VIII. In which Pen is kept waiting at the Door, while the Reader is informed who little Laura was…

VIII. In which Pen is kept waiting at the Door, while the Reader is informed who little Laura was

Once upon a time, then, there was a young gentleman of Cambridge University who came to pass the long vacation at the village where young Helen Thistlewood was living with her mother, the widow of the lieutenant slain at Copenhagen. This gentleman, whose name was the Reverend Francis Bell, was nephew to Mrs. Thistlewood, and by consequence, own cousin to Miss Helen, so that it was very right that he should take lodgings in his aunt’s house, who lived in a very small way; and there he passed the long vacation, reading with three or four pupils who accompanied him to the village. Mr. Bell was fellow of a college, and famous in the University for his learning and skill as a tutor.

His two kinswomen understood pretty early that the reverend gentleman was engaged to be married, and was only waiting for a college living to enable him to fulfil his engagement. His intended bride was the daughter of another parson, who had acted as Mr. Bell’s own private tutor in Bell’s early life, and it was whilst under Mr. Coacher’s roof, indeed, and when only a boy of seventeen or eighteen years of age, that the impetuous young Bell had flung himself at the feet of Miss Martha Coacher, whom he was helping to pick peas in the garden. On his knees, before those peas and her, he pledged himself to an endless affection.

Miss Coacher was by many years the young fellow’s senior and her own heart had been lacerated by many previous disappointments in the matrimonial line. No less than three pupils of her father had trifled with those young affections. The apothecary of the village had despicably jilted her. The dragoon officer, with whom she had danced so many many times during that happy season which she passed at Bath with her gouty grandmamma, one day gaily shook his bridle-rein and galloped away never to return. Wounded by the shafts of repeated ingratitude, can it be wondered at that the heart of Martha Coacher should pant to find rest somewhere? She listened to the proposals of the gawky gallant honest boy, with great kindness and good-humour; at the end of his speech she said, “Law, Bell, I’m sure you are too young to think of such things;” but intimated that she too would revolve them in her own virgin bosom. She could not refer Mr. Bell to her mamma, for Mr. Coacher was a widower, and being immersed in his books, was of course unable to take the direction of so frail and wondrous an article as a lady’s heart, which Miss Martha had to manage for herself.

A lock of her hair, tied up in a piece of blue ribbon, conveyed to the happy Bell the result of the Vestal’s conference with herself. Thrice before had she snipt off one of her auburn ringlets, and given them away. The possessors were faithless, but the hair had grown again: and Martha had indeed occasion to say that men were deceivers when she handed over this token of love to the simple boy.

Number 6, however, was an exception to former passions—Francis Bell was the most faithful of lovers. When his time arrived to go to college, and it became necessary to acquaint Mr. Coacher of the arrangements that had been made, the latter cried, “God bless my soul, I hadn’t the least idea what was going on;” as was indeed very likely, for he had been taken in three times before in precisely a similar manner; and Francis went to the University resolved to conquer honours, so as to be able to lay them at the feet of his beloved Martha.

This prize in view made him labour prodigiously. News came, term after term, of the honours he won. He sent the prize-books for his college essays to old Coacher, and his silver declamation cup to Miss Martha. In due season he was high among the Wranglers, and a fellow of his college; and during all the time of these transactions a constant tender correspondence was kept up with Miss Coacher, to whose influence, and perhaps with justice, he attributed the successes which he had won.

By the time, however, when the Rev. Francis Bell, M.A., and Fellow and Tutor of his College, was twenty-six years of age, it happened that Miss Coacher was thirty-four, nor had her charms, her manners, or her temper improved since that sunny day in the springtime of life when he found her picking peas in the garden. Having achieved his honours he relaxed in the ardour of his studies, and his judgment and tastes also perhaps became cooler. The sunshine of the pea-garden faded away from Miss Martha, and poor Bell found himself engaged—and his hand pledged to that bond in a thousand letters—to a coarse, ill-tempered, ill-favoured, ill-mannered, middle-aged woman.

It was in consequence of one of many altercations (in which Martha’s eloquence shone, and in which therefore she was frequently pleased to indulge) that Francis refused to take his pupils to Bearleader’s Green, where Mr. Coacher’s living was, and where Bell was in the habit of spending the summer: and he bethought him that he would pass the vacation at his aunt’s village, which he had not seen for many years—not since little Helen was a girl and used to sit on his knee. Down then he came and lived with them. Helen was grown a beautiful young woman now. The cousins were nearly four months together, from June to October. They walked in the summer evenings: they met in the early morn. They read out of the same book when the old lady dozed at night over the candles. What little Helen knew, Frank taught her. She sang to him: she gave her artless heart to him. She was aware of all his story. Had he made any secret?—had he not shown the picture of the woman to whom he was engaged, and with a blush,—her letters, hard, eager, and cruel?—The days went on and on, happier and closer, with more kindness, more confidence, and more pity. At last one morning in October came, when Francis went back to college, and the poor girl felt that her tender heart was gone with him.

Frank too wakened up from the delightful midsummer dream to the horrible reality of his own pain. He gnashed and tore at the chain which bound him. He was frantic to break it and be free. Should he confess?—give his savings to the woman to whom he was bound, and beg his release?—there was time yet—he temporised. No living might fall in for years to come. The cousins went on corresponding sadly and fondly: the betrothed woman, hard, jealous, and dissatisfied, complaining bitterly, and with reason, of her Francis’s altered tone.

At last things came to a crisis, and the new attachment was discovered. Francis owned it, cared not to disguise it, rebuked Martha with her violent temper and angry imperiousness, and, worst of all, with her inferiority and her age.

Her reply was, that if he did not keep his promise she would carry his letters into every court in the kingdom—letters in which his love was pledged to her ten thousand times; and, after exposing him to the world as the perjurer and traitor he was, she would kill herself.

Frank had one more interview with Helen, whose mother was dead then, and who was living companion with old Lady Pontypool,—one more interview, where it was resolved that he was to do his duty; that is, to redeem his vow; that is, to pay a debt cozened from him by a sharper; that is, to make two honest people miserable. So the two judged their duty to be, and they parted.

The living fell in only too soon; but yet Frank Bell was quite a grey and worn-out man when he was inducted into it. Helen wrote him a letter on his marriage, beginning “My dear Cousin,” and ending “always truly yours.” She sent him back the other letters, and the lock of his hair—all but a small piece. She had it in her desk when she was talking to the Major.

Bell lived for three or four years in his living, at the end of which time, the Chaplainship of Coventry Island falling vacant, Frank applied for it privately, and having procured it, announced the appointment to his wife. She objected, as she did to everything. He told her bitterly that he did not want her to come: so she went. Bell went out in Governor Crawley’s time, and was very intimate with that gentleman in his later years. And it was in Coventry Island, years after his own marriage, and five years after he had heard of the birth of Helen’s boy, that his own daughter was born.

She was not the daughter of the first Mrs. Bell, who died of island fever very soon after Helen Pendennis and her husband, to whom Helen had told everything, wrote to inform Bell of the birth of their child. “I was old, was I?” said Mrs. Bell the first; “I was old, and her inferior, was I? but I married you, Mr. Bell, and kept you from marrying her?” and hereupon she died. Bell married a colonial lady, whom he loved fondly. But he was not doomed to prosper in love; and, this lady dying in childbirth, Bell gave up too: sending his little girl home to Helen Pendennis and her husband, with a parting prayer that they would befriend her.

The little thing came to Fairoaks from Bristol, which is not very far off, dressed in black, and in company of a soldier’s wife, her nurse, at parting from whom she wept bitterly. But she soon dried up her grief under Helen’s motherly care.

Round her neck she had a locket with hair, which Helen had given, ah how many years ago! to poor Francis, dead and buried. This child was all that was left of him, and she cherished, as so tender a creature would, the legacy which he had bequeathed to her. The girl’s name, as his dying letter stated, was Helen Laura. But John Pendennis, though he accepted the trust, was always rather jealous of the orphan; and gloomily ordered that she should be called by her own mother’s name; and not by that first one which her father had given her. She was afraid of Mr. Pendennis, to the last moment of his life. And it was only when her husband was gone that Helen dared openly to indulge in the tenderness which she felt for the little girl.

Thus it was that Laura Bell became Mrs. Pendennis’s daughter. Neither her husband nor that gentleman’s brother, the Major, viewed her with very favourable eyes. She reminded the first of circumstances in his wife’s life which he was forced to accept, but would have forgotten much more willingly and as for the second, how could he regard her? She was neither related to his own family of Pendennis, nor to any nobleman in this empire, and she had but a couple of thousand pounds for her fortune.

And now let Mr. Pen come in, who has been waiting all this while.

Having strung up his nerves, and prepared himself, without at the door, for the meeting, he came to it, determined to face the awful uncle. He had settled in his mind that the encounter was to be a fierce one, and was resolved on bearing it through with all the courage and dignity of the famous family which he represented. And he flung open the door and entered with the most severe and warlike expression, armed cap-a-pie as it were, with lance couched and plumes displayed, and glancing at his adversary, as if to say, “Come on, I’m ready.”

The old man of the world, as he surveyed the boy’s demeanour, could hardly help a grin at his admirable pompous simplicity. Major Pendennis too had examined his ground; and finding that the widow was already half won over to the enemy, and having a shrewd notion that threats and tragic exhortations would have no effect upon the boy, who was inclined to be perfectly stubborn and awfully serious, the Major laid aside the authoritative manner at once, and with the most good-humoured natural smile in the world, held out his hands to Pen, shook the lad’s passive fingers gaily, and said, “Well, Pen, my boy, tell us all about it.”

Helen was delighted with the generosity of the Major’s good-humour. On the contrary, it quite took aback and disappointed poor Pen, whose nerves were strung up for a tragedy, and who felt that his grand entree was altogether baulked and ludicrous. He blushed and winced with mortified vanity and bewilderment. He felt immensely inclined to begin to cry—“I—I—I didn’t know that you were come till just now,” he said: “is—is—town very full, I suppose?”

If Pen could hardly gulp his tears down, it was all the Major could do to keep from laughter. He turned round and shot a comical glance at Mrs. Pendennis, who too felt that the scene was at once ridiculous and sentimental. And so, having nothing to say, she went up and kissed Mr. Pen: as he thought of her tenderness and soft obedience to his wishes, it is very possible too the boy was melted.

“What a couple of fools they are,” thought the old guardian. “If I hadn’t come down, she would have driven over in state to pay a visit and give her blessing to the young lady’s family.”

“Come, come,” said he, still grinning at the couple, “let us have as little sentiment as possible, and, Pen, my good fellow, tell us the whole story.”

Pen got back at once to his tragic and heroical air. “The story is, sir,” said he, “as I have written it to you before. I have made the acquaintance of a most beautiful and most virtuous lady; of a high family, although in reduced circumstances: I have found the woman in whom I know that the happiness of my life is centred; I feel that I never, never can think about any woman but her. I am aware of the difference of our ages and other difficulties in my way. But my affection was so great that I felt I could surmount all these; that we both could: and she has consented to unite her lot with mine, and to accept my heart and my fortune.”

“How much is that, my boy?” said the Major. “Has anybody left you some money? I don’t know that you are worth a shilling in the world.”

“You know what I have is his,” cried out Mrs. Pendennis.

“Good heavens, madam, hold your tongue!” was what the guardian was disposed to say; but he kept his temper, not without a struggle. “No doubt, no doubt,” he said. “You would sacrifice anything for him. Everybody knows that. But it is, after all then, your fortune which Pen is offering to the young lady; and of which he wishes to take possession at eighteen.”

“I know my mother will give me anything,” Pen said, looking rather disturbed.

“Yes, my good fellow, but there is reason in all things. If your mother keeps the house, it is but fair that she should select her company. When you give her house over her head, and transfer her banker’s account to yourself for the benefit of Miss What-d’-you-call-’em—Miss Costigan—don’t you think you should at least have consulted my sister as one of the principal parties in the transaction? I am speaking to you, you see, without the least anger or assumption of authority, such as the law and your father’s will give me over you for three years to come—but as one man of the world to another,—and I ask you, if you think that, because you can do what you like with your mother, therefore you have a right to do so? As you are her dependent, would it not have been more generous to wait before you took this step, and at least to have paid her the courtesy to ask her leave?”

Pen held down his head, and began dimly to perceive that the action on which he had prided himself as a most romantic, generous instance of disinterested affection, was perhaps a very selfish and headstrong piece of folly.

“I did it in a moment of passion,” said Pen, floundering; “I was not aware what I was going to say or to do” (and in this he spoke with perfect sincerity) “But now it is said, and I stand to it. No; I neither can nor will recall it. I’ll die rather than do so. And I—I don’t want to burthen my mother,” he continued. “I’ll work for myself. I’ll go on the stage, and act with her. She—she says I should do well there.”

“But will she take you on those terms?” the Major interposed. “Mind, I do not say that Miss Costigan is not the most disinterested of women: but, don’t you suppose now, fairly, that your position as a young gentleman of ancient birth and decent expectations forms a part of the cause why she finds your addresses welcome?”

“I’ll die, I say, rather than forfeit my pledge to her,” said Pen, doubling his fists and turning red.

“Who asks you, my dear friend?” answered the imperturbable guardian. “No gentleman breaks his word, of course, when it has been given freely. But after all, you can wait. You owe something to your mother, something to your family—something to me as your father’s representative.”

“Oh, of course,” Pen said, feeling rather relieved.

“Well, as you have pledged your word to her, give us another, will you Arthur?”

“What is it?” Arthur asked.

“That you will make no private marriage—that you won’t be taking a trip to Scotland, you understand.”

“That would be a falsehood. Pen never told his mother a falsehood,” Helen said.

Pen hung down his head again, and his eyes filled with tears of shame. Had not this whole intrigue been a falsehood to that tender and confiding creature who was ready to give up all for his sake? He gave his uncle his hand.

“No, sir—on my word of honour, as a gentleman,” he said, “I will never marry without my mother’s consent!” and giving Helen a bright parting look of confidence and affection unchangeable, the boy went out of the drawing-room into his own study.

“He’s an angel—he’s an angel,” the mother cried out in one of her usual raptures.

“He comes of a good stock, ma’am,” said her brother-in-law—“of a good stock on both sides.” The Major was greatly pleased with the result of his diplomacy—so much so, that he once more saluted the tips of Mrs. Pendennis’s glove, and dropping the curt, manly, and straightforward tone in which he had conducted the conversation with the lad, assumed a certain drawl which he always adopted when he was most conceited and fine.

“My dear creature,” said he, in that his politest tone, “I think it certainly as well that I came down, and I flatter myself that last botte was a successful one. I tell you how I came to think of it. Three years ago my kind friend Lady Ferrybridge sent for me in the greatest state of alarm about her son Gretna, whose affair you remember, and implored me to use my influence with the young gentleman, who was engaged in an affaire de coeur with a Scotch clergyman’s daughter, Miss MacToddy. I implored, I entreated gentle measures. But Lord Ferrybridge was furious, and tried the high hand. Gretna was sulky and silent, and his parents thought they had conquered. But what was the fact, my dear creature? The young people had been married for three months before Lord Ferrybridge knew anything about it. And that was why I extracted the promise from Master Pen.”

“Arthur would never have done so,” Mrs. Pendennis said.

“He hasn’t,—that is one comfort,” answered the brother-in-law.

