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The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2

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




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When the major arrived, his presence somehow cast a damp upon at least
three persons of our little party--upon Laura, who had any thing but
respect for him; upon Warrington, whose manner toward him showed an
involuntary haughtiness and contempt; and upon the timid and alarmed
widow, who dreaded lest he should interfere with her darling, though
almost desperate projects for her boy. And, indeed, the major, unknown
to himself, was the bearer of tidings which were to bring about a
catastrophe in the affairs of all our friends.

Pen with his two ladies had apartments in the town of Rosenbad; honest
Warrington had lodgings hard by; the major, on arrival at Rosenbad,
had, as befitted his dignity, taken up his quarters at one of the
great hotels, at the Roman Emperor or the Four Seasons, where two or
three hundred gamblers, pleasure-seekers, or invalids, sate down and
over-ate themselves daily at the enormous table d'hote. To this hotel
Pen went on the morning after the major's arrival dutifully to pay his
respects to his uncle, and found the latter's sitting-room duly
prepared and arranged by Mr. Morgan, with the major's hats brushed,
and his coats laid out: his dispatch-boxes and umbrella-cases, his
guide-books, passports, maps, and other elaborate necessaries of the
English traveler, all as trim and ready as they could be in their
master's own room in Jermyn-street. Every thing was ready, from the
medicine-bottle fresh filled from the pharmacien's, down to the old
fellow's prayer-book, without which he never traveled, for he made a
point of appearing at the English church at every place which he
honored with a stay. "Every body did it," he said; "every English
gentleman did it," and this pious man would as soon have thought of
not calling upon the English embassador in a continental town, as of
not showing himself at the national place of worship.

The old gentleman had been to take one of the baths for which Rosenbad
is famous, and which every body takes, and his after-bath toilet was
not yet completed when Pen arrived. The elder called out to Arthur in
a cheery voice from the inner apartment, in which he and Morgan were
engaged, and the valet presently came in, bearing a little packet to
Pen's address--Mr. Arthur's letters and papers, Morgan said, which he
had brought from Mr. Arthur's chambers in London, and which consisted
chiefly of numbers of the "Pall Mall Gazette," which our friend Mr.
Finucane thought his _collaborateur_ would like to see. The papers
were tied together: the letters in an envelope, addressed to Pen, in
the last-named gentleman's handwriting.

Among the letters there was a little note addressed, as a former
letter we have heard of had been, to "Arthur Pendennis, Esquire,"
which Arthur opened with a start and a blush, and read with a very
keen pang of interest, and sorrow, and regard. She had come to
Arthur's house, Fanny Bolton said--and found that he was gone--gone
away to Germany without ever leaving a word for her--or answer to her
last letter, in which she prayed but for one word of kindness--or the
books which he had promised her in happier times, before he was ill,
and which she would like to keep in remembrance of him. She said she
would not reproach those who had found her at his bedside when he was
in the fever, and knew nobody, and who had turned the poor girl away
without a word. She thought she should have died, she said, of that,
but Doctor Goodenough had kindly tended her, and kept her life, when,
perhaps, the keeping of it was of no good, and she forgave every body:
and as for Arthur, she would pray for him forever. And when he was so
ill, and they cut off his hair, she had made so free as to keep one
little lock for herself, and that she owned. And might she still keep
it, or would his mamma order that that should be gave up too? She was
willing to obey him in all things, and couldn't but remember that once
he was so kind, oh! so good and kind! to his poor Fanny. When Major
Pendennis, fresh and smirking from his toilet, came out of his bedroom
to his sitting-room, he found Arthur with this note before him, and an
expression of savage anger on his face, which surprised the elder
gentleman. "What news from London, my boy?" he rather faintly asked;
"are the duns at you that you look so glum?"

"Do you know any thing about this letter, sir?" Arthur asked.

"What letter, my good sir?" said the other drily, at once perceiving
what had happened.

"You know what I mean--about, about Miss--about Fanny Bolton--the
poor dear little girl," Arthur broke out. "When was she in my room?
Was she there when I was delirious--I fancied she was--was she? Who
sent her out of my chambers? Who intercepted her letters to me? Who
dared to do it? Did you do it, uncle?"

"It's not my practice to tamper with gentlemen's letters, or to answer
damned impertinent questions," Major Pendennis cried out, in a great
tremor of emotion and indignation. "There was a girl in your rooms
when I came up at great personal inconveinence, daymy--and to meet
with a return of this kind for my affection to you, is not pleasant,
by Gad, sir--not at all pleasant."

