In which Pendennis counts his Eggs
Our friend had arrived in London on that day only, though but for a
brief visit; and having left some fellow-travellers at an hotel to
which he had convoyed them from the West, he hastened to the Chambers
in Lamb Court, which were basking in as much sun as chose to visit that
dreary but not altogether comfortless building. Freedom stands in lieu
of sunshine in chambers; and Templars grumble, but take their ease in
their Inn. Pen’s domestic announced to him that Warrington was in
Chambers too, and, of course, Arthur ran up to his friend’s room
straightway, and found it, as of old, perfumed with the pipe, and
George once more at work with his newspapers and reviews. The pair
greeted each other with the rough cordiality which young Englishmen use
one to another: and which carries a great deal of warmth and kindness
under its rude exterior. Warrington smiled and took his pipe out of his
mouth, and said, “Well, young one!” Pen advanced and held out his hand,
and said, “How are you, old boy?” And so this greeting passed between
two friends who had not seen each other for months. Alphonse and
Frederic would have rushed into each other’s arms and shrieked Ce bon
coeur! ce cher Alphonse! over each other’s shoulders. Max and Wilhelm
would have bestowed half a dozen kisses, scented with Havannah, upon
each other’s mustachios. “Well, young one!” “How are you, old boy?” is
what two Britons say: after saving each other’s lives, possibly, the
day before. To-morrow they will leave off shaking hands, and only wag
their heads at one another as they come to breakfast. Each has for the
other the very warmest confidence and regard: each would share his
purse with the other: and hearing him attacked would break out in the
loudest and most enthusiastic praise of his friend; but they part with
a mere Good-bye, they meet with a mere How-d’you-do? and they don’t
write to each other in the interval. Curious, modesty, strange stoical
decorum of English friendship! “Yes, we are not demonstrative like
those confounded foreigners,” says Hardman: who not only shows no
friendship, but never felt any all his life long.
“Been in Switzerland?” says Pen.
“Yes,” says Warrington.
“Couldn’t find a bit of tobacco fit to smoke till we came to Strasburg,
where I got some caporal.” The man’s mind is full, very likely, of the
great sights which he has seen, of the great emotions with which the
vast works of nature have inspired it. But his enthusiasm is too coy to
show itself, even to his closest friend, and he veils it with a cloud
of tobacco. He will speak more fully of confidential evenings, however,
and write ardently and frankly about that which he is shy of saying.
The thoughts and experience of his travel will come forth in his
writings; as the learning, which he never displays in talk, enriches
his style with pregnant allusion and brilliant illustration, colours
his generous eloquence, and points his wit.
The elder gives a rapid account of the places which he has visited in
his tour. He has seen Switzerland, North Italy, and the Tyrol—he has
come home by Vienna, and Dresden, and the Rhine. He speaks about these
places in a shy sulky voice, as if he had rather not mention them at
all, and as if the sight of them had rendered him very unhappy. The
outline of the elder man’s tour thus gloomily sketched out, the young
one begins to speak. He has been in the country—very much
bored—canvassing uncommonly slow—he is here for a day or two, and going
on to—to the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells, to some friends that
will be uncommonly slow, too. How hard it is to make an Englishman
acknowledge that he is happy!
“And the seat in Parliament, Pen? Have you made it all right?” asks
Warrington.
“All right,—as soon as Parliament meets and a new writ can be issued,
Clavering retires, and I step into his shoes,” says Pen.
“And under which king does Bezonian speak or die?” asked Warrington.
“Do we come out as Liberal Conservative, or as Government man, or on
our own hook?”
“Hem! There are no politics now; every man’s politics, at least, are
pretty much the same. I have not got acres enough to make me a
Protectionist; nor could I be one, I think, if I had all the land in
the county. I shall go pretty much with Government, and in advance of
them upon some social questions which I have been getting up during the
vacation;—don’t grin, you old cynic, I have been getting up the Blue
Books, and intend to come out rather strong on the Sanitary and
Colonisation questions.”
“We reserve to ourselves the liberty of voting against Government,
though we are generally friendly. We are, however, friends of the
people avant tout. We give lectures at the Clavering Institute, and
shake hands with the intelligent mechanics. We think the franchise
ought to be very considerably enlarged; at the same time we are free to
accept office some day, when the House has listened to a few crack
speeches from us, and the Administration perceives our merit.”