Like a wary and patient man of the world, Major Pendennis did not press poor Pen any farther for the moment, but hoped the best from time, and that the young fellow’s eyes would be opened before long to see the absurdity of which he was guilty. And having found out how keen the boy’s point of honour was, he worked kindly upon that kindly feeling with great skill, discoursing him over their wine after dinner, and pointing out to Pen the necessity of a perfect uprightness and openness in all his dealings, and entreating that his communications with his interesting young friend (as the Major politely called Miss Fotheringay) should be carried on with the knowledge, if not approbation, of Mrs. Pendennis. “After all, Pen,” the Major said, with a convenient frankness that did not displease the boy, whilst it advanced the interests of the negotiator, “you must bear in mind that you are throwing yourself away. Your mother may submit to your marriage as she would to anything else you desired, if you did but cry long enough for it: but be sure of this, that it can never please her. You take a young woman off the boards of a country theatre and prefer her, for such is the case, to one of the finest ladies in England. And your mother will submit to your choice, but you can’t suppose that she will be happy under it. I have often fancied, entre nous, that my sister had it in her eye to make a marriage between you and that little ward of hers—Flora, Laura—what’s her name? And I always determined to do my small endeavour to prevent any such match. The child has but two thousand pounds, I am given to understand. It is only with the utmost economy and care that my sister can provide for the decent maintenance of her house, and for your appearance and education as a gentleman; and I don’t care to own to you that I had other and much higher views for you. With your name and birth, sir—with your talents, which I suppose are respectable, with the friends whom I have the honour to possess, I could have placed you in an excellent position—a remarkable position for a young man of such exceeding small means, and had hoped to see you, at least, try to restore the honours of our name. Your mother’s softness stopped one prospect, or you might have been a general, like our gallant ancestor who fought at Ramillies and Malplaquet. I had another plan in view: my excellent and kind friend, Lord Bagwig, who is very well disposed towards me, would, I have little doubt, have attached you to his mission at Pumpernickel, and you might have advanced in the diplomatic service. But, pardon me for recurring to the subject; how is a man to serve a young gentleman of eighteen, who proposes to marry a lady of thirty, whom he has selected from a booth in a fair?—well, not a fair,—a barn. That profession at once is closed to you. The public service is closed to you. Society is closed to you. You see, my good friend, to what you bring yourself. You may get on at the bar to be sure, where I am given to understand that gentlemen of merit occasionally marry out of their kitchens; but in no other profession. Or you may come and live down here—down here, mon Dieu! for ever” (said the Major, with a dreary shrug, as he thought with inexpressible fondness of Pall Mall), “where your mother will receive the Mrs. Arthur that is to be, with perfect kindness; where the good people of the county won’t visit you; and where, by Gad, sir, I shall be shy of visiting you myself, for I’m a plain-spoken man, and I own to you that I like to live with gentlemen for my companions; where you will have to live, with rum-and-water—drinking gentlemen—farmers, and drag through your life the young husband of an old woman, who, if she doesn’t quarrel with your mother, will at least cost that lady her position in society, and drag her down into that dubious caste into which you must inevitably fall. It is no affair of mine, my good sir. I am not angry. Your downfall will not hurt me farther than that it will extinguish the hopes I had of seeing my family once more taking its place in the world. It is only your mother and yourself that will be ruined. And I pity you both from my soul. Pass the claret: it is some I sent to your poor father; I remember I bought it at poor Lord Levant’s sale. But of course,” added the Major, smacking the wine, “having engaged yourself, you will do what becomes you as a man of honour, however fatal your promise may be. However, promise us on our side, my boy, what I set out by entreating you to grant,—that there shall be nothing clandestine, that you will pursue your studies, that you will only visit your interesting friend at proper intervals. Do you write to her much?”

Pen blushed and said, “Why, yes, he had written.”

“I suppose verses, eh! as well as prose? I was a dab at verses myself. I recollect when I first joined, I used to write verses for the fellows in the regiment; and did some pretty things in that way. I was talking to my old friend General Hobbler about some lines I dashed off for him in the year 1806, when we were at the Cape, and, Gad, he remembered every line of them still; for he’d used ’em so often, the old rogue, and had actually tried ’em on Mrs. Hobbler, sir—who brought him sixty thousand pounds. I suppose you’ve tried verses, eh, Pen?”

Pen blushed again, and said, “Why, yes, he had written verses.”

“And does the fair one respond in poetry or prose?” asked the Major, eyeing his nephew with the queerest expression, as much as to say, “O Moses and Green Spectacles! what a fool the boy is.”

Pen blushed again. She had written, but not in verse, the young lover owned, and he gave his breast-pocket the benefit of a squeeze with his left arm, which the Major remarked, according to his wont.

“You have got the letters there, I see,” said the old campaigner, nodding at Pen and pointing to his own chest (which was manfully wadded with cotton by Mr. Stultz). “You know you have. I would give twopence to see ’em.”

“Why,” said Pen, twiddling the stalks of the strawberries, “I—I,” but this sentence never finished; for Pen’s face was so comical and embarrassed, as the Major watched it, that the elder could contain his gravity no longer, and burst into a fit of laughter, in which chorus Pen himself was obliged to join after a minute: when he broke out fairly into a guffaw.

It sent them with great good-humour into Mrs. Pendennis’s drawing-room. She was pleased to hear them laughing in the hall as they crossed it.

“You sly rascal!” said the Major, putting his arm gaily on Pen’s shoulder, and giving a playful push at the boy’s breast-pocket. He felt the papers crackling there sure enough. The young fellow was delighted—conceited—triumphant—and in one word, a spoony.

The pair came to the tea-table in the highest spirits. The Major’s politeness was beyond expression. He had never tasted such good tea, and such bread was only to be had in the country. He asked Mrs. Pendennis for one of her charming songs. He then made Pen sing, and was delighted and astonished at the beauty of the boy’s voice: he made his nephew fetch his maps and drawings, and praised them as really remarkable works of talent in a young fellow: he complimented him on his French pronunciation: he flattered the simple boy as adroitly as ever lover flattered a mistress: and when bedtime came, mother and son went to their several rooms perfectly enchanted with the kind Major.

When they had reached those apartments, I suppose Helen took to her knees as usual: and Pen read over his letters before going to bed: just as if he didn’t know every word of them by heart already. In truth there were but three of those documents and to learn their contents required no great effort of memory.

In No. 1, Miss Fotheringay presents grateful compliments to Mr. Pendennis, and in her papa’s name and her own begs to thank him for his most beautiful presents. They will always be kept carefully; and Miss F. and Captain C. will never forget the delightful evening which they passed on Tuesday last.

No. 2 said—Dear Sir, we shall have a small quiet party of social friends at our humble board, next Tuesday evening, at an early tea, when I shall wear the beautiful scarf which, with its accompanying delightful verses, I shall ever, ever cherish: and papa bids me say how happy he will be if you will join ‘the feast of reason and the flow of soul’ in our festive little party, as I am sure will be your truly grateful Emily Fotheringay.

No. 3 was somewhat more confidential, and showed that matters had proceeded rather far. You were odious yesterday night, the letter said. Why did you not come to the stage-door? Papa could not escort me on account of his eye; he had an accident, and fell down over a loose carpet on the stair on Sunday night. I saw you looking at Miss Diggle all night; and you were so enchanted with Lydia Languish you scarcely once looked at Julia. I could have crushed Bingley, I was so angry. I play Ella Rosenberg on Friday: will you come then? Miss Diggle performs—ever your E. F.

These three letters Mr. Pen used to read at intervals, during the day and night, and embrace with that delight and fervour which such beautiful compositions surely warranted. A thousand times at least he had kissed fondly the musky satin paper, made sacred to him by the hand of Emily Fotheringay. This was all he had in return for his passion and flames, his vows and protests, his rhymes and similes, his wakeful nights and endless thoughts, his fondness, fears and folly. The young wiseacre had pledged away his all for this: signed his name to endless promissory notes, conferring his heart upon the bearer: bound himself for life, and got back twopence as an equivalent. For Miss Costigan was a young lady of such perfect good-conduct and self-command, that she never would have thought of giving more, and reserved the treasures of her affection until she could transfer them lawfully at church.

Howbeit, Mr. Pen was content with what tokens of regard he had got, and mumbled over his three letters in a rapture of high spirits, and went to sleep delighted with his kind old uncle from London, who must evidently yield to his wishes in time; and, in a word, in a preposterous state of contentment with himself and all the world.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

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.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

X. Facing the Enemy

Sauntering slowly homewards, Major Pendennis reached the George presently, and found Mr. Morgan, his faithful valet, awaiting him at the door of the George Inn, who stopped his master as he was about to take a candle to go to bed, and said, with his usual air of knowing deference, “I think, sir, if you would go into the coffee-room, there’s a young gentleman there as you would like to see.”

“What, is Mr. Arthur here?” the Major said, in great anger.

“No, sir—but his great friend, Mr. Foker, sir. Lady Hagnes Foker’s son is here, sir. He’s been asleep in the coffee-room since he took his dinner, and has just rung for his coffee, sir. And I think, p’raps, you might like to git into conversation with him,” the valet said, opening the coffee-room door.

The Major entered; and there indeed was Mr. Foker, the only occupant of the place. He was rubbing his eyes, and sate before a table decorated with empty decanters and relics of dessert. He had intended to go to the play too, but sleep had overtaken him after a copious meal, and he had flung up his legs on the bench, and indulged in a nap instead of the dramatic amusement. The Major was meditating how to address the young man, but the latter prevented him that trouble.

“Like to look at the evening paper, sir?” said Mr. Foker, who was always communicative and affable; and he took up the Globe from his table, and offered it to the new-comer.

“I am very much obliged to you,” said the Major, with a grateful bow and smile. “If I don’t mistake the family likeness, I have the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Henry Foker, Lady Agnes Foker’s son. I have the happiness to name her ladyship among my acquaintances—and you bear, sir, a Rosherville face.”

“Hullo! I beg your pardon,” Mr. Foker said, “I took you,”—he was going to say—“I took you for a commercial gent.” But he stopped that phrase. “To whom have I the pleasure of speaking?” he added.

“To a relative of a friend and schoolfellow of yours—Arthur Pendennis, my nephew, who has often spoken to me about you in terms of great regard. I am Major Pendennis, of whom you may have heard him speak. May I take my soda-water at your table? I have had the pleasure of sitting at your grandfather’s.”

“Sir, you do me proud,” said Mr. Foker, with much courtesy. “And so you are Arthur Pendennis’s uncle, are you?”

“And guardian,” added the Major.

“He’s as good a fellow as ever stepped, sir,” said Mr. Foker.

“I am glad you think so.”

“And clever, too—I was always a stupid chap, I was—but you see, sir, I know ’em when they are clever, and like ’em of that sort.”

“You show your taste and your modesty, too,” said the Major. “I have heard Arthur repeatedly speak of you, and he said your talents were very good.”

“I’m not good at the books,” Mr. Foker said, wagging his head—“never could manage that—Pendennis could—he used to do half the chaps’ verses—and yet”—the young gentleman broke out, “you are his guardian; and I hope you will pardon me for saying that I think he’s what we call flat,” the candid young gentleman said.

The Major found himself on the instant in the midst of a most interesting and confidential conversation. “And how is Arthur a flat?” he asked, with a smile.

“You know,” Foker answered, winking at him—he would have winked at the Duke of Wellington with just as little scruple, for he was in that state of absence, candour, and fearlessness which a man sometimes possesses after drinking a couple of bottles of wine—“You know Arthur’s a flat,—about women I mean.”

“He is not the first of us, my dear Mr. Harry,” answered the Major. “I have heard something of this—but pray tell me more.”

“Why, sir, you see—it’s partly my fault. He went to the play one night—for you see I’m down here readin’ for my little go during the Long, only I come over from Baymouth pretty often in my drag—well, sir, we went to the play, and Pen was struck all of a heap with Miss Fotheringay—Costigan her real name is—an uncommon fine gal she is too; and the next morning I introduced him to the General, as we call her father—a regular old scamp and such a boy for the whisky-and-water!—and he’s gone on being intimate there. And he’s fallen in love with her—and I’m blessed if he hasn’t proposed to her,” Foker said, slapping his hand on the table, until all the dessert began to jingle.

“What! you know it too?” asked the Major.

“Know it! don’t I? and many more too. We were talking about it at mess, yesterday, and chaffing Derby Oaks—until he was as mad as a hatter. Know Sir Derby Oaks? We dined together, and he went to the play: we were standing at the door smoking, I remember, when you passed in to dinner.”

“I remember Sir Thomas Oaks, his father, before he was a Baronet or a Knight; he lived in Cavendish-square, and was physician to Queen Charlotte.”

“The young one is making the money spin, I can tell you,” Mr. Foker said.

“And is Sir Derby Oaks,” the Major said, with great delight and anxiety, “another soupirant?”

“Another what?” inquired Mr. Foker.

“Another admirer of Miss Fotheringay?”

“Lord bless you! we call him Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Pen Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. But mind you, nothing wrong! No, no! Miss F. is a deal too wide-awake for that, Major Pendennis. She plays one off against the other. What you call two strings to her bow.”

“I think you seem tolerably wide-awake, too, Mr. Foker, Pendennis said, laughing.

“Pretty well, thank you, sir—how are you?” Foker replied, imperturbably. “I’m not clever, p’raps: but I am rather downy; and partial friends say I know what’s o’clock tolerably well. Can I tell you the time of day in any way?”

“Upon my word,” the Major answered, quite delighted, “I think you may be of very great service to me. You are a young man of the world, and with such one likes to deal. And as such I need not inform you that our family is by no means delighted at this absurd intrigue in which Arthur is engaged.”

“I should rather think not,” said Mr. Foker. “Connexion not eligible. Too much beer drunk on the premises. No Irish need apply. That I take to be your meaning.”

The Major said it was, exactly; though in truth he did not quite understand what Mr. Foker’s meaning was: and he proceeded to examine his new acquaintance regarding the amiable family into which his nephew proposed to enter, and soon got from the candid witness a number of particulars regarding the House of Costigan.

We must do Mr. Foker the justice to say that he spoke most favourably of Mr. and Miss Costigan’s moral character. “You see,” said he, “I think the General is fond of the jovial bowl, and if I wanted to be very certain of my money, it isn’t in his pocket I’d invest it—but he has always kept a watchful eye on his daughter, and neither he nor she will stand anything but what’s honourable. Pen’s attentions to her are talked about in the whole Company, and I hear all about them from a young lady who used to be very intimate with her, and with whose family I sometimes take tea in a friendly way. Miss Rouncy says, Sir Derby Oaks has been hanging about Miss Fotheringay ever since his regiment has been down here; but Pen has come in and cut him out lately, which has made the Baronet so mad, that he has been very near on the point of proposing too. Wish he would; and you’d see which of the two Miss Fotheringay would jump at.”

“I thought as much,” the Major said. “You give me a great deal of pleasure, Mr. Foker. I wish I could have seen you before.”

“Didn’t like to put in my oar,” replied the other. “Don’t speak till I’m asked, when, if there’s no objections, I speak pretty freely. Heard your man had been hankering about my servant—didn’t know myself what was going on until Miss Fotheringay and Miss Rouncy had the row about the ostrich feathers, when Miss R. told me everything.”

“Miss Rouncy, I gather, was the confidante of the other.”

“Confidant? I believe you. Why, she’s twice as clever a girl as Fotheringay, and literary and that, while Miss Foth can’t do much more than read.”

“She can write,” said the Major, remembering Pen’s breast-pocket.

Foker broke out into a sardonic “He, he! Rouncy writes her letters,” he said; “every one of ’em; and since they’ve quarrelled, she don’t know how the deuce to get on. Miss Rouncy is an uncommon pretty hand, whereas the old one makes dreadful work of the writing and spelling when Bows ain’t by. Rouncy’s been settin’ her copies lately—she writes a beautiful hand, Rouncy does.”

