 CHAPTER 4 Mrs. Haller After he returned to the George, Mr. Foker and his guest sat down to a handsome repast in the coffee room where Mr. Renser brought in the first dish and bowed as gravely as if he was waiting upon the Lord Lieutenant of the county. Mr. Foker attacked the turtle and venison with as much gusto as he had shown the year before when he used to make feasts off ginger beer and smuggled polonies. Penn could not but respect his connoisseurship as he pronounced the champagne to be condemned to gooseberry and winked at the port with one eye. The latter he declared to be of the right sort and told the waiters there was no way of home-bugging him. All these attendants he knew by their Christian names and showed a great interest in their families, and as the London coaches drove up, which in those early days used to set off from the George, Mr. Foker flung the coffee-room window open and called the guards and coachmen by their Christian names, too, asking about their respective families and imitating with great liveliness and accuracy the tooting of the horns as Jim the Osler whipped the horse's cloths off and the carriages drove gaily away. A bottle of sherry, a bottle of sham, a bottle of port, and a chess-caffee, it ain't so bad, hey, Penn, Foker said, and pronounced after all these delicacies and a quantity of nuts and fruit had been dispatched, that it was time to toddle. Penn sprang up with very bright eyes and a flushed face, and they moved off towards the theatre where they paid their money to the wheezy old lady slumbering in the money-takers' box. Mrs. Dropsicum, Binglu's mother-in-law, great in Lady Macbeth, Foker said to his companion, Foker knew her, too. They had almost their choice of places in the boxes of the theatre, which was no better filled than country theatres usually are in spite of the universal burst of attraction and galvanic thrills of delight advertised by Binglu in the playbills. A score or so of people dotted the pit benches, a few more kept a kicking and whistling in the galleries, and a dozen others, who came in with free admissions, were in the boxes where our young gentlemen sat. Lieutenant Rogers and Poggers, and young Cornette Tidmus of the Dragoons, occupied a private box. The performers acted to them, and these gentlemen seemed to hold conversations with the players when not engaged in the dialogue and applauded them by name loudly. Only the manager, who assumed all the chief tragic and comic parts, except when he modestly retreated to make way for the London stars, who came down occasionally to chatter us, was great in the character of the stranger. He was attired in the tight pantaloons and Hessian boots which the stage legend has given to that injured man, with a large cloak and beaver and a hearse feather in it, drooping over his rattled old face, and only partially concealing his great buckled brown wig. He had the stage jewelry on, too, of which he selected the largest and most shiny rings for himself, and allowed his little finger to quiver out of his cloak, with a sham diamond ring covering the first joint of the finger, and twiddling in the faces of the pit. Bingley made it a favor to the young man of his company to go on and light comedy parts with that ring. They flattered him by asking its history. The stage has its traditional jewels as the crown and all great families have. This had belonged to George Frederick Cook, who had had it for Mr. Quinn, who may have bought it for a shelling. Bingley fancied the world was fascinated with its glitter. He was reading out of the stage-book, that wonderful stage-book which is not bound like any other book in the world, but is rouge and tawdry, like the hero or heroine who holds it, and who holds it as people never do hold books, and points with his finger to a passage, and wags his head ominously at the audience, and then lifts up eyes and finger to the ceiling, professing to derive some intense consolation from the work between which and heaven there is a strong affinity. Anybody who has ever seen one of our great light comedians, X, in a chinstressing gown such as nobody ever wore, and representing himself to the public as a young nobleman in his apartments, and whiling away the time with light literature until his friend Sir Harry shall arrive, or his father shall come down to breakfast, anybody, I say, who has seen the great X over a sham-book has indeed had a great pleasure and an abiding matter forethought. Directly the strangers saw the young men, he acted at them, eyeing them solemnly over his guilt volume as he lay on the stage-bank, showing his hand, his ring, and his sessions. He calculated the effect that every one of these ornaments would produce upon his victims. He was determined to fascinate them, for he knew they had paid their money, and he saw their families coming in from the country and filling the cane-chairs in his boxes. As he lay on the bank-reading, his servant, Francis, made remarks upon his master. Again