LXVIII. In which the Major is bidden to Stand and Deliver…

LXVIII. In which the Major is bidden to Stand and Deliver

Any gentleman who has frequented the Wheel of Fortune public-house, where it may be remembered that Mr. James Morgan’s Club was held, and where Sir Francis Clavering had an interview with Major Pendennis, is aware that there are three rooms for guests upon the ground floor, besides the bar where the landlady sits. One is a parlour frequented by the public at large; to another room gentlemen in livery resort; and the third apartment, on the door of which “Private” is painted, is that hired by the Club of “The Confidentials,” of which Messrs Morgan and Lightfoot were members.

The noiseless Morgan had listened to the conversation between Strong and Major Pendennis at the latter’s own lodgings, and had carried away from it matter for much private speculation; and a desire of knowledge had led him to follow his master when the Major came to the Wheel of Fortune, and to take his place quietly in the Confidential room, whilst Pendennis and Clavering had their discourse in the parlour. There was a particular corner in the Confidential room from which you could hear almost all that passed in the next apartment; and as the conversation between the two gentlemen there was rather angry, and carried on in a high key, Morgan had the benefit of overhearing almost the whole of it and what he heard, strengthened the conclusions which his mind had previously formed.

“He knew Altamont at once, did he, when he saw him in Sydney? Clavering ain’t no more married to my Lady than I am! Altamont’s the man: Altamont’s a convict; young Harthur comes into Parlyment, and the Gov’nor promises not to split. By Jove, what a sly old rogue it is, that old Gov’nor! No wonder he’s anxious to make the match between Blanche and Harthur: why, she’ll have a hundred thousand if she’s a penny, and bring her man a seat in Parlyment into the bargain.” Nobody saw, but a physiognomist would have liked to behold, the expression of Mr. Morgan’s countenance, when this astounding intelligence was made clear to him. “But for my hage, and the confounded preudices of society,” he said, surveying himself in the glass, “dammy, James Morgan, you might marry her yourself.” But if he could not marry Miss Blanche and her fortune, Morgan thought he could mend his own by the possession of this information, and that it might be productive of benefit to him from very many sources. Of all the persons whom the secret affected, the greater number would not like to have it known. For instance, Sir Francis Clavering, whose fortune it involved, would wish to keep it quiet; Colonel Altamont, whose neck it implicated, would naturally be desirous to hush it: and that young hupstart beast, Mr. Harthur, who was for gettin’ into Parlyment on the strenth of it, and was as proud as if he was a duke with half a millium a year (such, we grieve to say, was Morgan’s opinion of his employer’s nephew), would pay anythink sooner than let the world know that he was married to a convick’s daughter, and had got his seat in Parlyment by trafficking with this secret. As for Lady C., Morgan thought, if she’s tired of Clavering, and wants to get rid of him, she’ll pay: if she’s frightened about her son, and fond of the little beggar, she’ll pay all the same: and Miss Blanche will certainly come down handsome to the man who will put her into her rights, which she was unjustly defrauded of them, and no mistake. “Dammy,” concluded the valet, reflecting upon this wonderful hand which luck had given him to play, “with such cards as these, James Morgan, you are a made man. It may be a reg’lar enewity to me. Every one of ’em must susscribe. And with what I’ve made already, I may cut business, give my old Gov’nor warning, turn gentleman, and have a servant of my own, begad.” Entertaining himself with calculations such as these, that were not a little likely to perturb a man’s spirit, Mr. Morgan showed a very great degree of self-command by appearing and being calm, and by not allowing his future prospects in any way to interfere with his present duties.

One of the persons whom the story chiefly concerned, Colonel Altamont, was absent from London when Morgan was thus made acquainted with his history. The valet knew of Sir Francis Clavering’s Shepherd’s Inn haunt, and walked thither an hour or two after the Baronet and Pendennis had had their conversation together. But that bird was flown; Colonel Altamont had received his Derby winnings, and was gone to the Continent. The fact of his absence was exceedingly vexatious to Mr. Morgan. “He’ll drop all that money at the gambling-shops on the Rhind,” thought Morgan, “and I might have had a good bit of it. It’s confounded annoying to think he’s gone and couldn’t have waited a few days longer.” Hope, triumphant or deferred, ambition or disappointment, victory or patient ambush, Morgan bore all alike, with similar equable countenance. Until the proper day came, the Major’s boots were varnished and his hair was curled, his early cup of tea was brought to his bedside, his oaths, rebukes, and senile satire borne, with silent, obsequious fidelity. Who would think, to see him waiting upon his master, packing and shouldering his trunks, and occasionally assisting at table, at the country-houses where he might be staying, that Morgan was richer than his employer, and knew his secrets and other people’s? In the profession Mr. Morgan was greatly respected and admired, and his reputation for wealth and wisdom got him much renown at most supper-tables: the younger gentlemen voted him stoopid, a feller of no idears, and a fogey, in a word: but not one of them would not say amen to the heartfelt prayer which some of the most serious-minded among the gentlemen uttered, “When I die may I cut up as well as Morgan Pendennis!”

As became a man of fashion, Major Pendennis spent the autumn passing from house to house of such country friends as were at home to receive him; and if the Duke happened to be abroad, the Marquis in Scotland, condescending to sojourn with Sir John or the plain Squire. To say the truth, the old gentleman’s reputation was somewhat on the wane: many of the men of his time had died out, and the occupants of their halls and the present wearers of their titles knew not Major Pendennis: and little cared for his traditions of “the wild Prince and Poins,” and of the heroes of fashion passed away. It must have struck the good man with melancholy as he walked by many a London door, to think how seldom it was now opened for him, and how often he used to knock at it—to what banquets and welcome he used to pass through it—a score of years back. He began to own that he was no longer of the present age, and dimly to apprehend that the young men laughed at him. Such melancholy musings must come across many a Pall Mall philosopher. The men, thinks he, are not such as they used to be in his time: the old grand manner and courtly grace of life are gone: what is Castlewood House and the present Castlewood, compared to the magnificence of the old mansion and owner? The late lord came to London with four postchaises and sixteen horses: all the North Road hurried out to look at his cavalcade: the people in London streets even stopped as his procession passed them. The present lord travels with five bagmen in a railway carriage, and sneaks away from the station, smoking a cigar in a brougham. The late lord in autumn filled Castlewood with company, who drank claret till midnight: the present man buries himself in a hut on a Scotch mountain, and passes November in two or three closets in an entresol at Paris, where his amusements are a dinner at a cafe and a box at a little theatre. What a contrast there is between his Lady Lorraine, the Regent’s Lady Lorraine, and her little ladyship of the present era! He figures to himself the first, beautiful, gorgeous, magnificent in diamonds and velvets, daring in rouge, the wits of the world (the old wits, the old polished gentlemen—not the canaille of to-day with their language of the cabstand, and their coats smelling of smoke) bowing at her feet; and then thinks of to-day’s Lady Lorraine—a little woman in a black silk gown, like a governess, who talks astronomy, and labouring classes, and emigration, and the deuce knows what, and lurks to church at eight o’clock in the morning. Abbots-Lorraine, that used to be the noblest house in the county, is turned into a monastery—a regular La Trappe. They don’t drink two glasses of wine after dinner, and every other man at table is a country curate, with a white neckcloth, whose talk is about Polly Higson’s progress at school, or widow Watkins’s lumbago. “And the other young men, those lounging guardsmen and great lazy dandies—sprawling over sofas and billiard-tables, and stealing off to smoke pipes in each other’s bedrooms, caring for nothing, reverencing nothing, not even an old gentleman who has known their fathers and their betters, not even a pretty woman—what a difference there is between these men, who poison the very turnips and stubble-fields with their tobacco, and the gentlemen of our time!” thinks the Major; “the breed is gone—there’s no use for ’em; they’re replaced by a parcel of damned cotton-spinners and utilitarians, and young sprigs of parsons with their hair combed down their barks. I’m getting old: they’re getting past me: they laugh at us old boys,” thought old Pendennis. And he was not far wrong; the times and manners which he admired were pretty nearly gone—the gay young men “larked” him irreverently, whilst the serious youth had a grave pity and wonder at him; which would have been even more painful to bear, had the old gentleman been aware of its extent. But he was rather simple: his examination of moral questions had never been very deep; it had never struck him perhaps, until very lately, that he was otherwise than a most respectable and rather fortunate man. Is there no old age but his without reverence? Did youthful folly never jeer at other bald pates? For the past two or three years, he had begun to perceive that his day was well-nigh over, and that the men of the new time had begun to reign.

After a rather unsuccessful autumn season, then, during which he was faithfully followed by Mr. Morgan, his nephew Arthur being engaged, as we have seen, at Clavering, it happened that Major Pendennis came back for a while to London, at the dismal end of October, when the fogs and the lawyers come to town. Who has not looked with interest at those loaded cabs, piled boxes, and crowded children, rattling through the streets on the dun October evenings; stopping at the dark houses, where they discharge nurse and infant, girls, matron and father, whose holidays are over? Yesterday it was France and sunshine, or Broadstairs and liberty; to-day comes work and a yellow fog; and, ye gods! what a heap of bills there lies in Master’s study! And the clerk has brought the lawyer’s papers from Chambers; and in half an hour the literary man knows that the printer’s boy will be in the passage; and Mr. Smith with that little account (that particular little account) has called presentient of your arrival, and has left word that he will call to-morrow morning at ten. Who amongst us has not said Good-bye to his holiday; returned to dun London, and his fate; surveyed his labours and liabilities laid out before him, and been aware of that inevitable little account to settle? Smith and his little account in the morning, symbolise duty, difficulty, struggle, which you will meet, let us hope, friend, with a manly and honest heart.—And you think of him, as the children are slumbering once more in their own beds, and the watchful housewife tenderly pretends to sleep.

Old Pendennis had no special labours or bills to encounter on the morrow, as he had no affection at home to soothe him. He had always money in his desk sufficient for his wants; and being by nature and habit tolerably indifferent to the wants of other people, these latter were not likely to disturb him. But a gentleman may be out of temper though he does not owe a shilling and though he may be ever so selfish, he must occasionally feel dispirited and lonely. He had had two or three twinges of gout in the country-house where he had been staying: the birds were wild and shy, and the walking over the ploughed fields had fatigued him deucedly: the young men had laughed at him, and he had been peevish at table once or twice: he had not been able to get his whist of an evening: and, in fine, was glad to come away. In all his dealings with Morgan, his valet, he had been exceedingly sulky and discontented. He had sworn at him and abused him for many days past. He had scalded his mouth with bad soup at Swindon. He had left his umbrella in the railroad carriage: at which piece of forgetfulness, he was in such a rage, that he cursed Morgan more freely than ever. Both, the chimneys smoked furiously in his lodgings; and when he caused the windows to be flung open, he swore so acrimoniously, that Morgan was inclined to fling him out of window too, through that opened casement. The valet swore after his master, as Pendennis went down the street on his way to the Club.

Bays’s was not at all pleasant. The house had been new painted, and smelt of varnish and turpentine, and a large streak of white paint inflicted itself on the back of the old boy’s fur-collared surtout. The dinner was not good: and the three most odious men in all London—old Hawkshaw, whose cough and accompaniments are fit to make any man uncomfortable; old Colonel Gripley, who seizes on all the newspapers; and that irreclaimable old bore Jawkins, who would come and dine at the next table to Pendennis, and describe to him every inn-bill which he had paid in his foreign tour: each and all of these disagreeable personages and incidents had contributed to make Major Pendennis miserable; and the Club waiter trod on his toe as he brought him his coffee. Never alone appear the Immortals. The Furies always hunt in company: they pursued Pendennis from home to the Club, and from the Club home.

Whilst the Major was absent from his lodgings, Morgan had been seated in the landlady’s parlour, drinking freely of hot brandy-and-water, and pouring out on Mrs. Brixham some of the abuse which he had received from his master upstairs. Mrs. Brixham was Mr. Morgan’s slave. He was his landlady’s landlord. He had bought the lease of the house which she rented; he had got her name and her son’s to acceptances, and a bill of sale which made him master of the luckless widow’s furniture. The young Brixham was a clerk in an insurance office, and Morgan could put him into what he called quod any day. Mrs. Brixham was a clergyman’s widow, and Mr. Morgan, after performing his duties on the first floor, had a pleasure in making the old lady fetch him his bootjack and his slippers. She was his slave. The little black profiles of her son and daughter; the very picture of Tiddlecot Church, where she was married, and her poor dear Brixham lived and died, was now Morgan’s property, as it hung there over the mantelpiece of his back-parlour. Morgan sate in the widow’s back-room, in the ex-curate’s old horse-hair study-chair, making Mrs. Brixham bring supper for him, and fill his glass again and again.

The liquor was bought with the poor woman’s own coin, and hence Morgan indulged in it only the more freely; and he had eaten his supper and was drinking a third tumbler, when old Pendennis returned from the Club, and went upstairs to his rooms. Mr. Morgan swore very savagely at him and his bell, when he heard the latter, and finished his tumbler of brandy before he went up to answer the summons.

He received the abuse consequent on this delay in silence, nor did the Major condescend to read in the flushed face and glaring eyes of the man, the anger under which he was labouring. The old gentleman’s foot-bath was at the fire; his gown and slippers awaiting him there. Morgan knelt down to take his boots off with due subordination: and as the Major abused him from above, kept up a growl of maledictions below at his feet. Thus, when Pendennis was crying “Confound you, sir, mind that strap—curse you, don’t wrench my foot off,” Morgan sotto voce below was expressing a wish to strangle him, drown him, and punch his head off.

The boots removed, it became necessary to divest Mr. Pendennis of his coat: and for this purpose the valet had necessarily to approach very near to his employer; so near that Pendennis could not but perceive what Mr. Morgan’s late occupation had been; to which he adverted in that simple and forcible phraseology which men are sometimes in the habit of using to their domestics; informing Morgan that he was a drunken beast, and that he smelt of brandy.

At this the man broke out, losing patience, and flinging up all subordination, “I’m drunk, am I? I’m a beast, am I? I’m d——d, am I? you infernal old miscreant. Shall I wring your old head off, and drownd yer in that pail of water? Do you think I’m a-goin’ to bear your confounded old harrogance, you old Wigsby! Chatter your old hivories at me, do you, you grinning old baboon! Come on, if you are a man, and can stand to a man. Ha! you coward, knives, knives!”

“If you advance a step, I’ll send it into you,” said the Major, seizing up a knife that was on the table near him. “Go downstairs, you drunken brute, and leave the house; send for your book and your wages in the morning, and never let me see your insolent face again. This d——d impertinence of yours has been growing for some months past. You have been growing too rich. You are not fit for service. Get out of it, and out of the house.”

“And where would you wish me to go, pray, out of the ’ouse?” asked the man, “and won’t it be equal convenient to-morrow mornin’?—tootyfay mame shose, sivvaplay, munseer?”

“Silence, you beast, and go!” cried out the Major.

Morgan began to laugh, with rather a sinister laugh. “Look yere, Pendennis,” he said, seating himself; “since I’ve been in this room you’ve called me beast, brute, dog: and d——d me, haven’t you? How do you suppose one man likes that sort of talk from another? How many years have I waited on you, and how many damns and cusses have you given me, along with my wages? Do you think a man’s a dog, that you can talk to him in this way? If I choose to drink a little, why shouldn’t I? I’ve seen many a gentleman drunk form’ly, and peraps have the abit from them. I ain’t a-goin’ to leave this house, old feller, and shall I tell you why? The house is my house, every stick of furnitur’ in it is mine, excep’ your old traps, and your shower-bath, and your wigbox. I’ve bought the place, I tell you, with my own industry and perseverance. I can show a hundred pound, where you can show a fifty, or your damned supersellious nephew either. I’ve served you honourable, done everythink for you these dozen years, and I’m a dog, am I? I’m a beast, am I? That’s the language for gentlemen, not for our rank. But I’ll bear it no more. I throw up your service; I’m tired on it; I’ve combed your old wig and buckled your old girths and waistbands long enough, I tell you. Don’t look savage at me, I’m sitting in my own chair, in my own room, a-telling the truth to you. I’ll be your beast, and your brute, and your dog, no more, Major Pendennis Alf Pay.”

The fury of the old gentleman, met by the servant’s abrupt revolt, had been shocked and cooled by the concussion, as much as if a sudden shower-bath or a pail of cold water had been flung upon him. That effect produced, and his anger calmed, Morgan’s speech had interested him, and he rather respected his adversary, and his courage in facing him; as of old days, in the fencing-room, he would have admired the opponent who hit him.

“You are no longer my servant,” the Major said, “and the house may be yours; but the lodgings are mine, and you will have the goodness to leave them. To-morrow morning, when we have settled our accounts, I shall remove into other quarters. In the meantime, I desire to go to bed, and have not the slightest wish for your further company.”

“We’ll have a settlement, don’t you be afraid,” Morgan said, getting up from his chair. “I ain’t done with you yet; nor with your family, nor with the Clavering family, Major Pendennis; and that you shall know.”

“Have the goodness to leave the room, sir—I’m tired,” said the Major.

“Hah! you’ll be more tired of me afore you’ve done,” answered the man, with a sneer, and walked out of the room; leaving the Major to compose himself as best he might, after the agitation of this extraordinary scene.

He sate and mused by his fireside over the past events, and the confounded impudence and ingratitude of servants; and thought how he should get a new man: how devilish unpleasant it was for a man of his age, and with his habits, to part with a fellow to whom he had been accustomed: how Morgan had a receipt for boot-varnish, which was incomparably better and more comfortable to the feet than any he had ever tried: how very well he made mutton-broth, and tended him when he was unwell. “Gad, it’s a hard thing to lose a fellow of that sort: but he must go,” thought the Major. “He has grown rich, and impudent since he has grown rich. He was horribly tipsy and abusive to-night. We must part, and I must go out of the lodgings. Dammy, I like the lodgings; I’m used to ’em. It’s very unpleasant, at my time of life, to change my quarters.” And so on, mused the old gentleman. The shower-bath had done him good: the testiness was gone: the loss of the umbrella, the smell of paint at the Club, were forgotten under the superior excitement. “Confound the insolent villain!” thought the old gentleman. “He understood my wants to a nicety: he was the best servant in England.” He thought about his servant as a man thinks of a horse that has carried him long and well, and that has come down with him, and is safe no longer. How the deuce to replace him? Where can he get such another animal?

In these melancholy cogitations the Major, who had donned his own dressing-gown and replaced his head of hair (a little grey had been introduced into the coiffure of late by Mr. Truefitt, which had given the Major’s head the most artless and respectable appearance); in these cogitations, we say, the Major, who had taken off his wig and put on his night-handkerchief, sate absorbed by the fireside, when a feeble knock came at his door, which was presently opened by the landlady of the lodgings.

“God bless my soul, Mrs. Brixham!” cried out the Major, startled that a lady should behold him in the simple appareil of his night-toilet. “It—it’s very late, Mrs. Brixham.”

“I wish I might speak to you, sir,” said the landlady, very piteously.

“About Morgan, I suppose? He has cooled himself at the pump. Can’t take him back, Mrs. Brixham. Impossible. I’d determined to part with him before, when I heard of his dealings in the discount business—I suppose you’ve heard of them, Mrs. Brixham? My servant’s a capitalist, begad.”

“Oh, sir,” said Mrs. Brixham, “I know it to my cost. I borrowed from him a little money five years ago; and though I have paid him many times over, I am entirely in his power. I am ruined by him, sir. Everything I had is his. He’s a dreadful man.”

“Eh, Mrs. Brixham? tout pis—dev’lish sorry for you, and that I must quit your house after lodging here so long: there’s no help for it. I must go.”

“He says we must all go, sir,” sobbed out the luckless widow. “He came downstairs from you just now—he had been drinking, and it always makes him very wicked—and he said that you had insulted him, sir, and treated him like a dog, and spoken to him unkindly; and he swore he would be revenged, and—and I owe him a hundred and twenty pounds, sir—and he has a bill of sale of all my furniture—and says he will turn me out of my house, and send my poor George to prison. He has been the ruin of my family, that man.”

“Dev’lish sorry, Mrs. Brixham; pray take a chair. What can I do?”

“Could you not intercede with him for us? George will give half his allowance; my daughter can send something. If you will but stay on, sir, and pay a quarter’s rent in advance——”

“My good madam, I would as soon give you a quarter in advance as not, if I were going to stay in the lodgings. But I can’t; and I can’t afford to fling away twenty pounds, my good madam. I’m a poor half-pay officer, and want every shilling I have, begad. As far as a few pounds goes—say five pounds—I don’t say—and shall be most happy, and that sort of thing: and I’ll give it you in the morning with pleasure: but—but it’s getting late, and I have made a railroad journey.”

“God’s will be done, sir,” said the poor woman, drying her tears. I must bear my fate.”

“And a dev’lish hard one it is, and most sincerely I pity you, Mrs. Brixham. I—I’ll say ten pounds, if you will permit me. Good night.”

“Mr. Morgan, sir, when he came downstairs, and when—when I besought him to have pity on me, and told him he had been the ruin of my family, said something which I did not well understand—that he would ruin every family in the house—that he knew something would bring you down too—and that you should pay him for your—your insolence to him. I—I must own to you, that I went down on my knees to him, sir; and he said, with a dreadful oath against you, that he would have you on your knees.”

“Me?—by Gad, that is too pleasant! Where is the confounded fellow?”

“He went away, sir. He said he should see you in the morning. Oh, pray try and pacify him, and save me and my poor boy.” And the widow went away with this prayer, to pass her night as she might, and look for the dreadful morrow.

The last words about himself excited Major Pendennis so much, that his compassion for Mrs. Brixham’s misfortunes was quite forgotten in the consideration of his own case.

“Me on my knees?” thought he, as he got into bed: “confound his impudence! Who ever saw me on my knees? What the devil does the fellow know? Gad, I’ve not had an affair these twenty years. I defy him.” And the old compaigner turned round and slept pretty sound, being rather excited and amused by the events of the day—the last day in Bury Street, he was determined it should be. “For it’s impossible to stay on with a valet over me, and a bankrupt landlady. What good can I do this poor devil of a woman? I’ll give her twenty pound—there’s Warrington’s twenty pound, which he has just paid—but what’s the use? She’ll want more, and more, and more, and that cormorant Morgan will swallow all. No, dammy, I can’t afford to know poor people; and to-morrow I’ll say Good-bye—to Mrs. Brixham and Mr. Morgan.”

