A CHAPTER OF CONVERSATIONS.
[Illustration]
Every day, after the entertainments at Grosvenor-place and Greenwich,
of which we have seen Major Pendennis partake, the worthy gentleman's
friendship and cordiality for the Clavering family seemed to increase.
His calls were frequent; his attentions to the lady of the house
unremitting. An old man about town, he had the good fortune to be
received in many houses, at which a lady of Lady Clavering's
distinction ought also to be seen. Would her ladyship not like to be
present at the grand entertainment at Gaunt House? There was to be a
very pretty breakfast ball at Viscount Marrowfat's, at Fulham. Every
body was to be there (including august personages of the highest
rank), and there was to be a Watteau quadrille, in which Miss Amory
would surely look charming. To these and other amusements the
obsequious old gentleman kindly offered to conduct Lady Clavering, and
was also ready to make himself useful to the baronet in any way
agreeable to the latter.
In spite of his present station and fortune, the world persisted in
looking rather coldly upon Clavering, and strange suspicious rumors
followed him about. He was blackballed at two clubs in succession. In
the house of commons, he only conversed with a few of the most
disreputable members of that famous body, having a happy knack of
choosing bad society, and adapting himself naturally to it, as other
people do to the company of their betters. To name all the senators
with whom Clavering consorted, would be invidious. We may mention
only a few. There was Captain Raff, the honorable member for Epsom,
who retired after the last Goodwood races, having accepted, as Mr.
Hotspur, the whip of the party, said, a mission to the Levant; there
was Hustingson, the patriotic member for Islington, whose voice is
never heard now denunciating corruption, since his appointment to the
Governorship of Coventry Island; there was Bob Freeny, of the
Booterstown Freenys, who is a dead shot, and of whom we therefore wish
to speak with every respect; and of all these gentlemen, with whom in
the course of his professional duty Mr. Hotspur had to confer, there
was none for whom he had a more thorough contempt and dislike than for
Sir Francis Clavering, the representative of an ancient race, who had
sat for their own borough of Clavering time out of mind in the house.
"If that man is wanted for a division," Hotspur said, "ten to one he
is to be found in a hell. He was educated in the Fleet, and he has not
heard the end of Newgate yet, take my word for it. He'll muddle away
the Begum's fortune at thimble-rig, be caught picking pockets, and
finish on board the hulks." And if the high-born Hotspur, with such an
opinion of Clavering, could yet from professional reasons be civil to
him, why should not Major Pendennis also have reasons of his own for
being attentive to this unlucky gentleman?
"He has a very good cellar and a very good cook," the major said; "as
long as he is silent he is not offensive, and he very seldom speaks.
If he chooses to frequent gambling-tables, and lose his money to
blacklegs, what matters to me? Don't look too curiously into any man's
affairs, Pen, my boy; every fellow has some cupboard in his house,
begad, which he would not like you and me to peep into. Why should we
try, when the rest of the house is open to us? And a devilish good
house, too, as you and I know. And if the man of the family is not all
one could wish, the women are excellent. The Begum is not
over-refined, but as kind a woman as ever lived, and devilish clever
too; and as for the little Blanche, you know my opinion about her, you
rogue; you know my belief is that she is sweet on you, and would have
you for the asking. But you are growing such a great man, that I
suppose you won't be content under a duke's daughter--Hey, sir? I
recommend you to ask one of them, and try."
Perhaps Pen was somewhat intoxicated by his success in the world; and
it may also have entered into the young man's mind (his uncle's
perpetual hints serving not a little to encourage the notion) that
Miss Amory was tolerably well disposed to renew the little flirtation
which had been carried on in the early days of both of them, by the
banks of the rural Brawl. But he was little disposed to marriage, he
said, at that moment, and, adopting some of his uncle's worldly tone,
spoke rather contemptuously of the institution, and in favor of a
bachelor life.
"You are very happy, sir," said he, "and you get on very well alone,
and so do I. With a wife at my side, I should lose my place in
society; and I don't, for my part, much fancy retiring into the
country with a Mrs. Pendennis; or taking my wife into lodgings to be
waited upon by the servant-of-all-work. The period of my little
illusions is over. You cured me of my first love, who certainly was
a fool, and would have had a fool for her husband, and a very sulky,
discontented husband, too, if she had taken me. We young fellows live
fast, sir; and I feel as old at five-and-twenty as many of the old
fo--, the old bachelors--whom I see in the bay-window at Bays's. Don't
look offended, I only mean that I am _blasé_ about love matters, and
that I could no more fan myself into a flame for Miss Amory now, than
I could adore Lady Mirabel over again. I wish I could; I rather like
old Mirabel for his infatuation about her, and think his passion is
the most respectable part of his life."
