after this, upon her birth-day, which happened in the month of June, Miss Amory received from “a friend” a parcel containing an enormous brass-inlaid writing-desk, in which there was a set of amethysts, the most hideous eyes ever looked upon–a musical snuff-box, and two keepsakes of the year before last, and accompanied with a couple of gown-pieces of the most astounding colors, the receipt of which goods made the Sylphide laugh and wonder immoderately. Now it is a fact that Colonel Altamont had made a purchase of cigars and French silks from some duffers in Fleet-street about this period; and he was found by Strong in the open Auction-room, in Cheapside, having invested some money in two desks, several pairs of richly-plated candlesticks, a dinner épergne and a bagatelle-board. The dinner épergne remained at chambers and figured at the banquets there, which the colonel gave pretty freely. It seemed beautiful in his eyes, until Jack Holt said it looked as if it had been taken in “a bill.” And Jack Holt certainly knew.
The dinners were pretty frequent at chambers, and Sir Francis Clavering condescended to partake of them constantly. His own house was shut up; the successor of Mirobolant, who had sent in his bills so prematurely, was dismissed by the indignant Lady Clavering; the luxuriance of the establishment was greatly pruned and reduced. One of the large footmen was cashiered, upon which the other gave warning, not liking to serve without his mate, or in a family where on’y one footman was kep’. General and severe economical reforms were practiced by the Begum in her whole household, in consequence of the extravagance of which her graceless husband had been guilty. The major, as her ladyship’s friend; Strong, on the part of poor Clavering; her ladyship’s lawyer, and the honest Begum herself, executed these reforms with promptitude and severity. After paying the baronet’s debts, the settlement of which occasioned considerable public scandal, and caused the baronet to sink even lower in the world’s estimation than he had been before, Lady Clavering quitted London for Tunbridge Wells in high dudgeon, refusing to see her reprobate husband, whom nobody pitied. Clavering remained in London patiently, by no means anxious to meet his wife’s just indignation, and sneaked in and out of the House of Commons, whence he and Captain Raff and Mr. Marker would go to have a game at billiards and a cigar: or showed in the sporting public-houses; or might be seen lurking about Lincoln’s Inn and his lawyers’, where the principals kept him for hours waiting, and the clerks winked at each other, as he sat in their office. No wonder that he relished the dinners at Shepherd’s Inn, and was perfectly resigned there: resigned? he was so happy nowhere else; he was wretched among his equals, who scorned him; but here he was the chief guest at the table, where they continually addressed him with “Yes, Sir Francis,” and “No, Sir Francis,” where he told his wretched jokes, and where he quavered his dreary little French song, after Strong had sung his jovial chorus, and honest Costigan had piped his Irish ditties. Such a jolly menage as Strong’s, with Grady’s Irish stew, and the chevalier’s brew of punch after dinner, would have been welcome to many a better man than Clavering, the solitude of whose great house at home frightened him, where he was attended only by the old woman who kept the house, and his valet who sneered at him.
“Yes, dammit,” said he, to his friends in Shepherd’s Inn. “That fellow of mine, I must turn him away, only I owe him two years’ wages, curse him, and can’t ask my lady. He brings me my tea cold of a morning, with a dem’d leaden tea-spoon, and he says my lady’s sent all the plate to the banker’s because it ain’t safe. Now ain’t it hard that she won’t trust me with a single tea-spoon–ain’t it ungentlemanlike, Altamont? You know my lady’s of low birth–that is–I beg your pardon–hem–that is, it’s most cruel of her not to show more confidence in me. And the very servants begin to laugh–the dam scoundrels! I’ll break every bone in their great hulking bodies, curse ’em, I will. They don’t answer my bell: and–and, my man was at Vauxhall last night with one of my dress shirts and my velvet waistcoat on, I know it was mine–the confounded impudent blackguard–and he went on dancing before my eyes, confound him; I’m sure he’ll live to be hanged–he deserves to be hanged–all those infernal rascals of valets.”
He was very kind to Altamont now: he listened to the colonel’s loud stories when Altamont described how–when he was working his way home once from New Zealand, where he had been on a whaling expedition–he and his comrades had been obliged to shirk on board at night, to escape from their wives, by Jove–and how the poor devils put out in their canoes when they saw the ship under sail, and paddled madly after her: how he had been lost in the bush once for three months in New South Wales, when he was there once on a trading speculation: how he had seen Boney at Saint Helena, and been presented to him with the rest of the officers of the Indiaman of which he was a mate–to all these tales (and over his cups Altamont told many of them; and, it must be owned, lied and bragged a great deal) Sir Francis now listened with great attention; making a point of drinking wine with Altamont at dinner and of treating him with every distinction.
“Leave him alone, I know what he’s a-coming to,” Altamont said, laughing to Strong, who remonstrated with him, “and leave me alone; I know what I’m a-telling, very well. I was officer on board an Indiaman, so I was; I traded to New South Wales, so I did, in a ship of my own, and lost her. I became officer to the Nawaub, so I did; only me and my royal master have had a difference, Strong–that’s it. Who’s the better or the worse for what I tell? or knows any thing about me? The other chap is dead–shot in the bush, and his body reckonized at Sydney. If I thought any body would split, do you think I wouldn’t wring his neck? I’ve done as good before now, Strong–I told you how I did for the overseer before I took leave–but in fair fight, I mean–in fair fight; or, rayther, he had the best of it. He had his gun and bay’net, and I had only an ax. Fifty of ’em saw it–ay, and cheered me when I did it–and I’d do it again,–him, wouldn’t I? I ain’t afraid of any body; and I’d have the life of the man who split upon me. That’s my maxim, and pass me the liquor–_You_ wouldn’t turn on a man. I know you. You’re an honest feller, and will stand by a feller, and have looked death in the face like a man. But as for that lily-livered sneak–that poor lyin’, swindlin’, cringin’ cur of a Clavering–who stands in my shoes–stands in my shoes, hang him! I’ll make him pull my boots off and clean ’em, I will. Ha, ha!” Here he burst out into a wild laugh, at which Strong got up and put away the brandy-bottle. The other still laughed good-humoredly. “You’re right, old boy,” he said; “you always keep your head cool, you do–and when I begin to talk too much–I say, when I begin to _pitch_, I authorize you, and order you, and command you, to put away the rum-bottle.”
“Take my counsel, Altamont,” Strong said, gravely, “and mind how you deal with that man. Don’t make it too much his interest to get rid of you; or who knows what he may do?”
The event for which, with cynical enjoyment, Altamont had been on the look-out, came very speedily. One day, Strong being absent upon an errand for his principal, Sir Francis made his appearance in the chambers, and found the envoy of the Nawaub alone. He abused the world in general for being heartless and unkind to him: he abused his wife for being ungenerous to him: he abused Strong for being ungrateful–hundreds of pounds had he given Ned Strong–been his friend for life and kept him out of jail, by Jove–and now Ned was taking her ladyship’s side against him and abetting her in her infernal, unkind treatment of him. “They’ve entered into a conspiracy to keep me penniless, Altamont,” the baronet said: “they don’t give me as much pocket-money as Frank has at school.”
“Why don’t you go down to Richmond and borrow of him, Clavering?” Altamont broke out with a savage laugh. “He wouldn’t see his poor old beggar of a father without pocket-money, would he?”
“I tell you, I’ve been obliged to humiliate myself cruelly,” Clavering said. “Look here, sir–look here, at these pawn-tickets! Fancy a member of Parliament and an old English baronet, by gad! obliged to put a drawing-room clock and a Buhl inkstand up the spout; and a gold duck’s head paper-holder, that I dare say cost my wife five pound, for which they’d only give me fifteen-and-six! Oh, it’s a humiliating thing, sir, poverty to a man of my habits; and it’s made me shed tears, sir–tears; and that d–d valet of mine–curse him, I wish he was hanged!–has had the confounded impudence to threaten to tell my lady: as if the things in my own house weren’t my own, to sell or to keep, or to fling out of window if I chose–by gad! the confounded scoundrel.”
“Cry a little; don’t mind cryin’ before me–it’ll relieve you, Clavering” the other said. “Why, I say, old feller, what a happy feller I once thought you, and what a miserable son of a gun you really are!”
“It’s a shame that they treat me so, ain’t it,” Clavering went on–for, though ordinarily silent and apathetic, about his own griefs the baronet could whine for an hour at a time. “And–and, by gad, sir, I haven’t got the money to pay the very cab that’s waiting for me at the door; and the porteress, that Mrs. Bolton, lent me three shillin’s, and I don’t like to ask her for any more: and I asked that d–d old Costigan, the confounded old penniless Irish miscreant, and he hadn’t got a shillin’, the beggar; and Campion’s out of town, or else he’d do a little bill for me, I know he would.”
“I thought you swore on your honor to your wife that you wouldn’t put your name to paper,” said Mr. Altamont, puffing at his cigar.
“Why does she leave me without pocket-money then? Damme, I must have money,” cried out the baronet. “Oh, Am–, Oh, Altamont, I’m the most miserable beggar alive.”
“You’d like a chap to lend you a twenty-pound-note, wouldn’t you now?” the other asked.
“If you would, I’d be grateful to you forever–forever, my dearest friend,” cried Clavering. “How much would you give? Will you give a fifty-pound bill, at six months, for half down and half in plate,” asked Altamont.
“Yes, I would, so help me–, and pay it on the day,” screamed Clavering. “I’ll make it payable at my banker’s: I’ll do any thing you like.”
[Illustration]
“Well, I was only chaffing you. I’ll _give_ you twenty pound.”
“You said a pony,” interposed Clavering; “my dear fellow, you said a pony, and I’ll be eternally obliged to you; and I’ll not take it as a gift–only as a loan, and pay you back in six months. I take my oath I will.”
“Well–well–there’s the money, Sir Francis Clavering. I ain’t a bad fellow. When I’ve money in my pocket, dammy, I spend it like a man. Here’s five-and-twenty for you. Don’t be losing it at the hells now. Don’t be making a fool of yourself. Go down to Clavering Park, and it’ll keep you ever so long. You needn’t ‘ave butchers’ meat: there’s pigs I dare say on the premises: and you can shoot rabbits for dinner, you know, every day till the game comes in. Besides, the neighbors will ask you about to dinner, you know, sometimes: for you _are_ a baronet, though you have outrun the constable. And you’ve got this comfort, that _I’m_ off your shoulders for a good bit to come–p’raps this two years–if I don’t play; and I don’t intend to touch the confounded black and red: and by that time my lady, as you call her– Jimmy, I used to say–will have come round again; and you’ll be ready for me, you know, and come down handsomely to yours truly.”
At this juncture of their conversation Strong returned, nor did the baronet care much about prolonging the talk, having got the money: and he made his way from Shepherd’s Inn, and went home and bullied his servant in a manner so unusually brisk and insolent, that the man concluded his master must have pawned some more of the house furniture, or at any rate, have come into possession of some ready money.
“And yet I’ve looked over the house, Morgan, and I don’t think he has took any more of the things,” Sir Francis’s valet said to Major Pendennis’s man, as they met at their club soon after. “My lady locked up a’most all the befews afore she went away, and he couldn’t take away the picters and looking-glasses in a cab: and he wouldn’t spout the fenders and fire-irons–he ain’t so bad as that. But he’s got money somehow. He’s so dam’d imperent when he have. A few nights ago I sor him at Vauxhall, where I was a polkin with Lady Hemly Babewood’s gals–a wery pleasant room that is, and an uncommon good lot in it, hall except the ‘ousekeeper, and she’s methodisticle–I was a polkin–you’re too old a cove to polk, Mr. Morgan–and ‘ere’s your ‘ealth–and I ‘appened to ‘ave on some of Clavering’s _abberdashery_, and he sor it too; and he didn’t dare so much as speak a word.”
“How about the house in St. John’s Wood?” Mr. Morgan asked.