"That's not the question, sir," Arthur said hotly--"and--and, I beg
your pardon, uncle. You were, you always have been, most kind to me:
but I say again, did you say any thing harsh to this poor girl. Did
you send her away from me?"

"I never spoke a word to the girl," the uncle said, "and I never sent
her away from you, and know no more about her, and wish to know no
more about her, than about the man in the moon."

"Then it's my mother that did it," Arthur broke out. "Did my mother
send that poor child away?"

"I repeat I know nothing about it, sir," the elder said testily.
"Let's change the subject, if you please."

"I'll never forgive the person who did it," said Arthur, bouncing up
and seizing his hat.

The major cried out, "Stop, Arthur, for God's sake, stop;" but before
he had uttered his sentence Arthur had rushed out of the room, and at
the next minute the major saw him striding rapidly down the street
that led toward his home.

"Get breakfast!" said the old fellow to Morgan, and he wagged his head
and sighed as he looked out of the window. "Poor Helen--poor soul!
There'll be a row. I knew there would: and begad all the fat's in
the fire."

When Pen reached home he only found Warrington in the ladies'
drawing-room, waiting their arrival in order to conduct them to the
room where the little English colony at Rosenbad held their Sunday
church. Helen and Laura had not appeared as yet; the former was
ailing, and her daughter was with her. Pen's wrath was so great that
he could not defer expressing it. He flung Fanny's letter across the
table to his friend. "Look there, Warrington," he said; "she tended me
in my illness, she rescued me out of the jaws of death, and this is
the way they have treated the dear little creature. They have kept her
letters from me; they have treated me like a child, and her like a
dog, poor thing! My mother has done this."

"If she has, you must remember it is your mother," Warrington
interposed.

"It only makes the crime the greater, because it is she who has done
it," Pen answered. "She ought to have been the poor girl's defender,
not her enemy: she ought to go down on her knees and ask pardon of
her. I ought! I will! I am shocked at the cruelty which has been shown
her. What? She gave me her all, and this is her return! She sacrifices
every thing for me, and they spurn her."

"Hush!" said Warrington, "they can hear you from the next room."

"Hear; let them hear!" Pen cried out, only so much the louder. "Those
may overhear my talk who intercept my letters. I say this poor girl
has been shamefully used, and I will do my best to right her; I will."

The door of the neighboring room opened and Laura came forth with pale
and stern face. She looked at Pen with glances from which beamed
pride, defiance, aversion. "Arthur, your mother is very ill," she
said; "it is a pity that you should speak so loud as to disturb her."

"It is a pity that I should have been obliged to speak at all," Pen
answered. "And I have more to say before I have done."

"I should think what you have to say will hardly be fit for me to
hear," Laura said, haughtily.

"You are welcome to hear it or not, as you like," said Mr. Pen. "I
shall go in now and speak to my mother."

Laura came rapidly forward, so that she should not be overheard by her
friend within. "Not now, sir," she said to Pen. "You may kill her if
you do. Your conduct has gone far enough to make her wretched."

"What conduct?" cried out Pen, in a fury. "Who dares impugn it? Who
dares meddle with me? Is it you who are the instigator of this
persecution?"

"I said before it was a subject of which it did not become me to hear
or to speak," Laura said. "But as for mamma, if she had acted
otherwise than she did with regard to--to the person about whom you
seem to take such an interest, it would have been I that must have
quitted your house, and not that--that person."

"By heavens! this is too much," Pen cried out, with a violent
execration.

"Perhaps that is what you wished," Laura said, tossing her head up.
"No more of this, if you please; I am not accustomed to hear such
subjects spoken of in such language;" and with a stately courtesy the
young lady passed to her friend's room, looking her adversary full in
the face as she retreated and closed the door upon him.