"Sir Charles Mirabel was always a theatrical man, sir," the major
said, annoyed that his nephew should speak flippantly of any person of
Sir Charles's rank and station. "He has been occupied with theatricals
since his early days. He acted at Carlton House when he was page to
the prince; he has been mixed up with that sort of thing; he could
afford to marry whom he chooses; and Lady Mirabel is a most
respectable woman, received every where--every where, mind. The
Duchess of Connaught receives her, Lady Rockminster receives her--it
doesn't become young fellows to speak lightly of people in that
station. There's not a more respectable woman in England than Lady
Mirabel: and the old fogies, as you call them at Bays's, are some of
the first gentlemen in England, of whom you youngsters had best learn
a little manners, and a little breeding, and a little modesty." And
the major began to think that Pen was growing exceedingly pert and
conceited, and that the world made a great deal too much of him.
The major's anger amused Pen. He studied his uncle's peculiarities
with a constant relish, and was always in a good humor with his
worldly old Mentor. "I am a youngster of fifteen years standing, sir,"
he said, adroitly, "and if you think that _we_ are disrespectful, you
should see those of the present generation. A protégé of yours came to
breakfast with me the other day. You told me to ask him, and I did it
to please you. We had a day's sights together, and dined at the club,
and went to the play. He said the wine at the Polyanthus was not so
good as Ellis's wine at Richmond, smoked Warrington's cavendish after
breakfast, and when I gave him a sovereign as a farewell token, said
he had plenty of them, but would take it to show he wasn't proud."
"Did he?--did you ask young Clavering?" cried the major, appeased at
once, "fine boy, rather wild, but a fine boy--parents like that sort
of attention, and you can't do better than pay it to our worthy
friends of Grosvenor-place. And so you took him to the play and tipped
him? That was right, sir, that was right;" with which Mentor quitted
Telemachus, thinking that the young men were not so very bad, and that
he should make something of that fellow yet.
As Master Clavering grew into years and stature, he became too strong
for the authority of his fond parents and governess; and rather
governed them than permitted himself to be led by their orders. With
his papa he was silent and sulky, seldom making his appearance,
however, in the neighborhood of that gentleman; with his mamma he
roared and fought when any contest between them arose as to the
gratification of his appetite, or other wish of his heart; and in his
disputes with his governess over his book, he kicked that quiet
creature's shins so fiercely, that she was entirely overmastered and
subdued by him. And he would have so treated his sister Blanche, too,
and did on one or two occasions attempt to prevail over her; but she
showed an immense resolution and spirit on her part, and boxed his
ears so soundly, that he forebore from molesting Miss Amory, as he did
the governess and his mamma, and his mamma's maid.
At length, when the family came to London, Sir Francis gave forth his
opinion that "the little beggar had best be sent to school."
Accordingly, the young son and heir of the house of Clavering was
dispatched to the Rev. Otto Rose's establishment at Twickenham, where
young noblemen and gentlemen were received preparatory to their
introduction to the great English public schools.
It is not our intention to follow Master Clavering in his scholastic
career; the paths to the Temple of learning were made more easy to him
than they were to some of us of earlier generations. He advanced
toward that fane in a carriage-and-four, so to speak, and might halt
and take refreshments almost whenever he pleased. He wore varnished
boots from the earliest period of youth, and had cambric handkerchiefs
and lemon-colored kid gloves of the smallest size ever manufactured by
Privat. They dressed regularly at Mr. Rose's to come down to dinner;
the young gentlemen had shawl dressing-gowns, fires in their bedrooms;
horse and carriage exercise occasionally, and oil for their hair.
Corporal punishment was altogether dispensed with by the principal,
who thought that moral discipline was entirely sufficient to lead
youth; and the boys were so rapidly advanced in many branches of
learning, that they acquired the art of drinking spirits and smoking
cigars, even before they were old enough to enter a public school.
Young Frank Clavering stole his father's Havannas, and conveyed them
to school, or smoked them in the stables, at a surprisingly early
period of life, and at ten years old drank his Champagne almost as
stoutly as any whiskered cornet of dragoons could do.