“Execution in it.–Sold up hevery thing: ponies and pianna, and Brougham, and all. Mrs. Montague Rivers hoff to Boulogne–non est inwentus, Mr. Morgan. It’s my belief she put the execution in herself: and was tired of him.”
“Play much?” asked Morgan.
“Not since the smash. When your governor, and the lawyers, and my lady and him had that tremenduous scene: he went down on his knees, my lady told Mrs. Bonner, as told me–and swoar as he never more would touch a card or a dice, or put his name to a bit of paper; and my lady was a-goin’ to give him the notes down to pay his liabilities after the race: only your governor said (which he wrote it on a piece of paper, and passed it across the table to the lawyer and my lady), that some one else had better book up for him, for he’d have kep’ some of the money. He’s a sly old cove, your gov’nor.” The expression of “old cove,” thus flippantly applied by the younger gentleman to himself and his master, displeased Mr. Morgan exceedingly. On the first occasion, when Mr. Lightfoot used the obnoxious expression, his comrade’s anger was only indicated by a silent frown; but on the second offense, Morgan, who was smoking his cigar elegantly, and holding it on the tip of his penknife, withdrew the cigar from his lips, and took his young friend to task.
“Don’t call Major Pendennis an old cove, if you’ll ‘ave the goodness, Lightfoot, and don’t call _me_ an old cove, nether. Such words ain’t used in society; and we have lived in the fust society, both at ‘ome and foring. We’ve been intimate with the fust statesmen of Europe. When we go abroad we dine with Prince Metternitch and Louy Philup reg’lar. We go here to the best houses, the tip-tops, I tell you. We ride with Lord John and the noble Whycount at the edd of Foring Affairs. We dine with the Earl of Burgrave, and are consulted by the Marquis of Steyne in every think. We _ought_ to know a thing or two, Mr. Lightfoot. You’re a young man, I’m an old cove, as you say. We’ve both seen the world, and we both know that it ain’t money, nor bein’ a baronet, nor ‘avin’ a town and country ‘ouse, nor a paltry five or six thousand a year.”
“It’s ten, Mr. Morgan,” cried Mr. Lightfoot, with great animation.
“It _may_ have been, sir,” Morgan said, with calm severity; “it may have been Mr. Lightfoot, but it ain’t six now, nor five, sir. It’s been doosedly dipped and cut into, sir, by the confounded extravygance of your master, with his helbow-shakin’ and his bill discountin’, and his cottage in the Regency Park, and his many wickednesses. He’s a bad un, Mr. Lightfoot–a bad lot, sir, and that you know. And it ain’t money, sir–not such money as that, at any rate, come from a Calcuttar attorney, and I dessay wrung out of the pore starving blacks–that will give a pusson position in society, as you know very well. We’ve no money, but we go every where; there’s not a housekeeper’s room, sir, in this town of any consiquince, where James Morgan ain’t welcome. And it was me who got you into this club, Lightfoot, as you very well know, though I am an old cove, and they would have blackballed you without me, as sure as your name is Frederic.”
“I know they would, Mr. Morgan,” said the other, with much humility.
“Well, then, don’t call me an old cove, sir. It ain’t gentlemanlike, Frederic Lightfoot, which I knew you when you was a cab-boy, and when your father was in trouble, and got you the place you have now when the Frenchman went away. And if you think, sir, that because you’re making up to Mrs. Bonner, who may have saved her two thousand pound–and I dare say she has in five-and-twenty years as she have lived confidential maid to Lady Clavering–yet, sir, you must remember who put you into that service, and who knows what you were before, sir, and it don’t become you, Frederic Lightfoot, to call me an old cove.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Morgan–I can’t do more than make an apology–will you have a glass, sir, and let me drink your ‘ealth?” “You know I don’t take sperrits, Lightfoot,” replied Morgan, appeased. “And so you and Mrs. Bonner is going to put up together, are you?”
“She’s old, but two thousand pound’s a good bit, you see, Mr. Morgan. And we’ll get the ‘Clavering Arms’ for a very little; and that’ll be no bad thing when the railroad runs through Clavering. And when we are there, I hope you’ll come and see us, Mr. Morgan.”
“It’s a stoopid place, and no society,” said Mr. Morgan. “I know it well. In Mrs. Pendennis’s time we used to go down reg’lar, and the hair refreshed me after the London racket.”
“The railroad will improve Mr. Arthur’s property,” remarked Lightfoot. “What’s about the figure of it, should you say, sir?”
“Under fifteen hundred, sir,” answered Morgan; at which the other, who knew the extent of poor Arthur’s acres, thrust his tongue in his cheek, but remained wisely silent.
“Is his man any good, Mr. Morgan?” Lightfoot resumed.
“Pigeon ain’t used to society as yet; but he’s young and has good talents, and has read a good deal, and I dessay he will do very well,” replied Morgan. “He wouldn’t quite do for _this_ kind of thing, Lightfoot, for he ain’t seen the world yet.”
When the pint of sherry for which Mr. Lightfoot called, upon Mr. Morgan’s announcement that he declined to drink spirits, had been discussed by the two gentlemen, who held the wine up to the light, and smacked their lips, and winked their eyes at it, and rallied the landlord as to the vintage, in the most approved manner of connoisseurs, Morgan’s ruffled equanimity was quite restored, and he was prepared to treat his young friend with perfect good-humor.
“What d’you think about Miss Amory, Lightfoot?–tell us in confidence, now–do you think we should do well–you understand–if we make Miss A. into Mrs. A. P.? _Comprendy vous_?”
“She and her ma’s always quarrelin’,” said Mr. Lightfoot. “Bonner is more than a match for the old lady, and treats Sir Francis like that–like this year spill, which I fling into the grate. But she daren’t say a word to Miss Amory. No more dare none of us. When a visitor comes in, she smiles and languishes, you’d think that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth: and the minute he is gone, very likely, she flares up like a little demon, and says things fit to send you wild. If Mr. Arthur comes, it’s ‘Do let’s sing that there delightful song!’ or, ‘Come and write me them pooty verses in this halbum!’ and very likely she’s been a rilin’ her mother, or sticking pins into her maid, a minute before. She do stick pins into her and pinch her. Mary Hann showed me one of her arms quite black and blue; and I recklect Mrs. Bonner, who’s as jealous of me as a old cat, boxed her ears for showing me. And then you should see Miss at luncheon, when there’s nobody but the family! She makes b’leave she never eats, and my! you should only jest see her. She has Mary Hann to bring her up plum-cakes and creams into her bedroom; and the cook’s the only man in the house she’s civil to. Bonner says, how, the second season in London, Mr. Soppington was a-goin’ to propose for her, and actially came one day, and sor her fling a book into the fire, and scold her mother so, that he went down softly by the back droring-room door, which he came in by; and next thing we heard of him was, he was married to Miss Rider. Oh, she’s a devil, that little Blanche, and that’s my candig apinium, Mr. Morgan.”
“Apinion, not apinium, Lightfoot, my good fellow,” Mr. Morgan said, with parental kindness, and then asked of his own bosom with a sigh, why the deuce does my governor want Master Arthur to marry such a girl as this? and the _tête-à-tête_ of the two gentlemen was broken up by the entry of other gentlemen, members of the club–when fashionable town-talk, politics, cribbage, and other amusements ensued, and the conversation became general.
The Gentleman’s Club was held in the parlor of the Wheel of Fortune public-house, in a snug little by-lane, leading out of one of the great streets of May Fair, and frequented by some of the most select gentlemen about town. Their masters’ affairs, debts, intrigues, adventures; their ladies’ good and bad qualities and quarrels with their husbands; all the family secrets were here discussed with perfect freedom and confidence, and here, when about to enter into a new situation, a gentleman was enabled to get every requisite information regarding the family of which he proposed to become a member. Liveries it may be imagined were excluded from this select precinct; and the powdered heads of the largest metropolitan footmen might bow down in vain, entreating admission into the Gentleman’s Club. These outcast giants in plush took their beer in an outer apartment of the Wheel of Fortune, and could no more get an entry into the club room than a Pall Mall tradesman or a Lincoln’s Inn attorney could get admission into Bay’s or Spratt’s. And it is because the conversation which we have been permitted to overhear here, in some measure explains the characters and bearings of our story, that we have ventured to introduce the reader into a society so exclusive.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE WAY OF THE WORLD.
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A short time after the piece of good fortune which befel Colonel Altamont at Epsom, that gentleman put into execution his projected foreign tour, and the chronicler of the polite world who goes down to London-bridge for the purpose of taking leave of the people of fashion who quit this country, announced that among the company on board the Soho to Antwerp last Saturday, were “Sir Robert, Lady, and the Misses Hodge; Mr. Sergeant Kewsy, and Mrs. and Miss Kewsy; Colonel Altamont, Major Coddy, &c.” The colonel traveled in state, and as became a gentleman: he appeared in a rich traveling costume: he drank brandy-and-water freely during the passage, and was not sick, as some of the other passengers were; and he was attended by his body servant, the faithful Irish legionary who had been for some time in waiting upon himself and Captain Strong in their chambers of Shepherd’s Inn.
The chevalier partook of a copious dinner at Blackwall with his departing friend the colonel, and one or two others, who drank many healths to Altamont at that liberal gentleman’s expense. “Strong, old boy,” the chevalier’s worthy chum said, “if you want a little money, now’s your time. I’m your man. You’re a good feller, and have been a good feller to me, and a twenty pound note, more or less, will make no odds to me.” But Strong said, no, he didn’t want any money; he was flush, quite flush–“that is, not flush enough to pay you back your last loan, Altamont, but quite able to carry on for some time to come”–and so, with a not uncordial greeting between them, the two parted. Had the possession of money really made Altamont more honest and amiable than he had hitherto been, or only caused him to seem more amiable in Strong’s eyes? Perhaps he really was better; and money improved him. Perhaps it was the beauty of wealth Strong saw and respected. But he argued within himself “This poor devil, this unlucky outcast of a returned convict, is ten times as good a fellow as my friend Sir Francis Clavering, Bart. He has pluck and honesty, in his way. He will stick to a friend, and face an enemy. The other never had courage to do either. And what is it that has put the poor devil under a cloud? He was only a little wild, and signed his father-in-law’s name. Many a man has done worse, and come to no wrong, and holds his head up. Clavering does. No, he don’t hold his head up: he never did in his best days.” And Strong, perhaps, repented him of the falsehood which he had told to the free-handed colonel, that he was not in want of money; but it was a falsehood on the side of honesty, and the chevalier could not bring down his stomach to borrow a second time from his outlawed friend. Besides, he could get on. Clavering had promised him some: not that Clavering’s promises were much to be believed, but the chevalier was of a hopeful turn, and trusted in many chances of catching his patron, and waylaying some of those stray remittances and supplies, in the procuring of which for his principal lay Mr. Strong’s chief business.
He had grumbled about Altamont’s companionship in the Shepherd’s Inn chambers; but he found those lodgings more glum now without his partner than with him. The solitary life was not agreeable to his social soul; and he had got into extravagant and luxurious habits, too, having a servant at his command to run his errands, to arrange his toilet, and to cook his meal. It was rather a grand and touching sight now to see the portly and handsome gentleman painting his own boots, and broiling his own mutton chop. It has been before stated that the chevalier had a wife, a Spanish lady of Vittoria, who had gone back to her friends, after a few months’ union with the captain, whose head she broke with a dish. He began to think whether he should not go back and see his Juanita. The chevalier was growing melancholy after the departure of his friend the colonel; or, to use his own picturesque expression, was “down on his luck.” These moments of depression and intervals of ill-fortune occur constantly in the lives of heroes; Marius at Minturnae, Charles Edward in the Highlands, Napoleon before Elba. What great man has not been called upon to face evil fortune? From Clavering no supplies were to be had for some time. The five-and-twenty pounds, or “pony” which the exemplary baronet had received from Mr. Altamont, had fled out of Clavering’s keeping as swiftly as many previous ponies. He had been down the river with a choice party of sporting gents, who dodged the police and landed in Essex, where they put up Billy Bluck to fight Dick the cabman, whom the baronet backed, and who had it all his own way for thirteen rounds, when, by an unluckly blow in the windpipe, Billy killed him. “It’s always my luck, Strong,” Sir Francis said; “the betting was three to one on the cabman, and I thought myself as sure of thirty pounds, as if I had it in my pocket. And dammy, I owe my man Lightfoot fourteen pound now which he’s lent and paid for me: and he duns me–the confounded impudent blackguard: and I wish to Heaven I knew any way of getting a bill done, or of screwing a little out of my lady! I’ll give you half, Ned, upon my soul and honor, I’ll give you half if you can get any body to do us a little fifty.”
