A History of Pendennis Volume I Part 20

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 p.r.o.nounced 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.

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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 chastis.e.m.e.nt 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 princ.i.p.al 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.

CHAPTER XVI.

MORE STORMS IN THE PUDDLE.

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Pen's conduct in this business of course was soon made public and angered his friend Doctor Portman, not a little: while it only amused Major Pendennis. As for the good Mrs. Pendennis, she was almost distracted when she heard of the squabble, and of Pen's unchristian behavior. All sorts of wretchedness, discomfort, crime, annoyance, seemed to come out of this transaction in which the luckless boy had engaged; and she longed more than ever to see him out of Chatteries for a while--any where removed from the woman who had brought him into so much trouble.

Pen, when remonstrated with by this fond parent, and angrily rebuked by the doctor for his violence and ferocious intentions, took the matter _au grand serieux_, with the happy conceit and gravity of youth: said that he himself was very sorry for the affair, that the insult had come upon him without the slightest provocation on his part; that he would permit no man to insult him upon this head without vindicating his own honor, and appealing with great dignity to his uncle, asked whether he could have acted otherwise as a gentleman, than as he did in resenting the outrage offered to him, and in offering satisfaction to the person chastised?

"_Vous allez trop vite_, my good sir," said the uncle, rather puzzled, for he had been indoctrinating his nephew with some of his own notions upon the point of honor--old-world notions savoring of the camp and pistol a great deal more than our soberer opinions of the present day--"between men of the world I don't say; but between two school-boys, this sort of thing is ridiculous, my dear boy--perfectly ridiculous."

"It is extremely wicked, and unlike my son," said Mrs. Pendennis, with tears in her eyes; and bewildered with the obstinacy of the boy.

Pen kissed her, and said with great pomposity, "Women, dear mother, don't understand these matters--I put myself into Foker's hands--I had no other course to pursue."

Major Pendennis grinned and shrugged his shoulders. The young ones were certainly making great progress, he thought. Mrs. Pendennis declared that that Foker was a wicked horrid little wretch, and was sure that he would lead her dear boy into mischief, if Pen went to the same college with him. "I have a great mind not to let him go at all," she said: and only that she remembered that the lad's father had always destined him for the college in which he had had his own brief education, very likely the fond mother would have put a veto upon his going to the University.

That he was to go, and at the next October term, had been arranged between all the authorities who presided over the lad's welfare. Foker had promised to introduce him to the right set; and Major Pendennis laid great store upon Pen's introduction into college life and society by this admirable young gentleman. "Mr. Foker knows the very best young men now at the University," the major said, "and Pen will form acquaintances there who will be of the greatest advantage through life to him. The young Marquis of Plinlimmon is there, eldest son of the Duke of Saint David's--Lord Magnus Charters is there, Lord Runnymede's son; and a first cousin of Mr. Foker (Lady Runnymede, my dear, was Lady Agatha Milton, you of course remember), Lady Agnes will certainly invite him to Logwood; and far from being alarmed at his intimacy with her son, who is a singular and humorous, but most prudent and amiable young man, to whom, I am sure, we are under every obligation for his admirable conduct in the affair of the Fotheringay marriage, I look upon it as one of the very luckiest things which could have happened to Pen, that he should have formed an intimacy with this most amusing young gentleman."

Helen sighed, she supposed the major knew best. Mr. Foker had been very kind in the wretched business with Miss Costigan, certainly, and she was grateful to him. But she could not feel otherwise than a dim presentiment of evil; and all these quarrels, and riots, and worldliness, scared her about the fate of her boy.

Doctor Portman was decidedly of opinion that Pen should go to college.

He hoped the lad would read, and have a moderate indulgence of the best society too. He was of opinion that Pen would distinguish himself: Smirke spoke very highly of his proficiency: the doctor himself had heard him construe, and thought he acquitted himself remarkably well.

That he should go out of Chatteries was a great point, at any rate, and Pen, who was distracted from his private grief by the various rows and troubles which had risen round about him, gloomily said he would obey.

