Chapter 8
The poor boy had taken the plunge. Trembling with pa.s.sionate emotion, his heart beating and throbbing fiercely, tears rus.h.i.+ng forth in spite of him, his voice almost choking with feeling, poor Pen had said those words which he could withhold no more, and flung himself and his whole store of love, and admiration, and ardor, at the feet of this mature beauty. Is he the first who has done so? Have none before or after him staked all their treasure of life, as a savage does his land and possessions against a draught of the fair-skins' fire-water, or a couple of bauble eyes?
"Does your mother know of this, _Arthur_?" said Miss Fotheringay, slowly. He seized her hand madly, and kissed it a thousand times.
She did not withdraw it. "_Does_ the old lady know it?" Miss Costigan thought to herself "well, perhaps she may," and then she remembered what a handsome diamond cross Mrs. Pendennis had on the night of the play, and thought, "sure 'twill go in the family."
"Calm yourself, dear Arthur," she said, in her low rich voice, and smiled sweetly and gravely upon him. Then, with her disengaged hand, she put the hair lightly off his throbbing forehead. He was in such a rapture and whirl of happiness that he could hardly speak. At last he gasped out, "My mother has seen you, and admires you beyond measure.
She will learn to love you soon: who can do otherwise? She will love you because I do."
"'Deed then, I think you do," said Miss Costigan, perhaps with a sort of pity for Pen.
Think he did! Of course here Mr. Pen went off into a rhapsody through which, as we have perfect command over our own feelings, we have no reason to follow the lad. Of course, love, truth, and eternity were produced; and words were tried but found impossible to plumb the tremendous depth of his affection. This speech, we say, is no business of ours. It was most likely not very wise, but what right have we to overhear? Let the poor boy fling out his simple heart at the woman's feet, and deal gently with him. It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can't; and are proud of our impotence too.
At the end of his speech Pen again kissed the imperial hand with rapture--and I believe it was at this very moment, and while Mrs. Dean and Doctor Portman were engaged in conversation, that young Master Ridley Roset, her son, pulled his mother by the back of her capacious dress, and said--
"I say, ma! look up there"--and he waggled his innocent head.
That was, indeed, a view from the dean's garden such as seldom is seen by deans--or is written in chapters. There was poor Pen performing a salute upon the rosy fingers of his charmer, who received the embrace with perfect calmness and good humor. Master Ridley looked up and grinned, little Miss Rosa looked at her brother, and opened the mouth of astonishment. Mrs. Dean's countenance defied expression, and as for Dr. Portman, when he beheld the scene, and saw his prime favorite and dear pupil Pen, he stood mute with rage and wonder.
Mrs. Haller spied the party below at the same moment, and gave a start and a laugh. "Sure there's somebody in the dean's garden," she cried out; and withdrew with perfect calmness, while Pen darted away with his face glowing like coals. The garden party had re-entered the house when he ventured to look out again. The sickle moon was blazing bright in the heavens then, the stars were glittering, the bell of the cathedral tolling nine, the dean's guests (all save one, who had called for his horse Dumpling, and ridden off early) were partaking of tea and b.u.t.tered cakes in Mrs. Dean's drawing-room--when Pen took leave of Miss Costigan.
Pen arrived at home in due time afterward; and was going to slip off to bed, for the poor lad was greatly worn and agitated, and his high-strung nerves had been at almost a maddening pitch--when a summons came to him by John, the old footman, whose countenance bore a very ominous look, that his mother must see him below.
On this he tied on his neckcloth again, and went down stairs to the drawing-room. There sate not only his mother, but her friend, the Reverend Doctor Portman. Helen's face looked very pale by the light of the lamp--the doctor's was flushed, on the contrary, and quivering with anger and emotion.
Pen saw at once that there was a crisis, and that there had been a discovery. "Now for it," he thought.
"Where have you been, Arthur?" Helen said, in a trembling voice.
"How can you look that--that dear lady, and a Christian clergyman in the face, sir?" bounced out the doctor, in spite of Helen's pale, appealing looks. "Where has he been? Where his mother's son should have been ashamed to go. For your mother's an angel, sir, an angel. How dare you bring pollution into her house, and make that spotless creature wretched with the thoughts of your crime?"