“I am not Moses,” said Pen, with, as usual, somewhat of melancholy in
his voice. “I have no laws from Heaven to bring down to the people from
the mountain. I don’t belong to the mountain at all, or set up to be a
leader and reformer of mankind. My faith is not strong enough for that;
nor my vanity, nor my hypocrisy, great enough. I will tell no lies,
George, that I promise you; and do no more than coincide in those which
are necessary and pass current, and can’t be got in without recalling
the whole circulation. Give a man at least the advantage of his
sceptical turn. If I find a good thing to say in the House, I will say
it; a good measure, I will support it; a fair place, I will take it,
and be glad of my luck. But I would no more flatter a great man than a
mob; and now you know as much about my politics as I do. What call have
I to be a Whig? Whiggism is not a divine institution. Why not vote with
the Liberal Conservatives? They have done for the nation what the Whigs
would never have done without them. Who converted both?—the Radicals
and the country outside. I think the Morning Post is often right, and
Punch is often wrong. I don’t profess a call, but take advantage of a
chance. Parlons d’autre chose.”
“The next thing at your heart, after ambition is love, I suppose?”
Warrington said. “How have our young loves prospered? Are we going to
change our condition, and give up our chambers? Are you going to
divorce me, Arthur, and take unto yourself a wife?”
“I suppose so. She is very good-natured and lively. She sings, and she
don’t mind smoking. She’ll have a fair fortune—I don’t know how
much—but my uncle augurs everything from the Begum’s generosity, and
says that she will come down very handsomely. And I think Blanche is
dev’lish fond of me,” said Arthur, with a sigh.
“That means that we accept her caresses and her money.”
“Haven’t we said before that life was a transaction?” Pendennis said.
“I don’t pretend to break my heart about her. I have told her pretty
fairly what my feelings are—and—and have engaged myself to her. And
since I saw her last, and for the last two months especially, whilst I
have been in the country, I think she has been growing fonder and
fonder of me; and her letters to me, and especially to Laura, seem to
show it. Mine have been simple enough—no raptures, nor vows, you
understand—but looking upon the thing as an affaire faite; and not
desirous to hasten or defer the completion.”
“And Laura? how is she?” Warrington asked frankly.
“Laura, George,” said Pen, looking his friend hard in the face—“by
heaven, Laura is the best, and noblest, and dearest girl the sun ever
shone upon.” His own voice fell as he spoke: it seemed as if he could
hardly utter the words: he stretched out his hand to his comrade, who
took it and nodded his head.
“Have you only found out that now, young un?” Warrington said after a
pause.
“Who has not learned things too late, George?” cried Arthur, in his
impetuous way, gathering words and emotion as he went on. “Whose life
is not a disappointment? Who carries his heart entire to the grave
without a mutilation? I never knew anybody who was happy quite: or who
has not had to ransom himself out of the hands of Fate with the payment
of some dearest treasure or other. Lucky if we are left alone
afterwards, when we have paid our fine, and if the tyrant visits us no
more. Suppose I have found out that I have lost the greatest prize in
the world, now that it can’t be mine—that for years I had an angel
under my tent, and let her go?—am I the only one—ah, dear old boy, am I
the only one? And do you think my lot is easier to bear because I own
that I deserve it? She’s gone from us. God’s blessing be with her! She
might have stayed, and I lost her; it’s like Undine: isn’t it, George?”
“She was in this room once,” said George.
He saw her there—he heard the sweet low voice—he saw the sweet smile
and eyes shining so kindly—the face remembered so fondly—thought of in
what night-watches—blest and loved always—gone now! A glass that had
held a nosegay—a bible with Helen’s handwriting—were all that were left
him of that brief flower of his life. Say it is a dream: say it passes:
better the recollection of a dream than an aimless waking from a blank
stupor.
The two friends sate in silence a while, each occupied with his own
thoughts and aware of the other’s. Pen broke it presently, by saying
that he must go and seek for his uncle, and report progress to the old
gentleman. The Major had written in a very bad humour; the Major was
getting old. “I should like to see you in Parliament, and snugly
settled with a comfortable house and an heir to the name before I make
my bow. Show me these,” the Major wrote, “and then, let old Arthur
Pendennis make room for the younger fellows; he has walked the Pall
Mall pave long enough.”
