Convalescence
Our duty now is to record a fact concerning Pendennis, which, however
shameful and disgraceful, when told regarding the chief personage and
godfather of a novel, must, nevertheless, be made known to the public
who reads his veritable memoirs. Having gone to bed ill with fever, and
suffering to a certain degree under the passion of love, after he had
gone through his physical malady, and had been bled and had been
blistered, and had had his head shaved, and had been treated and
medicamented as the doctor ordained:—it is a fact, that, when he
rallied up from his bodily ailment, his mental malady had likewise
quitted him, and he was no more in love with Fanny Bolton than you or
I, who are much too wise, or too moral, to allow our hearts to go
gadding after porters’ daughters.
He laughed at himself as he lay on his pillow, thinking of this second
cure which had been effected upon him. He did not care the least about
Fanny now: he wondered how he ever should have cared: and according to
his custom made an autopsy of that dead passion, and anatomised his own
defunct sensation for his poor little nurse. What could have made him
so hot and eager about her but a few weeks back? Not her wit, not her
breeding, not her beauty—there were hundreds of women better-looking
than she. It was out of himself that the passion had gone: it did not
reside in her. She was the same; but the eyes which saw were changed;
and, alas, that it should be so! were not particularly eager to see her
any more. He felt very well disposed towards the little thing, and so
forth, but as for violent personal regard, such as he had but a few
weeks ago, it had fled under the influence of the pill and lancet,
which had destroyed the fever in his frame. And an immense source of
comfort and gratitude it was to Pendennis (though there was something
selfish in that feeling, as in most others of our young man), that he
had been enabled to resist temptation at the time when the danger was
greatest, and had no particular cause of self-reproach as he remembered
his conduct towards the young girl. As from a precipice down which he
might have fallen, so from the fever from which he had recovered, he
reviewed the Fanny Bolton snare, now that he had escaped out of it, but
I’m not sure that he was not ashamed of the very satisfaction which he
experienced. It is pleasant, perhaps, but it is humiliating to own that
you love no more.
Meanwhile the kind smiles and tender watchfulness of the mother at his
bedside, filled the young man with peace and security. To see that
health was returning, was all the unwearied nurse demanded: to execute
any caprice or order of her patient’s, her chiefest joy and reward. He
felt himself environed by her love, and thought himself almost as
grateful for it as he had been when weak and helpless in childhood.
Some misty notions regarding the first part of his illness, and that
Fanny had nursed him, Pen may have had, but they were so dim that he
could not realise them with accuracy, or distinguish them from what he
knew to be delusions which had occurred and were remembered during the
delirium of his fever. So as he had not thought proper on former
occasions to make any allusions about Fanny Bolton to his mother, of
course he could not now confide to her his sentiments regarding Fanny,
or make this worthy lady a confidante. It was on both sides an unlucky
precaution and want of confidence; and a word or two in time might have
spared the good lady, and those connected with her, a deal of pain and
anguish.
Seeing Miss Bolton installed as nurse and tender to Pen, I am sorry to
say Mrs. Pendennis had put the worst construction on the fact of the
intimacy of these two unlucky young persons, and had settled in her own
mind that the accusations against Arthur were true. Why not have
stopped to inquire?—There are stories to a man’s disadvantage that the
women who are fondest of him are always the most eager to believe.
Isn’t a man’s wife often the first to be jealous of him? Poor Pen got a
good stock of this suspicious kind of love from the nurse who was now
watching over him; and the kind and pure creature thought that her boy
had gone through a malady much more awful and debasing than the mere
physical fever, and was stained by crime as well as weakened by
illness. The consciousness of this she had to bear perforce silently,
and to try to put a mask of cheerfulness and confidence over her doubt
and despair and inward horror.
When Captain Shandon, at Boulogne, read the next number of the Pall
Mall Gazette, it was to remark to Mrs. Shandon that Jack Finucane’s
hand was no longer visible in the leading articles, and that Mr.
