FLIGHT AFTER DEFEAT.
[Illustration]
Every body who has the least knowledge of Heraldry and the Peerage must
be aware that the noble family of which, as we know, Helen Pendennis was
a member, bears for a crest, a nest full of little pelicans pecking at
the ensanguined bosom of a big maternal bird, which plentifully supplies
the little wretches with the nutriment on which, according to the
heraldic legend, they are supposed to be brought up. Very likely female
pelicans like so to bleed under the selfish little beaks of their young
ones: it is certain that women do. There must be some sort of pleasure,
which we men don't understand, which accompanies the pain of being
scarified, and indeed I believe some women would rather actually so
suffer than not. They like sacrificing themselves in behalf of the
object which their instinct teaches them to love. Be it for a reckless
husband, a dissipated son, a darling scapegrace of a brother, how ready
their hearts are to pour out their best treasures for the benefit of
the cherished person; and what a deal of this sort of enjoyment are we,
on our side, ready to give the soft creatures! There is scarce a man
that reads this, but has administered pleasure in this fashion to his
womankind, and treated them to the luxury of forgiving him. They don't
mind how they live themselves; but when the prodigal comes home they
make a rejoicing, and kill the fatted calf for him: and at the very
first hint that the sinner is returning, the kind angels prepare their
festival, and Mercy and Forgiveness go smiling out to welcome him. I
hope it may be so always for us all: if we have only Justice to look
to, Heaven help us!
During the latter part of Pen's residence at the University of Oxbridge,
his uncle's partiality had greatly increased for the lad. The major was
proud of Arthur, who had high spirits, frank manners, a good person,
and high gentlemanlike bearing. It pleased the old London bachelor to
see Pen, walking with the young patricians of his University, and he
(who was never known to entertain his friends, and whose stinginess had
passed into a sort of byword among some wags at the club, who envied
his many engagements, and did not choose to consider his poverty) was
charmed to give his nephew and the young lords snug little dinners
at his lodgings, and to regale them with good claret, and his very
best _bons mots_ and stories: some of which would be injured by the
repetition, for the major's manner of telling them was incomparably
neat and careful; and others, whereof the repetition would do good to
nobody. He paid his court to their parents through the young men, and to
himself, as it were, by their company. He made more than one visit to
Oxbridge, where the young fellows were amused by entertaining the old
gentleman, and gave parties and breakfasts and fetes, partly to joke
him and partly to do him honor. He plied them with his stories. He made
himself juvenile and hilarious in the company of the young lords. He
went to hear Pen, at a grand debate at the Union, crowed and cheered,
and rapped his stick in chorus with the cheers of the men, and was
astounded at the boy's eloquence and fire. He thought he had got a young
Pitt for a nephew. He had an almost paternal fondness for Pen. He wrote
to the lad letters with playful advice and the news of the town. He
bragged about Arthur at his clubs, and introduced him with pleasure into
his conversation; saying, that, Egad, the young fellows were putting
the old ones to the wall; that the lads who were coming up, young Lord
Plinlimmon, a friend of my boy, young Lord Magnus Charters, a chum of
my scapegrace, &c., would make a greater figure in the world than even
their fathers had done before them. He asked permission to bring Arthur
to a grand fete at Gaunt House; saw him with ineffable satisfaction
dancing with the sisters of the young noblemen before mentioned; and
gave himself as much trouble to procure cards of invitation for the lad
to some good houses, as if he had been a mamma with a daughter to marry,
and not an old half-pay officer in a wig. And he boasted every where of
the boy's great talents, and remarkable oratorical powers; and of the
brilliant degree he was going to take. Lord Runnymede would take him on
his embassy, or the duke would bring him in for one of his boroughs, he
wrote over and over again to Helen; who for her part was too ready to
believe any thing that any body chose to say in favor of her son.
And all this pride and affection of uncle and mother had been trampled
down by Pen's wicked extravagance and idleness! I don't envy Pen's
feelings (as the phrase is), as he thought of what he had done. He had
slept and the tortoise had won the race. He had marred at its outset
what might have been a brilliant career. He had dipped ungenerously into
a generous mother's purse; basely and recklessly spilt her little cruse.
O! it was a coward hand that could strike and rob a creature so tender.
