Mr. and Mrs. Sam Huxter
“Dear Blanche,” Arthur wrote, “you are always reading and dreaming
pretty dramas, and exciting romances in real life: are you now prepared
to enact a part of one? And not the pleasantest part, dear Blanche,
that in which the heroine takes possession of her father’s palace and
wealth, and introducing her husband to the loyal retainers and faithful
vassals, greets her happy bridegroom with ‘All of this is mine and
thine,’—but the other character, that of the luckless lady, who
suddenly discovers that she is not the Prince’s wife, but Claude
Melnotte’s the beggar’s: that of Alnaschar’s wife, who comes in just as
her husband has kicked over the tray of porcelain which was to be the
making of his fortune—But stay; Alnaschar, who kicked down the china,
was not a married man; he had cast his eye on the Vizier’s daughter,
and his hopes of her went to the ground with the shattered bowls and
tea-cups.
“Will you be the Vizier’s daughter, and refuse and laugh to scorn
Alnaschar, or will you be the Lady of Lyons, and love the penniless
Claude Melnotte? I will act that part if you like. I will love you my
best in return. I will do my all to make your humble life happy: for
humble it will be: at least the odds are against any other conclusion;
we shall live and die in a poor prosy humdrum way. There will be no
stars and epaulettes for the hero of our story. I shall write one or
two more stories, which will presently be forgotten. I shall be called
to the Bar, and try to get on in my profession: perhaps some day, if I
am very lucky, and work very hard (which is absurd), I may get a
colonial appointment, and you may be an Indian Judge’s lady. Meanwhile.
I shall buy back the Pall Mall Gazette; the publishers are tired of it
since the death of poor Shandon, and will sell it for a small sum.
Warrington will be my right hand, and write it up to a respectable
sale. I will introduce you to Mr. Finucane the sub-editor, and I know
who in the end will be Mrs. Finucane,—a very nice gentle creature, who
has lived sweetly through a sad life and we will jog on, I say, and
look out for better times, and earn our living decently. You shall have
the opera-boxes, and superintend the fashionable intelligence, and
break your little heart in the poet’s corner. Shall we live over the
offices?—there are four very good rooms, a kitchen, and a garret for
Laura, in Catherine Street in the Strand; or would you like a house in
the Waterloo Road?—it would be very pleasant, only there is that
halfpenny toll at the Bridge. The boys may go to King’s College, mayn’t
they? Does all this read to you like a joke?
“Ah, dear Blanche, it is no joke, and I am sober and telling the truth.
Our fine day-dreams are gone. Our carriage has whirled out of sight
like Cinderella’s: our house in Belgravia has been whisked away into
the air by a malevolent Genius, and I am no more a member of Parliament
than I am a Bishop on his bench in the House of Lords, or a Duke with a
garter at his knee. You know pretty well what my property is, and your
own little fortune: we may have enough with those two to live in decent
comfort; to take a cab sometimes when we go out to see our friends, and
not to deny ourselves an omnibus when we are tired. But that is all: is
that enough for you, my little dainty lady? I doubt sometimes whether
you can bear the life which I offer you—at least, it is fair that you
should know what it will be. If you say, ‘Yes, Arthur, I will follow
your fate whatever it may be, and be a loyal and loving wife to aid and
cheer you’—come to me, dear Blanche, and may God help me so that I may
do my duty to you. If not, and you look to a higher station, I must not
bar Blanche’s fortune—I will stand in the crowd, and see your ladyship
go to Court when you are presented, and you shall give me a smile from
your chariot window. I saw Lady Mirabel going to the drawing-room last
season: the happy husband at her side glittered with stars and cordons.
All the flowers in the garden bloomed in the coachman’s bosom. Will you
have these and the chariot, or walk on foot and mend your husband’s
stockings?
“I cannot tell you now—afterwards I might, should the day come when we
may have no secrets from one another—what has happened within the last
few hours which has changed all my prospects in life: but so it is,
that I have learned something which forces me to give up the plans
which I had formed, and many vain and ambitious hopes in which I had
been indulging. I have written and despatched a letter to Sir Francis
Clavering, saying that I cannot accept his seat in Parliament until
after my marriage; in like manner I cannot and will not accept any
larger fortune with you than that which has always belonged to you
since your grandfather’s death, and the birth of your half-brother.
