A PEDIGREE AND OTHER FAMILY MATTERS.
[Illustration]
Early in the Regency of George the Magnificent, there lived in a small
town in the west of England, called Clavering, a gentleman whose name
was Pendennis. There were those alive who remembered having seen his
name painted on a board, which was surmounted by a gilt pestle and
mortar over the door of a very humble little shop in the city of Bath,
where Mr. Pendennis exercised the profession of apothecary and surgeon;
and where he not only attended gentlemen in their sick-rooms, and ladies
at the most interesting periods of their lives, but would condescend to
sell a brown-paper plaster to a farmer's wife across the counter--or to
vend tooth-brushes, hair-powder, and London perfumery. For these facts
a few folks at Clavering could vouch, where people's memories were more
tenacious, perhaps, than they are in a great bustling metropolis.
And yet that little apothecary who sold a stray customer a pennyworth
of salts, or a more fragrant cake of Windsor soap, was a gentleman of
good education, and of as old a family as any in the whole county of
Somerset. He had a Cornish pedigree which carried the Pendennises up to
the time of the Druids--and who knows how much farther back? They had
intermarried with the Normans at a very late period of their family
existence, and they were related to all the great families of Wales
and Britanny. Pendennis had had a piece of University education too, and
might have pursued that career with great honor, but that in his second
year at Cambridge his father died insolvent, and poor Pen was obliged
to betake himself to the pestle and apron. He always detested the trade,
and it was only necessity, and the offer of his mother's brother, a
London apothecary of low family, into which Pendennis's father had
demeaned himself by marrying, that forced John Pendennis into so odious
a calling.
He quickly after his apprenticeship parted from the coarse-minded
practitioner, his relative, and set up for himself at Bath with his
modest medical ensign. He had for some time a hard struggle with
poverty; and it was all he could do to keep the shop and its gilt
ornaments in decent repair, and his bed-ridden mother in comfort: but
Lady Ribstone, happening to be passing to the Rooms with an intoxicated
Irish chair man who bumped her ladyship up against Pen's very door-post,
and drove his chair-pole through the handsomest pink-bottle in the
surgeon's window, alighted screaming from her vehicle, and was
accommodated with a chair in Mr. Pendennis's shop, where she was
brought round with cinnamon and sal-volatile.
Mr. Pendennis's manners were so uncommonly gentlemanlike and soothing,
that her ladyship, the wife of Sir Pepin Ribstone, of Codlingbury, in
the county of Somerset, Bart., appointed her preserver, as she called
him, apothecary to her person and family, which was very large. Master
Ribstone coming home for the Christmas holidays from Eton, over-ate
himself and had a fever, in which Mr. Pendennis treated him with the
greatest skill and tenderness. In a word, he got the good graces of the
Codlingbury family, and from that day began to prosper. The good company
of Bath patronized him, and among the ladies especially he was beloved
and admired. First his humble little shop became a smart one; then he
discarded the selling of tooth-brushes and perfumery, as unworthy of a
gentleman of an ancient lineage; then he shut up the shop altogether,
and only had a little surgery attended by a genteel young man: then he
had a gig with a man to drive him; and, before her exit from this world,
his poor old mother had the happiness of seeing from her bed-room
window to which her chair was rolled, her beloved John step into a
close carriage of his own, a one-horse carriage it is true, but with
the arms of the family of Pendennis handsomely emblazoned on the panels.
"What would Arthur say now?" she asked, speaking of a younger son of
hers--"who never so much as once came to see my dearest Johnny through
all the time of his poverty and struggles!"
"Captain Pendennis is with his regiment in India, mother," Mr. Pendennis
remarked, "and, if you please, I wish you would not call me Johnny
before the young man--before Mr. Parkins."
Presently the day came when she ceased to call her son by the name of
Johnny, or by any other title of endearment or affection; and his house
was very lonely without that kind though querulous voice. He had his
night-bell altered and placed in the room in which the good old lady
had grumbled for many a long year, and he slept in the great large bed
there. He was upward of forty years old when these events befell; before
the war was over; before George the Magnificent came to the throne;
before this history indeed: but what is a gentleman without his
pedigree? Pendennis, by this time, had his handsomely framed and glazed,
and hanging up in his drawing-room between the pictures of Codlingbury
House in Somersetshire, and St. Boniface's College, Cambridge, where he
had passed the brief and happy days of his early manhood. As for the
pedigree he had taken it out of a trunk, as Sterne's officer called for
his sword, now that he was a gentleman and could show it.