reading, said Francis, thus it is, from morn to night. To him nature has no beauty, life no charm. For three years I have never seen him smile. The gloom of English face was fearful to witness during these comments of the faithful domestic. Nothing diverts him. Oh, if he would but attach himself to any living thing were it an animal, for something man must love. Enter Tobias, gall from the hut. He cries, Oh, how refreshing after seven long weeks to feel these warm sunbeams once again. Thanks, bounteous heaven, for the joy I taste. He presses his cap between his hands, looks up and prays. The stranger eyes him attentively. Francis to the stranger. This old man's share of earthly happiness can be but little, yet mark how grateful he is for his portion of it. Bengli. Because, though old, he is but a child in the leading string of hope. He looks steadily at folker, who, however, continues to suck the top of his stick in an unconcerned manner. Francis, hope is the nurse of life. Bengli. And her cradle is the grave. The stranger uttered this with the moan of a bassoon in agony, and fixed his eyes on Pendennis so steadily that the poor lad was quite put out of countenance. He thought the whole house must be looking at him and cast his eyes down. As soon as ever he raised them, Bengli's were at him again. All through the scene the manager played at him. When he was about to do a good action and sent off Francis with his book, so that that domestic should not witness the deed of benevolence which he meditated, Bengli marked the page carefully, so that he might continue the perusal of the volume off the stage if he liked. But all was done in the direct face of Pendennis, whom the manager was bent upon subjugating. How relieved the lad was when the scene ended, and folker, tapping with his cane, cried out, Bravo, Bengli! Give him a hand, Pendennis. You know every chap likes a hand, Mr. Folker said, and the good-natured young gentleman and Pendennis laughing and the dragoons in the opposite box began clapping hands to the best of their power. A chamber in Winterson Castle closed over to Bias's hut and the stranger and his boots, and servants appeared bustling about with chairs and tables. That's Hicks and Miss Thackthwaite, whispered Folker. Pretty girl, ain't she, Pendennis? But stop! Hurray! Bravo! Here's the fathering-gay. The pit thrilled and thumped its umbrellas. A volley of applause was fired from the gallery. The dragoon officers and Folker clapped their hands furiously. You would have thought the house was full, so loud were their plaudits. The red face and ragged whiskers of Mr. Costigan were seen peering from the side scene. Pen's eyes opened wide and bright, as Mrs. Haller entered with a downcast look. Then, rallying at the sound of the applause, swept the house with a grateful glance, and, folding her hands across her breast, sank down in a magnificent curtsy. More applause, more umbrellas. Pen, this time, flaming with wine and enthusiasm, clapped hands and sang Bravo louder than all. Mrs. Haller saw him, and everybody else, and old Mr. Bose, the little first fiddler of the orchestra, which was this night increased by a detachment of the band of the dragoons, by the kind permission of Colonel Swallowtail, looked up from the desk where he was perched with his crutch beside him, and smiled at the enthusiasm of the lad. Those who have only seen Miss Father and Gay in later days, since her marriage and introduction into London life, have little idea how beautiful a creature she was at the time when our friend Pen first set eyes on her. And I warned my reader, as beforehand, that the pencil which illustrates this work, and can draw an ugly face tolerably well, but is sadly put out when it tries to delineate a beauty, can give no sort of notion of her. She was of the tallest of women, and at her then age of six and twenty, for six and twenty she was, though she vows she was only nineteen, in the prime and fullness of her beauty. Her forehead was vast, and her black hair waved over it with a natural ripple, that beauties of late days have tried to imitate with the help of the crimping irons, and was confined in shining and voluminous braids at the back of a neck such as you see on the shoulders of the Louvre Venus, that the light of God's end pin. Her eyes, when she lifted them up to gaze on you, and ere she dropped their purple-fringed lids, shone with tenderness and mystery unfathomable. Love and a genius seemed to look out from them, and then retire coily, as if ashamed to have been seen at the lattice. Who could have had such a commanding brow, but a woman of high intellect? She never laughed, indeed her teeth were not good, but a smile of endless tenderness and sweetness played round her beautiful lips, and in the dimples of her cheeks and her lovely chin. Her nose defied description in those days. Her ears were like two little pearl shells, which the earrings she wore, though the handsomest properties in the theatre, only insulted. She was