When this interesting youth came home for his vacations, Major
Pendennis was as laboriously civil and gracious to him as he was to
the rest of the family; although the boy had rather a contempt for old
Wigsby, as the major was denominated, mimicked him behind his back, as
the polite major bowed and smirked with Lady Clavering or Miss Amory;
and drew rude caricatures, such as are designed by ingenious youths,
in which the major's wig, his nose, his tie, &c., were represented
with artless exaggeration. Untiring in his efforts to be agreeable,
the major wished that Pen, too, should take particular notice of this
child; incited Arthur to invite him to his chambers, to give him a
dinner at the club, to take him to Madame Tussaud's, the Tower, the
play, and so forth, and to tip him, as the phrase is, at the end of
the day's pleasures. Arthur, who was good-natured and fond of
children, went through all these ceremonies one day; had the boy to
breakfast at the Temple, where he made the most contemptuous remarks
regarding the furniture, the crockery, and the tattered state of
Warrington's dressing-gown; and smoked a short pipe, and recounted the
history of a fight between Tuffy and Long Biggings, at Rose's, greatly
to the edification of the two gentlemen his hosts.
As the major rightly predicted, Lady Clavering was very grateful for
Arthur's attention to the boy; more grateful than the lad himself, who
took attentions as a matter of course, and very likely had more
sovereigns in his pocket than poor Pen, who generously gave him one of
his own slender stock of those coins.
The major, with the sharp eyes with which nature endowed him, and with
the glasses of age and experience, watched this boy, and surveyed his
position in the family without seeming to be rudely curious about
their affairs. But, as a country neighbor, one who had many family
obligations to the Claverings, an old man of the world, he took
occasion to find out what Lady Clavering's means were, how her capital
was disposed, and what the boy was to inherit. And setting himself to
work, for what purposes will appear, no doubt, ulteriorly, he soon had
got a pretty accurate knowledge of Lady Clavering's affairs and
fortune, and of the prospects of her daughter and son. The daughter
was to have but a slender provision; the bulk of the property was, as
before has been said, to go to the son, his father did not care for
him or any body else, his mother was dotingly fond of him as the child
of her latter days, his sister disliked him. Such may be stated, in
round numbers, to be the result of the information which Major
Pendennis got. "Ah! my dear madam," he would say, patting the head of
the boy, "this boy may wear a baron's coronet on his head on some
future coronation, if matters are but managed rightly, and if Sir
Francis Clavering would but play his cards well."
At this the widow Amory heaved a deep sigh. "He plays only too much of
his cards, major, I'm afraid," she said. The major owned that he knew
as much; did not disguise that he had heard of Sir Francis Clavering's
unfortunate propensity to play; pitied Lady Clavering sincerely; but
spoke with such genuine sentiment and sense, that her ladyship, glad
to find a person of experience to whom she could confide her grief and
her condition, talked about them pretty unreservedly to Major
Pendennis, and was eager to have his advice and consolation. Major
Pendennis became the Begum's confidante and house-friend, and as a
mother, a wife, and a capitalist, she consulted him.
He gave her to understand (showing at the same time a great deal of
respectful sympathy) that he was acquainted with some of the
circumstances of her first unfortunate marriage, and with even the
person of her late husband, whom he remembered in Calcutta--when she
was living in seclusion with her father. The poor lady, with tears of
shame more than of grief in her eyes, told her version of her story.
Going back a child to India after two years at a European school, she
had met Amory, and foolishly married him. "O, you don't know how
miserable that man made me," she said, "or what a life I passed
between him and my father. Before I saw him I had never seen a man
except my father's clerks and native servants. You know we didn't go
into society in India on account of--" ("I know," said Major Pendennis,
with a bow). "I was a wild romantic child, my head was full of novels
which I'd read at school--I listened to his wild stories and adventures,
for he was a daring fellow, and I thought he talked beautifully of those
calm nights on the passage out, when he used to... Well, I married him,
and was wretched from that day--wretched with my father, whose character
you know, Major Pendennis, and I won't speak of: but he wasn't a good
man, sir--neither to my poor mother, nor to me, except that he left me
his money--nor to no one else that I ever heard of: and he didn't do
many kind actions in his lifetime, I'm afraid. And as for Amory he was
almost worse; he was a spendthrift, when my father was close: he drank
dreadfully, and was furious when in that way. He wasn't in any way a
good or a faithful husband to me, Major Pendennis; and if he'd died in
the jail before his trial, instead of afterward, he would have saved
me a deal of shame and unhappiness since, sir." Lady Clavering added:
"For perhaps I should not have married at all if I had not been so
anxious to change his horrid name, and I have not been happy in my
second husband, as I suppose you know, sir. Ah, Major Pendennis, I've
got money to be sure, and I'm a lady, and people fancy I'm very happy,
but I ain't. We all have our cares, and griefs, and troubles: and
many's the day that I sit down to one of my grand dinners with an
aching heart, and many a night do I lay awake on my fine bed, a great
deal more unhappy than the maid that makes it. For I'm not a happy
woman, major, for all the world says; and envies the Begum her
diamonds, and carriages, and the great company that comes to my house.
