Foreign Ground
Worthy Major Pendennis fulfilled his promise to Warrington so far as to
satisfy his own conscience, and in so far to ease poor Helen with
regard to her son, as to make her understand that all connexion between
Arthur and the odious little gatekeeper was at an end, and that she
need have no further anxiety with respect to an imprudent attachment or
a degrading marriage on Pen’s part. And that young fellow’s mind was
also relieved (after he had recovered the shock to his vanity) by
thinking that Miss Fanny was not going to die of love for him, and that
no unpleasant consequences were to be apprehended from the luckless and
brief connexion.
So the whole party were free to carry into effect their projected
Continental trip, and Arthur Pendennis, rentier, voyageant avec Madame
Pendennis and Mademoiselle Bell, and George Warrington, particulier,
age de 32 ans, taille 6 pieds (Anglais), figure ordinaire, cheveux
noirs, barbe idem, etc., procured passports from the consul of H.M. the
King of the Belgians at Dover, and passed over from that port to
Ostend, whence the party took their way leisurely, visiting Bruges and
Ghent on their way to Brussels and the Rhine. It is not our purpose to
describe this oft-travelled tour, or Laura’s delight at the tranquil
and ancient cities which she saw for the first time, or Helen’s wonder
and interest at the Beguine convents which they visited, or the almost
terror with which she saw the black-veiled nuns with outstretched arms
kneeling before the illuminated altars, and beheld the strange pomps
and ceremonials of the Catholic worship. Barefooted friars in the
streets; crowned images of Saints and Virgins in the churches before
which people were bowing down and worshipping, in direct defiance, as
she held, of the written law; priests in gorgeous robes, or lurking in
dark confessionals; theatres opened, and people dancing on Sundays,—all
these new sights and manners shocked and bewildered the simple country
lady; and when the young men after their evening drive or walk returned
to the widow and her adopted daughter, they found their books of
devotion on the table, and at their entrance Laura would commonly cease
reading some of the psalms or the sacred pages which, of all others,
Helen loved. The late events connected with her son had cruelly shaken
her; Laura watched with intense, though hidden anxiety, every movement
of her dearest friend; and poor Pen was most constant and affectionate
in waiting upon his mother, whose wounded bosom yearned with love
towards him, though there was a secret between them, and an anguish or
rage almost on the mother’s part, to think that she was dispossessed
somehow of her son’s heart, or that there were recesses in it which she
must not or dared not enter. She sickened as she thought of the sacred
days of boyhood when it had not been so—when her Arthur’s heart had no
secrets, and she was his all in all: when he poured his hopes and
pleasures, his childish griefs, vanities, triumphs into her willing and
tender embrace; when her home was his nest still; and before fate,
selfishness, nature, had driven him forth on wayward wings—to range his
own flight—to sing his own song—and to seek his own home and his own
mate. Watching this devouring care and racking disappointment in her
friend, Laura once said to Helen, “If Pen had loved me as you wished, I
should have gained him, but I should have lost you, mamma, I know I
should; and I like you to love me best. Men do not know what it is to
love as we do, I think,”—and Helen, sighing, agreed to this portion of
the young lady’s speech, though she protested against the former part.
For my part I suppose Miss Laura was right in both statements, and with
regard to the latter assertion especially, that it is an old and
received truism—love is an hour with us: it is all night and all day
with a woman. Damon has taxes, sermon, parade, tailors’ bills,
parliamentary duties, and the deuce knows what to think of; Delia has
to think about Damon—Damon is the oak (or the post) and stands up, and
Delia is the ivy or the honeysuckle whose arms twine about him. Is it
not so, Delia? Is it not your nature to creep about his feet and kiss
them, to twine round his trunk and hang there; and Damon’s to stand
like a British man with his hands in his breeches pocket, while the
pretty fond parasite clings round him?
