In which Pen is kept waiting at the Door, while the Reader is informed
who little Laura was.
Once upon a time, then, there was a young gentleman of Cambridge
University who came to pass the long vacation at the village where
young Helen Thistlewood was living with her mother, the widow of the
lieutenant slain at Copenhagen. This gentleman, whose name was the
Reverend Francis Bell, was nephew to Mrs. Thistlewood, and by
consequence, own cousin to Miss Helen, so that it was very right that
he should take lodgings in his aunt’s house, who lived in a very small
way; and there he passed the long vacation, reading with three or four
pupils who accompanied him to the village. Mr. Bell was fellow of a
college, and famous in the University for his learning and skill as a
tutor.
His two kinswomen understood pretty early that the reverend gentleman
was engaged to be married, and was only waiting for a college living to
enable him to fulfil his engagement. His intended bride was the
daughter of another parson, who had acted as Mr. Bell’s own private
tutor in Bell’s early life, and it was whilst under Mr. Coacher’s roof,
indeed, and when only a boy of seventeen or eighteen years of age, that
the impetuous young Bell had flung himself at the feet of Miss Martha
Coacher, whom he was helping to pick peas in the garden. On his knees,
before those peas and her, he pledged himself to an endless affection.
Miss Coacher was by many years the young fellow’s senior and her own
heart had been lacerated by many previous disappointments in the
matrimonial line. No less than three pupils of her father had trifled
with those young affections. The apothecary of the village had
despicably jilted her. The dragoon officer, with whom she had danced so
many many times during that happy season which she passed at Bath with
her gouty grandmamma, one day gaily shook his bridle-rein and galloped
away never to return. Wounded by the shafts of repeated ingratitude,
can it be wondered at that the heart of Martha Coacher should pant to
find rest somewhere? She listened to the proposals of the gawky gallant
honest boy, with great kindness and good-humour; at the end of his
speech she said, “Law, Bell, I’m sure you are too young to think of
such things;” but intimated that she too would revolve them in her own
virgin bosom. She could not refer Mr. Bell to her mamma, for Mr.
Coacher was a widower, and being immersed in his books, was of course
unable to take the direction of so frail and wondrous an article as a
lady’s heart, which Miss Martha had to manage for herself.
A lock of her hair, tied up in a piece of blue ribbon, conveyed to the
happy Bell the result of the Vestal’s conference with herself. Thrice
before had she snipt off one of her auburn ringlets, and given them
away. The possessors were faithless, but the hair had grown again: and
Martha had indeed occasion to say that men were deceivers when she
handed over this token of love to the simple boy.
Number 6, however, was an exception to former passions—Francis Bell was
the most faithful of lovers. When his time arrived to go to college,
and it became necessary to acquaint Mr. Coacher of the arrangements
that had been made, the latter cried, “God bless my soul, I hadn’t the
least idea what was going on;” as was indeed very likely, for he had
been taken in three times before in precisely a similar manner; and
Francis went to the University resolved to conquer honours, so as to be
able to lay them at the feet of his beloved Martha.
This prize in view made him labour prodigiously. News came, term after
term, of the honours he won. He sent the prize-books for his college
essays to old Coacher, and his silver declamation cup to Miss Martha.
In due season he was high among the Wranglers, and a fellow of his
college; and during all the time of these transactions a constant
tender correspondence was kept up with Miss Coacher, to whose
influence, and perhaps with justice, he attributed the successes which
he had won.
By the time, however, when the Rev. Francis Bell, M.A., and Fellow and
Tutor of his College, was twenty-six years of age, it happened that
Miss Coacher was thirty-four, nor had her charms, her manners, or her
temper improved since that sunny day in the springtime of life when he
found her picking peas in the garden. Having achieved his honours he
relaxed in the ardour of his studies, and his judgment and tastes also
perhaps became cooler. The sunshine of the pea-garden faded away from
Miss Martha, and poor Bell found himself engaged—and his hand pledged
to that bond in a thousand letters—to a coarse, ill-tempered,
ill-favoured, ill-mannered, middle-aged woman.
