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The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2

W >> William Makepeace Thackeray >> The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2




As these two were standing in this attitude, the door of Pen's
bed-chamber was opened stealthily as his mother was wont to open it,
and Warrington saw another lady, who first looked at him, and then
turning round toward the bed, said, "Hsh!" and put up her hand. It
was to Pen Helen was turning, and giving caution. He called out with a
feeble, tremulous, but cheery voice, "Come in, Stunner--come in,
Warrington. I knew it was you--by the--by the smoke, old boy," he
said, as holding his worn hand out, and with tears at once of weakness
and pleasure in his eyes, he greeted his friend.

"I--I beg pardon, ma'am, for smoking," Warrington said, who now almost
for the first time blushed for his wicked propensity.

Helen only said, "God bless you, Mr. Warrington." She was so happy,
she would have liked to kiss George. Then, and after the friends had
had a brief, very brief interview, the delighted and inexorable
mother, giving her hand to Warrington, sent him out of the room too,
back to Laura and the major, who had not resumed their play of
Cymbeline where they had left it off at the arrival of the rightful
owner of Pen's chambers.





CHAPTER XV.

CONVALESCENCE.


[Illustration]

Our duty now is to record a fact concerning Pendennis, which, however
shameful and disgraceful, when told regarding the chief personage and
Godfather of a novel, must, nevertheless, be made known to the public
who reads his veritable memoirs. Having gone to bed ill with fever,
and suffering to a certain degree under the passion of love, after he
had gone through his physical malady, and had been bled and had been
blistered, and had had his head shaved, and had been treated and
medicamented as the doctor ordained: it is a fact, that, when he
rallied up from his bodily ailment, his mental malady had likewise
quitted him, and he was no more in love with Fanny Bolton than you or
I, who are much too wise, or too moral, to allow our hearts to go
gadding after porters' daughters.

He laughed at himself as he lay on his pillow, thinking of this second
cure which had been effected upon him. He did not care the least about
Fanny now; he wondered how he ever should have cared: and according to
his custom made an autopsy of that dead passion, and anatomized his
own defunct sensation for his poor little nurse. What could have made
him so hot and eager about her but a few weeks back: Not her wit, not
her breeding, not her beauty--there were hundreds of women better
looking than she. It was out of himself that the passion had gone: it
did not reside in her. She was the same; but the eyes which saw her
were changed; and, alas, that it should be so! were not particularly
eager to see her any more. He felt very well disposed toward the
little thing, and so forth, but as for violent personal regard, such
as he had but a few weeks ago, it had fled under the influence of the
pill and lancet, which had destroyed the fever in his frame. And an
immense source of comfort and gratitude it was to Pendennis (though
there was something selfish in that feeling, as in most others of our
young man), that he had been enabled to resist temptation at the time
when the danger was greatest, and had no particular cause of
self-reproach as he remembered his conduct toward the young girl. As
from a precipice down which he might have fallen, so from the fever
from which he had recovered, he reviewed the Fanny Bolton snare, now
that he had escaped out of it, but I'm not sure that he was not
ashamed of the very satisfaction which he experienced. It is pleasant,
perhaps, but it is humiliating to own that you love no more.

Meanwhile the kind smiles and tender watchfulness of the mother at his
bed-side, filled the young man with peace and security. To see that
health was returning, was all the unwearied nurse demanded: to execute
any caprice or order of her patient's, her chiefest joy and reward. He
felt himself environed by her love, and thought himself almost as
grateful for it as he had been when weak and helpless in childhood.

Some misty notions regarding the first part of his illness, and that
Fanny had nursed him, Pen may have had, but they were so dim that he
could not realize them with accuracy, or distinguish them from what he
knew to be delusions which had occurred and were remembered during the
delirium of his fever. So as he had not thought proper on former
occasions to make any allusions about Fanny Bolton to his mother, of
course he could not now confide to her his sentiments regarding Fanny,
or make this worthy lady a confidante. It was on both sides an unlucky
precaution and want of confidence; and a word or two in time might
have spared the good lady and those connected with her, a deal of pain
and anguish.

Seeing Miss Bolton installed as nurse and tender to Pen, I am sorry to
say Mrs. Pendennis had put the worst construction on the fact of the
intimacy of these two unlucky young persons, and had settled in her
own mind that the accusations against Arthur were true. Why not have
stopped to inquire?--There are stories to a man's disadvantage that
the women who are fondest of him are always the most eager to believe.
Isn't a man's wife often the first to be jealous of him? Poor Pen got
a good stock of this suspicious kind of love from the nurse who was
now watching over him; and the kind and pure creature thought that her
boy had gone through a malady much more awful and debasing than the
mere physical fever, and was stained by crime as well as weakened by
illness. The consciousness of this she had to bear perforce silently,
and to try to put a mask of cheerfulness and confidence over her
inward doubt and despair and horror.

