THE HAPPY VILLAGE.
[Illustration]
Until the enemy had retired altogether from before the place, Major
Pendennis was resolved to keep his garrison in Fairoaks. He did not
appear to watch Pen's behavior or to put any restraint on his nephew's
actions, but he managed nevertheless to keep the lad constantly under
his eye or those of his agents, and young Arthur's comings and goings
were quite well known to his vigilant guardian.
I suppose there is scarcely any man who reads this or any other
novel but has been balked in love sometime or other, by fate, and
circumstance, by the falsehood of woman, or his own fault. Let that
worthy friend recall his own sensations under the circumstances, and
apply them as illustrative of Mr. Pen's anguish. Ah! what weary nights
and sickening fevers! Ah! what mad desires dashing up against some
rock of obstruction or indifference, and flung back again from the
unimpressionable granite! If a list could be made this very night in
London of the groans, thoughts, imprecations of tossing lovers, what
a catalogue it would be! I wonder what a per centage of the male
population of the metropolis will be lying awake at two or three o'clock
to-morrow morning, counting the hours as they go by knelling drearily,
and rolling from left to right, restless, yearning, and heart-sick?
What a pang it is! I never knew a man die of love, certainly, but
I have known a twelve stone man go down to nine stone five, under a
disappointed passion, so that pretty nearly a quarter of him may be said
to have perished; and that is no small portion. He has come back to his
old size subsequently; perhaps is bigger than ever: very likely some new
affection has closed round his heart and ribs and made them comfortable,
and young Pen is a man who will console himself like the rest of us. We
say this lest the ladies should be disposed to deplore him prematurely,
or be seriously uneasy with regard to his complaint. His mother was, but
what will not a maternal fondness fear or invent? "Depend on it, my dear
creature," Major Pendennis would say gallantly to her, "the boy will
recover. As soon as we get her out of the country we will take him
somewhere, and show him a little life. Meantime make yourself easy about
him. Half a fellow's pangs at losing a woman result from vanity more
than affection. To be left by a woman is the deuce and all, to be sure;
but look how easily we leave 'em."
Mrs. Pendennis did not know. This sort of knowledge had by no means come
within the simple lady's scope. Indeed she did not like the subject or
to talk of it: her heart had had its own little private misadventure and
she had borne up against it and cured it; and perhaps she had not much
patience with other folks' passions, except, of course, Arthur's whose
sufferings she made her own, feeling indeed, very likely, in many of the
boy's illnesses and pains a great deal more than Pen himself endured.
And she watched him through this present grief with a jealous silent
sympathy; although, as we have said, he did not talk to her of his
unfortunate condition.
The major must be allowed to have had not a little merit and
forbearance, and to have exhibited a highly creditable degree of family
affection. The life at Fairoaks was uncommonly dull to a man who had the
_entree_ of half the houses in London, and was in the habit of making
his bow in three or four drawing-rooms of a night. A dinner with Doctor
Portman or a neighboring squire now and then; a dreary rubber at
backgammon with the widow, who did her utmost to amuse him: these were
the chief of his pleasures. He used to long for the arrival of the
bag with the letters, and he read every word of the evening paper. He
doctored himself too, assiduously--a course of quiet living would suit
him well, he thought, after the London banquets. He dressed himself
laboriously every morning and afternoon: he took regular exercise
up and down the terrace walk. Thus with his cane, his toilet, his
medicine-chest, his backgammon-box, and his newspaper, this worthy and
worldly philosopher fenced himself against ennui; and if he did not
improve each shining hour, like the bees by the widow's garden wall,
Major Pendennis made one hour after another pass as he could: and
rendered his captivity just tolerable. After this period it was remarked
that he was fond of bringing round the conversation to the American war,
the massacre of Wyoming and the brilliant actions of Saint Lucie the
fact being that he had a couple of volumes of the "Annual Register" in
his bed-room, which he sedulously studied. It is thus a well-regulated
man will accommodate himself to circumstances, and show himself calmly
superior to fortune.