About the time of Mrs. Pendennis's demise, another of her son's patients
likewise died at Bath; that virtuous woman, old Lady Pontypool, daughter
of Reginald twelfth Earl of Bareacres, and by consequence great grand
aunt to the present earl, and widow of John second Lord Pontypool, and
likewise of the Reverend Jonas Wales, of the Armageddon Chapel, Clifton.
For the last five years of her life her ladyship had been attended by
Miss Helen Thistlewood, a very distant relative of the noble house of
Bareacres, before mentioned, and daughter of Lieutenant R. Thistlewood,
R. N., killed at the battle of Copenhagen. Under Lady Pontypool's roof
Miss Thistlewood found a comfortable shelter, as far as boarding and
lodging went, but suffered under such an infernal tyranny as only women
can inflict on, or bear from, one another; the doctor, who paid his
visits to my Lady Pontypool at least twice a day, could not but remark
the angelical sweetness and kindness with which the young lady bore her
elderly relative's insults; and it was, as they were going in the fourth
mourning coach to attend her ladyship's venerated remains to Bath Abbey,
where they now repose, that he looked at her sweet pale face, and
resolved upon putting a certain question to her, the very nature of
which made his pulse beat ninety, at least.
He was older than she by more than twenty years, and at no time the most
ardent of men. Perhaps he had had a love affair in early life which he
had to strangle--perhaps all early love affairs ought to be strangled or
drowned, like so many blind kittens: well, at three-and-forty he was a
collected quiet little gentleman in black stockings, with a bald head,
and a few days after the ceremony he called to see her, and, as he felt
her pulse, he kept hold of her hand in his, and asked her where she
was going to live now that the Pontypool family had come down upon the
property, which was being nailed into boxes, and packed into hampers,
and swaddled up with haybands, and buried in straw, and locked under
three keys in green-baize plate-chests, and carted away under the eyes
of poor Miss Helen--he asked her where she was going to live finally.
Her eyes filled with tears, and she said she did not know. She had a
little money. The old lady had left her a thousand pounds, indeed; and
she would go into a boarding-house or into a school; in fine, she did
not know where.
Then Pendennis, looking into her pale face, and keeping hold of her
cold little hand, asked her if she would come and live with him? He
was old compared to--to so blooming a young lady as Miss Thistlewood
(Pendennis was of the grave old complimentary school of gentlemen and
apothecaries), but he was of good birth, and, he flattered himself,
of good principles and temper. His prospects were good, and daily
mending. He was alone in the world, and had need of a kind and constant
companion, whom it would be the study of his life to make happy; in a
word, he recited to her a little speech, which he had composed that
morning in bed, and rehearsed and perfected in his carriage, as he was
coming to wait upon the young lady.
[Illustration]
Perhaps if he had had an early love-passage, she too had one day hoped
for a different lot than to be wedded to a little gentleman who rapped
his teeth and smiled artificially, who was laboriously polite to the
butler as he slid up stairs into the drawing-room, and profusely civil
to the lady's-maid, who waited at the bed-room door; for whom her old
patroness used to ring as for a servant, and who came with even more
eagerness; who got up stories, as he sent in draughts, for his patient's
amusement and his own profit: perhaps she would have chosen a different
man--but she knew, on the other hand, how worthy Pendennis was, how
prudent, how honorable; how good he had been to his mother, and constant
in his care of her; and the upshot of this interview was, that she,
blushing very much, made Pendennis an extremely low courtesy, and asked
leave to--to consider his very kind proposal.
They were married in the dull Bath season, which was the height
of the season in London. And Pendennis having previously, through
a professional friend, M.R.C.S., secured lodgings in Holles-street,
Cavendish Square, took his wife thither in a chaise and pair; conducted
her to the theaters, the Parks, and the Chapel Royal; showed her the
folks going to a drawing-room, and, in a word, gave her all the
pleasures of the town. He likewise left cards upon Lord Pontypool, upon
the Right Honorable the Earl of Bareacres, and upon Sir Pepin and Lady
Ribstone, his earliest and kindest patrons. Bareacres took no notice
of the cards. Pontypool called, admired Mrs. Pendennis, and said Lady
Pontypool would come and see her, which her ladyship did, per proxy of
John her footman, who brought her card, and an invitation to a concert
five weeks off. Pendennis was back in his little one-horse carriage,
dispensing draughts and pills at that time: but the Ribstones asked him
and Mrs. Pendennis to an entertainment, of which Mr. Pendennis bragged
to the last day of his life.
* * * * *
The secret ambition of Mr. Pendennis had always been to be a gentleman.