[Illustration]
But Ned said sternly that he had given his word of honor, as a gentleman, that he would be no party to any future bill-transactions in which her husband might engage (who had given his word of honor too), and the chevalier said that he, at least, would keep his word, and Would black his own boots all his life rather than break his promise. And what is more, he vowed he would advise Lady Clavering that Sir Francis was about to break his faith toward her, upon the very first hint which he could get that such was Clavering’s intention. Upon this information Sir Francis Clavering, according to his custom, cried and cursed very volubly. He spoke of death as his only resource. He besought and implored his dear Strong, his best friend, his dear old Ned, not to throw him over; and when he quitted his dearest Ned, as he went down the stairs of Shepherd’s Inn, swore and blasphemed at Ned as the most infernal villain, and traitor, and blackguard, and coward under the sun, and wished Ned was in his grave, and in a worse place, only he would like the confounded ruffian to live, until Frank Clavering had had his revenge out of him.
In Strong’s chambers the baronet met a gentleman whose visits were now, as it has been shown, very frequent in Shepherd’s Inn, Mr. Samuel Huxter, of Clavering. That young fellow, who had poached the walnuts in Clavering Park in his youth, and had seen the baronet drive through the street at home with four horses, and prance up to church with powdered footmen, had an immense respect for his member, and a prodigious delight in making his acquaintance. He introduced himself, with much blushing and trepidation, as a Clavering man–son of Mr. Huxter, of the market-place–father attended Sir Francis’s keeper, Coxwood, when his gun burst and took off three fingers–proud to make Sir Francis’s acquaintance. All of which introduction Sir Francis received affably. And honest Huxter talked about Sir Francis to the chaps at Bartholomew’s; and told Fanny, in the lodge, that, after all, there was nothing like a thorough-bred un, a regular good old English gentleman, one of the olden time! To which Fanny replied, that she thought Sir Francis was an ojous creature–she didn’t know why–but she couldn’t a-bear him–she was sure he was wicked, and low, and mean–she knew he was; and when Sam to this replied that Sir Francis was very affable, and had borrowed half a sov’ of him quite kindly, Fanny burst into a laugh, pulled Sam’s long hair (which was not yet of irreproachable cleanliness), patted his chin, and called him a stoopid, stoopid, old foolish stoopid, and said that Sir Francis was always borrering money of every body, and that Mar had actially refused him twice, and had to wait three months to get seven shillings which he had borrered of ‘er.
“Don’t say ‘er but her, borrer but borrow, actially but actually, Fanny,” Mr. Huxter replied–not to a fault in her argument, but to grammatical errors in her statement.
“Well then, her, and borrow, and hactually–there then, you stoopid,” said the other; and the scholar made such a pretty face that the grammar master was quickly appeased, and would have willingly given her a hundred more lessons on the spot at the price which he took for that one.
Of course Mrs. Bolton was by, and I suppose that Fanny and Mr. Sam were on exceedingly familiar and confidential terms by this time, and that time had brought to the former certain consolations, and soothed certain regrets, which are deucedly bitter when they occur, but which are, no more than tooth-pulling, or any other pang, eternal.
As you sit, surrounded by respect and affection; happy, honored, and flattered in your old age; your foibles gently indulged; your least words kindly cherished; your garrulous old stories received for the hundredth time with dutiful forbearance, and never-failing hypocritical smiles; the women of your house constant in their flatteries; the young men hushed and attentive when you begin to speak; the servants awe-stricken; the tenants cap in hand, and ready to act in the place of your worship’s horses when your honor takes a drive–it has often struck you, O thoughtful Dives! that this respect, and these glories, are for the main part transferred, with your fee-simple, to your successor–that the servants will bow, and the tenants shout, for your son as for you; that the butler will fetch him the wine (improved by a little keeping) that’s now in your cellar; and that, when your night is come, and the light of your life is gone down, as sure as the morning rises after you and without you, the sun of prosperity and flattery shines on your heir. Men come and bask in the halo of consols and acres that beams round about him: the reverence is transferred with the estate; of which, with all its advantages, pleasures, respect, and good-will, he in turn becomes the life-tenant. How long do you wish or expect that your people will regret you? How much time does a man devote to grief before he begins to enjoy? A great man must keep his heir at his feast like a living _memento mori_. If he holds very much by life, the presence of the other must be a constant sting and warning. “Make ready to go,” says the successor to your honor; “I am waiting: and I could hold it as well as you.”
What has this reference to the possible reader, to do with any of the characters of this history? Do we wish to apologize for Pen because he has got a white hat, and because his mourning for his mother is fainter? All the lapse of years, all the career of fortune, all the events of life, however strongly they may move or eagerly excite him, never can remove that sainted image from his heart, or banish that blessed love from its sanctuary. If he yields to wrong, the dear eyes will look sadly upon him when he dares to meet them; if he does well, endures pain, or conquers temptation, the ever present love will greet him, he knows, with approval and pity; if he falls, plead for him; if he suffers, cheer him;–be with him and accompany him always until death is past, and sorrow and sin are no more. Is this mere dreaming or, on the part of an idle storyteller, useless moralizing? May not the man of the world take his moment, too, to be grave and thoughtful? Ask of your own hearts and memories, brother and sister, if we do not live in the dead; and (to speak reverently) prove God by love?
Of these matters Pen and Warrington often spoke in many a solemn and friendly converse in after days; and Pendennis’s mother was worshiped in his memory, and canonized there, as such a saint ought to be. Lucky he in life who knows a few such women! A kind provision of Heaven it was, that sent us such; and gave us to admire that touching and wonderful spectacle of innocence, and love, and beauty.
But as it is certain that if, in the course of these sentimental conversations, any outer stranger, Major Pendennis for instance, had walked into Pen’s chambers, Arthur and Warrington would have stopped their talk, and chosen another subject, and discoursed about the Opera, or the last debate in Parliament, or Miss Jones’s marriage with Captain Smith, or what not–so let us imagine that the public steps in at this juncture, and stops the confidential talk between author and reader, and begs us to resume our remarks about this world, with which both are certainly better acquainted than with that other one into which we have just been peeping.
On coming into his property, Arthur Pendennis at first comported himself with a modesty and equanimity which obtained his friend Warrington’s praises, though Arthur’s uncle was a little inclined to quarrel with his nephew’s meanness of spirit, for not assuming greater state and pretensions now that he had entered on the enjoyment of his kingdom. He would have had Arthur installed in handsome quarters, and riding on showy park hacks, or in well-built cabriolets, every day. “I am too absent,” Arthur said, with a laugh, “to drive a cab in London; the omnibuses would cut me in two, or I should send my horse’s head into the ladies’ carriage windows; and you wouldn’t have me driven about by my servant like an apothecary, uncle?” No, Major Pendennis would on no account have his nephew appear like an apothecary; the august representative of the house of Pendennis must not so demean himself. And when Arthur, pursuing his banter, said, “And yet, I daresay, sir, my father was proud enough when he first set up his gig,” the old major hemmed and ha’d, and his wrinkled face reddened with a blush as he answered, “You know what Bonaparte said, sir, ‘_Il faut laver son linge sale en famille.’_ There is no need, sir, for you to brag that your father was a–a medical man. He came of a most ancient but fallen house, and was obliged to reconstruct the family fortunes as many a man of good family has done before him. You are like the fellow in Sterne, sir–the marquis who came to demand his sword again. Your father got back yours for you. You are a man of landed estate, by Gad, sir, and a gentleman–never forget you are a gentleman.”
Then Arthur slily turned on his uncle the argument which he had heard the old gentleman often use regarding himself. “In the society which I have the honor of frequenting through your introduction, who cares to ask about my paltry means or my humble gentility, uncle?” he asked. “It would be absurd of me to attempt to compete with the great folks; and all that thay can ask from us is, that we should have a decent address and good manners.”
“But for all that, sir, I should belong to a better Club or two,” the uncle answered: “I should give an occasional dinner, and select my society well; and I should come out of that horrible garret in the Temple, sir.” And so Arthur compromised by descending to the second floor in Lamb-court: Warrington still occupying his old quarters, and the two friends being determined not to part one from the other. Cultivate kindly, reader, those friendships of your youth: it is only in that generous time that they are formed. How different the intimacies of after days are, and how much weaker the grasp of your own hand after it has been shaken about in twenty years’ commerce with the world, and has squeezed and dropped a thousand equally careless palms! As you can seldom fashion your tongue to speak a new language after twenty, the heart refuses to receive friendship pretty soon: it gets too hard to yield to the impression.
So Pen had many acquaintances, and being of a jovial and easy turn, got more daily: but no friend like Warrington; and the two men continued to live almost as much in common as the Knights of the Temple, riding upon one horse (for Pen’s was at Warrington’s service), and having their chambers and their servitor in common.
Mr. Warrington had made the acquaintance of Pen’s friends of Grosvenor-place during their last unlucky season in London, and had expressed himself no better satisfied with Sir Francis and Lady Clavering and her ladyship’s daughter than was the public in general. “The world is right,” George said, “about those people. The young men laugh and talk freely before those ladies, and about them. The girl sees people whom she has no right to know, and talks to men with whom no girl should have an intimacy. Did you see those two reprobates leaning over Lady Clavering’s carriage in the Park the other day, and leering under Miss Blanche’s bonnet? No good mother would let her daughter know those men, or admit them within her doors.”
“The Begum is the most innocent and good-natured soul alive,” interposed Pen. “She never heard any harm of Captain Blackball, or read that trial in which Charley Lovelace figures. Do you suppose that honest ladies read and remember the Chronique Scandaleuse as well as you, you old grumbler?”
“Would you like Laura Bell to know those fellows?” Warrington asked, his face turning rather red. “Would you let any woman you loved be contaminated by their company? I have no doubt that poor Begum is ignorant of their histories. It seems to me she is ignorant of a great number of better things. It seems to me that your honest Begum is not a lady, Pen. It is not her fault, doubtless, that she has not had the education, or learned the refinements of a lady.”
“She is as moral as Lady Portsea, who has all the world at her balls, and as refined as Mrs. Bull, who breaks the king’s English, and has half-a-dozen dukes at her table,” Pen answered, rather sulkily. “Why should you and I be more squeamish than the rest of the world? Why are we to visit the sins of her fathers on this harmless, kind creature? She never did any thing but kindness to you or any mortal soul. As far as she knows she does her best. She does not set up to be more than she is. She gives you the best dinners she can buy, and the best company she can get. She pays the debts of that scamp of a husband of hers. She spoils her boy like the most virtuous mother in England. Her opinion about literary matters, to be sure, is not much; and I daresay she never read a line of Wordsworth, or heard of Tennyson in her life.”
“No more has Mrs. Flanagan the laundress,” growled out Pen’s Mentor; “no more has Betty the housemaid; and I have no word of blame against them. But a high-souled man doesn’t make friends of these. A gentleman doesn’t choose these for his companions, or bitterly rues it afterward if he do. Are you, who are setting up to be a man of the world and philosopher, to tell me that the aim of life is to guttle three courses and dine off silver? Do you dare to own to yourself that your ambition in life is good claret, and that you’ll dine with any, provided you get a stalled ox to feed on? You call me a Cynic–why, what a monstrous Cynicism it is, which you and the rest of you men of the world admit. I’d rather live upon raw turnips and sleep in a hollow tree, or turn backwoodsman or savage, than degrade myself to this civilization, and own that a French cook was the thing in life best worth living for.”
