Mrs. Haller
Having returned to the George, Mr. Foker and his guest sate down to a
handsome repast in the coffee-room; where Mr. Rincer brought in the
first dish, and bowed as gravely as if he was waiting upon the
Lord-Lieutenant of the county. Mr. Foker attacked the turtle and
venison with as much gusto as he had shown the year before, when he
used to make feasts off ginger-beer and smuggled polonies. Pen could
not but respect his connoisseurship as he pronounced the champagne to
be condemned gooseberry, and winked at the port with one eye. The
latter he declared to be of the right sort; and told the waiters there
was no way of humbugging him. All these attendants he knew by their
Christian names, and showed a great interest in their families; and as
the London coaches drove up, which in those early days used to set off
from the George, Mr. Foker flung the coffee-room window open, and
called the guards and coachmen by their Christian names, too, asking
about their respective families, and imitating with great liveliness
and accuracy the tooting of the horns as Jem the ostler whipped the
horses’ cloths off, and the carriages drove gaily away.
“A bottle of sherry, a bottle of sham, a bottle of port and a shass
caffy, it ain’t so bad, hay, Pen?” Foker said, and pronounced, after
all these delicacies and a quantity of nuts and fruit had been
dispatched, that it was time to “toddle.” Pen sprang up with very
bright eyes, and a flushed face; and they moved off towards the
theatre, where they paid their money to the wheezy old lady slumbering
in the money-taker’s box. “Mrs. Dropsicum, Bingley’s mother-in-law,
great in Lady Macbeth,” Foker said to his companion. Foker knew her,
too.
They had almost their choice of places in the boxes of the theatre,
which was no better filled than country theatres usually are in spite
of the “universal burst of attraction and galvanic thrills of delight”
advertised by Bingley in the play-bills. A score or so of people dotted
the pit-benches, a few more kept a kicking and whistling in the
galleries, and a dozen others, who came in with free admissions, were
in the boxes where our young gentlemen sate. Lieutenants Rodgers and
Podgers, and young Cornet Tidmus, of the Dragoons, occupied a private
box. The performers acted to them, and these gentlemen seemed to hold
conversations with the players when not engaged in the dialogue, and
applauded them by name loudly.
Bingley the manager, who assumed all the chief tragic and comic parts
except when he modestly retreated to make way for the London stars, who
came down occasionally to Chatteris, was great in the character of the
‘Stranger.’ He was attired in the tight pantaloons and Hessian boots
which the stage legend has given to that injured man, with a large
cloak and beaver and a hearse feather in it drooping over his raddled
old face, and only partially concealing his great buckled brown wig. He
had the stage jewellery on too, of which he selected the largest and
most shiny rings for himself, and allowed his little finger to quiver
out of his cloak with a sham diamond ring covering the first joint of
the finger and twiddling in the faces of the pit. Bingley made it a
favour to the young men of his company to go on in light comedy parts
with that ring. They flattered him by asking its history. The stage has
its traditional jewels as the Crown and all great families have. This
had belonged to George Frederick Cooke, who had had it from Mr. Quin,
who may have bought it for a shilling. Bingley fancied the world was
fascinated with its glitter.
He was reading out of the stage-book—that wonderful stage-book which is
not bound like any other book in the world, but is rouged and tawdry
like the hero or heroine who holds it; and who holds it as people never
do hold books: and points with his finger to a passage, and wags his
head ominously at the audience, and then lifts up eyes and finger to
the ceiling professing to derive some intense consolation from the work
between which and heaven there is a strong affinity. Anybody who has
ever seen one of our great light comedians, X., in a chintz
dressing-gown, such as nobody ever wore, and representing himself to
the public as a young nobleman in his apartments, and whiling away the
time with light literature until his friend Sir Harry shall arrive, or
his father shall come down to breakfast—anybody, I say, who has seen
the great X. over a sham book has indeed had a great pleasure and an
abiding matter for thought.
Directly the Stranger saw the young men, he acted at them; eyeing them
solemnly over his gilt volume as he lay on the stage-bank showing his
hand, his ring, and his Hessians. He calculated the effect that every
one of these ornaments would produce upon his victims: he was
determined to fascinate them, for he knew they had paid their money;
and he saw their families coming in from the country and filling the
cane chairs in his boxes.
As he lay on the bank reading, his servant, Francis, made remarks upon
his master.
“Again reading,” said Francis, “thus it is, from morn to night. To him
nature has no beauty—life no charm. For three years I have never seen
him smile” (the gloom of Bingley’s face was fearful to witness during
these comments of the faithful domestic). “Nothing diverts him. O, if
he would but attach himself to any living thing, were it an animal—for
something man must love.”