It was in consequence of one of many altercations (in which Martha’s
eloquence shone, and in which therefore she was frequently pleased to
indulge) that Francis refused to take his pupils to Bearleader’s Green,
where Mr. Coacher’s living was, and where Bell was in the habit of
spending the summer: and he bethought him that he would pass the
vacation at his aunt’s village, which he had not seen for many
years—not since little Helen was a girl and used to sit on his knee.
Down then he came and lived with them. Helen was grown a beautiful
young woman now. The cousins were nearly four months together, from
June to October. They walked in the summer evenings: they met in the
early morn. They read out of the same book when the old lady dozed at
night over the candles. What little Helen knew, Frank taught her. She
sang to him: she gave her artless heart to him. She was aware of all
his story. Had he made any secret?—had he not shown the picture of the
woman to whom he was engaged, and with a blush,—her letters, hard,
eager, and cruel?—The days went on and on, happier and closer, with
more kindness, more confidence, and more pity. At last one morning in
October came, when Francis went back to college, and the poor girl felt
that her tender heart was gone with him.
Frank too wakened up from the delightful midsummer dream to the
horrible reality of his own pain. He gnashed and tore at the chain
which bound him. He was frantic to break it and be free. Should he
confess?—give his savings to the woman to whom he was bound, and beg
his release?—there was time yet—he temporised. No living might fall in
for years to come. The cousins went on corresponding sadly and fondly:
the betrothed woman, hard, jealous, and dissatisfied, complaining
bitterly, and with reason, of her Francis’s altered tone.
At last things came to a crisis, and the new attachment was discovered.
Francis owned it, cared not to disguise it, rebuked Martha with her
violent temper and angry imperiousness, and, worst of all, with her
inferiority and her age.
Her reply was, that if he did not keep his promise she would carry his
letters into every court in the kingdom—letters in which his love was
pledged to her ten thousand times; and, after exposing him to the world
as the perjurer and traitor he was, she would kill herself.
Frank had one more interview with Helen, whose mother was dead then,
and who was living companion with old Lady Pontypool,—one more
interview, where it was resolved that he was to do his duty; that is,
to redeem his vow; that is, to pay a debt cozened from him by a
sharper; that is, to make two honest people miserable. So the two
judged their duty to be, and they parted.
The living fell in only too soon; but yet Frank Bell was quite a grey
and worn-out man when he was inducted into it. Helen wrote him a letter
on his marriage, beginning “My dear Cousin,” and ending “always truly
yours.” She sent him back the other letters, and the lock of his
hair—all but a small piece. She had it in her desk when she was talking
to the Major.
Bell lived for three or four years in his living, at the end of which
time, the Chaplainship of Coventry Island falling vacant, Frank applied
for it privately, and having procured it, announced the appointment to
his wife. She objected, as she did to everything. He told her bitterly
that he did not want her to come: so she went. Bell went out in
Governor Crawley’s time, and was very intimate with that gentleman in
his later years. And it was in Coventry Island, years after his own
marriage, and five years after he had heard of the birth of Helen’s
boy, that his own daughter was born.
She was not the daughter of the first Mrs. Bell, who died of island
fever very soon after Helen Pendennis and her husband, to whom Helen
had told everything, wrote to inform Bell of the birth of their child.
“I was old, was I?” said Mrs. Bell the first; “I was old, and her
inferior, was I? but I married you, Mr. Bell, and kept you from
marrying her?” and hereupon she died. Bell married a colonial lady,
whom he loved fondly. But he was not doomed to prosper in love; and,
this lady dying in childbirth, Bell gave up too: sending his little
girl home to Helen Pendennis and her husband, with a parting prayer
that they would befriend her.
The little thing came to Fairoaks from Bristol, which is not very far
off, dressed in black, and in company of a soldier’s wife, her nurse,
at parting from whom she wept bitterly. But she soon dried up her grief
under Helen’s motherly care.
Round her neck she had a locket with hair, which Helen had given, ah
how many years ago! to poor Francis, dead and buried. This child was
all that was left of him, and she cherished, as so tender a creature
would, the legacy which he had bequeathed to her. The girl’s name, as
his dying letter stated, was Helen Laura. But John Pendennis, though he
accepted the trust, was always rather jealous of the orphan; and
gloomily ordered that she should be called by her own mother’s name;
and not by that first one which her father had given her. She was
afraid of Mr. Pendennis, to the last moment of his life. And it was
only when her husband was gone that Helen dared openly to indulge in
the tenderness which she felt for the little girl.