Pen was bewildered with wonder, perplexity, fury, at this monstrous
and unreasonable persecution. He burst out into a loud and bitter
laugh as Laura quitted him, and with sneers and revilings, as a man
who jeers under an operation, ridiculed at once his own pain and his
persecutor's anger. The laugh, which was one of bitter humor, and no
unmanly or unkindly expression of suffering under most cruel and
unmerited torture, was heard in the next apartment, as some of his
unlucky previous expressions had been, and, like them, entirely
misinterpreted by the hearers. It struck like a dagger into the
wounded and tender heart of Helen; it pierced Laura, and inflamed the
high-spirited girl, with scorn and anger. "And it was to this hardened
libertine," she thought--"to this boaster of low intrigues, that I
had given my heart away." "He breaks the most sacred laws," thought
Helen. "He prefers the creature of his passion to his own mother; and
when he is upbraided, he laughs, and glories in his crime. 'She gave
me her all,' I heard him say it," argued the poor widow; "and he
boasts of it, and laughs, and breaks his mother's heart." The emotion,
the shame, the grief, the mortification almost killed her. She felt
she should die of his unkindness.

Warrington thought of Laura's speech--"Perhaps that is what you
wished." "She loves Pen still," he said. "It was jealousy made her
speak."--"Come away, Pen. Come away, and let us go to church and get
calm. You must explain this matter to your mother. She does not appear
to know the truth: nor do you quite, my good fellow. Come away, and
let us talk about it." And again he muttered to himself, "'Perhaps
that is what you wished.' Yes, she loves him. Why shouldn't she love
him? Whom else would I have her love? What can she be to me but the
dearest, and the fairest, and the best of women?"

So, leaving the women similarly engaged within, the two gentlemen
walked away, each occupied with his own thoughts, and silent for a
considerable space. "I must set this matter right," thought honest
George, "as she loves him still--I must set his mind right about the
other woman." And with this charitable thought, the good fellow began
to tell more at large what Bows had said to him regarding Miss
Bolton's behavior and fickleness, and he described how the girl was no
better than a little light-minded flirt; and, perhaps, he exaggerated
the good humor and contentedness which he had himself, as he thought,
witnessed in her behavior in the scene with Mr. Huxter.

Now, all Bows's statements had been colored by an insane jealousy and
rage on that old man's part; and instead of allaying Pen's renascent
desire to see his little conquest again, Warrington's accounts
inflamed and angered Pendennis, and made him more anxious than before
to set himself right, as he persisted in phrasing it, with Fanny. They
arrived at the church-door presently; but scarce one word of the
service, and not a syllable of Mr. Shamble's sermon, did either of
them comprehend, probably--so much was each engaged with his own
private speculations. The major came up to them after the service,
with his well-brushed hat and wig, and his jauntiest, most cheerful
air. He complimented them upon being seen at church; again he said
that every _comme-il-faut_ person made a point of attending the
English service abroad; and he walked back with the young men,
prattling to them in garrulous good-humor, and making bows to his
acquaintances as they passed; and thinking innocently that Pen and
George were both highly delighted by his anecdotes, which they
suffered to run on in a scornful and silent acquiescence.

At the time of Mr. Shamble's sermon (an erratic Anglican divine hired
for the season at places of English resort, and addicted to debts,
drinking, and even to roulette, it was said), Pen, chafing under the
persecution which his womankind inflicted upon him, had been
meditating a great act of revolt and of justice, as he had worked
himself up to believe; and Warrington on his part had been thinking
that a crisis in his affairs had likewise come, and that it was
necessary for him to break away from a connection which every day made
more and more wretched and dear to him. Yes, the time was come. He
took those fatal words, "Perhaps that is what you wished," as a text
for a gloomy homily, which he preached to himself, in the dark pew of
his own heart, while Mr. Shamble was feebly giving utterance to his
sermon.





CHAPTER XIX.

"FAIROAKS TO LET."


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Our poor widow (with the assistance of her faithful Martha of
Fairoaks, who laughed and wondered at the German ways, and
superintended the affairs of the simple household) had made a little
feast in honor of Major Pendennis's arrival, of which, however, only
the major and his two younger friends partook, for Helen sent to say
that she was too unwell to dine at their table, and Laura bore her
company. The major talked for the party, and did not perceive, or
choose to perceive, what a gloom and silence pervaded the other two
sharers of the modest dinner. It was evening before Helen and Laura
came into the sitting-room to join the company there. She came in
leaning on Laura, with her back to the waning light, so that Arthur
could not see how palid and woe-stricken her face was, and as she went
up to Pen, whom she had not seen during the day, and placed her fond
arms on his shoulder and kissed him tenderly, Laura left her, and
moved away to another part of the room. Pen remarked that his mother's
voice and her whole frame trembled, her hand was clammy cold as she
put it up to his forehead, piteously embracing him. The spectacle of
her misery only added, somehow, to the wrath and testiness of the
young man. He scarcely returned the kiss which the suffering lady gave
him: and the countenance with which he met the appeal of her look was
hard and cruel. "She persecutes me," he thought within himself, "and
she comes to me with the air of a martyr." "You look very ill, my
child," she said. "I don't like to see you look in that way." And she
tottered to a sofa, still holding one of his passive hands in her
thin, cold, clinging fingers.