It takes much time and careful saving for a provincial doctor, whose
gains are not very large, to lay by enough money wherewith to purchase
a house and land: but besides our friend's own frugality and prudence,
fortune aided him considerably in his endeavor, and brought him to
the point which he so panted to attain. He laid out some money very
advantageously in the purchase of a house and small estate close upon
the village of Clavering before mentioned. Words can not describe, nor
did he himself ever care to confess to any one, his pride when he found
himself a real landed proprietor, and could walk over acres of which
he was the master. A lucky purchase which he had made of shares in a
copper-mine added very considerably to his wealth, and he realized with
great prudence while this mine was still at its full vogue. Finally, he
sold his business, at Bath, to Mr. Parkins, for a handsome sum of ready
money, and for an annuity to be paid to him during a certain number of
years after he had forever retired from the handling of the mortar and
pestle.
Arthur Pendennis, his son, was eight years old at the time of this
event, so that it is no wonder that the latter, who left Bath and the
surgery so young, should forget the existence of such a place almost
entirely, and that his father's hands had ever been dirtied by the
compounding of odious pills, or the preparation of filthy plasters. The
old man never spoke about the shop himself, never alluded to it; called
in the medical practitioner of Clavering to attend his family when
occasion arrived; sunk the black breeches and stockings altogether;
attended market and sessions, and wore a bottle-green coat and brass
buttons with drab gaiters, just as if he had been an English gentleman
all his life. He used to stand at his lodge-gate, and see the coaches
come in, and bow gravely to the guards and coachmen as they touched
their hats and drove by. It was he who founded the Clavering Book Club;
and set up the Samaritan Soup and Blanket Society. It was he who brought
the mail, which used to run through Cacklefield before, away from that
village and through Clavering. At church he was equally active as a
vestryman and a worshiper. At market every Thursday, he went from pen
to stall, looked at samples of oats, and munched corn, felt beasts,
punched geese in the breast, and weighed them with a knowing air, and
did business with the farmers at the Clavering Arms, as well as the
oldest frequenter of that house of call. It was now his shame, as it
formerly was his pride, to be called doctor, and those who wished to
please him always gave him the title of squire.
Heaven knows where they came from, but a whole range of Pendennis
portraits presently hung round the doctor's oak dining-room; Lelys and
Vandykes he vowed all the portraits to be, and when questioned as to
the history of the originals, would vaguely say they were "ancestors
of his." You could see by his wife's looks that she disbelieved in
these genealogical legends, for she generally endeavored to turn the
conversation when he commenced them. But his little boy believed them to
their fullest extent, and Roger Pendennis of Agincourt, Arthur Pendennis
of Crecy, General Pendennis of Blenheim and Oudenarde, were as real
and actual beings for this young gentleman as--whom shall we say?--as
Robinson Crusoe, or Peter Wilkins, or the Seven Champions of
Christendom, whose histories were in his library.
Pendennis's fortune, which, at the best, was not above eight hundred
pounds a year, did not, with the best economy and management, permit
of his living with the great folks of the county; but he had a decent
comfortable society of the second-best sort. If they were not the roses,
they lived near the roses, as it were, and had a good deal of the odor
of genteel life. They had out their plate, and dined each other round
in the moonlight nights twice a year, coming a dozen miles to these
festivals; and besides the county, the Pendennises had the society
of the town of Clavering, as much as, nay, more than they liked:
for Mrs. Pybus was always poking about Helen's conservatories, and
intercepting the operation of her soup-tickets and coal-clubs: Captain
Glanders (H. P., 50th Dragoon Guards), was forever swaggering about
the squire's stables and gardens, and endeavoring to enlist him in
his quarrels with the vicar, with the postmaster, with the Reverend F.
Wapshot of Clavering Grammar School, for overflogging his son, Anglesea
Glanders--with all the village, in fine. And Pendennis and his wife
often blessed themselves, that their house of Fairoaks was nearly a
mile out of Clavering, or their premises would never have been free
from the prying eyes and prattle of one or other of the male and
female inhabitants there.