Thus it was that Laura Bell became Mrs. Pendennis’s daughter. Neither
her husband nor that gentleman’s brother, the Major, viewed her with
very favourable eyes. She reminded the first of circumstances in his
wife’s life which he was forced to accept, but would have forgotten
much more willingly and as for the second, how could he regard her? She
was neither related to his own family of Pendennis, nor to any nobleman
in this empire, and she had but a couple of thousand pounds for her
fortune.
And now let Mr. Pen come in, who has been waiting all this while.
Having strung up his nerves, and prepared himself, without at the door,
for the meeting, he came to it, determined to face the awful uncle. He
had settled in his mind that the encounter was to be a fierce one, and
was resolved on bearing it through with all the courage and dignity of
the famous family which he represented. And he flung open the door and
entered with the most severe and warlike expression, armed cap-a-pie as
it were, with lance couched and plumes displayed, and glancing at his
adversary, as if to say, “Come on, I’m ready.”
The old man of the world, as he surveyed the boy’s demeanour, could
hardly help a grin at his admirable pompous simplicity. Major Pendennis
too had examined his ground; and finding that the widow was already
half won over to the enemy, and having a shrewd notion that threats and
tragic exhortations would have no effect upon the boy, who was inclined
to be perfectly stubborn and awfully serious, the Major laid aside the
authoritative manner at once, and with the most good-humoured natural
smile in the world, held out his hands to Pen, shook the lad’s passive
fingers gaily, and said, “Well, Pen, my boy, tell us all about it.”
Helen was delighted with the generosity of the Major’s good-humour. On
the contrary, it quite took aback and disappointed poor Pen, whose
nerves were strung up for a tragedy, and who felt that his grand entree
was altogether baulked and ludicrous. He blushed and winced with
mortified vanity and bewilderment. He felt immensely inclined to begin
to cry—“I—I—I didn’t know that you were come till just now,” he said:
“is—is—town very full, I suppose?”
If Pen could hardly gulp his tears down, it was all the Major could do
to keep from laughter. He turned round and shot a comical glance at
Mrs. Pendennis, who too felt that the scene was at once ridiculous and
sentimental. And so, having nothing to say, she went up and kissed Mr.
Pen: as he thought of her tenderness and soft obedience to his wishes,
it is very possible too the boy was melted.
“What a couple of fools they are,” thought the old guardian. “If I
hadn’t come down, she would have driven over in state to pay a visit
and give her blessing to the young lady’s family.”
“Come, come,” said he, still grinning at the couple, “let us have as
little sentiment as possible, and, Pen, my good fellow, tell us the
whole story.”
Pen got back at once to his tragic and heroical air. “The story is,
sir,” said he, “as I have written it to you before. I have made the
acquaintance of a most beautiful and most virtuous lady; of a high
family, although in reduced circumstances: I have found the woman in
whom I know that the happiness of my life is centred; I feel that I
never, never can think about any woman but her. I am aware of the
difference of our ages and other difficulties in my way. But my
affection was so great that I felt I could surmount all these; that we
both could: and she has consented to unite her lot with mine, and to
accept my heart and my fortune.”
“How much is that, my boy?” said the Major. “Has anybody left you some
money? I don’t know that you are worth a shilling in the world.”
“You know what I have is his,” cried out Mrs. Pendennis.
“Good heavens, madam, hold your tongue!” was what the guardian was
disposed to say; but he kept his temper, not without a struggle. “No
doubt, no doubt,” he said. “You would sacrifice anything for him.
Everybody knows that. But it is, after all then, your fortune which Pen
is offering to the young lady; and of which he wishes to take
possession at eighteen.”
“I know my mother will give me anything,” Pen said, looking rather
disturbed.
“Yes, my good fellow, but there is reason in all things. If your mother
keeps the house, it is but fair that she should select her company.