Warrington must be at work there again. “I know the crack of his whip
in a hundred, and the cut which the fellow’s thong leaves. There’s Jack
Bludyer, goes to work like a butcher, and mangles a subject. Mr.
Warrington finished a man, and lays his cuts neat and regular, straight
down the back, and drawing blood every line;” at which dreadful
metaphor, Mrs. Shandon said, “Law, Charles, how can you talk so! I
always thought Mr. Warrington very high, but a kind gentleman; and I’m
sure he was most kind to the children.” Upon which Shandon said, “yes;
he’s kind to the children; but he’s savage to the men; and to be sure,
my dear, you don’t understand a word about what I’m saying; and it’s
best you shouldn’t; for it’s little good comes out of writing for
newspapers; and it’s better here, living easy at Boulogne, where the
wine’s plenty, and the brandy costs but two francs a bottle. Mix us
another tumbler, Mary, my dear; we’ll go back into harness soon. ‘Cras
ingens iterabimus aequor’ bad luck to it.”
In a word, Warrington went to work with all his might, in place of his
prostrate friend, and did Pen’s portion of the Pall Mall Gazette “with
a vengeance,” as the saying is. He wrote occasional articles and
literary criticisms; he attended theatres and musical performances, and
discoursed about them with his usual savage energy. His hand was too
strong for such small subjects, and it pleased him to tell Arthur’s
mother, and uncle, and Laura, that there was no hand in all the band of
penmen more graceful and light, more pleasant and more elegant, than
Arthur’s. “The people in this country, ma’am, don’t understand what
style is, or they would see the merits of our young one,” he said to
Mrs. Pendennis. “I call him ours, ma’am, for I bred him; and I am as
proud of him as you are; and, bating a little wilfulness, and a little
selfishness, and a little dandification, I don’t know a more honest, or
loyal, or gentle creature. His pen is wicked sometimes, but he is as
kind as a young lady—as Miss Laura here—and I believe he would not do
any living mortal harm.”
At this, Helen, though she heaved a deep, deep sigh, and Laura, though
she, too, was sadly wounded, nevertheless were most thankful for
Warrington’s good opinion of Arthur, and loved him for being so
attached to their Pen. And Major Pendennis was loud in his praises of
Mr. Warrington,—more loud and enthusiastic than it was the Major’s wont
to be. “He is a gentleman, my dear creature,” he said to Helen, “every
inch a gentleman, my good madam—the Suffolk Warringtons—Charles the
First’s baronets:—what could he be but a gentleman, come out of that
family?—father,—Sir Miles Warrington; ran away with—beg your pardon,
Miss Bell. Sir Miles was a very well known man in London, and a friend
of the Prince of Wales, This gentleman is a man of the greatest
talents, the very highest accomplishments,—sure to get on, if he had a
motive to put his energies to work.”
Laura blushed for herself whilst the Major was talking and praising
Arthur’s hero. As she looked at Warrington’s manly face, and dark,
melancholy eyes, this young person had been speculating about him, and
had settled in her mind that he must have been the victim of an unhappy
attachment; and as she caught herself so speculating, why, Miss Bell
blushed.
Warrington got chambers hard by,—Grenier’s chambers in Flag Court; and
having executed Pen’s task with great energy in the morning, his
delight and pleasure of an afternoon was to come and sit with the sick
man’s company in the sunny autumn evenings; and he had the honour more
than once of giving Miss Bell his arm for a walk in the Temple Gardens;
to take which pastime, when the frank Laura asked of Helen permission,
the Major eagerly said, “Yes, yes, begad—of course you go out with
him—it’s like the country, you know; everybody goes out with everybody
in the Gardens, and there are beadles, you know, and that sort of
thing—everybody walks in the Temple Gardens.” If the great arbiter of
morals did not object, why should simple Helen? She was glad that her
girl should have such fresh air as the river could give, and to see her
return with heightened colour and spirits from these harmless
excursions.
