Flight after Defeat
Everybody who has the least knowledge of Heraldry and the Peerage must
be aware that the noble family of which, as we know, Helen Pendennis
was a member, bears for a crest, a nest full of little pelicans pecking
at the ensanguined bosom of a big maternal bird, which plentifully
supplies the little wretches with the nutriment on which, according to
the heraldic legend, they are supposed to be brought up. Very likely
female pelicans like so to bleed under the selfish little beaks of
their young ones: it is certain that women do. There must be some sort
of pleasure, which we men don’t understand, which accompanies the pain
of being scarified, and indeed I believe some women would rather
actually so suffer than not. They like sacrificing themselves in behalf
of the object which their instinct teaches them to love. Be it for a
reckless husband, a dissipated son, a darling scapegrace of a brother,
how ready their hearts are to pour out their best treasures for the
benefit of the cherished person; and what a deal of this sort of
enjoyment are we, on one side, ready to give the soft creatures! There
is scarce a man that reads this, but has administered pleasure in this
fashion to his womankind, and has treated them to the luxury of
forgiving him. They don’t mind how they live themselves; but when the
prodigal comes home they make a rejoicing, and kill the fatted calf for
him: and at the very first hint that the sinner is returning, the kind
angels prepare their festival, and Mercy and Forgiveness go smiling out
to welcome him. I hope it may be so always for all: if we have only
Justice to look to, Heaven help us!
During the latter part of Pen’s residence at the University of
Oxbridge, his uncle’s partiality had greatly increased for the lad. The
Major was proud of Arthur, who had high spirits, frank manners, a good
person, and high gentleman-like bearing. It pleased the old London
bachelor to see Pen walking with the young patricians of his
university, and he (who was never known to entertain his friends, and
whose stinginess had passed into a sort of byword among some wags at
the Club, who envied his many engagements, and did not choose to
consider his poverty) was charmed to give his nephew and the young
lords snug little dinners at his lodgings, and to regale them with good
claret, and his very best bons mots and stories: some of which would be
injured by the repetition, for the Major’s manner of telling them was
incomparably neat and careful; and others, whereof the repetition would
do good to nobody. He paid his court to their parents through the young
men, and to himself as it were by their company. He made more than one
visit to Oxbridge, where the young fellows were amused by entertaining
the old gentleman, and gave parties and breakfasts and fêtes, partly to
joke him and partly to do him honour. He plied them with his stories.
He made himself juvenile and hilarious in the company of the young
lords. He went to hear Pen at a grand debate at the Union, crowed and
cheered, and rapped his stick in chorus with the cheers of the men, and
was astounded at the boy’s eloquence and fire. He thought he had got a
young Pitt for a nephew. He had an almost paternal fondness for Pen. He
wrote to the lad letters with playful advice and the news of the town.
He bragged about Arthur at his Clubs, and introduced him with pleasure
into his conversation; saying, that, Egad, the young fellows were
putting the old ones to the wall; that the lads who were coming up,
young Lord Plinlimmon, a friend of my boy, young Lord Magnus Charters,
a chum of my scapegrace, etc., would make a greater figure in the world
than even their fathers had done before them. He asked permission to
bring Arthur to a grand fête at Gaunt House; saw him with ineffable
satisfaction dancing with the sisters of the young noblemen before
mentioned; and gave himself as much trouble to procure cards of
invitation for the lad to some good houses, as if he had been a mamma
with a daughter to marry, and not an old half-pay officer in a wig. And
he boasted everywhere of the boy’s great talents, and remarkable
oratorical powers; and of the brilliant degree he was going to take.
Lord Runnymede would take him on his embassy, or the Duke would bring
him in for one of his boroughs, he wrote over and over again to Helen;
who, for her part, was too ready to believe anything that anybody chose
to say in favour of her son.
