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The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2

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




"At my father's death, I paid what debts I had contracted at college,
and settled every shilling which remained to me in an annuity upon--
upon those who bore my name, on condition that they should hide
themselves away, and not assume it. They have kept that condition, as
they would break it, for more money. If I had earned fame or
reputation, that woman would have come to claim it: if I had made a
name for myself, those who had no right to it would have borne it; and
I entered life at twenty, God help me--hopeless and ruined beyond
remission. I was the boyish victim of vulgar cheats, and, perhaps, it
is only of late I have found out how hard--ah, how hard--it is to
forgive them. I told you the moral before, Pen; and now I have told
you the fable. Beware how you marry out of your degree. I was made for
a better lot than this, I think: but God has awarded me this one--and
so, you see, it is for me to look on, and see others successful and
others happy, with a heart that shall be as little bitter as
possible."

"By Gad, sir," cried the major, in high good humor, "I intended you to
marry Miss Laura here."

"And, by Gad, Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound," Warrington
said.

"How d'ye mean a thousand? it was only a pony, sir," replied the major
simply, at which the other laughed.

As for Helen, she was so delighted, that she started up, and said,
"God bless you--God forever bless you, Mr. Warrington;" and kissed
both his hands, and ran up to Pen, and fell into his arms.

"Yes, dearest mother," he said as he held her to him, and with a noble
tenderness and emotion, embraced and forgave her. "I am innocent, and
my dear, dear mother has done me a wrong."

"Oh, yes, my child, I have wronged you, thank God, I have wronged
you!" Helen whispered. "Come away, Arthur--not here--I want to ask my
child to forgive me--and--and my God, to forgive me; and to bless you,
and love you, my son."

He led her, tottering, into her room, and closed the door, as the
three touched spectators of the reconciliation looked on in pleased
silence. Ever after, ever after, the tender accents of that voice
faltering sweetly at his ear--the look of the sacred eyes beaming with
an affection unutterable--the quiver of the fond lips smiling
mournfully--were remembered by the young man. And at his best moments,
and at his hours of trial and grief, and at his times of success or
well doing, the mother's face looked down upon him, and blessed him
with its gaze of pity and purity, as he saw it in that night when she
yet lingered with him; and when she seemed, ere she quite left him, an
angel, transfigured and glorified with love--for which love, as for
the greatest of the bounties and wonders of God's provision for us,
let us kneel and thank Our Father.

The moon had risen by this time; Arthur recollected well afterward how
it lighted up his mother's sweet pale face. Their talk, or his rather,
for she scarcely could speak, was more tender and confidential than it
had been for years before. He was the frank and generous boy of her
early days and love. He told her the story, the mistake regarding
which had caused her so much pain--his struggles to fly from
temptation, and his thankfulness that he had been able to overcome it.
He never would do the girl wrong, never; or wound his own honor or his
mother's pure heart. The threat that he would return was uttered in a
moment of exasperation, of which he repented. He never would see her
again. But his mother said yes he should; and it was she who had been
proud and culpable--and she would like to give Fanny Bolton
something--and she begged her dear boy's pardon for opening the letter
--and she would write to the young girl, if--if she had time. Poor
thing! was it not natural that she should love her Arthur? And again
she kissed him, and she blessed him.

As they were talking the clock struck nine, and Helen reminded him
how, when he was a little boy, she used to go up to his bedroom at
that hour, and hear him say Our Father. And once more, oh, once more,
the young man fell down at his mother's sacred knees, and sobbed out
the prayer which the Divine Tenderness uttered for us, and which has
been echoed for twenty ages since by millions of sinful and humbled
men. And as he spoke the last words of the supplication, the mother's
head fell down on her boy's, and her arms closed round him, and
together they repeated the words "for ever and ever," and "Amen."

A little time after, it might have been a quarter of an hour, Laura
heard Arthur's voice calling from within, "Laura! Laura!" She rushed
into the room instantly, and found the young man still on his knees
and holding his mother's hand. Helen's head had sunk back and was
quite pale in the moon. Pen looked round, scared with a ghastly terror
"Help, Laura, help!" he said--"she's fainted--she's--"

Laura screamed, and fell by the side of Helen. The shriek brought
Warrington and Major Pendennis and the servants to the room. The
sainted woman was dead. The last emotion of her soul here was joy, to
be henceforth uncheckered and eternal. The tender heart beat no more--
it was to have no more pangs, no more doubts, no more griefs and
trials. Its last throb was love; and Helen's last breath was a
benediction.