dressed in long flowing robes of black, which she managed and swept to and fro with wonderful grace, and out of the folds of which you only saw her sandals occasionally. They were of rather a large size, but pin thought them as ravishing as the slippers of Cinderella. But it was her hand and arm that this magnificent creature most excelled in, and somehow you could never see her but through them. They surrounded her, when she folded them over her bosom in resignation, when she dropped them in mute agony, or raised them in superb command, when in sportive gaiety her hands fluttered and waved before her, like what, shall we say, like the snowy doves before the chariot of Venus, it was with these arms and hands that she beckoned, repelled, and treated, embraced her admirers. No single one, for she was armed with her own virtue, and with her father's valor, whose sword would have leapt from it scabbard at any insult offered to his child. But the whole house, which rose to her as the phrase was, as she curtsied and bowed and charmed it. Thus she stood for a minute, complete and beautiful, as Penn stared at her. I say, Penn, isn't she a stunner? asked Mr. Folker. Hush, Penn said, she's speaking. She began her business in a deep sweet voice. Those who know the play of the stranger are aware that the remarks made by the various characters are not valuable in themselves, either for their sound sense, their novelty of observation, or their poetic fancy. In fact, if a man were to say it was a stupid play he would not be far wrong. Nobody ever talked so. If we meet idiots in life, as will happen, it is a great mercy that they do not use such absurdly fine words. The stranger's talk is sham, like the book he reads and the hair he wears and the bank he sits on and the diamond ring he makes play with. But, in the midst of the Balderdash, there runs that reality of love, children, and forgiveness of wrong which will be listened to wherever it is preached and sets all the world sympathizing. With what smothered sorrow, with what gushing pathos Mrs. Haller delivered her part. At first, when as Count Winterson's housekeeper, and preparing for his Excellencies' arrival, she has to give orders about the beds and furniture, and the dinner, etc., to be got ready, she did so with the calm agony of despair. But when she could get rid of the stupid servants, and give vent to her feelings to the pit and the house, she overflowed to each individual as if he were her particular confidant, and she was crying out her griefs on his shoulder. The little fiddler in the orchestra, whom she did not seem to watch, though he followed her ceaselessly, twitched, twisted, nodded, pointed about, and when she came to the favorite passage, I have a William too, if he be still alive. Ah, yes, if he be still alive. His little sisters, too. Why, fancy, dost thou wrack me so? Why dost thou image my poor children fainting in sickness, and crying to their mother? When she came to this passage, little Bose buried his face in his blue cotton-hankerchief, after crying out, Bravo! All the house was affected. Volker, for his part, taking out a large yellow bandana, wept piteously. As for Penn, he was gone too far for that. He followed the woman about and about. When she was off the stage, it and the house were blank. The lights and the red officers reeled wildly before his sight. He watched her at the side scene, where she stood waiting to come on the stage, and where her father took off her shawl. When the reconciliation arrived, and she flung herself down on Mr. Bingley's shoulders, whilst the children clung to their knees, and the Countess, Mrs. Bingley, and Baron Steinforth, performed with great liveliness and spirit by garbettes, while the rest of the characters formed a group round them, Penn's hot eyes only saw fatheringay, fatheringay. The curtain fell upon him like a pall. He did not hear a word of what Bingley said, who came forward to announce the play for the next evening, and who took the tumultuous applause, as usual, for himself. Penn was not even distinctly aware that the house was calling for Miss Fatheringay, nor did the manager seem to comprehend that anybody else but himself had caused the success of the play. At last he understood it, stepped back with a grin, and presently appeared with Mrs. Haller on his arm. How beautiful she looked! Her hair had fallen down, the officers threw her flowers, she clutched them to her heart, she put back her hair and smiled all round. Her eyes met Penn's. Down went the curtain again, and she was gone. Not one note could he hear of the overture which the brass band of the dragoons blew by kind permission of Colonel Swallowtail. She is a crusher, ain't she now, Mr. Fokker asked of his companion. Penn did not know exactly what Fokker said, and answered vaguely. He could not tell the other what he felt. He could not have spoken, just then, to any mortal. Besides, Penn Dennis did not quite know what he felt yet. It was something