“I suppose you know it pretty well,” said the Major archly upon which Mr. Foker winked at him again.

“I would give a great deal to have a specimen of her hand-writing,” continued Major Pendennis, “I dare say you could give me one.”

“No, no, that would be too bad,” Foker replied. “Perhaps I oughtn’t to have said as much as I have. Miss F.’s writin’ ain’t so very bad, I dare say; only she got Miss R. to write the first letter, and has gone on ever since. But you mark my word, that till they are friends again the letters will stop.”

“I hope they will never be reconciled,” the Major said with great sincerity; “and I can’t tell you how delighted I am to have had the good fortune of making your acquaintance. You must feel, my dear sir, as a man of the world, how fatal to my nephew’s prospects in life is this step which he contemplates, and how eager we all must be to free him from this absurd engagement.”

“He has come out uncommon strong,” said Mr. Foker; “I have seen his verses; Rouncy copied ’em. And I said to myself when I saw ’em, ‘Catch me writin’ verses to a woman,—that’s all.’”

“He has made a fool of himself, as many a good fellow has before him. How can we make him see his folly, and cure it? I am sure you will give us what aid you can in extricating a generous young man from such a pair of schemers as this father and daughter seem to be. Love on the lady’s side is out of the question.”

“Love, indeed!” Foker said. “If Pen hadn’t two thousand a year when he came of age——”

“If Pen hadn’t what?” cried out the Major in astonishment.

“Two thousand a year: hasn’t he got two thousand a year?—the General says he has.”

“My dear friend,” shrieked out the Major, with an eagerness which this gentleman rarely showed, “thank you!—thank you!—I begin to see now.—Two thousand a year! Why, his mother has but five hundred a year in the world.—She is likely to live to eighty, and Arthur has not a shilling but what she can allow him.”

“What! he ain’t rich then?” Foker asked.

“Upon my honour he has no more than what I say.”

“And you ain’t going to leave him anything?”

The Major had sunk every shilling he could scrape together on an annuity, and of course was going to leave Pen nothing; but he did not tell Foker this. “How much do you think a Major on half-pay can save?” he asked. “If these people have been looking at him as a fortune, they are utterly mistaken—and—and you have made me the happiest man in the world.”

“Sir to you,” said Mr. Foker, politely, and when they parted for the night they shook hands with the greatest cordiality; the younger gentleman promising the elder not to leave Chatteris without a further conversation in the morning. And as the Major went up to his room, and Mr. Foker smoked his cigar against the door pillars of the George, Pen, very likely, ten miles off; was lying in bed kissing the letter from his Emily.

The next morning, before Mr. Foker drove off in his drag, the insinuating Major had actually got a letter of Miss Rouncy’s in his own pocket-book. Let it be a lesson to women how they write. And in very high spirits Major Pendennis went to call upon Doctor Portman at the Deanery, and told him what happy discoveries he had made on the previous night. As they sate in confidential conversation in the Dean’s oak breakfast-parlour they could look across the lawn and see Captain Costigan’s window, at which poor Pen had been only too visible some three weeks since. The Doctor was most indignant against Mrs. Creed, the landlady, for her duplicity, in concealing Sir Derby Oaks’s constant visits to her lodgers, and threatened to excommunicate her out of the Cathedral. But the wary Major thought that all things were for the best; and, having taken counsel with himself over night, felt himself quite strong enough to go and face Captain Costigan.

“I’m going to fight the dragon,” he said, with a laugh, to Doctor Portman.

“And I shrive you, sir, and bid good fortune go with you,” answered the Doctor. Perhaps he and Mrs. Portman and Miss Myra, as they sate with their friend, the Dean’s lady, in her drawing-room, looked up more than once at the enemy’s window to see if they could perceive any signs of the combat.

The Major walked round, according to the directions given him, and soon found Mrs. Creed’s little door. He passed it, and as he ascended to Captain Costigan’s apartment, he could hear a stamping of feet, and a great shouting of “Ha, ha!” within.

“It’s Sir Derby Oaks taking his fencing lesson,” said the child, who piloted Major Pendennis. “He takes it Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.”

The Major knocked, and at length a tall gentleman came forth, with a foil and mask in one hand, and a fencing glove on the other.

Pendennis made him a deferential bow. “I believe I have the honour of speaking to Captain Costigan—My name is Major Pendennis.”

The Captain brought his weapon up to the salute, and said, “Major, the honer is moine; I’m deloighted to see ye.”

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XI. Negotiation

The Major and Captain Costigan were old soldiers and accustomed to face the enemy, so we may presume that they retained their presence of mind perfectly; but the rest of the party assembled in Cos’s sitting-room were, perhaps, a little flurried at Pendennis’s apparition. Miss Fotheringay’s slow heart began to beat no doubt, for her cheek flushed up with a great healthy blush, as Lieutenant Sir Derby Oaks looked at her with a scowl. The little crooked old man in the window-seat, who had been witnessing the fencing-match between the two gentlemen (whose stamping and jumping had been such as to cause him to give up all attempts to continue writing the theatre music, in the copying of which he had been engaged) looked up eagerly towards the new-comer as the Major of the well-blacked boots entered the apartment distributing the most graceful bows to everybody present.

“Me daughter—me friend, Mr. Bows—me gallant young pupil and friend, I may call ’um, Sir Derby Oaks,” said Costigan, splendidly waving his hand, and pointing each of these individuals to the Major’s attention. “In one moment, Meejor, I’m your humble servant,” and to dash into the little adjoining chamber where he slept, to give a twist to his lank hair with his hair-brush (a wonderful and ancient piece), to tear off his old stock and put on a new one which Emily had constructed for him, and to assume a handsome clean collar, and the new coat which had been ordered upon the occasion of Miss Fotheringay’s benefit, was with the still active Costigan the work of a minute.

After him Sir Derby entered, and presently emerged from the same apartment, where he also cased himself in his little shell-jacket, which fitted tightly upon the young officer’s big person; and which he, and Miss Fotheringay, and poor Pen too, perhaps, admired prodigiously.

Meanwhile conversation was engaged between the actress and the new-comer; and the usual remarks about the weather had been interchanged before Costigan re-entered in his new ‘Shoot,’ as he called it.

“I needn’t apologoise to ye, Meejor,” he said, in his richest and most courteous manner, “for receiving ye in me shirt-sleeves.”

“An old soldier can’t be better employed than in teaching a young one the use of his sword,” answered the Major, gallantly. “I remember in old times hearing that you could use yours pretty well, Captain Costigan.”

“What, ye’ve heard of Jack Costigan, Major,” said the other, greatly.

The Major had, indeed; he had pumped his nephew concerning his new friend, the Irish officer; and whether he had no other knowledge of the Captain than what he had thus gained, or whether he actually remembered him, we cannot say. But Major Pendennis was a person of honour and undoubted veracity, and said that he perfectly well recollected meeting Mr. Costigan, and hearing him sing at Sir Richard Strachan’s table at Walcheren.

At this information, and the bland and cordial manner in which it was conveyed, Bows looked up, entirely puzzled. “But we will talk of these matters another time,” the Major continued, perhaps not wishing to commit himself; “it is to Miss Fotheringay that I came to pay my respects to-day;” and he performed another bow for her, so courtly and gracious, that if she had been a duchess he could not have made it more handsome.

“I had heard of your performances from my nephew, madam,” the Major said, “who raves about you, as I believe you know pretty well. But Arthur is but a boy, and a wild enthusiastic young fellow, whose opinions one must not take au pied de la lettre; and I confess I was anxious to judge for myself. Permit me to say your performance delighted and astonished me. I have seen our best actresses, and, on my word, I think you surpass them all. You are as majestic as Mrs. Siddons.”

“Faith, I always said so,” Costigan said, winking at his daughter; “Major, take a chair.” Milly rose at this hint, took an unripped satin garment off the only vacant seat, and brought the latter to Major Pendennis with one of her finest curtseys.

“You are as pathetic as Miss O’Neill,” he continued, bowing and seating himself; “your snatches of song reminded me of Mrs. Jordan in her best time, when we were young men, Captain Costigan; and your manner reminded me of Mars. Did you ever see the Mars, Miss Fotheringay?”

“There was two Mahers in Crow Street,” remarked Miss Emily; “Fanny was well enough, but Biddy was no great things.”

“Sure, the Major means the god of war, Milly, my dear,” interposed the parent.

“It is not that Mars I meant, though Venus, I suppose, may be pardoned for thinking about him,” the Major replied with a smile directed in full to Sir Derby Oaks, who now re-entered in his shell-jacket; but the lady did not understand the words of which he made use, nor did the compliment at all pacify Sir Derby, who, probably, did not understand it either, and at any rate received it with great sulkiness and stiffness, scowling uneasily at Miss Fotheringay, with an expression which seemed to ask what the deuce does this man here?

Major Pendennis was not in the least annoyed by the gentleman’s ill-humour. On the contrary, it delighted him. “So,” thought he, “a rival is in the field;” and he offered up vows that Sir Derby might be, not only a rival, but a winner too, in this love-match in which he and Pen were engaged.

“I fear I interrupted your fencing lesson; but my stay in Chatteris is very short, and I was anxious to make myself known to my old fellow-campaigner Captain Costigan, and to see a lady nearer who had charmed me so much from the stage. I was not the only man epris last night, Miss Fotheringay (if I must call you so, though your own family name is a very ancient and noble one). There was a reverend friend of mine, who went home in raptures with Ophelia; and I saw Sir Derby Oaks fling a bouquet which no actress ever merited better. I should have brought one myself, had I known what I was going to see. Are not those the very flowers in a glass of water on the mantelpiece yonder?”

“I am very fond of flowers,” said Miss Fotheringay, with a languishing ogle at Sir Derby Oaks—but the Baronet still scowled sulkily.

“Sweets to the sweet—isn’t that the expression of the play?” Mr. Pendennis asked, bent upon being good-humoured.

“’Pon my life, I don’t know. Very likely it is. I ain’t much of a literary man,” answered Sir Derby.

“Is it possible?” the Major continued, with an air of surprise. You don’t inherit your father’s love of letters, then, Sir Derby? He was a remarkably fine scholar, and I had the honour of knowing him very well.”

“Indeed,” said the other, and gave a sulky wag of his head.

“He saved my life,” continued Pendennis.

“Did he now?” cried Miss Fotheringay, rolling her eyes first upon the Major with surprise, then towards Sir Derby with gratitude—but the latter was proof against those glances: and far from appearing to be pleased that the Apothecary, his father, should have saved Major Pendennis’s life, the young man actually looked as if he wished the event had turned the other way.

“My father, I believe, was a very good doctor,” the young gentleman said by way of reply. “I’m not in that line myself. I wish you good morning, sir. I’ve got an appointment—Cos, bye-bye—Miss Fotheringay, good morning.” And, in spite of the young lady’s imploring looks and appealing smiles, the Dragoon bowed stiffly out of the room, and the clatter of his sabre was heard as he strode down the creaking stair; and the angry tones of his voice as he cursed little Tom Creed, who was disporting in the passage, and whose peg-top Sir Derby kicked away with an oath into the street.

The Major did not smile in the least, though he had every reason to be amused. “Monstrous handsome young man that—as fine a looking soldier as ever I saw,” he said to Costigan.

“A credit to the army and to human nature in general,” answered Costigan. “A young man of refoined manners, polite affabilitee, and princely fortune. His table is sumptuous: he’s adawr’d in the regiment: and he rides sixteen stone.”

“A perfect champion,” said the Major, laughing. “I have no doubt all the ladies admire him.”

“He’s very well, in spite of his weight, now he’s young,” said Milly; “but he’s no conversation.”

“He’s best on horseback,” Mr. Bows said; on which Milly replied, that the Baronet had ridden third in the steeple-chase on his horse Tareaways, and the Major began to comprehend that the young lady herself was not of a particular genius, and to wonder how she should be so stupid and act so well.

Costigan, with Irish hospitality, of course pressed refreshment upon his guest: and the Major, who was no more hungry than you are after a Lord Mayor’s dinner, declared that he should like a biscuit and a glass of wine above all things, as he felt quite faint from long fasting—but he knew that to receive small kindnesses flatters the donors very much, and that people must needs grow well disposed towards you as they give you their hospitality.

“Some of the old Madara, Milly, love,” Costigan said, winking to his child—and that lady, turning to her father a glance of intelligence, went out of the room, and down the stair, where she softly summoned her little emissary Master Tommy Creed: and giving him a piece of money, ordered him to go buy a pint of Madara wine at the Grapes, and sixpennyworth of sorted biscuits at the baker’s, and to return in a hurry, when he might have two biscuits for himself.

Whilst Tommy Creed was gone on this errand, Miss Costigan sate below with Mrs. Creed, telling her landlady how Mr. Arthur Pendennis’s uncle, the Major, was above-stairs; a nice, soft-spoken old gentleman; that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth: and how Sir Derby had gone out of the room in a rage of jealousy, and thinking what must be done to pacify both of them.

“She keeps the keys of the cellar, Major,” said Mr. Costigan, as the girl left the room.

“Upon my word you have a very beautiful butler,” answered Pendennis, gallantly, “and I don’t wonder at the young fellows raving about her. When we were of their age, Captain Costigan, I think plainer women would have done our business.”

“Faith, and ye may say that, sir—and lucky is the man who gets her. Ask me friend Bob Bows here whether Miss Fotheringay’s moind is not even shuparior to her person, and whether she does not possess a cultiveated intellect, a refoined understanding, and an emiable disposition?”

“O of course,” said Mr. Bows, rather drily. “Here comes Hebe blushing from the cellar. Don’t you think it is time to go to rehearsal, Miss Hebe? You will be fined if you are later”—and he gave the young lady a look, which intimated that they had much better leave the room and the two elders together.

At this order Miss Hebe took up her bonnet and shawl, looking uncommonly pretty, good-humoured, and smiling: and Bows gathered up his roll of papers, and hobbled across the room for his hat and cane.

“Must you go?” said the Major. “Can’t you give us a few minutes more, Miss Fotheringay? Before you leave us, permit an old fellow to shake you by the hand, and believe that I am proud to have had the honour of making your acquaintance, and am most sincerely anxious to be your friend.”

Miss Fotheringay made a low curtsey at the conclusion of this gallant speech, and the Major followed her retreating steps to the door, where he squeezed her hand with the kindest and most paternal pressure. Bows was puzzled with this exhibition of cordiality: “The lad’s relatives can’t be really wanting to marry him to her,” he thought—and so they departed.

“Now for it,” thought Major Pendennis; and as for Mr. Costigan he profited instantaneously by his daughter’s absence to drink up the rest of the wine; and tossed off one bumper after another of the Madeira from the Grapes, with an eager shaking hand. The Major came up to the table, and took up his glass and drained it with a jovial smack. If it had been Lord Steyne’s particular, and not public-house Cape, he could not have appeared to relish it more.

“Capital Madeira, Captain Costigan,” he said. “Where do you get it? I drink the health of that charming creature in a bumper. Faith, Captain, I don’t wonder that the men are wild about her. I never saw such eyes in my life, or such a grand manner. I am sure she is as intellectual as she is beautiful; and I have no doubt she’s as good as she is clever.”

“A good girl, sir,—a good girl, sir,” said the delighted father; “and I pledge a toast to her with all my heart. Shall I send to the—to the cellar for another pint? It’s handy by. No? Well, indeed sir, ye may say she is a good girl, and the pride and glory of her father—honest old Jack Costigan. The man who gets her will have a jew’l to a wife, sir; and I drink his health, sir, and ye know who I mean, Major.”