I'm not happy in my husband; I'm not happy in my daughter. She ain't a
good girl like that dear Laura Bell at Fairoaks. She's cost me many a
tear though you don't see 'em; and she sneers at her mother because I
haven't had learning and that. How should I? I was brought up among
natives till I was twelve, and went back to India when I was fourteen.
Ah, major I should have been a good woman if I had had a good husband.
And now I must go up-stairs and wipe my eyes, for they're red with
cryin'. And Lady Rockminster's a-comin, and we're goin to 'ave a drive
in the Park. And when Lady Rockminster made her appearance, there was
not a trace of tears or vexation on Lady Clavering's face, but she was
full of spirits, and bounced out with her blunders and talk, and
murdered the king's English, with the utmost liveliness and
good humor.
[Illustration]
"Begad, she is not such a bad woman!" the major thought within
himself. "She is not refined, certainly, and calls 'Apollo' 'Apoller;'
but she has some heart, and I like that sort of thing, and a devilish
deal of money, too. Three stars in India Stock to her name, begad!
which that young cub is to have--is he?" And he thought how he should
like to see a little of the money transferred to Miss Blanche, and,
better still, one of those stars shining in the name of Mr. Arthur
Pendennis.
Still bent upon pursuing his schemes, whatsoever they might be, the
old negotiator took the privilege of his intimacy and age, to talk in
a kindly and fatherly manner to Miss Blanche, when he found occasion
to see her alone. He came in so frequently at luncheon-time, and
became so familiar with the ladies, that they did not even hesitate to
quarrel before him: and Lady Clavering, whose tongue was loud, and
temper brusk, had many a battle with the Sylphide in the family
friend's presence. Blanche's wit seldom failed to have the mastery in
these encounters, and the keen barbs of her arrows drove her adversary
discomfited away. "I am an old fellow," the major said; "I have
nothing to do in life. I have my eyes open. I keep good counsel. I am
the friend of both of you; and if you choose to quarrel before me,
why I shan't tell any one. But you are two good people, and I intend
to make it up between you. I have between lots of people--husbands and
wives, fathers and sons, daughters and mammas, before this. I like it;
I've nothing else to do."
One day, then, the old diplomatist entered Lady Clavering's drawing-room,
just as the latter quitted it, evidently in a high state of
indignation, and ran past him up the stairs to her own apartments.
"She couldn't speak to him now," she said; "she was a great deal too
angry with that--that--that little, wicked"--anger choked the rest of
the words, or prevented their utterance until Lady Clavering had
passed out of hearing.
"My dear, good Miss Amory," the major said, entering the drawing-room,
"I see what is happening. You and mamma have been disagreeing.
Mothers and daughters disagree in the best families. It was but last
week that I healed up a quarrel between Lady Clapperton and her
daughter Lady Claudia. Lady Lear and her eldest daughter have not
spoken for fourteen years. Kinder and more worthy people than these I
never knew in the whole course of my life; for every body but each
other admirable. But they can't live together: they oughtn't to live
together: and I wish, my dear creature, with all my soul, that I could
see you with an establishment of your own--for there is no woman in
London who could conduct one better--with your own establishment,
making your own home happy."
"I am not very happy in this one," said the Sylphide; "and the
stupidity of mamma is enough to provoke a saint."
"Precisely so; you are not suited to one another. Your mother
committed one fault in early life--or was it Nature, my dear, in your
case?--she ought not to have educated you. You ought not to have been
bred up to become the refined and intellectual being you are,
surrounded, as I own you are, by those who have not your genius or
your refinement. Your place would be to lead in the most brilliant
circles, not to follow, and take a second place in any society. I have
watched you, Miss Amory: you are ambitious; and your proper sphere is
command. You ought to shine; and you never can in this house, I know
it. I hope I shall see you in another and a happier one, some day, and
the mistress of it."