Your good mother is not in the least aware—I hope she never may be—of
the reasons which force me to this very strange decision. They arise
from a painful circumstance, which is attributable to none of our
faults; but, having once befallen, they are as fatal and irreparable as
that shock which overset honest Alnaschar’s porcelain, and shattered
all his hopes beyond the power of mending. I write gaily enough, for
there is no use in bewailing such a hopeless mischance. We have not
drawn the great prize in the lottery, dear Blanche: but I shall be
contented enough without it, if you can be so; and I repeat, with all
my heart, that I will do my best to make you happy.
“And now, what news shall I give you? My uncle is very unwell, and
takes my refusal of the seat in Parliament in sad dudgeon: the scheme
was his, poor old gentleman, and he naturally bemoans its failure. But
Warrington, Laura, and I had a council of war: they know this awful
secret, and back me in my decision. You must love George as you love
what is generous and upright and noble; and as for Laura—she must be
our Sister, Blanche, our Saint, our good Angel. With two such friends
at home, what need we care for the world without; or who is member for
Clavering, or who is asked or not asked to the great balls of the
season?”
To this frank communication came back the letter from Blanche to Laura,
and one to Pen himself, which perhaps his own letter justified. “You
are spoiled by the world,” Blanche wrote; “you do not love your poor
Blanche as she would be loved, or you would not offer thus lightly to
take her or to leave her, no, Arthur, you love me not—a man of the
world, you have given me your plighted troth, and are ready to redeem
it; but that entire affection, that love whole and abiding, where—where
is that vision of my youth? I am but a pastime of your life, and I
would be its all;—but a fleeting thought, and I would be your whole
soul. I would have our two hearts one; but ah, my Arthur, how lonely
yours is! how little you give me of it! You speak of our parting with a
smile on your lip; of our meeting, and you care not to hasten it! Is
life but a disillusion, then, and are the flowers of our garden faded
away? I have wept—I have prayed—I have passed sleepless hours—I have
shed bitter, bitter tears over your letter! To you I bring the gushing
poesy of my being—the yearnings of the soul that longs to be loved—that
pines for love, love, love, beyond all!—that flings itself at your
feet, and cries, Love me, Arthur! Your heart beats no quicker at the
kneeling appeal of my love!—your proud eye is dimmed by no tear of
sympathy!—you accept my soul’s treasure as though ’twere dross! not the
pearls from the unfathomable deeps of affection! not the diamonds from
the caverns of the heart. You treat me like a slave, and bid me bow to
my master! Is this the guerdon of a free maiden—is this the price of a
life’s passion? Ah me! when was it otherwise? when did love meet with
aught but disappointment? Could I hope (fond fool!) to be the exception
to the lot of my race; and lay my fevered brow on a heart that
comprehended my own? Foolish girl that I was! One by one, all the
flowers of my young life have faded away; and this, the last, the
sweetest, the dearest, the fondly, the madly loved, the wildly
cherished—where is it? But no more of this. Heed not my bleeding
heart.—Bless you, bless you always, Arthur!
“I will write more when I am more collected. My racking brain renders
thought almost impossible. I long to see Laura! She will come to us
directly we return from the country, will she not? And you, cold one!
“B.”
The words of this letter were perfectly clear, and written in Blanche’s
neatest hand upon her scented paper; and yet the meaning of the
composition not a little puzzled Pen. Did Blanche mean to accept or to
refuse his polite offer? Her phrases either meant that Pen did not love
her, and she declined him, or that she took him, and sacrificed herself
to him, cold as he was. He laughed sardonically over the letter, and
over the transaction which occasioned it. He laughed to think how
Fortune had jilted him, and how he deserved his slippery fortune. He
turned over and over the musky gilt-edged riddle. It amused his humour:
he enjoyed it as if it had been a funny story.
He was thus seated, twiddling the queer manuscript in his hand, joking
grimly to himself, when his servant came in with a card from a
gentleman, who wished to speak to him very particularly. And if Pen had
gone out into the passage, he would have seen, sucking his stick,
rolling his eyes, and showing great marks of anxiety, his old
acquaintance, Mr. Samuel Huxter.
“Mr. Huxter on particular business! Pray, beg Mr. Huxter to come in,”
said Pen, amused rather; and not the less so when poor Sam appeared
before him.
“Pray take a chair, Mr. Huxter,” said Pen, in his most superb manner.
“In what way can I be of service to you?”
“I had rather not speak before the flunk—before the man, Mr.
Pendennis:” on which Mr. Arthur’s attendant quitted the room.
“I’m in a fix,” said Mr. Huxter, gloomily.
“Indeed.”
“She sent me to you,” continued the young surgeon.
“What, Fanny? Is she well? I was coming to see her, but I have had a
great deal of business since my return to London.”
“I heard of you through my governor and Jack Hobnell,” broke in Huxter.