Fairoaks lawn comes down to the little river Brawl, and on the other
side were the plantations and woods (as much as were left of them) of
Clavering Park, Sir Francis Clavering, Bart. The park was let out in
pasture and fed down by sheep and cattle, when the Pendennises came
first to live at Fairoaks. Shutters were up in the house; a splendid
freestone palace, with great stairs, statues, and porticos, whereof you
may see a picture in the "Beauties of England and Wales." Sir Richard
Clavering, Sir Francis's grandfather, had commenced the ruin of the
family by the building of this palace; his successor had achieved the
ruin by living in it. The present Sir Francis was abroad somewhere;
nor could any body be found rich enough to rent that enormous mansion,
through the deserted rooms, moldy clanking halls, and dismal galleries
of which, Arthur Pendennis many a time walked trembling when he was a
boy. At sunset, from the lawn of Fairoaks, there was a pretty sight:
it and the opposite park of Clavering were in the habit of putting on a
rich golden tinge, which became them both wonderfully. The upper windows
of the great house flamed so as to make your eyes wink; the little river
ran off noisily westward, and was lost in a somber wood, behind which
the towers of the old abbey church of Clavering (whereby that town
is called Clavering St. Mary's to the present day) rose up in purple
splendor. Little Arthur's figure and his mother's, cast long blue
shadows over the grass; and he would repeat in a low voice (for a scene
of great natural beauty always moved the boy, who inherited this
sensibility from his mother) certain lines beginning, "These are thy
glorious works, Parent of Good; Almighty! thine this universal frame,"
greatly to Mrs. Pendennis's delight. Such walks and conversation
generally ended in a profusion of filial and maternal embraces; for to
love and to pray were the main occupations of this dear woman's life;
and I have often heard Pendennis say in his wild way, that he felt that
he was sure of going to heaven, for his mother never could be happy
there without him.
As for John Pendennis, as the father of the family, and that sort of
thing, every body had the greatest respect for him; and his orders
were obeyed like those of the Medes and Persians. His hat was as well
brushed, perhaps, as that of any man in this empire. His meals were
served at the same minute every day, and wo to those who came late,
as little Pen, a disorderly little rascal, sometimes did. Prayers were
recited, his letters were read, his business dispatched, his stables
and garden inspected, his hen-houses and kennel, his barn and pigstye
visited, always at regular hours. After dinner he always had a nap with
the Globe newspaper on his knee, and his yellow bandanna handkerchief on
his face (Major Pendennis sent the yellow handkerchiefs from India, and
his brother had helped in the purchase of his majority, so that they
were good friends now). And so, as his dinner took place at six o'clock
to a minute, and the sunset business alluded to may be supposed to have
occurred at about half-past seven, it is probable that he did not much
care for the view in front of his lawn windows, or take any share in the
poetry and caresses which were taking place there.
They seldom occurred in his presence. However frisky they were before,
mother and child were hushed and quiet when Mr. Pendennis walked into
the drawing room, his newspaper under his arm. And here, while little
Pen, buried in a great chair, read all the books of which he could lay
hold, the squire perused his own articles in the "Gardener's Gazette,"
or took a solemn hand at picquet with Mrs. Pendennis, or an occasional
friend from the village.
* * * * *
Pendennis usually took care that at least one of his grand dinners
should take place when his brother, the major, who, on the return of
his regiment from India and New South Wales, had sold out and gone upon
half-pay, came to pay his biennial visit to Fairoaks. "My brother, Major
Pendennis," was a constant theme of the retired doctor's conversation.
All the family delighted in my brother the major. He was the link which
bound them to the great world of London, and the fashion. He always
brought down the last news of the nobility, and was in the constant
habit of dining with lords and great folks. He spoke of such with
soldier-like respect and decorum. He would say, "My Lord Bareacres has
been good enough to invite me to Bareacres for the pheasant shooting,"
or, "My Lord Steyne is so kind as to wish for my presence at Stillbrook
for the Easter holidays;" and you may be sure the whereabouts of my
brother the major was carefully made known by worthy Mr. Pendennis to
his friends at the Clavering reading-room, at justice-meetings, or at
the county town. Their carriages would come from ten miles round to call
upon Major Pendennis in his visits to Fairoaks; the fame of his fashion
as a man about town was established throughout the county. There was a
talk of his marrying Miss Hunkle, of Lilybank, old Hunkle the attorney's
daughter, with at least fifteen hundred a year to her fortune: but my
brother the major refused this negotiation, advantageous as it might
seem to most persons. "As a bachelor," he said, "nobody cares how poor I
am. I have the happiness to live with people who are so highly placed in
the world, that a few hundreds or thousands a year more or less can make
no difference in the estimation in which they are pleased to hold me.
Miss Hunkle, though a most respectable lady, is not in possession of
either the birth or the manners, which would entitle her to be received
into the sphere in which I have the honor to move. I shall live and
die an old bachelor, John: and your worthy friend, Miss Hunkle, I have
no doubt, will find some more worthy object of her affection, than a
worn-out old soldier on half-pay." Time showed the correctness of the
surmise of the old man of the world; Miss Hunkle married a young French
nobleman, and is now at this moment living at Lilybank, under the title
of Baroness de Carambole, having been separated from her wild young
scapegrace of a baron very shortly after their union.