And if Pen felt the wrong which he had done too thers, are we to suppose
that a young gentleman of his vanity did not feel still more keenly the
shame he had brought upon himself? Let us be assured that there is no
more cruel remorse than that; and no groans more piteous than those of
wounded self-love. Like Joe Miller's friend, the Senior Wrangler, who
bowed to the audience from his box at the play, because he and the king
happened to enter the theater at the same time, only with a fatuity by
no means so agreeable to himself, poor Arthur Pendennis felt perfectly
convinced that all England would remark the absence of his name from
the examination-lists, and talk about his misfortune. His wounded
tutor, his many duns, the skip and bed-maker who waited upon him, the
undergraduates of his own time and the years below him, whom he had
patronized or scorned--how could he bear to look any of them in the face
now? He rushed to his rooms, into which he shut himself, and there he
penned a letter to his tutor, full of thanks, regards, remorse, and
despair, requesting that his name might be taken off the college books,
and intimating a wish and expectation that death would speedily end the
woes of the disgraced Arthur Pendennis.
Then he slunk out scarcely knowing whither he went, but mechanically
taking the unfrequented little lanes by the backs of the colleges, until
he cleared the University precincts, and got down to the banks of the
Camisis river, now deserted, but so often alive with the boat-races, and
the crowds of cheering gownsmen, he wandered on and on, until he found
himself at some miles' distance from Oxbridge, or rather was found by
some acquaintances leaving that city.
As Pen went up a hill, a drizzling January rain beating in his face, and
his ragged gown flying behind him--for he had not divested himself of
his academical garments since the morning--a postchaise came rattling
up the road, on the box of which was seated a servant, while within,
or rather half out of the carriage window, sate a young gentleman,
smoking a cigar, and loudly encouraging the postboy. It was our young
acquaintance of Baymouth, Mr. Spavin, who had got his degree, and was
driving homeward in triumph in his yellow postchaise. He caught a sight
of the figure, madly gesticulating as he worked up the hill, and of poor
Pen's pale and ghastly face as the chaise whirled by him.
"Wo!" roared Mr. Spavin to the postboy, and the horses stopped in their
mad career, and the carriage pulled up some fifty yards before Pen. He
presently heard his own name shouted, and beheld the upper half of the
body of Mr. Spavin thrust out of the side-window of the vehicle, and
beckoning Pen vehemently toward it.
Pen stopped, hesitated--nodded his head fiercely, and pointed onward,
as if desirous that the postillion should proceed. He did not speak:
but his countenance must have looked very desperate, for young Spavin,
having stared at him with an expression of blank alarm, jumped out
of the carriage presently, ran toward Pen, holding out his hand, and
grasping Pen's, said, "I say--hullo, old boy, where are you going, and
what's the row now?"
"I'm going where I deserve to go," said Pen, with an imprecation.
"This ain't the way," said Mr. Spavin, smiling. "This is the Fenbury
road. I say, Pen, don't take on because you are plucked. It's nothing
when you are used to it. I've been plucked three times, old boy--and
after the first time I didn't care. Glad it's over, though. You'll have
better luck next time."
Pen looked at his early acquaintance--who had been plucked, who had been
rusticated, who had only, after repeated failures, learned to read and
write correctly, and who, in spite of all these drawbacks, had attained
the honor of a degree. "This man has passed," he thought, "and I have
failed!" It was almost too much for him to bear.
"Good-by, Spavin," said he; "I'm very glad you are through. Don't let me
keep you; I'm in a hurry--I'm going to town to-night."
"Gammon," said Mr. Spavin. "This ain't the way to town; this is the
Fenbury road, I tell you."
"I was just going to turn back," Pen said.
"All the coaches are full with the men going down," Spavin said. Pen
winced. "You'd not get a place for a ten-pound note. Get into my yellow;
I'll drop you at Mudford, where you have a chance of the Fenbury mail.
I'll lend you a hat and a coat; I've got lots. Come along; jump in,
old boy--go it leathers!"--and in this way Pen found himself in Mr.
Spavin's postchaise, and rode with that gentleman as far as the Ram Inn
at Mudford, fifteen miles from Oxbridge; where the Fenbury mail changed
horses, and where Pen got a place on to London.