The Sylphide shrugged her lily shoulders with a look of scorn "Where
is the prince, and where is the palace, Major Pendennis?" she said. "I
am ready. But there is no romance in the world now, no real
affection."
"No, indeed," said the major, with the most sentimental and simple air
which he could muster.
"Not that I know any thing about it," said Blanche, casting her eyes
down, "except what I have read in novels."
"Of course not," Major Pendennis cried; "how should you, my dear young
lady? and novels ain't true, as you remark admirably, and there is no
romance left in the world. Begad, I wish I was a young fellow, like my
nephew." "And what," continued Miss Amory, musing, "what are the men
whom we see about at the balls every night--dancing guardsmen,
penniless treasury clerks--boobies! If I had my brother's fortune, I
might have such an establishment as you promise me--but with my name,
and with my little means, what am I to look to? A country parson, or a
barrister in a street near Russell-square, or a captain in a
dragoon-regiment, who will take lodgings for me, and come home from
the mess tipsy and smelling of smoke like Sir Francis Clavering. That
is how we girls are destined to end life. O Major Pendennis, I am sick
of London, and of balls, and of young dandies with their chin-tips,
and of the insolent great ladies who know us one day and cut us the
next--and of the world altogether. I should like to leave it and to go
into a convent, that I should. I shall never find any body to
understand me. And I live here as much alone in my family and in the
world, as if I were in a cell locked up for ever. I wish there were
Sisters of Charity here, and that I could be one, and catch the
plague, and die of it--I wish to quit the world. I am not very old:
but I am tired, I have suffered so much--I've been so
disillusionated--I'm weary, I'm weary--O that the Angel of Death would
come and beckon me away!"
This speech may be interpreted as follows. A few nights since a great
lady, Lady Flamingo, had cut Miss Amory and Lady Clavering. She was
quite mad because she could not get an invitation to Lady Drum's ball:
it was the end of the season and nobody had proposed to her: she had
made no sensation at all, she who was so much cleverer than any girl
of the year, and of the young ladies forming her special circle. Dora
who had but five thousand pounds, Flora who had nothing, and Leonora
who had red hair, were going to be married, and nobody had come for
Blanche Amory.
"You judge wisely about the world, and about your position, my dear
Miss Blanche," the major said. "The prince don't marry nowadays, as
you say: unless the princess has a doosid deal of money in the funds,
or is a lady of his own rank. The young folks of the great families
marry into the great families: if they haven't fortune they have each
other's shoulders, to push on in the world, which is pretty nearly as
good. A girl with your fortune can scarcely hope for a great match:
but a girl with your genius and your admirable tact and fine manners,
with a clever husband by her side, may make _any_ place for herself in
the world. We are grown doosid republican. Talent ranks with birth and
wealth now, begad: and a clever man with a clever wife, may take any
place they please."
Miss Amory did not of course in the least understand what Major
Pendennis meant. Perhaps she thought over circumstances in her mind,
and asked herself, could he be a negotiator for a former suitor of
hers, and could he mean Pen? No, it was impossible; he had been civil,
but nothing more. So she said, laughing, "Who is the clever man, and
when will you bring him to me, Major Pendennis? I am dying to see
him." At this moment a servant threw open the door, and announced
Mr. Henry Foker: at which name, and at the appearance of our friend
both the lady and the gentleman burst out laughing.
"That is not the man," Major Pendennis said. "He is engaged to his
cousin, Lord Gravesend's daughter. Good-by, my dear Miss Amory."
Was Pen growing worldly, and should a man not get the experience of
the world and lay it to his account? "He felt, for his part," as he
said, "that he was growing very old very soon. How this town forms and
changes us," he said once to Warrington. Each had come in from his
night's amusement; and Pen was smoking his pipe, and recounting, as
his habit was, to his friend the observations and adventures of the
evening just past. "How I am changed," he said, "from the simpleton
boy at Fairoaks, who was fit to break his heart about his first love?
Lady Mirabel had a reception to-night, and was as grave and collected
as if she had been born a duchess, and had never seen a trap-door in
her life. She gave me the honor of a conversation, and patronized me
about Walter Lorraine, quite kindly."
"What condescension," broke in Warrington.