The major was a great favorite with almost all the little establishment
of Fairoaks. He was as good-natured as he was well bred, and had a
sincere liking and regard for his sister-in-law, whom he pronounced,
and with perfect truth, to be as fine a lady as any in England, and
an honor to the family. Indeed, Mrs. Pendennis's tranquil beauty, her
natural sweetness and kindness, and that simplicity and dignity which a
perfect purity and innocence are sure to bestow upon a handsome woman,
rendered her quite worthy of her brother's praises. I think it is not
national prejudice which makes me believe that a high-bred English lady
is the most complete of all Heaven's subjects in this world. In whom
else do you see so much grace and so much virtue; so much faith and so
much tenderness; with such a perfect refinement and chastity? And by
high-bred ladies I don't mean duchesses and countesses. Be they ever so
high in station, they can be but ladies, and no more. But almost every
man who lives in the world has the happiness, let us hope, of counting
a few such persons among his circle of acquaintance--women in whose
angelical natures, there is something awful as well as beautiful, to
contemplate; at whose feet the wildest and fiercest of us must fall down
and humble ourselves;--in admiration of that adorable purity which never
seems to do or to think wrong.
Arthur Pendennis had the good fortune to have a mother endowed with
those happy qualities. During his childhood and youth, the boy thought
of her as little less than an angel--as a supernatural being, all
wisdom, love, and beauty. When her husband drove her into the county
town, or to the assize balls or concerts there, he would step into the
assembly with his wife on his arm, and look the great folks in the face,
as much as to say, "Look at that, my lord; can any of you show me a
woman like _that_?" She enraged some country ladies with three times her
money, by a sort of desperate perfection which they found in her. Miss
Pybus said she was cold and haughty; Miss Pierce, that she was too proud
for her station; Mrs. Wapshot as a doctor of divinity's lady, would have
the _pas_ of her, who was only the wife of a medical practitioner. In
the mean while, this lady moved through the world quite regardless of
all the comments that were made in her praise or disfavor. She did not
seem to know that she was admired or hated for being so perfect: but
carried on calmly through life, saying her prayers, loving her family,
helping her neighbors, and doing her duty.
That even a woman should be faultless, however, is an arrangement not
permitted by nature, which assigns to us mental defects, as it awards
to us headaches, illnesses, or death; without which, the scheme of
the world could not be carried on--nay, some of the best qualities of
mankind could not be brought into exercise. As pain produces or elicits
fortitude and endurance; difficulty, perseverance; poverty, industry and
ingenuity; danger, courage and what not; so the very virtues, on the
other hand, will generate some vices: and, in fine, Mrs. Pendennis had
that vice which Miss Pybus and Miss Pierce discovered in her, namely,
that of pride; which did not vest itself so much in her own person, as
in that of her family. She spoke about Mr. Pendennis (a worthy little
gentleman enough, but there are others as good as he) with an awful
reverence, as if he had been the Pope of Rome on his throne, and she
a cardinal kneeling at his feet and giving him incense. The major she
held to be a sort of Bayard among majors: and as for her son, Arthur, she
worshiped that youth with an ardor which the young scapegrace accepted
almost as coolly as the statue of the saint in Saint Peter's receives
the rapturous osculations which the faithful deliver on his toe.
This unfortunate superstition and idol-worship of this good woman was
the cause of a great deal of the misfortune which befell the young
gentleman who is the hero of this history, and deserves therefore to
be mentioned at the outset of his story.
Arthur Pendennis's schoolfellows at the Greyfriars School state that,
as a boy, he was in no ways remarkable either as a dunce or as a scholar.
He did, in fact, just as much as was required of him, and no more. If
he was distinguished for any thing it was for verse-writing; but was
his enthusiasm ever so great, it stopped when he had composed the
number of lines demanded by the regulations (unlike young Swettenham,
for instance, who, with no more of poetry in his composition than Mr.
Wakley, yet would bring up a hundred dreary hexameters to the master
after a half-holiday; or young Fluxmore, who not only did his own
verses, but all the fifth form's besides). He never read to improve
himself out of school-hours, but, on the contrary, devoured all the
novels, plays, and poetry, on which he could lay his hands. He never
was flogged, but it was a wonder how he escaped the whipping-post. When
he had money he spent it royally in tarts for himself and his friends;
he has been known to disburse nine and sixpence out of ten shillings
awarded to him in a single day. When he had no funds he went on tick.
When he could get no credit he went without, and was almost as happy.
He has been known to take a thrashing for a crony without saying a
word; but a blow, ever so slight, from a friend, would make him roar.
