A History of Pendennis Volume II Part 20

He pointed out the Russians and Spaniards gambling for heaps of gold, and denounced their eagerness as something sordid and barbarous; an English gentleman should play where the fas.h.i.+on is play, but should not elate or depress himself at the sport; and he told how he had seen his friend the Marquis of Steyne, when Lord Gaunt, lose eighteen thousand at a sitting, and break the bank three nights running at Paris, without ever showing the least emotion at his defeat or victory--"And that's what I call being an English gentleman, Pen, my dear boy," the old gentleman said, warming as he prattled about his recollections--"what I call the great manner only remains with us and with a few families in France." And as Russian princesses pa.s.sed him, whose reputation had long ceased to be doubtful, and damaged English ladies, who are constantly seen in company of their faithful attendant for the time being in these gay haunts of dissipation, the old major, with eager garrulity and mischievous relish told his nephew wonderful particulars regarding the lives of these heroines; and diverted the young man with a thousand scandals. Egad, he felt himself quite young again, he remarked to Pen, as, rouged and grinning, her enormous cha.s.seur behind her bearing her shawl, the Princess Obstropski smiled and recognized and accosted him. He remembered her in '14 when she was an actress of the Paris Boulevard, and the Emperor Alexander's aid-de-camp Obstropski (a man of great talents, who knew a good deal about the Emperor Paul's death, and was a devil to play) married her.

He most courteously and respectfully asked leave to call upon the princess, and to present to her his nephew, Mr. Arthur Pendennis; and he pointed out to the latter a half-dozen of other personages whose names were as famous, and whose histories were as edifying. What would poor Helen have thought, could she have heard those tales, or known to what kind of people her brother-in-law was presenting her son? Only once, leaning on Arthur's arm, she had pa.s.sed through the room where the green tables were prepared for play, and the croaking croupiers were calling out their fatal words of _Rouge gagne_ and _Couleur perd_. She had shrunk terrified out of the pandemonium, imploring Pen, extorting from him a promise, on his word of honor, that he would never play at those tables; and the scene which so frightened the simple widow, only amused the worldly old veteran, and made him young again! He could breath the air cheerfully which stifled her. Her right was not his right: his food was her poison. Human creatures are const.i.tuted thus differently, and with this variety the marvelous world is peopled. To the credit of Mr. Pen, let it be said, that he kept honestly the promise made to his mother, and stoutly told his uncle of his intention to abide by it.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

When the major arrived, his presence somehow cast a damp upon at least three persons of our little party--upon Laura, who had any thing but respect for him; upon Warrington, whose manner toward him showed an involuntary haughtiness and contempt; and upon the timid and alarmed widow, who dreaded lest he should interfere with her darling, though almost desperate projects for her boy. And, indeed, the major, unknown to himself, was the bearer of tidings which were to bring about a catastrophe in the affairs of all our friends.

Pen with his two ladies had apartments in the town of Rosenbad; honest Warrington had lodgings hard by; the major, on arrival at Rosenbad, had, as befitted his dignity, taken up his quarters at one of the great hotels, at the Roman Emperor or the Four Seasons, where two or three hundred gamblers, pleasure-seekers, or invalids, sate down and over-ate themselves daily at the enormous table d'hote. To this hotel Pen went on the morning after the major's arrival dutifully to pay his respects to his uncle, and found the latter's sitting-room duly prepared and arranged by Mr. Morgan, with the major's hats brushed, and his coats laid out: his dispatch-boxes and umbrella-cases, his guide-books, pa.s.sports, maps, and other elaborate necessaries of the English traveler, all as trim and ready as they could be in their master's own room in Jermyn-street. Every thing was ready, from the medicine-bottle fresh filled from the pharmacien's, down to the old fellow's prayer-book, without which he never traveled, for he made a point of appearing at the English church at every place which he honored with a stay. "Every body did it," he said; "every English gentleman did it," and this pious man would as soon have thought of not calling upon the English emba.s.sador in a continental town, as of not showing himself at the national place of wors.h.i.+p.