And all this pride and affection of uncle and mother had been trampled
down by Pen’s wicked extravagance and idleness! I don’t envy Pen’s
feelings (as the phrase is), as he thought of what he had done. He had
slept, and the tortoise had won the race. He had marred at its outset
what might have been a brilliant career. He had dipped ungenerously
into a generous mother’s purse; basely and recklessly spilt her little
cruse. O! it was a coward hand that could strike and rob a creature so
tender. And if Pen felt the wrong which he had done to others, are we
to suppose that a young gentleman of his vanity did not feel still more
keenly the shame he had brought upon himself? Let us be assured that
there is no more cruel remorse than that; and no groans more piteous
than those of wounded self-love. Like Joel Miller’s friend, the Senior
Wrangler, who bowed to the audience from his box at the play, because
he and the king happened to enter the theatre at the same time, only
with a fatuity by no means so agreeable to himself, poor Arthur
Pendennis felt perfectly convinced that all England would remark the
absence of his name from the examination-lists, and talk about his
misfortune. His wounded tutor, his many duns, the skip and bed-maker
who waited upon him, the undergraduates of his own time and the years
below him, whom he had patronised or scorned—how could he bear to look
any of them in the face now? He rushed to his rooms, into which he shut
himself, and there he penned a letter to his tutor, full of thanks,
regards, remorse, and despair, requesting that his name might be taken
off the college books, and intimating a wish and expectation that death
would speedily end the woes of the disgraced Arthur Pendennis.
Then he slunk out, scarcely knowing whither he went, but mechanically
taking the unfrequented little lanes by the backs of the colleges,
until he cleared the university precincts, and got down to the banks of
the Camisis river, now deserted, but so often alive with the
boat-races, and the crowds of cheering gownsmen, he wandered on and on,
until he found himself at some miles’ distance from Oxbridge, or rather
was found by some acquaintances leaving that city.
As Pen went up a hill, a drizzling January rain beating in his face,
and his ragged gown flying behind him—for he had not divested himself
of his academical garments since the morning—a postchaise came rattling
up the road, on the box of which a servant was seated, whilst within,
or rather half out of the carriage window, sate a young gentleman
smoking a cigar, and loudly encouraging the postboy. It was our young
acquaintance of Baymouth Mr. Spavin, who had got his degree, and was
driving homewards in triumph in his yellow postchaise. He caught a
sight of the figure, madly gesticulating as he worked up the hill, and
of poor Pen’s pale and ghastly face as the chaise whirled by him.
“Wo!” roared Mr. Spavin to the postboy, and the horses stopped in their
mad career, and the carriage pulled up some fifty yards before Pen. He
presently heard his own name shouted, and beheld the upper half of the
body of Mr. Spavin thrust out of the side-window of the vehicle, and
beckoning Pen vehemently towards it.
Pen stopped, hesitated—nodded his head fiercely, and pointed onwards,
as if desirous that the postillion should proceed. He did not speak:
but his countenance must have looked very desperate, for young Spavin,
having stared at him with an expression of blank alarm, jumped out of
the carriage presently, ran towards Pen holding out his hand, and
grasping Pen’s, said, “I say—hullo, old boy, where are you going, and
what’s the row now?”
“I’m going where I deserve to go,” said Pen, with an imprecation.
“This ain’t the way,” said Mr. Spavin, smiling. “This is the Fenbury
road. I say, Pen, don’t take on because you are plucked. It’s nothing
when you are used to it. I’ve been plucked three times, old boy—and
after the first time I didn’t care. Glad it’s over, though. You’ll have
better luck next time.”
Pen looked at his early acquaintance,—who had been plucked, who had
been rusticated, who had only, after repeated failures, learned to read
and write correctly, and who, in spite of all these drawbacks, had
attained the honour of a degree. “This man has passed,” he thought,
“and I have failed!” It was almost too much for him to bear.
“Good-bye, Spavin,” said he; “I’m very glad you are through. Don’t let
me keep you; I’m in a hurry—I’m going to town to-night.”
“Gammon,” said Mr. Spavin. “This ain’t the way to town; this is the
Fenbury road, I tell you.”
“I was just going to turn back,” Pen said.
“All the coaches are full with the men going down,” Spavin said. Pen
winced. “You’d not get a place for a ten-pound note. Get into my
yellow; I’ll drop you at Mudford, where you have a chance of the
Fenbury mail. I’ll lend you a hat and a coat; I’ve got lots. Come
along; jump in, old boy—go it, leathers!”—and in this way Pen found
himself in Mr. Spavin’s postchaise, and rode with that gentleman as far
as the Ram Inn at Mudford, fifteen miles from Oxbridge; where the
Fenbury mail changed horses, and where Pen got a place on to London.