"Wasn't it?" Pen said, simply; at which the other burst out laughing
according to his wont. "Is it possible," he said, "that any body
should think of patronizing the eminent author of Walter Lorraine?"
"You laugh at both of us," Pen said, blushing a little: "I was coming
to that myself. She told me that she had not read the book (as indeed
I believe she never read a book in her life), but that Lady
Rockminster had, and that the Duchess of Connaught pronounced it to be
very clever. In that case, I said I should die happy, for that to
please those two ladies was in fact the great aim of my existence, and
having their approbation, of course I need look for no other. Lady
Mirabel looked at me solemnly out of her fine eyes, and said, 'O
indeed,' as if she understood me, and then she asked me whether I went
to the duchess's Thursdays; and when I said no, hoped she should see
me there, and that I must try and get there, every body went there
--every body who was in society: and then we talked of the new
embassador from Timbuctoo, and how he was better than the old one; and
how Lady Mary Billington was going to marry a clergyman quite below
her in rank; and how Lord and Lady Ringdove had fallen out three
months after their marriage about Tom Pouter of the Blues, Lady
Ringdove's cousin, and so forth. From the gravity of that woman you
would have fancied she had been born in a palace, and lived all the
seasons of her life in Belgrave-square."
"And you, I suppose you took your part in the conversation pretty
well, as the descendant of the earl your father, and the heir of
Fairoaks Castle?" Warrington said. "Yes, I remember reading of the
festivities which occurred when you came of age. The countess gave a
brilliant tea soirée to the neighboring nobility; and the tenantry
were regaled in the kitchen with a leg of mutton and a quart of ale.
The remains of the banquet were distributed among the poor of the
village, and the entrance to the park was illuminated until old John
put the candle out on retiring to rest at his usual hour."
[Illustration]
"My mother is not a countess," said Pen, "though she has very good
blood in her veins, too; but commoner as she is, I have never met a
peeress who was more than her peer, Mr. George; and if you will come
to Fairoaks Castle you shall judge for yourself of her and of my
cousin too. They are not so witty as the London women, but they
certainly are as well bred. The thoughts of women in the country are
turned to other objects than those which occupy your London ladies. In
the country a woman has her household and her poor, her long calm days
and long calm evenings."
"Devilish long," Warrington said, "and a great deal too calm; I've
tried 'em." "The monotony of that existence must be to a certain
degree melancholy--like the tune of a long ballad; and its harmony
grave and gentle, sad and tender: it would be unendurable else. The
loneliness of women in the country makes them of necessity soft and
sentimental. Leading a life of calm duty, constant routine, mystic
reverie--a sort of nuns at large--too much gayety or laughter would
jar upon their almost sacred quiet, and would be as out of place there
as in a church."
"Where you go to sleep over the sermon," Warrington said.
"You are a professed misogynist, and hate the sex because, I suspect,
you know very little about them," Mr. Pen continued, with an air of
considerable self-complacency. "If you dislike the women in the
country for being too slow, surely the London women ought to be fast
enough for you. The pace of London life is enormous: how do people
last at it, I wonder--male and female? Take a woman of the world:
follow her course through the season; one asks how she can survive it?
or if she tumbles into a sleep at the end of August, and lies torpid
until the spring? She goes into the world every night, and sits
watching her marriageable daughters dancing till long after dawn. She
has a nursery of little ones, very likely, at home, to whom she
administers example and affection; having an eye likewise to
bread-and-milk, catechism, music and French, and roast leg of mutton
at one o'clock; she has to call upon ladies of her own station, either
domestically or in her public character, in which she sits upon
Charity Committees, or Ball Committees, or Emigration Committees, or
Queen's College Committees, and discharges I don't know what more
duties of British stateswomanship. She very likely keeps a poor
visiting list; has combinations with the clergyman about soup or
flannel, or proper religious teaching for the parish; and (if she
lives in certain districts) probably attends early church. She has the
newspapers to read, and, at least, must know what her husband's party
is about, so as to be able to talk to her neighbor at dinner; and it
is a fact that she reads every new book that comes out; for she can
talk, and very smartly and well, about them all, and you see them all
upon her drawing-room table. She has the cares of her household
besides: to make both ends meet; to make the girl's milliner's bills
appear not too dreadful to the father and paymaster of the family; to
snip off, in secret, a little extra article of expenditure here and
there, and convey it, in the shape of a bank-note, to the boys at
college or at sea; to check the encroachments of tradesmen, and
housekeepers' financial fallacies; to keep upper and lower servants
from jangling with one another, and the household in order. Add to
this, that she has a secret taste for some art or science, models in
clay, makes experiments in chemistry, or plays in private on the
violoncello,--and I say, without exaggeration, many London ladies are
doing this--and you have a character before you such as our ancestors
never heard of, and such as belongs entirely to our era and period of
civilization. Ye gods! how rapidly we live and grow! In nine months,
Mr. Paxton grows you a pine apple as large as a portmanteau, whereas a
little one, no bigger than a Dutch cheese, took three years to attain
his majority in old times; and as the race of pine-apples so is the
race of man. Hoiaper--what's the Greek for a pine-apple, Warrington?"