Pen sometimes took the box at backgammon of a night, or would listen to
his mother's simple music of summer evenings--but he was very restless
and wretched in spite of all; and has been known to be up before the
early daylight even: and down at a carp-pond in Clavering Park, a dreary
pool with innumerable-whispering rushes and green alders, where a
milkmaid drowned herself in the baronet's grandfather's time, and her
ghost was said to walk still. But Pen did not drown himself, as perhaps
his mother fancied might be his intention. He liked to go and fish
there, and think and think at leisure, as the float quivered in the
little eddies of the pond, and the fish flapped about him. If he got a
bite he was excited enough: and in this way occasionally brought home,
carps, tenches, and eels, which the major cooked in the continental
fashion.
By this pond, and under a tree, which was his favorite resort, Pen
composed a number of poems suitable to his circumstances--over which
verses he blushed in after days, wondering how he could ever have
invented such rubbish. And as for the tree, why, it is in a hollow of
this very tree, where he used to put his tin box of ground-bait, and
other fishing commodities, that he afterward--but we are advancing
matters. Suffice it to say, he wrote poems and relieved himself very
much. When a man's grief or passion is at this point, it may be loud,
but it is not very severe. When a gentleman is cudgeling his brain to
find any rhyme for sorrow, beside borrow and to-morrow, his woes are
nearer at an end than he thinks for. So were Pen's. He had his hot
and cold fits, his days of sullenness and peevishness, and of blank
resignation and despondency, and occasional mad paroxysms of rage and
longing, in which fits Rebecca would be saddled and galloped fiercely
about the country, or into Chatteries, her rider gesticulating wildly on
her back, and astonishing carters and turnpikemen as he passed, crying
out the name of the false one.
Mr. Foker became a very frequent and welcome visitor at Fairoaks during
this period, where his good spirits and oddities always amused the major
and Pendennis, while they astonished the widow and little Laura not a
little. His tandem made a great sensation in Clavering market-place;
where he upset a market stall, and cut Mrs. Pybus's poodle over the
shaven quarters, and drank a glass of raspberry bitters at the Clavering
Arms. All the society in the little place heard who he was, and looked
out his name in their Peerages. He was so young, and their books so old,
that his name did not appear in many of their volumes; and his mamma,
now quite an antiquated lady, figured among the progeny of the Earl of
Rosherville, as Lady Agnes Milton, still. But his name, wealth, and
honorable lineage were speedily known about Clavering, where you may be
sure that poor Pen's little transaction with the Chatteries actress was
also pretty freely discussed.
* * * * *
Looking at the little old town of Clavering St. Mary from the London
road as it runs by the lodge at Fairoaks, and seeing the rapid and
shining Brawl winding down from the town and skirting the woods of
Clavering Park, and the ancient church tower and peaked roofs of the
houses rising up among trees and old walls, behind which swells a fair
back-ground of sunshiny hills that stretch from Clavering westward
toward the sea--the place looks so cheery and comfortable that many a
traveler's heart must have yearned toward it from the coach-top, and he
must have thought that it was in such a calm friendly nook he would like
to shelter at the end of life's struggle. Tom Smith who used to drive
the Alacrity coach, would often point to a tree near the river, from
which a fine view of the church and town was commanded, and inform his
companion on the box that "Artises come and take hoff the Church from
that there tree.--It was a Habby once, sir:"--and indeed a pretty view
it is, which I recommend to Mr. Stanfield or Mr. Roberts, for their next
tour.
Like Constantinople seen from the Bosphorus; like Mrs. Rougemont viewed
in her box from the opposite side of the house; like many an object
which we pursue in life, and admire before we have attained it;
Clavering is rather prettier at a distance than it is on a closer
acquaintance. The town so cheerful of aspect a few furlongs off, looks
very blank and dreary. Except on market days there is nobody in the
streets.