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LXIX. In which the Major neither yields his Money nor his Life

Early next morning Pendennis’s shutters were opened by Morgan, who appeared as usual, with a face perfectly grave and respectful, bearing with him the old gentleman’s clothes, cans of water, and elaborate toilet requisites.

“It’s you, is it?” said the old fellow from his bed. “I shan’t take you back again, you understand.”

“I ave not the least wish to be took back agin, Major Pendennis,” Mr. Morgan said, with grave dignity, “nor to serve you nor hany man. But as I wish you to be comftable as long as you stay in my house, I came up to do what’s nessary.” And once more, and for the last time, Mr. James Morgan laid out the silver dressing-case, and strapped the shining razor.

These offices concluded, he addressed himself to the Major with an indescribable solemnity, and said: “Thinkin’ that you would most likely be in want of a respectable pusson, until you suited yourself, I spoke to a young man last night, who is ’ere.”

“Indeed,” said the warrior in the tent-bed.

“He ave lived in the fust famlies, and I can wouch for his respectability.”

“You are monstrous polite,” grinned the old Major. And the truth is, that after the occurrences of the previous evening, Morgan had gone out to his own Club at the Wheel of Fortune, and there finding Frosch, a courier and valet just returned from a foreign tour with young Lord Cubley, and for the present disposable, had represented to Mr. Frosch, that he, Morgan, had “a devil of a blow hup with his own Gov’nor, and was goin’ to retire from the business haltogether, and that if Frosch wanted a tempory job, he might probbly have it by applying in Bury Street.”

“You are very polite,” said the Major, “and your recommendation, I am sure, will have every weight.”

Morgan blushed; he felt his master was ‘a-chaffin’ of him.’ “The man have awaited on you before, sir,” he said with great dignity. “Lord De la Pole, sir, gave him to his nephew young Lord Cubley, and he have been with him on his foring tour, and not wishing to go to Fitzurse Castle, which Frosch’s chest is delicate, and he cannot bear the cold in Scotland, he is free to serve you or not, as you choose.”

“I repeat, sir, that you are exceedingly polite,” said the Major. “Come in, Frosch—you will do very well—Mr. Morgan, will you have the great kindness to——”

“I shall show him what is nessary, sir, and what is customry for you to wish to ave done. Will you please to take breakfast ’ere or at the Club, Major Pendennis?”

“With your kind permission, I will breakfast here, and afterwards we will make our little arrangements.”

“If you please, sir.”

“Will you now oblige me by leaving the room?”

Morgan withdrew; the excessive politeness of his ex-employer made him almost as angry as the Major’s bitterest words. And whilst the old gentleman is making his mysterious toilet, we will also modestly retire.

After breakfast, Major Pendennis and his new aide-de-camp occupied themselves in preparing for their departure. The establishment of the old bachelor was not very complicated. He encumbered himself with no useless wardrobe. A bible (his mother’s), a road book, Pen’s novel (calf elegant), and the Duke of Wellington’s Despatches, with a few prints, maps, and portraits of that illustrious general, and of various sovereigns and consorts of this country, and of the General under whom Major Pendennis had served in India, formed his literary and artistical collection: he was always ready to march at a few hours’ notice, and the cases in which he had brought his property into his lodgings some fifteen years before, were still in the lofts amply sufficient to receive all his goods. These, the young woman who did the work of the house, and who was known by the name of Betty to her mistress, and of “Slavey” to Mr. Morgan, brought down from their resting-place, and obediently dusted and cleaned under the eyes of the terrible Morgan. His demeanour was guarded and solemn; he had spoken no word as yet to Mrs. Brixham respecting his threats of the past night, but he looked as if he would execute them, and the poor widow tremblingly awaited her fate.

Old Pendennis, armed with his cane, superintended the package of his goods and chattels, under the hands of Mr. Frosch, and the Slavey burned such of his papers as he did not care to keep; flung open doors and closets until they were all empty; and now all boxes and chests were closed, except his desk, which was ready to receive the final accounts of Mr. Morgan.

That individual now made his appearance, and brought his books. “As I wish to speak to you in privick, peraps you will ave the kindness to request Frosch to step downstairs,” he said, on entering.

“Bring a couple of cabs, Frosch, if you please—and wait downstairs until I ring for you,” said the Major. Morgan saw Frosch downstairs, watched him go along the street upon his errand, and produced his books and accounts, which were simple and very easily settled.

“And now, sir,” said he, having pocketed the cheque which his ex-employer gave him, and signed his name to his book with a flourish, “and now that accounts is closed between us, sir,” he said, “I porpose to speak to you as one man to another”—(Morgan liked the sound of his own voice; and, as an individual, indulged in public speaking whenever he could get an opportunity, at the Club, or the housekeeper’s room)—“and I must tell you, that I’m in possession of certing infamation.”

“And may I inquire of what nature, pray?” asked the Major.

“It’s valuble information, Major Pendennis, as you know very well. I know of a marriage as is no marriage—of a honourable Baronet as is no more married than I am; and which his wife is married to somebody else, as you know too, sir.”

Pendennis at once understood all. “Ha! this accounts for your behaviour. You have been listening at the door, sir, I suppose,” said the Major, looking very haughty; “I forgot to look at the keyhole when I went to that public-house, or I might have suspected what sort of a person was behind it.”

“I may have my schemes as you may have yours, I suppose,” answered Morgan. “I may get my information, and I may act on that information, and I may find that information valuble as anybody else may. A poor servant may have a bit of luck as well as a gentleman, mayn’t he? Don’t you be putting on your aughty looks, sir, and comin’ the aristocrat over me. That’s all gammon with me. I’m an Englishman, I am, and as good as you.”

“To what the devil does this tend, sir? and how does the secret which you have surprised concern me, I should like to know?” asked Major Pendennis, with great majesty.

“How does it concern me, indeed! how grand we are! How does it concern my nephew, I wonder? How does it concern my nephew’s seat in Parlyment: and to subornation of bigamy? How does it concern that? What, are you to be the only man to have a secret, and to trade on it? Why shouldn’t I go halves, Major Pendennis? I’ve found it out too. Look here! I ain’t goin’ to be unreasonable with you. Make it worth my while, and I’ll keep the thing close. Let Mr. Arthur take his seat, and his rich wife, if you like; I don’t want to marry her. But I will have my share, as sure as my name’s James Morgan. And if I don’t——”

“And if you don’t, sir—what?” Pendennis asked.

“If I don’t, I split, and tell all. I smash Clavering, and have him and his wife up for bigamy—so help me, I will! I smash young Hopeful’s marriage, and I show up you and him as makin’ use of this secret, in order to squeeze a seat in Parlyment out of Sir Francis, and a fortune out of his wife.”

“Mr. Pendennis knows no more of this business than the babe unborn, sir,” cried the Major, aghast. “No more than Lady Clavering, than Miss Amory does.”

“Tell that to the marines, Major,” replied the valet; “that cock won’t fight with me.”

“Do you doubt my word, you villain?”

“No bad language. I don’t care one twopence’a’p’ny whether your word’s true or not. I tell you, I intend this to be a nice little annuity to me, Major: for I have every one of you; and I ain’t such a fool as to let you go. I should say that you might make it five hundred a year to me among you, easy. Pay me down the first quarter now and I’m as mum as a mouse. Just give a note for one twenty-five. There’s your cheque-book on your desk.”

“And there’s this too, you villain,” cried the old gentleman. In the desk to which the valet pointed was a little double-barrelled pistol, which had belonged to Pendennis’s old patron; the Indian commander-in-chief, and which had accompanied him in many a campaign. “One more word, you scoundrel and I’ll shoot you, like a mad dog. Stop—by Jove, I’ll do it now. You’ll assault me, will you? You’ll strike at an old man, will you, you lying coward? Kneel down and say your prayers, sir, for by the Lord you shall die.”

The Major’s face glared with rage at his adversary, who looked terrified before him for a moment, and at the next, with a shriek of “Murder!” sprang towards the open window, under which a policeman happened to be on his beat. “Murder! Police!” bellowed Mr. Morgan.

To his surprise, Major Pendennis wheeled away the table and walked to the other window, which was also open. He beckoned the policeman. “Come up here, policeman,” he said, and then went and placed himself against the door.

“You miserable sneak,” he said to Morgan; “the pistol hasn’t been loaded these fifteen years, as you would have known very well, if you had not been such a coward. That policeman is coming, and I will have him up, and have your trunks searched; I have reason to believe that you are a thief, sir. I know you are. I’ll swear to the things.”

“You gave ’em to me—you gave ’em to me!” cried Morgan.

The Major laughed. “We’ll see,” he said; and the guilty valet remembered some fine lawn-fronted shirts—a certain gold-headed cane—an opera-glass, which he had forgotten to bring down, and of which he had assumed the use along with certain articles of his master’s clothes, which the old dandy neither wore nor asked for.

Policeman X entered; followed by the seared Mrs. Brixham and her maid-of-all-work, who had been at the door and found some difficulty in closing it against the street amateurs, who wished to see the row. The Major began instantly to speak.

“I have had occasion to discharge this drunken scoundrel,” he said. “Both last night and this morning he insulted and assaulted me. I am an old man and took up a pistol. You see it is not loaded, and this coward cried out before he was hurt. I am glad you are come. I was charging him with taking my property, and desired to examine his trunks and his room.”

“The velvet cloak you ain’t worn these three years, nor the weskits, and I thought I might take the shirts, and I—I take my hoath I intended to put back the hopera-glass,” roared Morgan, writhing with rage and terror.

“The man acknowledges that he is a thief,” the Major said, calmly. “He has been in my service for years, and I have treated him with every kindness and confidence. We will go upstairs and examine his trunks.”

In those trunks Mr. Morgan had things which he would fain keep from public eyes. Mr. Morgan, the bill-discounter, gave goods as well as money to his customers. He provided young spendthrifts with snuff boxes and pins and jewels and pictures and cigars, and of a very doubtful quality those cigars and jewels and pictures were. Their display at a police-office, the discovery of his occult profession, and the exposure of the Major’s property, which he had appropriated, indeed, rather than stolen,—would not have added to the reputation of Mr. Morgan. He looked a piteous image of terror and discomfiture.

“He’ll smash me, will he?” thought the Major. “I’ll crush him now, and finish with him.”

But he paused. He looked at poor Mrs. Brixham’s scared face; and he thought for a moment to himself that the man brought to bay and in prison might make disclosures which had best be kept secret, and that it was best not to deal too fiercely with a desperate man.

“Stop,” he said, “policeman. I’ll speak with this man by himself.”

“Do you give Mr. Morgan in charge?” said the policeman.

“I have brought no charge as yet,” the Major said, with a significant look at his man.

“Thank you, sir,” whispered Morgan, very low.

“Go outside the door, and wait there, policeman, if you please.—Now, Morgan, you have played one game with me, and you have not had the best of it, my good man. No, begad, you’ve not had the best of it, though you had the best hand; and you’ve got to pay, too, now, you scoundrel.”

“Yes, sir,” said the man.

“I’ve only found out, within the last week, the game which you have been driving, you villain. Young De Boots, of the Blues, recognised you as the man who came to barracks, and did business one-third in money, one-third in eau-de-Cologne, and one-third in French prints, you confounded demure old sinner! I didn’t miss anything, or care a straw what you’d taken, you booby; but I took the shot, and it hit—hit the bull’s-eye, begad. Dammy, six, I’m an old campaigner.”

“What do you want with me, sir?”

“I’ll tell you. Your bills, I suppose, you keep about you in that dem’d great leather pocket-book, don’t you? You’ll burn Mrs. Brixham’s bill?”

“Sir, I ain’t a-goin’ to part with my property,” growled the man.

“You lent her sixty pounds five years ago. She and that poor devil of an insurance clerk, her son, have paid you fifty pounds a year ever since; and you have got a bill of sale of her furniture, and her note of hand for a hundred and fifty pounds. She told me so last night. By Jove, sir, you’ve bled that poor woman enough.”

“I won’t give it up,” said Morgan; “If I do I’m——”

“Policeman!” cried the Major.

“You shall have the bill,” said Morgan. “You’re not going to take money of me, and you a gentleman?”

“I shall want you directly,” said the Major to X, who here entered, and who again withdrew.

“No, my good sir,” the old gentleman continued; “I have not any desire to have further pecuniary transactions with you; but we will draw out a little paper, which you will have the kindness to sign. No, stop!—you shall write it: you have improved immensely in writing of late, and have now a very good hand. You shall sit down and write, if you please—there, at that table—so—let me see—we may as well have the date. Write ‘Bury Street, St. James’s, October 21, 18—.’”

And Mr. Morgan wrote as he was instructed, and as the pitiless old Major continued:—

“‘I, James Morgan, having come in extreme poverty into the service of Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, of Bury Street, St. James’s, a Major in her Majesty’s service, acknowledge that I received liberal wages and board wages from my employer, during fifteen years.’—You can’t object to that, I am sure,” said the Major.

“During fifteen years,” wrote Morgan.

“‘In which time, by my own care and prudence,’” the dictator resumed, “‘I have managed to amass sufficient money to purchase the house in which my master resides, and, besides, to effect other savings. Amongst other persons from whom I have had money, I may mention my present tenant, Mrs. Brixham, who, in consideration of sixty pounds advanced by me five years since, has paid back to me the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds sterling, besides giving me a note of hand for one hundred and twenty pounds, which I restore to her at the desire of my late master, Major Arthur Pendennis, and therewith free her furniture, of which I had a bill of sale.’—Have you written?”

“I think if this pistol was loaded, I’d blow your brains out,” said Morgan.

“No, you wouldn’t. You have too great a respect for your valuable life, my good man,” the Major answered. “Let us go on and begin a new sentence.

“‘And having, in return for my master’s kindness, stolen his property from him, which I acknowledge to be now upstairs in my trunks; and having uttered falsehoods regarding his and other honourable families, I do hereby, in consideration of his clemency to me, express my regret for uttering these falsehoods, and for stealing his property; and declare that I am not worthy of belief, and that I hope’—yes, begad—‘that I hope to amend for the future. Signed, James Morgan.’”

“I’m d——d if I sign it,” said Morgan.

“My good man, it will happen to you, whether you sign or no, begad,” said the old fellow, chuckling at his own wit. “There, I shall not use this, you understand, unless—unless I am compelled to do so. Mrs. Brixham, and our friend the policeman, will witness it, I dare say, without reading it: and I will give the old lady back her note of hand, and say, which you will confirm, that she and you are quits. I see there is Frosch come back with the cab for my trunks; I shall go to an hotel.—You may come in now, policeman; Mr. Morgan and I have arranged our little dispute. If Mrs. Brixham will sign this paper, and you, policeman, will do so, I shall be very much obliged to you both. Mrs. Brixham, you and your worthy landlord, Mr. Morgan, are quits. I wish you joy of him. Let Frosch come and pack the rest of the things.”

Frosch, aided by the Slavey, under the calm superintendence of Mr. Morgan, carried Major Pendennis’s boxes to the cabs in waiting; and Mrs. Brixham, when her persecutor was not by, came and asked a Heaven’s blessing upon the Major, her preserver, and the best and quietest and kindest of lodgers. And having given her a finger to shake, which the humble lady received with a curtsey, and over which she was ready to make a speech full of tears, the Major cut short that valedictory oration, and walked out of the house to the hotel in Jermyn Street, which was not many steps from Morgan’s door.

That individual, looking forth from the parlour-window, discharged anything but blessings at his parting guest; but the stout old boy could afford not to be frightened at Mr. Morgan, and flung him a look of great contempt and humour as he strutted away with his cane.

Major Pendennis had not quitted his house of Bury Street many hours, and Mr. Morgan was enjoying his otium in a dignified manner, surveying the evening fog, and smoking a cigar, on the door-steps, when Arthur Pendennis, Esq., the hero of this history, made his appearance at the well-known door.

“My uncle out, I suppose, Morgan?” he said to the functionary; knowing full well that to smoke was treason, in the presence of the Major.

“Major Pendennis is hout, sir,” said Morgan, with gravity, bowing, but not touching the elegant cap which he wore. “Major Pendennis have left this ouse to-day, sir, and I have no longer the honour of being in his service, sir.”

“Indeed, and where is he?”

“I believe he ave taken tempory lodgings at Cox’s otel, in Jummin Street,” said Mr. Morgan; and added, after a pause, “Are you in town for some time, pray, sir? Are you in Chambers? I should like to have the honour of waiting on you there: and would be thankful if you would favour me with a quarter of an hour.”

“Do you want my uncle to take you back?” asked Arthur, insolent and good-natured.

“I want no such thing; I’d see him——” The man glared at him for a minute, but he stopped. “No, sir, thank you,” he said in a softer voice; “it’s only with you that I wish to speak, on some business which concerns you; and perhaps you would favour me by walking into my house.”

“If it is but for a minute or two, I will listen to you, Morgan,” said Arthur; and thought to himself, “I suppose the fellow wants me to patronise him;” and he entered the house. A card was already in the front windows, proclaiming that apartments were to be let; and having introduced Mr. Pendennis into the dining-room, and offered him a chair, Mr. Morgan took one himself, and proceeded to convey some information to him, of which the reader has already had cognisance.

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LXX. In which Pendennis counts his Eggs

Our friend had arrived in London on that day only, though but for a brief visit; and having left some fellow-travellers at an hotel to which he had convoyed them from the West, he hastened to the Chambers in Lamb Court, which were basking in as much sun as chose to visit that dreary but not altogether comfortless building. Freedom stands in lieu of sunshine in chambers; and Templars grumble, but take their ease in their Inn. Pen’s domestic announced to him that Warrington was in Chambers too, and, of course, Arthur ran up to his friend’s room straightway, and found it, as of old, perfumed with the pipe, and George once more at work with his newspapers and reviews. The pair greeted each other with the rough cordiality which young Englishmen use one to another: and which carries a great deal of warmth and kindness under its rude exterior. Warrington smiled and took his pipe out of his mouth, and said, “Well, young one!” Pen advanced and held out his hand, and said, “How are you, old boy?” And so this greeting passed between two friends who had not seen each other for months. Alphonse and Frederic would have rushed into each other’s arms and shrieked Ce bon coeur! ce cher Alphonse! over each other’s shoulders. Max and Wilhelm would have bestowed half a dozen kisses, scented with Havannah, upon each other’s mustachios. “Well, young one!” “How are you, old boy?” is what two Britons say: after saving each other’s lives, possibly, the day before. To-morrow they will leave off shaking hands, and only wag their heads at one another as they come to breakfast. Each has for the other the very warmest confidence and regard: each would share his purse with the other: and hearing him attacked would break out in the loudest and most enthusiastic praise of his friend; but they part with a mere Good-bye, they meet with a mere How-d’you-do? and they don’t write to each other in the interval. Curious, modesty, strange stoical decorum of English friendship! “Yes, we are not demonstrative like those confounded foreigners,” says Hardman: who not only shows no friendship, but never felt any all his life long.

“Been in Switzerland?” says Pen.

“Yes,” says Warrington.

“Couldn’t find a bit of tobacco fit to smoke till we came to Strasburg, where I got some caporal.” The man’s mind is full, very likely, of the great sights which he has seen, of the great emotions with which the vast works of nature have inspired it. But his enthusiasm is too coy to show itself, even to his closest friend, and he veils it with a cloud of tobacco. He will speak more fully of confidential evenings, however, and write ardently and frankly about that which he is shy of saying. The thoughts and experience of his travel will come forth in his writings; as the learning, which he never displays in talk, enriches his style with pregnant allusion and brilliant illustration, colours his generous eloquence, and points his wit.

The elder gives a rapid account of the places which he has visited in his tour. He has seen Switzerland, North Italy, and the Tyrol—he has come home by Vienna, and Dresden, and the Rhine. He speaks about these places in a shy sulky voice, as if he had rather not mention them at all, and as if the sight of them had rendered him very unhappy. The outline of the elder man’s tour thus gloomily sketched out, the young one begins to speak. He has been in the country—very much bored—canvassing uncommonly slow—he is here for a day or two, and going on to—to the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells, to some friends that will be uncommonly slow, too. How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!

“And the seat in Parliament, Pen? Have you made it all right?” asks Warrington.

“All right,—as soon as Parliament meets and a new writ can be issued, Clavering retires, and I step into his shoes,” says Pen.

“And under which king does Bezonian speak or die?” asked Warrington. “Do we come out as Liberal Conservative, or as Government man, or on our own hook?”

“Hem! There are no politics now; every man’s politics, at least, are pretty much the same. I have not got acres enough to make me a Protectionist; nor could I be one, I think, if I had all the land in the county. I shall go pretty much with Government, and in advance of them upon some social questions which I have been getting up during the vacation;—don’t grin, you old cynic, I have been getting up the Blue Books, and intend to come out rather strong on the Sanitary and Colonisation questions.”

“We reserve to ourselves the liberty of voting against Government, though we are generally friendly. We are, however, friends of the people avant tout. We give lectures at the Clavering Institute, and shake hands with the intelligent mechanics. We think the franchise ought to be very considerably enlarged; at the same time we are free to accept office some day, when the House has listened to a few crack speeches from us, and the Administration perceives our merit.”

“I am not Moses,” said Pen, with, as usual, somewhat of melancholy in his voice. “I have no laws from Heaven to bring down to the people from the mountain. I don’t belong to the mountain at all, or set up to be a leader and reformer of mankind. My faith is not strong enough for that; nor my vanity, nor my hypocrisy, great enough. I will tell no lies, George, that I promise you; and do no more than coincide in those which are necessary and pass current, and can’t be got in without recalling the whole circulation. Give a man at least the advantage of his sceptical turn. If I find a good thing to say in the House, I will say it; a good measure, I will support it; a fair place, I will take it, and be glad of my luck. But I would no more flatter a great man than a mob; and now you know as much about my politics as I do. What call have I to be a Whig? Whiggism is not a divine institution. Why not vote with the Liberal Conservatives? They have done for the nation what the Whigs would never have done without them. Who converted both?—the Radicals and the country outside. I think the Morning Post is often right, and Punch is often wrong. I don’t profess a call, but take advantage of a chance. Parlons d’autre chose.”

“The next thing at your heart, after ambition is love, I suppose?” Warrington said. “How have our young loves prospered? Are we going to change our condition, and give up our chambers? Are you going to divorce me, Arthur, and take unto yourself a wife?”