"Stop, for mercy's sake, stop with the English and before you come to
the Greek," Warrington cried out, laughing. "I never heard you make
such a long speech, or was aware that you had penetrated so deeply
into the female mysteries. Who taught you all this, and into whose
boudoirs and nurseries have you been peeping, while I was smoking my
pipe, and reading my book, lying on my straw bed?"
"You are on the bank, old boy, content to watch the waves tossing in
the winds, and the struggles of others at sea," Pen said. "I am in the
stream now, and, by Jove, I like it. How rapidly we go down it, hey?
--strong and feeble, old and young--the metal pitchers and the earthen
pitchers--the pretty little china boat swims gayly till the big
bruised brazen one bumps him and sends him down--eh, vogue la
galère!--you see a man sink in the race, and say good-by to him--look,
he has only dived under the other fellow's legs, and comes up shaking
his pole, and striking out ever so far ahead. Eh, vogue la galère, I
say. It's good sport, Warrington--not winning merely, but playing."
"Well, go in and win, young 'un. I'll sit and mark the game,"
Warrington said, surveying the ardent young fellow with an almost
fatherly pleasure. "A generous fellow plays for the play, a sordid one
for the stake; an old fogy sits by and smokes the pipe of
tranquillity, while Jack and Tom are pommeling each other in
the ring."
"Why don't you come in, George, and have a turn with the gloves? You
are big enough and strong enough," Pen said. "Dear old boy, you are
worth ten of me."
"You are not quite as tall as Goliath, certainly," the other answered,
with a laugh that was rough and yet tender. "And as for me, I am
disabled. I had a fatal hit in early life. I will tell you about it
some day. You may, too, meet with your master. Don't be too eager, or
too confident, or too worldly, my boy."
Was Pendennis becoming worldly, or only seeing the world, or both? and
is a man very wrong for being after all only a man? Which is the most
reasonable, and does his duty best: he who stands aloof from the
struggle of life, calmly contemplating it, or he who descends to the
ground, and takes his part in the contest? "That philosopher," Pen
said, "had held a great place among the leaders of the world, and
enjoyed to the full what it had to give of rank and riches, renown and
pleasure, who came, weary-hearted, out of it, and said that all was
vanity and vexation of spirit. Many a teacher of those whom we
reverence, and who steps out of his carriage up to his carved
cathedral place, shakes his lawn ruffles over the velvet cushion, and
cries out, that the whole struggle is an accursed one, and the works
of the world are evil. Many a conscience-striken mystic flies from it
altogether, and shuts himself out from it within convent walls (real
or spiritual), whence he can only look up to the sky, and contemplate
the heaven out of which there is no rest, and no good. But the
earth, where our feet are, is the work of the same Power as the
immeasurable blue yonder, in which the future lies into which we would
peer. Who ordered toil as the condition of life, ordered weariness,
ordered sickness, ordered poverty, failure, success--to this man a
foremost place, to the other a nameless struggle with the crowd--to
that a shameful fall, or paralyzed limb, or sudden accident--to each
some work upon the ground he stands on, until he is laid beneath it."
While they were talking, the dawn came shining through the windows of
the room, and Pen threw them open to receive the fresh morning air.
"Look, George," said he; "look and see the sun rise: he sees the
laborer on his way a-field, the work-girl plying her poor needle; the
lawyer at his desk, perhaps; the beauty smiling asleep upon her pillow
of down; or the jaded reveler reeling to bed; or the fevered patient
tossing on it; or the doctor watching by it, over the throes of the
mother for the child that is to be born into the world; to be born and
to take his part in the suffering and struggling, the tears and
laughter, the crime, remorse, love, folly, sorrow, rest."