“Because you like a raw beef-steak and a pipe afterward,” broke out Pen, “you give yourself airs of superiority over people, whose tastes are more dainty, and are not ashamed of the world they live in. Who goes about professing particular admiration, or esteem, or friendship, or gratitude, even for the people one meets every day? If A. asks me to his house, and gives me his best, I take his good things for what they are worth, and no more. I do not profess to pay him back in friendship, but in the convention’s money of society. When we part, we part without any grief. When we meet, we are tolerably glad to see one another. If I were only to live with my friends, your black muzzle, old George, is the only face I should see.”
“You are your uncle’s pupil,” said Warrington, rather sadly; “and you speak like a worldling.”
“And why not?” asked Pendennis; “why not acknowledge the world I stand upon, and submit to the conditions of the society which we live in and live by? I am older than you, George, in spite of your grizzled whiskers, and have seen much more of the world than you have in your garret here, shut up with your books and your reveries and your ideas of one-and-twenty. I say, I take the world as it is, and being of it, will not be ashamed of it. If the time is out of joint, have I any calling or strength to set it right?”
“Indeed, I don’t think you have much of either,” growled Pen’s interlocutor.
“If I doubt whether I am better than my neighbor,” Arthur continued–“if I concede that I am no better–I also doubt whether he is better than I. I see men who begin with ideas of universal reform, and who, before their beards are grown, propound their loud plans for the regeneration of mankind, give up their schemes after a few years of bootless talking and vain-glorious attempts to lead their fellows; and after they have found that men will no longer hear them, as indeed they never were in the least worthy to be heard, sink quietly into the rank and file–acknowledging their aims impracticable, or thankful that they were never put into practice. The fiercest reformers grow calm, and are fain to put up with things as they are: the loudest Radical orators become dumb, quiescent placemen: the most fervent Liberals, when out of power, become humdrum Conservatives, or downright tyrants or despots in office. Look at Thiers, look at Guizot, in opposition and in place! Look at the Whigs appealing to the country, and the Whigs in power! Would you say that the conduct of these men is an act of treason, as the Radicals bawl–who would give way in their turn, were their turn ever to come? No, only that they submit to circumstances which are stronger than they–march as the world marches toward reform, but at the world’s pace (and the movements of the vast body of mankind must needs be slow)–forego this scheme as impracticable, on account of opposition–that as immature, because against the sense of the majority–are forced to calculate drawbacks and difficulties, as well as to think of reforms and advances–and compelled finally to submit, and to wait, and to compromise.”
“The Right Honorable Arthur Pendennis could not speak better, or be more satisfied with himself, if he was First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer,” Warrington said.
“Self-satisfied? Why self-satisfied?” continued Pen. “It seems to me that my skepticism is more respectful and more modest than the revolutionary ardor of other folks. Many a patriot of eighteen, many a spouting-club orator, would turn the bishops out of the House of Lords to-morrow, and throw the lords out after the bishops, and throw the throne into the Thames after the peers and the bench. Is that man more modest than I, who take these institutions as I find them, and wait for time and truth to develop, or fortify, or (if you like) destroy them? A college tutor, or a nobleman’s toady, who appears one fine day as my right reverend lord, in a silk apron and a shovel-hat, and assumes benedictory airs over me, is still the same man we remember at Oxbridge, when he was truckling to the tufts, and bullying the poor under-graduates in the lecture-room. An hereditary legislator, who passes his time with jockeys and blacklegs and ballet-girls, and who is called to rule over me and his other betters, because his grandfather made a lucky speculation in the funds, or found a coal or tin-mine on his property, or because his stupid ancestor happened to be in command of ten thousand men as brave as himself, who overcame twelve thousand Frenchmen, or fifty thousand Indians–such a man, I say, inspires me with no more respect than the bitterest democrat can feel toward him. But, such as he is, he is a part of the old society to which we belong: and I submit to his lordship with acquiescence; and he takes his place above the best of us at all dinner parties, and there bides his time. I don’t want to chop his head off with a guillotine, or to fling mud at him in the streets. When they call such a man a disgrace to his order; and such another, who is good and gentle, refined and generous, who employs his great means in promoting every kindness and charity, and art and grace of life, in the kindest and most gracious manner, an ornament to his rank–the question as to the use and propriety of the order is not in the least affected one way or other. There it is, extant among us, a part of our habits, the creed of many of us, the growth of centuries, the symbol of a most complicated tradition–there stand my lord the bishop and my lord the hereditary legislator–what the French call _transactions_ both of them–representing in their present shape mail-clad barons and double-sworded chiefs (from whom their lordships the hereditaries, for the most part, _don’t_ descend), and priests, professing to hold an absolute truth and a divinely inherited power, the which truth absolute our ancestors burned at the stake, and denied there; the which divine transmissible power still exists in print–to be believed, or not, pretty much at choice; and of these, I say, I acquiesce that they exist, and no more. If you say that these schemes, devised before printing was known, or steam was born; when thought was an infant, scared and whipped; and truth under its guardians was gagged, and swathed, and blindfolded, and not allowed to lift its voice, or to look out or to walk under the sun; before men were permitted to meet, or to trade, or to speak with each other–if any one says (as some faithful souls do) that these schemes are for ever, and having been changed, and modified constantly are to be subject to no farther development or decay, I laugh, and let the man speak. But I would have toleration for these, as I would ask it for my own opinions; and if they are to die, I would rather they had a decent and natural than an abrupt and violent death.”
“You would have sacrificed to Jove,” Warrington said, “had you lived in the time of the Christian persecutions.”
“Perhaps I would,” said Pen, with some sadness. “Perhaps I am a coward–perhaps my faith is unsteady; but this is my own reserve. What I argue here is that I will not persecute. Make a faith or a dogma absolute, and persecution becomes a logical consequence; and Dominic burns a Jew, or Calvin an Arian, or Nero a Christian, or Elizabeth or Mary a Papist or Protestant; or their father both or either, according to his humor; and acting without any pangs of remorse–but, on the contrary, with strict notions of duty fulfilled. Make dogma absolute, and to inflict or to suffer death becomes easy and necessary; and Mahomet’s soldiers shouting ‘Paradise! Paradise!’ and dying on the Christian spears, are not more or less praiseworthy than the same men slaughtering a townful of Jews, or cutting off the heads of all prisoners who would not acknowledge that there was but one prophet of God.”
“A little while since, young one,” Warrington said, who had been listening to his friend’s confessions neither without sympathy nor scorn, for his mood led him to indulge in both, “you asked me why I remained out of the strife of the world, and looked on at the great labor of my neighbor without taking any part in the struggle. Why, what a mere dilettante you own yourself to be, in this confession of general skepticism, and what a listless spectator yourself! You are six-and-twenty years old, and as _blase_ as a rake of sixty. You neither hope much, nor care much, nor believe much. You doubt about other men as much as about yourself. Were it made of such _pococuranti_ as you, the world would be intolerable; and I had rather live in a wilderness of monkeys, and listen to their chatter, than in a company of men who denied every thing.”
“Were the world composed of Saint Bernards or Saint Dominics, it would be equally odious,” said Pen, “and at the end of a few scores of years would cease to exist altogether. Would you have every man with his head shaved, and every woman in a cloister–carrying out to the full the ascetic principle? Would you have conventicle hymns twanging from every lane in every city in the world? Would you have all the birds of the forest sing one note and fly with one feather? You call me a skeptic because I acknowledge what _is_; and in acknowledging that, be it linnet or lark, a priest or parson, be it, I mean, any single one of the infinite varieties of the creatures of God (whose very name I would be understood to pronounce with reverence, and never to approach but with distant awe), I say that the study and acknowledgment of that variety among men especially increases our respect and wonder for the Creator, Commander, and Ordainer of all these minds, so different and yet so united–meeting in a common adoration, and offering up each according to his degree and means of approaching the Divine centre, his acknowledgment of praise and worship, each singing (to recur to the bird simile) his natural song.”
“And so, Arthur, the hymn of a saint, or the ode of a poet, or the chant of a Newgate thief, are all pretty much the same in your philosophy,” said George.
“Even that sneer could be answered were it to the point,” Pendennis replied; “but it is not; and it could be replied to you, that even to the wretched outcry of the thief on the tree, the wisest and the best of all teachers we know of, the untiring Comforter and Consoler, promised a pitiful hearing and a certain hope. Hymns of saints! Odes of poets! who are we to measure the chances and opportunities, the means of doing, or even judging, right and wrong, awarded to men; and to establish the rule for meting out their punishments and rewards? We are as insolent and unthinking in judging of men’s morals as of their intellects. We admire this man as being a great philosopher, and set down the other as a dullard, not knowing either, or the amount of truth in either, or being certain of the truth any where. We sing Te Deum for this hero who has won a battle, and De Profundis for that other one who has broken out of prison, and has been caught afterward by the policemen. Our measure of rewards and punishments is most partial and incomplete, absurdly inadequate, utterly worldly, and we wish to continue it into the next world. Into that next and awful world we strive to pursue men, and send after them our impotent party verdicts of condemnation or acquittal. We set up our paltry little rods to measure Heaven immeasurable, as if, in comparison to that, Newton’s mind or Pascal’s or Shakspeare’s was any loftier than mine; as if the ray which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than the man who blacks my boots. Measured by that altitude, the tallest and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, that I say we should take no count of the calculation, and it is a meanness to reckon the difference.”
“Your figure fails there, Arthur,” said the other, better pleased; “if even by common arithmetic we can multiply as we can reduce almost infinitely, the Great Reckoner must take count of all; and the small is not small, or the great great, to his infinity.”
“I don’t call those calculations in question,” Arthur said: “I only say that yours are incomplete and premature; false in consequence, and, by every operation, multiplying into wider error. I do not condemn the man who murdered Socrates and damned Galileo. I say that they damned Galileo and murdered Socrates.”
“And yet but a moment since you admitted the propriety of acquiescence in the present, and, I suppose, all other tyrannies?”
“No: but that if an opponent menaces me, of whom and without cost of blood and violence I can get rid, I would rather wait him out, and starve him out, than fight him out. Fabius fought Hannibal skeptically. Who was his Roman coadjutor, whom we read of in Plutarch when we were boys, who scoffed at the other’s procrastination and doubted his courage, and engaged the enemy and was beaten for his pains?”
In these speculations and confessions of Arthur, the reader may perhaps see allusions to questions which, no doubt, have occupied and discomposed himself, and which he has answered by very different solutions to those come to by our friend. We are not pledging ourselves for the correctness of his opinions, which readers will please to consider are delivered dramatically, the writer being no more answerable for them, than for the sentiments uttered by any other character of the story: our endeavor is merely to follow out, in its progress, the development of the mind of a worldly and selfish, but not ungenerous or unkind, or truth-avoiding man. And it will be seen that the lamentable stage to which his logic at present has brought him, is one of general skepticism and sneering acquiescence in the world as it is; or if you like so to call it, a belief qualified with scorn in all things extant. The tastes and habits of such a man prevent him from being a boisterous demagogue, and his love of truth and dislike of cant keep him from advancing crude propositions, such as many loud reformers are constantly ready with; much more of uttering downright falsehoods in arguing questions or abusing opponents, which he would die or starve rather than use. It was not in our friend’s nature to be able to utter certain lies; nor was he strong enough to protest against others, except with a polite sneer; his maxim being, that he owed obedience to all Acts of Parliament, as long as they were not repealed.