overwhelming, maddening, delicious. A fever of wild joy and undefined longing. And now Ralkins and Miss Thackthwaite came on to dance the favorite double hornpipe, and Fokker abandoned himself to the lights of this ballet just as he had to the tears of the tragedy a few minutes before. Penn did not care for it, or indeed think about the dance, except to remember that that woman was acting with her in the scene where she first came in. It was a mist before his eyes. At the end of the dance he looked at his watch and said it was time for him to go. Hang it! Stay to see the Bravo of the Battle Axe! Fokker said. Bingley's splendid in it. He wears red tights, and has to carry Mrs. B. over the pine bridge of the cataract. Only she's too heavy. It's great fun! Do stop! Penn looked at the bill with one lingering fond hope that Miss Father Engage's name might be hidden somewhere in the list of the actors of the after-piece, but there was no such name. Go he must! He had a long ride home. He squeezed Fokker's hand. He was choking to speak, but he couldn't. He quitted the theater and walked frantically about the town. He knew not how long. Then he mounted at the George and rode homewards, and clavoring clocks sang out one as he came into the yard at Faroaks. The lady of the house might have been awake, but she only heard him from the passage outside his room as he dashed into bed and pulled the clothes over his head. Penn had not been in the habit of passing wakeful nights, so he at once fell off into a sound sleep. Even in later days and with a great deal of care and other thoughtful matter to keep him awake, a man from long practice or fatigue or resolution begins by going to sleep, as usual, and gets a nap in advance of anxiety, but she soon comes up with him and jogs his shoulder and says, Come, my man, no more of this laziness. You must wake up and have a talk with me. Then they fall to together in the midnight. Well, whatever might afterwards happen to him, poor little Penn was not come to this state yet. He tumbled into a sound sleep, did not wake until an early hour in the morning, when the rooks began to call from the little wood beyond his bedroom windows. And, at that very instant, and as his eyes started open, the beloved image was in his mind. My dear boy, he heard her say, You were in a sound sleep, and I would not disturb you, but I have been close by your pillow all this while, and I don't intend that you shall leave me. I am love. I bring with me fever and passion, wild longing, maddening desire, restless craving and seeking. Many a long day are this, I heard you calling out for me, and to behold, now I am come. Was Penn frightened at the summons? Not he. He did not know what was coming. It was all wild pleasure and delight as yet. And as, when three years previously, and on entering the fifth forum at the Cistercians, his father had made him a present of a gold watch which the boy took from under his pillow and examined on the instant of waking, forever rubbing and polishing it up in private, and retiring into corners to listen to its ticking, so the young man exulted over his new delight, felt in his Westcott pocket to see that it was safe, wound it up at night, and at the very first moment of waking hugged it and looked at it. By the way, that first watch of Penn's was a showy, ill-manufactured piece. It never went well from the beginning and was always getting out of order. And after putting it aside into a drawer and forgetting it for some time, he swapped it finally away for a more useful timekeeper. Penn felt himself to be ever so many years older since yesterday. There was no mistake about it now. He was as much in love as the best hero in the best romance he ever read. He told to John to bring his shaving-water with the utmost confidence. He dressed himself in some of his finest clothes that morning and came splendidly down to breakfast, patronizing his mother and little Laura, who had been strumming her music lessons for hours before and who, after he had read the prayers, of which he did not heed one single syllable, wondered at his grand-appearance and asked him to tell her what the play was about. Penn laughed and declined to tell Laura what the play was about. In fact, it was quite as well that she should not know. Then she asked him why he had got on his fine pen and beautiful new waistcoat. Penn blushed and told his mother that the old school fellow with whom he had dined at Chatteris was reading with a tutor at Beymouth, a very learned man, and as he himself was to go to college, and as there were several young men pursuing their studies at Beymouth, he was anxious to write over, and, and to just see what the course of their reading was. Laura made a long face. Helen Pendennis looked hard at her son, troubled more than ever with the vague doubt and terror which had been haunting her ever since the last night, when farmer Gernet brought back the news that Penn would not return home to dinner. Arthur's eyes defied her. She