To fighting he was averse from his earliest youth, as indeed to physic,
the Greek Grammar, or any other exertion, and would engage in none of
them, except at the last extremity. He seldom, if ever, told lies, and
never bullied little boys. Those masters or seniors who were kind to
him, he loved with boyish ardor. And though the doctor, when he did not
know his Horace, or could not construe his Greek play, said that that
boy Pendennis was a disgrace to the school, a candidate for ruin in this
world, and perdition in the next; a profligate who would most likely
bring his venerable father to ruin and his mother to a dishonored grave,
and the like--yet as the doctor made use of these compliments to most
of the boys in the place (which has not turned out an unusual number of
felons and pick-pockets), little Pen, at first uneasy and terrified by
these charges, became gradually accustomed to hear them; and he has not,
in fact, either murdered his parents, or committed any act worthy of
transportation or hanging up to the present day.
There were many of the upper boys, among the Cistercians with whom
Pendennis was educated, who assumed all the privileges of men long
before they quitted that seminary. Many of them, for example, smoked
cigars--and some had already begun the practice of inebriation. One had
fought a duel with an ensign in a marching regiment in consequence of a
row at the theater--another actually kept a buggy and horse at a livery
stable in Covent Garden, and might be seen driving any Sunday in Hyde
Park with a groom with squared arms and armorial buttons by his side.
Many of the seniors were in love, and showed each other in confidence
poems addressed to, or letters and locks of hair received from, young
ladies--but Pen, a modest and timid youth, rather envied these than
imitated them as yet. He had not got beyond the theory as yet--the
practice of life was all to come. And, by the way, ye tender mothers
and sober fathers of Christian families, a prodigious thing that theory
of life is as orally learned at a great public school. Why, if you
could hear those boys of fourteen who blush before mothers and sneak
off in silence in the presence of their daughters, talking among each
other--it would be the woman's turn to blush then. Before he was twelve
years old and while his mother fancied him an angel of candor, little
Pen had heard talk enough to make him quite awfully wise upon certain
points--and so, madam, has your pretty little rosy-cheeked son, who
is coming home from school for the ensuing Christmas holidays. I don't
say that the boy is lost, or that the innocence has left him which
he had from "Heaven, which is our home," but that the shades of the
prison-house are closing very fast over him, and that we are helping
as much as possible to corrupt him.
Well--Pen had just made his public appearance in a coat with a tail, or
cauda-virilis, and was looking most anxiously in his little study-glass
to see if his whiskers were growing, like those of more fortunate youths
his companions; and, instead of the treble voice with which he used to
speak and sing (for his singing voice was a very sweet one, and he used
when little to be made to perform "Home, sweet Home," "My pretty Page,"
and a French song or two which his mother had taught him, and other
ballads for the delectation of the senior boys), had suddenly plunged
into a deep bass diversified by a squeak, which, when he was called upon
to construe in school, set the master and scholars laughing--he was
about sixteen years old, in a word, when he was suddenly called away
from his academic studies.
It was at the close of the forenoon school, and Pen had been unnoticed
all the previous part of the morning till now, when the doctor put him
on to construe in a Greek play. He did not know a word of it, though
little Timmins, his form-fellow, was prompting him with all his might.
Pen had made a sad blunder or two--when the awful chief broke out upon
him.
"Pendennis, sir," he said, "your idleness is incorrigible, and your
stupidity beyond example. You are a disgrace to your school, and to your
family, and I have no doubt will prove so in after-life to your country.
If that vice, sir, which is described to us as the root of all evil, be
really what moralists have represented (and I have no doubt of the
correctness of their opinion), for what a prodigious quantity of future
crime and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed! Miserable
trifler! A boy who construes [Greek: de] _and_, instead of [Greek: de]
_but_, at sixteen years of age is guilty not merely of folly, and
ignorance, and dullness inconceivable, but of crime, of deadly crime,
of filial ingratitude, which I tremble to contemplate. A boy, sir, who
does not learn his Greek play cheats the parent who spends money for
his education. A boy who cheats his parent is not very far from robbing
or forging upon his neighbor. A man who forges on his neighbor pays
the penalty of his crime at the gallows. And it is not such a one
that I pity (for he will be deservedly cut off); but his maddened and
heart-broken parents, who are driven to a premature grave by his crimes,
or, if they live, drag on a wretched and dishonored old age. Go on,
sir, and I warn you that the very next mistake that you make shall
subject you to the punishment of the rod. Who's that laughing? What
ill-conditioned boy is there that dares to laugh?" shouted the doctor.
[Illustration]
Indeed, while the master was making this oration, there was a general
titter behind him in the school-room. The orator had his back to the
door of this ancient apartment, which was open, and a gentleman who
was quite familiar with the place, for both Major Arthur and Mr. John
Pendennis had been at the school, was asking the fifth form boy who
sate by the door for Pendennis. The lad grinning pointed to the culprit
against whom the doctor was pouring out the thunders of his just
wrath--Major Pendennis could not help laughing. He remembered having
stood under that very pillar where Pen the younger now stood, and having
been assaulted by the doctor's predecessor, years and years ago. The
intelligence was "passed round" that it was Pendennis's uncle in an
instant, and a hundred young faces wondering and giggling, between
terror and laughter, turned now to the new comer and then to the awful
doctor.
