Chapter 22
"Grat.i.tude to this kind of people," the major said, "is very well; but familiarity is out of the question. This gentleman gives his lessons and receives his money like any other master. You are too humble, my good soul. There must be distinctions in ranks, and that sort of thing.
I told you before, you were too kind to Mr. Smirke."
But Helen did not think so; and now that Arthur was going away, and she bethought her how very polite Mr. Smirke had been; how he had gone on messages for her; how he had brought books and copied music; how he had taught Laura so many things, and given her so many kind presents, her heart smote her on account of her ingrat.i.tude toward the curate;--so much so, that when he came down from study with Pen, and was hankering about the hall previous to his departure, she went out and shook hands with him with rather a blus.h.i.+ng face, and begged him to come into her drawing-room, where she said they now never saw him. And as there was to be rather a good dinner that day, she invited Mr. Smirke to partake of it; and we may be sure that he was too happy to accept such a delightful summons.
Eased, by the above report, of all her former doubts and misgivings regarding the curate, Helen was exceedingly kind and gracious to Mr.
Smirke during dinner, redoubling her attentions, perhaps because Major Pendennis was very high and reserved with his nephew's tutor. When Pendennis asked Smirke to drink wine, he addressed him as if he was a sovereign speaking to a petty retainer, in a manner so condescending, that even Pen laughed at it, although quite ready, for his part, to be as conceited as most young men are.
But Smirke did not care for the impertinences of the major so long as he had his hostess's kind behavior; and he pa.s.sed a delightful time by her side at table, exerting all his powers of conversation to please her, talking in a manner both clerical and worldly, about the Fancy Bazaar, and the Great Missionary Meeting, about the last new novel, and the bishop's excellent sermon--about the fas.h.i.+onable parties in London, an account of which he read in the newspapers--in fine, he neglected no art, by which a college divine who has both sprightly and serious talents, a taste for the genteel, an irreproachable conduct, and a susceptible heart, will try and make himself agreeable to the person on whom he has fixed his affections.
Major Pendennis came yawning out of the dining-room very soon after his sister and little Laura had left the apartment--"What an unsufferable bore that man is, and how he did talk!" the major said.
"He has been very good to Arthur, who is very fond of him," Mrs.
Pendennis said--"I wonder who the Miss Thompson is whom he is going to marry."
"I always thought the fellow was looking in another direction," said the major.
"And in what?" asked Mrs. Pendennis, quite innocently--"toward Myra Portman?"
"Toward Helen Pendennis, if you must know," answered her brother-in-law.
"Toward me! impossible!" Helen said, who knew perfectly well that such had been the case. "His marriage will be a very happy thing. I hope Arthur will not take too much wine."
Now Arthur flushed with a good deal of pride at the privilege of having the keys of the cellar, and remembering that a very few more dinners would probably take place which he and his dear friend Smirke could share, had brought up a liberal supply of claret for the company's drinking, and when the elders with little Laura left him, he and the curate began to pa.s.s the wine very freely.
One bottle speedly yielded up the ghost, another shed more than half its blood, before the two topers had been much more than half an hour together--Pen, with a hollow laugh and voice, had drunk off one b.u.mper to the falsehood of women, and had said sardonically, that wine, at any rate, was a mistress who never deceived, and was sure to give a man a welcome.
Smirke gently said that he knew for his part some women who were all truth and tenderness; and casting up his eyes toward the ceiling, and heaving a sigh as if evoking some being dear and unmentionable, he took up his gla.s.s and drained it, and the rosy liquor began to suffuse his face.
Pen trolled over some verses he had been making that morning, in which he informed himself that the woman who had slighted his pa.s.sion could not be worthy to win it: that he was awaking from love's mad fever, and, of course, under these circ.u.mstances, proceeded to leave her, and to quit a heartless deceiver: that a name which
Pen, we say, who was a very excitable person, rolled out these verses in his rich, sweet voice, which trembled with emotion while our young poet spoke. He had a trick of blus.h.i.+ng when in this excited state, and his large and honest gray eyes also exhibited proofs of a sensibility so genuine, hearty, and manly, that Miss Costigan, if she had a heart, must needs have softened toward him; and very likely she was, as he said, altogether unworthy of the affection which he lavished upon her.
The sentimental Smirke was caught by the emotion which agitated his young friend. He grasped Pen's hand over the dessert dishes and wine gla.s.ses. He said the verses were beautiful: that Pen was a poet, a great poet, and likely by heaven's permission to run a great career in the world. "Go on and prosper, dear Arthur," he cried; "the wounds under which at present you suffer are only temporary, and the very grief you endure will cleanse and strengthen your heart. I have always prophesied the greatest and brightest things of you, as soon as you have corrected some failings and weaknesses of character, which at present belong to you. But you will get over these, my boy; you will get over these; and when you are famous and celebrated, as I know you will be, will you remember your old tutor and the happy early days of your youth?"
Pen swore he would: with another shake of the hand across the gla.s.ses and apricots. "I shall never forget how kind you have been to me, Smirke," he said. "I don't know what I should have done without you.
You are my best friend."
"Am I, _really_, Arthur?" said Smirke, looking through his spectacles; and his heart began to beat so that he thought Pen must almost hear it throbbing.
