achilles-like in his tent, for the loss of his ravished Briseis?
+
+After the affair with Hobnell, Pen was pronounced to be a murderer as
+well as a profligate, and his name became a name of terror and a byword
+in Clavering. But this was not all; he was not the only one of the family
+about whom the village began to chatter, and his unlucky mother was the
+next to become a victim to their gossip.
+
+"It is all settled," said Mrs. Pybus to Mrs. Speers, "the boy is to go to
+College, and then the widow is to console herself."
+
+"He's been there every day, in the most open manner, my dear," continued
+Mrs. Speers.
+
+"Enough to make poor Mr. Pendennis turn in his grave," said Mrs. Wapshot.
+
+"She never liked him, that we know," says No. 1.
+
+"Married him for his money. Everybody knows that: was a penniless
+hanger-on of Lady Pontypool's," says No. 2.
+
+"It's rather too open, though, to encourage a lover under pretence of
+having a tutor for your son," cried No. 3.
+
+"Hush! here comes Mrs. Portman," some one said, as the good Rector's wife
+entered Madame Fribsby's shop, to inspect her monthly book of fashions
+just arrived from London. And the fact is that Madame Fribsby had been
+able to hold out no longer; and one day, after she and her lodger had
+been talking of Pen's approaching departure, and the Curate had gone off
+to give one of his last lessons to that gentleman, Madame Fribsby had
+communicated to Mrs. Pybus, who happened to step in with Mrs. Speers, her
+strong suspicion, her certainty almost, that there was an attachment
+between a certain clerical gentleman and a certain lady, whose naughty
+son was growing quite unmanageable, and that a certain marriage would
+take place pretty soon.
+
+Mrs. Portman saw it all, of course, when the matter was mentioned. What a
+sly fox that Curate was! He was low-church, and she never liked him. And
+to think of Mrs. Pendennis taking a fancy to him after she had been
+married to such a man as Mr. Pendennis! She could hardly stay five
+minutes at Madame Fribsby's, so eager was she to run to the Rectory and
+give Doctor Portman the news.
+
+When Doctor Portman heard this piece of intelligence, he was in such a
+rage with his curate, that his first movement was to break with Mr.
+Smirke, and to beg him to transfer his services to some other parish.
+"That milksop of a creature pretend to be worthy of such a woman as Mrs.
+Pendennis," broke out the Doctor: "where will impudence stop next!"
+
+"She is much too old for Mr. Smirke," Mrs. Portman remarked: "why, poor
+dear Mrs. Pendennis might be his mother almost."
+
+"You always choose the most charitable reason, Betsy," cried the Rector.
+"A matron with a son grown up--she would never think of marrying again."
+
+"You only think men should marry again, Doctor Portman, answered his
+lady, bridling up.
+
+"You stupid old woman," said the Doctor, "when I am gone, you shall marry
+whomsoever you like. I will leave orders in my will, my dear, to that
+effect: and I'll bequeath a ring to my successor, and my Ghost shall come
+and dance at your wedding."
+
+"It is cruel for a clergyman to talk so," the lady answered, with a ready
+whimper: but these little breezes used to pass very rapidly over the
+surface of the Doctor's domestic bliss; and were followed by a great calm
+and sunshine. The Doctor adopted a plan for soothing Mrs. Portman's
+ruffled countenance, which has a great effect when it is tried between a
+worthy couple who are sincerely fond of one another; and which, I think,
+becomes 'John Anderson' at three-score, just as much as it used to do
+when he was a black-haired young Jo of five-and-twenty.
+
+"Hadn't you better speak to Mr. Smirke, John?" Mrs Portman asked.
+
+"When Pen goes to College, cadit quaestio," replied the Rector, "Smirke's
+visits at Fairoaks will cease of themselves, and there will be no need
+to bother the widow. She has trouble enough on her hands, with the
+affairs of that silly young scapegrace, without being pestered by the
+tittle-tattle of this place. It is all an invention of that fool,
+Fribsby."
+
+"Against whom I always warned you,--you know I did, my dear John,"
+interposed Mrs. Portman.
+
+"That you did; you very often do, my love," the Doctor answered with a
+laugh. "It is not for want of warning on your part, I am sure, that I
+have formed my opinion of most women with whom we are acquainted. Madame
+Fribsby is a fool, and fond of gossip, and so are some other folks. But
+she is good to the poor: she takes care of her mother, and she comes to
+church twice every Sunday. And as for Smirke, my dear----" here the
+Doctor's face assumed for one moment a comical expression, which Mrs.
+Portman did not perceive (for she was looking out of the drawing-room
+window, and wondering what Mrs. Pybus could want cheapening fowls again
+in the market, when she had bad poultry from Livermore's two days
+before)--"and as for Mr. Smirke, my dear Betsy, will you promise me that
+you will never breathe to any mortal what I am going to tell you as a
+profound secret?"
+
+"What is it, my dear John!--of course I won't," answered the Rector's
+lady.
+
+"Well, then--I cannot say it is a fact, mind--but if you find that Smirke
+is at this moment--ay, and has been for years--engaged to a young lady, a
+Miss--a Miss Thompson, if you will have the name, who lives on Clapham
+Common--yes, on Clapham Common, not far from Mrs. Smirke's house, what
+becomes of your story then about Smirke and Mrs. Pendennis?"
+
+"Why did you not tell me this before?" asked the Doctor's wife.--"How
+long have you known it?--How we all of us have been deceived in that
+man!"
+
+"Why should I meddle in other folks' business, my dear?" the Doctor
+answered. "I know how to keep a secret--and perhaps this is only an
+invention like that other absurd story; at least, Madame Portman, I
+should never have told you this but for the other, which I beg you to
+contradict whenever you hear it." And so saying the Doctor went away to
+his study, and Mrs. Portman seeing that the day was a remarkably fine
+one, thought she would take advantage of the weather and pay a few
+visits.
+
+The Doctor looking out of his study window saw the wife of his bosom
+presently issue forth, attired in her best. She crossed the Market-place,
+saluting the market-women right and left, and giving a glance at the
+grocery and general emporium at the corner: then entering London Street
+(formerly Hog Lane), she stopped for a minute at Madame Fribsby's window,
+and looking at the fashions which hung up there,--seemed hesitating
+whether she should enter; but she passed on and never stopped again until
+she came to Mrs. Pybus's little green gate and garden, through which she
+went to that lady's cottage.
+
+There, of course, her husband lost sight of Mrs. Portman. "Oh, what a
+long bow I have pulled," he said inwardly--"Goodness forgive me! and shot
+my own flesh and blood. There must be no more tattling and scandal about
+that house. I must stop it, and speak to Smirke. I'll ask him to dinner
+this very day."
+
+Having a sermon to compose, the Doctor sat down to that work, and was so
+engaged in the composition, that he had not concluded it until near five
+o'clock in the afternoon: when he stepped over to Mr. Smirke's lodgings,
+to put his hospitable intentions, regarding that gentleman, into effect.
+He reached Madame Fribsby's door, just as the Curate issued from it.
+
+Mr. Smirke was magnificently dressed, and as he turned out his toes, he
+showed a pair of elegant open-worked silk stockings and glossy pumps. His
+white cravat was arranged in a splendid stiff tie, and his gold shirt
+studs shone on his spotless linen. His hair was curled round his fair
+temples. Had he borrowed Madame Fribsby's irons to give that curly grace?
+His white cambric pocket-handkerchief was scented with the most delicious
+eau-de-Cologne.
+
+"O gracilis puer,"--cried the Doctor.--"Whither are you bound? I wanted
+you to come home to dinner."
+
+"I am engaged to dine at--at Fairoaks," said Mr. Smirke, blushing faintly
+and whisking the scented pocket-handkerchief, and his pony being in
+waiting, he mounted and rode away simpering down the street. No accident
+befell him that day, and he arrived with his tie in the very best order
+at Mrs. Pendennis's house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Which concludes the first Part of this History
+
+
+The Curate had gone on his daily errand to Fairoaks, and was upstairs in
+Pens study pretending to read with his pupil, in the early part of that
+very afternoon when Mrs. Portman, after transacting business with Mrs.
+Pybus, had found the weather so exceedingly fine that she pursued her
+walk as far as Fairoaks, in order to pay a visit to her dear friend
+there. In the course of their conversation, the Rector's lady told Mrs.
+Pendennis and the Major a very great secret about the Curate, Mr. Smirke,
+which was no less than that he had an attachment, a very old attachment,
+which he had long kept quite private.
+
+"And on whom is it that Mr. Smirke has bestowed his heart?" asked Mrs.
+Pendennis, with a superb air but rather an inward alarm.
+
+"Why, my dear," the other lady answered, "when he first came and used to
+dine at the Rectory, people said we wanted him for Myra, and we were
+forced to give up asking him. Then they used to say he was smitten in
+another quarter; but I always contradicted it for my part, and said that
+you----"
+
+"That I," cried Mrs. Pendennis; "people are very impertinent, I am sure.
+Mr. Smirke came here as Arthur's tutor, and I am surprised that anybody
+should dare to speak so----"
+
+"'Pon my soul, it is a little too much," the Major said, laying down the
+newspaper and the double eye-glass.
+
+"I've no patience with that Mrs. Pybus," Helen continued indignantly.
+
+"I told her there was no truth in it," Mrs. Portman said. "I always said
+so, my dear: and now it comes out that my demure gentleman has been
+engaged to a young lady--Miss Thompson, of Clapham Common, ever so long:
+and I am delighted for my part, and on Myra's account, too, for an
+unmarried curate is always objectionable about one's house: and of course
+it is strictly private, but I thought I would tell you, as it might
+remove unpleasantnesses. But mind: not one word, if you please, about the
+story."
+
+Mrs. Pendennis said, with perfect sincerity, that she was exceedingly
+glad to hear the news: and hoped Mr. Smirke, who was a very kind and
+amiable man, would have a deserving wife: and when her visitor went away,
+Helen and her brother talked of the matter with great satisfaction, the
+kind lady rebuking herself for her haughty behaviour to Mr. Smirke, whom
+she had avoided of late, instead of being grateful to him for his
+constant attention to Arthur.
+
+"Gratitude to this kind of people," the Major said, "is very well; but
+familiarity is out of the question. This gentleman gives his lessons and
+receives his money like any other master. You are too humble, my good
+soul. There must be distinctions in ranks, and that sort of thing. I told
+you before, you were too kind to Mr. Smirke."
+
+But Helen did not think so: and now that Arthur was going away, and she
+bethought her how very polite Mr. Smirke had been; how he had gone on
+messages for her; how he had brought books and copied music; how he had
+taught Laura so many things, and given her so many kind presents, her
+heart smote her on account of her ingratitude towards the Curate;--so
+much so, that when he came down from study with Pen, and was hankering
+about the hall previous to his departure, she went out and shook hands
+with him with rather a blushing face, and begged him to come into her
+drawing-room, where she said they now never saw him. And as there was to
+be rather a good dinner that day, she invited Mr. Smirke to partake of
+it; and we may be sure that he was too happy to accept such a delightful
+summons.
+
+Eased, by the above report, of all her former doubts and misgivings
+regarding the Curate, Helen was exceedingly kind and gracious to Mr.
+Smirke during dinner, redoubling her attentions, perhaps, because Major
+Pendennis was very high and reserved with his nephew's tutor. When
+Pendennis asked Smirke to drink wine, he addressed him as if he was a
+Sovereign speaking to a petty retainer, in a manner so condescending,
+that even Pen laughed at it, although quite ready, for his part, to be as
+conceited as most young men are.
+
+But Smirke did not care for the impertinences of the Major so long as he
+had his hostess's kind behaviour; and he passed a delightful time by her
+side at table, exerting all his powers of conversation to please her,
+talking in a manner both clerical and worldly, about the Fancy Bazaar,
+and the Great Missionary Meeting, about the last new novel, and the
+Bishop's excellent sermon about the fashionable parties in London, an
+account of which he read in the newspapers--in fine, he neglected no art,
+by which a College divine who has both sprightly and serious talents, a
+taste for the genteel, an irreproachable conduct, and a susceptible
+heart, will try and make himself agreeable to the person on whom he has
+fixed his affections.
+
+Major Pendennis came yawning out of the dining-room very soon after his
+sister and little Laura had left the apartment. "What an unsufferable
+bore that man is, and how he did talk!" the Major said.
+
+"He has been very good to Arthur, who is very fond of him," Mrs.
+Pendennis said,--"I wonder who the Miss Thompson is whom he is going to
+marry?"
+
+"I always thought the fellow was looking in another direction," said the
+Major.
+
+"And in what?" asked Mrs. Pendennis quite innocently,--"towards Myra
+Portman?"
+
+"Towards Helen Pendennis, if you must know," answered her brother-in-law.
+
+"Towards me! impossible!" Helen said, who knew perfectly well that such
+had been the case. "His marriage will be a very happy thing. I hope
+Arthur will not take too much wine."
+
+Now Arthur, flushed with a good deal of pride at the privilege of having
+the keys of the cellar, and remembering that a very few more dinners
+would probably take place which he and his dear friend Smirke could
+share, had brought up a liberal supply of claret for the company's
+drinking, and when the elders with little Laura left him, he and the
+Curate began to pass the wine very freely.
+
+One bottle speedily yielded up the ghost, another shed more than half its
+blood, before the two topers had been much more than half an hour
+together--Pen, with a hollow laugh and voice, had drunk off one bumper to
+the falsehood of women, and had said sardonically, that wine at any rate
+was a mistress who never deceived, and was sure to give a man a welcome.
+
+Smirke gently said that he knew for his part some women who were all
+truth and tenderness; and casting up his eyes towards the ceiling, and
+heaving a sigh as if evoking some being dear and unmentionable, he took
+up his glass and drained it, and the rosy liquor began to suffuse his
+face.
+
+Pen trolled over some verses he had been making that morning, in which he
+informed himself that the woman who had slighted his passion could not be
+worthy to win it: that he was awaking from love's mad fever, and, of
+course, under these circumstances, proceeded to leave her, and to quit a
+heartless deceiver: that a name which had one day been famous in the
+land, might again be heard in it: and, that though he never should be the
+happy and careless boy he was but a few months since, or his heart be
+what it had been ere passion had filled it and grief had well-nigh killed
+it; that though to him personally death was as welcome as life, and that
+he would not hesitate to part with the latter, but for the love of one
+kind being whose happiness depended on his own,--yet he hoped to show he
+was a man worthy of his race, and that one day the false one should be
+brought to know how great was the treasure and noble the heart which she
+had flung away.
+
+Pen, we say, who was a very excitable person, rolled out these verses in
+his rich sweet voice, which trembled with emotion whilst our young poet
+spoke. He had a trick of blushing when in this excited state, and his
+large and honest grey eyes also exhibited proofs of a sensibility so
+genuine, hearty, and manly, that Miss Costigan, if she had a heart, must
+needs have softened towards him; and very likely she was, as he said,
+altogether unworthy of the affection which he lavished upon her.
+
+The sentimental Smirke was caught by the emotion which agitated his young
+friend. He grasped Pen's hand over the dessert dishes and wine-glasses.
+He said the verses were beautiful: that Pen was a poet, a great poet, and
+likely by Heaven's permission to run a great career in the world. "Go on
+and prosper, dear Arthur," he cried; "the wounds under which at present
+you suffer are only temporary, and the very grief you endure will cleanse
+and strengthen your heart. I have always prophesied the greatest and
+brightest things of you, as soon as you have corrected some failings and
+weaknesses of character, which at present belong to you. But you will get
+over these, my boy; you will get over these; and when you are famous and
+celebrated, as I know you will be, will you remember your old tutor and
+the happy early days of your youth?"
+
+Pen swore he would: with another shake of the hand across the glasses and
+apricots. "I shall never forget how kind you have been to me, Smirke," he
+said. "I don't know what I should have done without you. You are my best
+friend."
+
+"Am I, really, Arthur?" said Smirke, looking through his spectacles; and
+his heart began to beat so that he thought Pen must almost hear it
+throbbing.
+
+"My best friend, my friend for ever," Pen said. "God bless you, old boy,"
+and he drank up the last glass of the second bottle of the famous wine
+which his father had laid in, which his uncle had bought, which Lord
+Levant had imported, and which now, like a slave indifferent, was
+ministering pleasure to its present owner, and giving its young master
+delectation.
+
+"We'll have another bottle, old boy," Pen said, "by Jove we will.
+Hurray!--claret goes for nothing. My uncle was telling me that he saw
+Sheridan drink five bottles at Brookes's, besides a bottle of Maraschino.
+This is some of the finest wine in England, he says. So it is, by Jove.
+There's nothing like it. Nunc vino pellite curas--cras ingens iterabimus
+aeq,--fill your glass, Old Smirke, a hogshead of it won't do you any
+harm." And Mr. Pen began to sing the drinking song out of Der
+Freischuetz. The dining-room windows were open, and his mother was softly
+pacing on the lawn outside, while little Laura was looking at the sunset.
+The sweet fresh notes of the boy's voice came to the widow. It cheered
+her kind heart to hear him sing.
+
+"You--you are taking too much wine, Arthur," Mr. Smirke said softly--"you
+are exciting yourself."
+
+"No," said Pen, "women give headaches, but this don't. Fill your glass,
+old fellow, and let's drink--I say, Smirke, my boy--let's drink to her--
+your her, I mean, not mine, for whom I swear I'll care no more--no, not a
+penny--no, not a fig--no, not a glass of wine. Tell us about the lady,
+Smirke; I've often seen you sighing about her."
+
+"Oh!" said Smirke--and his beautiful cambric shirt front and glistening
+studs heaved with the emotion which agitated his gentle and suffering
+bosom.
+
+"Oh--what a sigh!" Pen cried, growing very hilarious; "fill, my boy, and
+drink the toast, you can't refuse a toast, no gentleman refuses a toast.
+Here's her health, and good luck to you, and may she soon be Mrs.
+Smirke."
+
+"Do you say so?" Smirke said, all of a tremble. "Do you really say so,
+Arthur?"
+
+"Say so; of course, I say so. Down with it. Here's Mrs. Smirke's good
+health: Hip, hip, hurray!"
+
+Smirke convulsively gulped down his glass of wine, and Pen waved his over
+his head, cheering so as to make his mother and Laura wonder on the lawn,
+and his uncle, who was dozing over the paper in the drawing-room, start,
+and say to himself, "That boy's drinking too much." Smirke put down the
+glass.
+
+"I accept the omen," gasped out the blushing Curate. "Oh my dear Arthur,
+you--you know her----"
+
+"What--Myra Portman? I wish you joy; she's got a dev'lish large waist;
+but I wish you joy, old fellow."
+
+"Oh, Arthur!" groaned the Curate again, and nodded his head, speechless.
+
+"Beg your pardon--sorry I offended you--but she has got a large waist,
+you know--devilish large waist," Pen continued--the third bottle
+evidently beginning to act upon the young gentleman.
+
+"It's not Miss Portman," the other said, in a voice of agony.
+
+"Is it anybody at Chatteris or at Clapham? Somebody here? No--it ain't
+old Pybus? it can't be Miss Rolt at the Factory--she's only fourteen."
+
+"It's somebody rather older than I am, Pen," the Curate cried, looking up
+at his friend, and then guiltily casting his eyes down into his plate.
+
+Pen burst out laughing. "It's Madame Fribsby; by Jove, it's Madame
+Fribsby. Madame Frib. by the immortal Gods!"
+
+The Curate could contain no more. "O Pen," he cried, "how can you suppose
+that any of those--of those more than ordinary beings you have named
+could have an influence upon this heart, when I have been daily in the
+habit of contemplating perfection! I may be insane, I may be madly
+ambitious, I may be presumptuous--but for two years my heart has been
+filled by one image, and has known no other idol. Haven't I loved you as
+a son, Arthur?--say, hasn't Charles Smirke loved you as a son?"
+
+"Yes, old boy, you've been very good to me," Pen said, whose liking,
+however, for his tutor was not by any means of the filial kind.
+
+"My means," rushed on Smirke, "are at present limited, I own, and my
+mother is not so liberal as might be desired; but what she has will be
+mine at her death. Were she to hear of my marrying a lady of rank and
+good fortune, my mother would be liberal, I am sure she would be liberal.
+Whatever I have or subsequently inherit--and it's five hundred a year at
+the very least--would be settled upon her and--and--and you at my death--
+that is"
+
+"What the deuce do you mean?--and what have I to do with your money?"
+cried out Pen, in a puzzle.
+
+"Arthur, Arthur!" exclaimed the other wildly; "you say I am your dearest
+friend--Let me be more. Oh, can't you see that the angelic being I love--
+the purest, the best of women--is no other than your dear, dear angel of
+a--mother."
+
+"My mother!" cried out Arthur, jumping up and sober in a minute. "Pooh!
+damn it, Smirke, you must be mad--she's seven or eight years older than
+you are."
+
+"Did you find that any objection?" cried Smirke piteously, and alluding,
+of course, to the elderly subject of Pen's own passion.
+
+The lad felt the hint, and blushed quite red. "The cases are not similar,
+Smirke," he said, "and the allusion might have been spared. A man may
+forget his own rank and elevate any woman to it: but allow me to say our
+positions are very different."
+
+"How do you mean, dear Arthur?" the Curate interposed sadly, cowering as
+he felt that his sentence was about to be read.
+
+"Mean?" said Arthur. "I mean what I say. My tutor, I say my tutor, has no
+right to ask a lady of my mother's rank of life to marry him. It's a
+breach of confidence. I say it's a liberty you take, Smirke--it's a
+liberty. Mean, indeed!"
+
+"O Arthur!" the Curate began to cry with clasped hands, and a scared
+face, but Arthur gave another stamp with his foot and began to pull at
+the bell. "Don't let's have any more of this. We'll have some coffee, if
+you please," he said with a majestic air; and the old butler entering at
+the summons, Arthur bade him to serve that refreshment.
+
+John said he had just carried coffee into the drawing-room, where his
+uncle was asking for Master Arthur, and the old man gave a glance of
+wonder at the three empty claret-bottles. Smirke said he thought he'd--
+he'd rather not go into the drawing-room, on which Arthur haughtily said,
+"As you please," and called for Mr. Smirke's horse to be brought round.
+The poor fellow said he knew the way to the stable and would get his pony
+himself, and he went into the hall and sadly put on his coat and hat.
+
+Pen followed him out uncovered. Helen was still walking up and down the
+soft lawn as the sun was setting, and the Curate took off his hat and
+bowed by way of farewell, and passed on to the door leading to the stable
+court, by which the pair disappeared. Smirke knew the way to the stable,
+as he said, well enough. He fumbled at the girths of the saddle, which
+Pen fastened for him, and put on the bridle and led the pony into the
+yard. The boy was touched by the grief which appeared in the other's face
+as he mounted. Pen held out his hand, and Smirke wrung it silently,
+
+"I say, Smirke," he said in an agitated voice, "forgive me if I have said
+anything harsh--for you have always been very, very kind to me. But it
+can't be, old fellow, it can't be. Be a man. God bless you."
+
+Smirke nodded his head silently, and rode out of the lodge-gate: and Pen
+looked after him for a couple of minutes, until he disappeared down the
+road, and the clatter of the pony's hoofs died away. Helen was still
+lingering on the lawn waiting until the boy came back--she put his hair
+off his forehead and kissed it fondly. She was afraid he had been
+drinking too much wine. Why had Mr. Smirke gone away without any tea?
+
+He looked at her with a kind humour beaming in his eyes "Smirke is
+unwell," he said with a laugh. For a long while Hele had not seen the boy
+looking so cheerful. He put his arm round her waist, and walked her up
+and down the walk in front of the house. Laura began to drub on the
+drawing-room window and nod and laugh from it. "Come along, you two
+people," cried on Major Pendennis, "your coffee is getting quite cold."
+
+When Laura was gone to bed, Pen, who was big with his secret, burst out
+with it, and described the dismal but ludicrous scene which had occurred.
+Helen heard of it with many blushes, which became her pale face very
+well, and a perplexity which Arthur roguishly enjoyed.
+
+"Confound the fellow's impudence," Major Pendennis said as he took his
+candle, "where will the assurance of these people stop?" Pen and his
+mother had a long talk that night, full of love, confidence, and
+laughter, and the boy somehow slept more soundly and woke up more easily
+than he had done for many months before.
+
+Before the great Mr. Dolphin quitted Chatteris, he not only made an
+advantageous engagement with Miss Fotheringay, but he liberally left with
+her a sum of money to pay off any debts which the little family might
+have contracted during their stay in the place, and which, mainly through
+the lady's own economy and management, were not considerable. The small
+account with the spirit merchant, which Major Pendennis had settled, was
+the chief of Captain Costigan's debts, and though the Captain at one time
+talked about repaying every farthing of the money, it never appears that
+he executed his menace, nor did the laws of honour in the least call upon
+him to accomplish that threat.
+
+When Miss Costigan had seen all the outstanding bills paid to the
+uttermost shilling, she handed over the balance to her father, who broke
+out into hospitalities to all his friends, gave the little Creeds more
+apples and gingerbread than he had ever bestowed upon them, so that the
+widow Creed ever after held the memory of her lodger in veneration, and
+the young ones wept bitterly when he went away; and in a word managed the
+money so cleverly that it was entirely expended before many days, and
+that he was compelled to draw upon Mr. Dolphin for a sum to pay for
+travelling expenses when the time of their departure arrived.
+
+There was held at an inn in that county town a weekly meeting of a
+festive, almost a riotous character, of a society of gentlemen who called
+themselves the Buccaneers. Some of the choice spirits of Chatteris
+belonged to this cheerful club. Graves, the apothecary (than whom a
+better fellow never put a pipe in his mouth and smoked it), Smart, the
+talented and humorous portrait-painter of High Street, Croker, an
+excellent auctioneer, and the uncompromising Hicks, the able Editor for
+twenty-three years of the County Chronicle and Chatteris Champion, were
+amongst the crew of the Buccaneers, whom also Bingley, the manager, liked
+to join of a Saturday evening, whenever he received permission from his
+lady.
+
+Costigan had been also an occasional Buccaneer. But a want of punctuality
+of payments had of late somewhat excluded him from the Society, where he
+was subject to disagreeable remarks from the landlord, who said that a
+Buccaneer who didn't pay his shot was utterly unworthy to be a Marine
+Bandit. But when it became known to the 'Ears, as the Clubbists called
+themselves familiarly, that Miss Fotheringay had made a splendid
+engagement, a great revolution of feeling took place in the Club
+regarding Captain Costigan. Solly, mine host of the Grapes (and I need
+not say, as worthy a fellow as ever stood behind a bar), told the gents
+in the Buccaneers' room one night how noble the Captain had behaved;
+having been round and paid off all his ticks in Chatteris, including his
+score of three pound fourteen here--and pronounced that Cos was a good
+feller, a gentleman at bottom, and he, Solly, had always said so, and
+finally worked upon the feelings of the Buccaneers to give the Captain a
+dinner.
+
+The banquet took place on the last night of Costigan's stay at Chatteris,
+and was served in Solly's accustomed manner. As good a plain dinner of
+old English fare as ever smoked on a table was prepared by Mrs. Solly;
+and about eighteen gentlemen sate down to the festive board. Mr. Jubber
+(the eminent draper of High Street) was in the Chair, having the
+distinguished guest of the Club on his right. The able and consistent
+Hicks officiated as croupier on the occasion; most of the gentlemen of
+the Club were present, and H. Foker, Esq., and Spavin, Esq., friends of
+Captain Costigan, were also participators in the entertainment. The cloth
+having been drawn, the Chairman said, "Costigan, there is wine, if you
+like," but the Captain preferring punch, that liquor was voted by
+acclamation: and 'Non Nobis' having been sung in admirable style by
+Messrs. Bingley, Hicks, and Bullby (of the Cathedral choir, than whom a
+more jovial spirit "ne'er tossed off a bumper or emptied a bowl"), the
+Chairman gave the health of the 'King!' which was drunk with the loyalty
+of Chatteris men, and then without further circumlocution proposed their
+friend 'Captain Costigan.'
+
+After the enthusiastic cheering which rang through old Chatteris had
+subsided, Captain Costigan rose in reply, and made a speech of twenty
+minutes, in which he was repeatedly overcome by his emotions.
+
+The gallant Captain said he must be pardoned for incoherence, if his
+heart was too full to speak. He was quitting a city celebrated for its
+antiquitee, its hospitalitee, the beautee of its women, the manly
+fidelitee, generositee, and jovialitee of its men. (Cheers.) He was going
+from that ancient and venerable city, of which while Mimoree held her
+sayt, he should never think without the fondest emotion, to a
+methrawpolis where the talents of his daughther were about to have full
+play, and where he would watch over her like a guardian angel. He should
+never forget that it was at Chatteris she had acquired the skill which
+she was about to exercise in another sphere, and in her name and his own
+Jack Costigan thanked and blessed them. The gallant officer's speech was
+received with tremendous cheers.
+
+Mr. Hicks, Croupier, in a brilliant and energetic manner, proposed Miss
+Fotheringay's health.
+
+Captain Costigan returned thanks in a speech full of feeling and
+eloquence.
+
+Mr. Jubber proposed the Drama and the Chatteris Theatre, and Mr. Bingley
+was about to rise but was prevented by Captain Costigan, who, as long
+connected with the Chatteris Theatre and on behalf of his daughter,
+thanked the company. He informed them that he had been in garrison, at
+Gibraltar, and at Malta, and had been at the taking of Flushing. The Duke
+of York was a patron of the Drama; he had the honour of dining with His
+Royal Highness and the Duke of Kent many times; and the former had justly
+been named the friend of the soldier. (Cheers.)
+
+The Army was then proposed, and Captain Costigan returned thanks. In the
+course of the night he sang his well-known songs, 'The Deserter,' 'The
+Shan Van Voght,' 'The Little Pig under the Bed,' and 'The Vale of Avoca.'
+The evening was a great triumph for him--it ended. All triumphs and all
+evenings end. And the next day, Miss Costigan having taken leave of all
+her friends, having been reconciled to Miss Rouncy, to whom she left a
+necklace and a white satin gown--the next day, he and Miss Costigan had
+places in the Competitor coach rolling by the gates of Fairoaks Lodge--
+and Pendennis never saw them.
+
+Tom Smith, the coachman, pointed out Fairoaks to Mr. Costigan, who sate
+on the box smelling of rum-and-water--and the Captain said it was a poor
+place--and added, "Ye should see Castle Costigan, County Mayo, me boy,"--
+which Tom said he should like very much to see.
+
+They were gone and Pen had never seen them! He only knew of their
+departure by its announcement in the county paper the next day: and
+straight galloped over to Chatteris to hear the truth of this news. They
+were gone indeed. A card of 'Lodgings to let' was placed in the dear
+little familiar window. He rushed up into the room and viewed it over. He
+sate ever so long in the old window-seat looking into the Dean's garden:
+whence he and Emily had so often looked out together. He walked, with a
+sort of terror, into her little empty bedroom. It was swept out and
+prepared for new-comers. The glass which had reflected her fair face was
+shining ready for her successor. The curtains lay square folded on the
+little bed: he flung himself down and buried his head on the vacant
+pillow.
+
+Laura had netted a purse into which his mother had put some sovereigns,
+and Pen had found it on his dressing-table that very morning. He gave one
+to the little servant who had been used to wait upon the Costigans, and
+another to the children, because they said they were very fond of her. It
+was but a few months back, yet what years ago it seemed since he had
+first entered that room! He felt that it was all done. The very missing
+her at the coach had something fatal in it. Blank, weary, utterly
+wretched and lonely the poor lad felt.
+
+His mother saw She was gone by his look when he came home. He was eager
+to fly too now, as were other folks round about Chatteris. Poor Smirke
+wanted to go away from the sight of the syren widow. Foker began to think
+he had had enough of Baymouth, and that a few supper-parties at Saint
+Boniface would not be unpleasant. And Major Pendennis longed to be off,
+and have a little pheasant-shooting at Stillbrook, and get rid of all
+annoyances and tracasseries of the village. The widow and Laura nervously
+set about the preparation for Pen's kit, and filled trunks with his books
+and linen. Helen wrote cards with the name of Arthur Pendennis, Esq.,
+which were duly nailed on the boxes; and at which both she and Laura
+looked with tearful wistful eyes. It was not until long, long after he
+was gone, that Pen remembered how constant and tender the affection of
+these women had been, and how selfish his own conduct was.
+
+A night soon comes, when the mail, with echoing horn and blazing lamps,
+stops at the lodge-gate of Fairoaks, and Pen's trunks and his uncle's are
+placed on the roof of the carriage, into which the pair presently
+afterwards enter. Helen and Laura are standing by the evergreens of the
+shrubbery, their figures lighted up by the coach lamps; the guard cries
+all right: in another instant the carriage whirls onward; the lights
+disappear, and Helen's heart and prayers go with them. Her sainted
+benedictions follow the departing boy. He has left the home-nest in which
+he has been chafing, and whither, after his very first flight, he
+returned bleeding and wounded; he is eager to go forth again, and try his
+restless wings.
+
+How lonely the house looks without him! The corded trunks and book-boxes
+are there in his empty study. Laura asks leave to come and sleep in
+Helen's room: and when she has cried herself to sleep there, the mother
+goes softly into Pen's vacant chamber, and kneels down by the bed on
+which the moon is shining, and there prays for her boy, as mothers only
+know how to plead. He knows that her pure blessings are following him, as
+he is carried miles away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Alma Mater
+
+Every man, however brief or inglorious may have been his academical
+career, must remember with kindness and tenderness the old university
+comrades and days. The young man's life is just beginning: the boy's
+leading-strings are cut, and he has all the novel delights and dignities
+of freedom. He has no idea of cares yet, or of bad health, or of roguery,
+or poverty, or to-morrow's disappointment. The play has not been acted so
+often as to make him tired. Though the after drink, as we mechanically go
+on repeating it, is stale and bitter, how pure and brilliant was that
+first sparkling draught of pleasure!--How the boy rushes at the cup, and
+with what a wild eagerness he drains it! But old epicures who are cut off
+from the delights of the table, and are restricted to a poached egg and a
+glass of water, like to see people with good appetites; and, as the next
+best thing to being amused at a pantomime one's-self is to see one's
+children enjoy it, I hope there may be no degree of age or experience to
+which mortal may attain, when he shall become such a glum philosopher as
+not to be pleased by the sight of happy youth. Coming back a few weeks
+since from a brief visit to the old University of Oxbridge, where my
+friend Mr. Arthur Pendennis passed some period of his life, I made the
+journey in the railroad by the side of a young fellow at present a
+student of Saint Boniface. He had got an exeat somehow, and was bent on a
+day's lark in London: he never stopped rattling and talking from the
+commencement of the journey until its close (which was a great deal too
+soon for me, for I never was tired of listening to the honest young
+fellow's jokes and cheery laughter); and when we arrived at the terminus
+nothing would satisfy him but a hansom cab, so that he might get into
+town the quicker, and plunge into the pleasures awaiting him there. Away
+the young lad went whirling, with joy lighting up his honest face; and as
+for the reader's humble servant, having but a small carpet-bag, I got up
+on the outside of the omnibus, and sate there very contentedly between a
+Jew-pedlar smoking bad cigars, and a gentleman's servant taking care of a
+poodle-dog, until we got our fated complement of passengers and boxes,
+when the coachman drove leisurely away. We weren't in a hurry to get to
+town. Neither one of us was particularly eager about rushing into that
+near smoking Babylon, or thought of dining at the Club that night, or
+dancing at the Casino. Yet a few years more, and my young friend of the
+railroad will be not a whit more eager.
+
+There were no railroads made when Arthur Pendennis went to the famous
+University of Oxbridge; but he drove thither in a well-appointed coach,
+filled inside and out with dons, gownsmen, young freshmen about to enter,
+and their guardians, who were conducting them to the university. A fat
+old gentleman, in grey stockings, from the City, who sate by Major
+Pendennis inside the coach, having his pale-faced son opposite, was
+frightened beyond measure when he heard that the coach had been driven
+for a couple of stages by young Mr. Foker, of Saint Boniface College, who
+was the friend of all men, including coachmen, and could drive as well as
+Tom Hicks himself. Pen sate on the roof, examining coach, passengers, and
+country with great delight and curiosity. His heart jumped with pleasure
+as the famous university came in view, and the magnificent prospect of
+venerable towers and pinnacles, tall elms and shining river, spread
+before him.
+
+Pen had passed a few days with his uncle at the Major's lodgings, in Bury
+Street, before they set out for Oxbridge. Major Pendennis thought that
+the lad's wardrobe wanted renewal; and Arthur was by no means averse to
+any plan which was to bring him new coats and waistcoats. There was no
+end to the sacrifices which the self-denying uncle made in the youth's
+behalf. London was awfully lonely. The Pall Mall pavement was deserted;
+the very red jackets had gone out of town. There was scarce a face to be
+seen in the bow-windows of the clubs. The Major conducted his nephew
+into one or two of those desert mansions, and wrote down the lad's name
+on the candidate-list of one of them; and Arthur's pleasure at this
+compliment on his guardian's part was excessive. He read in the parchment
+volume his name and titles, as 'Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, of Fairoaks
+Lodge, ----shire and Saint Boniface College, Oxbridge; proposed by Major
+Pendennis, and seconded by Viscount Colchicum,' with a thrill of intense
+gratification. "You will come in for ballot in about three years, by
+which time you will have taken your degree," the guardian said. Pen
+longed for the three years to be over, and surveyed the stucco-halls, and
+vast libraries, and drawing-rooms as already his own property. The Major
+laughed slyly to see the pompous airs of the simple young fellow as he
+strutted out of the building. He and Foker drove down in the latter's cab
+one day to the Grey Friars, and renewed acquaintance with some of their
+old comrades there. The boys came crowding up to the cab as it stood by
+the Grey Friars gates, where they were entering, and admired the chestnut
+horse, and the tights and livery and gravity of Stoopid, the tiger. The
+bell for afternoon-school rang as they were swaggering about the
+play-ground talking to their old cronies. The awful Doctor passed into
+school with his grammar in his hand. Foker slunk away uneasily at his
+presence, but Pen went up blushing, and shook the dignitary by the hand.
+He laughed as he thought that well-remembered Latin Grammar had boxed his
+ears many a time. He was generous, good-natured, and, in a word,
+perfectly conceited and satisfied with himself.
+
+Then they drove to the parental brew-house. Foker's Entire is composed in
+an enormous pile of buildings, not far from the Grey Friars, and the name
+of that well-known firm is gilded upon innumerable public-house signs,
+tenanted by its vassals in the neighbourhood; and the venerable junior
+partner and manager did honour to the young lord of the vats and his
+friend, and served them with silver flagons of brown-stout, so strong,
+that you would have thought, not only the young men, but the very horse
+Mr. Harry Foker drove, was affected by the potency of the drink, for he
+rushed home to the west-end of the town at a rapid pace, which endangered
+the pie-stalls and the women on the crossings, and brought the cab-steps
+into collision with the posts at the street corners, and caused Stoopid
+to swing fearfully on his board behind.
+
+The Major was quite pleased when Pen was with his young acquaintance;
+listened to Mr. Foker's artless stories with the greatest interest; gave
+the two boys a fine dinner at a Covent Garden Coffee-house, whence they
+proceeded to the play; but was above all happy when Mr. and Lady Agnes
+Foker, who happened to be in London, requested the pleasure of Major
+Pendennis and Mr. Arthur Pendennis's company at dinner in Grosvenor
+Street. "Having obtained the entree into Lady Agnes Foker's house," he
+said to Pen with an affectionate solemnity which befitted the importance
+of the occasion, "it behoves you, my dear boy, to keep it. You must mind
+and never neglect to call in Grosvenor Street when you come to London. I
+recommend you to read up carefully, in Debrett, the alliances and
+genealogy of the Earls of Rosherville, and if you can, to make some
+trifling allusions to the family, something historical, neat, and
+complimentary, and that sort of thing, which you, who have a poetic
+fancy, can do pretty well. Mr. Foker himself is a worthy man, though not
+of high extraction or indeed much education. He always makes a point of
+having some of the family porter served round after dinner, which you
+will on no account refuse, and which I shall drink myself, though all
+beer disagrees with me confoundedly." And the heroic martyr did actually
+sacrifice himself, as he said he would, on the day when the dinner took
+place, and old Mr. Foker, at the head of his table, made his usual joke
+about Foker's Entire. We should all of us, I am sure, have liked to see
+the Major's grin, when the worthy old gentleman made his time-honoured
+joke.
+
+Lady Agnes, who, wrapped up in Harry, was the fondest of mothers, and one
+of the most good-natured though not the wisest of women, received her
+son's friend with great cordiality: and astonished Pen by accounts of the
+severe course of studies which her darling boy was pursuing, and which
+she feared might injure his dear health. Foker the elder burst into a
+horse-laugh at some of these speeches, and the heir of the house winked
+his eye very knowingly at his friend. And Lady Agnes then going through
+her son's history from the earliest time, and recounting his miraculous
+sufferings in the measles and hooping-cough, his escape from drowning,
+the shocking tyrannies practised upon him at that horrid school, whither
+Mr. Foker would send him because he had been brought up there himself,
+and she never would forgive that disagreeable Doctor, no never--Lady
+Agnes, we say, having prattled away for an hour incessantly about her
+son, voted the two Messieurs Pendennis most agreeable men; and when
+pheasants came with the second course, which the Major praised as the
+very finest birds he ever saw, her ladyship said they came from Logwood
+(as the Major knew perfectly well), and hoped that they would both pay
+her a visit there--at Christmas, or when dear Harry was at home for the
+vacations.
+
+"God bless you, my dear boy," Pendennis said to Arthur, as they were
+lighting their candles in Bury Street afterwards to go to bed. "You made
+that little allusion to Agincourt, where one of the Roshervilles
+distinguished himself, very neatly and well, although Lady Agnes did not
+quite understand it: but it was exceedingly well for a beginner--though
+you oughtn't to blush so, by the way--and I beseech you, my dear Arthur,
+to remember through life, that with an entree--with a good entree, mind--
+it is just as easy for you to have good society as bad, and that it costs
+a man, when properly introduced, no more trouble or soins to keep a good
+footing in the best houses in London than to dine with a lawyer in
+Bedford Square. Mind this when you are at Oxbridge pursuing your studies,
+and for Heaven's sake be very particular in the acquaintances which you
+make. The premier pas in life is the most important of all--did you write
+to your mother to-day?--No?--well, do, before you go, and call and ask
+Mr. Foker for a frank--They like it--Good night. God bless you."
+
+Pen wrote a droll account of his doings in London, and the play, and the
+visit to the old Friars, and the brewery, and the party at Mr. Foker's,
+to his dearest mother, who was saying her prayers at home in the lonely
+house at Fairoaks, her heart full of love and tenderness unutterable for
+the boy: and she and Laura read that letter and those which followed,
+many, many times, and brooded over them as women do. It was the first
+step in life that Pen was making--Ah! what a dangerous journey it is, and
+how the bravest may stumble and the strongest fail. Brother wayfarer! may
+you have a kind arm to support yours on the path, and a friendly hand to
+succour those who fall beside you. May truth guide, mercy forgive at the
+end, and love accompany always. Without that lamp how blind the traveller
+would be, and how black and cheerless the journey!
+
+So the coach drove up to that ancient and comfortable inn the Trencher,
+which stands in Main Street, Oxbridge, and Pen with delight and eagerness
+remarked, for the first time, gownsmen going about, chapel bells clinking
+(bells in Oxbridge are ringing from morning-tide till even-song)--towers
+and pinnacles rising calm and stately over the gables and antique
+house-roofs of the homely busy city. Previous communications had taken
+place between Dr. Portman on Pen's part, and Mr. Buck, Tutor of Boniface,
+on whose side Pen was entered; and as soon as Major Pendennis had
+arranged his personal appearance, so that it should make a satisfactory
+impression upon Pen's tutor, the pair walked down Main Street, and passed
+the great gate and belfry-tower of Saint George's College, and so came,
+as they were directed, to Saint Boniface: where again Pen's heart began
+to beat as they entered at the wicket of the venerable ivy-mantled gate
+of the College. It is surmounted with an ancient dome almost covered with
+creepers, and adorned with the effigy of the Saint from whom the House
+takes its name, and many coats-of-arms of its royal and noble
+benefactors.
+
+The porter pointed out a queer old tower at the corner of the quadrangle,
+by which Mr. Buck's rooms were approached, and the two gentlemen walked
+acrosse the square, the main features of which were at once and for ever
+stamped in Pen's mind--the pretty fountain playing in the centre of the
+fair grass plats; the tall chapel windows and buttresses rising to the
+right; the hall with its tapering lantern and oriel window; the lodge,
+from the doors of which the Master issued with rustling silks; the lines
+of the surrounding rooms pleasantly broken by carved chimneys, grey
+turrets, and quaint gables--all these Mr. Pen's eyes drank in with an
+eagerness which belongs to first impressions; and Major Pendennis
+surveyed with that calmness which belongs to a gentleman who does not
+care for the picturesque, and whose eyes have been somewhat dimmed by the
+constant glare of the pavement of Pall Mall.
+
+Saint George's is the great College of the University of Oxbridge, with
+its four vast quadrangles, and its beautiful hall and gardens, and the
+Georgians, as the men are called wear gowns of a peculiar cut, and give
+themselves no small airs of superiority over all other young men. Little
+Saint Boniface is but a petty hermitage in comparison of the huge
+consecrated pile alongside of which it lies. But considering its size it
+has always kept an excellent name in the university. Its ton is very
+good: the best families of certain counties have time out of mind sent up
+their young men to Saint Boniface: the college livings are remarkably
+good: the fellowships easy; the Boniface men had had more than their fair
+share of university honours; their boat was third upon the river; their
+chapel-choir is not inferior to Saint George's itself; and the Boniface
+ale the best in Oxbridge. In the comfortable old wainscoted College-Hall,
+and round about Roubilliac's statue of Saint Boniface (who stands in an
+attitude of seraphic benediction over the uncommonly good cheer of the
+fellows' table) there are portraits of many most eminent Bonifacians.
+There is the learned Doctor Griddle, who suffered in Henry VIII.'s time,
+and Archbishop Bush who roasted him--there is Lord Chief Justice Hicks--
+the Duke of St. David's, K.G., Chancellor of the University and Member of
+this College--Sprott the Poet, of whose fame the college is justly proud
+--Doctor Blogg, the late master, and friend of Doctor Johnson, who
+visited him at Saint Boniface--and other lawyers, scholars, and divines,
+whose portraitures look from the walls, or whose coats-of-arms shine in
+emerald and ruby, gold and azure, in the tall windows of the refectory.
+The venerable cook of the college is one of the best artists in Oxbridge
+(his son took the highest honours in the other University of Camford),
+and the wine in the fellows' room has long been famed for its excellence
+and abundance.
+
+Into this certainly not the least snugly sheltered arbour amongst the
+groves of Academe, Pen now found his way, leaning on his uncle's arm, and
+they speedily reached Mr. Buck's rooms, and were conducted into the
+apartment of that courteous gentleman.
+
+He had received previous information from Dr. Portman regarding Pen, with
+respect to whose family, fortune, and personal merits the honest Doctor
+had spoken with no small enthusiasm. Indeed Portman had described Arthur
+to the tutor as "a young gentleman of some fortune and landed estate, of
+one of the most ancient families in the kingdom, and possessing such a
+character and genius as were sure, under the proper guidance, to make him
+a credit to the college and the university." Under such recommendations
+the tutor was, of course, most cordial to the young freshman and his
+guardian, invited the latter to dine in hall, where he would have the
+satisfaction of seeing his nephew wear his gown and eat his dinner for
+the first time, and requested the pair to take wine at his rooms after
+hall, and in consequence of the highly favourable report he had received
+of Mr. Arthur Pendennis, said, he should be happy to give him the best
+set of rooms to be had in college--a gentleman-pensioner's set, indeed,
+which were just luckily vacant. So they parted until dinner-time, which
+was very near at hand, and Major Pendennis pronounced Mr. Buck to be
+uncommonly civil indeed. Indeed when a College Magnate takes the trouble
+to be polite, there is no man more splendidly courteous. Immersed in
+their books and excluded from the world by the gravity of their
+occupations, these reverend men assume a solemn magnificence of
+compliment in which they rustle and swell as in their grand robes of
+state. Those silks and brocades are not put on for all comers or every
+day.
+
+When the two gentlemen had taken leave of the tutor in his study, and had
+returned to Mr. Buck's ante-room, or lecture-room, a very handsome
+apartment, turkey-carpeted, and hung with excellent prints and richly
+framed pictures, they found the tutor's servant already in waiting there,
+accompanied by a man with a bag full of caps and a number of gowns, from
+which Pen might select a cap and gown for himself, and the servant, no
+doubt, would get a commission proportionable to the service done by him.
+Mr. Pen was all in a tremor of pleasure as the bustling tailor tried on a
+gown and pronounced that it was an excellent fit; and then he put the
+pretty college cap on, in rather a dandified manner and somewhat on one
+side, as he had seen Fiddicombe, the youngest master at Grey Friars,
+wear it. And he inspected the entire costume with a great deal of
+satisfaction in one of the great gilt mirrors which ornamented Mr. Buck's
+lecture-room: for some of these college divines are no more above
+looking--glasses than a lady is, and look to the set of their gowns and
+caps quite as anxiously as folks do of the lovelier sex. The Major smiled
+as he saw the boy dandifying himself in the glass: the old gentleman was
+not displeased with the appearance of the comely lad.
+
+Then Davis, the skip or attendant, led the way, keys in hand, across the
+quadrangle, the Major and Pen following him, the latter blushing, and
+pleased with his new academical habiliments, across the quadrangle to the
+rooms which were destined for the freshman; and which were vacated by the
+retreat of the gentleman-pensioner, Mr. Spicer. The rooms were very
+comfortable, with large cross beams, high wainscots, and small windows in
+deep embrasures. Mr. Spicer's furniture was there, and to be sold at a
+valuation, and Major Pendennis agreed on his nephew's behalf to take the
+available part of it, laughingly however declining (as, indeed, Pen did
+for his own part) six sporting prints, and four groups of opera-dancers
+with gauze draperies, which formed the late occupant's pictorial
+collection.
+
+Then they went to hall, where Pen sate down and ate his commons with his
+brother freshmen, and the Major took his place at the high-table along
+with the college dignitaries and other fathers or guardians of youth, who
+had come up with their sons to Oxbridge; and after hall they went to Mr.
+Buck's to take wine; and after wine to chapel, where the Major sate with
+great gravity in the upper place, having a fine view of the Master in his
+carved throne or stall under the organ-loft, where that gentleman, the
+learned Doctor Donne, sate magnificent, with his great prayer-book before
+him, an image of statuesque piety and rigid devotion. All the young
+freshmen behaved with gravity and decorum, but Pen was shocked to see
+that atrocious little Foker, who came in very late, and half a dozen of
+his comrades in the gentlemen-pensioners' seats, giggling and talking as
+if they had been in so many stalls at the Opera. But these circumstances,
+it must be remembered, took place some years back, when William the
+Fourth was king. Young men are much better behaved now, and besides,
+Saint Boniface was rather a fast college.
+
+Pen could hardly sleep at night in his bedroom at the Trencher: so
+anxious was he to begin his college life, and to get into his own
+apartments. What did he think about, as he lay tossing and awake? Was it
+about his mother at home; the pious soul whose life was bound up in his?
+Yes, let us hope he thought of her a little. Was it about Miss
+Fotheringay, and his eternal passion, which had kept him awake so many
+nights, and created such wretchedness and such longing? He had a trick of
+blushing, and if you had been in the room, and the candle had not been
+out, you might have seen the youth's countenance redden more than once,
+as be broke out into passionate incoherent exclamations regarding that
+luckless event of his life. His uncle's lessons had not been thrown away
+upon him; the mist of passion had passed from his eyes now, and he saw
+her as she was. To think that he, Pendennis, had been enslaved by such a
+woman, and then jilted by her! that he should have stooped so low, to be
+trampled on the mire! that there was a time in his life, and that but a
+few months back, when he was willing to take Costigan for his
+father-in-law!
+
+"Poor old Smirke!" Pen presently laughed out--"well, I'll write and try
+and console the poor old boy. He won't die of his passion, ha, ha!" The
+Major, had he been awake, might have heard a score of such ejaculations
+uttered by Pen as he lay awake and restless through the first night of
+his residence at Oxbridge.
+
+It would, perhaps, have been better for a youth, the battle of whose life
+was going to begin on the morrow, to have passed the eve in a fferent
+sort of vigil: but the world had got hold of Pen in the shape of his
+selfish old Mentor: and those who have any interest in his character must
+have perceived ere now, that this lad was very weak as well as very
+impetuous, very vain as well as very frank, and if of a generous
+disposition, not a little selfish in the midst of his profuseness, and
+also rather fickle, as all eager pursuers of self-gratification are.
+
+The six months' passion had aged him very considerably. There was an
+immense gulf between Pen the victim of love, and Pen the innocent boy of
+eighteen, sighing after it: and so Arthur Pendennis had all the
+experience and superiority, besides that command which afterwards conceit
+and imperiousness of disposition gave him over the young men with whom he
+now began to live.
+
+He and his uncle passed the morning with great satisfaction in making
+purchases for the better comfort of the apartments which the lad was
+about to occupy. Mr. Spicer's china and glass was in a dreadfully
+dismantled condition, his lamps smashed, and his bookcases by no means so
+spacious as those shelves which would be requisite to receive the
+contents of the boxes which were lying in the hall at Fairoaks, and which
+were addressed to Arthur in the hand of poor Helen.
+
+The boxes arrived in a few days, that his mother had packed with so much
+care. Pen was touched as he read the superscriptions in the dear
+well-known hand, and he arranged in their proper places all the books,
+his old friends, and all the linen and table-cloths which Helen had
+selected from the family stock, and all the jam-pots which little Laura
+had bound in straw, and the hundred simple gifts of home. Pen had another
+Alma Mater now. But it is not all children who take to her kindly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+Pendennis of Boniface
+
+
+Our friend Pen was not sorry when his Mentor took leave of the young
+gentleman on the second day after the arrival of the pair in Oxbridge,
+and we may be sure that the Major on his part was very glad to have
+discharged his duty, and to have the duty over. More than three months of
+precious time had that martyr of a Major given up to his nephew--Was ever
+selfish man called upon to make a greater sacrifice? Do you know many men
+or Majors who would do as much? A man will lay down his head, or peril
+his life for his honour, but let us be shy how we ask him to give up his
+ease or his heart's desire. Very few of us can bear that trial. Say,
+worthy reader, if thou hast peradventure a beard, wouldst thou do as
+much? I will not say that a woman will not. They are used to it: we take
+care to accustom them to sacrifices but, my good sir, the amount of
+self-denial which you have probably exerted through life, when put down
+to your account elsewhere, will not probably swell the balance on the
+credit side much. Well, well, there is no use in speaking of such ugly
+matters, and you are too polite to use a vulgar to quoque. But I wish to
+state once for all that I greatly admire the Major for his conduct during
+the past quarter, and think that he has quite a right to be pleased at
+getting a holiday. Foker and Pen saw him off in the coach, and the former
+young gentleman gave particular orders to the coachman to take care of
+that gentleman inside. It pleased the elder Pendennis to have his nephew
+in the company of a young fellow who would introduce him to the best set
+of the university. The Major rushed off to London and thence to
+Cheltenham, from which Watering-place he descended upon some neighbouring
+great houses, whereof the families were not gone abroad, and where good
+shooting and company was to be had.
+
+A quarter of the space which custom has awarded to works styled the
+Serial Nature, has been assigned to the account of one passage in Pen's
+career, and it is manifest that the whole of his adventures cannot be
+treated at a similar length, unless some descendant of the chronicler of
+Pen's history should take up the pen at his decease, and continue the
+narrative for the successors of the present generation of readers. We are
+not about to go through the young fellow's academical career with, by any
+means, a similar minuteness. Alas, the life of such boys does not bear
+telling altogether. I wish it did. I ask you, does yours? As long as what
+we call our honour is clear, I suppose your mind is pretty easy. Women
+are pure, but not men. Women are unselfish, but not men. And I would not
+wish to say of poor Arthur Pendennis that he was worse than his
+neighbours, only that his neighbours are bad for the most part. Let us
+have the candour to own as much at least. Can you point out ten spotless
+men of your acquaintance? Mine is pretty large, but I can't find ten
+saints in the list.
+
+During the first term of Mr. Pen's academical life, he attended classical
+and mathematical lectures with tolerable assiduity; but discovering
+before very long time that he had little taste or genius for the pursuing
+of the exact sciences, and being perhaps rather annoyed that one or two
+very vulgar young men, who did not even use straps to their trousers so
+as to cover the abominably thick and coarse shoes and stockings which
+they wore, beat him completely in the lecture-room, he gave up his
+attendance at that course, and announced to his fond parent that he
+proposed to devote himself exclusively to the cultivation of Greek and
+Roman Literature.
+
+Mrs. Pendennis was, for her part, quite satisfied that her darling boy
+should pursue that branch of learning for which he had the greatest
+inclination; and only besought him not to ruin his health by too much
+study, for she had heard the most melancholy stories of young students
+who, by over-fatigue, had brought on brain-fevers and perished untimely
+in the midst of their university career. And Pen's health, which was
+always delicate, was to be regarded, as she justly said, beyond all
+considerations or vain honours. Pen, although not aware of any lurking
+disease which was likely to end his life, yet kindly promised his mamma
+not to sit up reading too late of nights, and stuck to his word in this
+respect with a great deal more tenacity of resolution than he exhibited
+upon some other occasions, when perhaps he was a little remiss.
+
+Presently he began too to find that he learned little good in the
+classical lecture. His fellow-students there were too dull, as in
+mathematics they were too learned for him. Mr. Buck, the tutor, was no
+better a scholar than many a fifth-form boy at Grey Friars; might have
+some stupid humdrum notions about the metre and grammatical construction
+of a passage of Aeschylus or Aristophanes, but had no more notion of the
+poetry than Mrs. Binge, his bed-maker; and Pen grew weary of hearing the
+dull students and tutor blunder through a few lines of a play, which he
+could read in a tenth part of the time which they gave to it. After all,
+private reading, as he began to perceive, was the only study which was
+really profitable to a man; and he announced to his mamma that he should
+read by himself a great deal more, and in public a great deal less. That
+excellent woman knew no more about Homer than she did about Algebra, but
+she was quite contented with Pen's arrangements regarding his course of
+studies, and felt perfectly confident that her dear boy would get the
+place which he merited.
+
+Pen did not come home until after Christmas, a little to the fond
+mother's disappointment, and Laura's, who was longing for him to make a
+fine snow fortification, such as he had made three winters before. But he
+was invited to Logwood, Lady Agnes Foker's, where there were private
+theatricals, and a gay Christmas party of very fine folks, some of them
+whom Major Pendennis would on no account have his nephew neglect.
+However, he stayed at home for the last three weeks of the vacation, and
+Laura had the opportunity of remarking what a quantity of fine new
+clothes he brought with him, and his mother admired his improved
+appearance and manly and decided tone.
+
+He did not come home at Easter; but when he arrived for the long
+vacation, he brought more smart clothes; appearing in the morning in
+wonderful shooting jackets, with remarkable buttons; and in the evening
+in gorgeous velvet waistcoats, with richly-embroidered cravats, and
+curious linen. And as she pried about his room, she saw, oh, such a
+beautiful dressing-case, with silver mountings, and a quantity of lovely
+rings and jewellery. And he had a new French watch and gold chain, in
+place of the big old chronometer, with its bunch of jingling seals, which
+had hung from the fob of John Pendennis, and by the second-hand of which
+the defunct doctor had felt many a patient's pulse in his time. It was
+but a few months back Pen had longed for this watch, which he thought the
+most splendid and august timepiece in the world; and just before he went
+to college, Helen had taken it out of her trinket-box (where it had
+remained unwound since the death of her husband) and given it to Pen with
+a solemn and appropriate little speech respecting his father's virtues
+and the proper use of time. This portly and valuable chronometer Pen now
+pronounced to be out of date, and, indeed, made some comparisons between
+it and a warming-pan, which Laura thought disrespectful, and he left the
+watch in a drawer, in the company of soiled primrose gloves, cravats
+which had gone out of favour, and of that other school watch which has
+once before been mentioned in this history. Our old friend, Rebecca, Pen
+pronounced to be no long up to his weight, and swapped her away for
+another and more powerful horse, for which he had to pay rather a heavy
+figure. Mr. Pendennis gave the boy the money for the new horse; and Laura
+cried when Rebecca was fetched away.
+
+Also Pen brought a large box of cigars branded Colorados, Afrancesados,
+Telescopios, Fudson Oxford Street, or by some such strange titles, and
+began to consume these not only about the stables and green-houses, where
+they were very good for Helen's plants, but in his own study, of which
+practice his mother did not at first approve. But he was at work upon a
+prize-poem, he said, and could not compose without his cigar, and quoted
+the late lamented it Lord Byron's lines in favour of the custom of
+smoking. As he was smoking to such good purpose, his mother could not of
+course refuse permission: in fact, the good soul coming into the room one
+day in the midst of Pen's labours (he was consulting a novel which had
+recently appeared, for the cultivation of the light literature of his own
+country as well as of foreign nations became every student)--Helen, we
+say, coming into the room and finding Pen on the sofa at this work,
+rather than disturb him went for a light-box and his cigar-case to his
+bedroom which was adjacent, and actually put the cigar into his mouth and
+lighted the match at which he kindled it. Pen laughed, and kissed his
+mother's hand as it hung fondly over the back of the sofa. "Dear old
+mother," he said, "if I were to tell you to burn the house down, I think
+you would do it." And it is very likely that Mr. Pen was right, and that
+the foolish woman would have done almost as much for him as he said.
+
+Besides the works of English "light literature" which this diligent
+student devoured, he brought down boxes of the light literature of the
+neighbouring country of France: into the leaves of which when Helen
+dipped, she read such things as caused her to open her eyes with wonder.
+But Pen showed her that it was not he who made the books, though it was
+absolutely necessary that he should keep up his French by an acquaintance
+with the most celebrated writers of the day, and that it was as clearly
+his duty to read the eminent Paul de Kock, as to study Swift or Moliere.
+And Mrs. Pendennis yielded with a sigh of perplexity. But Miss Laura was
+warned off the books, both by his anxious mother, and that rigid moralist
+Mr. Arthur Pendennis himself, who, however he might be called upon to
+study every branch of literature in order to form his mind and to perfect
+his style, would by no means prescribe such a course of reading to a
+young lady whose business in life was very different.
+
+In the course of this long vacation Mr. Pen drank up the bin of claret
+which his father had laid in, and of which we have heard the son remark
+that there was not a headache in a hogshead; and this wine being
+exhausted, he wrote for a further supply to "his wine merchants," Messrs.
+Binney and Latham of Mark Lane, London: from whom, indeed, old Doctor
+Portman had recommended Pen to get a supply of port and sherry on going
+to college. "You will have, no doubt, to entertain your young friends at
+Boniface with wine-parties," the honest rector had remarked to the lad.
+"They used to be customary at college in my time, and I would advise you
+to employ an honest and respectable house in London for your small stock
+of wine, rather than to have recourse to the Oxbridge tradesmen, whose
+liquor, if I remember rightly, was both deleterious in quality and
+exorbitant in price." And the obedient young gentleman took the Doctor's
+advice, and patronised Messrs. Binney and Latham at the rector's
+suggestion.
+
+So when he wrote orders for a stock of wine to be sent down to the
+cellars at Fairoaks, he hinted that Messrs. B. and L. might send in his
+university account for wine at the same time with the Fairoaks bill. The
+poor widow was frightened at the amount. But Pen laughed at her
+old-fashioned views, said that the bill was moderate, that everybody
+drank claret and champagne now, and, finally, the widow paid, feeling
+dimly that the expenses of her household were increasing considerably,
+and that her narrow income would scarce suffice to meet them. But they
+were only occasional. Pen merely came home for a few weeks at the
+vacation. Laura and she might pinch when he was gone. In the brief time
+he was with them, ought they not to make him happy?
+
+Arthur's own allowances were liberal all this time; indeed, much more so
+than those of the sons of far more wealthy men. Years before, the thrifty
+and affectionate John Pendennis, whose darling project it had ever been
+to give his son a university education, and those advantages of which his
+own father's extravagance had deprived him, had begun laying by a store
+of money which he called Arthur's Education Fund. Year after year in his
+book his executors found entries of sums vested as A. E. F., and during
+the period subsequent to her husband's decease, and before Pen's entry at
+college, the widow had added sundry sums to this fund, so that when
+Arthur went up to Oxbridge it reached no inconsiderable amount. Let him
+be liberally allowanced, was Major Pendennis's maxim. Let him make his
+first entree into the world as a gentleman, and take his place with men
+of good rank and station: after giving it to him, it will be his own duty
+to hold it. There is no such bad policy as stinting a boy--or putting him
+on a lower allowance than his fellows. Arthur will have to face the world
+and fight for himself presently. Meanwhile we shall have procured for him
+good friends, gentlemanly habits, and have him well backed and well
+trained against the time when the real struggle comes. And these liberal
+opinions the Major probably advanced both because they were just, and
+because he was not dealing with his own money.
+
+Thus young Pen, the only son of an estated country gentleman, with a good
+allowance, and a gentlemanlike bearing and person, looked to be a lad of
+much more consequence than he was really; and was held by the Oxbridge
+authorities, tradesmen, and undergraduates, as quite a young buck and
+member of the aristocracy. His manner was frank, brave, and perhaps a
+little impertinent, as becomes a high-spirited youth. He was perfectly
+generous and free-handed with his money, which seemed pretty plentiful.
+He loved joviality, and had a good voice for a song. Boat-racing had not
+risen in Pen's time to the fureur which, as we are given to understand,
+it has since attained in the university; and riding and tandem-driving
+were the fashions of the ingenuous youth. Pen rode well to hounds,
+appeared in pink, as became a young buck, and, not particularly
+extravagant in equestrian or any other amusement, yet managed to run up a
+fine bill at Nile's, the livery-stable keeper, and in a number of other
+quarters. In fact, this lucky young gentleman had almost every taste to a
+considerable degree. He was very fond of books of all sorts: Doctor
+Portman had taught him to like rare editions, and his own taste led him
+to like beautiful bindings. It was marvellous what tall copies, and
+gilding, and marbling, and blind-tooling, the booksellers and binders put
+upon Pen's bookshelves. He had a very fair taste in matters of art, and a
+keen relish for prints of a high school--none of your French Opera
+Dancers, or tawdry Racing Prints, such as had delighted the simple eyes
+of Mr. Spicer, his predecessor--but your Stranges, and Rembrandt
+etchings, and Wilkies before the letter, with which his apartments were
+furnished presently in the most perfect good taste, as was allowed in the
+university, where this young fellow got no small reputation. We have
+mentioned that he exhibited a certain partiality for rings, jewellery,
+and fine raiment of all sorts; and it must be owned that Mr. Pen, during
+his time at the university, was rather a dressy man, and loved to array
+himself in splendour. He and his polite friends would dress themselves
+out with as much care in order to go and dine at each other's rooms, as
+other folks would who were going to enslave a mistress. They said he used
+to wear rings over his kid gloves, which he always denies; but what
+follies will not youth perpetrate with its own admirable gravity and
+simplicity? That he took perfumed baths is a truth; and he used to say
+that he took them after meeting certain men of a very low set in hall.
+
+In Pen's second year, when Miss Fotheringay made her chief hit in London,
+and scores of prints were published of her, Pen had one of these hung in
+his bedroom, and confided to the men of his set how awfully, how wildly,
+how madly, how passionately, he had loved that woman. He showed them in
+confidence the verses that he had written to her, and his brow would
+darken, his eyes roll, his chest heave with emotion as he recalled that
+fatal period of his life, and described the woes and agonies which he had
+suffered. The verses were copied out, handed about, sneered at, admired,
+passed from coterie to coterie. There are few things which elevate a lad
+in the estimation of his brother boys, more than to have a character for
+a great and romantic passion. Perhaps there is something noble in it at
+all times--among very young men it is considered heroic--Pen was
+pronounced a tremendous fellow. They said he had almost committed
+suicide: that he had fought a duel with a baronet about her. Freshmen
+pointed him out to each other. As at the promenade time at two o'clock he
+swaggered out of college, surrounded by his cronies, he was famous to
+behold. He was elaborately attired. He would ogle the ladies who came to
+lionise the university, and passed before him on the arms of happy
+gownsmen, and give his opinion upon their personal charms, or their
+toilettes, with the gravity of a critic whose experience entitled him to
+speak with authority. Men used to say that they had been walking with
+Pendennis, and were as pleased to be seen in his company as some of us
+would be if we walked with a duke down Pall Mall. He and the Proctor
+capped each other as they met, as if they were rival powers, and the men
+hardly knew which was the greater.
+
+In fact, in the course of his second year, Arthur Pendennis had become
+one of the men of fashion in the university. It is curious to watch that
+facile admiration, and simple fidelity of youth. They hang round a
+leader; and wonder at him, and love him, and imitate him. No generous boy
+ever lived, I suppose, that has not had some wonderment of admiration for
+another boy; and Monsieur Pen at Oxbridge had his school, his faithful
+band of friends and his rivals. When the young men heard at the
+haberdashers' shops that Mr. Pendennis, of Boniface, had just ordered a
+crimson satin-cravat, you would see a couple of dozen crimson satin
+cravats in Main Street in the course of the week--and Simon, the
+Jeweller, was known to sell no less than two gross of Pendennis pins,
+from a pattern which the young gentleman had selected in his shop.
+
+Now if any person with an arithmetical turn of mind will take the trouble
+to calculate what a sum of money it would cost a young man to indulge
+freely in all the above propensities which we have said Mr. Pen
+possessed, it will be seen that a young fellow, with such liberal tastes
+and amusements, must needs in the course of two or three years spend or
+owe a very handsome sum of money. We have said our friend Pen had not a
+calculating turn. No one propensity of his was outrageously extravagant;
+and it is certain that Paddington's tailor's account; Guttlebury's cook's
+bill for dinners; Dillon Tandy's bill with Finn, the print seller, for
+Raphael-Morgheus and Landseer proofs, and Wormall's dealings with
+Parkton, the great bookseller, for Aldine editions, black-letter folios,
+and richly illuminated Missals of the XVI. Century; and Snaffle's or
+Foker's score with Nile the horsedealer, were, each and all of them,
+incomparably greater than any little bills which Mr. Pen might run up
+with the above-mentioned tradesmen. But Pendennis of Boniface had the
+advantage over all these young gentlemen, his friends and associates, of
+a universality of taste: and whereas young Lord Paddington did not care
+twopence for the most beautiful print, or to look into any gilt frame
+that had not a mirror within it; and Guttlebury did not mind in the least
+how he was dressed, and had an aversion for horse exercise, nay a terror
+of it; and Snaffle never read any printed works but the 'Racing Calendar'
+or 'Bell's Life,' or cared for any manuscript except his greasy little
+scrawl of a betting-book:--our Catholic-minded young friend occupied
+himself in every one of the branches of science or pleasure
+above-mentioned, and distinguished himself tolerably in each.
+
+Hence young Pen got a prodigious reputation in the university, and was
+hailed as a sort of Crichton; and as for the English verse prize, in
+competition for which we have seen him busily engaged at Fairoaks, Jones
+of Jesus carried it that year certainly, but the undergraduates thought
+Pen's a much finer poem, and he had his verses printed at his own
+expense, and distributed in gilt morocco covers amongst his acquaintance.
+I found a copy of it lately in a dusty corner of Mr. Pen's bookcases, and
+have it before me this minute, bound up in a collection of old Oxbridge
+tracts, university statutes, prize-poems by successful and unsuccessful
+candidates, declamations recited in the college chapel, speeches
+delivered at the Union Debating Society, and inscribed by Arthur with his
+name and college, Pendennis--Boniface; or presented to him by his
+affectionate friend Thompson or Jackson, the author. How strange the
+epigraphs look in those half-boyish hands, and what a thrill the sight of
+the documents gives one after the lapse of a few lustres! How fate, since
+that time, has removed some, estranged others, dealt awfully with all!
+Many a hand is cold that wrote those kindly memorials, and that we
+pressed in the confident and generous grasp of youthful friendship. What
+passions our friendships were in those old days, how artless and void of
+doubt! How the arm you were never tired of having linked in yours under
+the fair college avenues or by the river side, where it washes Magdalen
+Gardens, or Christ Church Meadows, or winds by Trinity and King's, was
+withdrawn of necessity, when you entered presently the world, and each
+parted to push and struggle for himself through the great mob on the way
+through life! Are we the same men now that wrote those inscriptions--that
+read those poems? that delivered or heard those essays and speeches so
+simple, so pompous, so ludicrously solemn; parodied so artlessly from
+books, and spoken with smug chubby faces, and such an admirable aping of
+wisdom and gravity? Here is the book before me: it is scarcely fifteen
+years old. Here is Jack moaning with despair and Byronic misanthropy,
+whose career at the university was one of unmixed milk-punch. Here is
+Tom's daring Essay in defence of suicide and of republicanism in general,
+apropos of the death of Roland and the Girondins--Tom's, who wears the
+starchest tie in all the diocese, and would go to Smithfield rather than
+eat a beefsteak on a Friday in Lent. Here is Bob of the ---- Circuit, who
+has made a fortune in Railroad Committees, and whose dinners are so good
+--bellowing out with Tancred and Godfrey, "On to the breach, ye soldiers
+of the cross, Scale the red wall and swim the choking foss. Ye dauntless
+archers, twang your cross-bows well; On, bill and battle-axe and
+mangonel! Ply battering-ram and hurtling catapult, Jerusalem is ours--id
+Deus vult." After which comes a mellifluous description of the gardens of
+Sharon and the maids of Salem, and a prophecy that roses shall deck the
+entire country of Syria, and a speedy reign of peace be established--all
+in undeniably decasyllabic lines, and the queerest aping of sense and
+sentiment and poetry. And there are Essays and Poems along with these
+grave parodies, and boyish exercises (which are at once so frank and
+false and mirthful, yet, somehow, so mournful) by youthful hands, that
+shall never write more. Fate has interposed darkly, and the young voices
+are silent, and the eager brains have ceased to work. This one had genius
+and a great descent, and seemed to be destined for honours which now are
+of little worth to him: that had virtue, learning, genius--every faculty
+and endowment which might secure love, admiration, and worldly fame: an
+obscure and solitary churchyard contains the grave of many fond hopes,
+and the pathetic stone which bids them farewell--I saw the sun shining on
+it in the fall of last year, and heard the sweet village choir raising
+anthems round about. What boots whether it be Westminster or a little
+country spire which covers your ashes, or if, a few days sooner or later,
+the world forgets you?
+
+Amidst these friends, then, and a host more, Pen passed more than two
+brilliant and happy years of his life. He had his fill of pleasure and
+popularity. No dinner- or supper-party was complete without him; and
+Pen's jovial wit, and Pen's songs, and dashing courage and frank and
+manly bearing, charmed all the undergraduates, and even disarmed the
+tutors who cried out at his idleness, and murmured about his extravagant
+way of life. Though he became the favourite and leader of young men who
+were much his superiors in wealth and station, he was much too generous
+to endeavour to propitiate them by any meanness or cringing on his own
+part, and would not neglect the humblest man of his acquaintance in order
+to curry favour with the richest young grandee in the university. His
+name is still remembered at the Union Debating Club, as one of the
+brilliant orators of his day. By the way, from having been an ardent Tory
+in his freshman's year, his principles took a sudden turn afterwards, and
+he became a liberal of the most violent order. He avowed himself a
+Dantonist, and asserted that Louis the Sixteenth was served right. And as
+for Charles the First, he vowed that he would chop off that monarch's
+head with his own right hand were he then in the room at the Union
+Debating Club, and had Cromwell no other executioner for the traitor.
+He and Lord Magnus Charters, the Marquis of Runnymede's son,
+before-mentioned, were the most truculent republicans of their day.
+
+There are reputations of this sort made, quite independent of the
+collegiate hierarchy, in the republic of gownsmen. A man may be famous in
+the Honour-lists and entirely unknown to the undergraduates: who elect
+kings and chieftains of their own, whom they admire and obey, as
+negro-gangs have private black sovereigns in their own body, to whom they
+pay an occult obedience, besides that which they publicly profess for
+their owners and drivers. Among the young ones Pen became famous and
+popular: not that he did much, but there was a general determination that
+he could do a great deal if he chose. "Ah, if Pendennis of Boniface would
+but try," the men said, "he might do anything." He was backed for the
+Greek Ode won by Smith of Trinity; everybody was sure he would have the
+Latin hexameter prize which Brown of St. John's, however, carried off,
+and in this way one university honour after another was lost by him,
+until, after two or three failures, Mr. Pen ceased to compete. But he got
+a declamation prize in his own college, and brought home to his mother
+and Laura at Fairoaks a set of prize-books begilt with the college arms,
+and so big, well-bound, and magnificent, that these ladies thought there
+had been no such prize ever given in a college before as this of Pen's,
+and that he had won the very largest honour which Oxbridge was capable of
+awarding.
+
+As vacation after vacation and term after term passed away without the
+desired news that Pen had sate for any scholarship or won any honour,
+Doctor Portman grew mightily gloomy in his behaviour towards Arthur, and
+adopted a sulky grandeur of deportment towards him, which the lad
+returned by a similar haughtiness. One vacation he did not call upon the
+Doctor at all, much to his mother's annoyance, who thought that it was a
+privilege to enter the Rectory-house at Clavering, and listened to Dr.
+Portman's antique jokes and stories, though ever so often repeated, with
+unfailing veneration. "I cannot stand the Doctor's patronising air", Pen
+said. "He's too kind to me, a great deal fatherly. I have seen in the
+world better men than him, and am not going to bore myself by listening
+to his dull old stories and drinking his stupid old port wine." The tacit
+feud between Pen and the Doctor made the widow nervous, so that she too
+avoided Portman, and was afraid to go to the Rectory when Arthur was at
+home.
+
+One Sunday in the last long vacation, the wretched boy pushed his
+rebellious spirit so far as not to go to church, and he was seen at the
+gate of the Clavering Arms smoking a cigar, in the face of the
+congregation as it issued from St. Mary's. There was an awful sensation
+in the village society, Portman prophesied Pen's ruin after that, and
+groaned in spirit over the rebellious young prodigal.
+
+So did Helen tremble in her heart, and little Laura--Laura had grown to
+be a fine young stripling by this time, graceful and fair, clinging round
+Helen and worshipping her, with a passionate affection. Both of these
+women felt that their boy was changed. He was no longer the artless Pen
+of old days, so brave, so artless, so impetuous, and tender. His face
+looked careworn and haggard, his voice had a deeper sound, and tones more
+sarcastic. Care seemed to be pursuing him; but he only laughed when his
+mother questioned him, and parried her anxious queries with some scornful
+jest. Nor did he spend much of his vacations at home; he went on visits
+to one great friend or another, and scared the quiet pair at Fairoaks by
+stories of great houses whither he had been invited; and by talking of
+lords without their titles.
+
+Honest Harry Foker, who had been the means of introducing Arthur
+Pendennis to that set of young men at the university, from whose society
+and connexions Arthur's uncle expected that the lad would get so much
+benefit; who had called for Arthur's first song at his first
+supper-party; and who had presented him at the Barmecide Club, where none
+but the very best men of Oxbridge were admitted (it consisted in Pen's
+time of six noblemen, eight gentlemen-pensioners, and twelve of the most
+select commoners of the university), soon found himself left far behind
+by the young freshman in the fashionable world of Oxbridge, and being a
+generous and worthy fellow, without a spark of envy in his composition,
+was exceedingly pleased at the success of his young protege, and admired
+Pen quite as much as any of the other youth did. I was he who followed
+Pen now, and quoted his sayings; learned his songs, and retailed them at
+minor supper-parties, and was never weary of hearing them from the gifted
+young poet's own mouth--for a good deal of the time which Mr. Pen might
+have employed much more advantageously in the pursuit of the regular
+scholastic studies, was given up to the composition of secular ballads,
+which he sang about at parties according to university wont.
+
+It had been as well for Arthur if the honest Foker had remained for some
+time at college, for, with all his vivacity, he was a prudent young man,
+and often curbed Pen's propensity to extravagance: but Foker's collegiate
+career did not last very long after Arthur's entrance at Boniface.
+Repeated differences with the university authorities caused Mr. Foker to
+quit Oxbridge in an untimely manner. He would persist in attending races
+on the neighbouring Hungerford Heath, in spite of the injunctions of his
+academic superiors. He never could be got to frequent the chapel of the
+college with that regularity of piety which Alma Mater demands from her
+children; tandems, which are abominations in the eyes of the heads and
+tutors, were Foker's greatest delight, and so reckless was his driving
+and frequent the accidents and upsets out of his drag, that Pen called
+taking a drive with him taking the "Diversions of Purley;" finally,
+having a dinner-party at his rooms to entertain some friends from London,
+nothing would satisfy Mr. Foker but painting Mr. Buck's door vermilion,
+in which freak he was caught by the proctors; and although young Black
+Strap, the celebrated negro fighter, who was one of Mr. Foker's
+distinguished guests, and was holding the can of paint while the young
+artist operated on the door, knocked down two of the proctor's attendants
+and performed prodigies of valour, yet these feats rather injured than
+served Foker, whom the proctor knew very well and who was taken with the
+brush in his hand, and who was summarily convened and sent down from the
+university.
+
+The tutor wrote a very kind and feeling letter to Lady Agnes on the
+subject, stating that everybody was fond of the youth; that he never
+meant harm to any mortal creature; that he for his own part would have
+been delighted to pardon the harmless little boyish frolic, had not its
+unhappy publicity rendered it impossible to look the freak over, and
+breathing the most fervent wishes for the young fellow's welfare--wishes
+no doubt sincere, for Foker, as we know, came of a noble family on his
+mother's side, and on the other was heir to a great number of thousand
+pounds a year.
+
+"It don't matter," said Foker, talking over the matter with Pen,--"a
+little sooner or a little later, what is the odds? I should have been
+plucked for my little-go again, I know I should--that Latin I cannot
+screw into my head, and my mamma's anguish would have broke out next
+term. The Governor will blow like an old grampus, I know he will,--well,
+we must stop till he gets his wind again. I shall probably go abroad and
+improve my mind with foreign travel. Yes, parly-voo's the ticket. It'ly,
+and that sort of thing. I'll go to Paris and learn to dance and complete
+my education. But it's not me I'm anxious about, Pen. As long as people
+drink beer I don't care,--it's about you I'm doubtful, my boy. You're
+going too fast, and can't keep up the pace, I tell you. It's not the
+fifty you owe me,--pay it or not when you like,--but it's the every-day
+pace, and I tell you it will kill you. You're livin' as if there was no
+end to the money in the stockin' at home. You oughtn't to give dinners,
+you ought to eat 'em. Fellows are glad to have you. You oughtn't to owe
+horse bills, you ought to ride other chaps' nags. You know no more about
+betting than I do about Algebra: the chaps will win your money as sure as
+you sport it. Hang me if you are not trying everything. I saw you sit
+down to ecarte last week at Trumpington's, and taking your turn with the
+bones after Ringwood's supper. They'll beat you at it, Pen, my boy, even
+if they play on the square, which. I don't say they don't, nor which I
+don't say they do, mind. But I won't play with 'em. You're no match for
+'em. You ain't up to their weight. It's like little Black Strap standing
+up to Tom Spring,--the Black's a pretty fighter but, Law bless you, his
+arm ain't long enough to touch Tom,--and I tell you, you're going it with
+fellers beyond your weight. Look here--If you'll promise me never to bet
+nor touch a box nor a card, I'll let you off the two ponies."
+
+But Pen, laughingly, said, "that though it wasn't convenient to him to
+pay the two ponies at that moment, he by no means wished to be let off
+any just debts he owed;" and he and Foker parted, not without many dark
+forebodings on the latter's part with regard to his friend, who Harry
+thought was travelling speedily on the road to ruin.
+
+"One must do at Rome as Rome does," Pen said, in a dandified manner,
+jingling some sovereigns in his waistcoat-pocket. "A little quiet play at
+ecarte can't hurt a man who plays pretty well--I came away fourteen
+sovereigns richer from Ringwood's supper, and, gad! I wanted the money."
+--And he walked off, after having taken leave of poor Foker, who went
+away without any beat of drum, or offer to drive the coach out of
+Oxbridge, to superintend a little dinner which he was going to give at
+his own rooms in Boniface, about which dinners, the cook of the college,
+who had a great respect for Mr. Pendennis, always took especial pains for
+his young favourite.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+Rake's Progress
+
+
+Some short time before Mr. Foker's departure from Oxbridge, there had
+come up to Boniface a gentleman who had once, as it turned out,
+belonged to the other University of Camford, which he had quitted on
+account of some differences with the tutors and authorities there. This
+gentleman, whose name was Horace Bloundell, was of the ancient Suffolk
+family of Bloundell-Bloundell, of Bloundell-Bloundell Hall,
+Bloundell-Bloundellshire, as the young wags used to call it; and no
+doubt it was on account of his descent, and because Dr. Donne, the Master
+of Boniface, was a Suffolk man, and related perhaps to the family, that
+Mr. Horace Bloundell was taken in at Boniface, after St. George's and one
+or two other Colleges had refused to receive him. There was a living in
+the family, which it was important for Mr. Bloundell to hold; and, being
+in a dragoon regiment at the time when his third brother, for whom the
+living was originally intended, sickened and died, Mr. Bloundell
+determined upon quitting crimson pantaloons and sable shakos, for the
+black coat and white neckcloth of the English divine. The misfortunes
+which occurred at Camford, occasioned some slight disturbance to Mr.
+Bloundell's plans; but although defeated upon one occasion, the resolute
+ex-dragoon was not dismayed, and set to work to win a victory elsewhere.
+
+In Pen's second year Major Pendennis paid a brief visit to his nephew,
+and was introduced to several of Pen's university friends--the gentle and
+polite Lord Plinlimmon, the gallant and open-hearted Magnus Charters, the
+sly and witty Harland; the intrepid Ringwood, who was called Rupert in
+the Union Debating Club, from his opinions and the bravery of his
+blunders; Broadbent, styled Barebones Broadbent from the republican
+nature of his opinions (he was of a dissenting family from Bristol and a
+perfect Boanerges of debate); Mr. Bloundell-Bloundell finally, who had at
+once taken his place among the select of the university.
+
+Major Pendennis, though he did not understand Harland's Greek quotations,
+or quite appreciate Broadbent's thick shoes and dingy hands, was
+nevertheless delighted with the company assembled round his nephew, and
+highly approved of all the young men with the exception of that one who
+gave himself the greatest airs in the society, and affected most to have
+the manners of a man of the world.
+
+As he and Pen sate at breakfast on the morning after the party in the
+rooms of the latter, the Major gave his opinions regarding the young men,
+with whom he was in the greatest good-humour. He had regaled them with
+some of his stories, which, though not quite so fresh in London (where
+people have a diseased appetite for novelty in the way of anecdotes),
+were entirely new at Oxbridge, and the lads heard them with that honest
+sympathy, that eager pleasure, that boisterous laughter, or that profound
+respect, so rare in the metropolis, and which must be so delightful to
+the professed raconteur. Only once or twice during the telling of the
+anecdote Mr. Bloundell's face wore a look of scorn, or betrayed by its
+expression that he was acquainted with the tales narrated. Once he had
+the audacity to question the accuracy of one of the particulars of a tale
+as given by Major Pendennis, and gave his own version of the anecdote,
+about which he knew he was right, for he heard it openly talked of at
+the Club by So-and-so and T'other who were present at the business. The
+youngsters present looked up with wonder at their associate, who dared to
+interrupt the Major--few of them could appreciate that melancholy grace
+and politeness with which Major Pendennis at once acceded to Mr.
+Bloundell's version of the story, and thanked him for correcting his own
+error. They stared on the next occasion of meeting, when Bloundell spoke
+in contemptuous terms of old Pen; said everybody knew old Pen, regular
+old trencherman at Gaunt House, notorious old bore, regular old fogy.
+
+Major Pendennis on his side liked Mr. Bloundell not a whit. These
+sympathies are pretty sure to be mutual amongst men and women, and if,
+for my part, some kind friend tells me that such and such a man has been
+abusing me, I am almost sure, on my own side, that I have a misliking to
+such and such a man. We like or dislike each other, as folks like or
+dislike the odour of certain flowers, or the taste of certain dishes or
+wines, or certain books. We can't tell why--but as a general rule, all
+the reasons in the world will not make us love Dr. Fell, and as sure as
+we dislike him, we may be sure that he dislikes us.
+
+So the Major said, "Pen, my boy, your dinner went off a merveille; you
+did the honours very nicely--you carved well--I am glad you learned to
+carve--it is done on the sideboard now in most good houses, but is still
+an important point, and may aid you in middle-life--young Lord Plinlimmon
+is a very amiable young man, quite the image of his dear mother (whom I
+knew as Lady Aquila Brownbill); and Lord Magnus's republicanism will wear
+off--it sits prettily enough on a young patrician in early life, though
+nothing is so loathsome among persons of our rank--Mr. Broadbent seems to
+have much eloquence and considerable reading your friend Foker is always
+delightful: but your acquaintance, Mr. Bloundell, struck me as in all
+respects a most ineligible young man."
+
+"Bless my soul, sir, Bloundell-Bloundell!" cried Pen, laughing; "why,
+sir, he's the most popular man of the university. We elected him of the
+Barmecides the first week he came up--had a special meeting on purpose--
+he's of an excellent family--Suffolk Bloundells, descended from Richard's
+Blondel, bear a harp in chief--and motto O Mong Roy."
+
+"A man may have a very good coat-of-arms, and be a tiger, my boy," the
+Major said, chipping his egg; "that man is a tiger, mark my word--a low
+man. I will lay a wager that he left his regiment, which was a good one
+(for a more respectable man than my friend Lord Martingale never sate in
+a saddle), in bad odour. There is the unmistakable look of slang and bad
+habits about this Mr. Bloundell. He frequents low gambling-houses and
+billiard-hells, sir--he haunts third-rate clubs--I know he does. I know
+by his style. I never was mistaken in my man yet. Did you remark the
+quantity of rings and jewellery he wore? That person has Scamp written on
+his countenance, if any man ever had. Mark my words and avoid him. Let us
+turn the conversation. The dinner was a leetle too fine, but I don't
+object to your making a few extra frais when you receive friends. Of
+course, you don't do it often, and only those whom it is your interest to
+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
+that they know they know nothing of the science, when perhaps their
+conscience whispers them that the science is in itself little worth, and
+that a leg of mutton and content is as good as the dinners of pontiffs.
+But little Pen, in his character of Admirable Crichton, thought it
+necessary to be a great judge and practitioner of dinners; we have just
+said how the college cook respected him, and shall soon have to deplore
+that that worthy man so blindly trusted our Pen. In the third year of the
+lad's residence at Oxbridge, his staircase was by no means encumbered
+with dish-covers and desserts, and waiters carrying in dishes, and skips
+opening iced champagne; crowds of different sorts of attendants, with
+faces sulky or piteous, hung about the outer oak, and assailed the
+unfortunate lad as he issued out of his den.
+
+Nor did his guardian's advice take any effect, or induce Mr. Pen to avoid
+the society of the disreputable Mr. Bloundell. What young men like in
+their companions is, what had got Pen a great part of his own repute and
+popularity, a real or supposed knowledge of life. A man who has seen the
+world, or can speak of it with a knowing air--a roue, or Lovelace, who
+has his adventures to relate, is sure of an admiring audience among boys.
+It is hard to confess, but so it is. We respect that sort of prowess.
+From our school-days we have been taught to admire it. Are there five in
+the hundred, out of the hundreds and hundreds of English school-boys,
+brought up at our great schools and colleges, that must not own at one
+time of their lives to having read and liked Don Juan? Awful propagation
+of evil!--The idea of it should make the man tremble who holds the pen,
+lest untruth, or impurity, or unjust anger, or unjust praise escape it.
+
+One such diseased creature as this is enough to infect a whole colony,
+and the tutors of Boniface began to find the moral tone of their college
+lowered and their young men growing unruly, and almost ungentleman-like,
+soon after Mr. Bloundell's arrival at Oxbridge. The young magnates of the
+neighbouring great College of St. George's, who regarded Pen, and in
+whose society he lived, were not taken in by Bloundell's flashy graces,
+and rakish airs of fashion. Broadbent called him Captain Macheath, and
+said he would live to be hanged. Foker, during his brief stay at the
+university with Macheath, with characteristic caution declined to say
+anything in the Captain's disfavour, but hinted to Pen that he had better
+have him for a partner at whist than play against him, and better back
+him at ecarte than bet on the other side. "You see, he plays better than
+you do, Pen," was the astute young gentleman's remark: "he plays uncommon
+well, the Captain does;--and Pen, I wouldn't take the odds too freely
+from him, if I was you. I don't think he's too flush of money, the
+Captain ain't." But beyond these dark suggestions and generalities, the
+cautious Foker could not be got to speak.
+
+Not that his advice would have had more weight with a headstrong young
+man, than advice commonly has with a lad who is determined on pursuing
+his own way. Pen's appetite for pleasure was insatiable, and he rushed at
+it wherever it presented itself, with an eagerness which bespoke his
+fiery constitution and youthful health. He called taking pleasure "Seeing
+life," and quoted well-known maxims from Terence, from Horace, from
+Shakspeare, to show that one should do all that might become a man. He
+bade fair to be utterly used up and a roue, in a few years, if he were to
+continue at the pace at which he was going.
+
+One night after a supper-party in college, at which Pen and Macheath had
+been present, and at which a little quiet vingt-et-un had been played (an
+amusement much pleasanter to men in their second and third year than the
+boisterous custom of singing songs, which bring the proctors about the
+rooms, and which have grown quite stale by this time, every man having
+expended his budget)--as the men had taken their caps and were going
+away, after no great losses or winnings on any side, Mr. Bloundell
+playfully took up a green wine-glass from the supper-table, which had
+been destined to contain iced cup, but into which he inserted something
+still more pernicious, namely a pair of dice, which the gentleman took
+out of his waistcoat-pocket, and put into the glass. Then giving the
+glass a graceful wave which showed that his hand was quite experienced in
+the throwing of dice, he called sevens the main, and whisking the ivory
+cubes gently on the table, swept them up lightly again from the cloth,
+and repeated this process two or three times. The other men looked on,
+Pen, of course, among the number, who had never used the dice as yet,
+except to play a humdrum game of backgammon at home.
+
+Mr. Bloundell, who had a good voice, began to troll out the chorus from
+Robert the Devil, an Opera then in great vogue, in which chorus many of
+the men joined, especially Pen, who was in very high spirits, having won
+a good number of shillings and half-crowns at the vingt-et-un--and
+presently, instead of going home, most of the party were seated round the
+table playing at dice, the green glass going round from hand to hand
+until Pen finally shivered it, after throwing six mains.
+
+From that night Pen plunged into the delights of the game of hazard, as
+eagerly as it was his custom to pursue any new pleasure. Dice can be
+played of mornings as well as after dinner or supper. Bloundell would
+come into Pen's rooms after breakfast, and it was astonishing how quick
+the time passed as the bones were rattling. They had little quiet parties
+with closed doors, and Bloundell devised a box lined with felt, so that
+the dice should make no noise, and their tell-tale rattle not bring the
+sharp-eared tutors up to the rooms. Bloundell, Ringwood, and Pen were
+once very nearly caught by Mr. Buck, who, passing in the Quadrangle,
+thought he heard the words "Two to one on the caster," through Pen's open
+window; but when the tutor got into Arthur's rooms he found the lads with
+three Homers before them, and Pen said he was trying to coach the two
+other men, and asked Mr. Buck with great gravity what was the present
+condition of the River Scamander, and whether it was navigable or no?
+
+Mr. Arthur Pendennis did not win much money in these transactions with
+Mr. Bloundell, or indeed gain good of any kind except a knowledge of the
+odds at hazard, which he might have learned out of books.
+
+Captain Macheath had other accomplishments which he exercised for Pen's
+benefit. The Captain's stories had a great and unfortunate charm for
+Arthur, who was never tired of hearing Bloundell's histories of garrison
+conquests, and of his feats in country-quarters.--He had been at Paris,
+and had plenty of legends about the Palais Royal, and the Salon, and
+Frascati's. He had gone to the Salon one night, after a dinner at the
+Cafe de Paris, "when we were all devilishly cut, by Jove; and on waking
+in the morning in my own rooms, I found myself with twelve thousand
+francs under my pillow, and a hundred and forty-nine Napoleons in one of
+my boots. Wasn't that a coup, hay?" the Captain said. Pen's eyes
+glistened with excitement as he heard this story. He respected the man
+who could win such a sum of money. He sighed, and said it would set him
+all right. Macheath laughed, and told him to drink another drop of
+Maraschino. "I could tell you stories much more wonderful than that," he
+added; and so indeed the Captain could have done, without any further
+trouble than that of invention, with which portion of the poetic faculty
+Nature had copiously endowed him.
+
+He laughed to scorn Pen's love for Miss Fotheringay, when he came to hear
+of that amour from Arthur, as he pretty soon did, for, we have said, Pen
+was not averse to telling the story now to his confidential friends, and
+he and they were rather proud of the transaction. But Macheath took away
+all Pen's conceit on this head, not by demonstrating the folly of the
+lad's passion for an uneducated woman much his senior in years, but by
+exposing his absurd desire of gratifying his passion in a legitimate way.
+"Marry her," said he, "you might as well marry ----," and he named one of
+the most notorious actresses on the stage.
+
+"She hadn't a shred of a character." He knew twenty men who were openly
+admirers of her, and named them, and the sums each had spent upon her. I
+know no kind of calumny more frightful or frequent than this which takes
+away the character of women, no men more reckless and mischievous than
+those who lightly use it, and no kind of cowards more despicable than the
+people who invent these slanders.
+
+Is it, or not, a misfortune that a man, himself of a candid disposition,
+and disposed, like our friend Pen, to blurt out the truth on all
+occasions, begins life by believing all that is said to him? Would it be
+better for a lad to be less trustful, and so less honest? It requires no
+small experience of the world to know that a man, who has no especial
+reason thereto, is telling you lies. I am not sure whether it is not best
+to go on being duped for a certain time. At all events, our honest Pen
+had a natural credulity, which enabled him to accept all statements which
+were made to him, and he took every one of Captain Macheath's figments as
+if they had been the most unquestioned facts of history.
+
+So Bloundell's account about Miss Fotheringay pained and mortified Pen
+exceedingly. If he had been ashamed of his passion before,--what were his
+feelings regarding it now, when the object of so much pure flame and
+adoration turned out to be only a worthless impostor, an impostor
+detected by all but him? It never occurred to Pen to doubt the fact, or
+to question whether the stories of a man who, like his new friend, never
+spoke well of any woman, were likely to be true.
+
+One Easter vacation, when Pen had announced to his mother and uncle his
+intention not to go down, but stay at Oxbridge and read, Mr. Pen was
+nevertheless induced to take a brief visit to London in company with his
+friend Mr. Bloundell. They put up at a hotel in Covent Garden, where
+Bloundell had a tick, as he called it, and took the pleasures of the town
+very freely after the wont of young university men. Bloundell still
+belonged to a military club, whither he took Pen to dine once or twice
+(the young men would drive thither in a cab, trembling lest they should
+meet Major Pendennis on his beat in Pall Mall), and here Pen was
+introduced to a number of gallant young fellows with spurs and
+mustachios, with whom he drank pale-ale of mornings and beat the town of
+a night. Here he saw a deal of life, indeed: nor in his career about the
+theatres and singing-houses which these roaring young blades frequented,
+was he very likely to meet his guardian. One night, nevertheless, they
+were very near to each other: a plank only separating Pen, who was in the
+boxes of the Museum Theatre, from the Major, who was in Lord Steyne's
+box, along with that venerated nobleman. The Fotheringay was in the pride
+of her glory. Shad made a hit: that is, she had drawn very good houses
+for nearly a year, had starred the provinces with great eclat, had come
+back to shine in London with somewhat diminished lustre, and now was
+acting with "ever increasing attraction; etc.," "triumph of the good old
+British drama," as the play-bills avowed, to houses in which there was
+plenty of room for anybody who wanted to see her.
+
+It was not the first time Pen had seen her, since that memorable day when
+the two had parted in Chatteris. In the previous year, when the town was
+making much of her, and the press lauded her beauty, Pen had found a
+pretext for coming to London in term-time, and had rushed off to the
+theatre to see his old flame. He recollected it rather than renewed it.
+He remembered how ardently he used to be on the look-out at Chatteris,
+when the speech before Ophelia's or Mrs. Haller's entrance on the stage
+was made by the proper actor. Now, as the actor spoke, he had a sort of
+feeble thrill: as the house began to thunder with applause, and Ophelia
+entered with her old bow and sweeping curtsey, Pen felt a slight shock
+and blushed very much as he looked at her, and could not help thinking
+that all the house was regarding him. He hardly heard her for the first
+part of the play: and he thought with such rage of the humiliation to
+which she had subjected him, that he began to fancy he was jealous and in
+love with her still. But that illusion did not last very long. He ran
+round to the stage-door of the theatre to see her if possible, but he did
+not succeed. She passed indeed under his nose with a female companion,
+but he did not know her,--nor did she recognise him. The next night he
+came in late, and stayed very quietly for the afterpiece, and on the
+third and last night of his stay in London--why, Taglioni was going to
+dance at the Opera,--Taglioni! and there was to be Don Giovanni, which he
+admired of all things in the world: so Mr. Pen went to Don Giovanni and
+Taglioni.
+
+This time the illusion about her was quite gone. She was not less
+handsome, but she was not the same, somehow. The light was gone out of
+her eyes which used to flash there, or Pen's no longer were dazzled by
+it. The rich voice spoke as of old, yet it did not make Pen's bosom
+thrill as formerly. He thought he could recognise the brogue underneath:
+the accents seemed to him coarse and false. It annoyed him to hear the
+same emphasis on the same words, only uttered a little louder: worse than
+this, it annoyed him to think that he should ever have mistaken that loud
+imitation for genius, or melted at those mechanical sobs and sighs. He
+felt that it was in another life almost, that it was another man who had
+so madly loved her. He was ashamed and bitterly humiliated, and very
+lonely. Ah, poor Pen! the delusion is better than the truth sometimes,
+and fine dreams than dismal waking.
+
+They went and had an uproarious supper that night, and Mr. Pen had a fine
+headache the next morning, with which he went back to Oxbridge, having
+spent all his ready money.
+
+As all this narrative is taken from Pen's own confessions, so that the
+reader may be assured of the truth of every word of it, and as Pen
+himself never had any accurate notion of the manner in which he spent his
+money, and plunged himself in much deeper pecuniary difficulties, during
+his luckless residence at Oxbridge University, it is, of course,
+impossible for me to give any accurate account of his involvements,
+beyond that general notion of his way of life, which has been sketched a
+few pages back. He does not speak too hardly of the roguery of the
+university tradesmen, or of those in London whom he honoured with his
+patronage at the outset of his career. Even Finch, the money-lender, to
+whom Bloundell introduced him, and with whom he had various transactions,
+in which the young rascal's signature appeared upon stamped paper,
+treated him, according to Pen's own account, with forbearance, and never
+mulcted him of more than a hundred per cent. The old college-cook, his
+fervent admirer, made him a private bill, offered to send him in dinners
+up to the very last, and never would have pressed his account to his
+dying day. There was that kindness and frankness about Arthur Pendennis,
+which won most people who came in contact with him, and which, if it
+rendered him an easy prey to rogues, got him, perhaps, more goodwill than
+he merited from many honest men. It was impossible to resist his
+good-nature, or, in his worst moments, not to hope for his rescue from
+utter ruin.
+
+At the time of his full career of university pleasure, he would leave the
+gayest party to go and sit with a sick friend. He never knew the
+difference between small and great in the treatment of his acquaintances,
+however much the unlucky lad's tastes, which were of the sumptuous order,
+led him to prefer good society; he was only too ready to share his guinea
+with a poor friend, and when he got money had an irresistible propensity
+for paying, which he never could conquer through life.
+
+In his third year at college, the duns began to gather awfully round
+about him, and there was a levee at his oak which scandalised the tutors,
+and would have scared many a stouter heart. With some of these he used to
+battle, some he would bully (under Mr. Bloundell's directions, who was a
+master in this art, though he took a degree in no other), and some
+deprecate. And it is reported of him that little Mary Frodsham, the
+daughter of a certain poor gilder and frame-maker, whom Mr. Pen had
+thought fit to employ, and who had made a number of beautiful frames for
+his fine prints, coming to Pendennis with a piteous tale that her father
+was ill with ague, and that there was an execution in their house, Pen in
+an anguish of remorse rushed away, pawned his grand watch and every
+single article of jewellery except two old gold sleeve-buttons, which had
+belonged to his father, and rushed with the proceeds to Frodsham's shop,
+where, with tears in his eyes, and the deepest repentance and humility,
+he asked the poor tradesman's pardon.
+
+This, young gentlemen, is not told as an instance of Pen's virtue, but
+rather of his weakness. It would have been much more virtuous to have had
+no prints at all. He still stood for the baubles which he sold in order
+to pay Frodsham's bill, and his mother had cruelly to pinch herself in
+order to discharge the jeweller's account, so that she was in the end the
+sufferer by the lad's impertinent fancies and follies. We are not
+presenting Pen to you as a hero or a model, only as a lad, who, in the
+midst of a thousand vanities and weaknesses, has as yet some generous
+impulses, and is not altogether dishonest.
+
+We have said it was to the scandal of Mr. Buck the tutor that Pen's
+extravagances became known: from the manner in which he entered college,
+the associates he kept, and the introductions of Doctor Portman and the
+Major, Buck for a long time thought that his pupil was a man of large
+property, and wondered rather that he only wore a plain gown. Once on
+going up to London to the levee with an address from his Majesty's Loyal
+University of Oxbridge, Buck had seen Major Pendennis at St. James's in
+conversation with two knights of the garter, in the carriage of one of
+whom the dazzled tutor saw the Major whisked away after the levee. He
+asked Pen to wine the instant he came back, let him off from chapels and
+lectures more than ever, and felt perfectly sure that he was a young
+gentleman of large estate.
+
+Thus, he was thunderstruck when he heard the truth, and received a dismal
+confession from Pen. His university debts were large, and the tutor had
+nothing to do, and of course Pen did not acquaint him, with his London
+debts. What man ever does tell all when pressed by his friends about his
+liabilities? The tutor learned enough to know that Pen was poor, that he
+had spent a handsome, almost a magnificent allowance, and had raised
+around him such a fine crop of debts, as it would be very hard work for
+any man to mow down; for there is no plant that grows so rapidly when
+once it has taken root.
+
+Perhaps it was because she was so tender and good that Pen was terrified
+lest his mother should know of his sins. "I can't bear to break it to
+her," he said to the tutor in an agony of grief. "O! sir, I've been a
+villain to her"--and he repented, and he wished he had the time to come
+over again, and he asked himself, "Why, why did his uncle insist upon the
+necessity of living with great people, and in how much did all his grand
+acquaintance profit him?"
+
+They were not shy, but Pen thought they were, and slunk from them during
+his last terms at college. He was as gloomy as a death's-head at parties,
+which he avoided of his own part, or to which his young friends soon
+ceased to invite him. Everybody knew that Pendennis was "hard up." That
+man Bloundell, who could pay nobody, and who was obliged to go down after
+three terms, was his ruin, the men said. His melancholy figure might be
+seen shirking about the lonely quadrangles in his battered old cap and
+torn gown, and he who had been the pride of the university but a year
+before, the man whom all the young ones loved to look at, was now the
+object of conversation at freshmen's wine-parties, and they spoke of him
+with wonder and awe.
+
+At last came the Degree Examinations. Many a young man of his year whose
+hob-nailed shoes Pen had derided, and whose face or coat he had
+caricatured--many a man whom he had treated with scorn in the
+lecture-room or crushed with his eloquence in the debating-club--many of
+his own set who had not half his brains, but a little regularity and
+constancy of occupation, took high places in the honours or passed with
+decent credit. And where in the list was Pen the superb, Pen the wit and
+dandy, Pen the poet and orator? Ah, where was Pen the widow's darling and
+sole pride? Let us hide our heads, and shut up the page. The lists came
+out; and a dreadful rumour rushed through the university, that Pendennis
+of Boniface was plucked.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+Flight after Defeat
+
+
+Everybody who has the least knowledge of Heraldry and the Peerage must be
+aware that the noble family of which, as we know, Helen Pendennis was a
+member, bears for a crest, a nest full of little pelicans pecking at the
+ensanguined bosom of a big maternal bird, which plentifully supplies the
+little wretches with the nutriment on which, according to the heraldic
+legend, they are supposed to be brought up. Very likely female pelicans
+like so to bleed under the selfish little beaks of their young ones: it
+is certain that women do. There must be some sort of pleasure, which we
+men don't understand, which accompanies the pain of being scarified, and
+indeed I believe some women would rather actually so suffer than not.
+They like sacrificing themselves in behalf of the object which their
+instinct teaches them to love. Be it for a reckless husband, a dissipated
+son, a darling scapegrace of a brother, how ready their hearts are to
+pour out their best treasures for the benefit of the cherished person;
+and what a deal of this sort of enjoyment are we, on one side, ready to
+give the soft creatures! There is scarce a man that reads this, but has
+administered pleasure in this fashion to his womankind, and has treated
+them to the luxury of forgiving him. They don't mind how they live
+themselves; but when the prodigal comes home they make a rejoicing, and
+kill the fatted calf for him: and at the very first hint that the sinner
+is returning, the kind angels prepare their festival, and Mercy and
+Forgiveness go smiling out to welcome him. I hope it may be so always for
+all: if we have only Justice to look to, Heaven help us!
+
+During the latter part of Pen's residence at the University of Oxbridge,
+his uncle's partiality had greatly increased for the lad. The Major was
+proud of Arthur, who had high spirits, frank manners, a good person, and
+high gentleman-like bearing. It pleased the old London bachelor to see
+Pen walking with the young patricians of his university, and he (who was
+never known to entertain his friends, and whose stinginess had passed
+into a sort of byword among some wags at the Club, who envied his many
+engagements, and did not choose to consider his poverty) was charmed to
+give his nephew and the young lords snug little dinners at his lodgings,
+and to regale them with good claret, and his very best bons mots and
+stories: some of which would be injured by the repetition, for the
+Major's manner of telling them was incomparably neat and careful; and
+others, whereof the repetition would do good to nobody. He paid his court
+to their parents through the young men, and to himself as it were by
+their company. He made more than one visit to Oxbridge, where the young
+fellows were amused by entertaining the old gentleman, and gave parties
+and breakfasts and fetes, partly to joke him and partly to do him honour.
+He plied them with his stories. He made himself juvenile and hilarious in
+the company of the young lords. He went to hear Pen at a grand debate at
+the Union, crowed and cheered, and rapped his stick in chorus with the
+cheers of the men, and was astounded at the boy's eloquence and fire. He
+thought he had got a young Pitt for a nephew. He had an almost paternal
+fondness for Pen. He wrote to the lad letters with playful advice and the
+news of the town. He bragged about Arthur at his Clubs, and introduced
+him with pleasure into his conversation; saying, that, Egad, the young
+fellows were putting the old ones to the wall; that the lads who were
+coming up, young Lord Plinlimmon, a friend of my boy, young Lord Magnus
+Charters, a chum of my scapegrace, etc., would make a greater figure in
+the world than even their fathers had done before them. He asked
+permission to bring Arthur to a grand 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 everywhere of the boy's great talents, and remarkable
+oratorical powers; and of the brilliant degree he was going to take. Lord
+Runnymede would take him on his embassy, or the Duke would bring him in
+for one of his boroughs, he wrote over and over again to Helen; who, for
+her part, was too ready to believe anything that anybody chose to say in
+favour of her son.
+
+And all this pride and affection of uncle and mother had been trampled
+down by Pen's wicked extravagance and idleness! I don't envy Pen's
+feelings (as the phrase is), as he thought of what he had done. He had
+slept, and the tortoise had won the race. He had marred at its outset
+what might have been a brilliant career. He had dipped ungenerously into
+a generous mother's purse; basely and recklessly spilt her little cruse.
+O! it was a coward hand that could strike and rob a creature so tender.
+And if Pen felt the wrong which he had done to others, are we to suppose
+that a young gentleman of his vanity did not feel still more keenly the
+shame he had brought upon himself? Let us be assured that there is no
+more cruel remorse than that; and no groans more piteous than those of
+wounded self-love. Like Joel Miller's friend, the Senior Wrangler, who
+bowed to the audience from his box at the play, because he and the king
+happened to enter the theatre at the same time, only with a fatuity by no
+means so agreeable to himself, poor Arthur Pendennis felt perfectly
+convinced that all England would remark the absence of his name from the
+examination-lists, and talk about his misfortune. His wounded tutor, his
+many duns, the skip and bed-maker who waited upon him, the undergraduates
+of his own time and the years below him, whom he had patronised or
+scorned--how could he bear to look any of them in the face now? He rushed
+to his rooms, into which he shut himself, and there he penned a letter to
+his tutor, full of thanks, regards, remorse, and despair, requesting that
+his name might be taken off the college books, and intimating a wish and
+expectation that death would speedily end the woes of the disgraced
+Arthur Pendennis.
+
+Then he slunk out, scarcely knowing whither he went, but mechanically
+taking the unfrequented little lanes by the backs of the colleges, until
+he cleared the university precincts, and got down to the banks of the
+Camisis river, now deserted, but so often alive with the boat-races, and
+the crowds of cheering gownsmen, he wandered on and on, until he found
+himself at some miles' distance from Oxbridge, or rather was found by
+some acquaintances leaving that city.
+
+As Pen went up a hill, a drizzling January rain beating in his face, and
+his ragged gown flying behind him--for he had not divested himself of his
+academical garments since the morning--a postchaise came rattling up the
+road, on the box of which a servant was seated, whilst within, or rather
+half out of the carriage window, sate a young gentleman smoking a cigar,
+and loudly encouraging the postboy. It was our young acquaintance of
+Baymouth Mr. Spavin, who had got his degree, and was driving homewards in
+triumph in his yellow postchaise. He caught a sight of the figure, madly
+gesticulating as he worked up the hill, and of poor Pen's pale and
+ghastly face as the chaise whirled by him.
+
+"Wo!" roared Mr. Spavin to the postboy, and the horses stopped in their
+mad career, and the carriage pulled up some fifty yards before Pen. He
+presently heard his own name shouted, and beheld the upper half of the
+body of Mr. Spavin thrust out of the side-window of the vehicle, and
+beckoning Pen vehemently towards it.
+
+Pen stopped, hesitated--nodded his head fiercely, and pointed onwards, as
+if desirous that the postillion should proceed. He did not speak: but his
+countenance must have looked very desperate, for young Spavin, having
+stared at him with an expression of blank alarm, jumped out of the
+carriage presently, ran towards Pen holding out his hand, and grasping
+Pen's, said, "I say--hullo, old boy, where are you going, and what's the
+row now?"
+
+"I'm going where I deserve to go," said Pen, with an imprecation.
+
+"This ain't the way," said Mr. Spavin, smiling. "This is the Fenbury
+road. I say, Pen, don't take on because you are plucked. It's nothing
+when you are used to it. I've been plucked three times, old boy--and
+after the first time I didn't care. Glad it's over, though. You'll have
+better luck next time."
+
+Pen looked at his early acquaintance,--who had been plucked, who had been
+rusticated, who had only, after repeated failures, learned to read and
+write correctly, and who, in spite of all these drawbacks, had attained
+the honour of a degree. "This man has passed," he thought, "and I have
+failed!" It was almost too much for him to bear.
+
+"Good-bye, Spavin," said he; "I'm very glad you are through. Don't let me
+keep you; I'm in a hurry--I'm going to town to-night."
+
+"Gammon," said Mr. Spavin. "This ain't the way to town; this is the
+Fenbury road, I tell you."
+
+"I was just going to turn back," Pen said.
+
+"All the coaches are full with the men going down," Spavin said. Pen
+winced. "You'd not get a place for a ten-pound note. Get into my yellow;
+I'll drop you at Mudford, where you have a chance of the Fenbury mail.
+I'll lend you a hat and a coat; I've got lots. Come along; jump in, old
+boy--go it, leathers!"--and in this way Pen found himself in Mr. Spavin's
+postchaise, and rode with that gentleman as far as the Ram Inn at
+Mudford, fifteen miles from Oxbridge; where the Fenbury mail changed
+horses, and where Pen got a place on to London.
+
+The next day there was an immense excitement in Boniface College,
+Oxbridge, where, for some time, a rumour prevailed, to the terror of
+Pen's tutor and tradesmen, that Pendennis, maddened at losing his degree,
+had made away with himself--a battered cap, in which his name was almost
+discernible, together with a seal bearing his crest of an eagle looking
+at a now extinct sun, had been found three miles on the Fenbury road,
+near a mill-stream, and, for four-and-twenty hours, it was supposed that
+poor Pen had flung himself into the stream, until letters arrived from
+him, bearing the London post-mark.
+
+The mail reached London at the dreary hour of five; and he hastened to
+the inn at Covent Garden, at which he was accustomed to put up, where the
+ever-wakeful porter admitted him, and showed him to a bed. Pen looked
+hard at the man, and wondered whether Boots knew he was plucked? When in
+bed be could not sleep there. He tossed about until the appearance of the
+dismal London daylight, when he sprang up desperately, and walked off to
+his uncle's lodgings in Bury Street; where the maid, who was scouring the
+steps, looked up suspiciously at him, as he came with an unshaven face,
+and yesterday's linen. He thought she knew of his mishap, too.
+
+"Good evens! Mr. Harthur, what as appened, sir?" Mr. Morgan, the valet,
+asked, who had just arranged the well-brushed clothes and shiny boots at
+the door of his master's bedroom, and was carrying in his wig to the
+Major.
+
+"I want to see my uncle," he cried, in a ghastly voice, and flung himself
+down on a chair.
+
+Morgan backed before the pale and desperate-looking young man, with
+terrified and wondering glances, and disappeared in his master's
+apartment.
+
+The Major put his head out of the bedroom door, as soon as he had his wig
+on.
+
+"What? examination over? Senior Wrangler, double First Class, hay? said
+the old gentleman--I'll come directly;" and the head disappeared.
+
+"They don't know what has happened," groaned Pen; "what will they say
+when they know all?"
+
+Pen had been standing with his back to the window, and to such a dubious
+light as Bury Street enjoys of a foggy January morning, so that his uncle
+could not see the expression of the young man's countenance, or the looks
+of gloom and despair which even Mr. Morgan had remarked.
+
+But when the Major came out of his dressing-room neat and radiant, and
+preceded by faint odours from Delcroix's shop, from which emporium Major
+Pendennis's wig and his pocket-handkerchief got their perfume, he held
+out one of his hands to Pen, and was about addressing him in his cheery
+high-toned voice, when he caught sight of the boy's face at length, and
+dropping his hand, said, "Good God! Pen, what's the matter?"
+
+"You'll see it in the papers at breakfast, sir," Pen said.
+
+"See what?"
+
+"My name isn't there, sir."
+
+"Hang it, why should it be?" asked the Major, more perplexed.
+
+"I have lost everything, sir," Pen groaned out; "my honour's gone; I'm
+ruined irretrievably; I can't go back to Oxbridge."
+
+"Lost your honour?" screamed out the Major. "Heaven alive! you don't mean
+to say you have shown the white feather?"
+
+Pen laughed bitterly at the word feather, and repeated it. "No, it isn't
+that, sir. I'm not afraid of being shot; I wish to God anybody would. I
+have not got my degree. I--I'm plucked, sir."
+
+The Major had heard of plucking, but in a very vague and cursory way, and
+concluded that it was some ceremony performed corporally upon rebellious
+university youth. "I wonder you can look me in the face after such a
+disgrace, sir," he said; "I wonder you submitted to it as a gentleman."
+
+"I couldn't help it, sir. I did my classical papers well enough it was
+those infernal mathematics, which I have always neglected."
+
+"Was it--was it done in public, sir?" the Major said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"The--the plucking?" asked the guardian, looking Pen anxiously in the
+face.
+
+Pen perceived the error under which his guardian was labouring, and in
+the midst of his misery the blunder caused the poor wretch a faint smile,
+and served to bring down the conversation from the tragedy-key, in which
+Pen had been disposed to carry it on. He explained to his uncle that he
+had gone in to pass his examination, and failed. On which the Major said,
+that though he had expected far better things of his nephew, there was no
+great misfortune in this, and no dishonour as far as he saw, and that Pen
+must try again.
+
+"Me again at Oxbridge," Pen thought, "after such a humiliation as that!"
+He felt that, except he went down to burn the place, he could not enter
+it.
+
+But it was when he came to tell his uncle of his debts that the other
+felt surprise and anger most keenly, and broke out in speeches most
+severe upon Pen, which the lad bore, as best might, without flinching. He
+had determined to make a clean breast, and had formed a full, true, and
+complete list of all his bills and liabilities at the university, and in
+London. They consisted of various items, such as:
+
+   London Tailor.                      Oxbridge do.
+   Oxbridge do.                        Bill for horses.
+   Haberdasher, for shirts and gloves. Printseller.
+   Jeweller.                           Books.
+   College Cook.                       Binding.
+   Grump, for desserts.                Hairdresser and Perfumery.
+   Bootmaker.                          Hotel bill in London.
+   Wine Merchant in London.            Sundries.
+
+All which items the reader may fill in at his pleasure--such accounts
+have been inspected by the parents of many university youth,--and it
+appeared that Mr. Pen's bills in all amounted to about seven hundred
+pounds; and, furthermore, it was calculated that he had had more than
+twice that sum of ready money during his stay at Oxbridge. This sum he
+had spent, and for it had to show--what?
+
+"You need not press a man who is down, sir," Pen said to his uncle,
+gloomily. "I know very well, sir, how wicked and idle I have been. My
+mother won't like to see me dishonoured, sir," he continued, with his
+voice failing; "and I know she will pay these accounts. But I shall ask
+her for no more money."
+
+"As you like, sir," the Major said. "You are of age, and my hands are
+washed of your affairs. But you can't live without money, and have no
+means of making it that I see, though you have a fine talent in spending
+it, and it is my belief that you will proceed as you have begun, and ruin
+your mother before you are five years older.--Good morning; it is time
+for me to go to breakfast. My engagements won't permit me to see you much
+during the time that you stay in London. I presume that you will acquaint
+your mother with the news which you have just conveyed to me."
+
+And pulling on his hat, and trembling in his limbs somewhat, Major
+Pendennis walked out of his lodgings before his nephew, and went ruefully
+off to take his accustomed corner at the Club. He saw the Oxbridge
+examination-lists in the morning papers, and read over the names, not
+understanding the business, with mournful accuracy. He consulted various
+old fogies of his acquaintance, in the course of the day, at his Clubs;
+Wenham, a Dean, various Civilians; and, as it is called, "took their
+opinion," showing to some of them the amount of his nephew's debts, which
+he had dotted down on the back of a card, and asking what was to be done,
+and whether such debts were not monstrous, preposterous? What was to be
+done?--There was nothing for it but to pay. Wenham and the others told
+the Major of young men who owed twice as much--five times as much--as
+Arthur, and with no means at all to pay. The consultations, and
+calculations, and opinions, comforted the Major somewhat. After all, he
+was not to pay.
+
+But he thought bitterly of the many plans he had formed to make a man of
+his nephew, of the sacrifices which he had made, and of the manner in
+which he was disappointed. And he wrote off a letter to Doctor Portman,
+informing him of the direful events which had taken place, and begging
+the Doctor to break them to Helen. For the orthodox old gentleman
+preserved the regular routine in all things, and was of opinion that it
+was more correct to "break" a piece of bad news to a person by means of a
+(possibly maladroit and unfeeling) messenger, than to convey it simply to
+its destination by a note. So the Major wrote to Doctor Portman, and then
+went out to dinner, one of the saddest men in any London dining-room that
+day.
+
+Pen, too, wrote his letter, and skulked about London streets for the rest
+of the day, fancying that everybody was looking at him and whispering to
+his neighbour, "That is Pendennis of Boniface, who was plucked
+yesterday." His letter to his mother was full of tenderness and remorse:
+he wept the bitterest tears over it--and the repentance and passion
+soothed him to some degree.
+
+He saw a party of roaring young blades from Oxbridge in the coffee-room
+of his hotel, and slunk away from them, and paced the streets. He
+remembers, he says, the prints which he saw hanging up at Ackermann's
+window in the rain, and a book which he read at a stall near the Temple:
+at night he went to the pit of the play, and saw Miss Fotheringay, but he
+doesn't in the least recollect in what piece.
+
+On the second day there came a kind letter from his tutor, containing
+many grave and appropriate remarks upon the event which had befallen him,
+but strongly urging Pen not to take his name off the university books,
+and to retrieve a disaster which, everybody knew, was owing to his own
+carelessness alone, and which he might repair by a month's application.
+He said he had ordered Pen's skip to pack up some trunks of the young
+gentleman's wardrobe, which duly arrived with fresh copies of all Pen's
+bills laid on the top.
+
+On the third day there arrived a letter from home; which Pen read in his
+bedroom, and the result of which was that he fell down on his knees with
+his head in the bedclothes, and then prayed out his heart and humbled
+himself; and having gone downstairs and eaten an immense breakfast he
+sallied forth and took his place at the Bull and Mouth, Piccadilly, by
+the Chatteris coach for that evening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Prodigal's Return
+
+
+Such a letter as the Major wrote of course, sent Doctor Portman to
+Fairoaks, and he went off with that alacrity which a good man shows when
+he has disagreeable news to commit. He wishes the deed were done, and
+done quickly. He is sorry, but que voulez-vous? the tooth must be taken
+out, and he has you in the chair, and it is surprising with what courage
+and vigour of wrist he applies the forceps. Perhaps he would not be quite
+so active or eager if it were his tooth; but, in fine, it is your duty to
+have it out. So the doctor, having read the epistle out to Myra and Mrs.
+Portman, with many damnatory comments upon the young scapegrace who was
+goin deeper and deeper into perdition, left those ladies to spread the
+news through the Clavering society, which they did with their accustomed
+accuracy and despatch, and strode over to Fairoaks to break the
+intelligence to the widow.
+
+She had the news already. She had read Pen's letter, and it had relieved
+her somehow. A gloomy presentiment of evil had been hanging over her for
+many, many months past. She knew the worst now, and her darling boy was
+come back to her repentant and tender-hearted. Did she want more? All
+that the Rector could say (and his remarks were both dictated by
+common-sense, and made respectable by antiquity) could not bring Helen to
+feel any indignation or particular unhappiness, except that the boy
+should be unhappy. What was this degree that they made such an outcry
+about, and what good would it do Pen? Why did Doctor Portman and his
+uncle insist upon sending the boy to a place where there was so much
+temptation to be risked, and so little good to be won? Why didn't they
+leave him at home with his mother? As for his debts, of course they must
+be paid;--his debts!--wasn't his father's money all his, and hadn't he a
+right to spend it? In this way the widow met the virtuous Doctor, and all
+the arrows of his indignation somehow took no effect upon her gentle
+bosom.
+
+For some time past, an agreeable practice, known since times ever so
+ancient, by which brothers and sisters are wont to exhibit their
+affection towards one another, and in which Pen and his little sister
+Laura had been accustomed to indulge pretty frequently in their childish
+days, had been given up by the mutual consent of those two individuals.
+Coming back from college after an absence from home of some months, in
+place of the simple girl whom he had left behind him, Mr. Arthur found a
+tall, slim, handsome young lady, to whom he could not somehow proffer the
+kiss which he had been in the habit of administering previously, and who
+received him with a gracious curtsey and a proffered hand, and with a
+great blush which rose up to the cheek, just upon the very spot which
+young Pen had been used to salute.
+
+I am not good at descriptions of female beauty; and, indeed, do not care
+for it in the least (thinking that goodness and virtue are, of course,
+far more advantageous to a young lady than any mere fleeting charms of
+person and face), and so shall not attempt any particular delineation of
+Miss Laura Bell at the age of sixteen years. At that age she had attained
+her present altitude of five feet four inches, so that she was called
+tall and gawky by some, and a Maypole by others, of her own sex, who
+prefer littler women. But if she was a Maypole, she had beautiful roses
+about her head, and it is a fact that many swains were disposed to dance
+round her. She was ordinarily pale, with a faint rose tinge in her
+cheeks; but they flushed up in a minute when occasion called, and
+continued so blushing ever so long, the roses remaining after the emotion
+had passed away which had summoned those pretty flowers into existence.
+Her eyes have been described as very large from her earliest childhood,
+and retained that characteristic in later life. Good-natured critics
+(always females) said that she was in the habit of making play with those
+eyes, and ogling the gentlemen and ladies in her company; but the fact
+is, that Nature had made them so to shine and to look, and they could no
+more help so looking and shining than one star can help being brighter
+than another. It was doubtless to mitigate their brightness that Miss
+Laura's eyes were provided with two pairs of veils in the shape of the
+longest and finest black eyelashes, so that, when she closed her eyes,
+the same people who found fault with those orbs, said that she wanted to
+show her eyelashes off; and, indeed, I daresay that to see her asleep
+would have been a pretty sight.
+
+As for her complexion, that was nearly as brilliant as Lady Mantrap's,
+and without the powder which her ladyship uses. Her nose must be left to
+the reader's imaginaton: if her mouth was rather large (as Miss Piminy
+avers, who, but for her known appetite, one would think could not swallow
+anything larger than a button) everybody allowed that her smile was
+charming, and showed off a set of pearly teeth, whilst her voice was so
+low and sweet, that to hear it was like listening to sweet music. Because
+she is in the habit of wearing very long dresses, people of course say
+that her feet are not small: but it may be that they are of the size
+becoming her figure, and it does not follow, because Mrs. Pincher is
+always putting her foot out, that all other ladies should be perpetually
+bringing theirs on the tapis. In fine, Miss Laura Bell at the age of
+sixteen, was a sweet young lady. Many thousands of such are to be found,
+let us hope, in this country where there is no lack of goodness, and
+modesty, and purity, and beauty.
+
+Now Miss Laura, since she had learned to think for herself (and in the
+past two years her mind and her person had both developed themselves
+considerably) had only been half pleased with Pen's general conduct and
+bearing. His letters to his mother at home had become of late very rare
+and short. It was in vain that the fond widow urged how constant Arthur's
+occupations and studies were and how many his engagements. "It is better
+that he should lose a prize" Laura said "than forget his mother; and
+indeed, mamma, I don't see that he gets many prizes. Why doesn't he come
+home and stay with you, instead of passing his vacations at his great
+friends' fine houses? There is nobody there will love him half so much
+as--as you do." "As I do only, Laura?" sighed out Mrs. Pendennis. Laura
+declared stoutly that she did not love Pen a bit, when he did not do his
+duty to his mother nor would she be convinced by any of Helen's fond
+arguments, that the boy must make his way in the world; that his uncle
+was most desirous that Pen should cultivate the acquaintance of persons
+who were likely to befriend him in life; that men had a thousand ties and
+calls which women could not understand, and so forth. Perhaps Helen no
+more believed in these excuses than her adopted daughter did; but she
+tried to believe that she believed them, and comforted herself with the
+maternal infatuation. And that is a point whereon I suppose many a
+gentleman has reflected, that, do what we will, we are pretty sure of the
+woman's love that once has been ours; and that that untiring tenderness
+and forgiveness never fail us.
+
+Also, there had been that freedom, not to say audacity, in Arthur's
+latter talk and ways, which had shocked and displeased Laura. Not that
+he ever offended her by rudeness, or addressed to her a word which she
+ought not to hear, for Mr. Pen was a gentleman, and by nature and
+education polite to every woman high and low; but he spoke lightly and
+laxly of women in general; was less courteous in his actions than in his
+words--neglectful in sundry ways, and in many of the little offices of
+life. It offended Miss Laura that he should smoke his horrid pipes in
+the house; that he should refuse to go to church with his mother, or on
+walks or visits with her, and be found yawning over his novel in his
+dressing-gown, when the gentle widow returned from those duties. The hero
+of Laura's early infancy, about whom she had passed so many, many nights
+talking with Helen (who recited endless stories of the boy's virtues, and
+love, and bravery, when he was away at school), was a very different
+person from the young man whom now she knew; bold and brilliant,
+sarcastic and defiant, seeming to scorn the simple occupations or
+pleasures, or even devotions, of the women with whom he lived, and whom
+he quitted on such light pretexts.
+
+The Fotheringay affair, too, when Laura came to hear of it (which she did
+first by some sarcastic allusions of Major Pendennis, when on a visit to
+Fairoaks, and then from their neighbours at Clavering, who had plenty of
+information to give her on this head), vastly shocked and outraged Miss
+Laura. A Pendennis fling himself away on such a woman as that! Helen's
+boy galloping away from home, day after day, to fall on his knees to an
+actress, and drink with her horrid father! A good son want to bring such
+a man and such a woman into his house, and set her over his mother! "I
+would have run away, mamma; I would, if I had had to walk barefoot
+through the snow," Laura said.
+
+"And you would have left me too, then?" Helen answered; on which, of
+course, Laura withdrew her previous observation, and the two women rushed
+into each other's embraces with that warmth which belonged to both their
+natures, and which characterises not a few of their sex. Whence came all
+Whence came all the indignation of Miss Laura about Arthur's passion?
+Perhaps she did not know, that, if men throw themselves away upon women,
+women throw themselves away upon men, too; and that there is no more
+accounting for love, than for any other physical liking or antipathy:
+perhaps she had been misinformed by the Clavering people and old Mrs.
+Portman, who was vastly bitter against Pen, especially since his
+impertinent behaviour to the Doctor and since the wretch had smoked
+cigars in church-time: perhaps, finally, she was jealous; but this is a
+vice in which it is said the ladies very seldom indulge.
+
+Albeit she was angry with Pen, against his mother she had no such
+feeling; but devoted herself to Helen with the utmost force of her
+girlish affection--such affection as women, whose hearts are disengaged,
+are apt to bestow upon the near female friend. It was devotion--it was
+passion--it was all sorts of fondness and folly; it was a profusion of
+caresses, tender epithets and endearments, such as it does not become
+sober historians with beards to narrate. Do not let us men despise these
+instincts because we cannot feel them. These women were made for our
+comfort and delectation, gentlemen,--with all the rest of the minor
+animals.
+
+But as soon as Miss Laura heard that Pen was unfortunate and unhappy, all
+her wrath against him straightway vanished, and gave place to the most
+tender and unreasonable compassion. He was the Pen of old days once
+more restored to her, the frank and affectionate, the generous and
+tender-hearted. She at once took side with Helen against Doctor Portman,
+when he outcried at the enormity of Pen's transgressions. Debts? what
+were his debts? they were a trifle; he had been thrown into expensive
+society by his uncle's order, and of course was obliged to live in the
+same manner as the young gentlemen whose company he frequented. Disgraced
+by not getting his degree? the poor boy was ill when he went in for the
+examinations: he couldn't think of his mathematics and stuff on account
+of those very debts which oppressed him; very likely some of the odious
+tutors and masters were jealous of him, and had favourites of their own
+whom they wanted to put over his head. Other people disliked him, and
+were cruel to him, and were unfair to him, she was very sure. And so,
+with flushing cheeks and eyes bright with anger, this young creature
+reasoned; and she went up and seized Helen's hand, and kissed her in the
+Doctor's presence, and her looks braved the Doctor, and seemed to ask how
+he dared to say a word against her darling mother's Pen?
+
+When that divine took his leave, not a little discomfited and amazed at
+the pertinacious obstinacy of the women, Laura repeated her embraces and
+arguments with tenfold fervour to Helen, who felt that there was a great
+deal of cogency in most of the latter. There must be some jealousy
+against Pen. She felt quite sure that he had offended some of the
+examiners, who had taken a mean revenge of him--nothing more likely.
+Altogether, the announcement of the misfortune vexed these two ladies
+very little indeed. Pen, who was plunged in his shame and grief in
+London, and torn with great remorse for thinking of his mother's sorrow,
+would have wondered, had he seen how easily she bore the calamity.
+Indeed, calamity is welcome to women if they think it will bring truant
+affection home again: and if you have reduced your mistress to a crust,
+depend upon it that she won't repine, and only take a very little bit of
+it for herself, provided you will eat the remainder in her company.
+
+And directly the Doctor was gone, Laura ordered fires to be lighted in
+Mr. Arthur's rooms, and his bedding to be aired; and had these
+preparations completed by the time Helen had finished a most tender and
+affectionate letter to Pen: when the girl, smiling fondly, took her mamma
+by the hand, and led her into those apartments where the fires were
+blazing so cheerfully, and there the two kind creatures sate down on the
+bed, and talked about Pen ever so long. Laura added a postscript to
+Helen's letter, in which she called him her dearest Pen, and bade him
+come home instantly, with two of the handsomest dashes under the word,
+and be happy with his mother and his affectionate sister Laura.
+
+In the middle of the night--as these two ladies, after reading their
+bibles a great deal during the evening, and after taking just a look into
+Pen's room as they passed to their own--in the middle of the night, I
+say, Laura, whose head not unfrequently chose to occupy that pillow which
+the nightcap of the late Pendennis had been accustomed to press, cried
+out suddenly, "Mamma, are you awake?"
+
+Helen stirred and said, "Yes, I'm awake." The truth is, though she had
+been lying quite still and silent, she had not been asleep one instant,
+but had been looking at the night-lamp in the chimney, and had been
+thinking of Pen for hours and hours.
+
+Then Miss Laura (who had been acting with similar hypocrisy, and lying,
+occupied with her own thoughts, as motionless as Helen's brooch, with
+Pen's and Laura's hair in it, on the frilled white pincushion on the
+dressing-table) began to tell Mrs. Pendennis of a notable plan which she
+had been forming in her busy little brains; and by which all Pen's
+embarrassments would be made to vanish in a moment, and without the least
+trouble to anybody.
+
+"You know, mamma," this young lady said, "that I have been living with
+you for ten years, during which time you have never taken any of my
+money, and have been treating me just as if I was a charity girl. Now,
+this obligation has offended me very much, because I am proud and do not
+like to be beholden to people. And as, if I had gone to school--only I
+wouldn't--it must have cost me at least fifty pounds a year, it is clear
+that I owe you fifty times ten pounds, which I know you have put in the
+bank at Chatteris for me, and which doesn't belong to me a bit. Now,
+to-morrow we will go to Chatteris, and see that nice old Mr. Rowdy, with
+the bald head, and ask him for it,--not for his head, but for the five
+hundred pounds: and I dare say he will send you two more, which we will
+save and pay back; and we will send the money to Pen, who can pay all his
+debts without hurting anybody and then we will live happy ever after."
+
+What Helen replied to this speech need not be repeated, as the widow's
+answer was made up of a great number of incoherent ejaculations,
+embraces, and other irrelative matter. But the two women slept well after
+that talk; and when the night-lamp went out with a splutter, and the sun
+rose gloriously over the purple hills, and the birds began to sing and
+pipe cheerfully amidst the leafless trees and glistening evergreens on
+Fairoaks lawn, Helen woke too, and as she looked at the sweet face of the
+girl sleeping beside her, her lips parted with a smile, blushes on her
+cheeks, her spotless bosom heaving and falling with gentle undulations,
+as if happy dreams were sweeping over it--Pen's mother felt happy and
+grateful beyond all power of words, save such as pious women offer up to
+the Beneficent Dispenser of love and mercy--in Whose honour a chorus of
+such praises is constantly rising up all round the world.
+
+Although it was January and rather cold weather, so sincere was Mr. Pen's
+remorse, and so determined his plans of economy, that he would not take
+an inside place in the coach, but sate up behind with his friend the
+Guard, who remembered his former liberality, and lent him plenty of
+great-coats. Perhaps it was the cold that made his knees tremble as he
+got down at the lodge-gate, or it may be that he was agitated at the
+notion of seeing the kind creature for whose love he had made so selfish
+a return. Old John was in waiting to receive his master's baggage, but he
+appeared in a fustian jacket, and no longer wore his livery of drab and
+blue. "I'se garner and stable man, and lives in the ladge now," this
+worthy man remarked, with a grin of welcome to Pen, and something of a
+blush; but instantly as Pen turned the corner of the shrubbery and was
+out of eye-shot of the coach, Helen made her appearance, her face beaming
+with love and forgiveness--for forgiving is what some women love best of
+all.
+
+We may be sure that the widow, having a certain other object in view, had
+lost no time in writing off to Pen an account of the noble, the
+magnanimous, the magnificent offer of Laura, filling up her letter with a
+profusion of benedictions upon both her children. It was probably the
+knowledge of this money-obligation which caused Pen to blush very much
+when he saw Laura, who was in waiting in the hall, and who this time, and
+for this time only, broke through the little arrangement of which we have
+spoken, as having subsisted between her and Arthur for the last few
+years; but the truth is, there has been a great deal too much said about
+kissing in the present chapter.
+
+So the Prodigal came home, and the fatted calf was killed for him, and he
+was made as happy as two simple women could make him. No allusions were
+made to the Oxbridge mishap, or questions asked as to his farther
+proceedings, for some time. But Pen debated these anxiously in his own
+mind, and up in his own room, where he passed much time in cogitation.
+
+A few days after he came home, he rode to Chatteris on his horse, and
+came back on the top of the coach. He then informed his mother that he
+had left the horse to be sold; and when that operation was effected, he
+handed her over the cheque, which she, and possibly Pen himself, thought
+was an act of uncommon virtue and self-denial, but which Laura pronounced
+to be only strict justice.
+
+He rarely mentioned the loan which she had made, and which, indeed, had
+been accepted by the widow with certain modifications; but once or twice,
+and with great hesitation and stammering, he alluded to it, and thanked
+her; but it evidently pained his vanity to be beholden to the orphan for
+succour. He was wild to find some means of repaying her.
+
+He left off drinking wine, and betook himself, but with great moderation,
+to the refreshment of whisky-and-water. He gave up cigar-smoking; but it
+must be confessed that of late years he had liked pipes and tobacco as
+well or even better, so that this sacrifice was not a very severe one.
+
+He fell asleep a great deal after dinner when he joined the ladies in the
+drawing-room, and was certainly very moody and melancholy. He watched the
+coaches with great interest, walked in to read the papers at Clavering
+assiduously, dined with anybody who would ask him (and the widow was glad
+that he should have any entertainment in their solitary place), and
+played a good deal at cribbage with Captain Glanders.
+
+He avoided Dr. Portman, who, in his turn, whenever Pen passed, gave him
+very severe looks from under his shovel-hat. He went to church with his
+mother, however, very regularly, and read prayers for her at home to the
+little household. Always humble, it was greatly diminished now: a couple
+of maids did the work of the house of Fairoaks: the silver dish-covers
+never saw the light at all.
+
+John put on his livery to go to church, and assert his dignity on
+Sundays, but it was only for form's sake. He was gardener and out-door
+man, vice Upton, resigned. There was but little fire in Fairoaks kitchen,
+and John and the maids drank their evening beer there by the light, of a
+single candle. All this was Mr. Pen's doing, and the state of things did
+not increas his cheerfulness.
+
+For some time Pen said no power on earth could induce him to go back to
+Oxbridge again, after his failure there; but one day Laura said to him,
+with many blushes, that she thought, as some sort of reparation, of
+punishment on himself for his--for his idleness, he ought to go back and
+get his degree, if he could fetch it by doing so; and so back Mr. Pen
+went.
+
+A plucked man is a dismal being in a university; belonging to no set of
+men there, and owned by no one. Pen felt himself plucked indeed of all
+the fine feathers which he had won during his brilliant years, and rarely
+appeared out of his college; regularly going to morning chapel, and
+shutting himself up in his rooms of nights, away from the noise and
+suppers of the undergraduates. There were no duns about his door, they
+were all paid--scarcely any cards were left there. The men of his year
+had taken their degrees, and were gone. He went into a second
+examination, and passed with perfect ease. He was somewhat more easy in
+his mind when he appeared in his bachelor's gown.
+
+On his way back from Oxbridge he paid a visit to his uncle in London; but
+the old gentleman received him with very cold looks, and would scarcely
+give him his forefinger to shake. He called a second time, but Morgan,
+the valet, said his master was from home.
+
+Pen came back to Fairoaks, and to his books and to his idleness, and
+loneliness and despair. He commenced several tragedies, and wrote many
+copies of verses of a gloomy cast. He formed plans of reading and broke
+them. He thought about enlisting--about the Spanish legion--about a
+profession. He chafed against his captivity, and cursed the idleness
+which had caused it. Helen said he was breaking his heart, and was sad to
+see his prostration. As soon as they could afford it, he should go
+abroad--he should go to London--he should be freed from the dull society
+of two poor women. It was dull--very, certainly. The tender widow's
+habitual melancholy seemed to deepen into a sadder gloom; and Laura saw
+with alarm that the dear friend became every year more languid and weary,
+and that her pale cheek grew more wan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+New Faces
+
+
+The inmates of Fairoaks were drowsily pursuing this humdrum existence,
+while the great house upon the hill, on the other side of the River
+Brawl, was shaking off the slumber in which it had lain during the lives
+of two generations of masters, and giving extraordinary signs of renewed
+liveliness.
+
+Just about the time of Pen's little mishap, and when he was so absorbed
+in the grief occasioned by that calamity as to take no notice of events
+which befell persons less interesting to himself than Arthur Pendennis,
+an announcement appeared in the provincial journals which caused no small
+sensation in the county at least, and in all the towns, villages, halls
+and mansions, and parsonages for many miles round Clavering Park. At
+Clavering Market; at Cackleby Fair; at Chatteris Sessions; on Gooseberry
+Green, as the squire's carriage met the vicar's one-horse contrivance,
+and the inmates of both vehicles stopped on the road to talk; at
+Tinkleton Church gate, as the bell was tolling in the sunshine, and the
+white smocks and scarlet cloaks came trooping over the green common, to
+Sunday worship; in a hundred societies round about--the word was, that
+Clavering Park was to be inhabited again.
+
+Some five years before, the county papers had advertised the marriage at
+Florence, at the British Legation, of Francis Clavering, Esq., only son
+of Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., of Clavering Park, with Jemima Augusta,
+daughter of Samuel Snell, of Calcutta, Esq., and widow of the late J.
+Amory, Esq. At that time the legend in the county was that Clavering, who
+had been ruined for many a year, had married a widow from India with some
+money. Some of the county folks caught a sight of the newly-married pair.
+The Kickleburys, travelling in Italy, had seen them. Clavering occupied
+the Poggi Palace at Florence, gave parties, and lived comfortably--but
+could never come to England. Another year--young Peregrine, of Cackleby,
+making a Long Vacation tour, had fallen in with the Claverings occupying
+Schloss Schinkenstein, on the Mummel See. At Rome, at Lucca, at Nice, at
+the baths and gambling places of the Rhine and Belgium, this worthy
+couple might occasionally be heard of by the curious, and rumours of them
+came, as it were by gusts, to Clavering's ancestral place.
+
+Their last place of abode was Paris, where they appear to have lived in
+great fashion and splendour after the news of the death of Samuel Snell,
+Esq., of Calcutta, reached his orphan daughter in Europe.
+
+Of Sir Francis Clavering's antecedents little can be said that would be
+advantageous to that respected baronet. The son of an outlaw, living in a
+dismal old chateau near Bruges, this gentleman had made a feeble attempt
+to start in life with a commission in a dragoon regiment, and had broken
+down almost at the outset. Transactions at the gambling-table had
+speedily effected his ruin; after a couple of years in the army he had
+been forced to sell out, had passed some time in Her Majesty's prison of
+the Fleet, and had then shipped over to Ostend to join the gouty exile,
+his father. And in Belgium, France and Germany, for some years, this
+decayed and abortive prodigal might be seen lurking about billiard-rooms
+and watering-places, punting at gambling-houses, dancing at
+boarding-house balls, and riding steeple-chases on other folks' horses.
+
+It was at a boarding-house at Lausanne that Francis Clavering made what
+he called the lucky coup of marrying the widow Amory, very lately
+returned from Calcutta. His father died soon after, by consequence of
+whose demise his wife became Lady Clavering. The title so delighted Mr.
+Snell of Calcutta, that he doubled his daughter's allowance; and dying
+himself soon after, left a fortune to her and her children the amount of
+which was, if not magnified by rumour, something very splendid indeed.
+
+Before this time there had been, not rumours unfavourable to Lady
+Clavering's reputation, but unpleasant impressions regarding her
+ladyship. The best English people abroad were shy of making her
+acquaintance; her manners were not the most refined; her origin was
+lamentably low and doubtful. The retired East Indians, who are to be
+found in considerable force in most of the continental towns frequented
+by English, spoke with much scorn of the disreputable old lawyer and
+indigo-smuggler her father, and of Amory, her first husband, who had been
+mate of the Indiaman in which Miss Snell came out to join her father at
+Calcutta. Neither father nor daughter were in society at Calcutta, or had
+ever been heard of at Government House. Old Sir Jasper Rogers, who had
+been Chief Justice of Calcutta, had once said to his wife, that he could
+tell a queer story about Lady Clavering's first husband; but greatly to
+Lady Rogers's disappointment, and that of the young ladies his daughters,
+the old Judge could never be got to reveal that mystery.
+
+They were all, however, glad enough to go to Lady Clavering's parties,
+when her ladyship took the Hotel Bouilli in the Rue Grenelle at Paris,
+and blazed out in the polite world there in the winter of 183--. The
+Faubourg St. Germain took her up. Viscount Bagwig, our excellent
+ambassador, paid her marked attention. The princes of the family
+frequented her salons. The most rigid and noted of the English ladies
+resident in the French capital acknowledged and countenanced her; the
+virtuous Lady Elderbury, the severe Lady Rockminster, the venerable
+Countess of Southdown--people, in a word, renowned for austerity, and of
+quite a dazzling moral purity:--so great and beneficent an influence had
+the possession of ten (some said twenty) thousand a year exercised upon
+Lady Clavering's character and reputation. And her munificence and
+good-will were unbounded. Anybody (in society) who had a scheme of
+charity was sure to find her purse open. The French ladies of piety got
+money from her to support their schools and convents; she subscribed
+indifferently for the Armenian patriarch; for Father Barbarossa, who came
+to Europe to collect funds for his monastery on Mount Athos; for the
+Baptist Mission to Quashyboo, and the Orthodox Settlement in Feefawfoo,
+the largest and most savage of the Cannibal Islands. And it is on record
+of her, that, on the same day on which Madame de Cricri got five
+Napoleons from her in support of the poor persecuted Jesuits, who were at
+that time in very bad odour in France, Lady Budelight put her down in her
+subscription-list for the Rev. J. Ramshorn, who had had a vision which
+ordered him to convert the Pope of Rome. And more than this, and for the
+benefit of the worldly, her ladyship gave the best dinners, and the
+grandest balls and suppers, which were known at Paris during that season.
+
+And it was during this time, that the good-natured lady must have
+arranged matters with her husband's creditors in England, for Sir Francis
+reappeared in his native country, without fear of arrest; was announced
+in the Morning Post, and the county paper, as having taken up his
+residence at Mivart's Hotel; and one day the anxious old housekeeper at
+Clavering House beheld a carriage and four horses drive up the long
+avenue, and stop before the moss-grown steps in front of the vast
+melancholy portico.
+
+Three gentlemen were in the carriage--an open one. On the back seat was
+our old acquaintance, Mr. Tatham of Chatteris, whilst in the places of
+honour sate a handsome and portly gentleman enveloped in mustachios,
+whiskers, fur collars, and braiding, and by him a pale languid man who
+descended feebly from the carriage, when the little lawyer, and the
+gentleman in fur, nimbly jumped out of it.
+
+They walked up the great moss-grown steps to the hall-door, and a foreign
+attendant, with earrings and a gold-laced cap, pulled strenuously at the
+great bell-handle at the cracked and sculptured gate. The bell was heard
+clanging loudly through the vast gloomy mansion. Steps resounded
+presently upon the marble pavement of the hall within; and the doors
+opened, and finally Mrs. Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, Polly, her
+aide-de-camp, and Smart, the keeper, appeared bowing humbly.
+
+Smart, the keeper, pulled the wisp of hay-coloured hair which adorned his
+sunburnt forehead, kicked out his left heel as if there were a dog biting
+at his calves, and brought down his head to a bow. Old Mrs Blenkinsop
+dropped a curtsey. Little Polly, her aide-de-camp, made a curtsey and
+several rapid bows likewise; and Mrs. Blenkinsop, with a great deal of
+emotion, quavered out, "Welcome to Clavering, Sir Francis. It du my poor
+eyes good to see one of the family once more."
+
+The speech and the greetings were all addressed to the grand gentleman in
+fur and braiding, who wore his hat so magnificently on one side, and
+twirled his mustachios so royally. But he burst out laughing, and said,
+"You've saddled the wrong horse, old lady--I'm not Sir Francis Clavering
+what's come to revisit the halls of my ancestors. Friends and vassals!
+behold your rightful lord!"
+
+And he pointed his hand towards the pale, languid gentleman who said,
+"Don't be an ass, Ned"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Blenkinsop, I'm Sir Francis Clavering; I recollect you quite
+well. Forgot me, I suppose?--How dy do?" and he took the old lady's
+trembling hand; and nodded in her astonished face, in a not unkind
+manner.
+
+Mrs. Blenkinsop declared upon her conscience that she would have known
+Sir Francis anywhere, that he was the very image of Sir Francis, his
+father, and of Sir John who had gone before.
+
+"O yes--thanky--of course--very much obliged--and that sort of thing,"
+Sir Francis said, looking vacantly about the hall "Dismal old place,
+ain't it, Ned? Never saw it but once, when my governor quarrelled with
+gwandfather in the year twenty-thwee.
+
+"Dismal?--beautiful!--the Castle of Otranto!--the Mysteries of Udolpho,
+by Jove!" said the individual addressed as Ned. "What a fireplace! You
+might roast an elephant in it. Splendid carved gallery! Inigo Jones, by
+Jove! I'd lay five to two it's Inigo Jones."
+
+"The upper part by Inigo Jones; the lower was altered by the eminent
+Dutch architect, Vanderputty, in George the First his time, by Sir
+Richard, fourth baronet," said the housekeeper.
+
+"O indeed," said the Baronet "Gad, Ned, you know everything."
+
+"I know a few things, Frank," Ned answered. "I know that's not a Snyders
+over the mantelpiece--bet you three to one it's a copy. We'll restore it,
+my boy. A lick of varnish, and it will come out wonderfully, sir. That
+old fellow in the red gown, I suppose, is Sir Richard."
+
+"Sheriff of the county, and sate in parliament in the reign of Queen
+Anne," said the housekeeper, wondering at the stranger's knowledge; "that
+on the right is Theodosia, wife of Harbottle, second baronet, by Lely,
+represented in the character of Venus, the Goddess of Beauty,--her son
+Gregory, the third baronet, by her side, as Cupid, God of Love, with a
+bow and arrows; that on the next panel is Sir Rupert, made a knight
+banneret by Charles the First, and whose property was confuscated by
+Oliver Cromwell."
+
+"Thank you--needn't go on, Mrs. Blenkinsop," said the Baronet, "We'll
+walk about the place ourselves. Frosch, give me a cigar. Have a cigar,
+Mr. Tatham?"
+
+Little Mr. Tatham tried a cigar which Sir Francis's courier handed to
+him, and over which the lawyer spluttered fearfully. "Needn't come with
+us, Mrs. Blenkinsop. What's--his--name--you--Smart--feed the horses and
+wash their mouths. Shan't stay long. Come along, Strong,--I know the way:
+I was here in twenty-thwee, at the end of my gwandfather's time." And Sir
+Francis and Captain Strong, for such was the style and title of Sir
+Francis's friend, passed out of the hall into the reception-rooms,
+leaving the discomfited Mrs. Blenkinsop to disappear by a side-door
+which led to her apartments, now the only habitable rooms in the
+long-uninhabited mansion.
+
+It was a place so big that no tenant could afford to live in it; and Sir
+Francis and his friend walked through room after room, admiring their
+vastness and dreary and deserted grandeur. On the right of the hall-door
+were the saloons and drawing-rooms, and on the other side the oak room,
+the parlour, the grand dining-room, the library, where Pen had found
+books in old days. Round three sides of the hall ran a gallery, by which,
+and corresponding passages, the chief bedrooms were approached, and of
+which many were of stately proportions and exhibited marks of splendour.
+On the second story was a labyrinth of little discomfortable garrets,
+destined for the attendants of the great folks who inhabited the mansion
+in the days when it was first built: and I do not know any more cheering
+mark of the increased philanthropy of our own times, than to contrast our
+domestic architecture with that of our ancestors, and to see how much
+better servants and poor are cared for now, than in times when my lord
+and my lady slept under gold canopies, and their servants lay above them
+in quarters not so airy or so clean as stables are now.
+
+Up and down the house the two gentlemen wandered, the owner of the
+mansion being very silent and resigned about the pleasure of possessing
+it; whereas the Captain, his friend, examined the premises with so much
+interest and eagerness that you would have thought he was the master, and
+the other the indifferent spectator of the place. "I see capabilities in
+it--capabilities in it, sir," cried the Captain. "Gad, sir, leave it to
+me, and I'll make it the pride of the country, at a small expense. What a
+theatre we can have in the library here, the curtains between the columns
+which divide the room! What a famous room for a galop!--it will hold the
+whole shire. We'll hang the morning parlour with the tapestry in your
+second salon in the Rue de Grenelle, and furnish the oak room with the
+Moyen-age cabinets and the armour. Armour looks splendid against black
+oak, and there's a Venice glass in the Quai Voltaire, which will suit
+that high mantelpiece to an inch, sir. The long saloon, white and crimson
+of course; the drawing-room yellow satin; and the little drawing-room
+light blue, with lace over--hay?"
+
+"I recollect my old governor caning me in that little room," Sir Francis
+said sententiously; "he always hated me, my old governor."
+
+"Chintz is the dodge, I suppose, for my lady's rooms--the suite in the
+landing, to the south, the bedroom, the sitting-room, and the
+dressing-room. We'll throw a conservatory out, over the balcony. Where
+will you have your rooms?"
+
+"Put mine in the north wing," said the Baronet, with a yawn, "and out of
+the reach of Miss Amory's confounded piano. I can't bear it. She's
+scweeching from morning till night."
+
+The Captain burst out laughing. He settled the whole further arrangements
+of the house in the course of their walk through it; and, the promenade
+ended, they went into the steward's room, now inhabited by Mrs.
+Blenkinsop, and where Mr. Tatham was sitting poring over a plan of the
+estate, and the old housekeeper had prepared a collation in honour of her
+lord and master.
+
+Then they inspected the kitchen and stables, about both of which Sir
+Francis was rather interested, and Captain Strong was for examining the
+gardens; but the Baronet said, "D--- the gardens, and that sort of
+thing!" and finally he drove away from the house as unconcernedly as he
+had entered it; and that night the people of Clavering learned that Sir
+Francis Clavering had paid a visit to the Park, and was coming to live in
+the county.
+
+When this fact came to be known at Chatteris, all the folks in the place
+were set in commotion: High Church and Low Church, half-pay captains and
+old maids and dowagers, sporting squireens of the viciniage, farmers,
+tradesmen, and factory people--all the population in and round about the
+little place. The news was brought to Fairoaks, and received by the
+ladies there, and by Mr. Pen, with some excitement. "Mrs. Pybus says
+there is a very pretty girl in the family, Arthur," Laura said, who was
+as kind and thoughtful upon this point as women generally are: "a Miss
+Amory, Lady Clavering's daughter by her first marriage. Of course, you
+will fall in love with her as soon as she arrives."
+
+Helen cried out, "Don't talk nonsense, Laura." Pen laughed, and said,
+"Well, there is the young Sir Francis for you."
+
+"He is but four years old," Miss Laura replied. "But I shall console
+myself with that handsome officer, Sir Francis's friend. He was at church
+last Sunday, in the Clavering pew, and his mustachios were beautiful."
+
+Indeed the number of Sir Francis's family (whereof the members have all
+been mentioned in the above paragraphs) was pretty soon known in his
+town, and everything else, as nearly as human industry and ingenuity
+could calculate, regarding his household. The Park avenue and grounds
+were dotted now with town folks of the summer evenings, who made their
+way up to the great house, peered about the premises, and criticised the
+improvements which were taking place there. Loads upon loads of furniture
+arrived in numberless vans from Chatteris and London; and numerous as the
+vans are, there was not one but Captain Glanders knew what it contained,
+and escorted the baggage up to the Park House.
+
+He and Captain Edward Strong had formed an intimate acquaintance by this
+time. The younger Captain occupied those very lodgings at Clavering,
+which the peaceful Smirke had previously tenanted, and was deep in the
+good graces of Madame Fribsby, his landlady; and of the whole town,
+indeed. The Captain was splendid in person and raiment; fresh-coloured,
+blue-eyed, black-whiskered, broad-chested, athletic--a slight tendency to
+fulness did not take away from the comeliness of his jolly figure--a
+braver soldier never presented a broader chest to the enemy. As he strode
+down Clavering High Street, his hat on one side, his cane clanking on the
+pavement, or waving round him in the execution of military cuts and
+soldatesque manoeuvres--his jolly laughter ringing through the otherwise
+silent street--he was as welcome as sunshine to the place, and a comfort
+to every inhabitant in it.
+
+On the first market-day he knew every pretty girl in the market: he joked
+with all the women: had a word with the farmers about their stock, and
+dined at the Agricultural Ordinary at the Clavering Arms, where he set
+them all dying with laughing by his fun and jokes. "Tu be sure he be a
+vine veller, tu be sure that he be," was the universal opinion of the
+gentlemen in top-boots. He shook hands with a score of them, as they rode
+out of the inn-yard on their old nags, waving his hat to them splendidly
+as he smoked his cigar in the inn-gate. In the course of the evening he
+was free of the landlady's bar, knew what rent the landlord paid, how
+many acres he farmed, how much malt he put in his strong beer; and
+whether he ever ran in a little brandy unexcised by kings from Baymouth,
+or the fishing villages along the coast.
+
+He had tried to live at the great house first; but it was so dull he
+couldn't stand it. "I am a creature born for society," he told Captain
+Glanders. "I'm down here to see Clavering's house set in order; for
+between ourselves, Frank has no energy, sir, no energy; he's not the
+chest for it, sir (and he threw out his own trunk as he spoke); but I
+must have social intercourse. Old Mrs. Blenkinsop goes to bed at seven,
+and takes Polly with her. There was nobody but me and the Ghost for the
+first two nights at the great house, and I own it, sir, I like company.
+Most old soldiers do."
+
+Glanders asked Strong where he had served? Captain Strong curled his
+mustache, and said with a laugh, that the other might almost ask where he
+had not served. "I began, sir, as cadet of Hungarian Uhlans, and when the
+war of Greek independence broke out, quitted that service in consequence
+of a quarrel with my governor, and was one of seven who escaped from
+Missolonghi, and was blown up in one of Botzaris's fireships, at the age
+of seventeen. I'll show you my Cross of the Redeemer, if you'll come over
+to my lodgings and take a glass of grog with me, Captain, this evening.
+I've a few of those baubles in my desk. I've the White Eagle of Poland;
+Skrzynecki gave it me" (he pronounced Skrzynecki's name with wonderful
+accuracy and gusto) "upon the field of Ostrolenka. I was a lieutenant of
+the fourth regiment, sir, and we marched through Diebitsch's lines--bang
+thro' 'em into Prussia, sir, without firing a shot. Ah, Captain, that was
+a mismanaged business. I received this wound by the side of the King
+before Oporto,--where he would have pounded the stock-jobbing Pedroites,
+had Bourmont followed my advice; and I served in Spain with the King's
+troops, until the death of my dear friend, Zumalacarreguy, when I saw the
+game was over, and hung up my toasting iron, Captain. Alava offered me a
+regiment, the Queen's Muleteros; but I couldn't--damme, I couldn't--and
+now, sir, you know Ned Strong--the Chevalier Strong they call me abroad--
+as well as he knows himself."
+
+In this way almost everybody in Clavering came to know Ned Strong. He
+told Madame Fribsby, he told the landlord of the George, he told Baker at
+the reading-rooms, he told Mrs. Glanders, and the young ones, at dinner:
+and, finally, he told Mr. Arthur Pendennis, who, yawning into Clavering
+one day, found the Chevalier Strong in company with Captain Glanders; and
+who was delighted with his new acquaintance.
+
+Before many days were over, Captain Strong was as much at home in Helen's
+drawing-room as he was in Madame Fribsby's first floor; and made the
+lonely house very gay with his good-humour and ceaseless flow of talk.
+The two women had never before seen such a man. He had a thousand stories
+about battles and dangers to interest them--about Greek captives, Polish
+beauties, and Spanish nuns. He could sing scores of songs, in half a
+dozen languages, and would sit down to the piano and troll them off in a
+rich manly voice. Both the ladies pronounced him to be delightful--and so
+he was; though, indeed, they had not had much choice of man's society as
+yet, having seen in the course of their lives but few persons, except old
+Portman and the Major, and Mr. Pen, who was a genius, to be sure; but
+then your geniuses are somewhat flat and moody at home.
+
+And Captain Strong acquainted his new friends at Fairoaks, not only with
+his own biography, but with the whole history of the family now coming to
+Clavering. It was he who had made the marriage between his friend Frank
+and the widow Amory. She wanted rank, and he wanted money. What match
+could be more suitable? He organised it; he made those two people happy.
+There was no particular romantic attachment between them; the widow was
+not of an age or a person for romance, and Sir Francis, if he had his
+game at billiards, and his dinner, cared for little besides. But they
+were as happy as people could be. Clavering would return to his native
+place and country, his wife's fortune would pay his encumbrances off, and
+his son and heir would be one of the first men in the county.
+
+"And Miss Amory?" Laura asked. Laura was uncommonly curious about Miss
+Amory.
+
+Strong laughed. "Oh, Miss Amory is a muse--Miss Amory is a mystery--Miss
+Amory is a femme incomprise." "What is that?" asked simple Mrs.
+Pendennis--but the Chevalier gave her no answer: perhaps could not give
+her one. "Miss Amory paints, Miss Amory writes poems, Miss Amory composes
+music, Miss Amory rides like Diana Vernon. Miss Amory is a paragon, in a
+word."
+
+"I hate clever women," said Pen.
+
+"Thank you," said Laura. For her part she was sure she should be charmed
+with Miss Amory, and quite longed to have such a friend. And with this
+she looked Pen full in the face, as if every word the little hypocrite
+said was Gospel truth.
+
+Thus, an intimacy was arranged and prepared beforehand between the
+Fairoaks family and their wealthy neighbours at the Park; and Pen and
+Laura were to the full as eager for their arrival, as even the most
+curious of the Clavering folks. A Londoner, who sees fresh faces and
+yawns at them every day may smile at the eagerness with which country
+people expect a visitor. A cockney comes amongst them, and is remembered
+by his rural entertainers for years after he has left them, and forgotten
+them very likely--floated far away from them on the vast London sea. But
+the islanders remember long after the mariner has sailed away, and can
+tell you what he said and what he wore, and how he looked and how he
+laughed. In fine, a new arrival is an event in the country not to be
+understood by us, who don't, and had rather not, know who lives next
+door.
+
+When the painters and upholsterers had done their work in the house, and
+so beautified it, under Captain Strong's superintendence, that he might
+well be proud of his taste, that gentleman announced that he should go to
+London, where the whole family had arrived by this time, and should
+speedily return to establish them in their renovated mansion.
+
+Detachments of domestics preceded them. Carriages came down by sea, and
+were brought over from Baymouth by horses which had previously arrived
+under the care of grooms and coachmen. One day the 'Alacrity' coach
+brought down on its roof two large and melancholy men, who were dropped
+at the Park lodge with their trunks, and who were Messieurs Frederic and
+James, metropolitan footmen, who had no objection to the country, and
+brought with them state and other suits of the Clavering uniform.
+
+On another day, the mail deposited at the gate a foreign gentleman,
+adorned with many ringlets and chains. He made a great riot at the
+lodge-gate to the keeper's wife (who, being a West-country woman, did not
+understand his English or his Gascon French), because there was no
+carriage in waiting to drive him to the house, a mile off, and because he
+could not walk entire leagues in his fatigued state and varnished boots.
+This was Monsieur Alcide Mirobolant, formerly Chef of his Highness the
+Duc de Borodino, of H. Eminence Cardinal Beccafico, and at present Chef
+of the bouche of Sir Clavering, Baronet:--Monsieur Mirobolant's library,
+pictures, and piano had arrived previously in charge of the intelligent
+young Englishman, his aide-de-camp. He was, moreover, aided by a
+professed female cook, likewise from London, who had inferior females
+under her orders.
+
+He did not dine in the steward's room, but took his nutriment in solitude
+in his own apartments, where a female servant was affected to his private
+use. It was a grand sight to behold him in his dressing-gown composing a
+menu. He always sate down and played the piano for some time before that.
+If interrupted, he remonstrated pathetically with his little maid. Every
+great artist, he said, had need of solitude to perfectionate his works.
+
+But we are advancing matters in the fulness of our love and respect for
+Monsieur Mirobolant, and bringing him prematurely on the stage.
+
+The Chevalier Strong had a hand in the engagement of all the London
+domestics, and, indeed, seemed to be the master of the house. There were
+those among them who said he was the house-steward, only he dined with
+the family. Howbeit, he knew how to make himself respected, and two of by
+no means the least comfortable rooms of the house were assigned to his
+particular use.
+
+He was walking upon the terrace finally upon the eventful day when,
+amidst an immense jangling of bells from Clavering Church, where the flag
+was flying, an open carriage and one of those travelling chariots or
+family arks, which only English philoprogenitiveness could invent drove
+rapidly with foaming horses through the Park gates, and up to the steps
+of the Hall. The two battans of the sculptured door flew open. The
+superior officers in black, the large and melancholy gentlemen, now in
+livery with their hair in powder, the country menials engaged to aid
+them, were in waiting in the hall, and bowed like elms when autumn
+winds wail in the park. Through this avenue passed Sir Francis Clavering
+with a most unmoved face: Lady Clavering, with a pair of bright black
+eyes, and a good-humoured countenance, which waggled and nodded very
+graciously: Master Francis Clavering, who was holding his mamma's skirt
+(and who stopped the procession to look at the largest footman, whose
+appearance seemed to strike the young gentleman), and Miss Blandy,
+governess to Master Francis, and Miss Amory, her ladyship's daughter,
+giving her arm to Captain Strong. It was summer, but fires of welcome
+were crackling in the great hall chimney, and in the rooms which the
+family were to occupy.
+
+Monsieur Mirobolant had looked at the procession from one of the
+lime-trees in the avenue. "Elle est la," he said, laying his jewelled
+hand on his richly-embroidered velvet glass buttons, "Je t'ai vue, je te
+benis, O ma sylphide, O mon ange!" and he dived into the thicket, and
+made his way back to his furnaces and saucepans.
+
+The next Sunday the same party which had just made its appearance at
+Clavering Park, came and publicly took possession of the ancient pew in
+the church, where so many of the Baronet's ancestors had prayed, and were
+now kneeling in effigy. There was such a run to see the new folks, that
+the Low Church was deserted, to the disgust of its pastor; and as the
+state barouche, with the greys and coachman in silver wig, and solemn
+footmen, drew up at the old churchyard-gate, there was such a crowd
+assembled there as had not been seen for many a long day. Captain Strong
+knew everybody, and saluted for all the company--the country people vowed
+my lady was not handsome, to be sure, but pronounced her to be uncommon
+fine dressed, as indeed she was--with the finest of shawls, the finest of
+pelisses, the brilliantest of bonnets and wreaths, and a power of rings,
+cameos, brooches, chains, bangles, and other nameless gimcracks; and
+ribbons of every breadth and colour of the rainbow flaming on her person.
+Miss Amory appeared meek in dove-colour, like a vestal virgin--while
+Master Francis was in the costume, then prevalent, of Rob Roy Macgregor,
+a celebrated Highland outlaw. The Baronet was not more animated than
+ordinarily--there was a happy vacuity about him which enabled him to face
+a dinner, a death, a church, a marriage, with the same indifferent ease.
+
+A pew for the Clavering servants was filled by these domestics, and the
+enraptured congregation saw the gentlemen from London with "vlower on
+their heeds," and the miraculous coachman with his silver wig, take their
+places in that pew so soon as his horses were put up at the Clavering
+Arms.
+
+In the course of the service, Master Francis began to make such a yelling
+in the pew, that Frederic, the tallest of the footmen, was beckoned by
+his master, and rose and went and carried out Master Francis, who roared
+and beat him on the head, so that the powder flew round about, like
+clouds of incense. Nor was he pacified until placed on the box of the
+carriage, where he played at horses with John's whip.
+
+"You see the little beggar's never been to church before, Miss Bell," the
+Baronet drawled out to a young lady who was visiting him; "no wonder he
+should make a row: I don't go in town neither, but I think it's right in
+the country to give a good example--and that sort of thing."
+
+Miss Bell laughed and said, "The little boy had not given a particularly
+good example."
+
+"Gad, I don't know, and that sort of thing," said the Baronet. "It ain't
+so bad neither. Whenever he wants a thing, Frank always cwies, and
+whenever he cwies he gets it."
+
+Here the child in question began to howl for a dish of sweetmeats on the
+luncheon-table, and making a lunge across the table-cloth, upset a glass
+of wine over the best waistcoat of one of the guests present, Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis, who was greatly annoyed at being made to look foolish, and at
+having his spotless cambric shirt front blotched with wine.
+
+"We do spoil him so," said Lady Clavering to Mrs. Pendennis, finally
+gazing at the cherub, whose hands and face were now frothed over with the
+species of lather which is inserted in the confection called meringues a
+la creme.
+
+"It is very wrong," said Mrs. Pendennis, as if she had never done such a
+thing herself as spoil a child.
+
+"Mamma says she spoils my brother,--do you think anything could, Miss
+Bell? Look at him,--isn't he like a little angel?"
+
+"Gad, I was quite wight," said the Baronet. "He has cwied, and he has got
+it, you see. Go it, Fwank, old boy."
+
+"Sir Francis is a very judicious parent," Miss Amory whispered. Don't you
+think so, Miss Bell? I shan't call you Miss Bell--I shall call you Laura.
+I admired you so at church. Your robe was not well made, nor your bonnet
+very fresh. But you have such beautiful grey eyes, and such a lovely
+tint."
+
+"Thank you," said Miss Bell, laughing.
+
+"Your cousin is handsome, and thinks so. He is uneasy de sa personne. He
+has not seen the world yet. Has he genius? Has he suffered? A lady, a
+little woman in a rumpled satin and velvet shoes--a Miss Pybus--came
+here, and said he has suffered. I, too, have suffered,--and you, Laura,
+has your heart ever been touched?"
+
+Laura said "No!" but perhaps blushed a little at the idea or the
+question, so that the other said,--
+
+"Ah Laura! I see it all. It is the beau cousin. Tell me everything. I
+already love you as a sister."
+
+"You are very kind," said Miss Bell, smiling, "and--and it must be owned
+that it is a very sudden attachment."
+
+"All attachments are so. It is electricity--spontaneity. It is
+instantaneous. I knew I should love you from the moment I saw you. Do you
+not feel it yourself?"
+
+"Not yet," said Laura; "but--I daresay I shall if I try."
+
+"Call me by my name, then."
+
+"But I don't know it," Laura cried out.
+
+"My name is Blanche--isn't it a pretty name? Call me by it."
+
+"Blanche--it is very pretty, indeed."
+
+"And while mamma talks with that kind-looking lady--what relation is she
+to you? She must have been pretty once, but is rather passee; she is not
+well gantee, but she has a pretty hand--and while mamma talks to her,
+come with me to my own room,--my own, own room. It's a darling room,
+though that horrid creature, Captain Strong, did arrange it. Are you
+eprise of him? He says you are, but I know better; it is the beau cousin.
+Yes--il a de beaux yeux. Je n'aime pas les blonds, ordinairement. Car je
+suis blonde moi--je suis Blanche et blonde,"--and she looked at her face
+and made a moue in the glass; and never stopped for Laura's answer to the
+questions which she had put.