When you give her house over her head, and transfer her banker’s
account to yourself for the benefit of Miss What-d’-you-call-’em—Miss
Costigan—don’t you think you should at least have consulted my sister
as one of the principal parties in the transaction? I am speaking to
you, you see, without the least anger or assumption of authority, such
as the law and your father’s will give me over you for three years to
come—but as one man of the world to another,—and I ask you, if you
think that, because you can do what you like with your mother,
therefore you have a right to do so? As you are her dependent, would it
not have been more generous to wait before you took this step, and at
least to have paid her the courtesy to ask her leave?”
Pen held down his head, and began dimly to perceive that the action on
which he had prided himself as a most romantic, generous instance of
disinterested affection, was perhaps a very selfish and headstrong
piece of folly.
“I did it in a moment of passion,” said Pen, floundering; “I was not
aware what I was going to say or to do” (and in this he spoke with
perfect sincerity) “But now it is said, and I stand to it. No; I
neither can nor will recall it. I’ll die rather than do so. And I—I
don’t want to burthen my mother,” he continued. “I’ll work for myself.
I’ll go on the stage, and act with her. She—she says I should do well
there.”
“But will she take you on those terms?” the Major interposed. “Mind, I
do not say that Miss Costigan is not the most disinterested of women:
but, don’t you suppose now, fairly, that your position as a young
gentleman of ancient birth and decent expectations forms a part of the
cause why she finds your addresses welcome?”
“I’ll die, I say, rather than forfeit my pledge to her,” said Pen,
doubling his fists and turning red.
“Who asks you, my dear friend?” answered the imperturbable guardian.
“No gentleman breaks his word, of course, when it has been given
freely. But after all, you can wait. You owe something to your mother,
something to your family—something to me as your father’s
representative.”
“Oh, of course,” Pen said, feeling rather relieved.
“Well, as you have pledged your word to her, give us another, will you
Arthur?”
“What is it?” Arthur asked.
“That you will make no private marriage—that you won’t be taking a trip
to Scotland, you understand.”
“That would be a falsehood. Pen never told his mother a falsehood,”
Helen said.
Pen hung down his head again, and his eyes filled with tears of shame.
Had not this whole intrigue been a falsehood to that tender and
confiding creature who was ready to give up all for his sake? He gave
his uncle his hand.
“No, sir—on my word of honour, as a gentleman,” he said, “I will never
marry without my mother’s consent!” and giving Helen a bright parting
look of confidence and affection unchangeable, the boy went out of the
drawing-room into his own study.
“He’s an angel—he’s an angel,” the mother cried out in one of her usual
raptures.
“He comes of a good stock, ma’am,” said her brother-in-law—“of a good
stock on both sides.” The Major was greatly pleased with the result of
his diplomacy—so much so, that he once more saluted the tips of Mrs.
Pendennis’s glove, and dropping the curt, manly, and straightforward
tone in which he had conducted the conversation with the lad, assumed a
certain drawl which he always adopted when he was most conceited and
fine.
“My dear creature,” said he, in that his politest tone, “I think it
certainly as well that I came down, and I flatter myself that last
botte was a successful one. I tell you how I came to think of it. Three
years ago my kind friend Lady Ferrybridge sent for me in the greatest
state of alarm about her son Gretna, whose affair you remember, and
implored me to use my influence with the young gentleman, who was
engaged in an affaire de coeur with a Scotch clergyman’s daughter, Miss
MacToddy. I implored, I entreated gentle measures. But Lord Ferrybridge
was furious, and tried the high hand. Gretna was sulky and silent, and
his parents thought they had conquered. But what was the fact, my dear
creature? The young people had been married for three months before
Lord Ferrybridge knew anything about it. And that was why I extracted
the promise from Master Pen.”
“Arthur would never have done so,” Mrs. Pendennis said.
“He hasn’t,—that is one comfort,” answered the brother-in-law.