The next day there was an immense excitement in Boniface College,
Oxbridge, where, for some time, a rumor prevailed, to the terror of
Pen's tutor and tradesmen, that Pendennis, maddened at losing his
degree, had made away with himself--a battered cap, in which his name
was almost discernible, together with a seal bearing his crest of an
eagle looking at a now extinct sun, had been found three miles on the
Fenbury road, near a mill-stream; and, for four-and-twenty hours, it was
supposed that poor Pen had flung himself into the stream, until letters
arrived from him, bearing the London post-mark.
The mail reached London at the dreary hour of five; and he hastened to
the inn at Covent Garden, at which he was accustomed to put up, where
the ever-wakeful porter admitted him, and showed him to a bed. Pen
looked hard at the man, and wondered whether Boots knew he was plucked?
When in bed he could not sleep there. He tossed about until the
appearance of the dismal London daylight, when he sprang up desperately,
and walked off to his uncle's lodgings in Bury-street; where the maid
who was scouring the steps, looked up suspiciously at him, as he came
with an unshaven face, and yesterday's linen. He thought she knew of his
mishap, too.
"Good evens! Mr. Harthur, what _as_ appened, sir?" Mr. Morgan, the
valet, asked, who had just arranged the well-brushed clothes and shiny
boots at the door of his master's bed-room, and was carrying in his wig
to the major.
"I want to see my uncle," he cried, in a ghastly voice, and flung
himself down on a chair.
Morgan backed before the pale and desperate-looking young man, with
terrified and wondering glances, and disappeared into his master's
apartment.
[Illustration]
The major put his head out of the bed-room door, as soon as he had his
wig on.
"What! examination over? Senior Wrangler, double First Class, hay?" said
the old gentleman--"I'll come directly;" and the head disappeared.
"They don't know what has happened," groaned Pen; "what will they say
when they know all?"
Pen had been standing with his back to the window, and to such a dubious
light as Bury-street enjoys of a foggy January morning, so that his
uncle could not see the expression of the young man's countenance, or
the looks of gloom and despair which even Mr. Morgan had remarked.
But when the major came out of his dressing-room, neat and radiant, and
preceded by faint odors from Delcroix's shop, from which emporium Major
Pendennis's wig and his pocket-handkerchief got their perfume, he held
out one of his hands to Pen, and was about addressing him in his cheery
high-toned voice, when he caught sight of the boy's face at length, and
dropping his hand, said, "Good God! Pen, what's the matter?"
"You'll see it in the papers, at breakfast, sir," Pen said.
"See what?"
"My name isn't there, sir."
"Hang it, why _should_ it be?" asked the major, more perplexed.
"I have lost every thing, sir," Pen groaned out; "my honor's gone; I'm
ruined irretrievably; I can't go back to Oxbridge."
"Lost your honor?" screamed out the major. "Heaven alive! you don't mean
to say you have shown the white feather?"
Pen laughed bitterly at the word feather, and repeated it. "No, it isn't
that, sir. I'm not afraid of being shot; I wish to God any body would.
I have not got my degree. I--I'm plucked, sir."
The major had heard of plucking, but in a very vague and cursory way,
and concluded that it was some ceremony performed corporally upon
rebellious University youth. "I wonder you can look me in the face after
such a disgrace, sir," he said; "I wonder you submitted to it as a
gentleman."
"I couldn't help it, sir. I did my classical papers well enough: it was
those infernal mathematics, which I have always neglected."
"Was it--was it done in public, sir?" the major said.
"What?"
"The--the plucking?" asked the guardian, looking Pen anxiously in the
face.
Pen perceived the error under which his guardian was laboring, and
in the midst of his misery the blunder caused the poor wretch a faint
smile, and served to bring down the conversation from the tragedy-key,
in which Pen had been disposed to carry it on. He explained to his uncle
that he had gone in to pass his examination and failed. On which the
major said, that though he had expected far better things of his nephew,
there was no great misfortune in this, and no dishonor, as far as he
saw, and that Pen must try again.
"_Me_ again at Oxbridge," Pen thought, "after such a humiliation as
that!" He felt that, except he went down to burn the place, he could not
enter it.
But it was when he came to tell his uncle of his debts that the other
felt surprise and anger most keenly, and broke out into speeches most
severe upon Pen, which the lad bore, as best he might, without flinching.
He had determined to make a clean breast, and had formed a full, true,
and complete list of all his bills and liabilities at the University,
and in London, They consisted of various items, such as
London Tailor.