+
+Blanche was fair, and like a sylph. She had fair hair, with green
+reflections in it. But she had dark eyebrows. She had long black
+eyelashes, which veiled beautiful brown eyes. She had such a slim waist,
+that it was a wonder to behold; and such a slim little feet, that you
+would have thought the grass would hardly bend under them. Her lips were
+of the colour of faint rosebuds, and her voice warbled limpidly over a
+set of the sweetest little pearly teeth ever seen. She showed them very
+often, for they were very pretty. She was very good-natured, and a smile
+not only showed her teeth wonderfully, but likewise exhibited two lovely
+little pink dimples, that nestled in either cheek.
+
+She showed Laura her drawings, which the other thought charming. She
+played her some of her waltzes, with a rapid and brilliant finger, and
+Laura was still more charmed. And she then read her some poems, in French
+and English, likewise of her own composition, and which she kept locked
+in her own book--her own dear little book; it was bound in blue velvet,
+with a gilt lock, and on it was printed in gold the title of 'Mes
+Larmes.'
+
+"Mes Larmes!--isn't it a pretty name?" the young lady continued, who was
+pleased with everything that she did, and did everything very well. Laura
+owned that it was. She had never seen anything like it before; anything
+so lovely, so accomplished, so fragile and pretty; warbling so prettily,
+and tripping about such a pretty room, with such a number of pretty
+books, pictures, flowers, round about her. The honest and generous
+country girl forgot even jealousy in her admiration. "Indeed, Blanche,"
+she said, "everything in the room is pretty; and you are the prettiest of
+all." The other smiled, looked in the glass, went up and took both of
+Laura's hands, and kissed them, and sat down to the piano, and shook out
+a little song, as if she had been a nightingale.
+
+This was the first visit paid by Fairoaks to Clavering Park, in return
+for Clavering Park's visit to Fairoaks, in reply to Fairoaks's cards left
+a few days after the arrival of Sir Francis's family. The intimacy
+between the young ladies sprang up like Jack's Bean-stalk to the skies in
+a single night. The large footmen were perpetually walking with little
+rose-coloured pink notes to Fairoaks; where there was a pretty
+house-maid in the kitchen, who might possibly tempt those gentlemen to so
+humble a place. Miss Amory sent music, or Miss Amory sent a new novel, or
+a picture from the 'Journal des Modes,' to Laura; or my lady's
+compliments arrived with flowers and fruit; or Miss Amory begged and
+prayed Miss Bell to come to dinner; and dear Mrs. Pendennis, if she was
+strong enough; and Mr. Arthur, if a humdrum party were not too stupid for
+him; and would send a pony-carriage for Mrs. Pendennis; and would take no
+denial.
+
+Neither Arthur nor Laura wished to refuse. And Helen, who was, indeed,
+somewhat ailing, was glad that the two should have their pleasure; and
+would look at them fondly as they set forth, and ask in her heart that
+she might not be called away until those two beings whom she loved best
+in the world should be joined together. As they went out and crossed over
+the bridge, she remembered summer evenings five-and-twenty years ago,
+when she, too, had bloomed in her brief prime of love and happiness. It
+was all over now. The moon was looking from the purpling sky, and the
+stars glittering there, just as they used in the early, well-remembered
+evenings. He was lying dead far away, with the billows rolling between
+them. Good God! how well she remembered the last look of his face as they
+parted. It looked out at her through the vista of long years, as sad and
+as clear as then.
+
+So Mr. Pen and Miss Laura found the society at Clavering Park an
+uncommonly agreeable resort of summer evenings. Blanche vowed that she
+raffoled of Laura; and, very likely, Mr. Pen was pleased with Blanche.
+His spirits came back: he laughed and rattled till Laura wondered to hear
+him. It was not the same Pen, yawning in a shooting jacket, in the
+Fairoaks parlour, who appeared alert and brisk, and smiling and well
+dressed, in Lady Clavering's drawing-room. Sometimes they had music.
+Laura had a sweet contralto voice, and sang with Blanche, who had had the
+best continental instruction, and was charmed to be her friend's
+mistress. Sometimes Mr. Pen joined in these concerts, or oftener looked
+sweet upon Miss Blanche as she sang. Sometimes they had glees, when
+Captain Strong's chest was of vast service, and he boomed out in a
+prodigious bass, of which he was not a little proud.
+
+"Good fellow, Strong--ain't he, Miss Bell?" Sir Francis would say to her.
+"Plays at ecarte with Lady Clavering--plays anything, pitch-and-toss,
+pianoforty, cwibbage if you like. How long do you think he's been staying
+with me? He came for a week with a carpet-bag, and Gad, he's been staying
+here thwee years. Good fellow, ain't he? Don't know how he gets a
+shillin' though, begad I don't, Miss Lauwa."
+
+And yet the Chevalier, if he lost his money to Lady Clavering, always
+paid it; and if he lived with his friend for three years, paid for that
+too--in good-humour, in kindness and joviality, in a thousand little
+services by which he made himself agreeable. What gentleman could want a
+better friend than a man who was always in spirits, never in the way or
+out of it, and was ready to execute any commission for his patron,
+whether it was to sing a song or meet a lawyer, to fight a duel or to
+carve a capon?
+
+Although Laura and Pen commonly went to Clavering Park together, yet
+sometimes Mr. Pen took walks there unattended by her, and about which he
+did not tell her. He took to fishing the Brawl, which runs through the
+Park, and passes not very far from the garden-wall. And by the oddest
+coincidence, Miss Amory would walk out (having been to look at her
+flowers), and would be quite surprised to see Mr. Pendennis fishing.
+
+I wonder what trout Pen caught while the young lady was looking on? or
+whether Miss Blanche was the pretty little fish which played round his
+fly, and which Mr. Pen was endeavouring to hook? It must be owned, he
+became very fond of that healthful and invigorating pursuit of angling,
+and was whipping the Brawl continually with his fly.
+
+As for Miss Blanche she had a kind heart; and having, as she owned,
+herself "suffered" a good deal in the course of her brief life and
+experience--why, she could compassionate other susceptible beings like
+Pen, who had suffered too. Her love for Laura and that dear Mrs.
+Pendennis redoubled: if they were not at the Park, she was not easy
+unless she herself was at Fairoaks. She played with Laura; she read
+French and German with Laura; and Mr. Pen read French and German along
+with them. He turned sentimental ballads of Schiller and Goethe into
+English verse for the ladies, and Blanche unlocked 'Mes Larmes' for him,
+and imparted to him some of the plaintive outpourings of her own tender
+Muse.
+
+It appeared from these poems that this young creature had indeed suffered
+prodigiously. She was familiar with the idea of suicide. Death she
+repeatedly longed for. A faded rose inspired her with such grief that you
+would have thought she must die in pain of it. It was a wonder how a
+young creature (who had had a snug home or been at a comfortable
+boarding-school, and had no outward grief or hardship to complain of)
+should have suffered so much--should have found the means of getting at
+such an ocean of despair and passion (as a runaway boy who will get to
+sea), and having embarked on it should survive it. What a talent she must
+have had for weeping to be able to pour out so many of Mes Larmes!
+
+They were not particularly briny, Miss Blanche's tears, that is the
+truth; but Pen, who read her verses, thought them very well for a lady--
+and wrote some verses himself for her. His were very violent and
+passionate, very hot, sweet and strong: and he not only wrote verses;
+but--O the villain! O, the deceiver! he altered and adapted former poems
+in his possession, and which had been composed for a certain Emily
+Fotheringay, for the use and to the Christian name of Miss Blanche Amory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+A Little Innocent
+
+
+Every house has its skeleton in it somewhere, and it may be a comfort to
+some unhappy folks to think that the luckier and most wealthy of their
+neighbours have their miseries and causes of disquiet. Our little
+innocent Muse of Blanche, who sang so nicely and talked so sweetly, you
+would have thought she must have made sunshine where ever she went, was
+the skeleton, or the misery, or the bore, or the Nemesis of Clavering
+House, and of most of the inhabitants thereof. As one little stone in
+your own shoe or your horse's, suffices to put either to torture and to
+make your journey miserable, so in life a little obstacle is sufficient
+to obstruct your entire progress, and subject you to endless annoyance
+and disquiet. Who would have guessed that such a smiling little fairy as
+Blanche Amory could be the cause of discord in any family?
+
+"I say, Strong," one day the Baronet said, as the pair were conversing
+after dinner over the billiard-table, and that great unbosomer of
+secrets, a cigar; "I say, Strong, I wish to the doose your wife was
+dead."
+
+"So do I. That's a cannon, by Jove. But she won't; she'll live for ever--
+you see if she don't. Why do you wish her off the hooks, Frank, my boy?"
+asked Captain Strong.
+
+"Because then you might marry Missy. She ain't bad-looking. She'll have
+ten thousand, and that's a good bit of money for such a poor old devil as
+you," drawled out the other gentleman.
+
+"And gad, Strong, I hate her worse and worse every day. I can't stand
+her, Strong, by gad, I can't."
+
+"I wouldn't take her at twice the figure," Captain Strong said, laughing.
+"I never saw such a little devil in my life."
+
+"I should like to poison her," said the sententious Baronet; "by Jove I
+should,"
+
+"Why, what has she been at now?" asked his friend.
+
+"Nothing particular," answered Sir Francis; "only her old tricks. That
+girl has such a knack of making everybody miserable that, hang me, it's
+quite surprising. Last night she sent the governess crying away from the
+dinner-table. Afterwards, as I was passing Frank's room, I heard the poor
+little beggar howling in the dark, and found his sister had been
+frightening his soul out of his body, by telling him stories about the
+ghost that's in the house. At lunch she gave my lady a turn; and though
+my wife's a fool, she's a good soul--I'm hanged if she ain't."
+
+"What did Missy do to her?" Strong asked.
+
+"Why, hang me, if she didn't begin talking about the late Amory, my
+predecessor," the Baronet said, with a grin. "She got some picture out of
+the Keepsake, and said she was sure it was like her dear father, She
+wanted to know where her father's grave was. Hang her father! Whenever
+Miss Amory talks about him, Lady Clavering always bursts out crying: and
+the little devil will talk about him in order to spite her mother. Today
+when she began, I got in a confounded rage; said I was her father;
+and--and that sort of thing, and then, sir, she took a shy at me."
+
+"And what did she say about you, Frank?" Mr. Strong, still laughing,
+inquired of his friend and patron.
+
+"Gad, she said I wasn't her father; that I wasn't fit to comprehend her;
+that her father must have been a man of genius, and fine feelings, and
+that sort of thing: whereas I had married her mother for money."
+
+"Well, didn't you?" asked Strong.
+
+"It don't make it any the pleasanter to hear because it's true, don't you
+know," Sir Francis Clavering answered. "I ain't a literary man and that;
+but I ain't such a fool as she makes me out. I don't know how it is, but
+she always manages to put me in the hole, don't you understand. She turns
+all the house round her in her quiet way, and with her confounded
+sentimental airs. I wish she was dead, Ned."
+
+"It was my wife whom you wanted dead just now," Strong said, always in
+perfect good-humour; upon which the Baron with his accustomed candour,
+said, "Well; when people bore my life out, I do wish they were dead, and
+I wish Missy were down a well, with all my heart."
+
+Thus it will be seen from the above report of this candid conversation
+that our accomplished little friend had some peculiarities or defects of
+character which rendered her not very popular. She was a young lady of
+some genius, exquisite sympathies and considerable literary attainments,
+living, like many another genius, with relatives who could not comprehend
+her. Neither her mother nor her stepfather were persons of a literary
+turn. Bell's Life and the Racing Calendar were the extent of the
+Baronet's reading, and Lady Clavering still wrote like a schoolgirl of
+thirteen, and with an extraordinary disregard to grammar and spelling.
+And as Miss Amory felt very keenly that she was not appreciated, and that
+she lived with persons who were not her equals in intellect or
+conversational power, she lost no opportunity to acquaint her family
+circle with their inferiority to herself, and not only was a martyr, but
+took care to let everybody know that she was so. If she suffered, as she
+said and thought she did, severely, are we to wonder that a young
+creature of such delicate sensibilities should shriek and cry out a good
+deal? Without sympathy life is nothing; and would it not have been a want
+of candour on her part to affect a cheerfulness which she did not feel,
+or pretend a respect for those towards whom it was quite impossible she
+should entertain any reverence? If a poetess may not bemoan her lot, of
+what earthly use is her lyre? Blanche struck hers only to the saddest of
+tunes; and sang elegies over her dead hopes, dirges over her early
+frost-nipt buds of affection, as became such a melancholy fate and Muse.
+
+Her actual distresses, as we have said, had not been up to the present
+time very considerable: but her griefs lay; like those of most of us, in
+her own soul--that being sad and habitually dissatisfied, what wonder
+that she should weep? So Mes Larmes dribbled out of her eyes any day at
+command: she could furnish an unlimited supply of tears, and her faculty
+of shedding them increased by practice. For sentiment is like another
+complaint mentioned by Horace, as increasing by self-indulgence (I am
+sorry to say, ladies, that the complaint in question is called the
+dropsy), and the more you cry, the more you will be able and desirous to
+do so.
+
+Missy had begun to gush at a very early age. Lamartine was her favourite
+bard from the period when she first could feel: and she had subsequently
+improved her mind by a sedulous study of novels of the great modern
+authors of the French language. There was not a romance of Balzac and
+George Sand which the indefatigable little creature had not devoured--by
+the time she was sixteen: and, however little she sympathised with her
+relatives at home, she had friends, as she said, in the spirit-world,
+meaning the tender Indiana, the passionate and poetic Lelia, the amiable
+Trenmor, that high-souled convict, that angel of the galleys,--the fiery
+Stenio,--and the other numberless heroes of the French romances. She had
+been in love with Prince Rodolph and Prince Djalma while she was yet at
+school, and had settled the divorce question, and the rights of woman,
+with Indiana, before she had left off pinafores. The impetuous little
+lady played at love with these imaginary worthies as a little while
+before she had played at maternity with her doll. Pretty little poetical
+spirits! It is curious to watch them with those playthings. To-day the
+blue-eyed one is the favourite, and the black-eyed one is pushed behind
+the drawers. To-morrow blue-eyes may take its turn of neglect and it may
+be an odious little wretch with a burnt nose, or torn bead of hair, and
+no eyes at all, that takes the first place in Miss's affection, and is
+dandled and caressed in her arms.
+
+As novelists are supposed to know everything, even the secrets of female
+hearts, which the owners themselves do not perhaps know, we may state
+that at eleven years of age Mademoiselle Betsi, as Miss Amory was then
+called, had felt tender emotions towards a young Savoyard organ-grinder
+at Paris, whom she Persisted in believing to be a prince carried off from
+his parents; that at twelve an old and hideous drawing-master (but, ah,
+what age or personal defects are proof against woman's love?) had
+agitated her young heart; and that, at thirteen, being at Madame de
+Caramel's boarding-school, in the Champs Elysees, which, as everybody
+knows, is next door to Monsieur Rogron's (Chevalier of the Legion of
+Honour) pension for young gentlemen, a correspondence by letter took
+place between the seduisante Miss Betsi and two young gentlemen of the
+College of Charlemagne, who were pensioners of the Chevalier Rogron.
+
+In the above paragraph our young friend has been called by a Christian
+name different to that under which we were lately presented to her. The
+fact is, that Miss Amory, called Missy at home, had really at the first
+been christened Betsy--but assumed the name of Blanche of her own will
+and fantasy, and crowned herself with it; and the weapon which the
+Baronet, her stepfather, held in terror over her, was the threat to call
+her publicly by her name of Betsy, by which menace he sometimes managed
+to keep the young rebel in order.
+
+We have spoken just now of children's dolls, and of the manner in which
+those little people take up and neglect their darling toys, and very
+likely this history will show that Miss Blanche assumed and put away her
+live dolls with a similar girlish inconstancy. She had had hosts of dear,
+dear, darling, friends ere now, and had quite a little museum of locks of
+hair in her treasure-chest, which she had gathered in the course of her
+sentimental progress. Some dear friends had married: some had gone to
+other schools: one beloved sister she had lost from the pension, and
+found again, O, horror! her darling, her Leocadie keeping the books in
+her father's shop, a grocer in the Rue du Bac: in fact, she had met with
+a number of disappointments, estrangements, disillusionments, as she
+called them in her pretty French jargon, and had seen and suffered a
+great deal for so young a woman. But it is the lot of sensibility to
+suffer, and of confiding tenderness to be deceived, and she felt that she
+was only undergoing the penalties of genius in these pangs and
+disappointments of her young career.
+
+Meanwhile, she managed to make the honest lady, her mother, as
+uncomfortable as circumstances would permit; and caused her worthy
+stepfather to wish she was dead. With the exception of Captain Strong,
+whose invincible good-humour was proof against her sarcasms, the little
+lady ruled the whole house with he tongue. If Lady Clavering talked about
+Sparrowgrass instead of Asparagus, or called an object a hobject, as this
+unfortunate lady would sometimes do, Missy calmly corrected her, and
+frightened the good soul, her mother, into errors only the more frequent
+as she grew more nervous under her daughter's eye.
+
+It is not to be supposed, considering the vast interest which the arrival
+of the family at Clavering Park inspired in the inhabitants of the little
+town, that Madame Fribsby alone, of all the folks in Clavering, should
+have remained unmoved and incurious. At the first appearance of the Park
+family in church, Madame noted every article of toilette which the ladies
+wore, from their bonnets to their brodequins, and took a survey of the
+attire of the ladies' maids in the pew allotted to them. We fear that
+Doctor Portman's sermon, though it was one of his oldest and most valued
+compositions, had little effect upon Madame Fribsby on that day.
+
+In a very few days afterwards, she had managed for herself an interview
+with Lady Clavering's confidential attendant in the housekeeper's room at
+the Park; and her cards in French and English, stating that she received
+the newest fashions from Paris from her correspondent Madame Victorine,
+and that she was in the custom of making court and ball dresses for the
+nobility and gentry of the shire, were in the possession of Lady
+Clavering and Miss Amory, and favourably received, as she was happy to
+hear, by those ladies.
+
+Mrs. Bonner, Lady Clavering's lady, became soon a great frequenter of
+Madame Fribsby's drawing-room, and partook of many entertainments at the
+milliner's expense. A meal of green tea, scandal, hot Sally-Lunn cakes,
+and a little novel reading, were always at the service of Mrs. Bonner,
+whenever she was free to pass an evening in the town. And she found much
+more time for these pleasures than her junior officer, Miss Amory's maid,
+who seldom could be spared for a holiday, and was worked as hard as any
+factory-girl by that inexorable little Muse, her mistress.
+
+The Muse loved to be dressed becomingly, and, having a lively fancy and a
+poetic desire for change, was for altering her attire every day. Her maid
+having a taste in dressmaking--to which art she had been an apprentice at
+Paris, before she entered into Miss Blanche's service there--was kept
+from morning till night altering and remodelling Miss Amory's
+habiliments; and rose very early and went to bed very late, in obedience
+to the untiring caprices of her little taskmistress. The girl was of
+respectable English parents. There are many of our people, colonists of
+Paris, who have seen better days, who are not quite ruined, who do not
+quite live upon charity, and yet cannot get on without it; and as her
+father was a cripple incapable of work, and her return home would only
+increase the burthen and add to the misery of the family, poor Pincott
+was fain to stay where she could maintain herself, and spare a little
+relief to her parents.
+
+Our Muse, with the candour which distinguished her, never failed to
+remind her attendant of the real state of matters. "I should send you
+away, Pincott, for you are a great deal too weak, and your eyes are
+failing you, and you are always crying and snivelling and wanting the
+doctor; but I wish that your parents at home should be supported, and I
+go on enduring you for their sake, mind," the dear Blanche would say to
+her timid little attendant. Or, "Pincott, your wretched appearance and
+slavish manner, and red eyes, positively give me the migraine; and I
+think I shall make you wear rouge, so that you may look a little
+cheerful;" or, "Pincott, I can't bear, even for the sake of your starving
+parents, that you should tear my hair out of my head in that manner; and
+I will thank you to write to them and say that I dispense with your
+services." After which sort of speeches, and after keeping her for an
+hour trembling over her hair, which the young lady loved to have combed,
+as she perused one of her favourite French novels, she would go to bed at
+one o'clock, and say, "Pincott, you may kiss me. Good night. I should
+like you to have the pink dress ready for the morning." And so with
+blessing upon her attendant, she would turn round and go to sleep.
+
+The Muse might lie in bed as long as she chose of a morning, and availed
+herself of that privilege; but Pincott had to rise very early indeed to
+get her mistress's task done; and had to appear next day with the same
+red eyes and the same wan face, which displeased Miss Amory by their want
+of gaiety, and caused the mistress to be so angry, because the servant
+persisted in being and looking unwell and unhappy. Not that Blanche ever
+thought she was a hard mistress. Indeed, she made quite a friend of
+Pincott, at times, and wrote some very pretty verses about the lonely
+little tiring-maid, whose heart was far away. Our beloved Blanche was a
+superior being, and expected to be waited upon as such. And I do not know
+whether there are any other ladies in this world who treat their servants
+or dependants so, but it may be that there are such, and that the tyranny
+which they exercise over their subordinates, and the pangs which they can
+manage to inflict with a soft voice, and a well-bred simper, are as cruel
+as those which a slave-driver administers with an oath and a whip.
+
+But Blanche was a Muse--a delicate little creature, quite tremulous with
+excitability, whose eyes filled with tears at the smallest emotion; and
+who knows, but that it was the very fineness of her feelings which caused
+them to be froissed so easily? You crush a butterfly by merely touching
+it. Vulgar people have no idea of the sensibility of a Muse.
+
+So little Pincott being occupied all day and night in stitching, hemming,
+ripping, combing, ironing, crimping, for her mistress; reading to her
+when in bed,--for the girl was mistress of the two languages, and had a
+sweet voice and manner--could take no share in Madame Fribsby's soirees,
+nor indeed was she much missed, or considered of sufficient consequence
+to appear at their entertainments.
+
+But there was another person connected with the Clavering establishment,
+who became a constant guest of our friend, the milliner. This was the
+chief of the kitchen, Monsieur Mirobolant, with whom Madame Fribsby soon
+formed an intimacy.
+
+Not having been accustomed to the appearance or society of persons of the
+French nation, the rustic inhabitants of Clavering were not so favourably
+impressed by Monsieur Alcide's manners and appearance, as that gentleman
+might have desired that they should be. He walked among them quite
+unsuspiciously upon the afternoon of a summer day, when his services were
+not required at the House, in his usual favourite costume, namely, his
+light green frock or paletot, his crimson velvet waistcoat, with blue
+glass buttons, his pantalon Ecossais, of a very large and decided check
+pattern, his orange satin neckcloth, and his jean-boots, with tips of
+shiny leather,--these, with a gold-embroidered cap, and a richly gilt
+cane, or other varieties of ornament of a similar tendency, formed his
+usual holiday costume, in which he flattered himself there was nothing
+remarkable (unless, indeed, the beauty of his person should attract
+observation), and in which he considered that he exhibited the appearance
+of a gentleman of good Parisian ton.
+
+He walked then down the street, grinning and ogling every woman he met
+with glances, which he meant should kill them outright, and peered over
+the railings, and in at the windows, where females were, in the tranquil
+summer evening. But Betsy, Mrs. Pybus's maid, shrank back with a Lor
+bless us, as Alcide ogled her over the laurel-bush; the Miss Bakers, and
+their mamma, stared with wonder; and presently a crowd began to follow
+the interesting foreigner, of ragged urchins and children, who left their
+dirt-pies in the street to pursue him.
+
+For some time he thought that admiration was the cause which led these
+persons in his wake, and walked on, pleased himself that he could so
+easily confer on others so much harmless pleasure. But the little
+children and dirt-pie manufacturers were presently succeeded by followers
+of a larger growth, and a number of lads and girls from the factory being
+let loose at this hour, joined the mob, and began laughing, jeering,
+hooting, and calling opprobrious names at the Frenchman. Some cried out
+"Frenchy! Frenchy!" some exclaimed "Frogs!" one asked for a lock of his
+hair, which was long and in richly-flowing ringlets; and at length the
+poor artist began to perceive that he was an object of derision rather
+than of respect to the rude grinning mob.
+
+It was at this juncture that Madame Fribsby spied the unlucky gentleman
+with the train at his heels, and heard the scornful shouts with which
+they assailed him. She ran out of her room, and across the street to the
+persecuted foreigner; she held out her hand, and, addressing him in his
+own language, invited him into her abode; and when she had housed him
+fairly within her door, she stood bravely at the threshold before the
+gibing factory girls and boys, and said they were a pack of cowards to
+insult a poor man who could not speak their language, and was alone and
+without protection. The little crowd, with some ironical cheers and
+hootings, nevertheless felt the force of Madame Fribsby's vigorous
+allocution, and retreated before her; for the old lady was rather
+respected in the place, and her oddity and her kindness had made her many
+friends there.
+
+Poor Mirobolant was grateful indeed to hear the language of his country
+ever so ill spoken. Frenchmen pardon our faults in their language much
+more readily than we excuse their bad English; and will face our blunders
+throughout a long conversation, without the least propensity to grin. The
+rescued artist vowed that Madame Fribsby was his guardian angel, and that
+he had not as yet met with such suavity and politeness among les
+Anglaises. He was as courteous and complimentary to her as if it was the
+fairest and noblest of ladies whom he was addressing for Alcide
+Mirobolant paid homage after his fashion to all womankind, and never
+dreamed of a distinction of ranks in the realms of beauty, as his phrase
+was.
+
+A cream, flavoured with pineapple--a mayonnaise of lobster, which he
+flattered himself was not unworthy of his hand, or of her to whom he had
+the honour to offer it as an homage, and a box of preserved fruits of
+Provence, were brought by one of the chef's aides-de-camp, in a basket,
+the next day to the milliner's, and were accompanied with a gallant note
+to the amiable Madame Fribsbi. "Her kindness," Alcide said, "had made a
+green place in the desert of his existence,--her suavity would ever
+contrast in memory with the grossierete of the rustic population, who
+were not worthy to possess such a jewel." An intimacy of the most
+confidential nature thus sprang up between the milliner and the chief of
+the kitchen; but I do not know whether it was with pleasure or
+mortification that Madame received the declarations of friendship which
+the young Alcides proffered to her, for he persisted in calling her "La
+respectable Fribsbi," "La vertueuse Fribsbi,"--and in stating that he
+should consider her as his mother, while he hoped she would regard him as
+her son. Ah! it was not very long ago, Fribsby thought, that words had
+been addressed to her in that dear French language, indicating a
+different sort of attachment. And she sighed as she looked up at the
+picture of her Carabineer. For it is surprising how young some people's
+hearts remain when their heads have need of a front or a little
+hair-dye,--and, at this moment, Madame Fribsby, as she told young Alcide,
+felt as romantic as a girl of eighteen.
+
+When the conversation took this turn--and at their first intimacy Madame
+Fribsby was rather inclined so to lead it--Alcide always politely
+diverged to another subject: it was as his mother that he persisted in
+considering the good milliner. He would recognise her in no other
+capacity, and with that relationship the gentle lady was forced to
+content herself, when she found how deeply the artist's heart was engaged
+elsewhere.
+
+He was not long before he described to her the subject and origin of his
+passion.
+
+"I declared myself to her," said Alcide, laying his hand on his heart,
+"in a manner which was as novel as I am charmed to think it was
+agreeable. Where cannot Love penetrate, respectable Madame Fribsbi? Cupid
+is the father of invention!--I inquired of the domestics what were the
+plats of which Mademoiselle partook with most pleasure; and built up my
+little battery accordingly. On a day when her parents had gone to dine in
+the world (and I am grieved to say that a grossier dinner at a
+restaurateur, in the Boulevard, or in the Palais Royal seemed to form the
+delights of these unrefined persons), the charming Miss entertained some
+comrades of the pension; and I advised myself to send up a little repast
+suitable to so delicate young palates. Her lovely name is Blanche. The
+name of the maiden is white; the wreath of roses which she wears is
+white. I determined that my dinner should be as spotless as the snow. At
+her accustomed hour, and instead of the rude gigot a l'eau, which was
+ordinarily served at her too simple table, I sent her up a little potage
+a la Reine--a la Reine Blanche I called it,--as white as her own tint--
+and confectioned with the most fragrant cream and almonds. I then offered
+up at her shrine a filet de merlan a l'gnes, and a delicate plat which I
+designated as Eperlan a la Sainte-Therese, and of which my charming Miss
+partook with pleasure. I followed this by two little entrees of
+sweetbread and chicken; and the only brown thing which I permitted myself
+in the entertainment was a little roast of lamb, which I lay in a meadow
+of spinaches, surrounded with croustillons, representing sheep, and
+ornamented with daisies and other savage flowers. After this came my
+second service: a pudding a la Reine Elizabeth (who, Madame Fribsbi
+knows, was a maiden princess); a dish of opal-coloured plover's eggs
+which I called Nid de tourtereaux a la Roucoule; placing in the midst of
+them two of those tender volatiles, billing each other, and confectioned
+with butter; a basket containing little gateaux of apricots, which, I
+know, all young ladies adore; and a jelly of marasquin, bland
+insinuating, intoxicating as the glance of beauty. This I designated
+Ambroisie de Calypso a la Souveraine de mon Coeur. And when the ice was
+brought in--an ice of plombiere and cherries--how do you think I had
+shaped them, Madame Fribsbi? In the form of two hearts united with an
+arrow, on which I had laid, before it entered, a bridal veil in
+cut-paper, surmounted by a wreath of virginal orange-flowers. I stood at
+the door to watch the effect of this entry. It was but one cry of
+admiration. The three young ladies filled their glasses with the
+sparkling Ay, and carried me in a toast. I heard it--I heard Miss speak
+of me--I heard her say, 'Tell Monsieur Mirobolant that we thank him--we
+admire him--we love him!' My feet almost failed me as she spoke.
+
+"Since that, can I have any reason to doubt that the young artist has
+made some progress in the heart of the English Miss? I am modest, but my
+glass informs me that I am not ill-looking. Other victories have
+convinced me of the fact."
+
+"Dangerous man!" cried the milliner.
+
+"The blond misses of Albion see nothing in the dull inhabitants of their
+brumous isle, which can compare with the ardour and vivacity of the
+children of the South. We bring our sunshine with us; we are Frenchmen,
+and accustomed to conquer. Were it not for this affair of the heart, and
+my determination to marry an Anglaise, do you think I would stop in this
+island (which is not altogether ungrateful, since I have found here a
+tender mother in the respectable Madame Fribsbi), in this island, in this
+family? My genius would use itself in the company of these rustics--the
+poesy of my art cannot be understood by these carnivorous insularies.
+No--the men are odious, but the women--the women! I own, dear Fribsbi,
+are seducing! I have vowed to marry one; and as I cannot go into your
+markets and purchase, according to the custom of the country, I am
+resolved to adopt another custom, and fly with one to Gretna Grin. The
+blonde Miss will go. She is fascinated. Her eyes have told me so. The
+white dove wants but the signal to fly."
+
+"Have you any correspondence with her?" asked Fribsby, in amazement, and
+not knowing whether the young lady or the lover might be labouring under
+a romantic delusion.
+
+"I correspond with her by means of my art. She partakes of dishes which I
+make expressly for her. I insinuate to her thus a thousand hints which as
+she is perfectly spiritual, she receives. But I want other intelligences
+near her."
+
+"There is Pincott, her maid," said Madame Fribsby, who, by aptitude or
+education, seemed to have some knowledge of affairs of the heart, but the
+great artist's brow darkened at this suggestion.
+
+"Madame," he said, "there are points upon which a gallant man ought to
+silence himself; though, if he break the secret, he may do so with the
+least impropriety to his best friend--his adopted mother. Know then, that
+there is a cause why Miss Pincott should be hostile to me--a cause not
+uncommon with your sex--jealousy."
+
+"Perfidious monster!" said the confidante.
+
+"Ah, no," said the artist, with a deep bass voice, and a tragic accent
+worthy of the Port St Martin and his favourite melodrames, "not
+perfidious, but fatal. Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To inspire
+hopeless passion is my destiny. I cannot help it that women love me. Is
+it my fault that that young woman deperishes and languishes to the view
+of the eye, consumed by a flame which I cannot return? Listen! There are
+others in this family who are similarly unhappy. The governess of the
+young Milor has encountered me in my walks, and looked at me in a way
+which can bear but one interpretation. And Milady herself, who is of
+mature age, but who has oriental blood, has once or twice addressed
+compliments to the lonely artist which can admit of no mistake. I avoid
+the household, I seek solitude, I undergo my destiny. I can marry but
+one, and am resolved it shall be to a lady of your nation. And, if her
+fortune is sufficient I think Miss would be the person who would be most
+suitable. I wish to ascertain what her means are before I lead her to
+Gretna Grin."
+
+Whether Alcides was as irresistible a conqueror as his namesake, or
+whether he was simply crazy, is a point which must be left to the
+reader's judgment. But the latter if he had had the benefit of much
+French acquaintance, has perhaps met with men amongst them who fancied
+themselves almost as invincible; and who, if you credit them, have made
+equal havoc in the hearts of les Anglaises.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+Contains both Love and Jealousy
+
+
+Our readers have already heard Sir Francis Clavering's candid opinion of
+the lady who had given him her fortune and restored him to his native
+country and home, and it must be owned that the Baronet was not far wrong
+in his estimate of his wife, and that Lady Clavering was not the wisest
+or the best educated of women. She had had a couple of years' education
+in Europe, in a suburb of London, which she persisted in calling Ackney
+to her dying day, whence she had been summoned to join her father at
+Calcutta at the age of fifteen. And it was on her voyage thither, on
+board the Ramchunder East Indiaman, Captain Bragg, in which ship she had
+two years previously made her journey to Europe, that she formed the
+acquaintance of her first husband, Mr. Amory, who was third mate of the
+vessel in question.
+
+We are not going to enter into the early part of Lady Clavering's
+history, but Captain Bragg, under whose charge Miss Snell went out to her
+father, who was one of the Captain's consignees, and part owner of the
+Ramchunder and many other vessels, found reason to put the rebellious
+rascal of a mate in irons, until they reached the Cape, where the Captain
+left his officer behind; and finally delivered his ward to her father at
+Calcutta, after a stormy and perilous voyage in which the Ramchunder and
+the cargo and passengers incurred no small danger and damage.
+
+Some months afterwards Amory made his appearance at Calcutta, having
+worked his way out before the mast from the Cape--married the rich
+Attorney's daughter in spite of that old speculator--set up as
+indigo-planter and failed--set up as agent and failed again--set up as
+editor of the Sunderbund Pilot and failed again--quarrelling ceaselessly
+with his father-in-law and his wife during the progress of all these
+mercantile transactions and disasters, and ending his career finally with
+a crash which compelled him to leave Calcutta and go to New South Wales.
+It was in the course of these luckless proceedings, that Mr. Amory
+probably made the acquaintance of Sir Jasper Rogers, the respected
+Judge of the Supreme Court of Calcutta, who has been mentioned before:
+and, as the truth must out, it was by making an improper use of his
+father-in-law's name, who could write perfectly well, and had no need of
+an amanuensis, that fortune finally forsook Mr. Amory and caused him to
+abandon all further struggles with her.
+
+Not being in the habit of reading the Calcutta law-reports very
+assiduously, the European public did not know of these facts as well as
+people did in Bengal, and Mrs. Amory and her father finding her residence
+in India not a comfortable one, it was agreed that the lady should return
+to Europe, whither she came with her little daughter Betsy or Blanche,
+then four years old. They were accompanied by Betsy's nurse, who has been
+presented to the reader in the last chapter as the confidential maid of
+Lady Clavering, Mrs. Bonner: and Captain Bragg took a house for them in
+the near neighbourhood of his residence in Pocklington Street.
+
+It was a very hard bitter summer, and the rain it rained every day for
+some time after Mrs. Amory's arrival. Bragg was very pompous and
+disagreeable, perhaps ashamed, perhaps anxious, to get rid of the Indian
+lady. She believed that all the world in London was talking about her
+husband's disaster, and that the King and Queen and the Court of
+Directors were aware of her unlucky history. She had a good allowance
+from her father; she had no call to live in England; and she determined
+to go abroad. Away she went, then, glad to escape the gloomy surveillance
+of the odious bully, Captain Bragg. People had no objection to receive
+her at the continental towns where she stopped, and at the various
+boarding-houses, where she royally paid her way. She called Hackney
+Ackney, to be sure (though otherwise she spoke English with a little
+foreign twang, very curious and not unpleasant); she dressed amazingly;
+she was conspicuous for her love of eating and drinking, and prepared
+curries and pillaws at every boarding-house which she frequented; but her
+singularities of language and behaviour only gave a zest to her society,
+and Mrs. Amory was deservedly popular. She was the most good-natured,
+jovial, and generous of women. She was up to any party of pleasure by
+whomsoever proposed. She brought three times more champagne and fowl and
+ham to the picnics than anyone else. She took endless boxes for the play,
+and tickets for the masked balls, and gave them away to everybody. She
+paid the boarding-house people months beforehand; she helped poor shabby
+mustachiod bucks and dowagers whose remittances had not arrived, with
+constant supplies from her purse; and in this way she tramped through
+Europe, and appeared at Brussels, at Paris, at Milan, at Naples, at Rome,
+as her fancy led her. News of Amory's death reached her at the latter
+place, where Captain Clavering was then staying, unable to pay his hotel
+bill, as, indeed, was his friend, the Chevalier Strong; and the
+good-natured widow married the descendant of the ancient house of
+Clavering--professing, indeed, no particular grief for the scapegrace of
+a husband whom she had lost. We have brought her thus up to the present
+time when she was mistress of Clavering Park, in the midst of which Mr.
+Pinckney, the celebrated painter, pourtrayed her with her little boy by
+her side.
+
+Missy followed her mamma in most of her peregrinations, and so learned a
+deal of life. She had a governess for some time; and after her mother's
+second marriage, the benefit of Madame de Caramel's select pension in the
+Champs Elysees. When the Claverings came to England, she of course came
+with them. It was only within a few years, after the death of her
+grandfather, and the birth of her little brother, that she began to
+understand that her position in life was altered, and that Miss Amory,
+nobody's daughter, was a very small personage in a house compared with
+Master Francis Clavering, heir to an ancient baronetcy and a noble
+estate. But for little Frank, she would have been an heiress, in spite of
+her father: and though she knew, and cared not much about money, of which
+she never had any stint, and though she was a romantic little Muse, as we
+have seen, yet she could not reasonably be grateful to the persons who
+had so contributed to change her condition: nor, indeed, did she
+understand what the latter really was, until she had made some further
+progress, and acquired more accurate knowledge in the world.
+
+But this was clear, that her stepfather was dull and weak: that mamma
+dropped her H's, and was not refined in manners or appearance; and that
+little Frank was a spoiled quarrelsome urchin, always having his way,
+always treading upon her feet, always upsetting his dinner on her
+dresses, and keeping her out of her inheritance. None of these, as she
+felt, could comprehend her: and her solitary heart naturally pined for
+other attachments, and she sought around her where to bestow the precious
+boon of her unoccupied affection.
+
+This dear girl, then, from want of sympathy, or other cause, made herself
+so disagreeable at home, and frightened her mother and bored her
+stepfather so much, that they were quite as anxious as she could be that
+she should settle for herself in life; and hence Sir Francis Clavering's
+desire expressed to his friend, in the last chapter, that Mrs. Strong
+should die, and that he would take Blanche to himself as a second Mrs.
+Strong.
+
+But as this could not be, any other person was welcome to win her: and a
+smart young fellow, well-looking and well educated like our friend Arthur
+Pendennis, was quite free to propose for her if he had a mind, and would
+have been received with open arms by Lady Clavering as a son-in-law, had
+he had the courage to come forward as a competitor for Miss Amory's hand.
+
+Mr. Pen, however, besides other drawbacks, chose to entertain an extreme
+diffidence about himself. He was ashamed of his late failures, of his
+idle and nameless condition, of the poverty which he had brought on his
+mother by his folly, and there was as much of vanity as remorse in his
+present state of doubt and distrust. How could he ever hope for such a
+prize as this brilliant Blanche Amory, who lived in a fine park and
+mansion, and was waited on by a score of grand domestics, whilst a
+maid-servant brought in their meagre meal at Fairoaks, and his mother was
+obliged to pinch and manage to make both ends meet? Obstacles seemed for
+him insurmountable, which would have vanished had he marched manfully
+upon them: and he preferred despairing, or dallying with his wishes,--or
+perhaps he had not positively shaped them as yet,--to attempting to win
+gallantly the object of his desire. Many a young man fails by that
+species of vanity called shyness, who might, for the asking have his
+will.
+
+But we do not pretend to say that Pen had, as yet, ascertained his: or
+that he was doing much more than thinking about falling in love. Miss
+Amory was charming and lively. She fascinated and cajoled him by a
+thousand arts or natural graces or flatteries. But there were lurking
+reasons and doubts, besides shyness and vanity, withholding him. In spite
+of her cleverness, and her protestations, and her fascinations, Pen's
+mother had divined the girl, and did not trust her. Mrs. Pendennis saw
+Blanche light-minded and frivolous, detected many wants in her which
+offended the pure and pious-minded lady; a want of reverence for her
+parents, and for things more sacred, Helen thought: worldliness and
+selfishness couched under pretty words and tender expressions. Laura and
+Pen battled these points strongly at first with the widow--Laura being as
+yet enthusiastic about her new friend, and Pen not far-gone enough in
+love to attempt any concealment of his feelings. He would laugh at these
+objections of Helen's, and say, "Psha, mother! you are jealous about
+Laura--all women are jealous."
+
+But when, in the course of a month or two, and by watching the pair with
+that anxiety with which brooding women watch over their sons' affections
+--and in acknowledging which, I have no doubt there is a sexual jealousy
+on the mother's part, and a secret pang--when Helen saw that the intimacy
+appeared to make progress, that the two young people were perpetually
+finding pretexts to meet, and that Miss Blanche was at Fairoaks or Mr.
+Pen at the Park every day, the poor widow's heart began to fail her--her
+darling project seemed to vanish before her; and, giving way to her
+weakness, she fairly told Pen one day what her views and longings were;
+that she felt herself breaking, and not long for this world, and that she
+hoped and prayed before she went, that she might see her two children
+one. The late events, Pen's life and career and former passion for the
+actress, had broken the spirit of this tender lady. She felt that he had
+escaped her, and was in the maternal nest no more; and she clung with a
+sickening fondness to Laura, Laura who had been left to her by Francis in
+Heaven.
+
+Pen kissed and soothed her in his grand patronising way. He had seen
+something of this, he had long thought his mother wanted to make this
+marriage--did Laura know anything of it? (Not she,--Mrs. Pendennis said--
+not for worlds would she have breathed a word of it to Laura)--"Well,
+well, there was time enough, his mother wouldn't die," Pen said,
+laughingly: "he wouldn't hear of any such thing, and as for the Muse, she
+is too grand a lady to think about poor little me--and as for Laura, who
+knows that she would have me? She would do anything you told her, to be
+sure. But am I worthy of her?"
+
+"O, Pen, you might be," was the widow's reply; not that Mr. Pen ever
+doubted that he was; and a feeling of indefinable pleasure and
+self-complacency came over him as he thought over this proposal, and
+imaged Laura to himself, as his memory remembered her for years past,
+always fair and open, kindly and pious, cheerful, tender and true. He
+looked at her with brightening eyes as she came in from the garden at the
+end of this talk, her cheeks rather flushed, her looks frank and smiling
+--a basket of roses in her hand.
+
+She took the finest of them and brought it to Mrs. Pendennis, who was
+refreshed by the odour and colour of these flowers; and hung over her
+fondly and gave it to her.
+
+"And I might have this prize for the asking!" Pen thought with a thrill
+of triumph, as he looked at the kindly girl. "Why, she is as beautiful
+and as generous as her roses." The image of the two women remained for
+ever after in his mind, and he never recalled it but the tears came into
+his eyes.
+
+Before very many weeks' intimacy with her new acquaintance, however, Miss
+Laura was obliged to give in to Helen's opinion, and own that the Muse
+was selfish, unkind, and inconstant. Of course Blanche confided to her
+bosom friend all the little griefs and domestic annoyances; how the
+family could not comprehend her and she moved among them an isolated
+being; how her poor mamma's education had been neglected, and she was
+forced to blush for her blunders; how Sir Francis was a weak person
+deplorably unintellectual, and only happy when smoking his odious cigars;
+how, since the birth of her little brother, she had seen her mother's
+precious affection, which she valued more than anything in life,
+estranged from her once darling daughter; how she was alone, alone, alone
+in the world.
+
+But these griefs, real and heart-rending though they might be to a young
+lady of exquisite sensibility, did not convince Laura of the propriety of
+Blanche's conduct in many small incidents of Little Frank, for instance,
+life might be very provoking, and might have deprived Blanche of her
+mamma's affection, but this was no reason why Blanche should box the
+child's ears because he upset a glass of water over her drawing, and why
+she should call him many opprobrious names in the English and French
+language; and the preference accorded to little Frank was certainly no
+reason why Blanche should give herself imperial airs of command towards
+the boy's governess, and send that young lady upon messages through the
+house to bring her book or to fetch her pocket-handkerchief. When a
+domestic performed an errand for honest Laura, she was always thankful
+and pleased; whereas she could not but perceive that the little Muse had
+not the slightest scruple in giving her commands to all the world round
+about her, and in disturbing anybody's ease or comfort, in order to
+administer to her own. It was Laura's first experience in friendship; and
+it pained the kind creature's heart to be obliged to give up as
+delusions, one by one, those charms and brilliant qualities in which her
+fancy had dressed her new friend, and to find that the fascinating little
+fairy was but a mortal, and not a very amiable mortal after all. What
+generous person is there that has not been so deceived in his time?--what
+person, perhaps, that has not so disappointed others in his turn?
+
+After the scene with little Frank, in which that refractory son and heir
+of the house of Clavering had received the compliments in French and
+English, and the accompanying box on the ear from his sister, Miss Laura
+who had plenty of humour, could not help calling to mind some very
+touching and tender verses which the Muse had read to her out of Mes
+Larmes, and which began, "My pretty baby brother, may angels guard thy
+rest," in which the Muse, after complimenting the baby upon the station
+in life which it was about to occupy, and contrasting it with her own
+lonely condition, vowed nevertheless that the angel boy would never enjoy
+such affection as hers was, or find in the false world before him
+anything so constant and tender as a sister's heart. "It may be," the
+forlorn one said, "it may be, you will slight it, my pretty baby sweet,
+You will spurn me from your bosom, I'll cling around your feet! O let me,
+let me, love you! the world will prove to you As false as 'tis to others,
+but I am ever true." And behold the Muse was boxing the darling brother's
+ears instead of kneeling at his feet, and giving Miss Laura her first
+lesson in the Cynical philosophy--not quite her first, however,--
+something like this selfishness and waywardness, something like this
+contrast between practice and poetry, between grand versified aspirations
+and everyday life, she had witnessed at home in the person of our young
+friend Mr. Pen.
+
+But then Pen was different. Pen was a man. It seemed natural somehow that
+he should be self-willed and should have his own way. And under his
+waywardness and selfishness, indeed there was a kind and generous heart.
+O it was hard that such a diamond should be changed away against such a
+false stone as this. In a word, Laura began to be tired of her admired
+Blanche. She had assayed her and found her not true; and her former
+admiration and delight, which she had expressed with her accustomed
+generous artlessness, gave way to a feeling, which we shall not call
+contempt, but which was very near it; and which caused Laura to adopt
+towards Miss Amory a grave and tranquil tone of superiority, which was at
+first by no means to the Muse's liking. Nobody likes to be found out, or,
+having held a high place, to submit to step down.
+
+The consciousness that this event was impending did not serve to increase
+Miss Blanche's good-humour, and as it made her peevish and dissatisfied
+with herself, it probably rendered her even less agreeable to the persons
+round about her. So there arose, one fatal day, a battle-royal between
+dearest Blanche and dearest Laura, in which the friendship between them
+was all but slain outright. Dearest Blanche had been unusually capricious
+and wicked on this day. She had been insolent to her mother; savage with
+little Frank; odiously impertinent in her behaviour to the boy's
+governess; and intolerably cruel to Pincott, her attendant. Not venturing
+to attack her friend (for the little tyrant was of a timid feline nature,
+and only used her claws upon those who were weaker than herself), she
+maltreated all these, and especially poor Pincott, who was menial,
+confidante, companion (slave always), according to the caprice of her
+young mistress.
+
+This girl, who had been sitting in the room with the young ladies, being
+driven thence in tears, occasioned by the cruelty of her mistress, and
+raked with a parting sarcasm as she went sobbing from the door, Laura
+fairly broke out into a loud and indignant invective--wondered how one so
+young could forget the deference owing to her elders as well as to her
+inferiors in station; and professing so much sensibility of her own,
+could torture the feelings of others so wantonly. Laura told her friend
+that her conduct was absolutely wicked, and that she ought to ask pardon
+of Heaven on her knees for it. And having delivered herself of a hot and
+voluble speech whereof the delivery astonished the speaker as much almost
+as her auditor, she ran to her bonnet and shawl, and went home across the
+park in a great flurry and perturbation, and to the surprise of Mrs.
+Pendennis, who had not expected her until night.
+
+Alone with Helen, Laura gave an account of the scene, and gave up her
+friend henceforth. "O Mamma," she said, "you were right; Blanche, who
+seems so soft and so kind, is, as you have said, selfish and cruel. She
+who is always speaking of her affections can have no heart. No honest
+girl would afflict a mother so, or torture a dependant; and--and, I give
+her up from this day, and I will have no other friend but you."
+
+On this the two ladies went through the osculatory ceremony which they
+were in the habit of performing, and Mrs. Pendennis got a great secret
+comfort from the little quarrel--for Laura's confession seemed to say,
+"That girl can never be a wife for Pen, for she is light-minded and
+heartless, and quite unworthy of our noble hero. He will be sure to find
+out her unworthiness for his own part, and then he will be saved from
+this flighty creature, and awake out of his delusion."
+
+But Miss Laura did not tell Mrs. Pendennis, perhaps did not acknowledge
+to herself, what had been the real cause of the day's quarrel. Being in a
+very wicked mood, and bent upon mischief everywhere, the little wicked
+Muse of a Blanche had very soon begun her tricks. Her darling Laura had
+come to pass a long day; and as they were sitting in her own room
+together, had chosen to bring the conversation round to the subject of
+Mr. Pen.
+
+"I am afraid he is sadly fickle," Miss Blanche observed; "Mrs. Pybus, and
+many more Clavering people, have told us all about the actress."
+
+"I was quite a child when it happened, and I don't know anything about
+it," Laura answered, blushing very much.
+
+"He used her very ill," Blanche said, wagging her little head. "He was
+false to her."
+
+"I am sure he was not," Laura cried out; "he acted most generously by
+her; he wanted to give up everything to marry her. It was she that was
+false to him. He nearly broke his heart about it: he----"
+
+"I thought you didn't know anything about the story, dearest," interposed
+Miss Blanche.
+
+"Mamma has said so," said Laura.
+
+"Well, he is very clever," continued the other little dear, "What a sweet
+poet he is! Have you ever read his poems?"
+
+"Only the 'Fisherman and the Diver,' which he translated for us, and his
+Prize Poem, which didn't get the prize; and, indeed, I thought it very
+pompous and prosy," Laura said, laughing.
+
+"Has he never written you any poems, then, love?" asked Miss Amory.
+
+"No, my dear," said Miss Bell.
+
+Blanche ran up to her friend, kissed her fondly, called her my dearest
+Laura at least three times, looked her archly in the face, nodded her
+head, and said, "Promise to tell no-o-body, and I will show you
+something."
+
+And tripping across the room daintily to a little mother-of-pearl inlaid
+desk, she opened it with a silver key, and took out two or three papers
+crumpled and rather stained with green, which she submitted to her
+friend. Laura took them and read them. They were love-verses sure enough
+--something about Undine--about a Naiad--about a river. She looked at
+them for a long time; but in truth the lines were not very distinct
+before her eyes.
+
+"And you have answered them, Blanche?" she asked, putting them back.
+
+"O no! not for worlds, dearest," the other said: and when her dearest
+Laura had quite done with the verses, she tripped back and popped them
+again into the pretty desk.
+
+Then she went to her piano, and sang two or three songs of Rossini, whose
+flourishes of music her flexible little voice could execute to
+perfection, and Laura sate by, vaguely listening as she performed these
+pieces. What was Miss Bell thinking about the while? She hardly knew; but
+sate there silent as the songs rolled by. After this concert the young
+ladies were summoned to the room where luncheon was served; and whither
+they of course went with their arms round each other's waists.
+
+And it could not have been jealousy or anger on Laura's part which had
+made her silent; for, after they had tripped along the corridor and
+descended the steps, and were about to open the door which leads into the
+hall, Laura paused, and looking her friend kindly and frankly in the
+face, kissed her with a sisterly warmth.
+
+Something occurred after this--Master Frank's manner of eating, probably,
+or mamma's blunders, or Sir Francis smelling of cigars--which vexed Miss
+Blanche, and she gave way to that series of naughtinesses whereof we have
+spoken, and which ended in the above little quarrel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A House full of Visitors
+
+
+The difference between the girls did not last long. Laura was always too
+eager to forgive and be forgiven, and as for Miss Blanche, her
+hostilities, never very long or durable, had not been provoked by the
+above scene. Nobody cares about being accused of wickedness. No vanity is
+hurt by that sort of charge: Blanche was rather pleased than provoked by
+her friend's indignation, which never would have been raised but for a
+cause which both knew, though neither spoke of.
+
+And so Laura, with a sigh, was obliged to confess that the romantic part
+of her first friendship was at an end, and that the object of it was only
+worthy of a very ordinary sort of regard.
+
+As for Blanche, she instantly composed a copy of touching verses, setting
+forth her desertion and disenchantment. It was only the old story, she
+wrote, of love meeting with coldness, and fidelity returned by neglect;
+and some new neighbours arriving from London about this time, in whose
+family there were daughters, Miss Amory had the advantage of selecting an
+eternal friend from one of these young ladies, and imparting her sorrows
+and disappointments to this new sister. The tall footmen came but seldom
+now with notes to the sweet Laura; the pony-carriage was but rarely
+despatched to Fairoaks to be at the orders of the ladies there. Blanche
+adopted a sweet look of suffering martyrdom when Laura came to see her.
+The other laughed at her friend's sentimental mood, and treated it with a
+good-humour that was by no means respectful.
+
+But if Miss Blanche found new female friends to console her, the faithful
+historian is also bound to say, that she discovered some acquaintances of
+the other sex who seemed to give her consolation too. If ever this
+artless young creature met a young man, and had ten minutes' conversation
+with him in a garden walk, in a drawing-room window, or in the intervals
+of a waltz, she confided in him, so to speak--made play with her
+beautiful eyes--spoke in a tone of tender interest, and simple and
+touching appeal, and left him, to perform the same pretty little drama in
+behalf of his successor.
+
+When the Claverings first came down to the Park, there were very few
+audiences before whom Miss Blanche could perform: hence Pen had all the
+benefits of her glances and confidences, and the drawing-room window or
+the garden walk all to himself. In the town of Clavering, it has been
+said, there were actually young men: in the near surrounding country,
+only a curate or two or a rustic young squire, with large feet and
+ill-made clothes. To the dragoons quartered at Chatteris the Baronet made
+no overtures: it was unluckily his own regiment: he had left it on bad
+terms with some officers of the corps--an ugly business about a horse
+bargain--a disputed play account--blind-Hookey--a white feather--who need
+ask?--it is not our business to inquire too closely into the bygones of
+our characters, except in so far as their previous history appertains to
+the development of this present story.
+
+But the autumn, and the end of the Parliamentary Session and the London
+season, brought one or two county families down to their houses, and
+filled tolerably the neighbouring little watering-place of Baymouth, and
+opened our friend Mr. Bingley's Theatre Royal at Chatteris, and collected
+the usual company at the Assizes and Race-balls there. Up to this time,
+the old county families had been rather shy of our friends of Clavering
+Park. The Fogeys of Drummington; the Squares of Tozely Park; the Welbores
+of The Barrow, etc.: all sorts of stories were current among these folks
+regarding the family at Clavering;--indeed, nobody ought to say that
+people in the country have no imagination who heard them talk about new
+neighbours. About Sir Francis and his Lady, and her birth and parentage,
+about Miss Amory, about Captain Strong, there had been endless histories
+which need not be recapitulated; and the family of the Park had been
+three months in the county before the great people around began to call.
+
+But at the end of the season, the Earl of Trehawk, Lord Lieutenant of the
+County, coming to Eyrie Castle, and the Countess Dowager of Rockminster,
+whose son was also a magnate of the land, to occupy a mansion on the
+Marine Parade at Baymouth--these great folks came publicly, immediately,
+and in state, to call upon the family of Clavering Park; and the
+carriages of the county families speedily followed in the track which had
+been left in the avenue by their lordly wheels.
+
+It was then that Mirobolant began to have an opportunity of exercising
+that skill which he possessed, and of forgetting, in the occupations of
+his art, the pangs of love. It was then that the large footmen were too
+much employed at Clavering Park to be able to bring messages, or dally
+over the cup of small beer with the poor little maids at Fairoaks. It was
+then that Blanche found other dear friends than Laura, and other places
+to walk in besides the river-side, where Pen was fishing. He came day
+after day, and whipped the stream, but the "fish, fish!" wouldn't do
+their duty, nor the Peri appear. And here, though in strict confidence,
+and with a request that the matter go no further, we may as well allude
+to a delicate business, of which previous hint has been given. Mention
+has been made, in a former page, of a certain hollow tree, at which Pen
+used to take his station when engaged in his passion for Miss
+Fotheringay, and the cavity of which he afterwards used for other
+purposes than to insert his baits and fishing-cans in. The truth is, be
+converted this tree into a post-office. Under a piece of moss and a
+stone, he used to put little poems, or letters equally poetical, which
+were addressed to a certain Undine, or Naiad who frequented the stream,
+and which, once or twice, were replaced by a receipt in the shape of a
+flower, or by a modest little word or two of acknowledgment, written in a
+delicate hand, in French or English, and on pink scented paper.
+Certainly, Miss Amory used to walk by this stream, as we have seen; and
+it is a fact that she used pink scented paper for her correspondence. But
+after the great folks had invaded Clavering Park, and the family coach
+passed out of the lodge-gates, evening after evening, on their way to the
+other great country houses, nobody came to fetch Pen's letters at the
+post-office; the white paper was not exchanged for the pink, but lay
+undisturbed under its stone and its moss, whilst the tree was reflected
+into the stream, and the Brawl went rolling by. There was not much in the
+letters certainly; in the pink notes scarcely anything--merely a little
+word or two, half jocular, half sympathetic, such as might be written by
+any young lady. But oh, you silly Pendennis, if you wanted this one, why
+did you not speak? Perhaps neither party was in earnest. You were only
+playing at being in love, and the sportive little Undine was humouring
+you at the same play.
+
+But if a man is baulked at this game, he not unfrequently loses his
+temper; and when nobody came any more for Pen's poems, he began to look
+upon those compositions in a very serious light. He felt almost tragical
+and romantic again, as in his first affair of the heart:--at any rate he
+was bent upon having an explanation. One day he went to the Hall and
+there was a roomful of visitors: on another, Miss Amory was not to be
+seen; she was going to a ball that night, and was lying down to take a
+little sleep. Pen cursed balls, and the narrowness of his means, and the
+humility of his position in the country that caused him to be passed over
+by the givers of these entertainments. On a third occasion, Miss Amory
+was in the garden, and he ran thither; she was walking there in state
+with no less personages than the Bishop and Bishopess of Chatteris and
+the episcopal family, who scowled at him, and drew up in great dignity
+when he was presented to them, and they heard his name. The Right
+Reverend Prelate had heard it before, and also of the little transaction
+in the Dean's garden.
+
+"The Bishop says you're a sad young man," good-natured Lady Clavering
+whispered to him. "What have you been a doing of? Nothink, I hope, to vex
+such a dear Mar as yours? How is your dear Mar? Why don't she come and
+me? We an't seen her this ever such a time. We're a goin about a gaddin,
+so that we don't see no neighbours now. Give my love to her and Laurar,
+and come all to dinner to-morrow."
+
+Mrs. Pendennis was too unwell to come out but Laura and Pen came, and
+there was a great party, and Pen only got an opportunity of a hurried
+word with Miss Amory. "You never come to the river now" he said.
+
+"I can't," said Blanche, "the house is full of people."
+
+"Undine has left the stream," Mr. Pen went on, choosing to be poetical.
+
+"She never ought to have gone there," Miss Amory answered. "She won't go
+again. It was very foolish: very wrong: it was only play. Besides, you
+have other consolations at home," she added, looking him full in the face
+an instant, and dropping her eyes.
+
+If he wanted her, why did he not speak then? She might have said "Yes"
+even then. But as she spoke of other consolations at home, he thought of
+Laura, so affectionate and so pure, and of his mother at home, who had
+bent her fond heart upon uniting him with her adopted daughter.
+"Blanche!" he began, in a vexed tone,--"Miss Amory!"
+
+"Laura is looking at us, Mr. Pendennis," the young lady said. "I must go
+back to the company," and she ran off, leaving Mr. Pendennis to bite his
+nails in perplexity, and to look out into the moonlight in the garden.
+
+Laura indeed was looking at Pen. She was talking with, or appearing to
+listen to the talk of, Mr. Pynsent, Lord Rockminster's son, and grandson
+of the Dowager Lady, who was seated in state in the place of honour,
+gravely receiving Lady Clavering's bad grammar, and patronising the
+vacuous Sir Francis, whose interest in the county she was desirous to
+secure. Pynsent and Pen had been at Oxbridge together, where the latter,
+during his heyday of good fortune and fashion, had been the superior of
+the young patrician, and perhaps rather supercilious towards him. They
+had met for the first time, since they parted at the University, at the
+table to-day, and given each other that exceedingly impertinent and
+amusing demi-nod of recognition which is practised in England only, and
+only to perfection by University men,--and which seems to say, "Confound
+you--what do you do here?"
+
+"I knew that man at Oxbridge," Mr. Pynsent said to Miss Bell--"a Mr.
+Pendennis, I think."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Bell.
+
+"He seems rather sweet upon Miss Amory," the gentleman went on. Laura
+looked at them, and perhaps thought so too, but said nothing.
+
+"A man of large property in the county, ain't he? He used to talk about
+representing it. He used to speak at the Union. Whereabouts do his
+estates lie?"
+
+Laura smiled. "His estates lie on the other side of the river, near the
+lodge-gate. He is my cousin, and I live there."
+
+"Where?" asked Mr. Pynsent, with a laugh.
+
+"Why, on the other side of the river, at Fairoaks," answered Miss Bell.
+
+"Many pheasants there? Cover looks rather good," said the simple
+gentleman.
+
+Laura smiled again. "We have nine hens and a cock, a pig, and an old
+pointer."
+
+"Pendennis don't preserve, then?" continued Mr. Pynsent.
+
+"You should come and see him," the girl said, laughing, and greatly
+amused at the notion that her Pen was a great county gentleman, and
+perhaps had given himself out to be such.
+
+"Indeed, I quite long to renew our acquaintance," Mr. Pynsent said,
+gallantly, and with a look which fairly said, "It is you that I would
+like to come and see"--to which look and speech Miss Laura vouchsafed a
+smile, and made a little bow.
+
+Here Blanche came stepping up with her most fascinating smile and ogle,
+and begged dear Laura to come and take the second in a song. Laura was
+ready to do anything good-natured, and went to the piano; by which Mr.
+Pynsent listened as long as the duet lasted, and until Miss Amory began
+for herself, when he strode away.
+
+"What a nice, frank, amiable, well-bred girl that is, Wagg," said Mr.
+Pynsent to a gentleman who had come over with him from Baymouth--"the
+tall one, I mean, with the ringlets and red lips--monstrous red, ain't
+they?"
+
+"What do you think of the girl of the house?" asked Wagg.
+
+"I think she's a lean, scraggy humbug," said Mr. Pynsent, with great
+candour. "She drags her shoulders out of her dress, she never lets her
+eyes alone: and she goes simpering and ogling about like a French
+waiting-maid.
+
+"Pynsent, be civil," cried the other, "somebody can hear."
+
+"Oh, it's Pendennis of Boniface," Mr. Pynsent said. "Fine evening, Mr.
+Pendennis; we were just talking of your charming cousin."
+
+"Any relation to my old friend, Major Pendennis?" asked Mr. Wagg.
+
+"His nephew. Had the pleasure of meeting you at Gaunt House," Mr. Pen
+said with his very best air--the acquaintance between the gentlemen was
+made in an instant.
+
+In the afternoon of the next day, the two gentlemen who were staying at
+Clavering Park were found by Mr. Pen on his return from a fishing
+excursion, in which he had no sport, seated in his mother's drawing-room
+in comfortable conversation with the widow and her ward. Mr. Pynsent,
+tall and gaunt, with large red whiskers and an imposing tuft to his chin,
+was striding over a chair in the intimate neighbourhood of Miss Laura.
+She was amused by his talk, which was simple, straightforward, rather
+humorous and keen, and interspersed with homely expressions of a style
+which is sometimes called slang. It was the first specimen of a young
+London dandy that Laura had seen or heard: for she had been but a chit at
+the time of Mr. Foker's introduction at Fairoaks, nor indeed was that
+ingenuous gentleman much more than a boy, and his refinement was only
+that of a school and college.
+
+Mr. Wagg, as he entered the Fairoaks premises with his companion, eyed
+and noted everything. "Old gardener," he said, seeing Mr. John at the
+lodge--"old red livery waistcoat--clothes hanging out to dry on the
+gooseberry-bushes--blue aprons, white ducks--gad, they must be young
+Pendennis's white ducks--nobody else wears 'em in the family. Rather a
+shy place for a sucking county member, ay, Pynsent?"
+
+"Snug little crib," said Mr. Pynsent, "pretty cosy little lawn."
+
+"Mr. Pendennis at home, old gentleman?" Mr. Wagg said to the old
+domestic. John answered, "No, Master Pendennis was agone out."
+
+"Are the ladies at home?" asked the younger visitor. Mr. John answered,
+"Yes, they be;" and as the pair walked over the trim gravel, and by the
+neat shrubberies, up the steps to the hall-door, which old John opened,
+Mr. Wagg noted everything that he saw; the barometer and the letter-bag,
+the umbrellas and the ladies' clogs, Pen's hats and tartan wrapper, and
+old John opening the drawing-room door, to introduce the new-comers. Such
+minutiae attracted Wagg instinctively; he seized them in spite of
+himself.
+
+"Old fellow does all the work," he whispered to Pynsent. "Caleb
+Balderstone. Shouldn't wonder if he's the housemaid." The next minute the
+pair were in the presence of the Fairoaks ladies; in whom Pynsent could
+not help recognising two perfectly well-bred ladies, and to whom Mr. Wagg
+made his obeisance, with florid bows, and extra courtesy, accompanied
+with an occasional knowing leer at his companion. Mr. Pynsent did not
+choose to acknowledge these signals, except by extreme haughtiness
+towards Mr. Wagg, and particular deference to the ladies. If there was
+one thing laughable in Mr. Wagg's eyes, it was poverty. He had the soul
+of a butler who had been brought from his pantry to make fun in the
+drawing-room. His jokes were plenty, and his good-nature thoroughly
+genuine, but he did not seem to understand that a gentleman could wear an
+old coat, or that a lady could be respectable unless she had her
+carriage, or employed a French milliner.
+
+"Charming place, ma'am," said he, bowing to the widow; "noble prospect--
+delightful to us Cocknies, who seldom see anything but Pall Mall." The
+widow said simply, she had never been in London but once in her life--
+before her son was born.
+
+"Fine village, ma'am, fine village," said Mr. Wagg, "and increasing every
+day. It'll be quite a large town soon. It's not a bad place to live in
+for those who can't get the country, and will repay a visit when you
+honour it."
+
+"My brother, Major Pendennis, has often mentioned your name to us," the
+widow said, "and we have been very much amused by some of your droll
+books, sir," Helen continued, who never could be brought to like Mr.
+Wagg's books, and detested their tone most thoroughly.
+
+"He is my very good friend," Mr. Wagg said, with a low bow, "and one of
+the best known men about town, and where known, ma'am, appreciated--I
+assure you appreciated. He is with our friend Steyne, at Aix-la-Chapelle.
+Steyne has a touch of the gout and so, between ourselves, has your
+brother. I am going to Stillbrook for the pheasant-shooting, and
+afterwards to Bareacres, where Pendennis and I shall probably meet;" and
+he poured out a flood of fashionable talk, introducing the names of a
+score of peers, and rattling on with breathless spirits, whilst the
+simple widow listened in silent wonder. What a man, she thought; are all
+the men of fashion in London like this? I am sure Pen will never like
+him.
+
+Mr. Pynsent was in the meanwhile engaged with Miss Laura. He named some
+of the houses in the neighbourhood whither he was going, and hoped very
+much that he should see Miss Bell at some of them. He hoped that her aunt
+would give her a season in London. He said, that in the next parliament
+it was probable that he should canvass the county, and he hoped to get
+Pendennis's interest here. He spoke of Pen's triumph as an orator at
+Oxbridge, and asked was he coming into parliament too? He talked on very
+pleasantly, and greatly to Laura's satisfaction, until Pen himself
+appeared, and, as has been said, found these gentlemen.
+
+Pen behaved very courteously to the pair, now that they have found their
+way into his quarters; and though he recollected with some twinges a
+conversation at Oxbridge, when Pynsent was present, and in which after a
+great debate at the Union, and in the midst of considerable excitement
+produced by a supper and champagne-cup,--he had announced his intention
+of coming in for his native county, and had absolutely returned thanks in
+a fine speech as the future member; yet Mr. Pynsent's manner was so frank
+and cordial, that Pen hoped Pynsent might have forgotten his little
+fanfaronnade, and any other braggadocio speeches or actions which he
+might have made. He suited himself to the tone of the visitors, then, and
+talked about Plinlimmon and Magnus Charters, and the old set at Oxbridge,
+with careless familiarity and high-bred ease, as if he lived with
+marquises every day, and a duke was no more to him than a village curate.
+
+But at this juncture, and it being then six o'clock in the evening,
+Betsy, the maid, who did not know of the advent of strangers, walked into
+the room without any preliminary but that of flinging the door wide open
+before her, and bearing in her arms a tray, containing three tea-cups, a
+tea-pot, and a plate of thick bread-and-butter. All Pen's splendour and
+magnificence vanished away at this--and he faltered and became quite
+abashed. "What will they think of us?" he thought: and, indeed, Wagg
+thrust his tongue in his cheek, thought the tea infinitely contemptible,
+and leered and winked at Pynsent to that effect.
+
+But to Mr. Pynsent the transaction appeared perfectly simple--there was
+no reason present to his mind why people should not drink tea at six if
+they were minded, as well as at any other hour; and he asked of Mr. Wagg,
+when they went away, "What the devil he was grinning and winking at, and
+what amused him?"
+
+"Didn't you see how the cub was ashamed of the thick bread-and-butter? I
+dare say they're going to have treacle if they are good. I'll take an
+opportunity of telling old Pendennis when we get back to town," Mr. Wagg
+chuckled out.
+
+"Don't see the fun," said Mr. Pynsent.
+
+"Never thought you did," growled Wagg between his teeth; they walked home
+rather sulkily.
+
+Wagg told the story at dinner very smartly, with wonderful accuracy of
+observation. He described old John, the clothes that were drying, the
+clogs in the hall, the drawing-room, and its furniture and pictures;--
+"Old man with a beak and bald head--feu Pendennis I bet two to one;
+sticking-plaster full-length of a youth in a cap and gown--the present
+Marquis of Fairoaks, of course; the widow when young in a miniature, Mrs.
+Mee; she had the gown on when we came, or a dress made the year after,
+and the tips cut off the fingers of her gloves which she stitches her
+son's collars with; and then the sarving maid came in with their teas so
+we left the Earl and the Countess to their bread-and-butter."
+
+Blanche, near whom he sate as he told this story, and who adored les
+hommes desprit, burst out laughing, and called him such an odd, droll
+creature. But Pynsent, who began to be utterly disgusted with him, broke
+out in a loud voice, and said, "I don't know, Mr. Wagg, what sort of
+ladies you are accustomed to meet in your own family, but by gad, as far
+as a first acquaintance can show, I never met two better-bred women in my
+life, and I hope, ma'am, you'll call upon 'em," he added, addressing Lady
+Rockminster, who was seated at Sir Francis Clavering's right hand.
+
+Sir Francis turned to the guest on his left, and whispered. "That's what
+I call a sticker for Wagg." And Lady Clavering, giving the young
+gentleman a delighted tap with her fan, winked her black eyes at him, and
+said, "Mr. Pynsent, you're a good feller."
+
+After the affair with Blanche, a difference ever so slight, a tone of
+melancholy, perhaps a little bitter, might be perceived in Laura's
+converse with her cousin. She seemed to weigh him and find him wanting
+too; the widow saw the girl's clear and honest eyes watching the young
+man at times, and a look of almost scorn pass over her face, as he
+lounged in the room with the women, or lazily sauntered smoking upon the
+lawn, or lolled under a tree there over a book which he was too listless
+to read.
+
+"What has happened between you?" eager-sighted Helen asked of the girl.
+"Something has happened. Has that wicked little Blanche been making
+mischief? Tell me, Laura."
+
+"Nothing has happened at all," Laura said.
+
+"Then why do you look at Pen so?" asked his mother quickly.
+
+"Look at him, dear mother!" said the girl. "We two women are no society
+for him: we don't interest him; we are not clever enough for such a
+genius as Pen. He wastes his life and energies away among us, tied to our
+apron-strings. He interests himself in nothing: he scarcely cares to go
+beyond the garden-gate. Even Captain Glanders and Captain Strong pall
+upon him," she added with a bitter laugh; "and they are men, you know,
+and our superiors. He will never be happy while he is here. Why, is he
+not facing the world, and without a profession?"
+
+"We have got enough, with great economy," said the widow, her heart
+beginning to beat violently. "Pen has spent nothing for months. I'm sure
+he is very good. I am sure he might be very happy with us."
+
+"Don't agitate yourself so, dear mother," the girl answered. "I don't
+like to see you so. You should not be sad because Pen is unhappy here.
+All men are so. They must work. They must make themselves names and a
+place in the world. Look, the two captains have fought and seen battles;
+that Mr. Pynsent, who came here, and who will be very rich, is in a
+public office; he works very hard, he aspires to a name and a reputation.
+He says Pen was one of the best speakers at Oxbridge, and had as great a
+character for talent as any of the young gentlemen there. Pen himself
+laughs at Mr. Wagg's celebrity (and indeed he is a horrid person), and
+says he is a dunce, and that anybody could write his books."
+
+"I am sure they are odious and vulgar," interposed the widow.
+
+"Yet he has a reputation.--You see the County Chronicle says, 'The
+celebrated Mr. Wagg has been sojourning at Baymouth--let our fashionables
+and eccentrics look out for something from his caustic pen.' If Pen can
+write better than this gentleman, and speak better than Mr. Pynsent, why
+doesn't he? Mamma, he can't make speeches to us; or distinguish himself
+here. He ought to go away, indeed he ought."
+
+"Dear Laura," said Helen, taking the girl's hand. "Is it kind of you to
+hurry him so? I have been waiting. I have been saving up money these many
+months--to--to pay back your advance to us."
+
+"Hush, mother!" Laura cried, embracing her friend hastily. "It was your
+money, not mine. Never speak about that again. How much money have you
+saved?"
+
+Helen said there were more than two hundred pounds at the bank, and that
+she would be enabled to pay off all Laura's money by the end of the next
+year.
+
+"Give it him--let him have the two hundred pounds. Let him go to London
+and be a lawyer: be something, be worthy of his mother--and of mine,
+dearest mamma," said the good girl; upon which, and with her usual
+tenderness and emotion, the fond widow declared that Laura was a blessing
+to her and the best of girls--and I hope no one in this instance will be
+disposed to contradict her.
+
+The widow and her daughter had more than one conversation on this
+subject; and the elder gave way to the superior reason of the honest and
+stronger-minded girl; and indeed, whenever there was a sacrifice to be
+made on her part, this kind lady was only too eager to make it. But she
+took her own way, and did not loose sight of the end she had in view, in
+imparting these new plans to Pen. One day she told him of these projects,
+and it who that had formed them; how it was Laura who insisted upon his
+going to London and studying; how it was Laura who would not hear of
+the--the money arrangements when he came back from Oxbridge--being
+settled just then: how it was Laura whom he had to thank, if indeed he
+thought that he had to go.
+
+At that news Pen's countenance blazed up with pleasure, and he hugged his
+mother to his heart with an ardour that I fear disappointed the fond
+lady; but she rallied when he said, "By Heaven! she is a noble girl, and
+may God Almighty bless her mother! I have been wearing myself away for
+months here, longing to work, and not knowing how. I've been fretting
+over the thoughts of my shame, and my debts, and my past cursed
+extravagance and follies. I've suffered infernally. My heart has been
+half broken--never mind about that. If I can get a chance to redeem the
+past, and to do my duty to myself and the best mother in the world,
+indeed, indeed, I will. I'll be worthy of you yet. Heaven bless you! God
+bless Laura! Why isn't she here, that I may go and thank her?" Pen went
+on with more incoherent phrases; paced up and down the room, drank
+glasses of water, jumped about his mother with a thousand embraces--began
+to laugh--began to sing--was happier than she had seen him since he was a
+boy--since he had tasted of the fruit of that awful Tree of Life, which,
+from the beginning, has tempted all mankind.
+
+Laura was not at home. Laura was on a visit to the stately Lady
+Rockminster, daughter to my Lord Bareacres, sister to the late Lady
+Pontypool, and by consequence a distant kinswoman of Helen's, as her
+ladyship, who was deeply versed in genealogy, was graciously to point out
+to the modest country lady. Mr. Pen was greatly delighted at the
+relationship being acknowledged; though perhaps not over well pleased
+that Lady Rockminster took Miss Bell home with her for a couple of days
+to Baymouth, and did not make the slightest invitation to Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis. There was to be a ball at Baymouth, and it was to be Miss
+Laura's first appearance. The dowager came to fetch her in her carriage,
+and she went off with a white dress in her box, happy and blushing, like
+the rose to which Pen compared her.
+
+This was the night of the ball--a public entertainment at the Baymouth
+Hotel. "By Jove!" said Pen, "I'll ride over--No, I won't ride, but I'll
+go too." His mother was charmed that he should do so; and, as he was
+debating about the conveyance in which he should start for Baymouth,
+Captain Strong called opportunely, said he was going himself, and that he
+would put his horse, The Butcher Boy, into the gig, and drive Pen over.
+
+When the grand company began to fill the house at Clavering Park, the
+Chevalier Strong, who, as his patron said, was never in the way or out of
+it, seldom intruded himself upon its society, but went elsewhere to seek
+his relaxation. "I've seen plenty of grand dinners in my time," he said,
+"and dined, by Jove, in a company where there was a king and royal duke
+at top and bottom, and every man along the table had six stars on his
+coat; but dammy, Glanders, this finery don't suit me; and the English
+ladies with their confounded buckram airs, and the squires with their
+politics after dinner, send me to sleep--sink me dead if they don't. I
+like a place where I can blow my cigar when the cloth is removed, and
+when I'm thirsty, have my beer in its native pewter." So on a gala-day at
+Clavering Park, the Chevalier would content himself with superintending
+the arrangements of the table, and drilling the major-domo and servants;
+and having looked over the bill-of-fare with Monsieur Mirobolant, would
+not care to take the least part in the banquet. "Send me up a cutlet and
+a bottle of claret to my room," this philosopher would say, and from the
+windows of that apartment, which commanded the terrace and avenue, he
+would survey the company as they arrived in their carriages, or take a
+peep at the ladies in the hall through an oeil-de-boeuf which commanded
+it from his corridor. And the guests being seated, Strong would cross the
+park to Captain Glanders's cottage at Clavering, or to pay the landlady a
+visit at the Clavering Arms, or to drop in upon Madame Fribsby over her
+novel and tea. Wherever the Chevalier went he was welcome, and whenever
+he came away a smell of hot brandy-and-water lingered behind him.
+
+The Butcher Boy--not the worst horse in Sir Francis's stable--was
+appropriated to Captain Strong's express use; and the old Campaigner
+saddled him or brought him home at all hours of the day or night, and
+drove or rode him up and down the country. Where there was a public-house
+with a good tap of beer--where there was a tenant with a pretty daughter
+who played on the piano--to Chatteris, to the play, or the barracks--to
+Baymouth, if any fun was on foot there; to the rural fairs or races, the
+Chevalier and his brown horse made their way continually; and this worthy
+gentleman lived at free quarters in a friendly country. The Butcher Boy
+soon took Pen and the Chevalier to Baymouth. The latter was as familiar
+with the hotel and landlord there as with every other inn round about;
+and having been accommodated with a bedroom to dress, they entered the
+ballroom. The Chevalier was splendid. He wore three little gold crosses
+in a brochette on the portly breast of his blue coat, and looked like a
+foreign field-marshal.
+
+The ball was public and all sorts of persons were admitted and encouraged
+to come, young Pynsent having views upon the county and Lady Rockminster
+being patroness of the ball. There was a quadrille for the aristocracy at
+one end, and select benches for the people of fashion. Towards this end
+the Chevalier did not care to penetrate far (as he said he did not care
+for the nobs); but in the other part of the room he knew everybody--the
+wine-merchants', innkeepers', tradesmen's, solicitors', squire-farmers'
+daughters, their sires and brothers, and plunged about shaking hands.
+
+"Who is that man with the blue ribbon and the three-pointed star?" asked
+Pen. A gentleman in black with ringlets and a tuft stood gazing fiercely
+about him, with one hand in the arm-hole of his waistcoat and the other
+holding his claque.
+
+"By Jupiter, it's Mirobolant!" cried Strong, bursting out laughing. "Bon
+jour, Chef!--Bon jour, Chevalier!"
+
+"De la croix de Juillet, Chevalier!" said the Chef, laying his hand on
+his decoration.
+
+"By Jove, here's some more ribbon!" said Pen, amused.
+
+A man with very black hair and whiskers, dyed evidently with the purple
+of Tyre, with twinkling eyes and white eyelashes, and a thousand wrinkles
+in his face, which was of a strange red colour, with two under-vests, and
+large gloves and hands, and a profusion of diamonds and jewels in his
+waistcoat and stock, with coarse feet crumpled into immense shiny boots,
+and a piece of parti-coloured ribbon in his button-hole, here came up and
+nodded familiarly to the Chevalier.
+
+The Chevalier shook hands. "My friend Mr. Pendennis," Strong said.
+"Colonel Altamont, of the bodyguard of his Highness the Nawaub of
+Lucknow." That officer bowed to the salute of Pen; who was now looking
+out eagerly to see if the person wanted had entered the room.
+
+Not yet. But the band began presently performing 'See the Conquering Hero
+comes,' and a host of fashionables--Dowager Countess of Rockminster, Mr.
+Pynsent and Miss Bell, Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., of Clavering Park,
+Lady Clavering and Miss Amory, Sir Horace Fogey, Bart., Lady Fogey,
+Colonel and Mrs. Higgs Wagg, Esq. (as the county paper afterwards
+described them), entered the room.
+
+Pen rushed by Blanche, ran up to Laura, and seized her hand. "God bless
+you!" he said, "I want to speak to you--I must speak to you--Let me dance
+with you." "Not for three dances, dear Pen," she said, smiling: and he
+fell back, biting his nails with vexation, and forgetting to salute
+Pynsent.
+
+After Lady Rockminster's party, Lady Clavering's followed in the
+procession.
+
+Colonel Altamont eyed it hard, holding a most musky pocket-handkerchief
+up to his face, and bursting with laughter behind it.
+
+"Who's the gal in green along with 'em, Cap'n?" he asked of Strong.
+
+"That's Miss Amory, Lady Clavering's daughter," replied the Chevalier.
+
+The Colonel could hardly contain himself for laughing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+Contains some Ball-practising
+
+
+Under some calico draperies in the shady embrasure of a window, Arthur
+Pendennis chose to assume a very gloomy and frowning countenance, and to
+watch Miss Bell dance her first quadrille with Mr. Pynsent for a partner.
+That gentleman was as solemn and severe as Englishmen are upon such
+occasions, and walked through the dance as he would have walked up to his
+pew in church, without a smile upon his face, or allowing any outward
+circumstance to interfere with his attention to the grave duty in which
+he was engaged. But Miss Laura's face was beaming with pleasure and
+good-nature. The lights and the crowd and music excited her. As she
+spread out her white robes, and performed her part of the dance, smiling
+and happy, her brown ringlets flowing back over her fair shoulders from
+her honest rosy face, more than one gentleman in the room admired and
+looked after her; and Lady Fogey, who had a house in London and gave
+herself no small airs of fashion when in the country, asked of Lady
+Rockminster who the young person was, mentioned a reigning beauty in
+London whom, in her ladyship's opinion, Laura was rather like, and
+pronounced that she would "do."
+
+Lady Rockminster would have been very much surprised if any protegee of
+hers would not "do," and wondered at Lady Fogey's impudence in judging
+upon the point at all. She surveyed Laura with majestic glances through
+her eyeglass. She was pleased with the girl's artless looks, and gay
+innocent manner. Her manner is very good, her ladyship thought. Her arms
+are rather red, but that is a defect of her youth. Her tone is far better
+than that of the little pert Miss Amory, who is dancing opposite to her.
+
+Miss Blanche was, indeed, the vis-a-vis of Miss Laura, and smiled most
+killingly upon her dearest friend, and nodded to her and talked to her,
+when they met during the quadrille evolutions, and patronised her a great
+deal. Her shoulders were the whitest in the whole room: and they were
+never easy in her frock for one single instant: nor were her eyes, which
+rolled about incessantly: nor was her little figure:--it seemed to say to
+all the people, "Come and look at me--not at that pink, healthy, bouncing
+country lass, Miss Bell, who scarcely knew how to dance till I taught
+her. This is the true Parisian manner--this is the prettiest little foot
+in the room, and the prettiest little chaussure too. Look at it, Mr.
+Pynsent. Look at it, Mr. Pendennis, you who are scowling behind the
+curtain--I know you are longing to dance with me."
+
+Laura went on dancing, and keeping an attentive eye upon Mr. Pen in the
+embrasure of the window. He did not quit that retirement during the first
+quadrille, nor until the second, when the good-natured Lady Clavering
+beckoned to him to come up to her to the dais or place of honour where
+the dowagers were,--and whither Pen went blushing and exceedingly
+awkward, as most conceited young fellows are. He performed a haughty
+salutation to Lady Rockminster, who hardly acknowledged his bow, and then
+went and paid his respects to the widow of the late Amory, who was
+splendid in diamonds, velvet, lace, feathers, and all sorts of millinery
+and goldsmith's ware.
+
+Young Mr. Fogey, then in the fifth form at Eton, and ardently expecting
+his beard and his commission in a dragoon regiment, was the second
+partner who was honoured with Miss Bell's hand. He was rapt in admiration
+of that young lady. He thought he had never seen so charming a creature.
+"I like you much better than the French girl" (for this young gentleman
+had been dancing with Miss Amory before), he candidly said to her. Laura
+laughed, and looked more good-humoured than ever; and in the midst of her
+laughter caught a sight of Pen, and continued to laugh as he, on his
+side, continued to look absurdly pompous and sulky. The next dance was a
+waltz, and young Fogey thought, with a sigh, that he did not know how to
+waltz, and vowed he would have a master the next holidays.
+
+Mr. Pynsent again claimed Miss Bell's hand for this dance; and Pen beheld
+her, in a fury, twirling round the room, her waist encircled by the arm
+of that gentleman. He never used to be angry before when, on summer
+evenings, the chairs and tables being removed, and the governess called
+downstairs to play the piano, he and the Chevalier Strong (who was a
+splendid performer, and could dance a British hornpipe, a German waltz,
+or a Spanish fandango, if need were), and the two young ladies, Blanche
+and Laura, improvised little balls at Clavering Park. Laura enjoyed this
+dancing so much, and was so animated, that she even animated Mr. Pynsent.
+Blanche, who could dance beautifully, had an unlucky partner, Captain
+Broadfoot, of the Dragoons, then stationed at Chatteris. For Captain
+Broadfoot, though devoting himself with great energy to the object in
+view, could not get round in time: and, not having the least ear for
+music, was unaware that his movements were too slow.
+
+So, in the waltz as in the quadrille, Miss Blanche saw that her dear
+friend Laura had the honours of the dance, and was by no means pleased
+with the latter's success. After a couple of turns with the heavy
+dragoon, she pleaded fatigue, and requested to be led back to her place,
+near her mamma, to whom Pen was talking; and she asked him why he had not
+asked her to waltz, and had left her for the mercies of that great odious
+man in spurs and a red coat?
+
+"I thought spurs and scarlet were the most fascinating objects in the
+world to young ladies," Pen answered. "I never should have dared to put
+my black coat in competition with that splendid red jacket."
+
+"You are very unkind and cruel and sulky and naughty," said Miss Amory,
+with another shrug of the shoulders. "You had better go away. Your cousin
+is looking at us over Mr. Pynsent's shoulder."
+
+"Will you waltz with me?" said Pen.
+
+"Not this waltz. I can't, having just sent away that good Captain
+Broadfoot. Look at Mr. Pynsent, did you ever see such a creature? But I
+will dance the next waltz with you, and the quadrille too. I am promised,
+but I will tell Mr. Poole that I had forgotten my engagement to you."
+
+"Women forget very readily," Pendennis said.
+
+"But they always come back, and are very repentant and sorry for what
+they've done," Blanche said. "See, here comes the Foker, and dear Laura
+leaning on him. How pretty she looks!"
+
+Laura came up, and put out her hand to Pen, to whom Pynsent made a sort
+of bow, appearing to be not much more graceful than that domestic
+instrument to which Miss Amory compared him.
+
+But Laura's face was full of kindness. "I am so glad to have come, dear
+Pen," she said. "I can speak to you now. How is mamma? The three dances
+are over, and I am engaged to you for the next, Pen."
+
+"I have just engaged myself to Miss Amory," said Pen; and Miss Amory
+nodded her head, and made her usual little curtsey. "I don't intend to
+give him up, dearest Laura," she said.
+
+"Well, then, he'll waltz with me, dear Blanche," said the other. "Won't
+you, Pen?"
+
+"I promised to waltz with Miss Amory."
+
+"Provoking!" said Laura, and making a curtsey in her turn she went and
+placed herself under the ample wing of Lady Rockminster.
+
+Pen was delighted with his mischief. The two prettiest girls in the room
+were quarrelling about him. He flattered himself he had punished Miss
+Laura. He leaned in a dandified air, with his elbow over the wall, and
+talked to Blanche: he quizzed unmercifully all the men in the room--the
+heavy dragoons in their tight jackets--the country dandies in their queer
+attire--the strange toilettes of the ladies. One seemed to have a bird's
+nest in her head; another had six pounds of grapes in her hair, besides
+her false pearls. "It's a coiffure of almonds and raisins," said Pen "and
+might be served up for dessert." In a word, he was exceedingly satirical
+and amusing.
+
+During the quadrille he carried on this kind of conversation with
+unflinching bitterness and vivacity, and kept Blanche continually
+laughing, both at his wickedness and jokes, which were good, and also
+because Laura was again their vis-a-vis, and could see and hear how merry
+and confidential they were.
+
+"Arthur is charming to-night," she whispered to Laura, across Cornet
+Perch's shell-jacket, as Pen was performing cavalier seul before them,
+drawling through that figure with a thumb in the pocket of each
+waistcoat.
+
+"Who?" said Laura.
+
+"Arthur," answered Blanche, in French. "Oh, it's such a pretty name!" And
+now the young ladies went over to Pen's side, and Cornet Perch performed
+a pas seul in his turn. He had no waistcoat pocket to put his hands into,
+and they looked large and swollen as they hung before him depending from
+the tight arms in the jacket.
+
+During the interval between the quadrille and the succeeding waltz, Pen
+did not take any notice of Laura, except to ask her whether her partner,
+Cornet Perch, was an amusing youth, and whether she liked him so well as
+her other partner, Mr. Pynsent. Having planted which two daggers in
+Laura's gentle bosom, Mr. Pendennis proceeded to rattle on with Blanche
+Amory, and to make jokes good or bad, but which were always loud. Laura
+was at a loss to account for her cousin's sulky behaviour, and ignorant
+in what she had offended him; however, she was not angry in her turn at
+Pen's splenetic mood, for she was the most good-natured and forgiving of
+women, and besides, an exhibition of jealousy on a man's part is not
+always disagreeable to a lady.
+
+As Pen would not dance with her, she was glad to take up with the active
+Chevalier Strong, who was a still better performer than Pen; and being
+very fond of dancing, as every brisk and innocent young girl should be,
+when the waltz music began she set off, and chose to enjoy herself with
+all her heart. Captain Broadfoot on this occasion occupied the floor in
+conjunction with a lady of proportions scarcely inferior to his own; Miss
+Roundle, a large young woman in a strawberry-ice coloured crape dress,
+the daughter of the lady with the grapes in her head, whose bunches Pen
+had admired.
+
+And now taking his time, and with his fair partner Blanche hanging
+lovingly on the arm which encircled her, Mr. Arthur Pendennis set out
+upon his waltzing career, and felt, as he whirled round to the music,
+that he and Blanche were performing very brilliantly indeed. Very likely
+he looked to see if Miss Bell thought so too; but she did not or would
+not see him, and was always engaged with her partner Captain Strong. But
+Pen's triumph was not destined to last long; and it was doomed that poor
+Blanche was to have yet another discomfiture on that unfortunate night.
+While she and Pen were whirling round as light and brisk as a couple of
+opera-dancers, honest Captain Broadfoot and the lady round whose large
+waist he was clinging, were twisting round very leisurely according to
+their natures, and indeed were in everybody's way. But they were more in
+Pendennis's way than in anybody's else, for he and Blanche, whilst
+executing their rapid gyrations, came bolt up against the heavy dragoon
+and his lady, and with such force that the centre of gravity was lost by
+all four of the circumvolving bodies; Captain Broadfoot and Miss Roundle
+were fairly upset, as was Pen himself, who was less lucky than his
+partner Miss Amory, who was only thrown upon a bench against a wall.
+
+But Pendennis came fairly down upon the floor, sprawling in the general
+ruin with Broadfoot and Miss Roundle. The Captain, though heavy, was
+good-natured, and was the first to burst out into a loud laugh at his own
+misfortune, which nobody therefore heeded. But Miss Amory was savage at
+her mishap; Miss Roundle placed on her seant, and looking pitifully
+round, presented an object which very few people could see without
+laughing; and Pen was furious when he heard the people giggling about
+him. He was one of those sarcastic young fellows that did not bear a
+laugh at his own expense, and of all things in the world feared ridicule
+most.
+
+As he got up Laura and Strong were laughing at him; everybody was
+laughing; Pynsent and his partner were laughing; and Pen boiled with
+wrath against the pair, and could have stabbed them both on the spot. He
+turned away in a fury from them, and began blundering out apologies to
+Miss Amory. It was the other couple's fault--the woman in pink had done
+it--Pen hoped Miss Amory was not hurt--would she not have the courage to
+take another turn?
+
+Miss Amory in a pet said she was very much hurt indeed, and she would not
+take another turn; and she accepted with great thanks a glass of water
+which a cavalier, who wore a blue ribbon and a three-pointed star, rushed
+to fetch for her when he had seen the deplorable accident. She drank the
+water, smiled upon the bringer gracefully, and turning her white shoulder
+at Mr. Pen in the most marked and haughty manner, besought the gentleman
+with the star to conduct her to her mamma; and she held out her hand in
+order to take his arm.
+
+The man with the star trembled with delight at this mark of her favour;
+he bowed over her hand, pressed it to his coat fervidly, and looked round
+him with triumph.
+
+It was no other than the happy Mirobolant whom Blanche had selected as an
+escort. But the truth is, that the young lady had never fairly looked in
+the artist's face since he had been employed in her mother's family, and
+had no idea but it was a foreign nobleman on whose arm she was leaning.
+As she went off, Pen forgot his humiliation in his surprise, and cried
+out, "By Jove, it's the cook!"
+
+The instant he had uttered the words, he was sorry for having spoken
+them--for it was Blanche who had herself invited Mirobolant to escort
+her, nor could the artist do otherwise than comply with a lady's command.
+Blanche in her flutter did not hear what Arthur said; but Mirobolant
+heard him, and cast a furious glance at him over his shoulder, which
+rather amused Mr. Pen. He was in a mischievous and sulky humour; wanting
+perhaps to pick a quarrel with somebody; but the idea of having insulted
+a cook, or that such an individual should have any feeling of honour at
+all, did not much enter into the mind of this lofty young aristocrat, the
+apothecary's son.
+
+It had never entered that poor artist's head, that he as a man was not
+equal to any other mortal, or that there was anything in his position so
+degrading as to prevent him from giving his arm to a lady who asked for
+it. He had seen in the 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
+ballroom, where a scuffle and a noise of high voices was heard.
+
+The refreshment-room, in which Miss Amory now found herself, was a room
+set apart for the purposes of supper, which Mr. Rincer the landlord had
+provided for those who chose to partake, at the rate of five shillings
+per head. Also, refreshments of a superior class were here ready for the
+ladies and gentlemen of the county families who came to the ball; but the
+commoner sort of persons were kept out of the room by a waiter who stood
+at the portal, and who said that was a select room for Lady Clavering and
+Lady Rockminster's parties, and not to be opened to the public till
+supper-time, which was not to be until past midnight. Pynsent, who danced
+with his constituents' daughters, took them and their mammas in for their
+refreshment there. Strong, who was manager and master of the revels
+wherever he went, had of course the entree--and the only person who was
+now occupying the room was the gentleman with the black wig and the
+orders in his button--hole; the officer in the service of his Highness
+the Nawaub of Lucknow.
+
+This gentleman had established himself very early in the evening in this
+apartment, where, saying he was confoundedly thirsty, he called for a
+bottle of champagne. At this order the waiter instantly supposed that he
+had to do with a grandee, and the Colonel sate down and began to eat his
+supper and absorb his drink, and enter affably into conversation with
+anybody who entered the room.
+
+Sir Francis Clavering and Mr. Wagg found him there, when they left the
+ballroom, which they did pretty early--Sir Francis to go and smoke a
+cigar, and look at the people gathered outside the ballroom on the shore,
+which he declared was much better fun than to remain within; Mr. Wagg to
+hang on to a Baronet's arm, as he was always pleased to do on the arm of
+the greatest man in the company. Colonel Altamont had stared at these
+gentlemen in so odd a manner, as they passed through the 'Select' room,
+that Clavering made inquiries of the landlord who he was, and hinted a
+strong opinion that the officer of the Nawaub's service was drunk.
+
+Mr. Pynsent, too, had had the honour of a conversation with the servant
+of the Indian potentate. It was Pynsent's cue to speak to everybody
+(which he did, to do him justice, in the most ungracious manner); and he
+took the gentleman in the black wig for some constituent, some merchant
+captain, or other outlandish man of the place. Mr. Pynsent, then, coming
+into the refreshment-room with a lady, the wife of a constituent, on his
+arm, the Colonel asked him if he would try a glass of Sham? Pynsent took
+it with great gravity, bowed, tasted the wine, and pronounced it
+excellent, and with the utmost politeness retreated before Colonel
+Altamont. This gravity and decorum routed and surprised the Colonel more
+than any other kind of behaviour probably would: he stared after Pynsent
+stupidly, and pronounced to the landlord over the counter that he was a
+rum one. Mr. Rincer blushed, and hardly knew what to say. Mr. Pynsent was
+a county Earl's grandson, going to set up as a Parliament man. Colonel
+Altamont on the other hand, wore orders and diamonds, jingled sovereigns
+constantly in his pocket, and paid his way like a man; so not knowing
+what to say, Mr. Rincer said, "Yes, Colonel--yes, ma'am, did you say tea?
+Cup a tea for Mr. Jones, Mrs. R.," and so got off that discussion
+regarding Mr. Pynsent's qualities, into which the Nizam's officer
+appeared inclined to enter.
+
+In fact, if the truth must be told, Mr. Altamont, having remained at the
+buffet almost all night, and employed himself very actively whilst there,
+had considerably flushed his brain by drinking, and he was still going on
+drinking, when Mr. Strong and Miss Amory entered the room.
+
+When the Chevalier ran out of the apartment, attracted by the noise in
+the dancing-room, the Colonel rose from his chair with his little red
+eyes glowing like coals, and, with rather an unsteady gait advanced
+towards Blanche, who was sipping her ice. She was absorbed in absorbing
+it, for it was very fresh and good; or she was not curious to know what
+was going on in the adjoining room, although the waiters were, who ran
+after Chevalier Strong. So that when she looked up from her glass, she
+beheld this strange man staring at her out of his little red eyes. "Who
+was he? It was quite exciting."
+
+"And so you're Betsy Amory," said he, after gazing at her. "Betsy Amory,
+by Jove!"
+
+"Who--who speaks to me?" said Betsy, alias Blanche.
+
+But the noise in the ballroom is really becoming so loud, that we must
+rush back thither, and see what is the cause of the disturbance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+Which is both Quarrelsome and Sentimental
+
+
+Civil war was raging, high words passing, people pushing and squeezing
+together in an unseemly manner, round a window in the corner of the
+ballroom, close by the door through which the Chevalier Strong shouldered
+his way. Through the opened window, the crowd in the street below was
+sending up sarcastic remarks, such as "Pitch into him!" "Where's the
+police?" and the like; and a ring of individuals, amongst whom Madame
+Fribsby was conspicuous, was gathered round Monsieur Alcide Mirobolant on
+the one side; whilst several gentlemen and ladies surrounded our friend
+Arthur Pendennis on the other. Strong penetrated into this assembly,
+elbowing by Madame Fribsby, who was charmed at the Chevalier's
+appearance, and cried, "Save him, save him!" in frantic and pathetic
+accents.
+
+The cause of the disturbance, it appeared, was the angry little chef of
+Sir Francis Clavering's culinary establishment. Shortly after Strong had
+quitted the room, and whilst Mr. Pen, greatly irate at his downfall in
+the waltz, which had made him look ridiculous in the eyes of the nation,
+and by Miss Amory's behaviour to him, which had still further insulted
+his dignity, was endeavouring to get some coolness of body and temper, by
+looking out of window towards the sea, which was sparkling in the
+distance, and murmuring in a wonderful calm--whilst he was really trying
+to compose himself, and owning to himself, perhaps, that he had acted in
+a very absurd and peevish manner during the night--he felt a hand upon
+his shoulder; and, on looking round, beheld, to his utter surprise and
+horror, that the hand in question belonged to Monsieur Mirobolant, whose
+eyes were glaring out of his pale face and ringlets at Mr. Pen. To be
+tapped on the shoulder by a French cook was a piece of familiarity which
+made the blood of the Pendennises to boil up in the veins of their
+descendant, and he was astounded, almost more than enraged, at such an
+indignity.
+
+"You speak French?" Mirobolant said in his own language to Pen.
+
+"What is that to you, pray?" said Pen, in English.
+
+"At any rate, you understand it?" continued the other, with a bow.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Pen, with a stamp of his foot; "I understand it pretty
+well."
+
+"Vous me comprendrez alors, Monsieur Pendennis," replied the other,
+rolling out his r with Gascon force, "quand je vous dis que vous etes un
+lache. Monsieur Pendennis--un lache, entendez-vous?"
+
+"What?" said Pen, starting round on him.
+
+"You understand the meaning of the word and its consequences among men of
+honour?" the artist said, putting his hand on his hip, and staring at
+Pen.
+
+"The consequences are, that I will fling you out of window, you impudent
+scoundrel," bawled out Mr. Pen; and darting upon the Frenchman, he would
+very likely have put his threat into execution, for the window was at
+hand, and the artist by no means a match for the young gentleman--had not
+Captain Broadfoot and another heavy officer flung themselves between the
+combatants,--had not the ladies begun to scream,--had not the fiddles
+stopped, had not the crowd of people come running in that direction,--had
+not Laura, with a face of great alarm, looked over their heads and asked
+for Heaven's sake what was wrong,--had not the opportune Strong made his
+appearance from the refreshment-room, and found Alcides grinding his
+teeth and jabbering oaths in his Galleon French, and Pen looking
+uncommonly wicked, although trying to appear as calm as possible, when
+the ladies and the crowd came up.
+
+"What has happened?" Strong asked of the chef, in Spanish.
+
+"I am Chevalier de Juillet," said the other, slapping his breast, "and he
+has insulted me."
+
+"What has he said to you?" asked Strong.
+
+"Il m'a appele--Cuisinier," hissed out the little Frenchman.
+
+Strong could hardly help laughing. "Come away with me, poor Chevalier,"
+he said. "We must not quarrel before ladies. Come away; I will carry your
+message to Mr. Pendennis.--The poor fellow is not right in his head," he
+whispered to one or two people about him;--and others, and anxious
+Laura's face visible amongst these, gathered round Pen and asked the
+cause of the disturbance.
+
+Pen did not know. "The man was going to give his arm to a young lady, on
+which I said that he was a cook, and the man called me a coward and
+challenged me to fight. I own I was so surprised and indignant, that if
+you gentlemen had not stopped me, I should have thrown him out of
+window," Pen said.
+
+"D--- him, serve him right, too,--the impudent foreign scoundrel," the
+gentlemen said.
+
+"I--I'm very sorry if I hurt his feelings, though," Pen added and Laura
+was glad to hear him say that; although some of the young bucks said,
+"No, hang the fellow,--hang those impudent foreigners--little thrashing
+would do them good."
+
+"You will go and shake hands with him before you go to sleep--won't you,
+Pen?" said Laura, coming up to him. "Foreigners may be more susceptible
+than we are, and have different manners. If you hurt a poor man's
+feelings, I am sure you would be the first to ask his pardon. Wouldn't
+you, dear Pen?"
+
+She looked all forgiveness and gentleness, like an angel, as she spoke;
+and Pen took both her hands, and looked into her kind face, and said
+indeed he would.
+
+"How fond that girl is of me!" he thought, as she stood gazing at him.
+"Shall I speak to her now? No--not now. I must have this absurd business
+with the Frenchman over."
+
+Laura asked--Wouldn't he stop and dance with her? She was as anxious to
+keep him in the room, as he to quit it. "Won't you stop and waltz with
+me, Pen? I'm not afraid to waltz with you."
+
+This was an affectionate, but an unlucky speech. Pen saw himself
+prostrate on the ground, having tumbled over Miss Roundle and the
+dragoon, and flung Blanche up against the wall--saw himself on the
+ground, and all the people laughing at him, Laura and Pynsent amongst
+them.
+
+"I shall never dance again," he replied, with a dark and determined face.
+"Never. I'm surprised you should ask me."
+
+"Is it because you can't get Blanche for a partner?" asked Laura, with a
+wicked, unlucky captiousness.
+
+"Because I don't wish to make a fool of myself, for other people to laugh
+at me," Pen answered--"for you to laugh at me, Laura. I saw you and
+Pynsent. By Jove! no man shall laugh at me."
+
+"Pen, Pen, don't be so wicked!" cried out the poor girl, hurt at the
+morbid perverseness and savage vanity of Pen. He was glaring round in the
+direction of Mr. Pynsent as if he would have liked to engage that
+gentleman as he had done the cook. "Who thinks the worse of you for
+stumbling in a waltz?" If Laura does, we don't. "Why are you so
+sensitive, and ready to think evil?"
+
+Here again, by ill luck, Mr. Pynsent came up to Laura, and said "I have
+it in command from Lady Rockminster to ask whether I may take you in to
+supper?"
+
+"I--I was going in with my cousin," Laura said.
+
+"O--pray, no!" said Pen. "You are in such good hands, that I can't do
+better than leave you: and I'm going home."
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Pendennis," Pynsent said, drily--to which speech (which,
+in fact, meant, "Go to the deuce for an insolent, jealous, impertinent
+jackanapes, whose ears I should like to box") Mr. Pendennis did not
+vouchsafe any reply, except a bow: and in spite of Laura's imploring
+looks, he left the room.
+
+"How beautifully calm and bright the night outside is!" said Mr. Pynsent;
+"and what a murmur the sea is making! It would be pleasanter to be
+walking on the beach, than in this hot room."
+
+"Very," said Laura.
+
+"What a strange congregation of people," continued Pynsent. "I have had
+to go up and perform the agreeable to most of them--the attorney's
+daughters--the apothecary's wife--I scarcely know whom. There was a man
+in the refreshment-room, who insisted upon treating me to champagne--a
+seafaring-looking man--extraordinarily dressed, and seeming half tipsy.
+As a public man one is bound to conciliate all these people, but it is a
+hard task--especially when one would so very much like to be elsewhere"--
+and he blushed rather as he spoke.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Laura--"I--I was not listening. Indeed--I was
+frightened about that quarrel between my cousin and that--that--French
+person."
+
+"Your cousin has been rather unlucky to-night," Pynsent said. "There are
+three or four persons whom he has not succeeded in pleasing--captain
+Broadwood; what is his name--the officer--and the young lady in red with
+whom he danced--and Miss Blanche--and the poor chef--and I don't think he
+seemed to be particularly pleased with me."
+
+"Didn't he leave me in charge to you?" Laura said, looking up into Mr.
+Pynsent's face, and dropping her eyes instantly, like a guilty little
+story-telling coquette.
+
+"Indeed, I can forgive him a good deal for that," Pynsent eagerly cried
+out, and she took his arm, and he led off his little prize in the
+direction of the supper-room.
+
+She had no great desire for that repast, though it was served in Rincer's
+well-known style, as the county paper said, giving an account of the
+entertainment afterwards; indeed, she was very distraite; and exceedingly
+pained and unhappy about Pen. Captious and quarrelsome; jealous and
+selfish; fickle and violent and unjust when his anger led him astray; how
+could her mother (as indeed Helen had by a thousand words and hints) ask
+her to give her heart to such a man? and suppose she were to do so, would
+it make him happy?
+
+But she got some relief at length, when, at the end of half an hour--a
+long half-hour it had seemed to her--a waiter brought her a little note
+in pencil from Pen, who said, "I met Cooky below ready to fight me; and I
+asked his pardon. I'm glad I did it. I wanted to speak to you to-night,
+but will keep what I had to say till you come home. God bless you. Dance
+away all night with Pynsent, and be very happy.--PEN." Laura was very
+thankful for this letter, and to think that there was goodness and
+forgiveness still in her mother's boy.
+
+Pen went downstairs, his heart reproaching him for his absurd behaviour
+to Laura, whose gentle and imploring looks followed and rebuked him; and
+he was scarcely out of the ballroom door but he longed to turn back and
+ask her pardon. But he remembered that he had left her with that
+confounded Pynsent. He could not apologise before him. He would
+compromise and forget his wrath, and make his peace with the Frenchman.
+
+The Chevalier was pacing down below in the hall of the inn when Pen
+descended from the ballroom; and he came up to Pen, with all sorts of fun
+and mischief lighting up his jolly face.
+
+"I have got him in the coffee-room," he said, "with a brace of pistols
+and a candle. Or would you like swords on the beach? Mirobolant is a dead
+hand with the foils, and killed four gardes-du-corps with his own point
+in the barricades of July."
+
+"Confound it," said Pen, in a fury, "I can't fight a cook!"
+
+"He is a Chevalier of July," replied the other. "They present arms to him
+in his own country."
+
+"And do you ask me, Captain Strong, to go out with a servant?" Pen asked
+fiercely; "I'll call a policeman him but--but----"
+
+"You'll invite me to hair triggers?" cried Strong, with a laugh. "Thank
+you for nothing; I was but joking. I came to settle quarrels, not to
+fight them. I have been soothing down Mirobolant; I have told him that
+you did not apply the word 'Cook' to him in an offensive sense: that it
+was contrary to all the customs of the country that a hired officer of a
+household, as I called it, should give his arm to the daughter of the
+house." And then he told Pen the grand secret which he had had from
+Madame Fribsby of the violent passion under which the poor artist was
+labouring.
+
+When Arthur heard this tale, he broke out into a hearty laugh, in which
+Strong joined, and his rage against the poor cook vanished at once. He
+had been absurdly jealous himself all the evening, and had longed for a
+pretext to insult Pynsent. He remembered how jealous he had been of Oaks
+in his first affair; he was ready to pardon anything to a man under a
+passion like that: and he went into the coffee-room where Mirobolant was
+waiting, with an outstretched hand, and made him a speech in French, in
+which he declared that he was "sincerement fache d'avoir use une
+expression qui avoit pu blesser Monsieur Mirobolant, et qu'il donnoit sa
+parole comme un gentilhomme qu'il ne l'avoit jamais, jamais--intende,"
+said Pen, who made a shot at a French word for "intended," and was
+secretly much pleased with his own fluency and correctness in speaking
+that language.
+
+"Bravo, bravo!" cried Strong, as much amused with Pen's speech as pleased
+by his kind manner. And the Chevalier Mirobolant of course withdraws, and
+sincerely regrets the expression of which he made use.
+
+"Monsieur Pendennis has disproved my words himself," said Alcide with
+great politeness; "he has shown that he is a galant homme."
+
+And so they shook hands and parted, Arthur in the first place despatching
+his note to Laura before he and Strong committed themselves to the
+Butcher Boy.
+
+As they drove along, Strong complimented Pen upon his behaviour, as well
+as upon his skill in French. "You're a good fellow, Pendennis, and you
+speak French like Chateaubriand, by Jove."
+
+"I've been accustomed to it from my youth upwards," said Pen; and Strong
+had the grace not to laugh for five minutes, when he exploded into fits
+of hilarity which Pendennis has never perhaps understood up to this day.
+
+It was daybreak when they got to the Brawl, where they separated. By that
+time the ball at Baymouth was over too. Madame Fribsby and Mirobolant
+were on their way home in the Clavering fly; Laura was in bed with an
+easy heart and asleep at Lady Rockminster's; and the Claverings at rest
+at the inn at Baymouth, where they had quarters for the night. A short
+time after the disturbance between Pen and the chef, Blanche had come out
+of the refreshment-room, looking as pale as a lemon-ice. She told her
+maid, having no other confidante at hand, that she had met with the most
+romantic adventure--the most singular man--one who had known the author
+of her being--her persecuted--her unhappy--her heroic--her murdered
+father; and she began a sonnet to his manes before she went to sleep.
+
+So Pen returned to Fairoaks, in company with his friend the Chevalier,
+without having uttered a word of the message which he had been so anxious
+to deliver to Laura at Baymouth. He could wait, however, until her return
+home, which was to take place on the succeeding day. He was not seriously
+jealous of the progress made by Mr. Pynsent in her favour; and he felt
+pretty certain that in this, as in any other family arrangement, he had
+but to ask and have, and Laura, like his mother, could refuse him
+nothing.
+
+When Helen's anxious looks inquired of him what had happened at Baymouth,
+and whether her darling project was fulfilled, Pen, in a gay tone, told
+of the calamity which had befallen; laughingly said, that no man could
+think about declarations under such a mishap, and made light of the
+matter. "There will be plenty of time for sentiment, dear mother, when
+Laura comes back," he said, and he looked in the glass with a killing
+air, and his mother put his hair off his forehead and kissed him, and of
+course thought, for her part, that no woman could resist him: and was
+exceedingly happy that day.
+
+When he was not with her, Mr. Pen occupied himself in packing books and
+portmanteaus, burning and arranging papers, cleaning his gun and putting
+it into its case: in fact, in making dispositions for departure. For
+though he was ready to marry, this gentleman was eager to go to London
+too, rightly considering that at three-and-twenty it was quite time for
+him to begin upon the serious business of life, and to set about making a
+fortune as quickly as possible.
+
+The means to this end he had already shaped out for himself. "I shall
+take chambers," he said, "and enter myself at an Inn of Court. With a
+couple of hundred pounds I shall be able to carry through the first year
+very well; after that I have little doubt my pen will support me, as it
+is doing with several Oxbridge men now in town. I have a tragedy, a
+comedy, and a novel, all nearly finished, and for which I can't fail to
+get a price. And so I shall be able to live pretty well, without drawing
+upon my poor mother, until I have made my way at the bar. Then, some day
+I will come back and make her dear soul happy by marrying Laura. She is
+as good and as sweet-tempered a girl as ever lived, besides being really
+very good-looking, and the engagement will serve to steady me,--won't it,
+Ponto?" Thus, smoking his pipe, and talking to his dog as he sauntered
+through the gardens and orchards of the little domain of Fairoaks, this
+young day-dreamer built castles in the air for himself: "Yes, she'll
+steady me, won't she? And you'll miss me when I've gone, won't you, old
+boy?" he asked of Ponto, who quivered his tail and thrust his brown nose
+into his master's fist. Ponto licked his hand and shoe, as they all did
+in that house, and Mr. Pen received their homage as other folks do the
+flattery which they get.
+
+Laura came home rather late in the evening of the second day; and Mr.
+Pynsent, as ill luck would have it, drove her from Clavering. The poor
+girl could not refuse his offer, but his appearance brought a dark cloud
+upon the brow of Arthur Pendennis. Laura saw this, and was pained by it:
+the eager widow, however, was aware of nothing, and being anxious,
+doubtless, that the delicate question should be asked at once, was for
+going to bed very soon after Laura's arrival, and rose for that purpose
+to leave the sofa where she now generally lay, and where Laura would come
+and sit and work or read by her. But when Helen rose, Laura said, with a
+blush and rather an alarmed voice, that she was also very tired and
+wanted to go to bed: so that the widow was disappointed in her scheme for
+that night at least, and Mr. Pen was left another day in suspense
+regarding his fate.
+
+His dignity was offended at being thus obliged to remain in the
+ante-chamber when he wanted an audience. Such a sultan as he, could not
+afford to be kept waiting. However, he went to bed and slept upon his
+disappointment pretty comfortably, and did not wake until the early
+morning, when he looked up and saw his mother standing in his room.
+
+"Dear Pen, rouse up," said this lady. "Do not be lazy. It is the most
+beautiful morning in the world. I have not been able to sleep since
+daybreak; and Laura has been out for an hour. She is in the garden.
+Everybody ought to be in the garden and out on such a morning as this."
+
+Pen laughed. He saw what thoughts were uppermost in the simple woman's
+heart. His good-natured laughter cheered the widow. "Oh you profound
+dissembler," he said, kissing his mother. "Oh you artful creature! Can
+nobody escape from your wicked tricks? and will you make your only son
+your victim?" Helen too laughed, she blushed, she fluttered, and was
+agitated. She was as happy as she could be--a good tender, matchmaking
+woman, the dearest project of whose heart was about to be accomplished.
+
+So, after exchanging some knowing looks and hasty words, Helen left
+Arthur; and this young hero, rising from his bed, proceeded to decorate
+his beautiful person, and shave his ambrosial chin; and in half an hour
+he issued out from his apartment into the garden in quest of Laura. His
+reflections as he made his toilette were rather dismal. "I am going to
+tie myself for life," he thought, "to please my mother. Laura is the best
+of women, and--and she has given me her money. I wish to Heaven I had not
+received it; I wish I had not this duty to perform just yet. But as both
+the women have set their hearts on the match, why I suppose I must
+satisfy them--and now for it. A man may do worse than make happy two of
+the best creatures in the world." So Pen, now he was actually come to the
+point, felt very grave, and by no means elated, and, indeed, thought it
+was a great sacrifice he was going to perform.
+
+It was Miss Laura's custom, upon her garden excursions, to wear a sort of
+uniform, which, though homely, was thought by many people to be not
+unbecoming. She had a large straw hat, with a streamer of broad ribbon,
+which was useless probably, but the hat sufficiently protected the
+owner's pretty face from the sun. Over her accustomed gown she wore a
+blouse or pinafore, which, being fastened round her little waist by a
+smart belt, looked extremely well, and her bands were guaranteed from the
+thorns of her favourite rose-bushes by a pair of gauntlets, which gave
+this young lady a military and resolute air.
+
+Somehow she had the very same smile with which she had laughed at him on
+the night previous, and the recollection of his disaster again offended
+Pen. But Laura, though she saw him coming down the walk looking so gloomy
+and full of care, accorded to him a smile of the most perfect and
+provoking good-humour, and went to meet him, holding one of the gauntlets
+to him, so that he might shake it if he liked--and Mr. Pen condescended
+to do so. His face, however, did not lose its tragic expression in
+consequence of this favour, and he continued to regard her with a dismal
+and solemn air.
+
+"Excuse my glove," said Laura, with a laugh, pressing Pen's hand kindly
+with it. "We are not angry again, are we, Pen?"
+
+"Why do you laugh at me?" said Pen. "You did the other night, and made a
+fool of me to the people at Baymouth."
+
+"My dear Arthur, I meant you no wrong," the girl answered. "You and Miss
+Roundle looked so droll as you--as you met with your little accident,
+that I could not make a tragedy of it. Dear Pen, it wasn't a serious
+fall. And, besides, it was Miss Roundle who was the most unfortunate."
+
+"Confound Miss Roundle," bellowed out Pen.
+
+"I'm sure she looked so," said Laura, archly. "You were up in an instant;
+but that poor lady sitting on the ground in her red crape dress, and
+looking about her with that piteous face--can I ever forget her?"--and
+Laura began to make a face in imitation of Miss Roundle's under the
+disaster, but she checked herself repentantly, saying, "Well, we must not
+laugh at her, but I am sure we ought to laugh at you, Pen, if you were
+angry about such a trifle."
+
+"You should not laugh at me, Laura," said Pen, with some bitterness; "not
+you, of all people."
+
+"And why not? Are you such a great man?" asked Laura,
+
+"Ah no, Laura, I'm such a poor one," Pen answered. "Haven't you baited me
+enough already?"
+
+"My dear Pen, and how?" cried Laura. "Indeed, indeed, I didn't think to
+vex you by such a trifle. I thought such a clever man as you could bear a
+harmless little joke from his sister," she said, holding her hand out
+again. "Dear Arthur, if I have hurt you, I beg your pardon."
+
+"It is your kindness that humiliates me more even than your laughter,
+Laura," Pen said. "You are always my superior."
+
+"What! superior to the great Arthur Pendennis? How can it be possible?"
+said Miss Laura, who may have had a little wickedness as well as a great
+deal of kindness in her composition. "You can't mean that any woman is
+your equal?"
+
+"Those who confer benefits should not sneer," said Pen. "I don't like my
+benefactor to laugh at me, Laura; it makes the obligation very hard to
+bear. You scorn me because I have taken your money, and I am worthy to be
+scorned; but the blow is hard coming from you."
+
+"Money! Obligation! For shame, Pen; this is ungenerous," Laura said,
+flushing red. "May not our mother claim everything that belongs to us?
+Don't I owe her all my happiness in this world, Arthur? What matters
+about a few paltry guineas, if we can set her tender heart at rest, and
+ease her mind regarding you? I would dig in the fields, I would go out
+and be a servant--I would die for her. You know I would," said Miss
+Laura, kindling up; "and you call this paltry money an obligation? Oh,
+Pen, it's cruel--it's unworthy of you to take it so! If my brother may
+not share with me my superfluity, who may?--Mine?--I tell you it was not
+mine; it was all mamma's to do with as she chose, and so is everything I
+have," said Laura; "my life is hers." And the enthusiastic girl looked
+towards the windows of the widow's room, and blessed in her heart the
+kind creature within.
+
+Helen was looking, unseen, out of that window towards which Laura's eyes
+and heart were turned as she spoke, and was watching her two children
+with the deepest interest and emotion, longing and hoping that the prayer
+of her life might be fulfilled; and if Laura had spoken as Helen hoped,
+who knows what temptations Arthur Pendennis might have been spared, or
+what different trials he would have had to undergo? He might have
+remained at Fairoaks all his days, and died a country gentleman. But
+would he have escaped then? Temptation is an obsequious servant that has
+no objection to the country, and we know that it takes up its lodging in
+hermitages as well as in cities; and that in the most remote and
+inaccessible desert it keeps company with the fugitive solitary.
+
+"Is your life my mother's?" said Pen, beginning to tremble, and speak in
+a very agitated manner. "You know, Laura, what the great object of hers
+is?" And he took her hand once more.
+
+"What, Arthur?" she said, dropping it, and looking at him, at the window
+again, and then dropping her eyes to the ground, so that they avoided
+Pen's gaze. She, too, trembled, for she felt that the crisis for which
+she had been secretly preparing was come.
+
+"Our mother has one wish above all others in the world, Laura," Pen said;
+"and I think you know it. I own to you that she has spoken to me of it;
+and if you will fulfil it, dear sister, I am ready. I am but very young
+as yet; but I have had so many pains and disappointments, that I am old
+and weary. I think I have hardly got a heart to offer. Before I have
+almost begun the race in life, I am a tired man. My career has been a
+failure; I have been protected by those whom I by right should have
+protected. I own that your nobleness and generosity, dear Laura, shame
+me, whilst they render me grateful. When I heard from our mother what you
+had done for me; that it was you who armed me and bade me go out for one
+struggle more; I longed to go and throw myself at your feet, and say,
+'Laura, will you come and share the contest with me?' Your sympathy will
+cheer me while it lasts. I shall have one of the tenderest and most
+generous creatures under heaven to aid and bear me company. Will you
+take me, dear Laura, and make our mother happy?"
+
+"Do you think mamma would be happy if you were otherwise, Arthur?" Laura
+said in a low sad voice.
+
+"And why should I not be," asked Pen eagerly, "with so dear a creature as
+you by my side? I have not my first love to give you. I am a broken man.
+But indeed I would love you fondly and truly. I have lost many an
+illusion and ambition, but I am not without hope still. Talents I know I
+have, wretchedly as I have misapplied them: they may serve me yet: they
+would, had I a motive for action. Let me go away and think that I am
+pledged to return to you. Let me go and work, and hope, that you will
+share my success if I gain it. You have given me so much, Laura dear,
+will you take from me nothing?"
+
+"What have you got to give, Arthur?" Laura said, with a grave sadness of
+tone, which made Pen start, and see that his words had committed him.
+Indeed, his declaration had not been such as he would have made it two
+days earlier, when, full of hope and gratitude, he had run over to Laura,
+his liberatress, to thank her for his recovered freedom. Had he been
+permitted to speak then, he had spoken, and she, perhaps, had listened
+differently. It would have been a grateful heart asking for hers; not a
+weary one offered to her, to take or to leave. Laura was offended with
+the terms in which Pen offered himself to her. He had, in fact, said that
+he had no love, and yet would take no denial. "I give myself to you to
+please my mother," he had said: "take me, as she wishes that I should
+make this sacrifice." The girl's spirit would brook a husband under no
+such conditions: she was not minded to run forward because Pen chose to
+hold out the handkerchief, and her tone, in reply to Arthur, showed her
+determination to be independent.
+
+"No, Arthur," she said, "our marriage would not make mamma happy, as she
+fancies; for it would not content you very long. I, too, have known what
+her wishes were; for she is too open to conceal anything she has at
+heart: and once, perhaps, I thought--but that is over now--that I could
+have made you--that it might have been as she wished."
+
+"You have seen somebody else," said Pen, angry at her tone, and recalling
+the incidents of the past days.
+
+"That allusion might have been spared," Laura replied, flinging up her
+head. "A heart which has worn out love at three-and-twenty, as yours has,
+you say, should have survived jealousy too. I do not condescend to say
+whether I have seen or encouraged any other person. I shall neither admit
+the charge, nor deny it: and beg you also to allude to it no more."
+
+"I ask your pardon, Laura, if I have offended you: but if I am jealous,
+does it not prove that I have a heart?"
+
+"Not for me, Arthur. Perhaps you think you love me now but it is only for
+an instant, and because you are foiled. Were there no obstacle, you would
+feel no ardour to overcome it. No, Arthur, you don't love me. You would
+weary of me in three months, as--as you do of most things; and mamma,
+seeing you tired of me, would be more unhappy than at my refusal to be
+yours. Let us be brother and sister, Arthur, as heretofore--but no more.
+You will get over this little disappointment."
+
+"I will try," said Arthur, in a great indignation.
+
+"Have you not tried before?" Laura said, with some anger, for she had
+been angry with Arthur for a very long time, and was now determined, I
+suppose, to speak her mind. "And the next time, Arthur, when you offer
+yourself to a woman, do not say as you have done to me, 'I have no heart
+--I do not love you; but I am ready to marry you because my mother wishes
+for the match.' We require more than this in return for our love--that
+is, I think so. I have had no experience hitherto, and have not had the--
+the practice which you supposed me to have, when you spoke but now of my
+having seen somebody else. Did you tell your first love that you had no
+heart, Arthur? or your second that you did not love her, but that she
+might have you if she liked?"
+
+"What--what do you mean?" asked Arthur, blushing, and still in great
+wrath.
+
+"I mean Blanche Amory, Arthur Pendennis," Laura said, proudly. "It is but
+two months since you were sighing at her feet--making poems to her--
+placing them in hollow trees by the river-side. I knew all. I watched
+you--that is, she showed them to me. Neither one nor the other were in
+earnest perhaps; but it is too soon now, Arthur, to begin a new
+attachment. Go through the time of your--your widowhood at least, and do
+not think of marrying until you are out of mourning"--(Here the girl's
+eyes filled with tears, and she passed her hand across them.) "I am angry
+and hurt, and I have no right to be so, and I ask your pardon in my turn
+now, dear Arthur. You had a right to love Blanche. She was a thousand
+times prettier and more accomplished than--than any girl near us here;
+and you not could know that she had no heart; and so you were right to
+leave her too. I ought not to rebuke you about Blanche Amory, and because
+she deceived you. Pardon me, Pen,"--and she held the kind hand out to Pen
+once more.
+
+"We were both jealous," said Pen. "Dear Laura, let us both forgive"--and
+he seized her band and would have drawn her towards him. He thought that
+she was relenting, and already assumed the airs of a victor.
+
+But she shrank back, and her tears passed away; and she fixed on him a
+look so melancholy and severe, that the young man in his turn shrank
+before it. "Do not mistake me, Arthur," she said, "it cannot be. You do
+not know what you ask, and do not be too angry with me for saying that I
+think you do not deserve it. What do you offer in exchange to a woman for
+her love, honour, and obedience? If ever I say these words, dear Pen, I
+hope to say them in earnest, and by the blessing of God to keep my vow.
+But you--what tie binds you? You do not care about many things which we
+poor women hold sacred, I do not like to think or ask how far your
+incredulity leads you. You offer to marry to please our mother, and own
+that you have no heart to give away. Oh, Arthur, what is it you offer me?
+What a rash compact would you enter into so lightly? A month ago, and you
+would have given yourself to another. I pray you do not trifle with your
+own or others' hearts so recklessly. Go and work; go and mend, dear
+Arthur, for I see your faults, and dare speak of them now: go and get
+fame, as you say that you can, and I will pray for my brother, and watch
+our dearest mother at home."
+
+"Is that your final decision, Laura?" Arthur cried.
+
+"Yes," said Laura, bowing her head; and once more giving him her hand,
+she went away. He saw her pass under the creepers of the little porch,
+and disappear into the house. The curtains of his mother's window fell at
+the same minute, but he did not mark that, or suspect that Helen had been
+witnessing the scene.
+
+Was he pleased, or was he angry at its termination? He had asked her, and
+a secret triumph filled his heart to think that he was still free. She
+had refused him, but did she not love him? That avowal of jealousy made
+him still think that her heart was his own, whatever her lips might
+utter.
+
+And now we ought, perhaps, to describe another scene which took place at
+Fairoaks, between the widow and Laura, when the latter had to tell Helen
+that she had refused Arthur Pendennis. Perhaps it was the hardest task of
+all which Laura had to go through in this matter: and the one which gave
+her the most pain. But as we do not like to see a good woman unjust, we
+shall not say a word more of the quarrel which now befell between Helen
+and her adopted daughter, or of the bitter tears which the poor girl was
+made to shed. It was the only difference which she and the widow had ever
+had as yet, and the more cruel from this cause. Pen left home whilst it
+was as yet pending--and Helen, who could pardon almost everything, could
+not pardon an act of justice in Laura.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+Babylon
+
+
+Our reader must now please to quit the woods and sea-shore of the west,
+and the gossip of Clavering, and the humdrum life of poor little
+Fairoaks, and transport himself with Arthur Pendennis, on the 'Alacrity'
+coach, to London, whither he goes once for all to face the world and to
+make his fortune. As the coach whirls through the night away from the
+friendly gates of home, many a plan does the young man cast in his mind
+of future life and conduct, prudence, and peradventure success and fame.
+He knows he is a better man than many who have hitherto been ahead of him
+in the race: his first failure has caused him remorse, and brought with
+it reflection; it has not taken away his courage, or, let us add, his
+good opinion of himself. A hundred eager fancies and busy hopes keep him
+awake. How much older his mishaps and a year's thought and self-communion
+have made him, than when, twelve months since, he passed on this road on
+his way to and from Oxbridge! His thoughts turn in the night with
+inexpressible fondness and tenderness towards the fond mother who blessed
+him when parting, and who, in spite of all his past faults and follies,
+trusts him and loves him still. Blessings be on her! he prays, as he
+looks up to the stars overhead. O Heaven! give him strength to work, to
+endure, to be honest, to avoid temptation, to be worthy of the loving
+soul who loves him so entirely! Very likely she is awake, too, at that
+moment, and sending up to the same Father purer prayers than his for the
+welfare of her boy. That woman's love is a talisman by which he holds and
+hopes to get his safety. And Laura's--he would have fain carried her
+affection with him too, but she has denied it, as he is not worthy of it.
+He owns as much with shame and remorse; confesses how much better and
+loftier her nature is than his own--confesses it, and yet is glad to be
+free. "I am not good enough for such a creature," he owns to himself. He
+draws back before her spotless beauty and innocence, as from something
+that scares him. He feels he is not fit for such a mate as that; as many
+a wild prodigal who has been pious and guiltless in early days, keeps
+away from a church which he used to frequent once--shunning it, but not
+hostile to it--only feeling that he has no right in that pure place.
+
+With these thoughts to occupy him, Pen did not fall asleep until the
+nipping dawn of an October morning, and woke considerably refreshed when
+the coach stopped at the old breakfasting place at B----, where he had
+had a score of merry meals on his way to and from school and college many
+times since he was a boy. As they left that place, the sun broke out
+brightly, the pace was rapid, the horn blew, the milestones flew by, Pen
+smoked and joked with guard and fellow-passengers and people along the
+familiar road; it grew more busy and animated at every instant; the last
+team of greys came out at H----, and the coach drove into London. What
+young fellow has not felt a thrill as he entered the vast place? Hundreds
+of other carriages, crowded with their thousands of men, were hastening
+to the great city. "Here is my place," thought Pen; "here is my battle
+beginning, in which I must fight and conquer, or fall. I have been a boy
+and a dawdler as yet. Oh, I long, I long to show that I can be a man."
+And from his place on the coach-roof the eager young fellow looked down
+upon the city, with the sort of longing desire which young soldiers feel
+on the eve of a campaign.
+
+As they came along the road, Pen had formed acquaintance with a cheery
+fellow-passenger in a shabby cloak, who talked a great deal about men of
+letters with whom he was very familiar, and who was, in fact, the
+reporter of a London newspaper, as whose representative he had been to
+attend a great wrestling-match in the west. This gentleman knew
+intimately, as it appeared, all the leading men of letters of his day,
+and talked about Tom Campbell, and Tom Hood, and Sydney Smith, and this
+and the other, as if he had been their most intimate friend. As they
+passed by Brompton, this gentleman pointed out to Pen Mr. Hurtle, the
+reviewer, walking with his umbrella. Pen craned over the coach to have a
+long look at the great Hurtle. He was a Boniface man, said Pen. And Mr.
+Doolan, of the Star newspaper (for such was the gentleman's name and
+address upon the card which he handed to Pen), said "Faith he was, and he
+knew him very well." Pen thought it was quite an honour to have seen the
+great Mr. Hurtle, whose works he admired. He believed fondly, as yet, in
+authors, reviewers, and editors of newspapers. Even Wagg, whose books did
+not appear to him to be masterpieces of human intellect, he yet secretly
+revered as a successful writer. He mentioned that he had met Wagg in the
+country, and Doolan told him how that famous novelist received three
+hundther pounds a volume for every one of his novels. Pen began to
+calculate instantly whether he might not make five thousand a year.
+
+The very first acquaintance of his own whom Arthur met, as the coach
+pulled up at the Gloster Coffee-house, was his old friend Harry Foker,
+who came prancing down Arlington Street behind an enormous cab-horse. He
+had white kid gloves and white reins, and nature had by this time
+decorated him with a considerable tuft on the chin. A very small
+cab-boy, vice Stoopid retired, swung on behind Foker's vehicle;
+knock-kneed and in the tightest leather breeches. Foker looked at the
+dusty coach, and the smoking horses of the 'Alacrity' by which he had
+made journeys in former times. "What, Foker!" cried out Pendennis--
+"Hullo! Pen, my boy!" said the other, and he waved his whip by way of
+amity and salute to Arthur, who was very glad to see his queer friend's
+kind old face. Mr. Doolan had a great respect for Pen who had an
+acquaintance in such a grand cab; and Pen was greatly excited and pleased
+to be at liberty and in London. He asked Doolan to come and dine with him
+at the Covent Garden Coffee-house, where he put up: he called a cab and
+rattled away thither in the highest spirits. He was glad to see the
+bustling waiter and polite bowing landlord again; and asked for the
+landlady, and missed the old Boots and would have liked to shake hands
+with everybody. He had a hundred pounds in his pocket. He dressed himself
+in his very best; dined in the coffee-room with a modest pint of sherry
+(for he was determined to be very economical), and went to the theatre
+adjoining.
+
+The lights and the music, the crowd and the gaiety, charmed and
+exhilarated Pen, as those sights will do young fellows from college and
+the country, to whom they are tolerably new. He laughed at the jokes; he
+applauded the songs, to the delight of some of the dreary old habitues of
+the boxes, who had ceased long ago to find the least excitement in their
+place of nightly resort, and were pleased to see any one so fresh, and so
+much amused. At the end of the first piece, he went and strutted about
+the lobbies of the theatre, as if he was in a resort of the highest
+fashion. What tired frequenter of the London pave is there that cannot
+remember having had similar early delusions, and would not call them back
+again? Here was young Foker again, like an ardent votary of pleasure as
+he was. He was walking with Grandy Tiptoff, of the Household Brigade,
+Lord Tiptoff's brother, and Lord Colchicum, Captain Tiptoff's uncle, a
+venerable peer, who had been a man of pleasure since the first French
+Revolution. Foker rushed upon Pen with eagerness, and insisted that the
+latter should come into his private box, where a lady with the longest
+ringlets and the fairest shoulders, was seated. This was Miss Blenkinsop,
+the eminent actress of high comedy; and in the back of the box snoozing
+in a wig, sate old Blenkinsop, her papa. He was described in the
+theatrical prints as the "veteran Blenkinsop"--"the useful Blenkinsop"--
+"that old favourite of the public, Blenkinsop"--those parts in the drama,
+which are called the heavy fathers, were usually assigned to this
+veteran, who, indeed, acted the heavy father in public, as in private
+life.
+
+At this time, it being about eleven o'clock, Mrs. Pendennis was gone to
+bed at Fairoaks, and wondering whether her dearest Arthur was at rest
+after his journey. At this time Laura, too, was awake. And at this time
+yesterday night, as the coach rolled over silent commons, where cottage
+windows twinkled, and by darkling woods under calm starlit skies, Pen was
+vowing to reform and to resist temptation, and his heart was at home.
+Meanwhile the farce was going on very successfully, and Mrs. Leary, in a
+hussar jacket and braided pantaloons, was enchanting the audience with
+her archness, her lovely figure, and her delightful ballads.
+
+Pen, being new to the town, would have liked to listen to Mrs. Leary; but
+the other people in the box did not care about her song or her
+pantaloons, and kept up an incessant chattering. Tiptoff knew where her
+maillots came from. Colchicum saw her when she came out in '14. Miss
+Blenkinsop said she sang out of all tune, to the pain and astonishment of
+Pen, who thought that she was as beautiful as an angel, and that she sang
+like a nightingale; and when Hoppus came on as Sir Harcourt Featherby,
+the young man of the piece, the gentlemen in the box declared that Hoppus
+was getting too stale, and Tiptoff was for flinging Miss Blenkinsop's
+bouquet to him.
+
+"Not for the world," cried the daughter of the veteran Blenkinsop; "Lord
+Colchicum gave it to me."
+
+Pen remembered that nobleman's name, and with a bow and a blush said he
+believed he had to thank Lord Colchicum for having proposed him at the
+Megatherium Club, at the request of his uncle, Major Pendennis.
+
+"What, you're Wigsby's nephew, are you?" said the peer. "I beg your
+pardon, we always call him Wigsby." Pen blushed to hear his venerable
+uncle called by such a familiar name. "We balloted you in last week,
+didn't we? Yes, last Wednesday night. Your uncle wasn't there."
+
+Here was delightful news for Pen! He professed himself very much obliged
+indeed to Lord Colchicum, and made him a handsome speech of thanks, to
+which the other listened with his double opera-glass up to his eyes. Pen
+was full of excitement at the idea of being a member of this polite Club.
+
+"Don't be always looking at that box, you naughty creature," cried Miss
+Blenkinsop.
+
+"She's a dev'lish fine woman, that Mirabel," said Tiptoff; "though
+Mirabel was a d----d fool to marry her."
+
+"A stupid old spooney," said the peer.
+
+"Mirabel!" cried out Pendennis.
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed out Harry Foker. "We've heard of her before, haven't
+we, Pen?"
+
+It was Pen's first love. It was Miss Fotheringay. The year before she had
+been led to the altar by Sir Charles Mirabel, G.C.B., and formerly envoy
+to the Court of Pumpernickel, who had taken so active a part in the
+negotiations before the Congress of Swammerdam, and signed, on behalf of
+H.B.M., the Peace of Pultusk.
+
+"Emily was always as stupid as an owl," said Miss Blenkinsop.
+
+"Eh! Eh! pas si bete," the old Peer said.
+
+"Oh, for shame!" cried the actress, who did not in the least know what he
+meant.
+
+And Pen looked out and beheld his first love once again--and wondered how
+he ever could have loved her.
+
+Thus on the very first night of his arrival in London, Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis found himself introduced to a Club, to an actress of genteel
+comedy and a heavy father of the Stage, and to a dashing society of
+jovial blades, old and young; for my Lord Colchicum, though stricken in
+years, bald of head and enfeebled in person, was still indefatigable in
+the pursuit of enjoyment, and it was the venerable Viscount's boast that
+he could drink as much claret as the youngest member of the society which
+he frequented. He lived with the youth about town: he gave them countless
+dinners at Richmond and Greenwich: an enlightened patron of the drama in
+all languages and of the Terpsichorean art, he received dramatic
+professors of all nations at his banquets--English from the Covent Garden
+and Strand houses, Italians from the Haymarket, French from their own
+pretty little theatre, or the boards of the Opera where they danced. And
+at his villa on the Thames, this pillar of the State gave sumptuous
+entertainments to scores of young men of fashion, who very affably
+consorted with the ladies and gentlemen of the greenroom--with the former
+chiefly, for Viscount Colchicum preferred their society as more polished
+and gay than that of their male brethren.
+
+Pen went the next day and paid his entrance-money at the Club, which
+operation carried off exactly one-third of his hundred pounds; and took
+possession of the edifice, and ate his luncheon there with immense
+satisfaction. He plunged into an easy-chair in the library, and tried to
+read all the magazines. He wondered whether the members were looking at
+him, and that they could dare to keep on their hats in such fine rooms.
+He sate down and wrote a letter to Fairoaks on the Club paper, and said,
+what a comfort this place would be to him after his day's work was over.
+He went over to his uncle's lodgings in Bury Street with some
+considerable tremor, and in compliance with his mother's earnest desire,
+that he should instantly call on Major Pendennis; and was not a little
+relieved to find that the Major had not yet returned to town. His
+apartments were blank. Brown hollands covered his library-table, and
+bills and letters lay on the mantelpiece, grimly awaiting the return of
+their owner. The Major was on the Continent, the landlady of the house
+said, at Badnbadn, with the Marcus of Steyne. Pen left his card upon the
+shelf with the rest. Fairoaks was written on it still.
+
+When the Major returned to London, which he did in time for the fogs of
+November, after enjoying which he proposed to spend Christmas with some
+friends in the country, he found another card of Arthur's, on which Lamb
+Court, Temple, was engraved, and a note from that young gentleman and
+from his mother, stating that he was come to town, was entered a member
+of the Upper Temple, and was reading hard for the bar.
+
+Lamb Court, Temple:--where was it? Major Pendennis remembered that some
+ladies of fashion used to talk of dining with Mr. Ayliffe, the barrister,
+who was "in society," and who lived there in the King's Bench, of which
+prison there was probably a branch in the Temple, and Ayliffe was very
+likely an officer. Mr. Deuceace, Lord Crabs's son, had also lived there,
+he recollected. He despatched Morgan to find out where Lamb Court was,
+and to report upon the lodging selected by Mr. Arthur. That alert
+messenger had little difficulty in discovering Mr. Pen's abode. Discreet
+Morgan had in his time traced people far more difficult to find than
+Arthur.
+
+"What sort of a place is it, Morgan?" asked the Major, out of the
+bed-curtains in Bury Street the next morning, as the valet was arranging
+his toilette in the deep yellow London fog.
+
+"I should say rayther a shy place," said Mr. Morgan. "The lawyers lives
+there, and has their names on the doors. Mr. Harthur lives three pair
+high, sir. Mr. Warrington lives there too, sir."
+
+"Suffolk Warringtons! I shouldn't wonder: a good family," thought the
+Major. "The cadets of many of our good families follow the robe as a
+profession. Comfortable rooms, eh?"
+
+"Honly saw the outside of the door, sir, with Mr. Warrington's name and
+Mr. Arthur's painted up, and a piece of paper with 'Back at 6;' but I
+couldn't see no servant, sir."
+
+"Economical at any rate," said the Major.
+
+"Very, sir. Three pair, sir. Nasty black staircase as ever I see. Wonder
+how a gentleman can live in such a place."
+
+"Pray, who taught you where gentlemen should or should not live, Morgan?
+Mr. Arthur, sir, is going to study for the bar, sir," the Major said with
+much dignity; and closed the conversation and began to array himself in
+the yellow fog.
+
+"Boys will be boys," the mollified uncle thought to himself. "He has
+written to me a devilish good letter. Colchicum says he has had him to
+dine, and thinks him a gentlemanlike lad. His mother is one of the best
+creatures in the world. If he has sown his wild oats, and will stick to
+his business, he may do well yet. Think of Charley Mirabel, the old fool,
+marrying that flame of his! that Fotheringay! He doesn't like to come
+here until I give him leave, and puts it in a very manly nice way. I was
+deuced angry with him, after his Oxbridge escapades--and showed it too
+when he was here before--Gad, I'll go and see him, hang me if I don't."
+
+And having ascertained from Morgan that he could reach the Temple without
+much difficulty, and that a city omnibus would put him down at the gate,
+the Major one day after breakfast at his Club--not the Polyanthus,
+whereof Mr. Pen was just elected a member, but another Club: for the
+Major was too wise to have a nephew as a constant inmate of any house
+where he was in the habit of passing his time--the Major one day entered
+one of those public vehicles, and bade the conductor to put him down at
+the gate of the Upper Temple.
+
+When Major Pendennis reached that dingy portal it was about twelve
+o'clock in the day; and he was directed by a civil personage with a badge
+and a white apron, through some dark alleys, and under various melancholy
+archways into courts each more dismal than the other, until finally he
+reached Lamb Court. If it was dark in Pall Mail, what was it in Lamb
+Court? Candles were burning in many of the rooms there--in the pupil-room
+of Mr. Hodgeman, the special pleader, where six pupils were scribbling
+declarations under the tallow; in Sir Hokey Walker's clerk's room, where
+the clerk, a person far more gentlemanlike and cheerful in appearance
+than the celebrated counsel, his master, was conversing in a patronising
+manner with the managing clerk of an attorney at the door; and in Curling
+the wigmaker's melancholy shop, where, from behind the feeble glimmer of
+a couple of lights, large serpents' and judges' wigs were looming
+drearily, with the blank blocks looking at the lamp-post in the court.
+Two little clerks were playing at toss-halfpenny under that lamp. A
+laundress in pattens passed in at one door, a newspaper boy issued from
+another. A porter, whose white apron was faintly visible, paced up and
+down. It would be impossible to conceive a place more dismal, and the
+Major shuddered to think that any one should select such a residence.
+"Good Ged!" he said, "the poor boy mustn't live on here."
+
+The feeble and filthy oil-lamps, with which the staircases of the Upper
+Temple are lighted of nights, were of course not illuminating the stairs
+by day, and Major Pendennis, having read with difficulty his nephew's
+name under Mr. Warrington's on the wall of No. 6, found still greater
+difficulty in climbing the abominable black stairs, up the banisters of
+which, which contributed their damp exudations to his gloves, he groped
+painfully until he came to the third story. A candle was in the passage
+of one of the two sets of rooms; the doors were open, and the names of
+Mr. Warrington and Mr. A. Pendennis were very clearly visible to the
+Major as he went in. An Irish charwoman, with a pail and broom, opened
+the door for the Major.
+
+"Is that the beer?" cried out a great voice: "give us hold of it."
+
+The gentleman who was speaking was seated on a table, unshorn and smoking
+a short pipe; in a farther chair sate Pen, with a cigar, and his legs
+near the fire. A little boy, who acted as the clerk of these gentlemen,
+was grinning in the Major's face, at the idea of his being mistaken for
+beer. Here, upon the third floor, the rooms were somewhat lighter, and
+the Major could see place.
+
+"Pen, my boy, it's I--it's your uncle," he said, choking with the smoke.
+But as most young men of fashion used the weed, he pardoned the practice
+easily enough.
+
+Mr. Warrington got up from the table, and Pen, in a very perturbed
+manner, from his chair. "Beg your pardon for mistaking you," said
+Warrington, in a frank, loud voice. "Will you take a cigar, sir? Clear
+those things off the chair, Pidgeon, and pull it round to the fire."
+
+Pen flung his cigar into the grate; and was pleased with the cordiality
+with which his uncle shook him by the hand. As soon as be could speak for
+the stairs and the smoke, the Major began to ask Pen very kindly about
+himself and about his mother; for blood is blood, and he was pleased once
+more to see the boy.
+
+Pen gave his news, and then introduced Mr. Warrington--an old Boniface
+man--whose chambers he shared.
+
+The Major was quite satisfied when he heard that Mr. Warrington was a
+younger son of Sir Miles Warrington of Suffolk. He had served with an
+uncle of his in India and in New South Wales, years ago.
+
+"Took a sheep-farm there, sir, made a fortune--better thing than law or
+soldiering," Warrington said. "Think I shall go there too." And here the
+expected beer coming in, in a tankard with a glass bottom, Mr.
+Warrington, with a laugh, said he supposed the Major would not have any,
+and took a long, deep draught himself, after which he wiped his wrist
+across his beard with great satisfaction. The young man was perfectly
+easy and unembarrassed. He was dressed in a ragged old shooting jacket,
+and had a bristly blue beard. He was drinking beer like a coalheaver, and
+yet you couldn't but perceive that he was a gentleman.
+
+When he had sate for a minute or two after his draught he went out of the
+room, leaving it to Pen and his uncle, that they might talk over family
+affairs were they so inclined.
+
+"Rough and ready, your chum seems," the Major said. "Somewhat different
+from your dandy friends at Oxbridge."
+
+"Times are altered," Arthur replied, with a blush. "Warrington is only
+just called, and has no business, but he knows law pretty well; and until
+I can afford to read with a pleader, I use his books, and get his help."
+
+"Is that one of the books?" the Major asked, with a smile. A French novel
+was lying at the foot of Pen's chair.
+
+"This is not a working day, sir," the lad said. "We were out very late at
+a party last night--at Lady Whiston's," Pen added, knowing his uncle's
+weakness. "Everybody in town was there except you, sir; Counts,
+Ambassadors, Turks, Stars and Garters--I don't know who--it's all in the
+paper--and my name, too," said Pen, with great glee. "I met an old flame
+of mine there, sir," he added, with a laugh. "You know whom I mean, sir,
+--Lady Mirabel--to whom I was introduced over again. She shook hands, and
+was gracious enough. I may thank you for being out of that scrape, sir.
+She presented me to the husband, too--an old beau in a star and a blonde
+wig. He does not seem very wise. She has asked me to call on her, sir:
+and I may go now without any fear of losing my heart."
+
+"What, we have had some new loves, have we?" the Major asked in high
+good-humour.
+
+"Some two or three," Mr. Pen said, laughing. "But I don't put on my grand
+serieux any more, sir. That goes off after the first flame."
+
+"Very right, my dear boy. Flames and darts and passion, and that sort of
+thing, do very well for a lad: and you were but a lad when that affair
+with the Fotheringill--Fotheringay--(what's her name?) came off. But a
+man of the world gives up those follies. You still may do very well.
+You have been bit, but you may recover. You are heir to a little
+independence; which everybody fancies is a doosid deal more. You have
+a good name, good wits, good manners, and a good person--and, begad!
+I don't see why you shouldn't marry a woman with money--get into
+Parliament--distinguish yourself, and--and, in fact, that sort of thing.
+Remember, it's as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman: and a
+devilish deal pleasanter to sit down to a good dinner, than to a scrag
+of mutton in lodgings. Make up your mind to that. A woman with a good
+jointure is a doosid deal easier a profession than the law, let me tell
+you that. Look out; I shall be on the watch for you: and I shall die
+content, my boy, if I can see you with a good ladylike wife, and a good
+carriage, and a good pair of horses, living in society, and seeing your
+friends, like a gentleman. Would you like to vegetate like your dear
+good mother at Fairoaks? Dammy, sir! life, without money and the best
+society isn't worth having." It was thus this affectionate uncle spoke,
+and expounded to Pen his simple philosophy.
+
+"What would my mother and Laura say to this, I wonder?" thought the lad.
+Indeed old Pendennis's morals were not their morals, nor was his wisdom
+theirs.
+
+This affecting conversation between uncle and nephew had scarcely
+concluded, when Warrington came out of his bedroom, no longer in rags,
+but dressed like a gentleman, straight and tall and perfectly frank and
+good-humoured. He did the honours of his ragged sitting-room with as much
+ease as if it had been the finest apartment in London. And queer rooms
+they were in which the Major found his nephew. The carpet was full of
+holes--the table stained with many circles of Warrington's previous
+ale-pots. There was a small library of law-books, books of poetry, and of
+mathematics, of which he was very fond. (He had been one of the hardest
+livers and hardest readers of his time at Oxbridge, where the name of
+Stunning Warrington was yet famous for beating bargemen, pulling matches,
+winning prizes, and drinking milk-punch.) A print of the old college hung
+up over the mantelpiece, and some battered volumes of Plato, bearing its
+well-known arms, were on the book-shelves. There were two easy-chairs; a
+standing reading-desk piled with bills; a couple of very meagre briefs on
+a broken-legged study-table. Indeed, there was scarcely any article of
+furniture that had not been in the wars, and was not wounded. "Look here,
+sir, here is Pen's room. He is a dandy, and has got curtains to his bed,
+and wears shiny boots, and a silver dressing-case." Indeed, Pen's room
+was rather coquettishly arranged, and a couple of neat prints of
+opera-dancers, besides a drawing of Fairoaks, hung on the walls. In
+Warrington's room there was scarcely any article of furniture, save a
+great shower-bath, and a heap of books by the bedside: where he lay upon
+straw like Margery Daw, and smoked his pipe, and read half through the
+night his favourite poetry or mathematics.
+
+When he had completed his simple toilette, Mr. Warrington came out of
+this room, and proceeded to the cupboard to search for his breakfast.
+
+"Might I offer you a mutton-chop, sir? We cook 'em ourselves hot and hot:
+and I am teaching Pen the first principles of law, cooking, and morality
+at the same time. He's a lazy beggar, sir, and too much of a dandy."
+
+And so saying, Mr. Warrington wiped a gridiron with a piece of paper, put
+it on the fire, and on it two mutton-chops, and took from the cupboard a
+couple of plates and some knives and silver forks, and castors.
+
+"Say but a word, Major Pendennis," he said; "there's another chop in the
+cupboard, or Pidgeon shall go out and get you anything you like."
+
+Major Pendennis sate in wonder and amusement, but he said he had just
+breakfasted, and wouldn't have any lunch. So Warrington cooked the chops,
+and popped them hissing hot upon the plates.
+
+Pen fell to at his chop with a good appetite, after looking up at his
+uncle, and seeing that gentleman was still in good-humour.
+
+"You see, sir," Warrington said, "Mrs. Flanagan isn't here to do 'em, and
+we can't employ the boy, for the little beggar is all day occupied
+cleaning Pen's boots. And now for another swig at the beer. Pen drinks
+tea; it's only fit for old women."
+
+"And so you were at Lady Whiston's last night," the Major said, not in
+truth knowing what observation to make to this rough diamond.
+
+"I at Lady Whiston's! not such a flat, sir. I don't care for female
+society. In fact it bores me. I spent my evening philosophically at the
+Back Kitchen."
+
+"The Back Kitchen? indeed!" said the Major.
+
+"I see you don't know what it means," Warrington said. "Ask Pen. He was
+there after Lady Whiston's. Tell Major Pendennis about the Back Kitchen,
+Pen--don't be ashamed of yourself."
+
+So Pen said it was a little eccentric society of men of letters and men
+about town, to which he had been presented; and the Major began to think
+that the young fellow had seen a good deal of the world since his arrival
+in London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+The Knights of the Temple
+
+
+Colleges, schools, and inns of courts still have some respect for
+antiquity, and maintain a great number of the customs and institutions of
+our ancestors, with which those persons who do not particularly regard
+their forefathers, or perhaps are not very well acquainted with them;
+have long since done away. A well-ordained workhouse or prison si much
+better provided with the appliances of health, comfort, and cleanliness,
+than a respectable Foundation School a venerable College, or a learned
+Inn. In the latter place of residence men are contented to sleep in dingy
+closets, and to pay for the sitting-room and the cupboard which is their
+dormitory, the price of a good villa and garden in the suburbs, or of a
+roomy house in the neglected squares of the town. The poorest mechanic in
+Spitalfields has a cistern and an unbounded suppy of water at his
+command; but the gentlemen of the inns of court, and the gentlemen of the
+universities, have their supply of this cosmetic fetched in jugs by
+laundresses and bedmakers, and live in abodes which were erected long
+before the custom of cleanliness and decency obtained among us. There are
+individuals still alive who sneer at the people and speak of them with
+epithets of scorn. Gentlemen, there can be but little doubt that your
+ancestors were the Great Unwashed: and in the Temple especially, it is
+pretty certain, that only under the greatest difficulties and
+restrictions the virtue which has been pronounced to be next to godliness
+could have been practised at all.
+
+Old Grump, of the Norfolk Circuit, who had lived for more than thirty
+years in the chambers under those occupied by Warrington and Pendennis,
+and who used to be awakened by the roaring of the shower-baths which
+those gentlemen had erected in their apartments--a part of the contents
+of which occasionally trickled through the roof into Mr. Grump's room,--
+declared that the practice was an absurd, newfangled, dandified folly,
+and daily cursed the laundress who slopped the staircase by which he had
+to pass. Grump, now much more than half a century old, had indeed never
+used the luxury in question. He had done without water very well, and so
+had our fathers before him. Of all those knights and baronets, lords and
+gentlemen, bearing arms, whose escutcheons are painted upon the walls of
+the famous hall of the Upper Temple, was there no philanthropist
+good-natured enough to devise a set of Hummums for the benefit of the
+lawyers, his fellows and successors? The Temple historian makes no
+mention of such a scheme. There is Pump Court and Fountain Court, with
+their hydraulic apparatus, but one never heard of a bencher disporting in
+the fountain; and can't but think how many a counsel learned in the law
+of old days might have benefited by the pump.
+
+Nevertheless, those venerable Inns which have the Lamb and Flag and the
+Winged Horse for their ensigns, have attractions for persons who inhabit
+them, and a share of rough comforts and freedom which men always
+remember with pleasure. I don't know whether the student of law permits
+himself the refreshment of enthusiasm, or indulges in poetical
+reminiscences as he passes by historical chambers, and says, "Yonder
+Eldon lived--upon this site Coke mused upon Littleton--here Chitty
+toiled--here Barnewall and Alderson joined in their famous labours--here
+Byles composed his great work upon bills, and Smith compiled his immortal
+leading cases--here Gustavus still toils, with Solomon to aid him:" but
+the man of letters can't but love the place which has been inhabited by
+so many of his brethren, or peopled by their creations as real to us at
+this day as the authors whose children they were--and Sir Roger de
+Coverley walking in the Temple Garden, and discoursing with Mr. Spectator
+about the beauties in hoops and patches who are sauntering over the
+grass, is just as lively a figure to me as old Samuel Johnson rolling
+through the fog with the Scotch gentleman at his heels on their way to
+Dr. Goldsmith's chambers in Brick Court; or Harry Fielding, with inked
+ruffles and a wet towel round his head, dashing off articles at midnight
+for the Covent Garden Journal, while the printer's boy is asleep in the
+passage.
+
+If we could but get the history of a single day as it passed in any one
+of those four-storied houses in the dingy court where our friends Pen and
+Warrington dwelt, some Temple Asmodeus might furnish us with a queer
+volume. There may be a great parliamentary counsel on the ground floor,
+who drives off to Belgravia at dinner-time, when his clerk, too, becomes
+a gentleman, and goes away to entertain his friends, and to take his
+pleasure. But a short time since he was hungry and briefless in some
+garret of the Inn; lived by stealthy literature; hoped, and waited, and
+sickened, and no clients came; exhausted his own means and his friends'
+kindness; had to remonstrate humbly with duns, and to implore the
+patience of poor creditors. Ruin seemed to be staring him in the face,
+when, behold, a turn of the wheel of fortune, and the lucky wretch in
+possession of one of those prodigious prizes which are sometimes drawn in
+the great lottery of the Bar. Many a better lawyer than himself does not
+make a fifth part of the income of his clerk, who, a few months since,
+could scarcely get credit for blacking for his master's unpaid boots. On
+the first floor, perhaps, you will have a venerable man whose name is
+famous, who has lived for half a century in the Inn, whose brains are
+full of books, and whose shelves are stored with classical and legal
+lore. He has lived alone all these fifty years, alone and for himself,
+amassing learning, and compiling a fortune. He comes home now at night
+alone from the club, where he has been dining freely, to the lonely
+chambers where he lives a godless old recluse. When he dies, his Inn will
+erect a tablet to his honour, and his heirs burn a part of his library.
+Would you like to have such a prospect for your old age, to store up
+learning and money, and end so? But we must not linger too long by Mr.
+Doomsday's door. Worthy Mr. Grump lives over him, who is also an ancient
+inhabitant of the Inn, and who, when Doomsday comes home to read
+Catullus, is sitting down with three steady seniors of his standing, to a
+steady rubber at whist, after a dinner at which they have consumed their
+three steady bottles of Port. You may see the old boys asleep at the
+Temple Church of a Sunday. Attorneys seldom trouble them, and they have
+small fortunes of their own. On the other side of the third landing,
+where Pen and Warrington live, till long after midnight, sits Mr. Paley,
+who took the highest honours, and who is a fellow of his college, who
+will sit and read and note cases until two o'clock in the morning; who
+will rise at seven and be at the pleader's chambers as soon as they are
+open, where he will work until an hour before dinner-time; who will come
+home from Hall and read and note cases again until dawn next day, when
+perhaps Mr. Arthur Pendennis and his friend Mr. Warrington are returning
+from some of their wild expeditions. How differently employed Mr. Paley
+has been! He has not been throwing himself away: he has only been
+bringing a great intellect laboriously down to the comprehension of a
+mean subject, and in his fierce grasp of that, resolutely excluding from
+his mind all higher thoughts, all better things, all the wisdom of
+philosophers and historians, all the thoughts of poets; all wit, fancy,
+reflection, art, love, truth altogether--so that he may master that
+enormous legend of the law, which he proposes to gain his livelihood by
+expounding. Warrington and Paley had been competitors for university
+honours in former days, and had run each other hard; and everybody said
+now that the former was wasting his time and energies, whilst all people
+praised Paley for his industry. There may be doubts, however, as to which
+was using his time best. The one could afford time to think, and the
+other never could. The one could have sympathies and do kindnesses; and
+the other must needs be always selfish. He could not cultivate a
+friendship or do a charity, or admire a work of genius, or kindle at the
+sight of beauty or the sound of a sweet song--he had no time, and no eyes
+for anything but his law-books. All was dark outside his reading-lamp.
+Love, and Nature, and Art (which is the expression of our praise and
+sense of the beautiful world of God) were shut out from him. And as he
+turned off his lonely lamp at night, he never thought but that he had
+spent the day profitably, and went to sleep alike thankless and
+remorseless. But he shuddered when he met his old companion Warrington on
+the stairs, and shunned him as one that was doomed to perdition.
+
+It may have been the sight of that cadaverous ambition and
+self-complacent meanness, which showed itself in Paley's yellow face,
+and twinkled in his narrow eyes, or it may have been a natural appetite
+for pleasure and joviality, of which it must be confessed Mr. Pen was
+exceedingly fond, which deterred that luckless youth from pursuing his
+designs upon the Bench or the Woolsack with the ardour, or rather
+steadiness, which is requisite in gentlemen who would climb to those
+seats of honour. He enjoyed the Temple life with a great deal of relish:
+his worthy relatives thought he was reading as became a regular student;
+and his uncle wrote home congratulatory letters to the kind widow at
+Fairoaks, announcing that the lad had sown his wild oats, and was
+becoming quite steady. The truth is, that it was a new sort of excitement
+to Pen, the life in which he was now engaged, and having given up some of
+the dandified pretensions, and fine-gentleman airs which he had
+contracted among his aristocratic college acquaintances, of whom he now
+saw but little, the rough pleasures and amusements of a London bachelor
+were very novel and agreeable to him, and he enjoyed them all. Time was
+he would have envied the dandies their fine horses in Rotten Row, but he
+was contented now to walk in the Park and look at them. He was too young
+to succeed in London society without a better name and a larger fortune
+than he had, and too lazy to get on without these adjuncts. Old Pendennis
+fondly thought he was busied with law because he neglected the social
+advantages presented to him, and, having been at half a dozen balls and
+evening parties, retreated before their dulness and sameness; and
+whenever anybody made inquiries of the worthy Major about his nephew the
+old gentleman said the young rascal was reformed, and could not be got
+away from his books. But the Major would have been almost as much
+horrified as Mr. Paley was, had he known what was Mr. Pen's real course
+of life, and how much pleasure entered into his law studies.
+
+A long morning's reading, a walk in the park, a pull on the river, a
+stretch up the hill to Hampstead, and a modest tavern dinner; a bachelor
+night passed here or there, in joviality, not vice (for Arthur Pendennis
+admired women so heartily that he never could bear the society of any of
+them that were not, in his fancy at least, good and pure); a quiet
+evening at home, alone with a friend and a pipe or two, and a humble
+potation of British spirits, whereof Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress,
+invariably tested the quality;--these were our young gentleman's
+pursuits, and it must be owned that his life was not unpleasant. In
+term-time, Mr. Pen showed a most praiseworthy regularity in performing
+one part of the law-student's course of duty, and eating his dinners in
+Hall. Indeed, that Hall of the Upper Temple is a sight not uninteresting,
+and with the exception of some trifling improvements and anachronisms
+which have been introduced into the practice there, a man may sit down
+and fancy that he joins in a meal of the seventeenth century. The bar
+have their messes, the students their tables apart; the benchers sit at
+the high table on the raised platform surrounded by pictures of judges of
+the law and portraits of royal personages who have honoured its
+festivities with their presence and patronage. Pen looked about, on his
+first introduction, not a little amused with the scene which he
+witnessed. Among his comrades of the student class there were gentlemen
+of all ages, from sixty to seventeen; stout grey-headed attorneys who
+were proceeding to take the superior dignity,--dandies and men--about
+town who wished for some reason to be barristers of seven years'
+standing,--swarthy, black-eyed natives of the Colonies, who came to be
+called here before they practised in their own islands,--and many
+gentlemen of the Irish nation, who make a sojourn in Middle Temple Lane
+before they return to the green country of their birth. There were little
+squads of reading students who talked law all dinner-time; there were
+rowing men, whose discourse was of sculling matches, the Red House,
+Vauxhall and the Opera; there were others great in politics, and orators
+of the students' debating clubs; with all of which sets, except the
+first, whose talk was an almost unknown and a quite uninteresting
+language to him, Mr. Pen made a gradual acquaintance, and had many points
+of sympathy.
+
+The ancient and liberal Inn of the Upper Temple provides in its Hall, and
+for a most moderate price, an excellent wholesome dinner of soup, meat,
+tarts, and port wine or sherry, for the barristers and students who
+attend that place of refection. The parties are arranged in messes of
+four, each of which quartets has its piece of beef or leg of mutton, its
+sufficient apple-pie and its bottle of wine. But the honest habitues of
+the hall, amongst the lower rank of students, who have a taste for good
+living, have many harmless arts by which they improve their banquet, and
+innocent 'dodges' (if we may be permitted to use an excellent phrase that
+has become vernacular since the appearance of the last dictionaries) by
+which they strive to attain for themselves more delicate food than the
+common every-day roast meat of the students' tables.
+
+"Wait a bit," said Mr. Lowton, one of these Temple gourmands. "Wait a
+bit," said Mr. Lowton, tugging at Pen's gown--"the side-tables are very
+full, and there's only three benchers to eat ten dishes--if we wait,
+perhaps we shall get something from their table." And Pen looked with
+some amusement, as did Mr. Lowton with eyes of fond desire, towards the
+benchers' high table, where three old gentlemen were standing up before a
+dozen silver dish-covers, while the clerk was quavering out a grace.
+
+Lowton was great in the conduct of the dinner. His aim was to manage so
+as to be the first, a captain of the mess, and to secure for himself the
+thirteenth glass of the bottle of port wine. Thus he would have the
+command of the joint on which he operated his favourite cuts, and made
+rapid dexterous appropriations of gravy, which amused Pen infinitely.
+Poor Jack Lowton! thy pleasures in life were very harmless; an eager
+epicure, thy desires did not go beyond eighteen pence.
+
+Pen was somewhat older than many of his fellow-students, and there was
+that about his style and appearance, which, as we have said, was rather
+haughty and impertinent, that stamped him as a man of ton--very unlike
+those pale students who were talking law to one another, and those
+ferocious dandies, in rowing shirts and astonishing pins and waistcoats,
+who represented the idle part of the little community. The humble and
+good-natured Lowton had felt attracted by Pen's superior looks and
+presence--and had made acquaintance with him at the mess by opening the
+conversation.
+
+"This is boiled-beef day, I believe, sir," said Lowton to Pen.
+
+"Upon my word, sir, I'm not aware," said Pen, hardly able to contain his
+laughter, but added, "I'm a stranger; this is my first term;" on which
+Lowton began to point out to him the notabilities in the Hall.
+
+"That's Boosey the bencher, the bald one sitting under the picture and
+aving soup; I wonder whether it's turtle? They often ave turtle. Next is
+Balls, the King's Counsel, and Swettenham--Hodge and Swettenham, you
+know. That's old Grump, the senior of the bar; they say he's dined here
+forty years. They often send 'em down their fish from the benchers to the
+senior table. Do you see those four fellows seated opposite us? Those are
+regular swells--tip-top fellows, I can tell you--Mr. Trail, the Bishop of
+Ealing's son, Honourable Fred. Ringwood, Lord Cinqbar's brother, you
+know. He'll have a good place, I bet any money; and Bob Suckling, who's
+always with him--a high fellow too. Ha! ha!" Here Lowton burst into a
+laugh,
+
+"What is it?" said Pen, still amused.
+
+"I say, I like to mess with those chaps," Lowton said, winking his eye
+knowingly, and pouring out his glass of wine.
+
+"And why?" asked Pen.
+
+"Why! they don't come down here to dine, you know, they only make believe
+to dine. They dine here, Law bless you! They go to some of the swell
+clubs, or else to some grand dinner-party. You see their names in the
+Morning Post at all the fine parties in London. Why, I bet anything that
+Ringwood has his cab, or Trail his Brougham (he's a devil of a fellow,
+and makes the bishop's money spin, I can tell you) at the corner of Essex
+Street at this minute. They dine! They won't dine these two hours, I dare
+say."
+
+"But why should you like to mess with them, if they don't eat any
+dinner?" Pen asked, still puzzled. "There's plenty, isn't there?"
+
+"How green you are," said Lowton. "Excuse me, but you are green. They
+don't drink any wine, don't you see, and a fellow gets the bottle to
+himself if he likes it when he messes with those three chaps. That's why
+Corkoran got in with 'em."
+
+"Ah, Mr. Lowton, I see you are a sly fellow," Pen said, delighted with
+his acquaintance: on which the other modestly replied, that he had lived
+in London the better part of his life, and of course had his eyes about
+him; and went on with his catalogue to Pen.
+
+"There's a lot of Irish here," he said; "that Corkoran's one, and I can't
+say I like him. You see that handsome chap with the blue neck-cloth, and
+pink shirt, and yellow waistcoat, that's another; that's Molloy Maloney
+of Ballymaloney, and nephew to Major-General Sir Hector O'Dowd, he, he,"
+Lowton said, trying to imitate the Hibernian accent. "He's always
+bragging about his uncle; and came into Hall in silver-striped trousers
+the day he had been presented. That other near him, with the long black
+hair, is a tremendous rebel. By Jove, sir, to hear him at the Forum it
+makes your blood freeze; and the next is an Irishman, too, Jack Finucane,
+reporter of a newspaper. They all stick together, those Irish. It's your
+turn to fill your glass. What? you won't have any port? Don't like port
+with your dinner? Here's your health." And this worthy man found himself
+not the less attached to Pendennis because the latter disliked port wine
+at dinner.
+
+It was while Pen was taking his share of one of these dinners with his
+acquaintance Lowton as the captain of his mess, that there came to join
+them a gentleman in a barrister's gown, who could not find a seat, as it
+appeared, amongst the persons of his own degree, and who strode over the
+table and took his place on the bench where Pen sate. He was dressed in
+old clothes and a faded gown, which hung behind him, and he wore a shirt
+which, though clean, was extremely ragged, and very different to the
+magnificent pink raiment of Mr. Molloy Maloney, who occupied a commanding
+position in the next mess. In order to notify their appearance at dinner,
+it is the custom of the gentlemen who eat in the Upper Temple Hall to
+write down their names upon slips of paper, which are provided for that
+purpose, with a pencil for each mess. Lowton wrote his name first, then
+came Arthur Pendennis, and the next was that of the gentleman in the old
+clothes. He smiled when he saw Pen's name, and looked at him. "We ought
+to know each other," he said. "We're both Boniface men; my name's
+Warrington."
+
+"Are you St---- Warrington?" Pen said, delighted to see this hero.
+
+Warrington laughed--"Stunning Warrington--yes," he said, "I recollect you
+in your freshman's term. But you appear to have quite cut me out."
+
+"The college talks about you still," said Pen, who had a generous
+admiration for talent and pluck. "The bargeman you thrashed, Bill Simes,
+don't you remember, wants you up again at Oxbridge. The Miss Notleys, the
+haberdashers----"
+
+"Hush!" said Warrington--"glad to make your acquaintance, Pendennis.
+Heard a good deal about you."
+
+The young men were friends immediately, and at once deep in college-talk.
+And Pen, who had been acting rather the fine gentleman on a previous day,
+when he pretended to Lowton that he could not drink port wine at dinner,
+seeing Warrington take his share with a great deal of gusto, did not
+scruple about helping himself any more, rather to the disappointment of
+honest Lowton. When the dinner was over, Warrington asked Arthur where he
+was going.
+
+"I thought of going home to dress, and hear Grisi in Norma," Pen said.
+
+"Are you going to meet anybody there?" he asked.
+
+Pen said, "No--only to hear the music," of which he was fond.