Old Pendennis had only accompanied our friends to the water’s edge, and
left them on board the boat, giving the chief charge of the little
expedition to Warrington. He himself was bound on a brief visit to the
house of a great man, a friend of his, after which sojourn he proposed
to join his sister-in-law at the German watering-place, whither the
party was bound. The Major himself thought that his long attentions to
his sick family had earned for him a little relaxation—and though the
best of the partridges were thinned off, the pheasants were still to be
shot at Stillbrook, where the noble owner still was; old Pendennis
betook himself to that hospitable mansion and disported there with
great comfort to himself. A royal Duke, some foreigners of note, some
illustrious statesmen, and some pleasant people visited it: it did the
old fellow’s heart good to see his name in the Morning Post amongst the
list of the distinguished company which the Marquis of Steyne was
entertaining at his country-house at Stillbrook. He was a very useful
and pleasant personage in a country-house. He entertained the young men
with queer little anecdotes and grivoises stories on their
shooting-parties or in their smoking-room, where they laughed at him
and with him. He was obsequious with the ladies of a morning, in the
rooms dedicated to them. He walked the new arrivals about the park and
gardens, and showed them the carte du pays, and where there was the
best view of the mansion, and where the most favourable point to look
at the lake: he showed, where the timber was to be felled, and where
the old road went before the new bridge was built, and the hill cut
down; and where the place in the wood was where old Lord Lynx
discovered Sir Phelim O’Neal on his knees before her ladyship, etc.
etc.; he called the lodge-keepers and gardeners by their names; he knew
the number of domestics that sat down in the housekeeper’s room, and
how many dined in the servants’-hall; he had a word for everybody, and
about everybody, and a little against everybody. He was invaluable in a
country-house, in a word: and richly merited and enjoyed his vacation
after his labours. And perhaps whilst he was thus deservedly enjoying
himself with his country friends, the Major was not ill pleased at
transferring to Warrington the command of the family expedition to the
Continent, and thus perforce keeping him in the service of the
ladies,—a servitude which George was only too willing to undergo, for
his friend’s sake, and for that of a society which he found daily more
delightful. Warrington was a good German scholar, and was willing to
give Miss Laura lessons in the language, who was very glad to improve
herself, though Pen, for his part, was too weak or lazy now to resume
his German studies. Warrington acted as courier and interpreter;
Warrington saw the baggage in and out of ships, inns and carriages,
managed the money matters, and put the little troop into marching
order. Warrington found out where the English church was, and, if Mrs.
Pendennis and Miss Laura were inclined to go thither, walked with great
decorum along with them. Warrington walked by Mrs. Pendennis’s donkey,
when that lady went out on her evening excursions; or took carriages
for her; or got ‘Galignani’ for her; or devised comfortable seats under
the lime-trees for her, when the guests paraded after dinner, and the
Kursaal band at the bath, where our tired friends stopped, performed
their pleasant music under the trees. Many a fine whiskered Prussian or
French dandy, come to the bath for the ‘Trente-et-quarante,’ cast
glances of longing towards the pretty fresh-coloured English girl who
accompanied the pale widow, and would have longed to take a turn with
her at the galop or the waltz. But Laura did not appear in the
ballroom, except once or twice, when Pen vouchsafed to walk with her;
and as for Warrington, that rough diamond had not had the polish of a
dancing-master, and he did not know how to waltz,—though he would have
liked to learn, if he could have had such a partner as Laura.—Such a
partner! psha, what had a stiff bachelor to do with partners and
waltzing? what was he about, dancing attendance here? drinking in sweet
pleasure at a risk he knows not of what after-sadness, and regret, and
lonely longing? But yet he stayed on. You would have said he was the
widow’s son, to watch his constant care and watchfulness of her; or
that he was an adventurer, and wanted to marry her fortune, or, at any
rate, that he wanted some very great treasure or benefit from her,—and
very likely he did,—for ours, as the reader has possibly already
discovered, is a Selfish Story, and almost every person, according to
his nature, more or less generous than George, and according to the way
of the world as it seems to us, is occupied about Number One. So
Warrington selfishly devoted himself to Helen, who selfishly devoted
herself to Pen, who selfishly devoted himself to himself at this
present period, having no other personage or object to occupy him,
except, indeed, his mother’s health, which gave him a serious and real
disquiet; but though they, sate together, they did not talk much, and
the cloud was always between them.