The clack of a pair of pattens echoes through half the place, and you
may hear the creaking of the rusty old ensign at the Clavering Arms,
without being disturbed by any other noise. There has not been a ball
in the assembly rooms since the Clavering volunteers gave one to their
colonel, the old Sir Francis Clavering; and the stables which once held
a great part of that brilliant, but defunct regiment, are now cheerless
and empty, except on Thursdays, when the farmers put up there, and their
tilted carts and gigs make a feeble show of liveliness in the place, or
on petty sessions, when the magistrates attend in what used to be the
old card-room.
On the south side of the market rises up the church, with its great gray
towers, of which the sun illuminates the delicate carving; deepening the
shadows of the huge buttresses, and gilding the glittering windows, and
flaming vanes. The image of the patroness of the church was wrenched out
of the porch centuries ago: such of the statues of saints as were within
reach of stones and hammer at that period of pious demolition are maimed
and headless, and of those who were out of fire, only Doctor Portman
knows the names and history, for his curate, Smirke, is not much of
an antiquarian, and Mr. Simcoe (husband of the Honorable Mrs. Simcoe)
incumbent and architect of the Chapel of Ease in the lower town, thinks
them the abomination of desolation.
The rectory is a stout broad-shouldered brick house, of the reign of
Anne. It communicates with the church and market by different gates,
and stands at the opening of Yew-tree Lane, where the Grammar School
(Rev. ---- Wapshot) is; Yew-tree Cottage (Miss Flather); the butcher's
slaughtering-house, an old barn or brew-house of the Abbey times, and
the Misses Finucane's establishment for young ladies. The two schools
had their pews in the loft on each side of the organ, until the
Abbey Church getting rather empty, through the falling off of the
congregation, who were inveigled to the Heresy-shop in the lower town,
the doctor induced the Misses Finucane to bring their pretty little
flock down stairs; and the young ladies' bonnets make a tolerable show
in the rather vacant aisles. Nobody is in the great pew of the Clavering
family except the statues of defunct baronets and their ladies: there
is Sir Poyntz Clavering, knight and baronet, kneeling in a square
beard opposite his wife in a ruff; a very fat lady, the Dame Rebecca
Clavering, in alto-relievo, is borne up to Heaven by two little
blue-veined angels, who seem to have a severe task--and so forth. How
well, in after life, Pen remembered those effigies, and how often in
youth he scanned them as the doctor was grumbling the sermon from the
pulpit, and Smirke's mild head and forehead curl peered over the great
prayer-book in the desk!
The Fairoaks folks were constant at the old church; their servants
had a pew, so had the doctor's, so had Wapshot's, and those of Misses
Finucane's establishment, three maids and a very nice looking young man
in a livery. The Wapshot family were numerous and faithful. Glanders and
his children regularly came to church: so did one of the apothecaries.
Mrs. Pybus went, turn and turn about, to the Low Town church, and to the
Abbey: the Charity School and their families of course came; Wapshot's
boys made a good cheerful noise, scuffling with their feet as they
marched into church and up the organ-loft stair, and blowing their noses
a good deal during the service. To be brief, the congregation looked as
decent as might be in these bad times. The Abbey Church was furnished
with a magnificent screen, and many hatchments and heraldic tombstones.
The doctor spent a great part of his income in beautifying his darling
place; he had endowed it with a superb painted window, bought in the
Netherlands, and an organ grand enough for a cathedral.
But in spite of organ and window, in consequence of the latter very
likely, which had come out of a papistical place of worship and was
blazoned all over with idolatry, Clavering New Church prospered
scandalously in the teeth of orthodoxy; and many of the doctor's
congregation deserted to Mr. Simcoe and the honorable woman his wife.