The old gentleman had been to take one of the baths for which Rosenbad is famous, and which every body takes, and his after-bath toilet was not yet completed when Pen arrived. The elder called out to Arthur in a cheery voice from the inner apartment, in which he and Morgan were engaged, and the valet presently came in, bearing a little packet to Pen's address--Mr. Arthur's letters and papers, Morgan said, which he had brought from Mr. Arthur's chambers in London, and which consisted chiefly of numbers of the "Pall Mall Gazette," which our friend Mr.

Finucane thought his _collaborateur_ would like to see. The papers were tied together: the letters in an envelope, addressed to Pen, in the last-named gentleman's handwriting.

Among the letters there was a little note addressed, as a former letter we have heard of had been, to "Arthur Pendennis, Esquire,"

which Arthur opened with a start and a blush, and read with a very keen pang of interest, and sorrow, and regard. She had come to Arthur's house, f.a.n.n.y Bolton said--and found that he was gone--gone away to Germany without ever leaving a word for her--or answer to her last letter, in which she prayed but for one word of kindness--or the books which he had promised her in happier times, before he was ill, and which she would like to keep in remembrance of him. She said she would not reproach those who had found her at his bedside when he was in the fever, and knew n.o.body, and who had turned the poor girl away without a word. She thought she should have died, she said, of that, but Doctor Goodenough had kindly tended her, and kept her life, when, perhaps, the keeping of it was of no good, and she forgave every body: and as for Arthur, she would pray for him forever. And when he was so ill, and they cut off his hair, she had made so free as to keep one little lock for herself, and that she owned. And might she still keep it, or would his mamma order that that should be gave up too? She was willing to obey him in all things, and couldn't but remember that once he was so kind, oh! so good and kind! to his poor f.a.n.n.y. When Major Pendennis, fresh and smirking from his toilet, came out of his bedroom to his sitting-room, he found Arthur with this note before him, and an expression of savage anger on his face, which surprised the elder gentleman. "What news from London, my boy?" he rather faintly asked; "are the duns at you that you look so glum?"

"Do you know any thing about this letter, sir?" Arthur asked.

"What letter, my good sir?" said the other drily, at once perceiving what had happened.

"You know what I mean--about, about Miss--about f.a.n.n.y Bolton--the poor dear little girl," Arthur broke out. "When was she in my room?

Was she there when I was delirious--I fancied she was--was she? Who sent her out of my chambers? Who intercepted her letters to me? Who dared to do it? Did you do it, uncle?"

"It's not my practice to tamper with gentlemen's letters, or to answer d.a.m.ned impertinent questions," Major Pendennis cried out, in a great tremor of emotion and indignation. "There was a girl in your rooms when I came up at great personal inconveinence, daymy--and to meet with a return of this kind for my affection to you, is not pleasant, by Gad, sir--not at all pleasant."

"That's not the question, sir," Arthur said hotly--"and--and, I beg your pardon, uncle. You were, you always have been, most kind to me: but I say again, did you say any thing harsh to this poor girl. Did you send her away from me?"

"I never spoke a word to the girl," the uncle said, "and I never sent her away from you, and know no more about her, and wish to know no more about her, than about the man in the moon."

"Then it's my mother that did it," Arthur broke out. "Did my mother send that poor child away?"

"I repeat I know nothing about it, sir," the elder said testily.

"Let's change the subject, if you please."

"I'll never forgive the person who did it," said Arthur, bouncing up and seizing his hat.

The major cried out, "Stop, Arthur, for G.o.d's sake, stop;" but before he had uttered his sentence Arthur had rushed out of the room, and at the next minute the major saw him striding rapidly down the street that led toward his home.

"Get breakfast!" said the old fellow to Morgan, and he wagged his head and sighed as he looked out of the window. "Poor Helen--poor soul!

There'll be a row. I knew there would: and begad all the fat's in the fire."