The major asked the fifth-form boy to carry his card up to the doctor,
which the lad did with an arch look. Major Pendennis had written on the
card, "I must take A. P. home; his father is very ill."
As the doctor received the card, and stopped his harangue with rather
a scared look, the laughter of the boys, half constrained until then,
burst out in a general shout. "Silence!" roared out the doctor, stamping
with his foot. Pen looked up and saw who was his deliverer; the major
beckoned to him gravely with one of his white gloves, and tumbling down
his books, Pen went across.
The doctor took out his watch. It was two minutes to one. "We will take
the Juvenal at afternoon school," he said, nodding to the major, and all
the boys, understanding the signal, gathered up their books and poured
out of the hall.
Young Pen saw by his uncle's face that something had happened at home.
"Is there any thing the matter with--my mother?" he said. He could
hardly speak, though, for emotion, and the tears which were ready
to start.
"No," said the major, "but your father's very ill. Go and pack your
trunk directly; I have got a post-chaise at the gate."
Pen went off quickly to his boarding-house to do as his uncle bade him;
and the doctor, now left alone in the school-room, came out to shake
hands with his old schoolfellow. You would not have thought it was the
same man. As Cinderella at a particular hour became, from a blazing and
magnificent princess, quite an ordinary little maid in a gray petticoat,
so, as the clock struck one, all the thundering majesty and awful wrath
of the schoolmaster disappeared.
"There is nothing serious, I hope," said the doctor. "It is a pity to
take the boy away unless there is. He is a very good boy, rather idle
and unenergetic, but he is a very honest, gentlemanlike little fellow,
though I can't get him to construe as I wish. Won't you come in and
have some luncheon? My wife will be very happy to see you."
But Major Pendennis declined the luncheon. He said his brother was very
ill, had had a fit the day before, and it was a great question if they
should see him alive.
"There's no other son, is there?" said the doctor. The major answered
"No."
"And there's a good eh--a good eh--property I believe?" asked the other,
in an offhand way.
"H'm--so so," said the major. Whereupon this colloquy came to an end.
And Arthur Pendennis got into the post-chaise with his uncle never to
come back to school any more.
As the chaise drove through Clavering, the hostler standing whistling
under the archway of the Clavering Arms, winked the postillion ominously,
as much as to say all was over. The gardener's wife came and opened the
lodge-gates, and let the travelers through, with a silent shake of the
head. All the blinds were down at Fairoaks--the face of the old footman
was as blank when he let them in. Arthur's face was white too, with
terror more than with grief. Whatever of warmth and love the deceased
man might have had, and he adored his wife and loved and admired his son
with all his heart, he had shut them up within himself; nor had the boy
been ever able to penetrate that frigid outward harrier. But Arthur had
been his father's pride and glory through life, and his name the last
which John Pendennis had tried to articulate while he lay with his
wife's hand clasping his own cold and clammy palm, as the flickering
spirit went out into the darkness of death, and life and the world
passed away from him.
The little girl, whose face had peered for a moment under the blinds as
the chaise came up, opened the door from the stairs into the hall, and
taking Arthur's hand silently as he stooped down to kiss her, led him
up-stairs to his mother. Old John opened the drawing-room door for the
major. The room was darkened, with the blinds down, and surrounded by
all the gloomy pictures of the Pendennises. He drank a glass of wine.
The bottle had been opened for the squire four days before. His hat was
brushed, and laid on the hall table: his newspapers, and his letter bag,
with John Pendennis, Esquire, Fairoaks, engraved upon the brass plate,
were there in waiting. The doctor and the lawyer from Clavering, who
had seen the chaise pass through, came up in a gig half an hour after
the major's arrival, and entered by the back door. The former gave a
detailed account of the seizure and demise of Mr. Pendennis, enlarged on
his virtues and the estimation in which the neighborhood held him; on
what a loss he would be to the magistrates' bench, the county hospital,
&c. Mrs. Pendennis bore up wonderfully, he said, especially since Master
Arthur's arrival. The lawyer staid and dined with Major Pendennis,
and they talked business all the evening. The major was his brother's
executor, and joint guardian to the boy with Mrs. Pendennis. Every thing
was left unreservedly to her, except in case of a second marriage--an
occasion which might offer itself in the case of so young and handsome a
woman, Mr. Tatham gallantly said, when different provisions were enacted
by the deceased. The major would of course take entire superintendence
of every thing under this most impressive and melancholy occasion. Aware
of this authority, Old John the footman, when he brought Major Pendennis
the candle to go to bed, followed afterward with the plate-basket; and
the next morning brought him the key of the hall clock--the squire
always used to wind it up of a Thursday, John said. Mrs. Pendennis's
maid brought him messages from her mistress. She confirmed the doctor's
report, of the comfort which Master Arthur's arrival had caused to his
mother.