The melancholy party bent their way speedily homewards, and Helen was
laid by her husband's side at Clavering, in the old church where she
had prayed so often. For a while Laura went to stay with Dr. Portman,
who read the service over his dear sister departed, amidst his own
sobs and those of the little congregation which assembled round
Helen's tomb. There were not many who cared for her, or who spoke of
her when gone. Scarcely more than of a nun in a cloister did people
know of that pious and gentle lady. A few words among the cottagers
whom her bounty was accustomed to relieve, a little talk from house to
house, at Clavering, where this lady, told how their neighbor died of
a complaint in the heart; while that speculated upon the amount of
property which the widow had left; and a third wondered whether Arthur
would let Fairoaks or live in it, and expected that he would not be
long getting through his property--this was all, and except with one
or two who cherished her, the kind soul was forgotten by the next
market-day. Would you desire that grief for you should last for a
few more weeks? and does after-life seem less solitary, provided that
our names, when we "go down into silence," are echoing on this side of
the grave yet for a little while, and human voices are still talking
about us? She was gone, the pure soul, whom only two or three loved
and knew. The great blank she left was in Laura's heart, to whom her
love had been every thing, and who had now but to worship her memory.
"I am glad that she gave me her blessing before she went away,"
Warrington said to Pen; and as for Arthur, with a humble
acknowledgment and wonder at so much affection, he hardly dared to ask
of Heaven to make him worthy of it, though he felt that a saint there
was interceding for him.

All the lady's affairs were found in perfect order, and her little
property ready for transmission to her son, in trust for whom she held
it. Papers in her desk showed that she had long been aware of the
complaint, one of the heart, under which she labored, and knew it
would suddenly remove her: and a prayer was found in her hand-writing,
asking that her end might be, as it was, in the arms of her son.

Laura and Arthur talked over her sayings, all of which the former most
fondly remembered, to the young man's shame somewhat, who thought how
much greater her love had been for Helen than his own. He referred
himself entirely to Laura to know what Helen would have wished should
be done; what poor persons she would have liked to relieve; what
legacies or remembrances she would have wished to transmit. They
packed up the vase which Helen in her gratitude had destined to Dr.
Goodenough, and duly sent it to the kind doctor: a silver coffee-pot,
which she used, was sent off to Portman: a diamond ring with her hair,
was given with affectionate greeting to Warrington.

It must have been a hard day for poor Laura when she went over to
Fairoaks first, and to the little room which she had occupied, and
which was hers no more, and to the widow's own blank chamber in which
those two had passed so many beloved hours. There, of course, were the
clothes in the wardrobe, the cushion on which she prayed, the chair at
the toilet: the glass that was no more to reflect her dear sad face.
After she had been here awhile, Pen knocked and led her down stairs to
the parlor again, and made her drink a little wine, and said, "God
bless you," as she touched the glass. "Nothing shall ever be changed
in your room," he said, "it is always your room--it is always my
sister's room. Shall it not be so, Laura?" and Laura said, "Yes!"

Among the widow's papers was found a packet, marked by the widow
"Letters from Laura's father," and which Arthur gave to her. They were
the letters which had passed between the cousins in the early days
before the marriage of, either of them. The ink was faded in which
they were written: the tears dried out that both perhaps had shed over
them: the grief healed now whose bitterness they chronicled: the
friends doubtless united whose parting on earth had caused to both
pangs so cruel. And Laura learned fully now for the first time what
the tie was which had bound her so tenderly to Helen: how faithfully
her more than mother had cherished her father's memory, how truly she
had loved him, how meekly resigned him.

One legacy of his mother's Pen remembered, of which Laura could have
no cognizance. It was that wish of Helen's to make some present to
Fanny Bolton; and Pen wrote to her, putting his letter under an
envelope to Mr. Bows, and requesting that gentleman to read it before
he delivered it to Fanny. "Dear Fanny," Pen said, "I have to
acknowledge two letters from you, one of which was delayed in my
illness," (Pen found the first letter in his mother's desk after her
decease, and the reading it gave him a strange pang), "and to thank
you, my kind nurse and friend, who watched me so tenderly during my
fever. And I have to tell you that the last words of my dear mother,
who is no more, were words of good-will and gratitude to you for
nursing me: and she said she would have written to you had she had
time--that she would like to ask your pardon if she had harshly
treated you--and that she would beg you to show your forgiveness by
accepting some token of friendship and regard from her." Pen concluded
by saying that his friend, George Warrington, Esq., of Lamb-court
Temple, was trustee of a little sum of money, of which the interest
would be paid to her until she became of age, or changed her name,
which would always be affectionately remembered by her grateful
friend, A. Pendennis. The sum was in truth but small, although enough
to make a little heiress of Fanny Bolton, whose parents were appeased,
and whose father said Mr. P. had acted quite as the gentleman--though
Bows growled out that to plaster a wounded heart with a bank-note was
an easy kind of sympathy; and poor Fanny felt only too clearly that
Pen's letter was one of farewell.