+
+"You had much better come home and smoke a pipe with me," said
+Warrington,--"a very short one. Come, I live close by in Lamb Court, and
+we'll talk over Boniface and old times."
+
+They went away; Lowton sighed after them. He knew Warrington was a
+baronet's son, and he looked up with simple reverence to all the
+aristocracy. Pen and Warrington became sworn friends from that night.
+Warrington's cheerfulness and jovial temper, his good sense, his rough
+welcome, and his never-failing pipe of tobacco, charmed Pen, who found it
+more pleasant to dive into shilling taverns with him, than to dine in
+solitary state amongst the silent and polite frequenters of the
+Polyanthus.
+
+Ere long Pen gave up the lodgings in St. James's, to which he had
+migrated on quitting his hotel, and found it was much more economical to
+take up his abode with Warrington in Lamb Court, and furnish and occupy
+his friend's vacant room there. For it must be said of Pen, that no man
+was more easily led than he to do a thing, when it was a novelty, or when
+he had a mind to it. And Pidgeon, the youth, and Flanagan, the laundress,
+divided their allegiance now between Warrington and Pen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+Old and new Acquaintances
+
+
+Elated with the idea of seeing life, Pen went into a hundred queer London
+haunts. He liked to think he was consorting with all sorts of men--so he
+beheld coalheavers in their tap-rooms; boxers in their inn-parlours;
+honest citizens disporting in the suburbs or on the river; and he would
+have liked to hob and nob with celebrated pickpockets, or drink a pot of
+ale with a company of burglars and cracksmen, had chance afforded him an
+opportunity of making the acquaintance of this class of society. It was
+good to see the gravity with which Warrington listened to the Tutbury
+Pet or the Brighton Stunner at the Champion's Arms, and behold the
+interest which he took in the coalheaving company assembled at the
+Fox-under-the-Hill. His acquaintance with the public-houses of the
+metropolis and its neighbourhood, and with the frequenters of their
+various parlours, was prodigious. He was the personal friend of the
+landlord and landlady, and welcome to the bar as to the clubroom. He
+liked their society, he said, better than that of his own class, whose
+manners annoyed him, and whose conversation bored him. "In society," he
+used to say, "everybody is the same, wears the same dress, eats and
+drinks, and says the same things; one young dandy at the club talks and
+looks just like another, one Miss at a ball exactly resembles another,
+whereas there's character here. I like to talk with the strongest man in
+England, or the man who can drink the most beer in England, or with that
+tremendous republican of a hatter, who thinks Thistlewood was the
+greatest character in history. I like better gin-and-water than claret. I
+like a sanded floor in Carnaby Market better than a chalked one in
+Mayfair. I prefer Snobs, I own it." Indeed, this gentleman was a social
+republican; and it never entered his head while conversing with Jack and
+Tom that he was in any respect their better; although, perhaps, the
+deference which they paid him might secretly please him.
+
+Pen followed him then to these various resorts of men with great glee and
+assiduity. But he was considerably younger, and therefore much more
+pompous and stately than Warrington, in fact a young prince in disguise,
+visiting the poor of his father's kingdom. They respected him as a high
+chap, a fine fellow, a regular young swell. He had somehow about him an
+air of imperious good-humour, and a royal frankness and majesty, although
+he was only heir-apparent to twopence-halfpenny, and but one in descent
+from a gallypot. If these positions are made for us, we acquiesce in them
+very easily; and are always pretty ready to assume a superiority over
+those who are as good as ourselves. Pen's condescension at this time of
+his life was a fine thing to witness. Amongst men of ability this
+assumption and impertinence passes off with extreme youth: but it is
+curious to watch the conceit of a generous and clever lad--there is
+something almost touching in that early exhibition of simplicity and
+folly.,
+
+So, after reading pretty hard of a morning, and, I fear, not law merely,
+but politics and general history and literature, which were as necessary
+for the advancement and instruction of a young man as mere dry law, after
+applying with tolerable assiduity to letters, to reviews, to elemental
+books of law, and, above all, to the newspaper, until the hour of dinner
+was drawing nigh, these young gentlemen would sally out upon the town
+with great spirits and appetite, and bent upon enjoying a merry night as
+they had passed a pleasant forenoon. It was a jovial time, that of
+four-and-twenty, when every muscle of mind and body was in healthy
+action, when the world was new as yet, and one moved over it spurred
+onwards by good spirits and the delightful capability to enjoy. If ever
+we feel young afterwards, it is with the comrades of that time: the tunes
+we hum in our old age, are those we learned then. Sometimes, perhaps, the
+festivity of that period revives in our memory; but how dingy the
+pleasure-garden has grown, how tattered the garlands look, how scant and
+old the company, and what a number of the lights have gone out since that
+day! Grey hairs have come on like daylight streaming in--daylight and a
+headache with it. Pleasure has gone to bed with the rouge on her cheeks.
+Well, friend, let us walk through the day, sober and sad, but friendly.
+
+I wonder what Laura and Helen would have said, could they have seen, as
+they might not unfrequently have done had they been up and in London, in
+the very early morning when the bridges began to blush in the sunrise,
+and the tranquil streets of the city to shine in the dawn, Mr. Pen and
+Mr. Warrington rattling over the echoing flags towards the Temple, after
+one of their wild nights of carouse--nights wild, but not so wicked as
+such nights sometimes are, for Warrington was a woman-hater; and Pen, as
+we have said, too lofty to stoop to a vulgar intrigue. Our young Prince
+of Fairoaks never could speak to one of the sex but with respectful
+courtesy, and shrank from a coarse word or gesture with instinctive
+delicacy--for though we have seen him fall in love with a fool, as his
+betters and inferiors have done, and as it is probable that he did more
+than once in his life, yet for the time of the delusion it was always as
+a Goddess that he considered her, and chose to wait upon her. Men serve
+women kneeling--when they get on their feet, they go away.
+
+That was what an acquaintance of Pen's said to him in his hard homely
+way;--an old friend with whom he had fallen in again in London--no other
+than honest Mr. Bows of the Chatteris Theatre, who was now employed as
+pianoforte player, to accompany the eminent lyrical talent which nightly
+delighted the public at the Fielding's Head in Covent Garden: and where
+was held the little club called the Back Kitchen.
+
+Numbers of Pen's friends frequented this very merry meeting. The
+Fielding's Head had been a house of entertainment, almost since the time
+when the famous author of 'Tom Jones' presided as magistrate in the
+neighbouring Bow Street; his place was pointed out, and the chair said to
+have been his, still occupied by the president of the night's
+entertainment. The worthy Cutts, the landlord of the Fielding's Head,
+generally occupied this post when not disabled by gout or other illness.
+His jolly appearance and fine voice may be remembered by some of my male
+readers: he used to sing profusely in the course of the harmonic meeting,
+and his songs were of what may be called the British Brandy-and-Water
+School of Song--such as 'The Good Old English Gentleman,' 'Dear Tom, this
+Brown Jug,' and so forth--songs in which pathos and hospitality are
+blended, and the praises of good liquor and the social affections are
+chanted in a baritone voice. The charms of our women, the heroic deeds of
+our naval and military commanders, are often sung in the ballads of this
+school; and many a time in my youth have I admired how Cutts the singer,
+after he had worked us all up to patriotic enthusiasm, by describing the
+way in which the brave Abercrombie received his death-wound, or made us
+join him in tears, which he shed liberally himself, as in faltering
+accents he told how autumn's falling leaf "proclaimed the old man he must
+die"--how Cutts the singer became at once Cutts the landlord, and, before
+the applause which we were making with our fists on his table, in
+compliment to his heart-stirring melody, had died away,--was calling,
+"Now, gentlemen, give your orders, the waiter's in the room--John, a
+champagne cup for Mr. Green. I think, sir, you said sausages and mashed
+potatoes? John, attend on the gentleman."
+
+"And I'll thank ye give me a glass of punch too, John, and take care the
+wather boils," a voice would cry not unfrequently, a well-known voice to
+Pen, which made the lad blush and start when he heard it first--that of
+the venerable Captain Costigan; who was now established in London, and
+one of the great pillars of the harmonic meetings at the Fielding's Head.
+
+The Captain's manners and conversation brought very many young men to the
+place. He was a character, and his fame had begun to spread soon after
+his arrival in the metropolis, and especially after his daughter's
+marriage. He was great in his conversation to the friend for the time
+being (who was the neighbour drinking by his side), about "me daughther."
+He told of her marriage, and of the events previous and subsequent to
+that ceremony; of the carriages she kept; of Mirabel's adoration for her
+and for him; of the hundther pounds which he was at perfect liberty to
+draw from his son-in-law, whenever necessity urged him. And having stated
+that it was his firm intention to "dthraw next Sathurday, I give ye me
+secred word and honour next Sathurday, the fourteenth, when ye'll see the
+money will be handed over to me at Coutts's, the very instant I present
+the cheque," the Captain would not unfrequently propose to borrow a
+half-crown of his friend until the arrival of that day of Greek Calends,
+when, on the honour of an officer and gentleman, he would repee the
+thrifling obligetion.
+
+Sir Charles Mirabel had not that enthusiastic attachment to his
+father-in-law, of which the latter sometimes boasted (although in other
+stages of emotion Cos would inveigh, with tears in his eyes, against the
+ingratitude of the child of his bosom, and the stinginess of the wealthy
+old man who had married her); but the pair had acted not unkindly towards
+Costigan; had settled a small pension on him, which was paid regularly,
+and forestalled with even more regularity by poor Cos; and the period of
+the payments was always well known by his friend at the Fielding's Head,
+whither the honest Captain took care to repair, bank-notes in hand,
+calling loudly for change in the midst of the full harmonic meeting. "I
+think ye'll find that note won't be refused at the Bank of England,
+Cutts, my boy," Captain Costigan would say. "Bows, have a glass? Ye
+needn't stint yourself to-night, anyhow; and a glass of punch will make
+ye play con spirito." For he was lavishly free with his money when it
+came to him, and was scarcely known to button his breeches pocket, except
+when the coin was gone, or sometimes, indeed, when a creditor came by.
+
+It was in one of these moments of exultation that Pen found his old
+friend swaggering at the singers' table at the Back Kitchen of the
+Fielding's Head, and ordering glasses of brandy-and-water for any of his
+acquaintances who made their appearance in the apartment. Warrington, who
+was on confidential terms with the bass singer, made his way up to this
+quarter of the room, and Pen walked at his friend's heels.
+
+Pen started and blushed to see Costigan. He had just come from Lady
+Whiston's party, where he had met and spoken with the Captain's daughter
+again for the first time after very old old days. He came up with
+outstretched hand, very kindly and warmly to greet the old man; still
+retaining a strong remembrance of the time when Costigan's daughter had
+been everything in the world to him. For though this young gentleman may
+have been somewhat capricious in his attachments, and occasionally have
+transferred his affections from one woman to another, yet he always
+respected the place where Love had dwelt, and, like the Sultan of Turkey,
+desired that honours should be paid to the lady towards whom he had once
+thrown the royal pocket-handkerchief. The tipsy Captain returning the
+clasp of Pen's hand with all the strength of a palm which had become very
+shaky by the constant lifting up of weights of brandy-and-water, looked
+hard in Pen's face, and said, "Grecious Heavens, is it possible? Me dear
+boy, me dear fellow, me dear friend;" and then with a look of muddled
+curiosity, fairly broke down with, "I know your face, me dear dear
+friend, but, bedad, I've forgot your name." Five years of constant punch
+had passed since Pen and Costigan met. Arthur was a good deal changed,
+and the Captain may surly be excused for forgetting him; when a man at
+the actual moment sees things double, we may expect that his view of the
+past will be rather muzzy.
+
+Pen saw his condition and laughed, although, perhaps, he was somewhat
+mortified. "Don't you remember me, Captain?" he said. "I am Pendennis--
+Arthur Pendennis, of Chatteris."
+
+The sound of the young man's friendly voice recalled and steadied Cos's
+tipsy remembrance, and he saluted Arthur, as soon as he knew him, with a
+loud volley of friendly greetings. Pen was his dearest boy, his gallant
+young friend, his noble collagian, whom he had held in his inmost heart
+ever since they had parted--how was his fawther, no, his mother, and his
+guardian, the General, the Major? "I preshoom, from your apparance,
+you've come into your prawpertee; and, bedad, yee'll spend it like a man
+of spirit--I'll go bail for that. No? not yet come into your estete? If
+ye want any thrifle, heark ye, there's poor old Jack Costigan has got a
+guinea or two in his pocket--and, be heavens! you shall never want,
+Awthur, me dear boy. What'll ye have? John, come hither, and look aloive;
+give this gentleman a glass of punch, and I'll pay for't.--Your friend?
+I've seen him before. Permit me to have the honour of making meself known
+to ye, sir, and requesting ye'll take a glass of punch."
+
+"I don't envy Sir Charles Mirabel his father-in-law," thought Pendennis.
+"And how is my old friend, Mr. Bows, Captain? Have you any news of him,
+and do you see him still?"
+
+"No doubt he's very well," said the Captain, jingling his money, and
+whistling the air of a song--'The Little Doodeen'--for the singing of
+which he was celebrated at the Fielding's Head. "Me dear boy--I've forgot
+your name again--but my name's Costigan, Jack Costigan, and I'd loike ye
+to take as many tumblers of punch in my name as ever ye loike. Ye know my
+name; I'm not ashamed of it." And so the captain went maundering on.
+
+"It's pay-day with the General," said Mr. Hodgen, the bass singer, with
+whom Warrington was in deep conversation: "and he's a precious deal more
+than half seas over. He has already tried that 'Little Doodeen' of his,
+and broke it, too, just before I sang 'King Death.' Have you heard my new
+song, 'The Body Snatcher,' Mr. Warrington?--angcored at Saint
+Bartholomew's the other night--composed expressly for me. Per'aps you or
+your friend would like a copy of the song, sir? John, just 'ave the
+kyndness to 'and over a 'Body Snatcher' 'ere, will yer?--There's a
+portrait of me, sir, as I sing it--as the Snatcher--considered rather
+like."
+
+"Thank you," said Warrington; "heard it nine times--know it by heart,
+Hodgen."
+
+Here the gentleman who presided at the pianoforte began to play upon his
+instrument, and Pen, looking in the direction of the music, beheld that
+very Mr. Bows, for whom he had been asking but now, and whose existence
+Costigan had momentarily forgotten. The little old man sate before the
+battered piano (which had injured its constitution wofully by sitting up
+so many nights, and spoke with a voice, as it were, at once hoarse and
+faint), and accompanied the singers, or played with taste and grace in
+the intervals of the songs.
+
+Bows had seen and recollected Pen at once when the latter came into the
+room, and had remarked the eager warmth of the young man's recognition of
+Costigan. He now began to play an air, which Pen instantly remembered as
+one which used to be sung by the chorus of villagers in 'The Stranger,'
+just before Mrs. Haller came in. It shook Pen as he heard it. He
+remembered how his heart used to beat as that air was played, and before
+the divine Emily made her entry. Nobody, save Arthur, too any notice of
+old Bows's playing: it was scarcely heard amidst the clatter of knives
+and forks, the calls for poached eggs and kidneys, and the tramp of
+guests and waiters.
+
+Pen went up and kindly shook the player by the hand at the end of his
+performance; and Bows greeted Arthur with great respect and cordiality.
+"What, you haven't forgot the old tune, Mr. Pendennis?" he said; "I
+thought you'd remember it. I take it, it was the first tune of that sort
+you ever heard played--wasn't it, sir? You were quite a young chap then.
+I fear the Captain's very bad to-night. He breaks out on a pay-day; and I
+shall have the deuce's own trouble in getting home. We live together. We
+still hang on, sir, in partnership, though Miss Em--though my lady
+Mirabel has left the firm.--And so you remember old times, do you? Wasn't
+she a beauty, sir?--Your health and my service to you,"--and he took a
+sip at the pewter measure of porter which stood by his side as he played.
+
+Pen had many opportunities of seeing his early acquaintance afterwards,
+and of renewing his relations with Costigan and the old musician.
+
+As they sate thus in friendly colloquy, men of all sorts and conditions
+entered and quitted the house of entertainment; and Pen had the pleasure
+of seeing as many different persons of his race, as the most eager
+observer need desire to inspect. Healthy country tradesmen and farmers,
+in London for their business, came and recreated themselves with the
+jolly singing and suppers of the Back Kitchen,--squads of young
+apprentices and assistants, the shutters being closed over the scene of
+their labours, came hither for fresh air doubtless,--rakish young medical
+students, gallant, dashing, what is called "loudly" dressed, and (must it
+be owned?) somewhat dirty,--were here smoking and drinking, and
+vociferously applauding the songs; young university bucks were to be
+found here, too, with that indescribable genteel simper which is only
+learned at the knees of Alma Mater;--and handsome young guardsmen, and
+florid bucks from the St. James's Street Clubs--nay, senators English and
+Irish; and even members of the House of Peers.
+
+The bass singer had made an immense hit with his song of 'The Body
+Snatcher,' and the town rushed to listen to it. The curtain drew aside,
+and Mr. Hodgen appeared in the character of the Snatcher, sitting on a
+coffin, with a flask of gin before him, with a spade, and a candle stuck
+in a skull. The song was sung with a really admirable terrific humour.
+The singer's voice went down so low, that its grumbles rumbled into the
+hearer's awe-stricken soul; and in the chorus he clamped with his spade,
+and gave a demoniac "Ha! ha!" which caused the very glasses to quiver on
+the table, as with terror. None of the other singers, not even Cutts
+himself, as that high-minded man owned, could stand up before the
+Snatcher, and he commonly used to retire to Mrs. Cutts's private
+apartments, or into the bar, before that fatal song extinguished him.
+Poor Cos's ditty, 'The Little Doodeen,' which Bows accompanied charmingly
+on the piano, was sung but to a few admirers, who might choose to remain
+after the tremendous resurrectionist chant. The room was commonly emptied
+after that, or only left in possession of a very few and persevering
+votaries of pleasure.
+
+Whilst Pen and his friend were sitting here together one night, or rather
+morning, two habitues of the house entered almost together. "Mr. Hoolan
+and Mr. Doolan," whispered Warrington to Pen, saluting these gentlemen,
+and in the latter Pen recognised his friend of the Alacrity coach, who
+could not dine with Pen on the day on which the latter had invited him,
+being compelled by his professional duties to decline dinner-engagements
+on Fridays, he had stated, with his compliments to Mr. Pendennis.
+
+Doolan's paper, the Dawn, was lying on the table much bestained by
+porter, and cheek-by-jowl with Hoolan's paper, which we shall call the
+Day; the Dawn was Liberal--the Day was ultra-Conservative. Many of our
+journals are officered by Irish gentlemen, and their gallant brigade does
+the penning among us, as their ancestors used to transact the fighting in
+Europe; and engage under many a flag, to be good friends when the battle
+is over.
+
+"Kidneys, John, and a glass of stout," says Hoolan. "How are you, Morgan?
+how's Mrs. Doolan?"
+
+"Doing pretty well, thank ye, Mick, my boy--faith she's accustomed to
+it," said Doolan. "How's the lady that owns ye? Maybe I'll step down
+Sunday, and have a glass of punch, Kilburn way."
+
+"Don't bring Patsey with you, Mick, for our Georgy's got the measles,"
+said the friendly Morgan, and they straightway fell to talk about matters
+connected with their trade--about the foreign mails--about who was
+correspondent at Paris, and who wrote from Madrid--about the expense the
+Morning Journal was at in sending couriers, about the circulation of the
+Evening Star, and so forth.
+
+Warrington, laughing, took the Dawn which was lying before him, and
+pointed to one of the leading articles in that journal, which commenced
+thus--
+
+"As rogues of note in former days who had some wicked work to perform,--
+an enemy to be put out of the way, a quantity of false coin to be passed,
+a lie to be told or a murder to be done--employed a professional perjurer
+or assassin to do the work, which they were themselves too notorious or
+too cowardly to execute: our notorious contemporary, the Day, engages
+smashers out of doors to utter forgeries against individuals, and calls
+in auxiliary cut-throats to murder the reputation of those who offend
+him. A black-vizarded ruffian (whom we will unmask), who signs the forged
+name of Trefoil, is at present one of the chief bravoes and bullies in
+our contemporary's establishment. He is the eunuch who brings the
+bowstring, and strangles at the order of the Day. We can convict this
+cowardly slave, and propose to do so. The charge which he has brought
+against Lord Bangbanagher, because he is a Liberal Irish peer, and
+against the Board of Poor Law Guardians of the Bangbanagher Union, is,"
+etc.
+
+"How did they like the article at your place, Mick?" asked Morgan; "when
+the Captain puts his hand to it he's a tremendous hand at a smasher. He
+wrote the article in two hours--in--whew--you know where, while the boy
+was waiting."
+
+"Our governor thinks the public don't mind a straw about these newspaper
+rows, and has told the Docthor to stop answering," said the other. "Them
+two talked it out together in my room. The Docthor would have liked a
+turn, for he says it's such easy writing, and requires no reading up of a
+subject: but the governor put a stopper on him."
+
+"The taste for eloquence is going out, Mick," said Morgan.
+
+"'Deed then it is, Morgan," said Mick. "That was fine writing when the
+Docthor wrote in the Phaynix, and he and Condy Roony blazed away at each
+other day after day."
+
+"And with powder and shot, too, as well as paper," says Morgan, "Faith,
+the Docthor was out twice, and Condy Roony winged his man."
+
+"They are talking about Doctor Boyne and Captain Shandon," Warrington
+said, "who are the two Irish controversialists of the Dawn and the Day,
+Dr. Boyne being the Protestant champion and Captain Shandon the Liberal
+orator. They are the best friends in the world, I believe, in spite of
+their newspaper controversies; and though they cry out against the
+English for abusing their country, by Jove they abuse it themselves more
+in a single article than we should take the pains to do in a dozen
+volumes. How are you, Doolan?"
+
+"Your servant, Mr. Warrington--Mr. Pendennis, I am delighted to have the
+honour of seeing ye again. The night's journey on the top of the Alacrity
+was one of the most agreeable I ever enjoyed in my life, and it was your
+liveliness and urbanity that made the trip so charming. I have often
+thought over that happy night, sir, and talked over it to Mrs. Doolan. I
+have seen your elegant young friend, Mr. Foker, too, here, sir, not
+unfrequently. He is an occasional frequenter of this hostelry, and a
+right good one it is. Mr. Pendennis, when I saw you I was on the Tom and
+Jerry Weekly Paper; I have now the honour to be sub-editor of the Dawn,
+one of the best-written papers of the empire"--and he bowed very slightly
+to Mr. Warrington. His speech was unctuous and measured, his courtesy
+oriental, his tone, when talking with the two Englishmen, quite different
+to that with which he spoke to his comrade.
+
+"Why the devil will the fellow compliment so?" growled Warrington, with a
+sneer which he hardly took the pains to suppress. "Psha--who comes here?
+--all Parnassus is abroad to-night: here's Archer. We shall have some
+fun. Well, Archer, House up?"
+
+"Haven't been there. I have been," said Archer, with an air of mystery,
+"where I was wanted. Get me some supper, John--something substantial. I
+hate your grandees who give you nothing to eat. If it had been at Apsley
+House, it would have been quite different. The Duke knows what I like,
+and says to the Groom of the Chambers, 'Martin, you will have some cold
+beef, not too much done, and a pint bottle of pale ale, and some brown
+sherry, ready in my study as usual;--Archer is coming here this evening.'
+The Duke doesn't eat supper himself, but he likes to see a man enjoy a
+hearty meal, and he knows that I dine early. A man can't live upon air,
+be hanged to him."
+
+"Let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Pendennis," Warrington said, with
+great gravity. "Pen, this is Mr Archer, whom you have heard me talk
+about. You must know Pen's uncle, the Major, Archer, you who know
+everybody?"
+
+"Dined with him the day before yesterday at Gaunt House," Archer said.
+"We were four--the French Ambassador, Steyne, and we two commoners."
+
+"Why, my uncle is in Scot----" Pen was going to break out, but Warrington
+pressed his foot under the table as a signal for him to be quiet.
+
+"It was about the same business that I have been to the palace to-night,"
+Archer went on simply, "and where I've been kept four hours, in an
+anteroom, with nothing but yesterday's Times, which I knew by heart, as I
+wrote three of the leading articles myself; and though the Lord
+Chamberlain came in four times, and once holding the royal teacup and
+saucer in his hand, he did not so much as say to me, 'Archer, will you
+have a cup of tea?'"
+
+"Indeed! what is in the wind now?" asked Warrington--and turning to Pen,
+added, "You know, I suppose, that when there is anything wrong at Court
+they always send for Archer."
+
+"There is something wrong," said Mr. Archer, "and as the story will be
+all over the town in a day or two I don't mind telling it. At the last
+Chantilly races, where I rode Brian Boru for my old friend the Duke de
+Saint Cloud--the old King said to me, Archer, I'm uneasy about Saint
+Cloud. I have arranged his marriage with the Princess Marie Cunegonde;
+the peace of Europe depends upon it--for Russia will declare war if the
+marriage does not take place, and the young fool is so mad about Madame
+Massena, Marshal Massena's wife, that he actually refuses to be a party
+to the marriage. Well, Sir, I spoke to Saint Cloud, and having got him
+into pretty good humour by winning the race, and a good bit of money into
+the bargain, he said to me, 'Archer, tell the Governor I'll think of
+it.'"
+
+"How do you say Governor in French?" asked Pen, who piqued himself on
+knowing that language.
+
+"Oh, we speak in English--I taught him when we were boys, and I saved his
+life at Twickenham, when he fell out of a punt," Archer said. "I shall
+never forget the Queen's looks as I brought him out of the water. She
+gave me this diamond ring, and always calls me Charles to this day."
+
+"Madame Massena must be rather an old woman, Archer," Warrington said.
+
+"Dev'lish old--old enough to be his grandmother; I told him so," Archer
+answered at once. "But those attachments for old women are the deuce and
+all. That's what the King feels: that's what shocks the poor Queen so
+much. They went away from Paris last Tuesday night, and are living at
+this present moment at Jaunay's Hotel."
+
+"Has there been a private marriage, Archer?" asked Warrington.
+
+"Whether there has or not I don't know," Mr. Archer replied, "all I know
+is that I was kept waiting for four hours at the palace; that I never saw
+a man in such a state of agitation as the King of Belgium when he came
+out to speak to me, and that I'm devilish hungry--and here comes some
+supper."
+
+"He has been pretty well to-night," said Warrington, as the pair went
+home together: "but I have known him in much greater force, and keeping a
+whole room in a state of wonder. Put aside his archery practice, that man
+is both able and honest--a good man of business, an excellent friend,
+admirable to his family as husband, father, and son."
+
+"What is it makes him pull the long bow in that wonderful manner?"
+
+"An amiable insanity," answered Warrington. "He never did anybody harm by
+his talk, or said evil of anybody. He is a stout politician too, and
+would never write a word or do an act against his party, as many of us
+do."
+
+"Of us! Who are we?" asked Pen. "Of what profession is Mr. Archer?"
+
+"Of the Corporation of the Goosequill--of the Press, my boy," said
+Warrington; "of the fourth estate."
+
+"Are you, too, of the craft, then?" Pendennis said.
+
+"We will talk about that another time," answered the other. They were
+passing through the Strand as they talked, and by a newspaper office,
+which was all lighted up and bright. Reporters were coming out of the
+place, or rushing up to it in cabs; there were lamps burning in the
+editors' rooms, and above where the compositors were at work: the windows
+of the building were in a blaze of gas.
+
+"Look at that, Pen," Warrington said. "There she is--the great engine--
+she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world--
+her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, and
+her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are ubiquitous. Yonder
+journal has an agent, at this minute, giving bribes at Madrid; and
+another inspecting the price of potatoes in Covent Garden. Look! here
+comes the Foreign Express galloping in. They will be able to give news to
+Downing Street to-morrow: funds will rise or fall, fortunes be made or
+lost; Lord B. will get up, and, holding the paper in his hand, and seeing
+the noble marquis in his place, will make a great speech; and--and Mr.
+Doolan will be called away from his supper at the Back Kitchen; for he is
+foreign sub-editor, and sees the mail on the newspaper sheet before he
+goes to his own."
+
+And so talking, the friends turned into their chambers, as the dawn was
+beginning to peep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+In which the Printer's Devil comes to the Door
+
+
+Pen, in the midst of his revels and enjoyments, humble as they were, and
+moderate in cost if not in kind, saw an awful sword hanging over him
+which must drop down before long and put an end to his frolics and
+feasting. His money was very nearly spent. His club subscription had
+carried away a third part of it. He had paid for the chief articles of
+furniture with which he had supplied his little bedroom: in fine, he was
+come to the last five-pound note in his pocket-book, and could think of
+no method of providing a successor: for our friend had been bred up like
+a young prince as yet, or as a child in arms whom his mother feeds when
+it cries out.
+
+Warrington did not know what his comrade's means were. An only child,
+with a mother at her country house, and an old dandy of an uncle who
+dined with a great man every day, Pen might have a large bank at his
+command for anything that the other knew. He had gold chains and a
+dressing-case fit for a lord. His habits were those of an aristocrat,--
+not that he was expensive upon any particular point, for he dined and
+laughed over the pint of porter and the plate of beef from the cook's
+shop with perfect content and good appetite,--but he could not adopt the
+penny-wise precautions of life. He could not give twopence to a waiter;
+he could not refrain from taking a cab if he had a mind to do so, or if
+it rained, and as surely as he took the cab he overpaid the driver. He
+had a scorn for cleaned gloves and minor economies. Had he been bred to
+ten thousand a year he could scarcely have been more free-handed; and for
+a beggar, with a sad story, or a couple of pretty piteous-faced children,
+he never could resist putting his hand into his pocket. It was a
+sumptuous nature, perhaps, that could not be brought to regard money; a
+natural generosity and kindness; and possibly a petty vanity that was
+pleased with praise, even with the praise of waiters and cabmen. I doubt
+whether the wisest of us know what our own motives are, and whether some
+of the actions of which we are the very proudest will not surprise us
+when we trace them, as we shall one day, to their source.
+
+Warrington then did not know, and Pen had not thought proper to confide
+to his friend, his pecuniary history. That Pen had been wild and wickedly
+extravagant at college, the other was aware; everybody at college was
+extravagant and wild; but how great the son's expenses had been, and how
+small the mother's means, were points which had not been as yet submitted
+to Mr. Warrington's examination.
+
+At last the story came out, while Pen was grimly surveying the change for
+the last five-pound note, as it lay upon the tray from the public-house
+by Mr. Warrington's pot of ale.
+
+"It is the last rose of summer," said Pen; "its blooming companions have
+gone long ago; and behold the last one of the garland has shed its
+leaves;" and he told Warrington the whole story which we know of his
+mother's means, of his own follies, of Laura's generosity; during which
+time Warrington smoked his pipe and listened intent.
+
+"Impecuniosity will do you good," Pen's friend said, knocking out the
+ashes at the end of the narration; "I don't know anything more wholesome
+for a man--for an honest man, mind you--for another, the medicine loses
+its effect--than a state of tick. It is an alterative and a tonic; it
+keeps your moral man in a perpetual state of excitement: as a man who is
+riding at a fence, or has his opponent's single-stick before him, is
+forced to look his obstacle steadily in the face, and braces himself to
+repulse or overcome it; a little necessity brings out your pluck if you
+have any, and nerves you to grapple with fortune. You will discover what
+a number of things you can do without when you have no money to buy them.
+You won't want new gloves and varnished boots, eau de Cologne and cabs to
+ride in. You have been bred up as a molly-coddle, Pen, and spoilt by the
+women. A single man who has health and brains, and can't find a
+livelihood in the world, doesn't deserve to stay there. Let him pay his
+last halfpenny and jump over Waterloo Bridge. Let him steal a leg of
+mutton and be transported and get out of the country--he is not fit to
+live in it. Dixi; I have spoken. Give us another pull at the pale ale.
+
+"You have certainly spoken; but how is one to live?" said Pen. "There is
+beef and bread in plenty in England, but you must pay for it with work or
+money. And who will take my work? and what work can I do?"
+
+Warrington burst out laughing. "Suppose we advertise in the Times," he
+said, "for an usher's place at a classical and commercial academy--A
+gentleman, B.A. of St. Boniface College, and who was plucked for his
+degree--"
+
+"Confound you," cried Pen.
+
+"--Wishes to give lessons in classics and mathematics, and the rudiments
+of the French language; he can cut hair, attend to the younger pupils,
+and play a second on the piano with the daughters of the principal.
+Address A. P., Lamb Court, Temple."
+
+"Go on," said Pen, growling.
+
+"Men take to all sorts of professions. Why, there is your friend
+Bloundell-Bloundell is a professional blackleg, and travels the
+Continent, where he picks up young gentlemen of fashion and fleeces them.
+There is Bob O'Toole, with whom I was at school, who drives the
+Ballynafad mail now, and carries honest Jack Finucane's own
+correspondence to that city. I know a man, sir, a, doctor's son, like--
+well, don't be angry, I meant nothing offensive--a doctor's son, I say,
+who was walking the hospitals here, and quarrelled with his governor on
+questions of finance, and what did he do when he came to his last
+five-pound note? he let his mustachios grow, went into a provincial town,
+where he announced himself as Professor Spineto, chiropodist to the
+Emperor of All the Russians, and by a happy operation on the editor of
+the country newspaper, established himself in practice, and lived
+reputably for three years. He has been reconciled to his family, and
+has succeeded to his father's gallypots."
+
+"Hang gallypots," cried Pen. "I can't drive a coach, cut corns, or cheat
+at cards. There's nothing else you propose."
+
+"Yes; there's our own correspondent," Warrington said. "Every man has his
+secrets, look you. Before you told me the story of your money-matters, I
+had no idea but that you were a gentleman of fortune, for, with your
+confounded airs and appearance, anybody would suppose you to be so. From
+what you tell me about your mother's income, it is clear that you must
+not lay any more hands on it. You can't go on spunging upon the women.
+You must pay off that trump of a girl. Laura is her name?--here is your
+health, Laura!--and carry a hod rather than ask for a shilling from
+home."
+
+"But how earn one?" asked Pen.
+
+"How do I live, think you?" said the other. "On my younger brother's
+allowance, Pendennis? I have secrets of my own, my boy;" and here
+Warrington's countenance fell. "I made away with that allowance five
+years ago: if I had made away with myself a little time before, it would
+have been better. I have played off my own bat, ever since. I don't want
+much money. When my purse is out, I go to work and fill it, and then lie
+idle like a serpent or an Indian, until I have digested the mass. Look, I
+begin to feel empty," Warrington said, and showed Pen a long lean purse,
+with but a few sovereigns at one end of it.
+
+"But how do you fill it?" said Pen.
+
+"I write," said Warrington. "I don't tell the world that I do so," he
+added, with a blush. "I do not choose that questions should be asked: or,
+perhaps, I am an ass, and don't wish it to be said that George Warrington
+writes for bread. But I write in the Law Reviews: look here, these
+articles are mine." And he turned over some sheets. "I write in a
+newspaper now and then, of which a friend of mine is editor." And
+Warrington, going with Pendennis to the club one day, called for a file
+of the Dawn, and pointed with his finger silently to one or two articles,
+which Pen read with delight. He had no difficulty in recognising the
+style afterwards--the strong thoughts and curt periods, the sense, the
+satire, and the scholarship.
+
+"I am not up to this," said Pen, with a genuine admiration of his
+friend's powers. "I know very little about politics or history,
+Warrington; and have but a smattering of letters. I can't fly upon such a
+wing as yours."
+
+"But you can on your own, my boy, which is lighter, and soars higher,
+perhaps," the other said, good-naturedly. "Those little scraps and verses
+which I have seen of yours show me, what is rare in these days, a natural
+gift, sir. You needn't blush, you conceited young jackanapes. You have
+thought so yourself any time these ten years. You have got the sacred
+flame--a little of the real poetical fire, sir, I think; and all our
+oil-lamps are nothing compared to that, though ever so well trimmed. You
+are a poet, Pen, my boy," and so speaking, Warrington stretched out his
+broad hand, and clapped Pen on the shoulder.
+
+Arthur was so delighted that the tears came into his eyes. "How kind you
+are to me, Warrington!" he said.
+
+"I like you, old boy," said the other. "I was dev'lish lonely in
+chambers, and wanted somebody, and the sight of your honest face somehow
+pleased me. I liked the way you laughed at Lowton--that poor good little
+snob. And, in fine, the reason why I cannot tell--but so it is, young
+'un. I'm alone in the world, sir; and I wanted some one to keep me
+company;" and a glance of extreme kindness and melancholy passed out of
+Warrington's dark eyes.
+
+Pen was too much pleased with his own thoughts to perceive the sadness of
+the friend who was complimenting him. "Thank you, Warrington," he said,
+"thank you for your friendship to me, and--and what you say about me. I
+have often thought I was a poet. I will be one--I think I am one, as you
+say so, though the world mayn't. Is it--is it the Ariadne in Naxos which
+you liked (I was only eighteen when I wrote it), or the Prize Poem?"
+
+Warrington burst into a roar of laughter. "Why, young goose," he yelled
+out--"of all the miserable weak rubbish I ever tried, Ariadne in Naxos is
+the most mawkish and disgusting. The Prize Poem is so pompous and feeble,
+that I'm positively surprised, sir, it didn't get the medal. You don't
+suppose that you are a serious poet, do you, and are going to cut out
+Milton and Aeschylus? Are you setting up to be a Pindar, you absurd
+little tom-tit, and fancy you have the strength and pinion which the
+Theban eagle bear, sailing with supreme dominion through the azure fields
+of air? No, my boy, I think you can write a magazine article, and turn a
+pretty copy of verses; that's what I think of you."
+
+"By Jove!" said Pen, bouncing up and stamping his foot, "I'll show you
+that I am a better man than you think for."
+
+Warrington only laughed the more, and blew twenty-four puffs rapidly out
+of his pipe by way of reply to Pen.
+
+An opportunity for showing his skill presented itself before very long.
+That eminent publisher, Mr. Bacon (formerly Bacon and Bungay) of
+Paternoster Row, besides being the proprietor of the legal Review, in
+which Mr. Warrington wrote, and of other periodicals of note and gravity,
+used to present to the world every year a beautiful gilt volume called
+the Spring Annual, edited by the Lady Violet Lebas, and numbering amongst
+its contributors not only the most eminent, but the most fashionable,
+poets of our time. Young Lord Dodo's poems first appeared in this
+miscellany--the Honourable Percy Popjoy, whose chivalrous ballads have
+obtained him such a reputation--Bedwin Sands's Eastern Ghazuls, and many
+more of the works of our young nobles, were fast given to the world in
+the Spring Annual, which has since shared the fate of other vernal
+blossoms, and perished out of the world. The book was daintily
+illustrated with pictures of reigning beauties, or other prints of a
+tender and voluptuous character; and, as these plates were prepared long
+beforehand, requiring much time in engraving, it was the eminent poets
+who had to write to the plates, and not the painters who illustrated the
+poems.
+
+One day, just when this volume was on the eve of publication, it chanced
+that Mr. Warrington called in Paternoster Row to talk with Mr. Hack, Mr.
+Bacon's reader and general manager of publications--for Mr. Bacon, not
+having the least taste in poetry or in literature of any kind, wisely
+employed the services of a professional gentleman. Warrington, then,
+going into Mr. Hack's room on business of his own, found that gentleman
+with a bundle of proof plates and sheets of the Spring Annual before him,
+and glanced at some of them.
+
+Percy Popjoy had written some verses to illustrate one of the pictures,
+which was called The Church Porch. A Spanish damsel was hastening to
+church with a large prayer-book; a youth in a cloak was hidden in a niche
+watching this young woman. The picture was pretty: but the great genius
+of Percy Popjoy had deserted him, for he had made the most execrable
+verses which ever were perpetrated by a young nobleman.
+
+Warrington burst out laughing as he read the poem: and Mr. Hack laughed
+too but with rather a rueful face.--"It won't do," he said, "the public
+won't stand it. Bungay's people are going to bring out a very good book,
+and have set up Miss Bunyan against Lady Violet. We have most titles to
+be sure--but the verses are too bad. Lady Violet herself owns it; she's
+busy with her own poem; what's to be done? We can't lose the plate. The
+governor gave sixty pounds for it."
+
+"I know a fellow who would do some verses, I think," said Warrington.
+"Let me take the plate home in my pocket: and send to my chambers in the
+morning for the verses. You'll pay well, of course."
+
+"Of course," said Mr. Hack; and Warrington, having despatched his own
+business, went home to Mr. Pen, plate in hand.
+
+"Now, boy, here's a chance for you. Turn me off a copy of verses to
+this."
+
+"What's this? A Church Porch--A lady entering it, and a youth out of a
+wine-shop window ogling her.--What the deuce am I to do with it?"
+
+"Try," said Warrington. "Earn your livelihood for once, you who long so
+to do it."
+
+"Well, I will try," said Pen.
+
+"And I'll go out to dinner," said Warrington, and left Mr. Pen in a brown
+study.
+
+When Warrington came home that night, at a very late hour, the verses
+were done. "There they are," said Pen. "I've screwed 'em out at last. I
+think they'll do."
+
+"I think, they will," said Warrington, after reading them; they ran as
+follows:--
+
+
+       The Church Porch
+
+    Although I enter not,
+    Yet round about the spot
+       Sometimes I hover,
+    And at the sacred gate,
+    With longing eyes I wait,
+       Expectant of her.
+
+    The Minster bell tolls out
+    Above the city's rout
+       And noise and humming
+    They've stopp'd the chiming bell,
+    I hear the organ's swell
+       She's coming, she's coming!
+
+    My lady comes at last,
+    Timid and stepping fast,
+       And hastening hither,
+    With modest eyes downcast.
+    She comes--she's here--she's past.
+       May Heaven go with her!
+
+    Kneel undisturb'd, fair saint,
+    Pour out your praise or plaint
+       Meekly and duly.
+    I will not enter there,
+    To sully your pure prayer
+       With thoughts unruly.
+
+    But suffer me to pace
+    Round the forbidden place,
+       Lingering a minute,
+    Like outcast spirits, who wait
+    And see through Heaven's gate
+       Angels within it.
+
+"Have you got any more, young fellow?" asked Warrington. "We must make
+them give you a couple of guineas a page; and if the verses are liked,
+why, you'll get an entree into Bacon's magazines, and may turn a decent
+penny."
+
+Pen examined his portfolio and found another ballad which he thought
+might figure with advantage in the Spring Annual, and consigning these
+two precious documents to Warrington, the pair walked from the Temple to
+the famous haunt of the Muses and their masters, Paternoster Row. Bacon's
+shop was an ancient low-browed building, with a few of the books
+published by the firm displayed in the windows, under a bust of my Lord
+of Verulam, and the name of Mr. Bacon in brass on the private door.
+Exactly opposite to Bacon's house was that of Mr. Bungay, which was newly
+painted and elaborately decorated in the style of the seventeenth
+century, so that you might have fancied stately Mr. Evelyn passing over
+the threshold, or curious Mr. Pepys examining the books in the window.
+Warrington went into the shop of Mr. Bacon, but Pen stayed without. It
+was agreed that his ambassador should act for him entirely; and the young
+fellow paced up and down the street in a very nervous condition, until he
+should learn the result of the negotiation. Many a poor devil before him
+has trodden those flags, with similar cares and anxieties at his heels,
+his bread and his fame dependent upon the sentence of his magnanimous
+patrons of the Row. Pen looked at all the wonders of all the shops, and
+the strange variety of literature which they exhibit. In this were
+displayed black-letter volumes and books in the clear pale types of Aldus
+and Elzevir: in the next, you might see the Penny Horrific Register; the
+Halfpenny Annals of Crime and History of the most celebrated murderers of
+all countries, The Raff's Magazine, The Larky Swell, and other
+publications of the penny press; whilst at the next window, portraits of
+ill-favoured individuals, with fac-similes of the venerated signatures of
+the Reverend Grimes Wapshot, the Reverend Elias Howle, and the works
+written and the sermons preached by them, showed the British Dissenter
+where he could find mental pabulum. Hard by would be a little casement
+hung with emblems, with medals and rosaries with little paltry prints of
+saints gilt and painted, and books of controversial theology, by which
+the faithful of the Roman opinion might learn a short way to deal with
+Protestants, at a penny apiece, or ninepence the dozen for distribution;
+whilst in the very next window you might see 'Come out of Rome,' a sermon
+preached at the opening of the Shepherd's Bush College, by John Thomas
+Lord Bishop of Ealing. Scarce an opinion but has its expositor and its
+place of exhibition in this peaceful old Paternoster Row, under the toll
+of the bells of Saint Paul.
+
+Pen looked in at all the windows and shops, as a gentleman who is going
+to have an interview with the dentist examines the books on the
+waiting-room table. He remembered them afterwards. It seemed to him that
+Warrington would never come out; and indeed the latter was engaged for
+some time in pleading his friend's cause.
+
+Pen's natural conceit would have swollen immensely if he could but have
+heard the report which Warrington gave of him. It happened that Mr. Bacon
+himself had occasion to descend to Mr. Hack's room whilst Warrington was
+talking there, and Warrington, knowing Bacon's weaknesses, acted upon
+them with great adroitness in his friend's behalf. In the first place, he
+put on his hat to speak to Bacon, and addressed him from the table on
+which he seated himself. Bacon liked to be treated with rudeness by a
+gentleman, and used to pass it on to his inferiors as boys pass the mark.
+"What! not know Mr. Pendennis, Mr. Bacon?" Warrington said. "You can't
+live much in the world, or you would know him. A man of property in the
+West, of one of the most ancient families in England, related to half the
+nobility in the empire--he's cousin to Lord Pontypool--he was one of the
+most distinguished men at Oxbridge; he dines at Gaunt House every week."
+
+"Law bless me, you don't say so, sir. Well--really--Law bless me now,"
+said Mr. Bacon.
+
+"I have just been showing Mr. Hack some of his verses, which he sat up
+last night, at my request, to write; and Hack talks about giving him a
+copy of the book--the what-d'-you-call-'em."
+
+"Law bless me now, does he? The what-d'-you-call-'em. Indeed!"
+
+"'The Spring Annual' is its name,--as payment for those verses. You don't
+suppose that such a man as Mr. Arthur Pendennis gives up a dinner at
+Gaunt House for nothing? You know as well as anybody, that the men of
+fashion want to be paid."
+
+"That they do, Mr. Warrington, sir," said the publisher.
+
+"I tell you he's a star; he'll make a name, sir. He's a new man, sir."
+
+"They've said that of so many of those young swells, Mr. Warrington," the
+publisher interposed, with a sigh. "There was Lord Viscount Dodo, now; I
+gave his Lordship a good bit of money for his poems, and only sold eighty
+copies. Mr. Popjoy's Hadgincourt, sir, fell dead."
+
+"Well, then, I'll take my man over to Bungay," Warrington said, and rose
+from the table. This threat was too much for Mr. Bacon, who was instantly
+ready to accede to any reasonable proposal of Mr. Warrington's, and
+finally asked his manager what those proposals were? When he heard that
+the negotiation only related as yet to a couple of ballads, which Mr.
+Warrington offered for the Spring Annual, Mr. Bacon said, "Law bless you,
+give him a check directly;" and with this paper Warrington went out to
+his friend, and placed it, grinning, in Pen's hands. Pen was as elated as
+if somebody had left him a fortune. He offered Warrington a dinner at
+Richmond instantly. "What should he go and buy for Laura and his mother?
+He must buy something for them."
+
+"They'll like the book better than anything else," said Warrington, "with
+the young one's name to the verses, printed among the swells."
+
+"Thank God! thank God!" cried Arthur, "I needn't be a charge upon the old
+mother. I can pay off Laura now. I can get my own living. I can make my
+own way."
+
+"I can marry the grand vizier's daughter: I can purchase a house in
+Belgrave Square; I can build a fine castle in the air!" said Warrington,
+pleased with the other's exultation. "Well, you may get bread and cheese,
+Pen: and I own it tastes well, the bread which you earn yourself."
+
+They had a magnum of claret at dinner at the club that day, at Pen's
+charges. It was long since he had indulged in such a luxury, but
+Warrington would not baulk him: and they drank together to the health of
+the Spring Annual.
+
+It never rains but it pours, according to the proverb; so very speedily
+another chance occurred, by which Mr. Pen was to be helped in his scheme
+of making a livelihood. Warrington one day threw him a letter across the
+table, which was brought by a printer's boy, "from Captain Shandon, sir"
+--the little emissary said: and then went and fell asleep on his
+accustomed bench in the passage. He paid many a subsequent visit there,
+and brought many a message to Pen.
+
+F. P. Tuesday Morning.
+
+"MY DEAR SIR,--Bungay will be here to-day, about the Pall Mall Gazette.
+You would be the very man to help us with a genuine West-end article,--
+you understand--dashing, trenchant, and d---- aristocratic. Lady Hipshaw
+will write; but she's not much you know, and we've two lords; but the
+less they do the better. We must have you. We'll give you your own terms,
+and we'll make a hit with the Gazette.
+
+"Shall B. come and see you, or can you look in upon me here?--Ever yours,
+                                                                C. S."
+
+"Some more opposition," Warrington said, when Pen had read the note.
+"Bungay and Bacon are at daggers drawn; each married the sister of the
+other, and they were for some time the closest friends and partners. Hack
+says it was Mrs. Bungay who caused all the mischief between the two;
+whereas Shandon, who reads for Bungay a good deal, says Mrs. Bacon did
+the business; but I don't know which is right, Peachum or Lockit. But
+since they have separated, it is a furious war between the two
+publishers; and no sooner does one bring out a book of travels, or poems,
+a magazine or periodical, quarterly, or monthly, or weekly, or annual,
+but the rival is in the field with something similar. I have heard poor
+Shandon tell with great glee how he made Bungay give a grand dinner at
+Blackwall to all his writers, by saying that Bacon had invited his corps
+to an entertainment at Greenwich. When Bungay engaged your celebrated
+friend Mr. Wagg to edit the 'Londoner,' Bacon straightway rushed off and
+secured Mr. Grindle to give his name to the 'Westminster Magazine.' When
+Bacon brought out his comic Irish novel of 'Barney Brallaghan,' off went
+Bungay to Dublin, and produced his rollicking Hibernian story of 'Looney
+MacTwolter.' When Doctor Hicks brought out his 'Wanderings in
+Mesopotamia' under Bacon's auspices, Bungay produced Professor Sandiman's
+'Researches in Zahara;' and Bungay is publishing his 'Pall Mall Gazette'
+as a counterpoise to Bacon's 'Whitehall Review.' Let us go and hear about
+the 'Gazette.' There may be a place for you in it, Pen, my boy. We will
+go and see Shandon. We are sure to find him at home."
+
+"Where does he live?" asked Pen.
+
+"In the Fleet Prison," Warrington said. "And very much at home he is
+there, too. He is the king of the place."
+
+Pen had never seen this scene of London life, and walked with no small
+interest in at the grim gate of that dismal edifice. They went through
+the anteroom, where the officers and janitors of the place were seated,
+and passing in at the wicket, entered the prison. The noise and the
+crowd, the life and the shouting, the shabby bustle of the place, struck
+and excited Pen. People moved about ceaselessly and restless, like caged
+animals in a menagerie. Men were playing at fives. Others pacing and
+tramping: this one in colloquy with his lawyer in dingy black--that one
+walking sadly, with his wife by his side, and a child on his arm. Some
+were arrayed in tattered dressing-gowns, and had a look of rakish
+fashion. Everybody seemed to be busy, humming, and on the move. Pen felt
+as if he choked in the place, and as if the door being locked upon him
+they never would let him out.
+
+They went through a court up a stone staircase, and through passages full
+of people, and noise, and cross lights, and black doors clapping and
+banging;--Pen feeling as one does in a feverish morning dream. At last
+the same little runner who had brought Shandon's note, and had followed
+them down Fleet Street munching apples, and who showed the way to the two
+gentlemen through the prison, said, "This is the Captain's door," and Mr.
+Shandon's voice from within bade them enter.
+
+The room, though bare, was not uncheerful. The sun was shining in at the
+window--near which sate a lady at work, who had been gay and beautiful
+once, but in whose faded face kindness and tenderness still beamed.
+Through all his errors and reckless mishaps and misfortunes, this
+faithful creature adored her husband, and thought him the best and
+cleverest, as indeed he was one of the kindest of men. Nothing ever
+seemed to disturb the sweetness of his temper; not debts: not duns: not
+misery: not the bottle, not his wife's unhappy position, or his
+children's ruined chances. He was perfectly fond of wife and children
+after his fashion: he always had the kindest words and smiles for them,
+and ruined them with the utmost sweetness of temper. He never could
+refuse himself or any man any enjoyment which his money could purchase;
+he would share his last guinea with Jack and Tom, and we may be sure he
+had a score of such retainers. He would sign his name at the back of any
+man's bill, and never pay any debt of his own. He would write on any
+side, and attack himself or another man with equal indifference. He was
+one of the wittiest, the most amiable, and the most incorrigible of
+Irishmen. Nobody could help liking Charley Shandon who saw him once, and
+those whom he ruined could scarcely be angry with him.
+
+When Pen and Warrington arrived, the Captain (he had been in an Irish
+militia regiment once, and the title remained with him) was sitting on
+his bed in a torn dressing-gown, with a desk on his knees, at which he
+was scribbling as fast as his rapid pen could write. Slip after slip of
+paper fell off the desk wet on to the ground. A picture of his children
+was hung up over his bed, and the youngest of them was pattering about
+the room.
+
+Opposite the Captain sate Mr. Bungay, a portly man of stolid countenance,
+with whom the little child had been trying a conversation.
+
+"Papa's a very clever man," said she; "mamma says so."
+
+"Oh, very," said Mr. Bungay.
+
+"And you're a very rich man, Mr. Bundy," cried the child, who could
+hardly speak plain.
+
+"Mary!" said Mamma, from her work.
+
+"Oh, never mind," Bungay roared out with a great laugh; no harm in saying
+I'm rich--he, he--I am pretty well off, my little dear."
+
+"If you're rich, why don't you take papa out of piz'n?" asked the child.
+
+Mamma at this began to wipe her eyes with the work on which she was
+employed. (The poor lady had hung curtains up in the room, had brought
+the children's picture and placed it there, and had made one or two
+attempts to ornament it.) Mamma began to cry; Mr. Bungay turned red, and
+looked fiercely out of his bloodshot little eyes; Shandon's pen went on,
+and Pen and Warrington arrived with their knock.
+
+Captain Shandon looked up from his work. "How do you do, Mr. Warrington,"
+he said. "I'll speak to you in a minute. Please sit down, gentlemen, if
+you can find places," and away went the pen again.
+
+Warrington pulled forward an old portmanteau--the only available seat--
+and sate down on it, with a bow to Mrs. Shandon and a nod to Bungay: the
+child came and looked at Pen solemnly and in a couple of minutes the
+swift scribbling ceased; and Shandon, turning the desk over on the bed,
+stooped and picked up the papers.
+
+"I think this will do," said he. "It's the prospectus for the Pall Mall
+Gazette."
+
+"And here's the money for it," Mr. Bungay said, laying down a five-pound
+note. "I'm as good as my word, I am. When I say I'll pay, I pay."
+
+"Faith that's more than some of us can say," said Shandon, and he eagerly
+clapped the note into his pocket.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+Which is passed in the Neighbourhood of Ludgate Hill
+
+
+Our imprisoned Captain announced, in smart and emphatic language in his
+prospectus, that the time had come at last when it was necessary for the
+gentlemen of England to band together in defence of their common rights
+and their glorious order, menaced on all sides by foreign revolutions, by
+intestine radicalism, by the artful calumnies of mill-owners and
+cotton-lords, and the stupid hostility of the masses whom they gulled and
+led. "The ancient monarchy was insulted," the Captain said, "by a
+ferocious republican rabble. The Church was deserted by envious dissent,
+and undermined by stealthy infidelity. The good institutions, which had
+made our country glorious, and the name of English Gentleman the proudest
+in the world, were left without defence, and exposed to assault and
+contumely from men to whom no sanctuary was sacred, for they believed in
+nothing holy; no history venerable, for they were too ignorant to have
+heard of the past; and no law was binding which they were strong enough
+to break, when their leaders gave the signal for plunder. It was because
+the kings of France mistrusted their gentlemen," Mr. Shandon remarked,
+"that the monarchy of Saint Louis went down: it was because the people of
+England still believed in their gentlemen, that this country encountered
+and overcame the greatest enemy a nation ever met: it was because we were
+headed by gentlemen, that the Eagles retreated before us from the Donro
+to the Garonne: it was a gentleman who broke the line at Trafalgar, and
+swept the plain of Waterloo."
+
+Bungay nodded his head in a knowing manner, and winked his eyes when the
+Captain came to the Waterloo passage: and Warrington burst out laughing.
+
+"You see how our venerable friend Bungay is affected," Shandon said,
+slily looking up from his papers--"that's your true sort of test. I have
+used the Duke of Wellington and the battle of Waterloo a hundred times,
+and I never knew the Duke to fail."
+
+The Captain then went on to confess, with much candour, that up to the
+present time the gentlemen of England, confident of their right, and
+careless of those who questioned it, had left the political interest of
+their order as they did the management of their estates, or the
+settlement of their legal affairs, to persons affected to each peculiar
+service, and had permitted their interests to be represented in the press
+by professional proctors and advocates. That time Shandon professed to
+consider was now gone by: the gentlemen of England must be their own
+champions: the declared enemies of their order were brave, strong,
+numerous, and uncompromising. They must meet their foes in the field:
+they must not be belied and misrepresented by hireling advocates: they
+must not have Grub Street publishing Gazettes from Whitehall; "that's a
+dig at Bacon's people, Mr. Bungay," said Shandon, turning round to the
+publisher. Bungay clapped his stick on the floor. "Hang him, pitch into
+him, Capting," he said with exultation: and turning to Warrington, wagged
+his dull head more vehemently than ever, and said, "For a slashing
+article, sir, there's nobody like the Capting--no-obody like him."
+
+The prospectus-writer went on to say that some gentlemen, whose names
+were, for obvious reasons, not brought before the public (at which Mr.
+Warrington began to laugh again), had determined to bring forward a
+journal, of which the principles were so-and-so. "These men are proud of
+their order, and anxious to uphold it," cried out Captain Shandon,
+flourishing his paper with a grin. "They are loyal to their Sovereign, by
+faithful conviction and ancestral allegiance; they love their Church,
+where they would have their children worship, and for which their
+forefathers bled; they love their country, and would keep it what the
+gentlemen of England--yes, the gentlemen of England (we'll have that in
+large caps, Bungay, my boy) have made it--the greatest and freest in the
+world: and as the names of some of them are appended to the deed which
+secured our liberties at Runnymede--"
+
+"What's that?" asked Mr. Bungay.
+
+"An ancestor of mine sealed it with his sword-hilt," Pen said, with great
+gravity.
+
+"It's the Habeas Corpus, Mr. Bungay," Warrington said, on which the
+publisher answered, "All right, I dare say," and yawned, though he said,
+"Go on, Capting."
+
+"--at Runnymede; they are ready to defend that freedom to-day with sword
+and pen, and now, as then, to rally round the old laws and liberties of
+England."
+
+"Bravo!" cried Warrington. The little child stood wondering; the lady was
+working silently, and looking with fond admiration. "Come here, little
+Mary," said Warrington, and patted the child's fair curls with his large
+hand. But she shrank back from his rough caress, and preferred to go and
+take refuge at Pen's knee, and play with his fine watch-chain: and Pen
+was very much pleased that she came to him; for he was very soft-hearted
+and simple, though he concealed his gentleness under a shy and pompous
+demeanour. So she clambered up on his lap, whilst her father continued to
+read his programme.
+
+"You were laughing," the Captain said to Warrington, "about 'the obvious
+reasons' which I mentioned. Now, I'll show ye what they are, ye
+unbelieving heathen. 'We have said,'" he went on, "'that we cannot give
+the names of the parties engaged in this undertaking, and that there were
+obvious reasons for that concealment. We number influential friends in
+both Houses of the Senate, and have secured allies in every diplomatic
+circle in Europe. Our sources of intelligence are such as cannot, by any
+possibility, be made public--and, indeed, such as no other London or
+European journal could, by any chance, acquire. But this we are free to
+say, that the very earliest information connected with the movement of
+English and Continental politics will be found only in the columns of the
+Pall Mall Gazette, The Statesman and the Capitalist, the Country
+Gentleman and the Divine, will be amongst our readers, because our
+writers are amongst them. We address ourselves to the higher circles of
+society: we care not to disown it--the Pall Mall Gazette is written by
+gentlemen for gentlemen; its conductors speak to the classes in which
+they live and were born. The field-preacher has his journal, the radical
+free-thinker has his journal: why should the Gentlemen of England be
+unrepresented in the Press?'"
+
+Mr. Shandon then went on with much modesty to descant upon the literary
+and fashionable departments of the Pall Mall Gazette, which were to be
+conducted by gentlemen of acknowledged reputation; men famous at the
+Universities (at which Mr Pendennis could scarcely help laughing and
+blushing), known at the Clubs, and of the Society which they described.
+He pointed out delicately to advertisers that there would be no such
+medium as the Pall Mall Gazette for giving publicity to their sales; and
+he eloquently called upon the nobility of England, the baronetage of
+England, the revered clergy of England, the bar of England, the matrons,
+the daughters, the homes and hearths of England, to rally round the good
+old cause; and Bungay at the conclusion of the reading woke up from a
+second snooze in which he had indulged himself, and again said it was all
+right.
+
+The reading of the prospectus concluded, the gentlemen present entered
+into some details regarding the political and literary management of the
+paper, and Mr. Bungay sate by listening and nodding his head, as if he
+understood what was the subject of their conversation, and approved of
+their opinions. Bungay's opinions, in truth, were pretty simple. He
+thought the Captain could write the best smashing article in England. He
+wanted the opposition house of Bacon smashed, and it was his opinion that
+the Captain could do that business. If the Captain had written a letter
+of Junius on a sheet of paper, or copied a part of the Church Catechism,
+Mr. Bungay would have been perfectly contented, and have considered that
+the article was a smashing article. And he pocketed the papers with the
+greatest satisfaction: and he not only paid for the MS., as we have seen,
+but he called little Mary to him, and gave her a penny as he went away.
+
+The reading of the manuscript over, the party engaged in general
+conversation, Shandon leading with a jaunty fashionable air in compliment
+to the two guests who sate with him and, and who, by their appearance and
+manner, he presumed to be persons of the beau monde. He knew very little
+indeed of the great world, but he had seen it, and made the most of what
+he had seen. He spoke of the characters of the day, and great personages
+of the fashion, with easy familiarity and jocular allusions, as if it had
+been his habit to live amongst them. He told anecdotes of their private
+life, and of conversations he had had, and entertainments at which he had
+been present, and at which such and such a thing occurred. Pen was amused
+to hear the shabby prisoner in a tattered dressing-gown talking glibly
+about the great of the land. Mrs. Shandon was always delighted when her
+husband told these tales, and believed in them fondly every one. She did
+not want to mingle in the fashionable world herself, she was not clever
+enough; but the great Society was the very place for her Charles: he
+shone in it: he was respected in it. Indeed, Shandon had once been asked
+to dinner by the Earl of X; his wife treasured the invitation-card in her
+workbox at that very day.
+
+Mr. Bungay presently had enough of this talk and got up to take leave,
+whereupon Warrington and Pen rose to depart with the publisher, though
+the latter would have liked to stay to make a further acquaintance with
+this family, who interested him and touched him. He said something about
+hoping for permission to repeat his visit, upon which Shandon, with a
+rueful grin, said he was always to be found at home, and should be
+delighted to see Mr. Pennington.
+
+"I'll see you to my park-gate, gentlemen," said Captain Shandon, seizing
+his hat, in spite of a deprecatory look and a faint cry of "Charles" from
+Mrs. Shandon. And the Captain, in shabby slippers, shuffled out before
+his guests, leading the way through the dismal passages of the prison.
+His hand was already fiddling with his waistcoat pocket, where Bungay's
+five-pound note was, as he took leave of the three gentlemen at the
+wicket; one of them, Mr. Arthur Pendennis, being greatly relieved when he
+was out of the horrid place, and again freely treading the flags of
+Farringdon Street.
+
+Mrs. Shandon sadly went on with her work at the window looking into the
+court. She saw Shandon with a couple of men at his heels run rapidly in
+the direction of the prison tavern. She had hoped to have had him to
+dinner herself that day: there was a piece of meat, and some salad in a
+basin, on the ledge outside of the window of their room which she had
+expected that she and little Mary were to share with the child's father.
+But there was no chance of that now. He would be in that tavern until the
+hours for closing it; then he would go and play at cards or drink in some
+other man's room and come back silent, with glazed eyes, reeling a little
+on his walk, that his wife might nurse him. Oh, what varieties of pain do
+we not make our women suffer!
+
+So Mrs. Shandon went to the cupboard, and, in lieu of a dinner, made
+herself some tea. And in those varieties of pain of which we spoke anon,
+what a part of confidante has that poor tea-pot played ever since the
+kindly plant was introduced among us! What myriads of women have cried
+over it, to be sure! What sick-beds it has smoked by! What fevered lips
+have received refreshment from out of it! Nature meant very gently by
+women when she made that tea-plant; and with a little thought what a
+series of pictures and groups the fancy may conjure up and assemble round
+the tea-pot and cup! Melissa and Sacharissa are talking love-secrets over
+it. Poor Polly has it and her lover's letters upon the table; his letters
+who was her lover yesterday, and when it was with pleasure, not despair,
+she wept over them. Mary tripping noiselessly comes into her mother's
+bedroom, bearing a cup of the consoler to the widow who will take no
+other food, Ruth is busy concocting it for her husband, who is coming
+home from the harvest-field--one could fill a page with hints for such
+pictures;--finally, Mrs. Shandon and little Mary sit down and drink their
+tea together, while the Captain goes out and takes his pleasure. She
+cares for nothing else but that, when her husband is away.
+
+A gentleman with whom we are already slightly acquainted, Mr. Jack
+Finucane, a townsman of Captain Shandon's, found the Captain's wife and
+little Mary (for whom Jack always brought a sweetmeat in his pocket) over
+this meal. Jack thought Shandon the greatest of created geniuses, had had
+one or two helps from the good-natured prodigal, who had always a kind
+word, and sometimes a guinea for any friend in need; and never missed a
+day in seeing his patron. He was ready to run Shandon's errands and
+transact his money-business with publishers and newspaper editors, duns,
+creditors, holders of Shandon's acceptances, gentlemen disposed to
+speculate in those securities, and to transact the thousand little
+affairs of an embarrassed Irish gentleman. I never knew an embarrassed
+Irish gentleman yet, but he had an aide-de-camp of his own nation,
+likewise in circumstances of pecuniary discomfort. That aide-de-camp has
+subordinates of his own, who again may have other insolvent dependents--
+all through his life our Captain marched at the head of a ragged staff,
+who shared in the rough fortunes of their chieftain.
+
+"He won't have that five-pound note very long, I bet a guinea," Mr.
+Bungay said of the Captain, as he and his two companions walked away from
+the prison; and the publisher judged rightly, for when Mrs. Shandon came
+to empty her husband's pockets, she found but a couple of shillings, and
+a few halfpence out of the morning's remittance. Shandon had given a
+pound to one follower; had sent a leg of mutton and potatoes and beer to
+an acquaintance in the poor side of the prison; had paid an outstanding
+bill at the tavern where he had changed his five-pound note; had had a
+dinner with two friends there, to whom he lost sundry half-crowns at
+cards afterwards; so that the night left him as poor as the morning had
+found him.
+
+The publisher and the two gentlemen had had some talk together after
+quitting Shandon, and Warrington reiterated to Bungay what he had said to
+his rival, Bacon, viz., that Pen was a high fellow, of great genius, and
+what was more, well with the great world, and related to "no end" of the
+peerage. Bungay replied that he should be happy to have dealings with Mr.
+Pendennis, and hoped to have the pleasure of seeing both gents to cut
+mutton with him before long, and so, with mutual politeness and
+protestations, they parted.
+
+"It is hard to see such a man as Shandon," Pen said, musing, and talking
+that night over the sight which he had witnessed, "of accomplishments so
+multifarious, and of such an undoubted talent and humour, an inmate of a
+gaol for half his time, and a bookseller's hanger-on when out of prison."
+
+"I am a bookseller's hanger-on--you are going to try your paces as a
+hack," Warrington said with a laugh. "We are all hacks upon some road or
+other. I would rather be myself, than Paley our neighbour in chambers:
+who has as much enjoyment of his life as a mole. A deuced deal of
+undeserved compassion has been thrown away upon what you call your
+bookseller's drudge."
+
+"Much solitary pipes and ale make a cynic of you," said Pen "You are a
+Diogenes by a beer-barrel, Warrington. No man shall tell me that a man of
+genius, as Shandon is, ought to be driven by such a vulgar slave-driver,
+as yonder Mr. Bungay, whom we have just left, who fattens on the profits
+of the other's brains, and enriches himself out of his journeyman's
+labour. It makes me indignant to see a gentleman the serf of such a
+creature as that, of a man who can't speak the language that he lives by,
+who is not fit to black Shandon's boots."
+
+"So you have begun already to gird at the publishers, and to take your
+side amongst our order. Bravo, Pen, my be boy!" Warrington answered,
+laughing still. "What have you got to say against Bungay's relations with
+Shandon? Was it the publisher, think you, who sent the author to prison?
+Is it Bungay who is tippling away the five-pound note which we saw just
+now, or Shandon?"
+
+"Misfortune drives a man into bad company," Pen said. "It is easy to cry
+'Fie!' against a poor fellow who has no society but such as he finds in a
+prison; and no resource except forgetfulness and the bottle. We must deal
+kindly with the eccentricities of genius, and remember that the very
+ardour and enthusiasm of temperament which makes the author delightful
+often leads the man astray."
+
+"A fiddlestick about men of genius!" Warrington cried out, who was a very
+severe moralist upon some points, though possibly a very had
+practitioner. "I deny that there are so many geniuses as people who
+whimper about the fate of men of letters assert there are. There are
+thousands of clever fellows in the world who could, if they would, turn
+verses, write articles, read books, and deliver a judgment upon them; the
+talk of professional critics and writers is not a whit more brilliant, or
+profound, or amusing, than that of any other society of educated people.
+If a lawyer, or a soldier, or a parson, outruns his income, and does not
+pay his bills, he must go to gaol; and an author must go, too. If an
+author fuddles himself, I don't know why he should be let off a headache
+the next morning,--if he orders a coat from the tailor's, why he
+shouldn't pay for it."
+
+"I would give him more money to buy coats," said Pen, smiling. I suppose
+I should like to belong to a well-dressed profession. I protest against
+that wretch of a middle-man whom I see between Genius and his great
+landlord, the Public, and who stops more than half of the labourer's
+earnings and fame."
+
+"I am a prose labourer," Warrington said; "you, my boy, are a poet in a
+small way, and so, I suppose, consider you are authorised to be flighty.
+What is it you want? Do you want a body of capitalists that shall be
+forced to purchase the works of all authors, who may present themselves,
+manuscript in hand? Everybody who writes his epic, every driveller who
+can or can't spell, and produces his novel or his tragedy,--are they all
+to come and find a bag of sovereigns in exchange for their worthless
+reams of paper? Who is to settle what is good or bad, saleable or
+otherwise? Will you give the buyer leave, in fine, to purchase or not?
+Why, sir, when Johnson sate behind the screen at Saint John's Gate, and
+took his dinner apart, because he was too shabby and poor to join the
+literary bigwigs who were regaling themselves, round Mr. Cave's best
+table-cloth, the tradesman was doing him no wrong. You couldn't force the
+publisher to recognise the man of genius in the young man who presented
+himself before him, ragged, gaunt, and hungry. Rags are not a proof of
+genius; whereas capital is absolute, as times go, and is perforce the
+bargain-master. It has a right to deal with the literary inventor as with
+any other;--if I produce a novelty in the book trade, I must do the best
+I can with it; but I can no more force Mr. Murray to purchase my book of
+travels or sermons, than I can compel Mr. Tattersall to give me a hundred
+guineas for my horse. I may have my own ideas of the value of my Pegasus,
+and think him the most wonderful of animals; but the dealer has a right
+to his opinion, too, and may want a lady's horse, or a cob for a heavy
+timid rider, or a sound hack for the road, and my beast won't suit him."
+
+"You deal in metaphors, Warrington," Pen said; "but you rightly say that
+you are very prosaic. Poor Shandon! There is something about the kindness
+of that man, and the gentleness of that sweet creature of a wife, which
+touches me profoundly. I like him, I am afraid, better than a better man"
+
+"And so do I," Warrington said. "Let us give him the benefit of our
+sympathy, and the pity that is due to his weakness: though I fear that
+sort of kindness would be resented as contempt by a more high-minded man.
+You see he takes his consolation along with his misfortune, and one
+generates the other or balances ii, as the way of the world. He is a
+prisoner, but he is not unhappy."
+
+"His genius sings within his prison bars," Pen said.
+
+"Yes," Warrington said, bitterly; "Shandon accommodates himself to a cage
+pretty well. He ought to be wretched, but he has Jack and Tom to drink
+with, and that consoles him: he might have a high place, but, as he
+can't, why, he can drink with Tom and Jack;--he might be providing for
+his wife and children, but Thomas and John have got a bottle of brandy
+which they want him to taste;--he might pay poor Snip, the tailor, the
+twenty pounds which the poor devil wants for his landlord, but John and
+Thomas lay their hands upon his purse;--and so he drinks whilst his
+tradesman goes to gaol and his family to ruin. Let us pity the
+misfortunes of genius, and conspire against the publishing tyrants who
+oppress men of letters."
+
+"What! are you going to have another glass of brandy-and-water?" Pen
+said, with a humorous look. It was at the Black Kitchen that the above
+philosophical conversation took place between the two young men.
+
+Warrington began to laugh as usual. "Video meliora proboque--I mean,
+bring it me hot, with sugar, John," he said to waiter.
+
+"I would have some more, too, only I don't want it," said Pen. "It does
+not seem to me, Warrington, that we are much better than our neighbours."
+And Warrington's last glass having been despatched, the pair returned to
+their chambers.
+
+They found a couple of notes in the letter-box, on their return, which
+had been sent by their acquaintance of the morning, Mr. Bungay. That
+hospitable gentleman presented his compliments to each of the gentlemen,
+and requested their pleasure of company at dinner on an early day, to
+meet a few literary friends.
+
+"We shall have a grand spread, Warrington. We shall meet all Bungay's
+corps."
+
+"All except poor Shandon," said Pen, nodding a good-night to his friend,
+and he went into his own little room. The events and acquaintances of the
+day had excited him a good deal, and he lay for some time awake thinking
+over them, as Warrington's vigorous and regular snore from the
+neighbouring apartment pronounced that that gentleman was engaged in deep
+slumber.
+
+Is it true, thought Pendennis, lying on his bed and gazing at a bright
+moon without, that lighted up a corner of his dressing-table, and the
+frame of a little sketch of Fairoaks drawn by Laura, and hung over his
+drawers--is it true that I am going to earn my bread at last, and with my
+pen? that I shall impoverish the dear mother no longer; and that I may
+gain a name and reputation in the world, perhaps? These are welcome if
+they come, thought the young visionary, laughing and blushing to himself,
+though alone and in the night, as he thought how dearly he would relish
+honour and fame if they could be his. If fortune favours me, I laud her;
+if she frowns, I resign her. I pray Heaven I may be honest if I fail, or
+if I succeed. I pray Heaven I may tell the truth as far as I know it:
+that I mayn't swerve from it through flattery, or interest, or personal
+enmity, or party prejudice. Dearest old mother, what a pride will you
+have, if I can do anything worthy of our name I and you, Laura, you won't
+scorn me as the worthless idler and spendthrift, when you see that I--
+when I have achieved a--psha! what an Alnaschar I am because I have made
+five pounds by my poems, and am engaged to write half a dozen articles
+for a newspaper. He went on with these musings, more happy and hopeful,
+and in a humbler frame of mind, than he had felt to be for many a day. He
+thought over the errors and idleness, the passions, extravagances,
+disappointments, of his wayward youth: he got up from the bed: threw open
+the window, and looked out into the night: and then, by some impulse,
+which we hope was a good one, he went up and kissed the picture of
+Fairoaks, and flinging himself down on his knees by the bed, remained for
+some time in that posture of hope and submission. When he rose, it was
+with streaming eyes. He had found himself repeating, mechanically, some
+little words which he had been accustomed to repeat as a child at his
+mother's side, after the saying of which she would softly take him to his
+bed and close the curtains round him, hushing him with a benediction.
+
+The next day, Mr. Pidgeon, their attendant, brought in a large
+brown-paper parcel, directed to G. Warrington, Esq., with Mr. Trotter's
+compliments, and a note which Warrington read.
+
+"Pen, you beggar!" roared Warrington to Pen, who was in his own room.
+
+"Hullo!" sung out Pen.
+
+"Come here, you're wanted," cried the other, and Pen came out.
+
+"What is it?" said he.
+
+"Catch!" cried Warrington, and flung the parcel at Pen's head, who would
+have been knocked down had he not caught it.
+
+"It's books for review for the Pall Mall Gazette: pitch into 'em,"
+Warrington said. As for Pen, he never had been so delighted in his life:
+his hand trembled as he cut the string of the packet, and beheld within a
+smart set of new neat calico-bound books--travels, and novels, and poems.
+
+"Sport the oak, Pidgeon," said he. "I'm not at home to anybody to-day."
+And he flung into his easy-chair, and hardly gave himself time to drink
+his tea, so eager was he to begin to read and to review.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+In which the History still hovers about Fleet Street
+
+
+Captain Shandon, urged on by his wife, who seldom meddled in business
+matters, had stipulated that John Finucane, Esquire, of the Upper Temple,
+should be appointed sub-editor of forthcoming Pall Mall Gazette, and this
+post was accordingly conferred upon Mr. Finucane by the spirited
+proprietor of the Journal. Indeed he deserved any kindness at the hands
+of Shandon, so fondly attached was he, as we have said, to the Captain
+and his family, and so eager to do him a service. It was in Finucane's
+chambers that Shandon in former days used to hide when danger was near
+and bailiffs abroad: until at length his hiding-place was known, and the
+sheriff's officers came as regularly to wait for the Captain on
+Finucane's staircase as at his own door. It was to Finucane's chambers
+that poor Mrs. Shandon came often and often to explain her troubles and
+griefs, and devise means of rescue for her adored Captain. Many a meal
+did Finucane furnish for her and the child there. It was an honour to his
+little rooms to be visited by such a lady; and as she went down the
+staircase with her veil over her face, Fin would lean over the balustrade
+looking after her, to see that no Temple Lovelace assailed her upon the
+road, perhaps hoping that some rogue might be induced to waylay her, so
+that he, Fin, might have the pleasure of rushing to her rescue, and
+breaking the rascal's bones. It was a sincere pleasure to Mrs. Shandon
+when the arrangements were made by which her kind honest champion was
+appointed her husband's aide-de-camp in the newspaper.
+
+He would have sate with Mrs. Shandon as late as the prison hours
+permitted, and had indeed many a time witnessed the putting to bed of
+little Mary, who occupied a crib in the room; and to whose evening
+prayers that God might bless papa, Finucane, although of the Romish faith
+himself, had said Amen with a great deal of sympathy--but he had an
+appointment with Mr. Bungay regarding the affairs of the paper which they
+were to discuss over a quiet dinner. So he went away at six o'clock from
+Mrs. Shandon, but made his accustomed appearance at the Fleet Prison next
+morning, having arrayed himself in his best clothes and ornaments, which,
+though cheap as to cost, were very brilliant as to colour and appearance,
+and having in his pocket four pounds two shillings, being the amount of
+his week's salary at the Daily Journal, minus two shillings expended by
+him in the purchase of a pair of gloves on his way to the prison.
+
+He had cut his mutton with Mr. Bungay, as the latter gentleman phrased
+it, and Mr. Trotter, Bungay's reader and literary man of business, at
+Dick's Coffee-house on the previous day, and entered at large into his
+views respecting the conduct of the Pall Mall Gazette. In a masterly
+manner he had pointed out what should be the sub-editorial arrangements
+of the paper: what should be the type for the various articles: who
+should report the markets; who the turf and ring; who the Church
+intelligence; and who the fashionable chit-chat. He was acquainted with
+gentlemen engaged in cultivating these various departments of knowledge,
+and in communicating them afterwards to the public--in fine, Jack
+Finucane was, as Shandon had said of him, and as he proudly owned himself
+to be, one of the best sub-editors of a paper in London. He knew the
+weekly earnings of every man connected with the Press, and was up to a
+thousand dodges, or ingenious economic contrivances, by which money could
+be saved to spirited capitalists, who were going to set up a paper. He at
+once dazzled and mystified Mr. Bungay, who was slow of comprehension, by
+the rapidity of the calculations which he exhibited on paper, as they
+sate in the box. And Bungay afterwards owned to his subordinate Mr.
+Trotter, that that Irishman seemed a clever fellow.
+
+And now having succeeded in making this impression upon Mr. Bungay, the
+faithful fellow worked round to the point which he had very near at
+heart, viz., the liberation from prison of his admired friend and chief,
+Captain Shandon. He knew to a shilling the amount of the detainers which
+were against the Captain at the porter's lodge of the Fleet; and, indeed,
+professed to know all his debts, though this was impossible, for no man
+in England, certainly not the Captain himself, was acquainted with them.
+He pointed out what Shandon's engagements already were; and how much
+better he would work if removed from confinement (though this Mr. Bungay
+denied, for, "when the Captain's locked up," he said, "we are sure to
+find him at home; whereas, when he's free, you can never catch hold of
+him"); finally, he so worked on Mr. Bungay's feelings, by describing Mrs.
+Shandon pining away in the prison, and the child sickening there, that
+the publisher was induced to promise that, if Mrs. Shandon would come to
+him in the morning, he would see what could be done. And the colloquy
+ending at this time with the second round of brandy-and-water, although
+Finucane, who had four guineas in his pocket, would have discharged the
+tavern reckoning with delight, Bungay said, "No, sir,--this is my affair,
+sir, if you please. James, take the bill, and eighteenpence for
+yourself," and he handed over the necessary funds to the waiter. Thus it
+was that Finucane, who went to bed at the Temple after the dinner at
+Dick's, found himself actually with his week's salary intact upon
+Saturday morning.
+
+He gave Mrs. Shandon a wink so knowing and joyful, that that kind
+creature knew some good news was in store for her, and hastened to get
+her bonnet and shawl, when Fin asked if he might have the honour of
+taking her a walk, and giving her a little fresh air. And little Mary
+jumped for joy at the idea of this holiday, for Finucane never neglected
+to give her a toy, or to take her to a show, and brought newspaper orders
+in his pocket for all sorts of London diversions to amuse the child.
+Indeed, he loved them with all his heart, and would cheerfully have
+dashed out his rambling brains to do them, or his adored Captain, a
+service.
+
+"May I go, Charley? or shall I stay with you, for you're poorly, dear,
+this morning? He's got a headache, Mr. Finucane. He suffers from
+headaches, and I persuaded him to stay in bed," Mrs. Shandon said.
+
+"Go along with you, and Polly. Jack, take care of 'em. Hand me over the
+Burton's Anatomy, and leave me to my abominable devices," Shandon said,
+with perfect good-humour. He was writing, and not uncommonly took his
+Greek and Latin quotations (of which he knew the use as a public writer)
+from that wonderful repertory of learning.
+
+So Fin gave his arm to Mrs. Shandon, and Mary went skipping down the
+passages of the prison, and through the gate into the free air. From
+Fleet Street to Paternoster Row is not very far. As the three reached Mr.
+Bungay's shop, Mrs. Bungay was also entering at the private door, holding
+in her hand a paper parcel and a manuscript volume bound in red, and,
+indeed, containing an account of her transactions with the butcher in the
+neighbouring market. Mrs. Bungay was in a gorgeous shot-silk dress, which
+flamed with red and purple; she wore a yellow shawl, and had red flowers
+inside her bonnet, and a brilliant light blue parasol.
+
+Mrs. Shandon was in an old black watered silk; her bonnet had never seen
+very brilliant days of prosperity any more than its owner, but she could
+not help looking like a lady whatever her attire was. The two women
+curtsied to each other, each according to her fashion.
+
+"I hope you're pretty well, mum?" said Mrs. Bungay.
+
+"It's a very fine day," said Mrs. Shandon.
+
+"Won't you step in, mum?" said Mrs. Bungay, looking so hard at the child
+as almost to frighten her.
+
+"I--I came about business with Mr. Bungay--I--I hope he's pretty well?"
+said timid Mrs. Shandon.
+
+"If you go to see him in the counting-house, couldn't you, couldn't you
+leave your little gurl with me?" said Mrs. Bungay, in a deep voice, and
+with a tragic look, as she held out one finger towards the child.
+
+"I want to stay with mamma," cried little Mary, burying her face in her
+mother's dress.
+
+"Go with this lady, Mary, my dear," said the mother.
+
+"I'll show you some pretty pictures," said Mrs. Bungay, with the voice of
+an ogress, "and some nice things besides; look here,"--and opening her
+brown-paper parcel, Mrs. Bungay displayed some choice sweet buscuits,
+such as her Bungay loved after his wine. Little Mary followed after this
+attraction, the whole party entering at the private entrance, from which
+a side door led into Mr. Bungay's commercial apartments. Here, however,
+as the child was about to part from her mother, her courage again failed
+her, and again she ran to the maternal petticoat; upon which the kind and
+gentle Mrs. Shandon, seeing the look of disappointment in Mrs. Bungay's
+face, good-naturedly said, "If you will let me, I will come up too, and
+sit for a few minutes," and so the three females ascended the stairs
+together. A second biscuit charmed little Mary into perfect confidence,
+and in a minute or two she prattled away without the least restraint.
+
+Faithful Finucane meanwhile found Mr. Bungay in a severer mood than he
+had been on the night previous, when two-thirds of a bottle of port, and
+two large glasses of brandy-and-water, had warmed his soul into
+enthusiasm, and made him generous in his promises towards Captain
+Shandon. His impetuous wife had rebuked him on his return home. She had
+ordered that he should give no relief to the Captain; he was a
+good-for-nothing fellow, whom no money would help; she disapproved of the
+plan of the Pall Mall Gazette, and expected that Bungay would only lose
+his money in it as they were losing over the way (she always called her
+brother's establishment "over the way") by the Whitehall Journal. Let
+Shandon stop in prison and do his work; it was the best place for him. In
+vain Finucane pleaded and promised and implored, for his friend Bungay
+had had an hour's lecture in the morning and was inexorable.
+
+But what honest Jack failed to do below-stairs in the counting-house, the
+pretty faces and manners of the mother and child were effecting in the
+drawing-room, where they were melting the fierce but really soft Mrs.
+Bungay. There was an artless sweetness in Mrs. Shandon's voice, and a
+winning frankness of manner, which made most people fond of her, and pity
+her: and taking courage by the rugged kindness with which her hostess
+received her, the Captain's lady told her story, and described her
+husband's goodness and virtues, and her child's failing health (she was
+obliged to part with two of them, she said, and send them to school, for
+she could not have them in that horrid place)--that Mrs. Bungay, though
+as grim as Lady Macbeth, melted under the influence of the simple tale,
+and said she would go down and speak to Bungay. Now in this household to
+speak was to command, with Mrs. Bungay; and with Bungay, to hear was to
+obey.
+
+It was just when poor Finucane was in despair about his negotiation, that
+the majestic Mrs. Bungay descended upon her spouse, politely requested
+Mr. Finucane to step up to his friends in her drawing-room, while she
+held a few minutes' conversation with Mr. B., and when the pair were
+alone the publisher's better half informed him of her intentions towards
+the Captain's lady.
+
+"What's in the wind now, my dear?" Maecenas asked, surprised at his
+wife's altered tone. "You wouldn't hear of my doing anything for the
+Captain this morning: I wonder what has been a changing of you.
+
+"The Capting is an Irishman," Mrs. Bungay replied; "and those Irish I
+have always said I couldn't abide. But his wife is a lady, as any one can
+see; and a good woman, and a clergyman's daughter, and a West of England
+woman, B., which I am myself, by my mother's side--and, O Marmaduke!
+didn't you remark the little gurl?"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. B., I saw the little girl."
+
+"And didn't you see how like she was to our angel, Bessy, Mr. B.?"--and
+Mrs. Bungay's thoughts flew back to a period eighteen years back, when
+Bacon and Bungay had just set up in business as small booksellers in a
+country town, and when she had had a child, named Bessy, something like
+the little Mary who had moved her compassion.
+
+"Well, well, my dear," Mr. Bungay said, seeing the little eyes of his
+wife begin to twinkle and grow red; "the Captain ain't in for much.
+There's only a hundred and thirty pound against him. Half the money will
+take him out of the Fleet, Finucane says, and we'll pay him half salaries
+till he has made the account square. When the little 'un said, 'Why don't
+you take Par out of prizn?' I did feel it, Flora, upon my honour I did,
+now." And the upshot of this conversation was, that Mr. and Mrs. Bungay
+both ascended to the drawing-room, and Mr. Bungay made a heavy and clumsy
+speech, in which he announced to Mrs. Shandon, that, hearing sixty-five
+pounds would set her husband free, he was ready to advance that sum of
+money, deducting it from the Captain's salary, and that he would give it
+to her on condition that she would personally settle with the creditors
+regarding her husband's liberation.
+
+I think this was the happiest day that Mrs. Shandon and Mr. Finucane had
+had for a long time. "Bedad, Bungay, you're a trump!" roared out Fin, in
+an overpowering brogue and emotion. "Give us your fist, old boy: and
+won't we send the Pall Mall Gazette up to ten thousand a week, that's
+all!" and he jumped about the room, and tossed up little Mary, with a
+hundred frantic antics.
+
+"If I could drive you anywhere in my carriage, Mrs. Shandon--I'm sure
+it's quite at your service," Mrs. Bungay said, looking out at a
+one-horsed vehicle which had just driven up, and in which this lady took
+the air considerably--and the two ladies, with little Mary between them
+(whose tiny hand Maecenas's wife kept fixed in her great grasp), with the
+delighted Mr. Finucane on the back seat, drove away from Paternoster Row,
+as the owner of the vehicle threw triumphant glances at the opposite
+windows at Bacon's.
+
+"It won't do the Captain any good," thought Bungay, going back to his
+desk and accounts, "but Mrs. B. becomes reglar upset when she thinks
+about her misfortune. The child would have been of age yesterday, if
+she'd lived. Flora told me so:" and he wondered how women did remember
+things.
+
+We are happy to say that Mrs. Shandon sped with very good success upon
+her errand. She who had had to mollify creditors when she had no money at
+all, and only tears and entreaties wherewith to soothe them, found no
+difficulty in making them relent by means of a bribe of ten shillings in
+the pound; and the next Sunday was the last, for some time at least,
+which the Captain spent in prison.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+Dinner in the Row
+
+
+Upon the appointed day our two friends made their appearance at Mr.
+Bungay's door in Paternoster Row; not the public entrance through which
+booksellers' boys issued with their sacks full of Bungay's volumes, and
+around which timid aspirants lingered with their virgin manuscripts ready
+for sale to Sultan Bungay, but at the private door of the house, whence
+the splendid Mrs. Bungay would come forth to step into her chaise and
+take her drive, settling herself on the cushions, and casting looks of
+defiance at Mrs. Bacon's opposite windows--at Mrs. Bacon, who was as yet
+a chaiseless woman.
+
+On such occasions, when very much wroth at her sister-in-law's splendour
+Mrs. Bacon would fling up the sash of her drawing-room window, and look
+out with her four children at the chaise, as much as to say, "Look at
+these four darlings. Flora Bungay! this is why I can't drive in my
+carriage; you would give a coach-and-four to have the same reason." And
+it was with these arrows out of her quiver that Emma Bacon shot Flora
+Bungay as she sate in her chariot envious and childless.
+
+As Pen and Warrington came to Bungay's door, a carriage and a cab drove
+up to Bacon's. Old Dr. Slocum descended heavily from the first; the
+Doctor's equipage was as ponderous as his style, but both had a fine
+sonorous effect upon the publishers in the Row. A couple of dazzling
+white waistcoats stepped out of the cab.
+
+Warrington laughed. "You see Bacon has his dinner-party too. That is Dr.
+Slocum, author of 'Memoirs of the Poisoners.' You would hardly have
+recognised our friend Hoolan in that gallant white waistcoat. Doolan is
+one of Bungay's men, and faith, here he comes." Indeed, Messrs. Hoolan
+and Doolan had come from the Strand in the same cab, tossing up by the
+way which should pay the shilling; and Mr. D. stepped from the other side
+of the way, arrayed in black, with a large pair of white gloves which
+were spread out on his hands, and which the owner could not help
+regarding with pleasure.
+
+The house porter in an evening coat, and gentlemen with gloves as large
+as Doolan's, but of the famous Berlin web, were on the passage of Mr.
+Bungay's house to receive the guests' hats and coats, and bawl their
+names up the stair. Some of the latter had arrived when the three new
+visitors made their appearance; but there was only Mrs. Bungay in red
+satin and a turban to represent her own charming sex. She made curtsies
+to each new-comer as he entered the drawing-room, but her mind was
+evidently pre-occupied by extraneous thoughts. The fact is, Mrs. Bacon's
+dinner-party was disturbing her, and as soon as she had received each
+individual of her own company, Flora Bungay flew back to the embrasure of
+the window, whence she could rake the carriages of Emma Bacon's friends
+as they came rattling up the Row. The sight of Dr. Slocum's large
+carriage, with the gaunt job-horses, crushed Flora: none but hack cabs
+had driven up to her own door on that day.
+
+They were all literary gentlemen, though unknown as yet to Pen. There was
+Mr. Bole, the real editor of the magazine, of which Mr. Wagg was the
+nominal chief; Mr. Trotter, who, from having broken out on the world as a
+poet of a tragic and suicidial cast, had now subsided into one of Mr.
+Bungay's back shops as reader for that gentleman; and Captain Sumph, an
+ex-beau reader about town, and related in some indistinct manner to
+Literature and the Peerage. He was said to have written a book once, to
+have been a friend of Lord Byron, to be related to Lord Sumphington; in
+fact, anecdotes of Byron formed his staple, and he seldom spoke but with
+the name of that poet or some of his contemporaries in his mouth, as
+thus: "I remember poor Shelley, at school being sent up for good for a
+copy of verses, every line of which I wrote, by Jove;" or, "I recollect,
+when I was at Missolonghi with Byron, offering to bet gamba," and so
+forth. This gentleman, Pen remarked, was listened to with great attention
+by Mrs. Bungay; his anecdotes of the aristocracy, of which he was a
+middle-aged member, delighted the publisher's lady; and he was almost a
+greater man than the great Mr. Wagg himself in her eyes. Had he but come
+in his own carriage, Mrs. Bungay would have made her Bungay purchase any
+given volume from his pen.
+
+Mr. Bungay went about to his guests as they arrived, and did the honours
+of his house with much cordiality. "How are you, sir? Fine day, sir. Glad
+to see you year, sir. Flora, my love, let me ave the honour of
+introducing Mr. Warrington to you. Mr. Warrington, Mrs. Bungay; Mr.
+Pendennis, Mrs. Bungay. Hope you've brought good appetites with you,
+gentlemen. You, Doolan, I know ave, for you've always ad a deuce of a
+twist."
+
+"Lor, Bungay!" said Mrs. Bungay.
+
+"Faith, a man must be hard to please, Bungay, who can't eat a good dinner
+in this house," Doolan said, and he winked and stroked his lean chops
+with his large gloves; and made appeals of friendship to Mrs. Bungay,
+which that honest woman refused with scorn from the timid man. "She
+couldn't abide that Doolan," she said in confidence to her friends.
+Indeed, all his flatteries failed to win her.
+
+As they talked, Mrs. Bungay surveying mankind from her window, a
+magnificent vision of an enormous grey cab-horse appeared, and neared
+rapidly. A pair of white reins, held by small white gloves, were visible
+behind it; a face pale, but richly decorated with a chin-tuft, the head
+of an exiguous groom bobbing over the cab-head--these bright things were
+revealed to the delighted Mrs. Bungay. "The Honourable Percy Popjoy's
+quite punctual, I declare," she said, and sailed to the door to be in
+waiting at the nobleman's arrival.
+
+"It's Percy Popjoy," said Pen, looking out of window, and seeing an
+individual, in extremely lacquered boots, descend from the swinging cab:
+and, in fact, it was that young nobleman Lord Falconet's eldest son, as
+we all very well know, who was come to dine with the publisher--his
+publisher of the Row.
+
+"He was my fag at Eton," Warrington said. "I ought to have licked him a
+little more." He and Pen had had some bouts at the Oxbridge Union
+debates, in which Pen had had very much the better of Percy: who
+presently appeared, with his hat under his arm, and a look of
+indescribable good-humour and fatuity in his round dimpled face: upon
+which Nature had burst out with a chin-tuft, but, exhausted with the
+effort, had left the rest of the countenance bare of hair.
+
+The temporary groom of the chambers bawled out, "The Honourable Percy
+Popjoy," much to that gentleman's discomposure at hearing his titles
+announced.
+
+"What did the man want to take away my hat for, Bungay?" he asked of the
+publisher. "Can't do without my hat--want it to make my bow to Mrs.
+Bungay. How well you look. Mrs. Bungay, to-day. Haven't seen your
+carriage in the Park: why haven't you been there? I missed you; indeed, I
+did."
+
+"I'm afraid you're a sad quiz," said Mrs. Bungay.
+
+"Quiz! Never made a joke in my--hullo! who's here? How d'ye do,
+Pendennis? How d'ye do, Warrington? These are old friends of mine, Mrs.
+Bungay. I say, how the doose did you come here?" he asked of the two
+young men, turnip his lacquered heels upon Mrs. Bungay, who respected her
+husband's two young guests, now that she found they were intimate with a
+lord's son.
+
+"What! do they know him?" she asked rapidly of Mr. B.
+
+"High fellers, I tell you--the young one related to all the nobility,"
+said the publisher; and both ran forward, smiling and bowing, to greet
+almost as great personages as the young lord--no less characters, indeed,
+than the great Mr. Wenham and the great Mr. Wagg, who were now announced.
+
+Mr. Wenham entered, wearing the usual demure look and stealthy smile with
+which he commonly surveyed the tips of his neat little shining boots, and
+which he but seldom brought to bear upon the person who addressed him.
+Wagg's white waistcoat spread out, on the contrary, with profuse
+brilliancy; his burly, red face shone resplendent over it, lighted up
+with the thoughts of good jokes and a good dinner. He liked to make his
+entree into a drawing-room with a laugh, and, when he went away at night,
+to leave a joke exploding behind him. No personal calamities or
+distresses (of which that humourist had his share in common with the
+unjocular part of mankind) could altogether keep his humour down.
+Whatever his griefs might be, the thought of a dinner rallied his great
+soul; and when he saw a lord, he saluted him with a pun.
+
+Wenham went up, then, with a smug smile and whisper, to Mrs. Bungay, and
+looked at her from under his eyes, and showed her the tips of his shoes.
+Wagg said she looked charming, and pushed on straight at the young
+nobleman, whom he called Pop, and to whom he instantly related a funny
+story, seasoned with what the French call gros sel. He was delighted to
+see Pen, too, and shook hands with him, and slapped him on the back
+cordially; for he was full of spirits and good-humour. And he talked in a
+loud voice about their last place and occasion of meeting at Baymouth;
+and asked how their friends of Clavering Park were, and whether Sir
+Francis was not coming to London for the season; and whether Pen had been
+to see Lady Rockminster, who had arrived--fine old lady, Lady
+Rockminster! These remarks Wagg made not for Pen's ear so much as for the
+edification of the company, whom he was glad to inform that he paid
+visits to gentlemen's country seats, and was on intimate terms with the
+nobility.
+
+Wenham also shook hands with our young friend--all of which scenes Mrs.
+Bungay remarked with respectful pleasure, and communicated her ideas to
+Bungay, afterwards, regarding the importance of Mr. Pendennis--ideas by
+which Pen profited much more than he was aware.
+
+Pen, who had read, and rather admired some of her works (and expected to
+find in Miss Bunion a person somewhat resembling her own description of
+herself in the 'Passion-Flower,' in which she stated that her youth
+resembled--
+
+    "A violet, shrinking meanly
+     When blows the March wind keenly;
+     A timid fawn, on wild-wood lawn,
+     Where oak-boughs rustle greenly,--"
+
+and that her maturer beauty was something very different, certainly, to
+the artless loveliness of her prime, but still exceedingly captivating
+and striking), beheld, rather to his surprise and amusement, a large and
+bony woman in a crumpled satin dress, who came creaking into the room
+with a step as heavy as a grenadier's. Wagg instantly noted the straw
+which she brought in at the rumpled skirt of her dress, and would have
+stooped to pick it up: but Miss Bunion disarmed all criticism by
+observing this ornament herself, and, putting her own large foot upon it,
+so as to separate it from her robe, she stooped and picked up the straw,
+saying to Mrs. Bungay, that she was very sorry to be a little late, but
+that the omnibus was very slow, and what a comfort it was to get a ride
+all the way from Brompton for sixpence. Nobody laughed at the poetess's
+speech, it was uttered so simply. Indeed, the worthy woman had not the
+least notion of being ashamed of an action incidental upon her poverty.
+
+"Is that 'Passion-Flowers?'" Pen said to Wenham, by whom he was standing.
+"Why, her picture in the volume represents her as a very well-looking
+young woman."
+
+"You know passion-flowers, like all others, will run to seed," Wenham
+said; "Miss Bunion's portrait was probably painted some years ago."
+
+"Well, I like her for not being ashamed of her poverty."
+
+"So do I," said Mr. Wenham, who would have starved rather than have come
+to dinner in an omnibus, "but I don't think that she need flourish the
+straw about, do you, Mr. Pendennis? My dear Miss Bunion, how do you do? I
+was in a great lady's drawing-room this morning, and everybody was
+charmed with your new volume. Those lines on the christening of Lady
+Fanny Fantail brought tears into the Duchess's eyes. I said that I
+thought I should have the pleasure of meeting you to-day, and she begged
+me to thank you, and say how greatly she was pleased."
+
+This history, told in a bland smiling manner, of a Duchess whom Wenham
+had met that very morning, too, quite put poor Wagg's dowager and baronet
+out of court, and placed Wenham beyond Wagg as a man of fashion. Wenham
+kept this inestimable advantage, and having the conversation to himself,
+ran on with a number of anecdotes regarding the aristocracy. He tried to
+bring Mr. Popjoy into the conversation by making appeals to him, and
+saying, "I was telling your father this morning," or, "I think you were
+present at W. house the other night when the Duke said so-and-so," but
+Mr. Popjoy would not gratify him by joining in the talk, preferring to
+fall back into the window recess with Mrs. Bungay, and watch the cabs
+that drove up to the opposite door. At least, if he would not talk, the
+hostess hoped that those odious Bacons would see how she had secured the
+noble Percy Popjoy for her party.
+
+And now the bell of Saint Paul's tolled half an hour later than that for
+which Mr. Bungay had invited his party, and it was complete with the
+exception of two guests, who at last made their appearance, and in whom
+Pen was pleased to recognise Captain and Mrs. Shandon.
+
+When these two had made their greetings to the master and mistress of the
+house, and exchanged nods of more or less recognition with most of the
+people present, Pen and Warrington went up, and shook hands very warmly
+with Mrs. Shandon, who, perhaps, was affected to meet them, and think
+where it was she had seen them but a few days before. Shandon was brushed
+up, and looked pretty smart, in a red velvet waistcoat, and a frill, into
+which his wife had stuck her best brooch. In spite of Mrs. Bungay's
+kindness, perhaps in consequence of it, Mrs. Shandon felt great terror
+and timidity in approaching her: indeed, she was more awful than ever in
+her red satin and bird of paradise, and it was not until she had asked in
+her great voice about the dear little gurl, that the latter was somewhat
+encouraged, and ventured to speak.
+
+"Nice-looking woman," Popjoy whispered to Warrington. "Do introduce me to
+Captain Shandon, Warrington. I'm told he's a tremendous clever fellow;
+and, dammy, I adore intellect, by Jove I do!" This was the truth: Heaven
+had not endowed young Mr. Popjoy with much intellect of his own, but had
+given him a generous faculty for admiring, if not for appreciating, the
+intellect of others. "And introduce me to Miss Bunion. I'm told she's
+very clever too. She's rum to look at, certainly, but that don't matter.
+Dammy, I consider myself a literary man, and I wish to know all the
+clever fellows." So Mr. Popjoy and Mr. Shandon had the pleasure of
+becoming acquainted with one another; and now the doors of the adjoining
+dining-room being flung open, the party entered and took their seats at
+table. Pen found himself next to Bunion on one side, and to Mr. Wagg--the
+truth is, Wagg fled alarmed from the vacant place by the poetess, and Pen
+was compelled to take it.
+
+The gifted being did not talk much during dinner, but Pen remarked that
+she ate with a vast appetite, and never refused any of the supplies of
+wine which were offered to her by the butler. Indeed, Miss Bunion having
+considered Mr. Pendennis for a minute, who gave himself rather grand
+airs, and who was attired in an extremely fashionable style, with his
+very best chains, shirt studs, and cambric fronts, he was set down, and
+not without reason, as a prig by the poetess; who thought it was much
+better to attend to her dinner than to take any notice of him. She told
+him as much in after days with her usual candour. "I took you for one of
+the little Mayfair dandies," she said to Pen. "You looked as solemn as a
+little undertaker; and as I disliked, beyond measure, the odious creature
+who was on the other side of me, I thought it was best to eat my dinner
+and hold my tongue."
+
+"And you did both very well, my dear Miss Bunion," Pen said with a laugh.
+
+"Well, so I do, but I intend to talk to you the next time a great deal:
+for you are neither so solemn, nor so stupid, nor so pert as you look."
+
+"Ah, Miss Bunion, how I pine for that 'next time' to come," Pen said with
+an air of comical gallantry:--But we must return to the day, and the
+dinner at Paternoster Row.
+
+The repast was of the richest description--"What I call of the florid
+Gothic style," Wagg whispered to Penn, who sate beside the humourist, in
+his side-wing voice. The men in creaking shoes and Berlin gloves were
+numerous and solemn, carrying on rapid conversations behind the guests,
+as they moved to and fro with the dishes. Doolan called out, "Waither,"
+to one of them, and blushed when he thought of his blunder. Mrs. Bungay's
+footboy was lost amidst those large and black-coated attendants.
+
+"Look at that very bow-windowed man," Wagg said. "He's an undertaker in
+Amen Corner, and attends funerals and dinners. Cold meat and hot, don't
+you perceive? He's the sham butler here, and I observe, my dear Mr.
+Pendennis, as you will through life, that wherever there is a sham butler
+at a London dinner there is sham wine--this sherry is filthy. Bungay, my
+boy, where did you get this delicious brown sherry?"
+
+"I'm glad you like it, Mr. Wagg; glass with you," said the publisher.
+"It's some I got from Alderman Benning's store, and gave a good figure
+for it, I can tell you. Mr. Pendennis, will you join us? Your 'ealth,
+gentlemen."
+
+"The old rogue, where does he expect to go to? It came from the
+public-house," Wagg said. "It requires two men to carry off that sherry,
+'tis so uncommonly strong. I wish I had a bottle of old Steyne's wine
+here, Pendennis: your uncle and I have had many a one. He sends it about
+to people where he is in the habit of dining. I remember at poor Rawdon
+Crawley's, Sir Pitt Crawley's brother--he was Governor of Coventry
+Island--Steyne's chef always came in the morning, and the butler arrived
+wit the champagne from Gaunt House, in the ice-pails ready."
+
+"How good this is!" said Popjoy, good-naturedly. "You must have a cordon
+bleu in your kitchen."
+
+"O yes," Mrs. Bungay said, thinking he spoke of a jack-chain very likely.
+
+"I mean a French chef," said the polite guest.
+
+"O yes, your lordship," again said the lady.
+
+"Does your artist say he's a Frenchman, Mrs. B.?" called out Wagg.
+
+"Well, I'm sure I don't know," answered the publisher's lady.
+
+"Because, if he does, he's a quizzin yer," cried Mr. Wagg; but nobody saw
+the pun, which disconcerted somewhat the bashful punster. "The dinner is
+from Griggs, in St. Paul's Churchyard; so is Bacon's," he whispered Pen.
+"Bungay writes to give half-a-crown a head more than Bacon, so does
+Bacon. They would poison each other's ices if they could get near them;
+and as for the made-dishes--they are poison. This--hum--ha--this
+Brimborion a la Sevigne is delicious, Mrs. B.," he said, helping himself
+to a dish which the undertaker handed to him.
+
+"Well, I'm glad you like it," Mrs. Bungay answered, blushing and not
+knowing whether the name of the dish was actually that which Wagg gave to
+it, but dimly conscious that that individual was quizzing her.
+Accordingly she hated Mr. Wagg with female ardour; and would have deposed
+him from his command over Mr. Bungay's periodical, but that his name was
+great in the trade, and his reputation in the land considerable.
+
+By the displacement of persons, Warrington had found himself on the right
+hand of Mrs. Shandon, who sate in plain black silk and faded ornaments by
+the side of the florid publisher. The sad smile of the lady moved his
+rough heart to pity. Nobody seemed to interest himself about her: she
+sate looking at her husband, who himself seemed rather abashed in the
+presence of some of the company. Wenham and Wagg both knew him and his
+circumstances. He had worked with the latter, and was immeasurably his
+superior in wit, genius, and acquirement; but Wagg's star was brilliant
+in the world, and poor Shandon was unknown there. He could not speak
+before the noisy talk of the coarser and more successful man; but drank
+his wine in silence, and as much of it as the people would give him. He
+was under surveillance. Bungay had warned the undertaker not to fill the
+Captain's glass too often or too full. It was a melancholy precaution
+that, and the more melancholy that it was necessary. Mrs. Shandon, too,
+cast alarmed glances across the table to see that her husband did not
+exceed.
+
+Abashed by the failure of his first pun, for he was impudent and easily
+disconcerted, Wagg kept his conversation pretty much to Pen during the
+rest of dinner, and of course chiefly spoke about their neighbours. "This
+is one of Bungay's grand field-days," he said. "We are all Bungavians
+here.--Did you read Popjoy's novel? It was an old magazine story written
+by poor Buzzard years ago, and forgotten here until Mr. Trotter (that is
+Trotter with the large shirt collar) fished it out and bethought him that
+it was applicable to the late elopement; so Bob wrote a few chapters a
+propos--Popjoy permitted the use of his name, and I dare say supplied a
+page here and there--and 'Desperation, or the Fugitive Duchess' made its
+appearance. The great fun is to examine Popjoy about his own work, of
+which he doesn't know a word.--I say, Popjoy, what a capital passage that
+is in Volume Three,--where the Cardinal in disguise, after being
+converted by the Bishop of London, proposes marriage to the Duchess's
+daughter."
+
+"Glad you like it," Popjoy answered; "it's a favourite bit of my own."
+
+"There's no such thing in the whole book," whispered Wagg to Pen.
+"Invented it myself. Gad! it wouldn't be a bad plot for a high-church
+novel."
+
+"I remember poor Byron, Hobhouse, Trelawney, and myself, dining with
+Cardinal Mezzocaldo at Rome," Captain Sumph began, "and we had some
+Orvieto wine for dinner, which Byron liked very much. And I remember how
+the Cardinal regretted that he was a single man. We went to Civita
+Vecchia two days afterwards, where Byron's yacht was--and, by Jove, the
+Cardinal died within three weeks; and Byron was very sorry, for he rather
+liked him."
+
+"A devilish interesting story, Sumph, indeed," Wagg said.
+
+"You should publish some of those stories, Captain Sumph, you really
+should. Such a volume would make our friend Bungay's fortune," Shandon
+said.
+
+"Why don't you ask Sumph to publish 'em in your new paper--the
+what-d'ye-call-'em--hay, Shandon?" bawled out Wagg.
+
+"Why don't you ask him to publish 'em in your old magazine, the
+Thingumbob?" Shandon replied.
+
+"Is there going to be a new paper?" asked Wenham, who knew perfectly
+well, but was ashamed of his connection with the press.
+
+"Bungay going to bring out a paper?" cried Popjoy, who, on the contrary,
+was proud of his literary reputation and acquaintances. "You must employ
+me. Mrs. Bungay, use your influence with him, and make him employ me.
+Prose or verse--what shall it be? Novels, poems, travels, or leading
+articles, begad. Anything or everything--only let Bungay pay me, and I'm
+ready--I am now my dear Mrs. Bungay, begad now."
+
+"It's to be called the Small Beer Chronicle," growled Wagg, "and little
+Popjoy is to be engaged for the infantine department."
+
+"It is to be called the Pall Mall Gazette, sir, and we shall be very
+happy to have you with us," Shandon said.
+
+"Pall Mall Gazette--why Pall Mall Gazette?" asked Wagg.
+
+"Because the editor was born at Dublin, the sub-editor at Cork, because
+the proprietor lives in Paternoster Row;--and the paper is published in
+Catherine Street, Strand. Won't that reason suffice you, Wagg?" Shandon
+said; he was getting rather angry. "Everything must have a name. My dog
+Ponto has got a namee. You've got a name, and a name which you deserve,
+more or less, indeed. Why d'ye grudge the name to our paper?"
+
+"By any other name it would smell as sweet," said Wagg.
+
+"I'll have ye remember its name's not what-d'ye-call-'em, Mr. Wagg," said
+Shandon. "You know its name well enough, and--and you know mine."
+
+"And I know your address too," said Wagg; but this was spoken in an
+undertone, and the good-natured Irishman was appeased almost in an
+instant after his ebullition of spleen, and asked Wagg to drink wine with
+him in a friendly voice.
+
+When the ladies retired from the table, the talk grew louder still; and
+presently Wenham, in a courtly speech, proposed that everybody should
+drink to the health of the new Journal, eulogising highly the talents,
+wit, and learning of its editor, Captain Shandon. It was his maxim never
+to lose the support of a newspaper man, and in the course of that evening
+he went round and saluted every literary gentleman present with a privy
+compliment specially addressed to him; informing this one how great an
+impression had been made in Downing Street by his last article, and
+telling that one how profoundly his good friend, the Duke of So-and-So,
+had been struck by the ability of the late numbers.
+
+The evening came to a close, and in spite of all the precautions to the
+contrary, poor Shandon reeled in his walk, and went home to his new
+lodgings, with his faithful wife by his side, and the cabman on his box
+jeering at him. Wenham had a chariot of his own, which he put at Popjoy's
+seat; and the timid Miss Bunion seeing Mr. Wagg, who was her neighbour,
+about to depart, insisted upon a seat in his carriage, much to that
+gentleman's discomfiture.
+
+Pen and Warrington walked home together in the moonlight. "And now,"
+Warrington said, "that you have seen the men of letters, tell me, was I
+far wrong in saying that there are thousands of people in this town, who
+don't write books, who are, to the full, as clever and intellectual as
+people who do?"
+
+Pen was forced to confess that the literary personages with whom he had
+become acquainted had not said much, in the course of the night's
+conversation, that was worthy to be remembered or quoted. In fact not one
+word about literature had been said during the whole course of the
+night:--and it may be whispered to those uninitiated people who are
+anxious to know the habits and make the acquaintance of men of letters,
+that there are no race of people who talk about books, or, perhaps, who
+read books, so little as literary men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+The Pall Mall Gazette
+
+
+Considerable success at first attended the new journal. It was generally
+stated, that an influential political party supported the paper; and
+great names were cited amongst the contributors to its columns. Was there
+any foundation for these rumours? We are not at liberty to say whether
+they were ill-founded; but this much we may divulge, that an article
+upon foreign policy, which was generally attributed to a noble Lord,
+whose connexion with the Foreign Office is very well known, was in
+reality composed by Captain Shandon, in the parlour of the Bear and Staff
+public-house near Whitehall Stairs, whither the printer's boy had tracked
+him, and where a literary ally of his, Mr. Bludyer, had a temporary
+residence; and that a series of papers on finance questions, which were
+universally supposed to be written by a great Statesman of the House of
+Commons, were in reality composed by Mr. George Warrington of the Upper
+Temple.
+
+That there may have been some dealings between the Pall Mall Gazette and
+this influential party, is very possible, Percy Popjoy (whose father,
+Lord Falconet, was a member of the party) might be seen not unfrequently
+ascending the stairs to Warrington's chambers; and some information
+appeared in the paper which it gave a character, and could only be got
+from very peculiar sources. Several poems, feeble in thought, but loud
+and vigorous in expression, appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, with the
+signature of "P. P."; and it must be owned that his novel was praised in
+the new journal in a very outrageous manner.
+
+In the political department of the paper Mr. Pen did not take any share;
+but he was a most active literary contributor. The Pall Mall Gazette had
+its offices, as we have heard, in Catherine Street, in the Strand, and
+hither Pen often came with his manuscripts in his pocket, and with a
+great deal of bustle and pleasure; such as a man feels at the outset of
+his literary career, when to see himself in print is still a novel
+sensation, and he yet pleases himself to think that his writings are
+creating some noise in the world.
+
+Here it was that Mr. Jack Finucane, the sub-editor, compiled with paste
+and scissors the Journal of which he was supervisor. With an eagle eye he
+scanned all the paragraphs of all the newspapers which had anything to do
+with the world of fashion over which he presided. He didn't let a death
+or a dinner-party of the aristocracy pass without having the event
+recorded in the columns of his Journal; and from the most recondite
+provincial prints, and distant Scotch and Irish newspapers, he fished out
+astonishing paragraphs and intelligence regarding the upper classes of
+society. It was a grand, nay, a touching sight, for a philosopher, to see
+Jack Finucane, Esquire, with a plate of meat from the cookshop and glass
+of porter from the public-house, for his meal, recounting the feasts of
+the great as if h had been present at them; and in tattered trousers 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 parlour
+of the taverns which he frequented, whereas from his writing you would
+have supposed that he dined with ambassadors, and that his common lounge
+was the bow-window of White's. Errors of description, it is true,
+occasionally slipped from his pen; but the Ballinafad Sentinel, of which
+he was own correspondent, suffered by these, not the Pall Mall Gazette,
+in which Jack was not permitted to write much, his London chiefs thinking
+that the scissors and the paste were better wielded by him than the pen.
+
+Pen took a great deal of pains with the writing of his reviews, and
+having a pretty fair share of desultory reading, acquired in the early
+years of his life an eager fancy and a keen sense of fun, his articles
+pleased his chief and the public, and he was proud to think that he
+deserved the money which he earned. We may be sure that the Pall Mall
+Gazette was taken in regularly at Fairoaks, and read with delight by the
+two ladies there. It was received at Clavering Park, too, where we know
+there was a young lady of great literary tastes; and old Doctor Portman
+himself, to whom the widow sent her paper after she had got her son's
+articles by heart, signified his approval of Pen's productions, saying
+that the lad had spirit, taste, and fancy, and wrote, if not like a
+scholar, at any rate like a gentleman.
+
+And what was the astonishment and delight of our friend Major Pendennis,
+on walking into one of his clubs, the Regent, where Wenham, Lord
+Falconet, and some other gentlemen of good reputation and fashion were
+assembled, to hear them one day talking over a number of the Pall Mall
+Gazette, and of an article which appeared in its columns, making some
+bitter fun of the book recently published by the wife of a celebrated
+member of the opposition party. The book in question was a Book of
+Travels in Spain and Italy, by the Countess of Muffborough, in which it
+was difficult to say which was the most wonderful, the French or the
+English, in which languages her ladyship wrote indifferently, and upon
+the blunders of which the critic pounced with delightful mischief. The
+critic was no other than Pen: he jumped and danced round about his
+subject with the greatest jocularity and high spirits: he showed up the
+noble lady's faults with admirable mock gravity and decorum. There was
+not a word in the article which was not polite and gentlemanlike; and the
+unfortunate subject of the criticism was scarified and laughed at during
+the operation. Wenham's bilious countenance was puckered up with malign
+pleasure as he read the critique. Lady Muffborough had not asked him to
+her parties during the last year. Lord Falconet giggled and laughed with
+all his heart; Lord Muffborough and he had been rivals ever since they
+began life; and these complimented Major Pendennis, who until now had
+scarcely paid any attention to some hints which his Fairoaks
+correspondence threw out of "dear Arthur's constant and severe literary
+occupations, which I fear may undermine the poor boy's health," and had
+thought any notice of Mr. Pen and his newspaper connexions quite below
+his dignity as a Major and a gentleman.
+
+But when the oracular Wenham praised the boy's production; when Lord
+Falconet, who had had the news from Percy Popjoy, approved of the genius
+of young Pen; when the great Lord Steyne himself, to whom the Major
+referred the article, laughed and sniggered over it, swore it was
+capital, and that the Muffborough would writhe under it, like a whale
+under a harpoon, the Major, as in duty bound, began to admire his nephew
+very much, said, "By gad, the young rascal had some stuff in him, and
+would do something; he had always said he would do something;" and with a
+hand quite tremulous with pleasure, the old gentleman sate down to write
+to the widow at Fairoaks all that the great folks had said in praise of
+Pen; and he wrote to the young rascal, too, asking when he would come and
+eat a chop with his old uncle, and saying that he was commissioned to
+take him to dinner at Gaunt House, for Lord Steyne liked anybody who
+could entertain him, whether by his folly, wit, or by his dulness, by his
+oddity, affectation, good spirits, or any other quality. Pen flung his
+letter across the table to Warrington: perhaps he was disappointed that
+the other did not seem to be much affected by it.
+
+The courage of young critics is prodigious: they clamber up to the
+judgment-seat, and, with scarce a hesitation, give their opinion upon
+works the most intricate or profound. Had Macaulay's History or
+Herschel's Astronomy been put before Pen at this period, he would have
+looked through the volumes, meditated his opinion over a cigar, and
+signified his august approval of either author, as if the critic had been
+their born superior and indulgent master and patron. By the help of the
+Biographie Universelle or the British Museum, he would be able to take a
+rapid resume of a historical period, and allude to names, dates, and
+facts, in such a masterly, easy way, as to astonish his mamma at home,
+who wondered where her boy could have acquired such a prodigious store of
+reading and himself, too, when he came to read over his articles two or
+three months after they had been composed, and when he had forgotten the
+subject and the books which he had consulted. At that period of his life,
+Mr. Pen owns that he would not have hesitated, at twenty-four hours'
+notice, to pass his opinion upon the greatest scholars, or to give a
+judgment upon the Encyclopaedia. Luckily he had Warrington to laugh at
+him and to keep down his impertinence by a constant and wholesome
+ridicule, or he might have become conceited beyond all sufferance; for
+Shandon liked the dash and flippancy of his young aide-de-camp, and was,
+indeed, better pleased with Pen's light and brilliant flashes, than with
+the heavier metal which his elder coadjutor brought to bear.
+
+But though he might justly be blamed on the score of impertinence and a
+certain prematurity of judgment, Mr. Pen was a perfectly honest critic; a
+great deal too candid for Mr. Bungay's purposes, indeed, who grumbled
+sadly at his impartiality. Pen and his chief, the Captain, had a dispute
+upon this subject one day. "In the name of common-sense, Mr. Pendennis,"
+Shandon asked, "what have you been doing--praising one of Mr. Bacon's
+books? Bungay has been with me in a fury this morning at seeing a
+laudatory article upon one of the works of the odious firm over the way."
+
+Pen's eyes opened with wide astonishment. "Do you mean to say," he asked,
+"that we are to praise no books that Bacon publishes: or that, if the
+books are good, we are to say they are bad?"
+
+"My good young friend--for what do you suppose a benevolent publisher
+undertakes a critical journal, to benefit his rival?" Shandon inquired.
+
+"To benefit himself certainly, but to tell the truth too," Pen said,
+"ruat coelum, to tell the truth."
+
+"And my prospectus," said Shandon, with a laugh and a sner; "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 other's cynicism."
+
+"It's more profitable, at any rate," said the Captain, biting his nails.
+"That Wenham is as dull a quack as ever quacked: and you see the carriage
+in which he drove to dinner. Faith, it'll be a long time before Mrs.
+Shandon will take a drive in her own chariot. God help her, poor thing!"
+And Pen went away from his chief, after their little dispute and
+colloquy, pointing his own moral to the Captain's tale, and thinking to
+himself, "Behold this man, stored with genius, wit, learning, and a
+hundred good natural gifts: see how he has wrecked them, by paltering
+with his honesty, and forgetting to respect himself. Wilt thou remember
+thyself, O Pen? thou art conceited enough! Wilt thou sell thy honour for
+a bottle? No, by heaven's grace, we will be honest, whatever befalls, and
+our mouths shall only speak the truth when they open."
+
+A punishment, or, at least, a trial, was in store for Mr. Pen. In the
+very next number of the Pall Mall Gazette, Warrington read out, with
+roars of laughter, an article which by no means amused Arthur Pendennis,
+who was himself at work with a criticism for the next week's number of
+the same journal; and in which the Spring Annual was ferociously
+maltreated by some unknown writer. The person of all most cruelly mauled
+was Pen himself. His verses had not appeared with his own name in the
+Spring Annual, but under an assumed signature. As he had refused to
+review the book, Shandon had handed it over to Mr. Bludyer, with
+directions to that author to dispose of it. And he had done so
+effectually. Mr. Bludyer, who was a man of very considerable talent, and
+of a race which, I believe, is quite extinct in the press of our time,
+had a certain notoriety in his profession, and reputation for savage
+humour. He smashed and trampled down the poor spring flowers with no more
+mercy than a bull would have on a parterre; and having cut up the volume
+to his heart's content, went and sold it at a bookstall, and purchased a
+pint of brandy with the proceeds of the volume.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+Where Pen appears in Town and Country
+
+
+Let us be allowed to pass over a few months of the history of Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis's lifetime, during the which, many events may have occurred
+which were more interesting and exciting to himself, than they would be
+likely to prove to the reader of his present memoirs. We left him, in his
+last chapter, regularly entered upon his business as a professional
+writer, or literary hack, as Mr. Warrington chooses to style himself and
+his friend; and we know how the life of any hack, legal or literary, in a
+curacy, or in a marching regiment, or at a merchant's desk, is dull of
+routine, and tedious of description. One day's labour resembles another
+much too closely. A literary man has often to work for his bread against
+time, or against his will, or in spite of his health, or of his
+indolence, or of his repugnance to the subject on which he is called to
+exert himself, just like any other daily toiler. When you want to make
+money by Pegasus (as he must, perhaps, who has no other saleable
+property), farewell poetry and aerial flights: Pegasus only rises now
+like Mr. Green's balloon, at periods advertised beforehand, and when the
+spectator's money has been paid. Pegasus trots in harness, over the stony
+pavement, and pulls a cart or a cab behind him. Often Pegasus does his
+work with panting sides and trembling knees, and not seldom gets a cut of
+the whip from his driver.
+
+Do not let us, however, be too prodigal of our pity upon Pegasus. There
+is no reason why this animal should be exempt from labour, or illness, or
+decay, any more than any of the other creatures of God's world. If he
+gets the whip, Pegasus often deserves it, and I for one am quite ready to
+protest my friend, George Warrington, against the doctrine which poetical
+sympathisers are inclined to put forward, viz., that of letters, and what
+is called genius, are to be exempt from prose duties of this daily,
+bread-wanting, tax-paying life, and not to be made to work and pay like
+their neighbours.
+
+Well, then, the Pall Mall Gazette being duly established and Arthur
+Pendennis's merits recognised as a flippant, witty, and amusing critic,
+he worked away hard every week, preparing reviews of such works as came
+into his department, and writing his reviews with flippancy certainly,
+but with honesty, and to the best of his power. It might be that a
+historian of threescore, who had spent a quarter of a century in
+composing a work of which our young gentleman disposed in the course of a
+couple of days' reading at the British Museum, was not altogether fairly
+treated by such a facile critic; or that a poet who had been elaborating
+sublime sonnets and odes until he thought them fit for the public and for
+fame, was annoyed by two or three dozen pert lines in Mr. Pen's review,
+in which the poet's claims were settled by the critic, as if the latter
+were my lord on the bench and the author a miserable little suitor
+trembling before him. The actors at the theatres complained of him
+wofully, too, and very likely he was too hard upon them. But there was
+not much harm done after all. It is different now, as we know; but there
+were so few great historians, or great poets, or great actors, in Pen's
+time, that scarce any at all came up for judgment his critical desk.
+Those who got a little whipping, got what in the main was good for them;
+not that the judge was any better or wiser than the persons whom he
+sentenced, or indeed ever fancied himself so. Pen had a strong sense of
+humour and justice, and had not therefore an overweening respect for his
+own works; besides, he had his friend Warrington at his elbow--a terrible
+critic if the young man was disposed to be conceited, and more savage
+over Pen than ever he was to those whom he tried at his literary assize.
+
+By these critical labours, and by occasional contributions to  leading
+articles of the journal, when, without wounding his paper, this eminent
+publicist could conscientiously speak his mind, Mr. Arthur Pendennis
+gained the sum of four pounds four shillings weekly, and with no small
+pains and labour. Likewise be furnished Magazines and Reviews with
+articles of his composition, and is believed to have been (though on this
+score he never chooses to speak) London correspondent of the Chatteris
+Champion, which at that time contained some very brilliant and eloquent
+letters from the metropolis. By these labours the fortunate youth was
+enabled to earn a sum very nearly equal to four hundred pounds a year;
+and on the second Christmas after his arrival in London, he actually
+brought a hundred pounds to his mother, as a dividend upon the debt which
+he owed to Laura. That Mrs. Pendennis read every word of her son's works,
+and considered him to be the profoundest thinker and most elegant writer
+of the day; that she thought his retribution of the hundred pounds an act
+of angelic virtue; that she feared he was ruining his health by his
+labours, and was delighted when he told her of the society which he met,
+and of the great men of letters and fashion whom he saw, will be imagined
+by all readers who have seen son-worship amongst mothers, and that
+charming simplicity of love with which women in the country watch the
+career of their darlings in London. If John has held such and such a
+brief; if Tom has been invited to such and such a ball; or George has met
+this or that great and famous man at dinner; what a delight there is in
+the hearts of mothers and sisters at home in Somersetshire! How young
+Hopeful's letters are read and remembered! What a theme for village talk
+they give, and friendly congratulation! In the second winter, Pen came
+for a very brief space, and cheered the widow's heart, and lightened up
+the lonely house at Fairoaks. Helen had her son all to herself; Laura was
+away on a visit to old Lady Rockminster; the folks of Clavering Park were
+absent; the very few old friends of the house, Doctor Portman at their
+head, called upon Mr. Pen, and treated him with marked respect; between
+mother and son, it was all fondness, confidence, and affection. It was
+the happiest fortnight of the widow's whole life; perhaps in the lives of
+both of them. The holiday was gone only too quickly; and Pen was back in
+the busy world, and the gentle widow alone again. She sent Arthur's money
+to Laura: I don't know why this young lady took the opportunity of
+leaving home when Pen was coming thither, or whether he was the more
+piqued or relieved by her absence.
+
+He was by this time, by his own merits and his uncle's introductions,
+pretty well introduced into London, and known both in literary and polite
+circles. Amongst the former his fashionable reputation stood him in no
+little stead; he was considered to be a gentleman of good present means
+and better expectations, who wrote for his pleasure, than which there
+cannot be a greater recommendation to a young literary aspirant. Bacon,
+Bungay and Co. were proud to accept his articles; Mr. Wenham asked him to
+dinner; Mr. Wagg looked upon him with a favourable eye; and they reported
+how they met him at the houses of persons of fashion, amongst whom he was
+pretty welcome, as they did not trouble themselves about his means,
+present or future; as his appearance and address were good; and as he had
+got a character for being a clever fellow. Finally, he was asked to one
+house, because he was seen at another house: and thus no small varieties
+of London life were presented to the young man: he was made familiar with
+all sorts of people from Paternoster Row to Pimlico, and was as much at
+home at Mayfair dining-tables as at those tavern boards where some of his
+companions of the pen were accustomed to assemble.
+
+Full of high spirits and curiosity, easily adapting himself to all whom
+he met, the young fellow pleased himself in this strange variety and
+jumble of men, and made himself welcome, or at ease at least, wherever he
+went. He would breakfast, for instance, at Mr. Plover's of a morning, in
+company with a Peer, a Bishop, a parliamentary orator, two blue ladies of
+fashion, a popular preacher, the author of the last new novel, and the
+very latest lion imported from Egypt or from America: and would quit this
+distinguished society for the back room at the newspaper office, where
+pens and ink and the wet proof-sheets were awaiting him. Here would be
+Finucane, the sub-editor, with the last news from the Row: and Shandon
+would come in presently, and giving a nod to Pen, would begin scribbling
+his leading article at the other end of the table, flanked by the pint of
+sherry, which, when the attendant boy beheld him, was always silently
+brought for the Captain: or Mr. Bludyer's roaring voice would be heard in
+the front room, where that truculent critic would impound the books on
+the counter in spite of the timid remonstrances of Mr. Midge, the
+publisher, and after looking through the volumes would sell them at his
+accustomed bookstall, and having drunken and dined upon the produce of
+the sale in a tavern box, would call for ink and paper, and proceed to
+"smash" the author of his dinner and the novel. Towards evening Mr. Pen
+would stroll in the direction of his club, and take up Warrington there
+for a constitutional walk. This exercise freed the lungs, and gave an
+appetite for dinner, after which Pen had the privilege to make his bow at
+some very pleasant houses which were opened to him; or the town before
+him for amusement. There was the Opera; or the Eagle Tavern; or a ball to
+go to in Mayfair; or a quiet night with a cigar and a book and a long
+talk with Warrington; or a wonderful new song at the Back Kitchen;--at
+this time of his life Mr. Pen beheld all sorts of places and men; and
+very likely did not know how much he enjoyed himself until long after,
+when balls gave him no pleasure, neither did farces make him laugh; nor
+did the tavern joke produce the least excitement in him; nor did the
+loveliest dancer that ever showed her ankles cause him to stir from his
+chair after dinner. At his present mature age all these pleasures are
+over: and the times have passed away too. It is but a very very few years
+since--but the time is gone, and most of the men. Bludyer will no more
+bully authors or cheat landlords of their score. Shandon, the learned and
+thriftless, the witty and unwise, sleeps his last sleep. They buried
+honest Doolan the other day: never will he cringe or flatter, never pull
+long-bow or empty whisky-noggin any more.
+
+The London season was now blooming in its full vigour, and the
+fashionable newspapers abounded with information regarding the grand
+banquets, routs, and balls which were enlivening the polite world. Our
+gracious Sovereign was holding levees and drawing-rooms at St. James's:
+the bow-windows of the clubs were crowded with the heads of respectable
+red-faced newspaper-reading gentlemen: along the Serpentine trailed
+thousands of carriages: squadrons of dandy horsemen trampled over Rotten
+Row, everybody was in town, in a word; and of course Major Arthur
+Pendennis, who was somebody, was not absent.
+
+With his head tied up in a smart bandana handkerchief and his meagre
+carcass enveloped in a brilliant Turkish dressing-gown, the worthy
+gentleman sate on a certain morning by his fireside letting his feet
+gently simmer in a bath, whilst he took his early cup of tea, and perused
+his Morning Post. He could not have faced the day without his two hours'
+toilet, without his early cup of tea, without his Morning Post. I suppose
+nobody in the world except Morgan, not even Morgan's master himself, knew
+how feeble and ancient the Major was growing, and what numberless little
+comforts he required.
+
+If men sneer, as our habit is, at the artifices of an old beauty, at her
+paint, perfumes, ringlets; at those innumerable, and to us unknown,
+stratagems with which she is said to remedy the ravages of time and
+reconstruct the charms whereof years have bereft her; the ladies, it is
+to be presumed, are not on their side altogether ignorant that men are
+vain as well as they, and that the toilets of old bucks are to the full
+as elaborate as their own. How is it that old Blushington keeps that
+constant little rose-tint on his cheeks; and where does old Blondel get
+the preparation which makes his silver hair pass for golden? Have you
+ever seen Lord Hotspur get off his horse when he thinks nobody is
+looking? Taken out of his stirrups, his shiny boots can hardly totter up
+the steps of Hotspur House. He is a dashing young nobleman still as you
+see the back of him in Rotten Row; when you behold him on foot, what an
+old, old fellow! Did you ever form to yourself any idea of Dick Lacy
+(Dick has been Dick these sixty years) in a natural state, and without
+his stays? All these men are objects whom the observer of human life and
+manners may contemplate with as much profit as the most elderly
+Belgravian Venus, or inveterate Mayfair Jezebel. An old reprobate
+daddy-longlegs, who has never said his prayers (except perhaps in public)
+these fifty years: an old buck who still clings to as many of the habits
+of youth as his feeble grasp of health can hold by: who has given up the
+bottle, but sits with young fellows over it, and tells naughty stories
+upon toast-and-water--who has given up beauty, but still talks about it
+as wickedly as the youngest roue in company--such an old fellow, I say,
+if any parson in Pimlico or St. James's were to order the beadles to
+bring him into the middle aisle, and there set him in an armchair, and
+make a text of him, and preach about him to the congregation, could be
+turned to a wholesome use for once in his life, and might be surprised to
+find that some good thoughts came out of him. But we are wandering from
+our text, the honest Major, who sits all this while with his feet cooling
+in the bath: Morgan takes them out of that place of purification, and
+dries them daintily, and proceeds to set the old gentleman on his legs,
+with waistband and wig, starched cravat, and spotless boots and gloves.
+
+It was during these hours of the toilet that Morgan and his employer had
+their confidential conversations, for they did not meet much at other
+times of the day--the Major abhorring the society of his own chairs and
+tables in his lodgings; and Morgan, his master's toilet over and letters
+delivered, had his time very much on his own hands.
+
+This spare time the active and well-mannered gentleman bestowed among the
+valets and butlers of the nobility, his acquaintance; and Morgan
+Pendennis, as he was styled, for, by such compound names, gentlemen's
+gentlemen are called in their private circles, was a frequent and welcome
+guest at some of the very highest tables in this town. He was a member of
+two influential clubs in Mayfair and Pimlico; and he was thus enabled to
+know the whole gossip of the town, and entertain his master very
+agreeably during the two hours' toilet conversation. He knew a hundred
+tales and legends regarding persons of the very highest ton, whose
+valets canvass their august secrets, just, my dear Madam, as our own
+parlour-maids and dependants in the kitchen discuss our characters, our
+stinginess and generosity, our pecuniary means or embarrassments, and our
+little domestic or connubial tiffs and quarrels. If I leave this
+manuscript open on my table, I have not the slightest doubt Betty will
+read it, and they will talk it over in the lower regions to-night; and
+to-morrow she will bring in my breakfast with a face of such entire
+imperturbable innocence, that no mortal could suppose her guilty of
+playing the spy. If you and the Captain have high words upon any subject,
+which is just possible, the circumstances of the quarrel, and the
+characters of both of you, will be discussed with impartial eloquence
+over the kitchen tea-table; and if Mrs. Smith's maid should by chance be
+taking a dish of tea with yours, her presence will not undoubtedly act as
+a restraint upon the discussion in question; her opinion will be given
+with candour; and the next day her mistress will probably know that
+Captain and Mrs. Jones have been a quarrelling as usual. Nothing is
+secret. Take it as a rule that John knows everything: and as in our
+humble world so in the greatest: a duke is no more a hero to his
+valet-de-chambre than you or I; and his Grace's Man at his club, in
+company doubtless with other Men of equal social rank, talks over his
+master's character and affairs with the ingenuous truthfulness which
+befits gentlemen who are met together in confidence. Who is a niggard and
+screws up his money-boxes: who is in the hands of the money-lenders, and
+is putting his noble name on the back of bills of exchange: who is
+intimate with whose wife: who wants whom to marry her daughter, and which
+he won't, no not at any price:--all these facts gentlemen's confidential
+gentlemen discuss confidentially, and are known and examined by every
+person who has any claim to rank in genteel society. In a word, if old
+Pendennis himself was said to know everything, and was at once admirably
+scandalous and delightfully discreet; it is but justice to Morgan to say,
+that a great deal of his master's information was supplied to that worthy
+man by his valet, who went out and foraged knowledge for him. Indeed,
+what more effectual plan is there to get a knowledge of London society,
+than to begin at the foundation--that is, at the kitchen floor?
+
+So Mr. Morgan and his employer conversed as the latter's toilet
+proceeded. There had been a drawing-room on the previous day, and the
+Major read among the presentations that of Lady Clavering by Lady
+Rockminster, and of Miss Amory by her mother Lady Clavering,--and in a
+further part of the paper their dresses were described, with a precision
+and in a jargon which will puzzle and amuse the antiquary of future
+generations. The sight of these names carried Pendennis back to the
+country. "How long have the Claverings been in London?" he asked; "pray,
+Morgan, have you seen any of their people?"
+
+"Sir Francis have sent away his foring man, sir," Mr. Morgan replied;
+"and have took a friend of mine as own man, sir. Indeed he applied on my
+reckmendation. You may recklect Towler, sir,--tall red-aired man--but
+dyes his air. Was groom of the chambers in Lord Levant's family till his
+Lordship broke hup. It's a fall for Towler, sir; but pore men can't be
+particklar," said the valet, with a pathetic voice.
+
+"Devilish hard on Towler, by gad!" said the Major, amused, "and not
+pleasant for Lord Levant--he, he!"
+
+"Always knew it was coming, sir. I spoke to you of it Michaelmas was four
+years: when her Ladyship put the diamonds in pawn. It was Towler, sir,
+took 'em in two cabs to Dobree's--and a good deal of the plate went the
+same way. Don't you remember seeing of it at Blackwall, with the Levant
+arms and coronick, and Lord Levant settn oppsit to it at the Marquis of
+Steyne's dinner? Beg your pardon; did I cut you, sir?"
+
+Morgan was now operating upon the Major's chin--he continued the theme
+while strapping the skilful razor. "They've took a house in Grosvenor
+Place, and are coming out strong, sir. Her Ladyship's going to give three
+parties, besides a dinner a week, sir. Her fortune won't stand it--can't
+stand it."
+
+"Gad, she had a devilish good cook when I was at Fairoaks," the Major
+said, with very little compassion for the widow Amory's fortune.
+
+"Marobblan was his name, sir; Marobblan's gone away, sir," Morgan said,--
+and the Major, this time, with hearty sympathy, said, "he was devilish
+sorry to lose him."
+
+"There's been a tremenjuous row about that Mosseer Marobblan," Morgan
+continued "At a ball at Baymouth, sir, bless his impadence, he challenged
+Mr. Harthur to fight a jewel, sir, which Mr. Arthur was very near
+knocking him down, and pitchin' him outawinder, and serve him right; but
+Chevalier Strong, sir, came up and stopped the shindy--I beg pardon, the
+holtercation, sir--them French cooks has as much pride and hinsolence as
+if they was real gentlemen."
+
+"I heard something of that quarrel," said the Major; "but Mirobolant was
+not turned off for that?"
+
+"No, sir--that affair, sir, which Mr. Harthur forgave it him and beayved
+most handsome, was hushed hup: it was about Miss Hamory, sir, that he ad
+is dismissial. Those French fellers, they fancy everybody is in love with
+'em; and he climbed up the large grape vine to her winder, sir, and was a
+trying to get in, when he was caught, sir; and Mr. Strong came out, and
+they got the garden-engine and played on him, and there was no end of a
+row, sir."
+
+"Confound his impudence! You don't mean to say Miss Amory encouraged
+him," cried the Major, amazed at a peculiar expression in Mr. Morgan's
+countenance.
+
+Morgan resumed his imperturbable demeanour. "Know nothing about it, sir.
+Servants don't know them kind of things the least. Most probbly there was
+nothing in it--so many lies is told about families--Marobblan went away,
+bag and baggage, saucepans, and pianna, and all--the feller ad a pianna,
+and wrote potry in French, and he took a lodging at Clavering, and he
+hankered about the primises, and it was said that Madam Fribsy, the
+milliner, brought letters to Miss Hamory, though I don't believe a word
+about it; nor that he tried to pison hisself with charcoal, which it was
+all a humbug betwigst him and Madam Fribsy; and he was nearly shot by the
+keeper in the park."
+
+In the course of that very day, it chanced that the Major had stationed
+himself in the great window of Bays's Club in Saint James's Street, at
+the hour in the afternoon when you see a half-score of respectable old
+bucks similarly recreating themselves (Bays's is rather an old-fashioned
+place of resort now, and many of its members more than middle-aged; but
+in the time of the Prince Regent, these old fellows occupied the same
+window, and were some of the very greatest dandies in this empire)--Major
+Pendennis was looking from the great window, and spied his nephew Arthur
+walking down the street in company with his friend Mr. Popjoy.
+
+"Look!" said Popjoy to Pen, as they passed, "did you ever pass Bays's at
+four o'clock, without seeing that collection of old fogies? It's a
+regular museum. They ought to be cast in wax, and set up at Madame
+Tussaud's--"
+
+"--In a chamber of old horrors by themselves," Pen said, laughing.
+
+"--In the chamber of horrors! Gad, doosid good!" Pop cried. They are old
+rogues, most of 'em, and no mistake. There's old Blondel; there's my
+Uncle Colchicum, the most confounded old sinner in Europe; there's--
+hullo! there's somebody rapping the window and nodding at us."
+
+"It's my uncle, the Major," said Pen. "Is he an old sinner too?"
+
+"Notorious old rogue," Pop said, wagging his head. ("Notowious old
+wogue," he pronounced the words, thereby rendering them much more
+emphatic.)--"He's beckoning you in; he wants to speak to you."
+
+"Come in too," Pen said.
+
+"--Can't," replied the other. "Cut uncle Col. two years ago, about
+Mademoiselle Frangipane--Ta, ta," and the young sinner took leave of Pen,
+and the club of the elder criminals, and sauntered into Blacquiere's, an
+adjacent establishment, frequented by reprobates of his own age.
+
+Colchicum, Blondel, and the senior bucks had just been conversing about
+the Clavering family, whose appearance in London had formed the subject
+of Major Pendennis's morning conversation with his valet. Mr. Blondel's
+house was next to that of Sir Francis Clavering, in Grosvenor Place:
+giving very good dinners himself, he had remarked some activity in his
+neighbour's kitchen. Sir Francis, indeed, had a new chef, who had come in
+more than once and dressed Mr. Blondel's dinner for him; that gentleman
+having only a remarkably expert female artist permanently engaged in his
+establishment, and employing such chiefs of note as happened to be free
+on the occasion of his grand banquets. "They go to a devilish expense and
+see devilish bad company as yet, I hear," Mr. Blondel said, "they scour
+the streets, by gad, to get people to dine with 'em. Champignon says it
+breaks his heart to serve up a dinner to their society. What a shame it
+is that those low people should have money at all," cried Mr. Blondel,
+whose grandfather had been a reputable leather-breeches maker, and whose
+father had lent money to the Princes.
+
+"I wish I had fallen in with the widow myself" sighed Lord Colchicum,
+"and not been laid up with that confounded gout at Leghorn--I would have
+married the woman myself.--I'm told she has six hundred thousand pounds
+in the Threes."
+
+"Not quite so much as that,--I knew her family in India,"--Major
+Pendennis said, "I knew her family in India; her father was an enormously
+rich old indigo-planter,--know all about her;--Clavering has the next
+estate to ours in the country.--Ha! there's my nephew walking with"--
+"With mine,--the infernal young scamp," said Lord Colchicum glowering at
+Popjoy out of his heavy eyebrows; and he turned away from the window as
+Major Pendennis tapped upon it.
+
+The Major was in high good-humour. The sun was bright, the air brisk and
+invigorating. He had determined upon a visit to Lady Clavering on that
+day, and bethought him that Arthur would be a good companion for the walk
+across the Green Park to her ladyship's door. Master Pen was not
+displeased to accompany his illustrious relative, who pointed out a dozen
+great men in that brief transit through St. James's Street, and got bows
+from a Duke at a crossing, a Bishop (on a cob), and a Cabinet Minister
+with an umbrella. The Duke gave the elder Pendennis a finger of a
+pipe-clayed glove to shake, which the Major embraced with great
+veneration; and all Pen's blood tingled as he found himself in actual
+communication, as it were, with this famous man (for Pen had possession
+of the Major's left arm, whilst the gentleman's other wing was engaged
+with his Grace's right) and he wished all Grey Friars' School, all
+Oxbridge University, all Paternoster Row and the Temple and Laura and his
+mother at Fairoaks, could be standing on each side of the street, to see
+the meeting between him and his uncle, and the most famous duke in
+Christendom.
+
+"How do, Pendennis?--fine day," were his Grace's remarkable words, and
+with a nod of his august head he passed on--in a blue frock-coat and
+spotless white duck trousers, in a white stock, with a shining buckle
+behind.
+
+Old Pendennis, whose likeness to his Grace has been remarked, began to
+imitate him unconsciously, after they had parted, speaking with curt
+sentences, after the manner of the great man. We have all of us, no
+doubt, met with more than one military officer who has so imitated the
+manner of a certain great Captain of the Age; and has, perhaps, changed
+his own natural character and disposition, because Fate had endowed him
+with an aquiline nose. In like manner have we not seen many another man
+pride himself on having a tall forehead and a supposed likeness to Mr.
+Canning? many another go through life swelling with self-gratification on
+account of an imagined resemblance (we say "imagined," because that
+anybody should be really like that most beautiful and perfect of men is
+impossible) to the great and revered George IV.: many third parties, who
+wore low necks to their dresses because they fancied that Lord Byron and
+themselves were similar in appearance: and has not the grave closed but
+lately upon poor Tom Bickerstaff, who having no more imagination than Mr.
+Joseph Hume, looked in the glass and fancied himself like Shakspeare?
+shaved his forehead so as farther to resemble the immortal bard, wrote
+tragedies incessantly, and died perfectly crazy--actually perished of his
+forehead? These or similar freaks of vanity most people who have
+frequented the world must have seen in their experience. Pen laughed in
+his roguish sleeve at the manner in which his uncle began to imitate the
+great man from whom they had just parted but Mr. Pen was as vain in his
+own way, perhaps, as the elder gentleman, and strutted, with a very
+consequential air of his own, by the Major's side.
+
+"Yes, my dear boy," said the old bachelor, as they sauntered through the
+Green Park, where many poor children were disporting happily, and
+errand-boys were playing at toss-halfpenny, and black sheep were grazing
+in the sunshine, and an actor was learning his part on a bench, and
+nursery-maids and their charges sauntered here and there, and several
+couples were walking in a leisurely manner; "yes, depend on it, my boy;
+for a poor man, there is nothing like having good acquaintances. Who were
+those men, with whom you saw me in the bow-window at Bays's? Two were
+Peers of the realm. Hobananob will be a Peer, as soon as his grand-uncle
+dies, and he has had his third seizure; and of the other four, not one
+has less than his seven thousand a year. Did you see that dark blue
+brougham, with that tremendous stepping horse, waiting at the door of the
+club? You'll know it again. It is Sir Hugh Trumpington's; he was never
+known to walk in his life; never appears in the streets on foot--never:
+and if he is going two doors off, to see his mother, the old dowager (to
+whom I shall certainly introduce you, for she receives some of the best
+company in London), gad, sir--he mounts his horse at No. 23, and
+dismounts again at No. 25 A. He is now upstairs, at Bays's, playing
+picquet with Count Punter: he is the second-best player in England--as
+well he may be; for he plays every day of his life, except Sundays (for
+Sir Hugh is an uncommonly religious man) from half-past three till
+half-past seven, when he dresses for dinner.
+
+"A very pious manner of spending his time," Pen said, laughing and
+thinking that his uncle was falling into the twaddling state.
+
+"Gad, sir, that is not the question. A man of his estate may employ his
+time as he chooses. When you are a baronet, a county member, with ten
+thousand acres of the best land in Cheshire, and such a place as
+Trumpington (though he never goes there), you may do as you like."
+
+"And so that was his brougham, sir, was it?" the nephew said with almost
+a sneer.
+
+"His brougham--O ay, yes!--and that brings me back to my point--revenons
+a nos moutons. Yes, begad! revenons a nous moutons. Well, that brougham
+is mine if I choose, between four and seven. Just as much mine as if I
+jobbed it from Tilbury's, begad, for thirty pound a month. Sir Hugh is
+the best natured fellow in the world; and if it hadn't been so fine an
+afternoon as it is, you and I would have been in that brougham at this
+very minute on our way to Grosvenor Place. That is the benefit of knowing
+rich men;--I dine for nothing, sir;--I go into the country, and I'm
+mounted for nothing. Other fellows keep hounds and gamekeepers for me.
+Sic vos, non vobis, as we used to say at Grey Friars, hey? I'm of the
+opinion of my old friend Leech, of the Forty-fourth; and a devilish good
+shrewd fellow he was, as most Scotchmen are. Gad, sir, Leech used to say,
+'He was so poor that he couldn't afford to know a poor man.'"
+
+"You don't act up to your principles, uncle," Pen said good-naturedly.
+
+"Up to my principles; how, sir?" the Major asked, rather testily.
+
+"You would have cut me in Saint James's Street, sir," Pen said, "were
+your practice not more benevolent than your theory; you who live with
+dukes and magnates of the land, and would take no notice of a poor devil
+like me." By which speech we may see that Mr. Pen was getting on in the
+world, and could flatter as well as laugh in his sleeve.
+
+Major Pendennis was appeased instantly, and very much pleased. He tapped
+affectionately his nephew's arm on which he was leaning, and said,--"you,
+sir, you are my flesh and blood! Hang it, sir, I've been very proud of
+you and very fond of you, but for your confounded follies and
+extravagances--and wild oats, sir, which I hope you've sown 'em. I hope
+you've sown 'em; begad! My object, Arthur, is to make a man of you--to
+see you well placed in the world, as becomes one of your name and my own,
+sir. You have got yourself a little reputation by your literary talents,
+which I am very far from undervaluing, though in my time, begad, poetry
+and genius and that sort of thing were devilish disreputable. There was
+poor Byron, for instance, who ruined himself, and contracted the worst
+habits by living with poets and newspaper-writers, and people of that
+kind: But the times are changed now--there's a run upon literature--
+clever fellows get into the best houses in town, begad! Tempora mutantur,
+sir; and by Jove, I suppose whatever is is right, as Shakspeare says."
+
+Pen did not think fit to tell his uncle who was the author who had made
+use of that remarkable phrase, and here descending from the Green Park,
+the pair made their way into Grosvenor Place, and to the door of the
+mansion occupied there by Sir Francis and Lady Clavering.
+
+The dining-room shutters of this handsome mansion were freshly gilded;
+the knockers shone gorgeous upon the newly painted door; the balcony
+before the drawing-room bloomed with a portable garden of the most
+beautiful plants, and with flowers, white, and pink, and scarlet; the
+windows of the upper room (the sacred chamber and dressing-room of my
+lady, doubtless), and even a pretty little casement of the third story,
+which keen-sighted Mr. Pen presumed to belong to the virgin bedroom of
+Miss Blanche Amory, were similarly adorned with floral ornaments, and the
+whole exterior face of the house presented the most brilliant aspect
+which fresh new paint, shining plate-glass, newly cleaned bricks, and
+spotless mortar, could offer to the beholder.
+
+"How Strong must have rejoiced in organising all this splendour," thought
+Pen. He recognised the Chevalier's genius in the magnificence before him.
+
+"Lady Clavering is going out for her drive," the Major said. "We shall
+only have to leave our pasteboards, Arthur." He used the word
+'pasteboards,' having heard it from some of the ingenuous youth of the
+nobility about town, and as a modern phrase suited to Pen's tender years.
+Indeed, as the two gentlemen reached the door, a landau drove up, a
+magnificent yellow carriage, lined with brocade or satin of a faint cream
+colour, drawn by wonderful grey horses, with flaming ribbons, and harness
+blazing all over with crests: no less than three of these heraldic
+emblems surmounted the coats-of-arms on the panels, and these shields
+contained a prodigious number of quarterings, betokening the antiquity
+and splendour of the house of Clavering and Snell. A coachman in a tight
+silver wig surmounted the magnificent hammer-cloth (whereon the same arms
+were worked in bullion), and controlled the prancing greys--a young man
+still, but of a solemn countenance, with a laced waistcoat and buckles in
+his shoes--little buckles, unlike those which John and Jeames, the
+footmen, wear, and which we know are large, and spread elegantly over the
+foot.
+
+One of the leaves of the hall door was opened, and John--one of the
+largest of his race--was leaning against the door-pillar with his
+ambrosial hair powdered, his legs crossed; beautiful, silk-stockinged; in
+his hand his cane, gold-headed, dolichoskion. Jeames was invisible, but
+near at hand, waiting in the hall, with the gentleman who does not wear
+livery, and ready to fling down the roll of hair-cloth over which her
+ladyship was to step to her carriage. These things and men, the which to
+tell of demands time, are seen in the glance of a practised eye: and, in
+fact, the Major and Pen had scarcely crossed the street, when the second
+battant of the door flew open; the horse-hair carpet tumbled down the
+door-steps to those of the carriage; John was opening it on one side of
+the emblazoned door, and Jeames on the other, the two ladies, attired in
+the highest style of fashion, and accompanied by a third, who carried a
+Blenheim spaniel, yelping in a light blue ribbon, came forth to ascend
+the carriage.
+
+Miss Amory was the first to enter, which she did with aerial lightness,
+and took the place which she liked best. Lady Clavering next followed,
+but her ladyship was more mature of age and heavy of foot, and one of
+those feet, attired in a green satin boot, with some part of a stocking,
+which was very fine, whatever the ankle might be which it encircled,
+might be seen swaying on the carriage-step, as her ladyship leaned for
+support on the arm of the unbending Jeames, by the enraptured observer of
+female beauty who happened to be passing at the time of this imposing
+ceremonial.
+
+The Pendennises senior and junior beheld those charms as they came up to
+the door--the Major looking grave and courtly, and Pen somewhat abashed
+at the carriage and its owners; for he thought of sundry little passages
+at Clavering, which made his heart beat rather quick.
+
+At that moment Lady Clavering, looking round the pair,--she was on the
+first carriage-step, and would have been in the vehicle in another
+second, but she gave a start backwards (which caused some of the powder
+to fly from the hair of ambrosial Jeames), and crying out, "Lor, if it
+isn't Arthur Pendennis and the old Major!" jumped back to terra firma
+directly, and holding out two fat hands, encased in tight orange-coloured
+gloves, the good-natured woman warmly greeted the Major and his nephew.
+
+"Come in both of you.--Why haven't you been before?--Get out, Blanche,
+and come and see your old friends.--O, I'm so glad to see you. We've been
+waitin and waitin for you ever so long. Come in, luncheon ain't gone
+down," cried out this hospitable lady, squeezing Pen's hand in both hers
+(she had dropped the Major's after a brief wrench of recognition), and
+Blanche, casting up her eyes towards the chimneys, descended from the
+carriage presently, with a timid, blushing, appealing look, and gave a
+little hand to Major Pendennis.
+
+The companion with the spaniel looked about irresolute, and doubting
+whether she should not take Fido his airing; but she too turned right
+about face and entered the house, after Lady Clavering, her daughter, and
+the two gentlemen. And the carriage, with the prancing greys, was left
+unoccupied, save by the coachman in the silver wig.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+In which the Sylph reappears
+
+
+Better folks than Morgan, the valet, were not so well instructed as that
+gentleman, regarding the amount of Lady Clavering's riches; and the
+legend in London, upon her Ladyship's arrival in the polite metropolis,
+was, that her fortune was enormous. Indigo factories, opium clippers,
+banks overflowing with rupees, diamonds and jewels of native princes, and
+vast sums of interest paid by them for loans contracted by themselves or
+their predecessors to Lady Clavering's father, were mentioned as sources
+of her wealth. Her account at her London banker's was positively known,
+and the sum embraced so many cyphers as to create as many O's of
+admiration in the wondering hearer. It was a known fact that an envoy
+from an Indian Prince, a Colonel Altamont, the Nawaub of Lucknow's prime
+favourite, an extraordinary man, who had, it was said, embraced
+Mahometanism, and undergone a thousand wild and perilous adventures was
+at present in this country, trying to negotiate with the Begum Clavering,
+the sale of the Nawaub's celebrated nose-ring diamond, 'the light of the
+Dewan.'
+
+Under the title of the Begum, Lady Clavering's fame began to spread in
+London before she herself descended upon the Capital, and as it has been
+the boast of Delolme, and Blackstone, and all panegyrists of the British
+Constitution, that we admit into our aristocracy merit of every kind, and
+that the lowliest-born man, if he but deserve it, may wear the robes of a
+peer, and sit alongside of a Cavendish or a Stanley: so it ought to be
+the boast of our good society, that haughty though it be, naturally
+jealous of its privileges, and careful who shall be admitted into its
+circle, yet, if an individual be but rich enough, all barriers are
+instantly removed, and he or she is welcomed, as from his wealth he
+merits to be. This fact shows our British independence and honest
+feeling--our higher orders are not such mere haughty aristocrats as the
+ignorant represent them: on the contrary, if a man have money they will
+hold out their hands to him, eat his dinners, dance at his balls, marry
+his daughters, or give their own lovely girls to his sons, as affably as
+your commonest roturier would do.
+
+As he had superintended the arrangements of the country mansion, our
+friend, the Chevalier Strong, gave the benefit of his taste and advice to
+the fashionable London upholsterers, who prepared the town house for the
+reception of the Clavering family. In the decoration of this elegant
+abode, honest Strong's soul rejoiced as much as if he had been himself
+its proprietor. He hung and re-hung the pictures, he studied the
+positions of sofas, he had interviews with wine merchants and purveyors
+who were to supply the new establishment; and at the same time the
+Baronet's factotum and confidential friend took the opportunity of
+furnishing his own chambers, and stocking his snug little cellar: his
+friends complimented him upon the neatness of the former; and the select
+guests who came in to share Strong's cutlet new found a bottle of
+excellent claret to accompany the meal. The Chevalier was now, as be
+said, "in clover:" he had a very comfortable set of rooms in Shepherd's
+Inn. He was waited on by a former Spanish Legionary and comrade of his
+whom he had left at a breach of a Spanish fort, and found at a crossing
+in Tottenham-court Road, and whom he had elevated to the rank of
+body-servant to himself and to the chum who, at present, shared his
+lodgings. This was no other than the favourite of the Nawaub of Lucknow,
+the valiant Colonel Altamont.
+
+No man was less curious, or at any rate, more discreet, than Ned Strong,
+and he did not care to inquire into the mysterious connexion which, very
+soon after their first meeting at Baymouth was established between Sir
+Francis Clavering and the envoy of the Nawaub. The latter knew some
+secret regarding the former, which put Clavering into his power, somehow;
+and Strong, who knew that his patron's early life had been rather
+irregular, and that his career with his regiment in India had not been
+brilliant, supposed that the Colonel, who swore he knew Clavering well at
+Calcutta, had some hold upon Sir Francis, to which the latter was forced
+to yield. In truth, Strong had long understood Sir Francis Clavering's
+character, as that of a man utterly weak in purpose, in principle, and
+intellect, a moral and physical trifler and poltroon.
+
+With poor Clavering, his Excellency had had one or two interviews after
+their Baymouth meeting, the nature of which conversations the Baronet did
+not confide to Strong: although he sent letters to Altamont by that
+gentleman, who was his ambassador in all sorts of affairs. On one of
+these occasions the Nawaub's envoy must have been in an exceeding ill
+humour; for he crushed Clavering's letter in his hand, and said with his
+own particular manner and emphasis:--
+
+"A hundred, be hanged. I'll have no more letters nor no more
+shilly-shally. Tell Clavering I'll have a thousand, or by Jove I'll
+split, and burst him all to atoms. Let him give me a thousand and I'll go
+abroad, and I give you my honour as a gentleman, I'll not ask him for no
+more for a year. Give him that message from me, Strong, my boy; and tell
+him if the money ain't here next Friday at twelve o'clock, as sure as my
+name's what it is, I'll have a paragraph in the newspaper on Saturday,
+and next week I'll blow up the whole concern."
+
+Strong carried back these words to his principal, on whom their effect
+was such that actually on the day and hour appointed, the Chevalier made
+his appearance once more at Altamont's hotel at Baymouth, with the sum of
+money required. Altamont was a gentleman, he said, and behaved as such;
+he paid his bill at the Inn, and the Baymouth paper announced his
+departure on a foreign tour. Strong saw him embark at Dover. "It must be
+forgery at the very least," he thought, "that has put Clavering into this
+fellow's power, and the Colonel has got the bill."
+
+Before the year was out, however, this happy country saw the Colonel once
+more upon its shores. A confounded run on the red had finished him, he
+said, at Baden Baden: no gentleman could stand against a colour coming up
+fourteen times. He had been obliged to draw upon Sir Francis Clavering
+for means of returning home: and Clavering, though pressed for money (for
+he had election expenses, had set up his establishment in the country and
+was engaged in furnishing his London house), yet found means to accept
+Colonel Altamont's bill, though evidently very much against his will; for
+in Strong's hearing, Sir Francis wished to heaven, with many curses, that
+the Colonel could have been locked up in a debtor's goal in Germany for
+life, so that he might never be troubled again.
+
+These sums for the Colonel Sir Francis was obliged to raise without the
+knowledge of his wife; for though perfectly liberal, nay, sumptuous in
+her expenditure, the good lady had inherited a tolerable aptitude for
+business along with the large fortune of her father, Snell, and gave to
+her husband only such a handsome allowance as she thought befitted a
+gentleman of his rank. Now and again she would give him a present, or pay
+an outstanding gambling debt; but she always exacted a pretty accurate
+account of the moneys so required; and respecting the subsidies to the
+Colonel, Clavering fairly told Strong that he couldn't speak to his wife.
+
+Part of Mr. Strong's business in life was to procure this money and other
+sums, for his patron. And in the Chevalier's apartments, in Shepherd's
+Inn, many negotiations took place between gentlemen of the moneyed world
+and Sir Francis Clavering, and many valuable bank-notes and pieces of
+stamped paper were passed between them. When a man has been in the habit
+of getting in debt from his early youth, and of exchanging his promises
+to pay at twelve months against present sums of money, it would seem as
+if no piece of good fortune ever permanently benefited him: a little
+while after the advent of prosperity, the money-lender is pretty certain
+to be in the house again, and the bills with the old signature in the
+market. Clavering found it more convenient to see these gentry at
+Strong's lodgings than at his own; and such was the Chevalier's
+friendship for the Baronet that although he did not possess a shilling of
+his own, his name might be seen as the drawer of almost all the bills of
+exchange which Sir Francis Clavering accepted. Having drawn Clavering's
+bills, he got them discounted "in the City." When they became due he
+parleyed with the bill-holders, and gave them instalments of their debt,
+or got time in exchange for fresh acceptances. Regularly or irregularly,
+gentlemen must live somehow: and as we read how, the other day, at
+Comorn, the troops forming that garrison were gay and lively, acted
+plays, danced at balls, and consumed their rations; though menaced with
+an assault from the enemy without the walls, and with a gallows if the
+Austrians were successful,--so there are hundreds of gallant spirits in
+this town, walking about in good spirits, dining every day in tolerable
+gaiety and plenty, and going to sleep comfortably; with a bailiff always
+more or less near, and a rope of debt round their necks--the which
+trifling inconveniences, Ned Strong, the old soldier, bore very easily.
+
+But we shall have another opportunity of making acquaintance with these
+and some other interesting inhabitants of Shepherd's Inn, and in the
+meanwhile are keeping Lady Clavering and her friends too long waiting on
+the door-steps of Grosvenor Place.
+
+First they went into the gorgeous dining-room, fitted up, Lady Clavering
+couldn't for goodness gracious tell why, in the middle-aged style,
+"unless," said her good-natured ladyship, laughing, "because me and
+Clavering are middle-aged people;"--and here they were offered the
+copious remains of the luncheon of which Lady Clavering and Blanche had
+just partaken. When nobody was near, our little Sylphide, who scarcely
+ate at dinner more than the six grains of rice of Amina, the friend of
+the Ghouls in the Arabian Nights, was most active with her knife and
+fork, and consumed a very substantial portion of mutton cutlets: in which
+piece of hypocrisy it is believed she resembled other young ladies of
+fashion. Pen and his uncle declined the refection, but they admired the
+dining-room with fitting compliments, and pronounced it "very chaste,"
+that being the proper phrase. There were, indeed, high-backed Dutch
+chairs of the seventeenth century; there was a sculptured carved buffet
+of the sixteenth; there was a sideboard robbed out of the carved work of
+a church in the Low Countries, and a large brass cathedral lamp over the
+round oak table; there were old family portraits from Wardour Street
+and tapestry from France, bits of armour, double-handed swords and
+battle-axes made of carton-pierre, looking-glasses, statuettes of saints,
+and Dresden china--nothing, in a word, could be chaster. Behind the
+dining-room was the library, fitted with busts and books all of a size,
+and wonderful easy-chairs, and solemn bronzes in the severe classic
+style. Here it was that, guarded by double doors, Sir Francis smoked
+cigars, and read Bell's Life in London, and went to sleep after dinner,
+when he was not smoking over the billiard-table at his clubs, or punting
+at the gambling-houses in Saint James's.
+
+But what could equal the chaste splendour of the drawing-rooms?--the
+carpets were so magnificently fluffy that your foot made no more noise on
+them than your shadow: on their white ground bloomed roses and tulips as
+big as warming-pans: about the room were high chairs and low chairs,
+bandy-legged chairs, chairs so attenuated that it was a wonder any but a
+sylph could sit upon them, marquetterie-tables covered with marvellous
+gimcracks, china ornaments of all ages and countries, bronzes, gilt
+daggers, Books of Beauty, yataghans, Turkish papooshes and boxes of
+Parisian bonbons. Wherever you sate down there were Dresden shepherds
+and shepherdesses convenient at your elbow; there were, moreover, light
+blue poodles and ducks and cocks and hens in porcelain; there were nymphs
+by Boucher, and shepherdesses by Greuze, very chaste indeed; there were
+muslin curtains and brocade curtains, gilt cages with parroquets and
+love-birds, two squealing cockatoos, each out-squealing and
+out-chattering the other; a clock singing tunes on a console-table, and
+another booming the hours like Great Tom, on the mantelpiece--there was,
+in a word, everything that comfort could desire, and the most elegant
+taste devise. A London drawing-room, fitted up without regard to expense,
+is surely one of the noblest and most curious sights of the present day.
+The Romans of the Lower Empire, the dear Marchionesses and Countesses of
+Louis XV., could scarcely have had a finer taste than our modern folks
+exhibit; and everybody who saw Lady Clavering's reception rooms, was
+forced to confess that they were most elegant; and that the prettiest
+rooms in London--Lady Harley Quin's, Lady Hanway Wardour's, or Mrs.
+Hodge-Podgson's own; the great Railroad Croesus' wife, were not fitted up
+with a more consummate "chastity."
+
+Poor Lady Clavering, meanwhile, knew little regarding these things, and
+had a sad want of respect for the splendours around her. "I only know
+they cost a precious deal of money, Major," she said to her guest, "and
+that I don't advise you to try one of them gossamer gilt chairs: I came
+down on one the night we gave our second dinner-party. Why didn't you
+come and see us before? We'd have asked you to it."
+
+"You would have liked to see Mamma break a chair, wouldn't you, Mr.
+Pendennis?" dear Blanche said with a sneer. She was angry because Pen was
+talking and laughing with Mamma, because Mamma had made a number of
+blunders in describing the house--for a hundred other good reasons.
+
+"I should like to have been by to give Lady Clavering my arm if she had
+need of it," Pen answered, with a bow and a blush.
+
+"Quel preux Chevalier!" cried the Sylphide, tossing up her little head.
+
+"I have a fellow-feeling with those who fall, remember," Pen said. "I
+suffered myself very much from doing so once."
+
+"And you went home to Laura to console you," said Miss Amory. Pen winced.
+He did not like the remembrance of the consolation which Laura had given
+to him, nor was he very well pleased to find that his rebuff in that
+quarter was known to the world; so as he had nothing to say in reply, he
+began to be immensely interested in the furniture round about him, and to
+praise Lady Clavering's taste with all his might.
+
+"No, don't praise me," said honest Lady Clavering, "it's all the
+upholsterer's doings and Captain Strong's, they did it all while we was
+at the Park--and--and--Lady Rockminster has been here and says the
+salongs are very well," said Lady Clavering, with an air and tone of
+great deference.
+
+"My cousin Laura has been staying with her," Pen said.
+
+"It's not the dowager: it is the Lady Rockminster."
+
+"Indeed!" cried Major Pendennis, when he heard this great name of
+fashion. "If you have her ladyship's approval, Lady Clavering, you cannot
+be far wrong. No, no, you cannot be far wrong. Lady Rockminster, I should
+say, Arthur, is the very centre of the circle of fashion and taste. The
+rooms are beautiful indeed!" and the Major's voice hushed as he spoke of
+this great lady, and he looked round and surveyed the apartments awfully
+and respectfully, as if he had been at church.
+
+"Yes, Lady Rockminster has took us up," said Lady Clavering.
+
+"Taken us up, Mamma," cried Blanche, in a shrill voice.
+
+"Well, taken us up, then," said my lady; "it's very kind of her, and I
+dare say we shall like it when we git used to it, only at first one don't
+fancy being took--well, taken up, at all. She is going to give our balls
+for us; and wants to invite all our dinners. But I won't stand that. I
+will have my old friends and I won't let her send all the cards out, and
+sit mum at the head of my own table. You must come to me, Arthur and
+Major--come, let me see, on the 14th.--It ain't one of our grand dinners,
+Blanche," she said, looking round at her daughter, who bit her lips and
+frowned very savagely for a sylphide.
+
+The Major, with a smile and a bow, said he would much rather come to a
+quiet meeting than to a grand dinner. He had had enough of those large
+entertainments, and preferred the simplicity of the home circle.
+
+"I always think a dinner's the best the second day," said Lady Clavering,
+thinking to mend her first speech. "On the 14th we'll be quite a snug
+little party;" at which second blunder, Miss Blanche clasped her hands in
+despair, and said "O, mamma, vous etes incorrigible." Major Pendennis
+vowed that he liked snug dinners of all things in the world, and
+confounded her ladyship's impudence for daring to ask such a man as him
+to a second day's dinner. But he was a man of an economical turn of mind,
+and bethinking himself that he could throw over these people if anything
+better should offer, he accepted with the blandest air. As for Pen, he
+was not a diner-out of thirty years' standing as yet, and the idea of a
+fine feast in a fine house was still perfectly welcome to him.
+
+"What was that pretty little quarrel which engaged itself between your
+worship and Miss Amory?" the Major asked of Pen, as they walked away
+together. "I thought you used to au mieux in that quarter."
+
+"Used to be," answered Pen, with a dandified air "is a vague phrase
+regarding a woman. Was and is are two very different terms, sir, as
+regards women's hearts especially.
+
+"Egad, they change as we do," cried the elder. "When we took the Cape of
+Good Hope, I recollect there was a lady who talked poisoning herself for
+your humble servant; and, begad, in three months she ran away from her
+husband with somebody else. Don't get yourself entangled with that Miss
+Amory, She is forward, affected, and under-bred; and her character is
+somewhat--never mind what. But don't think of her; ten thousand pound
+won't do for you. What, my good fellow, is ten thousand pound? I would
+scarcely pay that girl's milliner's bill with the interest of the money."
+
+"You seem to be a connoisseur in millinery, Uncle" Pen said.
+
+"I was, sir, I was," replied the senior; "and the old war-horse, you
+know, never hears the sound of a trumpet, but he begins to he, he!--you
+understand,"--and he gave a killing and somewhat superannuated leer and
+bow to a carriage that passed them and entered the Park.
+
+"Lady Catherine Martingale's carriage" he said "mons'ous fine girls the
+daughters, though, gad, I remember their mother a thousand times
+handsomer. No, Arthur, my dear fellow, with your person and expectations,
+you ought to make a good coup in marriage some day or other; and though I
+wouldn't have this repeated at Fairoaks, you rogue, ha! ha! a reputation
+for a little wickedness, and for being an homme dangereux, don't hurt a
+young fellow with the women. They like it, sir, they hate a milksop--
+young men must be young men, you know. But for marriage," continued the
+veteran moralist, "that is a very different matter. Marry a woman with
+money. I've told you before it is as easy to get a rich wife as a poor
+one; and a doosed deal more comfortable to sit down to a well-cooked
+dinner, with your little entrees nicely served, than to have nothing but
+a damned cold leg of mutton between you and your wife. We shall have a
+good dinner on the 14th, when we dine with Sir Francis Clavering: stick
+to that, my boy, in your relations with the family. Cultivate 'em, but
+keep 'em for dining. No more of your youthful follies and nonsense about
+love in a cottage."