[Enter Tobias (Goll) from the hut.] He cries, “O, how refreshing, after
seven long weeks, to feel these warm sunbeams once again. Thanks,
bounteous heaven, for the joy I taste!” He presses his cap between his
hands, looks up and prays. The Stranger eyes him attentively.
Francis to the Stranger. “This old man’s share of earthly happiness can
be but little. Yet mark how grateful he is for his portion of it.”
Bingley. “Because though old, he is but a child in the leading-string
of hope.” (He looks steadily at Foker, who, however, continues to suck
the top of his stick in an unconcerned manner.)
Francis. “Hope is the nurse of life.”
Bingley. “And her cradle—is the grave.”
The Stranger uttered this with the moan of a bassoon in agony, and
fixed his eyes on Pendennis so steadily, that the poor lad was quite
put out of countenance. He thought the whole house must be looking at
him; and cast his eyes down. As soon as ever he raised them Bingley’s
were at him again. All through the scene the manager played at him.
When he was about to do a good action, and sent off Francis with his
book, so that that domestic should not witness the deed of benevolence
which he meditated, Bingley marked the page carefully, so that he might
continue the perusal of the volume off the stage if he liked. But all
was done in the direct face of Pendennis, whom the manager was bent
upon subjugating. How relieved the lad was when the scene ended, and
Foker, tapping with his cane, cried out “Bravo, Bingley!”
“Give him a hand, Pendennis; you know every chap likes a hand,” Mr.
Foker said; and the good-natured young gentleman, and Pendennis
laughing, and the dragoons in the opposite box, began clapping hands to
the best of their power.
A chamber in Wintersen Castle closed over Tobias’s hut and the Stranger
and his boots; and servants appeared bustling about with chairs and
tables—“That’s Hicks and Miss Thackthwaite,” whispered Foker. “Pretty
girl, ain’t she, Pendennis? But stop—hurray—bravo! here’s the
Fotheringay.”
The pit thrilled and thumped its umbrellas; a volley of applause was
fired from the gallery: the Dragoon officers and Foker clapped their
hands furiously: you would have thought the house was full, so loud
were their plaudits. The red face and ragged whiskers of Mr. Costigan
were seen peering from the side-scene. Pen’s eyes opened wide and
bright as Mrs. Haller entered with a downcast look, then rallying at
the sound of the applause, swept the house with a grateful glance, and,
folding her hands across her breast, sank down in a magnificent
curtsey. More applause, more umbrellas; Pen this time, flaming with
wine and enthusiasm, clapped hands and sang “bravo” louder than all.
Mrs. Haller saw him, and everybody else, and old Mr. Bows, the little
first fiddler of the orchestra (which was this night increased by a
detachment of the band of the Dragoons, by the kind permission of
Colonel Swallowtail), looked up from the desk where he was perched,
with his crutch beside him, and smiled at the enthusiasm of the lad.
Those who have only seen Miss Fotheringay in later days, since her
marriage and introduction into London life, have little idea how
beautiful a creature she was at the time when our friend Pen first set
eyes on her: and I warn my reader, as beforehand, that the pencil which
illustrates this work (and can draw an ugly face tolerably well, but is
sadly put out when it tries to delineate a beauty) can give no sort of
notion of her. She was of the tallest of women, and at her then age of
six-and-twenty—for six-and-twenty she was, though she vows she was only
nineteen—in the prime and fulness of her beauty. Her forehead was vast,
and her black hair waved over it with a natural ripple (that beauties
of late days have tried to imitate with the help of the
crimping-irons), and was confined in shining and voluminous braids at
the back of a neck such as you see on the shoulders of the Louvre
Venus—that delight of gods and men. Her eyes, when she lifted them up
to gaze on you, and ere she dropped their purple deep-fringed lids,
shone with tenderness and mystery unfathomable. Love and Genius seemed
to look out from them and then retire coyly, as if ashamed to have been
seen at the lattice. Who could have had such a commanding brow but a
woman of high intellect? She never laughed (indeed her teeth were not
good), but a smile of endless tenderness and sweetness played round her
beautiful lips, and in the dimples of her cheeks and her lovely chin.
Her nose defied description in those days. Her ears were like two
little pearl shells, which the earrings she wore (though the handsomest
properties in the theatre) only insulted. She was dressed in long
flowing robes of black, which she managed and swept to and fro with
wonderful grace, and out of the folds of which you only saw her sandals
occasionally; they were of rather a large size; but Pen thought them as
ravishing as the slippers of Cinderella. But it was her hand and arm
that this magnificent creature most excelled in, and somehow you could
never see her but through them. They surrounded her. When she folded
them over her bosom in resignation; when she dropped them in mute
agony, or raised them in superb command; when in sportive gaiety her
hands fluttered and waved before her, like what shall we say?—like the
snowy doves before the chariot of Venus—it was with these arms and
hands that she beckoned, repelled, entreated, embraced, her admirers—no
single one, for she was armed with her own virtue, and with her
father’s valour, whose sword would have leapt from its scabbard at any
insult offered to his child—but the whole house; which rose to her, as
the phrase was, as she curtseyed and bowed, and charmed it.