Laura and Helen had come, you must know, to a little explanation. When
the news arrived of Pen’s alarming illness, Laura insisted upon
accompanying the terrified mother to London, would not hear of the
refusal which the still angry Helen gave her, and, when refused a
second time yet more sternly, and when it seemed that the poor lost
lad’s life was despaired of, and when it was known that his conduct was
such as to render all thoughts of union hopeless, Laura had, with many
tears, told her mother a secret with which every observant person who
reads this story was acquainted already. Now she never could marry him,
was she to be denied the consolation of owning how fondly, how truly,
how entirely she had loved him? The mingling tears of the woman
appeased the agony of their grief somewhat; and the sorrows and terrors
of their journey were at least in so far mitigated that they shared
them together.
What could Fanny expect when suddenly brought up for sentence before a
couple of such judges? Nothing but swift condemnation, awful
punishment, merciless dismissal! Women are cruel critics in cases such
as that in which poor Fanny was implicated; and we like them to be so;
for, besides the guard which a man places round his own harem, and the
defences which a woman has in her heart, her faith, and honour, hasn’t
she all her own friends of her own sex to keep watch that she does not
go astray, and to tear her to pieces if she is found erring? When our
Mahmouds or Selims of Baker Street or Belgrave Square visit their
Fatimas with condign punishment, their mothers sew up Fatima’s sack for
her, and her sisters and sisters-in-law see her well under water. And
this present writer does not say nay. He protests most solemnly he is a
Turk, too. He wears a turban and a beard like another, and is all for
the sack practice, Bismillah! But O you spotless, who have the right of
capital punishment vested in you, at least be very cautious that you
make away with the proper (if so she may be called) person. Be very
sure of the fact before you order the barge out: and don’t pop your
subject into the Bosphorus, until you are quite certain that she
deserves it. This is all I would urge in poor Fatima’s
behalf—absolutely all—not a word more, by the beard of the Prophet. If
she’s guilty, down with her—heave over the sack, away with it into the
Golden Horn bubble and squeak, and justice being done, give way, men,
and let us pull back to supper.
So the Major did not in any way object to Warrington’s continued
promenades with Miss Laura, but, like a benevolent old gentleman,
encouraged in every way the intimacy of that couple. Were there any
exhibitions in town? he was for Warrington conducting her to them. If
Warrington had proposed to take her to Vauxhall itself, this most
complaisant of men would have seen no harm,—nor would Helen, if
Pendennis the elder had so ruled it,—nor would there have been any harm
between two persons whose honour was entirely spotless,—between
Warrington, who saw in intimacy a pure, and high-minded, and artless
woman for the first time in his life,—and Laura, who too for the first
time was thrown into the constant society of a gentleman of great
natural parts and powers of pleasing; who possessed varied
acquirements, enthusiasm, simplicity, humour, and that freshness of
mind which his simple life and habits gave him, and which contrasted so
much with Pen’s dandy indifference of manner and faded sneer. In
Warrington’s very uncouthness there was a refinement, which the other’s
finery lacked. In his energy, his respect, his desire to please, his
hearty laughter, or simple confiding pathos, what a difference to
Sultan Pen’s yawning sovereignty and languid acceptance of homage! What
had made Pen at home such a dandy and such a despot? The women had
spoiled him, as we like them and as they like to do. They had cloyed
him with obedience, and surfeited him with sweet respect and
submission, until he grew weary of the slaves who waited upon him, and
their caresses and cajoleries excited him no more. Abroad, he was brisk
and lively, and eager and impassioned enough—most men are so
constituted and so nurtured.—Does this, like the former sentence, run a
chance of being misinterpreted, and does any one dare to suppose that
the writer would incite the women to revolt? Never, by the whiskers of
the Prophet again, he says. He wears a beard, and he likes his women to
be slaves. What man doesn’t? What man would be henpecked, I say? We
will cut off all the heads in Christendom or Turkeydom rather than
that.