+
+"It must be a cottage with a double coach-house, a cottage of gentility,
+sir," said Pen, quoting the hackneyed ballad of the Devil's Walk: but his
+Uncle did not know that poem (though, perhaps, he might be leading Pen
+upon the very promenade in question), and went on with his philosophical
+remarks, very much pleased with the aptness of the pupil to whom he
+addressed them. Indeed Arthur Pendennis was a clever fellow, who took his
+colour very readily from his neighbour, and found the adaptation only too
+easy.
+
+Warrington, the grumbler, growled out that Pen was becoming such a puppy
+that soon there would be no bearing him. But the truth is, the young
+man's success and dashing manners pleased his elder companion. He liked
+to see Pen gay and spirited, and brimful of health, and life, and hope;
+as a man who has long since left off being amused with clown and
+harlequin, still gets a pleasure in watching a child at a pantomime. Mr.
+Pen's former sulkiness disappeared with his better fortune: and he
+bloomed as the sun began to shine upon him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+Colonel Altamont appears and disappears
+
+
+On the day appointed, Major Pendennis, who had formed no better
+engagement, and Arthur who desired none, arrived together to dine with
+Sir Francis Clavering. The only tenants of the drawing-room when Pen and
+his uncle reached it, were Sir Francis and his wife, and our friend
+Captain Strong, whom Arthur was very glad to see, though the Major looked
+very sulkily at Strong, being by no means well pleased to sit down to
+dinner with Clavering's d----- house-steward, as he irreverently called
+Strong. But Mr. Welbore Welbore, Clavering's country neighbour and
+brother member of Parliament, speedily arriving, Pendennis the elder was
+somewhat appeased, for Welbore, though perfectly dull, and taking no more
+part in the conversation at dinner than the footman behind his chair, was
+a respectable country gentleman of ancient family and seven thousand a
+year: and the Major felt always at ease in such society. To these were
+added other persons of note: the Dowager Lady Rockminster, who had her
+reasons for being well with the Clavering family, and the Lady Agnes
+Foker, with her son Mr. Harry, our old acquaintance. Mr. Pynsent could
+not come, his parliamentary duties keeping him at the House, duties which
+sate upon the two other senators very lightly. Miss Blanche Amory was the
+last of the company who made her appearance. She was dressed in a killing
+white silk dress which displayed her pearly shoulders to the utmost
+advantage. Foker whisped to Pen, who regarded her with eyes of evident
+admiration, that he considered her "a stunner." She chose to be very
+gracious to Arthur upon this day, and held out her hand most cordially,
+and talked about dear Fairoaks, and asked for dear Laura and his mother,
+and said she was longing to go back to the country, and in fact was
+entirely simple, affectionate, and artless.
+
+Harry Foker thought he had never seen anybody so amiable and delightful
+Not accustomed much to the society of ladies, and ordinarily being dumb
+to their presence, he found that he could speak before Miss Amory, and
+became uncommonly lively and talkative, even before the dinner was
+announced and the party descended to the lower rooms. He would have
+longed to give his arm to the fair Blanche, and conduct her down the
+broad carpeted stair; but she fell to the lot of Pen upon this occasion,
+Mr. Foker being appointed to escort Mrs. Welbore Welbore, in consequence
+of his superior rank as an earl's grandson.
+
+But though he was separated from the object of his desire during the
+passage downstairs, the delighted Foker found himself by Miss Amory's
+side at the dinner-table, and flattered himself that he had manoeuvred
+very well in securing that happy place. It may be that the move was not
+his, but that it was made by another person. Blanche had thus the two
+young men, one on each side of her, and each tried to render himself
+gallant and agreeable.
+
+Foker's mamma, from her place, surveying her darling boy, was surprised
+at his vivacity. Harry talked constantly to his fair neighbour about the
+topics of the day.
+
+"Seen Taglioni in the Sylphide, Miss Amory? Bring me that souprame of
+Volile again if you please (this was addressed to the attendant near
+him), very good: can't think where the souprames come from; what becomes
+of the legs of the fowls, I wonder? She's clipping in the Sylphide, ain't
+she?" and he began very kindly to hum the pretty air which pervades that
+prettiest of all ballets, now faded into the past with that most
+beautiful and gracious of all dancers. Will the young folks ever see
+anything so charming, anything so classic, anything like Taglioni?
+
+"Miss Amory is a sylph herself," said Mr. Pen.
+
+"What a delightful tenor voice you have, Mr. Foker," said the young lady.
+"I am sure you have been well taught. I sing a little myself. I should
+like to sing with you."
+
+Pen remembered that words very similar had been addressed to himself by
+the young lady, and that she had liked to sing with him in former days.
+And sneering within himself, he wondered with how many other gentlemen
+she had sung duets since his time? But he did not think fit to put this
+awkward question aloud: and only said, with the very tenderest air which
+he could assume, "I should like to hear you sing again, Miss Blanche. I
+never heard a voice I liked so well as yours, I think."
+
+"I thought you liked Laura's," said Miss Blanche.
+
+"Laura's is a contralto: and that voice is very often out, you know," Pen
+said, bitterly. "I have heard a great deal of music, in London," he
+continued. "I'm tired of those professional people--they sing too loud--
+or I have grown too old or too blase. One grows old very soon, in London,
+Miss Amory. And like all old fellows, I only care for the songs I heard
+in my youth."
+
+"I like English music best. I don't care for foreign songs much. Get me
+some saddle of mutton," said Mr. Foker.
+
+"I adore English ballads, of all things," said Miss Amory.
+
+"Sing me one of the old songs after dinner, will you?" said Pen, with an
+imploring voice.
+
+"Shall I sing you an English song, after dinner?" asked the Sylphide,
+turning to Mr. Foker. "I will, if you will promise to come up soon:" and
+she gave him a perfect broadside of her eyes.
+
+"I'll come up after dinner, fast enough," he said, simply. "I don't care
+about much wine afterwards--I take my whack at dinner--I mean my share,
+you know; and when I have had as much as I want I toddle up to tea. I'm a
+domestic character, Miss Amory--my habits are simple--and when I'm
+pleased I'm generally in a good-humour, ain't I, Pen?--that jelly, if you
+please--not that one, the other with the cherries inside. How the doose
+do they get those cherries inside the jellies?" In this way the artless
+youth prattled on: and Miss Amory listened to him with inexhaustible
+good-humour. When the ladies took their departure for the upper regions,
+Blanche made the two young men promise faithfully to quit the table soon,
+and departed with kind glances to each. She dropped her gloves on Foker's
+side of the table and her handkerchief on Pen's. Each had had some little
+attention paid to him: her politeness to Mr. Foker was perhaps a little
+more encouraging than her kindness to Arthur: but the benevolent little
+creature did her best to make both the gentlemen happy. Foker caught her
+last glance as she rushed out of the door; that bright look passed over
+Mr. Strong's broad white waistcoat and shot straight at Harry Foker's.
+The door closed on the charmer: he sate down with a sigh, and swallowed a
+bumper of claret.
+
+As the dinner at which Pen and his uncle took their places was not one of
+our grand parties, it had been served at a considerably earlier hour than
+those ceremonial banquets of the London season, which custom has ordained
+shall scarcely take place before nine o'clock; and, the company being
+small, and Miss Blanche anxious to betake herself to her piano in the
+drawing-room, giving constant hints to her mother to retreat,--Lady
+Clavering made that signal very speedily, so that it was quite
+daylight yet when the ladies reached the upper apartments, from the
+flower-embroidered balconies of which they could command a view of the
+two Parks, of the poor couples and children still sauntering in the one,
+and of the equipages of ladies and the horses of dandies passing through
+the arch of the other. The sun, in a word had not set behind the elms of
+Kensington Gardens, and was still gilding the statue erected by the
+ladies of England in honour of his Grace the Duke of Wellington, when
+Lady Clavering and her female friends left the gentlemen drinking wine.
+
+The windows of the dining-room were opened to let in the fresh air, and
+afforded to the passers-by in the street a pleasant, or perhaps,
+tantalising view of six gentlemen in white waistcoats with a quantity of
+decanters and a variety of fruits before them--little boys, as they
+passed and jumped up at the area-railings and took a peep, said to one
+another, "Hi hi, Jim, shouldn't you like to be there and have a cut of
+that there pineapple?"--the horses and carriages of the nobility and
+gentry passed by conveying them to Belgravian toilets: the policeman,
+with clamping feet patrolled up and down before the mansion: the shades
+of evening began to fall: the gasman came and lighted the lamps before
+Sir Francis's door: the butler entered the dining-room, and illuminated
+the antique gothic chandelier over the antique carved oak dining-table:
+so that from outside the house you looked inwards upon a night-scene of
+feasting and wax-candles; and from within you beheld a vision of a calm
+summer evening, and the wall of Saint James's Park, and the sky above, in
+which a star or two was just beginning to twinkle.
+
+Jeames, with folded legs, leaning against the door-pillar of his master's
+abode, looked forth musingly upon the latter tranquil sight: whilst a
+spectator clinging to the railings examined the former scene. Policeman X
+passing, gave his attention to neither, but fixed it upon the individual
+holding by the railings, and gazing into Sir Francis Clavering's
+dining-room, where Strong was laughing and talking away, making the
+conversation for the party.
+
+The man at the railing was very gorgeously attired with chains,
+jewellery, and waistcoats, which the illumination from the house lighted
+up to great advantage; his boots were shiny; he had brass buttons to his
+coat, and large white wristbands over his knuckles; and indeed looked so
+grand, that X imagined he beheld a member of parliament, or a person of
+consideration before him. Whatever his rank, however, the M.P., or person
+of consideration, was considerably excited by wine; for he lurched and
+reeled somewhat in his gait, and his hat was cocked over his wild and
+bloodshot eyes in a manner which no sober hat ever could assume. His
+copious black hair was evidently surreptitious, and his whiskers of the
+Tyrian purple.
+
+As Strong's laughter, following after one of his own gros mots, came
+ringing out of window, this gentleman without laughed and sniggered in
+the queerest way likewise, and he slapped his thigh and winked at Jeames
+pensive in the portico, as much as to say, "Plush, my boy, isn't that a
+good story?"
+
+Jeames's attention had been gradually drawn from the moon in the heavens
+to this sublunary scene; and he was puzzled and alarmed by the appearance
+of the man in shiny boots. "A holtercation," he remarked afterwards, in
+the servants'-hall--a "holtercation with a feller in the streets is never
+no good; and indeed he was not hired for any such purpose." So, having
+surveyed the man for some time, who went on laughing, reeling, nodding
+his head with tipsy knowingness, Jeames looked out of the portico, and
+softly called "Pleaceman," and beckoned to that officer.
+
+X marched up resolute, with one Berlin glove stuck in his belt-side, and
+Jeames simply pointed with his index finger to the individual who was
+laughing against the railings. Not one single word more than "Pleaceman"
+did he say, but stood there in the calm summer evening, pointing calmly:
+a grand sight.
+
+X advanced to the individual and said, "Now, sir, will you have the
+kindness to move hon?"
+
+The individual, who was in perfect good-humour, did not appear to bear
+one word which Policeman X uttered, but nodded and waggled his grinning
+head at Strong, until his hat almost fell from his head over the area
+railings.
+
+"Now, sir, move on, do you hear?" cries X, in a much more peremptory
+tone, and he touched the stranger gently with one of the fingers enclosed
+in the gauntlets of the Berlin woof.
+
+He of the many rings instantly started, or rather staggered back, into
+what is called an attitude of self-defence, and in that position began
+the operation which is entitled 'squaring' at Policeman X, and showed
+himself brave and warlike, if unsteady. "Hullo! keep your hands off a
+gentleman," he said, with an oath which need not be repeated.
+
+"Move on out of this," said X, "and don't be a blocking up the pavement,
+staring into gentlemen's dining-rooms."
+
+"Not stare--ho, ho,--not stare--that is a good one," replied the other
+with a satiric laugh and sneer--"Who's to prevent me from staring,
+looking at my friends, if I like? not you, old highlows."
+
+"Friends! I dessay. Move on," answered X.
+
+"If you touch me, I'll pitch into you, I will," roared the other. "I tell
+you I know 'em all--That's Sir Francis Clavering, Baronet, M.P.--I know
+him, and he knows me--and that's Strong, and that's the young chap that
+made the row at the ball. I say, Strong, Strong!"
+
+"It's that d----- Altamont," cried Sir Francis within, with a start and a
+guilty look; and Strong also, with a look of annoyance, got up from the
+table, and ran out to the intruder.
+
+A gentleman in a white waistcoat, running out from a dining-room
+bareheaded, a policeman, and an individual decently attired, engaged in
+almost fisticuffs on the pavement, were enough to make a crowd, even in
+that quiet neighbourhood, at half-past eight o'clock in the evening, and
+a small mob began to assemble before Sir Francis Clavering's door. "For
+God's sake, come in," Strong said, seizing his acquaintance's arm. "Send
+for a cab, James, if you please," he added in an under voice to that
+domestic; and carrying the excited gentleman out of the street, the outer
+door was closed upon him, and the small crowd began to move away.
+
+Mr. Strong had intended to convey the stranger into Sir Francis's private
+sitting-room, where the hats of the male guests were awaiting them, and
+having there soothed his friend by bland conversation, to have carried
+him off as soon as the cab arrived--but the new-comer was in a great
+state of wrath at the indignity which had been put upon him; and when
+Strong would have led him into the second door, said in a tipsy voice,
+"That ain't the door--that's the dining-room door--where the drink's
+going on--and I'll go and have some, by Jove; I'll go and have some." At
+this audacity the butler stood aghast in the hall, and placed himself
+before the door: but it opened behind him, and the master of the house
+made his appearance, with anxious looks.
+
+"I will have some,--by--- I will," the intruder was roaring out, as Sir
+Francis came forward. "Hullo! Clavering, I say I'm come to have some wine
+with you; hay! old boy--hay, old corkscrew? Get us a bottle of the yellow
+seal, you old thief--the very best--a hundred rupees a dozen, and no
+mistake."
+
+The host reflected a moment over his company. There is only Welbore,
+Pendennis, and those two lads, he thought--and with a forced laugh and a
+piteous look, he said,--"Well, Altamont, come in. I am very glad to see
+you, I'm sure."
+
+Colonel Altamont, for the intelligent reader has doubtless long ere this
+discovered in the stranger His Excellency the Ambassador of the Nawaub of
+Lucknow, reeled into the dining-room, with a triumphant look towards
+Jeames, the footman, which seemed to say, "There, sir, what do you think
+of that? Now, am I a gentleman or no?" and sank down into the first
+vacant chair. Sir Francis Clavering timidly stammered out the Colonel's
+name to his guest Mr. Welbore Welbore, and his Excellency began drinking
+wine forthwith and gazing round upon the company, now with the most
+wonderful frowns, and anon with the blandest smiles, and hiccupped
+remarks encomiastic of the drink which he was imbibing.
+
+"Very singular man. Has resided long in a native court in India," Strong
+said, with great gravity, the Chevalier's presence of mind never
+deserting him--"in those Indian courts they get very singular habits."
+
+"Very," said Major Pendennis, drily, and wondering what in goodness' name
+was the company into which he had got.
+
+Mr. Foker was pleased with the new-comer. "It's the man who would sing
+the Malay song at the Back Kitchen," he whispered to Pen. "Try this pine,
+sir," he then said to Colonel Altamont, it's uncommonly fine."
+
+"Pines--I've seen 'em feed pigs on pines," said the Colonel.
+
+"All the Nawaub of Lucknow's pigs are fed on pines," Strong whispered to
+Major Pendennis.
+
+"Oh, of course," the Major answered. Sir Francis Clavering was, in the
+meanwhile, endeavouring to make an excuse to his brother-guest for the
+new-comer's condition, and muttered something regarding Altamont, that he
+was an extraordinary character, very eccentric, very--had Indian habits--
+didn't understand the rules of English society--to which old Welbore, a
+shrewd old gentleman, who drank his wine with great regularity, said,
+"that seemed pretty clear."
+
+Then the Colonel, seeing Pen's honest face, regarded it for a while with
+as much steadiness as became his condition; and said, "I know you, too,
+young fellow. I remember you. Baymouth ball, by Jingo. Wanted to fight
+the Frenchman. I remember you;" and he laughed, and he squared with his
+fists, and seemed hugely amused in the drunken depths of his mind, as
+these recollections passed, or, rather, reeled across it.
+
+"Mr. Pendennis, you remember Colonel Altamont, at Baymouth?" Strong said:
+upon which Pen, bowing rather stiffly, said, "he had the pleasure of
+remembering that circumstance perfectly."
+
+"What's his name?" cried the Colonel. Strong named Mr. Pendennis again.
+
+"Pendennis!--Pendennis be hanged!" Altamont roared out to the surprise of
+every one, and thumping with his fist on the table.
+
+"My name is also Pendennis, sir," said the Major, whose dignity was
+exceedingly mortified by the evening's events--that he, Major Pendennis,
+should have been asked to such a party, and that a drunken man should
+have been introduced to it. "My name is Pendennis, and I will be obliged
+to you not to curse it too loudly."
+
+The tipsy man turned round to look at him, and as he looked, it appeared
+as if Colonel Altamont suddenly grew sober. He put his hand across his
+forehead, and in doing so, displaced somewhat the black wig which he
+wore; and his eyes stared fiercely at the Major, who, in his turn, like a
+resolute old warrior as he was, looked at his opponent very keenly and
+steadily. At the end of the mutual inspection, Altamont began to button
+up his brass-buttoned coat, and rising up from his chair, suddenly, and
+to the company's astonishment, reeled towards the door, and issued from
+it, followed by Strong: all that the latter heard him utter was--"Captain
+Beak! Captain Beak, by jingo!"
+
+There had not passed above a quarter of an hour from his strange
+appearance to his equally sudden departure. The two young men and the
+baronet's other guest wondered at the scene, and could find no
+explanation for it. Clavering seemed exceedingly pale and agitated, and
+turned with looks of almost terror towards Major Pendennis. The latter
+had been eyeing his host keenly for a moment or two. "Do you know him?"
+asked Sir Francis of the Major.
+
+"I am sure I have seen the fellow," the Major replied, looking as if he,
+too, was puzzled. "Yes, I have it. He was a deserter from the Horse
+Artillery who got into the Nawaub's service. I remember his face quite
+well."
+
+"Oh!" said Clavering, with a sigh which indicated immense relief of mind,
+and the Major looked at him with a twinkle of his sharp old eyes. The cab
+which Strong had desired to be called, drove away with the Chevalier and
+Colonel Altamont; coffee was brought to the remaining gentlemen, and they
+went upstairs to the ladies in the drawing-room, Foker declaring
+confidentially to Pen that "this was the rummest go he ever saw," which
+decision Pen said, laughing, "Showed great discrimination on Mr. Foker's
+part."
+
+Then, according to her promise, Miss Amory made music for the young men.
+Foker was enraptured with her performance, and kindly joined in the airs
+which she sang, when he happened to be acquainted with them. Pen affected
+to talk aside with others of the party, but Blanche brought him quickly
+to the piano, by singing some of his own words, those which we have given
+in a previous number, indeed, and which the Sylphide had herself, she
+said, set to music. I don't know whether the air was hers, or how much of
+it was arranged for her by Signor Twankidillo, from whom she took
+lessons: but good or bad, original or otherwise, it delighted Mr. Pen,
+who remained by her side, and turned the leaves now for her most
+assiduously--"Gad! how I wish I could write verses like you, Pen," Foker
+sighed afterwards to his companion. "If I could do 'em, wouldn't I,
+that's all? But I never was a dab at writing, you see, and I'm sorry I
+was so idle when I was at school."
+
+No mention was made before the ladies of the curious little scene which
+had been transacted below-stairs; although Pen was just on the point of
+describing it to Miss Amory, when that young lady inquired for Captain
+Strong, who she wished should join her in a duet. But chancing to look up
+towards Sir Francis Clavering, Arthur saw a peculiar expression of alarm
+in the baronet's ordinarily vacuous face, and discreetly held his tongue.
+It was rather a dull evening. Welbore went to sleep as he always did at
+music and after dinner: nor did Major Pendennis entertain the ladies with
+copious anecdotes and endless little scandalous stories, as his wont was,
+but sate silent for the most part, and appeared to be listening to the
+music, and watching the fair young performer.
+
+The hour of departure having arrived the Major rose, regretting that so
+delightful an evening should have passed away so quickly, and addressed a
+particularly fine compliment to Miss Amory upon her splendid talents as a
+singer. "Your daughter, Lady Clavering," he said to that lady, "is a
+perfect nightingale--a perfect nightingale, begad! I have scarcely ever
+heard anything equal to her, and her pronunciation of every language--
+begad, of every language--seems to me to be perfect; and the best houses
+in London must open before a young lady who has such talents, and, allow
+an old fellow to say, Miss Amory, such a face."
+
+Blanche was as much astonished by these compliments as Pen was, to whom
+his uncle, a little time since, had been speaking in very disparaging
+terms of the Sylph. The Major and the two young men walked home together,
+after Mr. Foker had placed his mother in her carriage, and procured a
+light for an enormous cigar.
+
+The young gentleman's company or his tobacco did not appear to be
+agreeable to Major Pendennis, who eyed him askance several times, and
+with a look which plainly indicated that he wished Mr. Foker would take
+his leave; but Foker hung on resolutely to the uncle and nephew, even
+until they came to the former's door in Bury Street, where the Major
+wished the lads good night.
+
+"And I say, Pen," he said in a confidential whisper, calling his nephew
+back, "mind you make a point of calling in Grosvenor Place to-morrow.
+They've been uncommonly civil; mons'ously civil and kind."
+
+Pen promised and wondered, and the Major's door having been closed upon
+him by Morgan, Foker took Pen's arm, and walked with him for some time
+silently puffing his cigar. At last, when they had reached Charing Cross
+on Arthur's way home to the Temple, Harry Foker relieved himself, and
+broke out with that eulogium upon poetry, and those regrets regarding a
+misspent youth which have just been mentioned. And all the way along the
+Strand, and up to the door of Pen's very staircase, in Lamb Court,
+Temple, young Harry Foker did not cease to speak about singing and
+Blanche Amory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+Relates to Mr. Harry Foker's Affairs
+
+
+Since that fatal but delightful night in Grosvenor Place, Mr. Harry
+Foker's heart had been in such a state of agitation as you would hardly
+have thought so great a philosopher could endure. When we remember what
+good advice he had given to Pen in former days, how an early wisdom and
+knowledge of the world had manifested itself in this gifted youth; how a
+constant course of self-indulgence, such as becomes a gentleman of his
+means and expectations, ought by right to have increased his cynicism,
+and made him, with every succeeding day of his life, care less and less
+for every individual in the world, with the single exception of Mr. Harry
+Foker, one may wonder that he should fall into the mishap to which most
+of us are subject once or twice in our lives, and disquiet his great mind
+about a woman. But Foker, though early wise, was still a man. He could no
+more escape the common lot than Achilles, or Ajax, or Lord Nelson, or
+Adam our first father, and now, his time being come, young Harry became a
+victim to Love, the All-conqueror.
+
+When he went to the Back Kitchen that night after quitting Arthur
+Pendennis at his staircase-door in Lamb Court, the gin-twist and devilled
+turkey had no charms for him, the jokes of his companions fell flatly on
+his ear; and when Mr. Hodgen, the singer of 'The Body Snatcher,' had a
+new chant even more dreadful and humorous than that famous composition,
+Foker, although he appeared his friend, and said "Bravo, Hodgen," as
+common politeness and his position as one of the chiefs of the Back
+Kitchen bound him to do, yet never distinctly heard one word of the song,
+which under its title of 'The Cat in the Cupboard,' Hodgen has since
+rendered so famous. Late and very tired, he slipped into his private
+apartments at home and sought the downy pillow, but his slumbers were
+disturbed by the fever of his soul, and the very instant that he woke
+from his agitated sleep, the image of Miss Amory presented itself to him,
+and said, "Here I am, I am your princess and beauty, you have discovered
+me, and shall care for nothing else hereafter."
+
+Heavens, how stale and distasteful his former pursuits and friendships
+appeared to him! He had not been, up to the present time, much accustomed
+to the society of females of his own rank in life. When he spoke of such,
+he called them "modest women." That virtue which, let us hope, they
+possessed, had not hitherto compensated to Mr. Foker for the absence of
+more lively qualities which most of his own relatives did not enjoy, and
+which he found in Mesdemoiselles, the ladies of the theatre. His mother,
+though good and tender, did not amuse her boy; his cousins, the daughters
+of his maternal uncle, the respectable Earl of Rosherville, wearied him
+beyond measure. One was blue, and a geologist; one was a horsewoman, and
+smoked cigars; one was exceedingly Low Church, and had the most heterodox
+views on religious matters; at least, so the other said, who was herself
+of the very Highest Church faction, and made the cupboard in her room
+into an oratory, and fasted on every Friday in the year. Their paternal
+house of Drummington, Foker could very seldom be got to visit. He swore
+he had rather go on the treadmill than stay there. He was not much
+beloved by the inhabitants. Lord Erith, Lord Rosherville's heir,
+considered his cousin a low person, of deplorably vulgar habits and
+manners; while Foker, and with equal reason, voted Erith a prig and a
+dullard, the nightcap of the House of Commons, the Speaker's opprobrium,
+the dreariest of philanthropic spouters. Nor could George Robert, Earl of
+Gravesend and Rosherville, ever forget that on one evening when he
+condescended to play at billiards with his nephew, that young gentleman
+poked his lordship in the side with his cue, and said, "Well, old cock,
+I've seen many a bad stroke in my life, but I never saw such a bad one as
+that there." He played the game out with angelic sweetness of temper, for
+Harry was his guest as well as his nephew; but he was nearly having a fit
+in the night; and he kept to his own rooms until young Harry quitted
+Drummington on his return to Oxbridge, where the interesting youth was
+finishing his education at the time when the occurrence took place. It
+was an awful blow to the venerable earl; the circumstance was never
+alluded to in the family; he shunned Foker whenever he came to see them
+in London or in the country, and could hardly be brought to gasp out a
+"How d'ye do?" to the young blasphemer. But he would not break his sister
+Agnes's heart, by banishing Harry from the family altogether; nor,
+indeed, could he afford to break with Mr. Foker, senior, between whom and
+his lordship there had been many private transactions, producing an
+exchange of bank-cheques from Mr. Foker, and autographs from the earl
+himself, with the letters I O U written over his illustrious signature.
+
+Besides the four daughters of Lord Gravesend whose various qualities have
+been enumerated in the former paragraph, his lordship was blessed with a
+fifth girl, the Lady Ana Milton, who, from her earliest years and
+nursery, had been destined to a peculiar position in life. It was
+ordained between her parents and her aunt, that when Mr Harry Foker
+attained a proper age, Lady Ann should become his wife. The idea had been
+familiar to her mind when she yet wore pinafores, and when Harry the
+dirtiest of little boys, used to come back with black eyes from school to
+Drummington, or to his father's house of Logwood, where Lady Ann lived,
+much with her aunt. Both of the young people coincided with the
+arrangement proposed by the elders, without any protests or difficulty.
+It no more entered Lady Ann's mind to question the order of her father,
+than it would have entered Esther's to dispute the commands of Ahasuerus.
+The heir-apparent of the house of Foker was also obedient, for when the
+old gentleman said, "Harry, your uncle and I have agreed that when you're
+of a proper age, you'll marry Lady Ann. She won't have any money, but
+she's good blood, and a good one to look at, and I shall make you
+comfortable. If you refuse, you'll have your mother's jointure, and two
+hundred a year during my life"--Harry, who knew that his sire, though a
+man of few words, was yet implicitly to be trusted, acquiesced at once in
+the parental decree, and said, "Well, sir, if Ann's agreeable, I say
+ditto. She's not a bad-looking girl."
+
+"And she has the best blood in England, sir. Your mother's blood, your
+own blood, sir," said the Brewer. "There's nothing like it, sir."
+
+"Well, sir, as you like it," Harry replied. "When you want me, please
+ring the bell. Only there's no hurry, and I hope you'll give us a long
+day. I should like to have my fling out before I marry."
+
+"Fling away, Harry," answered the benevolent father. "Nobody prevents
+you, do they?" And so very little more was said upon this subject, and
+Mr. Harry pursued those amusements in life which suited him best; and
+hung up a little picture of his cousin in his sitting-room, amidst the
+French prints, the favourite actresses and dancers, the racing and
+coaching works of art, which suited his taste and formed his gallery. It
+was an insignificant little picture, representing a simple round face
+with ringlets; and it made, as it must be confessed, a very poor figure
+by the side of Mademoiselle Petitot, dancing over a rainbow, or
+Mademoiselle Redowa, grinning in red boots and a lancer's cap.
+
+Being engaged and disposed of, Lady Ann Milton did not go out so much in
+the world as her sisters: and often stayed at home in London at the
+parental house in Gaunt Square, when her mamma with the other ladies went
+abroad. They talked and they danced with one man after another, and the
+men came and went, and the stories about them were various. But there was
+only this one story about Ann: she was engaged to Harry Foker: she never
+was to think about anybody else. It was not a very amusing story.
+
+Well, the instant Foker awoke on the day after Lady Clavering's dinner,
+there was Blanche's image glaring upon him with its clear grey eyes, and
+winning smile. There was her tune ringing in his ears, "Yet round about
+the spot, ofttimes I hover, ofttimes I hover," which poor Foker began
+piteously to hum, as he sat up in his bed under the crimson silken
+coverlet. Opposite him was a French Print, of a Turkish lady and her
+Greek lover, surprised by a venerable Ottoman, the lady's husband; on the
+other wall was a French print of a gentleman and lady, riding and kissing
+each other at full gallop; all round the chaste bedroom were more French
+prints, either portraits of gauzy nymphs of the Opera, or lovely
+illustrations of the novels; or mayhap, an English chef-d'oeuvre or two,
+in which Miss Calverley of T. R. E. O. would be represented in tight
+pantaloons in her favourite page part; or Miss Rougemont as Venus; their
+value enhanced by the signatures of these ladies, Maria Calverley, or
+Frederica Rougemont, inscribed underneath the prints in an exquisite
+facsimile. Such were the pictures in which honest Harry delighted. He was
+no worse than many of his neighbours; he was an idle jovial kindly fast
+man about town; and if his rooms were rather profusely decorated with
+works of French art, so that simple Lady Agnes, his mamma on entering the
+apartments where her darling sate enveloped in fragrant clouds of
+Latakia, was often bewildered by the novelties which she beheld there,
+why, it must be remembered, that he was richer than most young men, and
+could better afford to gratify his taste.
+
+A letter from Miss Calverley written in a very degage style of spelling
+and handwriting, scrawling freely over the filagree paper, and commencing
+by calling Mr. Harry, her dear Hokey-pokey-fokey, lay on his bed table by
+his side, amidst keys, sovereigns, cigar-cases, and a bit of verbena,
+which Miss Amory had given him, and reminding him of the arrival of the
+day when he was 'to stand that dinner at the Elefant and Castle, at
+Richmond, which he had promised;' a card for a private box at Miss
+Rougemont's approaching benefit, a bundle of tickets for 'Ben
+Budgeon's night, the North Lancashire Pippin, at Martin Faunce's, the
+Three-cornered Hat, in St. Martin's Lane; where Conkey Sam, Dick the
+Nailor, and Deadman (the Worcestershire Nobber), would put on the gloves,
+and the lovers of the good old British sport were invited to attend'--
+these and sundry other memoirs of Mr. Foker's pursuits and pleasure lay
+on the table by his side when he woke.
+
+Ah! how faint all these pleasures seemed now. What did he care for
+Conkey Sam or the Worcestershire Nobber? What for the French prints
+ogling him from all sides of the room; those regular stunning slap-up
+out-and-outers? And Calverley spelling bad, and calling him Hokey-fokey,
+confound her impudence! The idea of being engaged to a dinner at the
+Elephant and Castle at Richmond with that old woman (who was
+seven-and-thirty years old, if she was a day) filled his mind with dreary
+disgust now, instead of that pleasure which he had only yesterday
+expected to find from the entertainment.
+
+When his fond mamma beheld her boy that morning, she remarked on the
+pallor of his cheek, and the general gloom of his aspect. "Why do you go
+on playing billiards at that wicked Spratt's?" Lady Agnes asked. "My
+dearest child, those billiards will kill you, I'm sure they will."
+
+"It isn't the billiards," Harry said, gloomily.
+
+"Then it's the dreadful Back Kitchen," said the Lady Agnes. "I've often
+thought, d'you know, Harry, of writing to the landlady, and begging that
+she would have the kindness to put only very little wine in the negus
+which you take, and see that you have your shawl on before you get into
+your brougham."
+
+"Do, ma'am. Mrs Cutts is a most kind motley woman," Harry said. "But it
+isn't the Back Kitchen, neither," he added, with a ghastly sigh.
+
+As Lady Agnes never denied her son anything, and fell into all his ways
+with the fondest acquiescence, she was rewarded by a perfect confidence
+on young Harry's part, who never thought to disguise from her a knowledge
+of the haunts which he frequented; and, on the contrary, brought her home
+choice anecdotes from the clubs and billiard-rooms, which the simple lady
+relished, if she did not understand. "My son goes to Spratt's," she would
+say to her confidential friends. "All the young men go to Spratt's after
+their balls. It is de rigueur, my dear; and they play billiards as they
+used to play macao and hazard in Mr. Fox's time. Yes, my dear father
+often told me that they sate up always until nine o'clock the next
+morning with Mr. Fox at Brookes's, whom I remember at Drnmmington, when I
+was a little girl, in a buff waistcoat and black satin small-clothes. My
+brother Erith never played as a young man, nor sate up late--he had no
+health for it; but my boy must do as everybody does, you know. Yes, and
+then he often goes to a place called the Back Kitchen, frequented by all
+the wits and authors, you know, whom one does not see in society, but
+whom it is a great privilege and pleasure for Harry to meet, and there he
+hears the questions of the day discussed; and my dear father often said
+that it was our duty to encourage literature, and he had hoped to see the
+late Dr. Johnson at Drummington, only Dr. Johnson died. Yes, and Mr.
+Sheridan came over, and drank a great deal of wine,--everybody drank a
+great deal of wine in those days,--and papa's wine-merchant's bill was
+ten times as much as Erith's is, who gets it as he wants it from Fortnum
+and Mason's and doesn't keep any stock at all."
+
+"That was an uncommon good dinner we had yesterday, ma'am," the artful
+Harry broke out. "Their clear soup's better than ours. Moufflet will put
+too much taragon into everything. The supreme de volaille was very good--
+uncommon, and the sweets were better than Moufflet's sweets. Did you
+taste the plombiere, ma'am, and the maraschino jelly? Stunningly good
+that maraschino jelly!"
+
+Lady Agnes expressed her agreement in these, as in almost all other
+sentiments of her son, who continued the artful conversation,
+saying--
+
+"Very handsome house that of the Claverings. Furniture, I should say, got
+up regardless of expense. Magnificent display of plate, ma'am." The lady
+assented to all these propositions.
+
+"Very nice people the Claverings."
+
+"H'm!" said Lady Agnes.
+
+"I know what you mean. Lady C. ain't distangy exactly, but she is very
+good-natured."
+
+"Oh, very," mamma said, who was herself one of the most good-natured of
+women.
+
+"And Sir Francis, he don't talk much before ladies; but after dinner he
+comes out uncommon strong, ma'am--a highly agreeable, well-informed man.
+When will you ask them to dinner? Look out for an early day, ma'am;" and
+looking into Lady Agnes's pocket-book, he chose a day only a fortnight
+hence (an age that fortnight seemed to the young gentleman), when the
+Claverings were to be invited to Grosvenor-street.
+
+The obedient Lady Agnes wrote the required invitation. She was accustomed
+to do so without consulting her husband, who had his own society and
+habits, and who left his wife to see her own friends alone. Harry looked
+at the card; but there was an omission in the invitation which did not
+please him.
+
+"You have not asked Miss Whatdyecallem--Miss Emery, Lady Clavering's
+daughter."
+
+"Oh, that little creature!" Lady Agnes cried. "No! I think not, Harry."
+
+"We must ask Miss Amory," Foker said. "I--I want to ask Pendennis; and--
+and he's very sweet upon her. Don't you think she sings very well,
+ma'am?"
+
+"I thought her rather forward, and didn't listen to her singing. She only
+sang at you and Mr. Pendennis, it seemed to me. But I will ask her if you
+wish, Harry," and so Miss Amory's name was written on the card with her
+mother's.
+
+This piece of diplomacy being triumphantly executed Harry embraced his
+fond parent with the utmost affection, and retired to his own apartments
+where he stretched himself on his ottoman, and lay brooding silently,
+sighing for the day which was to bring the fair Miss Amory under his
+paternal roof, and devising a hundred wild schemes for meeting her.
+
+On his return from making the grand tour, Mr. Foker, Junior, had brought
+with him a polyglot valet, who took the place of Stoopid, and
+condescended to wait at dinner, attired in shirt fronts of worked muslin,
+with many gold studs and chains, upon his master and the elders of the
+family. This man, who was of no particular country, and spoke all
+languages indifferently ill, made himself useful to Mr. Harry in a
+variety of ways,--read all the artless youth's correspondence, knew his
+favourite haunts and the addresses of his acquaintance, and officiated at
+the private dinners which the young gentleman gave. As Harry lay upon
+his sofa after his interview with his mamma, robed in a wonderful
+dressing-gown, and puffing his pipe in gloomy silence, Anatole, too, must
+have remarked that something affected his master's spirits; though he did
+not betray any ill-bred sympathy with Harry's agitation of mind. When
+Harry began to dress himself in his out-of-door morning costume, he was
+very hard indeed to please, and particularly severe and snappish about
+his toilet: he tried, and cursed, pantaloons of many different stripes,
+checks, and colours: all the boots were villainously varnished; the
+shirts too "loud" in pattern. He scented his linen and person with
+peculiar richness this day; and what must have been the valet's
+astonishment, when, after some blushing and hesitation on Harry's part,
+the young gentleman asked, "I say, Anatole, when I engaged you, didn't
+you--hem--didn't you say that you could dress--hem--dress hair?"
+
+The valet said, "Yes, he could."
+
+"Cherchy alors une paire de tongs,--et--curly moi un peu," Mr. Foker
+said, in an easy manner; and the valet, wondering whether his master was
+in love or was going masquerading, went in search of the articles,--first
+from the old butler who waited upon Mr. Foker, senior, on whose bald pate
+the tongs would have scarcely found a hundred hairs to seize, and finally
+of the lady who had the charge of the meek auburn fronts of the Lady
+Agnes. And the tongs being got, Monsieur Anatole twisted his young
+master's locks until he had made Harry's head as curly as a negro's;
+after which the youth dressed himself with the utmost care and splendour,
+and proceeded to sally out.
+
+"At what dime sall I order de drag, sir, to be to Miss Calverley's door,
+sir?" the attendant whispered as his master was going forth.
+
+"Confound her!--Put the dinner off--I can't go!" said Foker. "No, hang
+it--I must go. Poyntz and Rougemont, and ever so many more are coming.
+The drag at Pelham Corner at six o'clock, Anatole."
+
+The drag was not one of Mr. Foker's own equipages, but was hired from a
+livery-stable for festive purposes; Foker, however, put his own carriage
+into requisition that morning, and for what purpose does the kind reader
+suppose? Why, to drive down to Lamb Court, Temple, taking Grosvenor Place
+by the way (which lies in the exact direction of the Temple from
+Grosvenor Street, as everybody knows), where he just had the pleasure of
+peeping upwards at Miss Amory's pink window-curtains, having achieved
+which satisfactory feat, he drove off to Pen's chambers. Why did he want
+to see his dear friend Pen so much? Why did he yearn and long after him;
+and did it seem necessary to Foker's very existence that he should see
+Pen that morning, having parted with him in perfect health on the night
+previous? Pen had lived two years in London, and Foker had not paid half
+a dozen visits to his chambers. What sent him thither now in such a
+hurry?
+
+What?--If any young ladies read this page, I have only to inform them
+that, when the same mishap befalls them, which now had for more than
+twelve hours befallen Harry Foker, people will grow interesting to them
+for whom they did not care sixpence on the day before; as on the other
+hand persons of whom they fancied themselves fond will be found to have
+become insipid and disagreeable. Then you dearest Eliza, or Maria of the
+other day, to whom you wrote letters and sent locks of hair yards long,
+will on a sudden be as indifferent to you as your stupidest relation
+whilst, on the contrary, about his relations you will begin to feel such
+a warm interest! such a loving desire to ingratiate yourself with his
+mamma; such a liking for that dear kind old man his father! If He is in
+the habit of visiting at any house, what advances you will make in order
+to visit there too. If He has a married sister you will like to spend
+long mornings with her. You will fatigue your servant by sending notes to
+her, for which there will be the most pressing occasion, twice or thrice
+in a day. You will cry if your mamma objects to your going too often to
+see His family. The only one of them you will dislike, is perhaps his
+younger brother, who is at home for the holidays, and who will persist in
+staying in the room when you come to see your dear new-found friend, his
+darling second sister. Something like this will happen to you, young
+ladies, or, at any rate, let us hope it may. Yes, you must go through the
+hot fits and the cold fits of that pretty fever. Your mothers, if they
+would acknowledge it, have passed through it before you were born, your
+dear papa being the object of the passion, of course,--who could it be
+but he? And as you suffer it, so will your brothers, in their way,--and
+after their kind. More selfish than you: more eager and headstrong than
+you: they will rush on their destiny when the doomed charmer makes her
+appearance. Or if they don't, and you don't, Heaven help you! As the
+gambler said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love and
+lose is the next best. You don't die of the complaint: or very few do.
+The generous wounded heart suffers and survives it. And he is not a man,
+or she a woman, who is not conquered by it, or who does not conquer it in
+his time.----Now, then, if you ask why Henry Foker, Esquire, was in such
+a hurry to see Arthur Pendennis, and felt such a sudden value and esteem
+for him, there is no difficulty in saying it was because Pen had become
+really valuable in Mr. Foker's eyes: because if Pen was not the rose, he
+yet had been near that fragrant flower of love. Was not he in the habit
+of going to her house in London? Did he not live near her in the
+country?--know all about the enchantress? What, I wonder, would Lady Ann
+Milton, Mr. Foker's cousin and pretendue, have said, if her ladyship had
+known all that was going on in the bosom of that funny little gentleman?
+
+Alas! when Foker reached Lamb Court, leaving his carriage for the
+admiration of the little clerks who were lounging in the archway that
+leads thence into Flag Court which leads into Upper Temple Lane,
+Warrington was in the chambers but Pen was absent. Pen was gone to the
+printing-office to see his proofs. "Would Foker have a pipe and should
+the laundress go to the Cock and get him some beer?"--Warrington asked,
+remarking with a pleased surprise the splendid toilet of this scented and
+shiny-booted young aristocrat; but Foker had not the slightest wish for
+beer or tobacco: he had very important business: he rushed away to the
+Pall Mall Gazette office, still bent upon finding Pen. Pen had quitted
+that pace. Foker wanted him that they might go together to call upon Lady
+Clavering. Foker went away disconsolate, and whiled away an hour or two
+vaguely at clubs: and when it was time to pay a visit, he thought it
+would be but decent and polite to drive to Grosvenor Place and leave a
+card upon Lady Clavering. He had not the courage to ask to see her when
+the door was opened, he only delivered two cards, with Mr. Henry Foker
+engraved upon them, to Jeames, in a speechless agony. Jeames received the
+tickets bowing his powdered head. The varnished doors closed upon him.
+The beloved object was as far as ever from him, though so near. He
+thought he heard the tones of a piano and of a syren singing, coming from
+the drawing-room and sweeping over the balcony-shrubbery of geraniums. He
+would have liked to stop and listen, but it might not be. "Drive to
+Tattersall's," he said to the groom, in a voice smothered with emotion,--
+"And bring my pony round," he added, as the man drove rapidly away.
+
+As good luck would have it, that splendid barouche of Lady Clavering's,
+which has been inadequately described in a former chapter, drove up to
+her ladyship's door just as Foker mounted the pony which was in waiting
+for him. He bestrode the fiery animal, and dodged about the arch of the
+Green Park, keeping the carriage well in view, until he saw Lady
+Clavering enter, and with her--whose could be that angel form, but the
+enchantress's, clad in a sort of gossamer, with a pink bonnet and a
+light-blue parasol,--but Miss Amory?
+
+The carriage took its fair owners to Madame Rigodon's cap and lace shop,
+to Mrs Wolsey's Berlin worsted shop,--who knows to what other resorts of
+female commerce? Then it went and took ices at Hunter's, for Lady
+Clavering was somewhat florid in her tastes and amusements, and not only
+liked to go abroad in the most showy carriage in London, but that the
+public should see her in it too. And so, in a white bonnet with a yellow
+feather, she ate a large pink ice in the sunshine before Hunter's door,
+till Foker on his pony, and the red jacket who accompanied him, were
+almost tired of dodging.
+
+Then at last she made her way into the Park, and the rapid Foker made his
+dash forward. What to do? Just to get a nod of recognition from Miss
+Amory and her mother; to cross them a half-dozen times in the drive; to
+watch and ogle them from the other side of the ditch, where the horsemen
+assemble when the band plays in Kensington Gardens. What is the use of
+looking at a woman in a pink bonnet across a ditch? What is the earthly
+good to be got out of a nod of the head? Strange that men will be
+contented with such pleasures, or if not contented, at least that they
+will be so eager in seeking them. Not one word did Harry, he so fluent of
+conversation ordinarily, change with his charmer on that day. Mutely he
+beheld her return to her carriage, and drive away among rather ironical
+salutes from the young men in the Park. One said that the Indian widow
+was making the paternal rupees spin rapidly; another said that she ought
+to have burned herself alive, and left the money to her daughter. This
+one asked who Clavering was?--and old Tom Eales, who knew everybody, and
+never missed a day in the Park on his grey cob, kindly said that
+Clavering had come into an estate over head and heels in mortgage: that
+there were dev'lish ugly stories about him when he was a young man, and
+that it was reported of him that he had a share in a gambling-house, and
+had certainly shown the white feather in his regiment. "He plays still;
+he is in a hell every night almost," Mr. Eales added.
+
+"I should think so, since his marriage," said a wag.
+
+"He gives devilish good dinners," said Foker, striking up for the honour
+of his host of yesterday.
+
+"I daresay, and I daresay he doesn't ask Eales," the wag said. "I say,
+Eales, do you dine at Clavering's,--at the Begum's?"
+
+"I dine there?" said Mr. Eales, who would have dined with Beelzebub if
+sure of a good cook, and when he came away, would have painted his host
+blacker than fate had made him.
+
+"You might, you know, although you do abuse him so," continued the wag.
+"They say it's very pleasant. Clavering goes to sleep after dinner; the
+Begum gets tipsy with cherry-brandy, and the young lady sings songs to
+the young gentlemen. She sings well, don't she, Fo?"
+
+"Slap up," said Fo. "I tell you what, Poyntz, she sings like a
+whatdyecallum--you know what I mean--like a mermaid, you know, but that's
+not their name."
+
+"I never heard a mermaid sing," Mr. Poyntz, the wag, replied. "Whoever
+heard a mermaid? Eales, you are an old fellow, did you?"
+
+"Don't make a lark of me, hang it, Poyntz," said Foker, turning red, and
+with tears almost in his eyes, "you know what I mean: it's those
+what's-his-names--in Homer, you know. I never said I was a good scholar."
+
+"And nobody ever said it of you, my boy," Mr. Poyntz remarked, and Foker
+striking spurs into his pony, cantered away down Rotten Row, his mind
+agitated with various emotions, ambitions, mortifications. He was sorry
+that he had not been good at his books in early life--that he might have
+cut out all those chaps who were about her, and who talked the languages,
+and wrote poetry, and painted pictures in her album, and--and that--"What
+am I," thought little Foker, "compared to her? She's all soul, she is,
+and can write poetry or compose music, as easy as I could drink a glass
+of beer. Beer?--damme, that's all I'm fit for, is beer. I am a poor,
+ignorant little beggar, good for nothing but Foker's Entire. I misspent
+my youth, and used to get the chaps to do my exercises. And what's the
+consequences now? Oh, Harry Foker, what a confounded little fool you have
+been!"
+
+As he made this dreary soliloquy, he had cantered out of Rotten Row into
+the Park, and there was on the point of riding down a large old roomy
+family carriage, of which he took no heed, when a cheery voice cried out,
+"Harry, Harry!" and looking up, he beheld his aunt, the Lady Rosherville,
+and two of her daughters, of whom the one who spoke was Harry's
+betrothed, the Lady Ann.
+
+He started back with a pale, scared look, as a truth about which he had
+not thought during the whole day, came across him. There was his fate,
+there, in the back seat of that carriage.
+
+"What is the matter, Harry? why are you so pale? You have been raking and
+smoking too much, you wicked boy," said Lady Ann.
+
+Foker said, "How do, aunt," "How do, Ann," in a perturbed manner--
+muttered something about a pressing engagement,--indeed he saw by the
+Park clock that he must have been keeping his party in the drag waiting
+for nearly an hour--and waved a good-bye. The little man and the little
+pony were out of sight in an instant--the great carriage rolled away.
+Nobody inside was very much interested about his coming or going; the
+Countess being occupied with her spaniel, the Lady Lucy's thoughts and
+eyes being turned upon a volume of sermons, and those of the Lady Ann
+upon a new novel, which the sisters had just procured from the library.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+Carries the Reader both to Richmond and Greenwich
+
+Poor Foker found the dinner at Richmond to be the most dreary
+entertainment upon which ever mortal man wasted his guineas. "I wonder
+how the deuce I could ever have liked these people," he thought in his
+own mind. "Why, I can see the crow's-feet under Rougemont's eyes, and the
+paint on her cheeks is laid on as thick as Clown's in a pantomime! The
+way in which that Calverley talks slang, is quite disgusting. I hate
+chaff in a woman. And old Colchicum! that old Col, coming down here in
+his brougham, with his coronet on it, and sitting bodkin between
+Mademoiselle Coralie and her mother! It's too bad. An English peer, and a
+horse-rider of Franconi's!--It won't do; by Jove, it won't do. I ain't
+proud; but it will not do!"
+
+"Twopence-halfpenny for your thoughts, Fokey!" cried out Miss Rougemont,
+taking her cigar from her truly vermilion lips, as she beheld the young
+fellow lost in thought, seated at the head of his table, amidst melting
+ices, and cut pineapples, and bottles full and empty, and cigar-ashes
+scattered on fruit, and the ruins of a dessert which had no pleasure for
+him.
+
+"Does Foker ever think?" drawled out Mr. Poyntz. "Foker, here is a
+considerable sum of money offered by a fair capitalist at this end of the
+table for the present emanations of your valuable and acute intellect,
+old boy!"
+
+"What the deuce is that Poyntz a talking about?" Miss Calverley asked of
+her neighbour. "I hate him. He's a drawlin', sneerin' beast."
+
+"What a droll of a little man is that little Fokare, my lor',"
+Mademoiselle Coralie said, in her own language, and with the rich twang
+of that sunny Gascony in which her swarthy cheeks and bright black eyes
+had got their fire. "What a droll of a man! He does not look to have
+twenty years."
+
+"I wish I were of his age," said the venerable Colchicum, with a sigh, as
+he inclined his purple face towards a large goblet of claret.
+
+"C'te Jeunesse. Peuh! je m'en fiche" said Madame Brack, Coralie's mamma,
+taking a great pinch out of Lord Colchicum's delicate gold snuff-box. "Je
+m'aime que les hommes faits, moi. Comme milor. Coralie! n'est-ce pas que
+tu n'aimes que les hommes faits, ma bichette?"
+
+My lord said, with a grin, "You flatter me, Madame Brack."
+
+"Taisez-vous, Maman, vous n'etes qu'une bete," Coralie cried, with a
+shrug of her robust shoulders; upon which, my lord said that she did not
+flatter at any rate; and pocketed his snuff-box, not desirous that Madame
+Brack's dubious fingers should plunge too frequently into his Mackabaw.
+
+There is no need to give a prolonged detail of the animated conversation
+which ensued during the rest of the banquet; a conversation which would
+not much edify the reader. And it is scarcely necessary to say, that all
+ladies of the corps de dance are not like Miss Calverley, any more than
+that all peers resemble that illustrious member of their order, the late
+lamented Viscount Colchicum. But there have been such in our memories who
+have loved the society of riotous youth better than the company of men of
+their own age and rank, and have given the young ones the precious
+benefit of their experience and example; and there have been very
+respectable men too who have not objected so much to the kind of
+entertainment as to the publicity of it. I am sure, for instance, that
+our friend Major Pendennis would have made no sort of objection to join
+the a party of pleasure, provided that it were en petit comite, and that
+such men as my Lord Steyne and my Lord Colchicum were of the society.
+"Give the young men their pleasures," this worthy guardian said to Pen
+more than once. "I'm not one of your strait-laced moralists, but an old
+man of the world, begad; and I know that as long as it lasts young men
+will be young men." And there were some young men to whom this estimable
+philosopher accorded about seventy years as the proper period for sowing
+their wild oats: but they were men of fashion.
+
+Mr. Foker drove his lovely guests home to Brompton in the drag that
+night; but he was quite thoughtful and gloomy during the whole of the
+little journey from Richmond; neither listening to the jokes of the
+friends behind him and on the box by his side nor enlivening them as was
+his wont, by his own facetious sallies. And when the ladies whom he had
+conveyed alighted at the door of their house, and asked their
+accomplished coachman whether he would not step in and take something to
+drink, he declined with so melancholy an air, that they supposed that the
+Governor and he had had a difference or that some calamity had befallen
+him; and he did not tell these people what the cause of his grief was,
+but left Mesdames Rougemont and Calverley, unheeding the cries of the
+latter, who hung over her balcony like Jezebel, and called out to him to
+ask him to give another party soon.
+
+He sent the drag home under the guidance of one of the grooms, and went
+on foot himself; his hands in his pockets, plunged in thought. The stars
+and moon shining tranquilly overhead, looked down upon Mr. Foker that
+night, as he in his turn sentimentally regarded them. And he went and
+gazed upwards at the house in Grosvenor Place, and at the windows which
+he supposed to be those of the beloved object; and he moaned and he
+sighed in a way piteous and surprising to witness, which Policeman X did,
+who informed Sir Francis Clavering's people, as they took the refreshment
+of beer on the coach-box at the neighbouring public-house, after bringing
+home their lady from the French play, that there had been another chap
+hanging about the premises that evening--a little chap, dressed like a
+swell.
+
+And now with that perspicuity and ingenuity and enterprise which only
+belongs to a certain passion, Mr. Foker began to dodge Miss Amory through
+London, and to appear wherever he could meet her. If Lady Clavering went
+to the French play, where her ladyship had a box, Mr. Foker, whose
+knowledge of the language, as we have heard, was not conspicuous,
+appeared in a stall. He found out where her engagements were (it is
+possible that Anatole, his man, was acquainted with Sir Francis
+Clavering's gentleman, and so got a sight of her ladyship's
+engagement-book), and at many of these evening parties Mr. Foker made his
+appearance--to the surprise of the world, and of his mother especially,
+whom he ordered to apply for cards to these parties, for which until now
+he had shown a supreme contempt. He told the pleased and unsuspicious
+lady that he went to parties because it was right for him to see the
+world: he told her that he went to the French play because he wanted to
+perfect himself in the language, and there was no such good lesson as a
+comedy or vaudeville,--and when one night the astonished Lady Agnes saw
+him stand up and dance, and complimented him upon his elegance and
+activity, the mendacious little rogue asserted that he had learned to
+dance in Paris, whereas Anatole knew that his young master used to go off
+privily to an academy in Brewer Street, and study there for some hours in
+the morning. The casino of our modern days was not invented, or was in
+its infancy as yet; and gentlemen of Mr. Foker's time had not the
+facilities of acquiring the science of dancing which are enjoyed by our
+present youth.
+
+Old Pendennis seldom missed going to church. He considered it to be his
+duty as a gentleman to patronise the institution of public worship and
+that it was quite a correct thing to be seen at church of a Sunday. One
+day it chanced that he and Arthur went thither together: the latter, who
+was now in high favour, had been to breakfast with his uncle, from whose
+lodging they walked across the park to a church not far from Belgrave
+Square. There was a charity sermon at Saint James's, as the Major knew by
+the bills posted on the pillars of his parish church, which probably
+caused him, for he was a thrifty man, to forsake it for that day: besides
+he had other views for himself and Pen. "We will go to church, sir,
+across the Park; and then, begad, we will go to the Claverings' house and
+ask them for lunch in a friendly way. Lady Clavering likes to be asked
+for lunch, and is uncommonly kind, and monstrous hospitable."
+
+"I met them at dinner last week, at Lady Agnes Foker's, sir," Pen said,
+"and the Begum was very kind indeed. So she was in the country: so she is
+everywhere. But I share your opinion about Miss Amory; one of your
+opinions, that is, uncle, for you were changing the last time we spoke
+about her."
+
+"And what do you think of her now?" the elder said.
+
+"I think her the most confounded little flirt in London," Pen answered,
+laughing "She made a tremendous assault upon Harry Foker, who sat next to
+her; and to whom she gave all the talk, though I took her down."
+
+"Bah! Henry Foker is engaged to his cousin all the world knows it: not a
+bad coup of Lady Rosherville's, that. I should say, that the young man at
+his father's death, and old Foker's life's devilish bad: you know he had
+a fit at Arthur's, last year: I should say, that young Foker won't have
+less than fourteen thousand a year from the brewery, besides Logwood and
+Norfolk property. I've no pride about me, Pen. I like a man of birth
+certainly, but dammy, I like a brewery which brings in a man fourteen
+thousand a year; hey, Pen? Ha, ha, that's the sort of man for me. And I
+recommend you now that you are lanced in the world, to stick to fellows
+of that sort, to fellows who have a stake in the country, begad."
+
+"Foker sticks to me, sir," Arthur answered. He has been at our chambers
+several times lately. He has asked me to dinner. We are almost as great
+friends, as we used to be in our youth: and his talk is about Blanche
+Amory from morning till night. I'm sure he's sweet upon her."
+
+"I'm sure he is engaged to his cousin, and that they will keep the young
+man to his bargain," said the Major. "The marriages in these families are
+affairs of state. Lady Agnes was made to marry old Foker by the late
+Lord, although she was notoriously partial to her cousin who was killed
+at Albuera afterwards, and who saved her life out of the lake at
+Drummington. I remember Lady Agnes, sir, an exceedingly fine woman. But
+what did she do?--of course she married her father's man. Why, Mr. Foker
+sate for Drummington till the Reform Bill, and paid dev'lish well for his
+seat, too. And you may depend upon this, sir, that Foker senior, who is a
+parvenu, and loves a great man, as all parvenus do, has ambitious views
+for his son as well as himself, and that your friend Harry must do as his
+father bids him. Lord bless you! I've known a hundred cases of love in
+young men and women: hey, Master Arthur, do you take me? They kick, sir,
+they resist, they make a deuce of a riot and that sort of thing, but they
+end by listening to reason, begad."
+
+"Blanche is a dangerous girl, sir," Pen said. "I was smitten with her
+myself once, and very far gone, too," he added; "but that is years ago."
+
+"Were you? How far did it go? Did she return it?" asked the Major,
+looking hard at Pen.
+
+Pen, with a laugh, said "that at one time he did think he was pretty well
+in Miss Amory's good graces. But my mother did not like her, and the
+affair went off." Pen did not think it fit to tell his uncle all the
+particulars of that courtship which had passed between himself and the
+young lady.
+
+"A man might go farther and fare worse, Arthur," the Major said, still
+looking queerly at his nephew.
+
+"Her birth, sir; her father was the mate of a ship, they say: and she has
+not money enough," objected Pen, in a dandified manner. "What's ten
+thousand pound and a girl bred up like her?"
+
+"You use my own words, and it is all very well. But, I tell you in
+confidence, Pen,--in strict honour, mind,--that it's my belief she has a
+devilish deal more than ten thousand pound: and from what I saw of her
+the other day, and--and have heard of her--I should say she was a
+devilish accomplished, clever girl: and would make a good wife with a
+sensible husband."
+
+"How do you know about her money?" Pen asked, smiling. "You seem to have
+information about everybody, and to know about all the town."
+
+"I do know a few things, sir, and I don't tell all I know. Mark that,"
+the uncle replied. "And as for that charming Miss Amory,--for charming,
+begad! she is,--if I saw her Mrs. Arthur Pendennis, I should neither be
+sorry nor surprised, begad! and if you object to ten thousand pound, what
+would you say, sir, to thirty, or forty, or fifty?" and the Major looked
+still more knowingly, and still harder at Pen.
+
+"Well, sir," he said to his godfather and namesake, "make her Mrs. Arthur
+Pendennis. You can do it as well as I."
+
+"Psha! you are laughing at me, sir," the other replied rather peevishly,
+"and you ought not to laugh so near a church gate. Here we are at St.
+Benedict's. They say Mr. Oriel is a beautiful preacher."
+
+Indeed, the bells were tolling, the people were trooping into the
+handsome church, the carriages of the inhabitants of the lordly quarter
+poured forth their pretty loads of devotees, in whose company Pen and his
+uncle, ending their edifying conversation, entered the fane. I do not
+know whether other people carry their worldly affairs to the church door.
+Arthur, who, from habitual reverence and feeling, was always more than
+respectful in a place of worship, thought of the incongruity of their
+talk, perhaps; whilst the old gentleman at his side was utterly
+unconscious of any such contrast. His hat was brushed: his wig was trim:
+his neckcloth was perfectly tied. He looked at every soul in the
+congregation, it is true: the bald heads and the bonnets, the flowers and
+the feathers: but so demurely that he hardly lifted up his eyes from his
+book--from his book which he could not read without glasses. As for Pen's
+gravity, it was sorely put to the test when, upon looking by chance
+towards the seats where the servants were collected, he spied out, by the
+side of a demure gentleman in plush, Henry Foker, Esquire, who had
+discovered this place of devotion. Following the direction of Harry's
+eye, which strayed a good deal from his book, Pen found that it alighted
+upon a yellow bonnet and a pink one: and that these bonnets were on the
+heads of Lady Clavering and Blanche Amory. If Pen's uncle is not the only
+man who has talked about his worldly affairs up to the church door, is
+poor Harry Foker the only one who has brought his worldly love into the
+aisle?
+
+When the congregation issued forth at the conclusion of the service,
+Foker was out amongst the first, but Pen came up with him presently, as
+he was hankering about the entrance, which he was unwilling to leave,
+until my lady's barouche, with the bewigged coachman, had borne away its
+mistress and her daughter from their devotions.
+
+When the two ladies came out, they found together the Pendennises, uncle
+and nephew, and Harry Foker, Esquire, sucking the crook of his stick,
+standing there in the sunshine. To see and to ask to eat were
+simultaneous with the good-natured Begum, and she invited the three
+gentlemen to luncheon straightway.
+
+Blanche was, too, particularly gracious. "O! do come," she said to
+Arthur, "if you are not too great a man. I want so to talk to you about--
+but we mustn't say what, here, you know. What would Mr. Oriel say?" And
+the young devotee jumped into the carriage after her mamma.--"I've read
+every word of it. It's adorable," she added, still addressing herself to
+Pen.
+
+"I know who is," said Mr. Arthur, making rather a pert bow.
+
+"What's the row about?" asked Mr. Foker, rather puzzled.
+
+"I suppose Miss Clavering means 'Walter Lorraine,'" said the Major,
+looking knowing, and nodding at Pen.
+
+"I suppose so, sir. There was a famous review in the Pall Mall this
+morning. It was Warrington's doing though, and I must not be too proud."
+
+"A review in Pall Mall?--Walter Lorraine? What the doose do you mean?"
+Foker asked. "Walter Lorraine died of the measles, poor little beggar,
+when we were at Grey Friars. I remember his mother coming up."
+
+"You are not a literary man, Foker," Pen said, laughing, and hooking his
+arm into his friend's. "You must know I have been writing a novel, and
+some of the papers have spoken very well of it. Perhaps you don't read
+the Sunday Papers?"
+
+"I read Bell's Life regular, old boy," Mr Foker answered: at which Pen
+laughed again, and the three gentlemen proceeded in great good-humour to
+Lady Clavering's house.
+
+The subject of the novel was resumed after luncheon by Miss Amory, who
+indeed loved poets and men of letters if she loved anything, and was
+sincerely an artist in feeling. "Some of the passages in the book made me
+cry, positively they did," she said.
+
+Pen said, with some fatuity, "I am happy to think I have a part of vos
+larmes, Miss Blanche,"--and the Major (who had not read more than six
+pages of Pen's book) put on his sanctified look, saying, "Yes, there are
+some passages quite affecting, mons'ous affecting:" and,--"Oh, if it
+makes you cry,"--Lady Amory declared she would not read it, "that she
+wouldn't."
+
+"Don't, mamma," Blanche said, with a French shrug of her shoulders; and
+then she fell into a rhapsody about the book, about the snatches of
+poetry interspersed in it about the two heroines, Leonora and Neaera;
+about the two heroes, Walter Lorraine and his rival the young Duke--"and
+what good company you introduce us to," said the young lady archly "quel
+ton! How much of your life have you passed at court, and are you a prime
+minister's son, Mr. Arthur?"
+
+Pen began to laugh--"It is as cheap for a novelist to create a Duke as to
+make a Baronet," he said. "Shall I tell you a secret, Miss Amory? I
+promoted all my characters at the request of the publisher. The young
+Duke was only a young Baron when the novel was first written; his false
+friend, the Viscount, was a simple commoner and so on with all the
+characters of the story."
+
+"What a wicked, satirical, pert young man you have become! Comme vous
+voila forme!" said the young lady. "How different from Arthur Pendennis
+of the country! Ah! I think I like Arthur Pendennis of the country best,
+though!" and she gave him the full benefit of her eyes,--both of the fond
+appealing glance into his own, and of the modest look downwards towards
+the carpet, which showed off her dark eyelids and long fringed lashes.
+
+Pen of course protested that he had not changed in the least, to which
+the young lady replied by a tender sigh; and thinking that she had done
+quite enough to make Arthur happy or miserable (as the case might be),
+she proceeded to cajole his companion, Mr. Harry Foker, who during the
+literary conversation had sate silently imbibing the head of his cane,
+and wishing that he was a clever chap like that Pen.
+
+If the Major thought that by telling Miss Amory of Mr. Foker's
+engagement to his cousin, Lady Ann Milton (which information the old
+gentleman neatly conveyed to the girl as he sate by her side at luncheon
+below-stairs),--if, we say, the Major thought that the knowledge of this
+fact would prevent Blanche from paying any further attention to the young
+heir of Foker's Entire, he was entirely mistaken. She became only the
+more gracious to Foker: she praised him, and everything belonging to him;
+she praised his mamma; she praised the pony which he rode in the Park;
+she praised the lovely breloques or gimcracks which the young gentleman
+wore at his watch-chain, and that dear little darling of a cane, and
+those dear little delicious monkeys' heads with ruby eyes, which
+ornamented Harry's shirt, and formed the buttons of his waistcoat. And
+then, having praised and coaxed the weak youth until he blushed and
+tingled with pleasure, and until Pen thought she really had gone quite
+far enough, she took another theme.
+
+"I am afraid Mr. Foker is a very sad young man," she said, turning round
+to Pen.
+
+"He does not look so," Pen answered with a sneer.
+
+"I mean we have heard sad stories about him. Haven't we, mamma? What was
+Mr. Poyntz saying here, the other day, about that party at Richmond? O
+you naughty creature!" But here, seeing that Harry's countenance assumed
+a great expression of alarm, while Pen's wore a look of amusement, she
+turned to the latter and said, "I believe you are just as bad: I believe
+you would have liked to have been there,--wouldn't you? I know you would:
+yes--and so should I."
+
+"Lor, Blanche!" mamma cried.
+
+"Well, I would. I never saw an actress in my life. I would give anything
+to know one; for I adore talent. And I adore Richmond, that I do; and I
+adore Greenwich, and I say, I should like to go there."
+
+"Why should not we three bachelors," the Major here broke out, gallantly,
+and to his nephew's special surprise, "beg these ladies to honour us with
+their company at Greenwich? Is Lady Clavering to go on for ever being
+hospitable to us, and may we make no return? Speak for yourselves, young
+men,--eh, begad! Here is my nephew, with his pockets full of money--his
+pockets full, begad! and Mr. Henry Foker, who, as I have heard say, is
+pretty well to do in the world,--how is your lovely cousin, Lady Ann, Mr.
+Foker?--here are these two young ones,--and they allow an old fellow like
+me to speak. Lady Clavering, will you do me the favour to be my guest?
+and Miss Blanche shall be Arthur's, if she will be so good."
+
+"Oh, delightful!" cried Blanche.
+
+"I like a bit of fun too," said Lady Clavering; and we will take some day
+when Sir Francis----"
+
+"When Sir Francis dines out,--yes, mamma," the daughter said, "it will be
+charming."
+
+And a charming day it was. The dinner was ordered at Greenwich, and
+Foker, though he did not invite Miss Amory, had some delicious
+opportunities of conversation with her during the repast, and afterwards
+on the balcony of their room at the hotel, and again during the drive
+home in her ladyship's barouche. Pen came down with his uncle, in Sir
+Hugh Trumpington's brougham, which the Major borrowed for the occasion.
+"I am an old soldier, begad," he said, "and I learned in early life to
+make myself comfortable."
+
+And, being an old soldier, he allowed the two young men to pay for the
+dinner between them, and all the way home in the brougham he rallied Pen,
+about Miss Amory's evident partiality for him: praised her good looks,
+spirits, and wit: and again told Pen in the strictest confidence, that
+she would be a devilish deal richer than people thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+Contains a novel Incident
+
+
+Some account has been given, in a former part of this story, how Mr. Pen,
+during his residence at home, after his defeat at Oxbridge, had occupied
+himself with various literary compositions, and amongst other works, had
+written the greater part of a novel. This book, written under the
+influence of his youthful embarrassments, amatory and pecuniary, was of a
+very fierce, gloomy, and passionate sort,--the Byronic despair, the
+Wertherian despondency, the mocking bitterness of Mephistopheles of
+Faust, were all reproduced and developed in the character of the hero;
+for our youth had just been learning the German language, and imitated,
+as almost all clever lads do, his favourite poets and writers. Passages
+in the volumes once so loved, and now read so seldom, still bear the mark
+of the pencil with which he noted them in those days. Tears fell upon the
+leaf of the book, perhaps, or blistered the pages of his manuscript as
+the passionate young man dashed his thoughts down. If he took up the
+books afterwards he had no ability or wish to sprinkle the leaves with
+that early dew of former times: his pencil was no longer eager to score
+its marks of approval: but as he looked over the pages of his manuscript,
+he remembered what had been overflowing feelings which had caused him to
+blot it, and the pain which had inspired the line. If the secret history
+of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings
+noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become
+interesting, and dull tales excite the reader! Many a bitter smile passed
+over Pen's face as he read his novel, and recalled the time and feelings
+which gave it birth. How pompous some of the grand passages appeared; and
+how weak were others in which he thought he had expressed his full heart!
+This page was imitated from a then favourite author, as he could now
+clearly see and confess, though he had believed himself to be writing
+originally then. As he mused over certain lines he recollected the place
+and hour where he wrote them: the ghost of the dead feeling came back as
+he mused, and he blushed to review the faint image. And what meant those
+blots on the page? As you come in the desert to a ground where camels'
+hoofs are marked in the clay, and traces of withered herbage are yet
+visible, you know that water was there once; so the place in Pen's mind
+was no longer green, and the fons lacrymarum was dried up.
+
+He used this simile one morning to Warrington, as the latter sate over
+his pipe and book, and Pen, with much gesticulation according to his wont
+when excited, and with a bitter laugh, thumped his manuscript down on the
+table, making the tea-things rattle, and, the blue milk dance in the jug.
+On the previous night he had taken the manuscript out of a long-neglected
+chest, containing old shooting jackets, old Oxbridge scribbling-books,
+his old surplice, and battered cap and gown, and other memorials of
+youth, school, and home. He read in the volume in bed until he fell
+asleep, for the commencement of the tale was somewhat dull, and he had
+come home tired from a London evening party.
+
+"By Jove!" said Pen, thumping down his papers, "when I think that these
+were written but very few years ago, I am ashamed of my memory. I wrote
+this when I believed myself be eternally in love with that little
+coquette, Miss Amory. I used to carry down verses to her, and put them
+into the hollow of a tree, and dedicate them 'Amori.'"
+
+"That was a sweet little play upon words," Warrington remarked, with a
+puff "Amory--Amori. It showed proof of scholarship. Let us hear a bit of
+the rubbish." And he stretched over from his easy-chair, and caught hold
+of Pen's manuscript with the fire-tongs, which he was just using in order
+to put a coal into his pipe. Thus, in possession of the volume, he began
+to read out from the 'Leaves from the Life-book of Walter Lorraine.'
+
+"'False as thou art beautiful! heartless as thou art fair! mockery of
+Passion!' Walter cried, addressing Leonora; 'what evil spirit hath sent
+thee to torture me so? O Leonora.----'"
+
+"Cut that part," cried out Pen, making a dash at the book, which,
+however, his comrade would not release. "Well! don't read it out at any
+rate. That's about my other flame, my first--Lady Mirabel that is now. I
+saw her last night at Lady Whiston's. She asked me to a party at her
+house, and said that, as old friends, we ought to meet oftener. She has
+been seeing me any time these two years in town, and never thought of
+inviting me before; but seeing Wenham talking to me, and Monsieur Dubois,
+the French literary man, who had a dozen orders on, and might have passed
+for a Marshal of France, she condescended to invite me. The Claverings
+are to be there on the same evening. Won't it be exciting to meet one's
+two flames at the same table?"
+
+"Two flames!--two heaps of burnt-out cinders," Warrington said. "Are both
+the beauties in this book?"
+
+"Both, or something like them," Pen said. "Leonora, who marries the Duke,
+is the Fotheringay. I drew the Duke from Magnus Charters, with whom I was
+at Oxford; it's a little like him; and Miss Amory is Neaera. By gad, that
+first woman! I thought of her as I walked home from Lady Whiston's in the
+moonlight; and the whole early scenes came back to me as if they had been
+yesterday. And when I got home, I pulled out the story which I wrote
+about her and the other three years ago: do you know, outrageous as it
+is, it has some good stuff in it, and if Bungay won't publish it, I think
+Bacon will."
+
+"That's the way of poets," said Warrington. "They fall in love, jilt, or
+are jilted; they suffer and they cry out that they suffer more than any
+other mortals: and when they have experienced feelings enough they note
+them down in a book, and take the book to market. All poets are humbugs,
+all literary men are humbugs; directly a man begins to sell his feelings
+for money he's a humbug. If a poet gets a pain in his side from too good
+a dinner, he bellows Ai Ai louder than Prometheus."
+
+"I suppose a poet has a greater sensibility than another man," said Pen,
+with some spirit. "That is what makes him a poet. I suppose that he sees
+and feels more keenly: it is that which makes him speak, of what he feels
+and sees. You speak eagerly enough in your leading articles when you espy
+a false argument in an opponent, or detect a quack in the House. Paley,
+who does not care for anything else in the world, will talk for an hour
+about a question of law. Give another the privilege which you take
+yourself, and the free use of his faculty, and let him be what nature has
+made him. Why should not a man sell his sentimental thoughts as well as
+you your political ideas, or Paley his legal knowledge? Each alike is a
+matter of experience and practice. It is not money which causes you to
+perceive a fallacy, or Paley to argue a point; but a natural or acquired
+aptitude for that kind of truth: and a poet sets down his thoughts and
+experiences upon paper as a painter does a landscape or a face upon
+canvas, to the best of his ability, and according to his particular gift.
+If ever I think I have the stuff in me to write an epic, by Jove I will
+try If I only feel that I am good enough to crack a joke or tell a story,
+I will do that."
+
+"Not a bad speech, young one," Warrington said, but that does not prevent
+all poets from being humbugs."
+
+"What--Homer, Aeschylus, Shakspeare and all?"
+
+"Their names are not to be breathed in the same sense with you pigmies,"
+Mr. Warrington said: "there are men and men, sir."
+
+"Well, Shakspeare was a man who wrote for money, just as you and I do,"
+Pen answered, at which Warrington confounded his impudence, and resumed
+his pipe and his manuscript.
+
+There was not the slightest doubt then that this document contained a
+great deal of Pen's personal experiences, and that 'Leaves from the
+Life-book of Walter Lorraine' would never have been written but for
+Arthur Pendennis's own private griefs, passions, and follies. As we have
+become acquainted with these in the first volume of his biography, it
+will not be necessary to make large extracts from the novel of 'Walter
+Lorraine,' in which the young gentleman had depicted such of them as he
+thought were likely to interest the reader, or were suitable for the
+purpose of his story.
+
+Now, though he had kept it in his box for nearly half of the period
+during which, according to the Horatian maxim, a work of art ought to lie
+ripening (a maxim, the truth of which may, by the way, be questioned
+altogether), Mr. Pen had not buried his novel for this time, in order
+that the work might improve, but because he did not know where else to
+bestow it, or had no particular desire to see it. A man who thinks of
+putting away a composition for ten years before he shall give it to the
+world, or exercise his own maturer judgment upon it, had best be very
+sure of the original strength and durability of the work; otherwise on
+withdrawing it from its crypt he may find, that like small wine it has
+lost what flavour it once had, and is only tasteless when opened. There
+are works of all tastes and smacks, the small and the strong, those that
+improve by age, and those that won't bear keeping at all, but are
+pleasant at the first draught, when they refresh and sparkle.
+
+Now Pen had never any notion, even in the time of his youthful
+inexperience and fervour of imagination, that the story he was writing
+was a masterpiece of composition, or that he was the equal of the great
+authors whom he admired; and when he now reviewed his little performance,
+he was keenly enough alive to its faults, and pretty modest regarding its
+merits. It was not very good, he thought; but it was as good as most
+books of the kind that had the run of circulating libraries and the
+career of the season. He had critically examined more than one
+fashionable novel by the authors of the day then popular, and he thought
+that his intellect was as good as theirs and that he could write the
+English language as well as those ladies or gentlemen; and as he now ran
+over his early performance, he was pleased to find here and there
+passages exhibiting both fancy and vigour, and traits, if not of genius,
+of genuine passion and feeling. This, too, was Warrington's verdict, when
+that severe critic, after half an hour's perusal of the manuscript, and
+the consumption of a couple of pipes of tobacco, laid Pen's book down,
+yawning portentously. "I can't read any more of that balderdash now," he
+said; "but it seems to me there is some good stuff in it, Pen, my boy.
+There's a certain greenness and freshness in it which I like somehow. The
+bloom disappears off the face of poetry after you begin to shave. You
+can't get up that naturalness and artless rosy tint in after days. Your
+cheeks are pale, and have got faded by exposure to evening parties,
+and you are obliged to take curling-irons, and macassar, and the
+deuce-knows-what to your whiskers; they curl ambrosially, and you are
+very grand and genteel, and so forth; but, ah! Pen, the spring-time was
+the best."
+
+"What the deuce have my whiskers to do with the subject in hand?" Pen
+said (who, perhaps, may have been nettled by Warrington's allusion to
+those ornaments, which, to say the truth, the young man coaxed, and
+curled, and oiled, and perfumed, and petted, in rather an absurd manner).
+"Do you think we can do anything with 'Walter Lorraine'? Shall we take
+him to the publishers, or make an auto-da-fe of him?"
+
+"I don't see what is the good of incremation," Warrington said, "though I
+have a great mind to put him into the fire, to punish your atrocious
+humbug and hypocrisy. Shall I burn him indeed? You have much too great a
+value for him to hurt a hair of his head."
+
+"Have I? Here goes," said Pen, and 'Walter Lorraine' went off the table,
+and was flung on to the coals. But the fire having done its duty of
+boiling the young man's breakfast-kettle, had given up work for the day,
+and had gone out, as Pen knew very well; Warrington with a scornful mile,
+once more took up the manuscript with the tongs from out of the
+harmless cinders.
+
+"Oh, Pen, what a humbug you are!" Warrington said; "and what is worst of
+all, sir, a clumsy humbug. I saw you look to see that the fire was out
+before you sent 'Walter Lorraine' behind the bars. No, we won't burn him:
+we will carry him to the Egyptians, and sell him. We will exchange him
+away for money, yea, for silver and gold, and for beef and for liquors,
+and for tobacco and for raiment. This youth will fetch some price in the
+market; for he is a comely lad, though not over strong; but we will
+fatten him up and give him the bath, and curl his hair, and we will sell
+him for a hundred piasters to Bacon or to Bungay. The rubbish is saleable
+enough, sir; and my advice to you is this: the next time you go home for
+a holiday, take 'Walter Lorraine' in your carpet-bag--give him a more
+modern air, prune away, though sparingly, some of the green passages, and
+add a little comedy, and cheerfulness, and satire, and that sort of
+thing, and then we'll take him to market, and sell him. The book is not a
+wonder of wonders, but it will do very well."
+
+"Do you think so, Warrington?" said Pen, delighted, for this was great
+praise from his cynical friend.
+
+"You silly young fool! I think it's uncommonly clever," Warrington said
+in a kind voice. "So do you, sir." And with the manuscript which he held
+in his hand he playfully struck Pen on the cheek. That part of Pen's
+countenance turned as red as it had ever done in the earliest days of his
+blushes: he grasped the other's hand and said, "Thank you, Warrington,"
+with all his might: and then he retired to his own room with his book,
+and passed the greater part of the day upon his bed re-reading it; and he
+did as Warrington had advised, and altered not a little, and added a
+great deal, until at length he had fashioned 'Walter Lorraine' pretty
+much into the shape in which, as the respected novel-reader knows, it
+subsequently appeared.
+
+Whilst he was at work upon this performance, the good-natured Warrington
+artfully inspired the two gentlemen who "read" for Messrs. Bacon and
+Bungay with the greatest curiosity regarding 'Walter Lorraine,' and
+pointed out the peculiar merits of its distinguished author. It was at
+the period when the novel, called 'The Fashionable,' was in vogue among
+us; and Warrington did not fail to point out, as before, how Pen was a
+man of the very first fashion himself, and received at the houses of some
+of the greatest personages in the land. The simple and kind-hearted Percy
+Popjoy was brought to bear upon Mrs. Bungay, whom he informed that his
+friend Pendennis was occupied upon a work of the most exciting nature; a
+work that the whole town would run after, full of wit, genius, satire,
+pathos, and every conceivable good quality. We have said before, that
+Bungay knew no more about novels than he did about Hebrew or Algebra, and
+neither read nor understood any of the books which he published and paid
+for; but he took his opinions from his professional advisers and from
+Mrs. B., and, evidently with a view to a commercial transaction, asked
+Pendennis and Warrington to dinner again.
+
+Bacon, when he found that Bungay was about to treat, of course, began to
+be anxious and curious, and desired to outbid his rival. Was anything
+settled between Mr. Pendennis and the odious house "over the way" about
+the new book? Mr. Hack, the confidential reader, was told to make
+inquiries, and see if any thing was to be done, and the result of the
+inquiries of that diplomatist was, that one morning, Bacon himself toiled
+up the staircase of Lamb Court and to the door on which the names of Mr.
+Warrington, and Mr. Pendennis, were painted.
+
+For a gentleman of fashion as poor Pen was represented to be, it must
+be confessed, that the apartments he and his friend occupied were not
+very suitable. The ragged carpet had grown only more ragged during the
+two years of joint occupancy: a constant odour of tobacco perfumed the
+sitting-room: Bacon tumbled over the laundress's buckets in the passage
+through which he had to pass; Warrington's shooting-jacket was as
+tattered at the elbows as usual; and the chair which Bacon was requested
+to take on entering, broke down with the publisher. Warrington burst out
+laughing, said that Bacon had got the game chair, and bawled out to Pen
+to fetch a sound one from his bedroom. And seeing the publisher looking
+round the dingy room with an air of profound pity and wonder, asked him
+whether he didn't think the apartments were elegant, and if he would
+like, for Mrs. Bacon's drawing-room, any of the articles of furniture?
+Mr. Warrington's character as a humourist was known to Mr. Bacon: "I
+never can make that chap out," the publisher was heard to say, "or tell
+whether he is in earnest or only chaffing."
+
+It is very possible that Mr. Bacon would have set the two gentlemen
+down as impostors altogether, but that there chanced to be on the
+breakfast-table certain cards of invitation which the post of the morning
+had brought in for Pen, and which happened to come from some very exalted
+personage of the beau-monde, into which our young man had his
+introduction. Looking down upon these, Bacon saw that the Marchioness of
+Steyne would be at home to Mr. Arthur Pendennis upon a given day, and
+that another lady of distinction proposed to have dancing at her house
+upon a certain future evening. Warrington saw the admiring publisher
+eyeing these documents. "Ah," said he, with an air of simplicity,
+"Pendennis is one of the most affable young men I ever knew, Mr. Bacon.
+Here is a young fellow that dines with all the men in London, and yet
+he'll take his mutton-chop with you and me quite contentedly. There's
+nothing like the affability of the old English gentleman."
+
+"Oh no, nothing," said Mr. Bacon.
+
+"And you wonder why he should go on living up three pair of stairs with
+me, don't you now? Well, it is a queer taste. But we are fond of each
+other; and as I can't afford to live in a great house, he comes and stays
+in these rickety old chambers with me. He's a man that can afford to live
+anywhere."
+
+"I fancy it don't cost him much here," thought Mr. Bacon, and the object
+of these praises presently entered the room from his adjacent sleeping
+apartment.
+
+Then Mr. Bacon began to speak upon the subject of his visit; said he
+heard that Mr. Pendennis had a manuscript novel; professed himself
+anxious to have a sight of that work, and had no doubt that they could
+come to terms respecting it. What would be his price for it? would he
+give Bacon the refusal of it? he would find our house a liberal house,
+and so forth. The delighted Pen assumed an air of indifference, and said
+that he was already in treaty with Bungay, and could give no definite
+answer. This piqued the other into such liberal, though vague offers,
+that Pen began to fancy Eldorado was opening to him, and that his fortune
+was made from that day.
+
+I shall not mention what was the sum of money which Mr. Arthur Pendennis
+finally received for the first edition of his novel of 'Walter Lorraine,'
+lest other young literary aspirants should expect to be as lucky as he
+was, and unprofessional persons forsake their own callings, whatever they
+may be, for the sake of supplying the world with novels, whereof there is
+already a sufficiency. Let no young people be misled and rush fatally
+into romance-writing: for one book which succeeds let them remember the
+many that fail, I do not say deservedly or otherwise, and wholesomely
+abstain or if they venture, at least let them do so at their own peril.
+As for those who have already written novels, this warning is not
+addressed, of course, to them. Let them take their wares to market; let
+them apply to Bacon and Bungay, and all the publishers in the Row, or the
+metropolis, and may they be happy in their ventures. This world is so
+wide, and the tastes of mankind happily so various, that there is always
+a chance for every man, and he may win the prize by his genius or by his
+good fortune. But what is the chance of success or failure; of obtaining
+popularity, or of holding it when achieved? One man goes over the ice,
+which bears him, and a score who follow flounder in. In fine, Mr.
+Pendennis's was an exceptional case, and applies to himself only and I
+assert solemnly, and will to the last maintain, that it is one thing to
+write a novel, and another to get money for it.
+
+By merit, then, or good fortune, or the skilful playing off of Bungay
+against Bacon which Warrington performed (and which an amateur novelist
+is quite welcome to try upon any two publishers in the trade), Pen's
+novel was actually sold for a certain sum of money to one of the two
+eminent patrons of letters whom we have introduced to our readers. The
+sum was so considerable that Pen thought of opening an account at a
+banker's, or of keeping a cab and horse, or of descending into the first
+floor of Lamb Court into newly furnished apartments, or of migrating to
+the fashionable end of the town.
+
+Major Pendennis advised the latter move strongly; he opened his eyes with
+wonder when he heard of the good luck that had befallen Pen; and which
+the latter, as soon as it occurred, hastened eagerly to communicate to
+his uncle. The Major was almost angry that Pen should have earned so much
+money. "Who the doose reads this kind of thing?" he thought to himself
+when he heard of the bargain which Pen had made. "I never read your
+novels and rubbish. Except Paul de Kock, who certainly makes me laugh, I
+don't think I've looked into a book of the sort these thirty years. Gad!
+Pen's a lucky fellow. I should think he might write one of these in a
+month now,--say a month,--that's twelve in a year. Dammy, he may go on
+spinning this nonsense for the next four to five years, and make a
+fortune. In the meantime I should wish him to live properly, take
+respectable apartments, and keep a brougham." And on this simple
+calculation it was that the Major counselled Pen.
+
+Arthur, laughing, told Warrington what his uncle's advice had been but he
+luckily had a much more reasonable counsellor than the old gentleman in
+the person of his friend, and in his own conscience, which said to him,
+"Be grateful for this piece of good fortune; don't plunge into any
+extravagancies. Pay back Laura!" And he wrote a letter to her, in which
+he told her his thanks and his regard; and enclosed to her such an
+instalment of his debt as nearly wiped it off. The widow and Laura
+herself might well be affected by the letter. It was written with genuine
+tenderness and modesty; and old Dr. Portman when he read a passage in the
+letter, in which Pen, with an honest heart full of gratitude, humbly
+thanked Heaven for his present prosperity, and for sending him such dear
+and kind friends to support him in his ill fortune,--when Doctor Portman
+read this portion of the letter, his voice faltered, and his eyes
+twinkled behind his spectacles, and when he had quite finished reading
+the same, and had taken his glasses off his nose, and had folded up the
+paper and given it back to the widow, I am constrained to say, that
+after holding Mrs. Pendennis's hand for a minute, the Doctor drew that
+lady towards him and fairly kissed her: at which salute, of course,
+Helen burst out crying on the Doctor's shoulder, for her heart was too
+full to give any other reply: and the Doctor blushing at great deal after
+his feat, led the lady, with a bow, to the sofa, on which he seated
+himself by her; and he mumbled out, in a low voice, some words of a Great
+Poet whom he loved very much, and who describes how in the days of his
+prosperity he had made "the widow's heart to sing for joy."
+
+"The letter does the boy very great honour, very great honour, my dear,"
+he said, patting it as it lay on Helen's knee--"and I think we have all
+reason to be thankful for it--very thankful. I need not tell you in what
+quarter, my dear, for you are a sainted woman: yes, Laura, my love, your
+mother is a sainted woman. And Mrs. Pendennis, ma'am, I shall order a
+copy of the book for myself, and another at the Book Club."
+
+We may be sure that the widow and Laura walked out to meet the mail which
+brought them their copy of Pen's precious novel, as soon as that work was
+printed and ready for delivery to the public and that they read it to
+each other: and that they also read it privately and separately, for when
+the widow came out of her room in her dressing-gown at one o'clock in the
+morning with volume two, which she had finished, she found Laura
+devouring volume three in bed. Laura did not say much about the book, but
+Helen pronounced that it was a happy mixture of Shakspeare, and Byron,
+and Walter Scott, and was quite certain that her son was the greatest
+genius, as he was the best son, in the world.
+
+Did Laura not think about the book and the author, although she said so
+little? At least she thought about Arthur Pendennis. Kind as his tone
+was, it vexed her. She did not like his eagerness to repay that money.
+She would rather that her brother had taken her gift as she intended it:
+and was pained that there should be money calculations between them. His
+letters from London, written with the good-natured wish to amuse his
+mother, were full of descriptions of the famous people and the
+entertainments and magnificence of the great city. Everybody was
+flattering him and spoiling him, she was sure. Was he not looking to some
+great marriage, with that cunning uncle for a Mentor (between whom and
+Laura there was always an antipathy), that inveterate worldling, whose
+whole thoughts were bent upon pleasure and rank and fortune? He never
+alluded to--to old times, when he spoke of her. He had forgotten them and
+her, perhaps had he not forgotten other things and people?
+
+These thoughts may have passed in Miss Laura's mind, though she did not,
+she could not, confide them to Helen. She had one more secret, too, from
+that lady, which she could not divulge, perhaps because she knew how the
+widow would have rejoiced to know it. This regarded an event which had
+occurred during that visit to Lady Rockminster, which Laura had paid in
+the last Christmas holidays: when Pen was at home with his mother, and
+when Mr. Pynsent, supposed to be so cold and so ambitious, had formally
+offered his hand to Miss Bell. No one except herself and her admirer knew
+of this proposal: or that Pynsent had been rejected by her, and probably
+the reasons she gave to the mortified young man himself were not those
+which actuated her refusal, or those which she chose to acknowledge to
+herself. "I never," she told Pynsent, "can accept such an offer as that
+which you make me, which you own is unknown to your family as I am sure
+it would be unwelcome to them. The difference of rank between us is too
+great. You are very kind to me here--too good and kind, dear Mr. Pynsent
+--but I am little better than a dependant."
+
+"A dependant! who ever so thought of you? You are the equal of all the
+world," Pynsent broke out.
+
+"I am a dependant at home, too," Laura said, sweetly, and indeed I would
+not be otherwise. Left early a poor orphan, I have found the kindest and
+tenderest of mothers, and I have vowed never to leave her--never. Pray do
+not speak of this again--here, under your relative's roof, or elsewhere.
+It is impossible."
+
+"If Lady Rockminster asks you herself, will you listen to her?" Pynsent
+cried eagerly.
+
+"No," Laura said. "I beg you never to speak of this any more. I must go
+away if you do"--and with this she left him.
+
+Pynsent never asked for Lady Rockminster's intercession; he knew how vain
+it was to look for that: and he never spoke again on that subject to
+Laura or to any person.
+
+When at length the famous novel appeared it not only met with applause
+from more impartial critics than Mrs. Pendennis, but, luckily for Pen it
+suited the taste of the public, and obtained a quick and considerable
+popularity before two months were over, Pen had the satisfaction and
+surprise of seeing the second edition of 'Walter Lorraine' advertised in
+the newspapers; and enjoyed the pleasure of reading and sending home the
+critiques of various literary journals and reviewers upon his book. Their
+censure did not much affect him; for the good-natured young man was
+disposed to accept with considerable humility the dispraises of others.
+Nor did their praise elate him over much; for, like most honest persons
+he had his own opinion about his own performance, and when a critic
+praised him in the wrong place he was rather hurt than pleased by the
+compliment. But if a review of his work was very laudatory, it was a
+great pleasure to him to send it home to his mother at Fairoaks, and to
+think of the joy which it would give there. There are some natures, and
+perhaps, as we have said, Pendennis's was one, which are improved and
+softened by prosperity and kindness, as there are men of other
+dispositions, who become arrogant and graceless under good fortune. Happy
+he, who can endure one or the other with modesty and good-humour! Lucky
+he who has been educated to bear his fate, whatsoever it may be, by an
+early example of uprightness, and a childish training in honour!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+Alsatia
+
+
+Bred up, like a bailiff or a shabby attorney, about the purlieus of the
+Inns of Court, Shepherd's Inn is always to be found in the close
+neighbourhood of Lincoln's-Inn Fields, and the Temple. Some where behind
+the black gables and smutty chimney-stacks of Wych Street, Holywell
+Street, Chancery Lane, the quadrangle lies, hidden from the outer world;
+and it is approached by curious passages and ambiguous smoky alleys, on
+which the sun has forgotten to shine. Slop-sellers, brandy-ball and
+hard-bake vendors, purveyors of theatrical prints for youth, dealers in
+dingy furniture and bedding suggestive of anything but sleep, line the
+narrow walls and dark casements with their wares. The doors are
+many-belled: and crowds of dirty children form endless groups about the
+steps: or around the shell-fish dealers' trays in these courts; whereof
+the damp pavements resound with pattens, and are drabbled with a
+never-failing mud. Ballad-singers come and chant here, in deadly guttural
+tones, satirical songs against the Whig administration, against the
+bishops and dignified clergy, against the German relatives of an august
+royal family: Punch sets up his theatre, sure of an audience, and
+occasionally of a halfpenny from the swarming occupants of the houses:
+women scream after their children for loitering in the gutter, or, worse
+still, against the husband who comes reeling from the gin-shop;--there is
+a ceaseless din and life in these courts out of which you pass into the
+tranquil, old-fashioned quadrangle of Shepherd's Inn. In a mangy little
+grass-plat in the centre rises up the statue of Shepherd, defended by
+iron railings from the assaults of boys. The hall of the Inn, on which
+the founder's arms are painted, occupies one side of the square, the tall
+and ancient chambers are carried round other two sides, and over the
+central archway, which leads into Oldcastle Street, and so into the great
+London thoroughfare.
+
+The Inn may have been occupied by lawyers once: but the laity have long
+since been admitted into its precincts, and I do not know that any of
+the principal legal firms have their chambers here. The offices of the
+Polwheedle and Tredyddlum Copper Mines occupy one set of the
+ground-floor chambers; the Registry of Patent Inventions and Union of
+Genius and Capital Company, another;--the only gentleman whose name
+figures here, and in the "Law List," is Mr. Campion, who wears
+mustachios, and who comes in his cab twice or thrice in a week; and whose
+West End offices are in Curzon Street, Mayfair, where Mrs. Campion
+entertains the nobility and gentry to whom her husband lends money.
+There, and on his glazed cards, he is Mr. Somerset Campion; here he is
+Campion and Co.; and the same tuft which ornaments his chin, sprouts
+from the under lip of the rest of the firm. It is splendid to see his
+cab-horse harness blazing with heraldic bearings, as the vehicle stops at
+the door leading to his chambers: The horse flings froth off his nostrils
+as he chafes and tosses under the shining bit. The reins and the breeches
+of the groom are glittering white,--the lustre of that equipage makes a
+sunshine in that shady place.
+
+Our old friend, Captain Costigan, has examined Campion's cab and horse
+many an afternoon, as he trailed about the court in his carpet slippers
+and dressing-gown, with his old hat cocked over his eye. He suns himself
+there after his breakfast when the day is suitable; and goes and pays a
+visit to the porter's lodge, where he pats the heads of the children, and
+talks to Mrs. Bolton about the thayatres and me daughther Leedy Mirabel.
+Mrs. Bolton was herself in the profession once, and danced at the Wells
+in early days as the thirteenth of Mr. Serle's forty pupils.
+
+Costigan lives in the third floor at No. 4, in the rooms which were Mr.
+Podmore's, and whose name is still on the door--(somebody else's name, by
+the way, is on almost all the doors in Shepherd's Inn). When Charley
+Podmore (the pleasing tenor singer, T.R.D.L., and at the Back Kitchen
+Concert Rooms) married, and went to live at Lambeth, he ceded his
+chambers to Mr. Bows and Captain Costigan, who occupy them in common now,
+and you may often hear the tones of Mr. Bows's piano of fine days when
+the windows are open, acid when he is practising for amusement, or for
+the instruction of a theatrical pupil, of whom he has one or two. Fanny
+Bolton is one, the porteress's daughter, who has heard tell of her
+mother's theatrical glories, which she longs to emulate. She has a good
+voice and a pretty face and figure for the stage; and she prepares the
+rooms and makes the beds and breakfasts for Messrs. Costigan and Bows, in
+return for which the latter instructs her in music and singing. But for
+his unfortunate propensity to liquor (and in that excess she supposes
+that all men of fashion indulge), she thinks the Captain the finest
+gentleman in the world, and believes in all the versions of all his
+stories, and she is very fond of Mr. Bows too, and very grateful to him,
+and this shy queer old gentleman has a fatherly fondness for her too, for
+in truth his heart is full of kindness, and he is never easy unless he
+loves somebody.
+
+Costigan has had the carriages of visitors of distinction before his
+humble door in Shepherd's Inn: and to hear him talk of a morning (for his
+evening song is of a much more melancholy nature) you would fancy that
+Sir Charles and Lady Mirabel were in the constant habit of calling at his
+chambers, and bringing with them the select nobility to visit the "old
+man, the honest old half-pay Captain, poor old Jack Costigan," as Cos
+calls himself.
+
+The truth is, that Lady Mirabel has left her husband's card (which has
+been stuck in the little looking-glass over the mantelpiece of the
+sitting-room at No. 4, for these many months past), and has come in
+person to see her father, but not of late days. A kind person, disposed
+to discharge her duties gravely, upon her marriage with Sir Charles she
+settled a little pension upon her father, who occasionally was admitted
+to the table of his daughter and son-in-law. At first poor Cos's
+behaviour "in the hoight of poloit societee," as he denominated Lady
+Mirabel's drawing-room table, was harmless, if it was absurd. As he
+clothed his person in his best attire, so he selected the longest and
+richest words in his vocabulary to deck his conversation, and adopted a
+solemnity of demeanour which struck with astonishment all those persons
+in whose company he happened to be.--"Was your Leedyship in the Pork to
+dee?" he would demand of his daughter. "I looked for your equipage in
+veen:--the poor old man was not gratified by the soight of his
+daughther's choriot. Sir Chorlus, I saw your neem at the Levee; many's
+the Levee at the Castle at Dublin that poor old Jack Costigan has
+attended in his time. Did the Juke look pretty well? Bedad, I'll call at
+Apsley House and lave me cyard upon 'um. I thank ye, James, a little
+dthrop more champeane." Indeed, he was magnificent in his courtesy to
+all, and addressed his observations not only to the master and the
+guests, but to the domestics who waited at the table, and who had some
+difficulty in maintaining their professional gravity while they waited on
+Captain Costigan.
+
+On the first two or three visits to his son-in-law, Costigan maintained a
+strict sobriety, content to make up for his lost time when he got to the
+Back Kitchen, where he bragged about his son-in-law's dart and burgundee,
+until his own utterance began to fail him, over his sixth tumbler of
+whisky-punch. But with familiarity his caution vanished, and poor Cos
+lamentably disgraced himself at Sir Charles Mirabel's table, by premature
+inebriation. A carriage was called for him: the hospitable door was shut
+upon him. Often and sadly did he speak to his friends at the Kitchen of
+his resemblance to King Lear in the plee--of his having a thankless
+choild, bedad--of his being a pore worn-out lonely old man, dthriven to
+dthrinking by ingratitude, and seeking to dthrown his sorrows in punch.
+
+It is painful to be obliged to record the weaknesses of fathers, but it
+must be furthermore told of Costigan, that when his credit was exhausted
+and his money gone, he would not unfrequently beg money from his
+daughter, and made statements to her not altogether consistent with
+strict truth. On one day a bailiff was about to lead him to prison, he
+wrote, "unless the--to you insignificant--sum of three pound five can be
+forthcoming to liberate a poor man's grey hairs from gaol." And the
+good-natured Lady Mirabel despatched the money necessary for her father's
+liberation, with a caution to him to be more economical for the future.
+On a second occasion the Captain met with a frightful accident, and broke
+a plate-glass window in the Strand, for which the proprietor of the shop
+held him liable. The money was forthcoming on this time too, to repair
+her papa's disaster, and was carried down by Lady Mirabel's servant to
+the slipshod messenger and aide-de-camp of the Captain, who brought the
+letter announcing his mishap. If the servant had followed the Captain's
+aide-de-camp who carried the remittance, he would have seen that
+gentleman, a person of Costigan's country too (for have we not said, that
+however poor an Irish gentleman is, he always has a poorer Irish
+gentleman to run on his errands and transact his pecuniary affairs?),
+call a cab from the nearest stand, and rattle down to the Roscius Head,
+Harlequin Yard, Drury Lane, where the Captain was indeed in pawn, and for
+several glasses containing rum-and-water, or other spirituous
+refreshment, of which he and his staff had partaken. On a third
+melancholy occasion he wrote that he was attacked by illness, and wanted
+money to pay the physician whom he was compelled to call in; and this
+time Lady Mirabel, alarmed about her father's safety, and perhaps
+reproaching herself that she had of late lost sight of her father, called
+for her carriage and drove to Shepherd's Inn, at the gate of which she
+alighted, whence she found the way to her father's chambers, "No. 4,
+third floor, name of Podmore over the door," the porteress said, with
+many curtsies, pointing towards the door of the house, into which the
+affectionate daughter entered and mounted the dingy stair. Alas! the
+door, surmounted by the name of Podmore, was opened to her by poor Cos in
+his shirt-sleeves, and prepared with the gridiron to receive the
+mutton-chops which Mrs. Bolton had gone to purchase.
+
+Also, it was not pleasant for Sir Charles Mirabel to have letters
+constantly addressed to him at Brookes's, with the information that
+Captain Costigan was in the hall, waiting for an answer; or when he went
+to play his rubber at the Travellers', to be obliged to shoot out of his
+brougham and run up the steps rapidly, lest his father-in-law should
+seize upon him; and to think that while he read his paper or played his
+whist, the Captain was walking on the opposite side of Pall Mall, with
+that dreadful cocked hat, and the eye beneath it fixed steadily upon the
+windows of the club. Sir Charles was a weak man; he was old, and had many
+infirmities: he cried about his father-in-law to his wife, whom he adored
+with senile infatuation: he said he must go abroad,--he must go and live
+in the country--he should die or have another fit if he saw that man
+again--he knew he should. And it was only by paying a second visit to
+Captain Costigan, and representing to him, that if he plagued Sir Charles
+by letters or addressed him in the street, or made any further
+applications for loans, his allowance would be withdrawn altogether, that
+Lady Mirabel was enabled to keep her papa in order, and to restore
+tranquillity to her husband. And on occasion of this visit, she sternly
+rebuked Bows for not keeping a better watch over the Captain; desired
+that he should not be allowed to drink in that shameful way; and that the
+people at the horrid taverns which he frequented should be told, upon no
+account to give him credit. "Papa's conduct is bringing me to the grave,"
+she said (though she looked perfectly healthy), "and you, as an old man,
+Mr. Bows, and one that pretended to have a regard for us, ought to be
+ashamed of abetting him in it." Those were the thanks which honest Bows
+got for his friendship and his life's devotion. And I do not suppose that
+the old philosopher was much worse off than many other men, or had
+greater reason to grumble.
+
+On the second floor of the next house to Bows's, in Shepherd's Inn, at
+No. 3, live two other acquaintances of ours: Colonel Altamont, agent to
+the Nawaub of Lucknow, and Captain Chevalier Edward Strong. No name at
+all is over their door. The Captain does not choose to let all the world
+know where he lives and his cards bear the address of a Jermyn Street
+hotel; and as for the Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Indian potentate,
+he is not an envoy accredited to the Courts of St. James's or Leadenhall
+Street but is here on a confidential mission quite independent of the
+East India Company or the Board of Control. "In fact," Strong says,
+"Colonel Altamont's object being financial, and to effectuate a sale of
+some of the principal diamonds and rubies  of the Lucknow crown, his wish
+is not to report himself at the India House or in Cannon Row, but rather
+to negotiate with private capitalists--with whom he has had important
+transactions both in this country and on the Continent."
+
+We have said that these anonymous chambers of Strong's had been very
+comfortably furnished since the arrival of Sir Francis Clavering in
+London, and the Chevalier might boast with reason to the friends who
+visited him, that few retired Captains were more snugly quartered than
+he, in his crib in Shepherd's Inn. There were three rooms below: the
+office where Strong transacted his business--whatever that might be--and
+where still remained the desk and railings of the departed officials who
+had preceded him, and the Chevalier's own bedroom and sitting-room; and a
+private stair led out of the office to two upper apartments, the one
+occupied by Colonel Altamont, and the other serving as the kitchen of the
+establishment, and the bedroom of Mr. Grady, the attendant. These rooms
+were on a level with the apartments of our friends Bows and Costigan next
+door at No. 4; and by reaching over the communicating leads, Grady could
+command the mignonette-box which bloomed in Bows's window.
+
+From Grady's kitchen casement often came odours still more fragrant. The
+three old soldiers who formed the garrison of No. 3 were all skilled in
+the culinary art. Grady was great at an Irish stew; the Colonel was
+famous for pillaus and curries; and as for Strong he could cook anything.
+He made French dishes and Spanish dishes, stews, fricassees, and
+omelettes, to perfection; nor was there any man in England more
+hospitable than he when his purse was full or his credit was good. At
+those happy periods, he could give a friend, as he said, a good dinner, a
+good glass of wine, and a good song afterwards; and poor Cos often heard
+with envy the roar of Strong's choruses, and the musical clinking of the
+glasses, as he sate in his own room, so far removed and yet so near to
+those festivities. It was not expedient to invite Mr. Costigan always:
+his practice of inebriation was lamentable; and he bored Strong's guests
+with his stories when sober, and with his maudlin tears when drunk.
+
+A strange and motley set they were, these friends of the Chevalier; and
+though Major Pendennis would not much have relished their company, Arthur
+and Warrington liked it not a little, and Pen thought it as amusing as
+the society of the finest gentlemen in the finest houses which he had the
+honour to frequent. There was a history about every man of the set: they
+seemed all to have had their tides of luck and bad fortune. Most of them
+had wonderful schemes and speculations in their pockets, and plenty for
+making rapid and extraordinary fortunes. Jack Holt had been in Don
+Carlos's army, when Ned Strong had fought on the other side; and was now
+organising a little scheme for smuggling tobacco into London, which must
+bring thirty thousand a year to any man who would advance fifteen
+hundred, just to bribe the last officer of the Excise who held out, and
+had wind of the scheme. Tom Diver, who had been in the Mexican navy, knew
+of a specie-ship which had been sunk in the first year of the war, with
+three hundred and eighty thousand dollars on board, and a hundred and
+eighty thousand pounds in bars and doubloons. "Give me eighteen hundred
+pounds," Tom said, "and I'm off tomorrow. I take out four men, and a
+diving-bell with me; and I return in ten months to take my seat in
+Parliament, by Jove! and to buy back my family estate." Keightley, the
+manager of the Tredyddlum and Polwheedle Copper Mines (which were as yet
+under water), besides singing as good a second as any professional man,
+and besides the Tredyddlum Office, had a Smyrna Sponge Company, and a
+little quicksilver operation in view, which would set him straight with
+the world yet. Filby had been everything a corporal of dragoons, a
+field-preacher, and missionary-agent for converting the Irish; an actor
+at a Greenwich fair-booth, in front of which his father's attorney found
+him when the old gentleman died and left him that famous property, from
+which he got no rents now, and of which nobody exactly knew the
+situation. Added to these was Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., who liked
+their society, though he did not much add to its amusements by his
+convivial powers. But he was made much of by the company now, on account
+of his wealth and position in the world. He told his little story and
+sang his little song or two with great affability; and he had had his own
+history, too, before his accession to good fortune; and had seen the
+inside of more prisons than one, and written his name on many a stamped
+paper.
+
+When Altamont first returned from Paris, and after he had communicated
+with Sir Francis Clavering from the hotel at which he had taken up his
+quarters (and which he had reached in a very denuded state, considering
+the wealth of diamonds and rubies with which this honest man was
+entrusted), Strong was sent to his patron by the Baronet; paid his little
+bill at the inn, and invited him to come and sleep for a night or two at
+the chambers, where he subsequently took up his residence. To negotiate
+with this man was very well, but to have such a person settled in his
+rooms, and to be constantly burthened with such society, did not suit the
+Chevalier's taste much; and he grumbled not a little to his principal.
+
+"I wish you would put this bear into somebody else's cage," he said to
+Clavering. "The fellow's no gentleman. I don't like walking with him. He
+dresses himself like a nigger on a holiday. I took him to the play the
+other night; and, by Jove, sir, he abused the actor who was doing the
+part of villain in the play, and swore at him so, that the people in the
+boxes wanted to turn him out. The after-piece was the 'Brigand,' where
+Wallack comes in wounded, you know, and dies. When he died, Altamont
+began to cry like a child, and said it was a d----d shame, and cried and
+swore so, that there was another row, and everybody laughing. Then I had
+to take him away, because he wanted to take his coat off to one fellow
+who laughed at him; and bellowed to him to stand up like a man.--Who is
+he? Where the deuce does he come from? You had best tell me the whole
+story. Frank; you must one day. You and he have robbed a church together,
+that's my belief. You had better get it off your mind at once, Clavering,
+and tell me what this Altamont is, and what hold he has over you."
+
+"Hang him! I wish he was dead!" was the Baronet's only reply; and his
+countenance became so gloomy, that Strong did not think fit to question
+his patron any further at that time; but resolved, if need were, to try
+and discover for himself what was the secret tie between Altamont and
+Clavering.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+In which the Colonel narrates some of his Adventures
+
+
+Early in the forenoon of the day after the dinner in Grosvenor Place, at
+which Colonel Altamont had chosen to appear, the Colonel emerged from his
+chamber in the upper story at Shepherd's Inn, and entered into Strong's
+sitting-room, where the Chevalier sate in his easy-chair with the
+newspaper and his cigar. He was a man who made his tent comfortable
+wherever he pitched it, and long before Altamont's arrival, had done
+justice to a copious breakfast of fried eggs and broiled rashers, which
+Mr. Grady had prepared secundum artem. Good-humoured and talkative, he
+preferred any company rather than none; and though he had not the least
+liking for his fellow-lodger, and would not have grieved to hear that the
+accident had befallen him which Sir Francis Clavering desired so
+fervently, yet kept on fair terms with him. He had seen Altamont to bed
+with great friendliness on the night previous, and taken away his candle
+for fear of accidents; and finding a spirit-bottle empty, upon which he
+had counted for his nocturnal refreshment, had drunk a glass of water
+with perfect contentment over his pipe, before he turned into his own
+crib and to sleep. That enjoyment never failed him: he had always an easy
+temper, a faultless digestion, and a rosy cheek; and whether he was going
+into action the next morning or to prison (and both had been his lot), in
+the camp or the Fleet, the worthy Captain snored healthfully through the
+night, and woke with a good heart and appetite, for the struggles or
+difficulties or pleasures of the day.
+
+The first act of Colonel Altamont was to bellow to Grady for a pint of
+pale ale, the which he first poured into a pewter flagon, whence he
+transferred it to his own lips. He put down the tankard empty, drew a
+great breath, wiped his mouth in his dressing-gown (the difference of the
+colour of his beard from his dyed whiskers had long struck Captain
+Strong, who had seen too that his hair was fair under his black wig, but
+made no remarks upon these circumstances)--the Colonel drew a great
+breath, and professed himself immensely refreshed by his draught.
+"Nothing like that beer," he remarked, "when the coppers are hot. Many a
+day I've drunk a dozen of Bass at Calcutta, and--and----"
+
+"And at Lucknow, I suppose," Strong said with a laugh. "I got the beer
+for you on purpose: knew you'd want it after last night." And the Colonel
+began to talk about his adventures of the preceding evening.
+
+"I cannot help myself," the Colonel said, beating his head with his big
+hand. "I'm a madman when I get the liquor on board me; and ain't fit to
+be trusted with a spirit-bottle. When I once begin I can't stop till I've
+emptied it; and when I've swallowed it, Lord knows what I say or what I
+don't say. I dined at home here quite quiet. Grady gave me just my two
+tumblers, and I intended to pass the evening at the Black and Red as
+sober as a parson. Why did you leave that confounded sample-bottle of
+Hollands out of the cupboard, Strong? Grady must go out too, and leave me
+the kettle a-boiling for tea. It was of no use, I couldn't keep away from
+it. Washed it all down, sir, by Jove. And it's my belief I had some more,
+too, afterwards at that infernal little thieves' den."
+
+"What, were you there too?" Strong asked, "and before you came to
+Grosvenor Place? That was beginning betimes."
+
+"Early hours to be drunk and cleared out before nine o'clock, eh? But so
+it was. Yes, like a great big fool, I must go there; and found the
+fellows dining, Blackland and young Moss, and two or three more of the
+thieves. If we'd gone to Rouge et Noir, I must have won. But we didn't
+try the black and red. No, hang 'em, they know'd I'd have beat 'em at
+that--I must have beat 'em--I can't help beating 'em, I tell you. But
+they was too cunnin for me. That rascal Blackland got the bones out, and
+we played hazard on the dining-table. And I dropped all the money I had
+from you in the morning, be hanged to my luck. It was that that set me
+wild, and I suppose I must have been very hot about the head, for I went
+off thinking to get some more money from Clavering, I recollect; and
+then--and then I don't much remember what happened till I woke this
+morning, and heard old Bows at No. 4 playing on his pianner."
+
+Strong mused for a while as he lighted his cigar with a coal, "I should
+like to know how you always draw money from Clavering, Colonel," he said.
+
+The Colonel burst out with a laugh--"Ha, ha! he owes it me," he said.
+
+"I don't know that that's a reason with Frank for paying," Strong
+answered. "He owes plenty besides you."
+
+"Well, he gives it me because he is so fond of me," the other said with
+the same grinning sneer. "He loves me like a brother; you know he does,
+Captain.--No?--He don't?--Well, perhaps he don't; and if you ask me no
+questions, perhaps I'll tell you no lies, Captain Strong--put that in
+your pipe and smoke it, my boy."
+
+"But I'll give up that confounded brandy-bottle," the Colonel continued,
+after a pause. "I must give it up, or it'll be the ruin of me."
+
+"It makes you say queer things," said the Captain, looking Altamont hard
+in the face. "Remember what you said last night, at Clavering's table."
+
+"Say? What did I say?" asked the other hastily. "Did I split anything?
+Dammy, Strong, did I split anything?"
+
+"Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no lies," the Chevalier replied
+on his part. Strong thought of the words Mr. Altamont had used, and his
+abrupt departure from the Baronet's dining-table and house as soon as he
+recognised Major Pendennis, or Captain Beak, as he called the Major. But
+Strong resolved to seek an explanation of these words otherwise than from
+Colonel Altamont, and did not choose to recall them to the other's
+memory. "No," he said then, "you didn't split as you call it, Colonel; it
+was only a trap of mine to see if I could make you speak; but you didn't
+say a word that anybody could comprehend--you were too far gone for
+that."
+
+So much the better, Altamont thought; and heaved a great sigh, as if
+relieved. Strong remarked the emotion, but took no notice, and the other
+being in a communicative mood, went on speaking.
+
+"Yes, I own to my faults," continued the Colonel. "There is some things I
+can't, do what I will, resist: a bottle of brandy, a box of dice, and a
+beautiful woman. No man of pluck and spirit, no man as was worth his salt
+ever could, as I know of. There's hardly p'raps a country in the world in
+which them three ain't got me into trouble."
+
+"Indeed?" said Strong.
+
+"Yes, from the age of fifteen, when I ran away from home, and went
+cabin-boy on board an Indiaman, till now, when I'm fifty year old, pretty
+nigh, them women have always been my ruin. Why, it was one of 'em, and
+with such black eyes and jewels on her neck, and Battens and ermine like
+a duchess, I tell you--it was one of 'em at Paris that swept off the best
+part of the thousand pound as I went off with. Didn't I ever tell you of
+it? Well, I don't mind. At first I was very cautious and having such a
+lot of money kept it close and lived like a gentleman--Colonel Altamont,
+Meurice's hotel, and that sort of thing--never played, except at the
+public tables, and won more than I lost. Well, sir, there was a chap that
+I saw at the hotel and the Palace Royal too, a regular swell fellow, with
+white kid gloves and a tuft to his chin, Bloundell-Bloundell his name
+was, as I made acquaintance with somehow, and he asked me to dinner, and
+took me to Madame the Countess de Foljambe's soirees--such a woman,
+Strong!--such an eye! such a hand at the pianner. Lor bless you, she'd
+sit down and sing to you, and gaze at you, until she warbled your soul
+out of your body a'most. She asked me to go to her evening parties every
+Toosday; and didn't I take opera-boxes and give her dinners at the
+restauranteur's, that's all? But I had a run of luck at the tables,
+and it was not in the dinners and opera-boxes that poor Clavering's
+money went. No, be hanged to it, it was swept off in another way. One
+night, at the Countess's, there was several of us at supper--Mr.
+Bloundell-Bloundell, the Honourable Deuceace, the Marky de la Tour de
+Force--all tip-top nobs, sir, and the height of fashion, when we had
+supper, and champagne you may be sure in plenty, and then some of that
+confounded brandy. I would have it--I would it go on at it--the Countess
+mixed the tumblers of punch for me, and we had cards as well as grog
+after supper, and I played and drank until I don't know what I did. I
+was like I was last night. I was taken away and put to bed somehow, and
+never woke until the next day, to a roaring headache, and to see my
+servant, who said the Honourable Deuceace wanted to see me, and was
+waiting in the sitting-room. 'How are you, Colonel?' says he, a coming
+into my bedroom. 'How long did you stay last night after I went away? The
+play was getting too high for me, and I'd lost enough to you for one
+night.'"
+
+"'To me,' says I, 'how's that, my dear feller? (for though he was an
+Earl's son, we was as familiar as you and me). How's that, my dear
+feller?' says I, and he tells me, that he had borrowed thirty louis of me
+at vingt-et-un, that he gave me an I.O.U. for it the night before, which
+I put into my pocket-book before he left the room. I takes out my
+card-case--it was the Countess as worked it for me--and there was the
+I.O.U. sure enough, and he paid me thirty louis in gold down upon the
+table at my bedside. So I said he was a gentleman, and asked him if he
+would like to take anything, when my servant should get it for him; but
+the Honourable Deuceace don't drink of a morning, and he went away to
+some business which he said he had.
+
+"Presently there's another ring at my outer door; and this time it's
+Bloundell-Bloundell and the Marky that comes in. 'Bong jour, Marky,' says
+I. 'Good morning--no headache?' says he. So I said I had one; and how I
+must have been uncommon queer the night afore; but they both declared I
+didn't show no signs of having had too much, but took my liquor as grave
+as a judge.
+
+"'So,' says the Marky, 'Deuceace has been with you; we met him in the
+Palais Royal as we were coming from breakfast. Has he settled with you?
+Get it while you can: he's a slippery card; and as he won three ponies of
+Bloundell, I recommend you to get your money while he has some.'
+
+"'He has paid me,' says I; 'but I knew no more than the dead that he owed
+me anything, and don't remember a bit about lending him thirty louis.'
+
+"The Marky and Bloundell looks and smiles at each other at this; and
+Bloundell says, 'Colonel, you are a queer feller. No man could have
+supposed, from your manners, that you had tasted anything stronger than
+tea all night, and yet you forget things in the morning. Come, come,--
+tell that to the marines, my friend,--we won't have it at any price.'
+
+"'En efet,' says the Marky, twiddling his little black mustachios in the
+chimney-glass, and making a lunge or two as he used to do at the
+fencing-school. (He was a wonder at the fencing-school, and I've seen him
+knock down the image fourteen times running, at Lepage's.) 'Let us speak
+of affairs. Colonel, you understand that affairs of honour are best
+settled at once: perhaps it won't be inconvenient to you to arrange our
+little matters of last night.'
+
+"'What little matters?' says I. 'Do you owe me any money, Marky?'
+
+"'Bah!' says he; 'do not let us have any more jesting. I have your note
+of hand for three hundred and forty louis. La voia!' says he, taking out
+a paper from his pocket-book.
+
+"'And mine for two hundred and ten,' says Bloundell-Bloundell, and he
+pulls out his bit of paper.
+
+"I was in such a rage of wonder at this, that I sprang out of bed, and
+wrapped my dressing-gown round me. 'Are you come here to make a fool of
+me?' says I. 'I don't owe you two hundred, or two thousand, or two louis;
+and I won't pay you a farthing. Do you suppose you can catch me with your
+notes of hand? I laugh at 'em and at you; and I believe you to be a
+couple----.'
+
+"'A couple of what?' says Mr. Bloundell. 'You, of course, are aware that
+we are a couple of men of honour, Colonel Altamont, and not come here to
+trifle or to listen to abuse from you. You will either pay us or we will
+expose you as a cheat, and chastise you as a cheat, too,' says Bloundell.
+
+"'Oui, parbleu,' says the Marky,--but I didn't mind him, for I could have
+thrown the little fellow out of the window; but it was different with
+Bloundell,--he was a large man, that weighs three stone more than me, and
+stands six inches higher, and I think he could have done for me.
+
+"'Monsieur will pay, or Monsieur will give me the reason why. I believe
+you're little better than a polisson, Colonel Altamont,'--that was the
+phrase he used--Altamont said with a grin--and I got plenty more of this
+language from the two fellows, and was in the thick of the row with them,
+when another of our party came in. This was a friend of mine--a gent I
+had met at Boulogne, and had taken to the Countess's myself. And as he
+hadn't played at all on the previous night, and had actually warned me
+against Bloundell and the others, I told the story to him, and so did the
+other two.
+
+"'I am very sorry,' says he. 'You would go on playing: the Countess
+entreated you to discontinue. These gentlemen offered repeatedly to stop.
+It was you that insisted on the large stakes, not they.' In fact he
+charged dead against me: and when the two others went away, he told me
+how the Marky would shoot me as sure as my name was--was what it is. 'I
+left the Countess crying, too,' said he. 'She hates these two men; she
+has warned you repeatedly against them'( which she actually had done, and
+often told me never to play with them), 'and now, Colonel, I have left
+her in hysterics almost, lest there should be any quarrel between you,
+and that confounded Marky should put a bullet through your head. Its my
+belief,' says my friend, 'that that woman is distractedly in love with
+you.'
+
+"'Do you think so?' says I; upon which my friend told me how she had
+actually gone down on her knees to him and 'Save Colonel Altamont!'
+
+"As soon as I was dressed, I went and called upon that lovely woman. She
+gave a shriek and pretty near fainted when she saw me. She called me
+Ferdinand,--I'm blest if she didn't."
+
+"I thought your name was Jack," said Strong, with a laugh; at which the
+Colonel blushed very much behind his dyed whiskers.
+
+"A man may have more names than one, mayn't he, Strong?" Altamont asked.
+"When I'm with a lady, I like to take a good one. She called me by my
+Christian name. She cried fit to break your heart. I can't stand seeing a
+woman cry--never could--not whilst I'm fond of her. She said she could
+bear not to think of my losing so much money in her house. Wouldn't I
+take her diamonds and necklaces, and pay part?
+
+"I swore I wouldn't touch a farthing's worth of her jewellery, which
+perhaps I did not think was worth a great deal,--but what can a woman do
+more than give you her all? That's the sort I like, and I know there's
+plenty of 'em. And I told her to be easy about the money, for I would not
+pay one single farthing.
+
+"'Then they'll shoot you,' says she; 'they'll kill my Ferdinand.'"
+
+"They'll kill my Jack wouldn't have sounded well in French," Strong said,
+laughing.
+
+"Never mind about names," said the other, sulkily; "a man of honour may
+take any name he chooses, I suppose."
+
+"Well, go on with your story," said Strong. "She said they would kill
+you."
+
+"'No,' says I, 'they won't: for I will not let that scamp of a Marquis
+send me out of the world; and if he lays a hand on me, I'll brain him,
+Marquis as he is.'
+
+"At this the Countess shrank back from me as if I had said something very
+shocking. 'Do I understand Colonel Altamont aright?' says she: 'and that
+a British officer refuses to meet any person who provokes him to the
+field of honour?'
+
+"'Field of honour be hanged, Countess,' says I. 'You would not have me be
+a target for that little scoundrel's pistol practice.'
+
+"'Colonel Altamont,' says the Countess, 'I thought you were a man of
+honour--I thought, I--but no matter. Good-bye, sir.'--And she was
+sweeping out of the room, her voice regular choking in her
+pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"'Countess!' says I, rushing after her and seizing her hand.
+
+"'Leave me, Monsieur le Colonel,' says she, shaking me off, 'my father
+was a General of the Grand Army. A soldier should know how to pay all his
+debts of honour.'
+
+"What could I do? Everybody was against me. Caroline said I had lost the
+money: though I didn't remember a syllable about the business. I had
+taken Deuceace's money too; but then it was because he offered it to me
+you know, and that's a different thing. Every one of these chaps was a
+man of fashion and honour; and the Marky and the Countess of the first
+families in France. And, by Jove, sir, rather than offend her, I paid the
+money up five hundred and sixty gold Napoleons, by Jove: besides three
+hundred which I lost when I had my revenge.
+
+"And I can't tell you at this minute whether I was done or not,"
+concluded the Colonel, musing. "Sometimes I think I was: but then
+Caroline was so fond of me. That woman would never have seen me done:
+never, I'm sure she wouldn't: at least, if she would, I'm deceived in
+woman."
+
+Any further revelations of his past life which Altamont might have been
+disposed to confide to his honest comrade the Chevalier, were interrupted
+by a knocking at the outer door of their chambers; which, when opened by
+Grady the servant, admitted no less a person than Sir Francis Clavering
+into the presence of the two worthies.
+
+"The Governor, by Jove," cried Strong, regarding the arrival of his
+patron with surprise. "What's brought you here?" growled Altamont,
+looking sternly from under his heavy eyebrows at the Baronet. "It's no
+good, I warrant." And indeed, good very seldom brought Sir Francis
+Clavering into that or any other place.
+
+Whenever he came into Shepherd's Inn it was money that brought the
+unlucky baronet into those precincts; and there was commonly a gentleman
+of the money-dealing world in waiting for him at Strong's chambers, or at
+Campion's below; and a question of bills to negotiate or to renew.
+Claverng was a man who had never looked his debts fairly in the face,
+familiar as he had been with them all his life; as long as he could renew
+a bill, his mind was easy regarding it; and he would sign almost anything
+for to-morrow, provided to-day could be left unmolested. He was a man
+whom scarcely any amount of fortune could have benefited permanently, and
+who was made to be ruined to cheat small tradesmen, to be the victim of
+astuter sharpers: to be niggardly and reckless, and as destitute of
+honesty as the people who cheated him, and a dupe, chiefly because he was
+too mean to be a successful knave. He had told more lies in his time, and
+undergone more baseness of stratagem in order to stave off a small debt,
+or to swindle a poor creditor, than would have sufficed to make a fortune
+for a braver rogue. He was abject and a shuffler in the very height of
+his prosperity. Had he been a Crown Prince--he could not have been more
+weak, useless, dissolute or ungrateful. He could not move through life
+except leaning on the arm of somebody: and yet he never had an agent but
+he mistrusted him; and marred any plans which might be arranged for his
+benefit, and secretly acting against the people whom he employed. Strong
+knew Clavering and judged him quite correctly. It was not as friends that
+this pair met: but the Chevalier worked for his principal, as he would
+when in the army have pursued a harassing march, or undergone his part in
+the danger and privations of a siege; because it was his duty, and
+because he had agreed to it. "What is it he wants?" thought the officers
+of the Shepherd's Inn garrison when the Baronet came among them.
+
+His pale face expressed extreme anger and irritation. "So sir," he said,
+addressing Altamont, "you've been at your old tricks."
+
+"Which of 'um?" asked Altamont, with a sneer.
+
+"You have been at the Rouge et Noir: you were there last night," cried
+the Baronet.
+
+"How do you know,--were you there?" the other said. "I was at the Club
+but it wasn't on the colours I played,--ask the Captain,--I've been
+telling him of it. It was with the bones. It was at hazard, Sir Francis,
+upon my word and honour it was;" and he looked at the Baronet with a
+knowing humorous mock humility, which only seemed to make the other more
+angry.
+
+"What the deuce do I care, sir, how a man like you loses his money, and
+whether it is at hazard or roulette?" screamed the Baronet, with a
+multiplicity of oaths, and at the top of his voice. "What I will not
+have, sir, is that you should use my name, or couple it with yours.--Damn
+him, Strong, why don't you keep him in better order? I tell you he has
+gone and used my name again, sir,--drawn a bill upon me, and lost the
+money on the table--I can't stand it--I won't stand it. Flesh and blood
+won't bear it--Do you know how much I have paid for you, sir?"
+
+"This was only a very little 'un, Sir Francis--only fifteen pound,
+Captain Strong, they wouldn't stand another: and it oughtn't to anger
+you, Governor. Why, it's so trifling I did not even mention it to
+Strong,--did I now, Captain? I protest it had quite slipped my memory,
+and all on account of that confounded liquor I took."
+
+"Liquor or no liquor, sir, it is no business of mine. I don't care what
+you drink, or where you drink it--only it shan't be in my house. And I
+will not have you breaking into my house of a night, and a fellow like
+you intruding himself on my company: how dared you show yourself in
+Grosvenor Place last night, sir,--and--and what do you suppose my
+friends must think of me when they see a man of your sort walking into my
+dining-room uninvited, and drunk, and calling for liquor as if you were
+the master of the house?"
+
+"They'll think you know some very queer sort of people, I dare say,"
+Altamont said with impenetrable good-humour. "Look here, Baronet, I
+apologise; on my honour I do, and ain't an apology enough between two
+gentlemen? It was a strong measure I own, walking into your cuddy, and
+calling for drink as if I was the Captain: but I had had too much before,
+you see, that's why I wanted some more; nothing can be more simple--and
+it was because they wouldn't give me no more money upon your name at the
+Black and Red, that I thought I would come down and speak to you about
+it. To refuse me was nothing: but to refuse a bill drawn on you that have
+been such a friend to the shop, and are a baronet and a member of
+parliament, and a gentleman and no mistake--Damme, its ungrateful."
+
+"By heavens, if ever you do it again--if ever you dare show to yourself
+in my house; or give my name at a gambling-house or at any other house,
+by Jove--at any other house--or give any reference at all to me, or speak
+to me in the street, by God, or anywhere else until I speak to you--I
+disclaim you altogether--I won't give you another shilling."
+
+"Governor, don't be provoking," Altamont said surlily. "Don't talk to me
+about daring to do this thing or t'other, or when my dander is up it's
+the very thing to urge me on. I oughtn't to have come last night, I know
+I oughtn't: but I told you I was drunk, and that ought to be sufficient
+between gentleman and gentleman."
+
+"You a gentleman! dammy, sir," said the Baronet, "how dares a fellow like
+you to call himself a gentleman?"
+
+"I ain't a baronet, I know," growled the other; and I've forgotten how to
+be a gentleman almost now, but--but I was one, once, and my father was
+one, and I'll not have this sort of talk from you, Sir F. Clavering,
+that's flat. I want to go abroad again. Why don't you come down with the
+money, and let me go? Why the devil are you to be rolling in riches, and
+me to have none? Why should have a house and a table covered with plate,
+and me be in a garret here in this beggarly Shepherd's Inn? We're
+partners, ain't we? I'd as good a right to be rich as you have, haven't
+I? Tell the story to Strong here, if you like; and ask him to be umpire
+between us. I don't mind letting my secret out to a man that won't split.
+Look here, Strong--perhaps you guess the story already--the fact is, me
+and the Governor----"
+
+"D---, hold your tongue," shrieked out the Baronet in a fury. "You shall
+have the money as soon as I can get it. I ain't made of money. I'm so
+pressed and badgered, I don't know where to turn. I shall go mad; by
+Jove, I shall. I wish I was dead, for I'm the most miserable brute alive.
+I say, Mr. Altamont, don't mind me. When I'm out of health--and I'm
+devilish bilious this morning--hang me, I abuse everybody, and don't know
+what I say. Excuse me if I've offended you. I--I'll try and get that
+little business done. Strong shall try. Upon my word he shall. And I say,
+Strong, my boy, I want to speak to you. Come into the office for a
+minute."
+
+Almost all Clavering's assaults ended in this ignominious way, and in a
+shameful retreat. Altamont sneered after the Baronet as he left the room,
+and entered into the office, to talk privately with his factotum.
+
+"What is the matter now?" the latter asked of him. "It's the old story, I
+suppose."
+
+"D--- it, yes," the Baronet said. "I dropped two hundred in ready money
+at the Little Coventry last night, and gave a cheque for three hundred
+more. On her ladyship's bankers, too, for to-morrow; and I must meet it,
+for there'll be the deuce to pay else. The last time she paid my
+play-debts, I swore I would not touch a dice-box again, and she'll keep
+her word, Strong, and dissolve partnership, if I go on. I wish I had
+three hundred a year, and was away. At a German watering-place you can do
+devilish well with three hundred a year. But my habits are so d-----
+reckless: I wish I was in the Serpentine. I wish I was dead, by Gad I
+wish I was. I wish I had never touched those confounded bones. I had such
+a run of luck last night, with five for the main, and seven to five all
+night, until those ruffians wanted to pay me with Altamont's bill upon
+me. The luck turned from that minute. Never held the box again for three
+mains, and came away cleared out, leaving that infernal cheque behind me.
+How shall I pay it? Blackland won't hold it over. Hulker and Bullock will
+write about it directly to her ladyship. By Jove, Ned, I'm the most
+miserable brute in all England."
+
+It was necessary for Ned to devise some plan to console the Baronet under
+this pressure of grief; and no doubt he found the means of procuring a
+loan for his patron, for he was closeted at Mr. Campion's offices that
+day for some time. Altamont had once more a guinea or two in his pocket,
+with a promise of a further settlement; and the Baronet had no need to
+wish himself dead for the next two or three months at least. And Strong,
+putting together what he had learned from the Colonel and Sir Francis,
+began to form in his own mind a pretty accurate opinion as to the nature
+of the tie which bound the two men together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+A Chapter of Conversations
+
+
+Every day, after the entertainment at Grosvenor Place and Greenwich, of
+which we have seen Major Pendennis partake, the worthy gentleman's
+friendship and cordiality for the Clavering family seemed to increase.
+His calls were frequent; his attentions to the lady of the house
+unremitting. An old man about town, he had the good fortune to be
+received in many houses, at which a lady of Lady Clavering's distinction
+ought to be seen. Would her ladyship not like to be present at the grand
+entertainment at Gaunt House? There was to be a very pretty breakfast
+ball at Viscount Marrowfat's, at Fulham. Everybody was to be there
+(including august personages of the highest rank), and there was to be a
+Watteau quadrille, in which Miss Amory would surely look charming. To
+these and other amusements the obsequious old gentleman kindly offered to
+conduct Lady Clavering, and was also ready to make himself useful to the
+Baronet in any way agreeable to the latter.
+
+In spite of his present station and fortune, the world persisted in
+looking rather coldly upon Clavering, and strange suspicious rumours
+followed him about. He was blackballed at two clubs in succession. In the
+House of Commons, he only conversed with a few of the most disreputable
+members of that famous body, having a happy knack of choosing bad
+society, and adapting himself naturally to it, as other people do to the
+company of their betters. The name all the senators with whom Clavering
+consorted, would be invidious. We may mention only a few. There was
+Captain Raff, the honourable member for Epsom, who retired after the last
+Goodwood races, having accepted, as Mr. Hotspur, the whip of the party,
+said, a mission to the Levant; there was Hustingson, the patriotic member
+for Islington, whose voice is never heard now denunciating corruption,
+since his appointment to the Governorship of Coventry Island; there was
+Bob Freeny, of the Booterstown Freenys, who is a dead shot, and of whom
+we therefore wish to speak with every respect; and of all these
+gentlemen, with whom in the course of his professional duty Mr. Hotspur
+had to confer, there was none for whom he had a more thorough contempt
+and dislike than for Sir Francis Clavering, the representative of an
+ancient race, who had sat for their own borough of Clavering time out of
+mind in the House. "If that man is wanted for a division," Hotspur said,
+"ten to one he is to be found in a hell. He was educated in the Fleet,
+and he has not heard the end of Newgate yet, take my word for it. He'll
+muddle away the Begum's fortune at thimble-rig, be caught picking
+pockets, and finish on board the hulks." And if the high-born Hotspur,
+with such an opinion of Clavering, could yet from professional reasons be
+civil to him, why should not Major Pendennis also have reasons of his own
+for being attentive to this unlucky gentleman?
+
+"He has a very good cellar and a very good cook," the Major said; "as
+long as he is silent he is not offensive, and he very seldom speaks. If
+he chooses to frequent gambling-tables, and lose his money to blacklegs,
+what matters to me? Don't look too curiously into any man's affairs, Pen,
+my boy; every fellow has some cupboard in his house, begad, which he
+would not like you and me to peep into. Why should we try, when the rest
+of the house is open to us? And a devilish good house, too, as you and I
+know. And if the man of the family is not all one could wish, the women
+are excellent. The Begum is not over-refined, but as kind a woman as ever
+lived, and devilish clever too; and as for the little Blanche, you know
+my opinion about her, you rogue; you know my belief is that she is sweet
+on you, and would have you for the asking. But you are growing such a
+great man, that I suppose you won't be content under a Duke's daughter--
+Hey, sir? I recommend you to ask one of them, and try."
+
+Perhaps Pen was somewhat intoxicated by his success in the world; and it
+may also have entered into the young man's mind (his uncle's perpetual
+hints serving not a little to encourage the notion) that Miss Amory was
+tolerably well disposed to renew the little flirtation which had been
+carried on in the early days of both of them, by the banks of the rural
+Brawl. But he was little disposed to marriage, he said, at that moment,
+and, adopting some of his uncle's worldly tone, spoke rather
+contemptuously of the institution, and in favour of a bachelor life.
+
+"You are very happy, sir," said he, "and you get on very well alone, and
+so do I. With a wife at my side, I should lose my place in society; and I
+don't, for my part, much fancy retiring into the country with a Mrs.
+Pendennis; or taking my wife into lodgings to be waited upon by the
+servant-of-all-work. The period of my little illusions is over. You cured
+me of my first love who, certainly was a fool, and would have had a fool
+for her husband, and a very sulky discontented husband too if she had
+taken me. We young fellows live fast, sir; and I feel as old at
+five-and-twenty as many of the old fo--the old bachelors--whom I see in
+the bow-window at Bays's. Don't look offended, I only mean that I am
+blase about love matters, and that I could no more fan myself into a
+flame for Miss Amory now, than I could adore Lady Mirabel over again. I
+wish I could; I rather like old Mirabel for his infatuation about her,
+and think his passion is the most respectable part of his life."
+
+"Sir Charles Mirabel was always a theatrical man, sir," the Major said,
+annoyed that his nephew should speak flippantly of any person of Sir
+Charles's rank and station. "He has been occupied with theatricals since
+his early days. He acted at Carlton House when he was Page to the Prince;
+he has been mixed up with that sort of thing: he could afford to marry
+whom he chooses; and Lady Mirabel is a most respectable woman, received
+everywhere--everywhere, mind. The Duchess of Connaught receives her, Lady
+Rockminster receives her--it doesn't become young fellows to speak
+lightly of people in that station. There's not a more respectable woman
+in England than Lady Mirabel:--and the old fogies, as you call them, at
+Bays's, are some of the first gentlemen in England, of whom you
+youngsters had best learn a little manners, and a little breeding, and a
+little modesty." And the Major began to think that Pen was growing
+exceedingly pert and conceited, and that the world made a great deal too
+much of him.
+
+The Major's anger amused Pen. He studied his uncle's peculiarities with a
+constant relish, and was always in a good humour with his worldly old
+Mentor. "I am a youngster of fifteen years' standing, sir," he said,
+adroitly, "and if you think that we are disrespectful, you should see
+those of the present generation. A protege of yours came to breakfast
+with me the other day. You told me to ask him, and I did it to please
+you. We had a day's sights together, and dined at the club, and went to
+the play. He said the wine at the Polyanthus was not so good as Ellis's
+wine at Richmond, smoked Warrington's cavendish after breakfast, and when
+I gave him a sovereign as a farewell token, said he had plenty of them,
+but would take it to show he wasn't proud."
+
+"Did he?--did you ask young Clavering?" cried the Major, appeased at
+once--"fine boy, rather wild, but a fine boy--parents like that sort of
+attention, and you can't do better than pay it to our worthy friends of
+Grosvenor Place. And so you took him to the play and tipped him? That was
+right, sir, that was right:" with which Mentor quitted Telemachus,
+thinking that the young men were not so very bad, and that he should make
+something of that fellow yet.
+
+As Blaster Clavering grew into years and stature, he became too strong
+for the authority of his fond parents and governess; and rather governed
+them than permitted himself to be led by their orders. With his papa he
+was silent and sulky, seldom making his appearance, however, in the
+neighbourhood of that gentleman; with his mamma be roared and fought when
+any contest between them arose as to the gratification of his appetite,
+or other wish of his heart; and in his disputes with his governess over
+his book, he kicked that quiet creature's shins so fiercely, that she was
+entirely overmastered and subdued by him. And he would have so treated
+his sister Blanche, too, and did on one or two occasions attempt to
+prevail over her; but she showed an immense resolution and spirit on her
+part, and boxed his ears so soundly, that he forbore from molesting Miss
+Amory, as he did the governess and his mamma, and his mamma's maid.
+
+At length, when the family came to London, Sir Francis gave forth his
+opinion, that "the little beggar had best be sent to school." Accordingly
+the young son and heir of the house of Clavering was despatched to the
+Rev. Otto Rose's establishment at Twickenham, where young noblemen and
+gentlemen were received preparatory to their introduction to the great
+English public schools.
+
+It is not our intention to follow Master Clavering in his scholastic
+career; the paths to the Temple of Learning were made more easy to him
+than they were to some of us of earlier generations. He advanced towards
+that fane in a carriage-and-four, so to speak, and might halt and take
+refreshment almost whenever he pleased. He wore varnished boots from
+the earliest period of youth, and had cambric handkerchiefs and
+lemon-coloured kid gloves, of the smallest size ever manufactured by
+Privat. They dressed regularly at Mr. Rose's to come down to dinner; the
+young gentlemen had shawl dressing-gowns, fires in their bedrooms, horse
+and carriage exercise occasionally, and oil for their hair. Corporal
+punishment was altogether dispensed with by the Principal, who thought
+that moral discipline was entirely sufficient to lead youth; and the boys
+were so rapidly advanced in many branches of learning, that they acquired
+the art of drinking spirits and smoking cigars, even before they were old
+enough to enter a public school. Young Frank Clavering stole his father's
+Havannahs, and conveyed them to school, or smoked them in the stables, at
+a surprisingly early period of life, and at ten years old drank his
+champagne almost as stoutly as any whiskered cornet of dragoons could do.
+
+When this interesting youth came home for his vacations Major Pendennis
+was as laboriously civil and gracious to him as he was to the rest of the
+family; although the boy had rather a contempt for old Wigsby, as the
+Major was denominated, mimicked him behind his back, as the polite Major
+bowed and smirked with Lady Clavering or Miss Amory; and drew rude
+caricatures, such as are designed by ingenious youths, in which the
+Major's wig, his nose, his tie, etc., were represented with artless
+exaggeration. Untiring in his efforts to be agreeable, the Major wished
+that Pen, too, should take particular notice of this child; incited
+Arthur to invite him to his chambers, to give him a dinner at the club,
+to take him to Madame Tussaud's, the Tower, the play, and so forth, and
+to tip him, as the phrase is, at the end of the day's pleastres. Arthur,
+who was good-natured and fond of children, went through all these
+ceremonies one day; had the boy to breakfast at the Temple, where he made
+the most contemptuous remarks regarding the furniture, the crockery, and
+the tattered state of Warrington's dressing-gown; and smoked a short
+pipe, and recounted the history of a fight between Tuffy and Long
+Biggings, at Rose's, greatly to the edification of the two gentlemen his
+hosts.
+
+As the Major rightly predicted, Lady Clavering was very grateful for
+Arthur's attention to the boy; more grateful than the lad himself, who
+took attentions as a matter of course, and very likely had more
+sovereigns in his pocket than poor Pen, who generously gave him one of
+his own slender stock of those coins.
+
+The Major, with the sharp eyes with which Nature endowed him, and with
+the glasses of age and experience, watched this boy, and surveyed his
+position in the family without seeming to be rudely curious about their
+affairs. But, as a country neighbour, one who had many family obligations
+to the Claverings, an old man of the world, he took occasion to find out
+what Lady Clavering's means were, how her capital was disposed, and what
+the boy was to inherit. And setting himself to work,--for what purposes
+will appear, no doubt, ulteriorly,--he soon had got a pretty accurate
+knowledge of Lady Clavering's affairs and fortune, and of the prospects
+of her daughter and son. The daughter was to have but a slender
+provision; the bulk of the property was, as before has been said, to go
+to the son,--his father did not care for him or anybody else,--his mother
+was dotingly fond of him as the child of her latter days,--his sister
+disliked him. Such may be stated in round numbers, to be the result of
+the information which Major Pendennis got. "Ah! my dear madam," he would
+say, patting the head of the boy, "this boy may wear a baron's coronet on
+his head on some future coronation, if matters are but managed rightly,
+and if Sir Francis Clavering would but play his cards well,"
+
+At this the widow Amory heaved a deep sigh. "He plays only much of his
+cards, Major, I'm afraid," she said. The Major owned that he knew as
+much; did not disguise that he had heard of Sir Francis Clavering's
+unfortunate propensity to play; pitied Lady Clavering sincerely; but
+spoke with such genuine sentiment and sense, that her ladyship, glad to
+find a person of experience to whom she could confide her grief and her
+condition, talked about them pretty unreservedly to Major Pendennis, and
+was eager to have his advice and consolation. Major Pendennis became the
+Begum's confidante and house-friend, and as a mother, a wife, and a
+capitalist, she consulted him.
+
+He gave her to understand (showing at the same time a great deal of
+respectful sympathy) that he was acquainted with some of the
+circumstances of her first unfortunate marriage, and with even the person
+of her late husband, whom he remembered in Calcutta--when she was living
+in seclusion with her father. The poor lady, with tears of shame more
+than of grief in her eyes, told her version of her story. Going back a
+child to India after two years at a European school, she had met Amory,
+and foolishly married him. "Oh, you don't know how miserable that man,
+made me," she said, "or what a life I passed betwixt him and my father.
+Before I saw him I had never seen a man except my father's clerks and
+native servants. You know we didn't go into society in India on account
+of----" ("I know," said Major Pendennis, with a bow) "I was a wild
+romantic child, my head was full of novels which I'd read at school--I
+listened to his wild stories and adventures, for he was a daring fellow,
+and I thought he talked beautifully of those calm nights on the passage
+out, when he used to----. Well, I married him, and I was wretched from
+that day--wretched with my father, whose character you know, Major
+Pendennis, and I won't speak of: but he wasn't a good man, sir,--neither
+to my poor mother, nor to me, except that he left me his money,--nor to
+no one else that I ever heard of: and he didn't do many kind actions in
+his lifetime, I'm afraid. And as for Amory, he was almost worse; he was a
+spendthrift when my father was close: he drank dreadfully, and was
+furious when in that way. He wasn't in any way a good or a faithful
+husband to me, Major Pendennis, and if he'd died in the gaol before this
+trial, instead of afterwards he would have saved me a deal of shame and
+of unhappiness since, sir." Lady Clavering added: "For perhaps I should
+not have married at all if I had not been so anxious to change his horrid
+name, and I have not been happy in my second husband, as I suppose you
+know, sir. Ah, Major Pendennis, I've got money to be sure, and I'm a
+lady, and people fancy I'm very happy, but I ain't. We all have our
+cares, and griefs, and troubles: and many's the day that I sit down to
+one of my grand dinners with an aching heart, and many a night do I lay
+awake on my fine bed a great deal more unhappy than the maid that makes
+for it. I'm not a happy woman, Major, for all the world says; and envies
+the Begum her diamonds, and carriages, and the great company that comes
+to my house. I'm not happy in my husband; I'm not in my daughter. She
+ain't a good girl like that dear Laura Bell at Fairoaks. She's cost me
+many a tear though you don't see 'em; and she sneers at her mother
+because I haven't had learning and that. How should I? I was brought up
+amongst natives till I was twelve, and went back to India when I was
+fourteen. Ah, Major, I should have been a good woman if I had had a good
+husband. And now I must go upstairs and wipe my eyes, for they're red
+with cryin. And Lady Rockminster's a comin, and we're goin to ave a drive
+in the Park. And when Lady Rockminster made her appearance, there was not
+a trace of tears or vexation on Lady Clavering's face, but she was full
+of spirits, and bounced out with her blunders and talk, and murdered the
+king's English with the utmost liveliness and good-humour.
+
+"Begad, she is not such a bad woman!" the Major thought within himself.
+"She is not refined, certainly, and calls 'Apollo' 'Apoller;' but she has
+some heart, and I like that sort of thing, and a devilish deal of money,
+too. Three stars in India Stock to her name, begad! which that young cub
+is to have--is he?" And he thought how he should like to see a little of
+the money transferred to Miss Blanche, and, better still, one of those
+stars shining in the name of Mr. Arthur Pendennis.
+
+Still bent upon pursuing his schemes, whatsoever they might be, the old
+negotiator took the privilege of his intimacy and age, to talk in a
+kindly and fatherly manner to Miss Blanche, when he found occasion to see
+her alone. He came in so frequently at luncheon-time, and became so
+familiar with the ladies, that they did not even hesitate to quarrel
+before him; and Lady Clavering, whose tongue was loud, and temper
+brusque, had many a battle with the Sylphide in the family friend's
+presence. Blanche's wit seldom failed to have the mastery in these
+encounters, and the keen barbs of her arrows drove her adversary
+discomfited away. "I am an old fellow," the Major said; "I have nothing
+to do in life. I have my eyes open. I keep good counsel. I am the friend
+of both of you; and if you choose to quarrel before me, why, I shan't
+tell any one. But you are two good people, and I intend to make it up
+between you. I have between lots of people--husbands and wives, fathers
+and sons, daughters and mammas, before this. I like it; I've nothing else
+to do."
+
+One day, then, the old diplomatist entered Lady Clavering's drawing-room,
+just as the latter quitted it, evidently in a high state of indignation,
+and ran past him up the stairs to her own apartments. "She couldn't speak
+to him now," she said; "she was a great deal too angry with that--that--
+that little, wicked"--anger choked the rest of the words, or prevented
+their utterance until Lady Clavering had passed out of hearing.
+
+"My dear, good Miss Amory," the Major said, entering the drawing-room, "I
+see what is happening. You and mamma have been disagreeing. Mothers and
+daughters disagree in the best families. It was but last week that I
+healed up a quarrel between Lady Clapperton and her daughter Lady
+Claudia. Lady Lear and her eldest daughter have not spoken for fourteen
+years. Kinder and more worthy people than these I never knew in the whole
+course of my life; for everybody but each other admirable. But they can't
+live together: they oughtn't to live together: and I wish, my dear
+creature, with all my soul, that I could see you with an establishment of
+your own--for there is no woman in London who could conduct one better--
+with your own establishment, making your own home happy."
+
+"I am not very happy in this one," said the Sylphide; "and the stupidity
+of mamma is enough to provoke a saint."
+
+"Precisely so; you are not suited to one another. Your mother committed
+one fault in early life--or was it Nature, my dear, in your case?--she
+ought not to have educated you. You ought not to have been bred up to
+become the refined and intellectual being you are, surrounded, as I own
+you are, by those who have not your genius or your refinement. Your place
+would be to lead in the most brilliant circles, not to follow, and take a
+second place in any society. I have watched you, Miss Amory: you are
+ambitious; and your proper sphere is command. You ought to shine; and you
+never can in this house, I know it. I hope I shall see you in another and
+a happier one, some day, and the mistress of it."
+
+The Sylphide shrugged her lily shoulders with a look of scorn. "Where is
+the Prince, and where is the palace, Major Pendennis?" she said. "I am
+ready. But there is no romance in the world now, no real affection."
+
+"No, indeed," said the Major, with the most sentimental and simple air
+which he could muster.
+
+"Not that I know anything about it," said Blanche, casting her eyes down
+"except what I have read in novels."
+
+"Of course not," Major Pendennis cried; "how should you, my dear young
+lady? and novels ain't true, as you remark admirably, and there is no
+romance left in the world. Begad, I wish I was a young fellow like my
+nephew."
+
+"And what," continued Miss Amory, musing, "what are the men whom we see
+about at the balls every night--dancing guardsmen, penniless treasury
+clerks--boobies! If I had my brother's fortune, I might have such an
+establishment as you promise me--but with my name, and with my little
+means, what am I to look to! A country parson, or a barrister in a street
+near Russell Square, or a captain in a dragoon regiment, who will take
+lodgings for me, and come home from the mess tipsy and smelling of smoke
+like Sir Francis Clavering. That is how we girls are destined to end
+life. O Major Pendennis, I am sick of London, and of balls, and of young
+dandies with their chin-tips, and of the insolent great ladies who know
+us one day and cut us the next--and of the world altogether. I should
+like to leave it and to go into a convent, that I should. I shall never
+find anybody to understand me. And I live here as much alone in my family
+and in the world, as if I were in a cell locked up for ever. I wish there
+were Sisters of Charity here, and that I could be one and catch the
+plague, and die of it--I wish to quit the world. I am not very old: but I
+am tired, I have suffered so much--I've been so disillusionated--I'm
+weary, I'm weary--O that the Angel of Death would come and beckon me
+away!"
+
+This speech may be interpreted as follows. A few nights since a great
+lady, Lady Flamingo, had cut Miss Amory and Lady Clavering. She was quite
+mad because she could not get an invitation to Lady Drum's ball: it was
+the end of the season and nobody had proposed to her: she had made no
+sensation at all, she who was so much cleverer than any girl of the year,
+and of the young ladies forming her special circle. Dora who had but five
+thousand pounds, Flora who had nothing, and Leonora who had red hair,
+were going to be married, and nobody had come for Blanche Amory!
+
+"You judge wisely about the world, and about your position, my dear Miss
+Blanche," the Major said. "The Prince don't marry nowadays, as you say:
+unless the Princess has a doosid deal of money in the funds, or is a lady
+of his own rank.--The young folks of the great families marry into the
+great families: if they haven't fortune they have each other's shoulders,
+to push on in the world, which is pretty nearly as good.--A girl with
+your fortune can scarcely hope for a great match: but a girl with your
+genius and your admirable tact and fine manners, with a clever husband by
+her side, may make any place for herself in the world.--We are grown
+doosid republican. Talent ranks with birth and wealth now, begad: and a
+clever man with a clever wife, may take any place they please."
+
+Miss Amory did not of course in the least understand what Major Pendennis
+meant.--Perhaps she thought over circumstances in her mind and asked
+herself, could he be a negotiator for a former suitor of hers, and could
+he mean Pen? No, it was impossible--He had been civil, but nothing more.
+--So she said laughing, "Who is the clever man, and when will you bring
+him to me, Major Pendennis? I am dying to see him."
+
+At this moment a servant threw open the door, and announced Mr. Henry
+Foker: at which name, and at the appearance of our friend, both the lady
+and the gentleman burst out laughing.
+
+"That is not the man," Major Pendennis said. "He is engaged to his
+cousin, Lord Gravesend's daughter.--Good-bye, my dear Miss Amory."
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Was Pen growing worldly, and should a man not get the experience of the
+world and lay it to his account? "He felt, for his part," as he said,
+"that he was growing very old very soon." "How this town forms and
+changes us," he said once to Warrington. Each had come in from his
+night's amusement; and Pen was smoking his pipe, and recounting, as his
+habit was, to his friend the observations and adventures of the evening
+just past. "How I am changed," he said, "from the simpleton boy at
+Fairoaks, who was fit to break his heart about his first love! Lady
+Mirabel had a reception to-night, and was as grave and collected as if
+she had been born a Duchess, and had never seen a trap-door in her life.
+She gave me the honour of a conversation, and patronised me about
+'Walter Lorraine,' quite kindly."
+
+"What condescension!" broke in Warrington.
+
+"Wasn't it?" Pen said, simply--at which the other burst out laughing
+according to his wont. "Is it possible," he said, "that anybody should
+think of patronising the eminent author of 'Walter Lorraine?'"
+
+"You laugh at both of us," Pen said, blushing a little--"I was coming to
+that myself. She told me that she had not read the book (as indeed I
+believe she never read a book in her life), but that Lady Rockminster
+had, and that the Duchess of Connaught pronounced it to be very clever.
+In that case, I said, I should die happy, for that to please those two
+ladies was in fact the great aim of my existence, and having their
+approbation, of course I need look for no other. Lady Mirabel looked at
+me solemnly out of her fine eyes, and said, 'Oh, indeed,' as if she
+understood me, and then she asked me whether I went to the Duchess's
+Thursdays, and when I said No, hoped she should see me there, and that I
+must try and get there, everybody went there--everybody who was in
+society: and then we talked of the new ambassador from Timbuctoo, and how
+he was better than the old one; and how Lady Mary Billington was going to
+marry a clergyman quite below her in rank; and how Lord and Lady Ringdove
+had fallen out three months after their marriage about Tom Pouter of the
+Blues, Lady Ringdove's cousin--and so forth. From the gravity of that
+woman you would have fancied she had been born in a palace, and lived all
+the seasons of her life in Belgrave Square."
+
+"And you, I suppose you took your part in the conversation pretty well,
+as the descendant of the Earl your father, and the heir of Fairoaks
+Castle?" Warrington said. "Yes, I remember reading of the festivities
+which occurred when you came of age. The Countess gave a brilliant tea
+soiree to the neighbouring nobility; and the tenantry were regaled in the
+kitchen with a leg of mutton and a quart of ale. The remains of the
+banquet were distributed amongst the poor of the village, and the
+entrance to the park was illuminated until old John put the candle out on
+retiring to rest at his usual hour."
+
+"My mother is not a countess," said Pen, "though she has very good blood
+in her veins too--but commoner as she is, I have never met a peeress who
+was more than her peer, Mr. George; and if you will come to Fairoaks
+Castle you shall judge for yourself of her and of my cousin too. They are
+not so witty as the London women, but they certainly are as well bred.
+The thoughts of women in the country are turned to other objects than
+those which occupy your London ladies. In the country a woman has her
+household and her poor, her long calm days and long calm evenings."
+
+"Devilish long," Warrington said, "and a great deal too calm; I've tried
+'em."
+
+"The monotony of that existence must be to a certain degree melancholy--
+like the tune of a long ballad; and its harmony grave and gentle, sad and
+tender: it would be unendurable else. The loneliness of women in the
+country makes them of necessity soft and sentimental. Leading a life of
+calm duty, constant routine, mystic reverie,--a sort of nuns at large--
+too much gaiety or laughter would jar upon their almost sacred quiet, and
+would be as out of place there as in a church."
+
+"Where you go to sleep over the sermon," Warrington said.
+
+"You are a professed misogynist, and hate the sex because, I suspect, you
+know very little about them," Mr. Pen continued, with an air of
+considerable self-complacency. "If you dislike the women in the country
+for being too slow, surely the London woman ought to be fast enough for
+you. The pace of London life is enormous: how do people last at it, I
+wonder,--male and female? Take a woman of the world: follow her course
+through the season; one asks how she can survive it? or if she tumbles
+into a sleep at the end of August, and lies torpid until the spring? She
+goes into the world every night, and sits watching her marriageable
+daughters dancing till long after dawn. She has a nursery of little ones,
+very likely, at home, to whom she administers example and affection;
+having an eye likewise to bread-and-milk, catechism, music and French,
+and roast leg of mutton at one o'clock; she has to call upon ladies of
+her own station, either domestically or in her public character, in which
+she sits upon Charity Committees, or Ball Committees, or Emigration
+Committees, or Queen's College Committees, and discharges I don't know
+what more duties of British stateswomanship. She very likely keeps a
+poor-visiting list; has conversations with the clergyman about soup or
+flannel, or proper religious teaching for the parish; and (if she lives
+in certain districts) probably attends early church. She has the
+newspapers to read, and, at least, must know what her husband's party is
+about, so as to be able to talk to her neighbour at dinner; and it is a
+fact that she reads every new book that comes out; for she can talk, and
+very smartly and well, about them all, and you see them all upon her
+drawing-room table. She has the cares of her household besides--to make
+both ends meet; to make the girls' milliner's bills appear not too
+dreadful to the father and paymaster of the family; to snip off, in
+secret, a little extra article of expenditure here and there, and convey
+it, in the shape of a bank-note, to the boys at college or at sea; to
+check the encroachments of tradesmen and housekeepers' financial
+fallacies; to keep upper and lower servants from jangling with one
+another, and the household in order. Add to this, that she has a secret
+taste for some art or science, models in clay, makes experiments in
+chemistry, or plays in private on the violoncello,--and I say, without
+exaggeration, many London ladies are doing this,--and you have a
+character before you such as our ancestors never heard of, and such as
+belongs entirely to our era and period of civilisation. Ye gods! how
+rapidly we live and grow! In nine months, Mr. Paxton grows you a
+pineapple as large as a portmanteau, whereas a little one, no bigger than
+a Dutch cheese, took three years to attain his majority in old times; and
+as the race of pineapples so is the race of man. Hoiaper--what's the
+Greek for a pineapple, Warrington?"
+
+"Stop, for mercy's sake, stop with the English and before you come to the
+Greek," Warrington cried out, laughing. "I never heard you make such a
+long speech, or was aware that you had penetrated so deeply into the
+female mysteries. Who taught you all this, and into whose boudoirs and
+nurseries have you been peeping, whilst I was smoking my pipe, and
+reading my book, lying on my straw bed?"
+
+"You are on the bank; old boy, content to watch the waves tossing in the
+winds, and the struggles of others at sea," Pen said. "I am in the stream
+now, and by Jove I like it. How rapidly we go down it, hey? Strong and
+feeble, old and young--the metal pitchers and the earthen pitchers--the
+pretty little china boat swims gaily till the big bruised brazen one
+bumps him and sends him down--eh, vogue la galere!--you see a man sink in
+the race, and say good-bye to him--look, he has only dived under the
+other fellow's legs, and comes up shaking his pole, and striking out ever
+so far ahead. Eh, vogue la galere, I say. It's good sport, Warrington--
+not winning merely, but playing."
+
+"Well, go in and win, young 'un. I'll sit and mark the game," Warrington
+said, surveying the ardent young fellow with an almost fatherly pleasure.
+"A generous fellow plays for the play, a sordid one for the stake; an old
+fogy sits by and smokes the pipe of tranquillity, while Jack and Tom are
+pummelling each other in the ring."
+
+"Why don't you come in, George, and have a turn with the gloves? You are
+big enough and strong enough," Pen said. "Dear old boy, you are worth ten
+of me."
+
+"You are not quite as tall as Goliath, certainly," the other answered,
+with a laugh that was rough and yet tender. "As for me, I am disabled. I
+had a fatal hit in early life. I will tell you about it some day. You
+may, too, meet with your master. Don't be too eager, or too confident, or
+too worldly, my boy."
+
+Was Pendennis becoming worldly, or only seeing the worldly, or both? and
+is a man very wrong for being after all only a man? Which is the most
+reasonable, and does his duty best: he who stands aloof from the struggle
+of life, calmly contemplating, or he who descends to the ground, and
+takes his part in the contest? "That philosopher," Pen said, "had held a
+great place amongst the leaders of the world, and enjoyed to the full
+what it had to give of rank and riches, renown and pleasure, who came,
+weary-hearted, out of it, and said that all was vanity and vexation of
+spirit. Many a teacher of those whom we reverence, and who steps out of
+his carriage up to his carved cathedral place, shakes his lawn ruffles
+over the velvet cushions, and cries out, that the whole struggle is
+an accursed one, and the works of the world are evil. Many a
+conscience-stricken mystic flies from it altogether, and shuts himself
+out from it within convent walls (real or spiritual), whence he can only
+look up to the sky, and contemplate the heaven out of which there is no
+rest, and no good.
+
+"But the earth, where our feet are, is the work of the same Power as the
+immeasurable blue yonder, in which the future lies into which we would
+peer. Who ordered toil as the condition of life, ordered weariness,
+ordered sickness, ordered poverty, failure, success--to this man a
+foremost place, to the other a nameless struggle with the crowd--to that
+a shameful fall, or paralysed limb, or sudden accident--to each some work
+upon the ground he stands on, until he is laid beneath it." While they
+were talking, the dawn came shining through the windows of the room, and
+Pen threw them open to receive the fresh morning air. "Look, George,"
+said he; "look and see the sun rise: he sees the labourer on his way
+a-field; the work-girl plying her poor needle; the lawyer at his desk,
+perhaps; the beauty smiling asleep upon her pillow of down; or the jaded
+reveller reeling to bed; or the fevered patient tossing on it; or the
+doctor watching by it, over the throes of the mother for the child that
+is to be born into the world;--to be born and to take his part in the
+suffering and struggling, the tears and laughter, the crime, remorse,
+love, folly, sorrow, rest."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+Miss Amory's Partners
+
+
+The noble Henry Foker, of whom we have lost sight for a few pages, has
+been in the meanwhile occupied, as we might suppose a man of his
+constancy would be, in the pursuit and indulgence of his all-absorbing
+passion of love.
+
+I wish that a few of my youthful readers who are inclined to that
+amusement would take the trouble to calculate the time which is spent in
+the pursuit, when they would find it to be one of the most costly
+occupations in which a man can possibly indulge. What don't you sacrifice
+to it, indeed, young gentlemen and young ladies of ill-regulated minds?
+Many hours of your precious sleep in the first place, in which you lie
+tossing and thinking about the adored object, whence you come down late
+to breakfast, when noon is advancing and all the family is long since
+away to its daily occupations. Then when you at length get to these
+occupations you pay no attention to them, and engage in them with no
+ardour--all your thoughts and powers of mind being fixed elsewhere. Then
+the day's work being slurred over, you neglect your friends and
+relatives, your natural companions and usual associates in life, that you
+may go and have a glance at the dear personage, or a look up at her
+windows, or a peep at her carriage in the Park. Then at night the artless
+blandishments of home bore you; mamma's conversation palls upon you; the
+dishes which that good soul prepares for the dinner of her favourite are
+sent away untasted,--the whole meal of life, indeed, except one
+particular plat, has no relish. Life, business, family ties, home, all
+things useful and dear once, become intolerable, and you are never easy
+except when you are in pursuit of your flame.
+
+Such I believe to be not unfrequently the state of mind amongst
+ill-regulated young gentlemen, and such indeed was Mr. H. Foker's
+condition, who, having been bred up to indulge in every propensity
+towards which he was inclined, abandoned himself to this one with his
+usual selfish enthusiasm. Nor because he had given his friend Arthur
+Pendennis a great deal of good advice on a former occasion, need men of
+the world wonder that Mr. Foker became passion's slave in his turn. Who
+among us has not given a plenty of the very best advice to his friends?
+Who has not preached, and who has practised? To be sure, you, madam, are
+perhaps a perfect being, and never had a wrong thought in the whole
+course of your frigid and irreproachable existence: or sir, you are a
+great deal too strong-minded to allow any foolish passion to interfere
+with your equanimity in chambers or your attendance on 'Change; you are
+so strong that you don't want any sympathy. We don't give you any, then;
+we keep ours for the humble and weak, that struggle and stumble and get
+up again, and so march with the rest of mortals. What need have you of a
+hand who never fall? Your serene virtue is never shaded by passion, or
+ruffled by temptation, or darkened by remorse; compassion would be
+impertinence for such an angel: but then with such a one companionship
+becomes intolerable; you are, from the elevation of your very virtue and
+high attributes, of necessity lonely; we can't reach up and talk
+familiarly with such potentatess good-bye, then; our way lies with humble
+folks, and not with serene highnesses like you; and we give notice that
+there are no perfect characters in this history, except, perhaps, one
+little one, and that one is not perfect either, for she never knows to
+this day that she is perfect, and with a deplorable misapprehension and
+perverseness of humility, believes herself to be as great a sinner as
+need be.
+
+This young person does not happen to be in London at the present period
+of our story, and it is by no means for the like of her that Mr. Henry
+Foker's mind is agitated. But what matters a few failings? Need we be
+angels, male or female, in order to be worshipped as such? Let us admire
+the diversity of the tastes of mankind; and the oldest, the ugliest, the
+stupidest and most pompous, the silliest and most vapid, the greatest
+criminal, tyrant booby, Bluebeard, Catherine Hayes, George Barnwell,
+amongst us, we need never despair. I have read of the passion of a
+transported pickpocket for a female convict (each of them advanced in
+age, being repulsive in person, ignorant, quarrelsome, and given to
+drink), that was as magnificent as the loves of Cleopatra and Antony, or
+Lancelot and Guinever. The passion which Count Borulawski, the Polish
+dwarf, inspired in the bosom of the most beautiful Baroness at the Court
+of Dresden, is a matter with which we are all of us acquainted: the flame
+which burned in the heart of young Cornet Tozer but the other day, and
+caused him to run off and espouse Mrs. Battersby, who was old enough to
+be his mamma,--all these instances are told in the page of history or the
+newspaper column. Are we to be ashamed or pleased to think that our
+hearts are formed so that the biggest and highest-placed Ajax among us
+may some day find himself prostrate before the pattens of his
+kitchen-maid; as that there is no poverty or shame or crime, which will
+not be supported, hugged even with delight, and cherished more closely
+than virtue would be, by the perverse fidelity and admirable constant
+folly of a woman?
+
+So then Henry Foker, Esquire, longed after his love, and cursed the fate
+which separated him from her. When Lord Gravesend's family retired to the
+country (his lordship leaving his proxy with the venerable Lord Bagwig),
+Harry still remained lingering on in London, certainly not much to the
+sorrow of Lady Ann, to whom he was affianced, and who did not in the
+least miss him. Wherever Miss Clavering went, this infatuated young
+fellow continued to follow her; and being aware that his engagement to
+his cousin was known in the world, he was forced to make a mystery of his
+passion, and confine it to his own breast, so that it was so pent in
+there and pressed down, that it is a wonder he did not explode some day
+with the stormy secret, and perish collapsed after the outburst.
+
+There had been a grand entertainment at Gaunt House on one beautiful
+evening in June, and the next day's journals contained almost two columns
+of the names of the most closely printed nobility and gentry who had been
+honoured with invitations to the ball. Among the guests were Sir Francis
+and Lady Clavering and Miss Amory, for whom the indefatigable Major
+Pendennis had procured an invitation, and our two young friends Arthur
+and Harry. Each exerted himself, and danced a great deal with Miss
+Blanche. As for the worthy Major, he assumed the charge of Lady
+Clavering, and took care to introduce her to that department of the
+mansion where her ladyship specially distinguished herself, namely, the
+refreshment-room, where, amongst pictures of Titian and Giorgione, and
+regal portraits of Vandyke and Reynolds, and enormous salvers of gold and
+silver, and pyramids of large flowers, and constellations of wax candles
+--in a manner perfectly regardless of expense, in a word--a supper was
+going on all night. Of how many creams, jellies, salads, peaches, white
+soups, grapes, pates, galantines, cups of tea, champagne, and so forth,
+Lady Clavering partook, it does not become us to say. How much the Major
+suffered as he followed the honest woman about, calling to the solemn
+male attendants and lovely servant-maids, and administering to Lady
+Clavering's various wants with admirable patience, nobody knows;--he
+never confessed. He never allowed his agony to appear on his countenance
+in the least; but with a constant kindness brought plate after plate to
+the Begum.
+
+Mr. Wagg counted up all the dishes of which Lady Clavering partook as
+long as he could count (but as he partook very freely himself of
+champagne during the evening, his powers of calculation were not to be
+trusted at the close of the entertainment), and he recommended Mr.
+Honeyman, Lady Steyne's medical man, to look carefully after the Begum,
+and to call and get news of her ladyship the next day.
+
+Sir Francis Clavering made his appearance, and skulked for a while about
+the magnificent rooms; but the company and the splendour which he met
+there were not to the Baronet's taste, and after tossing off a tumbler of
+wine or two at the buffet, he quitted Gaunt House for the neighbourhood
+of Jermyn Street, where his friends Loder, Punter, little Moss Abramns,
+and Captain Skewball were assembled at the familiar green table. In the
+rattle of the box, and of their agreeable conversation, Sir Francis's
+spirits rose to their accustomed point of feeble hilarity.
+
+Mr. Pynsent, who had asked Miss Amory to dance, came up on one occasion
+to claim her hand, but scowls of recognition having already passed
+between him and Mr. Arthur Pendennis in the dancing-room, Arthur suddenly
+rose up and claimed Miss Amory as his partner for the present dance, on
+which Mr. Pynsent, biting his lips and scowling yet more savagely,
+withdrew with a profound bow, saying that he gave up his claim. There are
+some men who are always falling in one's way in life. Pynsent and Pen had
+this view of each other; and each regarded other accordingly.
+
+"What a confounded conceited provincial fool that is!" thought the one.