“I am not surprised at young or old falling in love with her,” said the Major, “and frankly must tell you, that though I was very angry with my poor nephew Arthur, when I heard of the boy’s passion—now I have seen the lady I can pardon him any extent of it. By George, I should like to enter for the race myself, if I weren’t an old fellow and a poor one.”

“And no better man, Major, I’m sure,” cried Jack enraptured.

“Your friendship, sir, delights me. Your admiration for my girl brings tears to me eyes—tears, sir—manlee tears—and when she leaves me humble home for your own more splendid mansion, I hope she’ll keep a place for her poor old father, poor old Jack Costigan.”—The Captain suited the action to the word, and his bloodshot eyes were suffused with water, as he addressed the Major.

“Your sentiments do you honour,” the other said. “But, Captain Costigan, I can’t help smiling at one thing you have just said.”

“And what’s that, sir?” asked Jack, who was at a too heroic and sentimental pitch to descend from it.

“You were speaking about our splendid mansion—my sister’s house, I mean.”

“I mane the park and mansion of Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, of Fairoaks Park, whom I hope to see a Mimber of Parliament for his native town of Clavering, when he is of ege to take that responsible stetion,” cried the Captain with much dignity.

The Major smiled as he recognised a shaft of his own bow. It was he who had set Pen upon the idea of sitting in Parliament for the neighbouring borough—and the poor lad had evidently been bragging on the subject to Costigan and the lady of his affections. “Fairoaks Park, my dear sir,” he said. “Do you know our history? We are of excessively ancient family certainly, but I began life with scarce enough money to purchase my commission, and my eldest brother was a country apothecary: who made every shilling he died possessed of out of his pestle and mortar.”

“I have consented to waive that objection, sir,” said Costigan majestically, “in consideration of the known respectability of your family.”

“Curse your impudence,” thought the Major; but he only smiled and bowed.

“The Costigans, too, have met with misfortunes; and our house of Castle Costigan is by no manes what it was. I have known very honest men apothecaries, sir, and there’s some in Dublin that has had the honour of dining at the Lord Leftenant’s teeble.”

“You are very kind to give us the benefit of your charity,” the Major continued: “but permit me to say that is not the question. You spoke just now of my little nephew as heir of Fairoaks Park and I don’t know what besides.”

“Funded property, I’ve no doubt, Meejor, and something handsome eventually from yourself.”

“My good sir, I tell you the boy is the son of a country apothecary,” cried out Major Pendennis; “and that when he comes of age he won’t have a shilling.”

“Pooh, Major, you’re laughing at me,” said Mr. Costigan, “me young friend, I make no doubt, is heir to two thousand pounds a year.”

“Two thousand fiddlesticks! I beg your pardon, my dear sir; but has the boy been humbugging you?—it is not his habit. Upon my word and honour, as a gentleman and an executor to my brother’s will too, he left little more than five hundred a year behind him.”

“And with aconomy, a handsome sum of money too, sir,” the Captain answered. “Faith, I’ve known a man drink his clar’t, and drive his coach-and-four on five hundred a year and strict aconomy, in Ireland, sir. We’ll manage on it, sir—trust Jack Costigan for that.”

“My dear Captain Costigan—I give you my word that my brother did not leave a shilling to his son Arthur.”

“Are ye joking with me, Meejor Pendennis?” cried Jack Costigan. “Are ye thrifling with the feelings of a father and a gentleman?”

“I am telling you the honest truth,” said Major Pendennis. “Every shilling my brother had, he left to his widow: with a partial reversion, it is true, to the boy. But she is a young woman, and may marry if he offends her—or she may outlive him, for she comes of an uncommonly long-lived family. And I ask you, as a gentleman and a man of the world, what allowance can my sister, Mrs. Pendennis, make to her son out of five hundred a year, which is all her fortune,—that shall enable him to maintain himself and your daughter in the rank befitting such an accomplished young lady?”

“Am I to understand, sir, that the young gentleman, your nephew, and whom I have fosthered and cherished as the son of me bosom, is an imposther who has been thrifling with the affections of me beloved child?” exclaimed the General, with an outbreak of wrath.—“Have you yourself been working upon the feelings of the young man’s susceptible nature to injuice him to break off an engagement, and with it me adored Emily’s heart? Have a care, sir, how you thrifle with the honour of John Costigan. If I thought any mortal man meant to do so, be heavens I’d have his blood, sir—were he old or young.”

“Mr. Costigan!” cried out the Major.

“Mr. Costigan can protect his own and his daughter’s honour, and will, sir,” said the other. “Look at that chest of dthrawers, it contains heaps of letthers that that viper has addressed to that innocent child. There’s promises there, sir, enough to fill a bandbox with; and when I have dragged the scoundthrel before the Courts of Law, and shown up his perjury and his dishonour, I have another remedy in yondther mahogany case, sir, which shall set me right, sir, with any individual—ye mark me words, Major Pendennis—with any individual who has counselled your nephew to insult a soldier and a gentleman. What? Me daughter to be jilted, and me grey hairs dishonoured by an apothecary’s son. By the laws of Heaven, Sir, I should like to see the man that shall do it.”

“I am to understand then that you threaten in the first place to publish the letters of a boy of eighteen to a woman of eight-and-twenty: and afterwards to do me the honour of calling me out,” the Major said, still with perfect coolness.

“You have described my intentions with perfect accuracy, Meejor Pendennis,” answered the Captain, as he pulled his ragged whiskers over his chin.

“Well, well; these shall be the subjects of future arrangements, but before we come to powder and ball, my good sir,—do have the kindness to think with yourself in what earthly way I have injured you? I have told you that my nephew is dependent upon his mother, who has scarcely more than five hundred a year.”

“I have my own opinion of the correctness of that assertion,” said the Captain.

“Will you go to my sister’s lawyers, Messrs. Tatham here, and satisfy yourself?”

“I decline to meet those gentlemen,” said the Captain, with rather a disturbed air. “If it be as you say, I have been athrociously deceived by some one, and on that person I’ll be revenged.”

“Is it my nephew?” cried the Major, starting up and putting on his hat. “Did he ever tell you that his property was two thousand a year? If he did, I’m mistaken in the boy. To tell lies has not been a habit in our family, Mr. Costigan, and I don’t think my brother’s son has learned it as yet. Try and consider whether you have not deceived yourself; or adopted extravagant reports from hearsay—As for me, sir, you are at liberty to understand that I am not afraid of all the Costigans in Ireland, and know quite well how to defend myself against any threats from any quarter. I come here as the boy’s guardian to protest against a marriage, most absurd and unequal, that cannot but bring poverty and misery with it: and in preventing it I conceive I am quite as much your daughter’s friend (who I have no doubt is an honourable young lady) as the friend of my own family: and prevent the marriage I will, sir, by every means in my power. There, I have said my say, sir.”

“But I have not said mine, Major Pendennis—and ye shall hear more from me,” Mr. Costigan said, with a look of tremendous severity.

“’Sdeath, sir, what do you mean?” the Major asked, turning round on the threshold of the door, and looking the intrepid Costigan in the face.

“Ye said, in the coorse of conversation, that ye were at the George Hotel, I think,” Mr. Costigan said in a stately manner. “A friend shall wait upon ye there before ye leave town, sir.”

“Let him make haste, Mr. Costigan,” cried out the Major, almost beside himself with rage. “I wish you a good morning, sir.” And Captain Costigan bowed a magnificent bow of defiance to Major Pendennis over the landing-place as the latter retreated down the stairs.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

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.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

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.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

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.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XV. The happy Village

Until the enemy had retired altogether from before the place, Major Pendennis was resolved to keep his garrison in Fairoaks. He did not appear to watch Pen’s behaviour or to put any restraint on his nephew’s actions, but he managed nevertheless to keep the lad constantly under his eye or those of his agents, and young Arthur’s comings and goings were quite well known to his vigilant guardian.

I suppose there is scarcely any man who reads this or any other novel but has been baulked in love some time or the other, by fate and circumstance, by falsehood of women, or his own fault. Let that worthy friend recall his own sensations under the circumstances, and apply them as illustrative of Mr. Pen’s anguish. Ah! what weary nights and sickening fevers! Ah! what mad desires dashing up against some rock of obstruction or indifference, and flung back again from the unimpressionable granite! If a list could be made this very night in London of the groans, thoughts, imprecations of tossing lovers, what a catalogue it would be! I wonder what a percentage of the male population of the metropolis will be lying awake at two or three o’clock to-morrow morning, counting the hours as they go by knelling drearily, and rolling from left to right, restless, yearning and heart-sick? What a pang it is! I never knew a man die of love certainly, but I have known a twelve-stone man go down to nine-stone five under a disappointed passion, so that pretty nearly quarter of him may be said to have perished: and that is no small portion. He has come back to his old size subsequently; perhaps is bigger than ever: very likely some new affection has closed round his heart and ribs and made them comfortable, and young Pen is a man who will console himself like the rest of us. We say this lest the ladies should be disposed to deplore him prematurely, or be seriously uneasy with regard to his complaint. His mother was, but what will not a maternal fondness fear or invent? “Depend on it, my dear creature,” Major Pendennis would say gallantly to her, “the boy will recover. As soon as we get her out of the country we will take him somewhere, and show him a little life. Meantime make yourself easy about him. Half a fellow’s pangs at losing a woman result from vanity more than affection. To be left by a woman is the deuce and all, to be sure; but look how easily we leave ’em.”

Mrs. Pendennis did not know. This sort of knowledge had by no means come within the simple lady’s scope. Indeed she did not like the subject or to talk of it: her heart had had its own little private misadventure and she had borne up against it and cured it: and perhaps she had not much patience with other folk’s passions, except, of course, Arthur’s, whose sufferings she made her own, feeling indeed very likely in many of the boy’s illnesses and pains a great deal more than Pen himself endured. And she watched him through this present grief with a jealous silent sympathy; although, as we have said, he did not talk to her of his unfortunate condition.

The Major must be allowed to have had not a little merit and forbearance, and to have exhibited a highly creditable degree of family affection. The life at Fairoaks was uncommonly dull to a man who had the entree of half the houses in London, and was in the habit of making his bow in three or four drawing-rooms of a night. A dinner with Doctor Portman or a neighbouring Squire now and then; a dreary rubber at backgammon with the widow, who did her utmost to amuse him; these were the chief of his pleasures. He used to long for the arrival of the bag with the letters, and he read every word of the evening paper. He doctored himself too, assiduously,—a course of quiet living would suit him well, he thought, after the London banquets. He dressed himself laboriously every morning and afternoon: he took regular exercise up and down the terrace walk. Thus with his cane, his toilet, his medicine-chest, his backgammon-box, and his newspaper, this worthy and worldly philosopher fenced himself against ennui; and if he did not improve each shining hour, like the bees by the widow’s garden wall, Major Pendennis made one hour after another pass as he could, and rendered his captivity just tolerable. After this period it was remarked that he was fond of bringing round the conversation to the American war, the massacre of Wyoming and the brilliant actions of Saint Lucie, the fact being that he had a couple of volumes of the ‘Annual Register’ in his bedroom, which he sedulously studied. It is thus a well-regulated man will accommodate himself to circumstances, and show himself calmly superior to fortune.

Pen sometimes took the box at backgammon of a night, or would listen to his mother’s simple music of summer evenings—but he was very restless and wretched in spite of all: and has been known to be up before the early daylight even; and down at a carp-pond in Clavering Park, a dreary pool with innumerable whispering rushes and green alders, where a milkmaid drowned herself in the Baronet’s grandfather’s time, and her ghost was said to walk still. But Pen did not drown himself, as perhaps his mother fancied might be his intention. He liked to go and fish there, and think and think at leisure, as the float quivered in the little eddies of the pond, and the fish flapped about him. If he got a bite he was excited enough: and in this way occasionally brought home carps, tenches, and eels, which the Major cooked in the Continental fashion.

By this pond, and under a tree, which was his favourite resort, Pen composed a number of poems suitable to his circumstances over which verses he blushed in after days, wondering how he could ever have invented such rubbish. And as for the tree, why it is in a hollow of this very tree, where he used to put his tin-box of ground-bait, and other fishing commodities, that he afterwards—but we are advancing matters. Suffice it to say, he wrote poems and relieved himself very much. When a man’s grief or passion is at this point, it may be loud, but it is not very severe. When a gentleman is cudgelling his brain to find any rhyme for sorrow, besides borrow and to-morrow, his woes are nearer at an end than he thinks for. So were Pen’s. He had his hot and cold fits, his days of sullenness and peevishness, and of blank resignation and despondency, and occasional mad paroxysms of rage and longing, in which fits Rebecca would be saddled and galloped fiercely about the country, or into Chatteris, her rider gesticulating wildly on her back, and astonishing carters and turnpikemen as he passed, crying out the name of the false one.

Mr. Foker became a very frequent and welcome visitor at Fairoaks during this period, where his good spirits and oddities always amused the Major and Pendennis, while they astonished the widow and little Laura not a little. His tandem made a great sensation in Clavering market-place; where he upset a market stall, and cut Mrs. Pybus’s poodle over the shaven quarters, and drank a glass of raspberry bitters at the Clavering Arms. All the society in the little place heard who he was, and looked out his name in their Peerages. He was so young, and their books so old, that his name did not appear in many of their volumes; and his mamma, now quite an antiquated lady, figured amongst the progeny of the Earl of Rosherville, as Lady Agnes Milton still. But his name, wealth, and honourable lineage were speedily known about Clavering, where you may be sure that poor Pen’s little transaction with the Chatteris actress was also pretty freely discussed.

Looking at the little old town of Clavering St. Mary from the London road as it runs by the lodge at Fairoaks, and seeing the rapid and shining Brawl winding down from the town and skirting the woods of Clavering Park, and the ancient church tower and peaked roofs of the houses rising up amongst trees and old walls, behind which swells a fair background of sunshiny hills that stretch from Clavering westwards towards the sea—the place looks so cheery and comfortable that many a traveller’s heart must have yearned towards it from the coach-top, and he must have thought that it was in such a calm friendly nook he would like to shelter at the end of life’s struggle. Tom Smith, who used to drive the Alacrity coach, would often point to a tree near the river, from which a fine view of the church and town was commanded, and inform his companion on the box that “Artises come and take hoff the Church from that there tree—It was a Habby once, sir:”—and indeed a pretty view it is, which I recommend to Mr. Stanfield or Mr. Roberts, for their next tour.

Like Constantinople seen from the Bosphorus; like Mrs. Rougemont viewed in her box from the opposite side of the house; like many an object which we pursue in life, and admire before we have attained it; Clavering is rather prettier at a distance than it is on a closer acquaintance. The town so cheerful of aspect a few furlongs off, looks very blank and dreary. Except on market days there is nobody in the streets. The clack of a pair of pattens echoes through half the place, and you may hear the creaking of the rusty old ensign at the Clavering Arms, without being disturbed by any other noise. There has not been a ball in the Assembly Rooms since the Clavering volunteers gave one to their Colonel, the old Sir Francis Clavering; and the stables which once held a great part of that brilliant, but defunct regiment, are now cheerless and empty, except on Thursdays, when the farmers put up there, and their tilted carts and gigs make a feeble show of liveliness in the place, or on Petty Sessions, when the magistrates attend in what used to be the old card-room.

On the south side of the market rises up the church, with its great grey towers, of which the sun illuminates the delicate carving; deepening the shadows of the huge buttresses, and gilding the glittering windows and flaming vanes. The image of the Patroness of the Church was wrenched out of the porch centuries ago: such of the statues of saints as were within reach of stones and hammer at that period of pious demolition, are maimed and headless, and of those who were out of fire, only Doctor Portman knows the names and history, for his curate, Smirke, is not much of an antiquarian, and Mr. Simcoe (husband of the Honourable Mrs. Simcoe), incumbent and architect of the Chapel of Ease in the lower town, thinks them the abomination of desolation.