Well, then, Arthur being so languid, and indifferent, and careless
about the favours bestowed upon him, how came it that Laura should have
such a love and rapturous regard for him, that a mere inadequate
expression of it should have kept the girl talking all the way from
Fairoaks to London, as she and Helen travelled in the post-chaise? As
soon as Helen had finished one story about the dear fellow, and
narrated, with a hundred sobs and ejaculations, and looks up to heaven,
some thrilling incidents which occurred about the period when the hero
was breeched, Laura began another equally interesting and equally
ornamented with tears, and told how heroically he had a tooth out or
wouldn’t have it out, or how daringly he robbed a bird’s nest or how
magnanimously he spared it; or how he gave a shilling to the old woman
on the common, or went without his bread-and-butter for the beggar-boy
who came into the yard—and so on. One to another the sobbing women sang
laments upon their hero, who, my worthy reader has long since
perceived, is no more a hero than one of us. Being as he was, why
should a sensible girl be so fond of him?
This point has been argued before in a previous unfortunate sentence
(which lately drew down all the wrath of Ireland upon the writer’s
head), and which said that the greatest rascal-cut-throats have had
somebody to be fond of them, and if those monsters, why not ordinary
mortals? And with whom shall a young lady fall in love but with the
person she sees? She is not supposed to lose her heart in a dream, like
a Princess in the Arabian Nights; or to plight her young affections to
the portrait of a gentleman in the Exhibition, or a sketch in the
Illustrated London News. You have an instinct within you which inclines
you to attach yourself to some one: you meet Somebody: you hear
Somebody constantly praised: you walk, or ride, or waltz, or talk or
sit in the same pew at church with Somebody: you meet again, and again,
and—“Marriages are made in Heaven,” your dear mamma says, pinning your
orange-flowers wreath on, with her blessed eyes dimmed with tears—and
there is a wedding breakfast, and you take off your white satin and
retire to your coach-and-four, and you and he are a happy pair.—Or, the
affair is broken off, and then, poor wounded heart! why, then you meet
Somebody Else, and twine your young affections round number two. It is
your nature so to do. Do you suppose it is all for the man’s sake that
you love, and not a bit for your own? Do you suppose you would drink if
you were not thirsty, or eat if you were not hungry?
So then Laura liked Pen because she saw scarcely anybody else at
Fairoaks except Doctor Portman and Captain Glanders, and because his
mother constantly praised her Arthur, and because he was gentlemanlike,
tolerably good-looking and witty, and because, above all, it was of her
nature to like somebody. And having once received this image into her
heart, she there tenderly nursed it and clasped it—she there, in his
long absences and her constant solitudes, silently brooded over it and
fondled it—and when after this she came to London, and had an
opportunity of becoming rather intimate with Mr. George Warrington,
what on earth was to prevent her from thinking him a most odd,
original, agreeable, and pleasing person?
A long time afterwards, when these days were over, and Fate in its own
way had disposed of the various persons now assembled in the dingy
building in Lamb Court, perhaps some of them looked back and thought
how happy the time was, and how pleasant had been their evening talks
and little walks and simple recreations round the sofa of Pen the
convalescent. The Major had a favourable opinion of September in London
from that time forward, and declared at his clubs and in society that
the dead season in town was often pleasant, doosid pleasant, begad. He
used to go home to his lodgings in Bury Street of a night, wondering
that it was already so late, and that the evening had passed away so
quickly. He made his appearance at the Temple pretty constantly in the
afternoon, and tugged up the long black staircase with quite a
benevolent activity and perseverance. And he made interest with the
chef at Bays’s (that renowned cook, the superintendence of whose work
upon Gastronomy compelled the gifted author to stay in the metropolis),
to prepare little jellies, delicate clear soups, aspics, and other
trifles good for invalids, which Morgan the valet constantly brought
down to the little Lamb Court colony. And the permission to drink a
glass or two of pure sherry being accorded to Pen by Doctor Goodenough,
the Major told with almost tears in his eyes how his noble friend the
Marquis of Steyne, passing through London on his way to the Continent,
had ordered any quantity of his precious, his priceless Amontillado,
that had been a present from King Ferdinand to the noble Marquis, to be
placed at the disposal of Mr. Arthur Pendennis. The widow and Laura
tasted it with respect (though they didn’t in the least like the bitter
flavour) but the invalid was greatly invigorated by it, and Warrington
pronounced it superlatively good, and proposed the Major’s health in a
mock speech after dinner on the first day when the wine was served, and
that of Lord Steyne and the aristocracy in general.