+"Because he has written a twopenny novel, his absurd head is turned, and
+a kicking would take his conceit out of him."
+
+"What an impertinent idiot that man is!" remarked the other to his
+partner. "His soul is in Downing Street; his neckcloth is foolscap; his
+hair is sand; his legs are rulers; his vitals are tape and sealing-wax;
+he was a prig in his cradle; and never laughed since he was born, except
+three times at the same joke of his chief. I have the same liking for
+that man, Miss Amory, I have for that cold boiled veal." Upon which
+Blanche of course remarked, that Mr. Pendennis was wicked, mechant,
+perfectly abominable, and wondered what he would say when her back was
+turned.
+
+"Say!--Say that you have the most beautiful figure, and the slimmest
+waist in the world, Blanche--Miss Amory, I mean. I beg your pardon.
+Another turn; this music would make an alderman dance."
+
+"And you have left off tumbling when you waltz now?" Blanche asked,
+archly looking up at her partner's face.
+
+"One falls and one gets up again in life, Blanche; you know I used to
+call you so in old times, and it is the prettiest name in the world.
+Besides, I have practised since then."
+
+"And with a great number of partners, I'm afraid," Blanche said, with a
+little sham sigh, and a shrug of the shoulders. And so in truth Mr. Pen
+had practised a good deal in this life; and had undoubtedly arrived at
+being able to dance better.
+
+If Pendennis was impertinent in his talk, Foker, on the other hand, so
+bland and communicative on most occasions, was entirely mum and
+melancholy when he danced with Miss Amory. To clasp her slender waist was
+a rapture, to whirl round the room with her was a delirium; but to speak
+to her, what could he say that was worthy of her? What pearl of
+conversation could he bring that was fit for the acceptance of such a
+Queen of love and wit as Blanche? It was she who made the talk when she
+was in the company of this love-stricken partner. It was she who asked
+him bow that dear little pony was, and looked at him and thanked him with
+such a tender kindness and regret, and refused the dear little pony with
+such a delicate sigh when he offered it. "I have nobody to ride with in
+London," she said. "Mamma is timid, and her figure is not pretty on
+horseback. Sir Francis never goes out with me. He loves me like--like a
+stepdaughter. Oh, how delightful it must be to have a father--a father,
+Mr. Foker!"
+
+"Oh, uncommon," said Mr. Harry, who enjoyed that blessing very calmly,
+upon which, and forgetting the sentimental air which she had just before
+assumed, Blanche's grey eyes gazed at Foker with such an arch twinkle
+that both of them burst out laughing, and Harry enraptured and at his
+ease began to entertain her with a variety of innocent prattle--good kind
+simple Foker talk, flavoured with many expressions by no means to be
+discovered in dictionaries, and relating to the personal history of
+himself or horses, or other things dear and important to him, or to
+persons in the ballroom then passing before them, and about whose
+appearance or character Mr. Harry spoke with artless freedom, and a
+considerable dash of humour.
+
+And it was Blanche who, when the conversation flagged, and the youth's
+modesty came rushing back and overpowering him, knew how to reanimate her
+companion: asked him questions about Logwood, and whether it was a pretty
+place? Whether he was a hunting man, and whether he liked women to hunt?
+(in which case she was prepared to say that she adored hunting)--but Mr.
+Foker expressing his opinion against sporting females, and pointing out
+Lady Bullfinch, who happened to pass by, as a horse-godmother, whom he
+had seen at cover with a cigar in her face, Blanche too expressed her
+detestation of the sports of the field, and said it would make her
+shudder to think of a dear sweet little fox being killed, on which Foker
+laughed and waltzed with renewed vigour and grace.
+
+And at the end of the waltz,--the last waltz they had on that night,--
+Blanche asked him about Drummington, and whether it was a fine house. His
+cousins, she had heard, were very accomplished: Lord Erith she had met,
+and which of his cousins was his favourite? Was it not Lady Ann? Yes, she
+was sure it was she; sure by his looks and his blushes. She was tired of
+dancing; it was getting very late; she must go to mamma;--and, without
+another word, she sprang away from Harry Foker's arm, and seized upon
+Pen's, who was swaggering about the dancing-room, and again said, "Mamma,
+mamma!--take me to mamma, dear, Mr. Pendennis!" transfixing Harry with a
+Parthian shot, as she fled from him.
+
+My Lord Steyne, with garter and ribbon, with a bald head and shining
+eyes, and a collar of red whiskers round his face, always looked grand
+upon an occasion of state; and made a great effect upon Lady Clavering,
+when he introduced himself to her at the request of the obsequious Major
+Pendennis. With his own white and royal hand, he handed to her ladyship a
+glass of wine, said he had heard of her charming daughter, and begged to
+be presented to her; and, at this very juncture, Mr. Arthur Pendennis
+came up with the young lady on his arm.
+
+The peer made a profound bow, and Blanche the deepest curtesy that ever
+was seen. His lordship gave Mr. Arthur Pendennis his hand to shake; said
+he had read his book, which was very wicked and clever; asked Miss
+Blanche if she had read it,--at which Pen blushed and winced. Why,
+Blanche was one of the heroines of the novel. Blanche, in black ringlets
+and a little altered, was the Neaera of 'Walter Lorraine.'
+
+Blanche had read it: the language of the eyes expressed her admiration
+and rapture at the performance. This little play being achieved, the
+Marquis of Steyne made other two profound bows to Lady Clavering and her
+daughter, and passed on to some other of his guests at the splendid
+entertainment.
+
+Mamma and daughter were loud in their expressions of admiration of the
+noble Marquis so soon as his broad back was turned upon them. "He said
+they make a very nice couple," whispered major Pendennis to Lady
+Clavering. Did he now, really? Mamma thought they would; Mamma was so
+flustered with the honour which had just been shown to her, and with
+other intoxicating events of the evening, that her good-humour knew no
+bounds. She laughed, she winked, and nodded knowingly at Pen; she tapped
+him on the arm with her fan; she tapped Blanche; she tapped the Major;--
+her contentment was boundless, and her method of showing her joy equally
+expansive.
+
+As the party went down the great staircase of Gaunt House, the morning
+had risen stark and clear over the black trees of the square; the skies
+were tinged with pink; and the cheeks of some of the people at the ball,
+--ah, how ghastly they looked! That admirable and devoted Major above
+all,--who had been for hours by Lady Clavering's side, ministering to her
+and feeding her body with everything that was nice, and her ear with
+everything that was sweet and flattering,--oh! what an object he was! The
+rings round his eyes were of the colour of bistre; those orbs themselves
+were like the plovers' eggs whereof Lady Clavering and Blanche had each
+tasted; the wrinkles in his old face were furrowed in deep gashes; and a
+silver stubble, like an elderly morning dew was glittering on his chin,
+and alongside the dyed whiskers now limp and out of curl.
+
+There he stood, with admirable patience, enduring, uncomplainingly, a
+silent agony; knowing that people could see the state of his face (for
+could he not himself perceive the condition of others, males and females,
+of his own age?)--longing to go to rest for hours past; aware that
+suppers disagreed with him, and yet having eaten a little so as to keep
+his friend, Lady Clavering, in good-humour; with twinges of rheumatism in
+the back and knees; with weary feet burning in his varnished boots,--so
+tired, oh, so tired and longing for bed! If a man, struggling with
+hardship and bravely overcoming it, is an object of admiration for the
+gods, that Power in whose chapels the old Major was a faithful worshipper
+must have looked upwards approvingly upon the constancy of Pendennis's
+martyrdom. There are sufferers in that cause as in the other: the negroes
+in the service of Mumbo Jumbo tattoo and drill themselves with burning
+skewers with great fortitude; and we read that the priests in the service
+of Baal gashed themselves and bled freely. You who can smash the idols,
+do so with a good courage; but do not be too fierce with the idolaters,--
+they worship the best thing they know.
+
+The Pendennises, the elder and the younger, waited with Lady Clavering
+and her daughter until her ladyship's carriage was announced, when the
+elder's martyrdom may be said to have come to an end, for the
+good-natured Begum insisted upon leaving him at his door in Bury Street;
+so he took the back seat of the carriage after a feeble bow or two, and
+speech of thanks, polite to the last, and resolute in doing his duty. The
+Begum waved her dumpy little hand by way of farewell to Arthur and Foker,
+and Blanche smiled languidly out upon the young men, thinking whether she
+looked very wan and green under her rose-coloured hood, and whether it
+was the mirrors at Gaunt House, or the fatigue and fever of her own eyes,
+which made her fancy herself so pale.
+
+Arthur, perhaps, saw quite well how yellow Blanche looked, but did not
+attribute that peculiarity of her complexion to the effect of the
+looking-glasses, or to any error in his sight or her own. Our young man
+of the world could use his eyes very keenly, and could see Blanche's face
+pretty much as nature had made it. But for poor Foker it had a radiance
+which dazzled and blinded him: he could see no more faults in it than in
+the sun, which was now flaring over the house-tops.
+
+Amongst other wicked London habits which Pen had acquired, the moralist
+will remark that he had got to keep very bad hours; and often was going
+to bed at the time when sober country-people were thinking of leaving it.
+Men get used to one hour as to another. Editors of newspapers, Covent
+Garden market-people, night cabmen and coffee-sellers, chimney-sweeps,
+and gentlemen and ladies of fashion who frequent balls, are often quite
+lively at three or four o'clock of a morning, when ordinary mortals are
+snoring. We have shown in the last chapter how Pen was in a brisk
+condition of mind at this period, inclined to smoke his cigar at ease,
+and to speak freely.
+
+Foker and Pen walked away from Gaunt House, then, indulging in both the
+above amusements: or rather Pen talked, and Foker looked as if he wanted
+to say something. Pen was sarcastic and dandified when he had been in the
+company of great folks; he could not help imitating some of their airs
+and tones, and having a most lively imagination, mistook himself for a
+person of importance very easily. He rattled away, and attacked this
+person and that; sneered at Lady John Turnbull's bad French, which her
+ladyship will introduce into all conversations in spite of the sneers of
+everybody; at Mrs. Slack Roper's extraordinary costume and sham jewels;
+at the old dandies and the young ones;--at whom didn't he sneer and
+laugh?
+
+"You fire at everybody, Pen--you're grown awful, that you are," Foker
+said. "Now you've pulled about Blondel's yellow wig, and Colchicum's
+black one, why don't you have a shy at a brown one, hay? you know whose I
+mean. It got into Lady Clavering's carriage."
+
+"Under my uncle's hat? My uncle is a martyr, Foker, my boy. My uncle has
+been doing excruciating duties all night. He likes to go to bed rather
+early. He has a dreadful headache if he sits up and touches supper. He
+always has the gout if he walks or stands much at a ball. He has been
+sitting up, and standing up, and supping. He has gone home to the gout
+and the headache, and for my sake. Shall I make fun of the old boy? no,
+not for Venice!"
+
+"How do you mean that he has been doing it for your sake?" Foker asked,
+looking rather alarmed.
+
+"Boy! canst thou keep a secret if I impart it to thee?" Pen cried out, in
+high spirits. "Art thou of good counsel? Wilt thou swear? Wilt thou be
+mum, or wilt thou preach? Wilt thou be silent and hear, or wilt thou
+speak and die?" And as he spoke, flinging himself into an absurd
+theatrical attitude, the men in the cabstand in Piccadilly wondered and
+grinned at the antics of the two young swells.
+
+"What the doose are you driving at?" Foker asked, looking very much
+agitated.
+
+Pen, however, did not remark this agitation much, but continued in the
+same bantering and excited vein. "Henry, friend of my youth," he said,
+"and witness of my early follies, though dull at thy books, yet thou art
+not altogether deprived of sense,--nay, blush not, Henrico, thou hast a
+good portion of that, and of courage and kindness too, at the service of
+thy friends. Were I in a strait of poverty, I would come to my Foker's
+purse. Were I in grief, I would discharge my grief upon his sympathising
+bosom----"
+
+"Gammon, Pen--go on," Foker said.
+
+"I would, Henrico, upon thy studs, and upon thy cambric worked by the
+hands of beauty, to adorn the breast of valour! Know then, friend
+of my boyhood's days, that Arthur Pendennis of the Upper Temple,
+student-at-law, feels that he is growing lonely and old Care is furrowing
+his temples, and Baldness is busy with his crown. Shall we stop and have
+a drop of coffee at this stall, it looks very hot and nice? Look how that
+cabman is blowing at his saucer. No, you won't? Aristocrat! I resume my
+tale. I am getting on in life. I have got devilish little money. I want
+some. I am thinking of getting some, and settling in life. I'm thinking
+of settling. I'm thinking of marrying, old boy. I'm thinking of becoming
+a moral man; a steady port and sherry character: with a good reputation
+in my quartier, and a moderate establishment of two maids and a man--with
+an occasional brougham to drive out Mrs. Pendennis, and a house near the
+Parks for the accommodation of the children. Ha! what sayest thou? Answer
+thy friend, thou worthy child of beer. Speak, I adjure thee by all thy
+vats.
+
+"But you ain't got any money, Pen," said the other, still looking
+alarmed.
+
+"I ain't? No, but she ave. I tell thee there is gold in store for me--not
+what you call money, nursed in the lap of luxury, and cradled on grains,
+and drinking in wealth from a thousand mash-tubs. What do you know about
+money? What is poverty to you, is splendour to the hardy son of the
+humble apothecary. You can't live without an establishment, and your
+houses in town and country. A snug little house somewhere off Belgravia,
+a brougham for my wife, a decent cook, and a fair bottle of wine for my
+friends at home sometimes; these simple necessaries suffice for me, my
+Foker." And here Pendennis began to look more serious. Without bantering
+further, Pen continued, "I've rather serious thoughts of settling and
+marrying. No man can get on in the world without some money at his back.
+You must have a certain stake to begin with, before you can go in and
+play the great game. Who knows that I'm not going to try, old fellow?
+Worse men than I have won at it. And as I have not got enough capital
+from my fathers, I must get some by my wife--that's all."
+
+They were walking down Grosvenor Street, as they talked, or rather as Pen
+talked, in the selfish fulness of his heart; and Mr. Pen must have been
+too much occupied with his own affairs to remark the concern and
+agitation of his neighbour, for he continued: "We are no longer children,
+you know, you and I, Harry. Bah! the time of our romance has passed away.
+We don't marry for passion, but for prudence and for establishment. What
+do you take your cousin for? Because she is a nice girl, and an Earl's
+daughter, and the old folks wish it, and that sort of thing."
+
+"And you, Pendennis," asked Foker, "you ain't very fond of the girl--
+you're going to marry?"
+
+Pen shrugged his shoulders. "Comme ca," said he; "I like her well enough.
+She's pretty enough; she's clever enough. I think she'll do very well.
+And she has got money enough--that's the great point. Psha! you know who
+she is, don't you? I thought you were sweet on her yourself one night
+when we dined with her mamma. It's little Amory."
+
+"I--I thought so," Foker said; "and has she accepted you!"
+
+"Not quite," Arthur replied, with a confident smile, which seemed to say,
+I have but to ask, and she comes to me that instant.
+
+"Oh, not quite," said Foker; and he broke out with such a dreadful laugh,
+that Pen, for the first time, turned his thoughts from himself towards
+his companion, and was struck by the other's ghastly pale face.
+
+"My dear fellow, Fo! what's the matter? You're ill," Pen said, in a tone
+of real concern.
+
+"You think it was the champagne at Gaunt House, don't you? It ain't that.
+Come in; let me talk to you for a minute. I'll tell you what it is. D---
+it, let me tell somebody," Foker said.
+
+They were at Mr. Foker's door by this time, and, opening it, Harry walked
+with his friend into his apartments, which were situated in the back part
+of the house, and behind the family dining-room where the elder Foker
+received his guests, surrounded by pictures of himself, his wife, his
+infant son on a donkey, and the late Earl of Gravesend in his robes as a
+Peer. Foker and Pen passed by this chamber, now closed with death-like
+shutters, and entered into the young man's own quarters. Dusky streams of
+sunbeams were playing into that room, and lighting up poor Harry's
+gallery of dancing-girls and opera nymphs with flickering illuminations.
+
+"Look here! I can't help telling you, Pen," he said. Ever since the night
+we dined there, I'm so fond of that girl, that I think I shall die if I
+don't get her. I feel as if I should go mad sometimes. I can't stand it,
+Pen. I couldn't bear to hear you talking about her, just now, about
+marrying her only because she's money. Ah, Pen! that ain't the question
+in marrying. I'd bet anything it ain't. Talking about money and such a
+girl as that, it's--it's--what-d'ye-call-'em--you know what I mean--I
+ain't good at talking--sacrilege, then. If she'd have me, I'd take and
+sweep a crossing, that I would!"
+
+"Poor Fo! I don't think that would tempt her," Pen said, eyeing his
+friend with a great deal of real good-nature and pity. "She is not a girl
+for love and a cottage."
+
+"She ought to be a duchess, I know that very well, and I know she
+wouldn't take me unless I could make her a great place in the world--for
+I ain't good for anything myself much--I ain't clever and that sort of
+thing," Foker said sadly. "If I had all the diamonds that all the
+duchesses and marchionesses had on to-night, wouldn't I put 'em in her
+lap? But what's the use of talking? I'm booked for another race. It's
+that kills me, Pen. I can't get out of it; though I die, I can't get out
+of it. And though my cousin's a nice girl, and I like her very well, and
+that, yet I hadn't seen this one when our Governors settled that matter
+between us. And when you talked, just now, about her doing very well, and
+about her having money enough for both of you, I thought to myself it
+isn't money or mere liking a girl, that ought to be enough to make a
+fellow marry. He may marry, and find he likes somebody else better. All
+the money in the world won't make you happy then. Look at me; I've plenty
+of money, or shall have out of the mash-tubs, as you call 'em. My
+Governor thought he'd made it all right for me in settling my marriage
+with my cousin. I tell you it won't do; and when Lady Ann has got her
+husband, it won't be happy for either of us, and she'll have the most
+miserable beggar in town."
+
+"Poor old fellow!" Pen said, with rather a cheap magnanimity, "I wish I
+could help you. I had no idea of this, and that you were so wild about
+the girl. Do you think she would have you without your money? No. Do you
+think your father would agree to break off your engagement with your
+cousin? You know him very well, and that he would cast you off rather
+than do so."
+
+The unhappy Foker only groaned a reply, flinging himself prostrate on a
+sofa, face forwards, his head in his hands.
+
+"As for my affair," Pen went on, "my dear fellow, if I had thought
+matters were so critical with you, at least I would not have pained you
+by choosing you as my confidant. And my business is not serious, at least
+not as yet. I have not spoken a word about it to Miss Amory. Very likely
+she would not have me if I asked her. Only I have had a great deal of
+talk about it with my uncle, who says that the match might be an eligible
+one for me. I'm ambitious and I'm poor. And it appears Lady Clavering
+will give her a good deal of money, and Sir Francis might be got to never
+mind the rest. Nothing is settled, Harry. They are going out of town
+directly. I promise you I won't ask her before she goes. There's no
+hurry: there's time for everybody. But, suppose you got her, Foker.
+Remember what you said about marriages just now, and the misery of a man
+who doesn't care for his wife; and what sort of a wife would you have who
+didn't care for her husband?"
+
+"But she would care for me," said Foker, from his sofa--"that is, I think
+she would. Last night only, as we were dancing, she said----"
+
+"What did she say?" Pen cried, starting up in great wrath. But he saw his
+own meaning more clearly than Foker, and broke off with a laugh--"Well,
+never mind what she said, Harry. Miss Amory is a clever girl, and says
+numbers of civil things--to you--to me, perhaps--and who the deuce knows
+to whom besides? Nothing's settled, old boy. At least, my heart won't
+break if I don't get her. Win her if you can, and I wish you joy of her.
+Good-bye! Don't think about what I said to you. I was excited, and
+confoundedly thirsty in those hot rooms, and didn't, I suppose, put
+enough Seltzer-water into the champagne. Good night! I'll keep your
+counsel too. 'Mum' is the word between us; and 'let there be a fair
+fight, and let the best man win,' as Peter Crawley says."
+
+So saying, Mr. Arthur Pendennis, giving a very queer and rather
+dangerous look at his companion, shook him by the hand, with something
+of that sort of cordiality which befitted his just repeated simile of the
+boxing-match, and which Mr. Bendigo displays when he shakes hands with
+Mr. Gaunt before they fight each other for the champion's belt and two
+hundred pounds a side. Foker returned his friend's salute with an
+imploring look, and a piteous squeeze of the hand, sank back on his
+cushions again, and Pen, putting on his hat, strode forth into the air,
+and almost over the body of the matutinal housemaid, who was rubbing the
+steps at the door.
+
+"And so he wants her too, does be?" thought Pen as he marched along--and
+noted within himself with a fatal keenness of perception and almost an
+infernal mischief, that the very pains and tortures which that honest
+heart of Foker's was suffering gave a zest and an impetus to his own
+pursuit of Blanche: if pursuit might be called which had been no pursuit
+as yet, but mere sport and idle dallying. "She said something to him, did
+she? perhaps she gave him the fellow flower to this;" and he took out of
+his coat and twiddled in his thumb and finger a poor little shrivelled
+crumpled bud that had faded and blackened with the heat and flare of the
+night--"I wonder to how many more she has given her artless tokens of
+affection--the little flirt"--and he flung his into the gutter, where the
+water may have refreshed it, and where any amateur of rosebuds may have
+picked it up. And then bethinking him that the day was quite bright, and
+that the passers-by by might be staring at his beard and white neckcloth,
+our modest young gentleman took a cab and drove to the Temple.
+
+Ah! is this the boy that prayed at his mother's knee but a few years
+since, and for whom very likely at this hour of morning she is praying?
+Is this jaded and selfish worldling the lad who, a short while back, was
+ready to fling away his worldly all, his hope, his ambition, his chance
+of life, for his love? This is the man you are proud of, old Pendennis.
+You boast of having formed him: and of having reasoned him out of his
+absurd romance and folly--and groaning in your bed over your pains and
+rheumatisms, satisfy yourself still by thinking, that, at last, that lad
+will do something to better himself in life, and that the Pendennises
+will take a good place in the world. And is he the only one, who in his
+progress through this dark life goes wilfully or fatally astray, whilst
+the natural truth and love which should illumine him grow dim in the
+poisoned air, and suffice to light him no more?
+
+When Pen was gone away, poor Harry Foker got up from the sofa, and taking
+out from his waistcoat--the splendidly buttoned, but the gorgeously
+embroidered, the work of his mamma--a little white rosebud, he drew from
+his dressing-case, also the maternal present, a pair of scissors, with
+which he nipped carefully the stalk of the flower, and placing it in a
+glass of water opposite his bed, he sought refuge there from care and
+bitter remembrances.
+
+It is to be presumed that Miss Blanche Amory had more than one rose in
+her bouquet, and why should not the kind young creature give out of her
+superfluity, and make as many partners as possible happy?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+Monseigneur s'amuse
+
+
+The exertions of that last night at Gaunt House had proved almost too
+much for Major Pendennis; and as soon as he could move his weary old
+body with safety, he transported himself groaning to Buxton, and sought
+relief in the healing waters of that place. Parliament broke up. Sir
+Francis Clavering and family left town, and the affairs which we have
+just mentioned to the reader were not advanced, in the brief interval of
+a few days or weeks which have occurred between this and the last
+chapter. The town was, however, emptied since then.
+
+The season was now come to a conclusion: Pen's neighbours, the lawyers,
+were gone upon circuit: and his more fashionable friends had taken their
+passports for the Continent, or had fled for health or excitement to the
+Scotch moors. Scarce a man was to be seen in the bow-windows of the
+Clubs, or on the solitary Pall Mall pavement. The red jackets had
+disappeared from before the Palace-gate: the tradesmen of St. James's
+were abroad taking their pleasure: the tailors had grown mustachios and
+were gone up the Rhine: the bootmakers were at Ems or Baden, blushing
+when they met their customers at those places of recreation, or punting
+beside their creditors at the gambling-tables: the clergymen of St.
+James's only preached to half a congregation, in which there was not a
+single sinner of distinction: the band in Kensington Gardens had shut up
+their instruments of brass and trumpets of silver: only two or three old
+flies and chaises crawled by the banks of the Serpentine; and Clarence
+Bulbul, who was retained in town by his arduous duties as a Treasury
+clerk, when he took his afternoon ride in Rotten Row, compared its
+loneliness to the vastness of the Arabian desert and himself to a Bedouin
+wending his way through that dusty solitude. Warrington stowed away a
+quantity of Cavendish tobacco in his carpet-bag, and betook himself, as
+his custom was in the vacation, to his brother's house in Norfolk. Pen
+was left alone in chambers for a while, for this man of fashion could not
+quit the metropolis when he chose always: and was at present detained by
+the affairs of his newspaper, the Pall Mall Gazette, of, which he acted
+as the editor and charge d'affaires during the temporary absence of the
+chief, Captain Shandon, who was with his family at the salutary
+watering-place of Boulogne-sur-Mer.
+
+Although, as we have seen, Mr. Pen had pronounced himself for years past
+to be a man perfectly blase and wearied of life, yet the truth is that he
+was an exceedingly healthy young fellow still: with a fine appetite,
+which he satisfied with the greatest relish and satisfaction at least
+once a day; and a constant desire for society, which showed him to be
+anything but misanthropical. If he could not get a good dinner he sate
+down to a bad one with perfect contentment; if he could not procure the
+company of witty or great or beautiful persons, he put up with
+any society that came to hand; and was perfectly satisfied in a
+tavern-parlour or on board a Greenwich steamboat, or in a jaunt to
+Hampstead with Mr. Finucane, his colleague at the Pall Mall Gazette; or
+in a visit to the summer theatres across the river; or to the Royal
+Gardens of Vauxhall, where he was on terms of friendship with the great
+Simpson, and where he shook the principal comic singer of the lovely
+equestrian of the arena by the hand. And while he could watch the
+grimaces or the graces of these with a satiric humour that was not
+deprived of sympathy, he could look on with an eye of kindness at the
+lookers-on too; at the roystering youth bent upon enjoyment, and here
+taking it: at the honest parents, with their delighted children laughing
+and clapping their hands at the show: at the poor outcasts, whose
+laughter was less innocent though perhaps louder, and who brought their
+shame and their youth here, to dance and be merry till the dawn at least;
+and to get bread and drown care. Of this sympathy with all conditions of
+men Arthur often boasted: said he was pleased to possess it: and that he
+hoped thus to the last he should retain it. As another man has an ardour
+for art or music, or natural science, Mr. Pen said that anthropology was
+his favourite pursuit; and had his eyes always eagerly open to its
+infinite varieties and beauties: contemplating with an unfailing delight
+all specimens of it in all places to which he resorted, whether it was
+the coquetting of a wrinkled dowager in a ballroom, or a high-bred young
+beauty blushing in her prime there; whether it was a hulking guardsman
+coaxing a servant-girl in the Park--or innocent little Tommy that was
+feeding the ducks whilst the nurse listened. And indeed a man whose heart
+is pretty clean, can indulge in this pursuit with an enjoyment that never
+ceases, and is only perhaps the more keen because it is secret and has a
+touch of sadness in it: because he is of his mood and humour lonely, and
+apart although not alone.
+
+Yes, Pen used to brag and talk in his impetuous way to Warrington. "I was
+in love so fiercely in my youth, that I have burned out that flame for
+ever, I think, and if ever I marry, it will be a marriage of reason that
+I will make, with a well-bred, good-tempered, good-looking person who has
+a little money, and so forth, that will cushion our carriage in its
+course through life. As for romance, it is all done; I have spent that
+out, and am old before my time--I'm proud of it."
+
+"Stuff!" growled the other, "you fancied you were getting bald the other
+day, and bragged about it as you do about everything. But you began to
+use the bear's-grease pot directly the hairdresser told you; and are
+scented like a barber ever since."
+
+"You are Diogenes," the other answered, "and you want every man to live
+in a tub like yourself. Violets smell better than stale tobacco, you
+grizzly old cynic." But Mr. Pen was blushing whilst he made this reply to
+his unromantical friend, and indeed cared a great deal more about himself
+still than such a philosopher perhaps should have done. Indeed,
+considering that he was careless about the world, Mr. Pen ornamented his
+person with no small pains in order to make himself agreeable to it, and
+for a weary pilgrim as he was, wore very tight boots and bright varnish.
+
+It was in this dull season of the year, then, of a shining Friday night
+in autumn, that Mr. Pendennis, having completed at his newspaper office a
+brilliant leading article--such as Captain Shandon himself might have
+written, had the Captain been in good-humour, and inclined to work, which
+he never would do except under compulsion--that Mr. Arthur Pendennis
+having written his article, and reviewed it approvingly as it lay before
+him in its wet proof-sheet at the office of the paper, bethought him that
+he would cross the water, and regale himself with the fireworks and other
+amusements of Vauxhall. So he affably put in his pocket the order which
+admitted "Editor of Pall Mall Gazette and friend" to that place of
+recreation, and paid with the coin of the realm a sufficient sum to
+enable him to cross Waterloo Bridge. The walk thence to the Gardens was
+pleasant, the stars were shining in the skies above, looking down upon
+the royal property, whence the rockets and Roman candles had not yet
+ascended to outshine the stars.
+
+Before you enter the enchanted ground, where twenty thousand additional
+lamps are burned every night as usual, most of us have passed through the
+black and dreary passage and wickets which hide the splendours of
+Vauxhall from uninitiated men. In the walls of this passage are two holes
+strongly illuminated, in the midst of which you see two gentlemen at
+desks, where they will take either your money as a private individual, or
+your order of admission if you are provided with that passport to the
+Gardens. Pen went to exhibit his ticket at the last-named orifice, where,
+however, a gentleman and two ladies were already in parley before him.
+
+The gentleman, whose hat was very much on one side, and who wore a short
+and shabby cloak in an excessively smart manner, was crying out in a
+voice which Pen at once recognised.
+
+"Bedad, sir, if ye doubt me honour, will ye obleege me by stipping out of
+that box, and----"
+
+"Lor, Capting!" cried the elder lady.
+
+"Don't bother me," said the man in the box.
+
+And ask Mr. Hodgen himself, who's in the gyardens, to let these leedies
+pass. Don't be froightened, me dear madam, I'm not going to quarl with
+this gintleman, at anyreet before leedies. Will ye go, sir, and desoire
+Mr. Hodgen (whose orther I keem in with, and he's me most intemate
+friend, and I know he's goan to sing the 'Body Snatcher' here to-noight),
+with Captain Costigan's compliments, to stip out and let in the leedies--
+for meself, sir, I've seen Vauxhall, and I scawrun any interfayrance on
+moi account: but for these leedies, one of them has never been there, and
+of should think ye'd harly take advantage of me misfartune in losing the
+ticket, to deproive her of her pleasure."
+
+"It ain't no use, Captain. I can't go about your business," the
+check-taker said; on which the Captain swore an oath, and the elder lady
+said, "Lor, ow provokin!"
+
+As for the young one, she looked up at the Captain and said, "Never mind,
+Captain Costigan, I'm sure I don't want to go at all. Come away, mamma."
+And with this, although she did not want to go at all, her feelings
+overcame her, and she began to cry.
+
+"Me poor child!" the Captain said. "Can ye see that, sir, and will ye not
+let this innocent creature in?"
+
+"It ain't my business," cried the doorkeeper, peevishly, out of the
+illuminated box. And at this minute Arthur came up, and recognising
+Costigan, said, "Don't you know me, Captain? Pendennis!" And he took off
+his hat and made a bow to the two ladies. "Me dear boy! Me dear friend!"
+cried the Captain, extending towards Pendennis the grasp of friendship;
+and he rapidly explained to the other what he called "a most unluckee
+conthratong." He had an order for Vauxhall, admitting two, from Mr.
+Hodgen, then within the Gardens, and singing (as he did at the Back
+Kitchen and the nobility's concerts, the 'Body Snatcher,' the 'Death of
+General Wolfe,' the 'Banner of Blood,' and other favourite melodies);
+and, having this order for the admission of two persons, he thought that
+it would admit three, and had come accordingly to the Gardens with his
+friends. But, on his way, Captain Costigan had lost the paper of
+admission--it was not forthcoming at all; and the leedies must go back
+again, to the great disappointment of one of them, as Pendennis saw.
+
+Arthur had a great deal of good-nature for everybody, and sympathised
+with the misfortunes of all sorts of people: how could he refuse his
+sympathy in such a case as this? He had seen the innocent face as it
+looked up to the Captain, the appealing look of the girl, the piteous
+quiver of the mouth, and the final outburst of tears. If it had been his
+last guinea in the world, he must have paid it to have given the poor
+little thing pleasure. She turned the sad imploring eyes away directly
+they lighted upon a stranger, and began to wipe them with her
+handkerchief. Arthur looked very handsome and kind as he stood before the
+women, with his hat off, blushing, bowing, generous, a gentleman. "Who
+are they?" he asked of himself. He thought he had seen the elder lady
+before.
+
+"If I can be of any service to you, Captain Costigan," the young man
+said, "I hope you will command me; is there any difficulty about taking
+these ladies into the garden? Will you kindly make use of my purse? And--
+and I have a ticket myself which will admit two--I hope, ma'am, you will
+permit me?"
+
+The first impulse of the Prince of Fairoaks was to pay for the whole
+party, and to make away with his newspaper order as poor Costigan had
+done with his own ticket. But his instinct, and the appearance of the two
+women, told him that they would be better pleased if he did not give
+himself the airs of a grand seigneur, and he handed his purse to
+Costigan, and laughingly pulled out his ticket with one hand, as he
+offered the other to the elder of the ladies--ladies was not the word--
+they had bonnets and shawls, and collars and ribbons, and the youngest
+showed a pretty little foot and boot under her modest grey gown, but his
+Highness of Fairoaks was courteous to every person who wore a petticoat
+whatever its texture was, and the humbler the wearer, only the more
+stately and polite in his demeanour.
+
+"Fanny, take the gentleman's arm," the elder said; "Since you will be so
+very kind--I've seen you often come in at our gate, sir, and go in to
+Captain Strong's at No. 3."
+
+Fanny made a little curtsey, and put her hand under Arthur's arm. It had
+on a shabby little glove, but it was pretty and small. She was not a
+child, but she was scarcely a woman as yet; her tears had dried up, and
+her cheek mantled with youthful blushes, and her eyes glistened with
+pleasure and gratitude, as she looked up into Arthur's kind face.
+
+Arthur, in a protecting way, put his other hand upon the little one
+resting on his arm. "Fanny's a very pretty little name," he said, "and so
+you know me, do you?"
+
+"We keep the lodge, sir, at Shepherd's Inn," Fanny said with a curtsey;
+"and I've never been at Vauxhall, sir, and Papa didn't like me to go--
+and--and--O--O--law, how beautiful!" She shrank back as she spoke,
+starting with wonder and delight as she saw the Royal Gardens blaze
+before her with a hundred million of lamps, with a splendour such as the
+finest fairy tale, the finest pantomime she had ever witnessed at the
+theatre, had never realised. Pen was pleased with her pleasure, and
+pressed to his side the little hand which clung so kindly to him. "What
+would I not give for a little of this pleasure?" said the blase young
+man.
+
+"Your purse, Pendennis, me dear boy," said the Captain's voice behind
+him. "Will ye count it? it's all roight--no--ye thrust in old Jack
+Costigan (he thrusts me, ye see, madam). Ye've been me preserver, Pen
+(I've known um since choildhood, Mrs. Bolton; he's the proproietor of
+Fairoaks Castle, and many's the cooper of clart I've dthrunk there with
+the first nobilitee of his neetive countee),--Mr. Pendennis, ye've been
+me preserver, and of thank ye; me daughtther will thank ye;--Mr. Simpson,
+your humble servant sir."
+
+If Pen was magnificent in his courtesy to the ladies, what was his
+splendour in comparison to Captain Costigan's bowing here and there, and
+crying bravo to the singers?
+
+A man, descended like Costigan, from a long line of Hibernian kings,
+chieftains, and other magnates and sheriffs of the county, had of course
+too much dignity and self-respect to walk arrum-in-arrum (as the Captain
+phrased it) with a lady who occasionally swept his room out, and cooked
+his mutton-chops. In the course of their journey from Shepherd's Inn to
+Vauxhall Gardens, Captain Costigan had walked by the side of the two
+ladies, in a patronising and affable manner pointing out to them the
+edifices worthy of note, and discoorsing, according to his wont, about
+other cities and countries which he had visited, and the people of rank
+and fashion with whom he had the honour of an acquaintance. Nor could it
+be expected, nor, indeed, did Mrs. Bolton expect, that, arrived in the
+Royal property, and strongly illuminated by the flare of the twenty
+thousand additional lamps, the Captain could relax from his dignity, and
+give an arm to a lady who was, in fact, little better than a housekeeper
+or charwoman.
+
+But Pen, on his part, had no such scruples. Miss Fanny Bolton did not
+make his bed nor sweep his chambers; and he did not choose to let go his
+pretty little partner. As for Fanny, her colour heightened, and her
+bright eyes shone the brighter with pleasure, as she leaned for
+protection on the arm of such a fine gentleman as Mr. Pen. And she looked
+at numbers of other ladies in the place, and at scores of other gentlemen
+under whose protection they were walking here and there; and she thought
+that her gentleman was handsomer and grander-looking than any other gent
+in the place. Of course there were votaries of pleasure of all ranks
+there--rakish young surgeons, fast young clerks and commercialists,
+occasional dandies of the Guard regiments, and the rest. Old Lord
+Colchicum was there in attendance upon Mademoiselle Caracoline, who had
+been riding in the ring; and who talked her native French very loud, and
+used idiomatic expressions of exceeding strength as she walked about,
+leaning on the arm of his lordship.
+
+Colchicum was in attendance upon Mademoiselle Carandine, little Tom
+Tufthunt was in attendance upon Lord Colchicum; and rather pleased, too,
+with his position. When Don Juan scalles the wall, there's never a want
+of a Leporello to hold the ladder. Tom Tufthunt was quite happy to act as
+friend to the elderly viscount, and to carve the fowl, and to make the
+salad at supper. When Pen and his young lady met the Viscount's party,
+that noble poor only gave Arthur a passing leer of recognition as his
+lordship's  eyes passed from Pen's face under the bonnet of Pen's
+companion. But Tom Tufthunt wagged his head very good-naturedly at Mr.
+Arthur, and said, "How are you, old boy?" and looked extremely knowing at
+the godfather of this history.
+
+"That is the great rider at Astley's; I have seen her there," Miss Bolton
+said, looking after Mademoiselle Caracoline; "and who is that old man? is
+it not the gentleman in the ring!"
+
+"That is Lord Viscount Colchicum, Miss Fanny," said Pen with an air of
+protection. He meant no harm; he was pleased to patronise the young girl,
+and he was not displeased that she should be so pretty, and that she
+should be hanging upon his arm, and that yonder elderly Don Juan should
+have seen her there.
+
+Fanny was very pretty; her eyes were dark and brilliant, her teeth were
+like little pearls; her mouth was almost as red as Mademoiselle
+Caracoline's when the latter had put on her vermilion. And what a
+difference there was between the one's voice and the other's, between the
+girl's laugh and the woman's! It was only very lately, indeed, that
+Fanny, when looking in the little glass over the Bows-Costigan
+mantelpiece as she was dusting it had begun to suspect that she was a
+beauty. But a year ago, she was a clumsy, gawky girl, at whom her father
+sneered, and of whom the girls at the day-school (Miss Minifer's,
+Newcastle Street, Strand; Miss M., the younger sister, took the leading
+business at the Norwich circuit in 182--; and she herself had played for
+two seasons with some credit T. R. E. O., T. R. S. W., until she fell
+down a trap-door and broke her leg); the girls at Fanny's school, we say,
+took no account of her, and thought her a dowdy little creature as long
+as she remained under Miss Minifer's instruction. And it was unremarked
+and almost unseen in the porter's dark lodge of Shepherd's Inn, that this
+little flower bloomed into beauty.
+
+So this young person hung upon Mr. Pen's arm, and they paced the gardens
+together, Empty as London was, there were still some two millions of
+people left lingering about it, and amongst them, one or two of the
+acquaintances of Mr. Arthur Pendennis.
+
+Amongst them, silent and alone, pale, with his hands in his pockets, and
+a rueful nod of the head to Arthur as they met, passed Henry Foker, Esq.
+Young Henry was trying to ease his mind by moving from place to place,
+and from excitement to excitement. But he thought about Blanche as he
+sauntered in the dark walks; he thought about Blanche as he looked at the
+devices of the lamps. He consulted the fortune-teller about her, and was
+disappointed when that gipsy told him that he was in love with a dark
+lady who would make him happy; and at the concert, though Mr. Momus sang
+his most stunning comic songs, and asked his most astonishing riddles,
+never did a kind smile come to visit Foker's lips. In fact, he never
+heard Mr. Momus at all.
+
+Pen and Miss Bolton were hard by listening to the same concert, and the
+latter remarked, and Pen laughed at Mr. Fokei's woebegone face.
+
+Fanny asked what it was that made that odd-looking little man so dismal?
+"I think he is crossed in love!" Pen, said. "Isn't that enough to make
+any man dismal, Fanny?" And he looked down at her, splendidly protecting
+her, like Egmont at Clara in Goethe's play, or Leicester at Amy in
+Scott's novel.
+
+"Crossed in love is he? poor gentleman," said Fanny with a sigh, and her
+eyes turned round towards him with no little kindness and pity--but Harry
+did not see the beautiful dark eyes.
+
+"How dy do, Mr. Pendennis!"--a voice broke in here--it was that of a
+young man in a large white coat with a red neckcloth, over which a dingy
+shirt-collar was turned so as to exhibit a dubious neck--with a large pin
+of bullion or other metal, and an imaginative waistcoat with exceedingly
+fanciful glass buttons, and trousers that cried with a loud voice, "Come
+look at me and see how cheap and tawdry I am; my master, what a dirty
+buck!" and a little stick in one pocket of his coat, and a lady in pink
+satin on the other arm--"How dy do--Forget me, I dare say? Huxter,--
+Clavering."
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Huxter," the Prince of Fairoaks said in his most
+princely manner--"I hope you are very well."
+
+"Pretty bobbish, thanky."--And Mr. Huxter wagged his head. "I say,
+Pendennis, you've been coming it uncommon strong since we had the row at
+Wapshot's, don't you remember. Great author, hay? Go about with the
+swells. Saw your name in the Morning Post. I suppose you're too much of a
+swell to come and have a bit of supper with an old friend?--Charterhouse
+Lane to-morrow night,--some devilish good fellows from Bartholomew's, and
+some stunning gin-punch. Here's my card." And with this Mr. Huxter
+released his hand from the pocket where his cane was, and pulling off the
+top of his card-case with his teeth produced thence a visiting ticket,
+which he handed to Pen.
+
+"You are exceedingly kind, I am sure," said Pen: "but I regret that I
+have an engagement which will take me out of town to-morrow night." And
+the Marquis of Fairoaks, wondering that such a creature as this could
+have the audacity to give him a card, put Mr. Huxter's card into his
+waistcoat pocket with a lofty courtesy. Possibly Mr. Samuel Huxter was
+not aware that there was any great social difference between Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis and himself. Mr. Huxter's father was a surgeon and apothecary
+at Clavering just as Mr. Pendennis's papa had been a surgeon and
+apothecary at Bath. But the impudence of some men is beyond all
+calculation.
+
+"Well, old fellow, never mind," said Mr. Huxter, who, always frank and
+familiar, was from vinous excitement even more affable than usual. "If
+ever you are passing, look up our place, I'm mostly at home
+Saturdays; and there's generally a cheese cupboard. Ta, ta.--There's the
+bell for the fireworks ringing. Come along, Mary." And he set off running
+with the rest of the crowd in the direction of the fireworks.
+
+So did Pen presently, when this agreeable youth was out of sight, begin
+to run with his little companion; Mrs. Bolton following after them, with
+Captain Costigan at her side. But the Captain was too majestic and
+dignified in his movements to run for friend or enemy, and he pursued his
+course with the usual jaunty swagger which distinguished his steps, so
+that he and his companion were speedily distanced by Pen and Miss Fanny.
+
+Perhaps Arthur forgot, or perhaps he did not choose to remember, that the
+elder couple had no money in their pockets, as had been proved by their
+adventure at the entrance of the Gardens; howbeit, Pen paid a couple of
+shillings for himself and his partner, and with her hanging close on his
+arm, scaled the staircase which leads to the firework gallery. The
+Captain and mamma might have followed them if they liked, but Arthur and
+Fanny were too busy to look back. People were pushing and squeezing there
+beside and behind them. One eager individual rushed by Fanny, and elbowed
+her so, that she fell back with a little cry, upon which, of course,
+Arthur caught her adroitly in his arms, and, just for protection, kept
+her so defended, until they mounted the stair, and took their places.
+
+Poor Foker sate alone on one of the highest benches, his face illuminated
+by the fireworks, or in their absence by the moon. Arthur saw him, and
+laughed, but did not occupy himself about his friend much. He was engaged
+with Fanny. How she wondered! how happy she was! how she cried O, O, O,
+as the rockets soared into the air, and showered down in azure, and
+emerald, and vermilion! As these wonders blazed and disappeared before
+her, the little girl thrilled and trembled with delight at Arthur's side
+--her hand was under his arm still, he felt it pressing him as she looked
+up delighted.
+
+"How beautiful they are, sir!" she cried.
+
+"Don't call me sir, Fanny," Arthur said.
+
+A quick blush rushed up into the girl's face. "What shall I call you?"
+she said, in a low voice, sweet and tremulous. "What would you wish me to
+say, sir?"
+
+"Again, Fanny! Well, I forgot; it is best so, my dear," Pendennis said,
+very kindly and gently. "I may call you Fanny?"
+
+"Oh yes!" she said, and the little hand pressed his arm once more very
+eagerly, and the girl clung to him so that he could feel her heart
+beating on his shoulder.
+
+"I may call you Fanny, because you are a young girl, and a good girl,
+Fanny, and I am an old gentleman. But you mustn't call me anything but
+sir, or Mr. Pendennis, if you like; for we live in very different
+stations, Fanny; and don't think I speak unkindly; and--and why do you
+take your hand away, Fanny? Are you afraid of me? Do you think I would
+hurt you? Not for all the world, my dear little girl. And--and look how
+beautiful the moon and stars are, and how calmly they shine when the
+rockets have gone out, and the noisy wheels have done hissing and
+blazing. When I came here to-night I did not think I should have had such
+a pretty little companion to sit by my side, and see these fine
+fireworks. You must know I live by myself, and work very hard. I write in
+books and newspapers, Fanny; and I quite tired out, and was expected to
+sit alone all night; and--don't cry, my dear, dear, little girl." Here
+Pen broke out, rapidly putting an end to the calm oration which he had
+begun to deliver; for the sight of a woman's tears always put his nerves
+in a quiver, and he began forthwith to coax her and soothe her, and to
+utter a hundred and twenty little ejaculations of pity and sympathy,
+which need not be repeated here, because they would be absurd in print.
+So would a mother's talk to a child be absurd in print; so would a
+lover's to his bride. That sweet artless poetry bears no translation;
+and is too subtle for grammarians' clumsy definitions. You have but the
+same four letters to describe the salute which you perform on your
+grandmother's forehead, and that which you bestow on the sacred cheek of
+your mistress; but the same four letters, and not one of them a labial.
+Do we mean to hint that r. Arthur Pendennis made any use of the
+monosyllable in question? Not so. In the first place, it was dark: the
+fireworks were over, and nobody could see him; secondly, he was not
+a man to have this kind of secret, and tell it; thirdly and lastly,
+let the honest fellow who has kissed a pretty girl, say what would have
+been his own conduct in such a delicate juncture?
+
+Well, the truth is, that however you may suspect him, and whatever you
+would have done under the circumstances, or Mr. Pen would have liked to
+do, he behaved honestly, and like a man. "I will not play with this
+little girl's heart," he said within himself, "and forget my own or her
+honour. She seems to have a great deal of dangerous and rather contagious
+sensibility, and I am very glad the fireworks are over, and that I can
+take her back to her mother. Come along, Fanny; mind the steps, and lean
+on me. Don't stumble, you heedless little thing; this is the way, and
+there is your mamma at the door."
+
+And there, indeed, Mrs. Bolton was, unquiet in spirit, and grasping her
+umbrella. She seized Fanny with maternal fierceness and eagerness, and
+uttered some rapid abuse to the girl in an undertone. The expression in
+Captain Costigan's eye--standing behind the matron and winking at
+Pendennis from under his hat--was, I am bound to say, indefinably
+humorous.
+
+It was so much so, that Pen could not refrain from bursting into a laugh.
+"You should have taken my arm, Mrs. Bolton," he said, offering it. "I am
+very glad to bring Miss Fanny back quite safe to you. We thought you
+would have followed us up into the gallery. We enjoyed the fireworks,
+didn't we?"
+
+"Oh yes!" said Miss Fanny, with rather a demure look.
+
+"And the bouquet was magnificent," said Pen. "And it is ten hours since I
+had anything to eat, ladies; and I wish you would permit me to invite you
+to supper."
+
+"Dad," said Costigan, "I'd loike a snack to; only I forgawt me purse, or
+I should have invoited these leedies to a collection."
+
+Mrs. Bolton with considerable asperity said, She ad an eadache, and would
+much rather go ome.
+
+"A lobster salad is the best thing in the world for a headache," Pen said
+gallantly, "and a glass of wine I'm sure will do you good. Come, Mrs.
+Bolton, be kind to me and oblige me. I shan't have the heart to sup
+without you, and upon my word I have had no dinner. Give me your arm:
+give me the umbrella. Costigan, I'm sure you'll take care of Miss Fanny;
+and I shall think Mrs. Bolton angry with me, unless she will favour me
+with her society. And we will all sup quietly, and go back in a cab
+together."
+
+The cab, the lobster salad, the frank and good-humoured look of
+Pendennis, as he smilingly invited the worthy matron, subdued her
+suspicions and her anger. Since he would be so obliging, she thought she
+could take a little bit of lobster, and so they all marched away to a
+box; and Costigan called for a waither with such a loud and belligerent
+voice, as caused one of those officials instantly to run to him.
+
+The carte was examined on the wall, and Fanny was asked to choose her
+favourite dish; upon which the young creature said she was fond of
+lobster, too, but also owned to a partiality for raspberry tart. This
+delicacy was provided by Pen, and a bottle of the most frisky champagne
+was moreover ordered for the delight of the ladies. Little Fanny drank
+this;--what other sweet intoxication had she not drunk in the course of
+the night?
+
+When the supper, which was very brisk and gay, was over, and Captain
+Costigan and Mrs. Bolton had partaken of some of the rack-punch that is
+so fragrant at Vauxhall, the bill was called and discharged by Pen with
+great generosity,--"loike a foin young English gentleman of th' olden
+toime, be Jove," Costigan enthusiastically remarked. And as, when they
+went out of the box, he stepped forward and gave Mrs. Bolton his arm,
+Fanny fell to Pen's lot, and the young people walked away in high
+good-humour together, in the wake of their seniors.
+
+The champagne and the rack-punch, though taken in moderation by all
+persons, except perhaps poor Cos, who lurched ever so little in his gait,
+had set them in high spirits and good-humour, so that Fanny began to skip
+and move her brisk little feet in time to the band, which was playing
+waltzes and galops for the dancers. As they came up to the dancing, the
+music and Fanny's feet seemed to go quicker together--she seemed to
+spring, as if naturally, from the ground, and as if she required
+repression to keep her there.
+
+"Shouldn't you like a turn?" said the Prince of Fairoaks. "What fun it
+would be! Mrs. Bolton, ma'am, do let me take her once round." Upon which
+Mr. Costigan said, "Off wid you!" and Mrs. Bolton not refusing (indeed,
+she was an old war-horse, and would have liked, at the trumpet's sound,
+to have entered the arena herself), Fanny's shawl was off her back in a
+minute, and she and Arthur were whirling round in a waltz in the midst of
+a great deal of queer, but exceedingly joyful company.
+
+Pen had no mishap this time with little Fanny, as he had with Miss
+Blanche in old days,--at least, there was no mishap of his making. The
+pair danced away with great agility and contentment,--first a waltz, then
+a galop, then a waltz again, until, in the second waltz, they were bumped
+by another couple who had joined the Terpsichorean choir. This was Mr.
+Huxter and his pink satin young friend, of whom we have already had a
+glimpse.
+
+Mr. Huxter very probably had been also partaking of supper, for he was
+even more excited now than at the time when he had previously claimed
+Pen's acquaintance; and, having run against Arthur and his partner, and
+nearly knocked them down, this amiable gentleman of course began to abuse
+the people whom he had injured, and broke out into a volley of slang
+against the unoffending couple. "Now then, stoopid! Don't keep the ground
+if you can't dance, old Slow Coach!" the young surgeon roared out (using,
+at the same time, other expressions far more emphatic), and was joined in
+his abuse by the shrill language and laughter of his partner; to the
+interruption of the ball, the terror of poor little Fanny, and the
+immense indignation of Pen.
+
+Arthur was furious; and not so angry at the quarrel as at the shame
+attending it. A battle with a fellow like that! A row in a public garden,
+and with a porter's daughter on his arm! What a position for Arthur
+Pendennis! He drew poor little Fanny hastily away from the dancers to her
+mother, and wished that lady, and Costigan, and poor Fanny underground,
+rather than there, in his companionship, and under his protection.
+
+When Huxter commenced his attack, that free-spoken young gentleman had
+not seen who was his opponent; and directly he was aware that it was
+Arthur whom he had insulted, he began to make apologies. "Hold your
+stoopid tongue, Mary," he said to his partner. "It's an old friend and
+crony at home. I beg pardon, Pendennis; wasn't aware it was you, old
+boy." Mr. Huxter had been one of the boys of the Clavering School, who
+had been present at a combat which has been mentioned in the early part
+of this story, when young Pen knocked down the biggest champion of the
+academy, and Huxter knew that it was dangerous to quarrel with Arthur.
+
+His apologies were as odious to the other as his abuse had been. Pen
+stopped his tipsy remonstrance, by telling him to hold his tongue, and
+desiring him not to use his (Pendennis's) name in that place or any
+other; and he walked out of the gardens with a titter behind him from the
+crowd, every one of whom he would have liked to massacre for having been
+witness to the degrading broil. He walked out of the gardens, quite
+forgetting poor little Fanny, who came trembling behind him with her
+mother and the stately Costigan.
+
+He was brought back to himself by a word from the Captain, who touched
+him on the shoulder just as they were passing the inner gate.
+
+"There's no ray-admittance except ye pay again," the Captain said.
+"Hadn't I better go back and take the fellow your message?"
+
+Pen burst out laughing. "Take him a message! Do you think I would fight
+with such a fellow as that?" he asked.
+
+"No, no! Don't, don't?" cried out little Fanny. "How can you be so
+wicked, Captain Costigan?" The Captain muttered something about honour,
+and winked knowingly at Pen, but Arthur said gallantly, "No, Fanny, don't
+be frightened. It was my fault to have danced in such a place,--I beg
+your padon to have asked you to dance there." And he gave her his arm
+once more, and called a cab, and put his three friends into it.
+
+He was about to pay the driver, and to take another carriage for himself,
+when little Fanny, still alarmed, put her little hand out, and caught him
+by the coat, and implored him and besought him to come in.
+
+"Will nothing satisfy you," said Pen, in great good-humour, "that I am
+not going back to fight him? Well, I will come home with you. Drive to
+Shepherd's Inn, cab." The cab drove to its destination. Arthur was
+immensely pleased by the girl's solicitude about him: her tender terrors
+quite made him forget his previous annoyance.
+
+Pen put the ladies into their lodge, having shaken hands kindly with both
+of them; and the Captain again whispered to him that he would see um in
+the morning if he was inclined, and take his message to that
+"scounthrel." But the Captain was in his usual condition when he made the
+proposal; and Pen was perfectly sure that neither he nor Mr. Huxter, when
+they awoke, would remember anything about the dispute.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTYER XLVIII
+
+A Visit of Politeness
+
+
+Costigan never roused Pen from his slumbers; there was no hostile message
+from Mr. Huxter to disturb him; and when Pen woke, it was with a brisker
+and more lively feeling than ordinarily attends that moment in the day of
+the tired and blase London man. A City man wakes up to care and consols,
+and the thoughts of 'Change and the counting-house take possession of him
+as soon as sleep flies from under his night-cap; a lawyer rouses himself
+with the early morning to think of the case that will take him all his
+day to work upon, and the inevitable attorney to whom he has promised his
+papers ere night. Which of us has not his anxiety instantly present when
+his eyes are opened, to it and to the world, after his night's sleep?
+Kind strengthener that enables us to face the day's task with renewed
+heart! Beautiful ordinance of Providence that creates rest as it awards
+labour!
+
+Mr. Pendennis's labour, or rather his disposition, was of that sort that
+his daily occupations did not much interest him, for the excitement of
+literary composition pretty soon subsides with the hired labourer, and
+the delight of seeing one's-self in print only extends to the first two
+or three appearances in the magazine or newspaper page. Pegasus put into
+harness, and obliged to run a stage every day, is as prosaic as any other
+hack, and won't work without his whip or his feed of corn. So, indeed,
+Mr. Arthur performed his work at the Pall Mall Gazette (and since his
+success as a novelist with an increased salary), but without the least
+enthusiasm, doing his best or pretty nearly, and sometimes writing ill
+and sometimes well. He was a literary hack, naturally fast in pace, and
+brilliant in action.
+
+Neither did society, or that portion which he saw, excite or amuse him
+over much. In spite of his brag and boast to the contrary, he was too
+young as yet for women's society, which probably can only be had in
+perfection when a man has ceased to think about his own person, and has
+given up all designs of being a conqueror of ladies; he was too young to
+be admitted as an equal amongst men who had made their mark in the world,
+and of whose conversation he could scarcely as yet expect to be more than
+a listener. And he was too old for the men of pleasure of his own age;
+too much a man of pleasure for the men of business; destinied in a word
+to be a good deal alone. Fate awards this lot of solitude to many a man;
+and many like it from taste, as many without difficulty bear it.
+Pendennis, in reality, suffered it very equanimously; but in words, and
+according to his wont, grumbled over it not a little.
+
+"What a nice little artless creature that was," Mr. Pen thought at the
+very instant of waking after the Vauxhall affair; "what a pretty natural
+manner she has; how much pleasanter than the minauderies of the young
+ladies in the ballrooms" (and here he recalled to himself some instances
+of what he could not help seeing was the artful simplicity of Miss
+Blanche, and some of the stupid graces of other young ladies in the
+polite world); "who could have thought that such a pretty rose could grow
+in a porter's lodge, or bloom in that dismal old flower-pot of a
+Shepherd's Inn? So she learns to sing from old Bows? If her singing voice
+is as sweet as her speaking voice, it must be pretty. I like those low
+voilees voices. 'What would you like me to call you?' indeed, poor little
+Fanny! It went to my heart to adopt the grand air with her and tell her
+to call me, 'Sir.' But we'll have no nonsense of that sort--no Faust and
+Margaret business for me. That old Bows! So he teaches her to sing, does
+he? He's a dear old fellow, old Bows: a gentleman in those old clothes: a
+philosopher, and with a kind heart, too. How good he was to me in the
+Fotheringay business. He, too, has had his griefs and his sorrows. I must
+cultivate old Bows. A man ought to see people of all sorts. I am getting
+tired of genteel society. Besides, there's nobody in town. Yes, I'll go
+and see Bows, and Costigan too; what a rich character! begad, I'll study
+him, and put him into a book." In this way our young anthropologist
+talked with himself, and as Saturday was the holiday of the week, the
+Pall Mall Gazette making its appearance upon that day, and the
+contributors to that journal having no further calls upon their brains or
+ink-bottles, Mr. Pendennis determined he would take advantage of his
+leisure, and pay a visit to Shepherd's Inn--of course to see old Bows.
+
+The truth is, that if Arthur had been the most determined roue and artful
+Lovelace who ever set about deceiving a young girl, he could hardly have
+adopted better means for fascinating and overcoming poor little Fanny
+Bolton than those which he had employed on the previous night. His
+dandified protecting air, his conceit, generosity, and good-humour, the
+very sense of good and honesty which had enabled him to check the
+tremulous advances of the young creature, and not to take advantage of
+that little fluttering sensibility,--his faults and his virtues at once
+contributed to make her admire him; and if we could peep into Fanny's bed
+(which she shared in a cupboard, along with those two little sisters to
+whom we have seen Mr. Costigan administering gingerbread and apples), we
+should find the poor little maid tossing upon her mattress, to the great
+disturbance of its other two occupants, and thinking over all the
+delights and events of that delightful, eventful night, and all the
+words, looks, and actions of Arthur, its splendid hero. Many novels had
+Fanny read, in secret and at home, in three volumes and in numbers.
+Periodical literature had not reached the height which it has attained
+subsequently, and the girls of Fanny's generation were not enabled to
+purchase sixteen pages of excitement for a penny, rich with histories of
+crime, murder, oppressed virtue, and the heartless seductions of the
+aristocracy; but she had had the benefit of the circulating library
+which, in conjunction with her school and a small brandy-ball and
+millinery business, Miss Minifer kept,--and Arthur appeared to her at
+once as the type and realisation of all the heroes of all those darling
+greasy volumes which the young girl had devoured. Mr. Pen, we have seen,
+was rather a dandy about shirts and haberdashery in general. Fanny had
+looked with delight at the fineness of his linen, at the brilliancy of
+his shirt-studs, at his elegant cambric pocket-handkerchief and white
+gloves, and at the jetty brightness of his charming boots. The Prince had
+appeared and subjugated the poor little handmaid. His image traversed
+constantly her restless slumbers; the tone of his voice, the blue light
+of his eyes, the generous look, half love, half pity,--the manly
+protecting smile, the frank, winning laughter,--all these were repeated
+in the girl's fond memory. She felt still his arm encircling her, and saw
+him smiling so grand as he filled up that delicious glass of champagne.
+And then she thought of the girls, her friends, who used to sneer at her
+--of Emma Baker, who was so proud, forsooth, because she was engaged to a
+cheesemonger, in a white apron, near Clare Market; and of Betsy Rodgers,
+who make such a to-do about her young man--an attorney's clerk, indeed,
+that went about with a bag!
+
+So that, at about two o'clock in the afternoon--the Bolton family having
+concluded their dinner (and Mr. B., who besides his place of porter of
+the Inn, was in the employ of Messrs. Tressler, the eminent undertakers
+of the Strand, being absent in the country with the Countess of Estrich's
+hearse), when a gentleman in a white hat and white trousers made his
+appearance under the Inn archway, and stopped at the porter's wicket,
+Fanny was not in the least surprised, only delightful, only happy, and
+blushing beyond all measure. She knew it could be no other than He. She
+knew He'd come. There he was; there was His Royal Highness beaming upon
+her from the gate. She called to her mother, who was busy in the upper
+apartment, "Mamma, mamma," and ran to the wicket at once, and opened it,
+pushing aside the other children. How she blushed as she gave her hand to
+him! How affably he took off his white hat as he came in; the children
+staring up at him! He asked Mrs. Bolton if she had slept well, after the
+fatigues of the night, and hoped she had no headache; and he said that as
+he was going that way, he could not pass the door without asking news of
+his little partner.
+
+Mrs. Bolton was perhaps rather shy and suspicious about these advances;
+but Mr. Pen's good-humour was inexhaustible, he could not see that he was
+unwelcome. He looked about the premises for a seat, and none being
+disengaged, for a dish-cover was on one, a workbox on the other, and so
+forth, he took one of the children's chairs, and perched himself upon
+that uncomfortable eminence. At this, the children began laughing, the
+child Fanny louder than all--at least, she was more amused than any of
+them, and amazed at His Royal Highness's condescension. He to sit down in
+that chair--that little child's chair!--Many and many a time after, she
+regarded it: haven't we almost all, such furniture in our rooms, that our
+fancy peoples with dear figures, that our memory fills with sweet smiling
+faces, which may never look on us more?
+
+So Pen sate down and talked away with great volubility to Mrs. Bolton. He
+asked about the undertaking business, and how many mutes went down with
+Lady Estrich's remains; and about the Inn, and who lived there. He seemed
+very much interested about Mr. Campion's cab and horse, and had met that
+gentleman in society. He thought he should like shares in the Polwheedle
+and Tredyddlum; did Mrs. Bolton do for those chambers? Were there any
+chambers to let in the Inn? It was better than the Temple: he should like
+to come to live in Shepherd's Inn. As for Captain Strong, and--Colonel
+Altamont--was his name? he was deeply interested in them too. The Captain
+was an old friend at home. He had dined with him at chambers here, before
+the Colonel came to live with him. What sort of man was the Colonel?
+Wasn't he a stout man, with a large quantity of jewellery, and a wig and
+large black whiskers--very black (here Pen was immensely waggish, and
+caused hysteric giggles of delight from the ladies)--very black indeed;
+in fact, blue black; that is to say, a rich greenish purple? That was the
+man; he had met him, too, at Sir Fr---- in Society.
+
+"Oh, we know," said the ladies, "Sir F---- is Sir F. Clavering he's
+often here: two or three times a week with the Captain. My little boy has
+been out for bill-stamps for him. O Lor! I beg pardon, I shouldn't have
+mentioned no secrets," Mrs. Bolton blurted out, being talked perfectly
+into good-nature by this time. "But we know you to be a gentleman, Mr.
+Pendennis, for I'm sure you have shown that you can beayve as such.
+Hasn't Mr. Pendennis, Fanny?"
+
+Fanny loved her mother for that speech. She cast up her dark eyes to the
+low ceiling and said, "Oh, that he has, I'm sure, Ma," with a voice full
+of feeling.
+
+Pen was rather curious about the bill-stamps, and concerning the
+transactions in Strong's chambers. And he asked, when Altamont came and
+joined the Chevalier, whether he too was out for bill-stamps, who he was,
+whether he saw many people, and so forth. These questions, put with
+considerable adroitness by Pen who was interested about Sir Francis
+Clavering's doings from private motives of his own, were artlessly
+answered by Mrs. Bolton, and to the utmost of her knowledge and ability,
+which, in truth, were not very great.
+
+These questions answered, and Pen being at a loss for more, luckily
+recollected his privilege as a member of the Press, and asked the ladies
+whether they would like any orders for the play? The play was their
+delight, as it is almost always the delight of every theatrical person.
+When Bolton was away professionally (it appeared that of late the porter
+of Shepherd's Inn had taken a serious turn, drank a good deal, and
+otherwise made himself unpleasant to the ladies of his family), they
+would like of all things to slip out and go to the theatre--little
+Barney, their son, keeping the lodge; and Mr. Pendennis's most generous
+and most genteel compliment of orders was received with boundless
+gratitude by both mother and daughter.
+
+Fanny clapped her hands with pleasure: her faced beamed with it. She
+looked and nodded, and laughed at har mamma, who nodded and laughed in
+her turn. Mrs. Bolton was not superannuated for pleasure yet, or by any
+means too old for admiration, she thought. And very likely Mr. Pendennis,
+in his conversation with her, had insinuated some compliments, or shaped
+his talk so as to please her. At first against Pen, and suspicious of
+him, she was his partisan now, and almost as enthusiastic about him as
+her daughter. When two women get together to like a man, they help each
+other on--each pushes the other forward--and the second, out of sheer
+sympathy, becomes as eager as the principal:--at least, so it is said by
+philosophers who have examined this science.
+
+So the offer of the play-tickets, and other pleasantries; put all parties
+into perfect good-humour, except for one brief moment, when one of the
+younger children, hearing the name of 'Astley's' pronounced, came forward
+and stated that she should like very much to go, too; on which, Fanny
+said, "Don't bother!" rather sharply; and Mamma said, "Git-long,
+Betsy-Jane, do now, and play in the court:" so that the two little ones,
+namely, Betsy-Jane and Ameliar--Ann, went away in their little innocent
+pinafores, and disported in the courtyard on the smooth gravel, round
+about the statue of Shepherd the Great.
+
+And here, as they were playing, they very possibly communicated with an
+old friend of theirs and dweller in the Inn; for while Pen was making
+himself agreeable to the ladies at the lodge, who were laughing delighted
+at his sallies, an old gentleman passed under the archway from the
+Inn-square, and came and looked in at the door of the lodge.
+
+He made a very blank and rueful face when he saw Mr. Arthur seated upon a
+table, like Macheath in the play, in easy discourse with Mrs. Bolton and
+her daughter.
+
+"What! Mr. Bows? How d'you do, Bows?" cried out Pen, in a cheery, loud
+voice. "I was coming to see you, and was asking your address of these
+ladies."
+
+"You were coming to see me, were you, sir?" Bows said, and came in with a
+sad face, and shook hands with Arthur. "Plague on that old man!" somebody
+thought in the room: and so, perhaps, some one else besides her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+In Shepherd's Inn
+
+
+Our friend Pen said "How d'ye do, Mr. Bows," in a loud cheery voice on
+perceiving that gentleman, and saluted him in a dashing off-hand manner,
+yet you could have seen a blush upon Arthur's face (answered by Fanny,
+whose cheek straightway threw out a similar fluttering red signal); and
+after Bows and Arthur had shaken hands, and the former had ironically
+accepted the other's assertion that he was about to pay Mr. Costigan's
+chambers a visit, there was a gloomy and rather guilty silence in the
+company, which Pen presently tried to dispel by making a great rattling
+noise. The silence of course departed at Mr. Arthur's noise, but the
+gloom remained and deepened, as the darkness does in a vault if you light
+up a single taper in it. Pendennis tried to describe, in a jocular
+manner, the transactions of the previous night, and attempted to give an
+imitation of Costigan vainly expostulating with the check-taker at
+Vauxhall. It was not a good imitation. What stranger can imitate that
+perfection? Nobody laughed. Mrs. Bolton did not in the least understand
+what part Mr. Pendennis was performing, and whether it was the
+check-taker or the Captain he was taking off. Fanny wore an alarmed face,
+and tried a timid giggle; old Mr. Bows looked as glum as when he fiddled
+in the orchestra, or played a difficult piece upon the old piano at the
+Back Kitchen. Pen felt that his story was a failure; his voice sank and
+dwindled away dismally at the end of it--flickered, and went out; and it
+was all dark again. You could hear the ticket-porter, who lolls about
+Shepherd's Inn, as he passed on the flags under the archway: the clink of
+his boot-heels was noted by everybody.
+
+"You were coming to see me, sir," Mr. Bows said. "Won't you have the
+kindness to walk up to my chambers with me? You do them a great honour, I
+am sure. They are rather high up; but----"
+
+"Oh! I live in a garret myself, and Shepherd's Inn is twice as cheerful
+as Lamb Court," Mr. Pendennis broke in.
+
+"I knew that you had third-floor apartments," Mr. Bows said; "and was
+going to say--you will please not take my remark as discourteous--that
+the air up three pair of stairs is wholesomer for gentlemen, than the air
+of a porter's lodge."
+
+"Sir!" said Pen, whose candle flamed up again in his wrath, and who was
+disposed to be as quarrelsome as men are when they are in the wrong.
+"Will you permit me to choose my society without----?
+
+"You were so polite as to say that you were about to honour my umble
+domicile with a visit," Mr. Bows said, with his sad voice. "Shall I show
+you the way? Mr. Pendennis and I are old friends, Mrs. Bolton--very old
+acquaintances; and at the earliest dawn of his life we crossed each
+other."
+
+The old man pointed towards the door with a trembling finger, and a hat
+in the other hand, and in an attitude slightly theatrical; so were his
+words when he spoke somewhat artificial, and chosen from the vocabulary
+which he had heard all his life from the painted lips of the orators
+before the stage-lamps. But he was not acting or masquerading, as Pen
+knew very well, though he was disposed to pooh-pooh the old fellow's
+melodramatic airs. "Come along, sir," he said, "as you are so very
+pressing. Mrs. Bolton, I wish you a good day. Good-bye, Miss Fanny; I
+shall always think of our night at Vauxhall with pleasure; and be sure I
+will remember the theatre tickets." And he took her hand, pressed it, was
+pressed by it, and was gone.
+
+"What a nice young man, to be sure!" cried Mrs. Bolton.
+
+"D'you think so, ma?" said Fanny.
+
+"I was a-thinkin who he was like. When I was at the Wells with Mrs.
+Serle," Mrs. Bolton continued, looking through the window-curtain after
+Pen, as he went up the court with Bows, "there was a young gentleman from
+the city, that used to come in a tilbry, in a white at, the very image of
+him, only his whiskers was black, and Mr. P.'s is red."
+
+"Law, ma! they are a most beautiful hawburn," Fanny said.
+
+"He used to come for Emly Budd, who danced Columbine in 'Arleykin
+Ornpipe, or the Battle of Navarino,' when Miss De la Bosky was took ill--
+a pretty dancer, and a fine stage figure of a woman--and he was a great
+sugar-baker in the city, with a country ouse at Omerton; and he used to
+drive her in the tilbry down Goswell Street Road; and one day they drove
+and was married at St. Bartholomew's Church, Smithfield, where they ad
+their bands read quite private; and she now keeps her carriage, and I sor
+her name in the paper as patroness of the Manshing-House Ball for the
+Washywomen's Asylum. And look at Lady Mirabel--capting Costigan's
+daughter--she was profeshnl, as all very well know." Thus, and more to
+this purpose, Mrs. Bolton spoke, now peeping through the window-curtain,
+now cleaning the mugs and plates, and consigning them to their place in
+the corner cupboard; and finishing her speech as she and Fanny shook out
+and folded up the dinner-cloth between them, and restored it to its
+drawer in the table.
+
+Although Costigan had once before been made pretty accurately to
+understand what Pen's pecuniary means and expectations were, I suppose
+Cos had forgotten the information acquired at Chatteris years ago, or had
+been induced by his natural enthusiasm to exaggerate his friend's income.
+He had described Fairoaks Park in the most glowing terms to Mrs. Bolton,
+on the preceding evening, as he was walking about with her during Pen's
+little escapade with Fanny, had dilated upon the enormous wealth of Pen's
+famous uncle, the Major, and shown an intimate acquaintance with Arthur's
+funded and landed property. Very likely Mrs. Bolton, in her wisdom, had
+speculated upon these matters during the night; and had had visions of
+Fanny driving in her carriage, like Mrs. Bolton's old comrade, the dancer
+of Sadler's Wells.
+
+In the last operation of table-cloth folding, these two foolish women, of
+necessity, came close together; and as Fanny took the cloth and gave it
+the last fold, her mother put her finger under the young girl's chin, and
+kissed her. Again the red signal flew out, and fluttered on Fanny's
+cheek. What did it mean? It was not alarm this time. It was pleasure
+which caused the poor little Fanny to blush so. Poor little Fanny! What?
+is love sin? that it is so pleasant at the beginning, and so bitter at
+the end?
+
+After the embrace, Mrs. Bolton thought proper to say that she was a-goin
+out upon business, and that Fanny must keep the lodge; which Fanny, after
+a very faint objection indeed, consented to do. So Mrs. Bolton took her
+bonnet and market-basket, and departed; and the instant she was gone,
+Fanny went and sae by the window which commanded Bows's door, and never
+once took her eyes away from that quarter of Shepherd's Inn.
+
+Betsy-Jane and Ameliar-Ann were buzzing in one corner of the place, and
+making believe to read out of a picture-book, which one of them held
+topsy-turvy. It was a grave and dreadful tract, of Mr. Bolton's
+collection. Fanny did not hear her sisters prattling over it. She noticed
+nothing but Bows's door.
+
+At last she gave a little shake, and her eyes lighted up. He had come
+out. He would pass the door again. But her poor little countenance fell
+in an instant more. Pendennis, indeed, came out; but Bows followed after
+him. They passed under the archway together. He only took off his hat,
+and bowed as he looked in. He did not stop to speak.
+
+In three or four minutes--Fanny did not know how long, but she looked
+furiously at him when he came into the lodge--Bows returned alone, and
+entered into the porter's room.
+
+"Where's your Ma, dear?" he said to Fanny.
+
+"I don't know," Fanny said, with an angry toss. "I don't follow Ma's
+steps wherever she goes, I suppose, Mr. Bows."
+
+"Am I my mother's keeper?" Bows said, with his usual melancholy
+bitterness. "Come here, Betsy-Jane and Amelia-Ann; I've brought a cake
+for the one who can read her letters best, and a cake for the other who
+can read them the next best."
+
+When the young ladies had undergone the examination through which Bows
+put them, they were rewarded with their gingerbread medals, and went off
+to discuss them in the court. Meanwhile Fanny took out some work, and
+pretended to busy herself with it, her mind being in great excitement and
+anger, as she plied her needle. Bows sate so that he could command the
+entrance from the lodge to the street. But the person whom, perhaps, he
+expected to see, never made his appearance again. And Mrs. Bolton came in
+from market, and found Mr. Bows in place of the person whom she had
+expected to see. The reader perhaps can guess what was his name?
+
+The interview between Bows and his guest, when those two mounted to the
+apartment occupied by the former in common with the descendant of the
+Milesian kings, was not particularly satisfactory to either party. Pen
+was sulky. If Bows had anything on his mind, he did not care to deliver
+himself of his thoughts in the presence of Captain Costigan, who remained
+in the apartment during the whole of Pen's visit; having quitted his
+bedchamber, indeed, but a very few minutes before the arrival of that
+gentleman. We have witnessed the deshahille of Major Pendennis: will any
+man wish to be valet-de-chambre to our other hero, Costigan? It would
+seem that the Captain, before issuing from his bedroom, scented himself
+with otto-of-whisky. A rich odour of that delicious perfume breathed from
+out him, as he held out the grasp of cordiality to his visitor. The hand
+which performed that grasp shook wofully: it was a wonder how it could
+hold the razor with which the poor gentleman daily operated on his chin.
+
+Bows's room was as neat, on the other hand, as his comrade's was
+disorderly. His humble wardrobe hung behind a curtain. His books and
+manuscript music were trimly arranged upon shelves. A lithographed
+portrait of Miss Fotheringay, as Mrs. Haller, with the actress's
+sprawling signature at the corner, hung faithfully over the old
+gentleman's bed. Lady Mirabel wrote much better than Miss Fotheringay had
+been able to do. Her Ladyship had laboured assiduously to acquire the art
+of penmanship since her marriage; and, in a common note of invitation or
+acceptance, acquitted herself very genteelly. Bows loved the old
+handwriting best, though; the fair artist's earlier manner. He had but
+one specimen of the new style, a note in reply to a song composed and
+dedicated to Lady Mirabel, by her most humble servant Robert Bows; and
+which document was treasured in his desk amongst his other state papers.
+He was teaching Fanny Bolton now to sing and to write, as he had taught
+Emily in former days. It was the nature of the man to attach himself to
+something. When Emily was torn from him he took a substitute: as a man
+looks out for a crutch when he loses a leg; or lashes himself to a raft
+when he has suffered shipwreck. Latude had given his heart to a woman, no
+doubt, before he grew to be so fond of a mouse in the Bastille. There are
+people who in their youth have felt and inspired an heroic passion, and
+end by being happy in the caresses, or agitated by the illness of a
+poodle. But it was hard upon Bows, and grating to his feelings as a man
+and a sentimentalist, that he should find Pen again upon his track, and
+in pursuit of this little Fanny.
+
+Meanwhile, Costigan had not the least idea but that his company was
+perfectly welcome to Messrs. Pendennis and Bows, and that the visit of
+the former was intended for himself. He expressed himself greatly pleased
+with that mark of poloightness and promised, in his own mind, that he
+would repay that obligation at least--which was not the only debt which
+the Captain owed in life--by several visits to his young friend. He
+entertained him affably with news of the day, or rather of ten days
+previous; for Pen, in his quality of Journalist, remembered to have seen
+some of the Captain's opinions in the Sporting and Theatrical Newspaper,
+which was Costigan's oracle. He stated that Sir Charles and Lady Mirabel
+were gone to Baden-Baden, and were most pressing in their invitations
+that he should join them there. Pen replied with great gravity, that he
+had heard that Baden was very pleasant, and the Grand Duke exceedingly
+hospitable to English. Costigan answered, that the laws of hospitalitee
+bekeam a Grand Juke; that he sariously would think about visiting him;
+and made some remarks upon the splendid festivities at Dublin Castle,
+when his Excellency the Earl of Portansherry held the Viceraygal Coort
+there, and of which he, Costigan, had been a humble but pleased
+spectator. And Pen--as he heard these oft-told well-remembered legends--
+recollected the time when he had given a sort of credence to them, and
+had a certain respect for the Captain. Emily and first love, and the
+little room at Chatteris, and the kind talk with Bows on the bridge, came
+back to him. He felt quite kindly disposed towards his two old friends;
+and cordially shook the hands of both of them when he rose to go away.
+
+He had quite forgotten about little Fanny Bolton whilst the Captain was
+talking, and Pen himself was absorbed in other selfish meditations. He
+only remembered her again as Bows came hobbling down the stairs after
+him, bent evidently upon following him out of Shepherd's Inn.
+
+Mr. Bows's precaution was not a lucky one. The wrath of Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis rose at the poor old fellow's feeble persecution. Confound him,
+what does he mean by dogging me? thought Pen. And he burst out laughing
+when he was in the Strand and by himself, as he thought of the elder's
+stratagem. It was not an honest laugh, Arthur Pendennis. Perhaps the
+thought struck Arthur himself, and he blushed at his own sense of humour.
+
+He went off to endeavour to banish the thoughts which occupied him,
+whatever those thoughts might be, and tried various places of amusement
+with but indifferent success. He struggled up the highest stairs of the
+Panorama; but when he had arrived, panting at the height of the eminence,
+Care had come up with him, and was bearing him company. He went to the
+Club, and wrote a long letter home, exceedingly witty and sarcastic, and
+in which, if he did not say a single word about Vauxhall and Fanny
+Bolton, it was because he thought that subject, however interesting to
+himself, would not be very interesting to his mother and Laura. Nor could
+the novels or the library table fix his attention, nor the grave and
+respectable Jawkins (the only man in town), who wished to engage him in
+conversation; nor any of the amusements which he tried, after flying from
+Jawkins. He passed a Comic Theatre on his way home, and saw 'Stunning
+Farce,' 'Roars of Laughter,' 'Good Old English Fun and Frolic,' placarded
+in vermilion letters on the gate. He went into the pit, and saw the
+lovely Mrs. Leary, as usual, in a man's attire; and that eminent buffo
+actor, Tom Horseman, dressed as a woman. Horseman's travesty seemed to
+him a horrid and hideous degradation; Mrs. Leary's glances and ankles had
+not the least effect. He laughed again, and bitterly, to himself, as he
+thought of the effect which she had produced upon him, on the first night
+of his arrival in London, a short time--what a long long time ago!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+Or near the Temple Garden
+
+
+Fashion has long deserted the green and pretty Temple Garden, which in
+Shakespeare makes York and Lancaster to pluck the innocent white and red
+roses which became the badges of their bloody wars; and the learned and
+pleasant writer of the Handbook of London tells us that "the commonest
+and hardiest kind of rose has long ceased to put forth a bud" in that
+smoky air. Not many of the present occupiers of the buildings round about
+the quarter know or care, very likely, whether or not roses grow there,
+or pass the old gate, except on their way to chambers. The attorneys'
+clerks don't carry flowers in their bags, or posies under their arms, as
+they run to the counsel's chambers--the few lawyers who take
+constitutional walks think very little about York and Lancaster,
+especially since the railroad business is over. Only antiquarians and
+literary amateurs care to look at the gardens with much interest, and
+fancy good Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. Spectator with his short face
+pacing up and down the road; or dear Oliver Goldsmith in the
+summer-house, perhaps meditating about the next 'Citizen of the World,'
+or the new suit that Mr. Filby, the tailor, is fashioning for him, or the
+dunning letter that Mr. Newbery has sent. Treading heavily on the gravel,
+and rolling majestically along in a snuff-coloured suit, and a wig that
+sadly wants the barber's powder and irons, one sees the Great Doctor step
+up to him (his Scotch lackey following at the lexicographer's heels, a
+little the worse for port wine that they have been taking at the Mitre),
+and Mr. Johnson asks Mr. Goldsmith to come home and take a dish of tea
+with Miss Williams. Kind faith of Fancy! Sir Roger and Mr. Spectator are
+as real to us now as the two doctors and the boozy and faithful
+Scotchman. The poetical figures live in our memory just as much as the
+real personages,--and as Mr. Arthur Pendennis was of a romantic and
+literary turn, by no means addicted to the legal pursuits common in the
+neighbourhood of the place, we may presume that he was cherishing some
+such poetical reflections as these, when, upon the evening after the
+events recorded in the last chapter, the young gentleman chose the Temple
+Gardens as a place for exercise and meditation.
+
+On the Sunday evening the Temple is commonly calm. The chambers are for
+the most part vacant: the great lawyers are giving grand dinner-parties
+at their houses in the Belgravian or Tyburnian districts; the agreeable
+young barristers are absent, attending those parties, and paying their
+respects to Mr. Kewsy's excellent claret, or Mr. Justice Ermine's
+accomplished daughters the uninvited are partaking of the economic joint
+and the modest half-pint of wine at the Club, entertaining themselves,
+and the rest of the company in the Club-room, with Circuit jokes and
+points of wit and law. Nobody is in chambers at all, except poor Mr.
+Cockle, who is ill, and whose laundress is making him gruel; or Mr.
+Toodle, who is an amateur of the flute, and whom you may hear piping
+solitary from his chambers in the second floor; or young Tiger, the
+student, from whose open windows comes a great gush of cigar smoke, and
+at whose door are a quantity of dishes and covers, bearing the insignia
+of Dicks' or the Cock. But stop! Whither does Fancy lead us? It is
+vacation time; and with the exception of Pendennis, nobody is in Chambers
+at all.
+
+Perhaps it was solitude, then, which drove Pen into the garden; for
+although he had never before passed the gate, and had looked rather
+carelessly at the pretty flower-beds, and the groups of pleased citizens
+sauntering over the trim lawn and the broad gravel-walks by the river, on
+this evening it happened, as we have said, that the young gentleman, who
+had dined alone at a tavern in the neighbourhood of the Temple, took a
+fancy, as he was returning home to his chambers, to take a little walk in
+the gardens, and enjoy the fresh evening air, and the sight of the
+shining Thames. After walking for a brief space, and looking at the many
+peaceful and happy groups round about him, he grew tired of the exercise,
+and betook himself to one of the summer-houses which flank either end of
+the main walk, and there modestly seated himself. What were his
+cogitations? The evening was delightfully bright and calm; the sky was
+cloudless; the chimneys on the opposite bank were not smoking; the wharfs
+warehouses looked rosy in the sunshine, and as clear as if they, too, had
+washed for the holiday. The steamers rushed rapidly up and down the
+stream, laden with holiday passengers. The bells of the multitudinous
+city churches were ringing to evening prayers--such peaceful Sabbath
+evenings as this Pen may have remembered in his early days, as he paced,
+with his arm round his mother's waist, on the terrace before the lawn at
+home. The sun was lighting up the little Brawl, too, as well as the broad
+Thames, and sinking downwards majestically behind the Clavering elms, and
+the tower of the familiar village church. Was it thoughts of these, or
+the sunset merely, that caused the blush in the young man's face? He beat
+time on the bench, to the chorus of the bells without; flicked the dust
+off his shining boots with his pocket-handkerchief, and starting up,
+stamped with his foot and said, "No, by Jove, I'll go home." And with
+this resolution, which indicated that some struggle as to the propriety
+of remaining where he was, or of quitting the garden, had been going on
+in his mind, he stepped out of the summer-house.
+
+He nearly knocked down two little children, who did not indeed reach much
+higher than his knee, and were trotting along the gravel-walk, with their
+long blue shadows slanting towards the east.
+
+One cried out "Oh!" the other began to laugh; and with a knowing little
+infantile chuckle, said, "Missa Pendennis!" And Arthur, looking down, saw
+his two little friends of the day before, Mesdemoiselles Ameliar-Ann and
+Betsy-Jane. He blushed more than ever at seeing them, and seizing the one
+whom he had nearly upset, jumped her up into the air, and kissed her: at
+which sudden assault Ameliar-Ann began to cry in great alarm.
+
+This cry brought up instantly two ladies in clean collars and new
+ribbons, and grand shawls, namely: Mrs. Bolton in a rich scarlet
+Caledonian Cashmere, and a black silk dress, and Miss F. Bolton with a
+yellow scarf and a sweet sprigged muslin, and a parasol--quite the lady.
+Fanny did not say one single word: though; her eyes flashed a welcome,
+and shone as bright--as bright as the most blazing windows in Paper
+Buildings. But Mrs. Bolton, after admonishing Betsy-Jane, said, "Lor sir
+--how very odd that we should meet you year! I ope you ave your ealth
+well, sir.--Ain't it odd, Fanny, that we should meet Mr. Pendennis?" What
+do you mean by sniggering, Mesdames? When young Croesus has been staying
+at a country-house, have you never, by any singular coincidence, been
+walking with your Fanny in the shrubberies? Have you and your Fanny never
+happened to be listening to the band of the Heavies at Brighton, when
+young De Boots and Captain Padmore came clinking down the Pier? Have you
+and your darling Frances never chanced to be visiting old widow Wheezy at
+the cottage on the common, when the young curate has stepped in with a
+tract adapted to the rheumatism? Do you suppose that, if singular
+coincidences occur at the Hall, they don't also happen at the Lodge?
+
+It was a coincidence, no doubt: that was all. In the course of the
+conversation on the day previous, Mr. Pendennis had merely said, in the
+simplest way imaginable, and in reply to a question of Miss Bolton, that
+although some of the courts were gloomy, parts of the Temple were very
+cheerful and agreeable, especially the chambers looking on the river and
+around the gardens, and that the gardens were a very pleasant walk on
+Sunday evenings and frequented by a great number of people--and here, by
+the merest chance, all our acquaintances met together, just like so many
+people in genteel life. What could be more artless, good-natured, or
+natural?
+
+Pen looked very grave, pompous, and dandified. He was unusually smart and
+brilliant in his costume. His white duck trousers and white hat, his
+neckcloth of many colours, his light waistcoat, gold chains, and
+shirt-studs, gave him the air of a prince of the blood at least. How his
+splendour became his figure! Was anybody ever like him? some one thought.
+He blushed--how his blushes became him! the same individual said to
+herself. The children, on seeing him the day before, had been so struck
+with him, that after he had gone away they had been playing at him. And
+Ameliar-Ann, sticking her little chubby fingers into the arm-holes of her
+pinafore, as Pen was wont to do with his waistcoat, had said, "Now,
+Bessy-Jane, I'll be Missa Pendennis." Fanny had laughed till she cried,
+and smothered her sister with kisses for that feat. How happy, too, she
+was to see Arthur embracing the child!
+
+If Arthur was red, Fanny, on the contrary, was very worn and pale. Arthur
+remarked it, and asked kindly why she looked so fatigued.
+
+"I was awake all night," said Fanny, and began to blush a little.
+
+"I put out her candle, and hordered her to go to sleep and leave off
+readin," interposed the fond mother.
+
+"You were reading! And what was it that interested you so?" asked Pen,
+amused.
+
+"Oh, it's so beautiful!" said Fanny.
+
+"What?"
+
+"'Walter Lorraine,'" Fanny sighed out. "How I do hate that Neaera--
+Neaera--I don't know the pronunciation. And I love Leonora, and Walter,
+oh, how dear he is!"
+
+How had Fanny discovered the novel of 'Walter Lorraine,' and that Pen was
+the author? This little person remembered every single word which Mr.
+Pendennis had spoken on the night previous, and how he wrote in books and
+newspapers. What books? She was so eager to know, that she had almost a
+mind to be civil to old Bows, who was suffering under her displeasure
+since yesterday, but she determined first to make application to
+Costigan. She began by coaxing the Captain and smiling upon him in her
+most winning way, as she helped to arrange his dinner and set his humble
+apartment in order. She was sure his linen wanted mending (and indeed the
+Captain's linen-closet contained some curious specimens of manufactured
+flax and cotton). She would mend his shirts--all his shirts. What horrid
+holes--what funny holes! She put her little face through one of them, and
+laughed at the old warrior in the most winning manner. She would have
+made a funny little picture looking through the holes. Then she daintily
+removed Costigan's dinner things, tripping about the room as she had seen
+the dancers do at the play; and she danced to the Captain's cupboard, and
+produced his whisky-bottle, and mixed him a tumbler, and must taste a
+drop of it--a little drop; and the Captain must sing her one of his
+songs, his dear songs, and teach it to her. And when he had sung an Irish
+melody in his rich quavering voice, fancying it was he who was
+fascinating the little siren, she put her little question about Arthur
+Pendennis and his novel, and having got an answer, cared for nothing
+more, but left the Captain at the piano about to sing her another song,
+and the dinner-tray on the passage, and the shirts on the chair, and ran
+downstairs quickening her pace as she sped.
+
+Captain Costigan, as he said, was not a litherary cyarkter, nor had he as
+yet found time to peruse his young friend's ellygant perfaurumance,
+though he intended to teak an early opporchunitee of purchasing a cawpee
+of his work. But he knew the name of Pen's novel from the fact that
+Messrs. Finucane, Bludyer, and other frequenters of the Back Kitchen,
+spoke of Mr. Pendennis (and not all of them with great friendship; for
+Bludyer called him a confounded coxcomb, and Hoolan wondered that Doolan
+did not kick him etc.) by the sobriquet of Walter Lorraine,--and was
+hence enabled to give Fanny the information which she required.
+
+"And she went and ast for it at the libery," Mrs. Bolton said,--several
+liberies--and some ad it and it was bout, and some adn't it. And one of
+the liberies as ad it wouldn't let er ave it without a sovering: and she
+adn't one, and she came back a-cryin to me--didn't you, Fanny?--and I
+gave her a sovering."
+
+"And, oh, I was in such a fright lest any one should have come to the
+libery and took it while I was away," Fanny said, her cheeks and eyes
+glowing. "And, oh, I do like it so!"
+
+Arthur was touched by this artless sympathy, immensely flattered and
+moved by it. "Do you like it?" he said. "If you will come up to my
+chambers I will--No, I will bring you one--no, I will send you one. Good
+night. Thank you, Fanny. God bless you. I mustn't stay with you.
+Good-bye, good-bye." And, pressing her hand once, and nodding to her
+mother and the other children, he strode out of the gardens.
+
+He quickened his pace as he went from them, and ran out of the gate
+talking to himself. "Dear, dear little thing," he said,--"darling little
+Fanny! You are worth them all. I wish to heaven Shandon was back. I'd go
+home to my mother. I mustn't see her. I won't. I won't, so help me----"
+
+As he was talking thus, and running, the passers-by turning to look at
+him, he ran against a little old man, and perceived it was Mr. Bows.
+
+"Your very umble servant, sir," said Mr. Bows, making a sarcastic bow,
+and lifting his old hat from his forehead.
+
+"I wish you a good day," Arthur answered sulkily. "Don't let me detain
+you, or give you the trouble to follow me again. I am in a hurry, sir.
+Good evening."
+
+Bows thought Pen had some reason for hurrying to his rooms. "Where are
+they?" exclaimed the old gentleman. "You know whom I mean. They're not in
+your rooms, sir, are they? They told Bolton they were going to church at
+the Temple, they weren't there. They are in your chambers: they mustn't
+stay in your chambers, Mr. Pendennis."
+
+"Damn it, sir!" cried out Pendennis, fiercely. "Come and see if they are
+in my chambers: here's the court and the door--come in and see." And
+Bows, taking off his hat and bowing first, followed the young man.
+
+They were not in Pen's chambers, as we know. But when the gardens were
+closed, the two women, who had r had but a melancholy evening's
+amusement, walked away sadly with the children, and they entered into
+Lamb Court, and stood under the lamp-post which cheerfully ornaments the
+centre of that quadrangle, and looked up to the third floor of the house
+where Pendennis's chambers were, and where they saw a light presently
+kindled. Then this couple of fools went away, the children dragging
+wearily after them, and returned to Mr. Bolton, who was immersed in
+rum-and-water at his lodge in Shepherd's Inn.
+
+Mr. Bows looked round the blank room which the young man occupied, and
+which had received but very few ornaments or additions since the last
+time we saw them. Warrington's old bookcase and battered library, Pen's
+writing-table with its litter of papers, presented an aspect cheerless
+enough. "Will you like to look in the bedrooms, Mr. Bows, and see if my
+victims are there?" he said bitterly; "or whether I have made away with
+the little girls, and hid them in the coal-hole?"
+
+"Your word is sufficient, Mr. Pendennis," the other said in his sad tone.
+"You say they are not here, and I know they are not. And I hope they
+never have been here, and never will come."
+
+"Upon my word, sir, you are very good, to choose my acquaintances for
+me," Arthur said, in a haughty tone; "and to suppose that anybody would
+be the worse for my society. I remember you, and owe you kindness from
+old times, Mr. Bows; or I should speak more angrily than I do, about a
+very intolerable sort of persecution to which you seem inclined to
+subject me. You followed me out of your Inn yesterday, as if you wanted
+to watch that I shouldn't steal something." Here Pen stammered and turned
+red, directly he had said the words; he felt he had given the other an
+opening, which Bows instantly took.
+
+"I do think you came to steal something, as you say the words, sir," Bows
+said. "Do you mean to say that you came to pay a visit to poor old Bows,
+the fiddler; or to Mrs. Bolton, at the porter's lodge? O fie! Such a fine
+gentleman as Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, doesn't condescend to walk up to
+my garret, or to sit in a laundress's kitchen, but for reasons of his
+own. And my belief is that you came to steal a pretty girl's heart away,
+and to ruin it, and to spurn it afterwards, Mr. Arthur Pendennis. That's
+what the world makes of you young dandies, you gentlemen of fashion, you
+high and mighty aristocrats that trample upon the people. It's sport to
+you, but what is it to the poor, think you; the toys of your pleasures,
+whom you play with and whom you fling into the streets when you are
+tired? I know your order, sir. I know your selfishness, and your
+arrogance, and your pride. What does it matter to my lord, that the poor
+man's daughter is made miserable, and her family brought to shame? You
+must have your pleasures, and the people of course must pay for them.
+What are we made for, but for that? It's the way with you all--the way
+with you all, sir."
+
+Bows was speaking beside the question, and Pen had his advantage here,
+which he was not sorry to take--not sorry to put off the debate from the
+point upon which his adversary had first engaged it. Arthur broke out
+with a sort of laugh, for which he asked Bows's pardon. "Yes, I am an
+aristocrat," he said, "in a palace up three pair of stairs, with a carpet
+nearly as handsome as yours, Mr. Bows. My life is passed in grinding the
+people, is it?--in ruining virgins and robbing the poor? My good sir,
+this is very well in a comedy, where Job Thornberry slaps his breast, and
+asks my Lord how dare he trample on an honest man and poke out an
+Englishman's fireside; but in real life, Mr. Bows, to a man who has to
+work for his bread as much as you do--how can you talk about aristocrats
+tyrannising over the people? Have I ever done you a wrong? or assumed
+airs of superiority over you? Did you not have an early regard for me--in
+days when we were both of us romantic young fellows, Mr. Bows? Come,
+don't be angry with me now, and let us be as good friends as we were
+before."
+
+"Those days were very different," Mr. Bows answered; "and Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis was an honest, impetuous young fellow then; rather selfish and
+conceited, perhaps, but honest. He liked you then, because you were ready
+to ruin yourself for a woman."
+
+"And now, sir?" Arthur asked.
+
+"And now times are changed, and you want a woman to ruin herself for
+you," Bows answered. "I know this child, sir. I've always said this lot
+was hanging over her. She has heated her little brain with novels, until
+her whole thoughts are about love and lovers, and she scarcely sees that
+she treads on a kitchen floor. I have taught the little thing. She is
+full of many talents and winning ways, I grant you. I am fond of the
+girl, sir. I'm a lonely old man; I lead a life that I don't like, among
+boon companions, who make me melancholy. I have but this child that I
+care for. Have pity upon me, and don't take her away from me, Mr.
+Pendennis--don't take her away."
+
+The old man's voice broke as he spoke. Its accents touched Pen, much more
+than the menacing or sarcastic tone which Bows had commenced by adopting.
+
+"Indeed," said he, kindly, "you do me a wrong if you fancy I intend one
+to poor little Fanny. I never saw her till Friday night. It was the
+merest chance that our friend Costigan threw her into my way. I have no
+intentions regarding her--that is----"
+
+"That is, you know very well that she is a foolish girl, and her mother a
+foolish woman,--that is, you meet her in the Temple Gardens, and of
+course without previous concert,--that is, that when I found her
+yesterday reading the book you've wrote, she scorned me," Bows said.
+"What am I good for but to be laughed at? a deformed old fellow like me;
+an old fiddler, that wears a threadbare coat, and gets his bread by
+playing tunes at an ale-house? You are a fine gentleman, you are. You
+wear scent in your handkerchief, and a ring on your finger. You go to
+dine with great people. Who ever gives a crust to old Bows? And yet I
+might have been as good a man as the best of you. I might have been a
+man of genius, if I had had the chance; ay, and have lived with the
+master-spirits of the land. But everything hads ailed with me. I'd
+ambition once, and wrote plays, poems, music--nobody would give me a
+hearing. I never loved a woman, but she laughed at me; and here I am in
+my old age alone--alone! Don't take this girl from me, Mr. Pendennis, I
+say again. Leave her with me a little longer. She was like a child to me
+till yesterday. Why did you step in, and made her to mock my deformity
+and old age?"
+
+"I am guiltless of that, at least," Arthur said, with something of a
+sigh. "Upon my word of honour, I wish I had never seen the girl. My
+calling is not seduction, Mr. Bows. I did not imagine that I had made an
+impression on poor Fanny, until--until to-night. And then, sir, I was
+sorry, and was flying from my temptation, as you came upon me. And," he
+added, with a glow upon his cheek, which, in the gathering darkness, his
+companion could not see, and with an audible tremor in his voice, "I do
+not mind telling you, sir, that on this Sabbath evening, as the church
+bells were ringing, I thought of my own home, and of women angelically
+pure and good, who dwell there; and I was running hither as I met you,
+that I might avoid the danger which beset me, and ask strength of God
+Almighty to do my duty."
+
+After these words from Arthur a silence ensued, and when the conversation
+was resumed by his guest, the latter spoke in a tone which was much more
+gentle and friendly. And on taking farewell of Pen, Bows asked leave to
+shake hands with him, and with a very warm and affectionate greeting on
+both sides, apologised to Arthur for having mistaken him, and paid him
+some compliments which caused the young man to squeeze his old friend's
+hand heartily again. And as they parted at Pen's door, Arthur said he had
+given a promise, and he hoped and trusted that Mr. Bows might rely on it?
+
+"Amen to that prayer," said Mr. Bows, and went slowly down the stair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+The happy Village again
+
+
+Early in this history, we have had occasion to speak of the little town
+of Clavering, near which Pen's paternal home of Fairoaks stood, and of
+some of the people who inhabite the place; and as the society there was
+by no means amusing or pleasant, our reports concerning it were not
+carried to any very great length. Mr. Samuel Huxter, the gentleman whose
+acquaintance we lately made at Vauxhall, was one of the choice spirits of
+the little town, when he visited it during his vacation, and enlivened
+the tables of his friends there, by the wit of Bartholomew's and the
+gossip of the fashionable London circles which he frequented.
+
+Mr. Hobnell, the young gentleman whom Pen had thrashed in consequence of
+the quarrel in the Fotheringay affair, was, whilst a pupil at the Grammar
+School at Clavering, made very welcome at the tea-table of Mrs. Huxter,
+Samuel's mother, and was free of the surgery, where he knew the way to
+the tamarind-pots, and could scent his pocket-handkerchief with
+rose-water. And it was at this period of his life that he formed an
+attachment for Miss Sophy Huxter, whom, on his father's demise, he
+married, and took home to his house of the Warren, at a few miles from
+Clavering.
+
+The family had possessed and cultivated an estate there for many years,
+as yeomen and farmers. Mr. Hobnell's father pulled down the old
+farmhouse; built a flaring new whitewashed mansion, with capacious
+stables; and a piano in the drawing-room; kept a pack of harriers; and
+assumed the title of Squire Hobnell. When he died, and his son reigned in
+his stead, the family might be fairly considered to be established as
+county gentry. And Sam Huxter, at London, did no great wrong in boasting
+about his brother-in-law's place, his hounds, horses, and hospitality, to
+his admiring comrades at Bartholomew's. Every year, at a time commonly
+when Mrs. Hobnell could not leave the increasing duties of her nursery,
+Hobnell came up to London for a lark, had rooms at the Tavistock, and he
+and Sam indulged in the pleasures of the town together. Ascot, the
+theatres, Vauxhall, and the convivial taverns in the joyous neighbourhood
+of Covent Garden, were visited by the vivacious squire, in company with
+his learned brother. When he was in London, as he said, he liked to do as
+London does, and to "go it a bit," and when he returned to the west, he
+took a new bonnet and shawl to Mrs. Hobnell, and relinquished, for
+country sports and occupations during the next eleven months, the elegant
+amusements of London life.
+
+Sam Huxter kept up a correspondence with his relative, and supplied him
+with choice news of the metropolis, in return for the baskets of hares,
+partridges, and clouted cream which the squire and his good-natured wife
+forwarded to Sam. A youth more brilliant and distinguished they did not
+know. He was the life and soul of their house, when he made his
+appearance in his native place. His songs, jokes, and fun kept the
+Warren in a roar. He had saved their eldest darling's life, by taking a
+fish-bone out of her throat: in fine, he was the delight of their circle.
+
+As ill-luck would have it, Pen again fell in with Mr. Huxter, only three
+days after the rencontre at Vauxhall. Faithful to his vow, he had not
+been to see little Fanny. He was trying to drive her from his mind by
+occupation, or other mental excitement. He laboured, though not to much
+profit, incessantly in his rooms; and, in his capacity of critic for the
+Pall Mall Gazette, made woful and savage onslaught on a poem and a
+romance which came before him for judgment. These authors slain, he went
+to dine alone at the lonely club of the Polyanthus, where the vast
+solitudes frightened him, and made him only the more moody. He had been
+to more theatres for relaxation. The whole house was roaring with
+laughter and applause, and he saw only an ignoble farce that made him
+sad. It would have damped the spirits of the buffoon on the stage to have
+seen Pen's dismal face. He hardly knew what was happening; the scene and
+the drama passed before him like a dream or a fever. Then he thought he
+would go to the Back Kitchen, his old haunt with Warrington--he was not a
+bit sleepy yet. The day before he had walked twenty miles in search after
+rest, over Hampstead Common and Hendon lanes, and had got no sleep at
+night. He would go to the Back Kitchen. It was a sort of comfort to him
+to think he should see Bows. Bows was there, very calm, presiding at the
+old piano. Some tremendous comic songs were sung, which made the room
+crack with laughter. How strange they seemed to Pen! He could only see
+Bows. In an extinct volcano, such as he boasted that his breast was, it
+was wonderful how he should feel such a flame! Two days' indulgence had
+kindled it; two days' abstinence had set it burning in fury. So, musing
+upon this, and drinking down one glass after another, as ill luck would
+have it, Arthur's eyes lighted upon Mr. Huxter, who had been to the
+theatre, like himself, and, with two or three comrades, now entered the
+room. Huxter whispered to his companions, greatly to Pen's annoyance.
+Arthur felt that the other was talking about him. Huxter then worked
+through the room, followed by his friends, and came and took a place
+opposite Pen, nodding familiarly to him, and holding him out a dirty hand
+to shake.
+
+Pen shook hands with his fellow-townsman. He thought he had been
+needlessly savage to him on the last night when they had met. As for
+Huxter, perfectly at good-humour with himself, and the world, it never
+entered his mind that he could be disagreeable to anybody; and the little
+dispute, or "chaff," as he styled it, of Vauxhall, was a trifle which he
+did not in the least regard.
+
+The disciple of Galen having called for "four stouts," with which he and
+his party refreshed themselves, began to think what would be the most
+amusing topic of conversation with Pen, and hit upon that precise one
+which was most painful to our young gentleman.
+
+"Jolly night at Vauxhall--wasn't it?" he said, and winked in a very
+knowing way.
+
+"I'm glad you liked it," poor Pen said, groaning in spirit.
+
+"I was dev'lish cut--uncommon--been dining with some chaps at Greenwich.
+That was a pretty bit of muslin hanging on your arm--who was she?" asked
+the fascinating student.
+
+The question was too much for Arthur. "Have I asked you any questions
+about yourself, Mr. Huxter?" he said.
+
+"I didn't mean any offence--beg pardon--hang it, you cut up quite
+savage," said Pen's astonished interlocutor.
+
+"Do you remember what took place between us the other night?" Pen asked,
+with gathering wrath. "You forget? Very probably. You were tipsy, as you
+observed just now, and very rude."
+
+"Hang it, sir, I asked your pardon," Huxter said, looking red.
+
+"You did certainly, and it was granted with all my heart. I am sure. But
+if you recollect, I begged that you would have the goodness to omit me
+from the list of your acquaintance for the future; and when we met in
+public, that you would not take the trouble to recognise me. Will you
+please to remember this, hereafter? and as the song is beginning, permit
+me to leave you to the unrestrained enjoyment of the music."
+
+He took his hat, and making a bow to the amazed Mr. Huxter left the
+table, as Huxter's comrades, after a pause of wonder, set up such a roar
+of laughter at Huxter, as called for the intervention of the president of
+the room; who bawled out, "Silence, gentlemen; do have silence for the
+Body Snatcher!" which popular song began as Pen left the Back Kitchen. He
+flattered himself that he had commanded his temper perfectly. He rather
+wished that Huxter had been pugnacious. He would have liked to fight him
+or somebody. He went home. The day's work, the dinner, the play, the
+whisky-and-water, the quarrel,--nothing soothed him. He slept no better
+than on the previous night.
+
+A few days afterwards, Mr. Sam Huxter wrote home a letter to Mr. Hobnell
+in the country, of which Mr. Arthur Pendennis formed the principal
+subject. Sam described Arthur's pursuits in London, and his confounded
+insolence of behaviour to his old friends from home. He said he was an
+abandoned criminal, a regular Don Juan, a fellow who, when he did come
+into the country, ought to be kept out of honest people's houses. He had
+seen him at Vauxhall, dancing with an innocent girl in the lower ranks of
+life, of whom he was making a victim. He had found out from an Irish
+gentleman (formerly in the army), who frequented a club of which he,
+Huxter, was member, who the girl was, on whom this conceited humbug was
+practising his infernal arts; and he thought he should warn her father,
+etc. etc.,--the letter then touched on general news, conveyed the
+writer's thanks for the last parcel and the rabbits, and hinted his
+extreme readiness for further favours.
+
+About once a year, as we have stated, there was occasion for a
+christening at the Warren, and it happened that this ceremony took place
+a day after Hobnell had received the letter of his brother-in-law in
+town. The infant (a darling little girl) was christened Myra Lucretia,
+after its two godmothers, Miss Portman and Mrs. Pybus of Clavering, and
+as of course Hobnell had communicated Sam's letter to his wife, Mrs.
+Hobnell imparted its horrid contents to her two gossips. A pretty story
+it was, and prettily it was told throughout Clavering in the course of
+that day.
+
+Myra did not--she was too much shocked to do so--speak on the matter to
+her mamma, but Mrs. Pybus had no such feelings of reserve. She talked
+over the matter not only with Mrs. Portman, but with Mr. and the
+Honourable Mrs. Simcoe, with Mrs. Glanders, her daughters being to that
+end ordered out of the room, with Madame Fribsby, and, in a word, with
+the whole of the Clavering society. Madame Fribsby looking furtively up
+at her picture of the dragoon, and inwards into her own wounded memory,
+said that men would be men, and as long as they were men would be
+deceivers; and she pensively quoted some lines from Marmion, requesting
+to know where deceiving lovers should rest? Mrs. Pybus had no words of
+hatred, horror, contempt, strong enough for a villain who could be
+capable of conduct so base. This was what came of early indulgence, and
+insolence, and extravagance, and aristocratic airs (it is certain that
+Pen had refused to drink tea with Mrs. Pybus), and attending the corrupt
+and horrid parties in the dreadful modern Babylon! Mrs. Portman was
+afraid that she must acknowledge that the mother's fatal partiality had
+spoiled this boy, that his literary successes had turned his head, and
+his horrid passions had made him forget the principles which Doctor
+Portman had instilled into him in early life. Glanders, the atrocious
+Captain of Dragoons, when informed of the occurrence by Mrs. Glanders,
+whistled and made jocular allusions to it at dinner-time; on which Mrs.
+Glanders called him a brute, and ordered the girls again out of the room,
+as the horrid Captain burst out laughing. Mr. Simcoe was calm under the
+intelligence; but rather pleased than otherwise; it only served to
+confirm the opinion which he had always had of that wretched young man:
+not that he knew anything about him--not that he had read one line of his
+dangerous and poisonous works; Heaven forbid that he should: but what
+could be expected from such a youth, and such frightful, such lamentable,
+such deplorable want of seriousness? Pen formed the subject for a second
+sermon at the Clavering chapel-of-ease: where the dangers of London, and
+the crime of reading or writing novels, were pointed out on a Sunday
+evening to a large and warm congregation. They did not wait to hear
+whether he was guilty or not. They took his wickedness for granted: and
+with these admirable moralists, it was who should fling the stone at poor
+Pen.
+
+The next day Mrs. Pendennis, alone and almost fainting with emotion and
+fatigue, walked or rather ran to Dr. Portman's house to consult the good
+Doctor. She had had an anonymous letter;--some Christian had thought it
+his or her duty to stab the good soul who had never done mortal a wrong--
+an anonymous letter with references to Scripture, pointing out the doom
+of such sinners and a detailed account of Pen's crime. She was in a state
+of terror and excitement pitiable to witness. Two or three hours of this
+pain had aged her already. In her first moment of agitation she had
+dropped the letter, and Laura had read it. Laura blushed when she read
+it; her whole frame trembled, but it was with anger. "The cowards," she
+said.--It isn't true.--No, mother, it isn't true."
+
+"It is true, and you've done it, Laura," cried out Helen fiercely. "Why
+did you refuse him when he asked you? Why did you break my heart and
+refuse him? It is you who led him into crime. It is you who flung him
+into the arms of this--this woman.--Don't speak to me.--Don't answer me.
+I will never forgive you, never. Martha, bring me my bonnet and shawl.
+I'll go out. I won't have you come with me. Go away. Leave me, cruel
+girl; why have you brought this shame on me?" And bidding her daughter
+and her servants keep away from her, she ran down the road to Clavering.
+
+Doctor Portman, glancing over the letter, thought he knew the
+handwriting, and, of course, was already acquainted with the charge made
+against poor Pen. Against his own conscience, perhaps (for the worthy
+Doctor, like most of us, had a considerable natural aptitude for
+receiving any report unfavourable to his neighbours), he strove to
+console Helen; he pointed out that the slander came from an anonymous
+quarter, and therefore must be the work of a rascal; that the charge
+might not be true--was not true, most likely--at least, that Pen must be
+heard before he was condemned; that the son of such a mother was not
+likely to commit such a crime, etc. etc.
+
+Helen at once saw through his feint of objection and denial. "You think
+he has done it," she said,--"you know you think he has done it. Oh, why
+did I ever leave him, Doctor Portman, or suffer him away from me? But he
+can't be dishonest--pray God, not dishonest--you don't think that, do
+you? Remember his conduct about that other--person--how madly he was
+attached to her. He was an honest boy then--he is now. And I thank God--
+yes, I fall down on my knees and thank God he paid Laura. You said he was
+good--you did yourself. And now--if this woman loves him--and you know
+they must--if he has taken her from her home, or she tempted him, which
+is most likely--why still, she must be his wife and my daughter. And he
+must leave the dreadful world and come back to me--to his mother, Doctor
+Portman. Let us go away and bring him back--yes--bring him back--and
+there shall be joy for the--the sinner that repenteth. Let us go now,
+directly, dear friend--this very----"
+
+Helen could say no more. She fell back and fainted. She was carried to a
+bed in the house of the pitying Doctor, and the surgeon was called to
+attend her. She lay all night in an alarming state. Laura came to her, or
+to the rectory rather; for she would not see Laura. And Doctor Portman,
+still beseeching her to be tranquil, and growing bolder and more
+confident of Arthur's innocence as he witnessed the terrible grief of the
+poor mother, wrote a letter to Pen warning him of the rumours that were
+against him and earnestly praying that he would break off and repent of a
+connexion so fatal to his best interests and his soul's welfare.
+
+And Laura?--was her heart not wrung by the thought of Arthur's crime and
+Helen's estrangement? Was it not a bitter blow for the innocent girl to
+think that at one stroke she should lose all the love which she cared for
+in the world?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+Which had very nearly been the last of the Story
+
+
+Doctor Portman's letter was sent off to its destination in London, and
+the worthy clergyman endeavoured to soothe down Mrs. Pendennis into some
+state of composure until an answer should arrive, which the Doctor tried
+to think, or at any rate persisted in saying, would be satisfactory as
+regarded the morality of Mr. Pen. At least Helen's wisdom of moving upon
+London and appearing in person to warn her son of his wickedness, was
+impracticable for a day or two. The apothecary forbade her moving even so
+far as Fairoaks for the first day, and it was not until the subsequent
+morning that she found herself again back on her sofa at home, with the
+faithful, though silent, Laura nursing at her side.
+
+Unluckily for himself and all parties, Pen never read that homily which
+Doctor Portman addressed to him, until many weeks after the epistle had
+been composed; and day after day the widow waited for her son's reply to
+the charges against him; her own illness increasing with every day's
+delay. It was a hard task for Laura to bear the anxiety; to witness her
+dearest friend's suffering; worst of all, to support Helen's
+estrangement, and the pain caused to her by that averted affection. But
+it was the custom of this young lady to the utmost of her power, and by
+means of that gracious assistance which Heaven awarded to her pure and
+constant prayers, to do her duty. And; as that duty was performed quite
+noiselessly,--while the supplications, which endowed her with the
+requisite strength for fulfilling it, also took place in her own chamber,
+away from all mortal sight,--we, too, must be perforce silent about these
+virtues of hers, which no more bear public talking about, than a flower
+will bear to bloom in a ballroom. This only we will say--that a good
+woman is the loveliest flower that blooms under heaven; and that we look
+with love and wonder upon its silent grace, its pure fragrance, its
+delicate bloom of beauty. Sweet and beautiful!--the fairest and the most
+spotless!--is it not pity to see them bowed down or devoured by Grief or
+Death inexorable--wasting in disease--pining with long pain--or cut off
+by sudden fate in their prime? We may deserve grief--but why should these
+be unhappy?--except that we know that Heaven chastens those whom it loves
+best; being pleased, by repeated trials, to make these pure spirits more
+pure.
+
+So Pen never got the letter, although it was duly posted and faithfully
+discharged by the postman into his letter-box in Lamb Court, and thence
+carried by the laundress to his writing-table with the rest of his
+lordship's correspondence; into which room, have we not seen a picture of
+him, entering from his little bedroom adjoining, as Mrs. Flanagan, his
+laundress, was in the act of drinking his gin?
+
+Those kind readers who have watched Mr. Arthur's career hitherto, and
+have made, as they naturally would do, observations upon the moral
+character and peculiarities of their acquaintance, have probably
+discovered by this time what was the prevailing fault in Mr. Pen's
+disposition, and who was that greatest enemy, artfully indicated in the
+title-page, with whom he had to contend. Not a few of us, my beloved
+public, have the very same rascal to contend with: a scoundrel who takes
+every opportunity of bringing us into mischief, of plunging us into
+quarrels, of leading us into idleness and unprofitable company, and what
+not. In a word, Pen's greatest enemy was himself: and as he had been
+pampering, and coaxing, and indulging that individual all his life, the
+rogue grew insolent, as all spoiled servants will be; and at the
+slightest attempt to coerce him, or make him do that which was unpleasant
+to him, became frantically rude and unruly. A person who is used to
+making sacrifices--Laura, for instance, who had got such a habit of
+giving up her own pleasure for others--can do the business quite easily;
+but Pen, unaccustomed as he was to any sort of self-denial, suffered
+woundily when called on to pay his share, and savagely grumbled at being
+obliged to forgo anything he liked.
+
+He had resolved in his mighty mind then that he would not see Fanny; and
+he wouldn't. He tried to drive the thoughts of that fascinating little
+person out of his head, by constant occupation, by exercise, by
+dissipation and society. He worked then too much; he walked and rode too
+much; he ate, drank, and smoked too much: nor could all the cigars and
+the punch of which he partook drive little Fanny's image out of his
+inflamed brain, and at the end of a week of this discipline and
+self-denial our young gentleman was in bed with a fever. Let the reader
+who has never had a fever in chambers pity the wretch who is bound to
+undergo that calamity.
+
+A committee of marriageable ladies, or of any Christian persons
+interested in the propagation of the domestic virtues, should employ a
+Cruikshank or a Leech, or some other kindly expositor of the follies of
+the day, to make a series of designs representing the horrors of a
+bachelor's life in chambers, and leading the beholder to think of better
+things, and a more wholesome condition. What can be more uncomfortable
+than the bachelor's lonely breakfast?--with the black kettle in the
+dreary fire in midsummer; or, worse still, with the fire gone out at
+Christmas, half an hour after the laundress has quitted the sitting-room?
+Into this solitude the owner enters shivering, and has to commence his
+day by hunting for coals and wood; and before he begins the work of a
+student, has to discharge the duties of a housemaid, vice Mrs. Flanagan,
+who is absent without leave. Or, again, what can form a finer subject for
+the classical designer than the bachelor's shirt--that garment which he
+wants to assume just at dinner-time, and which he finds without any
+buttons to fasten it? Then there is the bachelor's return to chambers,
+after a merry Christmas holiday, spent in a cosy country-house, full of
+pretty faces, and kind welcomes and regrets. He leaves his portmanteau at
+the barber's in the Court: he lights his dismal old candle at the
+sputtering little lamp on the stair: he enters the blank familiar room,
+where the only tokens to greet him, that show any interest in his
+personal welfare, are the Christmas bills, which are lying in wait for
+him, amiably spread out on his reading-table. Add to these scenes an
+appalling picture of bachelor's illness, and the rents in the Temple will
+begin to fall from the day of the publication of the dismal diorama. To
+be well in chambers is melancholy, and lonely and selfish enough; but to
+be ill in chambers--to pass long nights of pain and watchfulness--to long
+for the morning and the laundress--to serve yourself your own medicine by
+your own watch--to have no other companion for long hours but your own
+sickening fancies and fevered thoughts: no kind hand to give you drink if
+you are thirsty, or to smooth the hot pillow that crumples under you,--
+this, indeed, is a fate so dismal and tragic, that we shall not enlarge
+upon its horrors, and shall only heartily pity those bachelors in the
+Temple, who brave it every day.
+
+This lot befell Arthur Pendennis after the various excesses which we have
+mentioned, and to which he had subjected his unfortunate brains. One
+night he went to bed ill, and the next day awoke worse. His only visitor
+that day, besides the laundress, was the Printer's Devil, from the Pall
+Mall Gazette office, whom the writer endeavoured, as best he could, to
+satisfy. His exertions to complete his work rendered his fever the
+greater: he could only furnish a part of the quantity of "copy" usually
+supplied by him; and Shandon being absent, and Warrington not in London
+to give a help, the political and editorial columns of the Gazette looked
+very blank indeed; nor did the sub-editor know how to fill them.
+
+Mr. Finucane rushed up to Pen's chambers, and found that gentleman so
+exceedingly unwell, that the good-natured Irishman set to work to supply
+his place, if possible, and produced a series of political and critical
+compositions, such as no doubt greatly edified the readers of the
+periodical in which he and Pen were concerned. Allusions to the greatness
+of Ireland, and the genius and virtue of the inhabitants of that injured
+country, flowed magnificently from Finucane's pen; and Shandon, the Chief
+of the paper, who was enjoying himself placidly at Boulogne-sur-Mer,
+looking over the columns of the journal, which was forwarded to him,
+instantly recognised the hand of the great Sub-editor, and said,
+laughing, as he flung over the paper to his wife, "Look here, Mary, my
+dear, here is Jack at work again." Indeed, Jack was a warm friend, and a
+gallant partisan, and when he had the pen in hand, seldom let slip an
+opportunity of letting the world know that Rafferty was the greatest
+painter in Europe, and wondering at the petty jealousy of the Academy,
+which refused to make him an R.A.: of stating that it was generally
+reported at the West End, that Mr. Rooney, M.P., was appointed Governor
+of Barataria; or of introducing into the subject in hand, whatever it
+might be, a compliment to the Round Towers, or the Giant's Causeway. And
+besides doing Pen's work for him, to the best of his ability, his
+kind-hearted comrade offered to forgo his Saturday's and Sunday's
+holiday, and pass those days of holiday and rest as nurse-tender to
+Arthur, who, however, insisted, that the other should not forgo his
+pleasure, and thankfully assured him that he could bear best his malady
+alone.
+
+Taking his supper at the Back Kitchen on the Friday night, after having
+achieved the work of the paper, Finucane informed Captain Costigan of the
+illness of their young friend in the Temple; and remembering the fact two
+days afterwards, the Captain went to Lamb Court and paid a visit to the
+invalid on Sunday afternoon.
+
+He found Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, in tears in the sitting-room, and
+got a bad report of the poor dear young gentleman within. Pen's condition
+had so much alarmed her, that she was obliged to have recourse to the
+stimulus of brandy to enable her to support the grief which his illness
+occasioned. As she hung about his bed, and endeavoured to minister to
+him, her attentions became intolerable to the invalid, and he begged her
+peevishly not to come near him. Hence the laundress's tears and redoubled
+grief, and renewed application to the bottle, which she was accustomed to
+use as an anodyne. The Captain rated the woman soundly for her
+intemperance, and pointed out to her the fatal consequences which must
+ensue if she persisted in her imprudent courses.
+
+Pen, who was by this time in a very fevered state, yet was greatly
+pleased to receive Costigan's visit. He heard the ell-known voice in his
+sitting-room, as he lay in the bedroom within, and called the Captain
+eagerly to him, and thanked him for coming, and begged him to take a
+chair and talk to him. The Captain felt the young man's pulse with great
+gravity--(his own tremulous and clammy hand growing steady for the
+instant while his finger pressed Arthur's throbbing vein)--the pulse was
+beating very fiercely--Pen's face was haggard and hot--his eyes were
+bloodshot and gloomy; his "bird," as the Captain pronounced the word,
+afterwards giving a description of his condition, had not been shaved for
+nearly a week. Pen made his visitor sit down, and, tossing and turning in
+his comfortless bed, began to try and talk to the Captain in a lively
+manner, about the Back Kitchen, about Vauxhall and when they should go
+again, and about Fanny--how was little Fanny?
+
+Indeed how was she? We know how she went home very sadly on the previous
+Sunday evening, after she had seen Arthur light his lamp in his chambers,
+whilst he was having his interview with Bows. Bows came back to his own
+rooms presently, passing by the lodge door, and looking into Mrs.
+Bolton's, according to his wont, as he passed, but with a very melancholy
+face. She had another weary night that night. Her restlessness wakened
+her little bedfellows more than once. She daren't read more of 'Walter
+Lorraine:' Father was at home, and would suffer no light. She kept the
+book under her pillow, and felt for it in the night. She had only just
+got to sleep, when the children began to stir with the morning, almost as
+early as the birds. Though she was very angry with Bows, she went to his
+room at her accustomed hour in the day, and there the good-hearted
+musician began to talk to her.
+
+"I saw Mr. Pendennis last night, Fanny," he said.
+
+"Did you? I thought you did," Fanny answered, looking fiercely at the
+melancholy old gentleman.
+
+"I've been fond of you ever since we came to live in this place," he
+continued. "You were a child when I came; and you used to like me, Fanny,
+until three or four days ago: until you saw this gentleman."
+
+"And now, I suppose, you are going to say ill of him," said Fanny. "Do,
+Mr. Bows--that will make me like you better."
+
+"Indeed I shall do no such thing," Bows answered; "I think he is a very
+good and honest young man."
+
+"Indeed! you know that if you said a word against him, I would never
+speak a word to you again--never!" cried Miss Fanny; and clenched her
+little hand, and paced up and down the room. Bows noted, watched, and
+followed the ardent little creature with admiration and gloomy sympathy.
+Her cheeks flushed, her frame trembled; her eyes beamed love, anger,
+defiance. "You would like to speak ill of him," she said; "but you
+daren't--you know you daren't!"
+
+"I knew him many years since," Bows continued, "when he was almost as
+young as you are, and he had a romantic attachment for our friend the
+Captain's daughter--Lady Mirabel that is now."
+
+Fanny laughed. "I suppose there was other people, too, that had romantic
+attachments for Miss Costigan," she said: "I don't want to hear about
+'em."
+
+"He wanted to marry her; but their ages were quite disproportionate: and
+their rank in life. She would not have him because he had no money. She
+acted very wisely in refusing him; for the two would have been very
+unhappy, and she wasn't a fit person to go and live with his family, or
+to make his home comfortable. Mr. Pendennis has his way to make in the
+world, and must marry a lady of his own rank. A woman who loves a man
+will not ruin his prospects, cause him to quarrel with his family, and
+lead him into poverty and misery for her gratification. An honest girl
+won't do that, for her own sake, or for the man's."
+
+Fanny's emotion, which but now had been that of defiance and anger, here
+turned to dismay and supplication. "What do I know about marrying, Bows?"
+she said. "When was there any talk of it? What has there been between
+this young gentleman and me that's to make people speak so cruel? It was
+not my doing; nor Arthur's--Mr. Pendennis's--that I met him at Vauxhall.
+It was the Captain took me and Ma there. We never thought of nothing
+wrong, I'm sure. He came and rescued us, and he was so very kind. Then he
+came to call and ask after us: and very, very good it was of a such grand
+gentleman to be so polite to humble folks like us! And yesterday Ma and
+me just went to walk in the Temple Gardens, and--and"--here she broke out
+with that usual, unanswerable female argument of tears--and cried, "Oh! I
+wish I was dead! I wish I was laid in my grave; and had never, never seen
+him!"
+
+"He said as much himself, Fanny," Bows said; and Fanny asked through her
+sobs, Why, why should he wish he had never seen her? Had she ever done
+him any harm? Oh, she would perish rather than do him any harm. Whereupon
+the musician informed her of the conversation of the day previous, showed
+her that Pen could not and must not think of her as a wife fitting for
+him, and that she, as she valued her honest reputation, must strive too
+to forget him. And Fanny, leaving the musician, convinced, but still of
+the same mind, and promising that she would avoid the danger which
+menaced her, went back to the porter's lodge, and told her mother all.
+She talked of her love for Arthur, and bewailed, in her artless manner,
+the inequality of their condition, that set barriers between them.
+"There's the 'Lady of Lyons,'" Fanny said; "Oh, Ma! how I did love Mr.
+Macready when I saw him do it; and Pauline, for being faithful to poor
+Claude, and always thinking of him; and he coming back to her, an
+officer, through all his dangers! And if everybody admires Pauline--and
+I'm sure everybody does, for being so true to a poor man--why should a
+gentleman be ashamed of loving a poor girl? Not that Mr. Arthur loves me
+--Oh no, no! I ain't worthy of him; only a princess is worthy of such a
+gentleman as him. Such a poet!--writing so beautifully, and looking so
+grand! I am sure he's a nobleman, and of ancient family, and kep' out of
+his estate. Perhaps his uncle has it. Ah, if I might, oh, how I'd serve
+him, and work for him, and slave for him, that I would. I wouldn't ask
+for more than that, Ma, just to be allowed to see him of a morning; and
+sometimes he'd say 'How d'you, Fanny?' or 'God bless you, Fanny!' as he
+said on Sunday. And I'd work, and work; and I'd sit up all night, and
+read, and learn, and make myself worthy of him. The Captain says his
+mother lives in the country, and is a grand lady there. Oh, how I wish I
+might go and be her servant, Ma! I can do plenty of things, and work very
+neat; and--and sometimes he'd come home, and I should see him!"
+
+The girl's head fell on her mother's shoulder, as she spoke, and she gave
+way to a plentiful outpouring of girlish tears, to which the matron, of
+course, joined her own. "You mustn't think no more of him, Fanny," she
+said. "If he don't come to you, he's a horrid, wicked man."
+
+"Don't call him so, Mother," Fanny replied. "He's the best of men, the
+best and the kindest. Bows says he thinks he is unhappy at leaving poor
+little Fanny. It wasn't his fault, was it, that we met?--and it ain't his
+that I mustn't see him again. He says I mustn't--and I mustn't, Mother.
+He'll forget me, but I shall never forget him. No! I'll pray for him, and
+love him always--until I die--and I shall die, I know I shall--and then
+my spirit will always go and be with him."
+
+"You forget your poor mother, Fanny, and you'll break my heart by goin on
+so," Mrs. Bolton said. "Perhaps you will see him. I'm sure you'll see
+him. I'm sure he'll come to-day. If ever I saw a man in love, that man is
+him. When Emily Budd's young man first came about her, he was sent away
+by old Budd, a most respectable man, and violoncello in the orchestra at
+the Wells; and his own family wouldn't hear of it neither. But he came
+back. We all knew he would. Emily always said so; and he married her; and
+this one will come back too; and you mark a mother's words, and see if he
+don't, dear."
+
+At this point of the conversation Mr. Bolton entered the lodge for his
+evening meal. At the father's appearance, the talk between mother and
+daughter ceased instantly. Mrs. Bolton caressed and cajoled the surly
+undertaker's aide-de-camp, and said, "Lor, Mr. B. who'd have thought to
+see you away from the Club of a Saturday night. Fanny, dear, get your pa
+some supper. What will you have, B.? The poor gurl's got a gathering in
+her eye, or somethink in it--I was lookin at it just now as you came in."
+And she squeezed her daughter's hand as a signal of prudence and secrecy;
+and Fanny's tears were dried up likewise; and by that wondrous hypocrisy
+and power of disguise which women practise, and with which weapons of
+defence nature endows them, the traces of her emotion disappeared; and
+she went and took her work, and sate in the corner so demure and quiet,
+that the careless male parent never suspected that anything ailed her.
+
+Thus, as if fate seemed determined to inflame and increase the poor
+child's malady and passion, all circumstances and all parties round about
+her urged it on. Her mother encouraged and applauded it; and the very
+words which Bows used in endeavouring to repress her flame only augmented
+this unlucky fever. Pen was not wicked and a seducer: Pen was high-minded
+in wishing to avoid her. Pen loved her: the good and the great, the
+magnificent youth, with the chains of gold and the scented auburn hair!
+And so he did: or so he would have loved her five years back perhaps,
+before the world had hardened the ardent and reckless boy--before he was
+ashamed of a foolish and imprudent passion, and strangled it as poor
+women do their illicit children, not on account of the crime, but of the
+shame, and from dread that the finger of the world should point to them.
+
+What respectable person in the world will not say he was quite right to
+avoid a marriage with an ill-educated person of low degree, whose
+relations a gentleman could not well acknowledge, and whose manners would
+not become her new station?--and what philosopher would not tell him that
+the best thing to do with these little passions if they spring up, is to
+get rid of them, and let them pass over and cure them: that no man dies
+about a woman or vice versa: and that one or the other having found the
+impossibility of gratifying his or her desire in the particular instance,
+must make the best of matters, forget each other, look out elsewhere, and
+choose again? And yet, perhaps, there may be something said on the other
+side. Perhaps Bows was right in admiring that passion of Pen's, blind and
+unreasoning as it was, that made him ready to stake his all for his love;
+perhaps if self-sacrifice is a laudable virtue, mere worldly
+self-sacrifice is not very much to be praised;--in fine, let this be a
+reserved point to be settled by the individual moralist who chooses to
+debate it.
+
+So much is certain, that with the experience of the world which Mr. Pen
+now had, he would have laughed at and scouted the idea of marrying a
+penniless girl out of a kitchen. And this point being fixed in his mind,
+he was but doing his duty as an honest man, in crushing any unlucky
+fondness which he might feel towards poor little Fanny.
+
+So she waited and waited in hopes that Arthur would come. She waited for
+a whole week, and it was at the end of that time that the poor little
+creature heard from Costigan of the illness under which Arthur was
+suffering.
+
+It chanced on that very evening after Costigan had visited Pen, that
+Arthur's uncle the excellent Major arrived in town from Buxton, where his
+health had been mended, and sent his valet Morgan to make inquiries for
+Arthur, and to request that gentleman to breakfast with the Major the
+next morning. The Major was merely passing through London on his way to
+the Marquis of Steyne's house of Stillbrook, where he was engaged to
+shoot partridges.
+
+Morgan came back to his master with a very long face. He had seen Mr.
+Arthur; Mr. Arthur was very bad indeed; Mr. Arthur was in bed with a
+fever. A doctor ought to be sent to him; and Morgan thought his case most
+alarming.
+
+Gracious goodness! this was sad news indeed. He had hoped that Arthur
+could come down to Stillbrook: he had arranged that he should go, and
+procured an invitation for his nephew from Lord Steyne. He must go
+himself; he couldn't throw Lord Steyne over: the fever might be catching:
+it might be measles: he had never himself had the measles; they were
+dangerous when contracted at his age. Was anybody with Mr. Arthur?
+
+Morgan said there was somebody a-nussing of Mr. Arthur.
+
+The Major then asked, had his nephew taken any advice? Morgan said he had
+asked that question, and had been told that Mr. Pendennis had had no
+doctor.
+
+Morgan's master was sincerely vexed at hearing of Arthur's calamity. He
+would have gone to him, but what good could it do Arthur that he, the
+Major, should catch a fever? His own ailments rendered it absolutely
+impossible that he should attend to anybody but himself. But the young
+man must have advice--the best advice; and Morgan was straightway
+despatched with a note from Major Pendennis to his friend Doctor
+Goodenough, who by good luck happened to be in London and at home, and
+who quitted his dinner instantly, and whose carriage was in half an hour
+in Upper Temple Lane, near Pen's chambers.
+
+The Major had asked the kind-hearted physician to bring him news of his
+nephew at the Club where he himself was dining, and in the course of the
+night the Doctor made his appearance. The affair was very serious: the
+patient was in a high fever: he had had Pen bled instantly: and would see
+him the first thing in the morning. The Major went disconsolate to bed
+with this unfortunate news. When Goodenough came to see him according to
+his promise the next day, the Doctor had to listen for a quarter of an
+hour to an account of the Major's own maladies, before the latter had
+leisure to hear about Arthur.
+
+He had had a very bad night--his--his nurse said: at one hour he had been
+delirious. It might end badly: his mother had better be sent for
+immediately. The Major wrote the letter to Mrs. Pendennis with the
+greatest alacrity, and at the same time with the most polite precautions.
+As for going himself to the lad, in his state it was impossible. "Could I
+be of any use to him, my dear Doctor?" he asked.
+
+The Doctor, with a peculiar laugh, said, No: he didn't think the Major
+could be of any use: that his own precious health required the most
+delicate treatment, and that he had best go into the country and stay:
+that he himself would take care to see the patient twice a day, and do
+all in his power for him.
+
+The Major declared upon his honour, that if he could be of any use he
+would rush to Pen's chambers. As it was, Morgan should go and see that
+everything was right. The Doctor must write to him by every post to
+Stillbrook: it was but forty miles distant from London, and if anything
+happened he would come up at any sacrifice.
+
+Major Pendennis transacted his benevolence by deputy and by post. "What
+else could he do," as he said? "Gad, you know, in these cases, it's best
+not disturbing a fellow. If a poor fellow goes to the bad, why, Gad, you
+know he's disposed of. But in order to get well (and in this, my dear
+Doctor, I'm sure that you will agree with me), the best way is to keep
+him quiet--perfectly quiet."
+
+Thus it was the old gentleman tried to satisfy his conscience and he went
+his way that day to Stillbrook by railway (for railways have sprung up in
+the course of this narrative, though they have not quite penetrated into
+Pen's country yet), and made his appearance in his usual trim order and
+curly wig, at the dinner-table of the Marquis of Steyne. But we must do
+the Major the justice to say, that he was very unhappy and gloomy in
+demeanour. Wagg and Wenham rallied him about his low spirits; asked
+whether he was crossed in love? and otherwise diverted themselves at his
+expense. He lost his money at whist after dinner, and actually trumped
+his partner's highest spade. And the thoughts of the suffering boy, of
+whom he was proud, and whom he loved after his manner, kept the old
+fellow awake half through the night, and made him feverish and uneasy.
+
+On the morrow he received a note in a handwriting which he did not know:
+it was that of Mr. Bows, indeed, saying that Mr. Arthur Pendennis had had
+a tolerable night; and that as Dr. Goodenough had stated that the Major
+desired to be informed of his nephew's health, he, R. B., had sent him
+the news per rail.
+
+The next day he was going out shooting, about noon, with some of the
+gentlemen staying at Lord Steyne's house; and the company, waiting for
+the carriages, were assembled on the terrace in front of the house, when
+a fly drove up from the neighbouring station, and a grey-headed, rather
+shabby old gentleman jumped out, and asked for Major Pendennis. It was
+Mr. Bows. He took the Major aside and spoke to him; most of the gentlemen
+round about saw that something serious had happened, from the alarmed
+look of the Major's face.
+
+Wagg said, "It's a bailiff come down to nab the Major," but nobody
+laughed at the pleasantry.
+
+"Hullo! What's the matter, Pendennis?" cried Lord Steyne, with his
+strident voice;--"anything wrong?"
+
+"It's--it's--my boy that's dead," said the Major, and burst into a sob--
+the old man was quite overcome.
+
+"Not dead, my Lord; but very ill when I left London," Mr. Bows said, in a
+low voice.
+
+A britzka came up at this moment as the three men were speaking. The Peer
+looked at his watch. "You've twenty minutes to catch the mail-train. Jump
+in, Pendennis; and drive like h---, sir, do you hear?"
+
+The carriage drove off swiftly with Pendennis and his companions, and let
+us trust that the oath will be pardoned to the Marquis of Steyne.
+
+The Major drove rapidly from the station to the Temple, and found a
+travelling carriage already before him, and blocking up the narrow Temple
+Lane. Two ladies got out of it, and were asking their way of the porters;
+the Major looked by chance at the panel of the carriage, and saw the
+worn-out crest of the Eagle looking at the Sun, and the motto, "Nec tenui
+penna," painted beneath. It was his brother's old carriage, built many,
+many years ago. It was Helen and Laura that were asking their way to
+Pen's room.
+
+He ran up to them; hastily clasped his sister's arm and kissed her hand;
+and the three entered into Lamb Court, and mounted the long gloomy stair.
+
+They knocked very gently at the door, on which Arthur's name was written,
+and it was opened by Fanny Bolton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+A critical Chapter
+
+
+As Fanny saw the two ladies and the anxious countenance of the eider, who
+regarded her with a look of inscrutable alarm and terror, the poor girl
+at once knew that Pen's mother was before her; there was a resemblance
+between the widow's haggard eyes and Arthur's as he tossed in his bed in
+fever. Fanny looked wistfully at Mrs. Pendennis and at Laura afterwards;
+there was no more expression in the latter's face than if it had been a
+mass of stone. Hard-heartedness and gloom dwelt on the figures of both
+the new-comers; neither showed any the faintest gleam of mercy or
+sympathy for Fanny. She looked desperately from them to the Major behind
+them. Old Pendennis dropped his eyelids, looking up ever so stealthily
+from under them at Arthur's poor little nurse.
+
+"I--I wrote to you yesterday, if you please, ma'am," Fanny said,
+trembling in every limb as she spoke; and as pale as Laura, whose sad
+menacing face looked over Mrs. Pendennis's shoulder.
+
+"Did you, madam?" Mrs. Pendennis said. "I suppose I may now relieve you
+from nursing my son. I am his mother, you understand."
+
+"Yes, ma'am. I--this is the way to his--Oh, wait a minute," cried out
+Fanny. "I must prepare you for his----"
+
+The widow, whose face had been hopelessly cruel and ruthless, here
+started back with a gasp and a little cry, which she speedily stifled.
+
+"He's been so since yesterday," Fanny said, trembling very much, and with
+chattering teeth.
+
+A horrid shriek of laughter came out of Pen's room, whereof the door was
+open; and, after several shouts, the poor wretch began to sing a college
+drinking-song, and then to hurray and to shout as if he was in the midst
+of a wine-party, and to thump with his fist against the wainscot. He was
+quite delirious.
+
+"He does not know me, ma'am," Fanny said.
+
+"Indeed. Perhaps he will know his mother; let me pass, if you please, and
+go in to him." And the widow hastily pushed by little Fanny, and through
+the dark passage which led into Pen's sitting-room. Laura sailed by
+Fanny, too, without a word; and Major Pendennis followed them. Fanny sat
+down on a bench in the passage, and cried, and prayed as well as she
+could. She would have died for him; and they hated her. They had not a
+word of thanks or kindness for her, the fine ladies. She sate there in
+the passage, she did not know how long. They never came out to speak to
+her. She sate there until Doctor Goodenough came to pay his second visit
+that day; he found the poor little thing at the door.
+
+"What, nurse? How's your patient?" asked the good-natured Doctor. "Has he
+had any rest?"
+
+"Go and ask them. They're inside," Fanny answered.
+
+"Who? his mother?"
+
+Fanny nodded her head and didn't speak.
+
+"You must go to bed yourself, my poor little maid," said the Doctor. "You
+will be ill, too, if you don't."
+
+"Oh, mayn't I come and see him: mayn't I come and see him! I--I--love him
+so," the little girl said; and as she spoke she fell down on her knees
+and clasped hold of the Doctor's hand in such an agony that to see her
+melted the kind physician's heart, and caused a mist to come over his
+spectacles.
+
+"Pooh, pooh! Nonsense! Nurse, has he taken his draught? Has he had any
+rest? Of course you must come and see him. So must I."
+
+"They'll let me sit here, won't they, sir? I'll never make no noise. I
+only ask to stop here," Fanny said. On which the Doctor called her a
+stupid little thing; put her down upon the bench where Pen's printer's
+devil used to sit so many hours; tapped her pale cheek with his finger,
+and bustled into the farther room.
+
+Mrs. Pendennis was ensconced pale and solemn in a great chair by Pen's
+bedside. Her watch was on the bed-table by Pen's medicines. Her bonnet
+and cloaks were laid in the window. She had her Bible in her lap, without
+which she never travelled. Her first movement, after seeing her son, had
+been to take Fanny's shawl and bonnet which were on his drawers, and
+bring them out and drop them down upon his study-table. She had closed
+the door upon Major Pendennis, and Laura too; and taken possession of her
+son.
+
+She had had a great doubt and terror lest Arthur should not know her; but
+that pang was spared to her in part at least. Pen knew his mother quite
+well, and familiarly smiled and nodded at her. When she came in, he
+instantly fancied that they were at home at Fairoaks; and began to talk
+and chatter and laugh in a rambling wild way. Laura could hear him
+outside. His laughter shot shafts of poison into her heart. It was true,
+then. He had been guilty--and with that creature!--an intrigue with a
+servant-maid, and she had loved him--and he was dying most likely raving
+and unrepentant. The Major now and then hummed out a word of remark or
+consolation, which Laura scarce heard.
+
+A dismal sitting it was for all parties; and when Goodenough appeared, he
+came like an angel into the room.
+
+It is not only for the sick man, it is for the sick man's friends that
+the Doctor comes. His presence is often as good for them as for the
+patient, and they long for him yet more eagerly. How we have all watched
+after him! what an emotion the thrill of his carriage-wheels in the
+street, and at length at the door, has made us feel! how we hang upon his
+words, and what a comfort we get from a smile or two, if he can vouchsafe
+that sunshine to lighten our darkness! Who hasn't seen the mother prying
+into his face, to know if there is hope for the sick infant that cannot
+speak, and that lies yonder, its little frame battling with fever? Ah how
+she looks into his eyes! What thanks if there is light there; what grief
+and pain if he casts them down, and dares not say "hope!" Or it is the
+house-father who is stricken. The terrified wife looks on, while the
+Physician feels his patient's wrist, smothering her agonies, as the
+children have been called upon to stay their plays and their talk. Over
+the patient in the fever, the wife expectant, the children unconscious,
+the Doctor stands as if he were Fate, the dispenser of life and death: he
+must let the patient off this time: the woman prays so for his respite!
+One can fancy how awful the responsibility must be to a conscientious
+man: how cruel the feeling that he has given the wrong remedy, or that it
+might have been possible to do better: how harassing the sympathy with
+survivors, if the case is unfortunate--how immense the delight of
+victory!
+
+Having passed through a hasty ceremony of introduction to the new-comers,
+of whose arrival he had been made aware by the heartbroken little nurse
+in waiting without, the Doctor proceeded to examine the patient, about
+whose condition of high fever there could be no mistake, and on whom he
+thought it necessary to exercise the strongest antiphlogistic remedies in
+his power. He consoled the unfortunate mother as best he might; and
+giving her the most comfortable assurances on which he could venture,
+that there was no reason to despair yet, that everything might still be
+hoped from his youth, the strength of his constitution, and so forth; and
+having done his utmost to allay the horrors of the alarmed matron, he
+took the elder Pendennis aside into the vacant room (Warrington's
+bedroom), for the purpose of holding a little consultation.
+
+The case was very critical. The fever, if not stopped, might and would
+carry off the young fellow: he must be bled forthwith: the mother must be
+informed of this necessity. Why was that other young lady brought with
+her? She was out of place in a sick-room.
+
+"And there was another woman still, be hanged to it!" the Major said,
+"the--the little person who opened the door." His sister-in-law had
+brought the poor little devil's bonnet and shawl out, flung them upon the
+study-table. Did Goodenough know anything about the--the little person?
+"I just caught a glimpse of her as we passed in," the Major said, "and
+begad she was uncommonly nice-looking." The Doctor looked queer: the
+Doctor smiled--in the very gravest moments, with life and death pending,
+such strange contrasts and occasions of humour will arise, and such
+smiles will pass, to satirise the gloom, as it were, and to make it more
+gloomy!
+
+"I have it," at last he said, re-entering the study; and he wrote a
+couple of notes hastily at the table there, and sealed one of them. Then,
+taking up poor Fanny's shawl and bonnet, and the notes, he went out in
+the passage to that poor little messenger, and said, "Quick, nurse; you
+must carry this to the surgeon, and bid him come instantly; and then go
+to my house, and ask for my servant Harbottle, and tell him to get this
+prescription prepared, and wait until I--until it is ready. It may take a
+little in preparation."
+
+So poor Fanny trudged away with her two notes, and found the apothecary,
+who lived in the Strand hard by, and who came straightway, his lancet in
+his pocket, to operate on his patient; and then Fanny made for the
+Doctor's house, in Hanover Square.
+
+The Doctor was at home again before the prescription was made up, which
+took Harbottle, his servant, such a long time in compounding; and, during
+the remainder of Arthur's illness, poor Fanny never made her appearance
+in the quality of nurse at his chambers any more. But for that day and
+the next, a little figure might be seen lurking about Pen's staircase,--a
+sad, sad little face looked at and interrogated the apothecary, and the
+apothecary's boy, and the laundress, and the kind physician himself, as
+they passed out of the chambers of the sick man. And on the third day,
+the kind Doctor's chariot stopped at Shepherd's Inn, and the good, and
+honest, and benevolent man went into the porter's lodge, and tended a
+little patient whom he had there, for the best remedy he found was on the
+day when he was enabled to tell Fanny Bolton that the crisis was over,
+and that there was at length every hope for Arthur Pendennis.
+
+J. Costigan, Esquire, late of Her Majesty's service, saw the Doctor's
+carriage, and criticised its horses and appointments. "Green liveries,
+bedad!" the General said, "and as foin a pair of high-stepping bee horses
+as ever a gentleman need sit behoind, let alone a docthor. There's no ind
+to the proide and ar'gance of them docthors, nowadays--not but that is a
+good one, and a scoientific cyarkter, and a roight good fellow, bedad;
+and he's brought the poor little girl well troo her faver, Bows, me boy;"
+and so pleased was Mr. Costigan with the Doctor's behaviour and skill,
+that, whenever he met Dr. Goodenough's carriage in future, he made a
+point of saluting it and the physician inside, in as courteous and
+magnificent a manner, as if Dr. Goodenough had been the Lord Liftenant
+himself, and Captain Costigan had been in his glory in Phaynix Park.
+
+The widow's gratitude to the physician knew no bounds--or scarcely any
+bounds, at least. The kind gentleman laughed at the idea of taking a fee
+from a literary man, or the widow of a brother practitioner; and she
+determined when she got to Fairoaks that she would send Goodenough the
+silver-gilt vase, the jewel of the house, and the glory of the late John
+Pendennis, preserved in green baize, and presented to him at Bath, by the
+Lady Elizabeth Firebrace, on the recovery of her son, the late Sir
+Anthony Firebrace, from the scarlet fever. Hippocrates, Hygeia, King
+Bladud, and a wreath of serpents surmount the cup to this day; which was
+executed in their finest manner by Messrs. Abednego, of Milsom Street;
+and the inscription was by Mr. Birch, tutor to the young baronet.
+
+This priceless gem of art the widow determined to devote to Goodenough,
+the preserver of her son; and there was scarcely any other favour which
+her gratitude would not have conferred upon him, except one, which he
+desired most, and which was that she should think a little charitably and
+kindly of poor Fanny, of whose artless, sad story he had got something
+during his interviews with her, and of whom he was induced to think very
+kindly,--not being disposed, indeed, to give much credit to Pen for his
+conduct in the affair, or not knowing what that conduct had been. He knew
+enough, however, to be aware that the poor infatuated little girl was
+without stain as yet; that while she had been in Pen's room it was to see
+the last of him, as she thought, and that Arthur was scarcely aware of
+her presence; and that she suffered under the deepest and most pitiful
+grief, at the idea of losing him, dead or living.
+
+But on the one or two occasions when Goodenough alluded to Fanny, the
+widow's countenance, always soft and gentle, assumed an expression so
+cruel and inexorable, that the Doctor saw it was in vain to ask her for
+justice or pity, and he broke off all entreaties, and ceased making any
+further allusions regarding his little client. There is a complaint which
+neither poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the East
+could allay, in the men in his time, as we are informed by a popular poet
+of the days of Elizabeth; and which, when exhibited in women, no medical
+discoveries or practice subsequent--neither homoeopathy, nor hydropathy,
+nor mesmerism, nor Dr. Simpson, nor Dr. Locock can cure, and that is--we
+won't call it jealousy, but rather gently denominate rivalry and
+emulation in ladies.
+
+Some of those mischievous and prosaic people who carp and calculate at
+every detail of the romancer, and want to know, for instance, how, when
+the characters in the 'Critic' are at a dead lock with their daggers at
+each other's throats, they are to be got out of that murderous
+complication of circumstances, may be induced to ask how it was possible
+in a set of chambers in the Temple, consisting of three rooms, two
+cupboards, a passage, and a coal-box, Arthur a sick gentleman, Helen his
+mother, Laura her adopted daughter, Martha their country attendant, Mrs.
+Wheezer a nurse from St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Mrs. Flanagan an Irish
+laundress, Major Pendennis a retired military officer, Morgan his valet,
+Pidgeon Mr. Arthur Pendennis's boy, and others could be accommodated--the
+answer is given at once, that almost everybody in the Temple was out of
+town, and that there was scarcely a single occupant of Pen's house in
+Lamb Court except those who were occupied round the sick-bed of the sick
+gentleman, about whose fever we have not given a lengthy account, neither
+enlarge we very much upon the more cheerful theme of his recovery.
+
+Everybody we have said was out of town, and of course such a fashionable
+man as young Mr. Sibwright, who occupied chambers on the second floor in
+Pen's staircase, could not be supposed to remain in London. Mrs.
+Flanagan, Mr. Pendennis's laundress was acquainted with Mrs. Rouncy who
+did for Mr. Sibwright; and that gentleman's bedroom was got ready for
+Miss Bell, or Mrs. Pendennis, when the latter should be inclined to leave
+her son's sick-room, to try and seek for a little rest for herself.
+
+If that young buck and flower of Baker Street, Percy Sibwright, could
+have known who was the occupant of his bedroom, how proud he would have
+been of that apartment:--what poems he would have written about Laura!
+(several of his things have appeared in the annuals, and in manuscript in
+the nobility's albums)--he was a Camford man and very nearly got the
+English Prize Poem, it was said--Sibwright, however, was absent and his
+bed given up to Miss Bell. It was the prettiest little brass bed in the
+world, with chintz curtains lined with pink--he had a mignonette-box in
+his bedroom window, and the mere sight of his little exhibition of shiny
+boots, arranged in trim rows over his wardrobe, was a gratification to
+the beholder. He had a museum of scent, pomatum, and bear's-grease pots,
+quite curious to examine, too; and a choice selection of portraits of
+females, almost always in sadness and generally in disguise or
+deshabille, glittered round the neat walls of his elegant little bower of
+repose. Medora with dishevelled hair was consoling herself over her banjo
+for the absence of her Conrad--the Princesse Fleur de Marie (of
+Rudolstein and the Mysteres de Paris) was sadly ogling out of the bars of
+her convent cage, in which, poor prisoned bird, she was moulting away,--
+Dorothea of Don Quixote was washing her eternal feet:--in fine, it was
+such an elegant gallery as became a gallant lover of the sex. And in
+Sibwright's sitting-room, while there was quite an infantine law library
+clad in skins of fresh new-born calf, there was a tolerably large
+collection of classical books which he could not read, and of English
+and French works of poetry and fiction which he read a great deal too
+much. His invitation cards of the past season still decorated his
+looking-glass: and scarce anything told of the lawyer but the wig-box
+beside the Venus upon the middle shelf of the bookcase, on which the name
+of P. Sibwright, Esquire, was gilded.
+
+With Sibwright in chambers was Mr. Bangham. Mr. Bangham was a sporting
+man married to a rich widow. Mr. Bangham had no practice--did not come to
+chambers thrice in a term: went a circuit for those mysterious reasons
+which make men go circuit,--and his room served as a great convenience to
+Sibwright when that young gentleman gave his little dinners. It must be
+confessed that these two gentlemen have nothing to do with our history,
+will never appear in it again probably, but we cannot help glancing
+through their doors as they happen to be open to us, and as we pass to
+Pen's rooms; as in the pursuit of our own business in life through the
+Strand, at the Club, nay at church itself, we cannot help peeping at the
+shops on the way, or at our neighbour's dinner, or at the faces under the
+bonnets in the next pew.
+
+Very many years after the circumstances about which we are at present
+occupied, Laura, with a blush and a laugh showing much humour, owned to
+having read a French novel once much in vogue, and when her husband asked
+her, wondering where on earth she could have got such a volume, she owned
+that it was in the Temple, when she lived in Mr. Percy Sibwright's
+chambers.
+
+"And, also, I never confessed," she said, "on that same occasion, what I
+must now own to: that I opened the japanned box, and took out that
+strange-looking wig inside it, and put it on and looked at myself in the
+glass in it."
+
+Suppose Percy Sibwright had come in at such a moment as that? What would
+he have said,--the enraptured rogue? What would have been all the
+pictures of disguised beauties in his room compared to that living one?
+Ah, we are speaking of old times, when Sibwright was a bachelor and
+before he got a county court,--when people were young--when most people
+were young. Other people are young now; but we no more.
+
+When Miss Laura played this prank with the wig, you can't suppose that
+Pen could have been very ill upstairs; otherwise, though she had grown to
+care for him ever so little, common sense of feeling and decorum would
+have prevented her from performing any tricks or trying any disguises.
+
+But all sorts of events had occurred in the course of the last few days
+which had contributed to increase or account for her gaiety, and a little
+colony of the reader's old friends and acquaintances was by this time
+established in Lamb Court, Temple, and round Pen's sick-bed there. First,
+Martha, Mrs. Pendennis's servant, had arrived from Fairoaks, being
+summoned thence by the Major who justly thought her presence would be
+comfortable and useful to her mistress and her young master, for neither
+of whom the constant neighbourhood of Mrs. Flanagan (who during Pen's
+illness required more spirituous consolation than ever to support her)
+could be pleasant. Martha then made her appearance in due season to wait
+upon Mr. Pendennis, nor did that lady go once to bed until the faithful
+servant had reached her, when, with a heart full of maternal thankfulness
+she went and lay down upon Warrington's straw mattress, and among his
+mathematical books as has been already described.
+
+It is true that ere that day a great and delightful alteration in Pen's
+condition had taken place. The fever, subjugated by Dr. Goodenough's
+blisters, potions, and lancet, had left the young man, or only returned
+at intervals of feeble intermittence; his wandering senses had settled in
+his weakened brain: he had had time to kiss and bless his mother for
+coming to him, and calling for Laura and his uncle (who were both
+affected according to their different natures by his wan appearance, his
+lean shrunken hands, his hollow eyes and voice, his thin bearded face) to
+press their hands and thank them affectionately; and after this greeting,
+and after they had been turned out of the room by his affectionate nurse,
+he had sunk into a fine sleep which had lasted for about sixteen hours,
+at the end of which period he awoke calling out that he was very hungry.
+If it is hard to be ill and to loathe food, oh, how pleasant to be
+getting well and to be feeling hungry--how hungry! Alas, the joys of
+convalescence become feebler with increasing years, as other joys do--and
+then--and then comes that illness when one does not convalesce at all.
+
+On the day of this happy event, too, came another arrival in Lamb Court.
+This was introduced into the Pen-Warring sitting-room by large puffs of
+tobacco smoke--the puffs of were followed by an individual with a cigar
+in his mouth, and a carpet-bag under his arm--this was Warrington who had
+run back from Norfolk, when Mr. Bows thoughtfully wrote to inform him of
+his friend's calamity. But he had been from home when Bows's letter had
+reached his brother's house--the Eastern Counties did not then boast of a
+railway (for we beg the reader to understand that we only commit
+anachronisms when we choose and when by a daring violation of those
+natural laws some great ethical truth is to be advanced)--in fine,
+Warrington only appeared with the rest of the good luck upon the lucky
+day after Pen's convalescence may have been said to have begun.
+
+His surprise was, after all, not very great when he found the chambers of
+his sick friend occupied, and his old acquaintance the Major seated
+demurely in an easy-chair (Warrington had let himself into the rooms with
+his own passkey), listening, or pretending to listen, to a young lady who
+was reading to him a play of Shakspeare in a low sweet voice. The lady
+stopped and started, and laid down her book, at the apparition of the
+tall traveller with the cigar and the carpet-bag. He blushed, he flung
+the cigar into the passage: he took off his hat, and dropped that too,
+and going up to the Major, seized that old gentleman's hand, and asked
+questions about Arthur.
+
+The Major answered in a tremulous, though cheery voice--it was curious
+how emotion seemed to olden him--and returning Warrington's pressure with
+a shaking hand, told him the news of Arthur's happy crisis, of his
+mother's arrival--with her young charge--with Miss----"
+
+"You need not tell me her name," Mr. Warrington said with great
+animation, for he was affected and elated with the thought of his
+friend's recovery--"you need not tell me your name. I knew at once it was
+Laura." And he held out his hand and took hers. Immense kindness and
+tenderness gleamed from under his rough eyebrows, and shook his voice as
+he gazed at her and spoke to her. "And this is Laura!" his looks seemed
+to say. "And this is Warrington!" the generous girl's heart beat back.
+"Arthur's hero--the brave and the kind--he has come hundreds of miles to
+succour him, when he heard of his friend's misfortune!"
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Warrington," was all that Laura said, however; and as she
+returned the pressure of his kind hand, she blushed so, that she was glad
+the lamp was behind her to conceal her flushing face.
+
+As these two were standing in this attitude, the door of Pen's bedchamber
+was opened stealthily as his mother was wont to open it, and Warrington
+saw another lady, who first looked at him, and then turning round towards
+the bed, said, "Hsh!" and put up her hand.
+
+It was to Pen Helen was turning, and giving caution. He called out with a
+feeble, tremulous, but cheery voice, "Come in, Stunner--come in,
+Warrington. I knew it was you--by the--by the smoke, old boy," he said,
+as holding his worn hand out, and with tears at once of weakness and
+pleasure in his eyes, he greeted his friend.
+
+"I--I beg pardon, ma'am, for smoking," Warrington said, who now almost
+for the first time blushed for his wicked propensity.
+
+Helen only said, "God bless you, Mr. Warrington." She was so happy, she
+would have liked to kiss George. Then, and after the friends had had a
+brief, very brief interview, the delighted and inexorable mother, giving
+her hand to Warrington, sent him out of the room, too, back to Laura
+and the Major, who had not resumed their play of Cymbeline where they had
+left it off at the arrival of the rightful owner of Pen's chambers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+Convalescence
+
+
+Our duty now is to record a fact concerning Pendennis, which, however
+shameful and disgraceful, when told regarding the chief personage and
+godfather of a novel, must, nevertheless, be made known to the public who
+reads his veritable memoirs. Having gone to bed ill with fever, and
+suffering to a certain degree under the passion of love, after he had
+gone through his physical malady, and had been bled and had been
+blistered, and had had his head shaved, and had been treated and
+medicamented as the doctor ordained:--it is a fact, that, when he rallied
+up from his bodily ailment, his mental malady had likewise quitted him,
+and he was no more in love with Fanny Bolton than you or I, who are much
+too wise, or too moral, to allow our hearts to go gadding after porters'
+daughters.
+
+He laughed at himself as he lay on his pillow, thinking of this second
+cure which had been effected upon him. He did not care the least about
+Fanny now: he wondered how he ever should have cared: and according to
+his custom made an autopsy of that dead passion, and anatomised his own
+defunct sensation for his poor little nurse. What could have made him so
+hot and eager about her but a few weeks back? Not her wit, not her
+breeding, not her beauty--there were hundreds of women better-looking
+than she. It was out of himself that the passion had gone: it did not
+reside in her. She was the same; but the eyes which saw were changed;
+and, alas, that it should be so! were not particularly eager to see her
+any more. He felt very well disposed towards the little thing, and so
+forth, but as for violent personal regard, such as he had but a few weeks
+ago, it had fled under the influence of the pill and lancet, which had
+destroyed the fever in his frame. And an immense source of comfort and
+gratitude it was to Pendennis (though there was something selfish in that
+feeling, as in most others of our young man), that he had been enabled to
+resist temptation at the time when the danger was greatest, and had no
+particular cause of self-reproach as he remembered his conduct towards
+the young girl. As from a precipice down which he might have fallen, so
+from the fever from which he had recovered, he reviewed the Fanny Bolton
+snare, now that he had escaped out of it, but I'm not sure that he was
+not ashamed of the very satisfaction which he experienced. It is
+pleasant, perhaps, but it is humiliating to own that you love no more.
+
+Meanwhile the kind smiles and tender watchfulness of the mother at his
+bedside, filled the young man with peace and security. To see that health
+was returning, was all the unwearied nurse demanded: to execute any
+caprice or order of her patient's, her chiefest joy and reward. He felt
+himself environed by her love, and thought himself almost as grateful for
+it as he had been when weak and helpless in childhood.
+
+Some misty notions regarding the first part of his illness, and that
+Fanny had nursed him, Pen may have had, but they were so dim that he
+could not realise them with accuracy, or distinguish them from what he
+knew to be delusions which had occurred and were remembered during the
+delirium of his fever. So as he had not thought proper on former
+occasions to make any allusions about Fanny Bolton to his mother, of
+course he could not now confide to her his sentiments regarding Fanny, or
+make this worthy lady a confidante. It was on both sides an unlucky
+precaution and want of confidence; and a word or two in time might have
+spared the good lady, and those connected with her, a deal of pain and
+anguish.
+
+Seeing Miss Bolton installed as nurse and tender to Pen, I am sorry to
+say Mrs. Pendennis had put the worst construction on the fact of the
+intimacy of these two unlucky young persons, and had settled in her own
+mind that the accusations against Arthur were true. Why not have stopped
+to inquire?--There are stories to a man's disadvantage that the women who
+are fondest of him are always the most eager to believe. Isn't a man's
+wife often the first to be jealous of him? Poor Pen got a good stock of
+this suspicious kind of love from the nurse who was now watching over
+him; and the kind and pure creature thought that her boy had gone through
+a malady much more awful and debasing than the mere physical fever, and
+was stained by crime as well as weakened by illness. The consciousness of
+this she had to bear perforce silently, and to try to put a mask of
+cheerfulness and confidence over her doubt and despair and inward horror.
+
+When Captain Shandon, at Boulogne, read the next number of the Pall Mall
+Gazette, it was to remark to Mrs. Shandon that Jack Finucane's hand was
+no longer visible in the leading articles, and that Mr. Warrington must
+be at work there again. "I know the crack of his whip in a hundred, and
+the cut which the fellow's thong leaves. There's Jack Bludyer, goes to
+work like a butcher, and mangles a subject. Mr. Warrington finished a
+man, and lays his cuts neat and regular, straight down the back, and
+drawing blood every line;" at which dreadful metaphor, Mrs. Shandon said,
+"Law, Charles, how can you talk so! I always thought Mr. Warrington very
+high, but a kind gentleman; and I'm sure he was most kind to the
+children." Upon which Shandon said, "yes; he's kind to the children; but
+he's savage to the men; and to be sure, my dear, you don't understand a
+word about what I'm saying; and it's best you shouldn't; for it's little
+good comes out of writing for newspapers; and it's better here, living
+easy at Boulogne, where the wine's plenty, and the brandy costs but two
+francs a bottle. Mix us another tumbler, Mary, my dear; we'll go back
+into harness soon. 'Cras ingens iterabimus aequor' bad luck to it."
+
+In a word, Warrington went to work with all his might, in place of his
+prostrate friend, and did Pen's portion of the Pall Mall Gazette "with a
+vengeance," as the saying is. He wrote occasional articles and literary
+criticisms; he attended theatres and musical performances, and discoursed
+about them with his usual savage energy. His hand was too strong for such
+small subjects, and it pleased him to tell Arthur's mother, and uncle,
+and Laura, that there was no hand in all the band of penmen more graceful
+and light, more pleasant and more elegant, than Arthur's. "The people in
+this country, ma'am, don't understand what style is, or they would see
+the merits of our young one," he said to Mrs. Pendennis. "I call him
+ours, ma'am, for I bred him; and I am as proud of him as you are; and,
+bating a little wilfulness, and a little selfishness, and a little
+dandification, I don't know a more honest, or loyal, or gentle creature.
+His pen is wicked sometimes, but he is as kind as a young lady--as Miss
+Laura here--and I believe he would not do any living mortal harm."
+
+At this, Helen, though she heaved a deep, deep sigh, and Laura, though
+she, too, was sadly wounded, nevertheless were most thankful for
+Warrington's good opinion of Arthur, and loved him for being so attached
+to their Pen. And Major Pendennis was loud in his praises of Mr.
+Warrington,--more loud and enthusiastic than it was the Major's wont to
+be. "He is a gentleman, my dear creature," he said to Helen, "every inch
+a gentleman, my good madam--the Suffolk Warringtons--Charles the First's
+baronets:--what could he be but a gentleman, come out of that family?--
+father,--Sir Miles Warrington; ran away with--beg your pardon, Miss Bell.
+Sir Miles was a very well known man in London, and a friend of the Prince
+of Wales, This gentleman is a man of the greatest talents, the very
+highest accomplishments,--sure to get on, if he had a motive to put his
+energies to work."
+
+Laura blushed for herself whilst the Major was talking and praising
+Arthur's hero. As she looked at Warrington's manly face, and dark,
+melancholy eyes, this young person had been speculating about him, and
+had settled in her mind that he must have been the victim of an unhappy
+attachment; and as she caught herself so speculating, why, Miss Bell
+blushed.
+
+Warrington got chambers hard by,--Grenier's chambers in Flag Court; and
+having executed Pen's task with great energy in the morning, his delight
+and pleasure of an afternoon was to come and sit with the sick man's
+company in the sunny autumn evenings; and he had the honour more than
+once of giving Miss Bell his arm for a walk in the Temple Gardens; to
+take which pastime, when the frank Laura asked of Helen permission, the
+Major eagerly said, "Yes, yes, begad--of course you go out with him--it's
+like the country, you know; everybody goes out with everybody in the
+Gardens, and there are beadles, you know, and that sort of thing--
+everybody walks in the Temple Gardens." If the great arbiter of morals
+did not object, why should simple Helen? She was glad that her girl
+should have such fresh air as the river could give, and to see her return
+with heightened colour and spirits from these harmless excursions.
+
+Laura and Helen had come, you must know, to a little explanation. When
+the news arrived of Pen's alarming illness, Laura insisted upon
+accompanying the terrified mother to London, would not hear of the
+refusal which the still angry Helen gave her, and, when refused a second
+time yet more sternly, and when it seemed that the poor lost lad's life
+was despaired of, and when it was known that his conduct was such as to
+render all thoughts of union hopeless, Laura had, with many tears, told
+her mother a secret with which every observant person who reads this
+story was acquainted already. Now she never could marry him, was she to
+be denied the consolation of owning how fondly, how truly, how entirely
+she had loved him? The mingling tears of the woman appeased the agony of
+their grief somewhat; and the sorrows and terrors of their journey were
+at least in so far mitigated that they shared them together.
+
+What could Fanny expect when suddenly brought up for sentence before a
+couple of such judges? Nothing but swift condemnation, awful punishment,
+merciless dismissal! Women are cruel critics in cases such as that in
+which poor Fanny was implicated; and we like them to be so; for, besides
+the guard which a man places round his own harem, and the defences which
+a woman has in her heart, her faith, and honour, hasn't she all her own
+friends of her own sex to keep watch that she does not go astray, and to
+tear her to pieces if she is found erring? When our Mahmouds or Selims of
+Baker Street or Belgrave Square visit their Fatimas with condign
+punishment, their mothers sew up Fatima's sack for her, and her sisters
+and sisters-in-law see her well under water. And this present writer does
+not say nay. He protests most solemnly he is a Turk, too. He wears a
+turban and a beard like another, and is all for the sack practice,
+Bismillah! But O you spotless, who have the right of capital punishment
+vested in you, at least be very cautious that you make away with the
+proper (if so she may be called) person. Be very sure of the fact before
+you order the barge out: and don't pop your subject into the Bosphorus,
+until you are quite certain that she deserves it. This is all I would
+urge in poor Fatima's behalf--absolutely all--not a word more, by the
+beard of the Prophet. If she's guilty, down with her--heave over the
+sack, away with it into the Golden Horn bubble and squeak, and justice
+being done, give way, men, and let us pull back to supper.
+
+So the Major did not in any way object to Warrington's continued
+promenades with Miss Laura, but, like a benevolent old gentleman,
+encouraged in every way the intimacy of that couple. Were there any
+exhibitions in town? he was for Warrington conducting her to them. If
+Warrington had proposed to take her to Vauxhall itself, this most
+complaisant of men would have seen no harm,--nor would Helen, if
+Pendennis the elder had so ruled it,--nor would there have been any harm
+between two persons whose honour was entirely spotless,--between
+Warrington, who saw in intimacy a pure, and high-minded, and artless
+woman for the first time in his life,--and Laura, who too for the first
+time was thrown into the constant society of a gentleman of great natural
+parts and powers of pleasing; who possessed varied acquirements,
+enthusiasm, simplicity, humour, and that freshness of mind which his
+simple life and habits gave him, and which contrasted so much with Pen's
+dandy indifference of manner and faded sneer. In Warrington's very
+uncouthness there was a refinement, which the other's finery lacked. In
+his energy, his respect, his desire to please, his hearty laughter, or
+simple confiding pathos, what a difference to Sultan Pen's yawning
+sovereignty and languid acceptance of homage! What had made Pen at home
+such a dandy and such a despot? The women had spoiled him, as we like
+them and as they like to do. They had cloyed him with obedience, and
+surfeited him with sweet respect and submission, until he grew weary of
+the slaves who waited upon him, and their caresses and cajoleries excited
+him no more. Abroad, he was brisk and lively, and eager and impassioned
+enough--most men are so constituted and so nurtured.--Does this,
+like the former sentence, run a chance of being misinterpreted, and does
+any one dare to suppose that the writer would incite the women to revolt?
+Nevert, by the whiskers of the Prophet again, he says. He wears a beard,
+and he likes his women to be slaves. What man doesn't? What man would be
+henpecked, I say? We will cut off all the heads in Christendom or
+Turkeydom rather than that.