Thus she stood for a minute—complete and beautiful—as Pen stared at
her. “I say, Pen, isn’t she a stunner?” asked Mr. Foker.
“Hush!” Pen said, “she’s speaking.”
She began her business in a deep sweet voice. Those who know the play
of the ‘Stranger,’ are aware that the remarks made by the various
characters are not valuable in themselves, either for their sound
sense, their novelty of observation, or their poetic fancy. In fact, if
a man were to say it was a stupid play, he would not be far wrong.
Nobody ever talked so. If we meet idiots in life, as will happen, it is
a great mercy that they do not use such absurdly fine words. The
Stranger’s talk is sham, like the book he reads and the hair he wears,
and the bank he sits on, and the diamond ring he makes play with—but,
in the midst of the balderdash, there runs that reality of love,
children, and forgiveness of wrong, which will be listened to wherever
it is preached, and sets all the world sympathising.
With what smothered sorrow, with what gushing pathos, Mrs. Haller
delivered her part! At first, when as Count Wintersen’s housekeeper,
and preparing for his Excellency’s arrival, she has to give orders
about the beds and furniture, and the dinner, etc., to be got ready,
she did so with the calm agony of despair. But when she could get rid
of the stupid servants and give vent to her feelings to the pit and the
house, she overflowed to each individual as if he were her particular
confidant, and she was crying out her griefs on his shoulder: the
little fiddler in the orchestra (whom she did not seem to watch, though
he followed her ceaselessly) twitched, twisted, nodded, pointed about,
and when she came to the favourite passage, “I have a William too, if
he be still alive—Ah, yes, if he be still alive. His little sisters,
too! Why, Fancy, dost thou rack me so? Why dost thou image my poor
children fainting in sickness, and crying to—to—their mum—um—other,”
when she came to this passage little Bows buried his face in his blue
cotton handkerchief, after crying out “Bravo.”
All the house was affected. Foker, for his part, taking out a large
yellow bandanna, wept piteously. As for Pen, he was gone too far for
that. He followed the woman about and about—when she was off the stage,
it and the house were blank; the lights and the red officers, reeled
wildly before his sight. He watched her at the side-scene—where she
stood waiting to come on the stage, and where her father took off her
shawl: when the reconciliation arrived, and she flung herself down on
Mr. Bingley’s shoulders, whilst the children clung to their knees, and
the Countess (Mrs. Bingley) and Baron Steinforth (performed with great
liveliness and spirit by Garbetts)—while the rest of the characters
formed a group round them, Pen’s hot eyes only saw Fotheringay,
Fotheringay. The curtain fell upon him like a pall. He did not hear a
word of what Bingley said, who came forward to announce the play for
the next evening, and who took the tumultuous applause, as usual, for
himself. Pen was not even distinctly aware that the house was calling
for Miss Fotheringay, nor did the manager seem to comprehend that
anybody else but himself had caused the success of the play. At last he
understood it—stepped back with a grin, and presently appeared with
Mrs. Haller on his arm. How beautiful she looked! Her hair had fallen
down, the officers threw her flowers. She clutched them to her heart.
She put back her hair, and smiled all round. Her eyes met Pen’s. Down
went the curtain again: and she was gone. Not one note could he hear of
the overture which the brass band of the dragoons blew by kind
permission of Colonel Swallowtail.
“She is a crusher, ain’t she now!” Mr. Foker asked of his companion.
Pen did not know exactly what Foker said, and answered vaguely. He
could not tell the other what he felt; he could not have spoken, just
then, to any mortal. Besides, Pendennis did not quite know what he felt
yet; it was something overwhelming, maddening, delicious; a fever of
wild joy and undefined longing.
And now Rowkins and Miss Thackthwaite came on to dance the favourite
double hornpipe, and Foker abandoned himself to the delights of this
ballet, just as he had to the tears of the tragedy, a few minutes
before. Pen did not care for it, or indeed think about the dance,
except to remember that that woman was acting with her in the scene
where she first came in. It was a mist before his eyes. At the end of
the dance he looked at his watch and said it was time for him to go.
“Hang it, stay to see The Bravo of the Battle-Axe,” Foker said,
“Bingley’s splendid in it; he wears red tights, and has to carry Mrs.
B. over the Pine-bridge of the Cataract, only she’s too heavy. It’s
great fun, do stop.”