When Captain Shandon, at Boulogne, read the next number of the
"Pall-Mall Gazette," it was to remark to Mrs. Shandon that Jack
Finucane's hand was no longer visible in the leading articles, and
that Mr. Warrington must be at work there again. "I know the crack of
his whip in a hundred, and the cut which the fellow's thong leaves.
There's Jack Bludyer, goes to work like a butcher, and mangles a
subject. Mr. Warrington finishes a man, and lays his cuts neat and
regular, straight down the back, and drawing blood every line;" at
which dreadful metaphor, Mrs. Shandon said, "Law, Charles, how can you
talk so! I always thought Mr. Warrington very high, but a kind
gentleman; and I'm sure he was most kind to the children." Upon which
Shandon said, "Yes; he's kind to the children; but he's savage to the
men; and to be sure, my dear, you don't understand a word about what
I'm saying; and it's best you shouldn't; for it's little good comes
out of writing for newspapers; and it's better here, living easy at
Boulogne, where the wine's plenty, and the brandy costs but two francs
a bottle. Mix us another tumbler, Mary, my dear; we'll go back into
harness soon. 'Cras ingens iterabimus aequor'--bad luck to it."

In a word, Warrington went to work with all his might, in place of his
prostrate friend, and did Pen's portion of the "Pall-Mall Gazette"
"with a vengeance," as the saying is. He wrote occasional articles and
literary criticisms; he attended theatres and musical performances,
and discoursed about them with his usual savage energy. His hand was
too strong for such small subjects, and it pleased him to tell
Arthur's mother, and uncle, and Laura, that there was no hand in all
the band of penmen more graceful and light, more pleasant and more
elegant, than Arthur's. "The people in this country, ma'am, don't
understand what style is, or they would see the merits of our young
one," he said to Mrs. Pendennis. "I call him ours, ma'am, for I bred
him; and I am as proud of him as you are; and, bating a little
willfulness, and a little selfishness, and a little dandyfication, I
don't know a more honest, or loyal, or gentle creature. His pen is
wicked sometimes, but he is as kind as a young lady--as Miss Laura
here--and I believe he would not do any living mortal harm."

At this, Helen, though she heaved a deep, deep sigh, and Laura, though
she, too, was sadly wounded, nevertheless were most thankful for
Warrington's good opinion of Arthur, and loved him for being so
attached to their Pen. And Major Pendennis was loud in his praises of
Mr. Warrington--more loud and enthusiastic than it was the major's
wont to be. "He is a gentleman, my dear creature," he said to Helen,
"every inch a gentleman, my good madam--the Suffolk Warringtons
--Charles the First's baronets: what could he be but a gentleman,
come out of that family?--father--Sir Miles Warrington; ran
away with--beg your pardon, Miss Bell. Sir Miles was a very well-known
man in London, and a friend of the Prince of Wales. This gentleman
is a man of the greatest talents, the very highest accomplishments
--sure to get on, if he had a motive to put his energies to work."

Laura blushed for herself while the major was talking and praising
Arthur's hero. As she looked at Warrington's manly face and dark,
melancholy eyes, this young person had been speculating about him, and
had settled in her mind that he must have been the victim of an
unhappy attachment; and as she caught herself so speculating, why,
Miss Bell blushed.

Warrington got chambers hard by--Grenier's chambers in Flagcourt; and
having executed Pen's task with great energy in the morning, his
delight and pleasure of an afternoon was to come and sit with the sick
man's company in the sunny autumn evenings; and he had the honor more
than once of giving Miss Bell his arm for a walk in the Temple
Gardens; to take which pastime, when the frank Laura asked of Helen
permission, the major eagerly said, "Yes, yes, begad--of course you go
out with him--it's like the country, you know; everybody goes out with
every body in the gardens, and there are beadles, you know, and that
sort of thing--every body walks in the Temple Gardens." If the great
arbiter of morals did not object, why should simple Helen? She was
glad that her girl should have such fresh air as the river could give,
and to see her return with heightened color and spirits from these
harmless excursions.