+
+Well, then, Arthur being so languid, and indifferent, and careless about
+the favours bestowed upon him, how came it that Laura should have such a
+love and rapturous regard for him, that a mere inadequate expression of
+it should have kept the girl talking all the way from Fairoaks to London,
+as she and Helen travelled in the post-chaise? As soon as Helen had
+finished one story about the dear fellow, and narrated, with a hundred
+sobs and ejaculations, and looks up to heaven, some thrilling incidents
+which occurred about the period when the hero was breeched, Laura began
+another equally interesting and equally ornamented with tears, and told
+how heroically he had a tooth out or wouldn't have it out, or how
+daringly he robbed a bird's nest or how magnanimously he spared it; or
+how he gave a shilling to the old woman on the common, or went without
+his bread-and-butter for the beggar-boy who came into the yard--and so on
+One to another the sobbing women sang laments upon their hero, who, my
+worthy reader has long since perceived, is no more a hero than one of us.
+Being as he was, why should a sensible girl be so fond of him?
+
+This point has been argued before in a previous unfortunate sentence
+(which lately drew down all the wrath of Ireland upon the writer's head),
+and which said that the greatest rascal-cut-throats have had somebody to
+be fond of them, and if those monsters, why not ordinary mortals? And
+with whom shall a young lady fall in love but with the person she sees?
+She is not supposed to lose her heart in a dream, like a Princess in the
+Arabian Nights; or to plight her young affections to the portrait of a
+gentleman in the Exhibition, or a sketch in the Illustrated London News.
+You have an instinct within you which inclines you to attach yourself to
+some one: you meet Somebody: you hear Somebody constantly praised: you
+walk, or ride, or waltz, or talk or sit in the same pew at church with
+Somebody: you meet again, and again, and--"Marriages are made in Heave,"
+your dear mamma says, pinning your orange-flowers wreath on, with her
+blessed eyes dimmed with tears--and there is a wedding breakfast, and you
+take off your white satin and retire to your coach-and-four, and you and
+he are a happy pair.--Or, the affair is broken off, and then, poor
+wounded heart! why, then you meet Somebody Else, and twine your young
+affections round number two. It is your nature so to do. Do you suppose
+it is all for the man's sake that you love, and not a bit for your own?
+Do you suppose you would drink if you were not thirsty, or eat if you
+were not hungry?
+
+So then Laura liked Pen because she saw scarcely anybody else at Fairoaks
+except Doctor Portman and Captain Glanders, and because his mother
+constantly praised her Arthur, and because he was gentlemanlike,
+tolerably good-looking and witty, and because, above all, it was of her
+nature to like somebody. And having once received this image into her
+heart, she there tenderly nursed it and clasped it--she there, in his
+long absences and her constant solitudes, silently brooded over it and
+fondled it--and when after this she came to London, and had an
+opportunity of becoming rather intimate with Mr. George Warrington, what
+on earth was to prevent her from thinking him a most odd, original,
+agreeable, and pleasing person?
+
+A long time afterwards, when these days were over, and Fate in its own
+way had disposed of the various persons now assembled in the dingy
+building in Lamb Court, perhaps some of them looked back and thought how
+happy the time was, and how pleasant had been their evening talks and
+little walks and simple recreations round the sofa of Pen the
+convalescent. The Major had a favourable opinion of September in London
+from that time forward, and declared at his clubs and in society that the
+dead season in town was often pleasant, doosid pleasant, begad. He used
+to go home to his lodgings in Bury Street of a night, wondering that it
+was already so late, and that the evening had passed away so quickly. He
+made his appearance at the Temple pretty constantly in the afternoon, and
+tugged up the long black staircase with quite a benevolent activity and
+perseverance. And he made interest with the chef at Bays's (that renowned
+cook, the superintendence of whose work upon Gastronomy compelled the
+gifted author to stay in the metropolis), to prepare little jellies,
+delicate clear soups, aspics, and other trifles good for invalids, which
+Morgan the valet constantly brought down to the little Lamb Court colony.
+And the permission to drink a glass or two of pure sherry being accorded
+to Pen by Doctor Goodenough, the Major told with almost tears in his eyes
+how his noble friend the Marquis of Steyne, passing through London on his
+way to the Continent, had ordered any quantity of his precious, his
+priceless Amontillado, that had been a present from King Ferdinand to the
+noble Marquis, to be placed at the disposal of Mr. Arthur Pendennis. The
+widow and Laura tasted it with respect (though they didn't in the least
+like the bitter flavour) but the invalid was greatly invigorated by it,
+and Warrington pronounced it superlatively good, and proposed the Major's
+health in a mock speech after dinner on the first day when the wine was
+served, and that of Lord Steyne and the aristocracy in general.
+
+Major Pendennis returned thanks with the utmost gravity and in a speech
+in which he used the words, 'the present occasion,' at least the proper
+number of times. Pen cheered with his feeble voice from his armchair.
+Warrington taught Miss Laura to cry "Hear! hear!" and tapped the table
+with his knuckles. Pidgeon the attendant grinned, and honest Doctor
+Goodenough found the party so merrily engaged, when he came in to pay his
+faithful gratuitous visit.
+
+Warrington knew Sibwright, who lived below and that gallant gentleman, in
+reply to a letter informing him of the use to which his apartment had
+been put, wrote back the most polite and flowery letter of acquiescence
+He placed his chambers at the service of their fair occupants, his bed at
+their disposal, his carpets at their feet. Everybody was kindly disposed
+towards the sick man and his family. His heart (and his mother's too, as
+we may fancy) melted within him at the thought of so much good-feeling
+and good-nature. Let Pen's biographer be pardoned for alluding to a time
+not far distant when a somewhat similar mishap brought him a providential
+friend, a kind physician, and a thousand proofs of a most touching and
+surprising kindness and sympathy.
+
+There was a piano in Mr. Sibwright's chamber (indeed, this gentleman, a
+lover of all the arts, performed himself--and excellently ill too--upon
+the instrument; and had had a song dedicated to him, the words by
+himself, the air by his devoted friend Leopoldo Twankidillo), and at this
+music-box, as Mr. Warrington called it, Laura, at first with a great deal
+of tremor and blushing (which became her very much), played and sang,
+sometimes of an evening, simple airs, and old songs of home. Her voice
+was a rich contralto, and Warrington, who scarcely knew one tune from
+another and who had but one tune or bray in his repertoire,--a most
+discordant imitation of 'God save the King'--sat rapt in delight
+listening to these songs. He could follow their rhythm if not their
+harmony; and he could watch, with a constant and daily growing
+enthusiasm, the pure and tender and generous creature who made the music.
+
+I wonder how that poor pale little girl in the black bonnet, who used to
+stand at the lamp-post in Lamb Court sometimes of an evening, looking up
+to the open windows from which the music came, liked to hear it? When
+Pen's bedtime came the songs were hushed. Lights appeared in the upper
+room: his room, whither the widow used to conduct him; and then the Major
+and Mr. Warrington, and sometimes Miss Laura, would have a game at ecarte
+or backgammon; or she would sit by working a pair of slippers in worsted
+--a pair of gentleman's slippers--they might have been for Arthur or for
+George or for Major Pendennis: one of those three would have given
+anything for the slippers.
+
+Whilst such business as this was going on within, a rather shabby old
+gentleman would come and lead away the pale girl in the black bonnet, who
+had no right to be abroad in the night air; and the Temple porters, the
+few laundresses, and other amateurs who had been listening to the
+concert, would also disappear.
+
+Just before ten o'clock there was another musical performance, namely
+that of the chimes of St. Clement's clock in the Strand, which played the
+clear cheerful notes of a psalm, before it proceeded to ring its ten
+fatal strokes. As they were ringing, Laura began to fold up the slippers;
+Martha from Fairoaks appeared with a bed-candle, and a constant smile on
+her face; the Major said, "God bless my soul, is it so late?" Warrington
+and he left their unfinished game, and got up and shook hands with Miss
+Bell. Martha from Fairoaks lighted them out of the passage and down the
+stair, and, as they descended, they could hear her bolting and locking
+"the sporting door" after them, upon her young mistress and herself. If
+there had been any danger, grinning Martha said she would have got down
+"that thar hooky soord which hung up in gantleman's room,"--meaning the
+Damascus scimitar with the names of the prophet engraved on the blade and
+the red velvet scabbard, which Percy Sibwright, Esquire, brought back
+from his tour in the Levant, along with an Albanian dress, and which he
+wore with such elegant effect at Lady Mullingar's fancy ball, Gloucester
+Square, Hyde Park. It entangled itself in Miss Kewsey's train, who
+appeared in the dress in which she, with her mamma, had been presented to
+their sovereign (the latter by the L--d Ch-nc-ll-r's lady), and led to
+events which have nothing to do with this history. Is not Miss Kewsey now
+Mrs. Sibwright? Has Sibwright not got a county court?--Good night, Laura
+and Fairoaks Martha. Sleep well and wake happy, pure and gentle lady.
+
+Sometimes after these evenings Warrington would walk a little way with
+Major Pendennis--just a little way just as far as the Temple gate--as the
+Strand--as Charing Cross--as the Club--he was not going into the Club?
+Well, as far as Bury Street, where he would laughingly shake hands on the
+Major's own door-step. They had been talking about Laura all the way. It
+was wonderful how enthusiastic the Major, who, as we know, used to
+dislike her, had grown to be regarding the young lady--"Dev'lish fine
+girl, begad. Dev'lish well-mannered girl--my sister-in-law has the
+manners of a duchess and would bring up any girl well. Miss Bell's a
+little countryfied. But the smell of the hawthorn is pleasant, demmy. How
+she blushes! Your London girls would give many a guinea for a bouquet
+like that--natural flowers, begad! And she's a little money too--nothing
+to speak of--but a pooty little bit of money." In all which opinions no
+doubt Mr. Warrington agreed; and though he laughed as he shook hands with
+the Major, his face fell as he left his veteran companion; and he strode
+back to chambers, and smoked pipe after pipe long into the night, and
+wrote article upon article, more and more savage, in lieu of friend Pen
+disabled.
+
+Well, it was a happy time for almost all parties concerned. Pen mended
+daily. Sleeping and eating were his constant occupations. His appetite
+was something frightful. He was ashamed of exhibiting it before Laura,
+and almost before his mother who laughed and applauded him. As the roast
+chicken of his dinner went away he eyed the departing friend with sad
+longing, and began to long for jelly, or tea, or what not. He was like an
+ogre in devouring. The Doctor cried stop, but Pen would not. Nature
+called out to him more loudly than the Doctor, and that kind and friendly
+physician handed him over with a very good grace to the other healer.
+
+And here let us speak very tenderly and in the strictest confidence of an
+event which befell him, and to which he never liked an allusion. During
+his delirium the ruthless Goodenough ordered ice to be put to his head,
+and all his lovely hair to be cut. It was done in the time of--of the
+other nurse, who left every single hair of course in a paper for the
+widow to count and treasure up. She never believed but that the girl had
+taken away some of it, but then women are so suspicious upon these
+matters.
+
+When this direful loss was made visible to Major Pendennis as of course
+it was the first time the elder saw the poor young man's shorn pate, and
+when Pen was quite out of danger, and gaining daily vigour, the Major,
+with something like blushes and a queer wink of his eyes, said he knew of
+a--a person--a coiffeur, in fact--a good man, whom he would send down to
+the Temple, and who would--a--apply--a--a temporary remedy to that
+misfortune.
+
+Laura looked at Warrington with the archest sparkle in her eyes--
+Warrington fairly burst out into a boohoo of laughter: even the widow was
+obliged to laugh: and the Major erubescent confounded the impudence of
+the young folks, and said when he had his hair cut he would keep a lock
+of it for Miss Laura.
+
+Warrington voted that Pen should wear a barrister's wig. There was
+Sibwright's down below, which would become him hugely. Pen said "Stuff,"
+and seemed as confused as his uncle; and the end was that a gentleman
+from Burlington Arcade waited next day upon Mr. Pendennis, and had a
+private interview with him in his bedroom; and a week afterwards the same
+individual appeared with a box under his arm, and an ineffable grin of
+politeness on his face, and announced that he had brought 'ome Mr.
+Pendennis's 'ead of 'air.
+
+It must have been a grand but melancholy sight to see Pen in the recesses
+of his apartment, sadly contemplating his ravaged beauty, and the
+artificial means of hiding its ruin. He appeared at length in the 'ead of
+'air; but Warrington laughed so, that Pen grew sulky, and went back for
+his velvet cap, a neat turban which the fondest of mammas had worked for
+him. Then Mr. Warrington and Miss Bell got some flowers off the ladies'
+bonnets and made a wreath, with which they decorated the wig and brought
+it out in procession, and did homage before it. In fact they indulged in
+a hundred sports, jularities, waggeries, and petits jeux innocens: so
+that the second and third floors of Number 6 Lamb Court, Temple, rang
+with more cheerfulness and laughter than had been known in those
+precincts for many a long day.
+
+At last, after about ten days of this life, one evening when the little
+spy of the court came out to take her usual post of observation at the
+lamp, there was no music from the second-floor window, there were no
+lights in the third-story chambers, the windows of each were open, and
+the occupants were gone. Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, told Fanny what
+had happened. The ladies and all the party had gone to Richmond for
+change of air. The antique travelling chariot was brought out again and
+cushioned with many pillows for Pen and his mother; and Miss Laura went
+in the most affable manner in the omnibus under the guardianship of Mr.
+George Warrington. He came back and took possession of his old bed that
+night in the vacant and cheerless chambers, and to his old books and his
+old pipes, but not perhaps to his old sleep.
+
+The widow had left a jar full of flowers upon his table, prettily
+arranged, and when he entered they filled the solitary room with odour.
+They were memorials of the kind, gentle souls who had gone away, and who
+had decorated for a little while that lonely cheerless place. He had had
+the happiest days of his whole life George felt--he knew it now they were
+just gone: he went and took up the flowers and put his face to them, and
+smelt them--perhaps kissed them. As he put them down, he rubbed his rough
+hand across his eyes with a bitter word and laugh. He would have given
+his whole life and soul to win that prize which Arthur rejected. Did she
+want fame? he would have won it for her:--devotion?--a great heart full
+of pent-up tenderness and manly love and gentleness was there for her, if
+she might take it. But it might not be. Fate had ruled otherwise. "Even
+if I could, she would not have me," George thought. "What has an ugly,
+rough old fellow like me, to make any woman like him? I'm getting old,
+and I've made no mark in life. I've neither good looks, nor youth, nor
+money, nor reputation. A man must be able to do something besides stare
+at her and offer on his knees his smooth devotion, to make a woman like
+him. What can I do? Lots of young fellows have passed me in the race--
+what they call the prizes of life didn't seem to me worth the trouble of
+the struggle. But for her. If she had been mine and liked a diamond--ah!
+shouldn't she have worn it! Psha, what a fool I am to brag of what I
+would have done! We are the slaves of destiny. Our lots are shaped for
+us, and mine is ordained long ago. Come, let us have a pipe, and put the
+smell of these flowers out of court, poor little silent flowers! you'll
+be dead to-morrow. What business had you to show your red cheeks in this
+dingy place?"
+
+By his bedside George found a new Bible which the widow had placed there,
+with a note inside saying that she had not seen the book amongst his
+collection in a room where she had spent a number of hours, and where God
+had vouchsafed to her prayers the life of her son, and that she gave to
+Arthur's friend the best thing she could, and besought him to read in the
+volume sometimes, and to keep it as a token of a grateful mother's regard
+and affection. Poor George mournfully kissed the book as he had done the
+flowers; and the morning found him still reading in its awful pages, in
+which so many stricken hearts, in which so many tender and faithful
+souls, have found comfort under calamity, and refuge and hope in
+affliction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+Fanny's Occupation's gone
+
+Good Helen, ever since her son's illness, had taken, as we have seen,
+entire possession of the young man, of his drawers and closets and all
+which they contained: whether shirts that wanted buttons, or stockings
+that required mending, or, must it be owned? letters that lay amongst
+those articles of raiment, and which of course it was necessary that
+somebody should answer during Arthur's weakened and incapable condition.
+Perhaps Mrs. Pendennis was laudably desirous to have some explanations
+about the dreadful Fanny Bolton mystery, regarding which she had never
+breathed a word to her son, though it was present in her mind always, and
+occasioned her inexpressible anxiety and disquiet. She had caused the
+brass knocker to be screwed off the inner door of the chambers, where
+upon the postman's startling double rap would, as she justly argued,
+disturb the rest of her patient, and she did not allow him to see any
+letter which arrived, whether from bootmakers who importuned him, or
+hatters who had a heavy account to make up against next Saturday, and
+would be very much obliged if Mr. Arthur Pendennis would have the
+kindness to settle, etc. Of these documents, Pen, who was always
+freehanded and careless, of course had his share, and though no great
+one, one quite enough to alarm his scrupulous and conscientious mother.
+She had some savings; Pen's magnificent self-denial, and her own economy,
+amounting from her great simplicity and avoidance of show to parsimony
+almost, had enabled her to put by a little sum of money, a part of which
+she delightedly consecrated to the paying off the young gentleman's
+obligations. At this price, many a worthy youth and respected reader
+would hand over his correspondence to his parents; and perhaps there is
+no greater test of a man's regularity and easiness of conscience, than
+his readiness to face the postman. Blessed is he who is made happy by the
+sound of the rat-tat! The good are eager for it: but the naughty tremble
+at the sound thereof. So it was very kind of Mrs. Pendennis doubly to
+spare Pen the trouble of hearing or answering letters during his illness.
+
+There could have been nothing in the young man's chest of drawers and
+wardrobes which could be considered as inculpating him in any way, nor
+any satisfactory documents regarding the Fanny Bolton affair found there,
+for the widow had to ask her brother-in-law if he knew anything about the
+odious transaction, and the dreadful intrigue about which her son was
+engaged. When they were at Richmond one day, and Pen with Warrington had
+taken a seat on a bench on the terrace, the widow kept Major Pendennis in
+consultation, and laid her terrors and perplexities before him, such of
+them at least (for as is the wont of men and women, she did not make
+quite a clean confession, and I suppose no spendthrift asked for a
+schedule of his debts, no lady of fashion asked by her husband for her
+dressmaker's bills, ever sent in the whole of them yet)--such, we say, of
+her perplexities, at least, as she chose to confide to her Director for
+the time being.
+
+When, then, she asked the Major what course she ought to pursue, about
+this dreadful--this horrid affair, and whether he knew anything regarding
+it? the old gentleman puckered up his face, so that you could not tell
+whether he was smiling or not; gave the widow one queer look with his
+little eyes; cast them down to the carpet again, and said, "My dear, good
+creature, I don't know anything about it; and I don't wish to know
+anything about it; and, as you ask me my opinion, I think you had best
+know nothing about it too. Young men will be young men; begad, and, my
+good ma'am, if you think our boy is a Jo----"
+
+"Pray, spare me this," Helen broke in, looking very stately.
+
+"My dear creature, I did not commence the conversation, permit me to
+say," the Major said, bowing very blandly.
+
+"I can't bear to hear such a sin--such a dreadful sin--spoken of in such
+a way," the widow said, with tears of annoyance starting from her eyes.
+"I can't bear to think that my boy should commit such a crime. I wish he
+had died, almost, before he had done it. I don't know how I survive it
+myself; for it is breaking my heart, Major Pendennis, to think that his
+father's son--my child--whom I remember so good--oh, so good, and full of
+honour!--should be fallen so dreadfully low, as to--as to----"
+
+"As to flirt with a little grisette, my dear creature?" said the Major.
+"Egad, if all the mothers in England were to break their hearts because--
+Nay, nay; upon my word and honour, now, don't agitate yourself--don't
+cry. I can't bear to see a woman's tears--I never could--never. But how
+do we know that anything serious has happened? Has Arthur said anything?"
+
+"His silence confirms it," sobbed Mrs. Pendennis, behind her
+pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"Not at all. There are subjects, my dear, about which a young fellow
+cannot surely talk to his mamma," insinuated the brother-in-law.
+
+"She has written to him," cried the lady, behind the cambric.
+
+"What, before he was ill? Nothing more likely."
+
+"No, since," the mourner with the batiste mask gasped out; not before;
+that is, I don't think so--that is, I----"
+
+"Only since; and you have--yes, I understand. I suppose when he was too
+ill to read his own correspondence, you took charge of it, did you?"
+
+"I am the most unhappy mother in the world," cried out the unfortunate
+Helen.
+
+"The most unhappy mother in the world, because your son is a man and not
+a hermit! Have a care, my dear sister. If you have suppressed any letters
+to him, you may have done yourself a great injury; and, if I know
+anything of Arthur's spirit, may cause a difference between him and you,
+which you'll rue all your life--a difference that's a dev'lish deal more
+important, my good madam, than the little--little--trumpery cause which
+originated it."
+
+"There was only one letter," broke out Helen,--"only a very little one--
+only a few words. Here it is--Oh--how can you, how can you speak so?"
+
+When the good soul said "only a very little one," the Major could not
+speak at all, so inclined was he to laugh, in spite of the agonies of the
+poor soul before him, and for whom he had a hearty pity and liking too.
+But each was looking at the matter with his or her peculiar eyes and
+views of morals, and the Major's morals, as the reader knows, were not
+those of an ascetic.
+
+"I recommend you," he gravely continued, "if you can, to seal it up--
+those letters ain't unfrequently sealed with wafers--and to put it
+amongst Pen's other letters, and let him have them when he calls for them
+Or if we'll can't seal it, we mistook it for a bill."
+
+"I can't tell my son a lie," said the widow. It had been put silently
+into the letter-box two days previous to their departure from the Temple,
+and had been brought to Mrs. Pendennis by Martha. She had never seen
+Fanny's handwriting, of course; but when the letter was put into her
+hands she knew the author at once. She had been on the watch for that
+letter every day since Pen had been ill. She had opened some of his other
+letters because she wanted to get at that one. She had the horrid paper
+poisoning her bag at that moment. She took it out and offered it to her
+brother-in-law.
+
+"Arther Pendennis, Esq.," he read in a timid little sprawling
+handwriting, and with a sneer on his face. "No, my dear, I won't read any
+more. But you who have read it may tell me what the letter contains--only
+prayers for his health in bad spelling, you say--and a desire to see him?
+Well--there's no harm in that. And as you ask me--" Here the Major began
+to look a little queer for his own part, and put on his demure look--"as
+you ask me, my dear, for information, why, I don't mind telling you that
+--ah--that--Morgan, my man, has made some inquiries regarding this
+affair, and that--my friend Doctor Goodenough also looked into it--and it
+appears that this person was greatly smitten with Arthur; that he paid
+for her and took her to Vauxhall Gardens, as Morgan heard from an old
+acquaintance of Pen's and ours, an Irish gentleman, who was very nearly
+once having the honour of being the--from an Irishman, in fact;--that the
+girl's father, a violent man of intoxicated habits, has beaten her
+mother, who persists in declaring her daughter's entire innocence to her
+husband on the one hand, while on the other she told Goodenough, that
+Arthur has acted like a brute to her child. And so you see the story
+remains in a mystery. Will you have it cleared up? I have but to ask Pen,
+and he will tell me at once--he is as honourable a man as ever lived."
+
+"Honourable!" said the widow with bitter scorn. "Oh, brother, what is
+this you call honour? If my boy has been guilty, he must marry her. I
+would go down on my knees and pray him to do so."
+
+"Good God! are you mad?" screamed out the Major; and remembering former
+passages in Arthur's history and Helen's, the truth came across his mind
+that, were Helen to make this prayer to her son, he would marry the girl:
+he was wild enough and obstinate enough to commit any folly when a woman
+he loved was in the case. "My dear sister, have you lost your senses?" he
+continued (after an agitated pause, during which the above dreary
+reflection crossed him); and in a softened tone, "What right have we to
+suppose that anything has passed between this girl and him? Let's see the
+letter. Her heart is breaking; pray, pray, write to me--home unhappy--
+unkind father--your nurse--poor little Fanny--spelt, as you say, in a
+manner to outrage all sense of decorum. But, good heavens! my dear, what
+is there in this? only that the little devil is making love to him still.
+Why, she didn't come into his chambers until he was so delirious that he
+didn't know her. What-d'you-call-'em, Flanagan, the laundress, told
+Morgan, my man, so. She came in company of an old fellow, an old Mr.
+Bows, who came most kindly down to Stillbrook and brought me away--by the
+way, I left him in the cab, and never paid the fare; and dev'lish kind it
+was of him. No, there's nothing in the story."
+
+"Do you think so? Thank Heaven--thank God!" Helen cried. "I'll take the
+letter to Arthur and ask him now. Look at him there. He's on the terrace
+with Mr. Warrington. They are talking to some children. My boy was always
+fond of children. He's innocent, thank God--thank God! Let me go to him."
+
+Old Pendennis had his own opinion. When he briskly took the not guilty
+side of the case, but a moment before, very likely the old gentleman had
+a different view from that which he chose to advocate, and judged of
+Arthur by what he himself would have done. If she goes to Arthur, and he
+speaks the truth, as the rascal will, it spoils all, he thought. And he
+tried one more effort.
+
+"My dear, good soul," he said, taking Helen's hand and kissing it, "as
+your son has not acquainted you with this affair, think if you have any
+right to examine it. As you believe him to be a man of honour, what right
+have you to doubt his honour in this instance? Who is his accuser? An
+anonymous scoundrel who has brought no specific charge against him. If
+there were any such, wouldn't the girl's parents have come forward? He is
+not called upon to rebut, nor you to entertain an anonymous accusation;
+and as for believing him guilty because a girl of that rank happened to
+be in his rooms acting as nurse to him, begad you might as well insist
+upon his marrying that dem'd old Irish gin-drinking laundress, Mrs.
+Flanagan."
+
+The widow burst out laughing through her tears--the victory was gained by
+the old general.
+
+"Marry Mrs. Flanagan, by Ged," he continued, tapping her slender hand.
+"No. The boy has told you nothing about it, and you know nothing about
+it. The boy is innocent--of course. And what, my good soul, is the course
+for us to pursue? Suppose he is attached to this girl--don't look sad
+again, it's merely a supposition--and begad a young fellow may have an
+attachment, mayn't he?--Directly he gets well he will be at her again."
+
+"He must come home! We must go off directly to Fairoaks," the widow cried
+out.
+
+"My good creature, he'll bore himself to death at Fairoaks. He'll have
+nothing to do but to think about his passion there. There's no place in
+the world for making a little passion into a big one, and where a fellow
+feeds on his own thoughts, like a dem'd lonely country-house where
+there's nothing to do. We must occupy him: amuse him: we must take him
+abroad: he's never been abroad except to Paris for a lark. We must travel
+a little. He must have a nurse with him, to take great care of him, for
+Goodenough says he had a dev'lish narrow squeak of it (don't look
+frightened), and so you must come and watch: and I suppose you'll take
+Miss Bell, and I should like to ask Warrington to come. Arthur's dev'lish
+fond of Warrington. He can't do without Warrington. Warrington's family
+is one of the oldest in England, and he is one of the best young fellows
+I ever met in my life. I like him exceedingly."
+
+"Does Mr. Warrington know anything about this--this affair?" asked Helen.
+"He had been away, I know, for two months before it happened; Pen wrote
+me so."
+
+"Not a word--I--I've asked him about it. I've pumped him. He never heard
+of the transaction, never; I pledge you my word," cried out the Major, in
+some alarm. "And, my dear, I think you had much best not talk to him
+about it--much best not--of course not: the subject is most delicate and
+painful."
+
+The simple widow took her brother's hand and pressed it. "Thank you,
+brother," she said. "You have been very, very kind to me. You have given
+me a great deal of comfort. I'll go to my room, and think of what you
+have said. This illness and these--these emotions--have agitated me a
+great deal; and I'm not very strong, you know. But I'll go and thank God
+that my boy is innocent. He is innocent. Isn't he, sir?"
+
+"Yes, my dearest creature, yes," said the old fellow, kissing her
+affectionately, and quite overcome by her tenderness. He looked after her
+as she retreated, with a fondness which was rendered more piquant, as it
+were, by the mixture of a certain scorn which accompanied it. "Innocent!"
+he said; "I'd swear, till I was black in the face, he was innocent,
+rather than give that good soul pain."
+
+Having achieved this victory, the fatigued and happy warrior laid himself
+down on the sofa, and put his yellow silk pocket-handkerchief over his
+face, and indulged in a snug little nap, of which the dreams, no doubt,
+were very pleasant, as he snored with refreshing regularity. The young
+men sate, meanwhile, dawdling away the sunshiny hours on the terrace,
+very happy, and Pen, at least, very talkative. He was narrating to
+Warrington a plan for a new novel, and a new tragedy. Warrington laughed
+at the idea of his writing a tragedy? By Jove, he would show that he
+could; and he began to spout some of the lines of his play.
+
+The little solo on the wind instrument which the Major was performing was
+interrupted by the entrance of Miss Bell. She had been on a visit to her
+old friend, Lady Rockminster, who had taken a summer villa in the
+neighbourhood; and who, hearing of Arthur's illness, and his mother's
+arrival at Richmond, had visited the latter; and, for the benefit of the
+former, whom she didn't like, had been prodigal of grapes, partridges,
+and other attentions. For Laura the old lady had a great fondness, and
+longed that she should come and stay with her; but Laura could not leave
+her mother at this juncture. Worn out by constant watching over Arthur's
+health, Helen's own had suffered very considerably; and Doctor Goodenough
+had had reason to prescribe for her as well as for his younger patient.
+
+Old Pendennis started up on the entrance of the young lady. His slumbers
+were easily broken. He made her a gallant speech--he had been full of
+gallantry towards her of late. Where had she been gathering those roses
+which she wore on her cheeks? How happy he was to be disturbed out of his
+dreams by such a charming reality! Laura had plenty of humour and
+honesty; and these two caused her to have on her side something very like
+a contempt for the old gentleman. It delighted her to draw out his
+worldlinesses, and to make the old habitue of clubs and drawing-rooms
+tell his twaddling tales about great folks, and expound his views of
+morals.
+
+Not in this instance, however, was she disposed to be satirical. She had
+been to drive with Lady Rockminster in the Park, she said; and she had
+brought home game for Pen, and flowers for mamma. She looked very grave
+about mamma. She had just been with Mrs. Pendennis. Helen was very much
+worn, and she feared she was very, very ill. Her large eyes filled with
+tender marks of the sympathy which she felt in her beloved friend's
+condition. She was alarmed about her. Could not that good--that dear Dr.
+Goodenough cure her?
+
+"Arthur's illness, and other mental anxiety," the Major slowly said,
+"had, no doubt, shaken Helen." A burning blush upon the girl's face
+showed that she understood the old man's allusion. But she looked him
+full in the face and made no reply. "He might have spared me that," she
+thought. "What is he aiming at in recalling that shame to me?"
+
+That he had an aim in view is very possible. The old diplomatist seldom
+spoke without some such end. Doctor Goodenough had talked to him, he
+said, about their dear friend's health, and she wanted rest and change of
+scene--yes, change of scene. Painful circumstances which had occurred
+must be forgotten and never alluded to; he begged pardon for even hinting
+at them to Miss Bell--he never should do so again--nor, he was sure,
+would she. Everything must be done to soothe and comfort their friend,
+and his proposal was that they should go abroad for the autumn to a
+watering-place in the Rhine neighbourhood, where Helen might rally her
+exhausted spirits, and Arthur try and become a new man. Of course, Laura
+would not forsake her mother?
+
+Of course not. It was about Helen, and Helen only--that is, about Arthur
+too for her sake, that Laura was anxious. She would go abroad or anywhere
+with Helen.
+
+And Helen having thought the matter over for an hour in her room, had by
+that time grown to be as anxious for the tour as any schoolboy, who has
+been reading a book of voyages, is eager to go to sea. Whither should
+they go? the farther the better--to some place so remote that even
+recollection could not follow them thither: so delightful that Pen should
+never want to leave it--anywhere so that he could be happy. She opened
+her desk with trembling fingers and took out her banker's book, and
+counted up her little savings. If more was wanted, she had the diamond
+cross. She would borrow from Laura again. "Let us go--let us go," she
+thought; "directly he can bear the journey let us go away. Come, kind
+Doctor Goodenough--come quick, and give us leave to quit England."
+
+The good Doctor drove over to dine with them that very day. "If you
+agitate yourself so," he said to her, "and if your heart beats so, and if
+you persist in being so anxious about a young gentleman who is getting
+well as fast as he can, we shall have you laid up, and Miss Laura to
+watch you; and then it will be her turn to be ill, and I should like to
+know how the deuce a doctor is to live who is obliged to come and attend
+you all for nothing? Mrs. Goodenough is already jealous of you, and says,
+with perfect justice, that I fall in love with my patients. And you must
+please to get out of the country as soon as ever you can, that I may have
+a little peace in my family."
+
+When the plan of going abroad was proposed, it was received by that
+gentleman with the greatest alacrity and enthusiasm. He longed to be off
+at once. He let his mustachios grow from that very moment, in order, I
+suppose, that he might get his mouth into training for a perfect French
+and German pronunciation; and he was seriously disquieted in his mind
+because the mustachios, when they came, were of a decidedly red colour.
+He had looked forward to an autumn at Fairoaks; and perhaps the idea of
+passing two or three months there did not amuse the young man. "There is
+not a soul to speak to in the place," he said to Warrington. "I can't
+stand old Portman's sermons, and pompous after-dinner conversation. I
+know all old Glanders's stories about the Peninsular war. The Claverings
+are the only Christian people in the neighbourhood, and they are not to
+be at home before Christmas, my uncle says: besides, Warrington, I want
+to get out of the country. Whilst you were away, confound it, I had a
+temptation, from which I am very thankful to have escaped, and which I
+count that even my illness came very luckily to put an end to." And here
+he narrated to his friend the circumstances of the Vauxhall affair, with
+which the reader is already acquainted.
+
+Warrington looked very grave when he heard this story. Putting the moral
+delinquency out of the question, he was extremely glad for Arthur's sake
+that the latter had escaped from a danger which might have made his whole
+life wretched; "which certainly," said Warrington, "would have occasioned
+the wretchedness and ruin of the other party. And your mother and--and
+your friends--what a pain it would have been to them!" urged Pen's
+companion, little knowing what grief and annoyance these good people had
+already suffered.
+
+"Not a word to my mother!" Pen cried out, in a state of great alarm. "She
+would never get over it. An esclandre of that sort would kill her, I do
+believe. And," he added, with a knowing air, and as if, like a young
+rascal of a Lovelace, he had been engaged in what are called affaires de
+coeur, all his life; "the best way, when a danger of that sort menaces,
+is not to face it, but to turn one's back on it and run."
+
+"And were you very much smitten?" Warrington asked.
+
+"Hm!" said Lovelace. "She dropped her h's, but she was a dear little
+girl."
+
+O Clarissas of this life, O you poor little ignorant vain foolish
+maidens! if you did but know the way in which the Lovelaces speak of you:
+if you could but hear Jack talking to Tom across the coffee-room of a
+Club; or see Ned taking your poor little letters out of his cigar-case,
+and handing them over to Charley, and Billy, and Harry across the
+messroom table, you would not be so eager to write, or so ready to
+listen! There's a sort of crime which is not complete unless the lucky
+rogue boasts of it afterwards; and the man who betrays your honour in the
+first place, is pretty sure, remember that, to betray your secret too.
+
+"It's hard to fight, and it's easy to fall," said Warring gloomily. "And
+as you say, Pendennis, when a danger like this is imminent, the best way
+is to turn your back on it and run."
+
+After this little discourse upon a subject about which Pen would have
+talked a great deal more eloquently a month back, the conversation
+reverted to the plans for going abroad, and Arthur eagerly pressed his
+friend to be of the party. Warrington was a part of the family--a part of
+the cure. Arthur said he should not have half the pleasure without
+Warrington.
+
+But George said no, he couldn't go. He must stop at home and take Pen's
+place. The other remarked that that was needless, for Shandon was now
+come back to London, and Arthur was entitled to a holiday.
+
+"Don't press me," Warrington said, "I can't go. I've particular
+engagements. I'm best at home. I've not got the money to travel, that's
+the long and short of it--for travelling costs money, you know."
+
+This little obstacle seemed fatal to Pen. He mentioned it to his mother:
+Mrs. Pendennis was very sorry; Mr. Warrington had been exceedingly kind;
+but she supposed he knew best about his affairs. And then, no doubt, she
+reproached herself, for selfishness in wishing to carry the boy off and
+have him to herself altogether.
+
+"What is this I hear from Pen, my dear Mr. Warrington?" the Major asked
+one day, when the pair were alone and after Warrington's objection had
+been stated to him. "Not go with us? We can't hear of such a thing--Pen
+won't get well without you. I promise you, I'm not going to be his nurse.
+He must have somebody with him that's stronger and gayer and better able
+to amuse him than a rheumatic old fogy like me. I shall go to Carlsbad
+very likely, when I've seen you people settle down. Travelling costs
+nothing nowadays--or so little! And--and, pray, Warrington, remember that
+I was your father's very old friend, and if you and your brother are not
+on such terms as to--to enable you to--to anticipate your younger
+brother's allowance, I beg you to make me your banker, for hasn't Pen
+been getting into your debt these three weeks past, during which you have
+been doing what he informs me is his work, with such exemplary talent and
+genius, begad?"
+
+Still, in spite of this kind offer and unheard-of generosity on the part
+of the Major, George Warrington refused, and said he would stay at home.
+But it was with a faltering voice and an irresolute accent which showed
+how much he would like to go, though his tongue persisted in saying nay.
+
+But the Major's persevering benevolence was not to be baulked in this
+way. At the tea-table that evening, Helen happening to be absent from the
+room for the moment, looking for Pen who had gone to roost, old Pendennis
+returned to the charge and rated Warrington for refusing to join in their
+excursion. "Isn't it ungallant, Miss Bell?" he said, turning to that
+young lady. "Isn't it unfriendly? Here we have been the happiest party in
+the world, and this odious selfish creature breaks it up!"
+
+Miss Bell's long eyelashes looked down towards her teacup: and Warrington
+blushed hugely but did not speak. Neither did Miss Bell speak: but when
+he blushed she blushed too.
+
+"You ask him to come, my dear," said the benevolent old gentleman, "and
+then perhaps he will listen to you----"
+
+"Why should Mr. Warrington listen to me?" asked the young lady, putting
+the query to her teaspoon seemingly and not to the Major.
+
+"Ask him; you have not asked him," said Pen's artless uncle.
+
+"I should be very glad, indeed, if Mr. Warrington would come," remarked
+Laura to the teaspoon.
+
+"Would you?" said George.
+
+She looked up and said, "Yes." Their eyes met. "I will go anywhere you
+ask me, or do anything," said George, lowly, and forcing out the words as
+if they gave him pain.
+
+Old Pendennis was delighted; the affectionate old creature clapped his
+hands and cried "Bravo! bravo! It's a bargain--a bargain, begad! Shake
+hands on it, young people!" And Laura, with a look full of tender
+brightness, put out her hand to Warrington. He took hers; his face
+indicated a strange agitation. He seemed to be about to speak, when from
+Pen's neighbouring room Helen entered, looking at them as the candle
+which she held lighted her pale frightened face.
+
+Laura blushed more red than ever and withdrew her hand.
+
+"What is it?" Helen asked.
+
+"It's a bargain we have been making, my dear creature," said the Major in
+his most caressing voice. "We have just bound over Mr. Warrington in a
+promise to come abroad with us."
+
+"Indeed!" Helen said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+In which Fanny engages a new Medical Man
+
+
+Could Helen have suspected that, with Pen's returning strength, his
+unhappy partiality for little Fanny would also reawaken? Though she never
+spoke a word regarding that young person, after her conversation with the
+Major, and though, to all appearances, she utterly ignored Fanny's
+existence, yet Mrs. Pendennis kept a particularly close watch upon all
+Master Arthur's actions; on the plea of ill-health would scarcely let him
+out of her sight; and was especially anxious that he should be spared the
+trouble of all correspondence for the present at least. Very likely
+Arthur looked at his own letters with some tremor; very likely, as he
+received them at the family table, feeling his mother's watch upon him
+(though the good soul's eye seemed fixed upon her teacup or her book), he
+expected daily to see a little handwriting, which he would have known,
+though he had never seen it yet, and his heart beat as he received the
+letters to his address. Was he more pleased or annoyed, that, day after
+day, his expectations were not realised; and was his mind relieved, that
+there came no letter from Fanny? Though, no doubt, in these matters, when
+Lovelace is tired of Clarissa (or the contrary) it is best for both
+parties to break at once, and each, after the failure of the attempt at
+union, to go his own way, and pursue his course through life solitary;
+yet our self-love, or our pity, or our sense of decency, does not like
+that sudden bankruptcy. Before we announce to the world that our firm of
+Lovelace and Co. can't meet its engagements, we try to make compromises:
+we have mournful meetings of partners: we delay the putting up of the
+shutters, and the dreary announcement of the failure. It must come: but
+we pawn our jewels to keep things going a little longer. On the whole, I
+dare say, Pen was rather annoyed that he had no remonstrances from Fanny.
+What! could she part from him, and never so much as once look round?
+could she sink, and never once hold a little hand out, or cry, "Help,
+Arthur?" Well, well: they don't all go down who venture on that voyage.
+Some few drown when the vessel founders; but most are only ducked, and
+scramble to shore. And the reader's experience of A. Pendennis, Esquire,
+of the Upper Temple, will enable him to state whether that gentleman
+belonged to the class of persons who were likely to sink or to swim.
+
+Though Pen was as yet too weak to walk half a mile; and might not, on
+account of his precious health, be trusted to take a drive in a carriage
+by himself, and without a nurse in attendance; yet Helen could not keep
+watch over Mr. Warrington too, and had no authority to prevent that
+gentleman from going to London if business called him thither. Indeed, if
+he had gone and stayed, perhaps the widow, from reasons of her own, would
+have been glad; but she checked these selfish wishes as soon as she
+ascertained or owned them; and, remembering Warrington's great regard and
+services, and constant friendship for her boy, received him as a member
+of her family almost, with her usual melancholy kindness and submissive
+acquiescence. Yet somehow, one morning when his affairs called him to
+town, she divined what Warrington's errand was, and that he was gone to
+London to get news about Fanny for Pen.
+
+Indeed, Arthur had had some talk with his friend, and told him more at
+large what his adventures had been with Fanny (adventures which the
+reader knows already), and what were his feelings respecting her. He was
+very thankful that he had escaped the great danger, to which Warrington
+said Amen heartily: that he had no great fault wherewith to reproach
+himself in regard of his behaviour to her, but that if they parted, as
+they must, he would be glad to say a God bless her, and to hope that she
+would remember him kindly. In his discourse with Warrington he spoke upon
+these matters with so much gravity, and so much emotion, that George, who
+had pronounced himself most strongly for the separation too, began to
+fear that his friend was not so well cured as he boasted of being; and
+that, if the two were to come together again, all the danger and the
+temptation might have to be fought once more. And with what result? "It
+is hard to struggle, Arthur, and it is easy to fall," Warrington said:
+"and the best courage for us poor wretches is to fly from danger. I would
+not have been what I am now, had I practised what I preach.
+
+"And what did you practise, George?" Pen asked, eagerly. "I knew there
+was something. Tell us about it, Warrington."
+
+"There was something that can't be mended, and that shattered my whole
+fortunes early," Warrington answered. "I said I would tell you about it
+some day, Pen: and will, but not now. Take the moral without the fable
+now, Pen, my boy; and if you want to see a man whose whole life has been
+wrecked, by an unlucky rock against which he struck as a boy--here he is,
+Arthur: and so I warn you."
+
+We have shown how Mr. Huxter, in writing home to his Clavering friends,
+mentioned that there was a fashionable club in London of which he was an
+attendant, and that he was there in the habit of meeting an Irish officer
+of distinction, who, amongst other news, had given that intelligence
+regarding Pendennis, which the young surgeon had transmitted to
+Clavering. This club was no other than the Back Kitchen, where the
+disciple of Saint Bartholomew was accustomed to meet the General, the
+peculiarities of whose brogue, appearance, disposition, and general
+conversation, greatly diverted many young gentlemen who used the Back
+Kitchen as a place of nightly entertainment and refreshment. Huxter, who
+had a fine natural genius for mimicking everything, whether it was a
+favourite tragic or comic actor, or a cock on a dunghill, a corkscrew
+going into a bottle and a cork issuing thence, or an Irish officer of
+genteel connexions who offered himself as an object of imitation with
+only too much readiness, talked his talk, and twanged his poor old long
+bow whenever drink, a hearer, and an opportunity occurred, studied our
+friend the General with peculiar gusto, and drew the honest fellow out
+many a night. A bait, consisting of sixpennyworth of brandy-and-water,
+the worthy old man was sure to swallow: and under the influence of this
+liquor, who was more happy than he to tell his stories of his daughter's
+triumphs and his own, in love, war, drink, and polite society? Thus
+Huxter was enabled to present to his friends many pictures of Costigan:
+of Costigan fighting a jewel in the Phaynix--of Costigan and his
+interview with the Juke of York--of Costigan at his sonunlaw's teeble,
+surrounded by the nobilitee of his countree--of Costigan, when crying
+drunk, at which time he was in the habit of confidentially lamenting his
+daughter's ingratichewd, and stating that his grey hairs were hastening
+to a praymachure greeve. And thus our friend was the means of bringing a
+number of young fellows to the Back Kitchen, who consumed the landlord's
+liquors whilst they relished the General's peculiarities, so that mine
+host pardoned many of the latter's foibles, in consideration of the good
+which they brought to his house. Not the highest position in life was
+this--certainly, or one which, if we had a reverence for an old man, we
+would be anxious that he should occupy: but of this aged buffoon it may
+be mentioned that he had no particular idea that his condition of life
+was not a high one, and that in his whiskied blood there was not a black
+drop, nor in his muddled brains a bitter feeling, against any mortal
+being. Even his child, his cruel Emily, he would have taken to his heart
+and forgiven with tears; and what more can one say of the Christian
+charity of a man than that he is actually ready to forgive those who have
+done him every kindness, and with whom he is wrong in a dispute!
+
+There was some idea amongst the young men who frequented the Back
+Kitchen, and made themselves merry with the society of Captain Costigan,
+that the Captain made a mystery regarding his lodgings for fear of duns,
+or from a desire of privacy, and lived in some wonderful place. Nor would
+the landlord of the premises, when questioned upon this subject, answer
+any inquiries; his maxim being that he only knew gentlemen who frequented
+that room, in that room; that when they quitted that room, having paid
+their scores as gentlemen, and behaved as gentlemen, his communication
+with them ceased; and that, as a gentleman himself, he thought it was
+only impertinent curiosity to ask where any other gentleman lived.
+Costigan, in his most intoxicated and confidential moments, also evaded
+any replies to questions or hints addressed to him on this subject: there
+was no particular secret about it, as we have seen, who have had more
+than once the honour of entering his apartments, but in the vicissitudes
+of a long life he had been pretty often in the habit of residing in
+houses where privacy was necessary to his comfort, and where the
+appearance of some visitors would have brought him anything but pleasure.
+Hence all sorts of legends were formed by wags or credulous persons
+respecting his place of abode. It was stated that he slept habitually in
+a watch-box in the city: in a cab at a mews, where a cab-proprietor gave
+him a shelter: in the Duke of York's Column etc, the wildest of these
+theories being put abroad by the facetious and imaginative Huxter. For
+Huxey, when not silenced by the company of "swells," and when in the
+society of his own friends, was a very different fellow to the youth whom
+we have seen cowed by Pen's impertinent airs, and, adored by his family
+at home, was the life and soul of the circle whom he met, either round
+the festive board or the dissecting table. On one brilliant September
+morning, as Huxter was regaling himself with a cup of coffee at a stall
+in Covent Garden, having spent a delicious night dancing at Vauxhall, he
+spied the General reeling down Henrietta Street, with a crowd of hooting
+blackguard boys at his heels, who had left their beds under the arches of
+the river betimes, and were prowling about already for breakfast, and the
+strange livelihood of the day. The poor old General was not in that
+condition when the sneers and jokes of these young beggars had much
+effect upon him: the cabmen and watermen at the cabstand knew him and
+passed their comments upon him: the policemen gazed after him and warned
+the boys off him, with looks of scorn and pity; what did the scorn and
+pity of men, the jokes of ribald children, matter to the General? He
+reeled along the street with glazed eyes, having just sense enough to
+know whither he was bound, and to pursue his accustomed beat homewards.
+He went to bed not knowing how he had reached it, as often as any man in
+London. He woke and found himself there, and asked no questions, and he
+was tacking about on this daily though perilous voyage, when, from his
+station at the coffee-stall, Huxter spied him. To note his friend, to pay
+his twopence (indeed, he had but eightpence left, or he would have had a
+cab from Vauxhall to take him home), was with the eager Huxter the work
+of an instant--Costigan dived down the alleys by Drury Lane Theatre,
+where gin-shops, oyster-shops, and theatrical wardrobes abound, the
+proprietors of which were now asleep behind their shutters, as the pink
+morning lighted up their chimneys; and through these courts Huxter
+followed the General, until he reached Oldcastle Street, in which is the
+gate of Shepherd's Inn.
+
+Here, just as he was within sight of home, a luckless slice of
+orange-peel came between the General's heel and the pavement, and
+caused the poor old fellow to fall backwards.
+
+Huxter ran up to him instantly, and after a pause, during which the
+veteran, giddy with his fall and his previous whisky, gathered, as he
+best might, his dizzy brains together, the young surgeon lifted up the
+limping General, and very kindly and good-naturedly offered to conduct
+him to his home. For some time, and in reply to the queries which the
+student of medicine put to him, the muzzy General refused to say where
+his lodgings were and declared that they were hard by, and that he could
+reach them without difficulty; and he disengaged himself from Huxter's
+arm, and made a rush as if to get to his own home unattended: but he
+reeled and lurched so, that the young surgeon insisted upon accompanying
+him, and, with many soothing expressions and cheering and consolatory
+phrases, succeeded in getting the General's dirty old hand under what he
+called his own fin, and led the old fellow, moaning piteously, across the
+street. He stopped when he came to the ancient gate, ornamented with the
+armorial bearings of the venerable Shepherd. "Here 'tis," said he,
+drawing up at the portal, and he made a successful pull at the gate bell,
+which presently brought out old Mr. Bolton, the porter, scowling
+fiercely, and grumbling as he was used to do every morning when it became
+his turn to let in that early bird.
+
+Costigan tried to hold Bolton for a moment in genteel conversation, but
+the other surlily would not. "Don't bother me," said he; "go to your hown
+bed Capting, and don't keep honest men out of theirs." So the Captain
+tacked across the square and reached his own staircase, up which he
+stumbled with the worthy Huxter at his heels. Costigan had a key of his
+own, which Huxter inserted into the keyhole for him, so that there was no
+need to call up little Mr. Bows from the sleep into which the old
+musician had not long since fallen, and Huxter having aided to disrobe
+his tipsy patient, and ascertained that no bones were broken, helped him
+to bed and applied compresses an water to one of his knees and shins,
+which, with the pair of trousers which encased them, Costigan had
+severely torn in his fall. At the General's age, and with his habit of
+body, such wounds as he had inflicted on himself are slow to heal: a good
+deal of inflammation ensued, and the old fellow lay ill for some days,
+suffering both pain and fever.
+
+Mr. Huxter undertook the case of his interesting patient with great
+confidence and alacrity, and conducted it with becoming skill. He visited
+his friend day after day, and consoled him with lively rattle and
+conversation for the absence of the society which Costigan needed, and of
+which he was an ornament; and he gave special instructions to the
+invalid's nurse about the quantity of whisky which the patient was to
+take--instructions which, as the poor old fellow could not for many days
+get out of his bed or sofa himself, he could not by any means infringe.
+Bows, Mrs. Bolton, and our little friend Fanny, when able to do so,
+officiated at the General's bedside, and the old warrior was made as
+comfortable as possible under his calamity.
+
+Thus Huxter, whose affable manners and social turn made him quickly
+intimate with persons in whose society he fell, and whose over-refinement
+did not lead them to repulse the familiarities of this young gentleman,
+became pretty soon intimate in Shepherd's Inn, both with our
+acquaintances in the garrets and those in the porter's lodge. He thought
+he had seen Fanny somewhere: he felt certain that he had: but it is no
+wonder that he should not accurately remember her, for the poor little
+thing never chose to tell him where she had met him: he himself had seen
+her at a period, when his own views both of persons and of right and
+wrong were clouded by the excitement of drinking and dancing, and also
+little Fanny was very much changed and worn by the fever and agitation,
+and passion and despair, which the past three weeks had poured upon the
+head of that little victim. Borne down was the head now, and very pale
+and wan the face; and many and many a time the sad eyes had looked into
+the postman's, as he came to the Inn, and the sickened heart had sunk as
+he passed away. When Mr. Costigan's accident occurred, Fanny was rather
+glad to have an opportunity of being useful and doing something kind--
+something that would make her forget her own little sorrows perhaps: she
+felt she bore them better whilst she did her duty, though I dare say many
+a tear dropped into the old Irishman's gruel. Ah, me! stir the gruel
+well, and have courage, little Fanny! If everybody who has suffered from
+your complaint were to die of it straightway, what a fine year the
+undertakers would have!
+
+Whether from compassion for his only patient, or delight in his society,
+Mr. Huxter found now occasion to visit Costigan two or three times in the
+day at least, and if any of the members of the porter's lodge family were
+not in attendance on the General, the young doctor was sure to have some
+particular directions to address to those at their own place of
+habitation. He was a kind fellow; he made or purchased toys for the
+children; he brought them apples and brandy-balls; he brought a mask and
+frightened them with it, and caused a smile upon the face of pale Fanny.
+He called Mrs. Bolton Mrs. B., and was very intimate, familiar, and
+facetious with that lady, quite different from that "aughty, artless
+beast," as Mrs. Bolton now denominated a certain young gentleman of our
+acquaintance, and whom she now vowed she never could abear.
+
+It was from this lady, who was very free in her conversation, that Huxter
+presently learnt what was the illness which was evidently preying upon
+little Fan, and what had been Pen's behaviour regarding her. Mrs.
+Bolton's account of the transaction was not, it may be imagined, entirely
+an impartial narrative. One would have thought from her story that the
+young gentleman had employed a course of the most persevering and
+flagitious artifices to win the girl's heart, had broken the most solemn
+promises made to her and was a wretch to be hated and chastised by every
+champion of woman. Huxter, in his present frame of mind respecting
+Arthur, and suffering under the latter's contumely, was ready, of course,
+to take all for granted that was said in the disfavour of this
+unfortunate convalescent. But why did he not write home to Clavering, as
+he had done previously, giving an account of Pen's misconduct, and of the
+particulars regarding it, which had now come to his knowledge? He soon,
+in a letter to his brother-in-law, announced that that nice young man,
+Mr. Pendennis, had escaped narrowly from a fever, and that no doubt all
+Clavering, where he was so popular, would be pleased at his recovery; and
+he mentioned that he had an interesting case of compound fracture, an
+officer of distinction, which kept him in town; but as for Fanny Bolton,
+he made no more mention of her in his letters--no more than Pen himself
+had made mention of her. O you mothers at home, how much do you think you
+know about your lads? How much do you think you know?
+
+But with Bows, there was no reason why Huxter should not speak his mind,
+and so, a very short time after his conversation with Mrs. Bolton, Mr.
+Sam talked to the musician about his early acquaintance with Pendennis;
+described him as a confounded conceited blackguard, and expressed a
+determination to punch his impudent head as soon as ever he should be
+well enough to stand up like a man.
+
+Then it was that Bows on his part spoke and told his version of the
+story, whereof Arthur and little Fan were the hero and heroine; how they
+had met by no contrivance of the former, but by a blunder of the old
+Irishman, now in bed with a broken shin--how Pen had acted with manliness
+and self-control in the business--how Mrs Bolton was an idiot; and he
+related the conversation which he, Bows, had had with Pen, and the
+sentiments uttered by the young man. Perhaps Bow's story caused some
+twinges of conscience in the breast of Pen's accuser, and that gentleman
+frankly owned that he had been wrong with regard to Arthur, and withdrew
+his project for punching Mr. Pendennis's head.
+
+But the cessation of his hostility for Pen did not diminish Huxter's
+attentions to Fanny, which unlucky Mr Bows marked with his usual jealousy
+and bitterness of spirit, "I have but to like anybody" the old fellow
+thought, "and somebody is sure to come and be preferred to me. It has
+been the same ill-luck with me since I was a lad, until now that I am
+sixty years old. What can such a man as I am expect better than to be
+laughed at? It is for the young to succeed, and to be happy, and not for
+old fools like me. I've played a second fiddle through life," he said,
+with a bitter laugh; "how can I suppose the luck is to change after it
+has gone against me so long?" This was the selfish way in which Bows
+looked at the state of affairs: though few persons would have thought
+there was any cause for his jealousy, who looked at the pale and
+grief-stricken countenance of the hapless little girl, its object. Fanny
+received Huxter's good-natured efforts at consolation and kind attentions
+kindly. She laughed now and again at his jokes and games with her little
+sisters, but relapsed quickly into a dejection which ought to have
+satisfied Mr. Bows that the new-comer had no place in her heart as yet,
+had jealous Mr. Bows been enabled to see with clear eyes.
+
+But Bows did not. Fanny attributed Pen's silence somehow to Bows's
+interference. Fanny hated him. Fanny treated Bows with constant cruelty
+and injustice. She turned from him when he spoke--she loathed his
+attempts at consolation. A hard life had Mr. Bows, and a cruel return for
+his regard.
+
+When Warrington came to Shepherd's Inn as Pen's ambassador, it was for
+Mr. Bows's apartments he inquired (no doubt upon a previous agreement
+with the principal for whom he acted in this delicate negotiation), and
+he did not so much as catch a glimpse of Miss Fanny when he stopped at
+the Inn-gate and made his inquiry. Warrington was, of course, directed to
+the musician's chambers, and found him tending the patient there, from
+whose chamber he came out to wait upon his guest. We have said that they
+had been previously known to one another, and the pair shook hands with
+sufficient cordiality. After a little preliminary talk, Warrington said
+that he had come from his friend Arthur Pendennis, and from his family,
+to thank Bows for his attention at the commencement of Pen's illness, and
+for his kindness in hastening into the country to fetch the Major.
+
+Bows replied that it was but his duty: he had never thought to have seen
+the young gentleman alive again when he went in search of Pen's
+relatives, and he was very glad of Mr. Pendennis's recovery, and that he
+had his friends with him. "Lucky are they who have friends, Mr.
+Warrington," said the musician. "I might be up in this garret and nobody
+would care for me, or mind whether I was alive or dead."
+
+"What! not the General, Mr. Bows?" Warrington asked.
+
+"The General likes his whisky-bottle more than anything in life," the
+other answered; "we live together from habit and convenience; and he
+cares for me no more than you do. What is it you want to ask me, Mr.
+Warrington? You ain't come to visit me, I know very well. Nobody comes to
+visit me. It is about Fanny, the porter's daughter, you are come--I see
+that--very well. Is Mr. Pendennis, now he has got well, anxious to see
+her again? Does his lordship the Sultan propose to throw his 'andkerchief
+to her? She has been very ill, sir, ever since the day when Mrs.
+Pendennis turned her out of doors--kind of a lady, wasn't it? The poor
+girl and myself found the young gentleman raving in a fever, knowing
+nobody, with nobody to tend him but his drunken laundress--she watched
+day and night by him. I set off to fetch his uncle. Mamma comes and turns
+Fanny to the right-about. Uncle comes and leaves me to pay the cab. Carry
+my compliments to the ladies and gentleman, and say we are both very
+thankful, very. Why, a countess couldn't have behaved better, and for an
+apothecary's lady, as I'm given to understand Mrs. Pendennis was--I'm
+sure her behaviour is most uncommon aristocratic and genteel. She ought
+to have a double-gilt pestle and mortar to her coach."
+
+It was from Mr. Huxter that Bows had learned Pen's parentage, no doubt,
+and if he took Pen's part against the young surgeon, and Fanny's against
+Mr. Pendennis, it was because the old gentleman was in so savage a mood,
+that his humour was to contradict everybody.
+
+Warrington was curious, and not ill pleased at the musician's taunts and
+irascibility. "I never heard of these transactions," he said, "or got but
+a very imperfect account of them from Major Pendennis. What was a lady to
+do? I think (I have never spoken with her on the subject) she had some
+notion that the young woman and my friend Pen were on--on terms of--of an
+intimacy which Mrs. Pendennis could not, of course, recognise----"
+
+"Oh, of course not, sir. Speak out, sir; say what you mean at once, that
+the young gentleman of the Temple had made a victim of the girl of
+Shepherd's Inn, eh? And so she was turned to be out of doors--or brayed
+alive in the double-gilt pestle and mortar, by Jove! No, Mr. Warrington,
+there was no such thing: there was no victimising, or if there was, Mr.
+Arthur was the victim, not the girl. He is an honest fellow, he is,
+though he is conceited, and a puppy sometimes. He can feel like a man,
+and run away from temptation like a man. I own it, though I suffer by it,
+I own it. He has a heart, he has: but the girl hasn't, sir. That girl
+will do anything to win a man, and fling him away without a pang, sir. If
+she's flung away herself, sir, she'll feel it and cry. She had a fever
+when Mrs. Pendennis turned her out of doors; and she made love to the
+Doctor, Doctor Goodenough, who came to cure her. Now she has taken on
+with another chap--another sawbones, ha, ha! d--- it, sir, she likes the
+pestle and mortar, and hangs round the pill-boxes, she's so fond of 'em,
+and she has got a fellow from Saint Bartholomew's, who grins through a
+horse-collar for her sisters, and charms away her melancholy. Go and see,
+sir: very likely he's in the lodge now. If you want news about Miss
+Fanny, you must ask at the Doctor's shop, sir, not of an old fiddler like
+me--Good-bye, sir. There's my patient calling."
+
+And a voice was heard from the Captain's bedroom, a well-known voice,
+which said, "I'd loike a dthrop of dthrink, Bows, I'm thirstee." And not
+sorry, perhaps, to hear that such was the state of things, and that Pen's
+forsaken was consoling herself, Warrington took his leave of the
+irascible musician.
+
+As luck would have it, he passed the lodge door just as Mr. Huxter was in
+the act of frightening the children with the mask whereof we have spoken,
+and Fanny was smiling languidly at his farces. Warrington laughed
+bitterly. "Are all women like that?" he thought. "I think there's one
+that's not," he added, with a sigh.
+
+At Piccadilly, waiting for the Richmond omnibus, George fell in with
+Major Pendennis, bound in the same direction, and he told the old
+gentleman of what he had seen and heard respecting Fanny.
+
+Major Pendennis was highly delighted: and as might be expected of such a
+philosopher, made precisely the same observation as that which had
+escaped from Warrington. "All women are the same," he said. "La petite se
+console. Daymy, when I used to read 'Telemaque' at school, Calypso ne
+pouvait se consoler,--you know the rest, Warrington,--I used to say it
+was absard. Absard, by Gad, and so it is. And so she's got a new
+soupirant, has she, the little porteress? Dayvlish nice little girl. How
+mad Pen will be--eh, Warrington? But we must break it to him gently, or
+he'll be in such a rage that he will be going after her again. We must
+menager the young fellow."
+
+"I think Mrs. Pendennis ought to know that Pen acted very well in the
+business. She evidently thinks him guilty, and according to Mr. Bows,
+Arthur behaved like a good fellow," Warrington said.
+
+"My dear Warrington," said the Major, with a look of some alarm, "in Mrs.
+Pendennis's agitated state of health and that sort of thing, the best
+way, I think, is not to say a single word about the subject--or, stay,
+leave it to me: and I'll talk to her--break it to her gently, you know,
+and that sort of thing. I give you my word I will. And so Calypso's
+consoled, is she," And he sniggered over this gratifying truth, happy in
+the corner of the omnibus during the rest of the journey.
+
+Pen was very anxious to hear from his envoy what had been the result of
+the latter's mission; and as soon as the two young men could be alone,
+the ambassador spoke in reply to Arthur's eager queries.
+
+"You remember your poem, Pen, of Ariadne in Naxos," Warrington said;
+"devilish bad poetry it was, to be sure."
+
+"Apres?" asked Pen, in a great state of excitement.
+
+"When Theseus left Ariadne, do you remember what happened to her, young
+fellow?"
+
+"It's a lie, it's a lie! You don't mean that!" cried out Pen, starting
+up, his face turning red.
+
+"Sit down, stoopid," Warrington said, and with two fingers pushed Pen
+back into his seat again. "It's better for you as it is, young one," he
+said sadly, in reply to the savage flush in Arthur's face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+Foreign Ground
+
+
+Worthy Major Pendennis fulfilled his promise to Warrington so far as to
+satisfy his own conscience, and in so far to ease poor Helen with regard
+to her son, as to make her understand that all connexion between Arthur
+and the odious little gatekeeper was at an end, and that she need have no
+further anxiety with respect to an imprudent attachment or a degrading
+marriage on Pen's part. And that young fellow's mind was also relieved
+(after he had recovered the shock to his vanity) by thinking that Miss
+Fanny was not going to die of love for him, and that no unpleasant
+consequences were to be apprehended from the luckless and brief
+connexion.
+
+So the whole party were free to carry into effect their projected
+Continental trip, and Arthur Pendennis, rentier, voyageant avec Madame
+Pendennis and Mademoiselle Bell, and George Warrington, particulier, age
+de 32 ans, taille 6 pieds (Anglais), figure ordinaire, cheveux noirs,
+barbe idem, etc., procured passports from the consul of H.M. the King of
+the Belgians at Dover, and passed over from that port to Ostend, whence
+the party took their way leisurely, visiting Bruges and Ghent on their
+way to Brussels and the Rhine. It is not our purpose to describe this
+oft-travelled tour, or Laura's delight at the tranquil and ancient cities
+which she saw for the first time, or Helen's wonder and interest at the
+Beguine convents which they visited, or the almost terror with which she
+saw the black-veiled nuns with outstretched arms kneeling before the
+illuminated altars, and beheld the strange pomps and ceremonials of the
+Catholic worship. Barefooted friars in the streets; crowned images of
+Saints and Virgins in the churches before which people were bowing down
+and worshipping, in direct defiance, as she held, of the written law;
+priests in gorgeous robes, or lurking in dark confessionals; theatres
+opened, and people dancing on Sundays,--all these new sights and manners
+shocked and bewildered the simple country lady; and when the young men
+after their evening drive or walk returned to the widow and her adopted
+daughter, they found their books of devotion on the table, and at their
+entrance Laura would commonly cease reading some of the psalms or the
+sacred pages which, of all others, Helen loved. The late events connected
+with her son had cruelly shaken her; Laura watched with intense, though
+hidden anxiety, every movement of her dearest friend; and poor Pen was
+most constant and affectionate in waiting upon his mother, whose wounded
+bosom yearned with love towards him, though there was a secret between
+them, and an anguish or rage almost on the mother's part, to think that
+she was dispossessed somehow of her son's heart, or that there were
+recesses in it which she must not or dared not enter. She sickened as she
+thought of the sacred days of boyhood when it had not been so--when her
+Arthur's heart had no secrets, and she was his all in all: when he poured
+his hopes and pleasures, his childish griefs, vanities, triumphs into her
+willing and tender embrace; when her home was his nest still; and before
+fate, selfishness, nature, had driven him forth on wayward wings--to
+range his own flight--to sing his own song--and to seek his own home and
+his own mate. Watching this devouring care and racking disappointment in
+her friend, Laura once said to Helen, "If Pen had loved me as you wished,
+I should have gained him, but I should have lost you, mamma, I know I
+should; and I like you to love me best. Men do not know what it is to
+love as we do, I think,"--and Helen, sighing, agreed to this portion of
+the young lady's speech, though she protested against the former part.
+For my part I suppose Miss Laura was right in both statements, and with
+regard to the latter assertion especially, that it is an old and received
+truism--love is an hour with us: it is all night and all day with a
+woman. Damon has taxes, sermon, parade, tailors' bills, parliamentary
+duties, and the deuce knows what to think of; Delia has to think about
+Damon--Damon is the oak (or the post) and stands up, and Delia is the ivy
+or the honeysuckle whose arms twine about him. Is it not so, Delia? Is it
+not your nature to creep about his feet and kiss them, to twine round his
+trunk and hang there; and Damon's to stand like a British man with his
+hands in his breeches pocket, while the pretty fond parasite clings round
+him?
+
+Old Pendennis had only accompanied our friends to the water's edge, and
+left them on board the boat, giving the chief charge of the little
+expedition to Warrington. He himself was bound on a brief visit to the
+house of a great man, a friend of his, after which sojourn he proposed to
+join his sister-in-law at the German watering-place, whither the party
+was bound. The Major himself thought that his long attentions to his sick
+family had earned for him a little relaxation--and though the best of the
+partridges were thinned off, the pheasants were still to be shot at
+Stillbrook, where the noble owner still was; old Pendennis betook himself
+to that hospitable mansion and disported there with great comfort to
+himself. A royal Duke, some foreigners of note, some illustrious
+statesmen, and some pleasant people visited it: it did the old fellow's
+heart good to see his name in the Morning Post amongst the list of the
+distinguished company which the Marquis of Steyne was entertaining at his
+country-house at Stillbrook. He was a very useful and pleasant personage
+in a country-house. He entertained the young men with queer little
+anecdotes and grivoises stories on their shooting-parties or in their
+smoking-room, where they laughed at him and with him. He was obsequious
+with the ladies of a morning, in the rooms dedicated to them. He walked
+the new arrivals about the park and gardens, and showed them the carte du
+pays, and where there was the best view of the mansion, and where the
+most favourable point to look at the lake: he showed, where the timber
+was to be felled, and where the old road went before the new bridge was
+built, and the hill cut down; and where the place in the wood was where
+old Lord Lynx discovered Sir Phelim O'Neal on his knees before her
+ladyship, etc. etc.; he called the lodge-keepers and gardeners by their
+names; he knew the number of domestics that sat down in the housekeeper's
+room, and how many dined in the servants'-hall; he had a word for
+everybody, and about everybody, and a little against everybody. He was
+invaluable in a country-house, in a word: and richly merited and enjoyed
+his vacation after his labours. And perhaps whilst he was thus deservedly
+enjoying himself with his country friends, the Major was not ill pleased
+at transferring to Warrington the command of the family expedition to the
+Continent, and thus perforce keeping him in the service of the ladies,--a
+servitude which George was only too willing to undergo, for his friend's
+sake, and for that of a society which he found daily more delightful.
+Warrington was a good German scholar, and was willing to give Miss Laura
+lessons in the language, who was very glad to improve herself, though
+Pen, for his part, was too weak or lazy now to resume his German studies.
+Warrington acted as courier and interpreter; Warrington saw the baggage
+in and out of ships, inns and carriages, managed the money matters, and
+put the little troop into marching order. Warrington found out where the
+English church was, and, if Mrs. Pendennis and Miss Laura were inclined
+to go thither, walked with great decorum along with them. Warrington
+walked by Mrs. Pendennis's donkey, when that lady went out on her evening
+excursions; or took carriages for her; or got 'Galignani' for her; or
+devised comfortable seats under the lime-trees for her, when the guests
+paraded after dinner, and the Kursaal band at the bath, where our tired
+friends stopped, performed their pleasant music under the trees. Many a
+fine whiskered Prussian or French dandy, come to the bath for the
+'Trente-et-quarante,' cast glances of longing towards the pretty
+fresh-coloured English girl who accompanied the pale widow, and would
+have longed to take a turn with her at the galop or the waltz. But Laura
+did not appear in the ballroom, except once or twice, when Pen vouchsafed
+to walk with her; and as for Warrington, that rough diamond had not had
+the polish of a dancing-master, and he did not know how to waltz,--though
+he would have liked to learn, if he could have had such a partner as
+Laura.--Such a partner! psha, what had a stiff bachelor to do with
+partners and waltzing? what was he about, dancing attendance here?
+drinking in sweet pleasure at a risk he knows not of what after-sadness,
+and regret, and lonely longing? But yet he stayed on. You would have said
+he was the widow's son, to watch his constant care and watchfulness of
+her; or that he was an adventurer, and wanted to marry her fortune, or,
+at any rate, that he wanted some very great treasure or benefit from
+her,--and very likely he did,--for ours, as the reader has possibly
+already discovered, is a Selfish Story, and almost every person,
+according to his nature, more or less generous than George, and according
+to the way of the world as it seems to us, is occupied about Number One.
+So Warrington selfishly devoted himself to Helen, who selfishly devoted
+herself to Pen, who selfishly devoted himself to himself at this present
+period, having no other personage or object to occupy him, except,
+indeed, his mother's health, which gave him a serious and real disquiet;
+but though they, sate together, they did not talk much, and the cloud was
+always between them.
+
+Every day Laura looked for Warrington, and received him with more frank
+and eager welcome. He found himself talking to her as he didn't know
+himself that he could talk. He found himself performing acts of gallantry
+which astounded him after the performance: he found himself looking
+blankly in the glass at the crow's feet round his eyes, and at some
+streaks of white in his hair, and some intrusive silver bristles in his
+grim, blue beard. He found himself looking at the young bucks at the
+bath--at the bland, tight-waisted Germans--at the capering Frenchmen,
+with their lacquered mustachios and trim varnished boots--at the English
+dandies, Pen amongst them, with their calm domineering air, and insolent
+languor: and envied each one of these some excellence or quality of
+youth, or good looks, which he possessed, and of which Warrington felt
+the need. And every night, as the night came, he quitted the little
+circle with greater reluctance; and, retiring to his own lodging in their
+neighbourhood, felt himself the more lonely and unhappy. The widow could
+not help seeing his attachment. She understood, now, why Major Pendennis
+(always a tacit enemy of her darling project) had been so eager that
+Warrington should be of their party. Laura frankly owned her great, her
+enthusiastic, regard for him: and Arthur would make no movement. Arthur
+did not choose to see what was going on; or did not care to prevent, or
+actually encouraged, it. She remembered his often having said that he
+could not understand how a man proposed to a woman twice. She was in
+torture--at secret feud with her son, of all objects in the world the
+dearest to her--in doubt, which she dared not express to herself, about
+Laura--averse to Warrington, the good and generous. No wonder that the
+healing waters of Rosenbad did not do her good, or that Doctor von
+Glauber, the bath physician, when he came to visit her, found that the
+poor lady made no progress to recovery. Meanwhile Pen got well rapidly;
+slept with immense perseverance twelve hours out of the twenty-four; ate
+huge meals; and, at the end of a couple of months, had almost got back
+the bodily strength and weight which he had possessed before his illness.
+
+After they had passed some fifteen days at their place of rest and
+refreshment, a letter came from Major Pendennis announcing his speedy
+arrival at Rosenbad, and, soon after the letter, the Major himself made
+his appearance accompanied by Morgan his faithful valet, without whom the
+old gentleman could not move. When the Major travelled he wore a jaunty
+and juvenile travelling costume; to see his back still you would have
+taken him for one of the young fellows whose slim waist and youthful
+appearance Warrington was beginning to envy. It was not until the worthy
+man began to move, that the observer remarked that Time had weakened his
+ancient knees, and had unkindly interfered to impede the action of the
+natty little varnished boots in which the gay old traveller still pinched
+his toes. There were magnates both of our own country and of foreign
+nations present that autumn at Rosenbad. The elder Pendennis read over
+the strangers' list with great gratification on the night of his arrival,
+was pleased to find several of his acquaintances among the great folks,
+and would have the honour of presenting his nephew to a German Grand
+Duchess, a Russian Princess, and an English Marquis, before many days
+were over: nor was Pen by any means averse to making the acquaintance of
+these great personages, having a liking for polite life, and all the
+splendours and amenities belonging to it. That very evening the resolute
+old gentleman, leaning on his nephew's arm, made his appearance in the
+halls of the Kursaal, and lost or won a napoleon or two at the table of
+'Trente-et-quarante.' He did not play to lose, he said, or to win, but he
+did as other folks did, and betted his napoleon and took his luck as it
+came. He pointed out the Russians and Spaniards gambling for heaps of
+gold, and denounced their eagerness as something sordid and barbarous; an
+English gentleman should play where the fashion is play, but should not
+elate or depress himself at the sport; and he told how he had seen his
+friend the Marquis of Steyne, when Lord Gaunt, lose eighteen thousand at
+a sitting, and break the bank three nights running at Paris, without ever
+showing the least emotion at his defeat or victory. "And that's what I
+call being an English gentleman, Pen, my dear boy," the old gentleman
+said, warming as he prattled about his recollections--"what I call the
+great manner only remains with us and with a few families in France." And
+as Russian Princesses passed him, whose reputation had long ceased to be
+doubtful, and damaged English ladies, who are constantly seen in company
+of their faithful attendant for the time being in these gay haunts of
+dissipation, the old Major, with eager garrulity and mischievous relish,
+told his nephew wonderful particulars regarding the lives of these
+heroines; and diverted the young man with a thousand scandals. Egad, he
+felt himself quite young again, he remarked to Pen, as, rouged and
+grinning, her enormous chasseur behind her bearing her shawl, the
+Princess Obstropski smiled and recognised and accosted him. He remembered
+her in '14 when she was an actress of the Paris Boulevard, and the
+Emperor Alexander's aide-de-camp Obstropski (a man of great talents, who
+knew a good deal about the Emperor Paul's death, and was a devil to play)
+married her. He most courteously and respectfully asked leave to call
+upon the Princess, and to present to her his nephew, Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis; and he pointed out to the latter a half-dozen of other
+personages whose names were as famous, and whose histories were as
+satisfying. What would poor Helen have thought, could she have heard
+those tales, or known to what kind of people her brother-in-law was
+presenting her son? Only once, leaning on Arthur's arm, she had passed
+through the room where the green tables were prepared for play, and the
+croaking croupiers were calling out their fatal words of Rouge gagne and
+Couleur perd. She had shrunk terrified out of the pandemonium, imploring
+Pen, extorting from him a promise, on his word of honour, that he would
+never play at those tables; and the scene which so frightened the simple
+widow, only amused the worldly old veteran, and made him young again! He
+could breathe the air cheerfully which stifled her. Her right was not his
+right: his food was her poison. Human creatures are constituted thus
+differently, and with this variety the marvellous world is peopled. To
+the credit of Mr. Pen, let it be said, that he kept honestly the promise
+made to his mother, and stoutly told his uncle of his intention to abide
+by it.
+
+When the Major arrived, his presence somehow cast a damp upon at least
+three of the persons of our little party--upon Laura who had anything but
+respect for him; upon Warrington, whose manner towards him showed an
+involuntary haughtiness and contempt; and upon the timid and alarmed
+widow, who dreaded lest he should interfere with her darling, though
+almost desperate, projects for her boy. And, indeed, the Major, unknown
+to himself, was the bearer of tidings which were to bring about a
+catastrophe in the affairs of all our friends.
+
+Pen with his two ladies had apartments in the town of Rosenbad; honest
+Warrington had lodgings hard by; the Major, on arrival at Rosenbad, had,
+as befitted his dignity, taken his quarters at one of the great hotels,
+at the Roman Emperor or the Four Seasons, where two or three hundred
+gamblers, pleasure-seekers, or invalids, sate down and over-ate
+themselves daily at the enormous table-d'hote. To this hotel Pen went on
+the morning after the Major's arrival, dutifully to pay his respects to
+his uncle, and found the latter's sitting-room duly prepared and arranged
+by Mr. Morgan, with the Major's hats brushed, and his coats laid out: his
+despatch-boxes and umbrella-cases, his guidebooks, passports, maps, and
+other elaborate necessaries of the English traveller, all as trim and
+ready as they could be in their master's own room in Jermyn Street.
+Everything was ready, from the medicine-bottle fresh filled from the
+pharmacien's, down to the old fellow's prayer-book, without which he
+never travelled, for he made a point of appearing at the English church
+at every place which he honoured with a stay "Everybody did it," he said;
+"every English gentleman did it," and this pious man would as soon have
+thought of not calling upon the English ambassador in a Continental town,
+as of not showing himself at the national place of worship.
+
+The old gentleman had been to take one of the baths for which Rosenbad is
+famous, and which everybody takes, and his after-bath toilet was not yet
+completed when Pen arrived. The elder called out to Arthur in a cheery
+voice from the inner apartment, in which he and Morgan were engaged, and
+the valet presently came in, bearing a little packet to Pen's address--
+Mr. Arthur's letters and papers, Morgan said, which he had brought from
+Mr. Arthur's chambers in London, and which consisted chiefly of numbers
+of the Pall Mall Gazette, which our friend Mr. Finucane thought his
+collaborateur would like to see. The papers were tied together: the
+letters in an envelope, addressed to Pen, in the last-named gentleman's
+handwriting.
+
+Amongst the letters there was a little note addressed, as a former letter
+we have heard of had been, to "Arther Pendennis, Esquire," which Arthur
+opened with a start and a blush, and read with a very keen pang of
+interest, and sorrow, and regard. She had come to Arthur's house, Fanny
+Bolton said--and found that he was gone--gone away to Germany without
+ever leaving a word for her--or answer to her last letter, in which she
+prayed but for one word of kindness--or the books which he had promised
+her in happier times, before he was ill, and which she should like to
+keep in remembrance of him. She said she would not reproach those who had
+found her at his bedside when he was in the fever, and knew nobody, and
+who had turned the poor girl away without a word. She thought she should
+have died, she said, of that, but Doctor Goodenough had kindly tended
+her, and kept her life, when, perhaps, the keeping of it was of no good,
+and she forgave everybody and as for Arthur, she would pray for him for
+ever. And when he was so ill, and they cut off his hair, she had made so
+free as to keep one little lock for herself, and that she owned. And
+might she still keep it, or would his mamma order that that should be
+gave up too? She was willing to obey him in all things, and couldn't but
+remember that once he was so kind, oh! so good and kind! to his poor
+Fanny.
+
+When Major Pendennis, fresh and smirking from his toilet, came out of his
+bedroom to his sitting-room, he found Arthur, with this note before him,
+and an expression of savage anger on his face, which surprised the elder
+gentleman. "What news from London, my boy?" he rather faintly asked; "are
+the duns at you that you look so glum?"
+
+"Do you know anything about this letter, sir?" Arthur asked.
+
+"What letter, my good sir?" said the other dryly, at once perceiving what
+had happened.
+
+"You know what I mean--about, about Miss--about Fanny Bolton--the poor
+dear little girl," Arthur broke out. "When she was in my room? Was she
+there when I was delirious--I fancied she was--was she? Who sent her out
+of my chambers? who intercepted her letters to me? Who dared to do it?
+Did you do it, uncle?"
+
+"It's not my practice to tamper with gentlemen's letters, or to answer
+damned impertinent questions," Major Pendennis cried out, in a great
+tremor of emotion and indignation. "There was a girl in your rooms when I
+came up at great personal inconvenience, daymy--and to meet with a return
+of this kind for my affection to you, is not pleasant, by Gad, sir--not
+at all pleasant."
+
+"That's not the question, sir," Arthur said hotly--"and I beg your
+pardon, uncle. You were, you always have been, most kind to me: but I say
+again, did you say anything harsh to this poor girl? Did you send her
+away from me?"
+
+"I never spoke a word to the girl," the uncle said, "and I never sent her
+away from you, and know no more about her, and wish to know no more about
+her, than about the man in the moon."
+
+"Then it's my mother that did it," Arthur broke out. "Did my mother send
+that poor child away?"
+
+"I repeat I know nothing about it, sir," the elder said testily. "Let's
+change the subject, if you please."
+
+"I'll never forgive the person who did it," said Arthur, bouncing up and
+seizing his hat.
+
+The Major cried out, "Stop, Arthur, for God's sake, stop;" but before he
+had uttered his sentence Arthur had rushed out of the room, and at the
+next minute the Major saw him striding rapidly down the street that led
+towards his home.
+
+"Get breakfast!" said the old fellow to Morgan, and he wagged his head
+and sighed as he looked out of the window. "Poor Helen--poor soul!
+There'll be a row. I knew there would: and begad all the fat's in the
+fire."
+
+When Pen reached home he only found Warrington in the ladies'
+drawing-room, waiting their arrival in order to conduct them to the room
+where the little English colony at Rosenbad held their Sunday church.
+Helen and Laura had not appeared as yet; the former was ailing, and her
+daughter was with her. Pen's wrath was so great that he could not defer
+expressing it. He flung Fanny's letter across the table to his friend.
+"Look there, Warrington," he said; "she tended me in my illness, she
+rescued me out of the jaws of death, and this is the way they have
+treated the dear little creature. They have kept her letters from me;
+they have treated me like a child, and her like a dog, poor thing! My
+mother has done this."
+
+"If she has, you must remember it is your mother," Warrington interposed.
+
+"It only makes the crime the greater, because it is she who has done it,"
+Pen answered. "She ought to have been the poor girl's defender, not her
+enemy: she ought to go down on her knees and ask pardon of her. I ought!
+I will! I am shocked at the cruelty which has been shown her. What? She
+gave me her all, and this is her return! She sacrifices everything for
+me, and they spurn her."
+
+"Hush!" said Warrington, "they can hear you from the next room."
+
+"Hear? let them hear!" Pen cried out, only so much the louder. "Those may
+overhear my talk who intercept my letters. I say this poor girl has been
+shamefully used, and I will do my best to right her; I will."
+
+The door of the neighbouring room opened, and Laura came forth with a
+pale and stern face. She looked at Pen with glances from which beamed
+pride, defiance, aversion. "Arthur, your mother is very ill," she said;
+"it is a pity that you should speak so loud as to disturb her."
+
+"It is a pity that I should have been obliged to speak at all," Pen
+answered. "And I have more to say before I have done."
+
+"I should think what you have to say will hardly be fit for me to hear,"
+Laura said, haughtily.
+
+"You are welcome to hear it or not, as you like," said Mr. Pen. "I shall
+go in now and speak to my mother."
+
+Laura came rapidly forward, so that she should not be overheard by her
+friend within. "Not now, sir," she said to Pen. "You may kill her if you
+do. Your conduct has gone far enough to make her wretched."
+
+"What conduct?" cried out Pen, in a fury. "Who dares impugn it? Who dares
+meddle with me? Is it you who are the instigator of this persecution?"
+
+"I said before it was a subject of which it did not become me to hear or
+to speak," Laura said. "But as for mamma, if she had acted otherwise than
+she did with regard to--to the person about whom you seem to take such an
+interest, it would have been I that must have quitted your house, and not
+that--that person."
+
+"By heavens! this is too much," Pen cried out, with a violent execration.
+
+"Perhaps that is what you wished," Laura said, tossing her head up. "No
+more of this, if you please; I am not accustomed to hear such subjects
+spoken of in such language," and with a stately curtsey the young lady
+passed to her room, looking her adversary full in the face as she
+retreated and closed the door upon him.
+
+Pen was bewildered with wonder, perplexity, fury, at this monstrous and
+unreasonable persecution. He burst out into a loud and bitter laugh as
+Laura quitted him, and with sneers and revilings, as a man who jeers
+under an operation, ridiculed at once his own pain and his persecutor's
+anger. The laugh, which was one of bitter humour, and no unmanly or
+unkindly expression of suffering under most cruel and unmerited torture,
+was heard in the next apartment, as some of his unlucky previous
+expressions had been, and, like them, entirely misinterpreted by the
+hearers. It struck like a dagger into the wounded and tender heart of
+Helen; it pierced Laura, and inflamed the high-spirited girl with scorn
+and anger. "And it was to this hardened libertine," she thought--"to this
+boaster of low intrigues, that I had given my heart away." "He breaks the
+most sacred laws," thought Helen. "He prefers the creature of his passion
+to his own mother; and when he is upbraided, he laughs, and glories in
+his crime. 'She gave me her all,' I heard him say it," argued the poor
+widow, "and he boasts of it, and laughs, and breaks his mother's heart."
+The emotion, the shame, the grief, the mortification almost killed her.
+She felt she should die of his unkindness.
+
+Warrington thought of Laura's speech--"Perhaps that is what you wished."
+"She loves Pen still," he said. "It was jealousy made her speak."--"Come
+away, Pen. Come away, and let us go to church and get calm. You must
+explain this matter to your mother. She does not appear to know the
+truth: nor do you quite, my good fellow. Come away, and let us talk
+about it." And again he muttered to himself, "'Perhaps that is what you
+wished.' Yes, she loves him. Why shouldn't she love him? Whom else would
+I have her love? What can she be to me but the dearest and the fairest
+and the best of women?"
+
+So, leaving the women similarly engaged within, the two gentlemen walked
+away, each occupied with his own thought, and silent for a considerable
+space. "I must set this matter right," thought honest George "as she
+loves him still--I must set his mind right about the other woman." And
+with this charitable thought, the good fellow began to tell more at large
+what Bows had said to him regarding Miss Bolton's behaviour and
+fickleness, and he described how the girl was no better than a little
+light-minded flirt; and, perhaps, he exaggerated the good-humour and
+contentedness which he had himself, as he thought, witnessed in her
+behaviour in the scene with Mr. Huxter.
+
+Now, all Bows's statements had been coloured by an insane jealousy and
+rage on that old man's part; and instead of allaying Pen's renascent
+desire to see his little conquest again, Warrington's accounts inflamed
+and angered Pendennis, and made him more anxious than before to set
+himself right, as he persisted in phrasing it, with Fanny. They arrived
+at the church door presently; but scarce one word of the service, and not
+a syllable of Mr. Shamble's sermon, did either of them comprehend,
+probably--so much was each engaged with his own private speculations. The
+Major came up to them after the service, with his well-brushed hat and
+wig, and his jauntiest, most cheerful air. He complimented them upon
+being seen at church; again he said that every comme-il faut person made
+a point of attending the English service abroad; and he walked back with
+the young men, prattling to them in garrulous good-humour, and making
+bows to his acquaintances as they passed; and thinking innocently that
+Pen and George were both highly delighted by his anecdotes, which they
+suffered to run on in a scornful and silent acquiescence.
+
+At the time of Mr. Shamble's sermon (an erratic Anglican divine, hired
+for the season at places of English resort, and addicted to debts,
+drinking, and even to roulette, it was said), Pen, chafing under the
+persecution which his womankind inflicted upon him, had been meditating a
+great act of revolt and of justice, as he had worked himself up to
+believe; and Warrington on his part had been thinking that a crisis in
+his affairs had likewise come, and that it was necessary for him to break
+away from a connexion which every day made more and more wretched and
+dear to him. Yes, the time was come. He took those fatal words, "Perhaps
+that is what you wished," as a text for a gloomy homily, which he
+preached to himself, in the dark pew of his own heart, whilst Mr. Shamble
+was feebly giving utterance to his sermon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII
+
+"Fairoaks to let"
+
+
+Our poor widow (with the assistance of her faithful Martha of Fairoaks,
+who laughed and wondered at the German ways, and superintend the affairs
+of the simple household) had made a little feast in honour of Major
+Pendennis's arrival, of which, however, only the Major and his two
+younger friends partook, for Helen sent to say that she was too unwell to
+dine at their table, and Laura bore her company. The Major talked for the
+party, and did not perceive, or choose to perceive, what a gloom and
+silence pervaded the other two sharers of the modest dinner. It was
+evening before Helen and Laura came into the sitting-room to join the
+company there. She came in leaning on Laura, with her back to the waning
+light, so that Arthur could not see how pallid and woe-stricken her face
+was, and as she went up to Pen, whom she had not seen during the day, and
+placed her fond arms on his shoulders and kissed him tenderly, Laura left
+her, and moved away to another part of the room. Pen remarked that his
+mother's voice and her whole frame trembled, her hand was clammy cold as
+she put it up to his forehead, piteously embracing him. The spectacle of
+her misery only added, somehow, to the wrath and testiness of the young
+man. He scarcely returned the kiss which the suffering lady gave him: and
+the countenance with which he met the appeal of her look was hard and
+cruel. "She persecutes me," he thought within himself, "and she comes to
+me with the air of a martyr!" "You look very ill, my child," she said. "I
+don't like to see you look in that way." And she tottered to a sofa,
+still holding one of his passive hands in her thin cold clinging fingers.
+
+"I have had much to annoy me, mother," Pen said, with a throbbing breast:
+and as he spoke Helen's heart began to beat so, that she sate almost dead
+and speechless with terror.
+
+Warrington, Laura, and Major Pendennis, all remained breathless, aware
+that the storm was about to break.
+
+"I have had letters from London," Arthur continued, "and one that has
+given me more pain than I ever had in my life. It tells me that former
+letters of mine have been intercepted and purloined away from me;--that--
+that a young creature who has shown the greatest love and care for me,
+has been most cruelly used by--by you, mother."
+
+"For God's sake stop," cried out Warrington. "She's ill--don't you see
+she is ill?"
+
+"Let him go on," said the widow, faintly.
+
+"Let him go on and kill her," said Laura, rushing up to her mother's
+side. "Speak on, sir, and see her die."
+
+"It is you who are cruel," cried Pen, more exasperated and more savage,
+because his own heart, naturally soft and weak, revolted indignantly at
+the injustice of the very suffering which was laid at his door. "It is
+you that are cruel, who attribute all this pain to me: it is you who are
+cruel with your wicked reproaches, your wicked doubts of me, your wicked
+persecutions of those who love me,--yes, those who love me, and who brave
+everything for me, and whom you despise and trample upon because they are
+of lower degree than you. Shall I tell you what I will do,--what I am
+resolved to do, now that I know what your conduct has been?--I will go
+back to this poor girl whom you turned out of my doors, and ask her to
+come back and share my home with me. I'll defy the pride which persecutes
+her, and the pitiless suspicion which insults her and me."
+
+"Do you mean, Pen, that you----" here the widow, with eager eyes and
+outstretched hands, was breaking out, but Laura stopped her: "Silence,
+hush, dear mother," she cried, and the widow hushed. Savagely as Pen
+spoke, she was only too eager to hear what more he had to say. "Go on,
+Arthur, go on, Arthur," was all she said, almost swooning away as she
+spoke.
+
+"By Gad, I say he shan't go on, or I won't hear him, by Gad," the Major
+said, trembling too in his wrath. "If you choose, sir, after all we've
+done for you, after all I've done for you myself, to insult your mother
+and disgrace your name, by allying yourself with a low-born kitchen-girl,
+go and do it, by Gad,--but let us, ma'am, have no more to do with him. I
+wash my hands of you, sir,--I wash my hands of you. I'm an old fellow,--I
+ain't long for this world. I come of as ancient and honourable a family
+as any in England, by Gad, and I did hope, before I went off the hooks,
+by Gad, that the fellow that I'd liked, and brought up, and nursed
+through life, by Jove, would do something to show me that our name--yes,
+the name of Pendennis, by Gad, was left undishonoured behind us, but if
+he won't, dammy, I say, amen. By G--, both my father and my brother Jack
+were the proudest men in England, and I never would have thought that
+there would come this disgrace to my name,--never--and--and I'm ashamed
+that it's Arthur Pendennis." The old fellow's voice here broke off into a
+sob: it was the second time that Arthur had brought tears from those
+wrinkled lids.
+
+The sound of his breaking voice stayed Pen's anger instantly, and he
+stopped pacing the room, as he had been doing until that moment. Laura
+was by Helen's sofa; and Warrington had remained hitherto an almost
+silent, but not uninterested spectator of the family storm. As the
+parties were talking, it had grown almost dark; and after the lull which
+succeeded the passionate outbreak of the Major, George's deep voice, as
+it here broke trembling into the twilight room, was heard with no small
+emotion by all.
+
+"Will you let me tell you something about myself, my kind friends?" he
+said,--"you have been so good to me, ma'am, you have been so kind to me,
+Laura--I hope I may call you so sometimes--my dear Pen and I have been
+such friends that I have long wanted to tell you my story such as it is,
+and would have told it to you earlier but that it is a sad one and
+contains another's secret. However, it may do good for Arthur to know it
+--it is that every one here should. It will divert you from thinking
+about a subject, which, out of a fatal misconception, has caused a great
+deal of pain to all of you. May I please tell you, Mrs. Pendennis?"
+
+"Pray speak," was all Helen said; and indeed she was not much heeding;
+her mind was full of another idea with which Pen's words had supplied
+her, and she was in a terror of hope that what he had hinted might be as
+she wished.
+
+George filled himself a bumper of wine and emptied it, and began to
+speak. "You all of you know how you see me," he said, "a man without a
+desire to make an advance in the world: careless about reputation; and
+living in a garret and from hand to mouth, though I have friends and a
+name, and I daresay capabilities of my own, that would serve me if I had
+a mind. But mind I have none. I shall die in that garret most likely, and
+alone. I nailed myself to that doom in early life. Shall I tell you what
+it was that interested me about Arthur years ago, and made me inclined
+towards him when first I saw him? The men from our college at Oxbridge
+brought up accounts of that early affair with the Chatteris actress,
+about whom Pen has talked to me since; and who, but for the Major's
+generalship, might have been your daughter-in-law, ma'am. I can't see Pen
+in the dark, but he blushes, I'm sure; and I dare say Miss Bell does; and
+my friend Major Pendennis, I dare say, laughs as he ought to do--for he
+won. What would have been Arthur's lot now had he been tied at nineteen
+to an illiterate woman older than himself, with no qualities in common
+between them to make one a companion for the other, no equality, no
+confidence, and no love speedily? What could he have been but most
+miserable? And when he spoke just now and threatened a similar union, be
+sure it was but a threat occasioned by anger, which you must give me
+leave to say, ma'am, was very natural on his part, for after a generous
+and manly conduct--let me say who know the circumstances well--most
+generous and manly and self-denying (which is rare with him),--he has met
+from some friends of his with a most unkind suspicion, and has had to
+complain of the unfair treatment of another innocent person, towards whom
+he and you all are under much obligation."
+
+The widow was going to get up here, and Warrington, seeing her attempt to
+rise, said, "Do I tire you, ma'am?"
+
+"Oh no--go on--go on," said Helen, delighted, and he continued.
+
+"I liked him, you see, because of that early history of his, which had
+come to my ears in college gossip, and because I like a man, if you will
+pardon me for saying so, Miss Laura, who shows that he can have a great
+unreasonable attachment for a woman. That was why we became friends--and
+are all friends here--for always, aren't we?" he added, in a lower voice,
+leaning over to her, "and Pen has been a great comfort and companion to a
+lonely and unfortunate man.
+
+"I am not complaining of my lot, you see; for no man's is what he would
+have it; and up in my garret, where you left the flowers, and with my old
+books and my pipe for a wife, I am pretty contented, and only
+occasionally envy other men, whose careers in life are more brilliant, or
+who can solace their ill fortune by what Fate and my own fault has
+deprived me of--the affection of a woman or a child." Here there came a
+sigh from somewhere near Warrington in the dark, and a hand was held out
+in his direction, which, however, was instantly, withdrawn, for the
+prudery of our females is such, that before all expression of feeling, or
+natural kindness and regard, a woman is 'taught to think of herself and
+the proprieties, and to be ready to blush at the very slightest notice;'
+and checking, as, of course, it ought, this spontaneous motion, modesty
+drew up again, kindly friendship shrank back ashamed of itself, and
+Warrington resumed his history. "My fate is such as I made it, and not
+lucky for me or for others involved in it.
+
+"I, too, had an adventure before I went to college; and there was no one
+to save me as Major Pendennis saved Pen. Pardon me, Miss Laura, if I tell
+this story before you. It is as well that you all of you should hear my
+confession. Before I went to college, as a boy of eighteen, I was at a
+private tutor's, and there, like Arthur, I became attached, or fancied I
+was attached, to a woman of a much lower degree and a greater age than my
+own. You shrink from me----"
+
+"No, I don't," Laura said, and here the hand went out resolutely, and
+laid itself in Warrington's. She had divined his story from some previous
+hints let fall by him, and his first words at its commencement.
+
+"She was a yeoman's daughter in the neighbourhood," Warrington said, with
+rather a faltering voice, "and I fancied--what all young men fancy. Her
+parents knew who my father was, and encouraged me, with all sorts of
+coarse artifices and scoundrel flatteries, which I see now, about their
+house. To do her justice, I own she never cared for me, but was forced
+into what happened by the threats and compulsion of her family. Would to
+God that I had not been deceived: but in these matters we are deceived
+because we wish to be so, and I thought I loved that poor woman.
+
+"What could come of such a marriage? I found, before long, that I was
+married to a boor. She could not comprehend one subject that interested
+me. Her dulness palled upon me till I grew to loathe it. And after some
+time of a wretched, furtive union--I must tell you all--I found letters
+somewhere (and such letters they were!) which showed me that her heart,
+such as it was, had never been mine, but had always belonged to a person
+of her own degree.
+
+"At my father's death, I paid what debts I had contracted at college, and
+settled every shilling which remained to me in an annuity upon--upon
+those who bore my name, on condition that they should hide themselves
+away, and not assume it. They have kept that condition, as they would
+break it, for more money. If I had earned fame or reputation, that woman
+would have come to claim it: if I had made a name for myself those who no
+right to it would have borne it; and I entered life at twenty, God help
+me--hopeless and ruined beyond remission. I was the boyish victim of
+vulgar cheats, and, perhaps, it is only of late I have found out how
+hard--ah, how hard--it is to forgive them. I told you the moral before,
+Pen; and now I have told you the fable. Beware how you marry out of your
+degree. I was made for a better lot than this, I think: but God has
+awarded me this one--and so, you see, it is for me to look on, and see
+others successful and others happy, with a heart that shall be as little
+bitter as possible."
+
+"By Gad, sir," cried the Major, in high good-humour, "I intended you to
+marry Miss Laura here."
+
+"And, by Gad, Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound," Warrington
+said.
+
+"How d'ye mean a thousand? it was only a pony, sir," replied the Major
+simply, at which the other laughed.
+
+As for Helen, she was so delighted, that she started up, and said, "God
+bless you--God for ever bless you, Mr. Warrington;" and kissed both his
+hands, and ran up to Pen, and fell into his arms.
+
+"Yes, dearest mother," he said as he held her to him, and with a noble
+tenderness and emotion, embraced and forgave her. "I am innocent, and my
+dear, dear mother has done me a wrong."
+
+"Oh yes, my child, I have wronged you, thank God, I have wronged you!"
+Helen whispered. "Come away, Arthur--not here--I want to ask my child to
+forgive me--and--and my God, to forgive me; and to bless you, and love
+you, my son."
+
+He led her, tottering, into her room, and closed the door, as the three
+touched spectators of the reconciliation looked on in pleased silence.
+Ever after, ever after, the tender accents of that voice faltering
+sweetly at his ear--the look of the sacred eyes beaming with an affection
+unutterable--the quiver of the fond lips smiling mournfully--were
+remembered by the young man. And at his best moments, and at his hours of
+trial and grief, and at his times of success or well-doing, the mother's
+face looked down upon him, and blessed him with its gaze of pity and
+purity, as he saw it in that night when she yet lingered with him; and
+when she seemed, ere she quite left him, an angel, transfigured and
+glorified with love--for which love, as for the greatest of the bounties
+and wonders of God's provision for us, let us kneel and thank Our Father.
+
+The moon had risen by this time; Arthur recollected well afterwards how
+it lighted up his mother's sweet pale face. Their talk, or his rather,
+for she scarcely could speak, was more tender and confidential than it
+had been for years before. He was the frank and generous boy of her early
+days and love. He told her the story, the mistake regarding which had
+caused her so much pain--his struggles to fly from temptation, and his
+thankfulness that he had been able to overcome it. He never would do the
+girl wrong, never; or wound his own honour or his mother's pure heart.
+The threat that he would return was uttered in a moment of exasperation,
+of which he repented. He never would see her again. But his mother said
+yes he should; and it was she who had been proud and culpable--and she
+would like to give Fanny Bolton something--and she begged her dear boy's
+pardon for opening the letter--and she would write to the young girl,
+if,--if she had time. Poor thing! was it not natural that she should love
+her Arthur? And again she kissed him, and she blessed him.
+
+As they were talking the clock struck nine, and Helen reminded him how,
+when he was a little boy, she used to go up to his bedroom at that hour,
+and hear him say Our Father. And once more, oh, once more, the young man
+fell down at his mother's sacred knees, and sobbed out the prayer which
+the Divine Tenderness uttered for us, and which has been echoed by twenty
+ages since by millions of sinful and humbled men. And as he spoke the
+last words of the supplication, the mother's head fell down on her boy's,
+and her arms closed round him, and together they repeated the words "for
+ever and ever" and "Amen."
+
+A little time after, it might have been a quarter of an hour, Laura heard
+Arthur's voice call from within, "Laura! Laura!" She rushed into the room
+instantly and found the young man still on his knees, and holding his
+mother's hand. Helen's head had sunk back and was quite pale in the room.
+Pen looked round, scared with a ghastly terror. "Help, Laura, help!" he
+said, "she's fainted--she's----"
+
+Laura screamed, and fell by the side of Helen. The shriek brought
+Warrington and Major Pendennis and the servants to the room. The sainted
+woman was dead. The last emotion of her soul here was joy to be
+henceforth unchequered and eternal. The tender heart beat no more; it was
+to have no more pangs, no more doubts, no more griefs and trials. Its
+last throb was love; and Helen's last breath was a benediction.
+
+The melancholy party bent their way speedily homewards, and Helen was
+laid by her husband's side at Clavering, in the old church where she had
+prayed so often. For a while Laura went to stay with Dr. Portman, who
+read the service over his dear departed sister, amidst his own sobs and
+those of the little congregation which assembled round Helen's tomb.
+There were not many who cared for her, or who spoke of her when gone.
+Scarcely more than of a nun in a cloister did people know of that pious
+and gentle lady. A few words among the cottagers whom her bounty was
+accustomed to relieve, a little talk from house to house at Clavering,
+where this lady told how their neighbour died of a complaint in the
+heart; whilst that speculated upon the amount of a property which the
+widow had left; and a third wondered whether Arthur would let Fairoaks or
+live in it, and expected that he would not be long getting through his
+property,--this was all, and except with one or two who cherished her,
+the kind soul was forgotten by the next market-day. Would you desire that
+grief for you should last for a few more weeks? and does after-life seem
+less solitary, provided that our names, when we "go down into silence,"
+are echoing on this side of the grave yet for a little while, and human
+voices are still talking about us? She was gone, the pure soul, whom only
+two or three loved and knew. The great blank she left was in Laura's
+heart, to whom her love had been everything, and who had now but to
+worship her memory. "I am glad that she gave me her blessing before she
+went away," Warrington said to Pen; and as for Arthur, with a humble
+acknowledgment and wonder at so much affection, he hardly dared to ask of
+Heaven to make him worthy of it, though he felt that a saint there was
+interceding for him.
+
+All the lady's affairs were found in perfect order, and her little
+property ready for transmission to her son, in trust for whom she held
+it. Papers in her desk showed that she had long been aware of the
+complaint, one of the heart, under which she laboured, and knew that it
+would suddenly remove her: and a prayer was found in her handwriting,
+asking that her end might be, as it was, in the arms of her son.
+
+Laura and Arthur talked over her sayings, all of which the former most
+fondly remembered, to the young man's shame somewhat, who thought how
+much greater her love had been for Helen than his own. He referred
+himself entirely to Laura to know what Helen would have wished should be
+done; what poor persons she would have liked to relieve; what legacies or
+remembrances she would have wished to transmit. They packed up the vase
+which Helen in her gratitude had destined to Dr. Goodenough, and duly
+sent it to the kind Doctor; a silver coffee-pot, which she used, was sent
+off to Portman: a diamond ring, with her hair, was given with
+affectionate greeting to Warrington.
+
+It must have been a hard day for poor Laura when she went over to
+Fairoaks first and to the little room which she had occupied, and which
+was hers no more, and to the widow's own blank chamber in which those two
+had passed so many beloved hours. There, of course, were the clothes in
+the wardrobe, the cushion on which she prayed, the chair at the toilette:
+the glass that was no more to reflect her dear sad face. After she had
+been here a while Pen knocked and led her downstairs to the parlour
+again, and made her drink a little wine, and said, "God bless you," as
+she touched the glass. "Nothing shall ever be changed in your room," he
+said--"it is always your room--it is always my sister's room. Shall it
+not be so, Laura?" and Laura said, "Yes!"
+
+Among the widow's papers was found a packet, marked by the widow,
+"Letters from Laura's father," and which Arthur gave to her. They were
+the letters which had passed between the cousins in the early days before
+the marriage of either of them. The ink was faded in which they were
+written: the tears dried out that both perhaps had shed over them: the
+grief healed now whose bitterness they chronicled: the friends doubtless
+united whose parting on earth had caused to both pangs so cruel. And
+Laura learned fully now for the first time what the tie was which had
+bound her so tenderly to Helen: how faithfully her more than mother had
+cherished her father's memory, how truly she had loved him, how meekly
+resigned him.
+
+One legacy of his mother's Pen remembered, of which Laura could have no
+cognisance. It was that wish of Helen's to make some present to Fanny
+Bolton; and Pen wrote to her, putting his letter under an envelope to Mr.
+Bows, and requesting that gentleman to read it before he delivered it to
+Fanny. "Dear Fanny," Pen said, "I have to acknowledge two letters from
+you, one of which was delayed in my illness" (Pen found the first letter
+in his mother's desk after her decease and the reading it gave him a
+strange pang), "and to thank you, my kind nurse and friend, who watched
+me so tenderly during my fever. And I have to tell you that the last
+words of my dear mother who is no more, were words of goodwill and
+gratitude to you for nursing me: and she said she would have written to
+you, had she had time--that she would like to ask your pardon if she had
+harshly treated you--and that she would beg you to show your
+forgiveness by accepting some token of friendship and regard from her."
+Pen concluded by saying that his friend, George Warrington, Esq., of Lamb
+Court, Temple, was trustee of a little sum of money, of which the
+interest would be paid to her until she became of age, or changed her
+name, which would always be affectionately remembered by her grateful
+friend, A. Pendennis. The sum was in truth but small, although enough to
+make a little heiress of Fanny Bolton, whose parents were appeased, and
+whose father said Mr. P. had acted quite as the gentleman--though Bows
+growled out that that to plaster a wounded heart with a banknote was an
+easy kind of sympathy; and poor Fanny felt only too clearly that Pen's
+letter was one of farewell.
+
+"Sending hundred-pound notes to porters' daughters is all dev'lish well,"
+old Major Pendennis said to his nephew (whom, as thee proprietor of
+Fairoaks and the head of the family, he now treated with marked deference
+and civility), "and as there was a little ready money at the bank, and
+your poor mother wished it, there's perhaps no harm done. But, my good
+lad, I'd have you to remember that you've not above five hundred a year,
+though, thanks to me the world gives you credit for being a doosid deal
+better off; and, on my knees, I beg you, my boy, don't break into your
+capital: Stick to it, sir; don't speculate with it, sir; keep your land,
+and don't borrow on it. Tatham tells me that the Chatteris branch of the
+railway may--will almost certainly pass through Chatteris, and of it can
+be brought on this side of the Brawl, sir, and through your fields,
+they'll be worth a dev'lish deal of money, and your five hundred a year
+will jump up to eight or nine. Whatever it is, keep it, I implore you
+keep it. And I say, Pen, I think you should give up living in those dirty
+chambers in the Temple and let a decent lodging. And I should have a man,
+sir, to wait upon me; and a horse or two in town in the season. All this
+will pretty well swallow up your income, and I know you must live close.
+But remember you have a certain place in society, and you can't afford to
+cut a poor figure in the world. What are you going to do in the winter?
+You don't intend to stay down here, or, I suppose, to go on writing for
+that--what-d'ye-call-'em--that newspaper?"
+
+"Warrington and I are going abroad again, sir, for a little, and then we
+shall see what is to be done," Arthur replied.
+
+"And you'll let Fairoaks, of course? Good school in the neighbourhood;
+cheap country: dev'lish nice place for East India Colonels, or families
+wanting to retire. I'll speak about it at the club; there are lots of
+fellows at the club want a place of that sort."
+
+"I hope Laura will live in it for the winter, at least, and will make it
+her home," Arthur replied: at which the Major pish'd and psha'd, and said
+that there ought to be convents, begad, for English ladies, and wished
+that Miss Bell had not been there to interfere with the arrangements of
+the family, and that she would mope herself to death alone in that place.
+
+Indeed, it would have been a very dismal abode for poor Laura, who was
+not too happy either in Dr. Portman's household, and in the town where
+too many things reminded her of the dear parent whom she had lost. But
+old Lady Rockminster, who adored her young friend Laura, as soon as she
+read in the paper of her loss, and of her presence in the country, rushed
+over from Baymouth, where the old lady was staying, and insisted that
+Laura should remain six months, twelve months, all her life with her; and
+to her ladyship's house, Martha from Fairoaks, as femme de chambre,
+accompanied her young mistress.
+
+Pen and Warrington saw her depart. It was difficult to say which of the
+young men seemed to regard her the most tenderly. "Your cousin is pert
+and rather vulgar, my dear, but he seems to have a good heart," little
+Lady Rockminster said, who said her say about everybody--"but I like
+Bluebeard best. Tell me, is he touche au coeur?"
+
+"Mr. Warrington has been long--engaged," Laura said, dropping her eyes.
+
+"Nonsense, child! And good heavens, my dear! that's a pretty diamond
+cross. What do you mean by wearing it in the morning?"
+
+"Arthur--my brother, gave it me just now. It was--it was----"
+
+She could not finish the sentence. The carriage passed over the bridge,
+and by the dear, dear gate of Fairoaks--home no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX
+
+Old Friends
+
+
+It chanced at that great English festival, at which all London takes a
+holiday upon Epsom Downs, that a great number of the personages to whom
+we have been introduced in the course of this history, were assembled to
+see the Derby. In a comfortable open carriage, which had been brought to
+the ground by a pair of horses, might be seen Mrs. Bungay, of Paternoster
+Row, attired like Solomon in all his glory, and having by her side modest
+Mrs. Shandon, for whom, since the commencement of their acquaintance, the
+worthy publisher's lady had maintained a steady friendship. Bungay,
+having recreated himself with a copious luncheon, was madly shying at the
+sticks hard by, till the perspiration ran off his bald pate. Shandon was
+shambling about among the drinking tenants and gipsies: Finucane constant
+in attendance on the two ladies, to whom gentlemen of their acquaintance,
+and connected with the publishing house, came up to pay a visit.
+
+Among others, Mr. Archer came up to make her his bow, and told Mrs.
+Bungay who was on the course. Yonder was the Prime Minister: his lordship
+had just told him to back Borax for the race; but Archer thought Munmeer
+the better horse. He pointed out countless dukes and grandees to the
+delighted Mrs. Bungay. "Look yonder in the Grand Stand," he said. "There
+sits the Chinese Ambassador with the Mandarins of his suite, Fou-choo-foo
+brought me over letters of introduction from the Governor-General of
+India, my most intimate friend, and I was for some time very kind to him,
+and he had his chopsticks laid for him at my table whenever he chose to
+come and dine. But he brought his own cook with him, and--would you
+believe it, Mrs. Bungay?--one day, when I was out, and the Ambassador was
+with Mrs. Archer in our garden eating gooseberries, of which the Chinese
+are passionately fond, the beast of a cook, seeing my wife's dear little
+Blenheim spaniel (that we had from the Duke of Marlborough himself, whose
+ancestor's life Mrs. Archer's great-great-grandfather saved at the battle
+of Malplaquet), seized upon the poor little devil, cut his throat, and
+skinned him, and served him up stuffed with forced-meat in the second
+course."
+
+"Law!" said Mrs. Bungay.
+
+"You may fancy my wife's agony when she knew what had happened! The cook
+came screaming upstairs, and told us that she had found poor Fido's skin
+in the area, just after we had all of us tasted of the dish! She never
+would speak to the Ambassador again--never; and, upon my word, he has
+never been to dine with us since. The Lord Mayor, who did me the honour
+to dine, liked the dish very much; and, eaten with green peas, it tastes
+rather like duck."
+
+"You don't say so, now!" cried the astonished publisher's lady.
+
+"Fact, upon my word. Look at that lady in blue, seated by the Ambassador:
+that is Lady Flamingo, and they say she is going to be married to him,
+and return to Pekin with his Excellency. She is getting her feet squeezed
+down on purpose. But she'll only cripple herself, and will never be able
+to do it--never. My wife has the smallest foot in England, and wears
+shoes for a six-years-old child; but what is that to a Chinese lady's
+foot, Mrs. Bungay?"
+
+"Who is that carriage as Mr. Pendennis is with, Mr. Archer?" Mrs. Bungay
+presently asked. "He and Mr. Warrington was here jest now. He's 'aughty
+in his manners, that Mr. Pendennis, and well he may be, for I'm told he
+keeps tip-top company. 'As he 'ad a large fortune left him, Mr. Archer?
+He's in black still, I see."
+
+"Eighteen hundred a year in land, and twenty-two thousand five hundred in
+the Three-and-a-half per Cents; that's about it," said Mr. Archer.
+
+"Law! why, you know everything, Mr. A.!" cried the lady of Paternoster
+Row.
+
+"I happen to know, because I was called in about poor Mrs. Pendennis's
+will," Mr. Archer replied. "Pendennis's uncle, the Major, seldom does
+anything without me; and as he is likely to be extravagant we've tied up
+the property, so that he can't make ducks and drakes with it.--How do you
+do, my lord?--Do you know that gentleman, ladies? You have read his
+speeches in the House; it is Lord Rochester."
+
+"Lord Fiddlestick," cried out Finucane, from the box. "Sure it's Tom
+Staples, of the Morning Advertiser, Archer."
+
+"Is it?" Archer said, simply. "Well I'm very short-sighted, and upon my
+word I thought it was Rochester. That gentleman with the double
+opera-glass (another nod) is Lord John; and the tall man with him, don't
+you know him? is Sir James."
+
+"You know 'em because you see 'em in the House," growled Finucane.
+
+"I know them because they are kind enough to allow me to call them my
+most intimate friends," Archer continued. "Look at the Duke of Hampshire;
+what a pattern of a fine old English gentleman! He never misses 'the
+Derby.' 'Archer,' he said to me only yesterday, 'I have been at
+sixty-five Derbies! appeared on the field for the first time on a piebald
+pony when I was seven years old, with my father, the Prince of Wales, and
+Colonel Hanger; and only missing two races--one when I had the measles at
+Eton, and one in the Waterloo year, when I was with my friend Wellington
+in Flanders."
+
+"And who is that yellow carriage, with the pink and yellow parasols, that
+Mr. Pendennis is talking to, and ever so many gentlemen?" asked Mrs.
+Bungay.
+
+"That is Lady Clavering, of Clavering Park, next estate to my friend
+Pendennis. That is the young son and heir upon the box; he's awfully
+tipsy, the little scamp! and the young lady is Miss Amory, Lady
+Clavering's daughter by a first marriage, and uncommonly sweet upon my
+friend Pendennis; but I've reason to think he has his heart fixed
+elsewhere. You have heard of young Mr. Foker--the great brewer, Foker,
+you know--he was going to hang himself in consequence of a fatal passion
+for Miss Amory who refused him, but was cut down just in time by his
+valet, and is now abroad, under a keeper."
+
+"How happy that young fellow is!" sighed Mrs. Bungay. "Who'd have thought
+when he came so quiet and demure to dine with us, three or four years
+ago, he would turn out such a grand character! Why, I saw his name at
+Court the other day, and presented by the Marquis of Steyne and all; and
+in every party of the nobility his name's down as sure as a gun."
+
+"I introduced him a good deal when he first came up to town," Mr. Archer
+said, "and his uncle, Major Pendennis, did the rest. Hallo! There's
+Cobden here, of all men in the world! I must go and speak to him.
+Good-bye, Mrs. Bungay. Good morning, Mrs. Shandon."
+
+An hour previous to this time, and at a different part of the course,
+there might have been seen an old stage-coach, on the battered roof of
+which a crowd of shabby raffs were stamping and hallooing, as the great
+event of the day--the Derby race--rushed over the greensward, and by the
+shouting millions of people assembled to view that magnificent scene.
+This was Wheeler's (the Harlequin's Head) drag, which had brought down a
+company of choice spirits from Bow Street, with a slap-up luncheon in the
+boot. As the whirling race flashed by, each of the choice spirits
+bellowed out the name of the horse or the colours which he thought or he
+hoped might be foremost. "The Cornet!" "It's Muffineer!" "It's blue
+sleeves!" "Yallow cap! yallow cap! yallow cap!" and so forth, yelled the
+gentlemen sportsmen during that delicious and thrilling minute before the
+contest was decided; and as the fluttering signal blew out, showing the
+number of the famous horse Podasokus as winner of the race, one of the
+gentlemen on the Harlequin's Head drag sprang up off the roof, as if he
+was a pigeon and about to fly away to London or York with the news.
+
+But his elation did not lift him many inches from his standing-place, to
+which he came down again on the instant, causing the boards of the crazy
+old coach-roof to crack with the weight of his joy. "Hurray, hurray!" he
+bawled out, "Podasokus is the horse! Supper for ten, Wheeler, my boy. Ask
+you all round of course, and damn the expense."
+
+And the gentlemen on the carriage, the shabby swaggerers, the dubious
+bucks, said, "Thank you--congratulate you, Colonel; sup with you with
+pleasure:" and whispered to one another, "The Colonel stands to win
+fifteen hundred, and he got the odds from a good man, too."
+
+And each of the shabby bucks and dusky dandies began to eye his neighbour
+with suspicion, lest that neighbour, taking his advantage, should get the
+Colonel into a lonely place and borrow money of him. And the winner on
+Podasokus could not be alone during the whole of that afternoon, so
+closely did his friends watch him and each other.
+
+At another part of the course you might have seen a vehicle certainly
+more modest, if not more shabby than that battered coach which had
+brought down the choice spirits from the Harlequin's Head; this was cab
+No. 2002, which had conveyed a gentleman and two ladies from the cabstand
+in the Strand: whereof one of the ladies, as she sate on the box of the
+cab enjoying with her mamma and their companion a repast of lobster salad
+and bitter ale, looked so fresh and pretty that many of the splendid
+young dandies who were strolling about the course, and enjoying
+themselves at the noble diversion of Sticks, and talking to the
+beautifully dressed ladies in the beautiful carriages, on the hill,
+forsook these fascinations to have a glance at the smiling and
+rosy-cheeked lass on the cab. The blushes of youth and good-humour
+mantled on the girl's cheeks, and played over that fair countenance like
+the pretty shining cloudlets on the serene sky overhead; the elder lady's
+cheek was red too; but that was a permanent mottled rose, deepening only
+as it received free draughts of pale ale and brandy-and-water, until her
+face emulated the rich shell of the lobster which she devoured.
+
+The gentleman who escorted these two ladies was most active in attendance
+upon them: here on the course, as he had been during the previous
+journey. During the whole of that animated and delightful drive from
+London, his jokes had never ceased. He spoke up undauntedly to the most
+awful drags full of the biggest and most solemn guardsmen; as to the
+humblest donkey-chaise in which Bob the dustman was driving Molly to the
+race. He had fired astonishing volleys of what is called "chaff" into
+endless windows as he passed; into lines of grinning girls' schools; into
+little regiments of shouting urchins hurraying behind the railings of
+their Classical and Commercial Academies; into casements whence smiling
+maid-servants, and nurses tossing babies, or demure old maiden ladies
+with dissenting countenances, were looking. And the pretty girl in the
+straw bonnet with pink ribbon, and her mamma the devourer of lobsters,
+had both agreed that when he was in "spirits" there was nothing like that
+Mr. Sam. He had crammed the cab with trophies won from the bankrupt
+proprietors of the Sticks hard by, and with countless pincushions, wooden
+apples, backy-boxes, Jack-in-the-boxes, and little soldiers. He had
+brought up a gipsy with a tawny child in her arms to tell the fortunes of
+the ladies: and the only cloud which momentarily obscured the sunshine of
+that happy party, was when the teller of fate informed the young lady
+that had had reason to beware of a fair man, who was false to her: that
+she had had a bad illness, and that she would find that a man would prove
+true.
+
+The girl looked very much abashed at this news: her mother and the young
+man interchanged signs of wonder and intelligence. Perhaps the conjurer
+had used the same words to a hundred different carriages on that day.
+
+Making his way solitary amongst the crowd and the carriages, and noting,
+according to his wont, the various circumstances and characters which the
+animated scene presented, a young friend of ours came suddenly upon cab
+2002, and the little group of persons assembled on the outside of the
+vehicle. As he caught sight of the young lady on the box, she started and
+turned pale: her mother became redder than ever: the heretofore gay and
+triumphant Mr. Sam immediately assumed a fierce and suspicious look, and
+his eyes turned savagely from Fanny Bolton (whom the reader, no doubt,
+has recognised in the young lady of the cab) to Arthur Pendennis,
+advancing to meet her.
+
+Arthur, too, looked dark and suspicious on perceiving Mr. Samuel Huxter
+in company with his old acquaintances: his suspicion was that of alarmed
+morality, and, I dare say, highly creditable to Mr. Arthur: like the
+suspicion of Mrs. Lynx, when she sees Mr. Brown and Mrs. Jones talking
+together, or when she remarks Mrs. Lamb twice or thrice in a handsome
+opera-box. There may be no harm in the conversation of Mr. B. and Mr. J.:
+and Mrs. Lamb's opera-box (though she notoriously can't afford one) may
+be honestly come by: but yet a moralist like Mrs. Lynx has a right to the
+little precautionary fright: and Arthur was no doubt justified in
+adopting that severe demeanour of his.
+
+Fanny's heart began to patter violently: Huxter's fists, plunged into the
+pockets of his paletot, clenched themselves involuntarily and armed
+themselves, as it were, in ambush: Mrs. Bolton began to talk with all her
+might, and with a wonderful volubility: and Lor! she was so 'apply to see
+Mr. Pendennis, and how well he was a-lookin', and we'd been talking'
+about Mr. P. only jest before; hadn't we, Fanny? and if this was the
+famous Epsom races that they talked so much about, she didn't care, for
+her part, if she never saw them again. And how was Major Pendennis, and
+that kind Mr. Warrington, who brought Mr. P.'s great kindness to Fanny?
+and she never would forget it, never: and Mr. Warrington was so tall, he
+almost broke his 'ead up against their lodge door. You recollect Mr.
+Warrington a-knocking' of his head--don't you, Fanny?
+
+Whilst Mrs. Bolton was so discoursing, I wonder how many thousands of
+thoughts passed through Fanny's mind, and what dear times, sad struggles,
+lonely griefs, and subsequent shamefaced consolations were recalled to
+her? What pangs had the poor little thing, as she thought how much she
+had loved him, and that she loved him no more? There he stood, about whom
+she was going to die ten months since, dandified, supercilious, with a
+black crape to his white hat, and jet buttons in his shirt-front and a
+pink in his coat, that some one else had probably given him: with the
+tightest lavender-coloured gloves sewn with black and the smallest of
+canes. And Mr. Huxter wore no gloves, and great Blucher boots, and smelt
+very much of tobacco certainly; and looked, oh, it must be owned, he
+looked as if a bucket of water would do him a great deal of good! All
+these thoughts, and a myriad of others, rushed through Fanny's mind as
+her mamma was delivering herself of her speech, and as the girl, from
+under her eyes, surveyed Pendennis--surveyed him entirely from head to
+foot, the circle on his white forehead that his hat left when he lifted
+it (his beautiful, beautiful hair had grown again), the trinkets at his
+watch-chain, the ring on his hand under his glove, the neat shining boot,
+so, so unlike Sam's high-low!--and after her hand had given a little
+twittering pressure to the lavender-coloured kid grasp which was held out
+to it, and after her mother had delivered herself of her speech, all
+Fanny could find to say was, "This is Mr. Samuel Huxter whom you knew
+formerly, I believe, sir; Mr. Samuel, you know you knew Mr. Pendennis
+formerly--and--and, will you take a little refreshment?"
+
+These little words, tremulous and uncoloured as they were, yet were
+understood by Pendennis in such a manner as to take a great load of
+suspicion from off his mind--of remorse, perhaps, from his heart. The
+frown on the countenance of the Prince of Fairoaks disappeared, and a
+good-natured smile and a knowing twinkle of the eyes illuminated his
+highness's countenance. "I am very thirsty," he said, "and I will be glad
+to drink your health, Fanny; and I hope Mr. Huxter will pardon me for
+having been very rude to him the last time we met, and when I was so ill
+and out of spirits, that indeed I scarcely knew what I said." And
+herewith the lavender-coloured Dexter kid-glove was handed out, in token
+of amity, to Huxter.
+
+The dirty fist in the young surgeon's pocket was obliged to undoable
+itself, and come out of its ambush disarmed. The poor fellow himself
+felt, as he laid it in Pen's hand, how hot his own was, and how black--it
+left black marks on Pen's gloves; he saw them,--he would have liked to
+have clenched it again and dashed it into the other's good-humoured face;
+and have seen, there upon that round, with Fanny, with all England
+looking on, which was the best man--he Sam Huxter of Bartholomew's, or
+that grinning dandy.
+
+Pen with ineffable good-humour took a glass--he didn't mind what it was--
+he was content to drink after the ladies; and he filled it with frothing
+lukewarm beer, which he pronounced to be delicious, and which he drank
+cordially to the health of the party.
+
+As he was drinking and talking on in an engaging manner, a young lady in
+a shot dove-coloured dress, with a white parasol lined with pink, and the
+prettiest dove-coloured boots that ever stepped, passed by Pen, leaning
+on the arm of a stalwart gentleman with a military moustache.
+
+The young lady clenched her little fist, and gave a mischievous side-look
+as she passed Pen. He of the mustachios burst out into a jolly laugh. He
+had taken off his hat to the ladies of cab No. 2002. You should have seen
+Fanny Bolton's eyes watching after the dove-coloured young lady.
+Immediately Huxter perceived the direction which they took, they ceased
+looking after the dove-coloured nymph, and they turned and looked into
+Sam Huxter's orbs with the most artless good-humoured expression.
+
+"What a beautiful creature!" Fanny said. "What a lovely dress! Did you
+remark, Mr. Sam, such little, little hands?"
+
+"It was Capting Strong," said Mrs. Bolton: "and who was the young woman,
+I wonder?"
+
+"A neighbour of mine in the country--Miss 'Amory,'" Arthur said,--"Lady
+Clavering's daughter. You've seen Sir Francis often in Shepherd's Inn,
+Mrs. Bolton."
+
+As he spoke, Fanny built up a perfect romance in three volumes love--
+faithlessness--splendid marriage at St. George's, Hanover Square--
+broken-hearted maid--and Sam Huxter was not the hero of that story--poor
+Sam, who by this time had got out an exceedingly rank Cuba cigar, and was
+smoking it under Fanny's little nose.
+
+After that confounded prig Pendennis joined and left the party, the sun
+was less bright to Sam Huxter, the sky less blue--the Sticks had no
+attraction for him--the bitter beer hot and undrinkable--the world was
+changed. He had a quantity of peas and a tin pea-shooter in the pocket of
+the cab for amusement on the homeward route. He didn't take them out, and
+forgot their existence until some other wag, on their return from the
+races, fired a volley into Sam's sad face; upon which salute, after a few
+oaths indicative of surprise, he burst into a savage and sardonic laugh.
+
+But Fanny was charming all the way home. She coaxed, and snuggled, and
+smiled. She laughed pretty laughs; she admired everything; she took out
+the darling little Jack-in-the-boxes, and was so obliged to Sam. And when
+they got home, and Mr. Huxter, still with darkness on his countenance,
+was taking a frigid leave of her--she burst into tears, and said he was a
+naughty unkind thing.
+
+Upon which, with a burst of emotion almost as emphatic as hers, the young
+surgeon held the girl in his arms--swore that she was an angel, and that
+he was a jealous brute; owned that he was unworthy of her, and that he
+had no right to hate Pendennis; and asked her, implored her, to say once
+more that she----
+
+That she what?--The end of the question and Fanny's answer were
+pronounced by lips that were so near each other, that no bystander could
+hear the words. Mrs. Bolton only said, "Come, come, Mr. H.--no nonsense,
+if you please; and I think you've acted like a wicked wretch, and been
+most uncommon cruel to Fanny, that I do."
+
+When Arthur left No. 2002, he went to pay his respects to the carriage to
+which, and to the side of her mamma, the dove-coloured author of Mes
+Larmes had by this time returned. Indefatigable old Major Pendennis was
+in waiting upon Lady Clavering, and had occupied the back seat in her
+carriage; the box being in possession of young Hopeful, under the care of
+Captain Strong.
+
+A number of dandies, and men of a certain fashion--of military bucks, of
+young rakes of the public offices, of those who may be styled men's men
+rather than ladies'--had come about the carriage during its station on
+the hill--and had exchanged a word or two with Lady Clavering, and a
+little talk (a little "chaff," some of the most elegant of the men styled
+their conversation) with Miss Amory. They had offered her sportive bets,
+and exchanged with her all sorts of free-talk and knowing innuendoes.
+They pointed out to her who was on the course: and the "who" was not
+always the person a young lady should know.
+
+When Pen came up to Lady Clavering's carriage, he had to push his way
+through a crowd of these young bucks who were paying their court to Miss
+Amory, in order to arrive as near that young lady, who beckoned him by
+many pretty signals to her side.
+
+"Je lay vue," she said; "Elle a de bien beaux yeux; vous etes un
+monster!"
+
+"Why monster?" said Pen, with a laugh; "Hone suit qui mal y peens. My
+young friend, yonder, is as well protected as any young lady in
+Christendom. She has her mamma on one side, her pretend on the other.
+Could any harm happen to a girl between those two?"
+
+"One does not know what may or may not arrive," said Miss Blanche, in
+French, "when a girl has the mind, and when she is pursued by a wicked
+monster like you. Figure to yourself, Major, that I come to find
+Monsieur, your nephew, near to a cab, by two ladies, and a man, oh, such
+a man! and who ate lobsters, and who laughed, who laughed!"
+
+"It did not strike me that the man laughed," Pen said, "And as for
+lobsters, I thought he would have liked to eat me after the lobsters. He
+shook hands with me, and gripped me so, that he bruised my glove
+black-and-blue. He is a young surgeon. He comes from Clavering. Don't you
+remember the gilt pestle and mortar in High Street?"
+
+"If he attends you when you are sick," continued Miss Amory, "he will
+kill you. He will serve you right; for you are a monster."
+
+The perpetual recurrence to the word "monster" jarred upon Pen. "She
+speaks about these matters a great deal too lightly," he thought. "If I
+had been a monster, as she calls it, she would have received me just the
+same. This is not the way in which an English lady should speak or think.
+Laura would not speak in that way, thank God;" and as he thought so, his
+own countenance fell.
+
+"Of what are you thinking? Are you going to bouder me at present?"
+Blanche asked. "Major, scold your mechant nephew. He does not amuse me at
+all. He is as bete as Captain Crackenbury."
+
+"What are you saying about me, Miss Amory?" said the guardsman, with a
+grin. "If it's anything good, say it in English, for I don't understand
+French when it's spoke so devilish quick."
+
+"It ain't anything good, Crack," said Crackenbury's fellow, Captain
+Clinker. "Let's come away, and don't spoil sport. They say Pendennis is
+sweet upon her."
+
+"I'm told he's a devilish clever fellow," sighed Crackenbury. "Lady
+Violet Lebas says he's a devilish clever fellow. He wrote a work, or a
+poem, or something; and he writes those devilish clever things in the--in
+the papers, you know. Dammy, I wish I was a clever fellow, Clinker."
+
+"That's past wishing for, Crack, my boy," the other said. "I can't write
+a good book, but I think I can make a pretty good one on the Derby. What
+a flat Clavering is! And the Begum! I like that old Begum. She's worth
+ten of her daughter. How pleased the old girl was at winning the
+lottery!"
+
+"Clavering's safe to pay up, ain't he?" asked Captain Crackenbury.
+
+"I hope so," said his friend; and they disappeared, to enjoy themselves
+among the Sticks.
+
+Before the end of the day's amusements, many more gentlemen of Lady
+Clavering's acquaintance came up to her carriage, and chatted with the
+party which it contained. The worthy lady was in high spirits and
+good-humour, laughing and talking according to her wont, and offering
+refreshments to all her friends, until her ample baskets and bottles were
+emptied, and her servants and postillions were in such a royal state of
+excitement as servants and postillions commonly are upon the Derby day.
+
+The Major remarked that some of the visitors to the carriage appeared to
+look with rather queer and meaning glances towards its owner. "How easily
+she takes it!" one man whispered to another. "The Begum's made of money,"
+the friend replied. "How easily she takes what?" thought old Pendennis.
+"Has anybody lost any money?" Lady Clavering said she was happy in the
+morning because Sir Francis had promised her not to bet.
+
+Mr. Welbore, the country neighbour of the Claverings, was passing the
+carriage, when he was called back by the Begum, who rallied him for
+wishing to cut her. "Why didn't he come before? Why didn't he come to
+lunch?" Her ladyship was in great delight, she told him--she told
+everybody, that she had won five pounds in a lottery. As she conveyed
+this piece of intelligence to him, Mr. Welbore looked so particularly
+knowing, and withal melancholy, that a dismal apprehension seized upon
+Major Pendennis. "He would go and look after the horses and those rascals
+of postillions, who were so long in coming round." When he came back to
+the carriage, his usually benign and smirking countenance was obscured by
+some sorrow. "What is the matter with you now?" the good-natured Begum
+asked. The Major pretended a headache from the fatigue and sunshine of
+the day. The carriage wheeled off the course and took its way
+Londonwards, not the least brilliant equipage in that vast and
+picturesque procession. The tipsy drivers dashed gallantly over the turf,
+amidst the admiration of foot-passengers, the ironical cheers of the
+little donkey-carriages and spring vans, and the loud objurgations of
+horse-and-chaise men, with whom the reckless post-boys came in contact.
+The jolly Begum looked the picture of good-humour as she reclined on her
+splendid cushions; the lovely Sylphide smiled with languid elegance. Many
+an honest holiday-maker with his family wadded into a tax-cart, many a
+cheap dandy working his way home on his weary hack, admired that
+brilliant turn-out, and thought, no doubt, how happy those "swells" must
+be. Strong sat on the box still, with a lordly voice calling to the
+post-boys and the crowd. Master Frank had been put inside of the carriage
+and was asleep there by the side of the Major, dozing away the effects of
+the constant luncheon and champagne of which he had freely partaken.
+
+The Major was revolving in his mind meanwhile the news the receipt of
+which had made him so grave. "If Sir Francis Clavering goes on in this
+way," Pendennis the elder thought, "this little tipsy rascal will be as
+bankrupt as his father and grandfather before him. The Begum's fortune
+can't stand such drains upon it: no fortune can stand them: she has paid
+his debts half a dozen times already. A few years more of the turf, and a
+few coups like this, will ruin her."
+
+"Don't you think we could get up races at Clavering, mamma?" Miss Amory
+asked. "Yes, we must have them there again. There were races there in the
+old times, the good old times. It's a national amusement, you know: and
+we could have a Clavering ball: and we might have dances for the
+tenantry, and rustic sports in the park--Oh, it would be charming."
+
+"Capital fun," said mamma. "Wouldn't it, Major?"
+
+"The turf is a very expensive amusement, my dear lady," Major Pendennis
+answered, with such a rueful face, that the Begum rallied him, and asked
+laughingly whether he had lost money on the race?
+
+After a slumber of about an hour and a half, the heir of the house began
+to exhibit symptoms of wakefulness, stretching his youthful arms over the
+Major's face, and kicking his sister's knees as she sate opposite to him.
+When the amiable youth was quite restored to consciousness, he began a
+sprightly conversation.
+
+"I say, Ma," he said, "I've gone and done it this time, I have."
+
+"What have you gone and done, Franky dear?" asked Mamma.
+
+"How much is seventeen half-crowns? Two pound and half-a crown, ain't it?
+I drew Borax in our lottery, but I bought Podasokus and Man-milliner of
+Leggat minor for two open tarts and a bottle of ginger-beer."
+
+"You little wicked gambling creature, how dare you begin so soon?" cried
+Miss Amory.
+
+"Hold your tongue, if you please. Who ever asked your leave, miss?" the
+brother said. "And I say, Ma----"
+
+"Well, Franky dear?"
+
+"You'll tip me all the same, you know, when I go back----" and here he
+broke out into a laugh. "I say, Ma, shall I tell you something?"
+
+The Begum expressed her desire to hear this something, and her son and
+heir continued:
+
+"When me and Strong was down at the grand stand after the race, and I was
+talking to Leggat minor, who was there with his governor, I saw Pa look
+as savage as a bear. And I say, Ma, Leggat minor told me that he heard
+his governor say that Pa had lost seven thousand backing the favourite.
+I'll never back the favourite when I'm of age. No, no--hang me if I do:
+leave me alone, Strong, will you?"
+
+"Captain Strong! Captain Strong! is this true?" cried out the unfortunate
+Begum. "Has Sir Francis been betting again? He promised me he wouldn't.
+He gave me his word of honour he wouldn't."
+
+Strong, from his place on the box, had overheard the end of young
+Clavering's communication, and was trying in vain to stop his unlucky
+tongue.
+
+"I'm afraid it's true, ma'am," he said, turning round, "I deplore the
+loss as much as you can. He promised me as he promised you; but the play
+is too strong for him! he can't refrain from it."
+
+Lady Clavering at this sad news burst into a fit of tears. She deplored
+her wretched fate as the most miserable of women, she declared she would
+separate, and pay no more debts for the ungrateful man. She narrated with
+tearful volubility a score of stories only too authentic, which showed
+how her husband had deceived, and how constantly she had befriended him:
+and in this melancholy condition, whilst young Hopeful was thinking about
+the two guineas which he himself had won; and the Major revolving, in his
+darkened mind, whether certain plans which he had been forming had better
+not be abandoned; the splendid carriage drove up at length to the Begum's
+house in Grosvenor Place; the idlers and boys lingering about the place
+to witness, according to public wont, the close of the Derby Day,
+cheering the carriage as it drew up, and envying the happy folks who
+descended from it.
+
+"And it's for the son of this man that I am made a beggar!" Blanche said,
+quivering with anger, as she walked upstairs leaning on the Major's arm--
+"for this cheat--for this blackleg--for this liar--for this robber of
+women."
+
+"Calm yourself, my dear Miss Blanche," the old gentleman said; "I pray
+calm yourself. You have been hardly treated, most unjustly. But remember
+that you have always a friend in me, and trust to an old fellow who will
+try and serve you."
+
+And the young lady, and the heir of the hopeful house of Clavering,
+having retired to their beds, the remaining three of the Epsom party
+remained for some time in deep consultation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX
+
+Explanations
+
+
+Almost a year, as the reader will perceive, has passed since an event
+described a few pages back. Arthur's black coat is about to be exchanged
+for a blue one. His person has undergone other more pleasing and
+remarkable changes. His wig has been laid aside, and his hair, though
+somewhat thinner, has returned to public view. And he has had the honour
+of appearing at Court in the uniform of a Cornet of the Clavering troop
+of the ----shire Yeomanry Cavalry, being presented to the Sovereign by
+the Marquis of Steyne.
+
+This was a measure strongly and pathetically urged by Arthur's uncle. The
+Major would not hear of a year passing before this ceremony of
+gentlemanhood was gone through. The old gentleman thought that his nephew
+should belong to some rather more select Club than the Megatherium; and
+has announced everywhere in the world his disappointment that the young
+man's property has turned out not by any means as well as he could have
+hoped, and is under fifteen hundred a year.
+
+That is the amount at which Pendennis's property is set down in the
+world--where his publishers begin to respect him much more than formerly,
+and where even mammas are by no means uncivil to him. For if the pretty
+daughters are, naturally, to marry people of very different expectations
+--at any rate, he will be eligible for the plain ones: and if the
+brilliant and fascinating Myra is to hook an Earl, poor little Beatrice,
+who has one shoulder higher than the other, must hang on to some boor
+through life, and why should not Mr. Pendennis be her support? In the
+very first winter after the accession to his mother's fortune, Mrs.
+Hawxby in a country-house caused her Beatrice to learn billiards from Mr.
+Pendennis and would be driven by nobody but him in the pony carriage,
+because he was literary and her Beatrice was literary too, and declared
+that the young man, under the instigation of his horrid old uncle, had
+behaved most infamously in trifling with Beatrice's feelings. The truth
+is the old gentleman, who knew Mrs. Hawxby's character, and how
+desperately that lady would practise upon unwary young men, had come to
+the country-house in question and carried Arthur out of the danger of her
+immediate claws, though not out of the reach of her tongue. The elder
+Pendennis would have had his nephew pass a part of the Christmas at
+Clavering, whither the family had returned; but Arthur had not the heart
+for that. Clavering was too near poor old Fairoaks; and that was too full
+of sad recollections for the young man.
+
+We have lost sight of the Claverings, too, until their reappearance upon
+the Epsom race-ground, and must give a brief account of them in the
+interval. During the past year, the world has not treated any member of
+the Clavering family very kindly; Lady Clavering, one of the best-natured
+women that ever enjoyed a good dinner, or made a slip in grammar, has had
+her appetite and good-nature sadly tried by constant family grievances,
+and disputes such as make the efforts of the best French cook
+unpalatable, and the most delicately-stuffed sofa-cushion hard to lie on.
+"I'd rather have a turnip, Strong, for dessert, than that pineapple, and
+all them Muscatel grapes, from Clavering," says poor Lady Clavering,
+looking at her dinner-table, and confiding her grief to her faithful
+friend, "if I could but have a little quiet to eat it with. Oh, how much
+happier I was when I was a widow and before all this money fell in to
+me!"
+
+The Clavering family had indeed made a false start in life, and had got
+neither conduct, nor position, nor thanks for the hospitalities which
+they administered, nor a return of kindness from the people whom they
+entertained. The success of their first London season was doubtful; and
+their failure afterwards notorious. "Human patience was not great enough
+to put up with Sir Francis Clavering," people said. "He was too
+hopelessly low, dull, and disreputable. You could not say what, but
+there was a taint about the house and its entourages. Who was the Begum,
+with her money, and without her h's, and where did she come from? What
+an extraordinary little piece of conceit the daughter was, with her
+Gallicised graces and daring affectations, not fit for well-bred English
+girls to associate with! What strange people were those they assembled
+round about them! Sir Francis Clavering was a gambler, living notoriously
+in the society of blacklegs and profligates. Hely Clinker, who was in his
+regiment, said that he not only cheated at cards, but showed the white
+feather. What could Lady Rockminster have meant by taking her up? After
+the first season, indeed, Lady Rockminster, who had taken up Lady
+Clavering, put her down; the great ladies would not take their daughters
+to her parties; the young men who attended them behaved with the most
+odious freedom and scornful familiarity; and poor Lady Clavering herself
+avowed that she was obliged to take what she called 'the canal' into her
+parlour, because the tip-tops wouldn't come."
+
+She had not the slightest ill-will towards "the canal," the poor dear
+lady, or any pride about herself, or idea, that she was better than her
+neighbour; but she had taken implicitly the orders which on her entry
+into the world her social godmother had given her: she had been willing
+to know whom they knew, and ask whom they asked. The "canal," in fact,
+was much pleasanter than what is called "society;" but, as we said
+before, that to leave a mistress is easy, while, on the contrary, to be
+left by her is cruel: so you may give up society without any great pang,
+or anything but a sensation of relief at the parting; but severe are the
+mortifications and pains you have if society gives up you.
+
+One young man of fashion we have mentioned, who at least it might have
+been expected would have been found faithful amongst the faithless, and
+Harry Foker, Esq., was indeed that young man. But he had not managed
+matters with prudence, and the unhappy passion at first confided to Pen
+became notorious and ridiculous to the town, was carried to the ears of
+his weak and fond mother; and finally brought under the cognisance of the
+bald-headed and inflexible Foker senior.
+
+When Mr. Foker learned this disagreeable news, there took place between
+him and his son a violent and painful scene, which ended in the poor
+little gentleman's banishment from England for a year, with a positive
+order to return at the expiration of that time and complete his marriage
+with his cousin, or to retire into private life and three hundred a year
+altogether, and never see parent or brewery more. Mr. Henry Foker went
+away then, carrying with him that grief and care which passes free at the
+strictest Custom-houses, and which proverbially accompanies the exile;
+and with this crape over his eyes, even the Parisian Boulevard looked
+melancholy to him, and the sky of Italy black.
+
+To Sir Francis Clavering, that year was a most unfortunate one. The
+events described in the last chapter came to complete the ruin of the
+year. It was that year of grace in which, as our sporting readers may
+remember, Lord Harrowhill's horse (he was a classical young nobleman, and
+named his stud out of the Iliad)--when Podasokus won the Derby, to the
+dismay of the knowing ones, who pronounced the winning horse's name in
+various extraordinary ways, and who backed Borax, who was nowhere in the
+race. Sir Francis Clavering, who was intimate with some of the most
+rascally characters of the turf, and, of course, had "valuable
+information," had laid heavy odds against the winning horse, and backed
+the favourite freely, and the result of his dealings was, as his son
+correctly stated to poor Lady Clavering, a loss of seven thousand pounds.
+
+Indeed, it was a cruel blow upon the lady, who had discharged her
+husband's debts many times over; who had received as many times his
+oaths and promises of amendment; who had paid his money-lenders and
+horse-dealers; who had furnished his town and country houses, and who was
+called upon now instantly to meet this enormous sum, the penalty of her
+cowardly husband's extravagance.
+
+It has been described in former pages how the elder Pendennis had become
+the adviser of the Clavering family, and, in his quality of intimate
+friend of the house, had gone over every room of ii, and even seen that
+ugly closet which we all of us have, and in which, according to the
+proverb, the family skeleton is locked up. About the Baronet's pecuniary
+matters, if the Major did not know, it was because Clavering himself did
+not know them, and hid them from himself and others in such a hopeless
+entanglement of lies that it was impossible for adviser or attorney or
+principal to get an accurate knowledge of his affairs. But, concerning
+Lady Clavering, the Major was much better informed; and when the unlucky
+mishap of the Derby arose, he took upon himself to become completely and
+thoroughly acquainted with all her means, whatsoever they were; and was
+now accurately informed of the vast and repeated sacrifices which the
+widow Amory had made in behalf of her present husband.
+
+He did not conceal--and he had won no small favour from Miss Blanche by
+avowing it--his opinion, that Lady Clavering's daughter had been hardly
+treated at the expense of her son, by her second marriage: and in his
+conversations with Lady Clavering had fairly hinted that he thought Miss
+Blanche ought to have a better provision. We have said that he had
+already given the widow to understand that he knew all the particulars of
+her early and unfortunate history, having been in India at the time when
+--when the painful circumstances occurred which had ended in her parting
+from her first husband. He could tell her where to find the Calcutta
+newspaper which contained the account of Amory's trial, and he showed,
+and the Begum was not a little grateful to him for his forbearance, how,
+being aware all along of this mishap which had befallen her, he had kept
+all knowledge of it to himself, and been constantly the friend of her
+family.
+
+"Interested motives, my dear Lady Clavering," he said, "of course I may
+have had. We all have interested motives, and mine, I don't conceal from
+you, was to make a marriage between my nephew and your daughter." To
+which Lady Clavering, perhaps with some surprise that the Major should
+choose her family for a union with his own, said she was quite willing to
+consent.
+
+But frankly he said, "My dear lady, my boy has but five hundred a year,
+and a wife with ten thousand pounds to her fortune would scarcely better
+him. We could do better for him than that, permit me to say, and he is a
+shrewd, cautious young fellow who has sown his wild oats now--who has
+very good parts and plenty of ambition--and whose object in marrying is
+to better himself. If you and Sir Francis chose--and Sir Francis, take my
+word for it, will refuse you nothing--you could put Arthur in a way to
+advance very considerably in the world, and show the stuff which he has
+in him. Of what use is that seat in Parliament to Clavering, who scarcely
+ever shows his face in the House, or speaks a word there? I'm told by
+gentlemen who heard my boy at Oxbridge, that he was famous as an orator,
+begad!--and once put his foot into the stirrup and mount him, I've no
+doubt he won't be the last of the field, ma'am. I've tested the chap, and
+know him pretty well, I think. He is much too lazy, and careless, and
+flighty a fellow, to make a jog-trot journey, and arrive, as your lawyers
+do, at the end of their lives! but give him a start and good friends, and
+an opportunity, and take my word for it, he'll make himself a name that
+his sons shall be proud of. I don't see any way for a fellow like him to
+parvenir, but by making a prudent marriage--not with a beggarly heiress--
+to sit down for life upon a miserable fifteen hundred a year--but with
+somebody whom he can help, and who can help him forward in the world, and
+whom he can give a good name and a station in the country, begad, in
+return for the advantages which she brings him. It would be better for
+you to have a distinguished son-in-law, than to keep your husband on in
+Parliament, who's of no good to himself or to anybody else there, and
+that's, I say, why I've been interested about you, and offer you what I
+think a good bargain for both."
+
+"You know I look upon Arthur as one of the family almost now," said the
+good-natured Begum; "he comes and goes when he likes; and the more I
+think of his dear mother, the more I see there's few people so good--none
+so good to me. And I'm sure I cried when I heard of her death, and would
+have gone into mourning for her myself, only black don't become me. And I
+know who his mother wanted him to marry--Laura, I mean--whom old Lady
+Rockminster has taken such a fancy to, and, no wonder. She's a better
+girl than my girl. I know both. And my Betsy--Blanche, I mean--ain't been
+a comfort to me, Major. It's Laura Pen ought to marry.
+
+"Marry on five hundred a year! My dear good soul, you are mad!" Major
+Pendennis said. "Think over what I have said to you. Do nothing in your
+affairs with that unhappy husband of yours without consulting me; and
+remember that old Pendennis is always your friend."
+
+For some time previous, Pen's uncle had held similar language to Miss
+Amory. He had pointed out to her the convenience of the match which he
+had at heart, and was bound to say, that mutual convenience was of all
+things the very best in the world to marry upon--the only thing. "Look at
+your love-marriages, my dear young creature. The love-match people are
+the most notorious of all for quarrelling afterwards; and a girl who runs
+away with Jack to Gretna Green, constantly runs away with Tom to
+Switzerland afterwards. The great point in marriage is for people to
+agree to be useful to one another. The lady brings the means, and the
+gentleman avails himself of them. My boy's wife brings the horse, and
+begad Pen goes in and wins the plate. That's what I call a sensible
+union. A couple like that have something to talk to each other about when
+they come together. If you had Cupid himself to talk to--if Blanche and
+Pen were Cupid and Psyche, begad--they'd begin to yawn after a few
+evenings, if they had nothing but sentiment to speak on."
+
+As for Miss Amory, she was contented enough with Pen as long as there was
+nobody better. And how many other young ladies are like her?--and how
+many love-marriages carry on well to the last?--and how sentimental firms
+do not finish in bankruptcy?--and how many heroic passions don't dwindle
+down into despicable indifference, or end in shameful defeat?
+
+These views of life and philosophy the Major was constantly, according to
+his custom, inculcating to Pen, whose mind was such that he could see the
+right on both sides of many questions, and, comprehending the sentimental
+life which was quite out of the reach of the honest Major's intelligence,
+could understand the practical life too, and accommodate himself, or
+think he could accommodate himself, to it. So it came to pass that during
+the spring succeeding his mother's death he became a good deal under the
+influence of his uncle's advice, and domesticated in Lady Clavering's
+house; and in a measure was accepted by Miss Amory without being a
+suitor, and was received without being engaged. The young people were
+extremely familiar, without being particularly sentimental, and met and
+parted with each other in perfect good-humour. "And I," thought
+Pendennis, "am the fellow who eight years ago had a Grand passion, and
+last year was raging in a fever about Briseis!"
+
+Yes, it was the same Pendennis, and time had brought to him, as to the
+rest of us, its ordinary consequences, consolations, developments. We
+alter very little. When we talk of this man or that woman being no longer
+the same person whom we remember in youth, and remark (of course to
+deplore) changes in our friends, we don't, perhaps, calculate that
+circumstance only brings out the latent defect or quality, and does not
+create it. The selfish languor and indifference of to-day's possession is
+the consequence of the selfish ardour of yesterday's pursuit: the scorn
+and weariness which cries vanitas vanitatum is but the lassitude of the
+sick appetite palled with pleasure: the insolence of the successful
+parvenu is only the necessary continuance of the career of the needy
+struggler: our mental changes are like our grey hairs or our wrinkles--
+but the fulfilment of the plan of mortal growth and decay: that which is
+snow-white now was glossy black once; that which is sluggish obesity
+to-day was boisterous rosy health a few years back; that calm weariness,
+benevolent, resigned, and disappointed, was ambition, fierce and violent,
+but a few years since, and has only settled into submissive repose after
+many a battle and defeat. Lucky he who can bear his failure so
+generously, and give up his broken sword to Fate the Conqueror with a
+manly and humble heart! Are you not awestricken, you, friendly reader,
+who, taking the page up for a moment's light reading, lay it down,
+perchance, for a graver reflection,--to think how you, who have
+consummated your success or your disaster, may be holding marked station,
+or a hopeless and nameless place, in the crowd--who have passed through
+how many struggles of defeat, success, crime, remorse, to yourself only
+known!--who may have loved and grown cold, wept and laughed again, how
+often!--to think how you are the same, You, whom in childhood you
+remember, before the voyage of life began? It has been prosperous, and
+you are riding into port, the people huzzaing and the guns saluting,--and
+the lucky captain bows from the ship's side, and there is a care under
+the star on his breast which nobody knows of: or you are wrecked, and
+lashed, hopeless, to a solitary spar out at sea:--the sinking man and the
+successful one are thinking each about home, very likely, and remembering
+the time when they were children; alone on the hopeless spar, drowning
+out of sight; alone in the midst of the crowd applauding you.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI
+
+Conversations
+
+
+
+Our good-natured Begum was at first so much enraged at this last instance
+of her husband's duplicity and folly, that she refused to give Sir
+Francis Clavering any aid in order to meet his debts of honour, and
+declared that she would separate from him, and leave him to the
+consequences of his incorrigible weakness and waste. After that fatal
+day's transactions at the Derby, the unlucky gambler was in such a
+condition of mind that he was disposed to avoid everybody; alike his
+turf-associates with whom he had made the debts which he trembled lest he
+should not have the means of paying, and his wife, his long-suffering
+banker, on whom he reasonably doubted whether he should be allowed any
+longer to draw. When Lady Clavering asked the next morning whether Sir
+Francis was in the house, she received answer that he had not returned
+that night, but had sent a messenger to his valet, ordering him to
+forward clothes and letters by the bearer. Strong knew that he should
+have a visit or a message from him in the course of that or the
+subsequent day, and accordingly got a note beseeching him to call upon
+his distracted friend F. C. at Short Hotel, Blackfriars, and ask for Mr.
+Francis there. For the Baronet was a gentleman of that peculiarity of
+mind that he would rather tell a lie than not, and always began a contest
+with fortune by running away and hiding himself. The Boots of Mr. Short's
+establishment, who carried Clavering's message to Grosvenor Place, and
+brought back his carpet-bag, was instantly aware who was the owner of the
+bag, and he imparted his information to the footman who was laying the
+breakfast-table, who carried down the news to the servants'-hall, who
+took it to Mrs. Bonner, my lady's housekeeper and confidential maid, who
+carried it to my lady. And thus every single person in the Grosvenor
+Place establishment knew that Sir Francis was in hiding, under the name
+of Francis, at an inn in the Blackfriars Road. And Sir Francis's coachman
+told the news to other gentlemen's coachmen, who carried it to their
+masters, and to the neighbouring Tattersall's, where very gloomy
+anticipations were formed that Sir Francis Clavering was about to make a
+tour in the Levant.
+
+In the course of that day the number of letters addressed to Sir Francis
+Clavering, Bart., which found their way to his hall-table, was quite
+remarkable. The French cook sent in his account to my lady; the tradesmen
+who supplied her ladyship's table, and Messrs. Finer and Gimcrack, the
+mercers and ornamental dealers, and Madame Crinoline, the eminent
+milliner, also forwarded their little bills to her ladyship, in company
+with Miss Amory's private, and by no means inconsiderable, account at
+each establishment.
+
+In the afternoon of the day after the Derby, when Strong (after a
+colloquy with his principal at Short's Hotel, whom he found crying and
+drinking Curacoa) called to transact business according to his custom at
+Grosvenor Place, he found all these suspicious documents ranged in the
+Baronet's study; and began to open them and examine them with a rueful
+countenance.
+
+Mrs. Bonner, my lady's maid and housekeeper, came down upon him whilst
+engaged in this occupation. Mrs. Bonner, a part of the family and as
+necessary to her mistress as the Chevalier was to Sir Francis, was of
+course on Lady Clavering's side in the dispute between her and her
+husband, and as by duty bound even more angry than her ladyship herself.
+
+"She won't pay, if she takes my advice," Mrs. Bonner said. "You'll please
+to go back to Sir Francis, Captain--and he lurking about in a low
+public-house and don't dare to face his wife like a man!--and say that we
+won't pay his debts no longer. We made a man of him, we took him out of
+gaol (and other folks too perhaps), we've paid his debts over and over
+again--we set him up in Parliament and gave him a house in town and
+country, and where he don't dare show his face, the shabby sneak! We've
+given him the horse he rides and the dinner he eats and the very clothes
+he has on his back; and we will give him no more. Our fortune, such as is
+left of it, is left to ourselves, and we won't waste any more of it on
+this ungrateful man. We'll give him enough to live upon and leave him,
+that's what we'll do: and that's what you may tell him from Susan
+Bonner."
+
+Susan Bonner's mistress hearing of Strong's arrival sent for him at this
+juncture, and the Chevalier went up to her ladyship not without hopes
+that he should find her more tractable than her factotum Mrs. Bonner.
+Many a time before had he pleaded his client's cause with Lady Clavering
+and caused her good-nature to relent. He tried again once more. He
+painted in dismal colours the situation in which he had found Sir
+Francis: and would not answer for any consequences which might ensue if
+he could not find means of meeting his engagements.
+
+"Kill hisself," laughed Mrs. Bonner, "kill hisself, will he? Dying's the
+best thing he could do." Strong vowed that he had found him with the
+razors on the table; but at this, in her turn, Lady Clavering laughed
+bitterly. "He'll do himself no harm, as long as there's a shilling left
+of which he can rob a poor woman. His life's quite safe, Captain: you may
+depend upon that. Ah! it was a bad day that ever I set eyes on him."
+
+"He's worse than the first man," cried out my lady's aide-de-camp. "He
+was a man, he was--a wild devil, but he had the courage of a man--whereas
+this fellow--what's the use of my lady paying his bills, and selling her
+diamonds, and forgiving him? He'll be as bad again next year. The very
+next chance he has he'll be a-cheating of her, and robbing of her; and
+her money will go to keep a pack of rogues and swindlers--I don't mean
+you, Captain--you've been a good friend to us enough, bating we wish we'd
+never set eyes on you."
+
+The Chevalier saw from the words which Mrs. Bonner had let slip regarding
+the diamonds, that the kind Begum was disposed to relent once more at
+least, and that there were hopes still for his principal.
+
+"Upon my word, ma'am," he said, with a real feeling of sympathy for Lady
+Clavering's troubles, and admiration for her untiring good-nature, and
+with a show of enthusiasm which advanced not a little his graceless
+patron's cause--"anything you say against Clavering, or Mrs. Bonner here
+cries out against me, is no better than we deserve, both of us, and it
+was an unlucky day for you when you saw either. He has behaved cruelly to
+you and if you were not the most generous and forgiving woman in the
+world, I know there would be no chance for him. But you can't let the
+father of your son be a disgraced man, and send little Frank into the
+world with such a stain upon him. Tie him down; bind him by any promises
+you like: I vouch for him that he will subscribe them."
+
+"And break 'em," said Mrs. Bonner.
+
+"And keep 'em this time," cried out Strong. "He must keep them. If you
+could have seen how he wept, ma'am! 'Oh, Strong,' he said to me, 'it's
+not for myself I feel now: it's for my boy--it's for the best woman in
+England, whom I have treated basely--I know I have.' He didn't intend to
+bet upon this race, ma'am--indeed he didn't. He was cheated into it: all
+the ring was taken in. He thought he might make the bet quite safely,
+without the least risk. And it will be a lesson to him for all his life
+long. To see a man cry--oh, it's dreadful."
+
+"He don't think much of making my dear missus cry," said Mrs. Bonner--
+"poor dear soul!--look if he does, Captain."
+
+          *     *    *     *     *     *
+
+"If you've the soul of a man, Clavering," Strong said to his principal,
+when he recounted this scene to him, "you'll keep your promise this time:
+and, so help me Heaven! if you break word with her, I'll turn against
+you, and tell all."
+
+"What all?" cried Mr. Francis, to whom his ambassador brought the news
+back at Short's Hotel, where Strong found the Baronet crying and drinking
+curacoa.
+
+"Psha! Do you suppose I am a fool?" burst out Strong. "Do you suppose I
+could have lived so long in the world, Frank Clavering, without having my
+eyes about me? You know I have but to speak and you are a beggar
+to-morrow. And I am not the only man who knows your secret."
+
+"Who else does?" gasped Clavering.
+
+"Old Pendennis does, or I am very much mistaken. He recognised the man
+the first night he saw him, when he came drunk into your house."
+
+"He knows it, does he?" shrieked out Clavering. "Damn him--kill him."
+
+"You'd like to kill us all, wouldn't you, old boy?" said Strong, with a
+sneer, puffing his cigar.
+
+The Baronet dashed his weak hand against his forehead; perhaps the other
+had interpreted his wish rightly. "Oh, Strong!" he cried, "if I dared,
+I'd put an end to myself, for I'm the d-----est miserable dog in all
+England. It's that that makes me so wild and reckless. It's that which
+makes me take to drink" (and he drank, with a trembling hand, a bumper of
+his fortifier--the curacoa), "and to live about with these thieves. I
+know they're thieves, every one of 'em, d----d thieves. And--and how can
+I help it?--and I didn't know it, you know--and, by Gad, I'm innocent--
+and until I saw the d----d scoundrel first, I knew no more about it than
+the dead--and I'll fly, and I'll go abroad out of the reach of the
+confounded hells, and I'll bury myself in a forest, by Gad! and hang
+myself up to a tree--and, oh--I'm the most miserable beggar in all
+England!" And so with more tears, shrieks, and curses, the impotent
+wretch vented his grief and deplored his unhappy fate; and, in the midst
+of groans and despair and blasphemy, vowed his miserable repentance.
+
+The honoured proverb which declares that to be an ill wind which blows
+good to nobody, was verified in the case of Sir Francis Clavering, and
+another of the occupants of Mr. Strong's chambers in Shepherd's Inn. The
+man was "good," by a lucky hap, with whom Colonel Altamont made his bet;
+and on the settling day of the Derby--as Captain Clinker, who was
+appointed to settle Sir Francis Clavering's book for him (for Lady
+Clavering by the advice of Major Pendennis, would not allow the Baronet
+to liquidate his own money transactions), paid over the notes to the
+Baronet's many creditors--Colonel Altamont had the satisfaction of
+receiving the odds of thirty to one in fifties, which he had taken
+against the winning horse of the day.
+
+Numbers of the Colonel's friends were present on the occasion to
+congratulate him on his luck--all Altamont's own set, and the gents who
+met in the private parlour of the convivial Wheeler, my host of the
+Harlequin's Head, came to witness their comrade's good fortune, and would
+have liked, with a generous sympathy for success, to share in it. "Now
+was the time," Tom Driver had suggested to the Colonel, "to have up the
+specie ship that was sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, with the three hundred
+and eighty thousand dollars on board, besides bars and doubloons." "The
+Tredyddlums were very low--to be bought for an old song--never was such
+an opportunity for buying shares," Mr. Keightley insinuated; and Jack
+Holt pressed forward his tobacco-smuggling scheme, the audacity of which
+pleased the Colonel more than any other of the speculations proposed to
+him. Then of the Harlequin's Head boys: there was Jack Rackstraw, who
+knew of a pair of horses which the Colonel must buy; Tom Fleet, whose
+satirical paper, The Swell, wanted but two hundred pounds of capital to
+be worth a thousand a year to any man--"with such a power and influence,
+Colonel, you rogue, and the entree of the green-rooms in London," Tom
+urged; whilst little Moss Abiams entreated the Colonel not to listen to
+these absurd fellows with their humbugging speculations, but to invest
+his money in some good bills which Moss could get for him, and which
+would return him fifty per cent as safe as the Bank of England.
+
+Each and all of these worthies came round the Colonel with their various
+blandishments; but he had courage enough to resist them, and to button up
+his notes in the pocket of his coat, and go home to Strong, and "sport"
+the outer door of the chambers. Honest Strong had given his fellow-lodger
+good advice about all his acquaintances; and though, when pressed, he did
+not mind frankly taking twenty pounds himself out of the Colonel's
+winnings, Strong was a great deal too upright to let others cheat him.
+
+He was not a bad fellow when in good fortune, this Altamont. He ordered a
+smart livery for Grady, and made poor old Costigan shed tears of quickly
+dried gratitude by giving him a five-pound note after a snug dinner at
+the Back Kitchen, and he bought a green shawl for Mrs. Bolton, and a
+yellow one for Fanny: the most brilliant "sacrifices" of a Regent Street
+haberdasher's window. And a short time after this, upon her birthday,
+which happened in the month of June, Miss Amory received from "a friend"
+a parcel containing an enormous brass inlaid writing-desk, in which there
+was a set of amethysts, the most hideous eyes ever looked upon,--a
+musical snuff-box, and two Keepsakes of the year before last, and
+accompanied with a couple of gown pieces of the most astounding colours,
+the receipt of which goods made the Sylphide laugh and wonder
+immoderately. Now it is a fact that Colonel Altamont had made a purchase
+of cigars and French silks from some duffers in Fleet Street about this
+period; and he was found by Strong in the open Auction Room in Cheapside,
+having invested some money in two desks, several pairs of richly-plated
+candlesticks, a dinner epergne, and a bagatelle-board. The dinner epergne
+remained at chambers, and figured at the banquets there, which the
+Colonel gave pretty freely. It seemed beautiful in his eyes, until Jack
+Holt said it looked as if it had been taken "in a bill." And Jack Holt
+certainly knew.
+
+The dinners were pretty frequent at chambers, and Sir Francis Clavering
+condescended to partake of them constantly. His own house was shut up:
+the successor of Mirobolant, who had sent in his bills so prematurely,
+was dismissed by the indignant Lady Clavering: the luxuriance of the
+establishment was greatly pruned and reduced. One of the large footmen
+was cashiered, upon which the other gave warning, not liking to serve
+without his mate, or in a family where on'y one footman was kep'. General
+and severe economical reforms were practised by the Begum in her whole
+household, in consequence of the extravagance of which her graceless
+husband had been guilty. The Major, as her ladyship's friend; Strong, on
+the part of poor Clavering; her ladyship's lawyer, and the honest Begum
+herself, executed these reforms with promptitude and severity. After
+paying the Baronet's debts, the settlement of which occasioned
+considerable public scandal, and caused the Baronet to sink even lower in
+the world's estimation than he had been before, Lady Clavering quitted
+London for Tunbridge Wells in high dudgeon, refusing to see her reprobate
+husband, whom nobody pitied. Clavering remained in London patiently, by
+no means anxious to meet his wife's just indignation, and sneaked in and
+out of the House of Commons, whence he and Captain Raff and Mr. Marker
+would go to have a game at billiards and a cigar or showed in the
+sporting public-houses; or might be seen lurking about Lincoln's Inn and
+his lawyers', where the principals kept him for hours waiting, and the
+clerks winked at each other, as he sate in their office. No wonder that
+he relished the dinners at Shepherd's Inn, and was perfectly resigned
+there: resigned? he was so happy nowhere else; he was wretched amongst
+his equals, who scorned him--but here he was the chief guest at the
+table, where they continually addressed him with "Yes, Sir Francis" and
+"No, Sir Francis," where he told his wretched jokes, and where he
+quavered his dreary little French song, after Strong had sung his Jovial
+chorus, and honest Costigan had piped his Irish ditties. Such a jolly
+menage as Strong's, with Grady's Irish-stew, and the Chevalier's brew of
+punch after dinner, would have been welcome to many a better man than
+Clavering, the solitude of whose great house at home frightened him,
+where he was attended only by the old woman who kept the house, and his
+valet who sneered at him.
+
+"Yes, dammit," said he to his friends in Shepherd's Inn, "that fellow of
+mine, I must turn him away, only I owe him two years' wages, curse him,
+and can't ask my lady. He brings me my tea cold of a morning, with a
+dem'd leaden teaspoon, and he says my lady's sent all the plate to the
+banker's because it ain't safe.--Now ain't it hard that she won't trust
+me with a single teaspoon; ain't it ungentlemanlike, Altamont? You know
+my lady's of low birth--that is--I beg your pardon--hem--that is, it's
+most cruel of her not to show more confidence in me. And the very
+servants begin to laugh--the damn scoundrels! I break every bone in their
+great hulking bodies, curse 'em, I will.--They don't answer my bell: and
+--and my man was at Vauxhall last night with one of my dress-shirts and
+my velvet waistcoat on, I know it was mine--the confounded impudent
+blackguard--and he went on dancing before my eyes confound him! I'm sure
+he'll live to be hanged--he deserves to be hanged--all those infernal
+rascals of valets."
+
+He was very kind to Altamont now: he listened to the Colonel's loud
+stories when Altamont described how--when he was working his way home
+once from New Zealand, where he had been on a whaling expedition--he and
+his comrades had been obliged to slink on board at night, to escape from
+their wives, by Jove--and how the poor devils put out in their canoes
+when they saw the ship under sail, and paddled madly after her: how he
+had been lost in the bush once for three months in New South Wales, when
+he was there once on a trading speculation: how he had seen Boney at
+Saint Helena, and been presented to him with the rest of the officers of
+the Indiaman of which he was a mate--to all these tales (and over his
+cups Altamont told many of them; and, it must be owned, lied and bragged
+a great deal) Sir Francis now listened with great attention; making a
+point of drinking wine with Altamont at dinner and of treating him with
+every distinction.
+
+"Leave him alone, I know what he's a-coming to," Altamont said, laughing
+to Strong, who remonstrated with him, "and leave me alone; I know what
+I'm a-telling, very well. I was officer on board an Indiaman, so I was; I
+traded to New South Wales, so I did, in a ship of my own, and lost her. I
+became officer to the Nawaub, so I did; only me and my royal master have
+had a difference, Strong--that's it. Who's the better or the worse for
+what I tell? or knows anything about me? The other chap is dead--shot in
+the bush, and his body reckonised at Sydney. If I thought anybody would
+split, do you think I wouldn't wring his neck? I've done as good before
+now, Strong--I told you how I did for the overseer before I took leave--
+but in fair fight, I mean--in fair fight; or, rayther, he had the best of
+it. He had his gun and bay'net, and I had only an axe. Fifty of 'em saw
+it--ay, and cheered me when I did it--and I'd do it again,--him, wouldn't
+I? I ain't afraid of anybody; and I'd have the life of the man who split
+upon me. That's my maxim, and pass me the liquor.--You wouldn't turn on a
+man. I know you. You're an honest feller, and will stand by a feller, and
+have looked death in the face like a man. But as for that lily-livered
+sneak--that poor lyin' swindlin' cringin' cur of a Clavering--who stands
+in my shoes--stands in my shoes, hang him! I'll make him pull my boots
+off and clean 'em, I will. Ha, ha!" Here he burst out into a wild laugh,
+at which Strong got up and put away the brandy-bottle. The other still
+laughed good-humouredly. "You're right, old boy," he said; "you always
+keep your head cool, you do--and when I begin to talk too much--I say,
+when I begin to pitch, I authorise you, and order you, and command you,
+to put away the rum-bottle."
+
+"Take my counsel, Altamont," Strong said, gravely, "and mind how you deal
+with that man. Don't make it too much his interest to get rid of you; or
+who knows what he may do?"
+
+The event for which, with cynical enjoyment, Altamont had been on the
+look-out, came very speedily. One day, Strong being absent upon an errand
+for his principal, Sir Francis made his appearance in the chambers, and
+found the envoy of the Nawaub alone. He abused the world in general for
+being heartless and unkind to him: he abused his wife for being
+ungenerous to him; he abused Strong for being ungrateful--hundreds of
+pounds had he given Ned Strong--been his friend for life and kept him out
+of gaol, by Jove,--and now Ned was taking her ladyship's side against him
+and abetting her in her infernal unkind treatment of him. "They've
+entered into a conspiracy to keep me penniless, Altamont," the Baronet
+said: "they don't give me as much pocket money as Frank has at school,"
+
+"Why don't you go down to Richmond and borrow of him, Clavering?"