"Sir!" said Pen.
"Don't deny it, sir," roared the doctor. "Don't add lies, sir, to your other infamy. I saw you myself, sir. I saw you from the dean's garden.
I saw you kissing the hand of that infernal painted--"
"Stop," Pen said, clapping his fist on the table, till the lamp flickered up and shook, "I am a very young man, but you will please to remember that I am a gentleman--I will hear no abuse of that lady."
"Lady, sir," cried the doctor, "_that_ a lady--you--you--you stand in your mother's presence and call that--that woman a lady!--"
"In any body's presence," shouted out Pen. "She is worthy of any place.
She is as pure as any woman. She is as good as she is beautiful. If any man but you insulted her, I would tell him what I thought; but as you are my oldest friend, I suppose you have the privilege to doubt of my honor."
"No, no, Pen, dearest Pen," cried out Helen in an excess of joy. "I told, I told you, doctor, he was not--not what you thought;" and the tender creature coming trembling forward flung herself on Pen's shoulder.
Pen felt himself a man, and a match for all the doctors in doctordom.
He was glad this explanation had come. "You saw how beautiful she was,"
he said to his mother, with a soothing, protecting air, like Hamlet with Gertrude in the play. "I tell you, dear mother, she is as good.
When you know her you will say so. She is of all, except you, the simplest, the kindest, the most affectionate of women. Why should she not be on the stage?--She maintains her father by her labor."
"Drunken old reprobate," growled the doctor, but Pen did not hear or heed.
"If you could see, as I have, how orderly her life is, how pure and pious her whole conduct, you would--as I do--yes, as I do"--(with a savage look at the doctor)--"spurn the slanderer who dared to do her wrong. Her father was an officer, and distinguished himself in Spain.
He was a friend of His Royal Highness the Duke
"Why, G.o.d bless my soul," shrieked out the doctor, hardly knowing whether to burst with rage or laughter, "you don't mean to say you want to _marry_ her?"
Pen put on his most princely air. "What else, Dr. Portman," he said, "do you suppose would be my desire?"
Utterly foiled in his attack, and knocked down by this sudden lunge of Pen's, the doctor could only gasp out, "Mrs. Pendennis, ma'am, send for the major."
"Send for the major? with all my heart," said Arthur, Prince of Pendennis and Grand Duke of Fairoaks, with a most superb wave of the hand. And the colloquy terminated by the writing of those two letters which were laid on Major Pendennis's breakfast-table, in London, at the commencement of Prince Arthur's most veracious history.
CHAPTER VII.
IN WHICH THE MAJOR MAKES HIS APPEARANCE.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Our acquaintance, Major Arthur Pendennis, arrived in due time at Fairoaks, after a dreary night pa.s.sed in the mail-coach, where a stout fellow-pa.s.senger, swelling preternaturally with great-coats, had crowded him into a corner, and kept him awake by snoring indecently; where a widow lady, opposite, had not only shut out the fresh air by closing all the windows of the vehicle, but had filled the interior with fumes of Jamaica rum and water, which she sucked perpetually from a bottle in her reticule; where, whenever he caught a brief moment of sleep, the tw.a.n.ging of the horn at the turnpike-gates, or the scuffling of his huge neighbor wedging him closer and closer, or the play of the widow's feet on his own tender toes, speedily woke up the poor gentleman to the horrors and realities of life--a life which has pa.s.sed away now and become impossible, and only lives in fond memories. Eight miles an hour, for twenty or five-and-twenty hours, a tight mail-coach, a hard seat, a gouty tendency, a perpetual change of coachmen grumbling because you did not fee them enough, a fellow-pa.s.senger partial to spirits-and-water--who has not borne with these evils in the jolly old times? and how could people travel under such difficulties? And yet they did, and were merry too. Next the widow, and by the side of the major's servant on the roof, were a couple of school-boys going home for the midsummer holidays, and Major Pendennis wondered to see them sup at the inn at Bagshot, where they took in a cargo of ham, eggs, pie, pickles, tea, coffee, and boiled beef, which surprised the poor major, sipping a cup of very feeble tea, and thinking with a tender dejection that Lord Steyne's dinner was coming off at that very moment. The ingenuous ardor of the boys, however, amused the major, who was very good-natured, and he became the more interested when he found that the one who traveled inside with him, was a lord's son, whose n.o.ble father Pendennis, of course, had met in the world of fas.h.i.+on, which he frequented. The little lord slept all night through, in spite of the squeezing, and the horn-blowing, and the widow; and he looked as fresh as paint (and, indeed, p.r.o.nounced himself to be so) when the major, with a yellow face, a bristly beard, a wig out of curl, and strong rheumatic griefs shooting through various limbs of his uneasy body, descended at the little lodge-gate at Fairoaks where the portress and gardener's wife reverentially greeted him; and, still more respectfully, Mr. Morgan, his man.