Laura and Helen had come, you must know, to a little explanation. When
the news arrived of Pen's alarming illness, Laura insisted upon
accompanying the terrified mother to London, would not hear of the
refusal which the still angry Helen gave her, and, when refused a
second time yet more sternly, and when it seemed that the poor lost
lad's life was despaired of, and when it was known that his conduct
was such as to render all thoughts of union hopeless, Laura had, with
many tears told her mother a secret with which every observant person
who reads this story is acquainted already. Now she never could marry
him, was she to be denied the consolation of owning how fondly, how
truly, how entirely she had loved him? The mingling tears of the women
appeased the agony of their grief somewhat, and the sorrows and
terrors of their journey were at least in so far mitigated that they
shared them together.

What could Fanny expect when suddenly brought up for sentence before a
couple of such judges? Nothing but swift condemnation, awful
punishment, merciless dismissal! Women are cruel critics in cases such
as that in which poor Fanny was implicated; and we like them to be so:
for, besides the guard which a man places round his own harem, and the
defenses which a woman has in her heart, her faith, and honor, hasn't
she all her own friends of her own sex to keep watch that she does not
go astray, and to tear her to pieces if she is found erring? When our
Mahmouds or Selims of Baker-street or Belgrave-square visit their
Fatimas with condign punishment, their mothers sew up Fatima's sack
for her, and her sisters and sisters-in-law see her well under
water. And this present writer does not say nay. He protests most
solemnly he is a Turk, too. He wears a turban and a beard like
another, and is all for the sack practice, Bismillah! But O you
spotless, who have the right of capital punishment vested in you, at
least be very cautious that you make away with the proper (if so she
may be called) person. Be very sure of the fact before you order the
barge out: and don't pop your subject into the Bosphorus, until you
are quite certain that she deserves it. This is all I would urge in
Poor Fatima's behalf--absolutely all--not a word more, by the beard of
the Prophet. If she's guilty, down with her--heave over the sack, away
with it into the Golden Horn bubble and squeak, and justice being
done, give away, men, and let us pull back to supper.

So the major did not in any way object to Warrington's continued
promenades with Miss Laura, but, like a benevolent old gentleman,
encouraged in every way the intimacy of that couple. Were there any
exhibitions in town? he was for Warrington conducting her to them. If
Warrington had proposed to take her to Vauxhall itself, this most
complaisant of men would have seen no harm--nor would Helen, if
Pendennis the elder had so ruled it--nor would there have been any
harm between two persons whose honor was entirely spotless--between
Warrington, who saw in intimacy a pure, and high-minded, and artless
woman for the first time in his life--and Laura, who too for the first
time was thrown into the constant society of a gentleman of great
natural parts and powers of pleasing; who possessed varied
acquirements, enthusiasm, simplicity, humor, and that freshness of
mind which his simple life and habits gave him, and which contrasted
so much with Pen's dandy indifference of manner and faded sneer. In
Warrington's very uncouthness there was a refinement, which the
other's finery lacked. In his energy, his respect, his desire to
please, his hearty laughter, or simple confiding pathos, what a
difference to Sultan Pen's yawning sovereignty and languid acceptance
of homage! What had made Pen at home such a dandy and such a despot?
The women had spoiled him, as we like them and as they like to do.
They had cloyed him with obedience, and surfeited him with sweet
respect and submission, until he grew weary of the slaves who waited
upon him, and their caresses and cajoleries excited him no more.
Abroad, he was brisk and lively, and eager and impassioned
enough--most men are so constituted and so nurtured. Does this, like
the former sentence, run a chance of being misinterpreted, and does
any one dare to suppose that the writer would incite the women to
revolt? Never, by the whiskers of the Prophet, again he says. He wears
a beard, and he likes his women to be slaves. What man doesn't? What
man would be henpecked, I say?--We will cut off all the heads in
Christendom or Turkeydom rather than that.

Well, then, Arthur being so languid, and indifferent, and careless
about the favors bestowed upon him, how came it that Laura should have
such a love and rapturous regard for him, that a mere inadequate
expression of it should have kept the girl talking all the way from
Fairoaks to London, as she and Helen traveled in the post-chaise? As
soon as Helen had finished one story about the dear fellow, and
narrated, with a hundred sobs and ejaculations, and looks up to
heaven, some thrilling incidents which occurred about the period when
the hero was breeched, Laura began another equally interesting, and
equally ornamented with tears, and told how heroically he had a tooth
out or wouldn't have it out, or how daringly he robbed a bird's nest,
or how magnanimously he spared it; or how he gave a shilling to the
old woman on the common, or went without his bread and butter for the
beggar-boy who came into the yard--and so on. One to another the
sobbing women sang laments upon their hero, who, my worthy reader has
long since perceived, is no more a hero than either one of us. Being
as he was, why should a sensible girl be so fond of him?