The Rectory is a stout broad-shouldered brick house, of the reign of Anne. It communicates with the church and market by different gates, and stands at the opening of Yew-tree Lane, where the Grammar School (Rev. —— Wapshot) is; Yew-tree Cottage (Miss Flather); the butchers’ slaughtering-house, an old barn or brew-house of the Abbey times, and the Misses Finucane’s establishment for young ladies. The two schools had their pews in the loft on each side of the organ, until the Abbey Church getting rather empty, through the falling-off of the congregation, who were inveigled to the Heresy-shop in the lower town, the Doctor induced the Misses Finucane to bring their pretty little flock downstairs; and the young ladies’ bonnets make a tolerable show in the rather vacant aisles. Nobody is in the great pew of the Clavering family, except the statues of defunct baronets and their ladies: there is Sir Poyntz Clavering, Knight and Baronet, kneeling in a square beard opposite his wife in a ruff: a very fat lady, the Dame Rebecca Clavering, in alto-relievo, is borne up to Heaven by two little blue-veined angels, who seem to have a severe task—and so forth. How well in after life Pen remembered those effigies, and how often in youth he scanned them as the Doctor was grumbling the sermon from the pulpit, and Smirke’s mild head and forehead curl peered over the great prayer-book in the desk!

The Fairoaks folks were constant at the old church; their servants had a pew, so had the Doctor’s, so had Wapshot’s, and those of Misses Finucane’s establishment, three maids and a very nice-looking young man in a livery. The Wapshot Family were numerous and faithful. Glanders and his children regularly came to church: so did one of the apothecaries. Mrs. Pybus went, turn and turn about, to the Low Town church, and to the Abbey: the Charity School and their families of course came; Wapshot’s boys made a good cheerful noise, scuffling with their feet as they marched into church and up the organ-loft stair, and blowing their noses a good deal during the service. To be brief, the congregation looked as decent as might be in these bad times. The Abbey Church was furnished with a magnificent screen, and many hatchments and heraldic tombstones. The Doctor spent a great part of his income in beautifying his darling place; he had endowed it with a superb painted window, bought in the Netherlands, and an organ grand enough for a cathedral.

But in spite of organ and window, in consequence of the latter very likely, which had come out of a Papistical place of worship and was blazoned all over with idolatry, Clavering New Church prospered scandalously in the teeth of Orthodoxy; and many of the Doctor’s congregation deserted to Mr. Simcoe and the honourable woman his wife. Their efforts had thinned the very Ebenezer hard by them, which building before Simcoe’s advent used to be so full, that you could see the backs of the congregation squeezing out of the arched windows thereof. Mr. Simcoe’s tracts fluttered into the doors of all the Doctor’s cottages, and were taken as greedily as honest Mrs. Portman’s soup, with the quality of which the graceless people found fault. With the folks at the Ribbon Factory situated by the weir on the Brawl side, and round which the Low Town had grown, Orthodoxy could make no way at all. Quiet Miss Myra was put out of court by impetuous Mrs. Simcoe and her female aides-de-camp. Ah, it was a hard burthen for the Doctor’s lady to bear, to behold her husband’s congregation dwindling away; to give the precedence on the few occasions when they met to a notorious low-churchman’s wife who was the daughter of an Irish Peer; to know that there was a party in Clavering, their own town of Clavering, on which her Doctor spent a great deal more than his professional income, who held him up to odium because he played a rubber at whist; and pronounced him to be a Heathen because he went to the play. In her grief she besought him to give up the play and the rubber,—indeed they could scarcely get a table now, so dreadful was the outcry against the sport,—but the Doctor declared that he would do what he thought right, and what the great and good George the Third did (whose Chaplain he had been): and as for giving up whist because those silly folks cried out against it, he would play dummy to the end of his days with his wife and Myra, rather than yield to their despicable persecutions.

Of the two families, owners of the Factory (which had spoiled the Brawl as a trout-stream and brought all the mischief into the town), the senior partner, Mr. Rolt, went to Ebenezer; the junior, Mr. Barker, to the New Church. In a word, people quarrelled in this little place a great deal more than neighbours do in London; and in the Book Club, which the prudent and conciliating Pendennis had set up, and which ought to have been a neutral territory, they bickered so much that nobody scarcely was ever seen in the reading-room, except Smirke, who, though he kept up a faint amity with the Simcoe faction, had still a taste for magazines and light worldly literature; and old Glanders, whose white head and grizzly moustache might be seen at the window; and of course, little Mrs. Pybus, who looked at everybody’s letters as the Post brought them (for the Clavering Reading-room, as every one knows, used to be held at Baker’s Library, London Street, formerly Hog Lane), and read every advertisement in the paper.

It may be imagined how great a sensation was created in this amiable little community when the news reached it of Mr. Pen’s love-passages at Chatteris. It was carried from house to house, and formed the subject of talk at high-church, low-church, and no-church tables; it was canvassed by the Misses Finucane and their teachers, and very likely debated by the young ladies in the dormitories for what we know; Wapshot’s big boys had their version of the story, and eyed Pen curiously as he sate in his pew at church, or raised the finger of scorn at him as he passed through Chatteris. They always hated him and called him Lord Pendennis, because he did not wear corduroys as they did, and rode a horse, and gave himself the airs of a buck.

And if the truth must be told, it was Mrs. Portman herself who was the chief narrator of the story of Pen’s loves. Whatever tales this candid woman heard, she was sure to impart them to her neighbours; and after she had been put into possession of Pen’s secret by the little scandal at Chatteris, poor Doctor Portman knew that it would next day be about the parish of which he was the Rector. And so indeed it was; the whole society there had the legend—at the news-room, at the milliner’s, at the shoe-shop, and the general warehouse at the corner of the market; at Mrs. Pybus’s, at the Glanders’s, at the Honourable Mrs. Simcoe’s soiree, at the Factory; nay, through the mill itself the tale was current in a few hours, and young Arthur Pendennis’s madness was in every mouth.

All Dr. Portman’s acquaintances barked out upon him when he walked the street the next day. The poor divine knew that his Betsy was the author of the rumour, and groaned in spirit. Well, well,—it must have come in a day or two, and it was as well that the town should have the real story. What the Clavering folks thought of Mrs. Pendennis for spoiling her son, and of that precocious young rascal of an Arthur for daring to propose to a play-actress, need not be told here. If pride exists amongst any folks in our country, and assuredly we have enough of it, there is no pride more deep-seated than that of twopenny old gentlewomen in small towns. “Gracious goodness,” the cry was, “how infatuated the mother is about that pert and headstrong boy who gives himself the airs of a lord on his blood-horse, and for whom our society is not good enough, and who would marry an odious painted actress off a booth, where very likely he wants to rant himself. If dear good Mr. Pendennis had been alive this scandal would never have happened.”

No more it would, very likely, nor should we have been occupied in narrating Pen’s history. It was true that he gave himself airs to the Clavering folks. Naturally haughty and frank, their cackle and small talk and small dignities bored him, and he showed a contempt which he could not conceal. The Doctor and the Curate were the only people Pen cared for in the place—even Mrs. Portman shared in the general distrust of him, and of his mother, the widow, who kept herself aloof from the village society, and was sneered at accordingly, because she tried, forsooth, to keep her head up with the great County families. She, indeed! Mrs. Barker at the Factory has four times the butcher’s meat that goes up to Fairoaks, with all their fine airs.

Etc. etc. etc.: let the reader fill up these details according to his liking and experience of village scandal. They will suffice to show how it was that a good woman occupied solely in doing her duty to her neighbour and her children, and an honest, brave lad, impetuous, and full of good, and wishing well to every mortal alive found enemies and detractors amongst people to whom they were superior, and to whom they had never done anything like harm. The Clavering curs were yelping all round the house of Fairoaks, and delighted to pull Pen down.

Doctor Portman and Smirke were both cautious of informing the widow of the constant outbreak of calumny which was pursuing poor Pen, though Glanders, who was a friend of the house, kept him au courant. It may be imagined what his indignation was: was there any man in the village whom he could call to account? Presently some wags began to chalk up ‘Fotheringay for ever!’ and other sarcastic allusions to late transactions, at Fairoaks’ gate. Another brought a large playbill from Chatteris, and wafered it there one night. On one occasion Pen, riding through the Lower Town, fancied he heard the Factory boys jeer him; and finally going through the Doctor’s gate into the churchyard, where some of Wapshot’s boys were lounging, the biggest of them, a young gentleman about twenty years of age, son of a neighbouring small Squire, who lived in the doubtful capacity of parlour-boarder with Mr. Wapshot, flung himself into a theatrical attitude near a newly-made grave, and began repeating Hamlet’s verses over Ophelia, with a hideous leer at Pen. The young fellow was so enraged that he rushed at Hobnell Major with a shriek very much resembling an oath, cut him furiously across the face with the riding-whip which he carried, flung it away, calling upon the cowardly villain to defend himself, and in another minute knocked the bewildered young ruffian into the grave which was just waiting for a different lodger.

Then with his fists clenched, and his face quivering with passion and indignation, he roared out to Mr. Hobnell’s gaping companions, to know if any of the blackguards would come on? But they held back with a growl, and retreated as Doctor Portman came up to his wicket, and Mr. Hobnell, with his nose and lip bleeding piteously, emerged from the grave.

Pen, looking death and defiance at the lads, who retreated toward their side of the churchyard, walked back again through the Doctor’s wicket, and was interrogated by that gentleman. The young fellow was so agitated he could scarcely speak. His voice broke into a sob as he answered. “The ——— coward insulted me, sir,” he said; and the Doctor passed over the oath, and respected the emotion of the honest suffering young heart.

Pendennis the elder, who like a real man of the world had a proper and constant dread of the opinion of his neighbour, was prodigiously annoyed by the absurd little tempest which was blowing in Chatteris, and tossing about Master Pen’s reputation. Doctor Portman and Captain Glanders had to support the charges of the whole Chatteris society against the young reprobate, who was looked upon as a monster of crime. Pen did not say anything about the churchyard scuffle at home; but went over to Baymouth, and took counsel with his friend Harry Foker, Esq., who drove over his drag presently to the Clavering Arms, whence he sent Stoopid with a note to Thomas Hobnell, Esq., at the Rev. J. Wapshot’s, and a civil message to ask when he should wait upon that gentleman.

Stoopid brought back word that the note had been opened by Mr. Hobnell, and read to half a dozen of the big boys, on whom it seemed to make a great impression; and that after consulting together, and laughing, Mr. Hobnell said he would send an answer “arter arternoon school, which the bell was a-ringing: and Mr. Wapshot he came out in his Master’s gownd.” Stoopid was learned in academical costume, having attended Mr. Foker at St. Boniface.

Mr. Foker went out to see the curiosities of Clavering meanwhile; but not having a taste for architecture, Doctor Portman’s fine church did not engage his attention much and he pronounced the tower to be as mouldy as an old Stilton cheese. He walked down the street and looked at the few shops there; he saw Captain Glanders at the window of the Reading-room, and having taken a good stare at that gentleman, he wagged his head at him in token of satisfaction; he inquired the price of meat at the butcher’s with an air of the greatest interest, and asked “when was next killing day?” he flattened his little nose against Madame Fribsby’s window to see if haply there was a pretty workwoman in her premises; but there was no face more comely than the doll’s or dummy’s wearing the French cap in the window, only that of Madame Fribsby herself, dimly visible in the parlour, reading a novel. That object was not of sufficient interest to keep Mr. Foker very long in contemplation, and so having exhausted the town and the inn stables, in which there were no cattle, save the single old pair of posters that earned a scanty livelihood by transporting the gentry round about to the county dinners, Mr. Foker was giving himself up to ennui entirely, when a messenger from Mr. Hobnell was at length announced.

It was no other than Mr. Wapshot himself, who came with an air of great indignation, and holding Pen’s missive in his hand, asked Mr. Foker “how dared he bring such an unchristian message as a challenge to a boy of his school?”

In fact Pen had written a note to his adversary of the day before, telling him that if after the chastisement which his insolence richly deserved, he felt inclined to ask the reparation which was usually given amongst gentlemen, Mr. Arthur Pendennis’s friend, Mr. Henry Foker, was empowered to make any arrangements for the satisfaction of Mr. Hobnell.

“And so he sent you with the answer—did he, sir?” Mr. Foker said, surveying the Schoolmaster in his black coat and clerical costume.

“If he had accepted this wicked challenge, I should have flogged him,” Mr. Wapshot said, and gave Mr. Foker a glance which seemed to say, “and I should like very much to flog you too.”

“Uncommon kind of you, sir, I’m sure,” said Pen’s emissary. “I told my principal that I didn’t think the other man would fight,” he continued with a great air of dignity. “He prefers being flogged to fighting, sir, I dare say. May I offer you any refreshment, Mr.? I haven’t the advantage of your name.”

“My name is Wapshot, sir, and I am Master of the Grammar School of this town, sir,” cried the other: “and I want no refreshment, sir, I thank you, and have no desire to make your acquaintance, sir.”

“I didn’t seek yours, sir, I’m sure,” replied Mr. Foker. “In affairs of this sort, you see, I think it is a pity that the clergy should be called in, but there’s no accounting for tastes, sir.”

“I think it’s a pity that boys should talk about committing murder, sir, as lightly as you do,” roared the Schoolmaster; “and if I had you in my school——”

“I dare say you would teach me better, sir,” Mr. Foker said, with a bow. “Thank you, sir. I’ve finished my education, sir, and ain’t a-going back to school, sir—when I do, I’ll remember your kind offer, sir. John, show this gentleman downstairs—and, of course, as Mr. Hobnell likes being thrashed, we can have no objection, sir, and we shall be very happy to accommodate him, whenever he comes our way.”

And with this, the young fellow bowed the elder gentleman out of the room, and sate down and wrote a note off to Pen, in which he informed the latter that Mr. Hobnell was not disposed to fight, and proposed to put up with the caning which Pen had administered to him.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XVI. More Storms in the Puddle

Pen’s conduct in this business of course was soon made public, and angered his friend Doctor Portman not a little: while it only amused Major Pendennis. As for the good Mrs. Pendennis, she was almost distracted when she heard of the squabble, and of Pen’s unchristian behaviour. All sorts of wretchedness, discomfort, crime, annoyance, seemed to come out of this transaction in which the luckless boy had engaged; and she longed more than ever to see him out of Chatteris for a while,—anywhere removed from the woman who had brought him into so much trouble.

Pen, when remonstrated with by this fond parent, and angrily rebuked by the Doctor for his violence and ferocious intentions, took the matter au grand serieux, with the happy conceit and gravity of youth: said that he himself was very sorry for the affair, that the insult had come upon him without the slightest provocation on his part; that he would permit no man to insult him upon this head without vindicating his own honour, and appealing with great dignity to his uncle, asked whether he could have acted otherwise as a gentleman, than as he did in resenting the outrage offered to him, and in offering satisfaction to the person chastised?

“Vous allez trop vite, my good sir,” said the uncle, rather puzzled, for he had been indoctrinating his nephew with some of his own notions upon the point of honour—old-world notions savouring of the camp and pistol a great deal more than our soberer opinions of the present day—“between men of the world I don’t say; but between two schoolboys, this sort of thing is ridiculous, my dear boy—perfectly ridiculous.”

“It is extremely wicked, and unlike my son,” said Mrs. Pendennis, with tears in her eyes, and bewildered with the obstinacy of the boy.

Pen kissed her, and said with great pomposity, “Women, dear mother, don’t understand these matters—I put myself into Foker’s hands—I had no other course to pursue.”