And to what does this easy and skeptical life lead a man? Friend Arthur was a Sadducee, and the Baptist might be in the Wilderness shouting to the poor, who were listening with all their might and faith to the preacher’s awful accents and denunciations of wrath or woe or salvation; and our friend the Sadducee would turn his sleek mule with a shrug and a smile from the crowd, and go home to the shade of his terrace, and muse over preacher and audience, and turn to his roll of Plato, or his pleasant Greek song-book babbling of honey and Hybla, and nymphs and fountains and love. To what, we say, does this skepticism lead? It leads a man to a shameful loneliness and selfishness, so to speak–the more shameful, because it is so good-humored and conscienceless and serene. Conscience! What is conscience? Why accept remorse? What is public or private faith? Mythuses alike enveloped in enormous tradition. If seeing and acknowledging the lies of the world, Arthur, as see them you can with only too fatal a clearness, you submit to them without any protest farther than a laugh: if plunged yourself in easy sensuality, you allow the whole wretched world to pass groaning by you unmoved: if the fight for the truth is taking place, and all men of honor are on the ground armed on the one side or the other, and you alone are to lie on your balcony and smoke your pipe out of the noise and the danger, you had better have died, or never have been at all, than such a sensual coward.
“The truth, friend!” Arthur said, imperturbably; “where is the truth? Show it me. That is the question between us. I see it on both sides. I see it in the Conservative side of the house, and among the Radicals, and even on the ministerial benches. I see it in this man who worships by act of Parliament, and is rewarded with a silk apron and five thousand a year; in that man, who, driven fatally by the remorseless logic of his creed, gives up every thing, friends, fame, dearest ties, closest vanities, the respect of an army of churchmen, the recognized position of a leader, and passes over, truth-impelled, to the enemy, in whose ranks he will serve henceforth as a nameless private soldier:–I see the truth in that man, as I do in his brother, whose logic drives him to quite a different conclusion, and who, after having passed a life in vain endeavors to reconcile an irreconcileable book, flings it at last down in despair, and declares, with tearful eyes, and hands up to heaven, his revolt and recantation. If the truth is with all these, why should I take side with any one of them? Some are called upon to preach: let them preach. Of these preachers there are somewhat too many, methinks, who fancy they have the gift. But we can not all be parsons in church, that is clear. Some must sit silent and listen, or go to sleep mayhap. Have we not all our duties? The head charity-boy blows the bellows; the master canes the other boys in the organ-loft; the clerk sings out Amen from the desk; and the beadle with the staff opens the door for his Reverence, who rustles in silk up to the cushion. I won’t cane the boys, nay, or say Amen always, or act as the church’s champion and warrior, in the shape of the beadle with the staff; but I will take off my hat in the place, and say my prayers there too, and shake hands with the clergyman as he steps on the grass outside. Don’t I know that his being there is a compromise, and that he stands before me an Act of Parliament? That the church he occupies was built for other worship? That the Methodist chapel is next door; and that Bunyan the tinker is bawling out the tidings of damnation on the common hard by? Yes, I am a Sadducee; and I take things as I find them, and the world, and the Acts of Parliament of the world, as they are; and as I intend to take a wife, if I find one–not to be madly in love and prostrate at her feet like a fool–not to worship her as an angel, or to expect to find her as such–but to be good-natured to her, and courteous, expecting good-nature and pleasant society from her in turn. And so, George, if ever you hear of my marrying, depend on it, it won’t be a romantic attachment on my side: and if you hear of any good place under Government, I have no particular scruples that I know of, which would prevent me from accepting your offer.”
“O Pen, you scoundrel! I know what you mean,” here Warrington broke out. “This is the meaning of your skepticism, of your quietism, of your atheism, my poor fellow. You’re going to sell yourself, and Heaven help you! You’re going to make a bargain which will degrade you and make you miserable for life, and there’s no use talking of it. If you are once bent on it, the devil won’t prevent you.”
“On the contrary, he’s on my side, isn’t he, George?” said Pen with a laugh. “What good cigars these are! Come down and have a little dinner at the Club; the _chef’s_ in town, and he’ll cook a good one for me. No, you won’t? Don’t be sulky, old boy, I’m going down to–to the country to-morrow.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
WHICH ACCOUNTS PERHAPS FOR CHAPTER XXIII.
[Illustration]
The information regarding the affairs of the Clavering family, which Major Pendennis had acquired through Strong, and by his own personal interference as the friend of the house, was such as almost made the old gentleman pause in any plans which he might have once entertained for his nephew’s benefit. To bestow upon Arthur a wife with two such fathers-in-law as the two worthies whom the guileless and unfortunate Lady Clavering had drawn in her marriage ventures, was to benefit no man. And though the one, in a manner, neutralized the other, and the appearance of Amory or Altamont in public would be the signal for his instantaneous withdrawal and condign punishment–for the fugitive convict had cut down the officer in charge of him–and a rope would be inevitably his end, if he came again under British authorities; yet, no guardian would like to secure for his ward a wife, whose parent was to be got rid of in such a way; and the old gentleman’s notion always had been that Altamont, with the gallows before his eyes, would assuredly avoid recognition; while, at the same time, by holding the threat of his discovery over Clavering, the latter, who would lose every thing by Amory’s appearance, would be a slave in the hands of the person who knew so fatal a secret.
But if the Begum paid Clavering’s debts many times more, her wealth would be expended altogether upon this irreclaimable reprobate: and her heirs, whoever they might be, would succeed but to an emptied treasury; and Miss Amory, instead of bringing her husband a good income and a seat in Parliament, would bring to that individual her person only, and her pedigree with that lamentable note of _sus per coll_ at the name of the last male of her line.
There was, however, to the old schemer revolving these things in his mind, another course yet open; the which will appear to the reader who may take the trouble to peruse a conversation, which presently ensued, between Major Pendennis and the honorable baronet, the member for Clavering.
When a man, under pecuniary difficulties, disappears from among his usual friends and equals–dives out of sight, as it were, from the flock of birds in which he is accustomed to sail, it is wonderful at what strange and distant nooks he comes up again for breath. I have known a Pall Mall lounger and Rotten Row buck, of no inconsiderable fashion, vanish from among his comrades of the Clubs and the Park, and be discovered, very happy and affable, at an eighteenpenny ordinary in Billingsgate: another gentleman, of great learning and wit, when out running the constables (were I to say he was a literary man, some critics would vow that I intended to insult the literary profession), once sent me his address at a little public-house called the “Fox under the Hill,” down a most darksome and cavernous archway in the Strand. Such a man, under such misfortunes, may have a house, but he is never in his house; and has an address where letters may be left; but only simpletons go with the hopes of seeing him. Only a few of the faithful know where he is to be found, and have the clew to his hiding-place. So, after the disputes with his wife, and the misfortunes consequent thereon, to find Sir Francis Clavering at home was impossible. “Ever since I hast him for my book, which is fourteen pound, he don’t come home till three o’clock, and purtends to be asleep when I bring his water of a mornin’, and dodges hout when I’m down stairs,” Mr. Lightfoot remarked to his friend Morgan; and announced that he should go down to my Lady, and be butler there, and marry his old woman. In like manner, after his altercations with Strong, the baronet did not come near him, and fled to other haunts, out of the reach of the chevalier’s reproaches; out of the reach of conscience, if possible, which many of us try to dodge and leave behind us by changes of scenes and other fugitive stratagems.
So, though the elder Pendennis, having his own ulterior object, was bent upon seeing Pen’s country neighbor and representative in Parliament, it took the major no inconsiderable trouble and time before he could get him into such a confidential state and conversation, as were necessary for the ends which the major had in view. For since the major had been called in as family friend, and had cognizance of Clavering’s affairs, conjugal and pecuniary, the baronet avoided him: as he always avoided all his lawyers and agents when there was an account to be rendered, or an affair of business to be discussed between them; and never kept any appointment but when its object was the raising of money. Thus, previous to catching this most shy and timorous bird, the major made more than one futile attempt to hold him; on one day it was a most innocent-looking invitation to dinner at Greenwich, to meet a few friends; the baronet accepted, suspected something, and did not come; leaving the major (who indeed proposed to represent in himself the body of friends) to eat his whitebait done: on another occasion the major wrote and asked for ten minutes’ talk, and the baronet instantly acknowledged the note, and made the appointment at four o’clock the next day at Bays’s _precisely_ (he carefully underlined the “precisely”); but though four o’clock came, as in the course of time and destiny it could not do otherwise, no Clavering made his appearance. Indeed, if he had borrowed twenty pounds of Pendennis, he could not have been more timid, or desirous of avoiding the major; and the latter found that it was one thing to seek a man, and another to find him.
Before the close of that day in which Strong’s patron had given the chevalier the benefit of so many blessings before his face and curses behind his back, Sir Francis Clavering who had pledged his word and his oath to his wife’s advisers to draw or accept no more bills of exchange, and to be content with the allowance which his victimized wife still awarded him, had managed to sign his respectable name to a piece of stamped paper, which the baronet’s friend, Mr. Moss Abrams, had carried off, promising to have the bill “done” by a party with whose intimacy Mr. Abrams was favored. And it chanced that Strong heard of this transaction at the place where the writings had been drawn–in the back parlor, namely, of Mr. Santiago’s cigar-shop, where the chevalier was constantly in the habit of spending an hour in the evening.
“He is at his old work again,” Mr. Santiago told his customer. “He and Moss Abrams were in my parlor. Moss sent out my boy for a stamp. It must have been a bill for fifty pound. I heard the baronet tell Moss to date it two months back. He will pretend that it is an old bill, and that he forgot it when he came to a settlement with his wife the other day. I daresay they will give him some more money now he is clear.” A man who has the habit of putting his unlucky name to “promises to pay” at six months, has the satisfaction of knowing, too, that his affairs are known and canvassed, and his signature handed round among the very worst knaves and rogues of London.
Mr. Santiago’s shop was close by St. James’s-street and Bury-street, where we have had the honor of visiting our friend Major Pendennis in his lodgings. The major was walking daintily toward his apartment, as Strong, burning with wrath and redolent of Havanna, strode along the same pavement opposite to him.
“Confound these young men: how they poison every thing with their smoke,” thought the major. “Here comes a fellow with mustaches and a cigar. Every fellow who smokes and wears mustaches is a low fellow. Oh! it’s Mr. Strong–I hope you are well, Mr. Strong?” and the old gentleman, making a dignified bow to the chevalier, was about to pass into his house; directing toward the lock of the door, with trembling hand, the polished door-key.
We have said, that, at the long and weary disputes and conferences regarding the payment of Sir Francis Clavering’s last debts, Strong and Pendennis had both been present as friends and advisers of the baronet’s unlucky family. Strong stopped and held out his hand to his brother negotiator, and old Pendennis put out toward him a couple of ungracious fingers.
“What is your good news?” said Major Pendennis, patronizing the other still farther, and condescending to address to him an observation, for old Pendennis had kept such good company all his life, that he vaguely imagined he honored common men by speaking to them. “Still in town, Mr. Strong? I hope I see you well.”
“My news is bad news, sir,” Strong answered; “it concerns our friends at Tunbridge Wells, and I should like to talk to you about it. Clavering is at his old tricks again, Major Pendennis.”
“Indeed! Pray do me the favor to come into my lodging,” cried the major with awakened interest; and the pair entered and took possession of his drawing-room. Here seated, Strong unburdened himself of his indignation to the major, and spoke at large of Clavering’s recklessness and treachery. “No promises will bind him sir,” he said. “You remember when we met, sir, with my lady’s lawyer, how he wouldn’t be satisfied with giving his honor, but wanted to take his oath on his knees to his wife, and rang the bell for a Bible, and swore perdition on his soul if he ever would give another bill. He has been signing one this very day, sir: and will sign as many more as you please for ready money: and will deceive any body, his wife or his child, or his old friend, who has backed him a hundred times. Why, there’s a bill of his and mine will be due next week–“
“I thought we had paid all–“
“Not that one,” Strong said, blushing. “He asked me not to mention it, and–and–I had half the money for that, major. And they will be down on me. But I don’t care for it; I’m used to it. It’s Lady Clavering that riles me. It’s a shame that that good-natured woman, who has paid him out of jail a score of times, should be ruined by his heartlessness. A parcel of bill-stealers, boxers, any rascals, get his money; and he don’t scruple to throw an honest fellow over. Would you believe it, sir, he took money of Altamont–you know whom I mean.”