This point has been argued before in a previous unfortunate sentence
(which lately drew down all the wrath of Ireland upon the writer's
head), and which said that the greatest rascal-cutthroats have had
somebody to be fond of them, and if those monsters, why not ordinary
mortals? And with whom shall a young lady fall in love but with the
person she sees? She is not supposed to lose her heart in a dream,
like a Princess in the Arabian Nights; or to plight her young
affections to the portrait of a gentleman in the Exhibition, or a
sketch in the Illustrated London News. You have an instinct within you
which inclines you to attach yourself to some one: you meet Somebody:
you hear Somebody constantly praised: you walk, or ride, or waltz, or
talk, or sit in the same pew at church with Somebody: you meet again,
and again, and--"Marriages are made in Heaven," your dear mamma says,
pinning your orange flowers wreath on, with her blessed eyes dimmed
with tears--and there is a wedding breakfast, and you take off your
white satin and retire to your coach and four, and you and he are a
happy pair. Or, the affair is broken off and then, poor dear wounded
heart! why then you meet Somebody Else and twine your young affections
round number two. It is your nature so to do. Do you suppose it is all
for the man's sake that you love, and not a bit for your own? Do you
suppose you would drink if you were not thirsty, or eat if you were
not hungry?

So then Laura liked Pen because she saw scarcely any body else at
Fairoaks except Doctor Portman and Captain Glanders, and because his
mother constantly praised her Arthur, and because he was
gentleman-like, tolerably good-looking and witty, and because, above
all, it was of her nature to like somebody. And having once received
this image into her heart, she there tenderly nursed it and clasped
it--she there, in his long absences and her constant solitudes,
silently brooded over it and fondled it--and when after this she came
to London, and had an opportunity of becoming rather intimate with Mr.
George Warrington, what on earth was to prevent her from thinking him
a most odd, original, agreeable, and pleasing person?

A long time afterward, when these days were over, and Fate in its
own way had disposed of the various persons now assembled in the dingy
building in Lamb-court, perhaps some of them looked back and thought
how happy the time was, and how pleasant had been their evening talks
and little walks and simple recreations round the sofa of Pen the
convalescent. The major had a favorable opinion of September in London
from that time forward, and declared at his clubs and in society that
the dead season in town was often pleasant, doosid pleasant, begad. He
used to go home to his lodgings in Bury-street of a night, wondering
that it was already so late, and that the evening had passed away so
quietly. He made his appearance at the Temple pretty constantly in the
afternoon, and tugged up the long, black staircase with quite a
benevolent activity and perseverance. And he made interest with the
chef at Bays's (that renowned cook, the superintendence of whose work
upon Gastronomy compelled the gifted author to stay in the
metropolis), to prepare little jellies, delicate clear soups, aspics,
and other trifles good for invalids, which Morgan the valet constantly
brought down to the little Lamb-court colony. And the permission to
drink a glass or two of pure sherry being accorded to Pen by Doctor
Goodenough, the major told with almost tears in his eyes how his noble
friend the Marquis of Steyne, passing through London on his way to the
Continent, had ordered any quantity of his precious, his priceless
Amontillado, that had been a present from King Ferdinand to the noble
marquis, to be placed at the disposal of Mr. Arthur Pendennis. The
widow and Laura tasted it with respect (though they didn't in the
least like the bitter flavor), but the invalid was greatly invigorated
by it, and Warrington pronounced it superlatively good, and proposed
the major's health in a mock speech after dinner on the first day when
the wine was served, and that of Lord Steyne and the aristocracy
in general.

Major Pendennis returned thanks with the utmost gravity and in a
speech in which he used the words "the present occasion," at least the
proper number of times. Pen cheered with his feeble voice from his
arm-chair. Warrington taught Miss Laura to cry "Hear! hear!" and
tapped the table with his knuckles. Pidgeon the attendant grinned, and
honest Doctor Goodenough found the party so merrily engaged, when he
came in to pay his faithful, gratuitous visit.