“I suppose so. She is very good-natured and lively. She sings, and she don’t mind smoking. She’ll have a fair fortune—I don’t know how much—but my uncle augurs everything from the Begum’s generosity, and says that she will come down very handsomely. And I think Blanche is dev’lish fond of me,” said Arthur, with a sigh.

“That means that we accept her caresses and her money.”

“Haven’t we said before that life was a transaction?” Pendennis said. “I don’t pretend to break my heart about her. I have told her pretty fairly what my feelings are—and—and have engaged myself to her. And since I saw her last, and for the last two months especially, whilst I have been in the country, I think she has been growing fonder and fonder of me; and her letters to me, and especially to Laura, seem to show it. Mine have been simple enough—no raptures, nor vows, you understand—but looking upon the thing as an affaire faite; and not desirous to hasten or defer the completion.”

“And Laura? how is she?” Warrington asked frankly.

“Laura, George,” said Pen, looking his friend hard in the face—“by heaven, Laura is the best, and noblest, and dearest girl the sun ever shone upon.” His own voice fell as he spoke: it seemed as if he could hardly utter the words: he stretched out his hand to his comrade, who took it and nodded his head.

“Have you only found out that now, young un?” Warrington said after a pause.

“Who has not learned things too late, George?” cried Arthur, in his impetuous way, gathering words and emotion as he went on. “Whose life is not a disappointment? Who carries his heart entire to the grave without a mutilation? I never knew anybody who was happy quite: or who has not had to ransom himself out of the hands of Fate with the payment of some dearest treasure or other. Lucky if we are left alone afterwards, when we have paid our fine, and if the tyrant visits us no more. Suppose I have found out that I have lost the greatest prize in the world, now that it can’t be mine—that for years I had an angel under my tent, and let her go?—am I the only one—ah, dear old boy, am I the only one? And do you think my lot is easier to bear because I own that I deserve it? She’s gone from us. God’s blessing be with her! She might have stayed, and I lost her; it’s like Undine: isn’t it, George?”

“She was in this room once,” said George.

He saw her there—he heard the sweet low voice—he saw the sweet smile and eyes shining so kindly—the face remembered so fondly—thought of in what night-watches—blest and loved always—gone now! A glass that had held a nosegay—a bible with Helen’s handwriting—were all that were left him of that brief flower of his life. Say it is a dream: say it passes: better the recollection of a dream than an aimless waking from a blank stupor.

The two friends sate in silence a while, each occupied with his own thoughts and aware of the other’s. Pen broke it presently, by saying that he must go and seek for his uncle, and report progress to the old gentleman. The Major had written in a very bad humour; the Major was getting old. “I should like to see you in Parliament, and snugly settled with a comfortable house and an heir to the name before I make my bow. Show me these,” the Major wrote, “and then, let old Arthur Pendennis make room for the younger fellows; he has walked the Pall Mall pave long enough.”

“There is a kindness about the old heathen,” said Warrington. “He cares for somebody besides himself, at least for some other part of himself besides that which is buttoned into his own coat;—for you and your race. He would like to see the progeny of the Pendennises multiplying and increasing, and hopes that they may inherit the land. The old patriarch blesses you from the Club window of Bays’s, and is carried off and buried under the flags of St. James’s Church, in sight of Piccadilly, and the cabstand, and the carriages going to the levee. It is an edifying ending.”

“The new blood I bring into the family,” mused Pen, “is rather tainted. If I had chosen, I think my father-in-law Amory would not have been the progenitor I should have desired for my race; nor my grandfather-in-law Snell; nor our Oriental ancestors. By the way, who was Amory? Amory was lieutenant of an Indiaman. Blanche wrote some verses about him, about the storm, the mountain wave, the seaman’s grave, the gallant father, and that sort of thing. Amory was drowned commanding a country ship between Calcutta and Sydney; Amory and the Begum weren’t happy together. She has been unlucky in her selection of husbands, the good old lady, for, between ourselves, a more despicable creature than Sir Francis Clavering, of Clavering Park, Baronet, never——” “Never legislated for his country,” broke in Warrington; at which Pen blushed rather.

“By the way, at Baden,” said Warrington, “I found our friend the Chevalier Strong in great state, and wearing his orders. He told me that he had quarrelled with Clavering, of whom he seemed to have almost as bad an opinion as you have, and in fact, I think, though I will not be certain, confided to me his opinion, that Clavering was an utter scoundrel. That fellow Bloundell, who taught you card-playing at Oxbridge, was with Strong; and time, I think, has brought out his valuable qualities, and rendered him a more accomplished rascal than he was during your undergraduateship. But the king of the place was the famous Colonel Altamont, who was carrying all before him, giving flies to the whole society, and breaking the bank, it was said.”

“My uncle knows something about that fellow—Clavering knows something about him. There’s something louche regarding him. But come! I must go to Bury Street, like a dutiful nephew.” And, taking his hat, Pen prepared to go.

“I will walk, too,” said Warrington. And they descended the stairs, stopping, however, at Pen’s chambers, which, as the reader has been informed, were now on the lower story.

Here Pen began sprinkling himself with eau-de-Cologne, and carefully scenting his hair and whiskers with that odoriferous water.

“What is the matter? You’ve not been smoking. Is it my pipe that has poisoned you?” growled Warrington.

“I am going to call upon some women,” said Pen. “I’m—I’m going to dine with ’em. They are passing through town, and are at an hotel in Jermyn Street.”

Warrington looked with good-natured interest at the young fellow dandifying himself up to a pitch of completeness; and appearing at length in a gorgeous shirt-front and neckcloth, fresh gloves, and glistening boots. George had a pair of thick high-lows, and his old shirt was torn about the breast, and ragged at the collar, where his blue beard had worn it.

“Well, young un,” said he, simply, “I like you to be a buck; somehow. When I walk about with you, it is as if I had a rose in my button-hole. And you are still affable. I don’t think there is any young fellow in the Temple turns out like you; and I don’t believe you were ever ashamed of walking with me yet.”

“Don’t laugh at me, George.” said Pen.

“I say, Pen,” continued the other, sadly, “if you write—if you write to Laura, I wish you would say ‘God bless her’ from me.”

Pen blushed; and then looked at Warrington; and then—and then burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughing.

“I’m going to dine with her,” he said. “I brought her and Lady Rockminster up from the country to-day—made two days of it—slept last night at Bath—I say, George, come and dine, too. I may ask any one I please, and the old lady is constantly talking about you.”

George refused. George had an article to write. George hesitated; and oh, strange to say! at last he agreed to go. It was agreed that they should go and call upon the ladies; and they marched away in high spirits to the hotel in Jermyn Street. Once more the dear face shone upon him; once more the sweet voice spoke to him, and the tender hand pressed a welcome.

There still wanted half an hour to dinner. “You will go and see your uncle now, Mr. Pendennis,” old Lady Rockminster said. “You will not bring him to dinner-no—his old stories are intolerable; and I want to talk to Mr. Warrington; I daresay he will amuse us. I think we have heard all your stories. We have been together for two whole days, and I think we are getting tired of each other.”

So, obeying her ladyship’s orders, Arthur went downstairs and walked to his uncle’s lodgings.

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LXXI. Fiat Justitia

The dinner was served when Arthur returned, and Lady Rockminster began to scold him for arriving late. But Laura, looking at her cousin, saw that his face was so pale and scared, that she interrupted her imperious patroness; and asked, with tender alarm, what had happened? Was Arthur ill?

Arthur drank a large bumper of sherry. “I have heard the most extraordinary news; I will tell you afterwards,” he said, looking at the servants. He was very nervous and agitated during the dinner. “Don’t tramp and beat so with your feet under the table,” Lady Rockminster said. “You have trodden on Fido, and upset his saucer. You see Mr. Warrington keeps his boots quiet.”

At the dessert—it seemed as if the unlucky dinner would never be over—Lady Rockminster said, “This dinner has been exceedingly stupid. I suppose something has happened, and that you want to speak to Laura. I will go and have my nap. I am not sure that I shall have any tea—no. Good night, Mr. Warrington. You must come again, and when there is no business to talk about.” And the old lady, tossing up her head, walked away from the room with great dignity.

George and the others had risen with her, and Warrington was about to go away, and was saying “Good night” to Laura, who, of course, was looking much alarmed about her cousin, when Arthur said, “Pray, stay, George. You should hear my news too, and give me your counsel in this case. I hardly know how to act in it.”

“It’s something about Blanche, Arthur,” said Laura, her heart beating, and her cheek blushing as she thought it had never blushed in her life.

“Yes—and the most extraordinary story,” said Pen. “When I left you to go to my uncle’s lodgings, I found his servant, Morgan, who has been with him so long, at the door, and he said that he and his master had parted that morning; that my uncle had quitted the house, and had gone to an hotel—this hotel. I asked for him when I came in; but he was gone out to dinner. Morgan then said that he had something of a most important nature to communicate to me, and begged me to step into the house; his house it is now. It appears the scoundrel has saved a great deal of money whilst in my uncle’s service, and is now a capitalist and a millionaire, for what I know. Well, I went into the house, and what do you think he told me? This must be a secret between us all—at least if we can keep it, now that it is in possession of that villain. Blanche’s father is not dead. He has come to life again. The marriage between Clavering and the Begum is no marriage.”

“And Blanche, I suppose, is her grandfather’s heir,” said Warrington.

“Perhaps: but the child of what a father! Amory is an escaped convict—Clavering knows it; my uncle knows it—and it was with this piece of information held over Clavering in terrorem that the wretched old man got him to give up his borough to me.”

“Blanche doesn’t know it,” said Laura, “nor poor Lady Clavering?”

“No,” said Pen; “Blanche does not even know the history of her father. She knew that he and her mother had separated, and had heard as a child, from Bonner, her nurse, that Mr. Amory was drowned in New South Wales. He was there as a convict, not as a ship’s-captain, as the poor girl thought. Lady Clavering has told me that they were not happy, and that her husband was a bad character. She would tell me all, she said, some day: and I remember her saying to me, with tears in her eyes, that it was hard for a woman to be forced to own that she was glad to hear her husband was dead: and that twice in her life she should have chosen so badly. What is to be done now? The man can’t show and claim his wife: death is probably over him if he discovers himself: return to transportation certainly. But the rascal has held the threat of discovery over Clavering for some time past, and has extorted money from him time after time.”

“It is our friend Colonel Altamont, of course,” said Warrington “I see all now.”

“If the rascal comes back,” continued Arthur, “Morgan, who knows his secret, will use it over him—and having it in his possession, proposes to extort money from us all. The d——d rascal supposed I was cognisant of it,” said Pen, white with anger; “asked me if I would give him an annuity to keep it quiet; threatened me, me, as if I was trafficking with this wretched old Begum’s misfortune, and would extort a seat in Parliament out of that miserable Clavering. Good heavens! was my uncle mad, to tamper in such a conspiracy? Fancy our mother’s son, Laura, trading on such a treason!”

“I can’t fancy it, dear Arthur,” said Laura, seizing Arthur’s hand, and kissing it.

“No!” broke out Warrington’s deep voice, with a tremor; he surveyed the two generous and loving young people with a pang of indescribable love and pain. “No. Our boy can’t meddle with such a wretched intrigue as that. Arthur Pendennis can’t marry a convict’s daughter; and sit in Parliament as member for the hulks. You must wash your hands of the whole affair, Pen. You must break off. You must give no explanations of why and wherefore, but state that family reasons render a match impossible. It is better that those poor women should fancy you false to your word than that they should know the truth. Besides, you can get from that dog Clavering—I can fetch that for you easily enough an acknowledgment that the reasons which you have given to him as the head of the family are amply sufficient for breaking off the union. Don’t you think with me, Laura?” He scarcely dared to look her in the face as he spoke. Any lingering hope that he might have—any feeble hold that he might feel upon the last spar of his wrecked fortune, he knew he was casting away; and he let the wave of his calamity close over him. Pen had started up whilst he was speaking, looking eagerly at him. He turned his head away. He saw Laura rise up also and go to Pen, and once more take his hand and kiss it. “She thinks so too—God bless her!” said George.

“Her father’s shame is not Blanche’s fault, dear Arthur, is it?” Laura said, very pale, and speaking very quickly. “Suppose you had been married, would you desert her because she had done no wrong? Are you not pledged to her? Would you leave her because she is in misfortune? And if she is unhappy, wouldn’t you console her? Our mother would, had she been here.” And, as she spoke, the kind girl folded her arms round him, and buried her face upon his heart.

“Our mother is an angel with God,” Pen sobbed out. “And you are the dearest and best of women—the dearest, the dearest and the best. Teach me my duty. Pray for me that I may do it—pure heart. God bless you—God bless you, my sister!”

“Amen,” groaned out Warrington, with his head in his hands. “She is right,” he murmured to himself. “She can’t do any wrong, I think—that girl.” Indeed, she looked and smiled like an angel. Many a day after he saw that smile—saw her radiant face as she looked up at Pen—saw her putting back her curls, blushing and smiling, and still looking fondly towards him.

She leaned for a moment her little fair hand on the table, playing on it. “And now, and now,” she said, looking at the two gentlemen—

“And what now?” asked George.

“And now we will have some tea,” said Miss Laura, with her smile.

But before this unromantic conclusion to a rather sentimental scene could be suffered to take place, a servant brought word that Major Pendennis had returned to the hotel, and was waiting to see his nephew. Upon this announcement, Laura, not without some alarm, and an appealing look to Pen, which said, “Behave yourself well—hold to the right, and do your duty—be gentle, but firm with your uncle”—Laura, we say, with these warnings written in her face, took leave of the two gentlemen, and retreated to her dormitory. Warrington, who was not generally fond of tea, yet grudged that expected cup very much. Why could not old Pendennis have come in an hour later? Well, an hour sooner or later, what matter? The hour strikes at last. The inevitable moment comes to say Farewell, The hand is shaken, the door closed, and the friend gone; and, the brief joy over, you are alone. “In which of those many windows of the hotel does her light beam?” perhaps he asks himself as he passes down the street. He strides away to the smoking-room of a neighbouring Club, and, there applies himself to his usual solace of a cigar. Men are brawling and talking loud about politics, opera-girls, horse-racing, the atrocious tyranny of the committee:—bearing this sacred secret about him, he enters into this brawl. Talk away, each louder than the other. Rattle and crack jokes. Laugh and tell your wild stories. It is strange to take one’s place and part in the midst of the smoke and din, and think every man here has his secret ego most likely, which is sitting lonely and apart, away in the private chamber, from the loud game in which the rest of us is joining!

Arthur, as he traversed the passages of the hotel, felt his anger rousing up within him. He was indignant to think that yonder old gentleman whom he was about to meet, should have made him such a tool and puppet, and so compromised his honour and good name. The old fellow’s hand was very cold and shaky when Arthur took it. He was coughing; he was grumbling over the fire; Frosch could not bring his dressing-gown or arrange his papers as that d——d confounded impudent scoundrel of a Morgan. The old gentleman bemoaned himself, and cursed Morgan’s ingratitude with peevish pathos.

“The confounded impudent scoundrel! He was drunk last night, and challenged me to fight him, Pen; and, begad, at one time I was so excited that I thought I should have driven a knife into him; and the infernal rascal has made ten thousand pound, I believe—and deserves to be hanged, and will be; but, curse him, I wish he could have lasted out my time. He knew all my ways, and, dammy, when I rang the bell, the confounded thief brought the thing I wanted—not like that stupid German lout. And what sort of time have you had in the country? Been a good deal with Lady Rockminster? You can’t do better. She is one of the old school—vieille ecole, bonne ecole, hey? Dammy, they don’t make gentlemen and ladies now; and in fifty years you’ll hardly know one man from another. But they’ll last my time. I ain’t long for this business: I am getting very old, Pen, my boy; and, gad, I was thinking to-day, as I was packing up my little library, there’s a bible amongst the books that belonged to my poor mother; I would like you to keep that, Pen. I was thinking, sir, that you would most likely open the box when it was your property, and the old fellow was laid under the sod, sir,” and the Major coughed and wagged his old head over the fire.

His age—his kindness, disarmed Pen’s anger somewhat, and made Arthur feel no little compunction for the deed which he was about to do. He knew that the announcement which he was about to make would destroy the darling hope of the old gentleman’s life, and create in his breast a woeful anger and commotion.

“Hey—hey—I’m off, sir,” nodded the Elder; “but I’d like to read a speech of yours in the Times before I go—‘Mr. Pendennis said, Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking’—hey, sir? hey, Arthur? Begad, you look dev’lish well and healthy, sir. I always said my brother Jack would bring the family right. You must go down into the west, and buy the old estate, sir. Nec tenui penna, hey? We’ll rise again, sir—rise again on the wing—and, begad, I shouldn’t be surprised that you will be a Baronet before you die.”

His words smote Pen. “And it is I,” he thought, “that am going to fling down the poor old fellow’s air-castle. Well, it must be. Here goes.—I—I went into your lodgings at Bury Street, though I did not find you,” Pen slowly began—“and I talked with Morgan, uncle.”

“Indeed!” The old gentleman’s cheek began to flush involuntarily, and he muttered, “The cat’s out of the bag now, begad!”

“He told me a story, sir, which gave me the deepest surprise and pain,” said Pen.

The Major tried to look unconcerned. “What—that story about—about—What-d’-you-call-’em, hey?”

“About Miss Amory’s father—about Lady Clavering’s first husband, and who he is, and what.”

“Hem—a dev’lish awkward affair!” said the old man, rubbing his nose. “I—I’ve been aware of that—eh—confounded circumstance for some time.”

“I wish I had known it sooner, or not at all,” said Arthur, gloomily.

“He is all safe,” thought the Senior, greatly relieved. “Gad! I should have liked to keep it from you altogether—and from those two poor women, who are as innocent as unborn babes in the transaction.”

“You are right. There is no reason why the two women should hear it; and I shall never tell them—though that villain, Morgan, perhaps may,” Arthur said, gloomily. “He seems disposed to trade upon his secret, and has already proposed terms of ransom to me. I wish I had known of the matter earlier, sir. It is not a very pleasant thought to me that I am engaged to a convict’s daughter.”

“The very reason why I kept it from you—my dear boy. But Miss Amory is not a convict’s daughter, don’t you see? Miss Amory is the daughter of Lady Clavering, with fifty or sixty thousand pounds for a fortune; and her father-in-law, a Baronet and country gentleman, of high reputation, approves of the match, and gives up his seat in Parliament to his son-in-law. What can be more simple?”

“Is it true, sir?”

“Begad, yes, it is true, of course it’s true. Amory’s dead. I tell you he is dead. The first sign of life he shows, he is dead. He can’t appear. We have him at a deadlock, like the fellow in the play—the ‘Critic,’ hey?—dev’lish amusing play, that ‘Critic.’ Monstrous witty man, Sheridan; and so was his son. By Gad, sir, when I was at the Cape, I remember——”

The old gentleman’s garrulity, and wish to conduct Arthur to the Cape, perhaps arose from a desire to avoid the subject which was nearest his nephew’s heart; but Arthur broke out, interrupting him—“If you had told me this tale sooner, I believe you would have spared me and yourself a great deal of pain and disappointment; and I should not have found myself tied to an engagement from which I can’t, in honour, recede.”

“No, begad, we’ve fixed you—and a man who’s fixed to a seat in Parliament, and a pretty girl, with a couple of thousand a year, is fixed to no bad thing, let me tell you,” said the old man.

“Great Heavens, sir!” said Arthur, “are you blind? Can’t you see?”

“See what, young gentleman?” asked the other.

“See, that rather than trade upon this secret of Amory’s,” Arthur cried out, “I would go and join my father-in-law at the hulks! See, that rather than take a seat in Parliament as a bribe from Clavering for silence, I would take the spoons off the table! See, that you have given me a felon’s daughter for a wife; doomed me to poverty and shame; cursed my career when it might have been—when it might have been so different but for you! Don’t you see that we have been playing a guilty game, and have been overreached;—that in offering to marry this poor girl, for the sake of her money, and the advancement she would bring, I was degrading myself, and prostituting my honour?”

“What in Heaven’s name do you mean, sir?” cried the old man.

“I mean to say that there is a measure of baseness which I can’t pass,” Arthur said. “I have no other words for it, and am sorry if they hurt you. I have felt, for months past, that my conduct in this affair has been wicked, sordid, and worldly. I am rightly punished by the event, and having sold myself for money and a seat in Parliament, by losing both.”

“How do you mean that you lose either?” shrieked the old gentleman. “Who the devil’s to take your fortune or your seat away from you? By G—, Clavering shall give ’em to you. You shall have every shilling of eighty thousand pounds.”

“I’ll keep my promise to Miss Amory, sir,” said Arthur.

“And, begad, her parents shall keep theirs to you.”

“Not so, please God,” Arthur answered. “I have sinned, but, Heaven help me, I will sin no more. I will let Clavering off from that bargain which was made without my knowledge. I will take no money with Blanche but that which was originally settled upon her; and I will try to make her happy. You have done it. You have brought this on me, sir. But you knew no better: and I forgive——”

“Arthur—in God’s name—in your father’s, who, by Heavens, was the proudest man alive, and had the honour of the family always at heart—in mine—for the sake of a poor broken-down old fellow, who has always been dev’lish fond of you—don’t fling this chance away—I pray you, I beg you, I implore you, my dear, dear boy, don’t fling this chance away. It’s the making of you. You’re sure to get on. You’ll be a Baronet; it’s three thousand a year: dammy, on my knees, there, I beg of you, don’t do this.”

And the old man actually sank down on his knees, and, seizing one of Arthur’s hands, looked up piteously at him. It was cruel to remark the shaking hands, the wrinkled and quivering face, the old eyes weeping and winking, the broken voice. “Ah, sir,” said Arthur, with a groan, “you have brought pain enough on me, spare me this. You have wished me to marry Blanche. I marry her. For God’s sake, sir, rise! I can’t bear it.”

“You—you mean to say that you will take her as a beggar, and be one yourself?” said the old gentleman, rising up and coughing violently.

“I look at her as a person to whom a great calamity has befallen, and to whom I am promised. She cannot help the misfortune; and as she had my word when she was prosperous, I shall not withdraw it now she is poor. I will not take Clavering’s seat, unless afterwards it should be given of his free will. I will not have a shilling more than her original fortune.”