Major Pendennis grinned and shrugged his shoulders. The young ones were certainly making great progress, he thought. Mrs. Pendennis declared that that Foker was a wicked horrid little wretch, and was sure that he would lead her dear boy into mischief, if Pen went to the same College with him. “I have a great mind not to let him go at all,” she said: and only that she remembered that the lad’s father had always destined him for the College in which he had had his own brief education, very likely the fond mother would have put a veto upon his going to the University.

That he was to go, and at the next October term, had been arranged between all the authorities who presided over the lad’s welfare. Foker had promised to introduce him to the right set; and Major Pendennis laid great store upon Pen’s introduction into College life and society by this admirable young gentleman. “Mr. Foker knows the very best young men now at the University,” the Major said, “and Pen will form acquaintances there who will be of the greatest advantage through life to him. The young Marquis of Plinlimmon is there, eldest son of the Duke of Saint David’s—Lord Magnus Charters is there, Lord Runnymede’s son, and a first cousin of Mr. Foker (Lady Runnymede, my dear, was Lady Agatha Milton, you of course remember); Lady Agnes will certainly invite him to Logwood; and far from being alarmed at his intimacy with her son, who is a singular and humorous, but most prudent and amiable young man, to whom, I am sure, we are under every obligation for his admirable conduct in the affair of the Fotheringay marriage, I look upon it as one of the very luckiest things which could have happened to Pen, that he should have formed an intimacy with this most amusing young gentleman.”

Helen sighed, she supposed the Major knew best. Mr. Foker had been very kind in the wretched business with Miss Costigan, certainly, and she was grateful to him. But she could not feel otherwise than a dim presentiment of evil; and all these quarrels, and riots, and worldliness, scared her about the fate of her boy.

Doctor Portman was decidedly of opinion that Pen should go to College. He hoped the lad would read, and have a moderate indulgence of the best society too. He was of opinion that Pen would distinguish himself: Smirke spoke very highly of his proficiency: the Doctor himself had heard him construe, and thought he acquitted himself remarkably well. That he should go out of Chatteris was a great point at any rate; and Pen, who was distracted from his private grief by the various rows and troubles which had risen round about him, gloomily said he would obey.

There were assizes, races, and the entertainments and the flux of company consequent upon them, at Chatteris, during a part of the months of August and September, and Miss Fotheringay still continued to act, and take farewell of the audiences at the Chatteris Theatre during that time. Nobody seemed to be particularly affected by her presence, or her announced departure, except those persons whom we have named; nor could the polite county folks, who had houses in London, and very likely admired the Fotheringay prodigiously in the capital, when they had been taught to do so by the Fashion which set in in her favour, find anything remarkable in the actress performing on the little Chatteris boards. Many genius and many a quack, for that matter, has met with a similar fate before and since Miss Costigan’s time. This honest woman meanwhile bore up against the public neglect, and any other crosses or vexations which she might have in life, with her usual equanimity; and ate, drank, acted, slept, with that regularity and comfort which belongs to people of her temperament. What a deal of grief, care, and other harmful excitement does a healthy dulness and cheerful insensibility avoid! Nor do I mean to say that Virtue is not Virtue because it is never tempted to go astray; only that dulness is a much finer gift than we give it credit for being; and that some people are very lucky whom Nature has endowed with a good store of that great anodyne.

Pen used to go drearily in and out from the play at Chatteris during this season, and pretty much according to his fancy. His proceedings tortured his mother not a little, and her anxiety would have led her often to interfere, had not the Major constantly checked, and at the same time encouraged her; for the wily man of the world fancied he saw that a favourable turn had occurred in Pen’s malady. It was the violent efflux of versification, among other symptoms, which gave Pen’s guardian and physician satisfaction. He might be heard spouting verses in the shrubbery walks, or muttering them between his teeth as he sat with the home party of evenings. One day prowling about the house in Pen’s absence, the Major found a great book full of verses in the lad’s study. They were in English, and in Latin; quotations from the classic authors were given in the scholastic manner in the foot-notes. He can’t be very bad, wisely thought the Pall-Mall Philosopher: and he made Pen’s mother remark (not, perhaps, without a secret feeling of disappointment, for she loved romance like other soft women), that the young gentleman during the last fortnight came home quite hungry to dinner at night, and also showed a very decent appetite at the breakfast-table in the morning. “Gad, I wish I could,” said the Major, thinking ruefully of his dinner pills. “The boy begins to sleep well, depend upon that.” It was cruel, but it was true.

Having no other soul to confide in—for he could not speak to his mother of his loves and disappointments—his uncle treated them in a scornful and worldly tone, which, though carefully guarded and polite, yet jarred greatly on the feelings of Mr. Pen—and Foker was much too coarse to appreciate those refined sentimental secrets—the lad’s friendship for the Curate redoubled, or rather, he was never tired of having Smirke for a listener on that one subject. What is a lovee without a confidant? Pen employed Mr. Smirke, as Corydon does the elm-tree, to cut out his mistress’s name upon. He made him echo with the name of the beautiful Amaryllis. When men have left off playing the tune, they do not care much for the pipe: but Pen thought he had a great friendship for Smirke, because he could sigh out his loves and griefs into his tutor’s ears; and Smirke had his own reasons for always being ready at the lad’s call.

Pen’s affection gushed out in a multitude of sonnets to the friend of his heart, as he styled the Curate, which the other received with great sympathy. He plied Smirke with Latin Sapphics and Alcaics. The love-songs multiplied under his fluent pen; and Smirke declared and believed that they were beautiful. On the other hand, Pen expressed a boundless gratitude to think that Heaven should have sent him such a friend at such a moment. He presented his tutor with his best-bound books, and his gold guard-chain, and wanted him to take his double-barrelled gun. He went into Chatteris and got a gold pencil-case on credit (for he had no money, and indeed was still in debt to Smirke for some of the Fotheringay presents), which he presented to Smirke, with an inscription indicative of his unalterable and eternal regard for the Curate; who of course was pleased with every mark of the boy’s attachment.

The poor Curate was naturally very much dismayed at the contemplated departure of his pupil. When Arthur should go, Smirke’s occupation and delight would go too. What pretext could he find for a daily visit to Fairoaks and that kind word or glance from the lady there, which was as necessary to the Curate as the frugal dinner which Madame Fribsby served him? Arthur gone, he would only be allowed to make visits like any other acquaintance: little Laura could not accommodate him by learning the Catechism more than once a week: he had curled himself like ivy round Fairoaks: he pined at the thought that he must lose his hold of the place. Should he speak his mind and go down on his knees to the widow? He thought over any indications in her behaviour which flattered his hopes. She had praised his sermons three weeks before: she had thanked him exceedingly for his present of a melon, for a small dinner-party which Mrs. Pendennis gave: she said she should always be grateful to him for his kindness to Arthur, and when he declared that there were no bounds to his love and affection for that dear boy, she had certainly replied in a romantic manner, indicating her own strong gratitude and regard to all her son’s friends. Should he speak out?—or should he delay? If he spoke and she refused him, it was awful to think that the gate of Fairoaks might be shut upon him for ever—and within that door lay all the world for Mr. Smirke.

Thus, oh friendly readers, we see how every man in the world has his own private griefs and business, by which he is more cast down or occupied than by the affairs or sorrows of any other person. While Mrs. Pendennis is disquieting herself about losing her son, and that anxious hold she has had of him, as long as he has remained in the mother’s nest, whence he is about to take flight into the great world beyond—while the Major’s great soul chafes and frets, inwardly vexed as he thinks what great parties are going on in London, and that he might be sunning himself in the glances of Dukes and Duchesses, but for those cursed affairs which keep him in a wretched little country hole—while Pen is tossing between his passion and a more agreeable sensation, unacknowledged yet, but swaying him considerably, namely, his longing to see the world—Mr. Smirke has a private care watching at his bedside, and sitting behind him on his pony; and is no more satisfied than the rest of us. How lonely we are in the world; how selfish and secret, everybody! You and your wife have pressed the same pillow for forty years and fancy yourselves united. Psha, does she cry out when you have the gout, or do you lie awake when she has the toothache? Your artless daughter, seemingly all innocence and devoted to her mamma and her piano-lesson, is thinking of neither, but of the young Lieutenant with whom she danced at the last ball—the honest frank boy just returned from school is secretly speculating upon the money you will give him, and the debts he owes the tart-man. The old grandmother crooning in the corner and bound to another world within a few months, has some business or cares which are quite private and her own—very likely she is thinking of fifty years back, and that night when she made such an impression, and danced a cotillon with the Captain before your father proposed for her: or, what a silly little overrated creature your wife is, and how absurdly you are infatuated about her—and, as for your wife—O philosophic reader, answer and say,—Do you tell her all? Ah, sir—a distinct universe walks about under your hat and under mine—all things in nature are different to each—the woman we look at has not the same features, the dish we eat from has not the same taste to the one and the other—you and I are but a pair of infinite isolations, with some fellow-islands a little more or less near to us. Let us return, however, to the solitary Smirke.

Smirke had one confidante for his passion—that most injudicious woman, Madame Fribsby. How she became Madame Fribsby, nobody knows: she had left Clavering to go to a milliner’s in London as Miss Fribsby—she pretended that she had got the rank in Paris during her residence in that city. But how could the French king, were he ever so much disposed, give her any such title? We shall not inquire into this mystery, however. Suffice to say, she went away from home a bouncing young lass; she returned a rather elderly character, with a Madonna front and a melancholy countenance—bought the late Mrs. Harbottle’s business for a song—took her elderly mother to live with her; was very good to the poor, was constant at church, and had the best of characters. But there was no one in all Clavering, not Mrs. Portman herself, who read so many novels as Madame Fribsby. She had plenty of time for this amusement, for, in truth, very few people besides the folks at the Rectory and Fairoaks employed her; and by a perpetual perusal of such works (which were by no means so moral or edifying in the days of which we write, as they are at present) she had got to be so absurdly sentimental, that in her eyes life was nothing but an immense love-match; and she never could see two people together, but she fancied they were dying for one another.

On the day after Mrs. Pendennis’s visit to the Curate, which we have recorded many pages back, Madame Fribsby settled in her mind that Mr. Smirke must be in love with the widow, and did everything in her power to encourage this passion on both sides. Mrs. Pendennis she very seldom saw, indeed, except in public, and in her pew at church. That lady had very little need of millinery, or made most of her own dresses and caps; but on the rare occasions when Madame Fribsby received visits from Mrs. Pendennis or paid her respects at Fairoaks, she never failed to entertain the widow with praises of the Curate, pointing out what an angelical man he was, how gentle, how studious, how lonely; and she would wonder that no lady would take pity upon him.

Helen laughed at these sentimental remarks, and wondered that Madame herself did not compassionate her lodger, and console him. Madame Fribsby shook her Madonna front, “Mong cure a boco souffare,” she said, laying her hand on the part she designated as her cure. “It est more en Espang, Madame,” she said with a sigh. She was proud of her intimacy with the French language, and spoke it with more volubility than correctness. Mrs. Pendennis did not care to penetrate the secrets of this wounded heart: except to her few intimates she was a reserved and it may be a very proud woman; she looked upon her son’s tutor merely as an attendant on that young Prince, to be treated with respect as a clergyman certainly, but with proper dignity as a dependant on the house of Pendennis. Nor were Madame’s constant allusions to the Curate particularly agreeable to her. It required a very ingenious sentimental turn indeed to find out that the widow had a secret regard for Mr. Smirke, to which pernicious error however Madame Fribsby persisted in holding.

Her lodger was very much more willing to talk on this subject with his soft-hearted landlady. Every time after that she praised the Curate to Mrs. Pendennis, she came away from the latter with the notion that the widow herself had been praising him. “Etre soul au monde est bien ouneeyoung,” she would say, glancing up at a print of a French carbineer in a green coat and brass cuirass which decorated her apartment—“Depend upon it when Master Pendennis goes to College, his Ma will find herself very lonely. She is quite young yet.—You wouldn’t suppose her to be five-and-twenty. Monsieur le Cury, song cure est touchy—j’ang suis sure—Je conny cela biang—Ally Monsieur Smirke.”

He softly blushed; he sighed; he hoped; he feared; he doubted; he sometimes yielded to the delightful idea—his pleasure was to sit in Madame Fribsby’s apartment, and talk upon the subject, where, as the greater part of the conversation was carried on in French by the Milliner, and her old mother was deaf, that retired old individual (who had once been a housekeeper, wife and widow of a butler in the Clavering family) could understand scarce one syllable of their talk.

Thus it was, that when Major Pendennis announced to his nephew’s tutor that the young fellow would go to College in October, and that Mr. Smirke’s valuable services would no longer be needful to his pupil, for which services the Major, who spoke as grandly as a lord, professed himself exceedingly grateful, and besought Mr. Smirke to command his interests in any way—thus it was, that the Curate felt that the critical moment was come for him, and was racked and tortured by those severe pangs which the occasion warranted.

Madame Fribsby had, of course, taken the strongest interest in the progress of Mr. Pen’s love affair with Miss Fotheringay. She had been over to Chatteris, and having seen that actress perform, had pronounced that she was old and overrated: and had talked over Master Pen’s passion in her shop many and many a time to the half-dozen old maids, and old women in male clothes, who are to be found in little country towns, and who formed the genteel population of Clavering. Captain Glanders, H.P., had pronounced that Pen was going to be a devil of a fellow, and had begun early: Mrs. Glanders had told him to check his horrid observations, and to respect his own wife, if he pleased. She said it would be a lesson to Helen for her pride and absurd infatuation about that boy. Mrs. Pybus said many people were proud of very small things, and for her part, she didn’t know why an apothecary’s wife should give herself such airs. Mrs. Wapshot called her daughters away from that side of the street, one day when Pen, on Rebecca, was stopping at the saddler’s, to get a new lash to his whip—one and all of these people had made visits of curiosity to Fairoaks, and had tried to condole with the widow, or bring the subject of the Fotheringay affair on the tapis, and had been severally checked by the haughty reserve of Mrs. Pendennis, supported by the frigid politeness of the Major her brother.

These rebuffs, however, did not put an end to the gossip, and slander went on increasing about the unlucky Fairoaks’ family. Glanders (H.P.), a retired cavalry officer, whose half-pay and large family compelled him to fuddle himself with brandy-and-water instead of claret after he quitted the Dragoons, had the occasional entree at Fairoaks, and kept his friend the Major there informed of all the stories which were current at Clavering. Mrs. Pybus had taken an inside place by the coach to Chatteris, and gone to the George on purpose to get the particulars. Mrs. Speers’s man, had treated Mr. Foker’s servant to drink at Baymouth for a similar purpose. It was said that Pen had hanged himself for despair in the orchard, and that his uncle had cut him down; that, on the contrary, it was Miss Costigan who was jilted, and not young Arthur; and that the affair had only been hushed up by the payment of a large sum of money, the exact amount of which there were several people in Clavering could testify—the sum of course varying according to the calculation of the individual narrator of the story.

Pen shook his mane and raged like a furious lion when these scandals, affecting Miss Costigan’s honour and his own, came to his ears. Why was not Pybus a man (she had whiskers enough), that he might call her out and shoot her? Seeing Simcoe pass by, Pen glared at him so from his saddle on Rebecca, and clutched his whip in a manner so menacing, that that clergyman went home and wrote a sermon, or thought over a sermon (for he delivered oral testimony at great length), in which he spoke of Jezebel, theatrical entertainments (a double cut this—for Doctor Portman, the Rector of the old church, was known to frequent such), and of youth going to perdition, in a manner which made it clear to every capacity that Pen was the individual meant, and on the road alluded to. What stories more were there not against young Pendennis, whilst he sate sulking, Achilles-like in his tent, for the loss of his ravished Briseis?