Warrington knew Sibwright, who lived below, and that gallant
gentleman, in reply to a letter informing him of the use to which his
apartments had been put, wrote back the most polite and flowery letter
of acquiescence. He placed his chambers at the service of their fair
occupants, his bed at their disposal, his carpets at their feet.
Everybody was kindly disposed toward the sick man and his family. His
heart (and his mother's too, as we may fancy) melted within him at the
thought of so much good feeling and good nature. Let Pen's biographer
be pardoned for alluding to a time, not far distant, when a somewhat
similar mishap brought him a providential friend, a kind physician,
and a thousand proofs of a most touching and surprising kindness and
sympathy There was a piano in Mr. Sibwright's chamber (indeed this
gentleman, a lover of all the arts, performed himself--and exceedingly
ill too--upon the instrument); and had had a song dedicated to him
(the words by himself, the air by his devoted friend Leopoldo
Twankidillo), and at this music-box, as Mr. Warrington called it,
Laura, at first with a great deal of tremor and blushing (which became
her very much), played and sang, sometimes of an evening, simple airs,
and old songs of home. Her voice was a rich contralto, and Warrington,
who scarcely knew one tune from another, and who had but one time or
bray in his _repertoire_--a most discordant imitation of God save the
King--sat rapt in delight listening to these songs. He could follow
their rhythm if not their harmony; and he could watch, with a constant
and daily growing enthusiasm, the pure, and tender, and generous
creature who made the music.

I wonder how that poor pale little girl in the black bonnet, who used
to stand at the lamp-post in Lamb-court sometimes of an evening
looking up to the open windows from which the music came, liked to
hear it? When Pen's bed-time came the songs were hushed. Lights
appeared in the upper room: _his_ room, whither the widow used to
conduct him; and then the major and Mr. Warrington, and sometimes Miss
Laura, would have a game at _écarté_ or backgammon; or she would sit
by working a pair of slippers in worsted--a pair of gentleman's
slippers--they might have been for Arthur, or for George, or for Major
Pendennis: one of those three would have given any thing for
the slippers.

While such business as this was going on within, a rather shabby old
gentleman would come and lead away the pale girl in the black bonnet;
who had no right to be abroad in the night air, and the Temple
porters, the few laundresses, and other amateurs who had been
listening to the concert, would also disappear.

Just before ten o'clock there was another musical performance, namely,
that of the chimes of St. Clement's clock in the Strand, which played
the clear, cheerful notes of a psalm, before it proceeded to ring its
ten fatal strokes. As they were ringing, Laura began to fold up the
slippers; Martha from Fairoaks appeared with a bed-candle, and a
constant smile on her face; the major said, "God bless my soul, is it
so late?" Warrington and he left their unfinished game, and got up and
shook hands with Miss Bell. Martha from Fairoaks lighted them out of
the passage and down the stair, and, as they descended, they could
hear, her bolting and locking "the sporting door" after them, upon her
young mistress and herself. If there had been any danger, grinning
Martha said she would have got down "that thar hooky soord which hung
up in gantleman's room,"--meaning the Damascus scimitar with the names
of the Prophet engraved on the blade and the red-velvet scabbard,
which Percy Sibwright, Esquire, brought back from his tour in the
Levant, along with an Albanian dress, and which he wore with such
elegant effect at Lady Mullinger's fancy ball, Gloucester-square, Hyde
Park. It entangled itself in Miss Kewsey's train, who appeared in the
dress in which she, with her mamma, had been presented to their
sovereign (the latter by the L--d Ch-nc-ll-r's lady), and led to
events which have nothing to do with this history. Is not Miss Kewsey
now Mrs. Sibwright? Has Sibwright not got a county court?--Good night,
Laura and Fairoaks Martha. Sleep well and wake happy, pure and
gentle lady.

Sometimes after these evenings Warrington would walk a little way with
Major Pendennis--just a little way--just as far as the Temple gate--as
the Strand--as Charing Cross--as the Club--he was not going into the
Club? Well, as far as Bury-street where he would laughingly shake
hands on the major's own door-step. They had been talking about Laura
all the way. It was wonderful how enthusiastic the major, who, as we
know, used to dislike her, had grown to be regarding the young lady.
"Dev'lish fine girl, begad. Dev'lish well-mannered girl--my
sister-in-law has the manners of a duchess and would bring up any girl
well. Miss Bell's a _little_ countryfied. But the smell of the
hawthorn is pleasant, demmy. How she blushes! Your London girls would
give many a guinea for a bouquet like that--natural flowers, begad!
And she's a little money too--nothing to speak of--but a pooty little
bit of money." In all which opinions no doubt Mr. Warrington agreed;
and though he laughed as he shook hands with the major, his face fell
as he left his veteran companion; and he strode back to chambers, and
smoked pipe after pipe long into the night, and wrote article upon
article, more and more savage, in lieu of friend Pen disabled.

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