Oxbridge do.
Haberdasher, for shirts and gloves.
Jeweler.
College Cook.
Crump, for desserts.
Bootmaker.
Wine Merchant in London.
Oxbridge do.
Bill for horses.
Printseller.
Books.
Binding.
Hairdresser and Perfumery.
Hotel Bill in London.
Sundries.
All which items the reader may fill in at his pleasure--such accounts
have been inspected by the parents of many University youth--and it
appeared that Mr. Pen's bills in all amounted to about seven hundred
pounds; and, furthermore, it was calculated that he had had more than
twice that sum of ready money during his stay at Oxbridge. This sum he
had spent, and for it had to show--what?
"You need not press a man who is down, sir," Pen said to his uncle
gloomily. "I know very well, sir, how wicked and idle I have been. My
mother won't like to see me dishonored, sir," he continued, with his
voice failing; "and I know she will pay these accounts. But I shall ask
her for no more money."
"As you like, sir," the major said. "You are of age, and my hands are
washed of your affairs. But you can't live without money, and have no
means of making it that I see, though you have a fine talent in spending
it, and it is my belief that you will proceed as you have begun, and
ruin your mother before you are five years older.--Good morning; it is
time for me to go to breakfast. My engagements won't permit me to see
you much during the time that you stay in London. I presume that you
will acquaint your mother with the news which you have just conveyed
to me."
And pulling on his hat, and trembling in his limbs somewhat, Major
Pendennis walked out of his lodgings before his nephew, and went
ruefully off to take his accustomed corner at the club. He saw the
Oxbridge examination-lists in the morning papers, and read over the
names, not understanding the business, with mournful accuracy. He
consulted various old fogies of his acquaintance, in the course of the
day, at his clubs; Wenham, a dean, various civilians; and, as it is
called, "took their opinion," showing to some of them the amount of his
nephew's debts, which he had dotted down on the back of a card, and
asking what was to be done, and whether such debts were not monstrous,
preposterous? What was to be done?--There was nothing for it but to pay.
Wenham and the others told the major of young men who owed twice as
much--five times as much--as Arthur, and with no means at all to pay.
The consultations, and calculations, and opinions, comforted the major
somewhat. After all, _he_ was not to pay.
But he thought bitterly of the many plans he had formed to make a man of
his nephew, of the sacrifices which he had made, and of the manner in
which he was disappointed. And he wrote off a letter to Doctor Portman,
informing him of the direful events which had taken place, and begging
the doctor to break them to Helen. For the orthodox old gentleman,
preserved the regular routine in all things, and was of opinion that it
was more correct to "break" a piece of bad news to a person by means of
a (possibly maladroit and unfeeling) messenger, than to convey it simply
to its destination by a note. So the major wrote to Doctor Portman, and
then went out to dinner, one of the saddest men in any London
dining-room that day.
Pen, too, wrote his letter, and skulked about London streets for
the rest of the day, fancying that every body was looking at him and
whispering to his neighbor, "That is Pendennis of Boniface, who was
plucked yesterday." His letter to his mother was full of tenderness and
remorse: he wept the bitterest tears over it--and the repentance and
passion soothed him to some degree.
He saw a party of roaring young blades from Oxbridge in the coffee-room
of his hotel, and slunk away from them, and paced the streets. He
remembers, he says, the prints which he saw hanging up at Ackermann's
window in the rain, and a book which he read at a stall near the Temple:
at night he went to the pit of the play, and saw Miss Fotheringay, but
he doesn't in the least recollect in what piece.
On the second day there came a kind letter from his tutor, containing
many grave and appropriate remarks upon the event which had befallen
him, but strongly urging Pen not to take his name off the University
books, and to retrieve a disaster which, every body knew, was owing
to his own carelessness alone, and which he might repair by a month's
application. He said he had ordered Pen's skip to pack up some trunks of
the young gentleman's wardrobe, which duly arrived, with fresh copies of
all Pen's bills laid on the top.
* * * * *
On the third day there arrived a letter from home; which Pen read in
his bed-room, and the result of which was that he fell down on his
knees, with his head in the bed-clothes, and there prayed out his heart,
and humbled himself; and having gone down stairs and eaten an immense
breakfast, he sallied forth and took his place at the Bull and Mouth,
Piccadilly, by the Chatteries coach for that evening.