After the affair with Hobnell, Pen was pronounced to be a murderer as well as a profligate, and his name became a name of terror and a byword in Clavering. But this was not all; he was not the only one of the family about whom the village began to chatter, and his unlucky mother was the next to become a victim to their gossip.

“It is all settled,” said Mrs. Pybus to Mrs. Speers, “the boy is to go to College, and then the widow is to console herself.”

“He’s been there every day, in the most open manner, my dear,” continued Mrs. Speers.

“Enough to make poor Mr. Pendennis turn in his grave,” said Mrs. Wapshot.

“She never liked him, that we know,” says No. 1.

“Married him for his money. Everybody knows that: was a penniless hanger-on of Lady Pontypool’s,” says No. 2.

“It’s rather too open, though, to encourage a lover under pretence of having a tutor for your son,” cried No. 3.

“Hush! here comes Mrs. Portman,” some one said, as the good Rector’s wife entered Madame Fribsby’s shop, to inspect her monthly book of fashions just arrived from London. And the fact is that Madame Fribsby had been able to hold out no longer; and one day, after she and her lodger had been talking of Pen’s approaching departure, and the Curate had gone off to give one of his last lessons to that gentleman, Madame Fribsby had communicated to Mrs. Pybus, who happened to step in with Mrs. Speers, her strong suspicion, her certainty almost, that there was an attachment between a certain clerical gentleman and a certain lady, whose naughty son was growing quite unmanageable, and that a certain marriage would take place pretty soon.

Mrs. Portman saw it all, of course, when the matter was mentioned. What a sly fox that Curate was! He was low-church, and she never liked him. And to think of Mrs. Pendennis taking a fancy to him after she had been married to such a man as Mr. Pendennis! She could hardly stay five minutes at Madame Fribsby’s, so eager was she to run to the Rectory and give Doctor Portman the news.

When Doctor Portman heard this piece of intelligence, he was in such a rage with his curate, that his first movement was to break with Mr. Smirke, and to beg him to transfer his services to some other parish. “That milksop of a creature pretend to be worthy of such a woman as Mrs. Pendennis,” broke out the Doctor: “where will impudence stop next!”

“She is much too old for Mr. Smirke,” Mrs. Portman remarked: “why, poor dear Mrs. Pendennis might be his mother almost.”

“You always choose the most charitable reason, Betsy,” cried the Rector. “A matron with a son grown up—she would never think of marrying again.”

“You only think men should marry again, Doctor Portman,” answered his lady, bridling up.

“You stupid old woman,” said the Doctor, “when I am gone, you shall marry whomsoever you like. I will leave orders in my will, my dear, to that effect: and I’ll bequeath a ring to my successor, and my Ghost shall come and dance at your wedding.”

“It is cruel for a clergyman to talk so,” the lady answered, with a ready whimper: but these little breezes used to pass very rapidly over the surface of the Doctor’s domestic bliss; and were followed by a great calm and sunshine. The Doctor adopted a plan for soothing Mrs. Portman’s ruffled countenance, which has a great effect when it is tried between a worthy couple who are sincerely fond of one another; and which, I think, becomes ‘John Anderson’ at three-score, just as much as it used to do when he was a black-haired young Jo of five-and-twenty.

“Hadn’t you better speak to Mr. Smirke, John?” Mrs Portman asked.

“When Pen goes to College, cadit quaestio,” replied the Rector, “Smirke’s visits at Fairoaks will cease of themselves, and there will be no need to bother the widow. She has trouble enough on her hands, with the affairs of that silly young scapegrace, without being pestered by the tittle-tattle of this place. It is all an invention of that fool, Fribsby.”

“Against whom I always warned you,—you know I did, my dear John,” interposed Mrs. Portman.

“That you did; you very often do, my love,” the Doctor answered with a laugh. “It is not for want of warning on your part, I am sure, that I have formed my opinion of most women with whom we are acquainted. Madame Fribsby is a fool, and fond of gossip, and so are some other folks. But she is good to the poor: she takes care of her mother, and she comes to church twice every Sunday. And as for Smirke, my dear——” here the Doctor’s face assumed for one moment a comical expression, which Mrs. Portman did not perceive (for she was looking out of the drawing-room window, and wondering what Mrs. Pybus could want cheapening fowls again in the market, when she had bad poultry from Livermore’s two days before)—“and as for Mr. Smirke, my dear Betsy, will you promise me that you will never breathe to any mortal what I am going to tell you as a profound secret?”

“What is it, my dear John!—of course I won’t,” answered the Rector’s lady.

“Well, then—I cannot say it is a fact, mind—but if you find that Smirke is at this moment—ay, and has been for years—engaged to a young lady, a Miss—a Miss Thompson, if you will have the name, who lives on Clapham Common—yes, on Clapham Common, not far from Mrs. Smirke’s house, what becomes of your story then about Smirke and Mrs. Pendennis?”

“Why did you not tell me this before?” asked the Doctor’s wife.—“How long have you known it?—How we all of us have been deceived in that man!”

“Why should I meddle in other folks’ business, my dear?” the Doctor answered. “I know how to keep a secret—and perhaps this is only an invention like that other absurd story; at least, Madame Portman, I should never have told you this but for the other, which I beg you to contradict whenever you hear it.” And so saying the Doctor went away to his study, and Mrs. Portman seeing that the day was a remarkably fine one, thought she would take advantage of the weather and pay a few visits.

The Doctor looking out of his study window saw the wife of his bosom presently issue forth, attired in her best. She crossed the Market-place, saluting the market-women right and left, and giving a glance at the grocery and general emporium at the corner: then entering London Street (formerly Hog Lane), she stopped for a minute at Madame Fribsby’s window, and looking at the fashions which hung up there,—seemed hesitating whether she should enter; but she passed on and never stopped again until she came to Mrs. Pybus’s little green gate and garden, through which she went to that lady’s cottage.

There, of course, her husband lost sight of Mrs. Portman. “Oh, what a long bow I have pulled,” he said inwardly—“Goodness forgive me! and shot my own flesh and blood. There must be no more tattling and scandal about that house. I must stop it, and speak to Smirke. I’ll ask him to dinner this very day.”

Having a sermon to compose, the Doctor sat down to that work, and was so engaged in the composition, that he had not concluded it until near five o’clock in the afternoon: when he stepped over to Mr. Smirke’s lodgings, to put his hospitable intentions, regarding that gentleman, into effect. He reached Madame Fribsby’s door, just as the Curate issued from it.

Mr. Smirke was magnificently dressed, and as he turned out his toes, he showed a pair of elegant open-worked silk stockings and glossy pumps. His white cravat was arranged in a splendid stiff tie, and his gold shirt studs shone on his spotless linen. His hair was curled round his fair temples. Had he borrowed Madame Fribsby’s irons to give that curly grace? His white cambric pocket-handkerchief was scented with the most delicious eau-de-Cologne.

“O gracilis puer,”—cried the Doctor.—“Whither are you bound? I wanted you to come home to dinner.”

“I am engaged to dine at—at Fairoaks,” said Mr. Smirke, blushing faintly and whisking the scented pocket-handkerchief, and his pony being in waiting, he mounted and rode away simpering down the street. No accident befell him that day, and he arrived with his tie in the very best order at Mrs. Pendennis’s house.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XVII. Which concludes the first Part of this History

The Curate had gone on his daily errand to Fairoaks, and was upstairs in Pen’s study pretending to read with his pupil, in the early part of that very afternoon when Mrs. Portman, after transacting business with Mrs. Pybus, had found the weather so exceedingly fine that she pursued her walk as far as Fairoaks, in order to pay a visit to her dear friend there. In the course of their conversation, the Rector’s lady told Mrs. Pendennis and the Major a very great secret about the Curate, Mr. Smirke, which was no less than that he had an attachment, a very old attachment, which he had long kept quite private.

“And on whom is it that Mr. Smirke has bestowed his heart?” asked Mrs. Pendennis, with a superb air but rather an inward alarm.

“Why, my dear,” the other lady answered, “when he first came and used to dine at the Rectory, people said we wanted him for Myra, and we were forced to give up asking him. Then they used to say he was smitten in another quarter; but I always contradicted it for my part, and said that you——”

“That I,” cried Mrs. Pendennis; “people are very impertinent, I am sure. Mr. Smirke came here as Arthur’s tutor, and I am surprised that anybody should dare to speak so——”

“’Pon my soul, it is a little too much,” the Major said, laying down the newspaper and the double eye-glass.

“I’ve no patience with that Mrs. Pybus,” Helen continued indignantly.

“I told her there was no truth in it,” Mrs. Portman said. “I always said so, my dear: and now it comes out that my demure gentleman has been engaged to a young lady—Miss Thompson, of Clapham Common, ever so long: and I am delighted for my part, and on Myra’s account, too, for an unmarried curate is always objectionable about one’s house: and of course it is strictly private, but I thought I would tell you, as it might remove unpleasantnesses. But mind: not one word, if you please, about the story.”

Mrs. Pendennis said, with perfect sincerity, that she was exceedingly glad to hear the news: and hoped Mr. Smirke, who was a very kind and amiable man, would have a deserving wife: and when her visitor went away, Helen and her brother talked of the matter with great satisfaction, the kind lady rebuking herself for her haughty behaviour to Mr. Smirke, whom she had avoided of late, instead of being grateful to him for his constant attention to Arthur.

“Gratitude to this kind of people,” the Major said, “is very well; but familiarity is out of the question. This gentleman gives his lessons and receives his money like any other master. You are too humble, my good soul. There must be distinctions in ranks, and that sort of thing. I told you before, you were too kind to Mr. Smirke.”

But Helen did not think so: and now that Arthur was going away, and she bethought her how very polite Mr. Smirke had been; how he had gone on messages for her; how he had brought books and copied music; how he had taught Laura so many things, and given her so many kind presents, her heart smote her on account of her ingratitude towards the Curate;—so much so, that when he came down from study with Pen, and was hankering about the hall previous to his departure, she went out and shook hands with him with rather a blushing face, and begged him to come into her drawing-room, where she said they now never saw him. And as there was to be rather a good dinner that day, she invited Mr. Smirke to partake of it; and we may be sure that he was too happy to accept such a delightful summons.

Eased, by the above report, of all her former doubts and misgivings regarding the Curate, Helen was exceedingly kind and gracious to Mr. Smirke during dinner, redoubling her attentions, perhaps, because Major Pendennis was very high and reserved with his nephew’s tutor. When Pendennis asked Smirke to drink wine, he addressed him as if he was a Sovereign speaking to a petty retainer, in a manner so condescending, that even Pen laughed at it, although quite ready, for his part, to be as conceited as most young men are.

But Smirke did not care for the impertinences of the Major so long as he had his hostess’s kind behaviour; and he passed a delightful time by her side at table, exerting all his powers of conversation to please her, talking in a manner both clerical and worldly, about the Fancy Bazaar, and the Great Missionary Meeting, about the last new novel, and the Bishop’s excellent sermon about the fashionable parties in London, an account of which he read in the newspapers—in fine, he neglected no art, by which a College divine who has both sprightly and serious talents, a taste for the genteel, an irreproachable conduct, and a susceptible heart, will try and make himself agreeable to the person on whom he has fixed his affections.

Major Pendennis came yawning out of the dining-room very soon after his sister and little Laura had left the apartment. “What an unsufferable bore that man is, and how he did talk!” the Major said.

“He has been very good to Arthur, who is very fond of him,” Mrs. Pendennis said,—“I wonder who the Miss Thompson is whom he is going to marry?”

“I always thought the fellow was looking in another direction,” said the Major.

“And in what?” asked Mrs. Pendennis quite innocently,—“towards Myra Portman?”

“Towards Helen Pendennis, if you must know,” answered her brother-in-law.

“Towards me! impossible!” Helen said, who knew perfectly well that such had been the case. “His marriage will be a very happy thing. I hope Arthur will not take too much wine.”

Now Arthur, flushed with a good deal of pride at the privilege of having the keys of the cellar, and remembering that a very few more dinners would probably take place which he and his dear friend Smirke could share, had brought up a liberal supply of claret for the company’s drinking, and when the elders with little Laura left him, he and the Curate began to pass the wine very freely.

One bottle speedily yielded up the ghost, another shed more than half its blood, before the two topers had been much more than half an hour together—Pen, with a hollow laugh and voice, had drunk off one bumper to the falsehood of women, and had said sardonically, that wine at any rate was a mistress who never deceived, and was sure to give a man a welcome.

Smirke gently said that he knew for his part some women who were all truth and tenderness; and casting up his eyes towards the ceiling, and heaving a sigh as if evoking some being dear and unmentionable, he took up his glass and drained it, and the rosy liquor began to suffuse his face.

Pen trolled over some verses he had been making that morning, in which he informed himself that the woman who had slighted his passion could not be worthy to win it: that he was awaking from love’s mad fever, and, of course, under these circumstances, proceeded to leave her, and to quit a heartless deceiver: that a name which had one day been famous in the land, might again be heard in it: and, that though he never should be the happy and careless boy he was but a few months since, or his heart be what it had been ere passion had filled it and grief had well-nigh killed it; that though to him personally death was as welcome as life, and that he would not hesitate to part with the latter, but for the love of one kind being whose happiness depended on his own,—yet he hoped to show he was a man worthy of his race, and that one day the false one should be brought to know how great was the treasure and noble the heart which she had flung away.

Pen, we say, who was a very excitable person, rolled out these verses in his rich sweet voice, which trembled with emotion whilst our young poet spoke. He had a trick of blushing when in this excited state, and his large and honest grey eyes also exhibited proofs of a sensibility so genuine, hearty, and manly, that Miss Costigan, if she had a heart, must needs have softened towards him; and very likely she was, as he said, altogether unworthy of the affection which he lavished upon her.

The sentimental Smirke was caught by the emotion which agitated his young friend. He grasped Pen’s hand over the dessert dishes and wine-glasses. He said the verses were beautiful: that Pen was a poet, a great poet, and likely by Heaven’s permission to run a great career in the world. “Go on and prosper, dear Arthur,” he cried; “the wounds under which at present you suffer are only temporary, and the very grief you endure will cleanse and strengthen your heart. I have always prophesied the greatest and brightest things of you, as soon as you have corrected some failings and weaknesses of character, which at present belong to you. But you will get over these, my boy; you will get over these; and when you are famous and celebrated, as I know you will be, will you remember your old tutor and the happy early days of your youth?”

Pen swore he would: with another shake of the hand across the glasses and apricots. “I shall never forget how kind you have been to me, Smirke,” he said. “I don’t know what I should have done without you. You are my best friend.”

“Am I, really, Arthur?” said Smirke, looking through his spectacles; and his heart began to beat so that he thought Pen must almost hear it throbbing.

“My best friend, my friend for ever,” Pen said. “God bless you, old boy,” and he drank up the last glass of the second bottle of the famous wine which his father had laid in, which his uncle had bought, which Lord Levant had imported, and which now, like a slave indifferent, was ministering pleasure to its present owner, and giving its young master delectation.

“We’ll have another bottle, old boy,” Pen said, “by Jove we will. Hurray!—claret goes for nothing. My uncle was telling me that he saw Sheridan drink five bottles at Brookes’s, besides a bottle of Maraschino. This is some of the finest wine in England, he says. So it is, by Jove. There’s nothing like it. Nunc vino pellite curas—cras ingens iterabimus aeq,—fill your glass, Old Smirke, a hogshead of it won’t do you any harm.” And Mr. Pen began to sing the drinking song out of Der Freischuetz. The dining-room windows were open, and his mother was softly pacing on the lawn outside, while little Laura was looking at the sunset. The sweet fresh notes of the boy’s voice came to the widow. It cheered her kind heart to hear him sing.