Like a wary and patient man of the world, Major Pendennis did not press
poor Pen any farther for the moment, but hoped the best from time, and
that the young fellow’s eyes would be opened before long to see the
absurdity of which he was guilty. And having found out how keen the
boy’s point of honour was, he worked kindly upon that kindly feeling
with great skill, discoursing him over their wine after dinner, and
pointing out to Pen the necessity of a perfect uprightness and openness
in all his dealings, and entreating that his communications with his
interesting young friend (as the Major politely called Miss
Fotheringay) should be carried on with the knowledge, if not
approbation, of Mrs. Pendennis. “After all, Pen,” the Major said, with
a convenient frankness that did not displease the boy, whilst it
advanced the interests of the negotiator, “you must bear in mind that
you are throwing yourself away. Your mother may submit to your marriage
as she would to anything else you desired, if you did but cry long
enough for it: but be sure of this, that it can never please her. You
take a young woman off the boards of a country theatre and prefer her,
for such is the case, to one of the finest ladies in England. And your
mother will submit to your choice, but you can’t suppose that she will
be happy under it. I have often fancied, entre nous, that my sister had
it in her eye to make a marriage between you and that little ward of
hers—Flora, Laura—what’s her name? And I always determined to do my
small endeavour to prevent any such match. The child has but two
thousand pounds, I am given to understand. It is only with the utmost
economy and care that my sister can provide for the decent maintenance
of her house, and for your appearance and education as a gentleman; and
I don’t care to own to you that I had other and much higher views for
you. With your name and birth, sir—with your talents, which I suppose
are respectable, with the friends whom I have the honour to possess, I
could have placed you in an excellent position—a remarkable position
for a young man of such exceeding small means, and had hoped to see
you, at least, try to restore the honours of our name. Your mother’s
softness stopped one prospect, or you might have been a general, like
our gallant ancestor who fought at Ramillies and Malplaquet. I had
another plan in view: my excellent and kind friend, Lord Bagwig, who is
very well disposed towards me, would, I have little doubt, have
attached you to his mission at Pumpernickel, and you might have
advanced in the diplomatic service. But, pardon me for recurring to the
subject; how is a man to serve a young gentleman of eighteen, who
proposes to marry a lady of thirty, whom he has selected from a booth
in a fair?—well, not a fair,—a barn. That profession at once is closed
to you. The public service is closed to you. Society is closed to you.
You see, my good friend, to what you bring yourself. You may get on at
the bar to be sure, where I am given to understand that gentlemen of
merit occasionally marry out of their kitchens; but in no other
profession. Or you may come and live down here—down here, mon Dieu! for
ever” (said the Major, with a dreary shrug, as he thought with
inexpressible fondness of Pall Mall), “where your mother will receive
the Mrs. Arthur that is to be, with perfect kindness; where the good
people of the county won’t visit you; and where, by Gad, sir, I shall
be shy of visiting you myself, for I’m a plain-spoken man, and I own to
you that I like to live with gentlemen for my companions; where you
will have to live, with rum-and-water—drinking gentlemen—farmers, and
drag through your life the young husband of an old woman, who, if she
doesn’t quarrel with your mother, will at least cost that lady her
position in society, and drag her down into that dubious caste into
which you must inevitably fall. It is no affair of mine, my good sir. I
am not angry. Your downfall will not hurt me farther than that it will
extinguish the hopes I had of seeing my family once more taking its
place in the world. It is only your mother and yourself that will be
ruined. And I pity you both from my soul. Pass the claret: it is some I
sent to your poor father; I remember I bought it at poor Lord Levant’s
sale. But of course,” added the Major, smacking the wine, “having
engaged yourself, you will do what becomes you as a man of honour,
however fatal your promise may be. However, promise us on our side, my
boy, what I set out by entreating you to grant,—that there shall be
nothing clandestine, that you will pursue your studies, that you will
only visit your interesting friend at proper intervals. Do you write to
her much?”
Pen blushed and said, “Why, yes, he had written.”
“I suppose verses, eh! as well as prose? I was a dab at verses myself.
I recollect when I first joined, I used to write verses for the fellows
in the regiment; and did some pretty things in that way. I was talking
to my old friend General Hobbler about some lines I dashed off for him
in the year 1806, when we were at the Cape, and, Gad, he remembered
every line of them still; for he’d used ’em so often, the old rogue,
and had actually tried ’em on Mrs. Hobbler, sir—who brought him sixty
thousand pounds. I suppose you’ve tried verses, eh, Pen?”
Pen blushed again, and said, “Why, yes, he had written verses.”
“And does the fair one respond in poetry or prose?” asked the Major,
eyeing his nephew with the queerest expression, as much as to say, “O
Moses and Green Spectacles! what a fool the boy is.”