"Sending hundred-pound notes to porters' daughters is all dev'lish
well," old Major Pendennis said to his nephew (whom, as the proprietor
of Fairoaks and the head of the family, he now treated with marked
deference and civility), "and as there was a little ready money at the
bank, and your poor mother wished it, there's perhaps no harm done.
But my good lad, I'd have you to remember that you've not above five
hundred a year, though, thanks to me, the world gives you credit for
being a doosid deal better off; and, on my knees, I beg you, my boy,
don't break into your capital. Stick to it, sir; don't speculate with
it, sir; keep your land, and don't borrow on it. Tatham tells me that
the Chatteris branch of the railway may--will almost certainly pass
through Chatteris, and if it can be brought on this side of the Brawl,
sir, and through your fields, they'll be worth a dev'lish deal of
money, and your five hundred a year will jump up to eight or nine.
Whatever it is, keep it, I implore you, keep it. And I say, Pen, I
think you should give up living in those dirty chambers in the Temple
and get a decent lodging. And I should have a man, sir, to wait upon
me; and a horse or two in town in the season. All this will pretty
well swallow up your income, and I know you must live close. But
remember you have a certain place in society, and you can't afford to
cut a poor figure in the world. What are you going to do in the
winter? You don't intend to stay down here, or, I suppose, to go on
writing for that--what-d'ye-call'em--that newspaper?"

"Warrington and I are going abroad again, sir, for a little, and then
we shall see what is to be done," Arthur replied.

"And you'll let Fairoaks, of course? Good school in the neighborhood;
cheap country: dev'lish nice place for East India Colonels or families
wanting to retire. I'll speak about it at the club; there are lots of
fellows at the club want a place of that sort."

"I hope Laura will live in it for the winter, at least, and will make
it her home," Arthur replied: at which the major pish'd, and psha'd,
and said that there ought to be convents, begad, for English ladies,
and wished that Miss Bell had not been there to interfere with the
arrangements of the family, and that she would mope herself to death
alone in that place.

Indeed, it would have been a very dismal abode for poor Laura, who was
not too happy either in Doctor Portman's household, and in the town
where too many things reminded her of the dear parent whom she had
lost. But old Lady Rockminster, who adored her young friend Laura, as
soon as she read in the paper of her loss, and of her presence in the
country, rushed over from Baymouth, where the old lady was staying,
and insisted that Laura should remain six months, twelve months, all
her life with her; and to her ladyship's house, Martha from Fairoaks,
as _femme de chambre_, accompanied her young mistress.

Pen and Warrington saw her depart. It was difficult to say which of
the young men seemed to regard her the most tenderly. "Your cousin is
pert and rather vulgar, my dear, but he seems to have a good heart,"
little Lady Rockminster said, who said her say about every body--"but
I like Bluebeard best. Tell, me is he _touche au coeur?_"

"Mr. Warrington has been long--engaged," Laura said dropping her eyes.

"Nonsense, child! And good heavens, my dear! that's a pretty diamond
cross. What do you mean by wearing it in the morning?"

"Arthur--my brother gave it to me just now. It was--it was--" She
could not finish the sentence. The carriage passed over the bridge,
and by the dear, dear gate of Fairoaks--home no more.





CHAPTER. XX.

OLD FRIENDS.


It chanced at that great English festival, at which all London takes a
holiday upon Epsom Downs, that a great number of the personages to
whom we have been introduced in the course of this history, were
assembled to see the Derby. In a comfortable open carriage, which had
been brought to the ground by a pair of horses, might be seen Mrs.
Bungay, of Paternoster-row, attired like Solomon in all his glory, and
having by her side modest Mrs. Shandon, for whom, since the
commencement of their acquaintance, the worthy publisher's lady had
maintained a steady friendship. Bungay, having recreated himself with
a copious luncheon, was madly shying at the sticks hard by, till the
perspiration ran off his bald pate. Shandon was shambling about among
the drinking tents and gipsies: Finucane constant in attendance on the
two ladies, to whom gentlemen of their acquaintance, and connected
with the publishing house, came up to pay a visit.