The next day there was an immense excitement in Boniface College,
Oxbridge, where, for some time, a rumour prevailed, to the terror of
Pen’s tutor and tradesmen, that Pendennis, maddened at losing his
degree, had made away with himself—a battered cap, in which his name
was almost discernible, together with a seal bearing his crest of an
eagle looking at a now extinct sun, had been found three miles on the
Fenbury road, near a mill-stream, and, for four-and-twenty hours, it
was supposed that poor Pen had flung himself into the stream, until
letters arrived from him, bearing the London post-mark.
The mail reached London at the dreary hour of five; and he hastened to
the inn at Covent Garden, at which he was accustomed to put up, where
the ever-wakeful porter admitted him, and showed him to a bed. Pen
looked hard at the man, and wondered whether Boots knew he was plucked?
When in bed he could not sleep there. He tossed about until the
appearance of the dismal London daylight, when he sprang up
desperately, and walked off to his uncle’s lodgings in Bury Street;
where the maid, who was scouring the steps, looked up suspiciously at
him, as he came with an unshaven face, and yesterday’s linen. He
thought she knew of his mishap, too.
“Good ’evens! Mr. Harthur, what as ’appened, sir?” Mr. Morgan, the
valet, asked, who had just arranged the well-brushed clothes and shiny
boots at the door of his master’s bedroom, and was carrying in his wig
to the Major.
“I want to see my uncle,” he cried, in a ghastly voice, and flung
himself down on a chair.
Morgan backed before the pale and desperate-looking young man, with
terrified and wondering glances, and disappeared in his master’s
apartment.
The Major put his head out of the bedroom door, as soon as he had his
wig on.
“What? examination over? Senior Wrangler, double First Class, hay? said
the old gentleman—I’ll come directly;” and the head disappeared.
“They don’t know what has happened,” groaned Pen; “what will they say
when they know all?”
Pen had been standing with his back to the window, and to such a
dubious light as Bury Street enjoys of a foggy January morning, so that
his uncle could not see the expression of the young man’s countenance,
or the looks of gloom and despair which even Mr. Morgan had remarked.
But when the Major came out of his dressing-room neat and radiant, and
preceded by faint odours from Delcroix’s shop, from which emporium
Major Pendennis’s wig and his pocket-handkerchief got their perfume, he
held out one of his hands to Pen, and was about addressing him in his
cheery high-toned voice, when he caught sight of the boy’s face at
length, and dropping his hand, said, “Good God! Pen, what’s the
matter?”
“You’ll see it in the papers at breakfast, sir,” Pen said.
“See what?”
“My name isn’t there, sir.”
“Hang it, why should it be?” asked the Major, more perplexed.
“I have lost everything, sir,” Pen groaned out; “my honour’s gone; I’m
ruined irretrievably; I can’t go back to Oxbridge.”
“Lost your honour?” screamed out the Major. “Heaven alive! you don’t
mean to say you have shown the white feather?”
Pen laughed bitterly at the word feather, and repeated it. “No, it
isn’t that, sir. I’m not afraid of being shot; I wish to God anybody
would. I have not got my degree. I—I’m plucked, sir.”
The Major had heard of plucking, but in a very vague and cursory way,
and concluded that it was some ceremony performed corporally upon
rebellious university youth. “I wonder you can look me in the face
after such a disgrace, sir,” he said; “I wonder you submitted to it as
a gentleman.”
“I couldn’t help it, sir. I did my classical papers well enough: it was
those infernal mathematics, which I have always neglected.”
“Was it—was it done in public, sir?” the Major said.
“What?”
“The—the plucking?” asked the guardian, looking Pen anxiously in the
face.
Pen perceived the error under which his guardian was labouring, and in
the midst of his misery the blunder caused the poor wretch a faint
smile, and served to bring down the conversation from the tragedy-key,
in which Pen had been disposed to carry it on. He explained to his
uncle that he had gone in to pass his examination, and failed. On which
the Major said, that though he had expected far better things of his
nephew, there was no great misfortune in this, and no dishonour as far
as he saw, and that Pen must try again.
“Me again at Oxbridge,” Pen thought, “after such a humiliation as
that!” He felt that, except he went down to burn the place, he could
not enter it.
But it was when he came to tell his uncle of his debts that the other
felt surprise and anger most keenly, and broke out in speeches most
severe upon Pen, which the lad bore, as best might, without flinching.
He had determined to make a clean breast, and had formed a full, true,
and complete list of all his bills and liabilities at the university,
and in London. They consisted of various items, such as:
London Tailor. Oxbridge do. Oxbridge do. Bill for horses.