There were a.s.sizes, races, and the entertainments, and the flux of company consequent upon them, at Chatteries, during a part of the months of August and September, and Miss Fotheringay still continued to act, and take farewell of the audiences at the Chatteries Theater during that time. n.o.body seemed to be particularly affected by her presence, or her announced departure, except those persons whom we have named; nor could the polite county folks who had houses in London, and very likely admired the Fotheringay prodigiously in the capital, when they had been taught to do so by the fas.h.i.+on which set in in her favor find any thing remarkable in the actress performing on the little Chatteries boards.

Many a genius and many a quack, for that matter, has met with a similar fate before and since Miss Costigan's time. This honest woman meanwhile bore up against the public neglect, and any other crosses or vexations which she might have in life, with her usual equanimity; and ate, drank, acted, slept, with that regularity and comfort which belongs to people of her temperament. What a deal of grief, care, and other harmful excitement, does a healthy dullness and cheerful insensibility avoid!

Nor do I mean to say that Virtue is not Virtue because it is never tempted to go astray; only that dullness is a much finer gift than we give it credit for being, and that some people are very lucky whom Nature has endowed with a good store of that great anodyne.

Pen used to go drearily in and out from the play at Chatteries during this season, and pretty much according to his fancy. His proceedings tortured his mother not a little, and her anxiety would have led her often to interfere, had not the major constantly checked, and at the same time encouraged her; for the wily man of the world fancied he saw that a favorable turn had occurred in Pen's malady. It was the violent efflux of versification, among other symptoms, which gave Pen's guardian and physician satisfaction. He might be heard spouting verses in the shrubbery walks, or muttering them between his teeth as he sat with the home party of evenings. One day prowling about the house in Pen's absence, the major found a great book full of verses in the lad's study.

They were in English, and in Latin; quotations from the cla.s.sic authors were given in the scholastic manner in the foot-notes. He can't be very bad, wisely thought the Pall Mall Philosopher: and he made Pen's mother remark (not, perhaps, without a secret feeling of disappointment, for she loved romance like other soft women), that the young gentleman during the last fortnight came home quite hungry to dinner at night, and also showed a very decent appet.i.te at the breakfast table in the morning. "Gad, I wish I could," said the major, thinking ruefully of his dinner pills. "The boy begins to sleep well, depend upon that." It was cruel, but it was true.

Having no other soul to confide in--for he could not speak to his mother of his loves and disappointments--his uncle treated them in a scornful and worldly tone, which, though carefully guarded and polite, yet jarred greatly on the feelings of Mr. Pen--and Foker was much too coa.r.s.e to appreciate those refined sentimental secrets--the lad's friends.h.i.+p for the curate redoubled, or rather, he was never tired of having Smirke for a listener on that one subject. What is a lover without a confidant?

Pen employed Mr. Smirke, as Corydon does the elm-tree, to cut out his mistress's name upon. He made him echo with the name of the beautiful Amaryllis. When men have left off playing the tune, they do not care much for the pipe: but Pen thought he had a great friends.h.i.+p for Smirke, because he could sigh out his loves and griefs into his tutor's ears; and Smirke had his own reasons for always being ready at the lad's call.

Pen's affection gushed out in a mult.i.tude of sonnets to the friend of his heart, as he styled the curate, which the other received with great sympathy. He plied Smirke with Latin Sapphics and Alcaics. The love-songs multiplied under his fluent pen; and Smirke declared and believed that they were beautiful. On the other hand, Pen expressed a boundless grat.i.tude to think that Heaven should have sent him such a friend at such a moment. He presented his tutor with his best bound books, and his gold guard chain, and wanted him to take his double-barreled gun. He went into Chatteries and got a gold pencil-case on credit (for he had no money, and indeed was still in debt to Smirke for some of the Fotheringay presents), which he presented to Smirke, with an inscription indicative of his unalterable and eternal regard for the curate; who of course was pleased with every mark of the boy's attachment.

The poor curate was naturally very much dismayed at the contemplated departure of his pupil. When Arthur should go, Smirke's occupation and delight would go too. What pretext could he find for a daily visit to Fairoaks, and that kind word or glance from the lady there, which was as necessary to the curate as the frugal dinner which Madam Fribsby served him? Arthur gone, he would only be allowed to make visits like any other acquaintance: little Laura could not accommodate him by learning the catechism more than once a week: he had curled himself like ivy round Fairoaks: he pined at the thought that he must lose his hold of the place. Should he speak his mind and go down on his knees to the widow?