Among others, Mr. Archer came up to make her his bow, and told Mrs.
Bungay who was on the course. Yonder was the prime minister: his
lordship had just told him to back Borax for the race; but Archer
thought Muffineer the better horse. He pointed out countless dukes and
grandees to the delighted Mrs. Bungay. "Look yonder in the Grand
Stand," he said. "There sits the Chinese embassador with the mandarins
of his suite. Fou-choo-foo brought me over letters of introduction
from the Governor-general of India, my most intimate friend, and I was
for some time very kind to him, and he had his chop-sticks laid for
him at my table whenever he chose to come and dine. But he brought his
own cook with him, and--would you believe it, Mrs. Bungay?--one day,
when I was out, and the embassador was with Mrs. Archer in our garden
eating gooseberries, of which the Chinese are passionately fond, the
beast of a cook, seeing my wife's dear little Blenheim spaniel (that we
had from the Duke of Maryborough himself, whose ancestor's life Mrs.
Archer's great-great-grandfather saved at the battle of Malplaquet),
seized upon the poor little devil, cut his throat, and skinned him,
and served him up stuffed with forced meat in the second course."

"Law!" said Mrs. Bungay.

"You may fancy my wife's agony when she knew what had happened! The
cook came screaming up-stairs, and told us that she had found poor
Fido's skin in the area, just after we had all of us tasted of the
dish! She never would speak to the embassador again--never; and, upon
my word, he has never been to dine with us since. The Lord Mayor, who
did me the honor to dine, liked the dish very much; and, eaten with
green peas, it tastes rather like duck."

"You don't say so, now!" cried the astonished publisher's lady.

"Fact, upon my word. Look at that lady in blue, seated by the
embassador: that is Lady Flamingo, and they say she is going to be
married to him, and return to Pekin with his Excellency. She is
getting her feet squeezed down on purpose. But she'll only cripple
herself, and will never be able to do it--never. My wife has the
smallest foot in England, and wears shoes for a six-year's old child;
but what is that to a Chinese lady's foot, Mrs. Bungay?"

"Who is that carriage as Mr. Pendennis is with, Mr. Archer?" Mrs.
Bungay presently asked. "He and Mr. Warrington was here just now. He's
'aughty in his manners, that Mr. Pendennis, and well he may be, for
I'm told he keeps tip-top company. As he 'ad a large fortune left
him, Mr. Archer? He's in black still, I see."

"Eighteen hundred a year in land, and twenty-two thousand five hundred
in the three-and-a-half per cents.; that's about it," said Mr. Archer.

"Law! why you know every thing Mr. A.!" cried the lady of Paternoster
Row.

"I happen to know, because I was called in about poor Mrs. Pendennis's
will," Mr. Archer replied. "Pendennis's uncle, the major, seldom does
any thing without me; and as he is likely to be extravagant we've tied
up the property, so that he can't make ducks and drakes with it. How
do you do, my Lord?--Do you know that gentleman, ladies? You have read
his speeches in the House; it is Lord Rochester."

"Lord Fiddlestick," cried out Finucane, from the box. "Sure it's Tom
Staples, of the Morning Advertiser, Archer."

"Is it?" Archer said, simply. "Well I'm very short-sighted, and upon
my word I thought it was Rochester. That gentleman with the double
opera-glass (another nod) is Lord John; and the tall man with him,
don't you know him? is Sir James."

"You know 'em because you see 'em in the house," growled Finucane.

"I know them because they are kind enough to allow me to call them my
most intimate friends," Archer continued. "Look at the Duke of
Hampshire; what a pattern of a fine old English gentleman! He never
misses 'the Derby.' 'Archer,' he said to me only yesterday, 'I have
been at sixty-five Derbies! appeared on the field for the first time
on a piebald pony when I was seven years old, with my father, the
Prince of Wales, and Colonel Hanger; and only missing two races--one
when I had the measles at Eton, and one in the Waterloo year, when I
was with my friend Wellington in Flanders.'"

"And who is that yellow carriage, with the pink and yellow parasols,
that Mr. Pendennis is talking to, and ever so many gentlemen?" asked
Mrs. Bungay.

"That is Lady Clavering, of Clavering Park, next estate to my friend
Pendennis. That is the young son and heir upon the box; he's awfully
tipsy, the little scamp! and the young lady is Miss Amory, Lady
Clavering's daughter by a first marriage, and uncommonly sweet upon my
friend Pendennis; but I've reason to think he has his heart fixed
elsewhere. You have heard of young Mr. Foker--the great brewer, Foker,
you know--he was going to hang himself in consequence of a fatal
passion for Miss Amory, who refused him, but was cut down just in time
by his valet, and is now abroad, under a keeper."

"How happy that young fellow is!" sighed Mrs. Bungay. "Who'd have
thought when he came so quiet and demure to dine with us, three or
four years ago, he would turn out such a grand character! Why, I saw
his name at court the other day, and presented by the Marquis of
Steyne and all; and in every party of the nobility his name's down, as
sure as a gun."