Their efforts had thinned the very Ebenezer hard by them, which
building, before Simcoe's advent used to be so full, that you could
see the backs of the congregation squeezing out of the arched windows
thereof. Mr. Simcoe's tracts fluttered into the doors of all the
doctor's cottages, and were taken as greedily as honest Mrs. Portman's
soup, with the quality of which the graceless people found fault. With
the folks at the Ribbon Factory situated by the weir on the Brawl side,
and round which the Low Town had grown, orthodoxy could make no way at
all. Quiet Miss Myra was put out of court by impetuous Mrs. Simcoe and
her female aids-de-camp. Ah, it was a hard burthen for the doctor's
lady to bear, to behold her husband's congregation dwindling away; to
give the precedence on the few occasions when they met to a notorious
low-churchman's wife who was the daughter of an Irish Peer; to know that
there was a party in Clavering, their own town of Clavering, on which
her doctor spent a great deal more than his professional income, who
held him up to odium because he played a rubber at whist; and pronounced
him to be a heathen because he went to the play. In her grief she
besought him to give up the play and the rubber--indeed they could
scarcely get a table now, so dreadful was the outcry against the
sport--but the doctor declared that he would do what he thought right,
and what the great and good George the Third did (whose chaplain he had
been): and as for giving up whist because those silly folks cried out
against it, he would play dummy to the end of his days with his wife and
Myra, rather than yield to their despicable persecutions.
Of the two families, owners of the factory (which had spoiled the Brawl
as a trout-stream and brought all the mischief into the town), the
senior partner, Mr. Rolt, went to Ebenezer; the junior, Mr. Barker, to
the New Church. In a word, people quarreled in this little place a great
deal more than neighbors do in London; and in the book club, which the
prudent and conciliating Pendennis had set up, and which ought to have
been a neutral territory, they bickered so much that nobody scarcely was
ever seen in the reading room, except Smirke, who though he kept up a
faint amity with the Simcoe faction, had still a taste for magazines and
light worldly literature; and old Glanders, whose white head and grizzly
mustache might be seen at the window; and of course, little Mrs. Pybus,
who looked at every body's letters as the post brought them (for the
Clavering reading room, as every one knows, used to be held at Baker's
Library, London-street formerly Hog Lane), and read every advertisement
in the paper.
It may be imagined how great a sensation was created in this amiable
little community when the news reached it of Mr. Pen's love-passages at
Chatteries. It was carried from house to house, and formed the subject
of talk at high-church, low-church, and no-church tables; it was
canvassed by the Misses Finucane and their teachers, and very likely
debated by the young ladies in the dormitories, for what we know;
Wapshot's big boys had their version of the story, and eyed Pen
curiously as he sate in his pew at church, or raised the finger of scorn
at him as he passed through Chatteries. They always hated him and called
him Lord Pendennis, because he did not wear corduroys as they did, and
rode a horse, and gave himself the airs of a buck.
And if the truth must be told, it was Mrs. Portman herself who was the
chief narrator of the story of Pen's loves. Whatever tales this candid
woman heard, she was sure to impart them to her neighbors; and after she
had been put into possession of Pen's secret by the little scandal at
Chatteries, poor Doctor Portman knew that it would next day be about
the parish of which he was the rector. And so indeed it was; the whole
society there had the legend--at the news' room, at the milliner's, at
the shoe-shop, and the general warehouse at the corner of the market;
at Mrs. Pybus's, at the Glanders's, at the Honorable Mrs. Simcoe's
_soiree_, at the factory; nay, through the mill itself the tale was
current in a few hours, and young Arthur Pendennis's madness, was in
every mouth.
All Doctor Portman's acquaintances barked out upon him when he walked
the street the next day. The poor divine knew that his Betsy was the
author of the rumor, and groaned in spirit. Well, well--it must have
come in a day or two, and it was as well that the town should have the
real story. What the Clavering folks thought of Mrs. Pendennis for
spoiling her son, and of that precocious young rascal of an Arthur for
daring to propose to a play-actress, need not be told here. If pride
exists among any folks in our country, and assuredly we have enough
of it, there is no pride more deep-seated than that of twopenny old
gentlewomen in small towns. "Gracious goodness," the cry was, "how
infatuated the mother is about that pert and headstrong boy, who gives
himself the airs of a _lord_ on his _blood-horse_, and for whom _our_
society is not good enough, and who would marry an odious painted
actress off a booth, where very likely he wants to rant himself. If
dear, good Mr. Pendennis had been alive this scandal would never have
happened."