Major Pendennis returned thanks with the utmost gravity and in a speech
in which he used the words, ‘the present occasion,’ at least the proper
number of times. Pen cheered with his feeble voice from his armchair.
Warrington taught Miss Laura to cry “Hear! hear!” and tapped the table
with his knuckles. Pidgeon the attendant grinned, and honest Doctor
Goodenough found the party so merrily engaged, when he came in to pay
his faithful gratuitous visit.
Warrington knew Sibwright, who lived below and that gallant gentleman,
in reply to a letter informing him of the use to which his apartment
had been put, wrote back the most polite and flowery letter of
acquiescence. He placed his chambers at the service of their fair
occupants, his bed at their disposal, his carpets at their feet.
Everybody was kindly disposed towards the sick man and his family. His
heart (and his mother’s too, as we may fancy) melted within him at the
thought of so much good-feeling and good-nature. Let Pen’s biographer
be pardoned for alluding to a time not far distant when a somewhat
similar mishap brought him a providential friend, a kind physician, and
a thousand proofs of a most touching and surprising kindness and
sympathy.
There was a piano in Mr. Sibwright’s chamber (indeed, this gentleman, a
lover of all the arts, performed himself—and excellently ill too—upon
the instrument; and had had a song dedicated to him, the words by
himself, the air by his devoted friend Leopoldo Twankidillo), and at
this music-box, as Mr. Warrington called it, Laura, at first with a
great deal of tremor and blushing (which became her very much), played
and sang, sometimes of an evening, simple airs, and old songs of home.
Her voice was a rich contralto, and Warrington, who scarcely knew one
tune from another and who had but one tune or bray in his repertoire,—a
most discordant imitation of ‘God save the King’—sat rapt in delight
listening to these songs. He could follow their rhythm if not their
harmony; and he could watch, with a constant and daily growing
enthusiasm, the pure and tender and generous creature who made the
music.
I wonder how that poor pale little girl in the black bonnet, who used
to stand at the lamp-post in Lamb Court sometimes of an evening,
looking up to the open windows from which the music came, liked to hear
it? When Pen’s bedtime came the songs were hushed. Lights appeared in
the upper room: his room, whither the widow used to conduct him; and
then the Major and Mr. Warrington, and sometimes Miss Laura, would have
a game at ecarte or backgammon; or she would sit by working a pair of
slippers in worsted—a pair of gentleman’s slippers—they might have been
for Arthur or for George or for Major Pendennis: one of those three
would have given anything for the slippers.
Whilst such business as this was going on within, a rather shabby old
gentleman would come and lead away the pale girl in the black bonnet,
who had no right to be abroad in the night air; and the Temple porters,
the few laundresses, and other amateurs who had been listening to the
concert, would also disappear.