“Have the kindness to ring the bell,” said the old gentleman. “I have done my best, and said my say; and I’m a dev’lish old fellow. And—and—it don’t matter. And—and Shakspeare was right—and Cardinal Wolsey—begad—‘and had I but served my God as I’ve served you’—yes, on my knees, by Jove, to my own nephew—I mightn’t have been—Good night, sir, you needn’t trouble yourself to call again.”

Arthur took his hand, which the old man left to him; it was quite passive and clammy. He looked very much oldened; and it seemed as if the contest and defeat had quite broken him.

On the next day he kept his bed, and refused to see his nephew.

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

LXXII. In which the Decks begin to clear

When, arrayed in his dressing-gown, Pen walked up, according to custom, to Warrington’s chambers next morning, to inform his friend of the issue of the last night’s interview with his uncle, and to ask, as usual, for George’s advice and opinion, Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, was the only person whom Arthur found in the dear old chambers. George had taken a carpet-bag, and was gone. His address was to his brother’s house, in Suffolk. Packages addressed to the newspaper and review for which he wrote lay on the table, awaiting delivery.

“I found him at the table, when I came, the dear gentleman!” Mrs. Flanagan said, “writing at his papers, and one of the candles was burned out; and hard as his bed is, he wasn’t in it all night, sir.”

Indeed, having sat at the Club until the brawl there became intolerable to him, George had walked home, and had passed the night finishing some work on which he was employed, and to the completion of which he bent himself with all his might. The labour was done, and the night was worn away somehow, and the tardy November dawn came and looked in on the young man as he sate over his desk. In the next day’s paper, or quarter’s review, many of us very likely admired the work of his genius, the variety of his illustration, the fierce vigour of his satire, the depth of his reason. There was no hint in his writing of the other thoughts which occupied him, and always accompanied him in his work—a tone more melancholy than was customary, a satire more bitter and impatient than that which he afterwards showed, may have marked the writings of this period of his life to the very few persons who knew his style or his name. We have said before, could we know the man’s feelings as well as the author’s thoughts—how interesting most books would be!—more interesting than merry. I suppose harlequin’s face behind his mask is always grave, if not melancholy—certainly each man who lives by the pen, and happens to read this, must remember, if he will, his own experiences, and recall many solemn hours of solitude and labour. What a constant care sate at the side of the desk and accompanied him! Fever or sickness were lying possibly in the next room: a sick child might be there, with a wife watching over it terrified and in prayer: or grief might be bearing him down, and the cruel mist before the eyes rendering the paper scarce visible as he wrote on it, and the inexorable necessity drove on the pen. What man among us has not had nights and hours like these? But to the manly heart—severe as these pangs are, they are endurable: long as the night seems, the dawn comes at last, and the wounds heal, and the fever abates, and rest comes, and you can afford to look back on the past misery with feelings that are anything but bitter.

Two or three books for reference, fragments of torn-up manuscript, drawers open, pens and inkstand, lines half visible on the blotting-paper, a bit of sealing-wax twisted and bitten and broken into sundry pieces—such relics as these were about the table, and Pen flung himself down in George’s empty chair—noting things according to his wont, or in spite of himself. There was a gap in the bookcase (next to the old College Plato, with the Boniface Arms), where Helen’s bible used to be. He has taken that with him, thought Pen. He knew why his friend was gone. Dear, dear old George!

Pen rubbed his hand over his eyes. Oh, how much wiser, how much better, how much nobler he is than I! he thought. Where was such a friend, or such a brave heart? Where shall I ever hear such a frank voice, and kind laughter? Where shall I ever see such a true gentleman? No wonder she loved him. God bless him! What was I compared to him? What could she do else but love him? To the end of our days we will be her brothers, as fate wills that we can be no more. We’ll be her knights, and wait on her: and when we’re old, we’ll say how we loved her. Dear, dear old George!

When Pen descended to his own chambers, his eye fell on the letter-box of his outer door, which he had previously overlooked, and there was a little note to A. P., Esq., in George’s well-known handwriting, George had put into Pen’s box probably as he was going away.

“Dear Pen,—I shall be half-way home when you breakfast, and intend to stay over Christmas, in Norfolk, or elsewhere. “I have my own opinion of the issue of matters about which we talked in J——— St. yesterday; and think my presence de trop.

“Vale. G. W.”

“Give my very best regards and adieux to your cousin.”

And so George was gone, and Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, ruled over his empty chambers.

Pen of course had to go and see his uncle on the day after their colloquy, and not being admitted, he naturally went to Lady Rockminster’s apartments, where the old lady instantly asked for Bluebeard, and insisted that he should come to dinner.

“Bluebeard is gone,” Pen said, and he took out poor George’s scrap of paper, and handed it to Laura, who looked at it—did not look at Pen in return, but passed the paper back to him, and walked away. Pen rushed into an eloquent eulogium upon his dear old George to Lady Rockminster, who was astonished at his enthusiasm. She had never heard him so warm in praise of anybody; and told him with her usual frankness, that she didn’t think it had been in his nature to care so much about any other person.

As Mr. Pendennis was passing in Waterloo Place, in one of his many walks to the hotel where Laura lived, and whither duty to his uncle carried Arthur every day, Arthur saw issuing from Messrs. Gimcrack’s celebrated shop an old friend, who was followed to his brougham by an obsequious shopman bearing parcels. The gentleman was in the deepest mourning: the brougham, the driver, and the horse were in mourning. Grief in easy circumstances and supported by the comfortablest springs and cushions, was typified in the equipage and the little gentleman, its proprietor.

“What, Foker! Hail, Foker!” cried out Pen—the reader, no doubt, has likewise recognised Arthur’s old schoolfellow—and he held out his hand to the heir of the late lamented John Henry Foker, Esq., the master of Logwood and other houses, the principal partner in the great brewery of Foker and Co.: the greater portion of Foker’s Entire.

A little hand, covered with a glove of the deepest ebony, and set off by three inches of a snowy wristband, was put forth to meet Arthur’s salutation. The other little hand held a little morocco case, containing, no doubt, something precious, of which Mr. Foker had just become proprietor in Messrs. Gimcrack’s shop. Pen’s keen eyes and satiric turn showed him at once upon what errand Mr. Foker had been employed; and he thought of the heir in Horace pouring forth the gathered wine of his father’s vats; and that human nature is pretty much the same in Regent Street as in the Via Sacra.

“Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!” said Arthur.

“Ah!” said the other. “Yes. Thank you—very much obliged. How do you do, Pen?—very busy—good-bye!” and he jumped into the black brougham, and sate like a little black Care behind the black coachman. He had blushed on seeing Pen, and shown other signs of guilt and perturbation, which Pen attributed to the novelty of his situation; and on which he began to speculate in his usual sardonic manner.

“Yes: so wags the world,” thought Pen. “The stone closes over Harry the Fourth, and Harry the Fifth reigns in his stead. The old ministers at the brewery come and kneel before him with their books; the draymen, his subjects, fling up their red caps, and shout for him. What a grave deference and sympathy the bankers and the lawyers show! There was too great a stake at issue between those two that they should ever love each other very cordially. As long as one man keeps another out of twenty thousand a year, the younger must be always hankering after the crown, and the wish must be the father to the thought of possession. Thank Heaven, there was no thought of money between me and our dear mother, Laura.”

“There never could have been. You would have spurned it!” cried Laura. “Why make yourself more selfish than you are, Pen; and allow your mind to own for an instant that it would have entertained such—such dreadful meanness? You make me blush for you, Arthur: you make me——” her eyes finished this sentence, and she passed her handkerchief across them.

“There are some truths which women will never acknowledge,” Pen said, “and from which your modesty always turns away. I do not say that I ever knew the feeling, only that I am glad I had not the temptation. Is there any harm in that confession of weakness?”

“We are all taught to ask to be delivered from evil, Arthur,” said Laura, in a low voice. “I am glad if you were spared from that great crime; and only sorry to think that you could by any possibility have been led into it. But you never could; and you don’t think you could. Your acts are generous and kind: you disdain mean actions. You take Blanche without money, and without a bribe. Yes, thanks be to Heaven, dear brother. You could not have sold yourself away; I knew you could not when it came to the day, and you did not. Praise be—be where praise is due. Why does this horrid scepticism pursue you, my Arthur? Why doubt and sneer at your own heart—at every one’s? Oh, if you knew the pain you give me—how I lie awake and think of those hard sentences, dear brother, and wish them unspoken, unthought!”

“Do I cause you many thoughts and many tears, Laura?” asked Arthur. The fulness of innocent love beamed from her in reply. A smile heavenly pure, a glance of unutterable tenderness, sympathy, pity, shone in her face—all which indications of love and purity Arthur beheld and worshipped in her, as you would watch them in a child, as one fancies one might regard them in an angel.

“I—I don’t know what I have done,” he said, simply, “to have merited such regard from two such women. It is like undeserved praise, Laura—or too much good fortune, which frightens one—or a great post, when a man feels that he is not fit for it. Ah, sister, how weak and wicked we are; how spotless, and full of love and truth, Heaven made you! I think for some of you there has been no fall,” he said, looking at the charming girl with an almost paternal glance of admiration. “You can’t help having sweet thoughts, and doing good actions. Dear creature! they are the flowers which you bear.”

“And what else, sir?” asked Laura. “I see a sneer coming over your face. What is it? Why does it come to drive all the good thoughts away?”

“A sneer, is there? I was thinking, my dear, that nature in making you so good and loving did very well: but——”

“But what? What is that wicked but? and why are you always calling it up?”

“But will come in spite of us. But is reflection. But is the sceptic’s familiar, with whom he has made a compact; and if he forgets it, and indulges in happy day-dreams, or building of air-castles, or listens to sweet music let us say, or to the bells ringing to church, But taps at the door, and says, Master, I am here. You are my master; but I am yours. Go where you will you can’t travel without me. I will whisper to you when you are on your knees at church. I will be at your marriage pillow. I will sit down at your table with your children. I will be behind your deathbed curtain. That is what But is,” Pen said.

“Pen, you frighten me,” cried Laura.

“Do you know what But came and said to me just now, when I was looking at you? But said, If that girl had reason as well as love, she would love you no more. If she knew you as you are—the sullied, selfish being which you know—she must part from you, and could give you no love and no sympathy. Didn’t I say,” he added fondly, “that some of you seem exempt from the fall? Love you know; but the knowledge of evil is kept from you.”

“What is this you young folks are talking about?” asked Lady Rockminster, who at this moment made her appearance in the room, having performed, in the mystic retirement of her own apartments, and under the hands of her attendant, those elaborate toilet-rites without which the worthy old lady never presented herself to public view. “Mr. Pendennis, you are always coming here.”

“It is very pleasant to be here,” Arthur said; “and we were talking, when you came in, about my friend Foker, whom I met just now; and who, as your ladyship knows, has succeeded to his father’s kingdom.”

“He has a very fine property, he has fifteen thousand a year. He is my cousin. He is a very worthy young man. He must come and see me,” said Lady Rockminster, with a look at Laura.

“He has been engaged for many years past to his cousin, Lady——”

“Lady Ann is a foolish little chit,” Lady Rockminster said, with much dignity; “and I have no patience with her. She has outraged every feeling of society. She has broken her father’s heart, and thrown away fifteen thousand a year.”

“Thrown away? What has happened?” asked Pen.

“It will be the talk of the town in a day or two; and there is no need why I should keep the secret any longer,” said Lady Rockminster, who had written and received a dozen letters on the subject. “I had a letter yesterday from my daughter, who was staying at Drummington until all the world was obliged to go away on account of the frightful catastrophe which happened there. When Mr. Foker came home from Nice, and after the funeral, Lady Ann went down on her knees to her father, said that she never could marry her cousin, that she had contracted another attachment, and that she must die rather than fulfil her contract. Poor Lord Rosherville, who is dreadfully embarrassed, showed his daughter what the state of his affairs was, and that it was necessary that the arrangements should take place; and in fine, we all supposed that she had listened to reason, and intended to comply with the desires of her family. But what has happened?—last Thursday she went out after breakfast with her maid, and was married in the very church in Drummington Park to Mr. Hobson, her father’s own chaplain and her brother’s tutor; a red-haired widower with two children. Poor dear Rosherville is in a dreadful way: he wishes Henry Foker should marry Alice or Barbara; but Alice is marked with the small-pox, and Barbara is ten years older than he is. And, of course, now the young man is his own master, he will think of choosing for himself. The blow on Lady Agnes is very cruel. She is inconsolable. She has the house in Grosvenor Street for her life, and her settlement, which was very handsome. Have you not met her? Yes, she dined one day at Lady Clavering’s—the first day I saw you, and a very disagreeable young man I thought you were. But I have formed you. We have formed him, haven’t we, Laura? Where is Bluebeard? let him come. That horrid Grindley, the dentist, will keep me in town another week.”

To the latter part of her ladyship’s speech Arthur gave no ear. He was thinking for whom could Foker be purchasing those trinkets which he was carrying away from the jeweller’s? Why did Harry seem anxious to avoid him? Could he be still faithful to the attachment which had agitated him so much, and sent him abroad eighteen months back? Psha! The bracelets and presents were for some of Harry’s old friends of the Opera or the French theatre. Rumours from Naples and Paris, rumours such as are borne to Club smoking-rooms, had announced that the young man had found distractions; or, precluded from his virtuous attachment, the poor fellow had flung himself back upon his old companions and amusements—not the only man or woman whom society forces into evil, or debars from good; not the only victim of the world’s selfish and wicked laws.

As a good thing when it is to be done cannot be done too quickly, Laura was anxious that Pen’s marriage intentions should be put into execution as speedily as possible, and pressed on his arrangements with rather a feverish anxiety. Why could she not wait? Pen could afford to do so with perfect equanimity, but Laura would hear of no delay. She wrote to Pen: she implored Pen: she used every means to urge expedition. It seemed as if she could have no rest until Arthur’s happiness was complete.

She offered herself to dearest Blanche to come and stay at Tunbridge with her, when Lady Rockminster should go on her intended visit to the reigning house of Rockminster; and although the old dowager scolded, and ordered, and commanded, Laura was deaf and disobedient: she must go to Tunbridge, she would go to Tunbridge: she who ordinarily had no will of her own, and complied smilingly with anybody’s whim and caprices, showed the most selfish and obstinate determination in this instance. The dowager lady must nurse herself in her rheumatism, she must read herself to sleep, if she would not hear her maid, whose voice croaked, and who made sad work of the sentimental passages in the novels—Laura must go,—and be with her new sister. In another week, she proposed, with many loves and regards to dear Lady Clavering, to pass some time with dearest Blanche.

Dearest Blanche wrote instantly in reply to dearest Laura’s No. 1, to say with what extreme delight she should welcome her sister: how charming it would be to practise their old duets together, to wander o’er the grassy sward, and amidst the yellowing woods of Penshurst and Southborough! Blanche counted the hours till she should embrace her dearest friend.

Laura, No. 2, expressed her delight at dearest Blanche’s affectionate reply. She hoped that their friendship would never diminish; that the confidence between them would grow in after years; that they should have no secrets from each other; that the aim of the life of each would be to make one person happy.

Blanche, No. 2, followed in two days. “How provoking! Their house was very small, the two spare bedrooms were occupied by that horrid Mrs. Planter and her daughter, who had thought proper to fall ill (she always fell ill in country-houses), and she could not or would not be moved for some days.”

Laura, No. 3. “It was indeed very provoking. L. had hoped to hear one of dearest B.’s dear songs on Friday; but she was the more consoled to wait, because Lady R. was not very well, and liked to be nursed by her. Poor Major Pendennis was very unwell, too, in the same hotel—too unwell even to see Arthur, who was constant in his calls on his uncle. Arthur’s heart was full of tenderness and affection. She had known Arthur all her life. She would answer”—yes, even in italics she would answer—“for his kindness, his goodness, and his gentleness.”

Blanche, No. 3. “What is this most surprising, most extraordinary letter from A. P.? What does dearest Laura know about it? What has happened? What, what mystery is enveloped under his frightful reserve?”

Blanche, No. 3, requires an explanation; and it cannot be better given than in the surprising and mysterious letter of Arthur Pendennis.

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LXXIII. Mr. and Mrs. Sam Huxter

“Dear Blanche,” Arthur wrote, “you are always reading and dreaming pretty dramas, and exciting romances in real life: are you now prepared to enact a part of one? And not the pleasantest part, dear Blanche, that in which the heroine takes possession of her father’s palace and wealth, and introducing her husband to the loyal retainers and faithful vassals, greets her happy bridegroom with ‘All of this is mine and thine,’—but the other character, that of the luckless lady, who suddenly discovers that she is not the Prince’s wife, but Claude Melnotte’s the beggar’s: that of Alnaschar’s wife, who comes in just as her husband has kicked over the tray of porcelain which was to be the making of his fortune—But stay; Alnaschar, who kicked down the china, was not a married man; he had cast his eye on the Vizier’s daughter, and his hopes of her went to the ground with the shattered bowls and tea-cups.

“Will you be the Vizier’s daughter, and refuse and laugh to scorn Alnaschar, or will you be the Lady of Lyons, and love the penniless Claude Melnotte? I will act that part if you like. I will love you my best in return. I will do my all to make your humble life happy: for humble it will be: at least the odds are against any other conclusion; we shall live and die in a poor prosy humdrum way. There will be no stars and epaulettes for the hero of our story. I shall write one or two more stories, which will presently be forgotten. I shall be called to the Bar, and try to get on in my profession: perhaps some day, if I am very lucky, and work very hard (which is absurd), I may get a colonial appointment, and you may be an Indian Judge’s lady. Meanwhile. I shall buy back the Pall Mall Gazette; the publishers are tired of it since the death of poor Shandon, and will sell it for a small sum. Warrington will be my right hand, and write it up to a respectable sale. I will introduce you to Mr. Finucane the sub-editor, and I know who in the end will be Mrs. Finucane,—a very nice gentle creature, who has lived sweetly through a sad life and we will jog on, I say, and look out for better times, and earn our living decently. You shall have the opera-boxes, and superintend the fashionable intelligence, and break your little heart in the poet’s corner. Shall we live over the offices?—there are four very good rooms, a kitchen, and a garret for Laura, in Catherine Street in the Strand; or would you like a house in the Waterloo Road?—it would be very pleasant, only there is that halfpenny toll at the Bridge. The boys may go to King’s College, mayn’t they? Does all this read to you like a joke?

“Ah, dear Blanche, it is no joke, and I am sober and telling the truth. Our fine day-dreams are gone. Our carriage has whirled out of sight like Cinderella’s: our house in Belgravia has been whisked away into the air by a malevolent Genius, and I am no more a member of Parliament than I am a Bishop on his bench in the House of Lords, or a Duke with a garter at his knee. You know pretty well what my property is, and your own little fortune: we may have enough with those two to live in decent comfort; to take a cab sometimes when we go out to see our friends, and not to deny ourselves an omnibus when we are tired. But that is all: is that enough for you, my little dainty lady? I doubt sometimes whether you can bear the life which I offer you—at least, it is fair that you should know what it will be. If you say, ‘Yes, Arthur, I will follow your fate whatever it may be, and be a loyal and loving wife to aid and cheer you’—come to me, dear Blanche, and may God help me so that I may do my duty to you. If not, and you look to a higher station, I must not bar Blanche’s fortune—I will stand in the crowd, and see your ladyship go to Court when you are presented, and you shall give me a smile from your chariot window. I saw Lady Mirabel going to the drawing-room last season: the happy husband at her side glittered with stars and cordons. All the flowers in the garden bloomed in the coachman’s bosom. Will you have these and the chariot, or walk on foot and mend your husband’s stockings?

“I cannot tell you now—afterwards I might, should the day come when we may have no secrets from one another—what has happened within the last few hours which has changed all my prospects in life: but so it is, that I have learned something which forces me to give up the plans which I had formed, and many vain and ambitious hopes in which I had been indulging. I have written and despatched a letter to Sir Francis Clavering, saying that I cannot accept his seat in Parliament until after my marriage; in like manner I cannot and will not accept any larger fortune with you than that which has always belonged to you since your grandfather’s death, and the birth of your half-brother. Your good mother is not in the least aware—I hope she never may be—of the reasons which force me to this very strange decision. They arise from a painful circumstance, which is attributable to none of our faults; but, having once befallen, they are as fatal and irreparable as that shock which overset honest Alnaschar’s porcelain, and shattered all his hopes beyond the power of mending. I write gaily enough, for there is no use in bewailing such a hopeless mischance. We have not drawn the great prize in the lottery, dear Blanche: but I shall be contented enough without it, if you can be so; and I repeat, with all my heart, that I will do my best to make you happy.

“And now, what news shall I give you? My uncle is very unwell, and takes my refusal of the seat in Parliament in sad dudgeon: the scheme was his, poor old gentleman, and he naturally bemoans its failure. But Warrington, Laura, and I had a council of war: they know this awful secret, and back me in my decision. You must love George as you love what is generous and upright and noble; and as for Laura—she must be our Sister, Blanche, our Saint, our good Angel. With two such friends at home, what need we care for the world without; or who is member for Clavering, or who is asked or not asked to the great balls of the season?”

To this frank communication came back the letter from Blanche to Laura, and one to Pen himself, which perhaps his own letter justified. “You are spoiled by the world,” Blanche wrote; “you do not love your poor Blanche as she would be loved, or you would not offer thus lightly to take her or to leave her, no, Arthur, you love me not—a man of the world, you have given me your plighted troth, and are ready to redeem it; but that entire affection, that love whole and abiding, where—where is that vision of my youth? I am but a pastime of your life, and I would be its all;—but a fleeting thought, and I would be your whole soul. I would have our two hearts one; but ah, my Arthur, how lonely yours is! how little you give me of it! You speak of our parting with a smile on your lip; of our meeting, and you care not to hasten it! Is life but a disillusion, then, and are the flowers of our garden faded away? I have wept—I have prayed—I have passed sleepless hours—I have shed bitter, bitter tears over your letter! To you I bring the gushing poesy of my being—the yearnings of the soul that longs to be loved—that pines for love, love, love, beyond all!—that flings itself at your feet, and cries, Love me, Arthur! Your heart beats no quicker at the kneeling appeal of my love!—your proud eye is dimmed by no tear of sympathy!—you accept my soul’s treasure as though ’twere dross! not the pearls from the unfathomable deeps of affection! not the diamonds from the caverns of the heart. You treat me like a slave, and bid me bow to my master! Is this the guerdon of a free maiden—is this the price of a life’s passion? Ah me! when was it otherwise? when did love meet with aught but disappointment? Could I hope (fond fool!) to be the exception to the lot of my race; and lay my fevered brow on a heart that comprehended my own? Foolish girl that I was! One by one, all the flowers of my young life have faded away; and this, the last, the sweetest, the dearest, the fondly, the madly loved, the wildly cherished—where is it? But no more of this. Heed not my bleeding heart.—Bless you, bless you always, Arthur!