“Indeed? of that singular man, who I think came tipsy once to Sir Francis’s house?” Major Pendennis said, with impenetrable countenance. “Who _is_ Altamont, Mr. Strong?”
“I am sure I don’t know, if you don’t know,” the chevalier answered, with a look of surprise and suspicion.
“To tell you frankly,” said the major, “I have my suspicions. I suppose–mind, I only suppose–that in our friend Clavering’s life– who, between you and me, Captain Strong, we must own is about as loose a fish as any in my acquaintance–there are, no doubt, some queer secrets and stories which he would not like to have known: none of us would. And very likely this fellow, who calls himself Altamont, knows some story against Clavering, and has some hold on him, and gets money out of him on the strength of his information. I know some of the best men of the best families in England who are paying through the nose in that way. But their private affairs are no business of mine, Mr. Strong; and it is not to be supposed that because I go and dine with a man, I pry into his secrets, or am answerable for all his past life. And so with our friend Clavering, I am most interested for his wife’s sake, and her daughter’s, who is a most charming creature: and when her ladyship asked me, I looked into her affairs, and tried to set them straight; and shall do so again, you understand, to the hest of my humble power and ability, if I can make myself useful. And if I am called upon–you understand, if I am called upon–and–by-the-way, this Mr. Altamont, Mr. Strong? How is this Mr. Altamont? I believe you are acquainted with him. Is he in town?”
“I don’t know that I am called upon to know where he is, Major Pendennis,” said Strong, rising and taking up his hat in dudgeon, for the major’s patronizing manner and impertinence of caution offended the honest gentleman not a little.
Pendennis’s manner altered at once from a tone of hauteur to one of knowing good-humor. “Ah, Captain Strong, you are cautious too, I see; and quite right, my good sir, quite right. We don’t know what ears walls may have, sir, or to whom we may be talking; and as a man of the world, and an old soldier–an old and distinguished soldier, I have been told, Captain Strong–you know very well that there is no use in throwing away your fire; you may have your ideas, and I may put two and two together and have mine. But there are things which don’t concern him that many a man had better not know, eh, captain? and which I, for one, won’t know until I have reason for knowing them: and that I believe is your maxim too. With regard to our friend the baronet, I think with you, it would be most advisable that he should be checked in his imprudent courses; and most strongly reprehend any man’s departure from his word, or any conduct of his which can give any pain to his family, or cause them annoyance in any way. That is my full and frank opinion, and I am sure it is yours.”
“Certainly,” said Mr. Strong, drily.
“I am delighted to hear it; delighted, that an old brother soldier should agree with me so fully. And I am exceedingly glad of the lucky meeting which has procured me the good fortune of your visit. Good evening. Thank you. Morgan, show the door to Captain Strong.”
And Strong, preceded by Morgan, took his leave of Major Pendennis; the chevalier not a little puzzled at the old fellow’s prudence; and the valet, to say the truth, to the full as much perplexed at his master’s reticence. For Mr. Morgan, in his capacity of accomplished valet, moved here and there in a house as silent as a shadow; and, as it so happened, during the latter part of his master’s conversation with his visitor, had been standing very close to the door, and had overheard not a little of the talk between, the two gentlemen, and a great deal more than he could understand.
“Who is that Altamont? know any thing about him and Strong?” Mr. Morgan asked of Mr. Lightfoot, on the next convenient occasion when they met at the Club.
“Strong’s his man of business, draws the governor’s bills, and indosses ’em, and does his odd jobs and that; and I suppose Altamont’s in it too,” Mr. Lightfoot replied. “That kite-flying, you know, Mr. M. always takes two or three on ’em to set the paper going. Altamont put the pot on at the Derby, and won a good bit of money. I wish the governor could get some somewhere, and I could get my book paid up.”
“Do you think my lady would pay his debts again?” Morgan asked “Find out that for me, Lightfoot, and I’ll make it worth your while my boy.”
Major Pendennis had often said with a laugh, that his valet Morgan was a much richer man than himself: and, indeed, by a long course of careful speculation, this wary and silent attendant had been amassing a considerable sum of money, during the years which he had passed in the major’s service, where he had made the acquaintance of many other valets of distinction, from whom he had learned the affairs of their principals. When Mr. Arthur came into his property, but not until then, Morgan had surprised the young gentleman, by saying that he had a little sum of money, some fifty or a hundred pound, which he wanted to lay out to advantage; perhaps the gentlemen in the Temple, knowing about affairs and business and that, could help a poor fellow to a good investment? Morgan would be very much obliged to Mr. Arthur, most grateful and obliged indeed, if Arthur could tell him of one. When Arthur laughingly replied, that he knew nothing about money matters, and knew no earthly way of helping Morgan, the latter, with the utmost simplicity, was very grateful, very grateful indeed, to Mr. Arthur, and if Mr. Arthur _should_ want a little money before his rents was paid perhaps he would kindly remember that his uncle’s old and faithful servant had some as he would like to put out: and be most proud if he could be useful anyways to any of the family.
The Prince of Fairoaks, who was tolerably prudent and had no need of ready money, would as soon have thought of borrowing from his uncle’s servant as of stealing the valet’s pocket-handkerchief, and was on the point of making some haughty reply to Morgan’s offer, but was checked by the humor of the transaction. Morgan a capitalist! Morgan offering to lend to him! The joke was excellent. On the other hand, the man might be quite innocent, and the proposal of money a simple offer of good-will. So Arthur withheld the sarcasm that was rising to his lips, and contented himself by declining Mr. Morgan’s kind proposal. He mentioned the matter to his uncle, however, and congratulated the latter on having such a treasure in his service.
It was then that the major said that he believed Morgan had been getting devilish rich for a devilish long time; in fact he had bought the house in Bury-street, in which his master was a lodger; and had actually made a considerable sum of money, from his acquaintance with the Clavering family and his knowledge obtained through his master that the Begum would pay all her husband’s debts, by buying up as many of the baronet’s acceptances as he could raise money to purchase. Of these transactions the major, however, knew no more than most gentlemen do of their servants, who live with us all our days and are strangers to us, so strong custom is, and so pitiless the distinction between class and class.
“So he offered to lend you money, did he?” the elder Pendennis remarked to his nephew. “He’s a dev’lish sly fellow, and a dev’lish rich fellow; and there’s many a nobleman would like to have such a valet in his service, and borrow from him too. And he ain’t a bit changed, Monsieur Morgan. He does his work just as well as ever–he’s always ready to my bell–steals about the room like a cat–he’s so dev’lishly attached to me, Morgan!”
On the day of Strong’s visit, the major bethought him of Pen’s story, and that Morgan might help him, and rallied the valet regarding his wealth with that free and insolent way which so high-placed a gentleman might be disposed to adopt toward so unfortunate a creature.
“I hear that you have got some money to invest, Morgan,” said the major.
It’s Mr. Arthur has been telling, hang him, thought the valet.
“I’m glad my place is such a good one.”
“Thank you, sir–I’ve no reason to complain of my place, nor of my master,” replied Morgan, demurely.
“You’re a good fellow: and I believe you are attached to me; and I’m glad you get on well. And I hope you’ll be prudent, and not be taking a public-house or that kind of thing.”
A public-house, thought Morgan–me in a public-house!–the old fool!–Dammy, if I was ten years younger I’d set in Parlyment before I died, that I would. “No, thank you kindly, sir. I don’t think of the public line, sir. And I’ve got my little savings pretty well put out, sir.”
“You do a little in the discounting way, eh, Morgan?”
“Yes, sir, a very little–I–I beg your pardon, sir–might I be so free as to ask a question–“
“Speak on, my good fellow,” the elder said, graciously.
“About Sir Francis Clavering’s paper, sir? Do you think he’s any longer any good, sir? Will my lady pay on ’em, any more, sir?”
“What, you’ve done something in that business already?”
“Yes, sir, a little,” replied Morgan, dropping down his eyes. “And I don’t mind owning, sir, and I hope I may take the liberty of saying, sir, that a little more would make me very comfortable if it turned out as well as the last.”
“Why, how much have you netted by him, in Gad’s name?” asked the major.
“I’ve done a good bit, sir, at it: that I own, sir. Having some information, and made acquaintance with the fam’ly through your kindness, I put on the pot, sir.”
“You did what?”
“I laid my money on, sir–I got all I could, and borrowed, and bought Sir Francis’s bills; many of ’em had his name, and the gentleman’s as is just gone out, Edward Strong, Esquire, sir: and of course I know of the blow hup and shindy as is took place in Grosvenor-place, sir: and as I may as well make my money as another, I’d be _very_ much obleeged to you if you’d tell me whether my lady will come down any more.”
Although Major Pendennis was as much surprised at this intelligence regarding his servant, as if he had heard that Morgan was a disguised marquis, about to throw off his mask and assume his seat in the House of Peers; and although he was of course indignant at the audacity of the fellow who had dared to grow rich under his nose, and without his cognizance; yet he had a natural admiration for every man who represented money and success, and found himself respecting Morgan, and being rather afraid of that worthy, as the truth began to dawn upon him.
“Well, Morgan,” said he, “I mustn’t ask how rich you are; and the richer the better for your sake, I’m sure. And if I could give you any information that could serve you, I would speedily help you. But frankly, if Lady Clavering asks me whether she shall pay any more of Sir Francis’s debts, I shall advise and I hope she won’t, though I fear she will–and that is all I know. And so you are aware that Sir Francis is beginning again in his–eh–reckless and imprudent course?”
“At his old games, sir–can’t prevent that gentleman. He will do it.”
“Mr. Strong was saying that a Mr. Moss Abrams was the holder of one of Sir Francis Covering’s notes. Do you know any thing of this Mr. Abrams, or the amount of the bill?”
“Don’t know the bill–know Abrams quite well, sir.”
“I wish you would find out about it for me. And I wish you would find out where I can see Sir Francis Clavering, Morgan.”
And Morgan said, “thank you, sir, yes, sir, I will, sir;” and retired from the room, as he had entered it, with his usual stealthy respect and quiet humility; leaving the major to muse and wonder over what he had just heard.
The next morning the valet informed Major Pendennis that he had seen Mr. Abrams; what was the amount of the bill that gentleman was desirous to negotiate; and that the baronet would be sure to be in the back parlor of the Wheel of Fortune Tavern that day at one o’clock.
To this appointment Sir Francis Clavering was punctual, and as at one o’clock he sat in the parlor of the tavern in question, surrounded by spittoons, Windsor chairs, cheerful prints of boxers, trotting horses, and pedestrians, and the lingering of last night’s tobacco fumes–as the descendant of an ancient line sate in this delectable place, accommodated with an old copy of Bell’s Life in London, much blotted with beer, the polite Major Pendennis walked into the apartment.
“So it’s you, old boy?” asked the baronet, thinking that Mr. Moss Abrams had arrived with the money.
“How do you do, Sir Francis Clavering? I wanted to see you, and followed you here,” said the major, at sight of whom the other’s countenance fell. Now that he had his opponent before him, the major was determined to make a brisk and sudden attack upon him, and went into action at once. “I know,” he continued, “who is the exceedingly disreputable person for whom you took me, Clavering; and the errand which brought you here.”
“It ain’t your business, is it?” asked the baronet, with a sulky and deprecatory look. “Why are you following me about and taking the command, and meddling in my affairs, Major Pendennis? I’ve never done _you_ any harm, have I? I’ve never had _your_ money. And I don’t choose to be dodged about in this way, and domineered over. I don’t choose it, and I won’t have it. If Lady Clavering has any proposal to make to me, let it be done in the regular way, and through the lawyers. I’d rather not have you.”