When Pen reached home he only found Warrington in the ladies'

drawing-room, waiting their arrival in order to conduct them to the room where the little English colony at Rosenbad held their Sunday church. Helen and Laura had not appeared as yet; the former was ailing, and her daughter was with her. Pen's wrath was so great that he could not defer expressing it. He flung f.a.n.n.y's letter across the table to his friend. "Look there, Warrington," he said; "she tended me in my illness, she rescued me out of the jaws of death, and this is the way they have treated the dear little creature. They have kept her letters from me; they have treated me like a child, and her like a dog, poor thing! My mother has done this."

"If she has, you must remember it is your mother," Warrington interposed.

"It only makes the crime the greater, because it is she who has done it," Pen answered. "She ought to have been the poor girl's defender, not her enemy: she ought to go down on her knees and ask pardon of her. I ought! I will! I am shocked at the cruelty which has been shown her. What? She gave me her all, and this is her return! She sacrifices every thing for me, and they spurn her."

"Hus.h.!.+" said Warrington, "they can hear you from the next room."

"Hear; let them hear!" Pen cried out, only so much the louder. "Those may overhear my talk who intercept my letters. I say this poor girl has been shamefully used, and I will do my best to right her; I will."

The door of the neighboring room opened and Laura came forth with pale and stern face. She looked at Pen with glances from which beamed pride, defiance, aversion. "Arthur, your mother is very ill," she said; "it is a pity that you should speak so loud as to disturb her."

"It is a pity that I should have been obliged to speak at all," Pen answered. "And I have more to say before I have done."

"I should think what you have to say will hardly be fit for me to hear," Laura said, haughtily.

"You are welcome to hear it or not, as you like," said Mr. Pen. "I shall go in now and speak to my mother."

Laura came rapidly forward, so that she should not be overheard by her friend within. "Not now, sir," she said to Pen. "You may kill her if you do. Your conduct has gone far enough to make her wretched."

"What conduct?" cried out Pen, in a fury. "Who dares impugn it? Who dares meddle with me? Is it you who are the instigator of this persecution?"

"I said before it was a subject of which it did not become me to hear or to speak," Laura said. "But as for mamma, if she had acted otherwise than she did with regard to--to the person about whom you seem to take such an interest, it would have been I that must have quitted your house, and not that--that person."

"By heavens! this is too much," Pen cried out, with a violent execration.

"Perhaps that is what you wished," Laura said, tossing her head up.

"No more of this, if you please; I am not accustomed to hear such subjects spoken of in such language;" and with a stately courtesy the young lady pa.s.sed to her friend's room, looking her adversary full in the face as she retreated and closed the door upon him.

Pen was bewildered with wonder, perplexity, fury, at this monstrous and unreasonable persecution. He burst out into a loud and bitter laugh as Laura quitted him, and with sneers and revilings, as a man who jeers under an operation, ridiculed at once his own pain and his persecutor's anger. The laugh, which was one of bitter humor, and no unmanly or unkindly expression of suffering under most cruel and unmerited torture, was heard in the next apartment, as some of his unlucky previous expressions had been, and, like them, entirely misinterpreted by the hearers. It struck like a dagger into the wounded and tender heart of Helen; it pierced Laura, and inflamed the high-spirited girl, with scorn and anger. "And it was to this hardened libertine," she thought--"to this boaster of low intrigues, that I had given my heart away." "He breaks the most sacred laws," thought Helen. "He prefers the creature of his pa.s.sion to his own mother; and when he is upbraided, he laughs, and glories in his crime. 'She gave me her all,' I heard him say it," argued the poor widow; "and he boasts of it, and laughs, and breaks his mother's heart." The emotion, the shame, the grief, the mortification almost killed her. She felt she should die of his unkindness.

Warrington thought of Laura's speech--"Perhaps that is what you wished." "She loves Pen still," he said. "It was jealousy made her speak."--"Come away, Pen. Come away, and let us go to church and get calm. You must explain this matter to your mother. She does not appear to know the truth: nor do you quite, my good fellow. Come away, and let us talk about it." And again he muttered to himself, "'Perhaps that is what you wished.' Yes, she loves him. Why shouldn't she love him? Whom else would I have her love? What can she be to me but the dearest, and the fairest, and the best of women?"