"I have had much to annoy me, mother," Pen said with a throbbing
breast: and as he spoke Helen's heart began to beat so, that she sate
almost dead and speechless with terror.

Warrington, Laura, and Major Pendennis, all remained breathless,
aware that a storm was about to break.

"I have had letters from London," Arthur continued, "and one that has
given me more pain than I ever had in my life. It tells me that former
letters of mine have been intercepted and purloined away from me;
that--that a young creature who has shown the greatest love and care
for me, has been most cruelly used by--by you, mother."

"For God's sake stop," cried out Warrington. "She's ill--don't you see
she is ill?"

"Let him go on," said the widow faintly.

"Let him go on and kill her," said Laura, rushing up to her mother's
side. "Speak on, sir, and see her die."

"It is you who are cruel," cried Pen, more exasperated and more
savage, because his own heart, naturally soft and weak, revolted
indignantly at the injustice of the very suffering which was laid at
his door. "It is you that are cruel, who attribute all this pain to
me: it is you who are cruel with your wicked reproaches, your wicked
doubts of me, your wicked persecutions of those who love me--yes,
those who love me, and who brave every thing for me, and whom you
despise and trample upon because they are of lower degree than you.
Shall I tell you what I will do--what I am resolved to do, now that I
know what your conduct has been? I will, go back to this poor girl
whom you turned out of my doors, and ask her to come back and share my
home with me. I'll defy the pride which persecutes her, and the
pitiless suspicion which insults her and me."

"Do you mean, Pen, that you--" here the widow, with eager eyes and
out-stretched hands, was breaking out, but Laura stopped her;
"Silence, hush, dear mother," she cried and the widow hushed. Savagely
as Pen spoke, she was only too eager to hear what more he had to say,
"Go on, Arthur, go on, Arthur," was all she said, almost swooning away
as she spoke.

"By Gad, I say he shan't go on, or I won't hear him, by Gad," the
major said, trembling too in his wrath. "If you choose, sir, after all
we've done for you, after all I've done for you myself, to insult your
mother and disgrace your name, by allying yourself with a low-born
kitchen-girl, go and do it, by Gad, but let us, ma'am have no more to
do with him. I wash my hands of you, sir--I wash my hands of you. I'm
an old fellow--I ain't long for this world. I come of as ancient and
honorable a family as any in England, by Gad, and I did hope, before I
went off the hooks, by Gad, that the fellow that I'd liked, and
brought up, and nursed through life, by Jove, would do something to
show me that our name--yes, the name of Pendennis, by Gad, was left
undishonored behind us, but if he won't, dammy, I say, amen. By G--,
both my father and my brother Jack were the proudest men in England,
and I never would have thought that there would come this disgrace to
my name--never--and--and I'm ashamed that it's Arthur Pendennis." The
old fellow's voice here broke off into a sob: it was a second time
that Arthur had brought tears from those wrinkled lids.

The sound of his breaking voice stayed Pen's anger instantly, and he
stopped pacing the room, as he had been doing until that moment. Laura
was by Helen's sofa; and Warrington had remained hitherto an almost
silent, but not uninterested spectator of the family storm. As the
parties were talking, it had grown almost dark; and after the lull
which succeeded the passionate outbreak of the major, George's deep
voice, as it here broke trembling into the twilight room, was heard
with no small emotion by all.

"Will you let me tell you something about myself, my kind friends?" he
said, "you have been so good to me, ma'am--you have been so kind to
me, Laura--I hope I may call you so sometimes--my dear Pen and I have
been such friends that--that I have long wanted to tell you my story,
such as it is, and would have told it to you earlier but that it is a
sad one, and contains another's secret. However, it may do good for
Arthur to know it--it is right that every one here should. It will
divert you from thinking about a subject, which, out of a fatal
misconception, has caused a great deal of pain to all of you. May I
please tell you, Mrs. Pendennis?"

"Pray speak," was all Helen said; and indeed she was not much heeding;
her mind was full of another idea with which Pen's words had supplied
her, and she was in a terror of hope that what he had hinted might be
as she wished.