Helen was on the lookout for this expected guest, and saw him from her window. But she did not come forward immediately to greet him. She knew the major did not like to be seen at a surprise, and required a little preparation before he cared to be visible. Pen, when a boy, had incurred sad disgrace, by carrying off from the major's dressing-table a little morocco box, which it must be confessed contained the major's back teeth, which he naturally would leave out of his jaws in a jolting mail-coach, and without which he would not choose to appear. Morgan, his man, made a mystery of his wigs: curling them in private places: introducing them mysteriously to his master's room;--nor without his head of hair would the major care to show himself to any member of his family or any acquaintance. He went to his apartment then, and supplied these deficiencies; he groaned and moaned, and wheezed, and cursed Morgan through his toilet, as an old buck will, who has been up all night with a rheumatism, and has a long duty to perform. And finally being belted, curled, and set straight, he descended upon the drawing-room, with a grave, majestic air, such as befitted one who was at once a man of business and a man of fas.h.i.+on.
Pen was not there, however, only Helen, and little Laura sewing at her knees; and to whom he never presented more than a fore-finger, as he did on this occasion, after saluting his sister-in-law. Laura took the finger, trembling, and dropped it--and then fled out of the room. Major Pendennis did not want to keep her, or indeed to have her in the house at all, and had his private reason for disapproving of her: which we may mention on some future occasion. Meanwhile Laura disappeared and wandered about the premises seeking for Pen; whom she presently found in the orchard, pacing up and down a walk there, in earnest conversation with Mr. Smirke. He was so occupied that he did not hear Laura's clear voice singing out, until Smirke pulled him by the coat, and pointed toward her as she came running.
She ran up and put her hand into his. "Come in, Pen," she said, "there's somebody come; uncle Arthur's come."
"He is, is he?" said Pen, and she felt him grasp her little hand. He looked round at Smirke with uncommon fierceness, as much as to say, I am ready for him or any man.--Mr. Smirke cast up his eyes as usual and heaved a gentle sigh.
"Lead on, Laura," Pen said, with a half fierce half comic air--"Lead on, and say I wait upon my uncle." But he was laughing in order to hide a great anxiety: and was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his courage inwardly to face the ordeal which he knew was now before him.
Pen had taken Smirke into his confidence in the last two days, and after the outbreak attendant on the discovery of Dr. Portman, and during every one of those forty-eight hours which he had pa.s.sed in Mr.
Smirke's society, had done nothing but talk to his tutor about Miss Fotheringay--Miss Emily Fotheringay--Emily, &c., to all which talk Smirke listened without difficulty, for he was in love himself, most anxious in all things to propitiate Pen, and indeed very much himself enraptured by the personal charms of this G.o.ddess, whose like, never having been before at a theatrical representation, he had not beheld until now. Pen's fire and volubility, his hot eloquence and rich poetical tropes and figures, his manly heart, kind, ardent, and hopeful, refusing to see any defects in the person he loved, any difficulties in their position that he might not overcome, half convinced Mr. Smirke that the arrangement proposed by Mr. Pen was a very feasible and prudent one and that it would be a great comfort to have Emily settled at Fairoaks, Captain Costigan in the yellow room, established for life there, and Pen married at eighteen.