Every day Laura looked for Warrington, and received him with more frank
and eager welcome. He found himself talking to her as he didn’t know
himself that he could talk. He found himself performing acts of
gallantry which astounded him after the performance: he found himself
looking blankly in the glass at the crow’s feet round his eyes, and at
some streaks of white in his hair, and some intrusive silver bristles
in his grim, blue beard. He found himself looking at the young bucks at
the bath—at the bland, tight-waisted Germans—at the capering Frenchmen,
with their lacquered mustachios and trim varnished boots—at the English
dandies, Pen amongst them, with their calm domineering air, and
insolent languor: and envied each one of these some excellence or
quality of youth, or good looks, which he possessed, and of which
Warrington felt the need. And every night, as the night came, he
quitted the little circle with greater reluctance; and, retiring to his
own lodging in their neighbourhood, felt himself the more lonely and
unhappy. The widow could not help seeing his attachment. She
understood, now, why Major Pendennis (always a tacit enemy of her
darling project) had been so eager that Warrington should be of their
party. Laura frankly owned her great, her enthusiastic, regard for him:
and Arthur would make no movement. Arthur did not choose to see what
was going on; or did not care to prevent, or actually encouraged, it.
She remembered his often having said that he could not understand how a
man proposed to a woman twice. She was in torture—at secret feud with
her son, of all objects in the world the dearest to her—in doubt, which
she dared not express to herself, about Laura—averse to Warrington, the
good and generous. No wonder that the healing waters of Rosenbad did
not do her good, or that Doctor von Glauber, the bath physician, when
he came to visit her, found that the poor lady made no progress to
recovery. Meanwhile Pen got well rapidly; slept with immense
perseverance twelve hours out of the twenty-four; ate huge meals; and,
at the end of a couple of months, had almost got back the bodily
strength and weight which he had possessed before his illness.
After they had passed some fifteen days at their place of rest and
refreshment, a letter came from Major Pendennis announcing his speedy
arrival at Rosenbad, and, soon after the letter, the Major himself made
his appearance accompanied by Morgan his faithful valet, without whom
the old gentleman could not move. When the Major travelled he wore a
jaunty and juvenile travelling costume; to see his back still you would
have taken him for one of the young fellows whose slim waist and
youthful appearance Warrington was beginning to envy. It was not until
the worthy man began to move, that the observer remarked that Time had
weakened his ancient knees, and had unkindly interfered to impede the
action of the natty little varnished boots in which the gay old
traveller still pinched his toes. There were magnates both of our own
country and of foreign nations present that autumn at Rosenbad. The
elder Pendennis read over the strangers’ list with great gratification
on the night of his arrival, was pleased to find several of his
acquaintances among the great folks, and would have the honour of
presenting his nephew to a German Grand Duchess, a Russian Princess,
and an English Marquis, before many days were over: nor was Pen by any
means averse to making the acquaintance of these great personages,
having a liking for polite life, and all the splendours and amenities
belonging to it. That very evening the resolute old gentleman, leaning
on his nephew’s arm, made his appearance in the halls of the Kursaal,
and lost or won a napoleon or two at the table of ‘Trente-et-quarante.’
He did not play to lose, he said, or to win, but he did as other folks
did, and betted his napoleon and took his luck as it came. He pointed
out the Russians and Spaniards gambling for heaps of gold, and
denounced their eagerness as something sordid and barbarous; an English
gentleman should play where the fashion is play, but should not elate
or depress himself at the sport; and he told how he had seen his friend
the Marquis of Steyne, when Lord Gaunt, lose eighteen thousand at a
sitting, and break the bank three nights running at Paris, without ever
showing the least emotion at his defeat or victory. “And that’s what I
call being an English gentleman, Pen, my dear boy,” the old gentleman
said, warming as he prattled about his recollections—“what I call the
great manner only remains with us and with a few families in France.”
And as Russian Princesses passed him, whose reputation had long ceased
to be doubtful, and damaged English ladies, who are constantly seen in
company of their faithful attendant for the time being in these gay
haunts of dissipation, the old Major, with eager garrulity and
mischievous relish, told his nephew wonderful particulars regarding the
lives of these heroines; and diverted the young man with a thousand
scandals. Egad, he felt himself quite young again, he remarked to Pen,
as, rouged and grinning, her enormous chasseur behind her bearing her
shawl, the Princess Obstropski smiled and recognised and accosted him.