tried to console herself and drive off her fears. The boy had never told her an untruth. Penn conducted himself during breakfast in a very haughty and supercilious manner, and taking leave of the elder and younger lady was presently heard writing out of the stable court. He went gently at first, but galloped like a madman as soon as he thought that he was out of hearing. Smirk, thinking of his own affairs, and softly writing with his toes out to give Penn his three hours reading at Faroaks, met his pupil who shot by him like the wind. Smirk's pony shied as the other thundered past him. The gentle curate went over his head among the stinging nettles in the hedge. Penn laughed as they met, headed towards the Beymouth Road, and was gone half a mile in that direction before poor Smirk had picked himself up. Penn had resolved in his mind that he must see Fokker that morning, he must hear about her, know about her, be with somebody who knew her, and honest Smirk, for his part, sitting up among the stinging nettles as his pony cropped quietly in the hedge, thought dismally to himself, ought he to go to Faroaks now that his pupil was evidently gone away for the day? Yes, he thought he might go, too. He might go and ask Mrs. Penn Dennis when Arthur would be back, and hear Miss Laura, her what's catechism. He got up on the little pony, both were used to his slipping off, and advanced upon the house from which his scholar had just rushed away in a whirlwind. This love makes fools of all of us, big and little, and the curate had tumbled over head and heels in pursuit of it, and Penn had started in the first heat of the mad race. CHAPTER V. OF THE HISTORY OF Penn Dennis. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. THE HISTORY OF Penn Dennis by William Makepeace Thackeray. CHAPTER V. Mrs. Holler at Home. Without slackening her pace, Rebecca the Mayor galloped on to Baymouth, where Penn put her up at the inn stables and ran straight way to Mr. Fokker's lodgings, which he knew from the direction given to him by that gentleman on the previous day. On reaching these apartments which were over a chemist's shop, whose stock of cigars and soda water went off rapidly by the kind patronage of his young inmates, Penn only found Mr. Spavin, Fokker's friend and part owner of the tandem which the latter had driven into Chatteros, who was smoking and teaching a little dog a friend of his, tricks with a bit of biscuit. Penn's healthy red face, fresh from the gallop, compared oddly with the waxy, debauched little features of Fokker's chum. The latter remarked it, who's that man, he thought? He looks as fresh as a bean. His hands don't shake of a morning I'd bet five to one. Fokker had not come home at all. Here was a disappointment. Mr. Spavin could not say when his friend would return. Sometimes he stopped a day, sometimes a week. Of what college was Penn? Would he have anything? There was a very fair tap of ale. Mr. Spavin was enabled to know Penn Dennis's name, on the card which the latter took out and laid down. Perhaps Penn in these days was rather proud of having a card. And so the young men took leave. Then Penn went down the rock and walked about on the sand, biting his nails by the shore of the much-sounding sea. It stretched before him bright and immeasurable. The blue waters came rolling into the bay, foaming and roaring hoarsely. Penn looked them in the face with blank eyes, hardly regarding them. What a tide there was pouring into the lad's own mind at the time, and what a little power he had to check it. Penn flung stones into the sea, but it still kept coming on. He was in a rage at not seeing Fokker. He wanted to see Fokker. He must see Fokker. Suppose I go on, on the chatterous road, just to see if I can meet him, Penn thought. Rebecca was saddled in another half hour and galloping on the grass by the chatterous road. About four miles from Beamus, the clevering road branches off, as everybody knows, and the man naturally was for taking that turn, but cutting her over the shoulder, Penn passed the turning and rode on to the turnpike without seeing any sign of the black tandem and red wheels. As he was at the turnpike, he might as well go on, that was quite clear. So Penn rode to the George, and the hustler told him that Mr. Fokker was there sure enough. He'd been making a tremendous row the night before at drinking and a singing and wanting to fight Tom the postboy, which I'm thinking he'd have had the worst of it, the man added with a grin. Have you carried up your master's hot water to shave with? He added in a very satirical manner to Mr. Fokker's domestic, who here came down the yard bearing his master's clothes, most beautifully brushed and arranged. Show Mr. Penn Dennis up to him, and Penn followed the man at last to the apartment where in the midst of an immense bed, Mr. Harry Fokker lay reposing. The feather bed embolsters swelled up all around Mr. Fokker, so that you could hardly see his little shallow face and red silk