“I will write more when I am more collected. My racking brain renders thought almost impossible. I long to see Laura! She will come to us directly we return from the country, will she not? And you, cold one!

“B.”

The words of this letter were perfectly clear, and written in Blanche’s neatest hand upon her scented paper; and yet the meaning of the composition not a little puzzled Pen. Did Blanche mean to accept or to refuse his polite offer? Her phrases either meant that Pen did not love her, and she declined him, or that she took him, and sacrificed herself to him, cold as he was. He laughed sardonically over the letter, and over the transaction which occasioned it. He laughed to think how Fortune had jilted him, and how he deserved his slippery fortune. He turned over and over the musky gilt-edged riddle. It amused his humour: he enjoyed it as if it had been a funny story.

He was thus seated, twiddling the queer manuscript in his hand, joking grimly to himself, when his servant came in with a card from a gentleman, who wished to speak to him very particularly. And if Pen had gone out into the passage, he would have seen, sucking his stick, rolling his eyes, and showing great marks of anxiety, his old acquaintance, Mr. Samuel Huxter.

“Mr. Huxter on particular business! Pray, beg Mr. Huxter to come in,” said Pen, amused rather; and not the less so when poor Sam appeared before him.

“Pray take a chair, Mr. Huxter,” said Pen, in his most superb manner. “In what way can I be of service to you?”

“I had rather not speak before the flunk—before the man, Mr. Pendennis:” on which Mr. Arthur’s attendant quitted the room.

“I’m in a fix,” said Mr. Huxter, gloomily.

“Indeed.”

“She sent me to you,” continued the young surgeon.

“What, Fanny? Is she well? I was coming to see her, but I have had a great deal of business since my return to London.”

“I heard of you through my governor and Jack Hobnell,” broke in Huxter. “I wish you joy, Mr. Pendennis, both of the borough and the lady, sir. Fanny wishes you joy, too,” he added, with something of a blush.

“There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip! Who knows what may happen, Mr. Huxter, or who will sit in Parliament for Clavering next session?”

“You can do anything with my governor,” continued Mr. Huxter. “You got him Clavering Park. The old boy was very much pleased, sir, at your calling him in. Hobnell wrote me so. Do you think you could speak to the governor for me, Mr. Pendennis?”

“And tell him what?”

“I’ve gone and done it, sir,” said Huxter, with a particular look.

“You—you don’t mean to say you have—you have done any wrong to that dear little creature, sir?” said Pen, starting up in a great fury.

“I hope not,” said Huxter, with a hangdog look: “but I’ve married her. And I know there will be an awful shindy at home. It was agreed that I should be taken into partnership when I had passed the College, and it was to have been Huxter and Son. But I would have it, confound it. It’s all over now, and the old boy’s wrote me that he’s coming up to town for drugs: he will be here to-morrow, and then it must all come out.”

“And when did this event happen?” asked Pen, not over well pleased, most likely, that a person who had once attracted some portion of his royal good graces should have transferred her allegiance, and consoled herself for his loss.

“Last Thursday was five weeks—it was two days after Miss Amory came to Shepherd’s Inn,” Huxter answered.

Pen remembered that Blanche had written and mentioned her visit. “I was called in,” Huxter said. “I was in the Inn looking after old Cos’s leg; and about something else too, very likely: and I met Strong, who told me there was a woman taken ill in Chambers, and went up to give her my professional services. It was the old lady who attends Miss Amory—her housekeeper, or some such thing. She was taken with strong hysterics: I found her kicking and screaming like a good one—in Strong’s chamber, along with him and Colonel Altamont, and Miss Amory crying and as pale as a sheet; and Altamont fuming about—a regular kick-up. They were two hours in the Chambers; and the old woman went whooping off in a cab. She was much worse than the young one. I called in Grosvenor Place next day to see if I could be of any service, but they were gone without so much as thanking me: and the day after I had business of my own to attend to—a bad business too,” said Mr. Huxter, gloomily. “But it’s done, and can’t be undone; and we must make the best of it”

She has known the story for a month, thought Pen, with a sharp pang of grief, and a gloomy sympathy—this accounts for her letter of to-day. She will not implicate her father, or divulge his secret; she wishes to let me off from the marriage—and finds a pretext—the generous girl!

“Do you know who Altamont is, sir?” asked Huxter, after the pause during which Pen had been thinking of his own affairs. “Fanny and I have talked him over, and we can’t help fancying that it’s Mrs. Lightfoot’s first husband come to life again, and she who has just married a second. Perhaps Lightfoot won’t be very sorry for it,” sighed Huxter, looking savagely at Arthur, for the demon of jealousy was still in possession of his soul; and now, and more than ever since his marriage, the poor fellow fancied that Fanny’s heart belonged to his rival.

“Let us talk about your affairs,” said Pen. “Show me how I can be of any service to you, Huxter. Let me congratulate you on your marriage. I am thankful that Fanny, who is so good, so fascinating, so kind a creature, has found an honest man, and a gentleman who will make her happy. Show me what I can do to help you.”

“She thinks you can, sir,” said Huxter, accepting Pen’s proffered hand, “and I’m very much obliged to you, I’m sure; and that you might talk over my father, and break the business to him, and my mother, who always has her back up about being a clergyman’s daughter. Fanny ain’t of a good family, I know, and not up to us in breeding and that—but she’s a Huxter now.”

“The wife takes the husband’s rank, of course,” said Pen.

“And with a little practice in society,” continued Huxter, imbibing his stick, “she’ll be as good as any girl in Clavering. You should hear her sing and play on the piano. Did you ever? Old Bows taught her. And she’ll do on the stage, if the governor was to throw me over; but I’d rather not have her there. She can’t help being a coquette, Mr. Pendennis, she can’t help it. Dammy, sir! I’ll be bound to say, that two or three of the Bartholomew chaps, that I’ve brought into my place, are sitting with her now: even Jack Linton, that I took down as my best man, is as bad as the rest, and she will go on singing and making eyes at him. It’s what Bows says, if there were twenty men in a room, and one not taking notice of her, she wouldn’t be satisfied until the twentieth was at her elbow.”

“You should have her mother with her,” said Pen, laughing.

“She must keep the lodge. She can’t see so much of her family as she used. I can’t, you know, sir, go on with that lot. Consider my rank in life,” said Huxter, putting a very dirty hand up to his chin.

“Au fait,” said Mr. Pen, who was infinitely amused, and concerning whom mutato nomine (and of course concerning nobody else in the world) the fable might have been narrated.

As the two gentlemen were in the midst of this colloquy, another knock came to Pen’s door, and his servant presently announced Mr. Bows. The old man followed slowly, his pale face blushing, and his hand trembling somewhat as he took Pen’s. He coughed, and wiped his face in his checked cotton pocket-handkerchief, and sate down with his hands on his knees, the sunshining on his bald head. Pen looked at the homely figure with no small sympathy and kindness. This man, too, has had his griefs and his wounds, Arthur thought. This man, too, has brought his genius and his heart, and laid them at a woman’s feet; where she spurned them. The chance of life has gone against him, and the prize is with that creature yonder. Fanny’s bridegroom, thus mutely apostrophised, had winked meanwhile with one eye at old Bows, and was driving holes in the floor with the cane which he loved.

“So we have lost, Mr. Bows, and here is the lucky winner,” Pen said, looking hard at the old man.

“Here is the lucky winner, sir, as you say.”

“I suppose you have come from my place?” asked Huxter, who, having winked at Bows with one eye, now favoured Pen with a wink of the other—a wink which seemed to say, “Infatuated old boy—you understand—over head and ears in love with her poor old fool.”

“Yes, I have been there ever since you went away. It was Mrs. Sam who sent me after you: who said that she thought you might be doing something stupid—something like yourself, Huxter.”

“There’s as big fools as I am,” growled the young surgeon.

“A few, p’raps,” said the old man; “not many, let us trust. Yes, she sent me after you for fear you should offend Mr. Pendennis; and I daresay because she thought you wouldn’t give her message to him, and beg him to go and see her; and she knew I would take her errand. Did he tell you that, sir?”

Huxter blushed scarlet, and covered his confusion with an imprecation. Pen laughed; the scene suited his bitter humour more and more.

“I have no doubt Mr. Huxter was going to tell me,” Arthur said, “and very much flattered I am sure I shall be to pay my respects to his wife.”

“It’s in Charterhouse Lane, over the baker’s, on the right hand side as you go from St. John’s Street,” continued Bows, without any pity. “You know Smithfield, Mr. Pendennis? St. John’s Street leads into Smithfield. Doctor Johnson has been down the street many a time with ragged shoes, and a bundle of penny-a-lining for the Gent’s Magazine. You literary gents are better off now—eh? You ride in your cabs, and wear yellow kid gloves now.”

“I have known so many brave and good men fail, and so many quacks and impostors succeed, that you mistake me if you think I am puffed up by my own personal good luck, old friend,” Arthur said, sadly. “Do you think the prizes of life are carried by the most deserving? and set up that mean test of prosperity for merit? You must feel that you are as good as I. I have never questioned it. It is you that are peevish against the freaks of fortune, and grudge the good luck that befalls others. It’s not the first time you have unjustly accused me, Bows.”

“Perhaps you are not far wrong, sir,” said the old fellow, wiping his bald forehead. “I am thinking about myself and grumbling; most men do when they get on that subject. Here’s the fellow that’s got the prize in the lottery; here’s the fortunate youth.”

“I don’t know what you are driving at,” Huxter said, who had been much puzzled as the above remarks passed between his two companions.

“Perhaps not,” said Bows, drily. “Mrs. H. sent me here to look after you, and to see that you brought that little message to Mr. Pendennis, which you didn’t, you see, and so she was right. Women always are; they have always a reason for everything. Why, sir,” he said, turning round to Pen with a sneer, “she had a reason even for giving me that message. I was sitting with her after you left us, very quiet and comfortable; I was talking away, and she was mending your shirts, when your two young friends, Jack Linton and Bob Blades, looked in from Bartholomew’s; and then it was she found out that she had this message to send. You needn’t hurry yourself, she don’t want you back again; they’ll stay these two hours, I daresay.”

Huxter arose with great perturbation at this news, and plunged his stick into the pocket of his paletot, and seized his hat.

“You’ll come and see us, sir, won’t you?” he said to Pen. “You’ll talk over the governor, won’t you, sir, if I can get out of this place and down to Clavering?”

“You will promise to attend me gratis if ever I fall ill at Fairoaks, will you, Huxter?” Pen said, good-naturedly. “I will do anything I can for you. I will come and see Mrs. Huxter immediately, and we will conspire together about what is to be done.”

“I thought that would send him out, sir,” Bows said, dropping into his chair again as soon as the young surgeon had quitted the room. “And it’s all true, sir—every word of it. She wants you back again, and sends her husband after you. She cajoles everybody, the little devil. She tries it on you, on me, on poor Costigan, on the young chaps from Bartholomew’s. She’s got a little court of ’em already. And if there’s nobody there, she practises on the old German baker in the shop, or coaxes the black sweeper at the crossing.”

“Is she fond of that fellow?” asked Pen.

“There is no accounting for likes and dislikes,” Bows answered.

“Yes, she is fond of him; and having taken the thing into her head, she would not rest until she married him. They had their banns published at St. Clement’s, and nobody heard it or knew any just cause or impediment. And one day she slips out of the porter’s lodge and has the business done, and goes off to Gravesend with Lothario; and leaves a note for me to go and explain all things to her Ma. Bless you! the old woman knew it as well as I did, though she pretended ignorance. And so she goes, and I’m alone again. I miss her, sir, tripping along that court, and coming for her singing lesson; and I’ve no heart to look into the porter’s lodge now, which looks very empty without her, the little flirting thing. And I go and sit and dangle about her lodgings, like an old fool. She makes ’em very trim and nice, though; gets up all Huxter’s shirts and clothes: cooks his little dinner, and sings at her business like a little lark. What’s the use of being angry? I lent ’em three pound to go on with: for they haven’t got a shilling till the reconciliation, and Pa comes down.”

When Bows had taken his leave, Pen carried his letter from Blanche, and the news which he had just received, to his usual adviser, Laura. It was wonderful upon how many points Mr. Arthur, who generally followed his own opinion, now wanted another person’s counsel. He could hardly so much as choose a waistcoat without referring to Miss Bell: if he wanted to buy a horse he must have Miss Bell’s opinion; all which marks of deference tended greatly to the amusement of the shrewd old lady with whom Miss Bell lived, and whose plans regarding her protegee we have indicated.

Arthur produced Blanche’s letter then to Laura, and asked her to interpret it. Laura was very much agitated and puzzled by the contents of the note.

“It seems to me,” she said, “as if Blanche is acting very artfully.”

“And wishes so to place matters that she may take me or leave me? Is it not so?”

“It is, I am afraid, a kind of duplicity which does not augur well for your future happiness; and is a bad reply to your own candour and honesty, Arthur. Do you know, I think, I think—I scarcely like to say what I think,” said Laura with a deep blush; but of course the blushing young lady yielded to her cousin’s persuasion, and expressed what her thoughts were. “It looks to me, Arthur, as if there might be—there might be somebody else,” said, Laura, with a repetition of the blush.

“And if there is,” broke in Arthur, “and if I am free once again, will the best and dearest of all women——”

“You are not free, dear brother,” Laura said calmly. “You belong to another; of whom I own it grieves me to think ill. But I can’t do otherwise. It is very odd that in this letter she does not urge you to tell her the reason why you have broken arrangements which would have been so advantageous to you; and avoids speaking on the subject. She somehow seems to write as if she knows her father’s secret.”

Pen said, “Yes, she must know it;” and told the story, which he had just heard from Huxter, of the interview at Shepherd’s Inn.

“It was not so that she described the meeting,” said Laura; and, going to her desk, produced from it that letter of Blanche’s which mentioned her visit to Shepherd’s Inn. ‘Another disappointment—only the Chevalier Strong and a friend of his in the room.’ This was all that Blanche had said. “But she was bound to keep her father’s secret, Pen,” Laura added. “And yet, and yet—it is very puzzling.”

The puzzle was this, that for three weeks after this eventful discovery Blanche had been only too eager about her dearest Arthur; was urging, as strongly as so much modesty could urge, the completion of the happy arrangements which were to make her Arthur’s for ever; and now it seemed as if something had interfered to mar these happy arrangements—as if Arthur poor was not quite so agreeable to Blanche as Arthur rich and a member of Parliament—as if there was some mystery. At last she said:

“Tunbridge Wells is not very far off, is it, Arthur? Hadn’t you better go and see her?”

They had been in town a week, and neither had thought of that simple plan before!

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LXXIV. Shows how Arthur had better have taken a Return-ticket

The train carried Arthur only too quickly to Tunbridge, though he had time to review all the circumstances of his life as he made the brief journey; and to acknowledge to what sad conclusions his selfishness and waywardness had led him. “Here is the end of hopes and aspirations,” thought he, “of romance and ambitions! Where I yield or where I am obstinate, I am alike unfortunate; my mother implores me, and I refuse an angel! Say I had taken her; forced on me as she was, Laura would never have been an angel to me. I could not have given her my heart at another’s instigation; I never could have known her as she is had I been obliged to ask another to interpret her qualities and point out her virtues. I yield to my uncle’s solicitations, and accept on his guarantee Blanche, and a seat in Parliament, and wealth, and ambition, and a career; and see!—fortune comes and leaves me the wife without the dowry, which I had taken in compensation of a heart. Why was I not more honest, or am I not less so? It would have cost my poor old uncle no pangs to accept Blanche’s fortune whencesoever it came; he can’t even understand, he is bitterly indignant, heart-stricken, almost, at the scruples which actuate me in refusing it. I dissatisfy everybody. A maimed, weak, imperfect wretch, it seems as if I am unequal to any fortune. I neither make myself nor any one connected with me happy. What prospect is there for this poor little frivolous girl, who is to take my obscure name and share my fortune? I have not even ambition to excite me, or self-esteem enough to console myself, much more her, for my failure. If I were to write a book that should go through twenty editions, why, I should be the very first to sneer at my reputation. Say I could succeed at the Bar, and achieve a fortune by bullying witnesses and twisting evidence; is that a fame which would satisfy my longings, or a calling in which my life would be well spent? How I wish I could be that priest opposite, who never has lifted his eyes from his breviary, except when we were in Reigate tunnel, when he could not see; or that old gentleman next him, who scowls at him with eyes of hatred over his newspaper. The priest shuts his eyes to the world, but has his thoughts on the book, which is his directory to the world to come. His neighbour hates him as a monster, tyrant, persecutor, and fancies burning martyrs, and that pale countenance looking on, and lighted up by the flame. These have no doubts; these march on trustfully, bearing their load of logic.”

“Would you like to look at the paper, sir?” here interposed the stout gentleman (it had a flaming article against the order of the black-coated gentleman who was travelling with them in the carriage), and Pen thanked him and took it, and pursued his reverie, without reading two sentences of the journal.

“And yet, would you take either of those men’s creeds, with its consequences?” he thought. “Ah me! you must bear your own burthen, fashion your own faith, think your own thoughts, and pray your own prayer. To what mortal ear could I tell all, if I had a mind? or who could understand all? Who can tell another’s shortcomings, lost opportunities, weigh the passions which overpower, the defects which incapacitate reason?—what extent of truth and right his neighbour’s mind is organised to perceive and to do?—what invisible and forgotten accident, terror of youth, chance or mischance of fortune, may have altered the whole current of life? A grain of sand may alter it, as the flinging of a pebble may end it. Who can weigh circumstances, passions, temptations, that go to our good and evil account, save One, before whose awful wisdom we kneel, and at whose mercy we ask absolution? Here it ends,” thought Pen; “this day or to-morrow will wind up the account of my youth; a weary retrospect, alas! a sad history, with many a page I would fain not look back on! But who has not been tired or fallen, and who has escaped without scars from that struggle?” And his head fell on his breast, and the young man’s heart prostrated itself humbly and sadly before that Throne where sits wisdom, and love, and pity for all, and made its confession. “What matters about fame or poverty!” he thought. “If I marry this woman I have chosen, may I have strength and will to be true to her, and to make her happy. If I have children, pray God teach me to speak and to do the truth among them, and to leave them an honest name. There are no splendours for my marriage. Does my life deserve any? I begin a new phase of it; a better than the last may it be, I pray Heaven!”

The train stopped at Tunbridge as Pen was making these reflections; and he handed over the newspaper to his neighbour, of whom he took leave, while the foreign clergyman in the opposite corner still sate with his eyes on his book. Pen jumped out of the carriage then, his carpet-bag in hand, and briskly determined to face his fortune.

A fly carried him rapidly to Lady Clavering’s house from the station; and, as he was transported thither, Arthur composed a little speech, which he intended to address to Blanche, and which was really as virtuous, honest, and well-minded an oration as any man of his turn of mind, and under his circumstances, could have uttered. The purport of it was—“Blanche, I cannot understand from your last letter what your meaning is, or whether my fair and frank proposal to you is acceptable or no. I think you know the reason which induces me to forgo the worldly advantages which a union with you offered, and which I could not accept without, as I fancy, being dishonoured. If you doubt of my affection, here I am ready to prove it. Let Smirke be called in, and let us be married out of hand; and with all my heart I purpose to keep my vow, and to cherish you through life, and to be a true and a loving husband to you.”

From the fly Arthur sprang out then to the hall-door, where he was met by a domestic whom he did not know. The man seemed to be surprised at the approach of the gentleman with the carpet-bag, which he made no attempt to take from Arthur’s hands. “Her Ladyship’s not at home, sir,” the man remarked.

“I am Mr. Pendennis,” Arthur said. “Where is Lightfoot?”

“Lightfoot is gone,” answered the man. “My Lady is out, and my orders was——”

“I hear Miss Amory’s voice in the drawing-room,” said Arthur. “Take the bag to a dressing-room, if you please;” and, passing by the porter, he walked straight towards that apartment, from which, as the door opened, a warble of melodious notes issued.

Our little Siren was at her piano singing with all her might and fascinations. Master Clavering was asleep on the sofa, indifferent to the music; but near Blanche sat a gentleman who was perfectly enraptured with her strain, which was of a passionate and melancholy nature.

As the door opened, the gentleman started up with Hullo! the music stopped, with a little shriek from the singer; Frank Clavering woke up from the sofa, and Arthur came forward and said, “What, Foker! how do you do, Foker?” He looked at the piano, and there, by Miss Amory’s side, was just such another purple-leather box as he had seen in Harry’s hand three days before, when the heir of Logwood was coming out of a jeweller’s shop in Waterloo Place. It was opened, and curled round the white satin cushion within was, oh, such a magnificent serpentine bracelet, with such a blazing ruby head and diamond tail!

“How de-do, Pendennis?” said Foker. Blanche made many motions of the shoulders, and gave signs of unrest and agitation. And she put her handkerchief over the bracelet, and then she advanced, with a hand which trembled very much, to greet Pen.

“How is dearest Laura?” she said. The face of Foker looking up from his profound mourning—that face, so piteous and puzzled, was one which the reader’s imagination must depict for himself; also that of Master Frank Clavering, who, looking at the three interesting individuals with an expression of the utmost knowingness, had only time to ejaculate the words, “Here’s a jolly go!” and to disappear sniggering.

Pen, too, had restrained himself up to that minute; but looking still at Foker, whose ears and cheeks tingled with blushes, Arthur burst out into a fit of laughter, so wild and loud, that it frightened Blanche much more than any the most serious exhibition.

“And this was the secret, was it? Don’t blush and turn away, Foker, my boy. Why, man, you are a pattern of fidelity. Could I stand between Blanche and such constancy—could I stand between Miss Amory and fifteen thousand a year?”