Pen blushed again. She had written, but not in verse, the young lover
owned, and he gave his breast-pocket the benefit of a squeeze with his
left arm, which the Major remarked, according to his wont.
“You have got the letters there, I see,” said the old campaigner,
nodding at Pen and pointing to his own chest (which was manfully wadded
with cotton by Mr. Stultz). “You know you have. I would give twopence
to see ’em.”
“Why,” said Pen, twiddling the stalks of the strawberries, “I—I,” but
this sentence never finished; for Pen’s face was so comical and
embarrassed, as the Major watched it, that the elder could contain his
gravity no longer, and burst into a fit of laughter, in which chorus
Pen himself was obliged to join after a minute: when he broke out
fairly into a guffaw.
It sent them with great good-humour into Mrs. Pendennis’s drawing-room.
She was pleased to hear them laughing in the hall as they crossed it.
“You sly rascal!” said the Major, putting his arm gaily on Pen’s
shoulder, and giving a playful push at the boy’s breast-pocket. He felt
the papers crackling there sure enough. The young fellow was
delighted—conceited—triumphant—and in one word, a spoony.
The pair came to the tea-table in the highest spirits. The Major’s
politeness was beyond expression. He had never tasted such good tea,
and such bread was only to be had in the country. He asked Mrs.
Pendennis for one of her charming songs. He then made Pen sing, and was
delighted and astonished at the beauty of the boy’s voice: he made his
nephew fetch his maps and drawings, and praised them as really
remarkable works of talent in a young fellow: he complimented him on
his French pronunciation: he flattered the simple boy as adroitly as
ever lover flattered a mistress: and when bedtime came, mother and son
went to their several rooms perfectly enchanted with the kind Major.
When they had reached those apartments, I suppose Helen took to her
knees as usual: and Pen read over his letters before going to bed: just
as if he didn’t know every word of them by heart already. In truth
there were but three of those documents and to learn their contents
required no great effort of memory.
In No. 1, Miss Fotheringay presents grateful compliments to Mr.
Pendennis, and in her papa’s name and her own begs to thank him for his
most beautiful presents. They will always be kept carefully; and Miss
F. and Captain C. will never forget the delightful evening which they
passed on Tuesday last.
No. 2 said—Dear Sir, we shall have a small quiet party of social
friends at our humble board, next Tuesday evening, at an early tea,
when I shall wear the beautiful scarf which, with its accompanying
delightful verses, I shall ever, ever cherish: and papa bids me say how
happy he will be if you will join ‘the feast of reason and the flow of
soul’ in our festive little party, as I am sure will be your truly
grateful Emily Fotheringay.
No. 3 was somewhat more confidential, and showed that matters had
proceeded rather far. You were odious yesterday night, the letter said.
Why did you not come to the stage-door? Papa could not escort me on
account of his eye; he had an accident, and fell down over a loose
carpet on the stair on Sunday night. I saw you looking at Miss Diggle
all night; and you were so enchanted with Lydia Languish you scarcely
once looked at Julia. I could have crushed Bingley, I was so angry. I
play Ella Rosenberg on Friday: will you come then? Miss Diggle
performs—ever your E. F.
These three letters Mr. Pen used to read at intervals, during the day
and night, and embrace with that delight and fervour which such
beautiful compositions surely warranted. A thousand times at least he
had kissed fondly the musky satin paper, made sacred to him by the hand
of Emily Fotheringay. This was all he had in return for his passion and
flames, his vows and protests, his rhymes and similes, his wakeful
nights and endless thoughts, his fondness, fears and folly. The young
wiseacre had pledged away his all for this: signed his name to endless
promissory notes, conferring his heart upon the bearer: bound himself
for life, and got back twopence as an equivalent. For Miss Costigan was
a young lady of such perfect good-conduct and self-command, that she
never would have thought of giving more, and reserved the treasures of
her affection until she could transfer them lawfully at church.
Howbeit, Mr. Pen was content with what tokens of regard he had got, and
mumbled over his three letters in a rapture of high spirits, and went
to sleep delighted with his kind old uncle from London, who must
evidently yield to his wishes in time; and, in a word, in a
preposterous state of contentment with himself and all the world.