“I wish you joy, Mr. Pendennis, both of the borough and the lady, sir.
Fanny wishes you joy, too,” he added, with something of a blush.
“There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip! Who knows what may
happen, Mr. Huxter, or who will sit in Parliament for Clavering next
session?”
“You can do anything with my governor,” continued Mr. Huxter. “You got
him Clavering Park. The old boy was very much pleased, sir, at your
calling him in. Hobnell wrote me so. Do you think you could speak to
the governor for me, Mr. Pendennis?”
“And tell him what?”
“I’ve gone and done it, sir,” said Huxter, with a particular look.
“You—you don’t mean to say you have—you have done any wrong to that
dear little creature, sir?” said Pen, starting up in a great fury.
“I hope not,” said Huxter, with a hangdog look: “but I’ve married her.
And I know there will be an awful shindy at home. It was agreed that I
should be taken into partnership when I had passed the College, and it
was to have been Huxter and Son. But I would have it, confound it. It’s
all over now, and the old boy’s wrote me that he’s coming up to town
for drugs: he will be here to-morrow, and then it must all come out.”
“And when did this event happen?” asked Pen, not over well pleased,
most likely, that a person who had once attracted some portion of his
royal good graces should have transferred her allegiance, and consoled
herself for his loss.
“Last Thursday was five weeks—it was two days after Miss Amory came to
Shepherd’s Inn,” Huxter answered.
Pen remembered that Blanche had written and mentioned her visit. “I was
called in,” Huxter said. “I was in the Inn looking after old Cos’s leg;
and about something else too, very likely: and I met Strong, who told
me there was a woman taken ill in Chambers, and went up to give her my
professional services. It was the old lady who attends Miss Amory—her
housekeeper, or some such thing. She was taken with strong hysterics: I
found her kicking and screaming like a good one—in Strong’s chamber,
along with him and Colonel Altamont, and Miss Amory crying and as pale
as a sheet; and Altamont fuming about—a regular kick-up. They were two
hours in the Chambers; and the old woman went whooping off in a cab.
She was much worse than the young one. I called in Grosvenor Place next
day to see if I could be of any service, but they were gone without so
much as thanking me: and the day after I had business of my own to
attend to—a bad business too,” said Mr. Huxter, gloomily. “But it’s
done, and can’t be undone; and we must make the best of it”
She has known the story for a month, thought Pen, with a sharp pang of
grief, and a gloomy sympathy—this accounts for her letter of to-day.
She will not implicate her father, or divulge his secret; she wishes to
let me off from the marriage—and finds a pretext—the generous girl!
“Do you know who Altamont is, sir?” asked Huxter, after the pause
during which Pen had been thinking of his own affairs. “Fanny and I
have talked him over, and we can’t help fancying that it’s Mrs.
Lightfoot’s first husband come to life again, and she who has just
married a second. Perhaps Lightfoot won’t be very sorry for it,” sighed
Huxter, looking savagely at Arthur, for the demon of jealousy was still
in possession of his soul; and now, and more than ever since his
marriage, the poor fellow fancied that Fanny’s heart belonged to his
rival.
“Let us talk about your affairs,” said Pen. “Show me how I can be of
any service to you, Huxter. Let me congratulate you on your marriage. I
am thankful that Fanny, who is so good, so fascinating, so kind a
creature, has found an honest man, and a gentleman who will make her
happy. Show me what I can do to help you.”
“She thinks you can, sir,” said Huxter, accepting Pen’s proffered hand,
“and I’m very much obliged to you, I’m sure; and that you might talk
over my father, and break the business to him, and my mother, who
always has her back up about being a clergyman’s daughter. Fanny ain’t
of a good family, I know, and not up to us in breeding and that—but
she’s a Huxter now.”
“The wife takes the husband’s rank, of course,” said Pen.
“And with a little practice in society,” continued Huxter, imbibing his
stick, “she’ll be as good as any girl in Clavering. You should hear her
sing and play on the piano. Did you ever? Old Bows taught her. And
she’ll do on the stage, if the governor was to throw me over; but I’d
rather not have her there. She can’t help being a coquette, Mr.
Pendennis, she can’t help it. Dammy, sir! I’ll be bound to say, that
two or three of the Bartholomew chaps, that I’ve brought into my place,
are sitting with her now: even Jack Linton, that I took down as my best
man, is as bad as the rest, and she will go on singing and making eyes
at him. It’s what Bows says, if there were twenty men in a room, and
one not taking notice of her, she wouldn’t be satisfied until the
twentieth was at her elbow.”