“It is not that, Mr. Pendennis,” Blanche said, with great dignity. “It is not money, it is not rank, it is not gold that moves me; but it is constancy, it is fidelity, it is a whole trustful loving heart offered to me, that I treasure—yes, that I treasure!” And she made for her handkerchief, but, reflecting what was underneath it, she paused. “I do not disown, I do not disguise—my life is above disguise—to him on whom it is bestowed, my heart must be for ever bare—that I once thought I loved you,—yes, thought I was beloved by you, I own! How I clung to that faith! How I strove, I prayed, I longed to believe it! But your conduct always—your own words so cold, so heartless, so unkind, have undeceived me. You trifled with the heart of the poor maiden! You flung me back with scorn the troth which I had plighted! I have explained all—all to Mr. Foker.”

“That you have,” said Foker, with devotion, and conviction in his looks.

“What, all?” said Pen, with a meaning look at Blanche. “It is I am in fault, is it? Well, well, Blanche, be it so. I won’t appeal against your sentence, and bear it in silence. I came down here looking to very different things, Heaven knows, and with a heart most truly and kindly disposed towards you. I hope you may be happy with another, as, on my word, it was my wish to make you so; and I hope my honest old friend here will have a wife worthy of his loyalty, his constancy, and affection. Indeed they deserve the regard of any woman—even Miss Blanche Amory. Shake hands, Harry; don’t look askance at me. Has anybody told you that I was a false and heartless character?”

“I think you’re a——” Foker was beginning, in his wrath, when Blanche interposed.

“Henry, not a word!—I pray you let there be forgiveness!”

“You’re an angel, by Jove, you’re an angel!” said Foker, at which Blanche looked seraphically up to the chandelier.

“In spite of what has passed, for the sake of what has passed, I must always regard Arthur as a brother,” the seraph continued; “we have known each other years, we have trodden the same fields, and plucked the same flowers together. Arthur! Henry! I beseech you to take hands and to be friends! Forgive you!—I forgive you, Arthur, with my heart I do. Should I not do so for making me so happy?”

“There is only one person of us three whom I pity, Blanche,” Arthur said, gravely, “and I say to you again, that I hope you will make this good fellow, this honest and loyal creature, happy.”

“Happy! O Heavens!” said Harry. He could not speak. His happiness gushed out at his eyes. “She don’t know—she can’t know how fond I am of her, and—and who am I? a poor little beggar, and she takes me up and says she’ll try and I—I—love me. I ain’t worthy of so much happiness. Give us your hand, old boy, since she forgives you after your heartless conduct, and says she loves you. I’ll make you welcome. I tell you I’ll love everybody who loves her. By——, if she tells me to kiss the ground I’ll kiss it. Tell me to kiss the ground! I say, tell me. I love you so. You see I love you so.”

Blanche looked up seraphically again. Her gentle bosom heaved. She held out one hand as if to bless Harry, and then royally permitted him to kiss it. She took up the pocket-handkerchief and hid her own eyes, as the other fair hand was abandoned to poor Harry’s tearful embrace.

“I swear that is a villain who deceives such a loving creature as that,” said Pen.

Blanche laid down the handkerchief, and put hand No. 2 softly on Foker’s head, which was bent down kissing and weeping over hand No. 1. “Foolish boy?” she said, “it shall be loved as it deserves: who could help loving such a silly creature!”

And at this moment Frank Clavering broke in upon the sentimental trio.

“I say, Pendennis!” he said.

“Well, Frank!”

“The man wants to be paid, and go back. He’s had some beer.”

“I’ll go back with him,” cried Pen. “Good-bye, Blanche. God bless you, Foker, old friend. You know, neither of you want me here.” He longed to be off that instant.

“Stay—I must say one word to you. One word in private, if you please,” Blanche said. “You can trust us together, can’t you, Henry?” The tone in which the word Henry was spoken, and the appeal, ravished Foker with delight. “Trust you!” said he. “Oh, who wouldn’t trust you! Come along, Franky, my boy.”

“Let’s have a cigar,” said Frank, as they went into the hall.

“She don’t like it,” said Foker, gently.

“Law bless you—she don’t mind. Pendennis used to smoke regular,” said the candid youth.

“It was but a short word I had to say,” said Blanche to Pen, with great calm, when they were alone. “You never loved me, Mr. Pendennis.”

“I told you how much,” said Arthur. “I never deceived you.”

“I suppose you will go back and marry Laura,” continued Blanche.

“Was that what you had to say?” said Pen.

“You are going to her this very night, I am sure of it. There is no denying it. You never cared for me.”

“Et vous?”

“Et moi, c’est different. I have been spoilt early. I cannot live out of the world, out of excitement. I could have done so, but it is too late. If I cannot have emotions, I must have the world. You would offer me neither one nor the other. You are blase in everything, even in ambition. You had a career before you, and you would not take it. You give it up!—for what?—for a betise, for an absurd scruple. Why would you not have that seat, and be such a puritain? Why should you refuse what is mine by right, by right, entendez-vous?”

“You know all, then?” said Pen.

“Only within a month. But I have suspected ever since Baymouth—n’importe since when. It is not too late. He is as if he had never been; and there is a position in the world before you yet. Why not sit in Parliament, exert your talent, and give a place in the world to yourself, to your wife? I take celui-la. Il est bon. Il est riche. Il est—vous le connaissez autant que moi enfin. Think you that I would not prefer un homme qui fera parler de moi? If the secret appears I am rich a millions. How does it affect me? It is not my fault. It will never appear.”

“You will tell Harry everything, won’t you?”

“Je comprends. Vous refusez,” said Blanche, savagely. “I will tell Harry at my own time, when we are married. You will not betray me, will you? You, having a defenceless girl’s secret, will not turn upon her and use it? S’il me plait de le cacher, mon secret; pourquoi le donnerai je? Je l’aime, mon pauvre pere, voyez-vous? I would rather live with that man than with you fades intriguers of the world. I must have emotions—il m’en donne. Il m’ecrit. Il ecrit tres-bien, voyez-vous—comme un pirate—comme un Bohemien—comme un homme. But for this I would have said to my mother—Ma mere! quittons ce lache mari, cette lache societe—retournons a mon pere.”

“The pirate would have wearied you like the rest,” said Pen.

“Eh! Il me faut des emotions,” said Blanche. Pen had never seen her or known so much about her in all the years of their intimacy as he saw and knew now: though he saw more than existed in reality. For this young lady was not able to carry out any emotion to the full; but had a sham enthusiasm, a sham hatred, a sham love, a sham taste, a sham grief, each of which flared and shone very vehemently for an instant, but subsided and gave place to the next sham emotion.

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LXXV. A Chapter of Match-making

Upon the platform at Tunbridge, Pen fumed and fretted until the arrival of the evening train to London, a full half-hour,—six hours it seemed to him; but even this immense interval was passed, the train arrived, the train sped on, the London lights came in view—a gentleman who forgot his carpet-bag in the train rushed at a cab, and said to the man, “Drive as hard as you can go to Jermyn Street.” The cabman, although a hansom-cabman, said Thank you for the gratuity which was put into his hand, and Pen ran up the stairs of the hotel to Lady Rockminster’s apartments. Laura was alone in the drawing-room, reading, with a pale face, by the lamp. The pale face looked up when Pen opened the door. May we follow him? The great moments of life are but moments like the others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes; a mere pressure of the hand may decide it; or of the lips, though they cannot speak.

When Lady Rockminster, who has had her after-dinner nap, gets up and goes into her sitting-room, we may enter with her ladyship.

“Upon my word, young people!” are the first words she says, and her attendant makes wondering eyes over her shoulder. And well may she say so; and well may the attendant cast wondering eyes; for the young people are in an attitude; and Pen in such a position as every young lady who reads this has heard tell of, or has seen, or hopes, or at any rate deserves to see.

In a word, directly he entered the room, Pen went up to Laura of the pale face, who had not time even to say, What, back so soon? and seizing her outstretched and trembling hand just as she was rising from her chair, fell down on his knees before her, and said quickly, “I have seen her. She has engaged herself to Harry Foker—and—and Now, Laura?”

The hand gives a pressure—the eyes beam a reply—the quivering lips answer, though speechless. Pen’s head sinks down in the girl’s lap, as he sobs out, “Come and bless us, dear mother,” and arms as tender as Helen’s once more enfold him.

In this juncture it is that Lady Rockminster comes in and says, “Upon my word, young people! Beck! leave the room. What do you want poking your nose in here?”

Pen starts up with looks of triumph, still holding Laura’s hand. “She is consoling me for my misfortune, ma’am,” he says.

“What do you mean by kissing her hand? I don’t know what you will be next doing.”

Pen kissed her Ladyship’s. “I have been to Tunbridge,” he says, “and seen Miss Amory; and find on my arrival that—that a villain has transplanted me in her affections,” he says with a tragedy air.

“Is that all? Is that what you were whimpering on your knees about?” says the old lady, growing angry. “You might have kept the news till to-morrow.”

“Yes—another has superseded me,” goes on Pen; “but why call him villain? He is brave, he is constant, he is young, he is wealthy, he is beautiful.”

“What stuff are you talking, sir?” cried the old lady. “What has happened?”

“Miss Amory has jilted me, and accepted Henry Foker, Esq. I found her warbling ditties to him as he lay at her feet; presents had been accepted, vows exchanged, these ten days. Harry was old Mrs. Planter’s rheumatism, which kept dearest Laura out of the house. He is the most constant and generous of men. He has promised the living of Logwood to Lady Ann’s husband, and given her a splendid present on her marriage; and he rushed to fling himself at Blanche’s feet the instant he found he was free.”

“And so, as you can’t get Blanche, you put up with Laura; is that it, sir?” asked the old lady.

“He acted nobly,” Laura said.

“I acted as she bade me,” said Pen. “Never mind how, Lady Rockminster; but to the best of my knowledge and power. And if you mean that I am not worthy of Laura, I know it, and pray Heaven to better me; and if the love and company of the best and purest creature in the world can do so, at least I shall have these to help me.”

“Hm, hm,” replied the old lady to this, looking with rather an appeased air at the young people. “It is all very well; but I should have preferred Bluebeard.”

And now Pen, to divert the conversation from a theme which was growing painful to some parties present, bethought him of his interview with Huxter in the morning, and of Fanny Bolton’s affairs, which he had forgotten under the immediate pressure and excitement of his own. And he told the ladies how Huxter had elevated Fanny to the rank of wife, and what terrors he was in respecting the arrival of his father. He described the scene with considerable humour, taking care to dwell especially upon that part of it which concerned Fanny’s coquetry and irrepressible desire of captivating mankind; his meaning being, “You see, Laura, I was not so guilty in that little affair; it was the girl who made love to me, and I who resisted. As I am no longer present, the little siren practises her arts and fascinations upon others. Let that transaction be forgotten in your mind, if you please; or visit me with a very gentle punishment for my error.”

Laura understood his meaning under the eagerness of his explanations. “If you did any wrong, you repented, dear Pen,” she said; “and you know,” she added, with meaning eyes and blushes, “that I have no right to reproach you.”

“Hm!” grumbled the old lady; “I should have preferred Bluebeard.”

“The past is broken away. The morrow is before us. I will do my best to make your morrow happy, dear Laura,” Pen said. His heart was humbled by the prospect of his happiness: it stood awestricken in the contemplation of her sweet goodness and purity. He liked his wife better that she had owned to that passing feeling for Warrington, and laid bare her generous heart to him. And she—very likely she was thinking, “How strange it is that I ever should have cared for another! I am vexed almost to think I care for him so little, am so little sorry that he is gone away. Oh, in these past two months how I have learned to love Arthur! I care about nothing but Arthur: my waking and sleeping thoughts are about him; he is never absent from me. And to think that he is to be mine, mine! and that I am to marry him, and not to be his servant as I expected to be only this morning; for I would have gone down on my knees to Blanche to beg her to let me live with him. And now—Oh, it is too much. Oh, mother! mother, that you were here!” Indeed, she felt as if Helen were there—by her actually, though invisibly. A halo of happiness beamed from her.

She moved with a different step, and bloomed with a new beauty. Arthur saw the change; and the old Lady Rockminster remarked it with her shrewd eyes.

“What a sly demure little wretch you have been,” she whispered to Laura—while Pen, in great spirits, was laughing, and telling his story about Huxter—“and how you have kept your secret!”

“How are we to help the young couple?” said Laura. Of course Miss Laura felt an interest in all young couples, as generous lovers always love other lovers.

“We must go and see them,” said Pen.

“Of course we must go and see them,” said Laura. “I intend to be very fond of Fanny. Let us go this instant. Lady Rockminster, may I have the carriage?”

“Go now!—why, you stupid creature, it is eleven o’clock at night. Mr. and Mrs. Huxter have got their nightcaps on, I dare say. And it is time for you to go now. Good night, Mr. Pendennis.”

Arthur and Laura begged for ten minutes more.

“We will go to-morrow morning, then. I will come and fetch you with Martha.”

“An earl’s coronet,” said Pen, who, no doubt, was pleased himself, “will have a great effect in Lamb Court and Smithfield. Stay—Lady Rockminster, will you join us in a little conspiracy?”

“How do you mean conspiracy, young man?”

“Will you please to be a little ill to-morrow; and when old Mr. Huxter arrives, will you let me call him in? If he is put into a good humour at the notion of attending a baronet in the country, what influence won’t a countess have on him? When he is softened—when he is quite ripe, we will break the secret upon him; bring in the young people, extort the paternal benediction, and finish the comedy.”

“A parcel of stuff,” said the old lady. “Take your hat, sir. Come away, miss. There—my head is turned another way. Good night, young people.” And who knows but the old lady thought of her own early days as she went away on Laura’s arm, nodding her head and humming to herself?

With the early morning came Laura and Martha according to appointment; and the desired sensation was, let us hope, effected in Lamb Court, whence the three proceeded to wait upon Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Huxter, at their residence in Charterhouse Lane.

The two ladies looked at each other with great interest, and not a little emotion on Fanny’s part. She had not seen her “guardian,” as she was pleased to call Pen in consequence of his bequest, since the event had occurred which had united her to Mr. Huxter.

“Samuel told me how kind you had been,” she said. “You were always very kind, Mr. Pendennis. And—and I hope your friend is better, who was took ill in Shepherd’s Inn, ma’am.”

“My name is Laura,” said the other, with a blush. “I am—that is, I was—that is, I am Arthur’s sister; and we shall always love you for being so good to him when he was ill. And when we live in the country, I hope we shall see each other. And I shall be always happy to hear of your happiness, Fanny.”

“We are going to do what you and Huxter have done, Fanny.—Where is Huxter? What nice, snug lodgings you’ve got! What a pretty cat!”

While Fanny is answering these questions in reply to Pen, Laura says to herself—“Well, now really! is this the creature about whom we were all so frightened? What could he see in her? She’s a homely little thing, but such manners! Well, she was very kind to him,—bless her for that.”

Mr. Samuel had gone out to meet his Pa. Mrs. Huxter said that the old gentleman was to arrive that day at the Somerset Coffee-house, in the Strand; and Fanny confessed that she was in a sad tremor about the meeting. “If his parent casts him off, what are we to do?” she said. “I shall never pardon myself for bringing ruing on my ’usband’s ’ead. You must intercede for us, Mr. Arthur. If mortal man can, you can bend and influence Mr. Huxter senior.” Fanny still regarded Pen in the light of a superior being, that was evident. No doubt Arthur thought of the past, as he marked the solemn little tragedy-airs and looks, the little ways, the little trepidations, vanities, of the little bride. As soon as the interview was over, entered Messrs. Linton and Blades, who came, of course, to visit Huxter, and brought with them a fine fragrance of tobacco. They had watched the carriage at the baker’s door, and remarked the coronet with awe. They asked of Fanny who was that uncommonly heavy swell who had just driven off? and pronounced the countess was of the right sort. And when they heard that it was Mr. Pendennis and his sister, they remarked that Pen’s father was only a sawbones; and that he gave himself confounded airs; they had been in Huxter’s company on the night of his little altercation with Pen in the Back Kitchen.

Returning homewards through Fleet Street, and as Laura was just stating to Pen’s infinite amusement that Fanny was very well, but that really there was no beauty in her,—there might be, but she could not see it,—as they were locked near Temple Bar, they saw young Huxter returning to his bride. “The governor had arrived; was at the Somerset Coffee-house—was in tolerable good-humour—something about the railway: but he had been afraid to speak about—about that business. Would Mr. Pendennis try it on?”

Pen said he would go and call at that moment upon Mr. Huxter, and see what might be done. Huxter junior would lurk outside whilst that awful interview took place. The coronet on the carriage inspired his soul also with wonder; and old Mr. Huxter himself beheld it with delight, as he looked from the coffee-house window on that Strand which it was always a treat to him to survey.

“And I can afford to give myself a lark, sir,” said Mr. Huxter, shaking hands with Pen. “Of course you know the news? we have got our bill, sir. We shall have our branch line—our shares are up, sir—and we buy your three fields along the Brawl, and put a pretty penny into your pocket, Mr. Pendennis.”

“Indeed!—that was good news.” Pen remembered that there was a letter from Mr. Tatham, at Chambers, these three days; but he had not opened the communication, being interested with other affairs.

“I hope you don’t intend to grow rich, and give up practice,” said Pen. “We can’t lose you at Clavering, Mr. Huxter; though I hear very good accounts of your son. My friend, Dr. Goodenough speaks most highly of his talents. It is hard that a man of your eminence, though, should be kept in a country town.”

“The metropolis would have been my sphere of action, sir,” said Mr. Huxter, surveying the Strand. “But a man takes his business where he finds it; and I succeeded to that of my father.”

“It was my father’s, too,” said Pen. “I sometimes wish I had followed it.”

“You, sir, have taken a more lofty career,” said the old gentleman. “You aspire to the senate: and to literary honours. You wield the poet’s pen, sir, and move in the circles of fashion. We keep an eye upon you at Clavering. We read your name in the lists of the select parties of the nobility. Why, it was only the other day that my wife was remarking how odd it was that at a party at the Earl of Kidderminster’s your name was not mentioned. To what member of the aristocracy may I ask does that equipage belong from which I saw you descend? The Countess Dowager of Rockminster? How is her Ladyship?”

“Her Ladyship is not very well; and when I heard that you were coming to town, I strongly urged her to see you, Mr. Huxter,” Pen said. Old Huxter felt, if he had a hundred votes for Clavering, he would give them all to Pen.

“There is an old friend of yours in the carriage—a Clavering lady, too—will you come out and speak to her?” asked Pen. The old surgeon was delighted to speak to a coroneted carriage in the midst of the full Strand: he ran out bowing and smiling. Huxter junior, dodging about the district, beheld the meeting between his father and Laura, saw the latter put out her hand, and presently, after a little colloquy with Pen, beheld his father actually jump into the carriage, and drive away with Miss Bell.

There was no room for Arthur, who came back, laughing, to the young surgeon, and told him whither his parent was bound. During the whole of the journey, that artful Laura coaxed, and wheedled, and cajoled him so adroitly, that the old gentleman would have granted her anything; and Lady Rockminster achieved the victory over him by complimenting him on his skill, and professing her anxiety to consult him. What were her Ladyship’s symptoms? Should he meet her Ladyship’s usual medical attendant? Mr. Jones was called out of town? He should be delighted to devote his very best energies and experience to her Ladyship’s service.

He was so charmed with his patient, that he wrote home about her to his wife and family; he talked of nothing but Lady Rockminster to Samuel, when that youth came to partake of beefsteak and oyster-sauce and accompany his parent to the play. There was a simple grandeur, a polite urbanity, a high-bred grace about her Ladyship, which he had never witnessed in any woman. Her symptoms did not seem alarming; he had prescribed—Spir: Ammon: Aromat: with a little Spir: Menth: Pip: and orange-flower, which would be all that was necessary.

“Miss Bell seemed to be on the most confidential and affectionate footing with her Ladyship. She was about to form a matrimonial connexion. All young people ought to marry. Such were her Ladyship’s words; and the Countess condescended to ask respecting my own family, and I mentioned you by name to her Ladyship, Sam, my boy. I shall look in to-morrow, when, if the remedies which I have prescribed for her Ladyship have had the effect which I anticipate, I shall probably follow them up by a little Spir: Lavend: Comp:—and so set my noble patient up. What is the theatre which is most frequented by the—by the higher classes in town, hey, Sam! and to what amusement will you take an old country doctor to-night, hey, sir?”

On the next day, when Mr. Huxter called in Jermyn Street at twelve o’clock, Lady Rockminster had not yet left her room, but Miss Bell and Mr. Pendennis were in waiting to receive him. Lady Rockminster had had a most comfortable night, and was getting on as well as possible. How had Mr. Huxter amused himself? at the theatre? with his son? What a capital piece it was, and how charmingly Mrs. O’Leary looked and sang it! and what a good fellow young Huxter was! liked by everybody, an honour to his profession. He has not his father’s manners, I grant you, or that old-world tone which is passing away from us, but a more excellent, sterling fellow never lived. “He ought to practise in the country whatever you do, sir,” said Arthur—“he ought to marry—other people are going to do so—and settle.”

“The very words that her Ladyship used yesterday, Mr. Pendennis. He ought to marry. Sam should marry, sir.”

“The town is full of temptations, sir,” continued Pen. The old gentleman thought of that houri, Mrs. O’Leary.

“There is no better safeguard for a young man than an early marriage with an honest affectionate creature.”

“No better, sir, no better.”

“And love is better than money, isn’t it?”

“Indeed it is,” said Miss Bell.

“I agree with so fair an authority,” said the old gentleman, with a bow.

“And—and suppose, sir,” Pen said, “that I had a piece of news to communicate to you.”

“God bless my soul, Mr. Pendennis! what do you mean?” asked the old gentleman.

“Suppose I had to tell you that a young man, carried away by an irresistible passion for an admirable and most virtuous young creature—whom everybody falls in love with—had consulted the dictates of reason and his heart, and had married. Suppose I were to tell you that that man is my friend; that our excellent, our truly noble friend the Countess Dowager of Rockminster is truly interested about him (and you may fancy what a young man can do in life when THAT family is interested for him); suppose I were to tell you that you know him—that he is here—that he is——”

“Sam married! God bless my soul, sir, you don’t mean that!”

“And to such a nice creature, dear Mr. Huxter.”

“Her Ladyship is charmed with her,” said Pen, telling almost the first fib which he has told in the course of this story.

“Married! the rascal, is he?” thought the old gentleman.