What passed between that lady and the boy is not of import. A vail
should be thrown over those sacred emotions of love and grief. The
maternal passion is a sacred mystery to me. What one sees symbolized
in the Roman churches in the image of the Virgin Mother with a bosom
bleeding with love, I think one may witness (and admire the Almighty
bounty for) every day. I saw a Jewish lady, only yesterday, with a
child at her knee, and from whose face toward the child there shone a
sweetness so angelical, that it seemed to form a sort of glory round
both. I protest I could have knelt before her too, and adored in her
the Divine beneficence in endowing us with the maternal _storge_,
which began with our race and sanctifies the history of mankind.
So it was with this, in a word, that Mrs. Pendennis comforted herself on
the death of her husband, whom, however, she always reverenced as the
best, the most upright, wise, high-minded, accomplished, and awful of
men. If the women did not make idols of us, and if they saw us as we see
each other, would life be bearable, or could society go on? Let a man
pray that none of his womankind should form a just estimation of him.
If your wife knew you as you are, neighbor, she would not grieve much
about being your widow, and would let your grave-lamp go out very
soon, or perhaps not even take the trouble to light it. Whereas Helen
Pendennis put up the handsomest of memorials to her husband, and
constantly renewed it with the most precious oil.
As for Arthur Pendennis, after that awful shock which the sight of his
dead father must have produced on him, and the pity and feeling which
such an event no doubt occasioned, I am not sure that in the very moment
of the grief, and as he embraced his mother and tenderly consoled her,
and promised to love her forever, there was not springing up in his
breast a feeling of secret triumph and exultation. He was the chief now
and lord. He was Pendennis; and all round about him were his servants
and handmaids. "You'll never send me away," little Laura said, tripping
by him, and holding his hand. "You won't send me to school, will you,
Arthur?"
Arthur kissed her and patted her head. No, she shouldn't go to school.
And as for going himself, that was quite out of the question. He had
determined that that part of his life should not be renewed. In the
midst of the general grief, and the corpse still lying above, he had
leisure to conclude that he would have it all holidays for the future,
that he wouldn't get up till he liked, or stand the bullying of the
doctor any more, and had made a hundred of such day dreams and resolves
for the future. How one's thoughts will travel! and how quickly our
wishes beget them! When he, with Laura in his hand, went into the
kitchen on his way to the dog-kennel, the fowl-houses, and his other
favorite haunts, all the servants there assembled in great silence with
their friends, and the laboring men and their wives, and Sally Potter
who went with the post-bag to Clavering, and the baker's man from
Clavering--all there assembled and drinking beer on the melancholy
occasion--rose up on his entrance and bowed or courtesied to him.
They never used to do so last holidays, he felt at once and with
indescribable pleasure. The cook cried out, "O Lord," and whispered,
"How Master Arthur do grow!" Thomas, the groom, in the act of drinking,
put down the jug, alarmed before his master. Thomas's master felt the
honor keenly. He went through and looked at the pointers. As Flora put
her nose up to his waistcoat, and Ponto, yelling with pleasure hurtled
at his chain, Pen patronized the dogs, and said, "Poo, Ponto, poo,
Flora," in his most condescending manner. And then he went and looked
at Laura's hens, and at the pigs, and at the orchard, and at the dairy;
perhaps he blushed to think that it was only last holidays he had, in a
manner, robbed the great apple-tree, and been scolded by the dairy-maid
for taking cream.
They buried John Pendennis, Esquire, "formerly an eminent medical
practitioner at Bath, and subsequently an able magistrate, a benevolent
landlord, and a benefactor to many charities and public institutions in
this neighborhood and county," with one of the most handsome funerals
that had been seen since Sir Roger Clavering was buried here, the
clerk said, in the abbey church of Clavering St. Mary's. A fair marble
slab, from which the above inscription is copied, was erected over the
Fairoaks pew in the church. On it you may see the Pendennis coat of
arms, and crest, an eagle looking toward the sun, with the motto
"_nec tenui penna_," to the present day. Doctor Portman alluded to the
deceased most handsomely and affectingly, "as our dear departed friend,"
in his sermon next Sunday; and Arthur Pendennis reigned in his stead.
[Illustration]