“You—you are taking too much wine, Arthur,” Mr. Smirke said softly—“you are exciting yourself.”

“No,” said Pen, “women give headaches, but this don’t. Fill your glass, old fellow, and let’s drink—I say, Smirke, my boy—let’s drink to her—your her, I mean, not mine, for whom I swear I’ll care no more—no, not a penny—no, not a fig—no, not a glass of wine. Tell us about the lady, Smirke; I’ve often seen you sighing about her.”

“Oh!” said Smirke—and his beautiful cambric shirt front and glistening studs heaved with the emotion which agitated his gentle and suffering bosom.

“Oh—what a sigh!” Pen cried, growing very hilarious; “fill, my boy, and drink the toast, you can’t refuse a toast, no gentleman refuses a toast. Here’s her health, and good luck to you, and may she soon be Mrs. Smirke.”

“Do you say so?” Smirke said, all of a tremble. “Do you really say so, Arthur?”

“Say so; of course, I say so. Down with it. Here’s Mrs. Smirke’s good health: Hip, hip, hurray!”

Smirke convulsively gulped down his glass of wine, and Pen waved his over his head, cheering so as to make his mother and Laura wonder on the lawn, and his uncle, who was dozing over the paper in the drawing-room, start, and say to himself, “That boy’s drinking too much.” Smirke put down the glass.

“I accept the omen,” gasped out the blushing Curate. “Oh my dear Arthur, you—you know her——”

“What—Myra Portman? I wish you joy; she’s got a dev’lish large waist; but I wish you joy, old fellow.”

“Oh, Arthur!” groaned the Curate again, and nodded his head, speechless.

“Beg your pardon—sorry I offended you—but she has got a large waist, you know—devilish large waist,” Pen continued—the third bottle evidently beginning to act upon the young gentleman.

“It’s not Miss Portman,” the other said, in a voice of agony.

“Is it anybody at Chatteris or at Clapham? Somebody here? No—it ain’t old Pybus? it can’t be Miss Rolt at the Factory—she’s only fourteen.”

“It’s somebody rather older than I am, Pen,” the Curate cried, looking up at his friend, and then guiltily casting his eyes down into his plate.

Pen burst out laughing. “It’s Madame Fribsby; by Jove, it’s Madame Fribsby. Madame Frib. by the immortal Gods!”

The Curate could contain no more. “O Pen,” he cried, “how can you suppose that any of those—of those more than ordinary beings you have named could have an influence upon this heart, when I have been daily in the habit of contemplating perfection! I may be insane, I may be madly ambitious, I may be presumptuous—but for two years my heart has been filled by one image, and has known no other idol. Haven’t I loved you as a son, Arthur?—say, hasn’t Charles Smirke loved you as a son?”

“Yes, old boy, you’ve been very good to me,” Pen said, whose liking, however, for his tutor was not by any means of the filial kind.

“My means,” rushed on Smirke, “are at present limited, I own, and my mother is not so liberal as might be desired; but what she has will be mine at her death. Were she to hear of my marrying a lady of rank and good fortune, my mother would be liberal, I am sure she would be liberal. Whatever I have or subsequently inherit—and it’s five hundred a year at the very least—would be settled upon her and—and—and you at my death—that is.”

“What the deuce do you mean?—and what have I to do with your money?” cried out Pen, in a puzzle.

“Arthur, Arthur!” exclaimed the other wildly; “you say I am your dearest friend—Let me be more. Oh, can’t you see that the angelic being I love—the purest, the best of women—is no other than your dear, dear angel of a—mother.”

“My mother!” cried out Arthur, jumping up and sober in a minute. “Pooh! damn it, Smirke, you must be mad—she’s seven or eight years older than you are.”

“Did you find that any objection?” cried Smirke piteously, and alluding, of course, to the elderly subject of Pen’s own passion.

The lad felt the hint, and blushed quite red. “The cases are not similar, Smirke,” he said, “and the allusion might have been spared. A man may forget his own rank and elevate any woman to it: but allow me to say our positions are very different.”

“How do you mean, dear Arthur?” the Curate interposed sadly, cowering as he felt that his sentence was about to be read.

“Mean?” said Arthur. “I mean what I say. My tutor, I say my tutor, has no right to ask a lady of my mother’s rank of life to marry him. It’s a breach of confidence. I say it’s a liberty you take, Smirke—it’s a liberty. Mean, indeed!”

“O Arthur!” the Curate began to cry with clasped hands, and a scared face, but Arthur gave another stamp with his foot and began to pull at the bell. “Don’t let’s have any more of this. We’ll have some coffee, if you please,” he said with a majestic air; and the old butler entering at the summons, Arthur bade him to serve that refreshment.

John said he had just carried coffee into the drawing-room, where his uncle was asking for Master Arthur, and the old man gave a glance of wonder at the three empty claret-bottles. Smirke said he thought he’d—he’d rather not go into the drawing-room, on which Arthur haughtily said, “As you please,” and called for Mr. Smirke’s horse to be brought round. The poor fellow said he knew the way to the stable and would get his pony himself, and he went into the hall and sadly put on his coat and hat.

Pen followed him out uncovered. Helen was still walking up and down the soft lawn as the sun was setting, and the Curate took off his hat and bowed by way of farewell, and passed on to the door leading to the stable court, by which the pair disappeared. Smirke knew the way to the stable, as he said, well enough. He fumbled at the girths of the saddle, which Pen fastened for him, and put on the bridle and led the pony into the yard. The boy was touched by the grief which appeared in the other’s face as he mounted. Pen held out his hand, and Smirke wrung it silently.

“I say, Smirke,” he said in an agitated voice, “forgive me if I have said anything harsh—for you have always been very, very kind to me. But it can’t be, old fellow, it can’t be. Be a man. God bless you.”

Smirke nodded his head silently, and rode out of the lodge-gate: and Pen looked after him for a couple of minutes, until he disappeared down the road, and the clatter of the pony’s hoofs died away. Helen was still lingering on the lawn waiting until the boy came back—she put his hair off his forehead and kissed it fondly. She was afraid he had been drinking too much wine. Why had Mr. Smirke gone away without any tea?

He looked at her with a kind humour beaming in his eyes “Smirke is unwell,” he said with a laugh. For a long while Helen had not seen the boy looking so cheerful. He put his arm round her waist, and walked her up and down the walk in front of the house. Laura began to drub on the drawing-room window and nod and laugh from it. “Come along, you two people,” cried on Major Pendennis, “your coffee is getting quite cold.”

When Laura was gone to bed, Pen, who was big with his secret, burst out with it, and described the dismal but ludicrous scene which had occurred. Helen heard of it with many blushes, which became her pale face very well, and a perplexity which Arthur roguishly enjoyed.

“Confound the fellow’s impudence,” Major Pendennis said as he took his candle, “where will the assurance of these people stop?” Pen and his mother had a long talk that night, full of love, confidence, and laughter, and the boy somehow slept more soundly and woke up more easily than he had done for many months before.

Before the great Mr. Dolphin quitted Chatteris, he not only made an advantageous engagement with Miss Fotheringay, but he liberally left with her a sum of money to pay off any debts which the little family might have contracted during their stay in the place, and which, mainly through the lady’s own economy and management, were not considerable. The small account with the spirit merchant, which Major Pendennis had settled, was the chief of Captain Costigan’s debts, and though the Captain at one time talked about repaying every farthing of the money, it never appears that he executed his menace, nor did the laws of honour in the least call upon him to accomplish that threat.

When Miss Costigan had seen all the outstanding bills paid to the uttermost shilling, she handed over the balance to her father, who broke out into hospitalities to all his friends, gave the little Creeds more apples and gingerbread than he had ever bestowed upon them, so that the widow Creed ever after held the memory of her lodger in veneration, and the young ones wept bitterly when he went away; and in a word managed the money so cleverly that it was entirely expended before many days, and that he was compelled to draw upon Mr. Dolphin for a sum to pay for travelling expenses when the time of their departure arrived.

There was held at an inn in that county town a weekly meeting of a festive, almost a riotous character, of a society of gentlemen who called themselves the Buccaneers. Some of the choice spirits of Chatteris belonged to this cheerful club. Graves, the apothecary (than whom a better fellow never put a pipe in his mouth and smoked it), Smart, the talented and humorous portrait-painter of High Street, Croker, an excellent auctioneer, and the uncompromising Hicks, the able Editor for twenty-three years of the County Chronicle and Chatteris Champion, were amongst the crew of the Buccaneers, whom also Bingley, the manager, liked to join of a Saturday evening, whenever he received permission from his lady.

Costigan had been also an occasional Buccaneer. But a want of punctuality of payments had of late somewhat excluded him from the Society, where he was subject to disagreeable remarks from the landlord, who said that a Buccaneer who didn’t pay his shot was utterly unworthy to be a Marine Bandit. But when it became known to the ‘Ears, as the Clubbists called themselves familiarly, that Miss Fotheringay had made a splendid engagement, a great revolution of feeling took place in the Club regarding Captain Costigan. Solly, mine host of the Grapes (and I need not say, as worthy a fellow as ever stood behind a bar), told the gents in the Buccaneers’ room one night how noble the Captain had behaved; having been round and paid off all his ticks in Chatteris, including his score of three pound fourteen here—and pronounced that Cos was a good feller, a gentleman at bottom, and he, Solly, had always said so, and finally worked upon the feelings of the Buccaneers to give the Captain a dinner.

The banquet took place on the last night of Costigan’s stay at Chatteris, and was served in Solly’s accustomed manner. As good a plain dinner of old English fare as ever smoked on a table was prepared by Mrs. Solly; and about eighteen gentlemen sate down to the festive board. Mr. Jubber (the eminent draper of High Street) was in the Chair, having the distinguished guest of the Club on his right. The able and consistent Hicks officiated as croupier on the occasion; most of the gentlemen of the Club were present, and H. Foker, Esq., and Spavin, Esq., friends of Captain Costigan, were also participators in the entertainment. The cloth having been drawn, the Chairman said, “Costigan, there is wine, if you like,” but the Captain preferring punch, that liquor was voted by acclamation: and ‘Non Nobis’ having been sung in admirable style by Messrs. Bingley, Hicks, and Bullby (of the Cathedral choir, than whom a more jovial spirit “ne’er tossed off a bumper or emptied a bowl”), the Chairman gave the health of the ‘King!’ which was drunk with the loyalty of Chatteris men, and then without further circumlocution proposed their friend ‘Captain Costigan.’

After the enthusiastic cheering which rang through old Chatteris had subsided, Captain Costigan rose in reply, and made a speech of twenty minutes, in which he was repeatedly overcome by his emotions.

The gallant Captain said he must be pardoned for incoherence, if his heart was too full to speak. He was quitting a city celebrated for its antiquitee, its hospitalitee, the beautee of its women, the manly fidelitee, generositee, and jovialitee of its men. (Cheers.) He was going from that ancient and venerable city, of which while Mimoree held her sayt, he should never think without the fondest emotion, to a methrawpolis where the talents of his daughther were about to have full play, and where he would watch over her like a guardian angel. He should never forget that it was at Chatteris she had acquired the skill which she was about to exercise in another sphere, and in her name and his own Jack Costigan thanked and blessed them. The gallant officer’s speech was received with tremendous cheers.

Mr. Hicks, Croupier, in a brilliant and energetic manner, proposed Miss Fotheringay’s health.

Captain Costigan returned thanks in a speech full of feeling and eloquence.

Mr. Jubber proposed the Drama and the Chatteris Theatre, and Mr. Bingley was about to rise but was prevented by Captain Costigan, who, as long connected with the Chatteris Theatre and on behalf of his daughter, thanked the company. He informed them that he had been in garrison, at Gibraltar, and at Malta, and had been at the taking of Flushing. The Duke of York was a patron of the Drama; he had the honour of dining with His Royal Highness and the Duke of Kent many times; and the former had justly been named the friend of the soldier. (Cheers.)

The Army was then proposed, and Captain Costigan returned thanks. In the course of the night he sang his well-known songs, ‘The Deserter,’ ‘The Shan Van Voght,’ ‘The Little Pig under the Bed,’ and ‘The Vale of Avoca.’ The evening was a great triumph for him—it ended. All triumphs and all evenings end. And the next day, Miss Costigan having taken leave of all her friends, having been reconciled to Miss Rouncy, to whom she left a necklace and a white satin gown—the next day, he and Miss Costigan had places in the Competitor coach rolling by the gates of Fairoaks Lodge—and Pendennis never saw them.

Tom Smith, the coachman, pointed out Fairoaks to Mr. Costigan, who sate on the box smelling of rum-and-water—and the Captain said it was a poor place—and added, “Ye should see Castle Costigan, County Mayo, me boy,”—which Tom said he should like very much to see.

They were gone and Pen had never seen them! He only knew of their departure by its announcement in the county paper the next day: and straight galloped over to Chatteris to hear the truth of this news. They were gone indeed. A card of ‘Lodgings to let’ was placed in the dear little familiar window. He rushed up into the room and viewed it over. He sate ever so long in the old window-seat looking into the Dean’s garden: whence he and Emily had so often looked out together. He walked, with a sort of terror, into her little empty bedroom. It was swept out and prepared for new-comers. The glass which had reflected her fair face was shining ready for her successor. The curtains lay square folded on the little bed: he flung himself down and buried his head on the vacant pillow.

Laura had netted a purse into which his mother had put some sovereigns, and Pen had found it on his dressing-table that very morning. He gave one to the little servant who had been used to wait upon the Costigans, and another to the children, because they said they were very fond of her. It was but a few months back, yet what years ago it seemed since he had first entered that room! He felt that it was all done. The very missing her at the coach had something fatal in it. Blank, weary, utterly wretched and lonely the poor lad felt.

His mother saw She was gone by his look when he came home. He was eager to fly too now, as were other folks round about Chatteris. Poor Smirke wanted to go away from the sight of the syren widow. Foker began to think he had had enough of Baymouth, and that a few supper-parties at Saint Boniface would not be unpleasant. And Major Pendennis longed to be off, and have a little pheasant-shooting at Stillbrook, and get rid of all annoyances and tracasseries of the village. The widow and Laura nervously set about the preparation for Pen’s kit, and filled trunks with his books and linen. Helen wrote cards with the name of Arthur Pendennis, Esq., which were duly nailed on the boxes; and at which both she and Laura looked with tearful wistful eyes. It was not until long, long after he was gone, that Pen remembered how constant and tender the affection of these women had been, and how selfish his own conduct was.

A night soon comes, when the mail, with echoing horn and blazing lamps, stops at the lodge-gate of Fairoaks, and Pen’s trunks and his uncle’s are placed on the roof of the carriage, into which the pair presently afterwards enter. Helen and Laura are standing by the evergreens of the shrubbery, their figures lighted up by the coach lamps; the guard cries all right: in another instant the carriage whirls onward; the lights disappear, and Helen’s heart and prayers go with them. Her sainted benedictions follow the departing boy. He has left the home-nest in which he has been chafing, and whither, after his very first flight, he returned bleeding and wounded; he is eager to go forth again, and try his restless wings.

How lonely the house looks without him! The corded trunks and book-boxes are there in his empty study. Laura asks leave to come and sleep in Helen’s room: and when she has cried herself to sleep there, the mother goes softly into Pen’s vacant chamber, and kneels down by the bed on which the moon is shining, and there prays for her boy, as mothers only know how to plead. He knows that her pure blessings are following him, as he is carried miles away.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us