“There is a kindness about the old heathen,” said Warrington. “He cares
for somebody besides himself, at least for some other part of himself
besides that which is buttoned into his own coat;—for you and your
race. He would like to see the progeny of the Pendennises multiplying
and increasing, and hopes that they may inherit the land. The old
patriarch blesses you from the Club window of Bays’s, and is carried
off and buried under the flags of St. James’s Church, in sight of
Piccadilly, and the cabstand, and the carriages going to the levee. It
is an edifying ending.”
“The new blood I bring into the family,” mused Pen, “is rather tainted.
If I had chosen, I think my father-in-law Amory would not have been the
progenitor I should have desired for my race; nor my grandfather-in-law
Snell; nor our Oriental ancestors. By the way, who was Amory? Amory was
lieutenant of an Indiaman. Blanche wrote some verses about him, about
the storm, the mountain wave, the seaman’s grave, the gallant father,
and that sort of thing. Amory was drowned commanding a country ship
between Calcutta and Sydney; Amory and the Begum weren’t happy
together. She has been unlucky in her selection of husbands, the good
old lady, for, between ourselves, a more despicable creature than Sir
Francis Clavering, of Clavering Park, Baronet, never——” “Never
legislated for his country,” broke in Warrington; at which Pen blushed
rather.
“By the way, at Baden,” said Warrington, “I found our friend the
Chevalier Strong in great state, and wearing his orders. He told me
that he had quarrelled with Clavering, of whom he seemed to have almost
as bad an opinion as you have, and in fact, I think, though I will not
be certain, confided to me his opinion, that Clavering was an utter
scoundrel. That fellow Bloundell, who taught you card-playing at
Oxbridge, was with Strong; and time, I think, has brought out his
valuable qualities, and rendered him a more accomplished rascal than he
was during your undergraduateship. But the king of the place was the
famous Colonel Altamont, who was carrying all before him, giving flies
to the whole society, and breaking the bank, it was said.”
“My uncle knows something about that fellow—Clavering knows something
about him. There’s something louche regarding him. But come! I must go
to Bury Street, like a dutiful nephew.” And, taking his hat, Pen
prepared to go.
“I will walk, too,” said Warrington. And they descended the stairs,
stopping, however, at Pen’s chambers, which, as the reader has been
informed, were now on the lower story.
Here Pen began sprinkling himself with eau-de-Cologne, and carefully
scenting his hair and whiskers with that odoriferous water.
“What is the matter? You’ve not been smoking. Is it my pipe that has
poisoned you?” growled Warrington.
“I am going to call upon some women,” said Pen. “I’m—I’m going to dine
with ’em. They are passing through town, and are at an hotel in Jermyn
Street.”
Warrington looked with good-natured interest at the young fellow
dandifying himself up to a pitch of completeness; and appearing at
length in a gorgeous shirt-front and neckcloth, fresh gloves, and
glistening boots. George had a pair of thick high-lows, and his old
shirt was torn about the breast, and ragged at the collar, where his
blue beard had worn it.
“Well, young un,” said he, simply, “I like you to be a buck; somehow.
When I walk about with you, it is as if I had a rose in my button-hole.
And you are still affable. I don’t think there is any young fellow in
the Temple turns out like you; and I don’t believe you were ever
ashamed of walking with me yet.”
“Don’t laugh at me, George.” said Pen.
“I say, Pen,” continued the other, sadly, “if you write—if you write to
Laura, I wish you would say ‘God bless her’ from me.”
Pen blushed; and then looked at Warrington; and then—and then burst
into an uncontrollable fit of laughing.
“I’m going to dine with her,” he said. “I brought her and Lady
Rockminster up from the country to-day—made two days of it—slept last
night at Bath—I say, George, come and dine, too. I may ask any one I
please, and the old lady is constantly talking about you.”
George refused. George had an article to write. George hesitated; and
oh, strange to say! at last he agreed to go. It was agreed that they
should go and call upon the ladies; and they marched away in high
spirits to the hotel in Jermyn Street. Once more the dear face shone
upon him; once more the sweet voice spoke to him, and the tender hand
pressed a welcome.
There still wanted half an hour to dinner. “You will go and see your
uncle now, Mr. Pendennis,” old Lady Rockminster said. “You will not
bring him to dinner-no—his old stories are intolerable; and I want to
talk to Mr. Warrington; I daresay he will amuse us. I think we have
heard all your stories. We have been together for two whole days, and I
think we are getting tired of each other.”
So, obeying her ladyship’s orders, Arthur went downstairs and walked to
his uncle’s lodgings.