Haberdasher, for shirts and gloves. Printseller. Jeweller. Books.
College Cook. Binding. Grump, for desserts. Hairdresser and
Perfumery. Bootmaker. Hotel bill in London. Wine Merchant in
London. Sundries.
All which items the reader may fill in at his pleasure—such accounts
have been inspected by the parents of many university youth,—and it
appeared that Mr. Pen’s bills in all amounted to about seven hundred
pounds; and, furthermore, it was calculated that he had had more than
twice that sum of ready money during his stay at Oxbridge. This sum he
had spent, and for it had to show—what?
“You need not press a man who is down, sir,” Pen said to his uncle,
gloomily. “I know very well, sir, how wicked and idle I have been. My
mother won’t like to see me dishonoured, sir,” he continued, with his
voice failing; “and I know she will pay these accounts. But I shall ask
her for no more money.”
“As you like, sir,” the Major said. “You are of age, and my hands are
washed of your affairs. But you can’t live without money, and have no
means of making it that I see, though you have a fine talent in
spending it, and it is my belief that you will proceed as you have
begun, and ruin your mother before you are five years older.—Good
morning; it is time for me to go to breakfast. My engagements won’t
permit me to see you much during the time that you stay in London. I
presume that you will acquaint your mother with the news which you have
just conveyed to me.”
And pulling on his hat, and trembling in his limbs somewhat, Major
Pendennis walked out of his lodgings before his nephew, and went
ruefully off to take his accustomed corner at the Club. He saw the
Oxbridge examination-lists in the morning papers, and read over the
names, not understanding the business, with mournful accuracy. He
consulted various old fogies of his acquaintance, in the course of the
day, at his Clubs; Wenham, a Dean, various Civilians; and, as it is
called, “took their opinion,” showing to some of them the amount of his
nephew’s debts, which he had dotted down on the back of a card, and
asking what was to be done, and whether such debts were not monstrous,
preposterous? What was to be done?—There was nothing for it but to pay.
Wenham and the others told the Major of young men who owed twice as
much—five times as much—as Arthur, and with no means at all to pay. The
consultations, and calculations, and opinions, comforted the Major
somewhat. After all, he was not to pay.
But he thought bitterly of the many plans he had formed to make a man
of his nephew, of the sacrifices which he had made, and of the manner
in which he was disappointed. And he wrote off a letter to Doctor
Portman, informing him of the direful events which had taken place, and
begging the Doctor to break them to Helen. For the orthodox old
gentleman preserved the regular routine in all things, and was of
opinion that it was more correct to “break” a piece of bad news to a
person by means of a (possibly maladroit and unfeeling) messenger, than
to convey it simply to its destination by a note. So the Major wrote to
Doctor Portman, and then went out to dinner, one of the saddest men in
any London dining-room that day.
Pen, too, wrote his letter, and skulked about London streets for the
rest of the day, fancying that everybody was looking at him and
whispering to his neighbour, “That is Pendennis of Boniface, who was
plucked yesterday.” His letter to his mother was full of tenderness and
remorse: he wept the bitterest tears over it—and the repentance and
passion soothed him to some degree.
He saw a party of roaring young blades from Oxbridge in the coffee-room
of his hotel, and slunk away from them, and paced the streets. He
remembers, he says, the prints which he saw hanging up at Ackermann’s
window in the rain, and a book which he read at a stall near the
Temple: at night he went to the pit of the play, and saw Miss
Fotheringay, but he doesn’t in the least recollect in what piece.
On the second day there came a kind letter from his tutor, containing
many grave and appropriate remarks upon the event which had befallen
him, but strongly urging Pen not to take his name off the university
books, and to retrieve a disaster which, everybody knew, was owing to
his own carelessness alone, and which he might repair by a month’s
application. He said he had ordered Pen’s skip to pack up some trunks
of the young gentleman’s wardrobe, which duly arrived with fresh copies
of all Pen’s bills laid on the top.
On the third day there arrived a letter from home; which Pen read in
his bedroom, and the result of which was that he fell down on his knees
with his head in the bedclothes, and then prayed out his heart and
humbled himself; and having gone downstairs and eaten an immense
breakfast he sallied forth and took his place at the Bull and Mouth,
Piccadilly, by the Chatteris coach for that evening.