“I am not come from Lady Clavering,” the major said, “but of my own accord, to try and remonstrate with you, Clavering, and see if you can be kept from ruin. It is but a month ago that you swore on your honor, and wanted to get a Bible to strengthen the oath, that you would accept no more bills, but content yourself with the allowance which Lady Clavering gives you. All your debts were paid with that proviso, and you have broken it; this Mr. Abrams has a bill of yours for sixty pounds.”
“It’s an old bill. I take my solemn oath it’s an old bill,” shrieked out the baronet.
“You drew it yesterday, and you dated three months back purposely. By Gad, Clavering, you sicken me with lies, I can’t help telling you so. I’ve no patience with you, by Gad. You cheat every body, yourself included. I’ve seen a deal of the world, but I never met your equal at humbugging. It’s my belief you had rather lie than not.”
“Have you come here, you old, old beast, to tempt me to–to pitch into you, and–and knock your old head off?” said the baronet, with a poisonous look of hatred at the major.
“What, sir?” shouted out the old major, rising to his feet and clasping his cane, and looking so fiercely, that the baronet’s tone instantly changed toward him.
“No, no,” said Clavering piteously, “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to be angry, or say any thing unkind, only you’re so damned harsh to me, Major Pendennis. What is it you want of me? Why have you been hunting me so? Do _you_ want money out of me too? By Jove, you know I’ve not got a shilling,”–and so Clavering, according to his custom, passed from a curse into a whimper.
Major Pendennis saw from the other’s tone, that Clavering knew his secret was in the major’s hands.
“I’ve no errand from any body, or no design upon you,” Pendennis said, “but an endeavor, if it’s not too late, to save you and your family from utter ruin, through the infernal recklessness of your courses. I knew your secret–“
“I didn’t know it when I married her; upon my oath I didn’t know it till the d–d scoundrel came back and told me himself; and it’s the misery about that which makes me so reckless, Pendennis; indeed it is;” the baronet cried, clasping his hands.
“I knew your secret from the very first day when I saw Amory come drunk into your dining-room in Grosvenor-place. I never forget faces. I remember that fellow in Sidney a convict, and he remembers me. I know his trial, the date of his marriage, and of his reported death in the bush. I could swear to him. And I know that you are no more married to Lady Clavering than I am. I’ve kept your secret well enough, for I’ve not told a single soul that I know it–not your wife, not yourself till now.”
“Poor Lady C., it would cut her up dreadfully,” whimpered Sir Francis; “and it wasn’t my fault, major; you know it wasn’t.”
“Rather than allow you to go on ruining her as you do, I _will_ tell her, Clavering, and tell all the world too; that is what I swear I will do, unless I can come to some terms with you, and put some curb on your infernal folly. By play, debt, and extravagance of all kind, you’ve got through half your wife’s fortune, and that of her legitimate heirs, mind–her legitimate heirs. Here it must stop. You can’t live together. You’re not fit to live in a great house like Clavering; and before three years more were over would not leave a shilling to carry on. I’ve settled what must be done. You shall have six hundred a year; you shall go abroad and live on that. You must give up Parliament, and get on as well as you can. If you refuse, I give you my word I’ll make the real state of things known to-morrow; I’ll swear to Amory, who, when identified, will go back to the country from whence he came, and will rid the widow of you and himself together. And so that boy of yours loses at once all title to old Snell’s property, and it goes to your wife’s daughter. Ain’t I making myself pretty clearly understood?”
“You wouldn’t be so cruel to that poor boy, would you, Pendennis?” asked the father, pleading piteously; “hang it, think about him. He’s a nice boy: though he’s dev’lish wild, I own–he’s dev’lish wild.”
“It’s you who are cruel to him,” said the old moralist. “Why, sir, you’ll ruin him yourself inevitably in three years.”
“Yes, but perhaps I won’t have such dev’lish bad luck, you know; the luck must turn: and I’ll reform, by Gad, I’ll reform. And if you were to split on me, it would cut up my wife so; you know it would, most infernally.”
“To be parted from _you_,” said the old major, with a sneer; “you know she won’t live with you again.”
“But why can’t Lady C. live abroad, or at Bath, or at Tunbridge, or at the doose, and I go on here?” Clavering continued. “I like being here better than abroad, and I like being in Parliament. It’s dev’lish convenient being in Parliament. There’s very few seats like mine left; and if I gave it to ’em, I should not wonder the ministry would give me an island to govern, or some dev’lish good thing; for you know I’m a gentleman of dev’lish good family, and have a handle to my name, and–and that sort of thing, Major Pendennis. Eh, don’t you see? Don’t you think they’d give me something dev’lish good if I was to play my cards well? And then, you know, I’d save money, and be kept out of the way of the confounded hells and _rouge et noir_–and–and so I’d rather not give up Parliament, please.” For at one instant to hate and defy a man, at the next to weep before him, and at the next to be perfectly confidential and friendly with him, was not an unusual process with our versatile-minded baronet.
“As for your seat in Parliament,” the major said, with something of a blush on his cheek, and a certain tremor, which the other did not see “you must part with that, Sir Francis Clavering, to–to me.”
“What! are you going into the House, Major Pendennis?”
“No–not I; but my nephew, Arthur, is a very clever fellow, and would make a figure there: and when Clavering had two members, his father might very likely have been one; and–and I should like Arthur to be there,” the major said.
“Dammy, does _he_ know it, too?” cried out Clavering.
“Nobody knows any thing out of this room,” Pendennis answered; “and if you do this favor for me, I hold my tongue. If not, I’m a man of my word, and will do what I have said.”
“I say, major,” said Sir Francis, with a peculiarly humble smile, “you–you couldn’t get me my first quarter in advance, could you, like the best of fellows? You can do any thing with Lady Clavering; and, upon my oath, I’ll take up that bill of Abrams. The little dam scoundrel, I know he’ll do me in the business–he always does; and if you could do this for me, we’d see, major.”
“And I think your best plan would be to go down in September to Clavering to shoot, and take my nephew with you, and introduce him. Yes, that will be the best time. And we will try and manage about the advance.” (Arthur may lend him that, thought old Pendennis. Confound him, a seat in Parliament is worth a hundred and fifty pounds.) “And, Clavering, you understand, of course, my nephew knows nothing about this business. You have a mind to retire: he is a Clavering man, and a good representative for the borough; you introduce him, and your people vote for him–you see.”
“When can you get me the hundred and fifty, major? When shall I come and see you? Will you be at home this evening or to-morrow morning? Will you have any thing here? They’ve got some dev’lish good bitters in the bar. I often have a glass of bitters, it sets one up so.”
The old major would take no refreshment; but rose and took his leave of the baronet, who walked with him to the door of the Wheel of Fortune, and then strolled into the bar, where he took a glass of gin and bitters with the landlady there: and a gentleman connected with the ring (who boarded at the Wheel of F.) coming in, he and Sir Francis Clavering and the landlord talked about the fights and the news of the sporting world in general; and at length Mr. Moss Abrams arrived with the proceeds of the baronet’s bill, from which his own handsome commission was deducted, and out of the remainder Sir Francis “stood” a dinner at Greenwich to his distinguished friend, and passed the evening gayly at Vauxhall. Meanwhile Major Pendennis, calling a cab in Piccadilly, drove to Lamb-court, Temple, where he speedily was closeted with his nephew in deep conversation.
After their talk they parted on very good terms, and it was in consequence of that unreported conversation, whereof the reader nevertheless can pretty well guess the bearing, that Arthur expressed himself as we have heard in the colloquy with Warrington, which is reported in the last chapter.
When a man is tempted to do a tempting thing, he can find a hundred ingenious reasons for gratifying his liking; and Arthur thought very much that he would like to be in Parliament, and that he would like to distinguish himself there, and that he need not care much what side he took, as there was falsehood and truth on every side. And on this and on other matters he thought he would compromise with his conscience, and that Sadduceeism was a very convenient and good-humored profession of faith.
CHAPTER XXV.
PHILLIS AND CORYDON.
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On a picturesque common in the neighborhood of Tunbridge Wells, Lady Clavering had found a pretty villa, whither she retired after her conjugal disputes at the end of that unlucky London season. Miss Amory, of course, accompanied her mother, and Master Clavering came home for the holidays, with whom Blanche’s chief occupation was to fight and quarrel. But this was only a home pastime, and the young school-boy was not fond of home sports. He found cricket, and horses, and plenty of friends at Tunbridge. The good-natured Begum’s house was filled with a constant society of young gentlemen of thirteen, who ate and drank much too copiously of tarts and Champagne, who rode races on the lawn, and frightened the fond mother; who smoked and made themselves sick, and the dining-room unbearable to Miss Blanche. She did not like the society of young gentlemen of thirteen.
As for that fair young creature, any change, as long as it was change, was pleasant to her; and for a week or two she would have liked poverty and a cottage, and bread and cheese; and, for a night, perhaps, a dungeon and bread and water, and so the move to Tunbridge was by no means unwelcome to her. She wandered in the woods, and sketched trees and farm-houses; she read French novels habitually; she drove into Tunbridge Wells pretty often, and to any play, or ball, or conjuror, or musician who might happen to appear in the place; she slept a great deal; she quarreled with mamma and Frank during the morning; she found the little village school and attended it, and first fondled the girls and thwarted the mistress, then scolded the girls and laughed at the teacher; she was constant at church, of course. It was a pretty little church, of immense antiquity–a little Anglo-Norman _bijou,_ built the day before yesterday, and decorated with all sorts of painted windows, carved saints’ heads, gilt Scripture texts, and open pews. Blanche began forthwith to work a most correct high-church altar-cover for the church. She passed for a saint with the clergyman for a while, whom she quite took in, and whom she coaxed, and wheedled, and fondled so artfully, that poor Mrs. Smirke, who at first was charmed with her, then bore with her, then would hardly speak to her, was almost mad with jealousy. Mrs. Smirke was the wife of our old friend Smirke, Pen’s tutor and poor Helen’s suitor. He had consoled himself for her refusal with a young lady from Clapham whom his mamma provided. When the latter died, our friend’s views became every day more and more pronounced. He cut off his coat collar, and let his hair grow over his back. He rigorously gave up the curl which he used to sport on his forehead, and the tie of his neckcloth of which he was rather proud. He went without any tie at all. He went without dinner on Fridays. He read the Roman Hours, and intimated that he was ready to receive confessions in the vestry. The most harmless creature in the world, he was denounced as a black and a most dangerous Jesuit and Papist, by Muffin of the Dissenting chapel, and Mr. Simeon Knight at the old church. Mr. Smirke had built his chapel of ease with the money left him by his mother at Clapham. Lord! lord! what would she have said to hear a table called an altar! to see candlesticks on it! to get letters signed on the Feast of Saint So-and-so, or the Vigil of Saint What-do-you-call-’em! All these things did the boy of Clapham practice; his faithful wife following him. But when Blanche had a conference of near two hours in the vestry with Mr. Smirke, Belinda paced up and down on the grass, where there were only two little grave-stones as yet; she wished that she had a third there: only, only he would offer very likely to that creature, who had infatuated him, in a fortnight. No, she would retire; she would go into a convent, and profess, and leave him. Such bad thoughts had Smirke’s wife and his neighbors regarding him; these, thinking him in direct correspondence with the bishop of Rome; that, bewailing errors to her even more odious and fatal; and yet our friend meant no earthly harm. The post-office never brought him any letters from the Pope; he thought Blanche, to be sure, at first, the most pious, gifted, right-thinking, fascinating person he had ever met; and her manner of singing the chants delighted him–but after a while he began to grow rather tired of Miss Amory, her ways and graces grew stale somehow; then he was doubtful about Miss Amory; then she made a disturbance in his school, lost her temper, and rapped the children’s fingers. Blanche inspired this admiration and satiety, somehow, in many men. She tried to please them, and flung out all her graces at once; came down to them with all her jewels on, all her smiles, and cajoleries, and coaxings, and ogles. Then she grew tired of them and of trying to please them, and never having cared about them, dropped them: and the men grew tired of her, and dropped her too. It was a happy night for Belinda when Blanche went away; and her husband, with rather a blush and a sigh, said “he had been deceived in her; he had thought her endowed with many precious gifts, he feared they were mere tinsel; he thought she had been a right-thinking person, he feared she had merely made religion an amusement–she certainly had quite lost her temper to the schoolmistress, and beat Polly Rucker’s knuckles cruelly.” Belinda flew to his arms, there was no question about the grave or the veil any more. He tenderly embraced her on the forehead. “There is none like thee, my Belinda,” he said, throwing his fine eyes up to the ceiling, “precious among women!” As for Blanche, from the instant she lost sight of him and Belinda, she never thought or cared about either any more.