He remembered her in ’14 when she was an actress of the Paris
Boulevard, and the Emperor Alexander’s aide-de-camp Obstropski (a man
of great talents, who knew a good deal about the Emperor Paul’s death,
and was a devil to play) married her. He most courteously and
respectfully asked leave to call upon the Princess, and to present to
her his nephew, Mr. Arthur Pendennis; and he pointed out to the latter
a half-dozen of other personages whose names were as famous, and whose
histories were as satisfying. What would poor Helen have thought, could
she have heard those tales, or known to what kind of people her
brother-in-law was presenting her son? Only once, leaning on Arthur’s
arm, she had passed through the room where the green tables were
prepared for play, and the croaking croupiers were calling out their
fatal words of Rouge gagne and Couleur perd. She had shrunk terrified
out of the pandemonium, imploring Pen, extorting from him a promise, on
his word of honour, that he would never play at those tables; and the
scene which so frightened the simple widow, only amused the worldly old
veteran, and made him young again! He could breathe the air cheerfully
which stifled her. Her right was not his right: his food was her
poison. Human creatures are constituted thus differently, and with this
variety the marvellous world is peopled. To the credit of Mr. Pen, let
it be said, that he kept honestly the promise made to his mother, and
stoutly told his uncle of his intention to abide by it.
When the Major arrived, his presence somehow cast a damp upon at least
three of the persons of our little party—upon Laura who had anything
but respect for him; upon Warrington, whose manner towards him showed
an involuntary haughtiness and contempt; and upon the timid and alarmed
widow, who dreaded lest he should interfere with her darling, though
almost desperate, projects for her boy. And, indeed, the Major, unknown
to himself, was the bearer of tidings which were to bring about a
catastrophe in the affairs of all our friends.
Pen with his two ladies had apartments in the town of Rosenbad; honest
Warrington had lodgings hard by; the Major, on arrival at Rosenbad,
had, as befitted his dignity, taken his quarters at one of the great
hotels, at the Roman Emperor or the Four Seasons, where two or three
hundred gamblers, pleasure-seekers, or invalids, sate down and over-ate
themselves daily at the enormous table-d’hote. To this hotel Pen went
on the morning after the Major’s arrival, dutifully to pay his respects
to his uncle, and found the latter’s sitting-room duly prepared and
arranged by Mr. Morgan, with the Major’s hats brushed, and his coats
laid out: his despatch-boxes and umbrella-cases, his guidebooks,
passports, maps, and other elaborate necessaries of the English
traveller, all as trim and ready as they could be in their master’s own
room in Jermyn Street. Everything was ready, from the medicine-bottle
fresh filled from the pharmacien’s, down to the old fellow’s
prayer-book, without which he never travelled, for he made a point of
appearing at the English church at every place which he honoured with a
stay. “Everybody did it,” he said; “every English gentleman did it,”
and this pious man would as soon have thought of not calling upon the
English ambassador in a Continental town, as of not showing himself at
the national place of worship.
The old gentleman had been to take one of the baths for which Rosenbad
is famous, and which everybody takes, and his after-bath toilet was not
yet completed when Pen arrived. The elder called out to Arthur in a
cheery voice from the inner apartment, in which he and Morgan were
engaged, and the valet presently came in, bearing a little packet to
Pen’s address—Mr. Arthur’s letters and papers, Morgan said, which he
had brought from Mr. Arthur’s chambers in London, and which consisted
chiefly of numbers of the Pall Mall Gazette, which our friend Mr.
Finucane thought his collaborateur would like to see. The papers were
tied together: the letters in an envelope, addressed to Pen, in the
last-named gentleman’s handwriting.
Amongst the letters there was a little note addressed, as a former
letter we have heard of had been, to “Arther Pendennis, Esquire,” which
Arthur opened with a start and a blush, and read with a very keen pang
of interest, and sorrow, and regard. She had come to Arthur’s house,
Fanny Bolton said—and found that he was gone—gone away to Germany
without ever leaving a word for her—or answer to her last letter, in
which she prayed but for one word of kindness—or the books which he had
promised her in happier times, before he was ill, and which she should
like to keep in remembrance of him. She said she would not reproach
those who had found her at his bedside when he was in the fever, and
knew nobody, and who had turned the poor girl away without a word. She
thought she should have died, she said, of that, but Doctor Goodenough
had kindly tended her, and kept her life, when, perhaps, the keeping of
it was of no good, and she forgave everybody and as for Arthur, she
would pray for him for ever. And when he was so ill, and they cut off
his hair, she had made so free as to keep one little lock for herself,
and that she owned. And might she still keep it, or would his mamma
order that that should be gave up too? She was willing to obey him in
all things, and couldn’t but remember that once he was so kind, oh! so
good and kind! to his poor Fanny.