Pen looked at the bill with one lingering fond hope that Miss
Fotheringay’s name might be hidden, somewhere, in the list of the
actors of the after-piece, but there was no such name. Go he must. He
had a long ride home. He squeezed Foker’s hand. He was choking to
speak, but he couldn’t. He quitted the theatre and walked frantically
about the town, he knew not how long; then he mounted at the George and
rode homewards, and Clavering clock sang out one as he came into the
yard at Fairoaks. The lady of the house might have been awake, but she
only heard him from the passage outside his room as he dashed into bed
and pulled the clothes over his head.
Pen had not been in the habit of passing wakeful nights, so he at once
fell off into a sound sleep. Even in later days and with a great deal
of care and other thoughtful matter to keep him awake, a man from long
practice or fatigue or resolution begins by going to sleep as usual:
and gets a nap in advance of Anxiety. But she soon comes up with him
and jogs his shoulder, and says, “Come, my man, no more of this
laziness, you must wake up and have a talk with me.” Then they fall to
together in the midnight. Well, whatever might afterwards happen to
him, poor little Pen was not come to this state yet; he tumbled into a
sound sleep—did not wake until an early hour in the morning, when the
rooks began to caw from the little wood beyond his bedroom windows;
and—at that very instant and as his eyes started open, the beloved
image was in his mind. “My dear boy,” he heard her say, “you were in a
sound sleep and I would not disturb you: but I have been close by your
pillow all this while: and I don’t intend that you shall leave me. I am
Love! I bring with me fever and passion: wild longing, maddening
desire; restless craving and seeking. Many a long day ere this I heard
you calling out for me; and behold now I am come.”
Was Pen frightened at the summons? Not he. He did not know what was
coming: it was all wild pleasure and delight as yet. And as, when three
years previously, and on entering the fifth form at the Cistercians,
his father had made him a present of a gold watch which the boy took
from under his pillow and examined on the instant of waking: for ever
rubbing and polishing it up in private and retiring into corners to
listen to its ticking: so the young man exulted over his new delight;
felt in his waistcoat pocket to see that it was safe; wound it up at
nights, and at the very first moment of waking hugged it and looked at
it.—By the way, that first watch of Pen’s was a showy ill-manufactured
piece: it never went well from the beginning, and was always getting
out of order. And after putting it aside into a drawer and forgetting
it for some time, he swapped it finally away for a more useful
time-keeper.
Pen felt himself to be ever so many years older since yesterday. There
was no mistake about it now. He was as much in love as the best hero in
the best romance he ever read. He told John to bring his shaving water
with the utmost confidence. He dressed himself in some of his finest
clothes that morning: and came splendidly down to breakfast,
patronising his mother and little Laura, who had been strumming her
music lesson for hours before; and who after he had read the prayers
(of which he did not heed one single syllable) wondered at his grand
appearance, and asked him to tell her what the play was about?
Pen laughed and declined to tell Laura what the play was about. In fact
it was quite as well that she should not know. Then she asked him why
he had got on his fine pin and beautiful new waistcoat?
Pen blushed and told his mother that the old schoolfellow with whom he
had dined at Chatteris was reading with a tutor at Baymouth, a very
learned man; and as he was himself to go to College, and as there were
several young men pursuing their studies at Baymouth—he was anxious to
ride over—and—and just see what the course of their reading was.
Laura made a long face. Helen Pendennis looked hard at her son,
troubled more than ever with the vague doubt and terror which had been
haunting her ever since the last night, when Farmer Gurnett brought
back the news that Pen would not return home to dinner. Arthur’s eyes
defied her. She tried to console herself, and drive off her fears. The
boy had never told her an untruth. Pen conducted himself during
breakfast in a very haughty and supercilious manner; and, taking leave
of the elder and younger lady, was presently heard riding out of the
stablecourt. He went gently at first, but galloped like a madman as
soon as he thought that he was out of hearing.
Smirke, thinking of his own affairs, and softly riding with his toes
out, to give Pen his three hours’ reading at Fairoaks, met his pupil,
who shot by him like the wind. Smirke’s pony shied, as the other
thundered past him; the gentle curate went over his head among the
stinging-nettles in the hedge. Pen laughed as they met, pointed towards
the Baymouth road, and was gone half a mile in that direction before
poor Smirke had picked himself up.
Pen had resolved in his mind that he must see Foker that morning; he
must hear about her; know about her; be with somebody who knew her; and
honest Smirke, for his part, sitting up among the stinging-nettles, as
his pony cropped quietly in the hedge, thought dismally to himself,
ought he to go to Fairoaks now that his pupil was evidently gone away
for the day. Yes, he thought he might go, too. He might go and ask Mrs.
Pendennis when Arthur would be back; and hear Miss Laura her Watts’s
Catechism. He got up on the little pony—both were used to his slipping
off—and advanced upon the house from which his scholar had just rushed
away in a whirlwind.
Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little; and the curate had
tumbled over head and heels in pursuit of it, and Pen had started in
the first heat of the mad race.