“They will do it, sir,” said Pen; and went and opened the door. Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Huxter issued thence, and both came and knelt down before the old gentleman. The kneeling little Fanny found favour in his sight. There must have been some thing attractive about her, in spite of Laura’s opinion.

“Will never do so any more, sir,” said Sam.

“Get up, sir,” said Mr. Huxter. And they got up, and Fanny came a little nearer and a little nearer still, and looked so pretty and pitiful, that somehow Mr. Huxter found himself kissing the little crying-laughing thing, and feeling as if he liked it.

“What’s your name, my dear?” he said, after a minute of this sport.

“Fanny, papa,” said Mrs. Samuel.

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

LXXVI. Exeunt Omnes

Our characters are all a month older than they were when the last-described adventures and conversations occurred, and a great number of the personages of our story have chanced to reassemble at the little country town where we were first introduced to them. Frederic Lightfoot, formerly maitre d’hotel in the service of Sir Francis Clavering, of Clavering Park, Bart., has begged leave to inform the nobility and gentry of ———shire that he has taken that well-known and comfortable hotel, the Clavering Arms, in Clavering, where he hopes for the continued patronage of the gentlemen and families of the county. “This ancient and well-established house,” Mr. Lightfoot’s manifesto states, “has been repaired and decorated in a style of the greatest comfort. Gentlemen hunting with the Dumplingbeare hounds will find excellent stabling and loose-boxes for horses at the Clavering Arms. A commodious billiard-room has been attached to the hotel, and the cellars have been furnished with the choicest wines and spirits, selected, without regard to expense, by C. L. Commercial gentlemen will find the Clavering Arms a most comfortable place of resort: and the scale of charges has been regulated for all, so as to meet the economical spirit of the present times.”

Indeed, there is a considerable air of liveliness about the old inn. The Clavering arms have been splendidly repainted over the gateway. The coffee-room windows are bright and fresh, and decorated with Christmas holly; the magistrates have met in petty sessions in the card-room of the old Assembly. The farmers’ ordinary is held as of old, and frequented by increased numbers, who are pleased with Mrs. Lightfoot’s cuisine. Her Indian curries and Mulligatawny soup are especially popular: Major Stokes, the respected tenant of Fairoaks Cottage, Captain Glanders, H.P., and other resident gentry, have pronounced in their favour, and have partaken of them more than once both in private and at the dinner of the Clavering Institute, attendant on the incorporation of the reading-room, and when the chief inhabitants of that flourishing little town met together and did justice to the hostess’s excellent cheer. The chair was taken by Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., supported by the esteemed rector, Dr. Portman; the vice chair being ably filled by Barker, Esq. (supported by the Rev. J. Simcoe and the Rev. S. Jowls), the enterprising head of the ribbon factory in Clavering, and chief director of the Clavering and Chatteris Branch of the Great Western Railway, which will be opened in another year, and upon the works of which the engineers and workmen are now busily engaged.

“An interesting event, which is likely to take place in the life of our talented townsman, Arthur Pendennis, Esq., has, we understand, caused him to relinquish the intentions which he had of offering himself as a candidate for our borough: and rumour whispers” (says the Chatteris Champion, Clavering Agriculturist, and Baymouth Fisherman,—that independent county paper, so distinguished for its unswerving principles and loyalty to the British oak, and so eligible a medium for advertisements)—rumour states, says the C. C. C. A. and B. F., “that should Sir Francis Clavering’s failing health oblige him to relinquish his seat in Parliament, he will vacate it in favour of a young gentleman of colossal fortune and related to the highest aristocracy of the empire, who is about to contract a matrimonial alliance with an accomplished and lovely lady, connected by the nearest ties with the respected family at Clavering Park. Lady Clavering and Miss Amory have arrived at the Park for the Christmas holidays; and we understand that a large number of the aristocracy are expected, and that festivities of a peculiarly interesting nature will take place there at the commencement of the new year.”

The ingenious reader will be enabled, by the help of the above announcement, to understand what has taken place during the little break which has occurred in our narrative. Although Lady Rockminster grumbled a little at Laura’s preference for Pendennis over Bluebeard, those who are aware of the latter’s secret will understand that the young girl could make no other choice, and the kind old lady who had constituted herself Miss Bell’s guardian was not ill pleased that she was to fulfil the great purpose in life of young ladies and marry. She informed her maid of the interesting event that very night, and of course Mrs. Beck, who was perfectly aware of every single circumstance, and kept by Martha, of Fairoaks, in the fullest knowledge of what was passing, was immensely surprised and delighted. “Mr. Pendennis’s income is so much; the railroad will give him so much more, he states; Miss Bell has so much, and may probably have a little more one day. For persons in their degree, they will be able to manage very well. And I shall speak to my nephew Pynsent, who I suspect was once rather attached to her,—but of course that was out of the question (‘Oh! of course, my lady; I should think so indeed!’)—not that you know anything whatever about it, or have any business to think at all on the subject,—I shall speak to George Pynsent, who is now chief secretary of the Tape and Sealing Wax Office, and have Mr. Pendennis made something. And, Beck, in the morning you will carry down my compliments to Major Pendennis, and say that I shall pay him a visit at one o’clock.”—“Yes,” muttered the old lady, “the Major must be reconciled, and he must leave his fortune to Laura’s children.”

Accordingly, at one o’clock, the Dowager Lady Rockminster appeared at Major Pendennis’s, who was delighted, as may be imagined, to receive so noble a visitor. The Major had been prepared, if not for the news which her Ladyship was about to give him, at least with the intelligence that Pen’s marriage with Miss Amory was broken off. The young gentleman bethinking him of his uncle, for the first time that day it must be owned, and meeting his new servant in the hall of the hotel, asked after the Major’s health from Mr. Frosch; and then went into the coffee-room of the hotel, where he wrote a half-dozen lines to acquaint his guardian with what had occurred. “Dear uncle,” he said, “if there has been any question between us, it is over now. I went to Tunbridge Wells yesterday, and found that somebody else had carried off the prize about which we were hesitating. Miss A., without any compunction for me, has bestowed herself upon Harry Foker, with his fifteen thousand a year. I came in suddenly upon their loves, and found and left him in possession.

“And you’ll be glad to hear, Tatham writes me, that he has sold three of my fields at Fairoaks to the Railroad Company, at a great figure. I will tell you this, and more when we meet; and am always your affectionate,—A. P.”

“I think I am aware of what you were about to tell me,” the Major said, with a most courtly smile and bow to Pen’s ambassadress. “It was a very great kindness of your Ladyship to think of bringing me the news. How well you look! How very good you are! How very kind you have always been to that young man!”

“It was for the sake of his uncle,” said Lady Rockminster, most politely.

“He has informed me of the state of affairs, and written me a nice note,—yes, a nice note,” continued the old gentleman; “and I find he has had an increase to his fortune,—yes; and, all things considered, I don’t much regret that this affair with Miss Amory is manquee, though I wished for it once, in fact, all things considered, I am very glad of it.”

“We must console him, Major Pendennis,” continued the lady; “we must get him a wife.” The truth then came across the Major’s mind, and he saw for what purpose Lady Rockminster had chosen to assume the office of ambassadress.

It is not necessary to enter into the conversation which ensued, or to tell at any length how her Ladyship concluded a negotiation which, in truth, was tolerably easy. There could be no reason why Pen should not marry according to his own and his mother’s wish; and as for Lady Rockminster, she supported the marriage by intimations which had very great weight with the Major, but of which we shall say nothing, as her ladyship (now, of course, much advanced in years) is still alive, and the family might be angry; and, in fine, the old gentleman was quite overcome by the determined graciousness of the lady, and her fondness for Laura. Nothing, indeed, could be more bland and kind than Lady Rockminster’s whole demeanour, except for one moment when the Major talked about his boy throwing himself away, at which her ladyship broke out into a little speech, in which she made the Major understand, what poor Pen and his friends acknowledge very humbly, that Laura was a thousand times too good for him. Laura was fit to be the wife of a king,—Laura was a paragon of virtue and excellence. And it must be said, that when Major Pendennis found that a lady of the rank of the Countess of Rockminster seriously admired Miss Bell, he instantly began to admire her himself.

So that when Herr Frosch was requested to walk upstairs to Lady Rockminster’s apartments, and inform Miss Bell and Mr. Arthur Pendennis that the Major would receive them, and Laura appeared blushing and happy as she hung on Pen’s arm, the Major gave a shaky hand to one and the other, with unaffected emotion and cordiality, and then went through another salutation to Laura, which caused her to blush still more. Happy blushes! bright eyes beaming with the light of love! The story-teller turns from this group to his young audience, and hopes that one day their eyes may all shine so.

Pen having retreated in the most friendly manner, and the lovely Blanche having bestowed her young affections upon a blushing bridegroom with fifteen thousand a year, there was such an outbreak of happiness in Lady Clavering’s heart and family as the good Begum had not known for many a year, and she and Blanche were on the most delightful terms of cordiality and affection. The ardent Foker pressed onwards the happy day, and was as anxious as might be expected to abridge the period of mourning which had put him in possession of so many charms and amiable qualities, of which he had been only, as it were, the heir-apparent, not the actual owner, until then. The gentle Blanche, everything that her affianced lord could desire, was not averse to gratify the wishes of her fond Henry. Lady Clavering came up from Tunbridge. Milliners and jewellers were set to work and engaged to prepare the delightful paraphernalia of Hymen. Lady Clavering was in such a good humour, that Sir Francis even benefited by it, and such a reconciliation was effected between this pair, that Sir Francis came to London, sate at the head of his own table once more, and appeared tolerably flush of money at his billiard-rooms and gambling-houses again. One day, when Major Pendennis and Arthur went to dine in Grosvenor Place, they found an old acquaintance established in the quality of major-domo, and the gentleman in black, who, with perfect politeness and gravity, offered them their choice of sweet or dry champagne, was no other than Mr. James Morgan. The Chevalier Strong was one of the party; he was in high spirits and condition, and entertained the company with accounts of his amusements abroad.

“It was my Lady who invited me,” said Strong to Arthur, under his voice—“that fellow Morgan looked as black as thunder when I came in. He is about no good here. I will go away first, and wait for you and Major Pendennis at Hyde Park Gate.”

Mr. Morgan helped Major Pendennis to his great-coat when he was quitting the house; and muttered something about having accepted a temporary engagement with the Clavering family.

“I have got a paper of yours, Mr. Morgan,” said the old gentleman.

“Which you can show, if you please, to Sir Francis, sir, and perfectly welcome,” said Mr. Morgan, with downcast eyes. “I’m very much obliged to you, Major Pendennis, and if I can pay you for all your kindness I will.”

Arthur overheard the sentence, and saw the look of hatred which accompanied it, suddenly cried out that he had forgotten his handkerchief, and ran upstairs to the drawing-room again. Foker was still there; still lingering about his siren. Pen gave the siren a look full of meaning, and we suppose that the siren understood meaning looks, for when, after finding the veracious handkerchief of which he came in quest, he once more went out, the siren, with a laughing voice, said, “Oh, Arthur—Mr. Pendennis—I want you to tell dear Laura something!” and she came out to the door.

“What is it?” she asked, shutting the door.

“Have you told Harry? Do you know that villain Morgan knows all?”

“I know it,” she said.

“Have you told Harry?”

“No, no,” she said. “You won’t betray me?”

“Morgan will,” said Pen.

“No, he won’t,” said Blanche. “I have promised him—n’importe. Wait until after our marriage—Oh, until after our marriage—Oh, how wretched I am,” said the girl, who had been all smiles, and grace, and gaiety during the evening.

Arthur said, “I beg and implore you to tell Harry. Tell him now. It is no fault of yours. He will pardon you anything. Tell him to-night.”

“And give her this—Il est la—with my love, please; and I beg your pardon for calling you back; and if she will be at Madame Crinoline’s at half-past three, and if Lady Rockminster can spare her, I should so like to drive with her in the park;” and she went in, singing and kissing her little hand, as Morgan the velvet-footed came up the carpeted stair.

Pen heard Blanche’s piano breaking out into brilliant music as he went down to join his uncle; and they walked away together. Arthur briefly told him what he had done. “What was to be done?” he asked.

“What is to be done, begad?” said the old gentleman. “What is to be done but to leave it alone? Begad, let us be thankful,” said the old fellow, with a shudder, “that we are out of the business, and leave it to those it concerns.”

“I hope to Heaven she’ll tell him,” said Pen.

“Begad, she’ll take her own course,” said the old man. “Miss Amory is a dev’lish wide-awake girl, sir, and must play her own cards; and I’m doosid glad you are out of it—doosid glad, begad. Who’s this smoking? Oh, it’s Mr. Strong again. He wants to put in his oar, I suppose. I tell you, don’t meddle in the business, Arthur.”

Strong began once or twice, as if to converse upon the subject, but the Major would not hear a word. He remarked on the moonlight on Apsley House, the weather, the cabstands—anything but that subject. He bowed stiffly to Strong, and clung to his nephew’s arm, as he turned down St. James’s Street, and again cautioned Pen to leave the affair alone. “It had like to have cost you so much, sir, that you may take my advice,” he said.

When Arthur came out of the hotel, Strong’s cloak and cigar were visible a few doors off. The jolly Chevalier laughed as they met. “I’m an old soldier, too,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you, Pendennis. I have heard of all that has happened, and all the chops and changes that have taken place during my absence. I congratulate you on your marriage, and I congratulate you on your escape, too,—you understand me. It was not my business to speak, but I know this, that a certain party is as arrant a little—well—well, never mind what. You acted like a man and a trump, and are well out of it.”

“I have no reason to complain,” said Pen. “I went back to beg and entreat poor Blanche to tell Foker all: I hope, for her sake, she will; but I fear not. There is but one policy, Strong, there is but one.”

“And lucky he that can stick to it,” said the Chevalier. “That rascal Morgan means mischief. He has been lurking about our chambers for the last two months: he has found out that poor mad devil Amory’s secret. He has been trying to discover where he was: he has been pumping Mr. Bolton, and making old Costigan drunk several times. He bribed the Inn porter to tell him when we came back: and he has got into Clavering’s service on the strength of his information. He will get very good pay for it, mark my words, the villain.”

“Where is Amory?” asked Pen.

“At Boulogne, I believe. I left him there, and warned him not to come back. I have broken with him, after a desperate quarrel, such as one might have expected with such a madman. And I’m glad to think that he is in my debt now, and that I have been the means of keeping him out of more harms than one.”

“He has lost all his winnings, I suppose,” said Pen.

“No: he is rather better than when he went away, or was a fortnight ago. He had extraordinary luck at Baden: broke the bank several nights, and was the fable of the place. He lied himself there with a fellow by the name of Bloundell, who gathered about him a society of all sorts of sharpers, male and female, Russians, Germans, French, English. Amory got so insolent, that I was obliged to thrash him one day within an inch of his life. I couldn’t help myself; the fellow has plenty of pluck, and I had nothing for it but to hit out.”

“And did he call you out?” said Pen.

“You think if I had shot him I should have done nobody any harm? No, sir; I waited for his challenge, but it never came and the next time I met him he begged my pardon, and said, ‘Strong, I beg your pardon; you whopped me and you served me right.’ I shook hands: but I couldn’t live with him after that. I paid him what I owed him the night before,” said Strong with a blush, “I pawned everything to pay him, and then I went with my last ten florins, and had a shy at the roulette. If I had lost, I should have let him shoot me in the morning. I was weary of my life. By Jove, sir, isn’t it a shame that a man like me, who may have had a few bills out, but who never deserted a friend, or did an unfair action, shouldn’t be able to turn his hand to anything to get bread? I made a good night, sir, at roulette, and I’ve done with that. I’m going into the wine business. My wife’s relations live at Cadiz. I intend to bring over Spanish wine and hams; there’s a fortune to be made by it, sir,—a fortune—here’s my card. If you want any sherry or hams, recollect Ned Strong is your man.” And the Chevalier pulled out a handsome card, stating that Strong and Company, Shepherd’s Inn, were sole agents of the celebrated Diamond Manzanilla of the Duke of Garbanzos, Grandee of Spain of the First Class; and of the famous Toboso hams, fed on acorns only in the country of Don Quixote. “Come and taste ’em, sir,—come and try ’em at my chambers. You see, I’ve an eye to business, and by Jove this time I’ll succeed.”

Pen laughed as he took the card. “I don’t know whether I shall be allowed to go to bachelors’ parties,” he said. “You know I’m going to——”

“But you must have sherry, sir. You must have sherry.”

“I will have it from you, depend on it,” said the other. “And I think you are very well out of your other partnership. That worthy Altamont and his daughter correspond, I hear,” Pen added after a pause.

“Yes; she wrote him the longest rigmarole letters, that I used to read: the sly little devil; and he answered under cover to Mrs. Bonner. He was for carrying her off the first day or two, and nothing would content him but having back his child. But she didn’t want to come, as you may fancy; and he was not very eager about it.” Here the Chevalier burst out in a laugh. “Why, sir, do you know what was the cause of our quarrel and boxing match? There was a certain widow at Baden, a Madame la Baronne de la Cruche-cassee, who was not much better than himself, and whom the scoundrel wanted to marry; and would, but that I told her he was married already. I don’t think that she was much better than he was. I saw her on the pier at Boulogne the day I came to England.”

And now we have brought up our narrative to the point, whither the announcement in the Chatteris Champion had already conducted us.

It wanted but very, very few days before that blissful one when Foker should call Blanche his own; the Clavering folks had all pressed to see the most splendid new carriage in the whole world, which was standing in the coach-house at the Clavering Arms; and shown, in grateful return for drink, commonly, by Mr. Foker’s head-coachman. Madame Fribsby was occupied in making some lovely dresses for the tenants’ daughters, who were to figure as a sort of bridesmaids’ chorus at the breakfast and marriage ceremony. And immense festivities were to take place at the Park upon this delightful occasion.

“Yes, Mr. Huxter, yes; a happy tenantry, its country’s pride, will assemble in the baronial hall, where the beards will wag all. The ox shall be slain, and the cup they’ll drain; and the bells shall peal quite genteel; and my father-in-law, with the tear of sensibility bedewing his eye, shall bless us at his baronial porch. That shall be the order of proceedings, I think, Mr. Huxter; and I hope we shall see you and your lovely bride by her husband’s side; and what will you please to drink, sir? Mrs. Lightfoot, madam, you will give to my excellent friend and body-surgeon, Mr. Huxter, Mr. Samuel Huxter, M.R.C.S., every refreshment that your hostel affords, and place the festive amount to my account; and Mr. Lightfoot, sir, what will you take? though you’ve had enough already, I think; yes, ha.”

So spoke Harry Foker in the bar of the Clavering Arms. He had apartments at that hotel, and had gathered a circle of friends round him there. He treated all to drink who came. He was hail-fellow with every man. He was so happy! He danced round Madame Fribsby, Mrs. Lightfoot’s great ally, as she sate pensive in the bar. He consoled Mrs. Lightfoot, who had already begun to have causes of matrimonial disquiet; for the truth must be told, that young Lightfoot, having now the full command of the cellar, had none over his own unbridled desires, and was tippling and tipsy from morning till night. And a piteous sight it was for his fond wife to behold the big youth reeling about the yard and coffee-room, or drinking with the farmers and tradesmen his own neat wines and carefully selected stock of spirits.

When he could find time, Mr. Morgan the butler came from the Park, and took a glass at the expense of the landlord of the Clavering Arms. He watched poor Lightfoot’s tipsy vagaries with savage sneers. Mrs. Lightfoot felt always doubly uncomfortable when her unhappy spouse was under his comrade’s eye. But a few months married, and to think he had got to this! Madame Fribsby could feel for her. Madame Fribsby could tell her stories of men every bit as bad. She had had her own woes too, and her sad experience of men. So it is that nobody seems happy altogether; and that there’s bitters, as Mr. Foker remarked, in the cup of every man’s life. And yet there did not seem to be any in his, the honest young fellow! It was brimming over with happiness and good-humour.

Mr. Morgan was constant in his attentions to Foker. “And yet I don’t like him somehow,” said the candid young man to Mrs. Lightfoot. “He always seems as if he was measuring me for my coffin somehow. Pa-in-law’s afraid of him; pa-in-law’s, ahem! never mind, but ma-in-law’s a trump, Mrs. Lightfoot.”

“Indeed my Lady was,” and Mrs. Lightfoot owned, with a sigh, that perhaps it had been better for her had she never left her mistress.

“No, I do not like thee, Dr. Fell; the reason why I cannot tell,” continued Mr. Foker; “and he wants to be taken as my head man. Blanche wants me to take him. Why does Miss Amory like him so?”

“Did Miss Blanche like him so?” The notion seemed to disturb Mrs. Lightfoot very much; and there came to this worthy landlady another cause for disturbance. A letter, bearing the Boulogne postmark, was brought to her one morning, and she and her husband were quarrelling over it as Foker passed down the stairs by the bar, on his way to the Park. His custom was to breakfast there, and bask a while in the presence of Armida; then, as the company of Clavering tired him exceedingly, and he did not care for sporting, he would return for an hour or two to billiards and the society of the Clavering Arms; then it would be time to ride with Miss Amory, and, after dining with her, he left her and returned modestly to his inn.

Lightfoot and his wife were quarrelling over the letter. What was that letter from abroad? Why was she always having letters from abroad? Who wrote ’em?—he would know. He didn’t believe it was her brother. It was no business of his? It was a business of his; and, with a curse, he seized hold of his wife, and dashed at her pocket for the letter.

The poor woman gave a scream; and said, “Well, take it.” Just as her husband seized on the letter, and Mr. Foker entered at the door, she gave another scream at seeing him, and once more tried to seize the paper. Lightfoot opened it, shaking her away, and an enclosure dropped down on the breakfast-table.

“Hands off, man alive!” cried little Harry, springing in. “Don’t lay hands on a woman, sir. The man that lays his hand upon a woman, save in the way of kindness, is a—hallo! it’s a letter for Miss Amory. What’s this, Mrs. Lightfoot?”

Mrs. Lightfoot began, in piteous tones of reproach to her husband,—“You unmanly! to treat a woman so who took you off the street. Oh, you coward, to lay your hand upon your wife! Why did I marry you? Why did I leave my Lady for you? Why did I spend eight hundred pound in fitting up this house that you might drink and guzzle?”

“She gets letters, and she won’t tell me who writes letters,” said Mr. Lightfoot, with a muzzy voice; “it’s a family affair, sir. Will you take anything, sir?”