But when Arthur went down to pass a few days at Tunbridge Wells with the Begum, this stage of indifference had not arrived on Miss Blanche’s part or on that of the simple clergyman. Smirke believed her to be an angel and wonder of a woman. Such a perfection he had never seen, and sate listening to her music in the summer evenings, open-mouthed, rapt in wonder, tea-less, and bread-and-butterless. Fascinating as he had heard the music of the opera to be–he had never but once attended an exhibition of that nature (which he mentioned with a blush and a sigh–it was on that day when he had accompanied Helen and her son to the play at Chatteris)–he could not conceive any thing more delicious, more celestial, he had almost said, than Miss Amory’s music. She was a most gifted being: she had a precious soul: she had the most remarkable talents–to all outward seeming, the most heavenly disposition, &c. It was in this way that, being then at the height of his own fever and bewitchment for Blanche, Smirke discoursed to Arthur about her.
The meeting between the two old acquaintances had been very cordial. Arthur loved any body who loved his mother; Smirke could speak on that theme with genuine feeling and emotion. They had a hundred things to tell each other of what had occurred in their lives. “Arthur would perceive,” Smirke said, “that his–his views on Church matters had developed themselves since their acquaintance.” Mrs. Smirke, a most exemplary person, seconded them with all her endeavors. He had built this little church on his mother’s demise, who had left him provided with a sufficiency of worldly means. Though in the cloister himself, he had heard of Arthur’s reputation. He spoke in the kindest and most saddened tone; he held his eyelids down, and bowed his fair head on one side. Arthur was immensely amused with him; with his airs; with his follies and simplicity; with his blank stock and long hair; with his real goodness, kindness, friendliness of feeling. And his praises of Blanche pleased and surprised our friend not a little, and made him regard her with eyes of particular favor.
The truth is, Blanche was very glad to see Arthur; as one is glad to see an agreeable man in the country, who brings down the last news and stories from the great city; who can talk better than most country folks, at least can talk that darling London jargon, so dear and indispensable to London people, so little understood by persons out of the world. The first day Pen came down, he kept Blanche laughing for hours after dinner. She sang her songs with redoubled spirit. She did not scold her mother; she fondled and kissed her to the honest Begum’s surprise. When it came to be bed-time, she said, “_Déjà!_” with the prettiest air of regret possible; and was really quite sorry to go to bed, and squeezed Arthur’s hand quite fondly. He on his side gave her pretty palm a very cordial pressure. Our young gentleman was of that turn, that eyes very moderately bright dazzled him.
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“She is very much improved,” thought Pen, looking out into the night, “very much. I suppose the Begum won’t mind my smoking with the window open. She’s a jolly good old woman, and Blanche is immensely improved. I liked her manner with her mother to-night. I liked her laughing way with that stupid young cub of a boy, whom they oughtn’t to allow to get tipsy. She sang those little verses very prettily; they were devilish pretty verses too, though I say it who shouldn’t say it.” And he hummed a tune which Blanche had put to some verses of his own. “Ah! what a fine night! How jolly a cigar is at night! How pretty that little Saxon church looks in the moonlight! I wonder what old Warrington’s doing? Yes, she’s a dayvlish nice little thing, as my uncle says.”
“O heavenly!” here broke out a voice from a clematis-covered casement near–a girl’s voice: it was the voice of the author of _Mes Larmes_.
Pen burst into a laugh. “Don’t tell about my smoking,” he said, leaning out of his own window.
“O! go on! I adore it,” cried the lady of _Mes Larmes_. “Heavenly night! Heavenly, heavenly moon! but I most shut my window, and not talk to you on account of _les moeurs_. How droll they are, _les moeurs!_ Adieu.” And Pen began to sing the good night to Don Basilio.
The next day they were walking in the fields together, laughing and chattering–the gayest pair of friends. They talked about the days of their youth, and Blanche was prettily sentimental. They talked about Laura, dearest Laura–Blanche had loved her as a sister: was she happy with that odd Lady Rockminster? Wouldn’t she come and stay with them at Tunbridge? O, what walks they would take together! What songs they would sing–the old, old songs. Laura’s voice was splendid. Did Arthur–she must call him Arthur–remember the songs they sang in the happy old days, now he was grown such a great man, and had such a _succès?_ &c. &c.
And the day after, which was enlivened with a happy ramble through the woods to Penshurst, and a sight of that pleasant Park and Hall, came that conversation with the curate which we have narrated, and which made our young friend think more and more.
“Is she all this perfection?” he asked himself. “Has she become serious and religious? Does she tend schools, and visit the poor? Is she kind to her mother and brother? Yes, I am sure of that, I have seen her.” And walking with his old tutor over his little parish, and going to visit his school, it was with inexpressible delight that Pen found Blanche seated instructing the children, and fancied to himself how patient she must be, how good-natured, how ingenuous, how really simple in her tastes, and unspoiled by the world.
“And do you really like the country?” he asked her, as they walked together.
“I should like never to see that odious city again. O Arthur–that is, Mr.–well, Arthur, then–one’s good thoughts grow up in these sweet woods and calm solitudes, like those flowers which won’t bloom in London, you know. The gardener comes and changes our balconies once a week. I don’t think I shall bear to look London in the face again–its odious, smoky, brazen face! But, heigho!”
“Why that sigh, Blanche?” “Never mind why.”
“Yes, I do mind why. Tell me, tell me every thing.”
“I wish you hadn’t come down;” and a second edition of _Mes Soupirs_ came out.
“You don’t want me, Blanche?”
“I don’t want you to go away. I don’t think this house will be very happy without you, and that’s why I wish that you never had come.”
_Mes Soupirs_ were here laid aside, and _Mes Larmes_ had begun.
Ah! What answer is given to those in the eyes of a young woman? What is the method employed for drying them? What took place? O ringdoves and roses, O dews and wildflowers, O waving greenwoods and balmy airs of summer! Here were two battered London rakes, taking themselves in for a moment, and fancying that they were in love with each other, like Phillis and Corydon!
When one thinks of country houses and country walks, one wonders that any man is left unmarried.
CHAPTER XXVI.
TEMPTATION
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Easy and frank-spoken as Pendennis commonly was with Warrington, how came it that Arthur did not inform the friend and depository of all his secrets, of the little circumstances which had taken place at the villa near Tunbridge Wells? He talked about the discovery of his old tutor Smirke, freely enough, and of his wife, and of his Anglo-Norman church, and of his departure from Clapham to Rome; but, when asked about Blanche, his answers were evasive or general; he said she was a good-natured, clever little thing–that, rightly guided, she might make no such bad wife after all; but that he had for the moment no intention of marriage, that his days of romance were over, that he was contented with his present lot, and so forth.
In the mean time there came occasionally to Lamb Court, Temple, pretty little satin envelopes, superscribed in the neatest handwriting, and sealed with one of those admirable ciphers, which, if Warrington had been curious enough to watch his friend’s letters, or indeed if the cipher had been decipherable, would have shown George that Mr. Arthur was in correspondence with a young lady whose initials were B. A. To these pretty little compositions Mr. Pen replied in his best and gallantest manner; with jokes, with news of the town, with points of wit, nay, with pretty little verses very likely, in reply to the versicles of the Muse of “Mes Larmes.” Blanche we know rhymes with “branch,” and “stanch,” and “launch,” and no doubt a gentleman of Pen’s ingenuity would not forego these advantages of position, and would ring the pretty little changes upon these pleasing notes. Indeed we believe that those love-verses of Mr. Pen’s, which had such a pleasing success in the “Roseleaves,” that charming Annual edited by Lady Violet Lebas, and illustrated by portraits of the female nobility by the famous artist Pinkney, were composed at this period of our hero’s life; and were first addressed to Blanche, per post, before they figured in print, _cornets_ as it were to Pinkney’s pictorial garland.
“Verses are all very well,” the elder Pendennis said, who found Pen scratching down one of these artless effusions at the Club as he was waiting for his dinner; “and letter-writing if mamma allows it, and between such old country friends of course there may be a correspondence, and that sort of thing–but mind, Pen, and don’t commit yourself, my boy. For who knows what the doose may happen? The best way is to make your letters safe. I never wrote a letter in all my life that would commit me, and demmy, sir, I have had some experience of women.” And the worthy gentleman, growing more garrulous and confidential with his nephew as he grew older, told many affecting instances of the evil results consequent upon this want of caution to many persons in “society;”–how from using too ardent expressions in some poetical notes to the widow Naylor, young Spoony had subjected himself to a visit of remonstrance from the widow’s brother, Colonel Flint; and thus had been forced into a marriage with a woman old enough to be his mother: how when Louisa Salter had at length succeeded in securing young Sir John Bird, Hopwood, of the Blues, produced some letters which Miss S. had written to him, and caused a withdrawal on Bird’s part, who afterward was united to Miss Stickney, of Lyme Regis, &c. The major, if he had not reading, had plenty of observation, and could back his wise saws with a multitude of modern instances, which he had acquired in a long and careful perusal of the great book of the world.
Pen laughed at the examples, and blushing a little at his uncle’s remonstrances, said that he would bear them in mind and be cautious. He blushed, perhaps, because he _had_ borne them in mind; because he _was_ cautious: because in his letters to Miss Blanche he had from instinct or honesty perhaps refrained from any avowals which might compromise him. “Don’t you remember the lesson I had, sir, in Lady Mirabel’s–Miss Fotheringay’s affair? I am not to be caught again, uncle,” Arthur said with mock frankness and humility. Old Pendennis congratulated himself and his nephew heartily on the latter’s prudence and progress, and was pleased at the position which Arthur was taking as a man of the world.
No doubt, if Warrington had been consulted, his opinion would have been different; and he would have told Pen that the boy’s foolish letters were better than the man’s adroit compliments and slippery gallantries; that to win the woman he loves, only a knave or a coward advances under cover, with subterfuges, and a retreat secured behind him: but Pen spoke not on this matter to Mr. Warrington, knowing pretty well that he was guilty, and what his friend’s verdict would be.
Colonel Altamont had not been for many weeks absent on his foreign tour, Sir Francis Clavering having retired meanwhile into the country pursuant to his agreement with Major Pendennis, when the ills of fate began to fall rather suddenly and heavily upon the sole remaining partner of the little firm of Shepherd’s Inn. When Strong, at parting with Altamont, refused the loan proffered by the latter in the fullness of his purse and the generosity of his heart, he made such a sacrifice to conscience and delicacy as caused him many an after-twinge and pang; and he felt–it was not very many hours in his life he had experienced the feeling–that in this juncture of his affairs he had been too delicate and too scrupulous. Why should a fellow in want refuse a kind offer kindly made? Why should a thirsty man decline a pitcher of water from a friendly hand, because it was a little soiled? Strong’s conscience smote him for refusing what the other had fairly come by, and generously proffered: and he thought ruefully, now it was too late, that Altamont’s cash would have been as well in his pocket as in that of the gambling-house proprietor at Baden or Ems, with whom his Excellency would infallibly leave his Derby winnings. It was whispered among the tradesmen, bill-discounters, and others who had commercial dealings with Captain Strong, that he and the baronet had parted company, and that the captain’s “paper” was henceforth of no value. The tradesmen, who had put a wonderful confidence in him hitherto–for who could resist Strong’s jolly face and frank and honest demeanor?–now began