Just before ten o’clock there was another musical performance, namely
that of the chimes of St. Clement’s clock in the Strand, which played
the clear cheerful notes of a psalm, before it proceeded to ring its
ten fatal strokes. As they were ringing, Laura began to fold up the
slippers; Martha from Fairoaks appeared with a bed-candle, and a
constant smile on her face; the Major said, “God bless my soul, is it
so late?” Warrington and he left their unfinished game, and got up and
shook hands with Miss Bell. Martha from Fairoaks lighted them out of
the passage and down the stair, and, as they descended, they could hear
her bolting and locking “the sporting door” after them, upon her young
mistress and herself. If there had been any danger, grinning Martha
said she would have got down “that thar hooky soord which hung up in
gantleman’s room,”—meaning the Damascus scimitar with the names of the
prophet engraved on the blade and the red velvet scabbard, which Percy
Sibwright, Esquire, brought back from his tour in the Levant, along
with an Albanian dress, and which he wore with such elegant effect at
Lady Mullingar’s fancy ball, Gloucester Square, Hyde Park. It entangled
itself in Miss Kewsey’s train, who appeared in the dress in which she,
with her mamma, had been presented to their sovereign (the latter by
the L—d Ch-nc-ll-r’s lady), and led to events which have nothing to do
with this history. Is not Miss Kewsey now Mrs. Sibwright? Has Sibwright
not got a county court?—Good night, Laura and Fairoaks Martha. Sleep
well and wake happy, pure and gentle lady.
Sometimes after these evenings Warrington would walk a little way with
Major Pendennis—just a little way just as far as the Temple gate—as the
Strand—as Charing Cross—as the Club—he was not going into the Club?
Well, as far as Bury Street, where he would laughingly shake hands on
the Major’s own door-step. They had been talking about Laura all the
way. It was wonderful how enthusiastic the Major, who, as we know, used
to dislike her, had grown to be regarding the young lady—“Dev’lish fine
girl, begad. Dev’lish well-mannered girl—my sister-in-law has the
manners of a duchess and would bring up any girl well. Miss Bell’s a
little countryfied. But the smell of the hawthorn is pleasant, demmy.
How she blushes! Your London girls would give many a guinea for a
bouquet like that—natural flowers, begad! And she’s a little money
too—nothing to speak of—but a pooty little bit of money.” In all which
opinions no doubt Mr. Warrington agreed; and though he laughed as he
shook hands with the Major, his face fell as he left his veteran
companion; and he strode back to chambers, and smoked pipe after pipe
long into the night, and wrote article upon article, more and more
savage, in lieu of friend Pen disabled.
Well, it was a happy time for almost all parties concerned. Pen mended
daily. Sleeping and eating were his constant occupations. His appetite
was something frightful. He was ashamed of exhibiting it before Laura,
and almost before his mother who laughed and applauded him. As the
roast chicken of his dinner went away he eyed the departing friend with
sad longing, and began to long for jelly, or tea, or what not. He was
like an ogre in devouring. The Doctor cried stop, but Pen would not.
Nature called out to him more loudly than the Doctor, and that kind and
friendly physician handed him over with a very good grace to the other
healer.
And here let us speak very tenderly and in the strictest confidence of
an event which befell him, and to which he never liked an allusion.
During his delirium the ruthless Goodenough ordered ice to be put to
his head, and all his lovely hair to be cut. It was done in the time
of—of the other nurse, who left every single hair of course in a paper
for the widow to count and treasure up. She never believed but that the
girl had taken away some of it, but then women are so suspicious upon
these matters.
When this direful loss was made visible to Major Pendennis as of course
it was the first time the elder saw the poor young man’s shorn pate,
and when Pen was quite out of danger, and gaining daily vigour, the
Major, with something like blushes and a queer wink of his eyes, said
he knew of a—a person—a coiffeur, in fact—a good man, whom he would
send down to the Temple, and who would—a—apply—a—a temporary remedy to
that misfortune.
Laura looked at Warrington with the archest sparkle in her
eyes—Warrington fairly burst out into a boohoo of laughter: even the
widow was obliged to laugh: and the Major erubescent confounded the
impudence of the young folks, and said when he had his hair cut he
would keep a lock of it for Miss Laura.