He thought over any indications in her behavior which flattered his hopes. She had praised his sermon three weeks before; she had thanked him exceedingly for his present of a melon, for a small dinner party which Mrs. Pendennis gave: she said she should always be grateful to him for his kindness to Arthur, and when he declared that there were no bounds to his love and affection for that dear boy, she had certainly replied in a romantic manner, indicating her own strong grat.i.tude and regard to all her son's friends. Should he speak out?--or should he delay? If he spoke and she refused him, it was awful to think that the gate of Fairoaks might be shut upon him forever--and within that door lay all the world for Mr. Smirke.

Thus, oh friendly readers, we see how every man in the world, has his own private griefs and business, by which he is more cast down or occupied than by the affairs or sorrows of any other person. While Mrs.

Pendennis is disquieting herself about losing her son and that anxious hold she has had of him, as long as he has remained in the mother's nest, whence he is about to take flight into the great world beyond--while the major's great soul chafes and frets, inwardly vexed as he thinks what great parties are going on in London, and that he might be sunning himself in the glances of dukes and d.u.c.h.esses, but for those cursed affairs which keep him in a wretched little country hole--while Pen is tossing between his pa.s.sion and a more agreeable sensation, unacknowledged yet, but swaying him considerably, namely, his longing to see the world--Mr. Smirke has a private care watching at his bed side, and sitting behind him on his pony; and is no more satisfied than the rest of us. How lonely we are in the world; how selfish and secret, every body! You and your wife have pressed the same pillow for forty years and fancy yourselves united.--Pshaw, does she cry out when you have the gout, or do you lie awake when she has the tooth-ache? Your artless daughter, seemingly all innocence, and devoted to her mamma and her piano lesson, is thinking of neither, but of the young lieutenant with whom she danced at the last ball--the honest frank boy just returned from school is secretly speculating upon the money you will give him, and the debts he owes the tart man. The old grandmother crooning in the corner and bound to another world within a few months, has some business or cares which are quite private and her own--very likely she is thinking of fifty years back, and that night when she made such an impression, and danced a cotillion with the captain, before your father proposed for her; or, what a silly little over-rated creature your wife is, and how absurdly you are infatuated about her--and, as for your wife--O philosophic reader, answer and say--Do you tell her all?

Ah, sir--a distinct universe walks about under your hat and under mine--all things in nature are different to each--the woman we look at has not the same features, the dish we eat from has not the same taste to the one and the other--you and I are but a pair of infinite isolations, with some fellow-islands a little more or less near to us.

Let us return, however, to the solitary Smirke.

Smirke had one confidante for his pa.s.sion--that most injudicious woman, Madame Fribsby. How she became Madame Fribsby, n.o.body knows; she had left Clavering to go to a milliner's in London as Miss Fribsby--she pretended that she had got the rank in Paris during her residence in that city. But how could the French king, were he ever so much disposed, give her any such t.i.tle? We shall not inquire into this mystery, however. Suffice to say, she went away from home a bouncing young la.s.s; she returned a rather elderly character, with a Madonna front and a melancholy countenance--bought the late Mrs. Harbottle's business for a song--took her elderly mother to live with her; was very good to the poor, was constant at church, and had the best of characters. But there was no one in all Clavering, not Mrs. Portman herself, who read so many novels as Madame Fribsby. She had plenty of time for this amus.e.m.e.nt, for, in truth, very few people besides the folks at the Rectory and Fairoaks employed her; and by a perpetual perusal of such works (which were by no means so moral or edifying in the days of which we write, as they are at present), she had got to be so absurdly sentimental, that in her eyes life was nothing but an immense love-match; and she never could see two people together, but she fancied they were dying for one another.

On the day after Mrs. Pendennis's visit to the curate, which we have recorded many pages back, Madame Fribsby settled in her mind that Mr.

Smirke must be in love with the widow, and did every thing in her power to encourage this pa.s.sion on both sides. Mrs. Pendennis she very seldom saw, indeed, except in public, and in her pew at church. That lady had very little need of millinery, or made most of her own dresses and caps; but on the rare occasions when Madame Fribsby received visits from Mrs. Pendennis, or paid her respects at Fairoaks, she never failed to entertain the widow with praises of the curate, pointing out what an angelical man he was, how gentle, how studious, how lonely; and she would wonder that no lady would take pity upon him.