+Altamont broke out with a savage laugh. "He wouldn't see his poor old
+beggar of a father without pocket-money, would he?"
+
+"I tell you, I've been obliged to humiliate myself cruelly" Clavering
+said. "Look here, sir--look here, at these pawn-tickets! Fancy a Member
+of Parliament and an old English Baronet, by Gad! obliged to put a
+drawing-room clock and a buhl inkstand up the spout; and a gold
+duck's-head paper-holder, that I dare say cost my wife five pound, for
+which they'd only give me fifteen-and-six! Oh, it's a humiliating thing,
+sir, poverty to a man of my habits; and it's made me shed tears, sir,--
+tears; and that d----d valet of mine--curse him, I wish he was hanged!--
+he had the confounded impudence to threaten to tell my lady: as the
+things in my own house weren't my own, to sell or to keep, or fling out
+of window if I chose--by Gad! the confounded scoundrel.
+
+"Cry a little; don't mind cryin' before me--it'll relieve you Clavering,"
+the other said. "Why, I say, old feller, what a happy feller I once
+thought you, and what a miserable son of a gun you really are!"
+
+"It's a shame that they treat me so, ain't it?" Clavering went on,--for,
+though ordinarily silent and apathetic, about his own griefs the Baronet
+could whine for an hour at a time. "And--and, by Gad, sir, I haven't got
+the money to pay the very cab that's waiting for me at the door; and the
+porteress, that Mrs. Bolton, lent me three shillin's, and I don't like to
+ask her for any more: and I asked that d----d old Costigan, the
+confounded old penniless Irish miscreant, and he hadn't got a shillin',
+the beggar; and Campion's out of town, or else he'd do a little bill for
+me, I know he would."
+
+"I thought you swore on your honour to your wife that you wouldn't put
+your name to paper," said Mr. Altamont, puffing at his cigar.
+
+"Why does she leave me without pocket-money, then? Damme, I must have
+money," cried out the Baronet. "Oh, Am----, oh, Altamont, I'm the most
+miserable beggar alive."
+
+"You'd like a chap to lend you a twenty-pound note, wouldn't you now?"
+the other asked.
+
+"If you would, I'd be grateful to you for ever--for ever, my dearest
+friend," cried Clavering.
+
+"How much would you give? Will you give a fifty-pound bill, at six
+months, for half down and half in plate?" asked Altamont.
+
+"Yes, I would, so help me----, and pay it on the day," screamed
+Clavering. "I'll make it payable at my banker's: I'll do anything you
+like."
+
+"Well, I was only chaffing you. I'll give you twenty pound."
+
+"You said a pony," interposed Clavering; "my dear fellow, you said a
+pony, and I'll be eternally obliged to you; and I'll not take it as a
+gift--only as a loan, and pay you back in six months. I take my oath, I
+will."
+
+"Well--well--there's the money, Sir Francis Clavering. I ain't a bad
+fellow. When I've money in my pocket, dammy, I spend it like a man.
+Here's five-and-twenty for you. Don't be losing it at the hells now.
+Don't be making a fool of yourself. Go down to Clavering Park, and it'll
+keep you ever so long. You needn't 'ave butchers' meat: there's pigs, I
+dare say, on the premises: and you can shoot rabbits for dinner, you
+know, every day till the game comes in. Besides, the neighbours will ask
+you about to dinner, you know, sometimes: for you are a Baronet, though
+you have outrun the constable. And you've got this comfort, that I'm off
+your shoulders for a good bit to come--p'raps this two years--if I don't
+play; and I don't intend to touch the confounded black and red: and by
+that time my lady, as you call her--Jimmy, I used to say--will have come
+round again; and you'll be ready for me, you know, and come down
+handsomely to yours truly."
+
+At this juncture of their conversation Strong returned, nor did the
+Baronet care much about prolonging the talk, having got the money: and he
+made his way from Shepherd's Inn, and went home and bullied his servant
+in a manner so unusually brisk and insolent that the man concluded his
+master must have pawned some more of the house furniture, or, at any
+rate, have come into possession of some ready money.
+
+          *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+"And yet I've looked over the house, Morgan, and I don't thin he has took
+any more of the things," Sir Francis's valet said to Major Pendennis's
+man, as they met at their Club soon after. "My lady locked up a'most all
+the bejews afore she went away, and he couldn't take away the picters
+and looking-glasses in a cab and he wouldn't spout the fenders and
+fire-irons--he ain't so bad as that. But he's got money somehow. He's so
+dam'd imperent when he have. A few nights ago I sor him at Vauxhall,
+where I was a-polkin with Lady Hemly Babewood's gals--a wery pleasant
+room that is, and an uncommon good lot in it, hall except the
+'ousekeeper, and she's methodisticle--I was a-polkin--you're too old a
+cove to polk, Mr. Morgan--and 'ere's your 'ealth--and I 'appened to 'ave
+on some of Clavering's abberdashery, and he sor it too: and he didn't
+dare so much as speak a word."
+
+"How about the house in St. John's Wood?" Mr. Morgan asked.
+
+"Execution in it.--Sold up heverythin: ponies, and pianna, and brougham,
+and all. Mrs. Montague were hoff to Boulogne,--non est inwentus, Mr.
+Morgan. It's my belief she put the execution in herself: and was tired of
+him."
+
+"Play much?" asked Morgan.
+
+"Not since the smash. When your Governor, and the lawyers, and my lady
+and him had that tremendous scene: he went down on his knees, my lady
+told Mrs. Bonner, as told me,--and swear as he never more would touch a
+card or a dice, or put his name to a bit of paper; and my lady was
+a-goin' to give him the notes down to pay his liabilities after the race:
+only your Governor said (which he wrote it on a piece of paper, and
+passed it across the table to the lawyer and my lady) that some one else
+had better book up for him, for he'd have kep' some of the money. He's a
+sly old cove, your Gov'nor."
+
+The expression of "old cove," thus flippantly applied by the younger
+gentleman to himself and his master, displeased Mr. Morgan exceedingly.
+On the first occasion, when Mr. Lightfoot used the obnoxious expression,
+his comrade's anger was only indicated by a silent frown; but on the
+second offence, Morgan, who was smoking his cigar elegantly, and holding
+it on the tip of his penknife, withdrew the cigar from his lips, and took
+his young friend to task.
+
+"Don't call Major Pendennis an old cove, if you'll 'ave the goodness,
+Lightfoot, and don't call me an old cove, nether. Such words ain't used
+in society; and we have lived in the fust society, both at 'ome and
+foring. We've been intimate with the fust statesmen of Europe. When we go
+abroad we dine with Prince Metternitch and Louy Philup reg'lar. We go
+here to the best houses, the tip-tops, I tell you. We ride with Lord John
+and the noble Whycount at the edd of Foring Affairs. We dine with the
+Hearl of Burgrave, and are consulted by the Marquis of Steyne in
+everythink. We ought to know a thing or two, Mr. Lightfoot. You're a
+young man, I'm an old cove, as you say. We've both seen the world, and we
+both know that it ain't money, nor bein' a Baronet, nor 'avin' a town and
+country 'ouse, nor a paltry five or six thousand a year."
+
+"It's ten, Mr. Morgan," cried Mr. Lightfoot, with great animation.
+
+"It may have been, sir," Morgan said, with calm severity; "it may have
+been, Mr. Lightfoot, but it ain't six now, nor five, sir. It's been
+doosedly dipped and cut into, sir, by the confounded extravygance of your
+master, with his helbow shakin', and his bill discountin', and his
+cottage in the Regency Park, and his many wickednesses. He's a bad un,
+Mr. Lightfoot,--a bad lot, sir, and that you know. And it ain't money,
+sir--not such money as that, at any rate, come from a Calcuttar attorney,
+and I dussay wrung out of the pore starving blacks--that will give a
+pusson position in society, as you know very well. We've no money, but we
+go everywhere; there's not a housekeeper's room, sir, in this town of any
+consiquince, where James Morgan ain't welcome. And it was me who got you
+into this Club, Lightfoot, as you very well know, though I am an old
+cove, and they would have blackballed you without me as sure as your name
+is Frederic."
+
+"I know they would, Mr. Morgan," said the other, with much humility.
+
+"Well, then, don't call me an old cove, sir. It ain't gentlemanlike,
+Frederic Lightfoot, which I knew you when you was a cab-boy, and when
+your father was in trouble, and got you the place you have now when the
+Frenchman went away. And if you think, sir, that because you're making up
+to Mrs. Bonner, who may have saved her two thousand pound--and I dare say
+she has in five-and-twenty years as she have lived confidential maid to
+Lady Clavering--yet, sir, you must remember who put you into that
+service; and who knows what you were before, sir, and it don't become
+you, Frederic Lightfoot, to call me an old cove."
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. Morgan--I can't do more than make an apology--
+will you have a glass, sir, and let me drink your 'ealth?"
+
+"You know I don't take sperrits. Lightfoot," replied Morgan, appeased.
+"And so you and Mrs. Bonner is going to put up together, are you?"
+
+"She's old, but two thousand pound's a good bit, you see, Mr Morgan. And
+we'll get the 'Clavering Arms' for a very little; and that'll be no bad
+thing when the railroad runs through Clavering. And when we are there, I
+hope you'll come and see us, Mr. Morgan."
+
+"It's a stoopid place, and no society," said Mr. Morgan. "I know it well.
+In Mrs Pendennis's time we used to go down, reg'lar, and the hair
+refreshed me after the London racket."
+
+"The railroad will improve Mr. Arthur's property," remarked Lightfoot.
+"What's about the figure of it, should you say, sir?"
+
+"Under fifteen hundred, sir," answered Morgan; at which the other, who
+knew the extent of poor Arthur's acres, thrust his tongue in his cheek,
+but remained wisely silent.
+
+"Is his man any good, Mr. Morgan?" Lightfoot resumed.
+
+"Pidgeon ain't used to society as yet; but he's young and has good
+talents, and has read a good deal, and I dessay he will do very well,"
+replied Morgan. "He wouldn't quite do for this kind of thing, Lightfoot,
+for he ain't seen the world yet."
+
+When the pint of sherry for which Mr. Lightfoot called, upon Mr. Morgan's
+announcement that he eclined to drink spirits, had been discussed by the
+two gentlemen, who held the wine up to the light, and smacked their lips,
+and winked their eyes at it, and rallied the landlord as to the vintage,
+in the most approved manner of connoisseurs, Morgan's ruffled equanimity
+was quite restored, and he was prepared to treat his young friend with
+perfect good-humour.
+
+"What d'you think about Miss Amory, Lightfoot--tell us in confidence,
+now--Do you think we should do well--you understand--if we make Miss A.
+into Mrs. A. P., comprendy vous?"
+
+"She and her Ma's always quarrellin'," said Mr. Lightfoot. "Bonner is
+more than a match for the old lady, and treats Sir Francis like that--
+like this year spill, which I fling into the grate. But she daren't say a
+word to Miss Amory. No more dare none of us. When a visitor comes in, she
+smiles and languishes, you'd think that butter wouldn't melt in her
+mouth: and the minute he is gone, very likely, she flares up like a
+little demon, and says things fit to send you wild. If Mr. Arthur comes,
+it's 'Do let's sing that there delightful Song!' or, 'Come and write me
+them pooty verses in this halbum!' and very likely she's been a-rilin'
+her mother, or sticking pins into her maid, a minute before. She do stick
+pins into her and pinch her. Mary Hann showed me one of her arms quite
+black and blue; and I recklect Mrs. Bonner, who's as jealous of me as a
+old cat, boxed her ears for showing me. And then you should see Miss at
+luncheon, when there's nobody but the family! She makes b'leave she never
+heats, and my! you should only jest see her. She has Mary Hann to bring
+her up plum-cakes and creams into her bedroom; and the cook's the only
+man in the house she's civil to. Bonner says, how, the second season in
+London, Mr. Soppington was a-goin' to propose for her, and actially came
+one day, and sor her fling a book into the fire, and scold her mother so,
+that he went down softly by the back droring-room door, which he came in
+by; and next thing we heard of him was, he was married to Miss Rider. Oh,
+she's a devil, that little Blanche, and that's my candig apinium, Mr.
+Morgan."
+
+"Apinion, not apinium, Lightfoot, my good fellow," Mr. Morgan said, with
+parental kindness, and then asked of his own bosom with a sigh, why the
+deuce does my Governor want Master Arthur to marry such a girl as this?
+and the tete-a-tete of the two gentlemen was broken up by the entry of
+other gentlemen, members of the Club--when fashionable town-talk,
+politics, cribbage, and other amusements ensued, and the conversation
+became general.
+
+The Gentleman's Club was held in the parlour of the Wheel of Fortune
+public-house, in a snug little by-lane, leading out of one of the great
+streets of Mayfair, and frequented by some of the most select gentlemen
+about town. Their masters' affairs, debts, intrigues, adventures; their
+ladies' good and bad qualities and quarrels with their husbands; all the
+family secrets were here discussed with perfect freedom and confidence,
+and here, when about to enter into a new situation, a gentleman was
+enabled to get every requisite information regarding the family of which
+he proposed to become a member. Liveries it may be imagined were excluded
+from this select precinct; and the powdered heads of the largest
+metropolitan footmen might bow down in vain entreating admission into the
+Gentleman's Club. These outcast giants in plush took their beer in an
+outer apartment of the Wheel of Fortune, and could no more get an entry
+into the Clubroom than a Pall Mall tradesman or a Lincoln's Inn attorney
+could get admission into Bays's or Spratt's. And it is because the
+conversation which we have permitted to overhear here, in some measure
+explains the characters and bearings of our story, that we have ventured
+to introduce the reader into a society so exclusive.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII
+
+The Way of the World
+
+
+A short time after the piece of good fortune which befell Colonel
+Altamont at Epsom, that gentleman put into execution his projected
+foreign tour, and the chronicler of the polite world who goes down to
+London Bridge for the purpose of taking leave of the people of fashion
+who quit this country, announced that among the company on board the
+Soho to Antwerp last Saturday, were "Sir Robert, Lady, and the Misses
+Hodge; Mr. Serjeant Kewsy, and Mrs. and Miss Kewsy; Colonel Altamont,
+Major Coddy, etc." The Colonel travelled in state, and as became a
+gentleman: he appeared in a rich travelling costume; he drank
+brandy-and-water freely during the passage, and was not sick, as some of
+the other passengers were; and he was attended by his body-servant; the
+faithful Irish legionary who had been for some time in waiting upon
+himself and Captain Strong in their chambers of Shepherd's Inn.
+
+The Chevalier partook of a copious dinner at Blackwall with his departing
+friend the Colonel, and one or two others, who drank many healths to
+Altamont at that liberal gentleman's expense. "Strong, old boy," the
+Chevalier's worthy chum said, "if you want a little money, now's your
+time. I'm your man. You're a good feller, and have been a good feller to
+me, and a twenty-pound note, more or less, will make no odds to me," But
+Strong said, No, he didn't want any money; he was flush, quite flush--
+"that is, not flush enough to pay you back your last loan, Altamont, but
+quite able to carry on for some time to come," and so, with a not
+uncordial greeting between them, the two parted. Had the possession of
+money really made Altamont more honest and amiable than he had hitherto
+been, or only caused him to seem more amiable in Strong's eyes? Perhaps
+he really was better, and money improved him. Perhaps it was the beauty
+of wealth Strong saw and respected. But he argued within himself, "This
+poor devil, this unlucky outcast of a returned convict, is ten times as
+good a fellow as my friend Sir Francis Clavering, Bart. He has pluck and
+honesty in his way. He will stick to a friend, and face an enemy. The
+other never had courage to do either. And what is it that has put the
+poor devil under a cloud? He was only a little wild, and signed his
+father-in-law's name. Many a man has done worse, and come to no wrong,
+and holds his head up. Clavering does. No, he don't hold his head up: he
+never did in his best days." And Strong, perhaps, repented him of the
+falsehood which he had told to the free-handed Colonel, that he was not
+in want of money; but it was a falsehood on the side of honesty, and the
+Chevalier could not bring down his stomach to borrow a second time from
+his outlawed friend. Besides, he could get on. Clavering had promised him
+some: not that Clavering's promises were much to be believed, but the
+Chevalier was of a hopeful turn, and trusted in many chances of catching
+his patron, and waylaying some of those stray remittances and supplies,
+in the procuring of which for his principal lay Mr. Strong's chief
+business.
+
+He had grumbled about Altamont's companionship in the Shepherd's Inn
+chambers; but he found those lodgings more glum now without his partner
+than with him. The solitary life was not agreeable to his social soul;
+and he had got into extravagant and luxurious habits, too, having a
+servant at his command to run his errands, to arrange his toilets, and to
+cook his meal. It was rather a grand and touching sight now to see the
+portly and handsome gentleman painting his own boots, and broiling his
+own mutton chop. It has been before stated that the Chevalier had a wife,
+a Spanish lady of Vittoria, who had gone back to her friends, after a few
+months' union with the Captain, whose head she broke with a dish. He
+began to think whether he should not go back and see his Juanita. The
+Chevalier was growing melancholy after the departure of his friend the
+Colonel; or, to use his own picturesque expression, was "down on his
+luck." These moments of depression and intervals of ill fortune occur
+constantly in the lives of heroes; Marius at Minturme, Charles Edward in
+the Highlands, Napoleon before Elba. What great man has not been called
+upon to face evil fortune?
+
+From Clavering no supplies were to be had for some time, the
+five-and-twenty pounds or the "pony," which the exemplary Baronet had
+received from Mr. Altamont, had fled out of Clavering's keeping as
+swiftly as many previous ponies. He had been down the river with a choice
+party of sporting gents, who dodged the police and landed in Essex, where
+they put up Billy Bluck to fight Dick the cabman whom the Baronet backed,
+and who had it all his own way for thirteen rounds, when, by an unlucky
+blow in the windpipe, Billy killed him. "It's always my luck, Strong,"
+Sir Francis said; "the betting was three to one on the cabman, and I
+thought myself as sure of thirty pound, as if I had it in my pocket. And
+dammy, I owe my man Lightfoot fourteen pound now which he's lent and paid
+for me: and he duns me--the confounded impudent blackguard: and I wish to
+Heaven I knew any way of getting a bill done, or of screwing a little out
+of my lady! I'll give you half, Ned, upon my soul and honour, I'll give
+you half if you can get anybody to do us a little fifty."
+
+But Ned said sternly that he had given his word of honour, as a
+gentleman, that he would be no party to any future bill transactions in
+which her husband might engage (who had given his word of honour too),
+and the Chevalier said that he, at least, would keep his word, and would
+black his own boots all his life rather than break his promise. And what
+is more, he vowed he would advise Lady Clavering that Sir Francis was
+about to break his faith towards her upon the very first hint which he
+could get that such was Clavering's intention.
+
+Upon this information Sir Francis Clavering, according to his custom,
+cried and cursed very volubly. He spoke of death as his only resource. He
+besought and implored his dear Strong, his best friend, his dear old Ned,
+not to throw him over: and when he quitted his dearest Ned, as he went
+down the stairs of Shepherd's Inn, swore and blasphemed at Ned as the
+most infernal villain, and traitor, and blackguard, and coward under the
+sun, and wished Ned was in his grave, and in a worse place, only he would
+like the confounded ruffian to live, until Frank Clavering had had his
+revenge out of him.
+
+In Strong's chambers the Baronet met a gentleman whose visits were now,
+as it has been shown, very frequent in Shepherd's Inn, Mr. Samuel Huxter,
+of Clavering. That young fellow, who had poached the walnuts in Clavering
+Park in his youth, and had seen the Baronet drive through the street at
+home with four horses, and prance up to church with powdered footmen, had
+an immense respect for his Member, and a prodigious delight in making his
+acquaintance. He introduced himself with much blushing and trepidation,
+as a Clavering man--son of Mr. Huxter, of the market-place--father
+attended Sir Francis's keeper, Coxwood, when his gun burst and took off
+three fingers--proud to make Sir Francis's acquaintance. All of which
+introduction Sir Francis received affably. And honest Huxter talked about
+Sir Francis to the chaps at Bartholomew's: and told Fanny, in the lodge,
+that, after all, there was nothing like a thoroughbred un, a regular good
+old English gentleman, one of the olden time! To which Fanny replied,
+that she thought Sir Francis was an ojous creature--she didn't know why--
+but she couldn't abear him--she was sure he was wicked, and low, and
+mean--she knew he was; and when Sam to this replied that Sir Francis was
+very affable, and had borrowed half a sov' of him quite kindly, Fanny
+burst into a laugh, pulled Sam's long hair (which was not yet of
+irreproachable cleanliness), patted his chin, and called him a stoopid,
+stoopid, old foolish stoopid, and said that Sir Francis was always
+borrering money of everybody, and that Mar had actially refused him
+twice, and had had to wait three months to get seven shillings which he
+had borrowed of 'er.
+
+"Don't say 'er but her, borrer but borrow, actially but actually, Fanny,"
+Mr. Huxter replied--not to a fault in her argument, but to grammatical
+errors in her statement.
+
+"Well then, her, and borrow, and hactually--there then, you stoopid,"
+said the other; and the scholar made such a pretty face that the grammar
+master was quickly appeased, and would have willingly given her a hundred
+more lessons on the spot at the price which he took for that one.
+
+Of course Mrs. Bolton was by, and I suppose that Fanny and Dr. Sam were
+on exceedingly familiar and confidential terms by this time, and that
+time had brought to the former certain consolations, and soothed certain
+regrets, which are deucedly bitter when they occur, but which are, no
+more than tooth-pulling, or any other pang, eternal.
+
+As you sit, surrounded by respect and affection; happy, honoured, and
+flattered in your old age; your foibles gently indulged; your least words
+kindly cherished; your garrulous old stories received for the hundredth
+time with dutiful forbearance, and never-failing hypocritical smiles; the
+women of your house constant in their flatteries; the young men hushed
+and attentive when you begin to speak; the servants awestricken; the
+tenants cap in hand, and ready to act in the place of your worship's
+horses when your honour takes a drive--it has often struck you, O
+thoughtful Dives! that this respect, and these glories, are for the main
+part transferred, with your fee-simple, to your successor--that the
+servants will bow, and the tenants shout, for your son as for you; that
+the butler will fetch him the wine (improved by a little keeping) that's
+now in your cellar; and that, when your night is come, and the light of
+your life is gone down, as sure as the morning rises after you and
+without you, the sun of prosperity and flattery shines on your heir. Men
+come and bask in the halo of consols and acres that beams round about
+him: the reverence is transferred with the estate; of which, with all its
+advantages, pleasures, respect, and good-will, he in turn becomes the
+life-tenant. How long do you wish or expect that your people will regret
+you? How much time does a man devote to grief before he begins to enjoy?
+A great man must keep his heir at his feast like a living memento mori.
+If he holds very much by life, the presence of the other must be a
+constant sting and warning. "Make ready to go," says the successor to
+your honour; "I am waiting: and I could hold it as well as you."
+
+What has this reference to the possible reader, to do with any of the
+characters of this history? Do we wish to apologise for Pen because he
+has got a white hat, and because his mourning for his mother is fainter?
+All the lapse of years, all the career of fortune, all the events of
+life, however strongly they may move or eagerly excite him, never can
+remove that sainted image from his heart, or banish that blessed love
+from its sanctuary. If he yields to wrong, the dear eyes will look sadly
+upon him when he dares to meet them; if he does well, endures pain, or
+conquers temptation, the ever present love will greet him, he knows, with
+approval and pity; if he falls, plead for him; if he suffers, cheer him;
+--be with him and accompany him always until death is past; and sorrow
+and sin are no more. Is this mere dreaming, or, on the part of an idle
+story-teller, useless moralising? May not the man of the world take his
+moment, too, to be grave and thoughtful? Ask of your own hearts and
+memories, brother and sister, if we do not live in the dead; and (to
+speak reverently) prove God by love?
+
+Of these matters Pen and Warrington often spoke in many a solemn and
+friendly converse in after days; and Pendennis's mother was worshipped in
+his memory, and canonised there, as such a saint ought to be. Lucky he in
+life who knows a few such women! A kind provision of Heaven it was, that
+sent us such; and gave us to admire that touching and wonderful spectacle
+of innocence, and love, and beauty.
+
+But as it is certain that if, in the course of these sentimental
+conversations, any outer stranger, Major Pendennis for instance, had
+walked into Pen's chambers, Arthur and Warrington would have stopped
+their talk, and chosen another subject, and discoursed about the Opera,
+or the last debate in Parliament, or Miss Jones's marriage with Captain
+Smith, or what not,--so, let us imagine that the public steps in at this
+juncture, and stops the confidential talk between author and reader, and
+begs us to resume our remarks about this world, with which both are
+certainly better acquainted than with that other one into which we have
+just been peeping.
+
+On coming into his property, Arthur Pendennis at first comported himself
+with a modesty and equanimity which obtained his friend Warrington's
+praises, though Arthur's uncle was a little inclined to quarrel with his
+nephew's meanness of spirit, for not assuming greater state and
+pretensions now that he had entered on the enjoyment of his kingdom. He
+would have had Arthur installed in handsome quarters, and riding on showy
+park hacks, or in well-built cabriolets, every day. "I am too absent,"
+Arthur said, with a laugh, "to drive a cab in London; the omnibus would
+cut me in two, or I should send my horse's head into the ladies'
+carriage-windows; and you wouldn't have me driven about by my servant
+like an apothecary, uncle?" No, Major Pendennis would on no account have
+his nephew appear like an apothecary; the august representative of the
+house of Pendennis must not so demean himself. And when Arthur, pursuing
+his banter, said, "And yet, I dare say, sir, my father was proud enough
+when he first set up his gig," the old Major hemmed and ha'd, and his
+wrinkled face reddened with a blush as he answered, "You know what
+Buonaparte said, sir, 'Il faut laver son linge sale en famille.' There is
+no need, sir, for you to brag that your father was a--a medical man. He
+came of a most ancient but fallen house, and was obliged to reconstruct
+the family fortunes as many a man of good family has done before him. You
+are like the fellow in Sterne, sir--the Marquis who came to demand his
+sword again. Your father got back yours for you. You are a man of landed
+estate, by Gad, sir, and a gentleman--never forget you are a gentleman."
+
+Then Arthur slily turned on his uncle the argument which he had heard the
+old gentleman often use regarding himself. "In the society which I have
+the honour of frequenting through your introduction, who cares to ask
+about my paltry means or my humble gentility, uncle?" he asked. "It would
+be absurd of me to attempt to compete with the great folks; and all that
+they can ask from us is, that we should have a decent address and good
+manners."
+
+"But for all that, sir, I should belong to a better Club or two," the
+uncle answered: "I should give an occasional dinner, and select my
+society well; and I should come out of that horrible garret in the
+Temple, sir." And so Arthur compromised by descending to the second floor
+in Lamb Court: Warrington still occupying his old quarters, and the two
+friends being determined not to part one from the other. Cultivate
+kindly, reader, those friendships of your youth: it is only in that
+generous time that they are formed. How different the intimacies of after
+days are, and how much weaker the grasp of your own hand after it has
+been shaken about in twenty years' commerce with the world, and has
+squeezed and dropped a thousand equally careless palms! As you can seldom
+fashion your tongue to speak a new language after twenty, the heart
+refuses to receive friendship pretty soon: it gets too hard to yield to
+the impression.
+
+So Pen had many acquaintances, and being of a jovial and easy turn, got
+more daily: but no friend like Warrington; and the two men continued to
+live almost as much in common as the Knights of the Temple, riding upon
+one horse (for Pen's was at Warrington's service), and having their
+chambers and their servitor in common.
+
+Mr. Warrington had made the acquaintance of Pen's friends of Grosvenor
+Place during their last unlucky season in London, and had expressed
+himself no better satisfied with Sir Francis and Lady Clavering and her
+ladyship's daughter than was the public in general. "The world is right,"
+George said, "about those people. The young men laugh and talk freely
+before those ladies, and about them. The girl sees people whom she has no
+right to know, and talks to men with whom no girl should have an
+intimacy. Did you see those two reprobates leaning over Lady Clavering's
+carriage in the Park the other day, and leering under Miss Blanche's
+bonnet? No good mother would let her daughter know those men, or admit
+them within her doors."
+
+"The Begum is the most innocent and good-natured soul alive," interposed
+Pen. "She never heard any harm of Captain Blackball, or read that trial
+in which Charley Lovelace figures. Do you suppose that honest ladies read
+and remember the Chronique Scandaleuse as well as you, you old grumbler?"
+
+"Would you like Laura Bell to know those fellows?" Warrington asked, his
+face turning rather red. "Would you let any woman you loved be
+contaminated by their company? I have no doubt that the poor Begum is
+ignorant of their histories. It seems to me she is ignorant of a great
+number of better things. It seems to me that your honest Begum is not a
+lady, Pen. It is not her fault, doubtless, that she has not had the
+education, or learned the refinements of a lady."
+
+"She is as moral as Lady Portsea, who has all the world at her balls, and
+as refined as Mrs. Bull, who breaks the King's English. and has half a
+dozen dukes at her table," Pen answered, rather sulkily. "Why should you
+and I be more squeamish than the rest of the world? Why are we to visit
+the sins of her father on this harmless kind creature? She never did
+anything but kindness to you or any mortal soul. As far as she knows she
+does her best. She does not set up to be more than she is. She gives you
+the best dinners she can buy, and the best company she can get. She pays
+the debts of that scamp of a husband of hers. She spoils her boy like the
+most virtuous mother in England. Her opinion about literary matters, to
+be sure, is not much; and I daresay she never read a line of Wordsworth,
+or heard of Tennyson in her life."
+
+"No more has Mrs. Flanagan the laundress," growled out Pen's Mentor; "no
+more has Betty the housemaid; and I have no word of blame against them.
+But a high-souled man doesn't make friends of these. A gentleman doesn't
+choose these for his companions, or bitterly rues it afterwards if he do.
+Are you, who are setting up to be a man of the world and a philosopher,
+to tell me that the aim of life is to guttle three courses and dine off
+silver? Do you dare to own to yourself that your ambition in life is good
+claret, and that you'll dine with any, provided you get a stalled ox to
+feed on? You call me a Cynic--why, what a monstrous Cynicism it is, which
+you and the rest of you men of the world admit! I'd rather live upon raw
+turnips and sleep in a hollow tree, or turn backwoodsman or savage, than
+degrade myself to this civilisation, and own that a French cook was the
+thing in life best worth living for."
+
+"Because you like a raw beefsteak and a pipe afterwards," broke out Pen,
+"you give yourself airs of superiority over people whose tastes are more
+dainty, and are not ashamed of the world they live in. Who goes about
+professing particular admiration, or esteem, or friendship, or gratitude
+even, for the people one meets every day? If A. asks me to his house, and
+gives me his best, I take his good things for what they are worth and no
+more. I do not profess to pay him back in friendship, but in the
+conventional money of society. When we part, we part without any grief.
+When we meet, we are tolerably glad to see one another. If I were only to
+live with my friends, your black muzzle, old George, is the only face I
+should see."
+
+"You are your uncle's pupil," said Warrington, rather sadly; and you
+speak like a worldling."
+
+"And why not?" asked Pendennis; "why not acknowledge the world I stand
+upon, and submit to the conditions of the society which we live in and
+live by? I am older than you, George, in spite of your grizzled whiskers,
+and have seen much more of the world than you have in your garret
+here, shut up with your books and your reveries and your ideas of
+one-and-twenty. I say, I take the world as it is, and being of it, will
+not be ashamed of it. If the time is out of joint, have I any calling or
+strength to set it right?"
+
+"Indeed, I don't think you have much of either," growled Pen's
+interlocutor.
+
+"If I doubt whether I am better than my neighbour," Arthur continued, "if
+I concede that I am no better,--I also doubt whether he is better than I.
+I see men who begin with ideas of universal reform, and who, before their
+beards are grown, propound their loud plans for the regeneration of
+mankind, give up their schemes after a few years of bootless talking and
+vainglorious attempts to lead their fellows; and after they have found
+that men will no longer bear them, as indeed they never were in the least
+worthy to be heard, sink quietly into the ranks-and-file,--acknowledging
+their aims impracticable, or thankful that they were never put into
+practice. The fiercest reformers grow calm, and are faire to put up with
+things as they are: the loudest Radical orators become dumb, quiescent
+placemen: the most fervent Liberals when out of power, become humdrum
+Conservatives or downright tyrants or despots in office. Look at the
+Thiers, look at Guizot, in opposition and in place! Look at the Whigs
+appealing to the country, and the Whigs in power! Would you say that the
+conduct of these men is an act of treason, as the Radicals bawl,--who
+would give way in their turn, were their turn ever to come? No, only that
+they submit to circumstances which are stronger than they,--march as the
+world marches towards reform, but at the world's pace (and the movements
+of the vast body of mankind must needs be slow), forgo this scheme as
+impracticable, on account of opposition,--that as immature, because
+against the sense of the majority,--are forced to calculate drawbacks and
+difficulties, as well as to think of reforms and advances,--and compelled
+finally to submit, and to wait, and to compromise."
+
+"The Right Honourable Arthur Pendennis could not speak better, or be more
+satisfied with himself, if he was First Lord of the Treasury and
+Chancellor of the Exchequer," Warrington said.
+
+"Self-satisfied? Why self-satisfied?" continued Pen. "It seems to me that
+my scepticism is more respectful and more modest than the revolutionary
+ardour of other folks. Many a patriot of eighteen, many a Spouting-Club
+orator, would turn the Bishops out of the House of Lords to-morrow, and
+throw the Lords out after the Bishops, and throw the Throne into the
+Thames after the Peers and the Bench. Is that man more modest than I, who
+takes these institutions as I find them, and waits for time and truth to
+develop, or fortify, or (if you like) destroy them? A college tutor, or a
+nobleman's toady, who appears one fine day as my right reverend lord, in
+a silk apron and a shovel-hat, and assumes benedictory airs over me, is
+still the same man we remember at Oxbridge, when he was truckling to the
+tufts, and bullying the poor undergraduates in the lecture-room. An
+hereditary legislator, who passes his time with jockeys and black-legs
+and ballet-girls, and who is called to rule over me and his other betters
+because his grandfather made a lucky speculation in the funds, or found a
+coal or tin mine on his property, or because his stupid ancestor happened
+to be in command of ten thousand men as brave as himself, who overcame
+twelve thousand Frenchmen, or fifty thousand Indians--such a man, I say,
+inspires me with no more respect than the bitterest democrat can feel
+towards him. But, such as he is, he is a part of the old society to which
+we belong and I submit to his lordship with acquiescence; and he takes
+his place above the best of us at all dinner-parties, and there bides his
+time. I don't want to chop his head off with a guillotine, or to fling
+mud at him in the streets. When they call such a man a disgrace to his
+order; and such another, who is good and gentle, refined and generous,
+who employs his great means in promoting every kindness and charity, and
+art and grace of life, in the kindest and most gracious manner, an
+ornament to his rank--the question as to the use and propriety of the
+order is not in the least affected one way or other. There it is, extant
+among us, a part of our habits, the creed of many of us, the growth of
+centuries, the symbol of a most complicated tradition--there stand my
+lord the bishop and my lord the hereditary legislator--what the French
+call transactions both of them,--representing in their present shape
+mail-clad barons and double-sworded chiefs (from whom their lordships the
+hereditaries, for the most part, don't descend), and priests, professing
+to hold an absolute truth and a divinely inherited power, the which truth
+absolute our ancestors burned at the stake, and denied there; the which
+divine transmissible power still exists in print--to be believed, or not,
+pretty much at choice; and of these, I say, I acquiesce that they exist,
+and no more. If you say that these schemes, devised before printing was
+known, or steam was born; when thought was an infant, scared and whipped;
+and truth under its guardians was gagged, and swathed, and blindfolded,
+and not allowed to lift its voice, or to look out or to walk under the
+sun; before men were permitted to meet, or to trade, or to speak with
+each other--if any one says (as some faithful souls do) that these
+schemes are for ever, and having been changed and modified constantly are
+to be subject to no further development or decay, I laugh, and let the
+man speak. But I would have toleration for these, as I would ask it for
+my own opinions; and if they are to die, I would rather they had a decent
+and natural than an abrupt and violent death."
+
+"You would have sacrificed to Jove," Warrington said, "had you lived in
+the time of the Christian persecutions."
+
+"Perhaps I would," said Pen, with some sadness. "Perhaps I am a coward,--
+perhaps my faith is unsteady; but this is my own reserve. What I argue
+here is that I will not persecute. Make a faith or a dogma absolute, and
+persecution becomes a logical consequence; and Dominic burns a Jew, or
+Calvin an Arian, or Nero a Christian, or Elizabeth or Mary a Papist or
+Protestant; or their father both or either, according to his humour; and
+acting without any pangs of remorse,--but, on the contrary, notions of
+duty fulfilled. Make dogma absolute, and to inflict or to suffer death
+becomes easy and necessary; and Mahomet's soldiers shouting, 'Paradise!
+Paradise!' and dying on the Christian spears, are not more or less
+praiseworthy than the same men slaughtering a townful of Jews, or cutting
+off the heads of all prisoners who would not acknowledge that there was
+but one Prophet of God."
+
+"A little while since, young one," Warrington said, who had been
+listening to his friend's confessions neither without sympathy nor scorn,
+for his mood led him to indulge in both, "you asked me why I remained out
+of the strife of the world, and looked on at the great labour of my
+neighbour without taking any part in the struggle? Why, what a mere
+dilettante you own yourself to be, in this confession of general
+scepticism, and what a listless spectator yourself! You are
+six-and-twenty years old; and as blase as a rake of sixty. You neither
+hope much nor care much, nor believe much. You doubt about other men as
+much as about yourself. Were it made of such pococuranti as you, the
+world would be intolerable; and I had rather live in a wilderness of
+monkeys, and listen to their chatter, than in a company of men who denied
+everything."
+
+"Were the world composed of Saint Bernards or Saint Dominies, it would be
+equally odious," said Pen, "and at the end of a few scores of years would
+cease to exist altogether. Would you have every man with his head shaved,
+and every woman in a cloister,--carrying out to the full the ascetic
+principle? Would you have conventicle hymns twanging from every lane in
+every city in the world? Would you have all the birds of the forest sing
+one note and fly with one feather? You call me a sceptic because I
+acknowledge what is; and in acknowledging that, be it linnet or lark, or
+priest or parson, be it, I mean, any single one of the infinite varieties
+of the creatures of God (whose very name I would be understood to
+pronounce with reverence, and never to approach but with distant awe), I
+say that the study and acknowledgment of that variety amongst men
+especially increases our respect and wonder for the Creator, Commander,
+and Ordainer of all these minds, so different and yet so united,--meeting
+in a common adoration, and offering up, each according to his degree and
+means of approaching the Divine centre, his acknowledgment of praise and
+worship, each singing (to recur to the bird simile) his natural song."
+
+"And so, Arthur, the hymn of a saint, or the ode of a poet, or the chant
+of a Newgate thief, are all pretty much the same in your philosophy,"
+said George.
+
+"Even that sneer could be answered were it to the point," Pendennis
+replied; "but it is not; and it could be replied to you, that even to the
+wretched outcry of the thief on the tree, the wisest and the best of all
+teachers we know of, the untiring Comforter and Consoler, promised a
+pitiful hearing and a certain hope. Hymns of saints! odes of poets! who
+are we to measure the chances and opportunities, the means of doing, or
+even judging, right and wrong, awarded to men; and to establish the rule
+for meting out their punishments and rewards? We are as insolent and
+unthinking in judging of men's morals as of their intellects. We admire
+this man as being a great philosopher, and set down the other as a
+dullard, not knowing either, or the amount of truth in either, or being
+certain of the truth anywhere. We sing Te Deum for this hero who has won
+a battle, and De Profundis for that other one who has broken out of
+prison, and has been caught afterwards by the policeman. Our measure of
+rewards and punishments is most partial and incomplete, absurdly
+inadequate, utterly worldly, and we wish to continue it into the next
+world. Into that next and awful world we strive to pursue men, and send
+after them our impotent party verdicts of condemnation or acquittal. We
+set up our paltry little rods to measure Heaven immeasurable, as if, in
+comparison to that, Newton's mind or Pascal's or Shakspeare's was any
+loftier than mine; as if the ray which travels from the sun would reach
+me sooner than the man who blacks my boots. Measured by that altitude,
+the tallest and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and
+pitifully base, that I say we should take no count of the calculation,
+and it is a meanness to reckon the difference."
+
+"Your figure fails there, Arthur," said the other, better pleased; "if
+even by common arithmetic we can multiply as we can reduce almost
+infinitely, the Great Reckoner must take count of all; and the small is
+not small, or the great great, to his infinity."
+
+"I don't call those calculations in question," Arthur said; "I only say
+that yours are incomplete and premature; false in consequence, and, by
+every operation, multiplying into wider error. I do not condemn the men
+who murdered Socrates and damned Galileo. I say that they damned Galileo
+and murdered Socrates."
+
+"And yet but a moment since you admitted the propriety of acquiescence in
+the present, and, I suppose, all other tyrannies?"
+
+"No: but that if an opponent menaces me, of whom and without cost of
+blood and violence I can get rid, I would rather wait him out, and starve
+him out, than fight him out. Fabius fought Hannibal sceptically. Who was
+his Roman coadjutor, whom we read of in Plutarch when we were boys, who
+scoffed at the other's procrastination and doubted his courage, and
+engaged the enemy and was beaten for his pains?"
+
+In these speculations and confessions of Arthur, the reader may perhaps
+see allusions to questions which, no doubt, have occupied and discomposed
+himself, and which he has answered by very different solutions to those
+come to by our friend. We are not pledging ourselves for the correctness
+of his opinions, which readers will please to consider are delivered
+dramatically, the writer being no more answerable for them, than for the
+sentiments uttered by any other character of the story: our endeavour is
+merely to follow out, in its progress, the development of the mind of a
+worldly and selfish, but not ungenerous or unkind or truth-avoiding man.
+And it will be seen that the lamentable stage to which his logic at
+present has brought him, is one of general scepticism and sneering
+acquiescence in the world as it is; or if you like so to call it, a
+belief qualified with scorn in all things extant. The tastes and habits
+of such a man prevent him from being a boisterous demagogue, and his love
+of truth and dislike of cant keep him from advancing crude propositions,
+such as many loud reformers are constantly ready with; much more of
+uttering downright falsehoods in arguing questions or abusing opponents,
+which he would die or starve rather than use. It was not in our friend's
+nature to be able to utter certain lies; nor was he strong enough to
+protest against others, except with a polite sneer; his maxim being, that
+he owed obedience to all Acts of Parliament, as long as they were not
+repealed.
+
+And to what does this easy and sceptical life lead a man? Friend Arthur
+was a Sadducee, and the Baptist might be in the Wilderness shouting to
+the poor, who were listening with all their might and faith to the
+preacher's awful accents and denunciations of wrath or woe or salvation;
+and our friend the Sadducee would turn his sleek mule with a shrug and a
+smile from the crowd, and go home to the shade of his terrace, and muse
+over preacher and audience, and turn to his roll of Plato, or his
+pleasant Greek songbook babbling of honey and Hybla, and nymphs and
+fountains and love. To what, we say, does this scepticism lead? It leads
+a man to a shameful loneliness and selfishness, so to speak--the more
+shameful, because it is so good-humoured and conscienceless and serene.
+Conscience! What is conscience? Why accept remorse? What is public or
+private faith? Mythuses alike enveloped in enormous tradition. If seeing
+and acknowledging the lies of the world, Arthur, as see them you can with
+only too fatal a clearness, you submit to them without any protest
+further than a laugh: if, plunged yourself in easy sensuality, you allow
+the whole wretched world to pass groaning by you unmoved: if the fight
+for the truth is taking place, and all men of honour are on the ground
+armed on the one side or the other, and you alone are to lie on your
+balcony and smoke your pipe out of the noise and the danger, you had
+better have died, or never have been at all, than such a sensual coward.
+
+"The truth, friend!" Arthur said, imperturbably; "where is the truth?
+Show it me. That is the question between us. I see it on both sides. I
+see it on the Conservative side of the house, and amongst the Radicals,
+and even on the ministerial benches. I see it in this man, who worships
+by Act of Parliament, and is rewarded with a silk apron and five thousand
+a year; in that man, who, driven fatally by the remorseless logic of his
+creed, gives up everything, friends, fame, dearest ties, closest
+vanities, the respect of an army of churchmen, the recognised position of
+a leader, and passes over, truth-impelled, to the enemy, in whose ranks
+he will serve henceforth as a nameless private soldier:--I see the truth
+in that man, as I do in his brother, whose logic drives him to quite a
+different conclusion, and who, after having passed a life in vain
+endeavours to reconcile an irreconcilable book, flings it at last down in
+despair, and declares, with tearful eyes, and hands up to heaven, his
+revolt and recantation. If the truth is with all these, why should I take
+side with any one of them? Some are called upon to preach: let them
+preach. Of these preachers there are somewhat too many, methinks, who
+fancy they have the gift. But we cannot all be parsons in church, that is
+clear. Some must sit silent and listen, or go to sleep mayhap. Have we
+not all our duties? The head charity-boy blows the bellows; the master
+canes the other boys in the organ-loft; the clerk sings out Amen from the
+desk; and the beadle with the staff opens the door for his Reverence, who
+rustles in silk up to the cushion. I won't cane the boys, nay, or say
+Amen always, or act as the church's champion and warrior, in the shape of
+the beadle with the staff; but I will take off my hat in the place, and
+say my prayers there too, and shake hands with the clergyman as he steps
+on the grass outside. Don't I know that his being there is a compromise,
+and that he stands before me an Act of Parliament? That the church he
+occupies was built for other worship? That the Methodist chapel is next
+door; and that Bunyan the tinker is bawling out the tidings of damnation
+on the common hard by? Yes, I am a Sadducee; and I take things as I find
+them, and the world, and the Acts of Parliament of the world, as they
+are; and as I intend to take a wife, if I find one--not to be madly in
+love and prostrate at her feet like a fool--not to worship her as an
+angel, or to expect to find her as such--but to be good-natured to her,
+and courteous, expecting good-nature and pleasant society from her in
+turn. And so, George, if ever you hear of my marrying, depend on it, it
+won't be a romantic attachment on my side: and if you hear of any good
+place under Government, I have no particular scruples that I know of,
+which would prevent me from accepting your offer."
+
+"O Pen, you scoundrel! I know what you mean," here Warrington broke out.
+"This is the meaning of your scepticism, of your quietism, of your
+atheism, my poor fellow. You're going to sell yourself, and Heaven help
+you! You are going to make a bargain which will degrade you and make you
+miserable for life, and there's no use talking of it. If you are once
+bent on it, the devil won't prevent you."
+
+"On the contrary, he's on my side, isn't he, George?" said Pen with a
+laugh. "What good cigars these are! Come down and have a little dinner at
+the Club; the chef's in town, and he'll cook a good one for me. No, you
+won't? Don't be sulky, old boy, I'm going down to--to the country
+to-morrow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIII
+
+Which accounts perhaps for Chapter LXI
+
+
+The information regarding the affairs of the Clavering family, which
+Major Pendennis had acquired through Strong, and by his own personal
+interference as the friend of the house, was such as almost made the old
+gentleman pause in any plans which he might have once entertained for his
+nephew's benefit. To bestow upon Arthur a wife with two such
+fathers-in-law, as the two worthies whom the guileless and unfortunate
+Lady Clavering had drawn in her marriage ventures, was to benefit no man.
+And though the one, in a manner, neutralised the other, and the
+appearance of Amory or Altamont in public would be the signal for his
+instantaneous withdrawal and condign punishment,--for the fugitive
+convict had cut down the officer in charge of him,--and a rope would be
+inevitably his end; if he came again under British authorities; yet, no
+guardian would like to secure for his ward a wife, whose parent was to be
+got rid of in such a way; and the old gentleman's notion always had been
+that Altamont, with the gallows before his eyes, would assuredly avoid
+recognition; while, at the same time, by holding the threat of his
+discovery over Clavering, the latter, who would lose everything by
+Amory's appearance, would be a slave in the hands of the person who knew
+so fatal a secret.
+
+But if the Begum paid Clavering's debts many times more, her wealth would
+be expended altogether upon this irreclaimable reprobate; and her heirs,
+whoever they might be, would succeed but to an emptied treasury; and Miss
+Amory, instead of bringing her husband a good income and a seat in
+Parliament, would bring to that individual her person only, and her
+pedigree with that lamentable note of sus. per coll. at the name of the
+last male of her line.
+
+There was, however, to the old schemer revolving these things in his
+mind, another course yet open; the which will appear to the reader who
+may take the trouble to peruse a conversation, which presently ensued,
+between Major Pendennis and the honourable Baronet, the Member for
+Clavering.
+
+When a man, under pecuniary difficulties, disappears from among his usual
+friends and equals,--dives out of sight, as it were, from the flock of
+birds in which he is accustomed to sail, it is wonderful at what strange
+and distant nooks he comes up again for breath. I have known a Pall Mall
+lounger and Rotten Row buck, of no inconsiderable fashion, vanish from
+amongst his comrades of the Clubs and the Park, and be discovered, very
+happy and affable, at an eighteenpenny ordinary in Billingsgate: another
+gentleman, of great learning and wit, when outrunning the constable (were
+I to say he was a literary man, some critics would vow that I intended to
+insult the literary profession), once sent me his address at a little
+public-house called the "Fox under the Hill," down a most darksome and
+cavernous archway in the Strand. Such a man, under such misfortunes, may
+have a house, but he is never in his house; and has an address where
+letters may be left; but only simpletons go with the hopes of seeing
+him.--Only a few of the faithful know where he is to be found, and have
+the clue to his hiding-place. So, after the disputes with his wife, and
+the misfortunes consequent thereon, to find Sir Francis Clavering at home
+was impossible. "Ever since I hast him for my book, which is fourteen
+pound, he don't come home till three o'clock, and purtends to be asleep
+when I bring his water of a mornin', and dodges hout when I'm
+downstairs," Mr. Lightfoot remarked to his friend Morgan; and announced
+that he should go down to my Lady, and be butler there, and marry his old
+woman. In like manner, after his altercations with Strong, the Baronet
+did not come near him, and fled to other haunts, out of the reach of the
+Chevalier's reproaches;--out of the reach of conscience, if possible,
+which many of us try to dodge and leave behind us by changes of scene and
+other fugitive stratagems.
+
+So, though the elder Pendennis, having his own ulterior object, was bent
+upon seeing Pen's country neighbour and representative in Parliament, it
+took the Major no inconsiderable trouble and time before he could get him
+into such a confidential state and conversation, as were necessary for
+the ends which the Major had in view. For since the Major had been called
+in as family friend, and had cognisance of Clavering's affairs, conjugal
+and pecuniary, the Baronet avoided him: as he always avoided all his
+lawyers and agents when there was an account to be rendered, or an affair
+of business to be discussed between them; and never kept any appointment
+but when its object was the raising of money. Thus, previous to catching
+this most shy and timorous bird, the Major made more than one futile
+attempt to hold him;--on one day it was a most innocent-looking
+invitation to dinner at Greenwich, to meet a few friends; the Baronet
+accepted, suspected something, and did not come; leaving the Major (who
+indeed proposed to represent in himself the body of friends) to eat his
+whitebait alone:--on another occasion the Major wrote and asked for ten
+minutes' talk, and the Baronet instantly acknowledged the note, and made
+the appointment at four o'clock the next day at Bays's precisely (he
+carefully underlined the "precisely"); but though four o'clock came, as
+in the course of time and destiny it could not do otherwise, no Clavering
+made his appearance. Indeed, if he had borrowed twenty pounds of
+Pendennis, he could not have been more timid, or desirous of avoiding the
+Major; and the latter found that it was one thing to seek a man, and
+another to find him.
+
+Before the close of that day in which Strong's patron had given the
+Chevalier the benefit of so many blessings before his face and curses
+behind his back, Sir Francis Clavering, who had pledged his word and his
+oath to his wife's advisers to draw or accept no more bills of exchange,
+and to be content with the allowance which his victimised wife still
+awarded him, had managed to sign his respectable name to a piece of
+stamped paper, which the Baronet's friend, Mr. Moss Abrams, had carried
+off, promising to have the bill "done" by a party with whose intimacy Mr.
+Abrams was favoured. And it chanced that Strong heard of this transaction
+at the place where the writings had been drawn,--in the back-parlour,
+namely, of Mr. Santiago's cigar-shop, where the Chevalier was constantly
+in the habit of spending an hour in the evening.
+
+"He is at his old work again," Mr. Santiago told his customer. "He and
+Moss Abrams were in my parlour. Moss sent out my boy for a stamp. It must
+have been a bill for fifty pound. I heard the Baronet tell Moss to date
+it two months back. He will pretend that it is an old bill, and that he
+forgot it when he came to a settlement with his wife the other day. I
+dare say they will give him some more money now he is clear." A man who
+has the habit of putting his unlucky name to "promises to pay" at six
+months, has the satisfaction of knowing, too, that his affairs are known
+and canvassed, and his signature handed round among the very worst knaves
+and rogues of London.
+
+Mr. Santiago's shop was close by St. James's Street and Bury Street,
+where we have had the honour of visiting our friend Major Pendennis in
+his lodgings. The Major was walking daintily towards his apartment, as
+Strong, burning with wrath and redolent of Havanna, strode along the same
+pavement opposite to him.
+
+"Confound these young men: how they poison everything with their smoke,"
+thought the Major. "Here comes a fellow with mustachios and a cigar.
+Every fellow who smokes and wears mustachios is a low fellow. Oh! it's
+Mr. Strong.--I hope you are well, Mr. Strong?" and the old gentleman,
+making a dignified bow to the Chevalier, was about to pass into his
+house; directing towards the lock of the door, with trembling hand, the
+polished door-key.
+
+We have said that, at the long and weary disputes and conferences
+regarding the payment of Sir Francis Clavering's last debts, Strong and
+Pendennis had both been present as friends and advisers of the Baronet's
+unlucky family. Strong stopped and held out his hand to his brother
+negotiator, and old Pendennis put out towards him a couple of ungracious
+fingers.
+
+"What is your good news?" said Major Pendennis, patronising the other
+still further, and condescending to address to him an observation; for
+old Pendennis had kept such good company all his life, that he vaguely
+imagined he honoured common men by speaking to them. "Still in town, Mr.
+Strong? I hope I see you well."
+
+"My news is bad news, sir," Strong answered; "it concerns our friends at
+Tunbridge Wells, and I should like to talk to you about it. Clavering is
+at his old tricks again, Major Pendennis."
+
+"Indeed! Pray do me the favour to come into my lodging," cried the Major
+with awakened interest; and the pair entered and took possession of his
+drawing-room. Here seated, Strong unburthened himself of his indignation
+to the Major, and spoke at large of Clavering's recklessness and
+treachery. "No promises will bind him, sir," he said. "You remember when
+we met, sir, with my lady's lawyer, how he wouldn't be satisfied with
+giving his honour, but wanted to take his oath on his knees to his wife,
+and rang the bell for a Bible, and swore perdition on his soul if he ever
+would give another bill. He has been signing one this very day, sir: and
+will sign as many more as you please for ready money: and will deceive
+anybody, his wife or his child, or his old friend, who has backed him a
+hundred times. Why, there's a bill of his and mine will be due next week"
+
+"I thought we had paid all."
+
+"Not that one," Strong said, blushing. "He asked me not to mention it,
+and--and--I had half the money for that, Major; And they will be down on
+me. But I don't care for it; I'm used to it. It's Lady Clavering that
+riles me. It's a shame that that good-natured woman, who has paid him out
+of gaol a score of times, should be ruined by his heartlessness. A parcel
+of bill-stealers boxers, any rascals, get his money; and he don't scruple
+to throw an honest fellow over. Would you believe it, sir, he took money
+of Altamont--you know whom I mean."
+
+"Indeed? of that singular man, who I think came tipsy once to Sir
+Francis's house?" Major Pendennis said, with impenetrable countenance.
+"Who is Altamont, Mr. Strong?"
+
+"I am sure I don't know, if you don't know," the Chevalier answered, with
+a look of surprise and suspicion.
+
+"To tell you frankly," said the Major, "I have my suspicions--I suppose--
+mind, I only suppose--that in our friend Clavering's a life--who, between
+you and me, Captain Strong, we must own about as loose a fish as any in
+my acquaintance--there are, no doubt, some queer secrets and stories
+which he would not like to have known: none of us would. And very likely
+this fellow, who calls himself Altamont, knows some story against
+Clavering, and has some hold on him, and gets money out of him on the
+strength of his information. I know some of the best men of the best
+families in England who are paying through the nose in that way. But
+their private affairs are no business of mine, Mr. Strong; and it is not
+to be supposed that because I go and dine with a man, I pry into his
+secrets, or am answerable for all his past life. And so with our friend
+Clavering, I am most interested for his wife's sake, and her daughter's,
+who is a most charming creature: and when her ladyship asked me, I looked
+into her affairs, and tried to set them straight; and shall do so again,
+you understand, to the best of my humble power and ability, if I can make
+myself useful. And if I am called upon--you understand, if I am called
+upon--and--by the way, this Mr. Altamont, Mr. Strong? How is this Mr.
+Altamont? I believe you are acquainted with him. Is he in town?"
+
+"I don't know that I am called upon to know where he is, Major
+Pendennis," said Strong, rising and taking up his hat in dudgeon, for the
+Major's patronising manner and impertinence of caution offended the
+honest gentleman not a little.
+
+Pendennis's manner altered at once from a tone of hauteur to one of
+knowing good-humour. "Ah, Captain Strong, you are cautious too, I see;
+and quite right, my good sir, quite right. We don't know what ears walls
+may have, sir, or to whom we may be talking; and as a man of the world,
+and an old soldier,--an old and distinguished soldier, I have been told,
+Captain Strong,--you know very well that there is no use in throwing away
+your fire; you may have your ideas, and I may put two and two together
+and have mine. But there are things which don't concern him that many a
+man had better not know, eh, Captain? and which I, for one, won't know
+until I have reason for knowing them: and that I believe is your maxim
+too. With regard to our friend the Baronet, I think with you, it would be
+most advisable that he should be checked in his imprudent courses; and
+most strongly reprehend any man's departure from his word, or any conduct
+of his which can give any pain to his family, or cause them annoyance in
+any way. That is my full and frank opinion, and I am sure it is yours."
+
+"Certainly," said Mr. Strong, drily.
+
+"I am delighted to hear it; delighted that an old brother soldier should
+agree with me so fully. And I am exceedingly glad of the lucky meeting
+which has procured me the good fortune of your visit. Good evening. Thank
+you. Morgan, show the door to Captain Strong."
+
+And Strong, preceded by Morgan, took his leave of Major Pendennis; the
+Chevalier not a little puzzled at the old fellow's prudence; and the
+valet, to say the truth, to the full as much perplexed at his master's
+reticence. For Mr. Morgan, in his capacity of accomplished valet, moved
+here and there in a house as silent as a shadow; and, as it so happened,
+during the latter part of his master's conversation with his visitor, had
+been standing very close to the door, and had overheard not a little of
+the talk between the two gentlemen, and a great deal more than he could
+understand.
+
+"Who is that Altamont? know anything about him and Strong?" Mr. Morgan
+asked of Mr. Lightfoot, on the next convenient occasion when they met at
+the Club.
+
+"Strong's his man of business, draws the Governor's bills, and indosses
+'em, and does his odd jobs and that; and I suppose Altamont's in it too,"
+Mr. Lightfoot replied. "That kite-flying, you know, Mr. M., always takes
+two or three on 'em to set the paper going. Altamont put the pot on at
+the Derby, and won a good bit of money. I wish the Governor could get
+some somewhere, and I could get my book paid up."
+
+"Do you think my Lady would pay his debts again?" Morgan asked. "Find out
+that for me, Lightfoot, and I'll make it worth your while, my boy."
+
+          *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Major Pendennis had often said with a laugh, that his vale Morgan was a
+much richer man than himself: and, indeed, by long course of careful
+speculation, this wary and silent attendant had been amassing a
+considerable sum of money, during the year which he had passed in the
+Major's service, where he had made the acquaintance of many other valets
+of distinction, from whom he had learned the affairs of their principals.
+When Mr. Arthur came into his property, but not until then, Morgan had
+surprised the young gentleman, by saying that he had a little sum of
+money, some fifty or a hundred pound, which he wanted to lay out to
+advantage; perhaps the gentlemen in the Temple, knowing about affairs and
+business and that, could help a poor fellow to a good investment? Morgan
+would be very much obliged to Mr. Arthur, most grateful and obliged
+indeed, if Arthur could tell him of one. When Arthur laughingly replied,
+that he knew nothing about money matters, and knew no earthly way of
+helping Morgan, the latter, with the utmost simplicity, was very
+grateful, very grateful indeed, to Mr. Arthur, and if Mr. Arthur should
+want a little money before his rents was paid, perhaps he would kindly
+remember that his uncle's old and faithful servant had some as he would
+like to put out: and be most proud if he could be useful anyways to any
+of the family.
+
+The Prince of Fairoaks, who was tolerably prudent and had no need of
+ready money, would as soon have thought of borrowing from his uncle's
+servant as of stealing the valet's pocket-handkerchief, and was on the
+point of making some haughty reply to Morgan's offer, but was checked by
+the humour of the transaction. Morgan a capitalist! Morgan offering to
+lend to him--The joke was excellent. On the other hand, the man might be
+quite innocent, and the proposal of money a simple offer of good-will. So
+Arthur withheld the sarcasm that was rising to his lips, and contented
+himself by declining Mr. Morgan's kind proposal. He mentioned the matter
+to his uncle, however, and congratulated the latter on having such a
+treasure in his service.
+
+It was then that the Major said that he believed Morgan had been getting
+devilish rich for a devilish long time; in fact, he had bought the house
+in Bury Street, in which his master was a lodger and had actually made a
+considerable sum of money, from his acquaintance with the Clavering
+family and his knowledge obtained through his master that the Begum would
+pay all her husband's debts, by buying up as many of the Baronet's
+acceptances as he could raise money to purchase. Of these transactions
+the Major, however, knew no more than most gentlemen do of their
+servants, who live with us all our days and are strangers to us, so
+strong custom is, and so pitiless the distinction between class and
+class.
+
+"So he offered to lend you money, did he?" the elder Pendennis remarked
+to his nephew. "He's a dev'lish sly fellow, and a dev'lish rich fellow;
+and there's many a nobleman would like to have such a valet in his
+service, and borrow from him too. And he ain't a bit changed, Monsieur
+Morgan. He does his work just as well as ever--he's always ready to my
+bell--steals about the room like a cat--he's so dev'lishly attached to
+me, Morgan!"
+
+On the day of Strong's visit, the Major bethought him of Pen's story, and
+that Morgan might help him, and rallied the valet regarding his wealth
+with that free and insolent way which so high-placed a gentleman might be
+disposed to adopt towards so unfortunate a creature.
+
+"I hear that you have got some money to invest, Morgan," said the Major.
+
+"It's Mr. Arthur has been telling, hang him," thought the valet.
+
+"I'm glad my place is such a good one."
+
+"Thank you, sir--I've no reason to complain of my place, nor of my
+master," replied Morgan, demurely.
+
+"You're a good fellow: and I believe you are attached to me; and I'm glad
+you get on well. And I hope you'll be prudent, and not be taking a
+public-house or that kind of thing."
+
+A public-house, thought Morgan--me in a public-house!--the old fool!--
+Dammy, if I was ten years younger I'd set in Parlyment before I died,
+that I would.--"No, thank you kindly, sir. I don't think of the public
+line, sir. And I've got my little savings pretty well put out, sir."
+
+"You do a little in the discounting way, eh, Morgan?"
+
+"Yes, sir, a very little--I--I beg your pardon, sir--might I be so free
+as to ask a question----"
+
+"Speak on, my good fellow," the elder said, graciously.
+
+"About Sir Francis Clavering's paper, sir? Do you think he's any longer
+any good, sir? Will my Lady pay on 'em, any more, sir?"
+
+"What, you've done something in that business already?"
+
+"Yes, sir, a little," replied Morgan, dropping down his eyes. And I don't
+mind owning, sir, and I hope I may take the liberty of saying, sir, that
+a little more would make me very comfortable if it turned out as well as
+the last."
+
+"Why, how much have you netted by him, in Gad's name?" asked the Major.
+
+"I've done a good bit, sir, at it: that I own, sir. Having some
+information, and made acquaintance with the fam'ly through your kindness,
+I put on the pot, sir."
+
+"You did what?"
+
+"I laid my money on, sir--I got all I could, and borrowed, and bought Sir
+Francis's bills; many of 'em had his name, and the gentleman's as is just
+gone out, Edward Strong, Esquire, sir: and of course I know of the
+blow-hup and shindy as is took place in Grosvenor Place, sir: and as I
+may as well make my money as another, I'd be very much obleeged to you if
+you'd tell me whether my Lady will come down any more."
+
+Although Major Pendennis was as much surprised at this intelligence
+regarding his servant, as if he had heard that Morgan was a disguised
+Marquis, about to throw off his mask and assume his seat in the House of
+Peers; and although he was of course indignant at the audacity of the
+fellow who had dared to grow rich under his nose, and without his
+cognisance; yet he had a natural admiration for every man who represented
+money and success, and found himself respecting Morgan, and being rather
+afraid of that worthy, as the truth began to dawn upon him.
+
+"Well, Morgan," said he, "I mustn't ask how rich you are; and the richer
+the better for your sake, I'm sure. And if I could give you any
+information that could serve you, I would speedily help you. But frankly,
+if Lady Clavering asks me whether she shall pay any more of Sir Francis's
+debts, I shall advise and I hope she won't, though I fear she will--and
+that is all I know. And so you are aware that Sir Francis is beginning
+again in his--eh--reckless and imprudent course?"
+
+"At his old games, sir--can't prevent that gentleman. He will do it."
+
+"Mr. Strong was saying that a Mr. Moss Abrams was the holder of one of
+Sir Francis Clavering's notes. Do you know anything of this Mr. Abrams;
+or the amount of the bill?"
+
+"Don't know the bill, know Abrams quite well, sir."
+
+"I wish you would find out about it for me. And I wish you would find out
+where I can see Sir Francis Clavering, Morgan."
+
+And Morgan said, "Thank you, sir, yes, sir, I will, sir;" and retired
+from the room, as he had entered it, with his usual stealthy respect and
+quiet humility; leaving the Major to muse and wonder over what he had
+just heard.
+
+The next morning the valet informed Major Pendennis that he had seen Mr.
+Abrams; what was the amount of the bill that gentleman was desirous to
+negotiate; and that the Baronet would be sure to be in the back-parlour
+of the Wheel of Fortune Tavern that day at one o'clock.
+
+To this appointment Sir Francis Clavering was punctual, and as at one
+o'clock he sate in the parlour of the tavern in question, surrounded by
+spittoons, Windsor chairs, cheerful prints of boxers, trotting horses,
+and pedestrians, and the lingering of last night's tobacco fumes--as the
+descendant of an ancient line sate in this delectable place accommodated
+with an old copy of Bell's Life in London, much blotted with beer, the
+polite Major Pendennis walked into the apartment.
+
+"So it's you, old boy?" asked the Baronet, thinking that Mr. Moss Abrams
+had arrived with the money.
+
+"How do you do, Sir Francis Clavering? I wanted to see you, and followed
+you here," said the Major, at sight of whom the other's countenance fell.
+
+Now that he had his opponent before him, the Major was determined to make
+a brisk and sudden attack upon him, and went into action at once. "I
+know," he continued, "who is the exceedingly disreputable person for whom
+you took me, Clavering; and the errand which brought you here."
+
+"It ain't your business, is it?" asked the Baronet, with a sulky and
+deprecatory look. "Why are you following me about and taking the command,
+and meddling in my affairs, Major Pendennis? I've never done you any
+harm, have I? I've never had your money. And I don't choose to be dodged
+about in this way, and domineered over. I don't choose it, and I won't
+have it. If Lady Clavering has any proposal to make to me, let it be done
+in the regular way, and through the lawyers. I'd rather not have you."
+
+"I am not come from Lady Clavering," the Major said, "but of my own
+accord, to try and remonstrate with you, Clavering, and see if you can be
+kept from ruin. It is but a month ago that you swore on your honour, and
+wanted to get a Bible to strengthen the oath, that you would accept no
+more bills, but content yourself with the allowance which Lady Clavering
+gives you. All your debts were paid with that proviso, and you have
+broken it; this Mr. Abrams has a bill of yours for sixty pounds."
+
+"It's an old bill. I take my solemn oath it's an old bill," shrieked out
+the Baronet.
+
+"You drew it yesterday, and you dated it three months back purposely. By
+Gad, Clavering, you sicken me with lies, I can't help telling you so.
+I've no patience with you, by Gad. You cheat everybody, yourself
+included. I've seen a deal of the world, but I never met your equal at
+humbugging. It's my belief you had rather lie than not."
+
+"Have you come here, you old--old beast, to tempt me to--to pitch into
+you, and--and knock your old head off?" said the Baronet, with a
+poisonous look of hatred at the Major.
+
+"What, sir?" shouted out the old Major, rising to his feet and clasping
+his cane, and looking so fiercely, that the Baronet's tone instantly
+changed towards him.
+
+"No, no," said Clavering, piteously, "I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to
+be angry, or say anything unkind, only you're so damned harsh to me,
+Major Pendennis. What is it you want of me? Why have you been hunting me
+so? Do you want money out of me too? By Jove, you know I've not got a
+shilling,"--and so Clavering, according to his custom, passed from a
+curse into a whimper.
+
+Major Pendennis saw, from the other's tone, that Clavering knew his
+secret was in the Major's hands.
+
+"I've no errand from anybody, or no design upon you," Pendennis said,
+"but an endeavour, if it's not too late, to save you and your family from
+utter ruin, through the infernal recklessness of your courses. I knew
+your secret----"
+
+"I didn't know it when I married her; upon my oath I didn't know it till
+the d----d scoundrel came back and told me himself; and it's the misery
+about that which makes me so reckless, Pendennis; indeed it is," the
+Baronet cried, clasping his hands.
+
+"I knew your secret from the very first day when I saw Amory come drunk
+into your dining-room in Grosvenor Place. I never forget faces. I
+remember that fellow in Sydney a convict, and he remembers me. I know his
+trial, the date of his marriage, and of his reported death in the bush. I
+could swear to him. And I know that you are no more married to Lady
+Clavering than I am. I've kept your secret well enough, for I've not told
+a single soul that I know it,--not your wife, not yourself till now."
+
+"Poor Lady C., it would cut her up dreadfully," whimpered Sir Francis;
+"and it wasn't my fault, Major; you know it wasn't."
+
+"Rather than allow you to go on ruining her as you do; I will tell her,
+Clavering, and tell all the world too; that is what I swear I will do,
+unless I can come to some terms with you, and put some curb on your
+infernal folly. By play, debt, and extravagance of all kind, you've got
+through half your wife's fortune, and that of her legitimate heirs, mind
+--her legitimate heirs. Here it must stop. You can't live together.
+You're not fit to live in a great house like Clavering; and before three
+years' more were over would not leave a shilling to carry on. I've
+settled what must be done. You shall have six hundred a year; you shall
+go abroad and live on that. You must give up Parliament, and get on as
+well as you can. If you refuse, I give you my word I'll make the real
+state of things known to-morrow; I'll swear to Amory, who, when
+identified, will go back to the country from whence he came, and will rid
+the widow of you and himself together. And so that boy of yours loses at
+once all title to old Spell's property, and it goes to your wife's
+daughter. Ain't I making myself pretty clearly understood?"
+
+"You wouldn't be so cruel to that poor boy, would you, Pendennis?" asked
+the father, pleading piteously; "hang it, think about him. He's a nice
+boy: though he's dev'lish wild, I own he's dev'lish wild."
+
+"It's you who are cruel to him," said the old moralist. "Why, sir, you'll
+ruin him yourself inevitably in three years."
+
+"Yes, but perhaps I won't have such dev'lish bad luck, you know;--the
+luck must turn: and I'll reform, by Gad, I'll reform. And if you were to
+split on me, it would cut up my wife so; you know it would, most
+infernally."
+
+"To be parted from you," said the old Major, with a sneer; "you know she
+won't live with you again."
+
+"But why can't Lady C. live abroad, or at Bath, or at Tunbridge, or at
+the doose, and I go on here?" Clavering continued. "I like being here
+better than abroad, and I like being in Parliament. It's dev'lish
+convenient being in Parliament. There's very few seats like mine left;
+and if I gave it to 'em, I should not wonder the ministry would give me
+an island to govern, or some dev'lish good thing; for you know I'm a
+gentleman of dev'lish good family, and have a handle to my name, and--and
+that sort of thing, Major Pendennis. Eh, don't you see? Don't you think
+they'd give me something dev'lish good if I was to play my cards well?
+And then, you know, I'd save money, and be kept out of the way of the
+confounded hells and rouge et noir--and--and so I'd rather not give up
+Parliament, please." For at one instant to hate and defy a man, at the
+next to weep before him, and at the next to be perfectly confidential and
+friendly with him, was not an unusual process with our versatile-minded
+Baronet.
+
+"As for your seat in Parliament," the Major said, with something of a
+blush on his cheek, and a certain tremor, which the other did not see,
+"you must part with that, Sir Francis Clavering, to--to me."
+
+"What! are you going into the House, Major Pendennis?"
+
+"No--not I; but my nephew, Arthur, is a very clever fellow and would make
+a figure there: and when Clavering had two members, his father might very
+likely have been one; and--and should like Arthur to be there," the Major
+said.
+
+"Dammy, does he know it, too?" cried out Clavering.
+
+"Nobody knows anything out of this room," Pendennis answered; and if you
+do this favour for me, I hold my tongue. "If not, I'm a man of my word,
+and will do what I have said."
+
+"I say, Major," said Sir Francis, with a peculiarly humble smile "You--
+You couldn't get me my first quarter in advance, could you, like the best
+of fellows? You can do anything with Lady Clavering; and, upon my oath,
+I'll take up that bill of Abrams'. The little dam scoundrel, I know he'll
+do me in the business--he always does; and if you could do this for me,
+we'd see, Major."
+
+"And I think your best plan would be to go down in September to Clavering
+to shoot, and take my nephew with you, and introduce him. Yes, that will
+be the best time. And we will try and manage about the advance." (Arthur
+may lend him that, thought old Pendennis. Confound him, a seat in
+Parliament is worth a hundred and fifty pounds.) "And, Clavering, you
+understand, of course, my nephew knows nothing about this business. You
+have a mind to retire: he is a Clavering man and a good representative.
+for the borough; you introduce him, and your people vote for him--you
+see."
+
+"When can you get me the hundred and fifty, Major? When shall I come and
+see you? Will you be at home this evening or to-morrow morning? Will you
+have anything here? They've got some dev'lish good bitters in the bar. I
+often have a glass of bitters, it sets one up so."
+
+The old Major would take no refreshment; but rose and took his leave of
+the Baronet, who walked with him to the door of the Wheel of Fortune, and
+then strolled into the bar, where he took a glass of gin and bitters with
+the landlady there: and a gentleman connected with the ring (who boarded
+at the Wheel of F.) coming in, he and Sir Francis Clavering and the
+landlord talked about the fights and the news of the sporting world in
+general; and at length Mr. Moss Abrams arrived with the proceeds of the
+Baronet's bill, from which his own handsome commission was deducted, and
+out of the remainder Sir Francis "stood" a dinner at Greenwich to his
+distinguished friend, and passed the evening gaily at Vauxhall.
+
+Meanwhile Major Pendennis, calling a cab in Piccadilly, drove to Lamb
+Court, Temple, where he speedily was closeted with his nephew in deep
+conversation.
+
+After their talk they parted on very good terms, and it was in
+consequence of that unreported conversation, whereof the reader
+nevertheless can pretty well guess the bearing, that Arthur expressed
+himself as we have heard in the colloquy with Warrington, which is
+reported in the last chapter.
+
+When a man is tempted to do a tempting thing, he can find a hundred
+ingenious reasons for gratifying his liking; and Arthur thought very much
+that he would like to be in Parliament, and that he would like to
+distinguish himself there, and that he need not care much what side he
+took, as there was falsehood and truth on every side. And on this and on
+other matters he thought he would compromise with his conscience, and
+that Sadduceeism was a very convenient and good-humoured profession of
+faith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIV
+
+Phyllis and Corydon
+
+
+On a picturesque common in the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells, Lady
+Clavering had found a pretty villa, whither she retired after her
+conjugal disputes at the end of that unlucky London season. Miss Amory,
+of course, accompanied her mother, and Master Clavering came home for the
+holidays, with whom Blanche's chief occupation was to fight and quarrel.
+But this was only a home pastime, and the young schoolboy was not fond of
+home sports. He found cricket, and horses, and plenty of friends at
+Tunbridge. The good-natured Begum's house was filled with a constant
+society of young gentlemen of thirteen, who ate and drank much too
+copiously of tarts and champagne, who rode races on the lawn, and
+frightened the fond mother, who smoked and made themselves sick, and the
+dining-room unbearable to Miss Blanche. She did not like the society of
+young gentlemen of thirteen.
+
+As for that fair young creature, any change as long as it was change was
+pleasant to her; and for a week or two she would have liked poverty and a
+cottage, and bread-and-cheese; and, for a night, perhaps, a dungeon and
+bread-and-water, and so the move to Tunbridge was by no means unwelcome
+to her. She wandered in the woods, and sketched trees and farmhouses; she
+read French novels habitually; she drove into Tunbridge Wells pretty
+often, and to any play, or ball, or conjurer, or musician who might
+happen to appear in the place; she slept a great deal; she quarrelled
+with Mamma and Frank during the morning; she found the little village
+school and attended it, and first fondled the girls and thwarted the
+mistress, then scolded the girls and laughed at the teacher; she was
+constant at church, of course. It was a pretty little church, of immense
+antiquity--a little Anglo-Norman bijou, built the day before yesterday,
+and decorated with all sorts of painted windows, carved saints' heads,
+gilt scripture texts, and open pews. Blanche began forthwith to work a
+most correct high-church altar-cover for the church. She passed for a
+saint with the clergyman for a while, whom she quite took in, and whom
+she coaxed, and wheedled, and fondled so artfully, that poor Mrs. Smirke,
+who at first was charmed with her, then bore with her, then would hardly
+speak to her, was almost mad with jealousy. Mrs. Smirke was the wife of
+our old friend Smirke, Pen's tutor and poor Helen's suitor. He had
+consoled himself for her refusal with a young lady from Clapham whom his
+mamma provided. When the latter died, our friend's views became every day
+more and more pronounced. He cut off his coat collar, and let his hair
+grow over his back. He rigorously gave up the curl which he used to sport
+on his forehead, and the tie of his neckcloth, of which he was rather
+proud. He went without any tie at all. He went without dinner on Fridays.
+He read the Roman Hours, and intimated that he was ready to receive
+confessions in the vestry. The most harmless creature in the world, he
+was denounced as a black and most dangerous Jesuit and Papist, by Muffin
+of the Dissenting chapel, and Mr. Simeon Knight at the old church. Mr.
+Smirke had built his chapel-of-ease with the money left him by his mother
+at Clapham. Lord! lord! what would she have said to hear a table called
+an altar! to see candlesticks on it! to get letters signed on the Feast
+of Saint So-and-so, or the Vigil of Saint What-do-you-call-'em! All these
+things did the boy of Clapham practise; his faithful wife following him.
+But when Blanche had a conference of near two hours in the vestry with
+Mr. Smirke, Belinda paced up and down on the grass, where there were only
+two little grave-stones as yet; she wished that she had a third there:
+only, only he would offer very likely to that creature, who had
+infatuated him in a fortnight. No, she would retire; she would go into a
+convent, and profess and leave him. Such bad thoughts had Smirke's wife
+and his neighbours regarding him; these, thinking him in direct
+correspondence with the Bishop of Rome; that, bewailing errors to her
+even more odious and fatal; and yet our friend meant no earthly harm. The
+post-office never brought him any letters from the Pope; he thought
+Blanche, to be sure, at first, the most pious, gifted, right-thinking,
+fascinating person he had ever met; and her manner of singing the Chants
+delighted him--but after a while he began to grow rather tired of Miss
+Amory, her ways and graces grew stale somehow; then he was doubtful about
+Miss Amory; then she made a disturbance in his school, lost her temper,
+and rapped the children's fingers. Blanche inspired this admiration and
+satiety, somehow, in many men. She tried to please them, and flung out
+all her graces at once; came down to them with all her jewels on, all her
+smiles, and cajoleries, and coaxings, and ogles. Then she grew tired of
+them and of trying to please them, and never having cared about them,
+dropped them: and the men grew tired of her, and dropped her too. It was
+a happy night for Belinda when Blanche went away; and her husband, with
+rather a blush and a sigh, said "he had been deceived in her; he had
+thought her endowed with many precious gifts, he feared they were mere
+tinsel; he thought she had been a right-thinking person, he feared she
+had merely made religion an amusement--she certainly had quite lost her
+temper to the schoolmistress, and beat Polly Rucker's knuckles cruelly."
+Belinda flew to his arms, there was no question about the grave or the
+veil any more. He tenderly embraced her on the forehead. "There is none
+like thee, my Belinda," he said, throwing his fine eyes up to the
+ceiling, "precious among women!" As for Blanche, from the instant she
+lost sight of him and Belinda, she never thought or cared about either
+any more.
+
+But when Arthur went down to pass a few days at Tunbridge Wells with the
+Begum, this stage of indifference had not arrived on Miss Blanche's part
+or on that of the simple clergyman. Smirke believed her to be an angel
+and wonder of a woman. Such a perfection he had never seen, and sate
+listening to her music in the summer evenings, open-mouthed, rapt in
+wonder, tea-less, and bread-and-butter-less. Fascinating as he had heard
+the music of the opera to be--he had never but once attended an
+exhibition of that nature (which he mentioned with a blush and a sigh--it
+was on that day when he had accompanied Helen and her son to the play at
+Chatteris)--he could not conceive anything more delicious, more
+celestial, he had almost said, than Miss Amory's music. She was a most
+gifted being: she had a precious soul: she had the most remarkable
+talents--to all outward seeming, the most heavenly disposition, etc. etc.
+It was in this way that, being then at the height of his own fever and
+bewitchment for Blanche, Smirke discoursed to Arthur about her.
+
+The meeting between the two old acquaintances had been very cordial.
+Arthur loved anybody who loved his mother; Smirke could speak on that
+theme with genuine feeling and emotion. They had a hundred things to tell
+each other of what had occurred in their lives. "Arthur would perceive,"
+Smirke said, "that his--his views on Church matters had developed
+themselves since their acquaintance." Mrs. Smirke, a most exemplary
+person, seconded them with all her endeavours. He had built this little
+church on his mother's demise, who had left him provided with a
+sufficiency of worldly means. Though in the cloister himself, he had
+heard of Arthur's reputation. He spoke in the kindest and most saddened
+tone; he held his eyelids down, and bowed his fair head on one side.
+Arthur was immensely amused with him; with his airs; with his follies and
+simplicity; with his blank stock and long hair; with his real goodness,
+kindness, friendliness of feeling. And his praises of Blanche pleased and
+surprised our friend not a little, and made him regard her with eyes of
+particular favour.
+
+The truth is, Blanche was very glad to see Arthur; as one is glad to see
+an agreeable man in the country, who brings down the last news and
+stories from the great city; who can talk better than most country-folks,
+at least can talk that darling London jargon, so dear and indispensable
+to London people, so little understood by persons out of the world. The
+first day Pen came down, he kept Blanche laughing for hours after dinner.
+She sang her songs with redoubled spirit. She did not scold her mother;
+she fondled and kissed her, to the honest Begum's surprise. When it came
+to be bedtime, she said, "Deja!" with the prettiest air of regret
+possible; and was really quite sorry to go to bed, and squeezed Arthur's
+hand quite fondly. He on his side gave her pretty palm a very cordial
+pressure. Our young gentleman was of that turn, that eyes very moderately
+bright dazzled him.
+
+"She is very much improved," thought Pen, looking out into the night,
+"very much. I suppose the Begum won't mind my smoking with the window
+open. She's a jolly good old woman, and Blanche is immensely improved. I
+liked her manner with her mother tonight. I liked her laughing way with
+that stupid young cub of a boy, whom they oughtn't to allow to get tipsy.
+She sang those little verses very prettily; they were devilish pretty
+verses too, though I say it who shouldn't say it." And he hummed a tune
+which Blanche had put to some verses of his own. "Ah! what a fine night!
+How jolly a cigar is at night! How pretty that little Saxon church looks
+in the moonlight! I wonder what old Warrington's doing? Yes, she's a
+dayvlish nice little thing, as my uncle says."
+
+"Oh, heavenly!" Here broke out a voice from a clematis-covered casement
+near--a girl's voice: it was the voice of the author of 'Mes Larmes.'
+
+Pen burst into a laugh. "Don't tell about my smoking," he said, leaning
+out of his own window.
+
+"Oh! go on! I adore it," cried the lady of 'Mes Larmes.' "Heavenly night!
+heavenly, heavenly moon! but I must shut my window, and not talk to you
+on account of les moeurs. How droll they are, les moeurs! Adieu." And Pen
+began to sing the Goodnight to Don Basilio.
+
+The next day they were walking in the fields together, laughing and
+chattering--the gayest pair of friends. They talked about the days of
+their youth, and Blanche was prettily sentimental. They talked about
+Laura, dearest Laura--Blanche had loved her as a sister: was she happy
+with that odd Lady Rockminster? Wouldn't she come and stay with them at
+Tunbridge? Oh, what walks they would take together! What songs they would
+sing--the old, old songs! Laura's voice was splendid. Did Arthur--she
+must call him Arthur--remember the songs they sang in the happy old days,
+now he was grown such a great man, and had such a succes? etc. etc.
+
+And the day after, which was enlivened with a happy ramble through the
+woods to Penshurst, and a sight of that pleasant park and hall, came that
+conversation with the curate which we have narrated, and which made our
+young friend think more and more.
+
+"Is she all this perfection?" he asked himself. "Has she become serious
+and religious? Does she tend schools, and visit the poor? Is she kind to
+her mother and brother? Yes, I am sure of that, I have seen her." And
+walking with his old tutor over his little parish, and going to visit his
+school, it was with inexpressible delight that Pen found Blanche seated
+instructing the children, and fancied to himself how patient she must be,
+how good-natured, how ingenuous, how really simple in her tastes, and
+unspoiled by the world.
+
+"And do you really like the country?" he asked her, as they walked
+together.
+
+"I should like never to see that odious city again. O Arthur--that is,
+Mr.--well, Arthur, then--one's good thoughts grow up in these sweet woods
+and calm solitudes, like those flowers which won't bloom in London, you
+know. The gardener comes and changes our balconies once a week. I don't
+think I shall bear to look London in the face again--its odious, smoky,
+brazen face! But, heigho!"
+
+"Why that sigh, Blanche?"
+
+"Never mind why."
+
+"Yes, I do mind why. Tell me, tell me everything."
+
+"I wish you hadn't come down;" and a second edition of 'Mes Soupirs' came
+out.
+
+"You don't want me, Blanche?"
+
+"I don't want you to go away. I don't think this house will be very happy
+without you, and that's why I wish that you never had come."
+
+'Mes Soupirs' were here laid aside, and 'Mes Larmes' had begun.
+
+Ah! What answer is given to those in the eyes of a young woman? What is
+the method employed for drying them? What took place? O ringdoves and
+roses, O dews and wildflowers, O waving greenwoods and balmy airs of
+summer! Here were two battered London rakes, taking themselves in for a
+moment, and fancying that they were in love with each other, like Phillis
+and Corydon!
+
+When one thinks of country houses and country walks, one wonders that any
+man is left unmarried.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV
+
+Temptation
+
+
+Easy and frank-spoken as Pendennis commonly was with Warrington, how came
+it that Arthur did not inform the friend and depository of all his
+secrets, of the little circumstances which had taken place at the villa
+near Tunbridge Wells? He talked about the discovery of his old tutor
+Smirke, freely enough, and of his wife, and of his Anglo-Norman church,
+and of his departure from Clapha to Rome; but, when asked about Blanche,
+his answers were evasive or general: he said she was a good-natured
+clever little thing, that rightly guided she make no such bad wife after
+all, but that he had for the moment no intention of marriage, that his
+days of romance were over, that he was contented with his present lot,
+and so forth.
+
+In the meantime there came occasionally to Lamb Court, Temple, pretty
+little satin envelopes, superscribed in the neatest handwriting, and
+sealed with one of those admirable ciphers, which, if Warrington had been
+curious enough to watch his friend's letters, or indeed if the cipher had
+been decipherable, would have shown George that Mr. Arthur was in
+correspondence with a young lady whose initials were B. A. To these
+pretty little compositions Mr. Pen replied in his best and gallantest
+manner; with jokes, with news of the town, with points of wit, nay, with
+pretty little verses very likely, in reply to the versicles of the Muse
+of 'Mes Larmes.' Blanche we know rhymes with "branch," and "stanch," and
+"launch," and no doubt a gentleman of Pen's ingenuity would not forgo
+these advantages of position, and would ring the pretty little changes
+upon these pleasing notes. Indeed we believe that those love-verses of
+Mr. Pen's, which had such a pleasing success in the 'Roseleaves,' that
+charming Annual edited by Lady Violet Lebas, and illustrated by portraits
+of the female nobility by the famous artist Pinkney, were composed at
+this period of our hero's life; and were first addressed to Blanche per
+post, before they figured in print, cornets as it were to Pinkney's
+pictorial garland.
+
+"Verses are all very well," the elder Pendennis said, who found Pen
+scratching down one of these artless effusions at the Club as he was
+waiting for his dinner; "and letter-writing if mamma allows it, and
+between such old country friends of course there may be a correspondence,
+and that sort of thing--but mind, Pen, and don't commit yourself, my boy.
+For who knows what the doose may happen? The best way is to make your
+letters safe. I never wrote a letter in all my life that would commit me,
+and demmy, sir, I have had some experience of women." And the worthy
+gentleman, growing more garrulous and confidential with his nephew as he
+grew older, told many affecting instances of the evil results consequent
+upon this want of caution to many persons in "Society;"--how from using
+too ardent expressions in some poetical notes to the widow Naylor, young
+Spoony had subjected himself to a visit of remonstrance from the widow's
+brother, Colonel Flint; and thus had been forced into a marriage with a
+woman old enough to be his mother: how when Louisa Salter had at length
+succeeded in securing young Sir John Bird, Hopwood, of the Blues,
+produced some letters which Miss S. had written to him, and caused a
+withdrawal on Bird's part, who afterwards was united to Miss Stickney, of
+Lyme Regis, etc. The Major, if he had not reading, had plenty of
+observation, and could back his wise saws with a multitude of modern
+instances, which he had acquired in a long and careful perusal of the
+great book of the world.
+
+Pen laughed at the examples, and blushing a little at his uncle's
+remonstrances, said that he would bear them in mind and be cautious. He
+blushed, perhaps, because he had borne them in mind; because he was
+cautious: because in his letters to Miss Blanche he had from instinct, or
+honesty perhaps, refrained from any avowals which might compromise him.
+"Don't you remember the lesson I had, sir, in Lady Mirabel's--Miss
+Fotheringay's affair? I am not to be caught again, uncle," Arthur said
+with mock frankness and humility. Old Pendennis congratulated himself and
+his nephew heartily on the latter's prudence and progress, and was
+pleased at the position which Arthur was taking as a man of the world.
+
+No doubt, if Warrington had been consulted, his opinion would have been
+different: and he would have told Pen that the boy's foolish letters were
+better than the man's adroit compliments and slippery gallantries; that
+to win the woman he loves, only a knave or a coward advances under cover,
+with subterfuges, and a retreat secured behind him: but Pen spoke not on
+this matter to Mr. Warrington, knowing pretty well that he was guilty,
+and what his friend's verdict would be.
+
+Colonel Altamont had not been for many weeks absent on his foreign tour,
+Sir Francis Clavering having retired meanwhile into the country pursuant
+to his agreement with Major Pendennis, when the ills of fate began to
+fall rather suddenly and heavily upon the sole remaining partner of the
+little firm of Shepherd's Inn. When Strong, at parting with Altamont,
+refused the loan proffered by the latter in the fulness of his purse and
+the generosity of his heart, he made such a sacrifice to conscience and
+delicacy as caused him many an after twinge and pang; he and felt--it was
+not very many hours in his life he had experienced the feeling--that in
+this juncture of his affairs he had been too delicate and too scrupulous.
+Why should a fellow in want refuse a kind offer kindly made? Why should a
+thirsty man decline a pitcher of water from a friendly hand, because it
+was a little soiled? Strong's conscience smote him for refusing what the
+other had fairly come by, and generously proffered: and he thought
+ruefully, now it was too late, that Altamont's cash would have been as
+well in his pocket as in that of the gambling--house proprietor at Baden
+or Ems, with whom his Excellency would infallibly leave his Derby
+winnings. It was whispered among the tradesmen, bill-discounters, and
+others who had commercial dealings with Captain Strong, that he and the
+Baronet had parted company, and that the Captain's "paper" was henceforth
+of no value. The tradesmen, who had put a wonderful confidence in him
+hitherto,--for who could resist Strong's jolly face and frank and honest
+demeanour?--now began to pour in their bills with a cowardly mistrust and
+unanimity. The knocks at the Shepherd's Inn chambers door were constant,
+and tailors, bootmakers, pastrycooks who had furnished dinners, in their
+own persons, or by the boys their representatives, held levees on
+Strong's stairs. To these were added one or two persons of a less
+clamorous but far more sly and dangerous sort,--the young clerks of
+lawyers, namely, who lurked about the Inn, or concerted with Mr.
+Campion's young man in the chambers hard by, having in their dismal
+pocketbooks copies of writs to be served on Edward Strong, requiring him
+to appear on an early day next term before our Sovereign Lady the Queen,
+and answer to, etc. etc.
+
+From this invasion of creditors, poor Strong, who had not a guinea in his
+pocket, had, of course, no refuge but that of the Englishman's castle,
+into which he retired, shutting the outer and inner door upon the enemy,
+and not quitting his stronghold until after nightfall. Against this outer
+barrier the foe used to come and knock and curse in vain, whilst the
+Chevalier peeped at them from behind the little curtain which he had put
+over the orifice of his letter-box; and had the dismal satisfaction of
+seeing the faces of furious clerk and fiery dun, as they dashed up
+against the door and retreated from it. But as they could not be always
+at his gate, or sleep on his staircase, the enemies of the Chevalier
+sometimes left him free.
+
+Strong, when so pressed by his commercial antagonists, was not quite
+alone in his defence against them, but had secured for himself an ally or
+two. His friends were instructed to communicate with him by a system of
+private signals: and they thus kept the garrison from starving by
+bringing in necessary supplies, and kept up Strong's heart and prevented
+him from surrendering by visiting him and cheering him in his retreat.
+Two of Ned's most faithful allies were Huxter and Miss Fanny Bolton: when
+hostile visitors were prowling about the Inn, Fanny's little sisters were
+taught a particular cry or jodel, which they innocently whooped in the
+court: when Fanny and Huxter came up to visit Strong, they archly sang
+this same note at his door; when that barrier was straightway opened, the
+honest garrison came out smiling, the provisions and the pot of porter
+were brought in, and in the society of his faithful friends the
+beleaguered one passed a comfortable night. There are some men who could
+not live under this excitement, but Strong was a brave man, as we have
+said, who had seen service and never lost heart in peril.
+
+But besides allies, our general had secured for himself, under
+difficulties, that still more necessary aid, a retreat. It has been
+mentioned in a former part of this history, how Messrs. Costigan and Bows
+lived in the house next door to Captain Strong, and that the window of
+one of their rooms was not very far off the kitchen-window which was
+situated in the upper story of Strong's chambers. A leaden water-pipe and
+gutter served for the two; and Strong, looking out from his kitchen one
+day, saw that he could spring with great ease up to the sill of his
+neighbour's window, and clamber up the pipe which communicated from one
+to the other. He had laughingly shown this refuge to his chum, Altamont;
+and they had agreed that it would be as well not to mention the
+circumstance to Captain Costigan, whose duns were numerous, and who would
+be constantly flying down the pipe into their apartments if this way of
+escape were shown to him.
+
+But now that the evil days were come, Strong made use of the passage, and
+one afternoon burst in upon Bows and Costigan with his jolly face, and
+explained that the enemy was in waiting on his staircase, and that he had
+taken this means of giving them the slip. So while Mr. Marks's
+aides-de-camp were in waiting in the passage of No. 3, Strong walked down
+the steps of No. 4, dined at the Albion, went to the play, and returned
+home at midnight, to the astonishment of Mrs. Bolton and Fanny, who had
+not seen him quit his chambers and could not conceive how he could have
+passed the line of sentries.
+
+Strong bore this siege for some weeks with admirable spirit and
+resolution, and as only such an old and brave soldier would, for the
+pains and privations which he had to endure were enough to depress any
+man of ordinary courage; and what vexed and riled him (to use his own
+expression) was the infernal indifference and cowardly ingratitude of
+Clavering, to whom he wrote letter after letter, which the Baronet never
+acknowledged by a single word, or by the smallest remittance, though a
+five-pound note, as Strong said, at that time would have been a fortune
+to him.
+
+But better days were in store for the Chevalier, and in the midst of his
+despondency and perplexities there came to him a most welcome aid. "Yes,
+if it hadn't been for this good fellow here," said Strong,--"for a good
+fellow you are, Altamont, my boy, and hang me if I don't stand by you as
+long as I live,--I think, Pendennis, it would have been all up with Ned
+Strong. I was the fifth week of my being kept a prisoner, for I couldn't
+be always risking my neck across that water-pipe, and taking my walks
+abroad through poor old Cos's window, and my spirit was quite broken,
+sir--dammy, quite beat, and I was thinking of putting an end to myself,
+and should have done it in another week, when who should drop down from
+heaven but Altamont!"
+
+"Heaven ain't exactly the place, Ned," said Altamont. "I came from
+Baden-Baden," said he, "and I'd had a deuced lucky month there, that's
+all."
+
+"Well, sir, he took up Marks's bill, and he paid the other fellows that
+were upon me, like a man, sir, that he did," said Strong,
+enthusiastically.
+
+"And I shall be very happy to stand a bottle of claret for this company,
+and as many more as the company chooses," said Mr. Altamont, with a
+blush. "Hallo! waiter, bring us a magnum of the right sort, do you hear?
+And we'll drink our healths all round, sir--and may every good fellow
+like Strong find another good fellow to stand by him at a pinch. That's
+my sentiment, Mr. Pendennis, though I don't like your name."
+
+"No! And why?" asked Arthur.
+
+Strong pressed the Colonel's foot under the table here; and Altamont,
+rather excited, filled up another bumper, nodded to Pen, drank off his
+wine, and said, "He was a gentleman, and that was sufficient, and they
+were all gentlemen."
+
+The meeting between these "all gentlemen" took place at Richmond, whither
+Pendennis had gone to dinner, and where he found the Chevalier and his
+friend at table in the coffee-room. Both of the latter were exceedingly
+hilarious, talkative, and excited by wine; and Strong, who was an
+admirable story-teller, told the story of his own siege, and adventures,
+and escapes with great liveliness and humour, and described the talk of
+the sheriff's officers at his door, the pretty little signals of Fanny,
+the grotesque exclamations of Costigan when the Chevalier burst in at his
+window, and his final rescue by Altamont, in a most graphic manner, and
+so as greatly to interest his hearers.
+
+"As for me, it's nothing," Altamont said. "When a ship's paid off, a chap
+spends his money, you know. And it's the fellers at the black and red at
+Baden-Baden that did it. I won a good bit of money there, and intend to
+win a good bit more, don't I, Strong? I'm going to take him with me. I've
+got a system. I'll make his fortune, I tell you. I'll make your fortune,
+if you like--dammy, everybody's fortune. But what I'll do, and no
+mistake, boys, I promise you. I'll put in for that little Fanny. Dammy,
+sir, what do you think she did? She had two pound, and I'm blest if she
+didn't go and lend it to Ned Strong! Didn't she, Ned? Let's drink her
+health."
+
+"With all my heart," said Arthur, and pledged this toast with the
+greatest cordiality.
+
+Mr. Altamont then began, with the greatest volubility, at great length,
+to describe his system. He said that it was infallible, if played with
+coolness; that he had it from a chap at Baden, who had lost by it, it was
+true, but because he had not enough capital; if he could have stood one
+more turn of the wheel, he would have had all his money back; that he and
+several more chaps were going to make a bank, and try it; and that he
+would put every shilling he was worth into it, and had come back to the
+country for the express purpose of fetching away his money, and Captain
+Strong; that Strong should play for him; that he could trust Strong and
+his temper much better than he could his own; and much better than
+Bloundell-Bloundell or the Italian that "stood in." As he emptied his
+bottle, the Colonel described at full length all his plans and prospects
+to Pen, who was interested in listening to his story, and the confessions
+of his daring and lawless good-humour.
+
+"I met that queer fellow Altamont the other day," Pen said to his uncle,
+a day or two afterwards.
+
+"Altamont? What Altamont? There's Lord Westport's son," said the Major.
+
+"No, no; the fellow who came tipsy into Clavering's dining-room one day
+when we were there," said the nephew, laughing, "he said he did not like
+the name of Pendennis, though he did me the honour to think that I was a
+good fellow."
+
+"I don't know any man of the name of Altamont, I give you my honour,"
+said the impenetrable Major; "and as for your acquaintance, I think the
+less you have to do with him the better, Arthur."
+
+Arthur laughed again. "He is going to quit the country, and make his
+fortune by a gambling system. He and my amiable college acquaintance,
+Bloundell, are partners, and the Colonel takes out Strong with him as
+aide-de-camp. What is it that binds the Chevalier and Clavering, I
+wonder?"
+
+"I should think, mind you, Pen, I should think, but of course I have only
+the idea, that there has been something in Clavering's previous life
+which gives these fellows and some others a certain power over him; and
+if there should be no such a secret, which affair of ours, my boy, dammy,
+I say, it ought to be a lesson to a man to keep himself straight in life,
+and not to give any man a chance over him."
+
+"Why, I think you have some means of persuasion over Clavering, uncle, or
+why should he give me that seat in Parlament?"
+
+"Clavering thinks he ain't fit for Parliament," the Major answered. "No
+more he is. What's to prevent him from putting you or anybody else into
+his place if he likes? Do you think that vernment or the Opposition would
+make any bones about accepting the seat if he offered it to them! Why
+should you be more squeamish than the first men, and the most honourable
+men, and men of the highest birth and position in the country, begad?"
+The Major had an answer of this kind to most of Pen's objections, and Pen
+accepted his uncle's replies, not so much because he believed them, but
+because he wished to believe them. We do a thing--which of us has not?--
+not because "everybody does it," but because we like it; and our
+acquiescence, alas! proves not that everybody is right, but that we and
+the rest of the world are poor creatures alike.
+
+At his next visit to Tunbridge, Mr. Pen did not forget to amuse Miss
+Blanche with the history which he had learned at Richmond of the
+Chevalier's imprisonment, and of Altamont's gallant rescue. And after he
+had told his tale in his usual satirical way, he mentioned with praise
+and emotion little Fanny's generous behaviour to the Chevalier, and
+Altamont's enthusiasm in her behalf.
+
+Miss Blanche was somewhat jealous, and a good deal piqued and curious
+about Fanny. Among the many confidential little communications which
+Arthur made to Miss Amory in the course of their delightful rural drives
+and their sweet evening walks, it may be supposed that our hero would not
+forget a story so interesting to himself and so likely to be interesting
+to her, as that of the passion and cure of the poor little Ariadne of
+Shepherd's Inn. His own part in that drama he described, to do him
+justice, with becoming modesty; the moral which he wished to draw from
+the tale being one in accordance with his usual satirical mood, viz.,
+that women get over their first loves quite as easily as men do (for the
+fair Blanche, in their intimes conversations, did not cease to twit Mr.
+Pen about his notorious failure in his own virgin attachment to the
+Fotheringay), and, number one being withdrawn, transfer themselves to
+number two without much difficulty. And poor little Fanny was offered up
+in sacrifice as an instance to prove this theory. What griefs she had
+endured and surmounted, what bitter pangs of hopeless attachment she had
+gone through, what time it had taken to heal those wounds of the tender
+little bleeding heart, Mr. Pen did not know, or perhaps did not choose to
+know; for he was at once modest and doubtful about his capabilities as a
+conqueror of hearts, and averse to believe that he had executed any
+dangerous ravages on that particular one, though his own instance and
+argument told against himself in this case; for if, as he said, Miss
+Fanny was by this time in love with her surgical adorer, who had neither
+good looks, nor good manners, nor wit, nor anything but ardour and
+fidelity to recommend him, must she not in her first sickness of the
+love-complaint have had a serious attack, and suffered keenly for a man
+who had certainly a number of the showy qualities which Mr. Huxter
+wanted?
+
+"You wicked odious creature," Miss Blanche said, "I believe that you are
+enraged with Fanny for being so impudent as to forget you, and that you
+are actually jealous of Mr. Huxter." Perhaps Miss Amory was right, as the
+blush which came in spite of himself and tingled upon Pendennis's cheek
+(one of those blows with which a man's vanity is constantly slapping his
+face) proved to Pen that he was angry to think he had been superseded by
+such a rival. By such a fellow as that! without any conceivable good
+quality! O Mr. Pendennis! (although this remark does not apply to such a
+smart fellow as you) if Nature had not made that provision for each sex
+in the credulity of the other, which sees good qualities where none
+exist, good looks in donkeys' ears, wit in their numskulls, and music in
+their bray, there would not have been near so much marrying and giving in
+marriage as now obtains, and as is necessary for the due propagation and
+continuance of the noble race to which we belong.
+
+"Jealous or not," Pen said, "and, Blanche, I don't say no, I should have
+liked Fanny to have come to a better end than that. I don't like
+histories that end in that cynical way; and when we arrive at the
+conclusion of the story of a pretty girl's passion, to find such a figure
+as Huxter's at the last page of the tale. Is a life a compromise, my lady
+fair, and the end of the battle of love an ignoble surrender? Is the
+search for the Cupid which my poor little Psyche pursued in the darkness
+--the god of her soul's longing--the god of the blooming cheek and
+rainbow pinions,--to result in Huxter smelling of tobacco and gallypots?
+I wish, though I don't see it in life, that people could be like Jenny
+and Jessamy, or my Lord and Lady Clementina in the story-books and
+fashionable novels, and at once under the ceremony, and, as it were, at
+the parson's benediction, become perfectly handsome and good and happy
+ever after."
+
+"And don't you intend to be good and happy, pray, Monsieur le
+Misanthrope--and are you very discontented with your lot--and will your
+marriage be a compromise"--(asked the author of 'Mes Larmes,' with a
+charming moue)--"and is your Psyche an odious vulgar wretch? You wicked
+satirical creature, I can't abide you! You take the hearts of young
+things, play with them, and fling them away with scorn. You ask for love
+and trample on it. You--you make me cry, that you do, Arthur, and--and
+don't--and I won't be consoled in that way--and I think Fanny was quite
+right in leaving such a heartless creature."
+
+"Again, I don't say no," said Pen, looking very gloomily at Blanche, and
+not offering by any means to repeat the attempt at consolation, which had
+elicited that sweet monosyllable "don't" from the young lady. "I don't
+think I have much of what people call heart; but I don't profess it. I
+made my venture when I was eighteen, and lighted my lamp and went in
+search of Cupid. And what was my discovery of love?--a vulgar
+dancing-woman! I failed, as everybody does, almost everybody; only it is
+luckier to fail before marriage than after."
+
+"Merci du choix, Monsieur," said the Sylphide, making a curtsey.
+
+"Look, my little Blanche," said Pen, taking her hand, and with his voice
+of sad good-humour; "at least I stoop to no flatteries."
+
+"Quite the contrary," said Miss Blanche.
+
+And tell you no foolish lies, as vulgar men do. Why should you and I,
+with our experience, ape romance and dissemble passion? I do not believe
+Miss Blanche Amory to be peerless among the beautiful, nor the greatest
+poetess, nor the most surpassing musician, any more than I believe you to
+be the tallest woman in the whole world--like the giantess whose picture
+we saw as we rode through the fair yesterday. But if I don't set you up
+as a heroine, neither do I offer you your very humble servant as a hero.
+But I think you are--well, there, I think you are very sufficiently
+good-looking."
+
+"Merci," Miss Blanche said, with another curtsey.
+
+"I think you sing charmingly. I'm sure you're clever. I hope and believe
+that you are good-natured, and that you will be companionable."
+
+"And so, provided I bring you a certain sum of money and
+a seat in Parliament, you condescend to fling to me your royal
+pocket-handkerchief," said Blanche. "Que d'honneur! We used to call your
+Highness the Prince of Fairoaks. What an honour to think that I am to be
+elevated to the throne, and to bring the seat in Parliament as backsheesh
+to the sultan! I am glad I am clever, and that I can play and sing to
+your liking; my songs will amuse my lord's leisure."
+
+"And if thieves are about the house," said Pen, grimly pursuing the
+simile, "forty besetting thieves in the shape of lurking cares and
+enemies in ambush and passions in arms, my Morgiana will dance round me
+with a tambourine, and kill all my rogues and thieves with a smile. Won't
+she?" But Pen looked as if he did not believe that she would. "Ah,
+Blanche," he continued after a pause, "don't be angry; don't be hurt at
+my truth-telling.--Don't you see that I always take you at your word? You
+say you will be a slave and dance--I say, dance. You say, 'I take you
+with what you bring:' I say, 'I take you with what you bring.' To the
+necessary deceits and hypocrisies of our life, why add any that are
+useless and unnecessary? If I offer myself to you because I think we have
+a fair chance of being happy together, and because by your help I may get
+for both of us a good place and a not undistinguished name, why ask me to
+feign raptures and counterfeit romance, in which neither of us believe?
+Do you want me to come wooing in a Prince Prettyman's dress from the
+masquerade warehouse, and to pay you compliments like Sir Charles
+Grandison? Do you want me to make you verses as in the days when we were
+--when we were children? I will if you like, and sell them to Bacon and
+Bungay afterwards. Shall I feed my pretty princess with bonbons?"
+
+"Mais j'adore les bonbons, moi," said the little Sylphide, with a queer
+piteous look.
+
+"I can buy a hatful at Fortnum and Mason's for a guinea. And it shall
+have its bonbons, its pooty little sugar-plums, that it shall," Pen said
+with a bitter smile. "Nay, my dear, nay, my dearest little Blanche, don't
+cry. Dry the pretty eyes, I can't bear that;" and he proceeded to offer
+that consolation which the circumstance required, and which the tears,
+the genuine tears of vexation, which now sprang from the angry eyes of
+the author of 'Mes Larmes' demanded.
+
+The scornful and sarcastic tone of Pendennis quite frightened and
+overcame the girl. "I--I don't want your consolation. I--I never was--so
+--spoken to before--by any of my--my--by anybody"--she sobbed out, with
+much simplicity.
+
+"Anybody!" shouted out Pen, with a savage burst of laughter, and Blanche
+blushed one of the most genuine blushes which her cheek had ever
+exhibited, and she cried out, "O Arthur, vous etes un homme terrible!"
+She felt bewildered, frightened, oppressed, the worldly little flirt who
+had been playing at love for the last dozen years of her life, and yet
+not displeased at meeting a master.
+
+"Tell me, Arthur," she said, after a pause in this strange love-making.
+"Why does Sir Francis Clavering give up his seat in Parliament?"
+
+"Au fait, why does he give it to me?" asked Arthur, now blushing in his
+turn.
+
+"You always mock me, sir," she said. "If it is good to be in Parliament,
+why does Sir Francis go out?"
+
+"My uncle has talked him over. He always said that you were not
+sufficiently provided for. In the--the family disputes, when your mamma
+paid his debts so liberally, it was stipulated, I suppose, that you--that
+is, that I--that is, upon my word, I don't know why he goes out of
+Parliament," Pen said, with rather a forced laugh. "You see, Blanche,
+that you and I are two good little children, and that this marriage has
+been arranged for us by our mammas and uncles, and that we must be
+obedient, like a good little boy and girl."
+
+So, when Pen went to London, he sent Blanche a box of bonbons, each
+sugar-plum of which was wrapped up in ready-made French verses, of the
+most tender kind; and, besides, despatched to her some poems of his own
+manufacture, quite as artless and authentic; and it was no wonder that he
+did not tell Warrington what his conversations with Miss Amory had been,
+of so delicate a sentiment were they, and of a nature so necessarily
+private.
+
+And if, like many a worse and better man, Arthur Pendennis, the widow's
+son, was meditating an apostasy, and going to sell himself to--we all
+know whom,--at least the renegade did not pretend to be a believer in the
+creed to which he was ready to swear. And if every woman and man in this
+kingdom, who has sold her or himself for money or position, as Mr.
+Pendennis was about to do, would but purchase a copy of his memoirs, what
+tons of volumes Messrs. Bradbury and Evans would sell!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI
+
+In which Pen begins his Canvass
+
+
+Melancholy as the great house at Clavering Park had been in the days
+before his marriage, when its bankrupt proprietor was a refugee in
+foreign lands, it was not much more cheerful now when Sir Francis
+Clavering came to inhabit it. The greater part of the mansion was shut
+up, and the Baronet only occupied a few of the rooms on the ground floor,
+where his housekeeper and her assistant from the lodge-gate waited upon
+the luckless gentleman in his forced retreat, and cooked a part of the
+game which he spent the dreary mornings in shooting. Lightfoot, his man,
+had passed over to my Lady's service; and, as Pen was informed in a
+letter from Mr. Smirke, who performed the ceremony, had executed his
+prudent intention of marrying Mrs. Bonner, my Lady's woman, who, in her
+mature years, was stricken with the charms of the youth, and endowed him
+with her savings and her mature person.
+
+To be landlord and landlady of the Clavering Arms was the ambition of
+both of them; and it was agreed that they were to remain in Lady
+Clavering's service until quarter-day arrived, when they were to take
+possession of their hotel. Pen graciously promised that he would give his
+election dinner there, when the Baronet should vacate his seat in the
+young man's favour; and, as it had been agreed by his uncle, to whom
+Clavering seemed to be able to refuse nothing, Arthur came down in
+September on a visit to Clavering Park, the owner of which was very glad
+to have a companion who would relieve his loneliness, and perhaps would
+lend him a little ready money.
+
+Pen furnished his host with these desirable supplies a couple of days
+after he had made his appearance at Clavering: and no sooner were these
+small funds in Sir Francis's pocket, than the latter found he had
+business at Chatteris and at the neighbouring watering-places, of which
+------shire boasts many, and went off to see to his affairs, which were
+transacted, as might be supposed, at the county race-grounds and
+billiard-rooms. Arthur could live alone well enough, having many mental
+resources and amusements which did not require other persons' company: he
+could walk with the gamekeeper of a morning, and for the evenings there
+was a plenty of books and occupation for a literary genius like Mr.
+Arthur, who required but a cigar and a sheet of paper or two to make the
+night pass away pleasantly. In truth, in two or three days he had found
+the society of Sir Francis Clavering perfectly intolerable; and it was
+with a mischievous eagerness and satisfaction that he offered Clavering
+the little pecuniary aid which the latter according to his custom
+solicited, and supplied him with the means of taking flight from his own
+house.
+
+Besides, our ingenious friend had to ingratiate himself with the
+townspeople of Clavering, and with the voters of the borough which he
+hoped to represent; and he set himself to this task with only the more
+eagerness, remembering how unpopular he had before been in Clavering, and
+determined to vanquish the odium which he had inspired amongst the simple
+people there. His sense of humour made him delight in this task.
+Naturally rather reserved and silent in public, he became on a sudden as
+frank, easy, and jovial as Captain Strong. He laughed with everybody who
+would exchange a laugh with him, shook hands right and left, with what
+may be certainly called a dexterous cordiality; made his appearance at
+the market-day and the farmers' ordinary; and, in fine, acted like a
+consummate hypocrite, and as gentlemen of the highest birth and most
+spotless integrity act when they wish to make themselves agreeable to
+their constituents, and have some end to gain of the country-folks. How
+is it that we allow ourselves not to be deceived, but to be ingratiated
+so readily by a glib tongue, a ready laugh, and a frank manner? We know,
+for the most part, that it is false coin, and we take it we know that it
+is flattery, which it costs nothing to distribute to everybody, and we
+had rather have it than be without it. Friend Pen went about at
+Clavering, laboriously simple and adroitly pleased, and quite a different
+being from the scornful and rather sulky young dandy whom the inhabitants
+remembered ten years ago.
+
+The Rectory was shut up. Doctor Portman was gone, with his gout and his
+family, to Harrogate,--an event which Pen deplored very much in a letter
+to the Doctor, in which, in a few kind and simple words, he expressed his
+regret at not seeing his old friend, whose advice he wanted and whose aid
+he might require some day: but Pen consoled himself for the Doctor's
+absence by making acquaintance with Mr. Simcoe, the opposition preacher,
+and with the two partners of the cloth-factory at Chatteris, and with the
+Independent preacher there, all of whom he met at Clavering Athenaeum,
+which the Liberal party had set up in accordance with the advanced
+spirit of the age, and perhaps in opposition to the aristocratic old
+reading-room, into which the Edinburgh Review had once scarcely got an
+admission, and where no tradesmen were allowed an entrance. He
+propitiated the younger partner of the cloth-factory, by asking him to
+dine in a friendly way at the Park; he complimented the Honourable Mrs.
+Simcoe with hares and partridges from the same quarter, and a request to
+read her husband's last sermon; and being a little unwell one day, the
+rascal took advantage of the circumstance to show his tongue to Mr.
+Huxter, who sent him medicines and called the next morning. How delighted
+old Pendennis would have been with his pupil! Pen himself was amused with
+the sport in which he was engaged, and his success inspired him with a
+wicked good-humour.
+
+And yet, as he walked out of Clavering of a night, after "presiding" at a
+meeting of the Athenaeum, or working through an evening with Mrs. Simcoe,
+who, with her husband, was awed by the young Londoner's reputation, and
+had heard of his social successes; as he passed over the old familiar
+bridge of the rushing Brawl, and heard that well-remembered sound of
+waters beneath, and saw his own cottage of Fairoaks among the trees,
+their darkling outlines clear against the starlit sky, different thoughts
+no doubt came to the young man's mind, and awakened pangs of grief and
+shame there. There still used to be a light in the windows of the room
+which he remembered so well, and in which the Saint who loved him had
+passed so many hours of care and yearning and prayer. He turned away his
+gaze from the faint light which seemed to pursue him with its wan
+reproachful gaze, as though it was his mother's spirit watching and
+warning. How clear the night was! How keen the stars shone! how ceaseless
+the rush of the flowing waters! the old home trees whispered, and waved
+gently their dark heads and branches over the cottage roof. Yonder, in
+the faint starlight glimmer, was the terrace where, as a boy, he walked
+of summer evenings, ardent and trustful, unspotted, untried, ignorant of
+doubts or passions; sheltered as yet from the world's contamination in
+the pure and anxious bosom of love. The clock of the near town tolling
+midnight, with a clang, disturbs our wanderer's reverie, and sends him
+onwards towards his night's resting-place, through the lodge into
+Clavering avenue, and under the dark arcades of the rustling limes.
+
+When he sees the cottage the next time, it is smiling in sunset; those
+bedroom windows are open where the light was burning the night before;
+and Pen's tenant, Captain Stokes, of the Bombay Artillery (whose mother,
+old Mrs. Stokes, lives in Clavering), receives his landlord's visit with
+great cordiality: shows him over the grounds and the new pond he has made
+in the back-garden from the stables; talks to him confidentially about
+the roof and chimneys, and begs Mr. Pendennis to name a day when he will
+do himself and Mrs. Stokes the pleasure to, etc. Pen, who has been a
+fortnight in the country, excuses himself for not having called sooner
+upon the Captain by frankly owning that he had not the heart to do it. "I
+understand you, sir," the Captain says; and Mrs. Stokes, who had slipped
+away at the ring of the bell (how odd it seemed to Pen to ring the
+bell!), comes down in her best gown, surrounded by her children. The
+young ones clamb about Stokes: the boy jumps into an arm-chair. It was
+Pen's father's arm-chair; and Arthur remembers the days when he would as
+soon have thought of mounting the king's throne as of seating himself in
+that arm-chair. He asks if Miss Stokes--she is the very image of her
+mamma--if she can play? He should like to hear a tune on that piano. She
+plays. He hears the notes of the old piano once more, enfeebled by age,
+but he does not listen to the player. He is listening to Laura singing as
+in the days of their youth, and sees his mother bending and beating time
+over the shoulder of the girl.
+
+The dinner at Fairoaks given in Pen's honour by his tenant, and at which
+old Mrs. Stokes, Captain Glanders, Squire Hobnel and the clergyman and
+his lady from Tinckleton, were present, was very stupid and melancholy
+for Pen, until the waiter from Clavering (who aided the captain's
+stable-boy and Mrs. Stokes's butler) whom Pen remembered as a street boy,
+and who was now indeed barber in that place, dropped a plate over Pen's
+shoulder, on which Mr. Hobnell (who also employed him) remarked, "I
+suppose, Hodson, your hands are slippery with bear's-grease. He's always
+dropping the crockery about, that Hodson is--haw, haw!" On which Hodson
+blushed, and looked so disconcerted, that Pen burst out laughing; and
+good-humour and hilarity were the order of the evening. For the second
+course, there was a hare and partridges top and bottom, and when after
+the withdrawal of the servants Pen said to the Vicar of Tinckleton, "I
+think, Mr. Stooks, you should have asked Hodson to cut the hare," the
+joke was taken instantly by the clergyman, who was followed in the course
+of a few minutes by Captains Stokes and Glanders, and by Mr. Hobnell, who
+arrived rather late, but with an immense guffaw.
+
+          *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+While Mr. Pen was engaged in the country in the above schemes, it
+happened that the lady of his choice, if not of his affections, came up
+to London from the Tunbridge villa bound upon shopping expeditions or
+important business, and in company of old Mrs. Bonner, her mother's maid,
+who had lived and quarrelled with Blanche many times since she was an
+infant, and who now being about to quit Lady Clavering's service for the
+hymeneal state, was anxious like a good soul to bestow some token of
+respectful kindness upon her old and young mistress before she quitted
+them altogether, to take her post as the wife of Lightfoot, and landlady
+of the Clavering Arms.
+
+The honest woman took the benefit of Miss Amory's taste to make the
+purchase which she intended to offer her ladyship; and, requested the
+fair Blanche to choose something for herself that should be to her
+liking, and remind her of her old nurse who had attended her through many
+a wakeful night, and eventful teething, and childish fever, and who loved
+her like a child of her own a'most. These purchases were made, and as the
+nurse insisted on buying an immense Bible for Blanche, the young lady
+suggested that Bonner should purchase a large Johnson's Dictionary for
+her mamma. Each of the two women might certainly profit by the present
+made to her.
+
+Then Mrs. Bonner invested money in some bargains in linen-drapery, which
+might be useful at the Clavering Arms, and bought a red and yellow
+neck-handkerchief, which Blanche could see at once was intended for Mr.
+Lightfoot. Younger than herself by at least five-and-twenty years, Mrs.
+Bonner regarded that youth with a fondness at once parental and conjugal,
+and loved to lavish ornaments on his person, which already glittered with
+pins, rings, shirt-studs, and chains and seals, purchased at the good
+creature's expense.
+
+It was in the Strand that Mrs. Bonner made her purchases, aided by Miss
+Blanche, who liked the fun very well; and when the old lady had bought
+everything that she desired, and was leaving the shop, Blanche, with a
+smiling face, and a sweet bow to one of the shopmen, said, "Pray, sir,
+will you have the kindness to show us the way to Shepherd's Inn?"
+
+Shepherd's Inn was but a few score of yards off, Old Castle Street was
+close by, the elegant young shopman pointed out the turning which the
+young lady was to take, and she and her companion walked off together.
+
+"Shepherd's Inn! what can you want in Shepherd's Inn, Miss Blanche?"
+Bonner inquired. "Mr. Strong lives there. Do you want to go and see the
+Captain?"
+
+"I should like to see the Captain very well. I like the Captain; but it
+is not him I want. I want to see a dear little good girl, who was very
+kind to--to Mr. Arthur when he was so ill last year, and saved his life
+almost; and I want to thank her and ask her if she would like anything. I
+looked out several of my dresses on purpose this morning, Bonner!" and
+she looked at Bonner as if she had a right to admiration, and had
+performed an act of remarkable virtue. Blanche, indeed, was very fond of
+sugar-plums; she would have fed the poor upon them, when she had had
+enough, and given a country girl a ball-dress, when she had worn it and
+was tired of it.
+
+"Pretty girl--pretty young woman!" mumbled Mrs. Bonner. "I know I want no
+pretty young women to come about Lightfoot," and in imagination she
+peopled the Clavering Arms with a harem of the most hideous chambermaids
+and barmaids.
+
+Blanche, with pink and blue, and feathers, and flowers, and trinkets
+(that wondrous invention, a chatelaine, was not extant yet, or she would
+have had one, we may be sure), and a shot-silk dress, and a wonderful
+mantle, and a charming parasol, presented a vision of elegance and beauty
+such as bewildered the eyes of Mrs. Bolton, who was scrubbing the
+lodge-floor of Shepherd's Inn and caused Betsy-Jane and Ameliar-Ann to
+look with delight.
+
+Blanche looked on them with a smile of ineffable sweetness and
+protection; like Rowena going to see Rebecca; like Marie Antoinette
+visiting the poor in the famine; like the Marchioness of Carabas
+alighting from her carriage-and-four at a pauper-tenant's door, and
+taking from John No II. the packet of Epsom salts for the invalid's
+benefit, carrying it with her own imperial hand into the sick-room--
+Blanche felt a queen stepping down from her throne to visit a subject,
+and enjoyed all the bland consciousness of doing a good action.
+
+"My good woman! I want to see Fanny--Fanny Bolton; is she here?"
+
+Mrs. Bolton had a sudden suspicion, from the splendour of Blanche's
+appearance, that it must be a play-actor, or something worse.
+
+"What do you want with Fanny, pray?" she asked.
+
+"I am Lady Clavering's daughter--you have heard of Sir Francis Clavering?
+And I wish very much indeed to see Fanny Bolton."
+
+"Pray step in, miss.--Betsy-Jane, where's Fanny?"
+
+Betsy-Jane said Fanny had gone into No. 3 staircase, on which Mrs. Bolton
+said she was probably in Strong's rooms, and bade the child go and see if
+she was there.
+
+"In Captain Strong's rooms! oh, let us go to Captain Strong's rooms,"
+cried out Miss Blanche. "I know him very well. You dearest little girl,
+show us the way to Captain Strong!" cried out Miss Blanche, for the floor
+reeked with the recent scrubbing, and the goddess did not like the smell
+of brown-soap.
+
+And as they passed up the stairs, a gentleman by the name of Costigan,
+who happened to be swaggering about the court, and gave a very knowing
+look with his "oi" under Blanche's bonnet, remarked to himself, "That's a
+devilish foine gyurll, bedad, goan up to Sthrong and Altamont: they're
+always having foine gyurlls up their stairs."
+
+"Hallo--hwhat's that?" he presently said, looking up at the windows: from
+which some piercing shrieks issued.
+
+At the sound of the voice of a distressed female the intrepid Cos rushed
+up the stairs as fast as his old legs would carry him, being nearly
+overthrown by Strong's servant, who was descending the stair. Cos found
+the outer door of Strong's chambers opened, and began to thunder at the
+knocker. After many and fierce knocks, the inner door was partially
+unclosed, and Strong's head appeared.
+
+"It's oi, me boy. Hwhat's that noise, Sthrong?" asked Costigan.
+
+"Go to the d----!" was the only answer, and the door was shut on Cos's
+venerable red nose: and he went downstairs muttering threats at the
+indignity offered to him, and vowing that he would have satisfaction. In
+the meanwhile the reader, more lucky than Captain Costigan, will have the
+privilege of being made acquainted with the secret which was withheld
+from that officer.
+
+It has been said of how generous a disposition Mr. Altamont was, and when
+he was well supplied with funds how liberally he spent them. Of a
+hospitable turn, he had no greater pleasure than drinking in company with
+other people; so that there was no man more welcome at Greenwich and
+Richmond than the Emissary of the Nawaub of Lucknow.
+
+Now it chanced that on the day when Blanche and Mrs. Bonner ascended the
+staircase to Strong's room in Shepherd's Inn, the Colonel had invited
+Miss Delaval of the ------ Theatre Royal, and her mother, Mrs. Hodge, to
+a little party down the river, and it had been agreed that they were to
+meet at Chambers, and thence walk down to a port in the neighbouring
+Strand to take water. So that when Mrs. Bonner and Mes Larmes came to the
+door, where Grady, Altamont's servant, was standing, the domestic said,
+"Walk in, ladies," with the utmost affability, and led them into the
+room, which was arranged as if they had been expected there. Indeed, two
+bouquets of flowers, bought at Covent Garden that morning, and instances
+of the tender gallantry of Altamont, were awaiting his guests upon the
+table. Blanche smelt at the bouquet, and put her pretty little dainty
+nose into it, and tripped about the room, and looked behind the curtains,
+and at the books and prints, and at the plan of Clavering estate hanging
+up on the wall; and had asked the servant for Captain Strong, and had
+almost forgotten his existence and the errand about which she had come,
+namely, to visit Fanny Bolton; so pleased was she with the new adventure,
+and the odd, strange, delightful, droll little idea of being in a
+bachelor's chambers in a queer old place in the city!
+
+Grady meanwhile, with a pair of ample varnished boots, had disappeared
+into his master's room. Blanche had hardly the leisure to remark how big
+the boots were, and how unlike Mr. Strong's.
+
+"The women's come," said Grady, helping his master to the boots.
+
+"Did you ask 'em if they would take a glass of anything?" asked Altamont.
+
+Grady came out--"He says, will you take anything to drink?" the domestic
+asked of them; at which Blanche, amused with the artless question, broke
+out into a pretty little laugh, and asked of Mrs. Bonner, "Shall we take
+anything to drink?"
+
+"Well, you may take it or lave it," said Mr. Grady, who thought his offer
+slighted, and did not like the contemptuous manners of the new-comers,
+and so left them.
+
+"Will we take anything to drink?" Blanche asked again: and again began to
+laugh.
+
+"Grady," bawled out a voice from the chamber within:--a voice that made
+Mrs. Bonner start.
+
+Grady did not answer: his song was heard from afar off, from the kitchen,
+his upper room, where Grady was singing at his work.
+
+"Grady, my coat!" again roared the voice from within.
+
+"Why, that is not Mr. Strong's voice," said the Sylphide, still half
+laughing. "Grady my coat!--Bonner, who is Grady my coat? We ought to go
+away."
+
+Bonner still looked quite puzzled at the sound of the voice which she had
+heard.
+
+The bedroom door here opened and the individual who had called out
+"Grady, my coat," appeared without the garment in question.
+
+He nodded to the women, and walked across the room. "I beg your pardon,
+ladies. Grady, bring my coat down, sir! Well, my dears, it's a fine day,
+and we'll have a jolly lark at----"
+
+He said no more; for here Mrs. Bonner, who had been looking at him with
+scared eyes, suddenly shrieked out, "Amory! Amory!" and fell back
+screaming and fainting in her chair.
+
+The man, so apostrophised, looked at the woman an instant, and, rushing
+up to Blanche, seized her and kissed her. "Yes, Betsy," he said, "by G--
+it is me. Mary Bonner knew me. What a fine gal we've grown! But it's a
+secret, mind. I'm dead, though I'm your father. Your poor mother don't
+know it. What a pretty gal we've grown! Kiss me--kiss me close, my Betsy?
+D--- it, I love you: I'm your old father."
+
+Betsy or Blanche looked quite bewildered, and began to scream too--once,
+twice, thrice; and it was her piercing shrieks which Captain Costigan
+heard as he walked the court below.
+
+At the sound of these shrieks the perplexed parent clasped his hands (his
+wristbands were open, and on one brawny arm you could see letters
+tattooed in blue), and, rushing to his apartment, came back with an
+eau-de-Cologne bottle from his grand silver dressing-case, with the
+fragrant contents of which he began liberally to sprinkle Bonner and
+Blanche.
+
+The screams of these women brought the other occupants of the chambers
+into the room: Grady from his kitchen, and Strong from his apartment in
+the upper story. The latter at once saw from the aspect of the two women
+what had occurred.
+
+"Grady, go and wait in the court," he said, "and if anybody comes--you
+understand me."
+
+"Is it the play-actress and her mother?" said Grady.
+
+"Yes--confound you--say that there's nobody in chambers, and the party's
+off for to-day."
+
+"Shall I say that, sir? and after I bought them bokays?" asked Grady of
+his master.
+
+"Yes," said Amory, with a stamp of his foot; and Strong going to the
+door, too, reached it just in time to prevent the entrance of Captain
+Costigan, who had mounted the stair.
+
+The ladies from the theatre did not have their treat to Greenwich, nor
+did Blanche pay her visit to Fanny Bolton on that day. And Cos, who took
+occasion majestically to inquire of Grady what the mischief was, and who
+was crying?--had for answer that 'twas a woman, another of them, and that
+they were, in Grady's opinion, the cause of 'most all the mischief in the
+world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII
+
+In which Pen begins to doubt about his Election
+
+
+Whilst Pen, in his own county, was thus carrying on his selfish plans and
+parliamentary schemes, news came to him that Lady Rockminster had arrived
+at Baymouth, and had brought with her our friend Laura. At the
+announcement that Laura his sister was near him, Pen felt rather guilty.
+His wish was to stand higher in her esteem, perhaps; than in that of any
+other person in the world. She was his mother's legacy to him. He was to
+be her patron and protector in some sort. How would she brave the news
+which he had to tell her; and how should he explain the plans which he
+was meditating? He felt as if neither he nor Blanche could bear Laura's
+dazzling glance of calm scrutiny, and as if he would not dare to disclose
+his worldly hopes and ambitions to that spotless judge. At her arrival at
+Baymouth, he wrote a letter thither which contained a great number of
+fine phrases and protests of affection, and a great deal of easy satire
+and raillery; in the midst of all which Mr. Pen could not help feeling
+that he was in panic, and that he was acting like a rogue and hypocrite.
+
+How was it that a simple country girl should be the object of fear and
+trembling to such an accomplished gentleman as Mr. Pen? His worldly
+tactics and diplomacy, his satire and knowledge of the world, could not
+bear the test of her purity, he felt somehow. And he had to own to
+himself that his affairs were in such a position, that he could not tell
+the truth to that honest soul. As he rode from Clavering to Baymouth he
+felt as guilty as a schoolboy who doesn't know his lesson and is about to
+face the awful master. For is not truth the master always, and does she
+not have the power and hold the book?
+
+Under the charge of her kind, though somewhat wayward and absolute
+patroness, Lady Rockminster, Laura had seen somewhat of the world in the
+last year, had gathered some accomplishments, and profited by the lessons
+of society. Many a girl who had been accustomed to that too great
+tenderness in which Laura's early life had been passed, would have been
+unfitted for the changed existence which she now had to lead. Helen
+worshipped her two children, and thought, as home-bred women will, that
+all the world was made for them, or to be considered after them. She
+tended Laura with a watchfulness of affection which never left her. If
+she had a headache, the widow was as alarmed as if there had never been
+an aching head before in the world. She slept and woke, read and moved
+under her mother's fond superintendence, which was now withdrawn from
+her, along with the tender creature whose anxious heart would beat no
+more. And painful moments of grief and depression no doubt Laura had,
+when she stood in the great careless world alone. Nobody heeded her
+griefs or her solitude. She was not quite the equal, in social rank, of
+the lady whose companion she was, or of the friends and relatives of the
+imperious, but kind old dowager. Some very likely bore her no goodwill--
+some, perhaps, slighted her: it might have been that servants were
+occasionally rude; their mistress certainly was often. Laura not seldom
+found herself in family meetings, the confidence and familiarity of which
+she felt were interrupted by her intrusion; and her sensitiveness of
+course was wounded at the idea that she should give or feel this
+annoyance. How many governesses are there in the world, thought cheerful
+Laura,--how many ladies, whose necessities make them slaves and
+companions by profession! What bad tempers and coarse unkindness have not
+these to encounter? How infinitely better my lot is with these really
+kind and affectionate people than that of thousands of unprotected girls!
+It was with this cordial spirit that our young lady adapted herself to
+her new position; and went in advance of her fortune with a trustful
+smile.
+
+Did you ever know a person who met Fortune in that way, whom the goddess
+did not regard kindly? Are not even bad people won by a constant
+cheerfulness and a pure and affectionate heart? When the babes in the
+wood, in the ballad, looked up fondly and trustfully at those notorious
+rogues whom their uncle had set to make away with the little folks, we
+all know how one of the rascals relented, and made away with the other--
+not having the heart to be unkind to so much innocence and beauty. Oh,
+happy they who have that virgin loving trust and sweet smiling confidence
+in the world, and fear no evil because they think none! Miss Laura Bell
+was one of these fortunate persons; and besides the gentle widow's little
+cross, which, as we have seen, Pen gave her, had such a sparkling and
+brilliant kohinoor in her bosom, as is even more precious than that
+famous jewel; for it not only fetches a price, and is retained, by its
+owner in another world where diamonds are stated to be of no value, but
+here, too, is of inestimable worth to its possessor; is a talisman
+against evil, and lightens up the darkness of life, like Cogia Hassan's
+famous stone.
+
+So that before Miss Bell had been a year in Lady Rockminster's house,
+there was not a single person in it whose love she had not won by the use
+of this talisman. From the old lady to the lowest dependent of her
+bounty, Laura had secured the goodwill and kindness of everybody. With a
+mistress of such a temper, my Lady's woman (who had endured her mistress
+for forty years, and had been clawed and scolded and jibed every day and
+night in that space of time) could not be expected to have a good temper
+of her own; and was at first angry against Miss Laura, as she had been
+against her Ladyship's fifteen preceding companions. But when Laura was
+ill at Paris, this old woman nursed her in spite of her mistress, who was
+afraid of catching the fever, and absolutely fought for her medicine with
+Martha from Fairoaks, now advanced to be Miss Laura's own maid. As she
+was recovering, Grandjean the chef wanted to kill her by the numbers of
+delicacies which he dressed for her, and wept when she ate her first
+slice of chicken. The Swiss major-domo of the house celebrated Miss
+Bell's praises in almost every European language, which he spoke with
+indifferent incorrectness; the coachman was happy to drive her out; the
+page cried when he heard she was ill; and Calverley and Coldstream (those
+two footmen, so large, so calm ordinarily, and so difficult to move)
+broke out into extraordinary hilarity at the news of her convalescence,
+and intoxicated the page at a wine-shop, to fete Laura's recovery. Even
+Lady Diana Pynsent (our former acquaintance Mr. Pynsent had married by
+this time), Lady Diana, who had had a considerable dislike to Laura for
+some time, was so enthusiastic as to say that she thought Miss Bell was
+a very agreeable person, and that grandmamma had found a great trouvaille
+in her. All this goodwill and kindness Laura had acquired, not by any
+arts, not by any flattery, but by the simple force of good-nature, and by
+the blessed gift of pleasing and being pleased.
+
+On the one or two occasions when he had seen Lady Rockminster, the old
+lady, who did not admire him, had been very pitiless and abrupt with our
+young friend, and perhaps Pen expected when he came to Baymouth to find
+Laura installed in her house in the quality of humble companion, and
+treated no better than himself. When she heard of his arrival she came
+running downstairs, and I am not sure that she did not embrace him in the
+presence of Calverley and Coldstream: not that those gentlemen ever told:
+if the fractus orbis had come to a smash, if Laura, instead of kissing
+Pen, had taken her scissors and snipped off his head--Calverley and
+Coldstream would have looked on impavidly, without allowing a grain of
+powder to be disturbed by the calamity.
+
+Laura had so much improved in health and looks that Pen could not but
+admire her. The frank and kind eyes which met his, beamed with
+good-health; the cheek which he kissed blushed with beauty. As he looked
+at her, artless and graceful, pure and candid, he thought he had never
+seen her so beautiful. Why should he remark her beauty now so much, and
+remark too to himself that he had not remarked it sooner? He took her
+fair trustful hand and kissed it fondly: he looked in her bright clear
+eyes, and read in them that kindling welcome which he was always sure to
+find there. He was affected and touched by the tender tone and the pure
+sparkling glance; their innocence smote him somehow and moved him.
+
+"How good you are to me, Laura--sister!" said Pen; "I don't deserve that
+you should--that you should be so kind to me."
+
+"Mamma left you to me," she said, stooping down and brushing his forehead
+with her lips hastily. "You know you were to come to me when you were in
+trouble, or to tell me when you were very happy: that was our compact,
+Arthur, last year, before we parted. Are you very happy now, or are you
+in trouble--which is it?" and she looked at him with an arch glance of
+kindness. "Do you like going into Parliament! Do you intend to
+distinguish yourself there? How I shall tremble for your first speech!"
+
+"Do you know about the Parliament plan, then?" Pen asked.
+
+"Know?--all the world knows! I have heard it talked about many times.
+Lady Rockminster's doctor talked about it to-day. I daresay it will be in
+the Chatteris paper to-morrow. It is all over the county that Sir Francis
+Clavering, of Clavering, is going to retire, in behalf of Mr. Arthur
+Pendennis, of Fairoaks; and that the young and beautiful Miss Blanche
+Amory is----"
+
+"What! that too?" asked Pendennis.
+
+"That, too, dear Arthur. Tout se sait, as somebody would say, whom I
+intend to be very fond of; and who I am sure is very clever and pretty. I
+have had a letter from Blanche. The kindest of letters. She speaks so
+warmly of you, Arthur! I hope--I know she feels what she writes.--When is
+it to be, Arthur? Why did you not tell me? I may come and live with you
+then, mayn't I?"
+
+"My home is yours, dear Laura, and everything I have," Pen said. "If I
+did not tell you, it was because--because--I do not know: nothing is
+decided as yet. No words have passed between us. But you think Blanche
+could be happy with me--don't you? Not a romantic fondness, you know. I
+have no heart, I think; I've told her so: only a sober-sided attachment:
+--and want my wife on one side of the fire and my sister on the other,--
+Parliament in the session and Fairoaks in the holidays, and my Laura
+never to leave me until somebody who has a right comes to take her away."
+
+Somebody who has a right--somebody with a right! Why did Pen, as he
+looked at the girl and slowly uttered the words, begin to feel angry and
+jealous of the invisible somebody with the right to take her away?
+Anxious, but a minute ago, how she would take the news regarding his
+probable arrangements with Blanche, Pen was hurt somehow that she
+received the intelligence so easily, and took his happiness for granted.
+
+"Until somebody comes," Laura said, with a laugh, "I will stay at home
+and be aunt Laura, and take care of the children when Blanche is in the
+world. I have arranged it all. I am an excellent housekeeper. Do you know
+I have been to market at Paris with Mrs. Beck, and have taken some
+lessons from M. Grandjean? And I have had some lessons in Paris in
+singing too, with the money which you sent me, you kind boy: and I can
+sing much better now: and I have learned to dance, though not so well as
+Blanche; and when you become a minister of state, Blanche shall present
+me:" and with this, and with a provoking good-humour, she performed for
+him the last Parisian curtsey.
+
+Lady Rockminster came in whilst this curtsey was being performed, and
+gave to Arthur one finger to shake; which he took, and over which he
+bowed as well as he could, which, in truth, was very clumsily.
+
+"So you are going to be married, sir," said the old lady.
+
+"Scold him, Lady Rockminster, for not telling us," Laura said, going
+away: which, in truth, the old lady began instantly to do. "So you
+are going to marry, and to go into Parliament in place of that
+good-for-nothing Sir Francis Clavering. I wanted him to give my grandson
+his seat--why did he not give my grandson his seat? I hope you are to
+have a great deal of money with Miss Amory. I wouldn't take her without a
+great deal."
+
+"Sir Francis Clavering is tired of Parliament," Pen said, wincing, "and--
+and I rather wish to attempt that career. The rest of the story is at
+least premature."
+
+"I wonder, when you had Laura at home, you could take up with such an
+affected little creature as that," the old lady continued.
+
+"I am very sorry Miss Amory does not please your ladyship," said Pen,
+smiling.
+
+"You mean--that it is no affair of mine, and that I am not going to marry
+her. Well, I'm not, and I'm very glad I am not--a little odious thing--
+when I think that a man could prefer her to my Laura, I've no patience
+with him, and so I tell you, Mr. Arthur Pendennis."
+
+"I am very glad you see Laura with such favourable eyes," Pen said.
+
+"You are very glad, and you are very sorry. What does it matter, sir,
+whether you are very glad or very sorry? A young man who prefers Miss
+Amory to Miss Bell has no business to be sorry or glad. A young man who
+takes up with such a crooked lump of affectation as that little Amory,--
+for she is crooked, I tell you she is,--after seeing my Laura, has no
+right to hold up his head again. Where is your friend Bluebeard? The tall
+young man, I mean,--Warrington, isn't his name? Why does he not come
+down, and marry Laura? What do the young men mean by not marrying such a
+girl as that? They all marry for money now. You are all selfish and
+cowards. We ran away with each other, and made foolish matches in my
+time. I have no patience with the young men! When I was at Paris in the
+winter, I asked all the three attaches at the Embassy why they did not
+fall in love with Miss Bell? They laughed--they said they wanted money.
+You are all selfish--you are all cowards."
+
+"I hope before you offered Miss Bell to the attaches," said Pen, with
+some heat, "you did her the favour to consult her?"
+
+"Miss Bell has only a little money. Miss Bell must marry soon. Somebody
+must make a match for her, sir; and a girl can't offer herself," said the
+old dowager, with great state. "Laura, my dear, I've been telling your
+cousin that all the young men are selfish; and that there is not a
+pennyworth of romance left among them. He is as bad as the rest."
+
+"Have you been asking Arthur why he won't marry me?" said Laura, with a
+kindling smile, coming back and taking her cousin's hand. (She had been
+away, perhaps, to hide some traces of emotion, which she did not wish
+others to see.) "He is going to marry somebody else; and I intend to be
+very fond of her, and to go and live with them, provided he then does not
+ask every bachelor who comes to his house, why he does not marry me?"
+
+The terrors of Pen's conscience being thus appeased, and his examination
+before Laura over without any reproaches on the part of the latter, Pen
+began to find that his duty and inclination led him constantly to
+Baymouth, where Lady Rockminster informed him that a place was always
+reserved for him at her table. "And I recommend you to come often," the
+old lady said, "for Grandjean is an excellent cook, and to be with Laura
+and me will do your manners good. It is easy to see that you are always
+thinking about yourself. Don't blush and stammer--almost all young men
+are always thinking about themselves. My sons and grandsons always were
+until I cured them. Come here, and let us teach you to behave properly;
+you will not have to carve, that is done at the side-table. Hecker will
+give you as much wine as is good for you; and on days when you are very
+good and amusing you shall have some champagne. Hecker, mind what I say.
+Mr. Pendennis is Miss Laura's brother; and you will make him comfortable,
+and see that he does not have too much wine, or disturb me whilst I am
+taking my nap after dinner. You are selfish: I intend to cure you of
+being selfish. You will dine here when you have no other engagements; and
+if it rains you had better put up at the hotel." As long as the good lady
+could order everybody round about her, she was not hard to please; and
+all the slaves and subjects of her little dowager court trembled before
+her, but loved her.
+
+She did not receive a very numerous or brilliant society. The doctor, of
+course, was admitted as a constant and faithful visitor; the vicar and
+his curate; and on public days the vicar's wife and daughters, and some
+of the season visitors at Baymouth, were received at the old lady's
+entertainments: but generally the company was a small one, and Mr. Arthur
+drank his wine by himself, when Lady Rockminster retired to take her
+doze, and to be played and sung to sleep by Laura after dinner.
+
+"If my music can give her a nap," said the good-natured girl, "ought I
+not to be very glad that it can do so much good? Lady Rockminster sleeps
+very little of nights: and I used to read to her until I fell ill at
+Paris, since when she will not hear of my sitting up."
+
+"Why did you not write to me when you were ill?" asked Pen, with a blush.
+
+"What good could you do me? I had Martha to nurse me and the doctor every
+day. You are too busy to write to women or to think about them. You have
+your books and your newspapers, and your politics and your railroads to
+occupy you. I wrote when I was well."
+
+And Pen looked at her, and blushed again, as he remembered that, during
+all the time of her illness, he had never written to her and had scarcely
+thought about her.
+
+In consequence of his relationship, Pen was free to walk and ride with
+his cousin constantly, and in the course of those walks and rides, could
+appreciate the sweet frankness of her disposition, and the truth,
+simplicity, and kindliness of her fair and spotless heart. In their
+mother's lifetime, she had never spoken so openly or so cordially as now.
+The desire of poor Helen to make an union between her two children, had
+caused a reserve on Laura's part towards Pen; for which, under the
+altered circumstances of Arthur's life, there was now no necessity. He
+was engaged to another woman; and Laura became his sister at once,--
+hiding, or banishing from herself, any doubts which she might have as to
+his choice; striving to look cheerfully forward, and hope for his
+prosperity; promising herself to do all that affection might do to make
+her mother's darling happy.
+
+Their talk was often about the departed mother. And it was from a
+thousand stories which Laura told him that Arthur was made aware how
+constant and absorbing that silent maternal devotion had been; which had
+accompanied him present and absent through life, and had only ended with
+the fond widow's last breath. One day the people in Clavering saw a lad
+in charge of a couple of horses at the churchyard-gate: and it was told
+over the place that Pen and Laura had visited Helen's grave together.
+Since Arthur had come down into the country, he had been there once or
+twice: but the sight of the sacred stone had brought no consolation to
+him. A guilty man doing a guilty deed: a mere speculator, content to lay
+down his faith and honour for a fortune and a worldly career; and owning
+that his life was but a contemptible surrender--what right had he in the
+holy place? what booted it to him in the world he lived in, that others
+were no better than himself? Arthur and Laura rode by the gates of
+Fairoaks; and he shook hands with his tenant's children, playing on the
+lawn and the terrace--Laura looked steadily at the cottage wall, at the
+creeper on the porch and the magnolia growing up to her window. "Mr.
+Pendennis rode by to-day," one of the boys told his mother, "with a lady,
+and he stopped and talked to us, and he asked for a bit of honeysuckle
+off the porch, and gave it the lady. I couldn't see if she was pretty;
+she had her veil down. She was riding one of Cramp's horses, out of
+Baymouth."
+
+As they rode over the downs between home and Baymouth, Pen did not speak
+much, though they rode very close together. He was thinking what a
+mockery life was, and how men refuse happiness when they may have it; or,
+having it, kick it down; or barter it, with their eyes open, for a little
+worthless money or beggarly honour. And then the thought came, what does
+it matter for the little space? The lives of the best and purest of us
+are consumed in a vain desire, and end in a disappointment: as the dear
+soul's who sleeps in her grave yonder. She had her selfish ambition, as
+much as Caesar had; and died, baulked of her life's longing. The stone
+covers over our hopes and our memories. Our place knows us not. "Other
+people's children are playing on the grass," he broke out, in a hard
+voice, "where you and I used to play, Laura. And you see how the magnolia
+we planted has grown up since our time. I have been round to one or two
+of the cottages where my mother used to visit. It is scarcely more than a
+year that she is gone, and the people whom she used to benefit care no
+more for her death than for Queen Anne's. We are all selfish: the world
+is selfish: there are but a few exceptions, like you, my dear, to shine
+like good deeds in a naughty world, and make the blackness more dismal."
+
+"I wish you would not speak in that way, Arthur," said Laura, looking
+down and bending her head to the honeysuckle on her breast. "When you
+told the little boy to give me this, you were not selfish."
+
+"A pretty sacrifice I made to get it for you!" said the sneerer.
+
+"But your heart was kind and full of love when you did so. One cannot ask
+for more than love and kindness; and if you think humbly of yourself
+Arthur, the love and kindness are--diminished--are they? I often thought
+our dearest mother spoiled you at home, by worshipping you; and that if
+you are--I hate the word--what you say, her too great fondness helped to
+make you so. And as for the world, when men go out into it, I suppose
+they cannot be otherwise than selfish. You have to fight for yourself,
+and to get on for yourself, and to make a name for yourself. Mamma and
+your uncle both encouraged you in this ambition. If it is a vain thing,
+why pursue it? I suppose such a clever man as you intend to do a great
+deal of good to the country, by going into Parliament, or you would not
+wish to be there. What are you going to do when you are in the House of
+Commons?"
+
+"Women don't understand about politics, my dear," Pen said sneering at
+himself as he spoke.
+
+"But why don't you make us understand? I could never tell about Mr.
+Pynsent why he should like to be there so much. He is not a clever
+man----"
+
+"He certainly is not a genius, Pynsent," said Pen.
+
+"Lady Diana says that he attends Committees all day; that then again he
+is at the House all night; that he always votes as he is told; that he
+never speaks; that he will never get on beyond a subordinate place; and
+as his grandmother tells him, he is choked with red-tape. Are you going
+to follow the same career; Arthur? What is there in it so brilliant that
+you should be so eager for it? I would rather that you should stop at
+home, and write books--good books, kind books, with gentle kind thoughts,
+such as you have, dear Arthur, and such as might do people good to read.
+And if you do not win fame, what then? You own it is vanity, and you can
+live very happily without it. I must not pretend to advise; but I take
+you at your own word about the world; and as you own it is wicked, and
+that it tires you, ask you why you don't leave it?"
+
+"And what would you have me do?" asked Arthur.
+
+"I would have you bring your wife to Fairoaks to live there, and study,
+and do good round about you. I would like to see your own children
+playing on the lawn, Arthur, and that we might pray in our mother's
+church again once more, dear brother. If the world is a temptation, are
+we not told to pray that we may not be led into it?"
+
+"Do you think Blanche would make a good wife for a petty country
+gentleman? Do you think I should become the character very well, Laura?"
+Pen asked. "Remember temptation walks about the hedgerows as well as the
+city streets: and idleness is the greatest tempter of all."
+
+"What does--does Mr. Warrington say?" said Laura, as a blush mounted up
+to her cheek, and of which Pen saw the fervour, though Laura's veil fell
+over her face to hide it.
+
+Pen rode on by Laura's side silently for a while. George's name so
+mentioned brought back the past to him, and the thoughts which he had
+once had regarding George and Laura. Why should the recurrence of the
+thought agitate him, now that he knew the union was impossible? Why
+should he be curious to know if, during the months of their intimacy,
+Laura had felt a regard for Warrington? From that day until the present
+time George had never alluded to his story, and Arthur remembered now
+that since then George had scarcely ever mentioned Laura's name.
+
+At last he cane close to her. "Tell me something, Laura," he said.
+
+She put back her veil and looked at him. "What is it, Arthur?" she asked
+--though from the tremor of her voice she guessed very well.
+
+"Tell me--but for George's misfortune--I never knew him speak of it
+before or since that day--would you--would you have given him--what you
+refused me?"
+
+"Yes, Pen," she said, bursting into tears,
+
+"He deserved you better than I did," poor Arthur groaned forth, with an
+indescribable pang at his heart. "I am but a selfish wretch, and George
+is better, nobler, truer, than I am. God bless him!"
+
+"Yes, Pen," said Laura, reaching out her hand to her cousin, and he put
+his arm round her, and for a moment she sobbed on his shoulder.
+
+The gentle girl had had her secret, and told it. In the widow's last
+journey from Fairoaks, when hastening with her mother to Arthur's
+sick-bed, Laura had made a different confession; and it was only when
+Warrington told his own story, and described the hopeless condition of
+his life, that she discovered how much her feelings had changed, and with
+what tender sympathy, with what great respect, delight, and admiration
+she had grown to regard her cousin's friend. Until she knew that some
+plans she might have dreamed of were impossible, and that Warrington,
+reading in her heart, perhaps, had told his melancholy story to warn her,
+she had not asked herself whether it was possible that her affections
+could change; and had been shocked and seared by the discovery of the
+truth. How should she have told it to Helen, and confessed her shame?
+Poor Laura felt guilty before her friend, with the secret which she dared
+not confide to her; felt as if she had been ungrateful for Helen's love
+and regard; felt as if she had been wickedly faithless to Pen in
+withdrawing that love from him which he did not even care to accept;
+humbled even and repentant before Warrington, lest she should have
+encouraged him by undue sympathy, or shown the preference which she began
+to feel.
+
+The catastrophe which broke up Laura's home, and the grief and anguish
+which she felt for her mother's death, gave her little leisure for
+thoughts more selfish; and by the time she rallied from that grief the
+minor one was also almost cured. It was but for a moment that she had
+indulged a hope about Warrington. Her admiration and respect for him
+remained as strong as ever. But the tender feeling with which she knew
+she had regarded him, was schooled into such calmness, that it may be
+said to have been dead and passed away. The pang which it left behind was
+one of humility and remorse. "Oh, how wicked and proud I was about
+Arthur," she thought, "how self-confident and unforgiving! I never
+forgave from my heart this poor girl, who was fond of him, or him for
+encouraging her love; and I have been more guilty than she, poor, little,
+artless creature! I, professing to love one man, could listen to another
+only too eagerly; and would not pardon the change of feelings in Arthur,
+whilst I myself was changing and unfaithful:" And so humiliating herself,
+and acknowledging her weakness, the poor girl sought for strength and
+refuge in the manner in which she had been accustomed to look for them.
+
+She had done no wrong: but there are some folks who suffer for a fault
+ever so trifling as much as others whose stout consciences can walk under
+crimes of almost any weight; and poor Laura chose to fancy that she had
+acted in this delicate juncture of her life as a very great criminal. She
+determined that she had done Pen a great injury by withdrawing that love
+which, privately in her mother's hearing, she had bestowed upon him; that
+she had been ungrateful to her dead benefactress by ever allowing herself
+to think of another or of violating her promise; and that, considering
+her own enormous crimes, she ought to be very gentle in judging those of
+others, whose temptations were much greater, very likely, and whose
+motives she could not understand.
+
+A year back Laura would have been indignant at the idea that Arthur
+should marry Blanche: and her high spirit would have risen, as she
+thought that from worldly motives he should stoop to one so unworthy. Now
+when the news was brought to her of such a chance (the intelligence was
+given to her by old Lady Rockminster, whose speeches were as direct and
+rapid as a slap on the face), the humbled girl winced a little at the
+blow, but bore it meekly, and with a desperate acquiescence. "He has a
+right to marry, he knows a great deal more of the world than I do," she
+argued with herself. "Blanche may not be so light-minded as she seemed,
+and who am I to be her judge? I daresay it is very good that Arthur
+should go into Parliament and distinguish himself, and my duty is to do
+everything that lies in my power to aid him and Blanche, and to make his
+home happy. I daresay I shall live with them. If I am godmother to one of
+their children, I will leave her my three thousand pounds!" And forthwith
+she began to think what she could give Blanche out of her small
+treasures, and how best to conciliate her affection. She wrote her
+forthwith a kind letter, in which, of course, no mention was made of the
+plans in contemplation, but in which Laura recalled old times, and spoke
+her goodwill, and in reply to this she received an eager answer from
+Blanche: in which not a word about marriage was said, to be sure, but Mr.
+Pendennis was mentioned two or three times in the letter, and they were
+to be henceforth, dearest Laura, and dearest Blanche, and loving sisters,
+and so forth.
+
+When Pen and Laura reached home, after Laura's confession (Pen's noble
+acknowledgment of his own inferiority and generous expression of love for
+Warrington, causing the girl's heart to throb, and rendering doubly keen
+those tears which she sobbed on his shoulder), a little slim letter was
+awaiting Miss Bell in the hall, which she trembled rather guiltily as she
+unsealed, and which Pen blushed as he recognised: for he saw instantly
+that it was from Blanche.
+
+Laura opened it hastily, and cast her eyes quickly over it, as Pen kept
+his fixed on her, blushing.
+
+"She dates from London," Laura said. "She has been with old Bonner, Lady
+Clavering's maid. Bonner is going to marry Lightfoot the butler. Where do
+you think Blanche has been?" she cried out eagerly.
+
+"To Paris, to Scotland, to the Casino?"
+
+"To Shepherd's Inn, to see Fanny; but Fanny wasn't there, and Blanche is
+going to leave a present for her. Isn't it kind of her and thoughtful?"
+And she handed the letter to Pen, who read--
+
+"'I saw Madame Mere, who was scrubbing the room, and looked at me with
+very scrubby looks; but la belle Fanny was not au logis; and as I heard
+that she was in Captain Strong's apartments, Bonner and I mounted au
+troisieme to see this famous beauty. Another disappointment--only the
+Chevalier Strong and a friend of his in the room: so we came away after
+all without seeing the enchanting Fanny.
+
+"'Je t'envoie mille et mille baisers. When will that horrid canvassing be
+over? Sleeves are worn, etc. etc. etc.'"
+
+After dinner the doctor was reading the Times. "A young gentleman I
+attended when he was here some eight or nine years ago, has come into a
+fine fortune," the doctor said. "I see here announced the death of John
+Henry Foker, Esq., of Logwood Hall, at Pau, in the Pyrenees, on the 15th
+ult."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVIII
+
+In which the Major is bidden to Stand and Deliver
+
+
+Any gentleman who has frequented the Wheel of Fortune public-house, where
+it may be remembered that Mr. James Morgan's Club was held, and where Sir
+Francis Clavering had an interview with Major Pendennis, is aware that
+there are three rooms for guests upon the ground floor, besides the bar
+where the landlady sits. One is a parlour frequented by the public at
+large; to another room gentlemen in livery resort; and the third
+apartment, on the door of which "Private" is painted, is that hired by
+the Club of "The Confidentials," of which Messrs Morgan and Lightfoot
+were members.
+
+The noiseless Morgan had listened to the conversation between Strong and
+Major Pendennis at the latter's own lodgings, and had carried away from
+it matter for much private speculation; and a desire of knowledge had led
+him to follow his master when the Major came to the Wheel of Fortune, and
+to take his place quietly in the Confidential room, whilst Pendennis and
+Clavering had their discourse in the parlour. There was a particular
+corner in the Confidential room from which you could hear almost all that
+passed in the next apartment; and as the conversation between the two
+gentlemen there was rather angry, and carried on in a high key, Morgan
+had the benefit of overhearing almost the whole of it and what he heard,
+strengthened the conclusions which his mind had previously formed.
+
+"He knew Altamont at once, did he, when he saw him in Sydney? Clavering
+ain't no more married to my Lady than I am! Altamont's the man:
+Altamont's a convict; young Harthur comes into Parlyment, and the Gov'nor
+promises not to split. By Jove, what a sly old rogue it is, that old
+Gov'nor! No wonder he's anxious to make the match between Blanche and
+Harthur: why, she'll have a hundred thousand if she's a penny, and bring
+her man a seat in Parlyment into the bargain." Nobody saw, but a
+physiognomist would have liked to behold, the expression of Mr. Morgan's
+countenance, when this astounding intelligence was made clear to him.
+"But for my hage, and the confounded preudices of society," he said,
+surveying himself in the glass, "dammy, James Morgan, you might marry her
+yourself." But if he could not marry Miss Blanche and her fortune, Morgan
+thought he could mend his own by the possession of this information, and
+that it might be productive of benefit to him from very many sources. Of
+all the persons whom the secret affected, the greater number would not
+like to have it known. For instance, Sir Francis Clavering, whose fortune
+it involved, would wish to keep it quiet; Colonel Altamont, whose neck it
+implicated, would naturally be desirous to hush it: and that young
+hupstart beast, Mr. Harthur, who was for getting' into Parlyment on the
+strenth of it, and was as proud as if he was a duke with half a millium a
+year (such, we grieve to say, was Morgan's opinion of his employer's
+nephew), would pay anythink sooner than let the world know that he was
+married to a convick's daughter, and had got his seat in Parlyment by
+trafficking with this secret. As for Lady C., Morgan thought, if she's
+tired of Clavering, and wants to get rid of him, she'll pay: if she's
+frightened about her son, and fond of the little beggar, she'll pay all
+the same: and Miss Blanche will certainly come down handsome to the man
+who will put her into her rights, which she was unjustly defrauded of
+them, and no mistake. "Dammy," concluded the valet, reflecting upon this
+wonderful hand which luck had given him to play, "with such cards as
+these, James Morgan, you are a made man. It may be a reg'lar enewity to
+me. Every one of 'em must susscribe. And with what I've made already, I
+may cut business, give my old Gov'nor warning, turn gentleman, and have a
+servant of my own, begad." Entertaining himself with calculations such as
+these, that were not a little likely to perturb a man's spirit, Mr.
+Morgan showed a very great degree of self-command by appearing and being
+calm, and by not allowing his future prospects in any way to interfere
+with his present duties.
+
+One of the persons whom the story chiefly concerned, Colonel Altamont,
+was absent from London when Morgan was thus made acquainted with his
+history. The valet knew of Sir Francis Clavering's Shepherd's Inn haunt,
+and walked thither an hour or two after the Baronet and Pendennis had had
+their conversation together. But that bird was flown; Colonel Altamont
+had received his Derby winnings, and was gone to the Continent. The fact
+of his absence was exceedingly vexatious to Mr. Morgan. "He'll drop all
+that money at the gambling-shops on the Rhind," thought Morgan, "and I
+might have had a good bit of it. It's confounded annoying to think he's
+gone and couldn't have waited a few days longer." Hope, triumphant or
+deferred, ambition or disappointment, victory or patient ambush, Morgan
+bore all alike, with similar equable countenance. Until the proper day
+came, the Major's boots were varnished and his hair was curled, his early
+cup of tea was brought to his bedside, his oaths, rebukes, and senile
+satire borne, with silent, obsequious fidelity. Who would think, to see
+him waiting upon his master, packing and shouldering his trunks, and
+occasionally assisting at table, at the country-houses where he might be
+staying, that Morgan was richer than his employer, and knew his secrets
+and other people's? In the profession Mr. Morgan was greatly respected
+and admired, and his reputation for wealth and wisdom got him much renown
+at most supper-tables: the younger gentlemen voted him stoopid, a feller
+of no idears, and a fogey, in a word: but not one of them would not say
+amen to the heartfelt prayer which some of the most serious-minded among
+the gentlemen uttered, "When I die may I cut up as well as Morgan
+Pendennis!"
+
+As became a man of fashion, Major Pendennis spent the autumn passing from
+house to house of such country friends as were at home to receive him;
+and if the Duke happened to be abroad, the Marquis in Scotland,
+condescending to sojourn with Sir John or the plain Squire. To say the
+truth, the old gentleman's reputation was somewhat on the wane: many of
+the men of his time had died out, and the occupants of their halls and
+the present wearers of their titles knew not Major Pendennis: and little
+cared for his traditions of "the wild Prince and Poins," and of the
+heroes of fashion passed away. It must have struck the good man with
+melancholy as he walked by many a London door, to think how seldom it was
+now opened for him, and how often he used to knock at it--to what
+banquets and welcome he used to pass through it--a score of years back.
+He began to own that he was no longer of the present age, and dimly to
+apprehend that the young men laughed at him. Such melancholy musings must
+come across many a Pall Mall philosopher. The men, thinks he, are not
+such as they used to be in his time: the old grand manner and courtly
+grace of life are gone: what is Castlewood House and the present
+Castlewood, compared to the magnificence of the old mansion and owner?
+The late lord came to London with four postchaises and sixteen horses:
+all the North Road hurried out to look at his cavalcade: the people in
+London streets even stopped as his procession passed them. The present
+lord travels with five bagmen in a railway carriage, and sneaks away from
+the station, smoking a cigar in a brougham. The late lord in autumn
+filled Castlewood with company, who drank claret till midnight: the
+present man buries himself in a hut on a Scotch mountain, and passes
+November in two or three closets in an entresol at Paris, where his
+amusements are a dinner at a cafe and a box at a little theatre. What a
+contrast there is between his Lady Lorraine, the Regent's Lady Lorraine,
+and her little ladyship of the present era! He figures to himself the
+first, beautiful, gorgeous, magnificent in diamonds and velvets, daring
+in rouge, the wits of the world (the old wits, the old polished
+gentlemen--not the canaille of to-day with their language of the
+cabstand, and their coats smelling of smoke) bowing at her feet; and then
+thinks of to-day's Lady Lorraine--a little woman in a black silk gown,
+like a governess, who talks astronomy, and labouring classes, and
+emigration, and the deuce knows what, and lurks to church at eight
+o'clock in the morning. Abbots-Lorraine, that used to be the noblest
+house in the county, is turned into a monastery--a regular La Trappe.
+They don't drink two glasses of wine after dinner, and every other man at
+table is a country curate, with a white neckcloth, whose talk is about
+Polly Higson's progress at school, or widow Watkins's lumbago. "And the
+other young men, those lounging guardsmen and great lazy dandies--
+sprawling over sofas and billiard-tables, and stealing off to smoke pipes
+in each other's bedrooms, caring for nothing, reverencing nothing, not
+even an old gentleman who has known their fathers and their betters, not
+even a pretty woman--what a difference there is between these men, who
+poison the very turnips and stubble-fields with their tobacco, and the
+gentlemen of our time!" thinks the Major; "the breed is gone--there's no
+use for 'em; they're replaced by a parcel of damned cotton--spinners and
+utilitarians, and young sprigs of parsons with their hair combed down
+their barks. I'm getting old: they're getting past me: they laugh at us
+old boys," thought old Pendennis. And he was not far wrong; the times and
+manners which he admired were pretty nearly gone--the gay young men
+"larked" him irreverently, whilst the serious youth had a grave pity and
+wonder at him; which would have been even more painful to bear, had the
+old gentleman been aware of its extent. But he was rather simple: his
+examination of moral questions had never been very deep; it had never
+struck him perhaps, until very lately, that he was otherwise than a most
+respectable and rather fortunate man. Is there no old age but his without
+reverence? Did youthful folly never jeer at other bald pates? For the
+past two or three years, he had begun to perceive that his day was
+well-nigh over, and that the men of the new time had begun to reign.
+
+After a rather unsuccessful autumn season, then, during which he was
+faithfully followed by Mr. Morgan, his nephew Arthur being engaged, as we
+have seen, at Clavering, it happened that Major Pendennis came back for a
+while to London, at the dismal end of October, when the fogs and the
+lawyers come to town. Who has not looked with interest at those loaded
+cabs, piled boxes, and crowded children, rattling through the streets on
+the dun October evenings; stopping at the dark houses, where they
+discharge nurse and infant, girls, matron and father, whose holidays are
+over? Yesterday it was France and sunshine, or Broadstairs and liberty;
+to-day comes work and a yellow fog; and, ye gods! what a heap of bills
+there lies in Master's study! And the clerk has brought the lawyer's
+papers from Chambers; and in half an hour the literary man knows that the
+printer's boy will be in the passage; and Mr. Smith with that little
+account (that particular little account) has called presentient of your
+arrival, and has left word that he will call to-morrow morning at ten.
+Who amongst us has not said Good-bye to his holiday; returned to dun
+London, and his fate; surveyed his labours and liabilities laid out
+before him, and been aware of that inevitable little account to settle?
+Smith and his little account in the morning, symbolise duty, difficulty,
+struggle, which you will meet, let us hope, friend, with a manly and
+honest heart.--And you think of him, as the children are slumbering once
+more in their own beds, and the watchful housewife tenderly pretends to
+sleep.
+
+Old Pendennis had no special labours or bills to encounter on the morrow,
+as he had no affection at home to soothe him. He had always money in his
+desk sufficient for his wants; and being by nature and habit tolerably
+indifferent to the wants of other people, these latter were not likely to
+disturb him. But a gentleman may be out of temper though he does not owe
+a shilling and though he may be ever so selfish, he must occasionally
+feel dispirited and lonely. He had had two or three twinges of gout in
+the country-house where he had been staying: the birds were wild and shy,
+and the walking over the ploughed fields had fatigued him deucedly: the
+young men had laughed at him, and he had been peevish at table once or
+twice: he had not been able to get his whist of an evening: and, in fine,
+was glad to come away. In all his dealings with Morgan, his valet, he had
+been exceedingly sulky and discontented. He had sworn at him and abused
+him for many days past. He had scalded his mouth with bad soup at
+Swindon. He had left his umbrella in the railroad carriage: at which
+piece of forgetfulness, he was in such a rage, that he cursed Morgan more
+freely than ever. Both, the chimneys smoked furiously in his lodgings;
+and when he caused the windows to be flung open, he swore so
+acrimoniously, that Morgan was inclined to fling him out of window too,
+through that opened casement. The valet swore after his master, as
+Pendennis went down the street on his way to the Club.
+
+Bays's was not at all pleasant. The house had been new painted, and smelt
+of varnish and turpentine, and a large streak of white paint inflicted
+itself on the back of the old boy's fur-collared surtout. The dinner was
+not good: and the three most odious men in all London--old Hawkshaw,
+whose cough and accompaniments are fit to make any man uncomfortable; old
+Colonel Gripley, who seizes on all the newspapers; and that irreclaimable
+old bore Jawkins, who would come and dine at the next table to Pendennis,
+and describe to him every inn-bill which he had paid in his foreign tour:
+each and all of these disagreeable personages and incidents had
+contributed to make Major Pendennis miserable; and the Club waiter trod
+on his toe as he brought him his coffee. Never alone appear the
+Immortals. The Furies always hunt in company: they pursued Pendennis from
+home to the Club, and from the Club home.
+
+Whilst the Major was absent from his lodgings, Morgan had been seated in
+the landlady's parlour, drinking freely of hot brandy-and-water, and
+pouring out on Mrs. Brixham some of the abuse which he had received from
+his master upstairs. Mrs. Brixham was Mr. Morgan's slave. He was his
+landlady's landlord. He had bought the lease of the house which she
+rented; he had got her name and her son's to acceptances, and a bill of
+sale which made him master of the luckless widow's furniture. The young
+Brixham was a clerk in an insurance office, and Morgan could put him into
+what he called quod any day. Mrs. Brixham was a clergyman's widow, and
+Mr. Morgan, after performing his duties on the first floor, had a
+pleasure in making the old lady fetch him his bootjack and his slippers.
+She was his slave. The little black profiles of her son and daughter; the
+very picture of Tiddlecot Church, where she was married, and her poor
+dear Brixham lived and died, was now Morgan's property, as it hung there
+over the mantelpiece of his back-parlour. Morgan sate in the widow's
+back-room, in the ex-curate's old horse-hair study-chair, making Mrs.
+Brixham bring supper for him, and fill his glass again and again.
+
+The liquor was bought with the poor woman's own coin, and hence Morgan
+indulged in it only the more freely; and he had eaten his supper and was
+drinking a third tumbler, when old Pendennis returned from the Club, and
+went upstairs to his rooms. Mr. Morgan swore very savagely at him and his
+bell, when he heard the latter, and finished his tumbler of brandy before
+he went up to answer the summons.
+
+He received the abuse consequent on this delay in silence, nor did the
+Major condescend to read in the flushed face and glaring eyes of the man,
+the anger under which he was labouring. The old gentleman's foot-bath was
+at the fire; his gown and slippers awaiting him there. Morgan knelt down
+to take his boots off with due subordination: and as the Major abused him
+from above, kept up a growl of maledictions below at his feet. Thus, when
+Pendennis was crying "Confound you, sir, mind that strap--curse you,
+don't wrench my foot off," Morgan sotto voce below was expressing a wish
+to strangle him, drown him, and punch his head off.
+
+The boots removed, it became necessary to divest Mr. Pendennis of his
+coat: and for this purpose the valet had necessarily to approach very
+near to his employer; so near that Pendennis could not but perceive what
+Mr. Morgan's late occupation had been; to which he adverted in that
+simple and forcible phraseology which men are sometimes in the habit of
+using to their domestics; informing Morgan that he was a drunken beast,
+and that he smelt of brandy.