“I will take this letter to Miss Amory, as I am going to the Park,” said Foker, turning very pale; and taking it up from the table, which was arranged for the poor landlady’s breakfast, he went away.

“He’s comin’—dammy, who’s a-comin’? Who’s J. A., Mrs. Lightfoot—curse me, who’s J. A.?” cried the husband.

Mrs. Lightfoot cried out, “Be quiet, you tipsy brute, do,” and running to her bonnet and shawl, threw them on, saw Mr. Foker walking down the street, took the by-lane which skirts it, and ran as quickly as she could to the lodge-gate, Clavering Park. Foker saw a running figure before him, but it was lost when he got to the lodge-gate. He stopped and asked, “Who was that who had just come in? Mrs. Bonner, was it?” He reeled almost in his walk: the trees swam before him. He rested once or twice against the trunks of the naked limes.

Lady Clavering was in the breakfast-room with her son, and her husband yawning over his paper. “Good morning, Harry,” said the Begum. “Here’s letters, lots of letters; Lady Rockminster will be here on Tuesday instead of Monday, and Arthur and the Major come to-day; and Laura is to go to Dr. Portman’s, and come to church from there: and—what’s the matter, my dear? What makes you so pale, Harry?”

“Where is Blanche!” asked Harry, in a sickening voice—“not down yet?”

“Blanche is always the last,” said the boy, eating muffins; “she’s a regular dawdle, she is. When you’re not here, she lays in bed till lunch-time.”

“Be quiet, Frank,” said the mother.

Blanche came down presently, looking pale, and with rather an eager look towards Foker; then she advanced and kissed her mother, and had a face beaming with her very best smiles on when she greeted Harry.

“How do you do, sir?” she said, and put out both her hands.

“I’m ill,” answered Harry. “I—I’ve brought a letter for you, Blanche.”

“A letter, and from whom is it, pray? Voyons,” she said.

“I don’t know—I should like to know,” said Foker.

“How can I tell until I see it?” asked Blanche.

“Has Mrs. Bonner not told you?” he said, with a shaking voice;—“there’s some secret. You give her the letter, Lady Clavering.”

Lady Clavering, wondering, took the letter from poor Foker’s shaking hand, and looked at the superscription. As she looked at it, she too began to shake in every limb, and with a scared face she dropped the letter, and running up to Frank, clutched the boy to her, and burst out with a sob—“Take that away—it’s impossible, it’s impossible.”

“What is the matter?” cried Blanche, with rather a ghastly smile; “the letter is only from—from a poor pensioner and relative of ours.”

“It’s not true, it’s not true,” screamed Lady Clavering. “No, my Frank—is it, Clavering?”

Blanche had taken up the letter, and was moving with it towards the fire, but Foker ran to her and clutched her arm—“I must see that letter,” he said; “give it me. You shan’t burn it.”

“You—you shall not treat Miss Amory so in my house,” cried the Baronet; “give back the letter, by Jove!”

“Read it—and look at her,” Blanche cried, pointing to her mother; “it—it was for her I kept the secret! Read it, cruel man!”

And Foker opened and read the letter:—

“I have not wrote, my darling Betsy, this three weeks; but this is to give her a father’s blessing, and I shall come down pretty soon as quick as my note, and intend to see the ceremony, and my son-in-law. I shall put up at Bonner’s. I have had a pleasant autumn, and am staying here at an hotel where there is good company, and which is kep’ in good style. I don’t know whether I quite approve of your throwing over Mr. P. for Mr. F., and don’t think Foker’s such a pretty name, and from your account of him he seems a muff, and not a beauty. But he has got the rowdy, which is the thing. So no more, my dear little Betsy, till we meet, from your affectionate father, J. Amory Altamont.”

“Read it, Lady Clavering; it is too late to keep it from you now,” said poor Foker; and the distracted woman, having cast her eyes over it, again broke out into hysterical screams, and convulsively grasped her son.

“They have made an outcast of you, my boy,” she said. “They’ve dishonoured your old mother; but I’m innocent, Frank; before God, I’m innocent. I didn’t know this, Mr. Foker; indeed, indeed, I didn’t.”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” said Foker, going up and kissing her hand.

“Generous, generous Harry!” cried out Blanche, in an ecstasy. But he withdrew his hand, which was upon her side, and turned from her with a quivering lip. “That’s different,” he says.

“It was for her sake—for her sake, Harry.” Again Miss Amory is in an attitude.

“There was something to be done for mine,” said Foker. “I would have taken you, whatever you were. Everything’s talked about in London. I knew that your father had come to—to grief. You don’t think it was—it was for your connexion I married you? D—— it all! I’ve loved you with all my heart and soul for two years, and you’ve been playing with me, and cheating me,” broke out the young man, with a cry. “Oh, Blanche, Blanche, it’s a hard thing, a hard thing!” and he covered his face with his hands, and sobbed behind them.

Blanche thought, “Why didn’t I tell him that night when Arthur warned me?”

“Don’t refuse her, Harry,” cried out Lady Clavering. “Take her, take everything I have. It’s all hers, you know, at my death. This boy’s disinherited.”—(Master Frank, who had been looking as scared at the strange scene, here burst into a loud cry.) “Take every shilling. Give me just enough to live, and to go and hide my head with this child, and to fly from both. Oh, they’ve both been bad, bad men. Perhaps he’s here now. Don’t let me see him. Clavering, you coward, defend me from him.”

Clavering started up at this proposal. “You ain’t serious, Jemima? You don’t mean that?” he said. “You won’t throw me and Frank over? I didn’t know it, so help me ——. Foker, I’d no more idea of it than the dead—until the fellow came and found me out, the d——d escaped convict scoundrel.”

“The what?” said Foker. Blanche gave a scream.

“Yes,” screamed out the Baronet in his turn, “yes, a d——d runaway convict—a fellow that forged his father-in-law’s name—a d——d attorney, and killed a fellow in Botany Bay, hang him—and ran into the Bush, curse him; I wish he’d died there. And he came to me, a good six years ago, and robbed me; and I’ve been ruining myself to keep him, the infernal scoundrel! And Pendennis knows it, and Strong knows it, and that d——d Morgan knows it, and she knows it, ever so long; and I never would tell it, never: and I kept it from my wife.”

“And you saw him, and you didn’t kill him, Clavering, you coward?” said the wife of Amory. “Come away, Frank; your father’s a coward. I am dishonoured, but I’m your old mother, and you’ll—you’ll love me, won’t you?”

Blanche, eploree, went up to her mother; but Lady Clavering shrank from her with a sort of terror. “Don’t touch me,” she said; “you’ve no heart; you never had. I see all now. I see why that coward was going to give up his place in Parliament to Arthur; yes, that coward! and why you threatened that you would make me give you half Frank’s fortune. And when Arthur offered to marry you without a shilling, because he wouldn’t rob my boy, you left him, and you took poor Harry. Have nothing to do with her, Harry. You’re good, you are. Don’t marry that—that convict’s daughter. Come away, Frank, my darling; come to your poor old mother. We’ll hide ourselves; but we’re honest, yes, we are honest.”

All this while a strange feeling of exultation had taken possession of Blanche’s mind. That month with poor Harry had been a weary month to her. All his fortune and splendour scarcely sufficed to make the idea of himself supportable. She was wearied of his simple ways, and sick of coaxing and cajoling him.

“Stay, mamma; stay, madam!” she cried out, with a gesture which was always appropriate, though rather theatrical; “I have no heart, have I? I keep the secret of my mother’s shame. I give up my rights to my half-brother and my bastard brother, yes, my rights and my fortune. I don’t betray my father, and for this I have no heart. I’ll have my rights now, and the laws of my country shall give them to me. I appeal to my country’s laws—yes, my country’s laws! The persecuted one returns this day. I desire to go to my father.” And the little lady swept round her hand, and thought that she was a heroine.

“You will, will you?” cried out Clavering, with one of his usual oaths. “I’m a magistrate, and dammy, I’ll commit him. Here’s a chaise coming; perhaps it’s him. Let him come.”

A chaise was indeed coming up the avenue; and the two women shrieked each their loudest, expecting at that moment to see Altamont arrive.

The door opened, and Mr. Morgan announced Major Pendennis and Mr. Pendennis, who entered, and found all parties engaged in this fierce quarrel. A large screen fenced the breakfast-room from the hall; and it is probable that, according to his custom, Mr. Morgan had taken advantage of the screen to make himself acquainted with all that occurred.

It had been arranged on the previous day that the young people should ride; and at the appointed hour in the afternoon, Mr. Foker’s horses arrived from the Clavering Arms. But Miss Blanche did not accompany him on this occasion. Pen came out and shook hands with him on the door-steps; and Harry Foker rode away, followed by his groom in mourning. The whole transactions which have occupied the most active part of our history were debated by the parties concerned during those two or three hours. Many counsels had been given, stories told, and compromises suggested; and at the end, Harry Foker rode away, with a sad “God bless you!” from Pen. There was a dreary dinner at Clavering Park, at which the lately installed butler did not attend; and the ladies were both absent. After dinner, Pen said, “I will walk down to Clavering and see if he is come.” And he walked through the dark avenue, across the bridge and road by his own cottage,—the once quiet and familiar fields of which were flaming with the kilns and forges of the artificers employed on the new railroad works; and so he entered the town, and made for the Clavering Arms.

It was past midnight when he returned to Clavering Park. He was exceedingly pale and agitated. “Is Lady Clavering up yet?” he asked. Yes, she was in her own sitting-room. He went up to her, and there found the poor lady in a piteous state of tears and agitation.

“It is I,—Arthur,” he said, looking in; and entering, he took her hand very affectionately and kissed it. “You were always the kindest of friends to me, dear Lady Clavering,” he said. “I love you very much. I have got some news for you.”

“Don’t call me by that name,” she said, pressing his hand. “You were always a good boy, Arthur; and it’s kind of you to come now,—very kind. You sometimes look very like your ma, my dear.”

“Dear good Lady Clavering,” Arthur repeated, with particular emphasis, “something very strange has happened.”

“Has anything happened to him?” gasped Lady Clavering. “Oh, it’s horrid to think I should be glad of it—horrid!”

“He is well. He has been and is gone, my dear lady. Don’t alarm yourself;—he is gone, and you are Lady Clavering still.”

“Is it true? what he sometimes said to me,” she screamed out,—“that he——”

“He was married before he married you,” said Pen. “He has confessed it to-night. He will never come back.” There came another shriek from Lady Clavering, as she flung her arms round Pen, and kissed him, and burst into tears on his shoulder.

What Pen had to tell, through a multiplicity of sobs and interruptions, must be compressed briefly, for behold our prescribed limit is reached, and our tale is coming to its end. With the Branch Coach from the railroad, which had succeeded the old Alacrity and Perseverance, Amory arrived, and was set down at the Clavering Arms. He ordered his dinner at the place under his assumed name of Altamont; and, being of a jovial turn, he welcomed the landlord, who was nothing loth, to a share of his wine. Having extracted from Mr. Lightfoot all the news regarding the family at the Park, and found, from examining his host, that Mrs. Lightfoot, as she said, had kept his counsel, he called for more wine of Mr. Lightfoot; and at the end of this symposium, both, being greatly excited, went into Mrs. Lightfoot’s bar.

She was there taking tea with her friend, Madame Fribsby; and Lightfoot was by this time in such a happy state as not to be surprised at anything which might occur, so that, when Altamont shook hands with Mrs. Lightfoot as an old acquaintance, the recognition did not appear to him to be in the least strange, but only a reasonable cause for further drinking. The gentlemen partook then of brandy-and-water, which they offered to the ladies, not heeding the terrified looks of one or the other.

Whilst they were so engaged, at about six o’clock in the evening, Mr. Morgan, Sir Francis Clavering’s new man, came in, and was requested to drink. He selected his favourite beverage, and the parties engaged in general conversation.

After a while Mr. Lightfoot began to doze. Mr. Morgan had repeatedly given hints to Mrs. Fribsby to quit the premises; but that lady, strangely fascinated, and terrified it would seem, or persuaded by Mrs. Lightfoot not to go, kept her place. Her persistence occasioned much annoyance to Mr. Morgan, who vented his displeasure in such language as gave pain to Mrs. Lightfoot, and caused Mr. Altamont to say, that he was a rum customer, and not polite to the sex.

The altercation between the two gentlemen became very painful to the women, especially to Mrs. Lightfoot, who did everything to soothe Mr. Morgan; and, under pretence of giving a pipe-light to the stranger, she handed him a paper on which she had privily written the words, “He knows you. Go.” There may have been something suspicious in her manner of handing, or in her guest’s of reading, the paper; for when he got up a short time afterwards, and said he would go to bed, Morgan rose too, with a laugh, and said it was too early to go to bed.

The stranger then said he would go to his bedroom. Morgan said he would show him the way.

At this the guest said, “Come up. I’ve got a brace of pistols up there to blow out the brains of any traitor or skulking spy,” and glared so fiercely upon Morgan, that the latter, seizing hold of Lightfoot by the collar, and waking him, said, “John Amory, I arrest you in the Queen’s name. Stand by me, Lightfoot. This capture is worth a thousand pounds.”

He put forward his hand as if to seize his prisoner, but the other, doubling his fist, gave Morgan with his left hand so fierce a blow on the chest, that it knocked him back behind Mr. Lightfoot. That gentleman, who was athletic and courageous, said he would knock his guest’s head off, and prepared to do so, as the stranger, tearing off his coat, and cursing both of his opponents, roared to them to come on.

But with a piercing scream Mrs. Lightfoot flung herself before her husband, whilst with another and louder shriek Madame Fribsby ran to the stranger, and calling out “Armstrong, Johnny Armstrong!” seized hold of his naked arm, on which a blue tattooing of a heart and M. F. were visible.

The ejaculation of Madame Fribsby seemed to astound and sober the stranger. He looked down upon her, and cried out, “it’s Polly, by Jove.”

Mrs. Fribsby continued to exclaim, “This is not Amory. This is Johnny Armstrong, my wicked—wicked husband, married to me in St. Martin’s Church, mate on board an Indiaman, and he left me two months after, the wicked wretch. This is John Armstrong—here’s the mark on his arm which he made for me.”

The stranger said, “I am John Armstrong, sure enough, Polly. I’m John Armstrong, Amory, Altamont—and let ’em all come on, and try what they can do against a British sailor. Hurray, who’s for it?”

Morgan still called out, “Arrest him!” But Mrs. Lightfoot said, “Arrest him! arrest you, you mean spy! What! stop the marriage and ruin my lady, and take away the Clavering Arms from us?”

“Did he say he’d take away the Clavering Arms from us?” asked Mr. Lightfoot, turning round. “Hang him, I’ll throttle him.”

“Keep him, darling, till the coach passes to the up train. It’ll be here now directly.”

“D—— him, I’ll choke him if he stirs,” said Lightfoot. And so they kept Morgan until the coach came, and Mr. Amory or Armstrong went away back to London.

Morgan had followed him: but of this event Arthur Pendennis did not inform Lady Clavering, and left her invoking blessings upon him at her son’s door, going to kiss him as he was asleep. It had been a busy day.

We have to chronicle the events of but one day more, and that was a day when Mr. Arthur, attired in a new hat, a new blue frock-coat and blue handkerchief, in a new fancy waistcoat, new boots, and new shirt-studs (presented by the Right Honourable the Countess Dowager of Rockminster), made his appearance at a solitary breakfast-table, in Clavering Park, where he could scarce eat a single morsel of food. Two letters were laid by his worship’s plate; and he chose to open the first, which was in a round clerk-like hand, in preference to the second more familiar superscription.

Note 1 ran as follows:—

“Garbanzos Wine Company, Shepherd’s Inn.—Monday.

“My Dear Pendennis,—In congratulating you heartily upon the event which is to make you happy for life, I send my very kindest remembrances to Mrs. Pendennis, whom I hope to know even longer than I have already known her. And when I call her attention to the fact, that one of the most necessary articles to her husband’s comfort is pure sherry, I know I shall have her for a customer for your worship’s sake.

“But I have to speak to you of other than my own concerns. Yesterday afternoon, a certain J. A. arrived at my chambers from Clavering, which he had left under circumstances of which you are doubtless now aware. In spite of our difference, I could not but give him food and shelter (and he partook freely both of the Garbanzos Amontillado and the Toboso ham), and he told me what had happened to him, and many other surprising adventures. The rascal married at sixteen, and has repeatedly since performed that ceremony—in Sydney, in New Zealand, in South America, in Newcastle, he says, first, before he knew our poor friend the milliner. He is a perfect Don Juan.

“And it seemed as if the commendatore had at last overtaken him, for, as we were at our meal, there came three heavy knocks at my outer door, which made our friend start. I have sustained a siege or two here, and went to my usual place to reconnoitre. Thank my stars I have not a bill out in the world, and besides, those gentry do not come in that way. I found that it was your uncle’s late valet, Morgan, and a policeman (I think a sham policeman), and they said they had a warrant to take the person of John Armstrong, alias Amory, alias Altamont, a runaway convict, and threatened to break in the oak.

“Now, sir, in my own days of captivity I had discovered a little passage along the gutter into Bows and Costigan’s window, and I sent Jack Alias along this covered way, not without terror of his life, for it had grown very cranky; and then, after a parley, let in Mons. Morgan and friend.

“The rascal had been instructed about that covered way, for he made for the room instantly, telling the policeman to go downstairs and keep the gate; and he charged up my little staircase as if he had known the premises. As he was going out of the window we heard a voice that you know, from Bows’s garret, saying, ‘Who are ye, and hwhat the divvle are ye at? You’d betther leave the gutther; bedad there’s a man killed himself already.’

“And as Morgan, crossing over and looking into the darkness, was trying to see whether this awful news was true, he took a broomstick, and with a vigorous dash broke down the pipe of communication—and told me this morning, with great glee, that he was reminded of that ’aisy sthratagem by remembering his dorling Emilie, when she acted the pawrt of Cora in the Plee—and by the bridge in Pezawro, bedad.’ I wish that scoundrel Morgan had been on the bridge when the General tried his ‘sthratagem.’

“If I hear more of Jack Alias I will tell you. He has got plenty of money still, and I wanted him to send some to our poor friend the milliner; but the scoundrel laughed, and said he had no more than he wanted, but offered to give anybody a lock of his hair. Farewell—be happy! and believe me always truly yours, E. Strong.”

“And now for the other letter,” said Pen. “Dear old fellow!” and he kissed the seal before he broke it.

“Warrington, Tuesday.

“I must not let the day pass over without saying a God bless you, to both of you. May Heaven make you happy, dear Arthur, and dear Laura. I think, Pen, that you have the best wife in the world; and pray that, as such, you will cherish her and tend her. The chambers will be lonely without you, dear Pen; but if I am tired, I shall have a new home to go to in the house of my brother and sister. I am practising in the nursery here, in order to prepare for the part of Uncle George. Farewell! make your wedding tour, and come back to your affectionate G. W.”

Pendennis and his wife read this letter together after Doctor Portman’s breakfast was over, and the guests were gone; and when the carriage was waiting amidst the crowd at the Doctor’s outer gate. But the wicket led into the churchyard of St. Mary’s, where the bells were pealing with all their might, and it was here, over Helen’s green grass, that Arthur showed his wife George’s letter. For which of those two—for grief was it or for happiness, that Laura’s tears abundantly fell on the paper? And once more, in the presence of the sacred dust, she kissed and blessed her Arthur.

There was only one marriage on that day at Clavering Church; for in spite of Blanche’s sacrifices for her dearest mother, honest Harry Foker could not pardon the woman who had deceived her husband, and justly argued that she would deceive him again. He went to the Pyramids and Syria, and there left his malady behind him, and returned with a fine beard, and a supply of tarbooshes and nargillies, with which he regales all his friends. He lives splendidly, and, through Pen’s mediation, gets his wine from the celebrated vintages of the Duke of Garbanzos.

As for poor Cos, his fate has been mentioned in an early part of this story. No very glorious end could be expected to such a career. Morgan is one of the most respectable men in the parish of St. James’s, and in the present political movement has pronounced himself like a man and a Briton. And Bows,—on the demise of Mr. Piper, who played the organ at Clavering, little Mrs. Sam Hunter, who has the entire command of Doctor Portman, brought Bows down from London to contest the organ-loft, and her candidate carried the chair. When Sir Francis Clavering quitted this worthless life, the same little indefatigable canvasser took the borough by storm, and it is now represented by Arthur Pendennis, Esq. Blanche Amory, it is well known, married at Paris, and the saloons of Madame la Comtesse de Montmorenci de Valentinois were amongst the most suivis of that capital. The duel between the Count and the young and fiery Representative of the Mountain, Alcide de Mirobo, arose solely from the latter questioning at the Club the titles borne by the former nobleman. Madame de Montmorenci de Valentinois travelled after the adventure: and Bungay bought her poems, and published them, with the Countess’s coronet emblazoned on the Countess’s work.

Major Pendennis became very serious in his last days, and was never so happy as when Laura was reading to him with her sweet voice, or listening to his stories. For this sweet lady is the friend of the young and the old: and her life is always passed in making other lives happy.

“And what sort of a husband would this Pendennis be?” many a reader will ask, doubting the happiness of such a marriage and the fortune of Laura. The querists, if they meet her, are referred to that lady herself, who, seeing his faults and wayward moods—seeing and owning that there are men better than he—loves him always with the most constant affection. His children or their mother have never heard a harsh word from him; and when his fits of moodiness and solitude are over, welcome him back with a never-failing regard and confidence. His friend is his friend still,—entirely heart-whole. That malady is never fatal to a sound organ. And George goes through his part of godpapa perfectly, and lives alone. If Mr. Pen’s works have procured him more reputation than has been acquired by his abler friend, whom no one knows, George lives contented without the fame. If the best men do not draw the great prizes in life, we know it has been so settled by the Ordainer of the lottery. We own, and see daily, how the false and worthless live and prosper, while the good are called away, and the dear and young perish untimely,—we perceive in every man’s life the maimed happiness, the frequent falling, the bootless endeavour, the struggle of Right and Wrong, in which the strong often succumb and the swift fail: we see flowers of good blooming in foul places, as, in the most lofty and splendid fortunes, flaws of vice and meanness, and stains of evil; and, knowing how mean the best of us is, let us give a hand of charity to Arthur Pendennis, with all his faults and shortcomings, who does not claim to be a hero, but only a man and a brother.

THE END

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