When Major Pendennis, fresh and smirking from his toilet, came out of
his bedroom to his sitting-room, he found Arthur, with this note before
him, and an expression of savage anger on his face, which surprised the
elder gentleman. “What news from London, my boy?” he rather faintly
asked; “are the duns at you that you look so glum?”
“Do you know anything about this letter, sir?” Arthur asked.
“What letter, my good sir?” said the other dryly, at once perceiving
what had happened.
“You know what I mean—about, about Miss—about Fanny Bolton—the poor
dear little girl,” Arthur broke out. “When she was in my room? Was she
there when I was delirious—I fancied she was—was she? Who sent her out
of my chambers? who intercepted her letters to me? Who dared to do it?
Did you do it, uncle?”
“It’s not my practice to tamper with gentlemen’s letters, or to answer
damned impertinent questions,” Major Pendennis cried out, in a great
tremor of emotion and indignation. “There was a girl in your rooms when
I came up at great personal inconvenience, daymy—and to meet with a
return of this kind for my affection to you, is not pleasant, by Gad,
sir—not at all pleasant.”
“That’s not the question, sir,” Arthur said hotly—“and I beg your
pardon, uncle. You were, you always have been, most kind to me: but I
say again, did you say anything harsh to this poor girl? Did you send
her away from me?”
“I never spoke a word to the girl,” the uncle said, “and I never sent
her away from you, and know no more about her, and wish to know no more
about her, than about the man in the moon.”
“Then it’s my mother that did it,” Arthur broke out. “Did my mother
send that poor child away?”
“I repeat I know nothing about it, sir,” the elder said testily. “Let’s
change the subject, if you please.”
“I’ll never forgive the person who did it,” said Arthur, bouncing up
and seizing his hat.
The Major cried out, “Stop, Arthur, for God’s sake, stop;” but before
he had uttered his sentence Arthur had rushed out of the room, and at
the next minute the Major saw him striding rapidly down the street that
led towards his home.
“Get breakfast!” said the old fellow to Morgan, and he wagged his head
and sighed as he looked out of the window. “Poor Helen—poor soul!
There’ll be a row. I knew there would: and begad all the fat’s in the
fire.”
When Pen reached home he only found Warrington in the ladies’
drawing-room, waiting their arrival in order to conduct them to the
room where the little English colony at Rosenbad held their Sunday
church. Helen and Laura had not appeared as yet; the former was ailing,
and her daughter was with her. Pen’s wrath was so great that he could
not defer expressing it. He flung Fanny’s letter across the table to
his friend. “Look there, Warrington,” he said; “she tended me in my
illness, she rescued me out of the jaws of death, and this is the way
they have treated the dear little creature. They have kept her letters
from me; they have treated me like a child, and her like a dog, poor
thing! My mother has done this.”
“If she has, you must remember it is your mother,” Warrington
interposed.
“It only makes the crime the greater, because it is she who has done
it,” Pen answered. “She ought to have been the poor girl’s defender,
not her enemy: she ought to go down on her knees and ask pardon of her.
I ought! I will! I am shocked at the cruelty which has been shown her.
What? She gave me her all, and this is her return! She sacrifices
everything for me, and they spurn her.”
“Hush!” said Warrington, “they can hear you from the next room.”
“Hear? let them hear!” Pen cried out, only so much the louder. “Those
may overhear my talk who intercept my letters. I say this poor girl has
been shamefully used, and I will do my best to right her; I will.”
The door of the neighbouring room opened, and Laura came forth with a
pale and stern face. She looked at Pen with glances from which beamed
pride, defiance, aversion. “Arthur, your mother is very ill,” she said;
“it is a pity that you should speak so loud as to disturb her.”
“It is a pity that I should have been obliged to speak at all,” Pen
answered. “And I have more to say before I have done.”
“I should think what you have to say will hardly be fit for me to
hear,” Laura said, haughtily.
“You are welcome to hear it or not, as you like,” said Mr. Pen. “I
shall go in now and speak to my mother.”
Laura came rapidly forward, so that she should not be overheard by her
friend within. “Not now, sir,” she said to Pen. “You may kill her if
you do. Your conduct has gone far enough to make her wretched.”
“What conduct?” cried out Pen, in a fury. “Who dares impugn it? Who
dares meddle with me? Is it you who are the instigator of this
persecution?”
“I said before it was a subject of which it did not become me to hear
or to speak,” Laura said. “But as for mamma, if she had acted otherwise
than she did with regard to—to the person about whom you seem to take
such an interest, it would have been I that must have quitted your
house, and not that—that person.”