"I introduced him a good deal when he first came up to town," Mr.
Archer said, "and his uncle, Major Pendennis, did the rest. Halloo!
There's Cobden here, of all men in the world! I must go and speak to
him. Good-by, Mrs. Bungay. Good morning, Mrs. Shandon."

An hour previous to this time, and at a different part of the course,
there might have been seen an old stage-coach, on the battered roof of
which a crowd of shabby raffs were stamping and hallooing, as the
great event of the day--the Derby race--rushed over the green sward,
and by the shouting millions of people assembled to view that
magnificent scene. This was Wheeler's (the "Harlequin's Head") drag,
which had brought down a company of choice spirits from Bow-street,
with a slap-up luncheon in the "boot." As the whirling race flashed
by, each of the choice spirits bellowed out the name of the horse or
the colors which he thought or he hoped might be foremost. "The
Cornet!" "It's Muffineer!" "It's blue sleeves!'" "Yallow cap! yallow
cap! yallow cap!" and so forth, yelled the gentlemen sportsmen during
that delicious and thrilling minute before the contest was decided;
and as the fluttering signal blew out, showing the number of the
famous horse Podasokus as winner of the race, one of the gentlemen on
the "Harlequin's Head" drag sprang up off the roof, as if he was a
pigeon and about to fly away to London or York with the news.

But his elation did not lift him many inches from his standing-place,
to which he came down again on the instant, causing the boards of the
crazy old coach-roof to crack with the weight of his joy. "Hurrah,
hurrah!" he bawled out, "Podasokus is the horse! Supper for ten
Wheeler, my boy. Ask you all round of course, and damn the expense."

[Illustration]

And the gentlemen on the carriage, the shabby swaggerers, the dubious
bucks, said, "Thank you--congratulate you, colonel; sup with you with
pleasure:" and whispered to one another, "The colonel stands to win
fifteen hundred, and he got the odds from a good man, too."

And each of the shabby bucks and dusky dandies began to eye his
neighbor with suspicion, lest that neighbor, taking his advantage,
should get the colonel into a lonely place and borrow money of him.
And the winner on Podasokus could not be alone during the whole of
that afternoon, so closely did his friends watch him and each other.

At another part of the course you might have seen a vehicle, certainly
more modest, if not more shabby than that battered coach which had
brought down the choice spirits from the Harlequin's Head; this was
cab No. 2002, which had conveyed a gentleman and two ladies from the
cab-stand in the Strand: whereof one of the ladies, as she sate on the
box of the cab enjoying with her mamma and their companion a repast of
lobster-salad and bitter ale, looked so fresh and pretty that many of
the splendid young dandies who were strolling about the course, and
enjoying themselves at the noble diversion of sticks, and talking to
the beautifully dressed ladies in the beautiful carriages on the hill,
forsook these fascinations to have a glance at the smiling and
rosy-cheeked lass on the cab. The blushes of youth and good-humor
mantled on the girl's cheeks, and played over that fair countenance
like the pretty shining cloudlets on the serene sky over head; the
elder lady's cheek was red too; but that was a permanent mottled rose,
deepening only as it received fresh draughts of pale ale and
brandy-and-water, until her face emulated the rich shell of the
lobster which she devoured.

The gentleman who escorted these two ladies was most active in
attendance upon them: here on the course, as he had been during the
previous journey. During the whole of that animated and delightful
drive from London, his jokes had never ceased. He spoke up undauntedly
to the most awful drags full of the biggest and most solemn guardsmen;
as to the humblest donkey-chaise in which Bob the dustman was driving
Molly to the race. He had fired astonishing volleys of what is called
"chaff" into endless windows as he passed; into lines of grinning
girls' schools; into little regiments of shouting urchins hurrahing
behind the railings of their classical and commercial academies; into
casements whence smiling maid-servants, and nurses tossing babies, or
demure old maiden ladies with dissenting countenances, were looking.
And the pretty girl in the straw bonnet with pink ribbon, and her
mamma the devourer of lobsters, had both agreed that when he was in
"spirits" there was nothing like that Mr. Sam. He had crammed the cab
with trophies won from the bankrupt proprietors of the sticks hard by,
and with countless pincushions, wooden-apples, backy-boxes,
Jack-in-the-boxes, and little soldiers. He had brought up a gipsy with
a tawny child in her arms to tell the fortunes of the ladies; and the
only cloud which momentarily obscured the sunshine of that happy
party, was when the teller of fate informed the young lady that she
had had reason to beware of a fair man, who was false to her: that she
had had a bad illness, and that she would find that a dark man would
prove true.

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