+
+At this the man broke out, losing patience, and flinging up all
+subordination, "I'm drunk, am I? I'm a beast, am I? I'm d----d, am I? you
+infernal old miscreant. Shall I wring your old head off, and drownd yer
+in that pail of water? Do you think I'm a-goin' to bear your confounded
+old harrogance, you old Wigsby! Chatter your old hivories at me, do you,
+you grinning old baboon! Come on, if you are a man, and can stand to a
+man. Ha! you coward, knives, knives!"
+
+"If you advance a step, I'll send it into you," said the Major, seizing
+up a knife that was on the table near him. "Go downstairs, you drunken
+brute, and leave the house; send for your book and your wages in the
+morning, and never let me see your insolent face again. This d----d
+impertinence of yours has been growing for some months past. You have
+been growing too rich. You are not fit for service. Get out of it, and
+out of the house."
+
+"And where would you wish me to go, pray, out of the 'ouse?" asked the
+man, "and won't it be equal convenient to-morrow mornin'?--tootyfay mame
+shose, sivvaplay, munseer?"
+
+"Silence, you beast, and go!" cried out the Major.
+
+Morgan began to laugh, with rather a sinister laugh. "Look yere,
+Pendennis," he said, seating himself; "since I've been in this room
+you've called me beast, brute, dog: and d----d me, haven't you? How do
+you suppose one man likes that sort of talk from another? How many years
+have I waited on you, and how many damns and cusses have you given me,
+along with my wages? Do you think a man's a dog, that you can talk to him
+in this way? If I choose to drink a little, why shouldn't I? I've seen
+many a gentleman drunk form'ly, and peraps have the abit from them. I
+ain't a-goin' to leave this house, old feller, and shall I tell you why?
+The house is my house, every stick of furnitur' in it is mine, excep'
+your old traps, and your shower-bath, and your wigbox. I've bought the
+place, I tell you, with my own industry and perseverance. I can show a
+hundred pound, where you can show a fifty, or your damned supersellious
+nephew either. I've served you honourable, done everythink for you these
+dozen years, and I'm a dog, am I? I'm a beast, am I? That's the language
+for gentlemen, not for our rank. But I'll bear it no more. I throw up
+your service; I'm tired on it; I've combed your old wig and buckled your
+old girths and waistbands long enough, I tell you. Don't look savage at
+me, I'm sitting in my own chair, in my own room, a-telling the truth to
+you. I'll be your beast, and your brute, and your dog, no more, Major
+Pendennis Alf Pay."
+
+The fury of the old gentleman, met by the servant's abrupt revolt, had
+been shocked and cooled by the concussion, as much as if a sudden
+shower-bath or a pail of cold water had been flung upon him. That effect
+produced, and his anger calmed, Morgan's speech had interested him, and
+he rather respected his adversary, and his courage in facing him; as of
+old days, in the fencing-room, he would have admired the opponent who hit
+him.
+
+"You are no longer my servant," the Major said, "and the house may be
+yours; but the lodgings are mine, and you will have the goodness to leave
+them. To-morrow morning, when we have settled our accounts, I shall
+remove into other quarters. In the meantime, I desire to go to bed, and
+have not the slightest wish for your further company."
+
+"We'll have a settlement, don't you be afraid," Morgan said, getting up
+from his chair. "I ain't done with you yet; nor with your family, nor
+with the Clavering family, Major Pendennis; and that you shall know."
+
+"Have the goodness to leave the room, sir--I'm tired," said the Major.
+
+"Hah! you'll be more tired of me afore you've done," answered the man,
+with a sneer, and walked out of the room; leaving the Major to compose
+himself as best he might, after the agitation of this extraordinary
+scene.
+
+He sate and mused by his fireside over the past events, and the
+confounded impudence and ingratitude of servants; and thought how he
+should get a new man: how devilish unpleasant it was for a man of his
+age, and with his habits, to part with a fellow to whom he had been
+accustomed: how Morgan had a receipt for boot-varnish, which was
+incomparably better and more comfortable to the feet than any he had ever
+tried: how very well he made mutton-broth, and tended him when he was
+unwell. "Gad, it's a hard thing to lose a fellow of that sort: but he
+must go," thought the Major. "He has grown rich, and impudent since he
+has grown rich. He was horribly tipsy and abusive to-night. We must part,
+and I must go out of the lodgings. Dammy, I like the lodgings; I'm used
+to 'em. It's very unpleasant, at my time of life, to change my quarters."
+And so on, mused the old gentleman. The shower-bath had done him good:
+the testiness was gone: the loss of the umbrella, the smell of paint at
+the Club, were forgotten under the superior excitement. "Confound the
+insolent villain!" thought the old gentleman. "He understood my wants to
+a nicety: he was the best servant in England." He thought about his
+servant as a man thinks of a horse that has carried him long and well,
+and that has come down with him, and is safe no longer. How the deuce to
+replace him? Where can he get such another animal?
+
+In these melancholy cogitations the Major, who had donned his own
+dressing-gown and replaced his head of hair (a little grey had been
+introduced into the coiffure of late by Mr. Truefitt, which had given the
+Major's head the most artless and respectable appearance); in these
+cogitations, we say, the Major, who had taken off his wig and put on his
+night-handkerchief, sate absorbed by the fireside, when a feeble knock
+came at his door, which was presently opened by the landlady of the
+lodgings.
+
+"God bless my soul, Mrs. Brixham!" cried out the Major, startled that a
+lady should behold him in the simple appareil of his night-toilet. "It--
+it's very late, Mrs. Brixham."
+
+"I wish I might speak to you, sir," said the landlady, very piteously.
+
+"About Morgan, I suppose? He has cooled himself at the pump. Can't take
+him back, Mrs. Brixham. Impossible. I'd determined to part with him
+before, when I heard of his dealings in the discount business--I suppose
+you've heard of them, Mrs. Brixham? My servant's a capitalist, begad."
+
+"Oh, sir," said Mrs. Brixham, "I know it to my cost. I borrowed from him
+a little money five years ago; and though I have paid him many times
+over, I am entirely in his power. I am ruined by him, sir. Everything I
+had is his. He's a dreadful man."
+
+"Eh, Mrs. Brixham? tout pis--dev'lish sorry for you, and that I must quit
+your house after lodging here so long: there's no help for it. I must
+go."
+
+"He says we must all go, sir," sobbed out the luckless widow. He came
+downstairs from you just now--he had been drinking, and it always makes
+him very wicked--and he said that you had insulted him, sir, and treated
+him like a dog, and spoken to him unkindly; and he swore he would be
+revenged, and--and I owe him a hundred and twenty pounds, sir--and he has
+a bill of sale of all my furniture--and says he will turn me out of my
+house, and send my poor George to prison. He has been the ruin of my
+family, that man."
+
+"Dev'lish sorry, Mrs. Brixham; pray take a chair. What can I do?"
+
+"Could you not intercede with him for us? George will give half his
+allowance; my daughter can send something. If you will but stay on, sir,
+and pay a quarter's rent in advance----"
+
+"My good madam, I would as soon give you a quarter in advance as not, if
+I were going to stay in the lodgings. But I can't; and I can't afford to
+fling away twenty pounds, my good madam. I'm a poor half-pay officer, and
+want every shilling I have, begad. As far as a few pounds goes--say five
+pounds--I don't say--and shall be most happy, and that sort of thing: and
+I'll give it you in the morning with pleasure: but--but it's getting
+late, and I have made a railroad journey."
+
+"God's will be done, sir," said the poor woman, drying her tears. I must
+bear my fate."
+
+"And a dev'lish hard one it is, and most sincerely I pity you, Mrs.
+Brixham. I--I'll say ten pounds, if you will permit me. Good night."
+
+"Mr. Morgan, sir, when he came downstairs, and when--when I besought him
+to have pity on me, and told him he had been the ruin of my family, said
+something which I did not well understand--that he would ruin every
+family in the house--that he knew something would bring you down too--and
+that you should pay him for your--your insolence to him. I--I must own to
+you, that I went down on my knees to him, sir; and he said, with a
+dreadful oath against you, that he would have you on your knees."
+
+"Me?--by Gad, that is too pleasant! Where is the confounded fellow?"
+
+"He went away, sir. He said he should see you in the morning. Oh, pray
+try and pacify him, and save me and my poor boy." And the widow went away
+with this prayer, to pass her night as she might, and look for the
+dreadful morrow.
+
+The last words about himself excited Major Pendennis so much, that his
+compassion for Mrs. Brixham's misfortunes was quite forgotten in the
+consideration of his own case.
+
+"Me on my knees?" thought he, as he got into bed: "confound his
+impudence! Who ever saw me on my knees? What the devil does the fellow
+know? Gad, I've not had an affair these twenty years. I defy him." And
+the old compaigner turned round and slept pretty sound, being rather
+excited and amused by the events of the day--the last day in Bury Street,
+he was determined it should be. "For it's impossible to stay on with a
+valet over me, and a bankrupt landlady. What good can I do this poor
+devil of a woman? I'll give her twenty pound--there's Warrington's twenty
+pound, which he has just paid--but what's the use? She'll want more, and
+more, and more, and that cormorant Morgan will swallow all. No, dammy, I
+can't afford to know poor people; and to-morrow I'll say Good-bye--to
+Mrs. Brixham and Mr. Morgan."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIX
+
+In which the Major neither yields his Money nor his Life
+
+
+Early next morning Pendennis's shutters were opened by Morgan, who
+appeared as usual, with a face perfectly grave and respectful, bearing
+with him the old gentleman's clothes, cans of water, and elaborate toilet
+requisites.
+
+"It's you, is it?" said the old fellow from his bed. "I shan't take you
+back again, you understand."
+
+"I ave not the least wish to be took back agin, Major Pendennis," Mr.
+Morgan said, with grave dignity, "nor to serve you nor hany man. But as I
+wish you to be comftable as long as you stay in my house, I came up to do
+what's nessary." And once more, and for the last time, Mr. James Morgan
+laid out the silver dressing-case, and strapped the shining razor.
+
+These offices concluded, he addressed himself to the Major with an
+indescribable solemnity, and said: "Thinkin' that you would most likely
+be in want of a respectable pusson, until you suited yourself, I spoke to
+a young man last night, who is 'ere."
+
+"Indeed," said the warrior in the tent-bed.
+
+"He ave lived in the fust famlies, and I can wouch for his
+respectability."
+
+"You are monstrous polite," grinned the old Major. And the truth is, that
+after the occurrences of the previous evening, Morgan had gone out to his
+own Club at the Wheel of Fortune, and there finding Frosch, a courier and
+valet just returned from a foreign tour with young Lord Cubley, and for
+the present disposable, had represented to Mr. Frosch, that he, Morgan,
+had "a devil of a blow hup with his own Gov'nor, and was goin' to retire
+from the business haltogether, and that if Frosch wanted a tempory job,
+he might probbly have it by applying in Bury Street."
+
+"You are very polite," said the Major, "and your recommendation, I am
+sure, will have every weight."
+
+Morgan blushed; he felt his master was 'a-chaffin' of him.' "The man have
+awaited on you before, sir," he said with great dignity. "Lord De la
+Pole, sir, gave him to his nephew young Lord Cubley, and he have been
+with him on his foring tour, and not wishing to go to Fitzurse Castle,
+which Frosch's chest is delicate, and he cannot bear the cold in
+Scotland, he is free to serve you or not, as you choose."
+
+"I repeat, sir, that you are exceedingly polite," said the Major. Come
+in, Frosch--you will do very well--Mr. Morgan, will you have the great
+kindness to----"
+
+"I shall show him what is nessary, sir, and what is customry for you to
+wish to ave done. Will you please to take breakfast 'ere or at the Club,
+Major Pendennis?"
+
+"With your kind permission, I will breakfast here, and afterwards we will
+make our little arrangements."
+
+"If you please, sir."
+
+"Will you now oblige me by leaving the room?"
+
+Morgan withdrew; the excessive politeness of his ex-employer made him
+almost as angry as the Major's bitterest words. And whilst the old
+gentleman is making his mysterious toilet, we will also modestly retire.
+
+After breakfast, Major Pendennis and his new aide-de-camp occupied
+themselves in preparing for their departure. The establishment of the old
+bachelor was not very complicated. He encumbered himself with no useless
+wardrobe. A bible (his mother's), a road book, Pen's novel (calf
+elegant), and the Duke of Wellington's Despatches, with a few prints,
+maps, and portraits of that illustrious general, and of various
+sovereigns and consorts of this country, and of the General under whom
+Major Pendennis had served in India, formed his literary and artistical
+collection: he was always ready to march at a few hours' notice, and the
+cases in which he had brought his property into his lodgings some fifteen
+years before, were still in the lofts amply sufficient to receive all his
+goods. These, the young woman who did the work of the house, and who was
+known by the name of Betty to her mistress, and of "Slavey" to Mr.
+Morgan, brought down from their resting-place, and obediently dusted and
+cleaned under the eyes of the terrible Morgan. His demeanour was guarded
+and solemn; he had spoken no word as yet to Mrs. Brixham respecting his
+threats of the past night, but he looked as if he would execute them, and
+the poor widow tremblingly awaited her fate.
+
+Old Pendennis, armed with his cane, superintended the package of his
+goods and chattels, under the hands of Mr. Frosch, and the Slavey burned
+such of his papers as he did not care to keep; flung open doors and
+closets until they were all empty; and now all boxes and chests were
+closed, except his desk, which was ready to receive the final accounts of
+Mr. Morgan.
+
+That individual now made his appearance, and brought his books. "As I
+wish to speak to you in privick, peraps you will ave the kindness to
+request Frosch to step downstairs," he said, on entering.
+
+"Bring a couple of cabs, Frosch, if you please--and wait downstairs until
+I ring for you," said the Major. Morgan saw Frosch downstairs, watched
+him go along the street upon his errand, and produced his books and
+accounts, which were simple and very easily settled.
+
+"And now, sir," said he, having pocketed the cheque which his ex-employer
+gave him, and signed his name to his book with a flourish, "and now that
+accounts is closed between us, sir," he said, "I porpose to speak to you
+as one man to another"--(Morgan liked the sound of his own voice; and, as
+an individual, indulged in public speaking whenever he could get an
+opportunity, at the Club, or the housekeeper's room)--"and I must tell
+you, that I'm in possession of certing infamation."
+
+"And may I inquire of what nature, pray?" asked the Major.
+
+"It's valuble information, Major Pendennis, as you know very well. I know
+of a marriage as is no marriage--of a honourable Baronet as is no more
+married than I am; and which his wife is married to somebody else, as you
+know too, sir."
+
+Pendennis at once understood all. "Ha! this accounts for your behaviour.
+You have been listening at the door, sir, I suppose," said the Major,
+looking very haughty; "I forgot to look at the keyhole when I went to
+that public-house, or I might have suspected what sort of a person was
+behind it."
+
+"I may have my schemes as you may have yours, I suppose," answered
+Morgan. "I may get my information, and I may act on that information, and
+I may find that information valuble as anybody else may. A poor servant
+may have a bit of luck as well as a gentleman, mayn't he? Don't you be
+putting on your aughty looks, sir, and comin' the aristocrat over me.
+That's all gammon with me. I'm an Englishman, I am, and as good as you."
+
+"To what the devil does this tend, sir? and how does the secret which you
+have surprised concern me, I should like to know?" asked Major Pendennis,
+with great majesty.
+
+"How does it concern me, indeed! how grand we are! How does it concern my
+nephew, I wonder? How does it concern my nephew's seat in Parlyment: and
+to subornation of bigamy? How does it concern that? What, are you to be
+the only man to have a secret, and to trade on it? Why shouldn't I go
+halves, Major Pendennis? I've found it out too. Look here! I ain't goin'
+to be unreasonable with you. Make it worth my while, and I'll keep the
+thing close. Let Mr. Arthur take his seat, and his rich wife, if you
+like; I don't want to marry her. But I will have my share, as sure as my
+name's James Morgan. And if I don't----"
+
+"And if you don't, sir--what?" Pendennis asked.
+
+"If I don't, I split, and tell all. I smash Clavering, and have him and
+his wife up for bigamy--so help me, I will! I smash young Hopeful's
+marriage, and I show up you and him as makin' use of this secret, in
+order to squeeze a seat in Parlyment out of Sir Francis, and a fortune
+out of his wife."
+
+"Mr. Pendennis knows no more of this business than the babe unborn, sir,"
+cried the Major, aghast. "No more than Lady Clavering, than Miss Amory
+does."
+
+"Tell that to the marines, Major," replied the valet; "that cock won't
+fight with me."
+
+"Do you doubt my word, you villain?"
+
+"No bad language. I don't care one twopence'a'p'ny whether your word's
+true or not. I tell you, I intend this to be a nice little annuity to me,
+Major: for I have every one of you; and I ain't such a fool as to let you
+go. I should say that you might make it five hundred a year to me among
+you, easy. Pay me down the first quarter now and I'm as mum as a mouse.
+Just give a note for one twenty-five. There's your cheque-book on your
+desk."
+
+"And there's this too, you villain," cried the old gentleman. In the
+desk to which the valet pointed was a little double-barrelled
+pistol, which had belonged to Pendennis's old patron; the Indian
+commander-in-chief, and which had accompanied him in many a campaign.
+"One more word, you scoundrel and I'll shoot you, like a mad dog. Stop--
+by Jove, I'll do it now. You'll assault me, will you? You'll strike at an
+old man, will you, you lying coward? Kneel down and say your prayers,
+sir, for by the Lord you shall die."
+
+The Major's face glared with rage at his adversary, who looked terrified
+before him for a moment, and at the next, with a shriek of "Murder!"
+sprang towards the open window, under which a policeman happened to be on
+his beat. "Murder! Police!" bellowed Mr. Morgan.
+
+To his surprise, Major Pendennis wheeled away the table and walked to the
+other window, which was also open. He beckoned the policeman. "Come up.
+here, policeman," he said, and then went and placed himself against the
+door.
+
+"You miserable sneak," he said to Morgan; "the pistol hasn't been loaded
+these fifteen years, as you would have known very well, if you had not
+been such a coward. That policeman is coming, and I will have him up, and
+have your trunks searched; I have reason to believe that you are a thief,
+sir. I know you are. I'll swear to the things."
+
+"You gave 'em to me--you gave 'em to me!" cried Morgan.
+
+The Major laughed. "We'll see," he said; and the guilty valet remembered
+some fine lawn-fronted shirts--a certain gold-headed cane--an
+opera-glass, which he had forgotten to bring down, and of which he had
+assumed the use along with certain articles of his master's clothes,
+which the old dandy neither wore nor asked for.
+
+Policeman X entered; followed by the seared Mrs. Brixham and her
+maid-of-all-work, who had been at the door and found some difficulty in
+closing it against the street amateurs, who wished to see the row. The
+Major began instantly to speak.
+
+"I have had occasion to discharge this drunken scoundrel," he said. "Both
+last night and this morning he insulted and assaulted me. I am an old man
+and took up a pistol. You see it is not loaded, and this coward cried out
+before he was hurt. I am glad you are come. I was charging him with
+taking my property, and desired to examine his trunks and his room."
+
+"The velvet cloak you ain't worn these three years, nor the weskits, and
+I thought I might take the shirts, and I--I take my hoath I intended to
+put back the hopera-glass," roared Morgan, writhing with rage and terror.
+
+"The man acknowledges that he is a thief," the Major said, calmly. "He
+has been in my service for years, and I have treated him with every
+kindness and confidence. We will go upstairs and examine his trunks."
+
+In those trunks Mr. Morgan had things which he would fain keep from
+public eyes. Mr. Morgan, the bill-discounter, gave goods as well as
+money to his customers. He provided young spendthrifts with snuff boxes
+and pins and jewels and pictures and cigars, and of a very doubtful
+quality those cigars and jewels and pictures were. Their display at a
+police-office, the discovery of his occult profession, and the exposure
+of the Major's property, which he had appropriated, indeed, rather than
+stolen,--would not have added to the reputation of Mr. Morgan. He looked
+a piteous image of terror and discomfiture.
+
+"He'll smash me, will he?" thought the Major. "I'll crush him now, and
+finish with him."
+
+But he paused. He looked at poor Mrs. Brixham's scared face; and he
+thought for a moment to himself that the man brought to bay and in prison
+might make disclosures which had best be kept secret, and that it was
+best not to deal too fiercely with a desperate man.
+
+"Stop," he said, "policeman. I'll speak with this man by himself."
+
+"Do you give Mr. Morgan in charge?" said the policeman.
+
+"I have brought no charge as yet," the Major said, with a significant
+look at his man.
+
+"Thank you, sir," whispered Morgan, very low.
+
+"Go outside the door, and wait there, policeman, if you please.--Now,
+Morgan, you have played one game with me, and you have not had the best
+of it, my good man. No, begad, you've not had the best of it, though you
+had the best hand; and you've got to pay, too, now, you scoundrel."
+
+"Yes, sir," said the man.
+
+"I've only found out, within the last week, the game which you have been
+driving, you villain. Young De Boots, of the Blues, recognised you as the
+man who came to barracks, and did business one-third in money, one-third
+in eau-de-Cologne, and one-third in French prints, you confounded demure
+old sinner! I didn't miss anything, or care a straw what you'd taken, you
+booby; but I took the shot, and it hit--hit the bull's-eye, begad. Dammy,
+six, I'm an old campaigner."
+
+"What do you want with me, sir?"
+
+"I'll tell you. Your bills, I suppose, you keep about you in that dem'd
+great leather pocket-book, don't you? You'll burn Mrs. Brixham's bill?"
+
+"Sir, I ain't a-goin' to part with my property," growled the man.
+
+"You lent her sixty pounds five years ago. She and that poor devil of an
+insurance clerk, her son, have paid you fifty pounds a year ever since;
+and you have got a bill of sale of her furniture, and her note of hand
+for a hundred and fifty pounds. She told me so last night. By Jove, sir,
+you've bled that poor woman enough."
+
+"I won't give it up," said Morgan; "If I do I'm----"
+
+"Policeman!" cried the Major.
+
+"You shall have the bill," said Morgan. "You're not going to take money
+of me, and you a gentleman?"
+
+"I shall want you directly," said the Major to X, who here entered, and
+who again withdrew.
+
+"No, my good sir," the old gentleman continued; "I have not any desire to
+have further pecuniary transactions with you; but we will draw out a
+little paper, which you will have the kindness to sign. No, stop!--you
+shall write it: you have improved immensely in writing of late, and have
+now a very good hand. You shall sit down and write, if you please--there,
+at that table--so--let me see--we may as well have the date. Write 'Bury
+Street, St. James's, October 21, 18--.'"
+
+And Mr. Morgan wrote as he was instructed, and as the pitiless old Major
+continued:--
+
+"'I, James Morgan, having come in extreme poverty into the service of
+Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, of Bury Street, St. James's, a Major in her
+Majesty's service, acknowledge that I received liberal wages and board
+wages from my employer, during fifteen years.'--You can't object to that,
+I am sure," said the Major.
+
+"During fifteen years," wrote Morgan.
+
+"'In which time, by my own care and prudence,'" the dictator resumed, "'I
+have managed to amass sufficient money to purchase the house in which my
+master resides, and, besides, to effect other savings. Amongst other
+persons from whom I have had money, I may mention my present tenant, Mrs.
+Brixham, who, in consideration of sixty pounds advanced by me five years
+since, has paid back to me the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds
+sterling, besides giving me a note of hand for one hundred and twenty
+pounds, which I restore to her at the desire of my late master, Major
+Arthur Pendennis, and therewith free her furniture, of which I had a bill
+of sale.'--Have you written?"
+
+"I think if this pistol was loaded, I'd blow your brains out," said
+Morgan.
+
+"No, you wouldn't. You have too great a respect for your valuable life,
+my good man," the Major answered. "Let us go on and begin a new sentence.
+
+"'And having, in return for my master's kindness, stolen his property
+from him, which I acknowledge to be now upstairs in my trunks; and having
+uttered falsehoods regarding his and other honourable families, I do
+hereby, in consideration of his clemency to me, express my regret for
+uttering these falsehoods, and for stealing his property; and declare
+that I am not worthy of belief, and that I hope'--yes, begad--'that I
+hope to amend for the future. Signed, James Morgan.'"
+
+"I'm d----d if I sign it," said Morgan.
+
+"My good man, it will happen to you, whether you sign or no, begad," said
+the old fellow, chuckling at his own wit "There, I shall not use this,
+you understand, unless--unless I am compelled to do so. Mrs. Brixham, and
+our friend the policeman, will witness it, I dare say, without reading
+it: and I will give the old lady back her note of hand, and say, which
+you will confirm, that she and you are quits. I see there is Frosch come
+back with the cab for my trunks; I shall go to an hotel.--You may come in
+now, policeman; Mr. Morgan and I have arranged our little dispute. If
+Mrs. Brixham will sign this paper, and you, policeman, will do so, I
+shall be very much obliged to you both. Mrs. Brixham, you and your worthy
+landlord, Mr. Morgan, are quits. I wish you joy of him. Let Frosch come
+and pack the rest of the things."
+
+Frosch, aided by the Slavey, under the calm superintendence of Mr.
+Morgan, carried Major Pendennis's boxes to the cabs in waiting; and Mrs.
+Brixham, when her persecutor was not by, came and asked a Heaven's
+blessing upon the Major, her preserver, and the best and quietest and
+kindest of lodgers. And having given her a finger to shake, which the
+humble lady received with a curtsey, and over which she was ready to make
+a speech full of tears, the Major cut short that valedictory oration, and
+walked out of the house to the hotel in Jermyn Street, which was not many
+steps from Morgan's door.
+
+That individual, looking forth from the parlour-window, discharged
+anything but blessings at his parting guest; but the stout old boy could
+afford not to be frightened at Mr. Morgan, and flung him a look of great
+contempt and humour as he strutted away with his cane.
+
+Major Pendennis had not quitted his house of Bury Street many hours, and
+Mr. Morgan was enjoying his otium in a dignified manner, surveying the
+evening fog, and smoking a cigar, on the door-steps, when Arthur
+Pendennis, Esq., the hero of this history, made his appearance at the
+well-known door.
+
+"My uncle out, I suppose, Morgan?" he said to the functionary; knowing
+full well that to smoke was treason, in the presence of the Major.
+
+"Major Pendennis is hout, sir," said Morgan, with gravity, bowing, but
+not touching the elegant cap which he wore. "Major Pendennis have left
+this ouse to-day, sir, and I have no longer the honour of being in his
+service, sir."
+
+"Indeed, and where is he?"
+
+"I believe he ave taken tempory lodgings at Cox's otel, in Jummin
+Street," said Mr. Morgan; and added, after a pause, "Are you in town for
+some time, pray, sir? Are you in Chambers? I should like to have the
+honour of waiting on you there: and would be thankful if you would favour
+me with a quarter of an hour."
+
+"Do you want my uncle to take you back?" asked Arthur, insolent and
+good-natured.
+
+"I want no such thing; I'd see him----" The man glared at him for a
+minute, but he stopped. "No, sir, thank you," he said in a softer voice;
+"it's only with you that I wish to speak, on some business which concerns
+you; and perhaps you would favour me by walking into my house."
+
+"If it is but for a minute or two, I will listen to you, Morgan," said
+Arthur; and thought to himself, "I suppose the fellow wants me to
+patronise him;" and he entered the house. A card was already in the front
+windows, proclaiming that apartments were to be let; and having
+introduced Mr. Pendennis into the dining-room, and offered him a chair,
+Mr. Morgan took one himself, and proceeded to convey some information to
+him, of which the reader has already had cognisance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXX
+
+In which Pendennis counts his Eggs
+
+
+Our friend had arrived in London on that day only, though but for a brief
+visit; and having left some fellow-travellers at an hotel to which he had
+convoyed them from the West, he hastened to the Chambers in Lamb Court,
+which were basking in as much sun as chose to visit that dreary but not
+altogether comfortless building. Freedom stands in lieu of sunshine in
+chambers; and Templars grumble, but take their ease in their Inn. Pen's
+domestic announced to him that Warrington was in Chambers too, and, of
+course, Arthur ran up to his friend's room straightway, and found it, as
+of old, perfumed with the pipe, and George once more at work with his
+newspapers and reviews. The pair greeted each other with the rough
+cordiality which young Englishmen use one to another: and which carries a
+great deal of warmth and kindness under its rude exterior. Warrington
+smiled and took his pipe out of his mouth, and said, "Well, young one!"
+Pen advanced and held out his hand, and said, "How are you, old boy?" And
+so this greeting passed between two friends who had not seen each other
+for months. Alphonse and Frederic would have rushed into each other's
+arms and shrieked Ce bon coeur! ce cher Alphonse! over each other's
+shoulders. Max and Wilhelm would have bestowed half a dozen kisses,
+scented with Havannah, upon each other's mustachios. "Well, young one!"
+"How are you, old boy?" is what two Britons say: after saving each
+other's lives, possibly, the day before. To-morrow they will leave off
+shaking hands, and only wag their heads at one another as they come to
+breakfast. Each has for the other the very warmest confidence and regard:
+each would share his purse with the other: and hearing him attacked would
+break out in the loudest and most enthusiastic praise of his friend; but
+they part with a mere Good-bye, they meet with a mere How-d'you-do? and
+they don't write to each other in the interval. Curious, modesty, strange
+stoical decorum of English friendship! "Yes, we are not demonstrative
+like those confounded foreigners," says Hardman: who not only shows no
+friendship, but never felt any all his life long.
+
+"Been in Switzerland?" says Pen.
+
+"Yes," says Warrington.
+
+"Couldn't find a bit of tobacco fit to smoke till we came to Strasburg,
+where I got some caporal." The man's mind is full, very likely, of the
+great sights which he has seen, of the great emotions with which the vast
+works of nature have inspired it. But his enthusiasm is too coy to show
+itself, even to his closest friend, and he veils it with a cloud of
+tobacco. He will speak more fully of confidential evenings, however, and
+write ardently and frankly about that which he is shy of saying. The
+thoughts and experience of his travel will come forth in his writings; as
+the learning, which he never displays in talk, enriches his style with
+pregnant allusion and brilliant illustration, colours his generous
+eloquence, and points his wit.
+
+The elder gives a rapid account of the places which he has visited in his
+tour. He has seen Switzerland, North Italy, and the Tyrol--he has come
+home by Vienna, and Dresden, and the Rhine. He speaks about these places
+in a shy sulky voice, as if he had rather not mention them at all, and as
+if the sight of them had rendered him very unhappy. The outline of the
+elder man's tour thus gloomily sketched out, the young one begins to
+speak. He has been in the country--very much bored--canvassing uncommonly
+slow--he is here for a day or two, and going on to--to the neighbourhood
+of Tunbridge Wells, to some friends that will be uncommonly slow, too.
+How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!
+
+"And the seat in Parliament, Pen? Have you made it all right?" asks
+Warrington.
+
+"All right,--as soon as Parliament meets and a new writ can be issued,
+Clavering retires, and I step into his shoes," says Pen.
+
+"And under which king does Bezonian speak or die?" asked Warrington. "Do
+we come out as Liberal Conservative, or as Government man, or on our own
+hook?"
+
+"Hem! There are no politics now; every man's politics, at least, are
+pretty much the same. I have not got acres enough to make me a
+Protectionist; nor could I be one, I think, if I had all the land in the
+county. I shall go pretty much with Government, and in advance of them
+upon some social questions which I have been getting up during the
+vacation;--don't grin, you old cynic, I have been getting up the Blue
+Books, and intend to come out rather strong on the Sanitary and
+Colonisation questions."
+
+"We reserve to ourselves the liberty of voting against Government, though
+we are generally friendly. We are, however, friends of the people avant
+tout. We give lectures at the Clavering Institute, and shake bands with
+the intelligent mechanics. We think the franchise ought to be very
+considerably enlarged; at the same time we are free to accept office some
+day, when the House has listened to a few crack speeches from us, and the
+Administration perceives our merit."
+
+"I am not Moses," said Pen, with, as usual, somewhat of melancholy in his
+voice. "I have no laws from Heaven to bring down to the people from the
+mountain. I don't belong to the mountain at all, or set up to be a leader
+and reformer of mankind. My faith is not strong enough for that; nor my
+vanity, nor my hypocrisy, great enough. I will tell no lies, George, that
+I promise you; and do no more than coincide in those which are necessary
+and pass current, and can't be got in without recalling the whole
+circulation. Give a man at least the advantage of his sceptical turn. If
+I find a good thing to say in the House, I will say it; a good measure, I
+will support it; a fair place, I will take it, and be glad of my luck.
+But I would no more flatter a great man than a mob; and now you know as
+much about my politics as I do. What call have I to be a Whig? Whiggism
+is not a divine institution. Why not vote with the Liberal Conservatives?
+They have done for the nation what the Whigs would never have done
+without them. Who converted both?--the Radicals and the country outside.
+I think the Morning Post is often right, and Punch is often wrong. I
+don't profess a call, but take advantage of a chance. Parlons d'autre
+chose."
+
+"The next thing at your heart, after ambition is love, I suppose?"
+Warrington said. "How have our young loves prospered? Are we going to
+change our condition, and give up our chambers? Are you going to divorce
+me, Arthur, and take unto yourself a wife?"
+
+"I suppose so. She is very good-natured and lively. She sings, and she
+don't mind smoking. She'll have a fair fortune--I don't know how much--
+but my uncle augurs everything from the Begum's generosity, and says that
+she will come down very handsomely. And I think Blanche is dev'lish fond
+of me," said Arthur, with a sigh.
+
+"That means that we accept her caresses and her money."
+
+"Haven't we said before that life was a transaction?" Pendennis said. "I
+don't pretend to break my heart about her. I have told her pretty fairly
+what my feelings are--and--and have engaged myself to her. And since I
+saw her last, and for the last two months especially, whilst I have been
+in the country, I think she has been growing fonder and fonder of me; and
+her letters to me, and especially to Laura, seem to show it. Mine have
+been simple enough--no raptures, nor vows, you understand--but looking
+upon the thing as an affaire faite; and not desirous to hasten or defer
+the completion."
+
+"And Laura? how is she?" Warrington asked frankly.
+
+"Laura, George," said Pen, looking his friend hard in the face--"by
+heaven, Laura is the best, and noblest, and dearest girl the sun ever
+shone upon." His own voice fell as he spoke: it seemed as if he could
+hardly utter the words: he stretched out his hand to his comrade, who
+took it and nodded his head.
+
+"Have you only found out that now, young un?" Warrington said after a
+pause.
+
+"Who has not learned things too late, George?" cried Arthur, in his
+impetuous way, gathering words and emotion as he went on. "Whose life is
+not a disappointment? Who carries his heart entire to the grave without a
+mutilation? I never knew anybody who was happy quite: or who has not had
+to ransom himself out of the hands of Fate with the payment of some
+dearest treasure or other. Lucky if we are left alone afterwards, when we
+have paid our fine, and if the tyrant visits us no more. Suppose I have
+found out that I have lost the greatest prize in the world, now that it
+can't be mine--that for years I had an angel under my tent, and let her
+go?--am I the only one--ah, dear old boy, am I the only one? And do you
+think my lot is easier to bear because I own that I deserve it? She's
+gone from us. God's blessing be with her! She might have stayed, and I
+lost her; it's like Undine: isn't it, George?"
+
+"She was in this room once," said George.
+
+He saw her there--he heard the sweet low voice--he saw the sweet smile
+and eyes shining so kindly--the face remembered so fondly--thought of in
+what night-watches--blest and loved always--gone now! A glass that had
+held a nosegay--a bible with Helen's handwriting--were all that were left
+him of that brief flower of his life. Say it is a dream: say it passes:
+better the recollection of a dream than an aimless waking from a blank
+stupor.
+
+The two friends sate in silence a while, each occupied with his own
+thoughts and aware of the other's. Pen broke it presently, by saying that
+he must go and seek for his uncle, and report progress to the old
+gentleman. The Major had written in a very bad humour; the Major was
+getting old. "I should like to see you in Parliament, and snugly settled
+with a comfortable house and an heir to the name before I make my bow.
+Show me these," the Major wrote, "and then, let old Arthur Pendennis make
+room for the younger fellows; he has walked the Pall Mall pave long
+enough."
+
+"There is a kindness about the old heathen," said Warrington. "He cares
+for somebody besides himself, at least for some other part of himself
+besides that which is buttoned into his own coat;--for you and your race.
+He would like to see the progeny of the Pendennises multiplying and
+increasing, and hopes that they may inherit the land. The old patriarch
+blesses you from the Club window of Bays's, and is carried off and buried
+under the flags of St. James's Church, in sight of Piccadilly, and the
+cabstand, and the carriages going to the levee. It is an edifying
+ending."
+
+"The new blood I bring into the family," mused Pen, "is rather tainted.
+If I had chosen, I think my father-in-law Amory would not have been the
+progenitor I should have desired for my race; nor my grandfather-in-law
+Snell; nor our Oriental ancestors. By the way, who was Amory? Amory was
+lieutenant of an Indiaman. Blanche wrote some verses about him, about the
+storm, the mountain wave, the seaman's grave, the gallant father, and
+that sort of thing. Amory was drowned commanding a country ship between
+Calcutta and Sydney; Amory and the Begum weren't happy together. She has
+been unlucky in her selection of husbands, the good old lady, for,
+between ourselves, a more despicable creature than Sir Francis Clavering,
+of Clavering Park, Baronet, never----" "Never legislated for his
+country," broke in Warrington; at which Pen blushed rather.
+
+"By the way, at Baden," said Warrington, "I found our friend the
+Chevalier Strong in great state, and wearing his orders. He told me that
+he had quarrelled with Clavering, of whom he seemed to have almost as bad
+an opinion as you have, and in fact, I think, though I will not be
+certain, confided to me his opinion, that Clavering was an utter
+scoundrel. That fellow Bloundell, who taught you card-playing at
+Oxbridge, was with Strong; and time, I think, has brought out his
+valuable qualities, and rendered him a more accomplished rascal than he
+was during your undergraduateship. But the king of the place was the
+famous Colonel Altamont, who was carrying all before him, giving flies to
+the whole society, and breaking the bank, it was said."
+
+"My uncle knows something about that fellow--Clavering knows something
+about him. There's something louche regarding him. But come! I must go to
+Bury Street, like a dutiful nephew." And, taking his hat, Pen prepared to
+go.
+
+"I will walk, too," said Warrington. And they descended the stairs,
+stopping, however, at Pen's chambers, which, as the reader has been
+informed, were now on the lower story.
+
+Here Pen began sprinkling himself with eau-de-Cologne, and carefully
+scenting his hair and whiskers with that odoriferous water.
+
+"What is the matter? You've not been smoking. Is it my pipe that has
+poisoned you?" growled Warrington.
+
+"I am going to call upon some women," said Pen. "I'm--I'm going to dine
+with 'em. They are passing through town, and are at an hotel in Jermyn
+Street."
+
+Warrington looked with good-natured interest at the young fellow
+dandifying himself up to a pitch of completeness; and appearing at length
+in a gorgeous shirt-front and neckcloth, fresh gloves, and glistening
+boots. George had a pair of thick high-lows, and his old shirt was torn
+about the breast, and ragged at the collar, where his blue beard had
+worn it.
+
+"Well, young un," said he, simply, "I like you to be a buck; somehow.
+When I walk about with you, it is as if I had a rose in my button-hole.
+And you are still affable. I don't think there is any young fellow in the
+Temple turns out like you; and I don't believe you were ever ashamed of
+walking with me yet."
+
+"Don't laugh at me, George." said Pen.
+
+"I say, Pen," continued the other, sadly, "if you write--if you write to
+Laura, I wish you would say 'God bless her' from me."
+
+Pen blushed; and then looked at Warrington; and then--and then burst into
+an uncontrollable fit of laughing.
+
+"I'm going to dine with her," he said. "I brought her and Lady
+Rockminster up from the country to-day--made two days of it--slept last
+night at Bath--I say, George, come and dine, too. I may ask any one I
+please, and the old lady is constantly talking about you."
+
+George refused. George had an article to write. George hesitated; and oh,
+strange to say! at last he agreed to go. It was agreed that they should
+go and call upon the ladies; and they marched away in high spirits to the
+hotel in Jermyn Street. Once more the dear face shone upon him; once more
+the sweet voice spoke to him, and the tender hand pressed a welcome.
+
+There still wanted half an hour to dinner. "You will go and see your
+uncle now, Mr. Pendennis," old Lady Rockminster said. "You will not bring
+him to dinner-no--his old stories are intolerable; and I want to talk to
+Mr. Warrington; I daresay he will amuse us. I think we have heard all
+your stories. We have been together for two whole days, and I think we
+are getting tired of each other."
+
+So, obeying her ladyship's orders, Arthur went downstairs and walked to
+his uncle's lodgings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXI
+
+Fiat Justitia
+
+
+The dinner was served when Arthur returned, and Lady Rockminster began to
+scold him for arriving late. But Laura, looking at her cousin, saw that
+his face was so pale and scared, that she interrupted her imperious
+patroness; and asked, with tender alarm, what had happened? Was Arthur
+ill?
+
+Arthur drank a large bumper of sherry. "I have heard the most
+extraordinary news; I will tell you afterwards," he said, looking at the
+servants. He was very nervous and agitated during the dinner. "Don't
+tramp and beat so with your feet under the table," Lady Rockminster said.
+"You have trodden on Fido, and upset his saucer. You see Mr. Warrington
+keeps his boots quiet."
+
+At the dessert--it seemed as if the unlucky dinner would never be over--
+Lady Rockminster said, "This dinner has been exceedingly stupid. I
+suppose something has happened, and that you want to speak to Laura. I
+will go and have my nap. I am not sure that I shall have any tea--no.
+Good night, Mr. Warrington. You must come again, and when there is no
+business to talk about." And the old lady, tossing up her head, walked
+away from the room with great dignity.
+
+George and the others had risen with her, and Warrington was about to go
+away, and was saying "Good night" to Laura, who, of course, was looking
+much alarmed about her cousin, when Arthur said, "Pray, stay, George. You
+should hear my news too, and give me your counsel in this case. I hardly
+know how to act in it."
+
+"It's something about Blanche, Arthur," said Laura, her heart beating,
+and her cheek blushing as she thought it had never blushed in her life.
+
+"Yes--and the most extraordinary story," said Pen. "When I left you to go
+to my uncle's lodgings, I found his servant, Morgan, who has been with
+him so long, at the door, and he said that he and his master had parted
+that morning; that my uncle had quitted the house, and had gone to an
+hotel--this hotel. I asked for him when I came in; but he was gone out to
+dinner. Morgan then said that he had something of a most important nature
+to communicate to me, and begged me to step into the house; his house it
+is now. It appears the scoundrel has saved a great deal of money whilst
+in my uncle's service, and is now a capitalist and a millionaire, for
+what I know. Well, I went into the house, and what do you think he told
+me? This must be a secret between us all--at least if we can keep it, now
+that it is in possession of that villain. Blanche's father is not dead.
+He has come to life again. The marriage between Clavering and the Begum
+is no marriage."
+
+"And Blanche, I suppose, is her grandfather's heir," said Warrington.
+
+"Perhaps: but the child of what a father! Amory is an escaped convict--
+Clavering knows it; my uncle knows it--and it was with this piece of
+information held over Clavering in terrorem that the wretched old man got
+him to give up his borough to me."
+
+"Blanche doesn't know it," said Laura, "nor poor Lady Clavering?"
+
+"No," said Pen; "Blanche does not even know the history of her father.
+She knew that he and her mother had separated, and had heard as a child,
+from Bonner, her nurse, that Mr. Amory was drowned in New South Wales. He
+was there as a convict, not as a ship's-captain, as the poor girl
+thought. Lady Clavering has told me that they were not happy, and that
+her husband was a bad character. She would tell me all, she said, some
+day: and I remember her saying to me, with tears in her eyes, that it was
+hard for a woman to be forced to own that she was glad to hear her
+husband was dead: and that twice in her life she should have chosen so
+badly. What is to be done now? The man can't show and claim his wife:
+death is probably over him if he discovers himself: return to
+transportation certainly. But the rascal has held the threat of discovery
+over Clavering for some time past, and has extorted money from him time
+after time."
+
+"It is our friend Colonel Altamont, of course," said Warrington "I see
+all now."
+
+"If the rascal comes back," continued Arthur, "Morgan, who knows his
+secret, will use it over him--and having it in his possession, proposes
+to extort money from us all. The d----d rascal supposed I was cognisant
+of it," said Pen, white with anger; "asked me if I would give him an
+annuity to keep it quiet; threatened me, me, as if I was trafficking with
+this wretched old Begum's misfortune, and would extort a seat in
+Parliament out of that miserable Clavering. Good heavens! was my uncle
+mad, to tamper in such a conspiracy? Fancy our mother's son, Laura,
+trading on such a treason!"
+
+"I can't fancy it, dear Arthur," said Laura, seizing Arthur's hand, and
+kissing it.
+
+"No!" broke out Warrington's deep voice, with a tremor; he surveyed the
+two generous and loving young people with a pang of indescribable love
+and pain. "No. Our boy can't meddle with such a wretched intrigue as
+that. Arthur Pendennis can't marry a convict's daughter; and sit in
+Parliament as member for the hulks. You must wash your hands of the whole
+affair, Pen. You must break off. You must give no explanations of why and
+wherefore, but state that family reasons render a match impossible. It is
+better that those poor women should fancy you false to your word than
+that they should know the truth. Besides, you can get from that dog
+Clavering--I can fetch that for you easily enough an acknowledgment that
+the reasons which you have given to him as the head of the family are
+amply sufficient for breaking off the union. Don't you think with me,
+Laura?" He scarcely dared to look her in the face as he spoke. Any
+lingering hope that he might have--any feeble hold that he might feel
+upon the last spar of his wrecked fortune, he knew he was casting away;
+and he let the wave of his calamity close over him. Pen had started up
+whilst he was speaking, looking eagerly at him. He turned his head away.
+He saw Laura rise up also and go to Pen, and once more take his hand and
+kiss it. "She thinks so too--God bless her!" said George.
+
+"Her father's shame is not Blanche's fault, dear Arthur, is it?" Laura
+said, very pale, and speaking very quickly. "Suppose you had been
+married, would you desert her because she had done no wrong? Are you not
+pledged to her? Would you leave her because she is in misfortune? And if
+she is unhappy, wouldn't you console her? Our mother would, had she been
+here." And, as she spoke, the kind girl folded her arms round him, and
+buried her face upon his heart.
+
+"Our mother is an angel with God," Pen sobbed out. "And you are the
+dearest and best of women--the dearest, the dearest and the best. Teach
+me my duty. Pray for me that I may do it--pure heart. God bless you--God
+bless you, my sister!"
+
+"Amen," groaned out Warrington, with his head in his hands. "She is
+right," he murmured to himself. "She can't do any wrong, I think--that
+girl." Indeed, she looked and smiled like an angel. Many a day after he
+saw that smile--saw her radiant face as she looked up at Pen--saw her
+putting back her curls, blushing and smiling, and still looking fondly
+towards him.
+
+She leaned for a moment her little fair hand on the table, playing on it.
+"And now, and now," she said, looking at the two gentlemen--
+
+"And what now?" asked George.
+
+"And now we will have some tea," said Miss Laura, with her smile.
+
+But before this unromantic conclusion to a rather sentimental scene could
+be suffered to take place, a servant brought word that Major Pendennis
+had returned to the hotel, and was waiting to see his nephew. Upon this
+announcement, Laura, not without some alarm, and an appealing look to
+Pen, which said, "Behave yourself well--hold to the right, and do your
+duty--be gentle, but firm with your uncle"--Laura, we say, with these
+warnings written in her face, took leave of the two gentlemen, and
+retreated to her dormitory. Warrington, who was not generally fond of
+tea, yet grudged that expected cup very much. Why could not old Pendennis
+have come in an hour later? Well, an hour sooner or later, what matter?
+The hour strikes at last. The inevitable moment comes to say Farewell,
+The hand is shaken, the door closed, and the friend gone; and, the brief
+joy over, you are alone. "In which of those many windows of the hotel
+does her light beam?" perhaps he asks himself as he passes down the
+street. He strides away to the smoking-room of a neighbouring Club, and,
+there applies himself to his usual solace of a cigar. Men are brawling
+and talking loud about politics, opera-girls, horse-racing, the atrocious
+tyranny of the committee:--bearing this sacred secret about him, he
+enters into this brawl. Talk away, each louder than the other. Rattle and
+crack jokes. Laugh and tell your wild stories. It is strange to take
+one's place and part in the midst of the smoke and din, and think every
+man here has his secret ego most likely, which is sitting lonely and
+apart, away in the private chamber, from the loud game in which the rest
+of us is joining!
+
+Arthur, as he traversed the passages of the hotel, felt his anger rousing
+up within him. He was indignant to think that yonder old gentleman whom
+he was about to meet, should have made him such a tool and puppet, and so
+compromised his honour and good name. The old fellow's hand was very cold
+and shaky when Arthur took it. He was coughing; he was grumbling over the
+fire; Frosch could not bring his dressing-gown or arrange his papers as
+that d----d confounded impudent scoundrel of a Morgan. The old gentleman
+bemoaned himself, and cursed Morgan's ingratitude with peevish pathos.
+
+"The confounded impudent scoundrel! He was drunk last night, and
+challenged me to fight him, Pen; and, begad, at one time I was so excited
+that I thought I should have driven a knife into him; and the infernal
+rascal has made ten thousand pound, I believe--and deserves to be hanged,
+and will be; but, curse him, I wish he could have lasted out my time. He
+knew all my ways, and, dammy, when I rang the bell, the confounded thief
+brought the thing I wanted--not like that stupid German lout. And what
+sort of time have you had in the country? Been a good deal with Lady
+Rockminster? You can't do better. She is one of the old school--vieille
+ecole, bonne ecole, hey? Dammy, they don't make gentlemen and ladies now;
+and in fifty years you'll hardly know one man from another. But they'll
+last my time. I ain't long for this business: I am getting very old, Pen,
+my boy; and, gad, I was thinking to-day, as I was packing up my little
+library, there's a bible amongst the books that belonged to my poor
+mother; I would like you to keep that, Pen. I was thinking, sir, that you
+would most likely open the box when it was your property, and the old
+fellow was laid under the sod, sir," and the Major coughed and wagged his
+old head over the fire.
+
+His age--his kindness, disarmed Pen's anger somewhat, and made Arthur
+feel no little compunction for the deed which he was about to do. He knew
+that the announcement which he was about to make would destroy the
+darling hope of the old gentleman's life, and create in his breast a
+woful anger and commotion.
+
+"Hey--hey--I'm off, sir," nodded the Elder; "but I'd like to read a
+speech of yours in the Times before I go--'Mr. Pendennis said,
+Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking'--hey, sir? hey, Arthur? Begad,
+you look dev'lish well and healthy, sir. I always said my brother Jack
+would bring the family right. You must go down into the west, and buy the
+old estate, sir. Nec tenui penna, hey? We'll rise again, sir--rise again
+on the wing--and, begad, I shouldn't be surprised that you will be a
+Baronet before you die."
+
+His words smote Pen. "And it is I," he thought, "that am going to fling
+down the poor old fellow's air-castle. Well, it must be. Here goes.--I--I
+went into your lodgings at Bury Street, though I did not find you," Pen
+slowly began--"and I talked with Morgan, uncle."
+
+"Indeed!" The old gentleman's cheek began to flush involuntarily, and he
+muttered, "The cat's out of the bag now, begad!"
+
+"He told me a story, sir, which gave me the deepest surprise and pain,"
+said Pen.
+
+The Major tried to look unconcerned. "What--that story about--about--
+What-d'-you-call-'em, hey?"
+
+"About Miss Amory's father--about Lady Clavering's first husband, and who
+he is, and what."
+
+"Hem--a dev'lish awkward affair!" said the old man, rubbing his nose. "I
+--I've been aware of that--eh--confounded circumstance for some time."
+
+"I wish I had known it sooner, or not at all," said Arthur, gloomily.
+
+"He is all safe," thought the Senior, greatly relieved. "Gad! I should
+have liked to keep it from you altogether--and from those two poor women,
+who are as innocent as unborn babes in the transaction."
+
+"You are right. There is no reason why the two women should hear it; and
+I shall never tell them--though that villain, Morgan, perhaps may,"
+Arthur said, gloomily. "He seems disposed to trade upon his secret, and
+has already proposed terms of ransom to me. I wish I had known of the
+matter earlier, sir. It is not a very pleasant thought to me that I am
+engaged to a convict's daughter."
+
+"The very reason why I kept it from you--my dear boy. But Miss Amory is
+not a convict's daughter, don't you see? Miss Amory is the daughter of
+Lady Clavering, with fifty or sixty thousand pounds for a fortune; and
+her father-in-law, a Baronet and country gentleman, of high reputation,
+approves of the match, and gives up his seat in Parliament to his
+son-in-law. What can be more simple?"
+
+"Is it true, sir?"
+
+"Begad, yes, it is true, of course it's true. Amory's dead. I tell you he
+is dead. The first sign of life he shows, he is dead. He can't appear. We
+have him at a deadlock, like the fellow in the play--the 'Critic,' hey?--
+dev'lish amusing play, that 'Critic.' Monstrous witty man, Sheridan; and
+so was his son. By Gad, sir, when I was at the Cape, I remember----"
+
+The old gentleman's garrulity, and wish to conduct Arthur to the Cape,
+perhaps arose from a desire to avoid the subject which was nearest his
+nephew's heart; but Arthur broke out, interrupting him--"If you had told
+me this tale sooner, I believe you would have spared me and yourself a
+great deal of pain and disappointment; and I should not have found myself
+tied to an engagement from which I can't, in honour, recede."
+
+"No, begad, we've fixed you--and a man who's fixed to a seat in
+Parliament, and a pretty girl, with a couple of thousand a year, is fixed
+to no bad thing, let me tell you," said the old man.
+
+"Great Heavens, sir!" said Arthur, "are you blind? Can't you see?"
+
+"See what, young gentleman?" asked the other.
+
+"See, that rather than trade upon this secret of Amory's," Arthur cried
+out, "I would go and join my father-in-law at the hulks! See, that rather
+than take a seat in Parliament as a bribe from Clavering for silence, I
+would take the spoons off the table! See, that you have given me a
+felon's daughter for a wife; doomed me to poverty and shame; cursed my
+career when it might have been--when it might have been so different but
+for you! Don't you see that we have been playing a guilty game, and have
+been overreached;--that in offering to marry this poor girl, for the sake
+of her money, and the advancement she would bring, I was degrading
+myself, and prostituting my honour?"
+
+"What in Heaven's name do you mean, sir?" cried the old man.
+
+"I mean to say that there is a measure of baseness which I can't pass,"
+Arthur said. "I have no other words for it, and am sorry if they hurt
+you. I have felt, for months past, that my conduct in this affair has
+been wicked, sordid, and worldly. I am rightly punished by the event, and
+having sold myself for money and a seat in Parliament, by losing both."
+
+"How do you mean that you lose either?" shrieked the old gentleman. "Who
+the devil's to take your fortune or your seat away from you? By G--,
+Clavering shall give 'em to you. You shall have every shilling of eighty
+thousand pounds."
+
+"I'll keep my promise to Miss Amory, sir," said Arthur.
+
+"And, begad, her parents shall keep theirs to you."
+
+"Not so, please God," Arthur answered. "I have sinned, but, Heaven help
+me, I will sin no more. I will let Clavering off from that bargain which
+was made without my knowledge. I will take no money with Blanche but that
+which was originally settled upon her; and I will try to make her happy.
+You have done it. You have brought this on me, sir. But you knew no
+better: and I forgive----"
+
+"Arthur--in God's name--in your father's, who, by Heavens, was the
+proudest man alive, and had the honour of the family always at heart--in
+mine--for the sake of a poor broken-down old fellow, who has always been
+dev'lish fond of you--don't fling this chance away--I pray you, I beg
+you, I implore you, my dear, dear boy, don't fling this chance away. It's
+the making of you. You're sure to get on. You'll be a Baronet; it's three
+thousand a year: dammy, on my knees, there, I beg of you, don't do this."
+
+And the old man actually sank down on his knees, and, seizing one of
+Arthur's hands, looked up piteously at him. It was cruel to remark the
+shaking hands, the wrinkled and quivering face, the old eyes weeping and
+winking, the broken voice. "Ah, sir," said Arthur, with a groan, "you
+have brought pain enough on me, spare me this. You have wished me to
+marry Blanche. I marry her. For God's sake, sir, rise! I can't bear it."
+
+"You--you mean to say that you will take her as a beggar, and be one
+yourself?" said the old gentleman, rising up and coughing violently.
+
+"I look at her as a person to whom a great calamity has befallen, and to
+whom I am promised. She cannot help the misfortune; and as she had my
+word when she was prosperous, I shall not withdraw it now she is poor. I
+will not take Clavering's seat, unless afterwards it should be given of
+his free will. I will not have a shilling more than her original
+fortune."
+
+"Have the kindness to ring the bell," said the old gentleman. "I have
+done my best, and said my say; and I'm a dev'lish old fellow. And--and--
+it don't matter. And--and Shakspeare was right--and Cardinal Wolsey--
+begad--'and had I but served my God as I've served you'--yes, on my
+knees, by Jove, to my own nephew--I mightn't have been--Good night, sir,
+you needn't trouble yourself to call again."
+
+Arthur took his hand, which the old man left to him; it was quite passive
+and clammy. He looked very much oldened; and it seemed as if the contest
+and defeat had quite broken him.
+
+On the next day he kept his bed, and refused to see his nephew.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXII
+
+In which the Decks begin to clear
+
+
+When, arrayed in his dressing-gown, Pen walked up, according to custom,
+to Warrington's chambers next morning, to inform his friend of the issue
+of the last night's interview with his uncle, and to ask, as usual, for
+George's advice and opinion, Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, was the only
+person whom Arthur found in the dear old chambers. George had taken a
+carpet-bag, and was gone. His address was to his brother's house, in
+Suffolk. Packages addressed to the newspaper and review for which he
+wrote lay on the table, awaiting delivery.
+
+"I found him at the table, when I came, the dear gentleman!" Mrs.
+Flanagan said, "writing at his papers, and one of the candles was burned
+out; and hard as his bed is, he wasn't in it all night, sir."
+
+Indeed, having sat at the Club until the brawl there became intolerable
+to him, George had walked home, and had passed the night finishing some
+work on which he was employed, and to the completion of which he bent
+himself with all his might. The labour was done, and the night was worn
+away somehow, and the tardy November dawn came and looked in on the young
+man as he sate over his desk. In the next day's paper, or quarter's
+review, many of us very likely admired the work of his genius, the
+variety of his illustration, the fierce vigour of his satire, the depth
+of his reason. There was no hint in his writing of the other thoughts
+which occupied him, and always accompanied him in his work--a tone more
+melancholy than was customary, a satire more bitter and impatient than
+that which he afterwards showed, may have marked the writings of this
+period of his life to the very few persons who knew his style or his
+name. We have said before, could we know the man's feelings as well as
+the author's thoughts--how interesting most books would be!--more
+interesting than merry. I suppose harlequin's face behind his mask is
+always grave, if not melancholy--certainly each man who lives by the pen,
+and happens to read this, must remember, if he will, his own experiences,
+and recall many solemn hours of solitude and labour. What a constant care
+sate at the side of the desk and accompanied him! Fever or sickness were
+lying possibly in the next room: a sick child might be there, with a wife
+watching over it terrified and in prayer: or grief might be bearing him
+down, and the cruel mist before the eyes rendering the paper scarce
+visible as he wrote on it, and the inexorable necessity drove on the pen.
+What man among us has not had nights and hours like these? But to the
+manly heart--severe as these pangs are, they are endurable: long as the
+night seems, the dawn comes at last, and the wounds heal, and the fever
+abates, and rest comes, and you can afford to look back on the past
+misery with feelings that are anything but bitter.
+
+Two or three books for reference, fragments of torn-up manuscript,
+drawers open, pens and inkstand, lines half visible on the
+blotting-paper, a bit of sealing-wax twisted and bitten and broken into
+sundry pieces--such relics as these were about the table, and Pen flung
+himself down in George's empty chair--noting things according to his
+wont, or in spite of himself. There was a gap in the bookcase (next to
+the old College Plato, with the Boniface Arms), where Helen's bible used
+to be. He has taken that with him, thought Pen. He knew why his friend
+was gone. Dear, dear old George!
+
+Pen rubbed his hand over his eyes. Oh, how much wiser, how much better,
+how much nobler he is than I! he thought. Where was such a friend, or
+such a brave heart? Where shall I ever hear such a frank voice, and kind
+laughter? Where shall I ever see such a true gentleman? No wonder she
+loved him. God bless him! What was I compared to him? What could she do
+else but love him? To the end of our days we will be her brothers, as
+fate wills that we can be no more. We'll be her knights, and wait on her:
+and when we're old, we'll say how we loved her. Dear, dear old George!
+
+When Pen descended to his own chambers, his eye fell on the letter-box of
+his outer door, which he had previously overlooked, and there was a
+little note to A. P., Esq., in George's well-known handwriting, George
+had put into Pen's box probably as he was going away.
+
+
+  "Dear Pen,--I shall be half-way home when you breakfast, and intend
+   to stay over Christmas, in Norfolk, or elsewhere.
+
+  "I have my own opinion of the issue of matters about which we talked
+   in J----- St. yesterday; and think my presence de trop.
+
+                                         "Vale.          G. W."
+
+  "Give my very best regards and adieux to your cousin."
+
+
+And so George was gone, and Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, ruled over his
+empty chambers.
+
+Pen of course had to go and see his uncle on the day after their
+colloquy, and not being admitted, he naturally went to Lady Rockminster's
+apartments, where the old lady instantly asked for Bluebeard, and
+insisted that he should come to dinner.
+
+"Bluebeard is gone," Pen said, and he took out poor George's scrap of
+paper, and handed it to Laura, who looked at it--did not look at Pen in
+return, but passed the paper back to him, and walked away. Pen rushed
+into an eloquent eulogium upon his dear old George to Lady Rockminster,
+who was astonished at his enthusiasm. She had never heard him so warm in
+praise of anybody; and told him with her usual frankness, that she didn't
+think it had been in his nature to care so much about any other person.
+
+As Mr. Pendennis was passing in Waterloo Place, in one of his many walks
+to the hotel where Laura lived, and whither duty to his uncle carried
+Arthur every day, Arthur saw issuing from Messrs. Gimcrack's celebrated
+shop an old friend, who was followed to his brougham by an obsequious
+shopman bearing parcels. The gentleman was in the deepest mourning: the
+brougham, the driver, and the horse were in mourning. Grief in easy
+circumstances and supported by the comfortablest springs and cushions,
+was typified in the equipage and the little gentleman, its proprietor.
+
+"What, Foker! Hail, Foker!" cried out Pen--the reader, no doubt, has
+likewise recognised Arthur's old schoolfellow--and he held out his hand
+to the heir of the late lamented John Henry Foker, Esq., the master of
+Logwood and other houses, the principal partner in the great brewery of
+Foker and Co.: the greater portion of Foker's Entire.
+
+A little hand, covered with a glove of the deepest ebony, and set off by
+three inches of a snowy wristband, was put forth to meet Arthur's
+salutation. The other little hand held a little morocco case, containing,
+no doubt, something precious, of which Mr. Foker had just become
+proprietor in Messrs. Gimcrack's shop. Pen's keen eyes and satiric turn
+showed him at once upon what errand Mr. Foker had been employed; and he
+thought of the heir in Horace pouring forth the gathered wine of his
+father's vats; and that human nature is pretty much the same in Regent
+Street as in the Via Sacra.
+
+"Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!" said Arthur.
+
+"Ah!" said the other. "Yes. Thank you--very much obliged. How do you do,
+Pen?--very busy--good-bye!" and he jumped into the black brougham, and
+sate like a little black Care behind the black coachman. He had blushed
+on seeing Pen, and shown other signs of guilt and perturbation, which Pen
+attributed to the novelty of his situation; and on which he began to
+speculate in his usual sardonic manner.
+
+"Yes: so wags the world," thought Pen. "The stone closes over Harry the
+Fourth, and Harry the Fifth reigns in his stead. The old ministers at the
+brewery come and kneel before him with their books; the draymen, his
+subjects, fling up their red caps, and shout for him. What a grave
+deference and sympathy the bankers and the lawyers show! There was too
+great a stake at issue between those two that they should ever love each
+other very cordially. As long as one man keeps another out of twenty
+thousand a year, the younger must be always hankering after the crown,
+and the wish must be the father to the thought of possession. Thank
+Heaven, there was no thought of money between me and our dear mother,
+Laura."
+
+"There never could have been. You would have spurned it!" cried Laura.
+"Why make yourself more selfish than you are, Pen; and allow your mind to
+own for an instant that it would have entertained such--such dreadful
+meanness? You make me blush for you, Arthur: you make me----" her eyes
+finished this sentence, and she passed her handkerchief across them.
+
+"There are some truths which women will never acknowledge," Pen said,
+"and from which your modesty always turns away. I do not say that I ever
+knew the feeling, only that I am glad I had not the temptation. Is there
+any harm in that confession of weakness?"
+
+"We are all taught to ask to be delivered from evil, Arthur," said Laura,
+in a low voice. "I am glad if you were spared from that great crime; and
+only sorry to think that you could by any possibility have been led into
+it. But you never could; and you don't think you could. Your acts are
+generous and kind: you disdain mean actions. You take Blanche without
+money, and without a bribe. Yes, thanks be to Heaven, dear brother. You
+could not have sold yourself away; I knew you could not when it came to
+the day, and you did not. Praise be--be where praise is due. Why does
+this horrid scepticism pursue you, my Arthur? Why doubt and sneer at your
+own heart--at every one's? Oh, if you knew the pain you give me--how I
+lie awake and think of those hard sentences, dear brother, and wish them
+unspoken, unthought!"
+
+"Do I cause you many thoughts and many tears, Laura?" asked Arthur. The
+fulness of innocent love beamed from her in reply. A smile heavenly pure,
+a glance of unutterable tenderness, sympathy, pity, shone in her face--
+all which indications of love and purity Arthur beheld and worshipped in
+her, as you would watch them in a child, as one fancies one might regard
+them in an angel.
+
+"I--I don't know what I have done," he said, simply, "to have merited
+such regard from two such women. It is like undeserved praise, Laura--or
+too much good fortune, which frightens one--or a great post, when a man
+feels that he is not fit for it. Ah, sister, how weak and wicked we are;
+how spotless, and full of love and truth, Heaven made you! I think for
+some of you there has been no fall," he said, looking at the charming
+girl with an almost paternal glance of admiration. "You can't help having
+sweet thoughts, and doing good actions. Dear creature! they are the
+flowers which you bear."
+
+"And what else, sir?" asked Laura. "I see a sneer coming over your face.
+What is it? Why does it come to drive all the good thoughts away?"
+
+"A sneer, is there? I was thinking, my dear, that nature in making you so
+good and loving did very well: but----"
+
+"But what? What is that wicked but? and why are you always calling
+it up?"
+
+"But will come in spite of us. But is reflection. But is the sceptic's
+familiar, with whom he has made a compact; and if he forgets it, and
+indulges in happy day-dreams, or building of air-castles, or listens to
+sweet music let us say, or to the bells ringing to church, But taps at
+the door, and says, Master, I am here. You are my master; but I am yours.
+Go where you will you can't travel without me. I will whisper to you when
+you are on your knees at church. I will be at your marriage pillow. I
+will sit down at your table with your children. I will be behind your
+deathbed curtain. That is what But is," Pen said.
+
+"Pen, you frighten me," cried Laura.
+
+"Do you know what But came and said to me just now, when I was looking at
+you? But said, If that girl had reason as well as love, she would love
+you no more. If she knew you as you are--the sullied, selfish being which
+you know--she must part from you, and could give you no love and no
+sympathy. Didn't I say," he added fondly, "that some of you seem exempt
+from the fall? Love you know; but the knowledge of evil is kept from
+you."
+
+"What is this you young folks are talking about?" asked Lady Rockminster,
+who at this moment made her appearance in the room, having performed, in
+the mystic retirement of her own apartments, and under the hands of her
+attendant, those elaborate toilet-rites without which the worthy old lady
+never presented herself to public view. "Mr. Pendennis, you are always
+coming here."
+
+"It is very pleasant to be here," Arthur said; "and we were talking, when
+you came in, about my friend Foker, whom I met just now; and who, as your
+ladyship knows, has succeeded to his father's kingdom."
+
+"He has a very fine property, he has fifteen thousand a year. He is my
+cousin. He is a very worthy young man. He must come and see me," said
+Lady Rockminster, with a look at Laura.
+
+"He has been engaged for many years past to his cousin," Lady----"
+
+"Lady Ann is a foolish little chit," Lady Rockminster said, with much
+dignity; "and I have no patience with her. She has outraged every feeling
+of society. She has broken her father's heart, and thrown away fifteen
+thousand a year."
+
+"Thrown away? What has happened?" asked Pen.
+
+"It will be the talk of the town in a day or two; and there is no need
+why I should keep the secret any longer," said Lady Rockminster, who had
+written and received a dozen letters on the subject. "I had a letter
+yesterday from my daughter, who was staying at Drummington until all the
+world was obliged to go away on account of the frightful catastrophe
+which happened there. When Mr. Foker came home from Nice, and after the
+funeral, Lady Ann went down on her knees to her father, said that she
+never could marry her cousin, that she had contracted another attachment,
+and that she must die rather than fulfil her contract. Poor Lord
+Rosherville, who is dreadfully embarrassed, showed his daughter what the
+state of his affairs was, and that it was necessary that the arrangements
+should take place; and in fine, we all supposed that she had listened to
+reason, and intended to comply with the desires of her family. But what
+has happened?--last Thursday she went out after breakfast with her maid,
+and was married in the very church in Drummington Park to Mr. Hobson, her
+father's own chaplain and her brother's tutor; a red-haired widower with
+two children. Poor dear Rosherville is in a dreadful way: he wishes Henry
+Foker should marry Alice or Barbara; but Alice is marked with the
+small-pox, and Barbara is ten years older than he is. And, of course, now
+the young man is his own master, he will think of choosing for himself.
+The blow on Lady Agnes is very cruel. She is inconsolable. She has the
+house in Grosvenor Street for her life, and her settlement, which was
+very handsome. Have you not met her? Yes, she dined one day at Lady
+Clavering's--the first day I saw you, and a very disagreeable young man I
+thought you were. But I have formed you. We have formed him, haven't we,
+Laura? Where is Bluebeard? let him come. That horrid Grindley, the
+dentist, will keep me in town another week."
+
+To the latter part of her ladyship's speech Arthur gave no ear. He was
+thinking for whom could Foker be purchasing those trinkets which he was
+carrying away from the jeweller's? Why did Harry seem anxious to avoid
+him? Could he be still faithful to the attachment which had agitated him
+so much, and sent him abroad eighteen months back? Psha! The bracelets
+and presents were for some of Harry's old friends of the Opera or the
+French theatre. Rumours from Naples and Paris, rumours such as are borne
+to Club smoking-rooms, had announced that the young man had found
+distractions; or, precluded from his virtuous attachment, the poor fellow
+had flung himself back upon his old companions and amusements--not the
+only man or woman whom society forces into evil, or debars from good; not
+the only victim of the world's selfish and wicked laws.
+
+As a good thing when it is to be done cannot be done too quickly, Laura
+was anxious that Pen's marriage intentions should be put into execution
+as speedily as possible, and pressed on his arrangements with rather a
+feverish anxiety. Why could she not wait? Pen could afford to do so with
+perfect equanimity, but Laura would hear of no delay. She wrote to Pen:
+she implored Pen: she used every means to urge expedition. It seemed as
+if she could have no rest until Arthur's happiness was complete.
+
+She offered herself to dearest Blanche to come and stay at Tunbridge with
+her, when Lady Rockminster should go on her intended visit to the
+reigning house of Rockminster; and although the old dowager scolded, and
+ordered, and commanded, Laura was deaf and disobedient: she must go to
+Tunbridge, she would go to Tunbridge: she who ordinarily had no will of
+her own, and complied smilingly with anybody's whim and caprices, showed
+the most selfish and obstinate determination in this instance. The
+dowager lady must nurse herself in her rheumatism, she must read herself
+to sleep, if she would not hear her maid, whose voice croaked, and who
+made sad work of the sentimental passages in the novels--Laura must go,--
+and be with her new sister. In another week, she proposed, with many
+loves and regards to dear Lady Clavering, to pass some time with dearest
+Blanche.
+
+Dearest Blanche wrote instantly in reply to dearest Laura's No. 1, to say
+with what extreme delight she should welcome her sister: how charming it
+would be to practise their old duets together, to wander o'er the grassy
+sward, and amidst the yellowing woods of Penshurst and Southborough!
+Blanche counted the hours till she should embrace her dearest friend.
+
+Laura, No. 2, expressed her delight at dearest Blanche's affectionate
+reply. She hoped that their friendship would never diminish; that the
+confidence between them would grow in after years; that they should have
+no secrets from each other; that the aim of the life of each would be to
+make one person happy.
+
+Blanche, No. 2, followed in two days. "How provoking! Their house was
+very small, the two spare bedrooms were occupied by that horrid Mrs.
+Planter and her daughter, who had thought proper to fall ill (she always
+fell ill in country-houses), and she could not or would not be moved for
+some days."
+
+Laura, No. 3. "It was indeed very provoking. L. had hoped to hear one of
+dearest B.'s dear songs on Friday; but she was the more consoled to wait,
+because Lady R. was not very well, and liked to be nursed by her. Poor
+Major Pendennis was very unwell, too, in the same hotel--too unwell even
+to see Arthur, who was constant in his calls on his uncle. Arthur's heart
+was full of tenderness and affection. She had known Arthur all her life.
+She would answer"--yes, even in italics she would answer--"for his
+kindness, his goodness, and his gentleness."
+
+Blanche, No. 3. "What is this most surprising, most extraordinary letter
+from A. P.? What does dearest Laura know about it? What has happened?
+What, what mystery is enveloped under his frightful reserve?"
+
+Blanche, No. 3, requires an explanation; and it cannot be better given
+than in the surprising and mysterious letter of Arthur Pendennis.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIII
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Sam Huxter
+
+
+"Dear Blanche," Arthur wrote, "you are always reading and dreaming pretty
+dramas, and exciting romances in real life: are you now prepared to enact
+a part of one? And not the pleasantest part, dear Blanche, that in which
+the heroine takes possession of her father's palace and wealth, and
+introducing her husband to the loyal retainers and faithful vassals,
+greets her happy bridegroom with 'All of this is mine and thine,'--but
+the other character, that of the luckless lady, who suddenly discovers
+that she is not the Prince's wife, but Claude Melnotte's the beggar's:
+that of Alnaschar's wife, who comes in just as her husband has kicked
+over the tray of porcelain which was to be the making of his fortune--But
+stay; Alnaschar, who kicked down the china, was not a married man; he had
+cast his eye on the Vizier's daughter, and his hopes of her went to the
+ground with the shattered bowls and tea-cups.
+
+"Will you be the Vizier's daughter, and refuse and laugh to scorn
+Alnaschar, or will you be the Lady of Lyons, and love the penniless
+Claude Melnotte? I will act that part if you like. I will love you my
+best in return. I will do my all to make your humble life happy: for
+humble it will be: at least the odds are against any other conclusion; we
+shall live and die in a poor prosy humdrum way. There will be no stars
+and epaulettes for the hero of our story. I shall write one or two more
+stories, which will presently be forgotten. I shall be called to the Bar,
+and try to get on in my profession: perhaps some day, if I am very lucky,
+and work very hard (which is absurd), I may get a colonial appointment,
+and you may be an Indian Judge's lady. Meanwhile. I shall buy back the
+Pall Mall Gazette; the publishers are tired of it since the death of poor
+Shandon, and will sell it for a small sum. Warrington will be my right
+hand, and write it up to a respectable sale. I will introduce you to Mr.
+Finucane the sub-editor, and I know who in the end will be Mrs.
+Finucane,--a very nice gentle creature, who has lived sweetly through a
+sad life and we will jog on, I say, and look out for better times, and
+earn our living decently. You shall have the opera-boxes, and superintend
+the fashionable intelligence, and break your little heart in the poet's
+corner. Shall we live over the offices?--there are four very good rooms,
+a kitchen, and a garret for Laura, in Catherine Street in the Strand; or
+would you like a house in the Waterloo Road?--it would be very pleasant,
+only there is that halfpenny toll at the Bridge. The boys may go to
+King's College, mayn't they? Does all this read to you like a joke?
+
+"Ah, dear Blanche, it is no joke, and I am sober and telling the truth.
+Our fine day-dreams are gone. Our carriage has whirled out of sight like
+Cinderella's: our house in Belgravia has been whisked away into the air
+by a malevolent Genius, and I am no more a member of Parliament than I am
+a Bishop on his bench in the House of Lords, or a Duke with a garter at
+his knee. You know pretty well what my property is, and your own little
+fortune: we may have enough with those two to live in decent comfort; to
+take a cab sometimes when we go out to see our friends, and not to deny
+ourselves an omnibus when we are tired. But that is all: is that enough
+for you, my little dainty lady? I doubt sometimes whether you can bear
+the life which I offer you--at least, it is fair that you should know
+what it will be. If you say, 'Yes, Arthur, I will follow your fate
+whatever it may be, and be a loyal and loving wife to aid and cheer you'
+--come to me, dear Blanche, and may God help me so that I may do my duty
+to you. If not, and you look to a higher station, I must not bar
+Blanche's fortune--I will stand in the crowd, and see your ladyship go to
+Court when you are presented, and you shall give me a smile from your
+chariot window. I saw Lady Mirabel going to the drawing-room last season:
+the happy husband at her side glittered with stars and cordons. All the
+flowers in the garden bloomed in the coachman's bosom. Will you have
+these and the chariot, or walk on foot and mend your husband's stockings?
+
+"I cannot tell you now--afterwards I might, should the day come when we
+may have no secrets from one another--what has happened within the last
+few hours which has changed all my prospects in life: but so it is, that
+I have learned something which forces me to give up the plans which I had
+formed, and many vain and ambitious hopes in which I had been indulging.
+I have written and despatched a letter to Sir Francis Clavering, saying
+that I cannot accept his seat in Parliament until after my marriage; in
+like manner I cannot and will not accept any larger fortune with you than
+that which has always belonged to you since your grandfather's death, and
+the birth of your half-brother. Your good mother is not in the least
+aware--I hope she never may be--of the reasons which force me to this
+very strange decision. They arise from a painful circumstance, which is
+attributable to none of our faults; but, having once befallen, they are
+as fatal and irreparable as that shock which overset honest Alnaschar's
+porcelain, and shattered all his hopes beyond the power of mending. I
+write gaily enough, for there is no use in bewailing such a hopeless
+mischance. We have not drawn the great prize in the lottery, dear
+Blanche: but I shall be contented enough without it, if you can be so;
+and I repeat, with all my heart, that I will do my best to make you
+happy.
+
+"And now, what news shall I give you? My uncle is very unwell, and takes
+my refusal of the seat in Parliament in sad dudgeon: the scheme was his,
+poor old gentleman, and he naturally bemoans its failure. But Warrington,
+Laura, and I had a council of war: they know this awful secret, and back
+me in my decision. You must love George as you love what is generous and
+upright and noble; and as for Laura--she must be our Sister, Blanche, our
+Saint, our good Angel. With two such friends at home, what need we care
+for the world without; or who is member for Clavering, or who is asked or
+not asked to the great balls of the season?"
+
+To this frank communication came back the letter from Blanche to Laura,
+and one to Pen himself, which perhaps his own letter justified. "You are
+spoiled by the world," Blanche wrote; "you do not love your poor Blanche
+as she would be loved, or you would not offer thus lightly to take her or
+to leave her, no, Arthur, you love me not--a man of the world, you have
+given me your plighted troth, and are ready to redeem it; but that entire
+affection, that love whole and abiding, where--where is that vision of my
+youth? I am but a pastime of your life, and I would be its all;--but a
+fleeting thought, and I would be your whole soul. I would have our two
+hearts one; but ah, my Arthur, how lonely yours is! how little you give
+me of it! You speak of our parting with a smile on your lip; of our
+meeting, and you care not to hasten it! Is life but a disillusion, then,
+and are the flowers of our garden faded away? I have wept--I have prayed
+--I have passed sleepless hours--I have shed bitter, bitter tears over
+your letter! To you I bring the gushing poesy of my being--the yearnings
+of the soul that longs to be loved--that pines for love, love, love,
+beyond all!--that flings itself at your feet, and cries, Love me, Arthur!
+Your heart beats no quicker at the kneeling appeal of my love!--your
+proud eye is dimmed by no tear of sympathy!--you accept my soul's
+treasure as though 'twere dross! not the pearls from the unfathomable
+deeps of affection! not the diamonds from the caverns of the heart. You
+treat me like a slave, and bid me bow to my master! Is this the guerdon
+of a free maiden--is this the price of a life's passion? Ah me! when was
+it otherwise? when did love meet with aught but disappointment? Could I
+hope (fond fool!) to be the exception to the lot of my race; and lay my
+fevered brow on a heart that comprehended my own? Foolish girl that I
+was! One by one, all the flowers of my young life have faded away; and
+this, the last, the sweetest, the dearest, the fondly, the madly loved,
+the wildly cherished--where is it? But no more of this. Heed not my
+bleeding heart.--Bless you, bless you always, Arthur!
+
+"I will write more when I am more collected. My racking brain renders
+thought almost impossible. I long to see Laura! She will come to us
+directly we return from the country, will she not? And you, cold one!
+                                                              B."
+
+The words of this letter were perfectly clear, and written in Blanche's
+neatest hand upon her scented paper; and yet the meaning of the
+composition not a little puzzled Pen. Did Blanche mean to accept or to
+refuse his polite offer? Her phrases either meant that Pen did not love
+her, and she declined him, or that she took him, and sacrificed herself
+to him, cold as he was. He laughed sardonically over the letter, and over
+the transaction which occasioned it. He laughed to think how Fortune had
+jilted him, and how he deserved his slippery fortune. He turned over and
+over the musky gilt-edged riddle. It amused his humour: he enjoyed it as
+if it had been a funny story.
+
+He was thus seated, twiddling the queer manuscript in his hand, joking
+grimly to himself, when his servant came in with a card from a gentleman,
+who wished to speak to him very particularly. And if Pen had gone out
+into the passage, he would have seen, sucking his stick, rolling his
+eyes, and showing great marks of anxiety, his old acquaintance, Mr.
+Samuel Huxter.
+
+"Mr. Huxter on particular business! Pray, beg Mr. Huxter to come in,"
+said Pen, amused rather; and not the less so when poor Sam appeared
+before him.
+
+"Pray take a chair, Mr. Huxter," said Pen, in his most superb manner. "In
+what way can I be of service to you?"
+
+"I had rather not speak before the flunk--before the man, Mr. Pendennis:"
+on which Mr. Arthur's attendant quitted the room.
+
+"I'm in a fix," said Mr. Huxter, gloomily.
+
+"Indeed."
+
+"She sent me to you," continued the young surgeon.
+
+"What, Fanny? Is she well? I was coming to see her, but I have had a
+great deal of business since my return to London."
+
+"I heard of you through my governor and Jack Hobnell," broke in Huxter.
+"I wish you joy, Mr. Pendennis, both of the borough and the lady, sir.
+Fanny wishes you joy, too," he added, with something of a blush.
+
+"There's many a slip between the cup and the lip! Who knows what may
+happen, Mr. Huxter, or who will sit in Parliament for Clavering next
+session?"
+
+"You can do anything with my governor," continued Mr. Huxter. "You got
+him Clavering Park. The old boy was very much pleased, sir, at your
+calling him in. Hobnell wrote me so. Do you think you could speak to the
+governor for me, Mr. Pendennis?"
+
+"And tell him what?"
+
+"I've gone and done it, sir," said Huxter, with a particular look.
+
+"You--you don't mean to say you have--you have done any wrong to that
+dear little creature, sir?" said Pen, starting up in a great fury.
+
+"I hope not," said Huxter, with a hangdog look: "but I've married her.
+And I know there will be an awful shindy at home. It was agreed that I
+should be taken into partnership when I had passed the College, and it
+was to have been Huxter and Son. But I would have it, confound it. It's
+all over now, and the old boy's wrote me that he's coming up to town for
+drugs: he will be here to-morrow, and then it must all come out."
+
+"And when did this event happen?" asked Pen, not over well pleased, most
+likely, that a person who had once attracted some portion of his royal
+good graces should have transferred her allegiance, and consoled herself
+for his loss.
+
+"Last Thursday was five weeks--it was two days after Miss Amory came to
+Shepherd's Inn," Huxter answered.
+
+Pen remembered that Blanche had written and mentioned her visit. "I was
+called in," Huxter said. "I was in the Inn looking after old Cos's leg;
+and about something else too, very likely: and I met Strong, who told me
+there was a woman taken ill in Chambers, and went up to give her my
+professional services. It was the old lady who attends Miss Amory--her
+housekeeper, or some such thing. She was taken with strong hysterics: I
+found her kicking and screaming like a good one--in Strong's chamber,
+along with him and Colonel Altamont, and Miss Amory crying and as pale as
+a sheet; and Altamont fuming about--a regular kick-up. They were two
+hours in the Chambers; and the old woman went whooping off in a cab. She
+was much worse than the young one. I called in Grosvenor Place next day
+to see if I could be of any service, but they were gone without so much
+as thanking me: and the day after I had business of my own to attend to--
+a bad business too," said Mr. Huxter, gloomily. "But it's done, and can't
+be undone; and we must make the best of it"
+
+She has known the story for a month, thought Pen, with a sharp pang of
+grief, and a gloomy sympathy--this accounts for her letter of to-day. She
+will not implicate her father, or divulge his secret; she wishes to let
+me off from the marriage--and finds a pretext--the generous girl!
+
+"Do you know who Altamont is, sir?" asked Huxter, after the pause during
+which Pen had been thinking of his own affairs. "Fanny and I have talked
+him over, and we can't help fancying that it's Mrs. Lightfoot's first
+husband come to life again, and she who has just married a second.
+Perhaps Lightfoot won't be very sorry for it," sighed Huxter, looking
+savagely at Arthur, for the demon of jealousy was still in possession of
+his soul; and now, and more than ever since his marriage, the poor fellow
+fancied that Fanny's heart belonged to his rival.
+
+"Let us talk about your affairs," said Pen. "Show me how I can be of any
+service to you, Huxter. Let me congratulate you on your marriage. I am
+thankful that Fanny, who is so good, so fascinating, so kind a creature,
+has found an honest man, and a gentleman who will make her happy. Show me
+what I can do to help you."
+
+"She thinks you can, sir," said Huxter, accepting Pen's proffered hand,
+"and I'm very much obliged to you, I'm sure; and that you might talk over
+my father, and break the business to him, and my mother, who always has
+her back up about being a clergyman's daughter. Fanny ain't of a good
+family, I know, and not up to us in breeding and that--but she's a Huxter
+now."
+
+"The wife takes the husband's rank, of course," said Pen.
+
+"And with a little practice in society," continued Huxter, imbibing his
+stick, "she'll be as good as any girl in Clavering. You should hear her
+sing and play on the piano. Did you ever? Old Bows taught her. And she'll
+do on the stage, if the governor was to throw me over; but I'd rather not
+have her there. She can't help being a coquette, Mr. Pendennis, she can't
+help it. Dammy, sir! I'll be bound to say, that two or three of the
+Bartholomew chaps, that I've brought into my place, are sitting with her
+now: even Jack Linton, that I took down as my best man, is as bad as the
+rest, and she will go on singing and making eyes at him. It's what Bows
+says, if there were twenty men in a room, and one not taking notice of
+her, she wouldn't be satisfied until the twentieth was at her elbow."
+
+"You should have her mother with her," said Pen, laughing.
+
+"She must keep the lodge. She can't see so much of her family as she
+used. I can't, you know, sir, go on with that lot. Consider my rank in
+life," said Huxter, putting a very dirty hand up to his chin.
+
+"Au fait," said Mr. Pen, who was infinitely amused, and concerning whom
+mutato nomine (and of course concerning nobody else in the world) the
+fable might have been narrated.
+
+As the two gentlemen were in the midst of this colloquy, another knock
+came to Pen's door, and his servant presently announced Mr. Bows. The old
+man followed slowly, his pale face blushing, and his hand trembling
+somewhat as he took Pen's. He coughed, and wiped his face in his checked
+cotton pocket-handkerchief, and sate down with his hands on his knees,
+the sunshining on his bald head. Pen looked at the homely figure with no
+small sympathy and kindness. This man, too, has had his griefs and his
+wounds, Arthur thought. This man, too, has brought his genius and his
+heart, and laid them at a woman's feet; where she spurned them. The
+chance of life has gone against him, and the prize is with that creature
+yonder. Fanny's bridegroom, thus mutely apostrophised, had winked
+meanwhile with one eye at old Bows, and was driving holes in the floor
+with the cane which he loved.
+
+"So we have lost, Mr. Bows, and here is the lucky winner," Pen said,
+looking hard at the old man.
+
+"Here is the lucky winner, sir, as you say."
+
+"I suppose you have come from my place?" asked Huxter, who, having winked
+at Bows with one eye, now favoured Pen with a wink of the other--a wink
+which seemed to say, "Infatuated old boy--you understand--over head and
+ears in love with her poor old fool."
+
+"Yes, I have been there ever since you went away. It was Mrs. Sam who
+sent me after you: who said that she thought you might be doing something
+stupid--something like yourself, Huxter."
+
+"There's as big fools as I am," growled the young surgeon.
+
+"A few, p'raps," said the old man; "not many, let us trust. Yes, she sent
+me after you for fear you should offend Mr. Pendennis; and I daresay
+because she thought you wouldn't give her message to him, and beg him to
+go and see her; and she knew I would take her errand. Did he tell you
+that, sir?"
+
+Huxter blushed scarlet, and covered his confusion with an imprecation.
+Pen laughed; the scene suited his bitter humour more and more.
+
+"I have no doubt Mr. Huxter was going to tell me," Arthur said, "and very
+much flattered I am sure I shall be to pay my respects to his wife."
+
+"It's in Charterhouse Lane, over the baker's, on the right hand side as
+you go from St. John's Street," continued Bows, without any pity. "You
+know Smithfield, Mr. Pendennis? St. John's Street leads into Smithfield.
+Doctor Johnson has been down the street many a time with ragged shoes,
+and a bundle of penny-a-lining for the Gent's Magazine. You literary
+gents are better off now--eh? You ride in your cabs, and wear yellow kid
+gloves now."
+
+"I have known so many brave and good men fail, and so many quacks and
+impostors succeed, that you mistake me if you think I am puffed up by my
+own personal good luck, old friend," Arthur said, sadly. "Do you think
+the prizes of life are carried by the most deserving? and set up that
+mean test of prosperity for merit? You must feel that you are as good as
+I. I have never questioned it. It is you that are peevish against the
+freaks of fortune, and grudge the good luck that befalls others. It's not
+the first time you have unjustly accused me, Bows."
+
+"Perhaps you are not far wrong, sir," said the old fellow, wiping his
+bald forehead. "I am thinking about myself and grumbling; most men do
+when they get on that subject. Here's the fellow that's got the prize in
+the lottery; here's the fortunate youth."
+
+"I don't know what you are driving at," Huxter said, who had been much
+puzzled as the above remarks passed between his two companions.
+
+"Perhaps not," said Bows, drily. "Mrs. H. sent me here to look after you,
+and to see that you brought that little message to Mr. Pendennis, which
+you didn't, you see, and so she was right. Women always are; they have
+always a reason for everything. Why, sir," he said, turning round to Pen
+with a sneer, "she had a reason even for giving me that message. I was
+sitting with her after you left us, very quiet and comfortable; I was
+talking away, and she was mending your shirts, when your two young
+friends, Jack Linton and Bob Blades, looked in from Bartholomew's; and
+then it was she found out that she had this message to send. You needn't
+hurry yourself, she don't want you back again; they'll stay these two
+hours, I daresay."
+
+Huxter arose with great perturbation at this news, and plunged his stick
+into the pocket of his paletot, and seized his hat.
+
+"You'll come and see us, sir, won't you?" he said to Pen. "You'll talk
+over the governor, won't you, sir, if I can get out of this place and
+down to Clavering?"
+
+"You will promise to attend me gratis if ever I fall ill at Fairoaks,
+will you, Huxter?" Pen said, good-naturedly. "I will do anything I can
+for you. I will come and see Mrs. Huxter immediately, and we will
+conspire together about what is to be done."
+
+"I thought that would send him out, sir," Bows said, dropping into his
+chair again as soon as the young surgeon had quitted the room. "And it's
+all true, sir--every word of it. She wants you back again, and sends her
+husband after you. She cajoles everybody, the little devil. She tries it
+on you, on me, on poor Costigan, on the young chaps from Bartholomew's.
+She's got a little court of 'em already. And if there's nobody there, she
+practises on the old German baker in the shop, or coaxes the black
+sweeper at the crossing."
+
+"Is she fond of that fellow?" asked Pen.
+
+"There is no accounting for likes and dislikes," Bows answered.
+
+"Yes, she is fond of him; and having taken the thing into her head, she
+would not rest until she married him. They had their banns published at
+St. Clement's, and nobody heard it or knew any just cause or impediment.
+And one day she slips out of the porter's lodge and has the business
+done, and goes off to Gravesend with Lothario; and leaves a note for me
+to go and explain all things to her Ma. Bless you! the old woman knew it
+as well as I did, though she pretended ignorance. And so she goes, and
+I'm alone again. I miss her, sir, tripping along that court, and coming
+for her singing lesson; and I've no heart to look into the porter's lodge
+now, which looks very empty without her, the little flirting thing. And I
+go and sit and dangle about her lodgings, like an old fool. She makes 'em
+very trim and nice, though; gets up all Huxter's shirts and clothes:
+cooks his little dinner, and sings at her business like a little lark.
+What's the use of being angry? I lent 'em three pound to go on with: for
+they haven't got a shilling till the reconciliation, and Pa comes down."
+
+When Bows had taken his leave, Pen carried his letter from Blanche, and
+the news which he had just received, to his usual adviser, Laura. It was
+wonderful upon how many points Mr. Arthur, who generally followed his own
+opinion, now wanted another person's counsel. He could hardly so much as
+choose a waistcoat without referring to Miss Bell: if he wanted to buy a
+horse he must have Miss Bell's opinion; all which marks of deference
+tended greatly to the amusement of the shrewd old lady with whom Miss
+Bell lived, and whose plans regarding her protegee we have indicated.
+
+Arthur produced Blanche's letter then to Laura, and asked her to
+interpret it. Laura was very much agitated and puzzled by the contents
+of the note.
+
+"It seems to me," she said, "as if Blanche is acting very artfully."
+
+"And wishes so to place matters that she may take me or leave me? Is it
+not so?"
+
+"It is, I am afraid, a kind of duplicity which does not augur well for
+your future happiness; and is a bad reply to your own candour and
+honesty, Arthur. Do you know, I think, I think--I scarcely like to say
+what I think," said Laura with a deep blush; but of course the blushing
+young lady yielded to her cousin's persuasion, and expressed what her
+thoughts were. "It looks to me, Arthur, as if there might be--there might
+be somebody else," said, Laura, with a repetition of the blush.
+
+"And if there is," broke in Arthur, "and if I am free once again, will
+the best and dearest of all women----"
+
+"You are not free, dear brother," Laura said calmly. "You belong to
+another; of whom I own it grieves me to think ill. But I can't do
+otherwise. It is very odd that in this letter she does not urge you to
+tell her the reason why you have broken arrangements which would have
+been so advantageous to you; and avoids speaking on the subject. She
+somehow seems to write as if she knows her father's secret."
+
+Pen said, "Yes, she must know it;" and told the story, which he had just
+heard from Huxter, of the interview at Shepherd's Inn.
+
+"It was not so that she described the meeting," said Laura; and, going to
+her desk, produced from it that letter of Blanche's which mentioned her
+visit to Shepherd's Inn. 'Another disappointment--only the Chevalier
+Strong and a friend of his in the room.' This was all that Blanche had
+said. "But she was bound to keep her father's secret, Pen," Laura added.
+"And yet, and yet--it is very puzzling."
+
+The puzzle was this, that for three weeks after this eventful discovery
+Blanche had been only too eager about her dearest Arthur; was urging, as
+strongly as so much modesty could urge, the completion of the happy
+arrangements which were to make her Arthur's for ever; and now it seemed
+as if something had interfered to mar these happy arrangements--as if
+Arthur poor was not quite so agreeable to Blanche as Arthur rich and a
+member of Parliament--as if there was some mystery. At last she said:
+
+"Tunbridge Wells is not very far off, is it, Arthur? Hadn't you better go
+and see her?"
+
+They had been in town a week, and neither had thought of that simple plan
+before!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIV
+
+Shows how Arthur had better have taken a Return-ticket
+
+
+The train carried Arthur only too quickly to Tunbridge, though he had
+time to review all the circumstances of his life as he made the brief
+journey; and to acknowledge to what sad conclusions his selfishness and
+waywardness had led him. "Here is the end of hopes and aspirations,"
+thought he, "of romance and ambitions! Where I yield or where I am
+obstinate, I am alike unfortunate; my mother implores me, and I refuse an
+angel! Say I had taken her; forced on me as she was, Laura would never
+have been an angel to me. I could not have given her my heart at
+another's instigation; I never could have known her as she is had I been
+obliged to ask another to interpret her qualities and point out her
+virtues. I yield to my uncle's solicitations, and accept on his guarantee
+Blanche, and a seat in Parliament, and wealth, and ambition, and a
+career; and see!--fortune comes and leaves me the wife without the dowry,
+which I had taken in compensation of a heart. Why was I not more honest,
+or am I not less so? It would have cost my poor old uncle no pangs to
+accept Blanche's fortune whencesoever it came; he can't even understand,
+he is bitterly indignant, heart-stricken, almost, at the scruples which
+actuate me in refusing it. I dissatisfy everybody. A maimed, weak,
+imperfect wretch, it seems as if I am unequal to any fortune. I neither
+make myself nor any one connected with me happy. What prospect is there
+for this poor little frivolous girl, who is to take my obscure name and
+share my fortune? I have not even ambition to excite me, or self-esteem
+enough to console myself, much more her, for my failure. If I were to
+write a book that should go through twenty editions, why, I should be the
+very first to sneer at my reputation. Say I could succeed at the Bar, and
+achieve a fortune by bullying witnesses and twisting evidence; is that a
+fame which would satisfy my longings, or a calling in which my life would
+be well spent? How I wish I could be that priest opposite, who never has
+lifted his eyes from his breviary, except when we were in Reigate tunnel,
+when he could not see; or that old gentleman next him, who scowls at him
+with eyes of hatred over his newspaper. The priest shuts his eyes to the
+world, but has his thoughts on the book, which is his directory to the
+world to come. His neighbour hates him as a monster, tyrant, persecutor,
+and fancies burning martyrs, and that pale countenance looking on, and
+lighted up by the flame. These have no doubts; these march on trustfully,
+bearing their load of logic."
+
+"Would you like to look at the paper, sir?" here interposed the stout
+gentleman (it had a flaming article against the order of the black-coated
+gentleman who was travelling with them in the carriage), and Pen thanked
+him and took it, and pursued his reverie, without reading two sentences
+of the journal.
+
+"And yet, would you take either of those men's creeds, with its
+consequences?" he thought. "Ah me! you must bear your own burthen,
+fashion your own faith, think your own thoughts, and pray your own
+prayer. To what mortal ear could I tell all, if I had a mind? or who
+could understand all? Who can tell another's shortcomings, lost
+opportunities, weigh the passions which overpower, the defects which
+incapacitate reason?--what extent of truth and right his neighbour's mind
+is organised to perceive and to do?--what invisible and forgotten
+accident, terror of youth, chance or mischance of fortune, may have
+altered the whole current of life? A grain of sand may alter it, as the
+flinging of a pebble may end it. Who can weigh circumstances, passions,
+temptations, that go to our good and evil account, save One, before whose
+awful wisdom we kneel, and at whose mercy we ask absolution? Here it
+ends," thought Pen; "this day or to-morrow will wind up the account of my
+youth; a weary retrospect, alas! a sad history, with many a page I would
+fain not look back on! But who has not been tired or fallen, and who has
+escaped without scars from that struggle?" And his head fell on his
+breast, and the young man's heart prostrated itself humbly and sadly
+before that Throne where sits wisdom, and love, and pity for all, and
+made its confession. "What matters about fame or poverty!" he thought.
+"If I marry this woman I have chosen, may I have strength and will to be
+true to her, and to make her happy. If I have children, pray God teach me
+to speak and to do the truth among them, and to leave them an honest
+name. There are no splendours for my marriage. Does my life deserve any?
+I begin a new phase of it; a better than the last may it be, I pray
+Heaven!"
+
+The train stopped at Tunbridge as Pen was making these reflections; and
+he handed over the newspaper to his neighbour, of whom he took leave,
+while the foreign clergyman in the opposite corner still sate with his
+eyes on his book. Pen jumped out of the carriage then, his carpet-bag in
+hand, and briskly determined to face his fortune.
+
+A fly carried him rapidly to Lady Clavering's house from the station;
+and, as he was transported thither, Arthur composed a little speech,
+which he intended to address to Blanche, and which was really as
+virtuous, honest, and well-minded an oration as any man of his turn of
+mind, and under his circumstances, could have uttered. The purport of it
+was--"Blanche, I cannot understand from your last letter what your
+meaning is, or whether my fair and frank proposal to you is acceptable or
+no. I think you know the reason which induces me to forgo the worldly
+advantages which a union with you offered, and which I could not accept
+without, as I fancy, being dishonoured. If you doubt of my affection,
+here I am ready to prove it. Let Smirke be called in, and let us be
+married out of hand; and with all my heart I purpose to keep my vow, and
+to cherish you through life, and to be a true and a loving husband to
+you."
+
+From the fly Arthur sprang out then to the hall-door, where he was met by
+a domestic whom he did not know. The man seemed to be surprised at the
+approach of the gentleman with the carpet-bag, which he made no attempt
+to take from Arthur's hands. "Her Ladyship's not at home, sir," the man
+remarked.
+
+"I am Mr. Pendennis," Arthur said. "Where is Lightfoot?"
+
+"Lightfoot is gone," answered the man. "My Lady is out, and my orders
+was----"
+
+"I hear Miss Amory's voice in the drawing-room," said Arthur. "Take the
+bag to a dressing-room, if you please;" and, passing by the porter, he
+walked straight towards that apartment, from which, as the door opened, a
+warble of melodious notes issued.
+
+Our little Siren was at her piano singing with all her might and
+fascinations. Master Clavering was asleep on the sofa, indifferent to the
+music; but near Blanche sat a gentleman who was perfectly enraptured with
+her strain, which was of a passionate and melancholy nature.
+
+As the door opened, the gentleman started up with Hullo! the music
+stopped, with a little shriek from the singer; Frank Clavering woke up
+from the sofa, and Arthur came forward and said, "What, Foker! how do you
+do, Foker?" He looked at the piano, and there, by Miss Amory's side, was
+just such another purple-leather box as he had seen in Harry's hand three
+days before, when the heir of Logwood was coming out of a jeweller's shop
+in Waterloo Place. It was opened, and curled round the white satin
+cushion within was, oh, such a magnificent serpentine bracelet, with such
+a blazing ruby head and diamond tail!
+
+"How de-do, Pendennis?" said Foker. Blanche made many motions of the
+shoulders, and gave signs of unrest and agitation. And she put her
+handkerchief over the bracelet, and then she advanced, with a hand which
+trembled very much, to greet Pen.
+
+"How is dearest Laura?" she said. The face of Foker looking up from his
+profound mourning--that face, so piteous and puzzled, was one which the
+reader's imagination must depict for himself; also that of Master Frank
+Clavering, who, looking at the three interesting individuals with an
+expression of the utmost knowingness, had only time to ejaculate the
+words, "Here's a jolly go!" and to disappear sniggering.
+
+Pen, too, had restrained himself up to that minute; but looking still at
+Foker, whose ears and cheeks tingled with blushes, Arthur burst out into
+a fit of laughter, so wild and loud, that it frightened Blanche much more
+than any the most serious exhibition.
+
+"And this was the secret, was it? Don't blush and turn away, Foker, my
+boy. Why, man, you are a pattern of fidelity. Could I stand between
+Blanche and such constancy--could I stand between Miss Amory and fifteen
+thousand a year?"
+
+"It is not that, Mr. Pendennis," Blanche said, with great dignity. "It is
+not money, it is not rank, it is not gold that moves me; but it is
+constancy, it is fidelity, it is a whole trustful loving heart offered to
+me, that I treasure--yes, that I treasure!" And she made for her
+handkerchief, but, reflecting what was underneath it, she paused. "I do
+not disown, I do not disguise--my life is above disguise--to him on whom
+it is bestowed, my heart must be for ever bare--that I once thought I
+loved you,--yes, thought I was beloved by you, I own! How I clung to that
+faith! How I strove, I prayed, I longed to believe it! But your conduct
+always--your own words so cold, so heartless, so unkind, have undeceived
+me. You trifled with the heart of the poor maiden! You flung me back with
+scorn the troth which I had plighted! I have explained all--all to Mr.
+Foker."
+
+"That you have," said Foker, with devotion, and conviction in his looks.
+
+"What, all?" said Pen, with a meaning look at Blanche. "It is I am in
+fault, is it? Well, well, Blanche, be it so. I won't appeal against your
+sentence, and bear it in silence. I came down here looking to very
+different things, Heaven knows, and with a heart most truly and kindly
+disposed towards you. I hope you may be happy with another, as, on my
+word, it was my wish to make you so; and I hope my honest old friend here
+will have a wife worthy of his loyalty, his constancy, and affection.
+Indeed they deserve the regard of any woman--even Miss Blanche Amory.
+Shake hands, Harry; don't look askance at me. Has anybody told you that I
+was a false and heartless character?"
+
+"I think you're a----" Foker was beginning, in his wrath, when Blanche
+interposed.
+
+"Henry, not a word!--I pray you let there be forgiveness!"
+
+"You're an angel, by Jove, you're an angel!" said Foker, at which Blanche
+looked seraphically up to the chandelier.
+
+"In spite of what has passed, for the sake of what has passed, I must
+always regard Arthur as a brother," the seraph continued; "we have known
+each other years, we have trodden the same fields, and plucked the same
+flowers together. Arthur! Henry! I beseech you to take hands and to be
+friends! Forgive you!--I forgive you, Arthur, with my heart I do. Should
+I not do so for making me so happy?"
+
+"There is only one person of us three whom I pity, Blanche," Arthur said,
+gravely, "and I say to you again, that I hope you will make this good
+fellow, this honest and loyal creature, happy."
+
+"Happy! O Heavens!" said Harry. He could not speak. His happiness gushed
+out at his eyes. "She don't know--she can't know how fond I am of her,
+and--and who am I? a poor little beggar, and she takes me up and says
+she'll try and I--I--love me. I ain't worthy of so much happiness. Give
+us your hand, old boy, since she forgives you after your heartless
+conduct, and says she loves you. I'll make you welcome. I tell you I'll
+love everybody who loves her. By---, if she tells me to kiss the ground
+I'll kiss it. Tell me to kiss the ground! I say, tell me. I love you so.
+You see I love you so."
+
+Blanche looked up seraphically again. Her gentle bosom heaved. She held
+out one hand as if to bless Harry, and then royally permitted him to kiss
+it. She took up the pocket-handkerchief and hid her own eyes, as the
+other fair hand was abandoned to poor Harry's tearful embrace.
+
+"I swear that is a villain who deceives such a loving creature as that,"
+said Pen.
+
+Blanche laid down the handkerchief, and put hand No. 2 softly on Foker's
+head, which was bent down kissing and weeping over hand No. 1. "Foolish
+boy?" she said, "it shall be loved as it deserves: who could help loving
+such a silly creature!"
+
+And at this moment Frank Clavering broke in upon the sentimental trio.
+
+"I say, Pendennis!" he said.
+
+"Well, Frank!"
+
+"The man wants to be paid, and go back. He's had some beer."
+
+"I'll go back with him," cried Pen. "Good-bye, Blanche. God bless you,
+Foker, old friend. You know, neither of you want me here." He longed to
+be off that instant.
+
+"Stay--I must say one word to you. One word in private, if you please,"
+Blanche said. "You can trust us together, can't you, Henry?" The tone in
+which the word Henry was spoken, and the appeal, ravished Foker with
+delight. "Trust you!" said he. "Oh, who wouldn't trust you! Come along,
+Franky, my boy."
+
+"Let's have a cigar," said Frank, as they went into the hall.
+
+"She don't like it," said Foker, gently.
+
+"Law bless you--she don't mind. Pendennis used to smoke regular," said
+the candid youth.
+
+"It was but a short word I had to say," said Blanche to Pen, with great
+calm, when they were alone. "You never loved me, Mr. Pendennis."
+
+"I told you how much," said Arthur. "I never deceived you."
+
+"I suppose you will go back and marry Laura," continued Blanche.
+
+"Was that what you had to say?" said Pen.
+
+"You are going to her this very night, I am sure of it. There is no
+denying it. You never cared for me."
+
+"Et vous?"
+
+"Et moi, c'est different. I have been spoilt early. I cannot live out of
+the world, out of excitement. I could have done so, but it is too late.
+If I cannot have emotions, I must have the world. You would offer me
+neither one nor the other. You are blase in everything, even in ambition.
+You had a career before you, and you would not take it. You give it up!--
+for what?--for a betise, for an absurd scruple. Why would you not have
+that seat, and be such a puritain? Why should you refuse what is mine by
+right, by right, entendez-vous?"
+
+"You know all, then?" said Pen.
+
+"Only within a month. But I have suspected ever since Baymouth--n'importe
+since when. It is not too late. He is as if he had never been; and there
+is a position in the world before you yet. Why not sit in Parliament,
+exert your talent, and give a place in the world to yourself, to your
+wife? I take celui-la. Il est bon. Il est riche. Il est--vous le
+connaissez autant que moi enfin. Think you that I would not prefer un
+homme qui fera parler de moi? If the secret appears I am rich a millions.
+How does it affect me? It is not my fault. It will never appear."
+
+"You will tell Harry everything, won't you?"
+
+"Je comprends. Vous refusez," said Blanche, savagely. "I will tell Harry
+at my own time, when we are married. You will not betray me, will you?
+You, having a defenceless girl's secret, will not turn upon her and use
+it? S'il me plait de le cacher, mon secret; pourquoi le donnerai je? Je
+l'aime, mon pauvre pere, voyez-vous? I would rather live with that man
+than with you fades intriguers of the world. I must have emotions--it
+m'en donne. Il m'ecrit. Il ecrit tres-bien, voyez-vous--comme un pirate--
+comme un Bohemien--comme un homme. But for this I would have said to my
+mother--Ma mere! quittons ce lache mari, cette lache societe--retournons
+a mon pere."
+
+"The pirate would have wearied you like the rest," said Pen.
+
+"Eh! Il me faut des emotions," said Blanche. Pen had never seen her or
+known so much about her in all the years of their intimacy as he saw and
+knew now: though he saw more than existed in reality. For this young lady
+was not able to carry out any emotion to the full; but had a sham
+enthusiasm, a sham hatred, a sham love, a sham taste, a sham grief, each
+of which flared and shone very vehemently for an instant, but subsided
+and gave place to the next sham emotion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXV
+
+A Chapter of Match-making
+
+
+Upon the platform at Tunbridge, Pen fumed and fretted until the arrival
+of the evening train to London, a full half-hour,--six hours it seemed to
+him; but even this immense interval was passed, the train arrived, the
+train sped on, the London lights came in view--a gentleman who forgot
+his carpet-bag in the train rushed at a cab, and said to the man, "Drive
+as hard as you can go to Jermyn Street." The cabman, although a
+hansom-cabman, said Thank you for the gratuity which was put into his
+hand, and Pen ran up the stairs of the hotel to Lady Rockminster's
+apartments. Laura was alone in the drawing-room, reading, with a pale
+face, by the lamp. The pale face looked up when Pen opened the door. May
+we follow him? The great moments of life are but moments like the others.
+Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes; a mere
+pressure of the hand may decide it; or of the lips, though they cannot
+speak.
+
+When Lady Rockminster, who has had her after-dinner nap, gets up and goes
+into her sitting-room, we may enter with her ladyship.
+
+"Upon my word, young people!" are the first words she says, and her
+attendant makes wondering eyes over her shoulder. And well may she say
+so; and well may the attendant cast wondering eyes; for the young people
+are in an attitude; and Pen in such a position as every young lady who
+reads this has heard tell of, or has seen, or hopes, or at any rate
+deserves to see.
+
+In a word, directly he entered the room, Pen went up to Laura of the pale
+face, who had not time even to say, What, back so soon? and seizing her
+outstretched and trembling hand just as she was rising from her chair,
+fell down on his knees before her, and said quickly, "I have seen her.
+She has engaged herself to Harry Foker--and--and Now, Laura?"
+
+The hand gives a pressure--the eyes beam a reply--the quivering lips
+answer, though speechless. Pen's head sinks down in the girl's lap, as he
+sobs out, "Come and bless us, dear mother," and arms as tender as Helen's
+once more enfold him.
+
+In this juncture it is that Lady Rockminster comes in and says, "Upon my
+word, young people! Beck! leave the room. What do you want poking your
+nose in here?"
+
+Pen starts up with looks of triumph, still holding Laura's hand. "She is
+consoling me for my misfortune, ma'am," he says.
+
+"What do you mean by kissing her hand? I don't know what you will be next
+doing."
+
+Pen kissed her Ladyship's. "I have been to Tunbridge," he says, "and seen
+Miss Amory; and find on my arrival that--that a villain has transplanted
+me in her affections," he says with a tragedy air.
+
+"Is that all? Is that what you were whimpering on your knees about?"
+says the old lady, growing angry. "You might have kept the news till
+to-morrow."
+
+"Yes--another has superseded me," goes on Pen; "but why call him villain?
+He is brave, he is constant, he is young, he is wealthy, he is
+beautiful."
+
+"What stuff are you talking, sir?" cried the old lady. "What has
+happened?"
+
+"Miss Amory has jilted me, and accepted Henry Foker, Esq. I found her
+warbling ditties to him as he lay at her feet; presents had been
+accepted, vows exchanged, these ten days. Harry was old Mrs. Planter's
+rheumatism, which kept dearest Laura out of the house. He is the most
+constant and generous of men. He has promised the living of Logwood to
+Lady Ann's husband, and given her a splendid present on her marriage; and
+he rushed to fling himself at Blanche's feet the instant he found he was
+free."
+
+"And so, as you can't get Blanche, you put up with Laura; is that it,
+sir?" asked the old lady.
+
+"He acted nobly," Laura said.
+
+"I acted as she bade me," said Pen. "Never mind how, Lady Rockminster;
+but to the best of my knowledge and power. And if you mean that I am not
+worthy of Laura, I know it, and pray Heaven to better me; and if the love
+and company of the best and purest creature in the world can do so, at
+least I shall have these to help me."
+
+"Hm, hm," replied the old lady to this, looking with rather an appeased
+air at the young people. "It is all very well; but I should have
+preferred Bluebeard."
+
+And now Pen, to divert the conversation from a theme which was growing
+painful to some parties present, bethought him of his interview with
+Huxter in the morning, and of Fanny Bolton's affairs, which he had
+forgotten under the immediate pressure and excitement of his own. And he
+told the ladies how Huxter had elevated Fanny to the rank of wife, and
+what terrors he was in respecting the arrival of his father. He described
+the scene with considerable humour, taking care to dwell especially upon
+that part of it which concerned Fanny's coquetry and irrepressible desire
+of captivating mankind; his meaning being, "You see, Laura, I was not so
+guilty in that little affair; it was the girl who made love to me, and I
+who resisted. As I am no longer present, the little siren practises her
+arts and fascinations upon others. Let that transaction be forgotten in
+your mind, if you please; or visit me with a very gentle punishment for
+my error."
+
+Laura understood his meaning under the eagerness of his explanations. "If
+you did any wrong, you repented, dear Pen," she said; "and you know," she
+added, with meaning eyes and blushes, "that I have no right to reproach
+you."
+
+"Hm!" grumbled the old lady; "I should have preferred Bluebeard."
+
+"The past is broken away. The morrow is before us. I will do my best to
+make your morrow happy, dear Laura," Pen said. His heart was humbled by
+the prospect of his happiness: it stood awestricken in the contemplation
+of her sweet goodness and purity. He liked his wife better that she had
+owned to that passing feeling for Warrington, and laid bare her generous
+heart to him. And she--very likely she was thinking, "How strange it is
+that I ever should have cared for another! I am vexed almost to think I
+care for him so little, am so little sorry that he is gone away. Oh, in
+these past two months how I have learned to love Arthur! I care about
+nothing but Arthur: my waking and sleeping thoughts are about him; he is
+never absent from me. And to think that he is to be mine, mine! and that
+I am to marry him, and not to be his servant as I expected to be only
+this morning; for I would have gone down on my knees to Blanche to beg
+her to let me live with him. And now--Oh, it is too much. Oh, mother!
+mother, that you were here!" Indeed, she felt as if Helen were there--by
+her actually, though invisibly. A halo of happiness beamed from her.
+
+She moved with a different step, and bloomed with a new beauty. Arthur
+saw the change; and the old Lady Rockminster remarked it with her shrewd
+eyes.
+
+"What a sly demure little wretch you have been," she whispered to Laura--
+while Pen, in great spirits, was laughing, and telling his story about
+Huxter--"and how you have kept your secret!"
+
+"How are we to help the young couple?" said Laura. Of course Miss Laura
+felt an interest in all young couples, as generous lovers always love
+other lovers.
+
+"We must go and see them," said Pen.
+
+"Of course we must go and see them," said Laura. "I intend to be very
+fond of Fanny. Let us go this instant. Lady Rockminster, may I have the
+carriage?"
+
+"Go now!--why, you stupid creature, it is eleven o'clock at night. Mr.
+and Mrs. Huxter have got their nightcaps on, I dare say. And it is time
+for you to go now. Good night, Mr. Pendennis."
+
+Arthur and Laura begged for ten minutes more.
+
+"We will go to-morrow morning, then. I will come and fetch you with
+Martha."
+
+"An earl's coronet," said Pen, who, no doubt, was pleased himself, "will
+have a great effect in Lamb Court and Smithfield. Stay--Lady Rockminster,
+will you join us in a little conspiracy?"
+
+"How do you mean conspiracy, young man?"
+
+"Will you please to be a little ill to-morrow; and when old Mr. Huxter
+arrives, will you let me call him in? If he is put into a good humour at
+the notion of attending a baronet in the country, what influence won't a
+countess have on him? When he is softened--when he is quite ripe, we will
+break the secret upon him; bring in the young people, extort the paternal
+benediction, and finish the comedy."
+
+"A parcel of stuff," said the old lady. "Take your hat, sir. Come away,
+miss. There--my head is turned another way. Good night, young people."
+And who knows but the old lady thought of her own early days as she went
+away on Laura's arm, nodding her head and humming to herself?
+
+With the early morning came Laura and Martha according to appointment;
+and the desired sensation was, let us hope, effected in Lamb Court,
+whence the three proceeded to wait upon Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Huxter, at
+their residence in Charterhouse Lane.
+
+The two ladies looked at each other with great interest, and not a little
+emotion on Fanny's part. She had not seen her "guardian," as she was
+pleased to call Pen in consequence of his bequest, since the event had
+occurred which had united her to Mr. Huxter.
+
+"Samuel told me how kind you had been," she said. "You were always very
+kind, Mr. Pendennis. And--and I hope your friend is better, who was took
+ill in Shepherd's Inn, ma'am."
+
+"My name is Laura," said the other, with a blush. "I am--that is, I was--
+that is, I am Arthur's sister; and we shall always love you for being so
+good to him when he was ill. And when we live in the country, I hope we
+shall see each other. And I shall be always happy to hear of your
+happiness, Fanny."
+
+"We are going to do what you and Huxter have done, Fanny.--Where is
+Huxter? What nice, snug lodgings you've got! What a pretty cat!"
+
+While Fanny is answering these questions in reply to Pen, Laura says to
+herself--"Well, now really! is this the creature about whom we were all
+so frightened? What could he see in her? She's a homely little thing, but
+such manners! Well, she was very kind to him,--bless her for that."
+
+Mr. Samuel had gone out to meet his Pa. Mrs. Huxter said that the old
+gentleman was to arrive that day at the Somerset Coffee-house, in the
+Strand; and Fanny confessed that she was in a sad tremor about the
+meeting. "If his parent casts him off, what are we to do?" she said. "I
+shall never pardon myself for bringing ruing on my 'usband's 'ead. You
+must intercede for us, Mr. Arthur. If mortal man can, you can bend and
+influence Mr. Huxter senior." Fanny still regarded Pen in the light of a
+superior being, that was evident. No doubt Arthur thought of the past, as
+he marked the solemn little tragedy-airs and looks, the little ways, the
+little trepidations, vanities, of the little bride. As soon as the
+interview was over, entered Messrs. Linton and Blades, who came, of
+course, to visit Huxter, and brought with them a fine fragrance of
+tobacco. They had watched the carriage at the baker's door, and remarked
+the coronet with awe. They asked of Fanny who was that uncommonly heavy
+swell who had just driven off? and pronounced the countess was of the
+right sort. And when they heard that it was Mr. Pendennis and his sister,
+they remarked that Pen's father was only a sawbones; and that he gave
+himself confounded airs; they had been in Huxter's company on the night
+of his little altercation with Pen in the Back Kitchen.
+
+Returning homewards through Fleet Street, and as Laura was just stating
+to Pen's infinite amusement that Fanny was very well, but that really
+there was no beauty in her,--there might be, but she could not see it,--
+as they were locked near Temple Bar, they saw young Huxter returning to
+his bride. "The governor had arrived; was at the Somerset Coffee-house--
+was in tolerable good-humour--something about the railway: but he had
+been afraid to speak about--about that business. Would Mr. Pendennis try
+it on?"
+
+Pen said he would go and call at that moment upon Mr. Huxter, and see
+what might be done. Huxter junior would lurk outside whilst that awful
+interview took place. The coronet on the carriage inspired his soul also
+with wonder; and old Mr. Huxter himself beheld it with delight, as he
+looked from the coffee-house window on that Strand which it was always a
+treat to him to survey.
+
+"And I can afford to give myself a lark, sir," said Mr. Huxter, shaking
+hands with Pen. "Of course you know the news? we have got our bill, sir.
+We shall have our branch line--our shares are up, sir--and we buy your
+three fields along the Brawl, and put a pretty penny into your pocket,
+Mr. Pendennis."
+
+"Indeed!--that was good news." Pen remembered that there was a letter
+from Mr. Tatham, at Chambers, these three days; but he had not opened the
+communication, being interested with other affairs.
+
+"I hope you don't intend to grow rich, and give up practice," said Pen.
+"We can't lose you at Clavering, Mr. Huxter; though I hear very good
+accounts of your son. My friend, Dr. Goodenough speaks most highly of his
+talents. It is hard that a man of your eminence, though, should be kept
+in a country town."
+
+"The metropolis would have been my sphere of action, sir," said Mr.
+Huxter, surveying the Strand. "But a man takes his business where he
+finds it; and I succeeded to that of my father."
+
+"It was my father's, too," said Pen. "I sometimes wish I had followed
+it."
+
+"You, sir, have taken a more lofty career," said the old gentleman. "You
+aspire to the senate: and to literary honours. You wield the poet's pen,
+sir, and move in the circles of fashion. We keep an eye upon you at
+Clavering. We read your name in the lists of the select parties of the
+nobility. Why, it was only the other day that my wife was remarking how
+odd it was that at a party at the Earl of Kidderminster's your name was
+not mentioned. To what member of the aristocracy may I ask does that
+equipage belong from which I saw you descend? The Countess Dowager of
+Rockminster? How is her Ladyship?"
+
+"Her Ladyship is not very well; and when I heard that you were coming to
+town, I strongly urged her to see you, Mr. Huxter," Pen said. Old Huxter
+felt, if he had a hundred votes for Clavering, he would give them all to
+Pen.
+
+"There is an old friend of yours in the carriage--a Clavering lady, too--
+will you come out and speak to her?" asked Pen. The old surgeon was
+delighted to speak to a coroneted carriage in the midst of the full
+Strand: he ran out bowing and smiling. Huxter junior, dodging about the
+district, beheld the meeting between his father and Laura, saw the latter
+put out her hand, and presently, after a little colloquy with Pen, beheld
+his father actually jump into the carriage, and drive away with Miss
+Bell.
+
+There was no room for Arthur, who came back, laughing, to the young
+surgeon, and told him whither his parent was bound. During the whole of
+the journey, that artful Laura coaxed, and wheedled, and cajoled him so
+adroitly, that the old gentleman would have granted her anything; and
+Lady Rockminster achieved the victory over him by complimenting him on
+his skill, and professing her anxiety to consult him. What were her
+Ladyship's symptoms? Should he meet her Ladyship's usual medical
+attendant? Mr. Jones was called out of town? He should be delighted to
+devote his very best energies and experience to her Ladyship's service.
+
+He was so charmed with his patient, that he wrote home about her to his
+wife and family; he talked of nothing but Lady Rockminster to Samuel,
+when that youth came to partake of beefsteak and oyster-sauce and
+accompany his parent to the play. There was a simple grandeur, a polite
+urbanity, a high-bred grace about her Ladyship, which he had never
+witnessed in any woman. Her symptoms did not seem alarming; he had
+prescribed--Spir: Ammon: Aromat: with a little Spir: Menth: Pip: and
+orange-flower, which would be all that was necessary.
+
+"Miss Bell seemed to be on the most confidential and affectionate footing
+with her Ladyship. She was about to form a matrimonial connexion. All
+young people ought to marry. Such were her Ladyship's words; and the
+Countess condescended to ask respecting my own family, and I mentioned
+you by name to her Ladyship, Sam, my boy. I shall look in to-morrow,
+when, if the remedies which I have prescribed for her Ladyship have had
+the effect which I anticipate, I shall probably follow them up by a
+little Spir: Lavend: Comp:--and so set my noble patient up. What is the
+theatre which is most frequented by the--by the higher classes in town,
+hey, Sam! and to what amusement will you take an old country doctor
+to-night, hey, sir?"
+
+On the next day, when Mr. Huxter called in Jermyn Street at twelve
+o'clock, Lady Rockminster had not yet left her room, but Miss Bell and
+Mr. Pendennis were in waiting to receive him. Lady Rockminster had had a
+most comfortable night, and was getting on as well as possible. How had
+Mr. Huxter amused himself? at the theatre? with his son? What a capital
+piece it was, and how charmingly Mrs. O'Leary looked and sang it! and
+what a good fellow young Huxter was! liked by everybody, an honour to his
+profession. He has not his father's manners, I grant you, or that
+old-world tone which is passing away from us, but a more excellent,
+sterling fellow never lived. "He ought to practise in the country
+whatever you do, sir," said Arthur--"he ought to marry--other people are
+going to do so--and settle."
+
+"The very words that her Ladyship used yesterday, Mr. Pendennis. He ought
+to marry. Sam should marry, sir."
+
+"The town is full of temptations, sir," continued Pen. The old gentleman
+thought of that houri, Mrs. O'Leary.
+
+"There is no better safeguard for a young man than an early marriage with
+an honest affectionate creature."
+
+"No better, sir, no better."
+
+"And love is better than money, isn't it?"
+
+"Indeed it is," said Miss Bell.
+
+"I agree with so fair an authority," said the old gentleman, with a bow.
+
+"And--and suppose, sir," Pen said, "that I had a piece of news to
+communicate to you."
+
+"God bless my soul, Mr. Pendennis! what do you mean?" asked the old
+gentleman.
+
+"Suppose I had to tell you that a young man, carried away by an
+irresistible passion for an admirable and most virtuous young creature--
+whom everybody falls in love with--had consulted the dictates of reason
+and his heart, and had married. Suppose I were to tell you that that man
+is my friend; that our excellent, our truly noble friend the Countess
+Dowager of Rockminster is truly interested about him (and you may fancy
+what a young man can do in life when THAT family is interested for him);
+suppose I were to tell you that you know him--that he is here--that he
+is----"
+
+"Sam married! God bless my soul, sir, you don't mean that!"
+
+"And to such a nice creature, dear Mr. Huxter."
+
+"Her Ladyship is charmed with her," said Pen, telling almost the first
+fib which he has told in the course of this story.
+
+"Married! the rascal, is he?" thought the old gentleman.
+
+"They will do it, sir," said Pen; and went and opened the door. Mr. and
+Mrs. Samuel Huxter issued thence, and both came and knelt down before the
+old gentleman. The kneeling little Fanny found favour in his sight. There
+must have been some thing attractive about her, in spite of Laura's
+opinion.
+
+"Will never do so any more, sir," said Sam.
+
+"Get up, sir," said Mr. Huxter. And they got up, and Fanny came a little
+nearer and a little nearer still, and looked so pretty and pitiful, that
+somehow Mr. Huxter found himself kissing the little crying-laughing
+thing, and feeling as if he liked it.
+
+"What's your name, my dear?" he said, after a minute of this sport.
+
+"Fanny, papa," said Mrs. Samuel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVI
+
+Exeunt Omnes
+
+
+Our characters are all a month older than they were when the
+last-described adventures and conversations occurred, and a great number
+of the personages of our story have chanced to reassemble at the little
+country town where we were first introduced to them. Frederic Lightfoot,
+formerly maitre d'hotel in the service of Sir Francis Clavering, of
+Clavering Park, Bart., has begged leave to inform the nobility and gentry
+of ------shire that he has taken that well-known and comfortable hotel,
+the Clavering Arms, in Clavering, where he hopes for the continued
+patronage of the gentlemen and families of the county. "This ancient and
+well-established house," Mr. Lightfoot's manifesto states, "has been
+repaired and decorated in a style of the greatest comfort. Gentlemen
+hunting with the Dumplingbeare hounds will find excellent stabling and
+loose-boxes for horses at the Clavering Arms. A commodious billiard-room
+has been attached to the hotel, and the cellars have been furnished with
+the choicest wines and spirits, selected, without regard to expense, by
+C. L. Commercial gentlemen will find the Clavering Arms a most
+comfortable place of resort: and the scale of charges has been regulated
+for all, so as to meet the economical spirit of the present times."
+
+Indeed, there is a considerable air of liveliness about the old inn. The
+Clavering arms have been splendidly repainted over the gateway. The
+coffee-room windows are bright and fresh, and decorated with Christmas
+holly; the magistrates have met in petty sessions in the card-room of the
+old Assembly. The farmers' ordinary is held as of old, and frequented by
+increased numbers, who are pleased with Mrs. Lightfoot's cuisine. Her
+Indian curries and Mulligatawny soup are especially popular: Major
+Stokes, the respected tenant of Fairoaks Cottage, Captain Glanders, H.P.,
+and other resident gentry, have pronounced in their favour, and have
+partaken of them more than once both in private and at the dinner of the
+Clavering Institute, attendant on the incorporation of the reading-room,
+and when the chief inhabitants of that flourishing little town met
+together and did justice to the hostess's excellent cheer. The chair was
+taken by Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., supported by the esteemed rector,
+Dr. Portman; the vice chair being ably filled by Barker, Esq. (supported
+by the Rev. J. Simcoe and the Rev. S. Jowls), the enterprising head of
+the ribbon factory in Clavering, and chief director of the Clavering and
+Chatteris Branch of the Great Western Railway, which will be opened in
+another year, and upon the works of which the engineers and workmen are
+now busily engaged.
+
+"An interesting event, which is likely to take place in the life of our
+talented townsman, Arthur Pendennis, Esq., has, we understand, caused him
+to relinquish the intentions which he had of offering himself as a
+candidate for our borough: and rumour whispers" (says the Chatteris
+Champion, Clavering Agriculturist, and Baymouth Fisherman,--that
+independent county paper, so distinguished for its unswerving principles
+and loyalty to the British oak, and so eligible a medium for
+advertisements)--rumour states, says the C. C. C. A. and B. F., "that
+should Sir Francis Clavering's failing health oblige him to relinquish
+his seat in Parliament, he will vacate it in favour of a young gentleman
+of colossal fortune and related to the highest aristocracy of the empire,
+who is about to contract a matrimonial alliance with an accomplished and
+lovely lady, connected by the nearest ties with the respected family at
+Clavering Park. Lady Clavering and Miss Amory have arrived at the Park
+for the Christmas holidays; and we understand that a large number of the
+aristocracy are expected, and that festivities of a peculiarly
+interesting nature will take place there at the commencement of the new
+year."
+
+The ingenious reader will be enabled, by the help of the above
+announcement, to understand what has taken place during the little break
+which has occurred in our narrative. Although Lady Rockminster grumbled a
+little at Laura's preference for Pendennis over Bluebeard, those who are
+aware of the latter's secret will understand that the young girl could
+make no other choice, and the kind old lady who had constituted herself
+Miss Bell's guardian was not ill pleased that she was to fulfil the great
+purpose in life of young ladies and marry. She informed her maid of the
+interesting event that very night, and of course Mrs. Beck, who was
+perfectly aware of every single circumstance, and kept by Martha, of
+Fairoaks, in the fullest knowledge of what was passing, was immensely
+surprised and delighted. "Mr. Pendennis's income is so much; the railroad
+will give him so much more, he states; Miss Bell has so much, and may
+probably have a little more one day. For persons in their degree, they
+will be able to manage very well. And I shall speak to my nephew Pynsent,
+who I suspect was once rather attached to her,--but of course that was
+out of the question ('Oh! of course, my lady; I should think so
+indeed!')--not that you know anything whatever about it, or have any
+business to think at all on the subject,--I shall speak to George
+Pynsent, who is now chief secretary of the Tape and Sealing Wax Office,
+and have Mr. Pendennis made something. And, Beck, in the morning you will
+carry down my compliments to Major Pendennis, and say that I shall pay
+him a visit at one o'clock."--"Yes," muttered the old lady, "the Major
+must be reconciled, and he must leave his fortune to Laura's children."
+
+Accordingly, at one o'clock, the Dowager Lady Rockminster appeared at
+Major Pendennis's, who was delighted, as may be imagined, to receive so
+noble a visitor. The Major had been prepared, if not for the news which
+her Ladyship was about to give him, at least with the intelligence that
+Pen's marriage with Miss Amory was broken off. The young gentleman
+bethinking him of his uncle, for the first time that day it must be
+owned, and meeting his new servant in the hall of the hotel, asked after
+the Major's health from Mr. Frosch; and then went into the coffee-room of
+the hotel, where he wrote a half-dozen lines to acquaint his guardian
+with what had occurred. "Dear uncle," he said, "if there has been any
+question between us, it is over now. I went to Tunbridge Wells yesterday,
+and found that somebody else had carried off the prize about which we
+were hesitating. Miss A., without any compunction for me, has bestowed
+herself upon Harry Foker, with his fifteen thousand a year. I came in
+suddenly upon their loves, and found and left him in possession.
+
+"And you'll be glad to hear, Tatham writes me, that he has sold three of
+my fields at Fairoaks to the Railroad Company, at a great figure. I will
+tell you this, and more when we meet; and am always your affectionate,
+--A. P."
+
+"I think I am aware of what you were about to tell me," the Major said,
+with a most courtly smile and bow to Pen's ambassadress. "It was a very
+great kindness of your Ladyship to think of bringing me the news. How
+well you look! How very good you are! How very kind you have always been
+to that young man!"
+
+"It was for the sake of his uncle," said Lady Rockminster, most politely.
+
+"He has informed me of the state of affairs, and written me a nice note,
+--yes, a nice note," continued the old gentleman; "and I find he has had
+an increase to his fortune,--yes; and, all things considered, I don't
+much regret that this affair with Miss Amory is manquee, though I wished
+for it once, in fact, all things considered, I am very glad of it."
+
+"We must console him, Major Pendennis," continued the lady; "we must get
+him a wife." The truth then came across the Major's mind, and he saw for
+what purpose Lady Rockminster had chosen to assume the office of
+ambassadress.
+
+It is not necessary to enter into the conversation which ensued, or to
+tell at any length how her Ladyship concluded a negotiation which, in
+truth, was tolerably easy. There could be no reason why Pen should not
+marry according to his own and his mother's wish; and as for Lady
+Rockminster, she supported the marriage by intimations which had very
+great weight with the Major, but of which we shall say nothing, as her
+ladyship (now, of course, much advanced in years) is still alive, and the
+family might be angry; and, in fine, the old gentleman was quite overcome
+by the determined graciousness of the lady, and her fondness for Laura.
+Nothing, indeed, could be more bland and kind than Lady Rockminster's
+whole demeanour, except for one moment when the Major talked about his
+boy throwing himself away, at which her ladyship broke out into a little
+speech, in which she made the Major understand, what poor Pen and his
+friends acknowledge very humbly, that Laura was a thousand times too good
+for him. Laura was fit to be the wife of a king,--Laura was a paragon of
+virtue and excellence. And it must be said, that when Major Pendennis
+found that a lady of the rank of the Countess of Rockminster seriously
+admired Miss Bell, he instantly began to admire her himself.
+
+So that when Herr Frosch was requested to walk upstairs to Lady
+Rockminster's apartments, and inform Miss Bell and Mr. Arthur Pendennis
+that the Major would receive them, and Laura appeared blushing and happy
+as she hung on Pen's arm, the Major gave a shaky hand to one and the
+other, with unaffected emotion and cordiality, and then went through
+another salutation to Laura, which caused her to blush still more. Happy
+blushes! bright eyes beaming with the light of love! The story-teller
+turns from this group to his young audience, and hopes that one day their
+eyes may all shine so.
+
+Pen having retreated in the most friendly manner, and the lovely Blanche
+having bestowed her young affections upon a blushing bridegroom with
+fifteen thousand a year, there was such an outbreak of happiness in Lady
+Clavering's heart and family as the good Begum had not known for many a
+year, and she and Blanche were on the most delightful terms of cordiality
+and affection. The ardent Foker pressed onwards the happy day, and was as
+anxious as might be expected to abridge the period of mourning which had
+put him in possession of so many charms and amiable qualities, of which
+he had been only, as it were, the heir-apparent, not the actual owner,
+until then. The gentle Blanche, everything that her affianced lord could
+desire, was not averse to gratify the wishes of her fond Henry. Lady
+Clavering came up from Tunbridge. Milliners and jewellers were set to
+work and engaged to prepare the delightful paraphernalia of Hymen. Lady
+Clavering was in such a good humour, that Sir Francis even benefited by
+it, and such a reconciliation was effected between this pair, that Sir
+Francis came to London, sate at the head of his own table once more,
+and appeared tolerably flush of money at his billiard-rooms and
+gambling-houses again. One day, when Major Pendennis and Arthur went to
+dine in Grosvenor Place, they found an old acquaintance established in
+the quality of major-domo, and the gentleman in black, who, with perfect
+politeness and gravity, offered them their choice of sweet or dry
+champagne, was no other than Mr. James Morgan. The Chevalier Strong was
+one of the party; he was in high spirits and condition, and entertained
+the company with accounts of his amusements abroad.
+
+"It was my Lady who invited me," said Strong to Arthur, under his voice--
+"that fellow Morgan looked as black as thunder when I came in. He is
+about no good here. I will go away first, and wait for you and Major
+Pendennis at Hyde Park Gate."
+
+Mr. Morgan helped Major Pendennis to his great-coat when he was quitting
+the house; and muttered something about having accepted a temporary
+engagement with the Clavering family.
+
+"I have got a paper of yours, Mr. Morgan," said the old gentleman.
+
+"Which you can show, if you please, to Sir Francis, sir, and perfectly
+welcome," said Mr. Morgan, with downcast eyes. "I'm very much obliged to
+you, Major Pendennis, and if I can pay you for all your kindness I will."
+
+Arthur overheard the sentence, and saw the look of hatred which
+accompanied it, suddenly cried out that he had forgotten his
+handkerchief, and ran upstairs to the drawing-room again. Foker was still
+there; still lingering about his siren. Pen gave the siren a look full of
+meaning, and we suppose that the siren understood meaning looks, for
+when, after finding the veracious handkerchief of which he came in quest,
+he once more went out, the siren, with a laughing voice, said, "Oh,
+Arthur--Mr. Pendennis--I want you to tell dear Laura something!" and she
+came out to the door.
+
+"What is it?" she asked, shutting the door.
+
+"Have you told Harry? Do you know that villain Morgan knows all?"
+
+"I know it," she said.
+
+"Have you told Harry?"
+
+"No, no," she said. "You won't betray me?"
+
+"Morgan will," said Pen.
+
+"No, he won't," said Blanche. "I have promised him--n'importe. Wait until
+after our marriage--Oh, until after our marriage--Oh, how wretched I am,"
+said the girl, who had been all smiles, and grace, and gaiety during the
+evening.
+
+Arthur said, "I beg and implore you to tell Harry. Tell him now. It is no
+fault of yours. He will pardon you anything. Tell him to-night."
+
+"And give her this--Il est la--with my love, please; and I beg your
+pardon for calling you back; and if she will be at Madame Crinoline's at
+half-past three, and if Lady Rockminster can spare her, I should so like
+to drive with her in the park;" and she went in, singing and kissing her
+little hand, as Morgan the velvet-footed came up the carpeted stair.
+
+Pen heard Blanche's piano breaking out into brilliant music as he went
+down to join his uncle; and they walked away together. Arthur briefly
+told him what he had done. "What was to be done?" he asked.
+
+"What is to be done, begad?" said the old gentleman. "What is to be done
+but to leave it alone? Begad, let us be thankful," said the old fellow,
+with a shudder, "that we are out of the business, and leave it to those
+it concerns."
+
+"I hope to Heaven she'll tell him," said Pen.
+
+"Begad, she'll take her own course," said the old man. "Miss Amory is a
+dev'lish wide-awake girl, sir, and must play her own cards; and I'm
+doosid glad you are out of it--doosid glad, begad. Who's this smoking?
+Oh, it's Mr. Strong again. He wants to put in his oar, I suppose. I tell
+you, don't meddle in the business, Arthur."
+
+Strong began once or twice, as if to converse upon the subject, but the
+Major would not hear a word. He remarked on the moonlight on Apsley
+House, the weather, the cabstands--anything but that subject. He bowed
+stiffly to Strong, and clung to his nephew's arm, as he turned down St.
+James's Street, and again cautioned Pen to leave the affair alone. "It
+had like to have cost you so much, sir, that you may take my advice," he
+said.
+
+When Arthur came out of the hotel, Strong's cloak and cigar were visible
+a few doors off. The jolly Chevalier laughed as they met. "I'm an old
+soldier, too," he said. "I wanted to talk to you, Pendennis. I have heard
+of all that has happened, and all the chops and changes that have taken
+place during my absence. I congratulate you on your marriage, and I
+congratulate you on your escape, too,--you understand me. It was not my
+business to speak, but I know this, that a certain party is as arrant a
+little--well--well, never mind what. You acted like a man and a trump,
+and are well out of it."
+
+"I have no reason to complain," said Pen. "I went back to beg and entreat
+poor Blanche to tell Foker all: I hope, for her sake, she will; but I
+fear not. There is but one policy, Strong, there is but one."
+
+"And lucky he that can stick to it," said the Chevalier. "That rascal
+Morgan means mischief. He has been lurking about our chambers for the
+last two months: he has found out that poor mad devil Amory's secret. He
+has been trying to discover where he was: he has been pumping Mr. Bolton,
+and making old Costigan drunk several times. He bribed the Inn porter to
+tell him when we came back: and he has got into Clavering's service on
+the strength of his information. He will get very good pay for it, mark
+my words, the villain."
+
+"Where is Amory?" asked Pen.
+
+"At Boulogne, I believe. I left him there, and warned him not to come
+back. I have broken with him, after a desperate quarrel, such as one
+might have expected with such a madman. And I'm glad to think that he is
+in my debt now, and that I have been the means of keeping him out of more
+harms than one."
+
+"He has lost all his winnings, I suppose," said Pen.
+
+"No: he is rather better than when he went away, or was a fortnight ago.
+He had extraordinary luck at Baden: broke the bank several nights, and
+was the fable of the place. He lied himself there with a fellow by the
+name of Bloundell, who gathered about him a society of all sorts of
+sharpers, male and female, Russians, Germans, French, English. Amory got
+so insolent, that I was obliged to thrash him one day within an inch of
+his life. I couldn't help myself; the fellow has plenty of pluck, and I
+had nothing for it but to hit out."
+
+"And did he call you out?" said Pen.
+
+"You think if I had shot him I should have done nobody any harm? No, sir;
+I waited for his challenge, but it never came and the next time I met him
+he begged my pardon, and said, 'Strong, I beg your pardon; you whopped me
+and you served me right.' I shook hands: but I couldn't live with him
+after that. I paid him what I owed him the night before," said Strong
+with a blush, "I pawned everything to pay him, and then I went with my
+last ten florins, and had a shy at the roulette. If I had lost, I should
+have let him shoot me in the morning. I was weary of my life. By Jove,
+sir, isn't it a shame that a man like me, who may have had a few bills
+out, but who never deserted a friend, or did an unfair action, shouldn't
+be able to turn his hand to anything to get bread? I made a good night,
+sir, at roulette, and I've done with that. I'm going into the wine
+business. My wife's relations live at Cadiz. I intend to bring over
+Spanish wine and hams; there's a fortune to be made by it, sir,--a
+fortune--here's my card. If you want any sherry or hams, recollect Ned
+Strong is your man." And the Chevalier pulled out a handsome card,
+stating that Strong and Company, Shepherd's Inn, were sole agents of the
+celebrated Diamond Manzanilla of the Duke of Garbanzos, Grandee of Spain
+of the First Class; and of the famous Toboso hams, fed on acorns only in
+the country of Don Quixote. "Come and taste 'em, sir,--come and try 'em
+at my chambers. You see, I've an eye to business, and by Jove this time
+I'll succeed."
+
+Pen laughed as he took the card. "I don't know whether I shall be allowed
+to go to bachelors' parties," he said. "You know I'm going to----"
+
+"But you must have sherry, sir. You must have sherry."
+
+"I will have it from you, depend on it," said the other. "And I think you
+are very well out of your other partnership. That worthy Altamont and his
+daughter correspond, I hear," Pen added after a pause.
+
+"Yes; she wrote him the longest rigmarole letters, that I used to read:
+the sly little devil; and he answered under cover to Mrs. Bonner. He was
+for carrying her off the first day or two, and nothing would content him
+but having back his child. But she didn't want to come, as you may fancy;
+and he was not very eager about it." Here the Chevalier burst out in a
+laugh. "Why, sir, do you know what was the cause of our quarrel and
+boxing match? There was a certain widow at Baden, a Madame la Baronne de
+la Cruche-cassee, who was not much better than himself, and whom the
+scoundrel wanted to marry; and would, but that I told her he was married
+already. I don't think that she was much better than he was. I saw her on
+the pier at Boulogne the day I came to England."
+
+And now we have brought up our narrative to the point, whither the
+announcement in the Chatteris Champion had already conducted us.
+
+It wanted but very, very few days before that blissful one when Foker
+should call Blanche his own; the Clavering folks had all pressed to see
+the most splendid new carriage in the whole world, which was standing in
+the coach-house at the Clavering Arms; and shown, in grateful return for
+drink, commonly, by Mr. Foker's head-coachman. Madame Fribsby was
+occupied in making some lovely dresses for the tenants' daughters, who
+were to figure as a sort of bridesmaids' chorus at the breakfast and
+marriage ceremony. And immense festivities were to take place at the Park
+upon this delightful occasion.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Huxter, yes; a happy tenantry, its country's pride, will
+assemble in the baronial hall, where the beards will wag all. The ox
+shall be slain, and the cup they'll drain; and the bells shall peal quite
+genteel; and my father-in-law, with the tear of sensibility bedewing his
+eye, shall bless us at his baronial porch. That shall be the order of
+proceedings, I think, Mr. Huxter; and I hope we shall see you and your
+lovely bride by her husband's side; and what will you please to drink,
+sir? Mrs. Lightfoot, madam, you will give to my excellent friend and
+body-surgeon, Mr. Huxter, Mr. Samuel Huxter, M.R.C.S., every refreshment
+that your hostel affords, and place the festive amount to my account; and
+Mr. Lightfoot, sir, what will you take? though you've had enough already,
+I think; yes, ha."
+
+So spoke Harry Foker in the bar of the Clavering Arms. He had apartments
+at that hotel, and had gathered a circle of friends round him there. He
+treated all to drink who came. He was hail-fellow with every man. He was
+so happy! He danced round Madame Fribsby, Mrs. Lightfoot's great ally, as
+she sate pensive in the bar. He consoled Mrs. Lightfoot, who had already
+begun to have causes of matrimonial disquiet; for the truth must be told,
+that young Lightfoot, having now the full command of the cellar, had none
+over his own unbridled desires, and was tippling and tipsy from morning
+till night. And a piteous sight it was for his fond wife to behold the
+big youth reeling about the yard and coffee-room, or drinking with the
+farmers and tradesmen his own neat wines and carefully selected stock of
+spirits.
+
+When he could find time, Mr. Morgan the butler came from the Park, and
+took a glass at the expense of the landlord of the Clavering Arms. He
+watched poor Lightfoot's tipsy vagaries with savage sneers. Mrs.
+Lightfoot felt always doubly uncomfortable when her unhappy spouse was
+under his comrade's eye. But a few months married, and to think he had
+got to this! Madame Fribsby could feel for her. Madame Fribsby could tell
+her stories of men every bit as bad. She had had her own woes too, and
+her sad experience of men. So it is that nobody seems happy altogether;
+and that there's bitters, as Mr. Foker remarked, in the cup of every
+man's life. And yet there did not seem to be any in his, the honest young
+fellow! It was brimming over with happiness and good-humour.
+
+Mr. Morgan was constant in his attentions to Foker. "And yet I don't like
+him somehow," said the candid young man to Mrs. Lightfoot. "He always
+seems as if he was measuring me for my coffin somehow. Pa-in-law's afraid
+of him; pa-in-law's," ahem! never mind, but ma-in-law's a trump, Mrs.
+Lightfoot."
+
+"Indeed my Lady was," and Mrs. Lightfoot owned, with a sigh, that perhaps
+it had been better for her had she never left her mistress.
+
+"No, I do not like thee, Dr. Fell; the reason why I cannot tell,"
+continued Mr. Foker; "and he wants to be taken as my head man. Blanche
+wants me to take him. Why does Miss Amory like him so?"
+
+"Did Miss Blanche like him so?" The notion seemed to disturb Mrs.
+Lightfoot very much; and there came to this worthy landlady another cause
+for disturbance. A letter, bearing the Boulogne postmark, was brought to
+her one morning, and she and her husband were quarrelling over it as
+Foker passed down the stairs by the bar, on his way to the Park. His
+custom was to breakfast there, and bask a while in the presence of
+Armida; then, as the company of Clavering tired him exceedingly, and he
+did not care for sporting, he would return for an hour or two to
+billiards and the society of the Clavering Arms; then it would be time to
+ride with Miss Amory, and, after dining with her, he left her and
+returned modestly to his inn.
+
+Lightfoot and his wife were quarrelling over the letter. What was that
+letter from abroad? Why was she always having letters from abroad? Who
+wrote 'em?--he would know. He didn't believe it was her brother. It was
+no business of his? It was a business of his; and, with a curse, he
+seized hold of his wife, and dashed at her pocket for the letter.
+
+The poor woman gave a scream; and said, "Well, take it." Just as her
+husband seized on the letter, and Mr. Foker entered at the door, she gave
+another scream at seeing him, and once more tried to seize the paper.
+Lightfoot opened it, shaking her away, and an enclosure dropped down on
+the breakfast-table.
+
+"Hands off, man alive!" cried little Harry, springing in. "Don't lay
+hands on a woman, sir. The man that lays his hand upon a woman, save in
+the way of kindness, is a--hallo! it's a letter for Miss Amory. What's
+this, Mrs. Lightfoot?"
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot began, in piteous tones of reproach to her husband,--"You
+unmanly! to treat a woman so who took you off the street. Oh, you coward,
+to lay your hand upon your wife! Why did I marry you? Why did I leave my
+Lady for you? Why did I spend eight hundred pound in fitting up this
+house that you might drink and guzzle?"
+
+"She gets letters, and she won't tell me who writes letters," said Mr.
+Lightfoot, with a muzzy voice; "it's a family affair, sir. Will you take
+anything, sir?"
+
+"I will take this letter to Miss Amory, as I am going to the Park," said
+Foker, turning very pale; and taking it up from the table, which was
+arranged for the poor landlady's breakfast, he went away.
+
+"He's comin'--dammy, who's a-comin'? Who's J. A., Mrs. Lightfoot--curse
+me, who's J. A.?" cried the husband.
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot cried out, "Be quiet, you tipsy brute, do," and running to
+her bonnet and shawl, threw them on, saw Mr. Foker walking down the
+street, took the by-lane which skirts it, and ran as quickly as she could
+to the lodge-gate, Clavering Park. Foker saw a running figure before him,
+but it was lost when he got to the lodge-gate. He stopped and asked, "Who
+was that who had just come in? Mrs. Bonner, was it?" He reeled almost in
+his walk: the trees swam before him. He rested once or twice against the
+trunks of the naked limes.
+
+Lady Clavering was in the breakfast-room with her son, and her husband
+yawning over his paper. "Good morning, Harry," said the Begum. "Here's
+letters, lots of letters; Lady Rockminster will be here on Tuesday
+instead of Monday, and Arthur and the Major come to-day; and Laura is to
+go to Dr. Portman's, and come to church from there: and--what's the
+matter, my dear? What makes you so pale, Harry?"
+
+"Where is Blanche!" asked Harry, in a sickening voice--"not down yet?"
+
+"Blanche is always the last," said the boy, eating muffins; "she's a
+regular dawdle, she is. When you're not here, she lays in bed till
+lunch-time."
+
+"Be quiet, Frank," said the mother.
+
+Blanche came down presently, looking pale, and with rather an eager look
+towards Foker; then she advanced and kissed her mother, and had a face
+beaming with her very best smiles on when she greeted Harry.
+
+"How do you do, sir?" she said, and put out both her hands.
+
+"I'm ill," answered Harry. "I--I've brought a letter for you, Blanche."
+
+"A letter, and from whom is it, pray? Voyons," she said.
+
+"I don't know--I should like to know," said Foker.
+
+"How can I tell until I see it?" asked Blanche.
+
+"Has Mrs. Bonner not told you?" he said, with a shaking voice;--"there's
+some secret. You give her the letter, Lady Clavering."
+
+Lady Clavering, wondering, took the letter from poor Foker's shaking
+hand, and looked at the superscription. As she looked at it, she too
+began to shake in every limb, and with a scared face she dropped the
+letter, and running up to Frank, clutched the boy to her, and burst out
+with a sob--"Take that away--it's impossible, it's impossible."
+
+"What is the matter?" cried Blanche, with rather a ghastly smile; "the
+letter is only from--from a poor pensioner and relative of ours."
+
+"It's not true, it's not true," screamed Lady Clavering. "No, my Frank--
+is it, Clavering?"
+
+Blanche had taken up the letter, and was moving with it towards the fire,
+but Foker ran to her and clutched her arm--"I must see that letter," he
+said; "give it me. You shan't burn it."
+
+"You--you shall not treat Miss Amory so in my house," cried the Baronet;
+"give back the letter, by Jove!"
+
+"Read it--and look at her," Blanche cried, pointing to her mother; "it--
+it was for her I kept the secret! Read it, cruel man!"
+
+And Foker opened and read the letter:--
+
+"I have not wrote, my darling Betsy, this three weeks; but this is to
+give her a father's blessing, and I shall come down pretty soon as quick
+as my note, and intend to see the ceremony, and my son-in-law. I shall
+put up at Bonner's. I have had a pleasant autumn, and am staying here at
+an hotel where there is good company, and which is kep' in good style. I
+don't know whether I quite approve of your throwing over Mr. P. for Mr.
+F., and don't think Foker's such a pretty name, and from your account of
+him he seems a muff, and not a beauty. But he has got the rowdy, which is
+the thing. So no more, my dear little Betsy, till we meet, from your
+affectionate father,                    J. Amory Altamont."
+
+"Read it, Lady Clavering; it is too late to keep it from you now," said
+poor Foker; and the distracted woman, having cast her eyes over it, again
+broke out into hysterical screams, and convulsively grasped her son.
+
+"They have made an outcast of you, my boy," she said. "They've
+dishonoured your old mother; but I'm innocent, Frank; before God, I'm
+innocent. I didn't know this, Mr. Foker; indeed, indeed, I didn't."
+
+"I'm sure you didn't," said Foker, going up and kissing her hand.
+
+"Generous, generous Harry!" cried out Blanche, in an ecstasy. But he
+withdrew his hand, which was upon her side, and turned from her with a
+quivering lip. "That's different," he says.
+
+"It was for her sake--for her sake, Harry." Again Miss Amory is in an
+attitude.
+
+"There was something to be done for mine," said Foker. "I would have
+taken you, whatever you were. Everything's talked about in London. I knew
+that your father had come to--to grief. You don't think it was--it was
+for your connexion I married you? D--- it all! I've loved you with all my
+heart and soul for two years, and you've been playing with me, and
+cheating me," broke out the young man, with a cry. "Oh, Blanche, Blanche,
+it's a hard thing, a hard thing!" and he covered his face with his hands,
+and sobbed behind them.
+
+Blanche thought, "Why didn't I tell him that night when Arthur warned
+me?"
+
+"Don't refuse her, Harry," cried out Lady Clavering. "Take her, take
+everything I have. It's all hers, you know, at my death. This boy's
+disinherited."--(Master Frank, who had been looking as scared at the
+strange scene, here burst into a loud cry.) "Take every shilling. Give me
+just enough to live, and to go and hide my head with this child, and to
+fly from both. Oh, they've both been bad, bad men. Perhaps he's here now.
+Don't let me see him. Clavering, you coward, defend me from him."
+
+Clavering started up at this proposal. "You ain't serious, Jemima? You
+don't mean that?" he said. "You won't throw me and Frank over? I didn't
+know it, so help me ---. Foker, I'd no more idea of it than the dead--
+until the fellow came and found me out, the d----d escaped convict
+scoundrel."
+
+"The what?" said Foker. Blanche gave a scream.
+
+"Yes," screamed out the Baronet in his turn, "yes, a d----d runaway
+convict--a fellow that forged his father-in-law's name--a d----d
+attorney, and killed a fellow in Botany Bay, hang him--and ran into the
+Bush, curse him; I wish he'd died there. And he came to me, a good six
+years ago, and robbed me; and I've been ruining myself to keep him, the
+infernal scoundrel! And Pendennis knows it, and Strong knows it, and that
+d----d Morgan knows it, and she knows it, ever so long; and I never would
+tell it, never: and I kept it from my wife."
+
+"And you saw him, and you didn't kill him, Clavering, you coward?" said
+the wife of Amory. "Come away, Frank; your father's a coward. I am
+dishonoured, but I'm your old mother, and you'll--you'll love me, won't
+you?"
+
+Blanche, eploree, went up to her mother; but Lady Clavering shrank from
+her with a sort of terror. "Don't touch me," she said; "you've no heart;
+you never had. I see all now. I see why that coward was going to give up
+his place in Parliament to Arthur; yes, that coward! and why you
+threatened that you would make me give you half Frank's fortune. And when
+Arthur offered to marry you without a shilling, because he wouldn't rob
+my boy, you left him, and you took poor Harry. Have nothing to do with
+her, Harry. You're good, you are. Don't marry that--that convict's
+daughter. Come away, Frank, my darling; come to your poor old mother.
+We'll hide ourselves; but we're honest, yes, we are honest."
+
+All this while a strange feeling of exultation had taken possession of
+Blanche's mind. That month with poor Harry had been a weary month to her.
+All his fortune and splendour scarcely sufficed to make the idea of
+himself supportable. She was wearied of his simple ways, and sick of
+coaxing and cajoling him.
+
+"Stay, mamma; stay, madam!" she cried out, with a gesture which was
+always appropriate, though rather theatrical; "I have no heart, have
+I? I keep the secret of my mother's shame. I give up my rights to my
+half-brother and my bastard brother, yes, my rights and my fortune. I
+don't betray my father, and for this I have no heart. I'll have my rights
+now, and the laws of my country shall give them to me. I appeal to my
+country's laws--yes, my country's laws! The persecuted one returns this
+day. I desire to go to my father." And the little lady swept round her
+hand, and thought that she was a heroine.
+
+"You will, will you?" cried out Clavering, with one of his usual oaths.
+"I'm a magistrate, and dammy, I'll commit him. Here's a chaise coming;
+perhaps it's him. Let him come."
+
+A chaise was indeed coming up the avenue; and the two women shrieked each
+their loudest, expecting at that moment to see Altamont arrive.
+
+The door opened, and Mr. Morgan announced Major Pendennis and Mr.
+Pendennis, who entered, and found all parties engaged in this fierce
+quarrel. A large screen fenced the breakfast-room from the hall; and it
+is probable that, according to his custom, Mr. Morgan had taken advantage
+of the screen to make himself acquainted with all that occurred.
+
+It had been arranged on the previous day that the young people should
+ride; and at the appointed hour in the afternoon, Mr. Foker's horses
+arrived from the Clavering Arms. But Miss Blanche did not accompany him
+on this occasion. Pen came out and shook hands with him on the
+door-steps; and Harry Foker rode away, followed by his groom in mourning.
+The whole transactions which have occupied the most active part of our
+history were debated by the parties concerned during those two or three
+hours. Many counsels had been given, stories told, and compromises
+suggested; and at the end, Harry Foker rode away, with a sad "God bless
+you!" from Pen. There was a dreary dinner at Clavering Park, at which the
+lately installed butler did not attend; and the ladies were both absent.
+After dinner, Pen said, "I will walk down to Clavering and see if he is
+come." And he walked through the dark avenue, across the bridge and road
+by his own cottage,--the once quiet and familiar fields of which were
+flaming with the kilns and forges of the artificers employed on the new
+railroad works; and so he entered the town, and made for the Clavering
+Arms.
+
+It was past midnight when he returned to Clavering Park. He was
+exceedingly pale and agitated. "Is Lady Clavering up yet?" he asked. Yes,
+she was in her own sitting-room. He went up to her, and there found the
+poor lady in a piteous state of tears and agitation.
+
+"It is I,--Arthur," he said, looking in; and entering, he took her hand
+very affectionately and kissed it. "You were always the kindest of
+friends to me, dear Lady Clavering," he said. "I love you very much. I
+have got some news for you."
+
+"Don't call me by that name," she said, pressing his hand. "You were
+always a good boy, Arthur; and it's kind of you to come now,--very kind.
+You sometimes look very like your ma, my dear."
+
+"Dear good Lady Clavering," Arthur repeated, with particular emphasis,
+"something very strange has happened."
+
+"Has anything happened to him?" gasped Lady Clavering. "Oh, it's horrid
+to think I should be glad of it--horrid!"
+
+"He is well. He has been and is gone, my dear lady. Don't alarm
+yourself;--he is gone, and you are Lady Clavering still."
+
+"Is it true? what he sometimes said to me," she screamed out,--
+"that he----"
+
+"He was married before he married you," said Pen. "He has confessed it
+to-night. He will never come back." There came another shriek from Lady
+Clavering, as she flung her arms round Pen, and kissed him, and burst
+into tears on his shoulder.
+
+What Pen had to tell, through a multiplicity of sobs and interruptions,
+must be compressed briefly, for behold our prescribed limit is reached,
+and our tale is coming to its end. With the Branch Coach from the
+railroad, which had succeeded the old Alacrity and Perseverance, Amory
+arrived, and was set down at the Clavering Arms. He ordered his dinner at
+the place under his assumed name of Altamont; and, being of a jovial
+turn, he welcomed the landlord, who was nothing loth, to a share of his
+wine. Having extracted from Mr. Lightfoot all the news regarding the
+family at the Park, and found, from examining his host, that Mrs.
+Lightfoot, as she said, had kept his counsel, he called for more wine of
+Mr. Lightfoot; and at the end of this symposium, both, being greatly
+excited, went into Mrs. Lightfoot's bar.
+
+She was there taking tea with her friend, Madame Fribsby; and Lightfoot
+was by this time in such a happy state as not to be surprised at anything
+which might occur, so that, when Altamont shook hands with Mrs. Lightfoot
+as an old acquaintance, the recognition did not appear to him to be in
+the least strange, but only a reasonable cause for further drinking. The
+gentlemen partook then of brandy-and-water, which they offered to the
+ladies, not heeding the terrified looks of one or the other.
+
+Whilst they were so engaged, at about six o'clock in the evening, Mr.
+Morgan, Sir Francis Clavering's new man, came in, and was requested to
+drink. He selected his favourite beverage, and the parties engaged in
+general conversation.
+
+After a while Mr. Lightfoot began to doze. Mr. Morgan had repeatedly
+given hints to Mrs. Fribsby to quit the premises; but that lady,
+strangely fascinated, and terrified it would seem, or persuaded by Mrs.
+Lightfoot not to go, kept her place. Her persistence occasioned much
+annoyance to Mr. Morgan, who vented his displeasure in such language as
+gave pain to Mrs. Lightfoot, and caused Mr. Altamont to say, that he was
+a rum customer, and not polite to the sex.
+
+The altercation between the two gentlemen became very painful to the
+women, especially to Mrs. Lightfoot, who did everything to soothe Mr.
+Morgan; and, under pretence of giving a pipe-light to the stranger, she
+handed him a paper on which she had privily written the words, "He knows
+you. Go." There may have been something suspicious in her manner of
+handing, or in her guest's of reading, the paper; for when he got up a
+short time afterwards, and said he would go to bed, Morgan rose too, with
+a laugh, and said it was too early to go to bed.
+
+The stranger then said he would go to his bedroom. Morgan said he would
+show him the way.
+
+At this the guest said, "Come up. I've got a brace of pistols up there to
+blow out the brains of any traitor or skulking spy," and glared so
+fiercely upon Morgan, that the latter, seizing hold of Lightfoot by the
+collar, and waking him, said, "John Amory, I arrest you in the Queen's
+name. Stand by me, Lightfoot. This capture is worth a thousand pounds."
+
+He put forward his hand as if to seize his prisoner, but the other,
+doubling his fist, gave Morgan with his left hand so fierce a blow on the
+chest, that it knocked him back behind Mr. Lightfoot. That gentleman, who
+was athletic and courageous, said he would knock his guest's head off,
+and prepared to do so, as the stranger, tearing off his coat, and cursing
+both of his opponents, roared to them to come on.
+
+But with a piercing scream Mrs. Lightfoot flung herself before her
+husband, whilst with another and louder shriek Madame Fribsby ran to the
+stranger, and calling out "Armstrong, Johnny Armstrong!" seized hold of
+his naked arm, on which a blue tattooing of a heart and M. F. were
+visible.
+
+The ejaculation of Madame Fribsby seemed to astound and sober the
+stranger. He looked down upon her, and cried out, "it's Polly, by Jove."
+
+Mrs. Fribsby continued to exclaim, "This is not Amory. This is Johnny
+Armstrong, my wicked--wicked husband, married to me in St. Martin's
+Church, mate on board an Indiaman, and he left me two months after, the
+wicked wretch. This is John Armstrong--here's the mark on his arm which
+he made for me."
+
+The stranger said, "I am John Armstrong, sure enough, Polly. I'm John
+Armstrong, Amory, Altamont--and let 'em all come on, and try what they
+can do against a British sailor. Hurray, who's for it?"
+
+Morgan still called out, "Arrest him!" But Mrs. Lightfoot said, "Arrest
+him! arrest you, you mean spy! What! stop the marriage and ruin my lady,
+and take away the Clavering Arms from us?"
+
+"Did he say he'd take away the Clavering Arms from us?" asked Mr.
+Lightfoot, turning round. "Hang him, I'll throttle him."
+
+"Keep him, darling, till the coach passes to the up train. It'll be here
+now directly."
+
+"D--- him, I'll choke him if he stirs," said Lightfoot. And so they kept
+Morgan until the coach came, and Mr. Amory or Armstrong went away back to
+London.
+
+Morgan had followed him: but of this event Arthur Pendennis did not
+inform Lady Clavering, and left her invoking blessings upon him at her
+son's door, going to kiss him as he was asleep. It had been a busy day.
+
+We have to chronicle the events of but one day more, and that was a day
+when Mr. Arthur, attired in a new hat, a new blue frock-coat and blue
+handkerchief, in a new fancy waistcoat, new boots, and new shirt-studs
+(presented by the Right Honourable the Countess Dowager of Rockminster),
+made his appearance at a solitary breakfast-table, in Clavering Park,
+where he could scarce eat a single morsel of food. Two letters were laid
+by his worship's plate; and he chose to open the first, which was in a
+round clerk-like hand, in preference to the second more familiar
+superscription.
+
+Note 1 ran as follows:--
+
+
+"Garbanzos Wine Company, Shepherd's Inn.--Monday.
+
+"My Dear Pendennis,--In congratulating you heartily upon the event which
+is to make you happy for life, I send my very kindest remembrances to
+Mrs. Pendennis, whom I hope to know even longer than I have already known
+her. And when I call her attention to the fact, that one of the most
+necessary articles to her husband's comfort is pure sherry, I know I
+shall have her for a customer for your worship's sake.
+
+"But I have to speak to you of other than my own concerns. Yesterday
+afternoon, a certain J. A. arrived at my chambers from Clavering, which
+he had left under circumstances of which you are doubtless now aware. In
+spite of our difference, I could not but give him food and shelter (and
+he partook freely both of the Garbanzos Amontillado and the Toboso ham),
+and he told me what had happened to him, and many other surprising
+adventures. The rascal married at sixteen, and has repeatedly since
+performed that ceremony--in Sydney, in New Zealand, in South America, in
+Newcastle, he says, first, before he knew our poor friend the milliner.
+He is a perfect Don Juan.
+
+"And it seemed as if the commendatore had at last overtaken him, for, as
+we were at our meal, there came three heavy knocks at my outer door,
+which made our friend start. I have sustained a siege or two here, and
+went to my usual place to reconnoitre. Thank my stars I have not a bill
+out in the world, and besides, those gentry do not come in that way. I
+found that it was your uncle's late valet, Morgan, and a policeman (I
+think a sham policeman), and they said they had a warrant to take the
+person of John Armstrong, alias Amory, alias Altamont, a runaway convict,
+and threatened to break in the oak.
+
+"Now, sir, in my own days of captivity I had discovered a little passage
+along the gutter into Bows and Costigan's window, and I sent Jack Alias
+along this covered way, not without terror of his life, for it had grown
+very cranky; and then, after a parley, let in Mons. Morgan and friend.
+
+"The rascal had been instructed about that covered way, for he made for
+the room instantly, telling the policeman to go downstairs and keep the
+gate; and he charged up my little staircase as if he had known the
+premises. As he was going out of the window we heard a voice that you
+know, from Bows's garret, saying, 'Who are ye, and hwhat the divvle are
+ye at? You'd betther leave the gutther; bedad there's a man killed
+himself already.'
+
+"And as Morgan, crossing over and looking into the darkness, was trying
+to see whether this awful news was true, he took a broomstick, and with a
+vigorous dash broke down the pipe of communication--and told me this
+morning, with great glee, that he was reminded of that 'aisy sthratagem
+by remembering his dorling Emilie, when she acted the pawrt of Cora in
+the Plee--and by the bridge in Pezawro, bedad.' I wish that scoundrel
+Morgan had been on the bridge when the General tried his 'sthratagem.'
+
+"If I hear more of Jack Alias I will tell you. He has got plenty of money
+still, and I wanted him to send some to our poor friend the milliner; but
+the scoundrel laughed, and said he had no more than he wanted, but
+offered to give anybody a lock of his hair. Farewell--be happy! and
+believe me always truly yours,                 E. Strong."
+
+
+"And now for the other letter," said Pen. "Dear old fellow!" and he
+kissed the seal before he broke it.
+
+
+"Warrington, Tuesday.
+
+"I must not let the day pass over without saying a God bless you, to both
+of you. May Heaven make you happy, dear Arthur, and dear Laura. I think,
+Pen, that you have the best wife in the world; and pray that, as such,
+you will cherish her and tend her. The chambers will be lonely without
+you, dear Pen; but if I am tired, I shall have a new home to go to in the
+house of my brother and sister. I am practising in the nursery here, in
+order to prepare for the part of Uncle George. Farewell! make your
+wedding tour, and come back to your affectionate          G. W."
+
+
+Pendennis and his wife read this letter together after Doctor Portman's
+breakfast was over, and the guests were gone; and when the carriage was
+waiting amidst the crowd at the Doctor's outer gate. But the wicket led
+into the churchyard of St. Mary's, where the bells were pealing with all
+their might, and it was here, over Helen's green grass, that Arthur
+showed his wife George's letter. For which of those two--for grief was it
+or for happiness, that Laura's tears abundantly fell on the paper? And
+once more, in the presence of the sacred dust, she kissed and blessed her
+Arthur.
+
+There was only one marriage on that day at Clavering Church; for in spite
+of Blanche's sacrifices for her dearest mother, honest Harry Foker could
+not pardon the woman who had deceived her husband, and justly argued that
+she would deceive him again. He went to the Pyramids and Syria, and there
+left his malady behind him, and returned with a fine beard, and a supply
+of tarbooshes and nargillies, with which he regales all his friends. He
+lives splendidly, and, through Pen's mediation, gets his wine from the
+celebrated vintages of the Duke of Garbanzos.
+
+As for poor Cos, his fate has been mentioned in an early part of this
+story. No very glorious end could be expected to such a career. Morgan is
+one of the most respectable men in the parish of St. James's, and in the
+present political movement has pronounced himself like a man and a
+Briton. And Bows,--on the demise of Mr. Piper, who played the organ at
+Clavering, little Mrs. Sam Hunter, who has the entire command of Doctor
+Portman, brought Bows down from London to contest the organ-loft, and her
+candidate carried the chair. When Sir Francis Clavering quitted this
+worthless life, the same little indefatigable canvasser took the borough
+by storm, and it is now represented by Arthur Pendennis, Esq. Blanche
+Amory, it is well known, married at Paris, and the saloons of Madame la
+Comtesse de Montmorenci de Valentinois were amongst the most suivis of
+that capital. The duel between the Count and the young and fiery
+Representative of the Mountain, Alcide de Mirobo, arose solely from the
+latter questioning at the Club the titles borne by the former nobleman.
+Madame de Montmorenci de Valentinois travelled after the adventure: and
+Bungay bought her poems, and published them, with the Countess's coronet
+emblazoned on the Countess's work.
+
+Major Pendennis became very serious in his last days, and was never so
+happy as when Laura was reading to him with her sweet voice, or listening
+to his stories. For this sweet lady is the friend of the young and the
+old: and her life is always passed in making other lives happy.
+
+"And what sort of a husband would this Pendennis be?" many a reader will
+ask, doubting the happiness of such a marriage and the fortune of Laura.
+The querists, if they meet her, are referred to that lady herself, who,
+seeing his faults and wayward moods--seeing and owning that there are men
+better than he--loves him always with the most constant affection. His
+children or their mother have never heard a harsh word from him; and when
+his fits of moodiness and solitude are over, welcome him back with a
+never-failing regard and confidence. His friend is his friend still,--
+entirely heart-whole. That malady is never fatal to a sound organ. And
+George goes through his part of godpapa perfectly, and lives alone. If
+Mr. Pen's works have procured him more reputation than has been acquired
+by his abler friend, whom no one knows, George lives contented without
+the fame. If the best men do not draw the great prizes in life, we know
+it has been so settled by the Ordainer of the lottery. We own, and see
+daily, how the false and worthless live and prosper, while the good are
+called away, and the dear and young perish untimely,--we perceive in
+every man's life the maimed happiness, the frequent falling, the bootless
+endeavour, the struggle of Right and Wrong, in which the strong often
+succumb and the swift fail: we see flowers of good blooming in foul
+places, as, in the most lofty and splendid fortunes, flaws of vice and
+meanness, and stains of evil; and, knowing how mean the best of us is,
+let us give a hand of charity to Arthur Pendennis, with all his faults
+and shortcomings, who does not claim to be a hero, but only a man and a
+brother.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The History of Pendennis
+by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS ***
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+This file should be named pendn10.txt or pendn10.zip
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, pendn11.txt
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