Helen laughed at these sentimental remarks, and wondered that madame herself did not compa.s.sionate her lodger, and console him. Madame Fribsby shook her Madonna front, "_Mong cure a boco souffare_," she said, laying her hand on the part she designated as her cure. "_Il est more en Espang, Madame_," she said with a sigh. She was proud of her intimacy with the French language, and spoke it with more volubility than correctness. Mrs. Pendennis did not care to penetrate the secrets of this wounded heart: except to her few intimates she was a reserved and it may be a very proud woman; she looked upon her son's tutor merely as an attendant on that young prince, to be treated with respect as a clergyman, certainly, but with proper dignity as a dependent on the house of Pendennis. Nor were madame's constant allusions to the curate particularly agreeable to her. It required a very ingenious sentimental turn indeed to find out that the widow had a secret regard for Mr.

Smirke, to which pernicious error, however, Madame Fribsby persisted in holding.

Her lodger was very much more willing to talk on this subject with his soft-hearted landlady. Every time after that she praised the curate to Mrs. Pendennis, she came away from the latter with the notion that the widow herself had been praising him. "_Etre soul au monde est bien ouneeyong_," she would say, glancing up at a print of a French carbineer in a green coat and bra.s.s cuira.s.s which decorated her apartment--"Depend upon it when Master Pendennis goes to college, his ma will find herself very lonely. She is quite young yet.--You wouldn't suppose her to be five-and-twenty. _Monsieur le Cury, song cure est touchy--j'ong suis sure--Je conny cela biang--Ally, Monsieur Smirke._"

He softly blushed; he sighed; he hoped; he feared; he doubted; he sometimes yielded to the delightful idea--his pleasure was to sit in Madame Fribsby's apartment, and talk upon the subject, where, as the greater part of the conversation was carried on in French by the milliner, and her old mother was deaf, that retired old individual (who had once been a housekeeper, wife and widow of a butler in the Clavering family), could understand scarce one syllable of their talk.

Thus it was, that when Major Pendennis announced to his nephew's tutor that the young fellow would go to college in October, and that Mr.

Smirke's valuable services would no longer be needful to his pupil, for which services the major, who spoke as grandly as a lord, professed himself exceedingly grateful, and besought Mr. Smirke to command his interest in any way--thus it was, that the curate felt that the critical moment was come for him, and was racked and tortured by those severe pangs which the occasion warranted.

Madame Fribsby had, of course, taken the strongest interest in the progress of Mr. Pen's love affair with Miss Fotheringay. She had been over to Chatteries, and having seen that actress perform, had p.r.o.nounced that she was old and overrated: and had talked over Master Pen's pa.s.sion in her shop many and many a time to the half-dozen old maids, and old women in male clothes, who are to be found in little country towns, and who formed the genteel population of Clavering. Captain Glanders, H.P., had p.r.o.nounced that Pen was going to be a devil of a fellow, and had begun early; Mrs. Glanders had told him to check his horrid observations, and to respect his own wife, if he pleased. She said it would be a lesson to Helen for her pride and absurd infatuation about that boy. Mrs. Pybus said many people were proud of very small things, and for her part, she didn't know why an apothecary's wife should give herself such airs. Mrs. Wapshot called her daughters away from that side of the street, one day when Pen, on Rebecca, was stopping at the saddler's, to get a new lash to his whip--one and all of these people had made visits of curiosity to Fairoaks, and had tried to condole with the widow, or bring the subject of the Fotheringay affair on the tapis, and had been severally checked by the haughty reserve of Mrs. Pendennis, supported by the frigid politeness of the major her brother.

These rebuffs, however, did not put an end to the gossip, and slander went on increasing about the unlucky Fairoaks family. Glanders (H.P.), a retired cavalry officer, whose half-pay and large family compelled him to fuddle himself with brandy-and-water instead of claret, after he quitted the dragoons, had the occasional _entree_ at Fairoaks, and kept his friend the major there informed of all the stories which were current at Clavering. Mrs. Pybus had taken an inside place by the coach to Chatteries, and gone to the George on purpose to get the particulars.