“You should have her mother with her,” said Pen, laughing.
“She must keep the lodge. She can’t see so much of her family as she
used. I can’t, you know, sir, go on with that lot. Consider my rank in
life,” said Huxter, putting a very dirty hand up to his chin.
“Au fait,” said Mr. Pen, who was infinitely amused, and concerning whom
mutato nomine (and of course concerning nobody else in the world) the
fable might have been narrated.
As the two gentlemen were in the midst of this colloquy, another knock
came to Pen’s door, and his servant presently announced Mr. Bows. The
old man followed slowly, his pale face blushing, and his hand trembling
somewhat as he took Pen’s. He coughed, and wiped his face in his
checked cotton pocket-handkerchief, and sate down with his hands on his
knees, the sunshining on his bald head. Pen looked at the homely figure
with no small sympathy and kindness. This man, too, has had his griefs
and his wounds, Arthur thought. This man, too, has brought his genius
and his heart, and laid them at a woman’s feet; where she spurned them.
The chance of life has gone against him, and the prize is with that
creature yonder. Fanny’s bridegroom, thus mutely apostrophised, had
winked meanwhile with one eye at old Bows, and was driving holes in the
floor with the cane which he loved.
“So we have lost, Mr. Bows, and here is the lucky winner,” Pen said,
looking hard at the old man.
“Here is the lucky winner, sir, as you say.”
“I suppose you have come from my place?” asked Huxter, who, having
winked at Bows with one eye, now favoured Pen with a wink of the
other—a wink which seemed to say, “Infatuated old boy—you
understand—over head and ears in love with her poor old fool.”
“Yes, I have been there ever since you went away. It was Mrs. Sam who
sent me after you: who said that she thought you might be doing
something stupid—something like yourself, Huxter.”
“There’s as big fools as I am,” growled the young surgeon.
“A few, p’raps,” said the old man; “not many, let us trust. Yes, she
sent me after you for fear you should offend Mr. Pendennis; and I
daresay because she thought you wouldn’t give her message to him, and
beg him to go and see her; and she knew I would take her errand. Did he
tell you that, sir?”
Huxter blushed scarlet, and covered his confusion with an imprecation.
Pen laughed; the scene suited his bitter humour more and more.
“I have no doubt Mr. Huxter was going to tell me,” Arthur said, “and
very much flattered I am sure I shall be to pay my respects to his
wife.”
“It’s in Charterhouse Lane, over the baker’s, on the right hand side as
you go from St. John’s Street,” continued Bows, without any pity. “You
know Smithfield, Mr. Pendennis? St. John’s Street leads into
Smithfield. Doctor Johnson has been down the street many a time with
ragged shoes, and a bundle of penny-a-lining for the Gent’s Magazine.
You literary gents are better off now—eh? You ride in your cabs, and
wear yellow kid gloves now.”
“I have known so many brave and good men fail, and so many quacks and
impostors succeed, that you mistake me if you think I am puffed up by
my own personal good luck, old friend,” Arthur said, sadly. “Do you
think the prizes of life are carried by the most deserving? and set up
that mean test of prosperity for merit? You must feel that you are as
good as I. I have never questioned it. It is you that are peevish
against the freaks of fortune, and grudge the good luck that befalls
others. It’s not the first time you have unjustly accused me, Bows.”
“Perhaps you are not far wrong, sir,” said the old fellow, wiping his
bald forehead. “I am thinking about myself and grumbling; most men do
when they get on that subject. Here’s the fellow that’s got the prize
in the lottery; here’s the fortunate youth.”
“I don’t know what you are driving at,” Huxter said, who had been much
puzzled as the above remarks passed between his two companions.
“Perhaps not,” said Bows, drily. “Mrs. H. sent me here to look after
you, and to see that you brought that little message to Mr. Pendennis,
which you didn’t, you see, and so she was right. Women always are; they
have always a reason for everything. Why, sir,” he said, turning round
to Pen with a sneer, “she had a reason even for giving me that message.
I was sitting with her after you left us, very quiet and comfortable; I
was talking away, and she was mending your shirts, when your two young
friends, Jack Linton and Bob Blades, looked in from Bartholomew’s; and
then it was she found out that she had this message to send. You
needn’t hurry yourself, she don’t want you back again; they’ll stay
these two hours, I daresay.”
Huxter arose with great perturbation at this news, and plunged his
stick into the pocket of his paletot, and seized his hat.
“You’ll come and see us, sir, won’t you?” he said to Pen. “You’ll talk
over the governor, won’t you, sir, if I can get out of this place and
down to Clavering?”