No more it would, very likely, nor should we have been occupied in
narrating Pen's history. It was true that he gave himself airs to the
Clavering folks. Naturally haughty and frank, their cackle and small
talk and small dignities bored him, and he showed a contempt which he
could not conceal. The doctor and the curate were the only people Pen
cared for in the place--even Mrs. Portman shared in the general distrust
of him, and of his mother, the widow, who kept herself aloof from the
village society, and was sneered at accordingly, because she tried,
forsooth, to keep her head up with the great county families. She,
indeed! Mrs. Barker at the factory has four times the butcher's meat
that goes up to Fairoaks, with all their fine airs.
_&c. &c. &c._: let the reader fill up these details according to his
liking and experience of village scandal. They will suffice to show
how it was that a good woman, occupied solely in doing her duty to her
neighbor and her children, and an honest, brave lad, impetuous, and
full of good, and wishing well to every mortal alive, found enemies and
detractors among people to whom they were superior, and to whom they
had never done any thing like harm. The Clavering curs were yelping all
round the house of Fairoaks, and delighted to pull Pen down.
Doctor Portman and Smirke were both cautious of informing the widow
of the constant outbreak of calumny which was pursuing poor Pen,
though Glanders, who was a friend of the house, kept him _au courant_.
It may be imagined what his indignation was; was there any man in the
village whom he could call to account? Presently some wags began to
chalk up "Fotheringay forever!" and other sarcastic allusions to late
transactions, at Fairoaks gate. Another brought a large play-bill from
Chatteries, and wafered it there one night. On one occasion Pen, riding
through the lower town, fancied he heard the factory boys jeer him; and
finally going through the doctor's gate into the churchyard, where some
of Wapshot's boys were lounging, the biggest of them, a young gentleman
about twenty years of age, son of a neighboring small squire, who lived
in the doubtful capacity of parlor boarder with Mr. Wapshot, flung
himself into a theatrical attitude near a newly-made grave, and began
repeating Hamlet's verses over Ophelia, with a hideous leer at Pen.
The young fellow was so enraged that he rushed at Hobnell Major with a
shriek very much resembling an oath, cut him furiously across the face
with the riding-whip which he carried, flung it away, calling upon the
cowardly villain to defend himself, and in another minute knocked the
bewildered young ruffian into the grave which was just waiting for a
different lodger.
Then with his fists clenched, and his face quivering with passion and
indignation, he roared out to Mr. Hobnell's gaping companions, to know
if any of the blackguards would come on? But they held back with a
growl, and retreated as Doctor Portman came up to his wicket, and Mr.
Hobnell, with his nose and lip bleeding piteously, emerged from the
grave.
Pen, looking death and defiance at the lads, who retreated toward their
side of the churchyard, walked back again through the doctor's wicket,
and was interrogated by that gentleman. The young fellow was so agitated
he could scarcely speak. His voice broke into a sob, as he answered.
"The ---- coward insulted me, sir," he said; and the doctor passed over
the oath, and respected the emotion of the honest, suffering young
heart.
* * * * *
Pendennis the elder, who like a real man of the world had a proper and
constant dread of the opinion of his neighbor, was prodigiously annoyed
by the absurd little tempest which was blowing in Chatteries, and
tossing about Master Pen's reputation. Doctor Portman and Captain
Glanders had to support the charges of the whole Chatteries society
against the young reprobate, who was looked upon as a monster of crime.
Pen did not say any thing about the churchyard scuffle at home; but went
over to Baymouth, and took counsel with his friend Harry Foker, Esq.,
who drove over his drag presently to the Clavering Arms, whence he sent
Stoopid with a note to Thomas Hobnell, Esq., at the Rev. J. Wapshot's,
and a civil message to ask when he should wait upon that gentleman.