And it is a fact that in these two days, the boy had almost talked over his mother too; had parried all her objections one after another with that indignant good sense which is often the perfection of absurdity and had brought her almost to acquiesce in the belief that if the marriage was doomed in heaven, why doomed it was--that if the young woman was a good person, it was all that she, for her part, had to ask; and rather to dread the arrival of the guardian uncle who, she foresaw, would regard Mr. Pen's marriage in a manner very different to that simple, romantic, honest, and utterly absurd way, in which the widow was already disposed to look at questions of this sort.
For as in the old allegory of the gold and silver s.h.i.+eld, about which the two knights quarreled, each is right according to the point from which he looks: so about marriage; the question whether it is foolish or good, wise or otherwise, depends upon the point of view from which you regard it. If it means a snug house in Belgravia, and pretty little dinner parties, and a pretty little brougham to drive in the Park, and a decent provision, not only for the young people, but for the little Belgravians to come; and if these are the necessaries of life (and they are with many honest people), to talk of any other arrangement is an absurdity: of love in lodgings--a babyish folly of affection: that can't pay coach-hire or afford a decent milliner--as mere wicked balderdash and childish romance. If, on the other hand your opinion is that people, not with an a.s.sured subsistence, but with a fair chance to obtain it, and with the stimulus of hope, health, and strong affection, may take the chance of fortune for better or worse, and share its good or its evil together, the polite theory then becomes an absurdity in its turn: worse than an absurdity, a blasphemy almost, and doubt of Providence; and a man who waits to make his chosen woman happy, until he can drive her to church in a neat little carriage with a pair of horses, is no better than a coward or a trifler, who is neither worthy of love nor of fortune.
I don't say that the town folks are not right, but Helen Pendennis was a country bred woman, and the book of life, as she interpreted it, told her a different story to that page which is read in cities. Like most soft and sentimental women, match-making, in general, formed a great part of her thoughts, and I dare say she had begun to speculate about her son's falling in love and marrying long before the subject had ever entered into the brains of the young gentleman. It pleased her (with that dismal pleasure which the idea of sacrificing themselves gives to certain women), to think of the day when she would give up all to Pen, and he should bring his wife home, and she would surrender the keys and the best bed-room, and go and sit at the side of the table, and see him happy. What did she want in life but to see the lad prosper?
As an empress certainly was not too good for him, and would be honored by becoming Mrs. Pen; so if he selected humble Esther instead of Queen Vashti, she would be content with his lords.h.i.+p's choice. Never mind how lowly or poor the person might be who was to enjoy that prodigious honor, Mrs. Pendennis was willing to bow before her and welcome her, and yield her up the first place. But an actress--a mature woman, who had long ceased blus.h.i.+ng except with rouge, as she stood under the eager glances of thousands of eyes--an illiterate and ill-bred person, very likely, who must have lived with light a.s.sociates, and have heard doubtful conversation--Oh! it was hard that such a one should be chosen, and that the matron should be deposed to give place to such a Sultana.
All these doubts the widow laid before Pen during the two days which had of necessity to elapse ere the uncle came down; but he met them with that happy frankness and ease which a young gentleman exhibits at his time of life, and routed his mother's objections with infinite satisfaction to himself. Miss Costigan was a paragon of virtue and delicacy; she was as sensitive as the most timid maiden; she was as pure as the unsullied snow; she had the finest manners, the most graceful wit and genius, the most charming refinement and justness of appreciation in all matters of taste; she had the most admirable temper and devotion to her father, a good old gentleman of high family and fallen fortunes, who had lived, however, with the best society in Europe: he was in no hurry, and could afford to wait any time--till he was one-and-twenty. But he felt (and here his face a.s.sumed an awful and harrowing solemnity) that he was engaged in the one only pa.s.sion of his life, and that DEATH alone could close it.
Helen told him, with a sad smile and shake of the head, that people survived these pa.s.sions, and as for long engagements contracted between very young men and old women--she knew an instance in her own family--Laura's poor father was an instance--how fatal they were.