“You will promise to attend me gratis if ever I fall ill at Fairoaks,
will you, Huxter?” Pen said, good-naturedly. “I will do anything I can
for you. I will come and see Mrs. Huxter immediately, and we will
conspire together about what is to be done.”
“I thought that would send him out, sir,” Bows said, dropping into his
chair again as soon as the young surgeon had quitted the room. “And
it’s all true, sir—every word of it. She wants you back again, and
sends her husband after you. She cajoles everybody, the little devil.
She tries it on you, on me, on poor Costigan, on the young chaps from
Bartholomew’s. She’s got a little court of ’em already. And if there’s
nobody there, she practises on the old German baker in the shop, or
coaxes the black sweeper at the crossing.”
“Is she fond of that fellow?” asked Pen.
“There is no accounting for likes and dislikes,” Bows answered.
“Yes, she is fond of him; and having taken the thing into her head, she
would not rest until she married him. They had their banns published at
St. Clement’s, and nobody heard it or knew any just cause or
impediment. And one day she slips out of the porter’s lodge and has the
business done, and goes off to Gravesend with Lothario; and leaves a
note for me to go and explain all things to her Ma. Bless you! the old
woman knew it as well as I did, though she pretended ignorance. And so
she goes, and I’m alone again. I miss her, sir, tripping along that
court, and coming for her singing lesson; and I’ve no heart to look
into the porter’s lodge now, which looks very empty without her, the
little flirting thing. And I go and sit and dangle about her lodgings,
like an old fool. She makes ’em very trim and nice, though; gets up all
Huxter’s shirts and clothes: cooks his little dinner, and sings at her
business like a little lark. What’s the use of being angry? I lent ’em
three pound to go on with: for they haven’t got a shilling till the
reconciliation, and Pa comes down.”
When Bows had taken his leave, Pen carried his letter from Blanche, and
the news which he had just received, to his usual adviser, Laura. It
was wonderful upon how many points Mr. Arthur, who generally followed
his own opinion, now wanted another person’s counsel. He could hardly
so much as choose a waistcoat without referring to Miss Bell: if he
wanted to buy a horse he must have Miss Bell’s opinion; all which marks
of deference tended greatly to the amusement of the shrewd old lady
with whom Miss Bell lived, and whose plans regarding her protegee we
have indicated.
Arthur produced Blanche’s letter then to Laura, and asked her to
interpret it. Laura was very much agitated and puzzled by the contents
of the note.
“It seems to me,” she said, “as if Blanche is acting very artfully.”
“And wishes so to place matters that she may take me or leave me? Is it
not so?”
“It is, I am afraid, a kind of duplicity which does not augur well for
your future happiness; and is a bad reply to your own candour and
honesty, Arthur. Do you know, I think, I think—I scarcely like to say
what I think,” said Laura with a deep blush; but of course the blushing
young lady yielded to her cousin’s persuasion, and expressed what her
thoughts were. “It looks to me, Arthur, as if there might be—there
might be somebody else,” said, Laura, with a repetition of the blush.
“And if there is,” broke in Arthur, “and if I am free once again, will
the best and dearest of all women——”
“You are not free, dear brother,” Laura said calmly. “You belong to
another; of whom I own it grieves me to think ill. But I can’t do
otherwise. It is very odd that in this letter she does not urge you to
tell her the reason why you have broken arrangements which would have
been so advantageous to you; and avoids speaking on the subject. She
somehow seems to write as if she knows her father’s secret.”
Pen said, “Yes, she must know it;” and told the story, which he had
just heard from Huxter, of the interview at Shepherd’s Inn.
“It was not so that she described the meeting,” said Laura; and, going
to her desk, produced from it that letter of Blanche’s which mentioned
her visit to Shepherd’s Inn. ‘Another disappointment—only the Chevalier
Strong and a friend of his in the room.’ This was all that Blanche had
said. “But she was bound to keep her father’s secret, Pen,” Laura
added. “And yet, and yet—it is very puzzling.”
The puzzle was this, that for three weeks after this eventful discovery
Blanche had been only too eager about her dearest Arthur; was urging,
as strongly as so much modesty could urge, the completion of the happy
arrangements which were to make her Arthur’s for ever; and now it
seemed as if something had interfered to mar these happy
arrangements—as if Arthur poor was not quite so agreeable to Blanche as
Arthur rich and a member of Parliament—as if there was some mystery. At
last she said:
“Tunbridge Wells is not very far off, is it, Arthur? Hadn’t you better
go and see her?”
They had been in town a week, and neither had thought of that simple
plan before!