"My best friend, my friend _forever_," Pen said. "G.o.d bless you, old boy," and he drank up the last gla.s.s of the second bottle of the famous wine which his father had laid in, which his uncle had bought, which Lord Levant had imported, and which now, like a slave indifferent, was ministering pleasure to its present owner, and giving its young master delectation.
"We'll have another bottle, old boy," Pen said, "by Jove we will.
Hurray!--claret goes for nothing. My uncle was telling me that he saw Sheridan drink five bottles at Brookes's, besides a bottle of Maraschino. This is some of the finest wine in England, he says. So it is, by Jove. There's nothing like it. _Nunc vino pellite curas--cras ingens iterabimus aeq_--fill your gla.s.s, Old Smirke, a hogshead of it won't do you any harm." And Mr. Pen began to sing the drinking song out of Der Freischutz. The dining-room windows were open, and his mother was softly pacing on the lawn outside, while little Laura was looking at the sunset. The sweet fresh notes of the boy's voice came to the widow. It cheered her kind heart to hear him sing.
"You--you are taking too much wine, Arthur," Mr. Smirke said, softly--"you are exciting yourself."
"No," said Pen, "women give headaches, but this don't. Fill your gla.s.s, old fellow, and let's drink--I say, Smirke, my boy--let's drink to her--_your_ her, I mean, not mine, for whom I swear I'll care no more--no, not a penny--no, not a fig--no, not a gla.s.s of wine. Tell us about the lady, Smirke; I've often seen you sighing about her."
"Oh!" said Smirke--and his beautiful cambric s.h.i.+rt front and glistening studs heaved with the emotion which agitated his gentle and suffering bosom.
"Oh--what a sigh!" Pen cried, growing very hilarious; "fill, my boy, and drink the toast, you can't refuse a toast, no gentleman refuses a toast.
Here's her health, and good luck to you, and may she soon be Mrs.
Smirke."
"_Do_ you say so?" Smirke said, all of a tremble. "Do you really say so, Arthur?"
"Say so; of course, I say so. Down with it. Here's Mrs. Smirke's good health: hip, hip, hurray!"
Smirke convulsively gulped down his gla.s.s of wine, and Pen waved his over his head, cheering so as to make his mother and Laura wonder on the lawn, and his uncle, who was dozing over the paper in the drawing-room, start, and say to himself, "that boy's drinking too much."
Smirke put down the gla.s.s.
"I accept the omen," gasped out the blus.h.i.+ng curate. "Oh, my dear Arthur, you--you know her--"
"What--Myra Portman? I wish you joy: she's got a dev'lish large waist; but I wish you joy, old fellow."
"Oh, Arthur!" groaned the curate again, and nodded his head, speechless.
"Beg your pardon--sorry I offended you--but she _has_ got a large waist, you know--devilish large waist," Pen continued--the third bottle evidently beginning to act upon the young gentleman.
"It's not Miss Portman," the other said, in a voice of agony.
"Is it any body at Chatteries or at Clapham? Somebody here? No--it ain't old Pybus? it can't be Miss Rolt at the factory--she's only fourteen."
"It's somebody rather older than I am, Pen," the curate cried, looking up at his friend, and then guiltily casting his eyes down into his plate.
Pen burst out laughing. "It's Madame Fribsby, by Jove, it's Madame Fribsby. Madame Frib, by the immortal G.o.ds!"
The curate could contain no more. "O Pen," he cried, "how can you suppose that any of those--of those more than ordinary beings you have named, could have an influence upon this heart, when I have been daily in the habit of contemplating perfection! I may be insane, I may be madly ambitious, I may be presumptuous--but for two years my heart has been filled by one image, and has known no other idol. Haven't I loved you as a son, Arthur?--say, hasn't Charles Smirke loved you as a son?"
"Yes, old boy, you've been very good to me," Pen said, whose liking, however, for his tutor was not by any means of the filial kind.
"My means," rushed on Smirke, "are at present limited, I own, and my mother is not so liberal as might be desired; but what she has will be mine at her death. Were she to hear of my marrying a lady of rank and good fortune, my mother would be liberal, I am sure she would be liberal. Whatever I have or subsequently inherit--and it's five hundred a year at the very least--would be settled upon her and--and--and you at my death--that is--"
"What the deuce do you mean?--and what have I to do with your money?"
cried out Pen, in a puzzle.
"Arthur, Arthur!" exclaimed the other wildly; "You say I am your dearest friend--let me be more. Oh, can't you see that the angelic being I love--the purest, the best of women--is no other than your dear, dear angel of a mother."
"My mother!" cried out Arthur, jumping up, and sober in a minute. "Pooh!
d.a.m.n it, Smirke, you must be mad--she's seven or eight years older than you are."
"Did _you_ find that any objection," cried Smirke piteously, and alluding, of course, to the elderly subject of Pen's own pa.s.sion.
The lad felt the hint, and blushed quite red. "The cases are not similar, Smirke," he said, "and the allusion might have been spared.
A man may forget his own rank and elevate any woman to it; but allow me to say our positions are very different."
"How do you mean, dear Arthur?" the curate interposed sadly, cowering as he felt that his sentence was about to be read.