George filled himself a bumper of wine and emptied it, and began to
speak. "You all of you know how you see me," he said, "A man without a
desire to make an advance in the world; careless about reputation; and
living in a garret and from hand to mouth, though I have friends and a
name, and I dare say capabilities of my own, that would serve me if I
had a mind. But mind I have none. I shall die in that garret most
likely, and alone. I nailed myself to that doom in early life. Shall I
tell you what it was that interested me about Arthur years ago, and
made me inclined toward him when first I saw him? The men from our
college at Oxbridge brought up accounts of that early affair with the
Chatteris actress, about whom Pen has often talked to me since; and
who, but for the major's generalship, might have been your
daughter-in-law, ma'am. I can't see Pen in the dark, but he blushes,
I'm sure; and I dare say Miss Bell does; and my friend Major
Pendennis, I dare say, laughs as he ought to do--for he won. What
would have been Arthur's lot now had he been tied at nineteen to an
illiterate woman older than himself, with no qualities in common
between them to make one a companion for the other, no equality, no
confidence, and no love speedily? What could he have been but most
miserable? And when he spoke just now and threatened a similar union,
be sure it was but a threat occasioned by anger, which you must give
me leave to say, ma'am, was very natural on his part, for after a
generous and manly conduct--let me say who know the circumstances
well--most generous and manly and self-denying (which is rare with
him)--he has met from some friends of his with a most unkind
suspicion, and has had to complain of the unfair treatment of another
innocent person, toward whom he and you all are under much
obligation."

The widow was going to get up here, and Warrington, seeing her attempt
to rise, said, "Do I tire you, ma'am?"

"O no--go on--go on," said Helen, delighted, and he continued.

"I liked him, you see, because of that early history of his, which had
come to my ears in college gossip, and because I like a man, if you
will pardon me for saying so, Miss Laura, who shows that he can have a
great unreasonable attachment for a woman. That was why we became
friends--and are all friends here--for always, aren't we?" he added,
in a lower voice, leaning over to her, "and Pen has been a great
comfort and companion to a lonely and unfortunate man.

"I am not complaining of my lot, you see; for no man's is what he
would have it; and up in my garret, where you left the flowers, and
with my old books and my pipe for a wife, I am pretty contented, and
only occasionally envy other men, whose careers in life are more
brilliant, or who can solace their ill fortune by what Fate and my own
fault has deprived me of--the affection of a woman or a child." Here
there came a sigh from somewhere near Warrington in the dark, and a
hand was held out in his direction, which, however, was instantly
withdrawn, for the prudery of our females is such, that before all
expression of feeling, or natural kindness and regard, a woman is
taught to think of herself and the proprieties, and to be ready to
blush at the very slightest notice; and checking, as, of course, it
ought, this spontaneous motion, modesty drew up again, kindly
friendship shrank back ashamed of itself, and Warrington resumed his
history. "My fate is such as I made it, and not lucky for me or for
others involved in it.

"I, too, had an adventure before I went to college; and there was no
one to save me as Major Pendennis saved Pen. Pardon me, Miss Laura, if
I tell this story before you. It is as well that you all of you should
hear my confession. Before I went to college, as a boy of eighteen, I
was at a private tutor's and there, like Arthur, I became attached, or
fancied I was attached, to a woman of a much lower degree and a
greater age than my own. You shrink from me--"

"No I don't," Laura said, and here the hand went out resolutely, and
laid itself in Warrington's. She had divined his story from some
previous hints let fall by him, and his first words at its
commencement.

"She was a yeoman's daughter in the neighborhood," Warrington said,
with rather a faltering voice, "and I fancied--what all young men
fancy. Her parents knew who my father was, and encouraged me, with all
sorts of coarse artifices and scoundrel flatteries, which I see now,
about their house. To do her justice, I own she never cared for me but
was forced into what happened by the threats and compulsion of her
family. Would to God that I had not been deceived: but in these
matters we are deceived because we wish to be so, and I thought I
loved that poor woman.

"What could come of such a marriage? I found, before long, that I was
married to a boor. She could not comprehend one subject that
interested me. Her dullness palled upon me till I grew to loathe it.
And after some time of a wretched, furtive union--I must tell you all
--I found letters somewhere (and such letters they were!) which showed
me that her heart, such as it was, had never been mine, but had always
belonged to a person of her own degree.

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