“By heavens! this is too much,” Pen cried out, with a violent
execration.
“Perhaps that is what you wished,” Laura said, tossing her head up. “No
more of this, if you please; I am not accustomed to hear such subjects
spoken of in such language,” and with a stately curtsey the young lady
passed to her room, looking her adversary full in the face as she
retreated and closed the door upon him.
Pen was bewildered with wonder, perplexity, fury, at this monstrous and
unreasonable persecution. He burst out into a loud and bitter laugh as
Laura quitted him, and with sneers and revilings, as a man who jeers
under an operation, ridiculed at once his own pain and his persecutor’s
anger. The laugh, which was one of bitter humour, and no unmanly or
unkindly expression of suffering under most cruel and unmerited
torture, was heard in the next apartment, as some of his unlucky
previous expressions had been, and, like them, entirely misinterpreted
by the hearers. It struck like a dagger into the wounded and tender
heart of Helen; it pierced Laura, and inflamed the high-spirited girl
with scorn and anger. “And it was to this hardened libertine,” she
thought—“to this boaster of low intrigues, that I had given my heart
away.” “He breaks the most sacred laws,” thought Helen. “He prefers the
creature of his passion to his own mother; and when he is upbraided, he
laughs, and glories in his crime. ‘She gave me her all,’ I heard him
say it,” argued the poor widow, “and he boasts of it, and laughs, and
breaks his mother’s heart.” The emotion, the shame, the grief, the
mortification almost killed her. She felt she should die of his
unkindness.
Warrington thought of Laura’s speech—“Perhaps that is what you wished.”
“She loves Pen still,” he said. “It was jealousy made her speak.”—“Come
away, Pen. Come away, and let us go to church and get calm. You must
explain this matter to your mother. She does not appear to know the
truth: nor do you quite, my good fellow. Come away, and let us talk
about it.” And again he muttered to himself, “‘Perhaps that is what you
wished.’ Yes, she loves him. Why shouldn’t she love him? Whom else
would I have her love? What can she be to me but the dearest and the
fairest and the best of women?”
So, leaving the women similarly engaged within, the two gentlemen
walked away, each occupied with his own thought, and silent for a
considerable space. “I must set this matter right,” thought honest
George “as she loves him still—I must set his mind right about the
other woman.” And with this charitable thought, the good fellow began
to tell more at large what Bows had said to him regarding Miss Bolton’s
behaviour and fickleness, and he described how the girl was no better
than a little light-minded flirt; and, perhaps, he exaggerated the
good-humour and contentedness which he had himself, as he thought,
witnessed in her behaviour in the scene with Mr. Huxter.
Now, all Bows’s statements had been coloured by an insane jealousy and
rage on that old man’s part; and instead of allaying Pen’s renascent
desire to see his little conquest again, Warrington’s accounts inflamed
and angered Pendennis, and made him more anxious than before to set
himself right, as he persisted in phrasing it, with Fanny. They arrived
at the church door presently; but scarce one word of the service, and
not a syllable of Mr. Shamble’s sermon, did either of them comprehend,
probably—so much was each engaged with his own private speculations.
The Major came up to them after the service, with his well-brushed hat
and wig, and his jauntiest, most cheerful air. He complimented them
upon being seen at church; again he said that every comme-il
faut-person made a point of attending the English service abroad; and
he walked back with the young men, prattling to them in garrulous
good-humour, and making bows to his acquaintances as they passed; and
thinking innocently that Pen and George were both highly delighted by
his anecdotes, which they suffered to run on in a scornful and silent
acquiescence.
At the time of Mr. Shamble’s sermon (an erratic Anglican divine, hired
for the season at places of English resort, and addicted to debts,
drinking, and even to roulette, it was said), Pen, chafing under the
persecution which his womankind inflicted upon him, had been meditating
a great act of revolt and of justice, as he had worked himself up to
believe; and Warrington on his part had been thinking that a crisis in
his affairs had likewise come, and that it was necessary for him to
break away from a connexion which every day made more and more wretched
and dear to him. Yes, the time was come. He took those fatal words,
“Perhaps that is what you wished,” as a text for a gloomy homily, which
he preached to himself, in the dark pew of his own heart, whilst Mr.
Shamble was feebly giving utterance to his sermon.