So, leaving the women similarly engaged within, the two gentlemen walked away, each occupied with his own thoughts, and silent for a considerable s.p.a.ce. "I must set this matter right," thought honest George, "as she loves him still--I must set his mind right about the other woman." And with this charitable thought, the good fellow began to tell more at large what Bows had said to him regarding Miss Bolton's behavior and fickleness, and he described how the girl was no better than a little light-minded flirt; and, perhaps, he exaggerated the good humor and contentedness which he had himself, as he thought, witnessed in her behavior in the scene with Mr. Huxter.

Now, all Bows's statements had been colored by an insane jealousy and rage on that old man's part; and instead of allaying Pen's renascent desire to see his little conquest again, Warrington's accounts inflamed and angered Pendennis, and made him more anxious than before to set himself right, as he persisted in phrasing it, with f.a.n.n.y. They arrived at the church-door presently; but scarce one word of the service, and not a syllable of Mr. Shamble's sermon, did either of them comprehend, probably--so much was each engaged with his own private speculations. The major came up to them after the service, with his well-brushed hat and wig, and his jauntiest, most cheerful air. He complimented them upon being seen at church; again he said that every _comme-il-faut_ person made a point of attending the English service abroad; and he walked back with the young men, prattling to them in garrulous good-humor, and making bows to his acquaintances as they pa.s.sed; and thinking innocently that Pen and George were both highly delighted by his anecdotes, which they suffered to run on in a scornful and silent acquiescence.

At the time of Mr. Shamble's sermon (an erratic Anglican divine hired for the season at places of English resort, and addicted to debts, drinking, and even to roulette, it was said), Pen, chafing under the persecution which his womankind inflicted upon him, had been meditating a great act of revolt and of justice, as he had worked himself up to believe; and Warrington on his part had been thinking that a crisis in his affairs had likewise come, and that it was necessary for him to break away from a connection which every day made more and more wretched and dear to him. Yes, the time was come. He took those fatal words, "Perhaps that is what you wished," as a text for a gloomy homily, which he preached to himself, in the dark pew of his own heart, while Mr. Shamble was feebly giving utterance to his sermon.

CHAPTER XIX.

"FAIROAKS TO LET."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Our poor widow (with the a.s.sistance of her faithful Martha of Fairoaks, who laughed and wondered at the German ways, and superintended the affairs of the simple household) had made a little feast in honor of Major Pendennis's arrival, of which, however, only the major and his two younger friends partook, for Helen sent to say that she was too unwell to dine at their table, and Laura bore her company. The major talked for the party, and did not perceive, or choose to perceive, what a gloom and silence pervaded the other two sharers of the modest dinner. It was evening before Helen and Laura came into the sitting-room to join the company there. She came in leaning on Laura, with her back to the waning light, so that Arthur could not see how palid and woe-stricken her face was, and as she went up to Pen, whom she had not seen during the day, and placed her fond arms on his shoulder and kissed him tenderly, Laura left her, and moved away to another part of the room. Pen remarked that his mother's voice and her whole frame trembled, her hand was clammy cold as she put it up to his forehead, piteously embracing him. The spectacle of her misery only added, somehow, to the wrath and testiness of the young man. He scarcely returned the kiss which the suffering lady gave him: and the countenance with which he met the appeal of her look was hard and cruel. "She persecutes me," he thought within himself, "and she comes to me with the air of a martyr." "You look very ill, my child," she said. "I don't like to see you look in that way." And she tottered to a sofa, still holding one of his pa.s.sive hands in her thin, cold, clinging fingers.

"I have had much to annoy me, mother," Pen said with a throbbing breast: and as he spoke Helen's heart began to beat so, that she sate almost dead and speechless with terror.

Warrington, Laura, and Major Pendennis, all remained breathless, aware that a storm was about to break.

"I have had letters from London," Arthur continued, "and one that has given me more pain than I ever had in my life. It tells me that former letters of mine have been intercepted and purloined away from me; that--that a young creature who has shown the greatest love and care for me, has been most cruelly used by--by you, mother."

"For G.o.d's sake stop," cried out Warrington. "She's ill--don't you see she is ill?"