Stoopid brought back word that the note had been opened by Mr. Hobnell,
and read to half-a-dozen of the big boys, on whom it seemed to make a
great impression; and that after consulting together, and laughing, Mr.
Hobnell said he would send an answer "arter arternoon school, which the
bell was a ringing; and Mr. Wapshot he came out in his Master's gownd."
Stoopid was learned in academical costume, having attended Mr. Foker at
St. Boniface.
Mr. Foker went out to see the curiosities of Clavering, meanwhile; but
not having a taste for architecture, Doctor Portman's fine church did
not engage his attention much, and he pronounced the tower to be as
moldy as an old Stilton cheese. He walked down the street and looked
at the few shops there; he saw Captain Glanders at the window of the
reading-room, and having taken a good stare at that gentleman, he wagged
his head at him in token of satisfaction; he inquired the price of meat
at the butcher's, with an air of the greatest interest, and asked,
"when was next killing day?" he flattened his little nose against Madam
Fribsby's window to see if haply there was a pretty workwoman in her
premises; but there was no face more comely than the doll's or dummy's
wearing the French cap in the window, only that of Madame Fribsby
herself, dimly visible in the parlor, reading a novel. That object was
not of sufficient interest to keep Mr. Foker very long in contemplation,
and so having exhausted the town and the inn stables, in which there
were no cattle, save the single old pair of posters that earned a scanty
livelihood by transporting the gentry round about to the county dinners,
Mr. Foker was giving himself up to _ennui_ entirely, when a messenger
from Mr. Hobnell was at length announced.
[Illustration]
It was no other than Mr. Wapshot himself, who came with an air of great
indignation, and holding Pen's missive in his hand, asked Mr. Foker
"how dared he bring such an unchristian message as a challenge to a
boy of his school?"
In fact Pen had written a note to his adversary of the day before,
telling him that if after the chastisement which his insolence richly
deserved, he felt inclined to ask the reparation which was usually given
among gentlemen, Mr. Arthur Pendennis's friend, Mr. Henry Foker, was
empowered to make any arrangements for the satisfaction of Mr. Hobnell.
"And so he sent _you_ with the answer--did he, sir?" Mr. Foker said,
surveying the schoolmaster in his black coat and clerical costume.
"If he had accepted this wicked challenge, I should have flogged him,"
Mr. Wapshot said, and gave Mr. Foker a glance which seemed to say, "and
I should like very much to flog you, too."
"Uncommon kind of you, sir, I'm sure," said Pen's emissary. "I told my
principal that I didn't think the other man would fight," he continued,
with a great air of dignity. "He prefers being flogged to fighting, sir,
I dare say. May I offer you any refreshment, Mr. ----? I haven't the
advantage of your name."
"My name is Wapshot, sir, and I am master of the grammar school of this
town, sir," cried the other: "and I want no refreshment, sir, I thank
you, and have no desire to make your acquaintance, sir."
"I didn't seek yours, sir, I'm sure," replied Mr. Foker. "In affairs
of this sort, you see, I think it is a pity that the clergy should be
called in, but there's no accounting for tastes, sir."
"I think it's a pity that boys should talk about committing murder, sir,
as lightly as you do," roared the schoolmaster; "and if I had you in my
school--"
"I dare say you would teach me better, sir," Mr. Foker said, with a bow.
"Thank you, sir. I've finished my education, sir, and ain't a going back
to school, sir--when I do, I'll remember your kind offer, sir. John,
show this gentleman down stairs--and, of course, as Mr. Hobnell likes
being thrashed, we can have no objection, sir, and we shall be very
happy to accommodate him, whenever he comes our way."
And with this, the young fellow bowed the elder gentleman out of the
room, and sate down and wrote a note off to Pen, in which he informed
the latter, that Mr. Hobnell was not disposed to fight, and proposed
to put up with the caning which Pen had administered to him.