Warrington voted that Pen should wear a barrister’s wig. There was
Sibwright’s down below, which would become him hugely. Pen said
“Stuff,” and seemed as confused as his uncle; and the end was that a
gentleman from Burlington Arcade waited next day upon Mr. Pendennis,
and had a private interview with him in his bedroom; and a week
afterwards the same individual appeared with a box under his arm, and
an ineffable grin of politeness on his face, and announced that he had
brought ’ome Mr. Pendennis’s ’ead of ’air.
It must have been a grand but melancholy sight to see Pen in the
recesses of his apartment, sadly contemplating his ravaged beauty, and
the artificial means of hiding its ruin. He appeared at length in the
’ead of ’air; but Warrington laughed so, that Pen grew sulky, and went
back for his velvet cap, a neat turban which the fondest of mammas had
worked for him. Then Mr. Warrington and Miss Bell got some flowers off
the ladies’ bonnets and made a wreath, with which they decorated the
wig and brought it out in procession, and did homage before it. In fact
they indulged in a hundred sports, jularities, waggeries, and petits
jeux innocens: so that the second and third floors of Number 6 Lamb
Court, Temple, rang with more cheerfulness and laughter than had been
known in those precincts for many a long day.
At last, after about ten days of this life, one evening when the little
spy of the court came out to take her usual post of observation at the
lamp, there was no music from the second-floor window, there were no
lights in the third-story chambers, the windows of each were open, and
the occupants were gone. Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, told Fanny what
had happened. The ladies and all the party had gone to Richmond for
change of air. The antique travelling chariot was brought out again and
cushioned with many pillows for Pen and his mother; and Miss Laura went
in the most affable manner in the omnibus under the guardianship of Mr.
George Warrington. He came back and took possession of his old bed that
night in the vacant and cheerless chambers, and to his old books and
his old pipes, but not perhaps to his old sleep.
The widow had left a jar full of flowers upon his table, prettily
arranged, and when he entered they filled the solitary room with odour.
They were memorials of the kind, gentle souls who had gone away, and
who had decorated for a little while that lonely cheerless place. He
had had the happiest days of his whole life George felt—he knew it now
they were just gone: he went and took up the flowers and put his face
to them, and smelt them—perhaps kissed them. As he put them down, he
rubbed his rough hand across his eyes with a bitter word and laugh. He
would have given his whole life and soul to win that prize which Arthur
rejected. Did she want fame? he would have won it for her:—devotion?—a
great heart full of pent-up tenderness and manly love and gentleness
was there for her, if she might take it. But it might not be. Fate had
ruled otherwise. “Even if I could, she would not have me,” George
thought. “What has an ugly, rough old fellow like me, to make any woman
like him? I’m getting old, and I’ve made no mark in life. I’ve neither
good looks, nor youth, nor money, nor reputation. A man must be able to
do something besides stare at her and offer on his knees his smooth
devotion, to make a woman like him. What can I do? Lots of young
fellows have passed me in the race—what they call the prizes of life
didn’t seem to me worth the trouble of the struggle. But for her. If
she had been mine and liked a diamond—ah! shouldn’t she have worn it!
Psha, what a fool I am to brag of what I would have done! We are the
slaves of destiny. Our lots are shaped for us, and mine is ordained
long ago. Come, let us have a pipe, and put the smell of these flowers
out of court, poor little silent flowers! you’ll be dead to-morrow.
What business had you to show your red cheeks in this dingy place?”
By his bedside George found a new Bible which the widow had placed
there, with a note inside saying that she had not seen the book amongst
his collection in a room where she had spent a number of hours, and
where God had vouchsafed to her prayers the life of her son, and that
she gave to Arthur’s friend the best thing she could, and besought him
to read in the volume sometimes, and to keep it as a token of a
grateful mother’s regard and affection. Poor George mournfully kissed
the book as he had done the flowers; and the morning found him still
reading in its awful pages, in which so many stricken hearts, in which
so many tender and faithful souls, have found comfort under calamity,
and refuge and hope in affliction.