nightcap. Hello, said Penn. Who goes there? Brother quickly tell, sang out the voice from the bed. What Penn Dennis again? Is your mama acquainted with your absence? Did you sub with us last night? No, stop. Who's up with us last night, stupid? There was the three officers, sir, and Mr. Bingley, sir, and Mr. Costigan, sir, the man answered, who received all Mr. Fokker's remarks with perfect gravity. Ah, yes, the cup and Mary just went round. We were chanted, and I remember I wanted to fight a postboy. Did I thrash him, stupid? No, sir. Fight didn't come off, sir, said stupid, still with perfect gravity. He was arranging Mr. Fokker's dressing case, a trunk, the gift of a fond mother without which the young fellow never travelled. It contained a prodigious apparatus in plate, a silver dish, a silver mug, silver boxes and bottles for all sorts of essences, and a choice of raisers ready against the time when Mr. Fokker's beard should come. Do it some other day, said the young fellow, yawning and throwing up his little lean arms over his head. No, there was no fight. But there was chanting, Bingley chanted, I chanted, and the general chanted, Costigan, I mean. Did you ever hear him sing the little pig under the bedpen? The man we met yesterday, said Pen, all in a tremor. The father of, of the fathering gay, the very man, ain't she a Venus pen? Please, sir, Mr. Costigan's in the sitting room, sir, and says, sir, you asked him to breakfast, sir, called five times, sir, but wouldn't wake you on no account and has been here since eleven o'clock, sir? How much is it now? Once, sir, what would the best of mothers say, cried the little slugard, if she saw me in bed at this hour? She sent me down here with a grinder. She wants me to cultivate my neglected genus. Hey, B, I say, Pen, this isn't quite like seven o'clock school, is it, old boy? And the young fellow burst out into a boyish laugh of enjoyment. Then he added, go in and talk to the general whilst I dress. And I say, Pen Dennis, ask him to sing you the little pig under the bed. It's capital. Pen went off in great perturbation to meet Mr. Costigan, and Mr. Fokker commenced his toilet. Of Mr. Fokker's two grandfathers, the one from whom he inherited a fortune was a brewer, the other was an earl who endowed him with the most doting mother in the world. The Fokker's had been at the Cistercian school from father to son, at which place our friend whose name could be seen over the playground wall, on the public house sign under which Fokker's entire was painted, had been dreadfully bullied on account of his trade, his uncomely countenance, his in-aftertude for learning and cleanliness, his gluttony and other weak points. But those who know how a susceptible youth, under the tyranny of his school fellows, becomes silent and a sneak, may understand how in a very few months after his liberation from bondage, he developed himself as he had done, and became the humorous, the sarcastic, the brilliant Fokker with whom we have made acquaintance. A dance he always was, it is true, for learning cannot be acquired by leaving school and entering at college as a fellow commoner. But he was now, in his own peculiar manner, as great a dandy as he before had been a slatter, and when he entered his sitting room to join his two guests, arrived centred in a raid in fine linen, and perfectly splendid in appearance. General, or Captain Costigan, for the latter was the rank which he preferred to assume, was seated in the window with the newspaper held before him at arm's length. The Captain's eyes were somewhat dim, and he was spelling the paper with the help of his lips, as well as of those bloodshot eyes of his, as you see gentlemen do to whom reading is a rare and difficult occupation. His hat was cocked very much on one ear, and as one of his feet lay up in the window seat, the observer of such matters might remark, by the size and shabbiness of the boots which the Captain wore, that times did not go very well with him. Poverty seems as if it were disposed before it takes possession of a man entirely to attack his extremities first. The coverings of his head, feet and hands are its first prey. All these parts of the Captain's person were particularly rakish and shabby. As soon as he saw pen he descended from the window seat and saluted the newcomer, first in a military manner by conveying a couple of his fingers covered with a broken black glove to his hat, and then removing that ornament all together. The Captain was inclined to be bald, but he brought a quantity of lank iron gray hair over his peat and had a couple of wists of the same falling down on each side of his face. Much whiskey had spoiled what complexion Mr. Kosick and May have possessed in his youth. His once handsome face had now a copper tinge. He wore a very high stock, scarred and stained in many places, and a dress coat tightly buttoned up in those places where the buttons had not parted company from the garment. The young gentleman to whom I had the honour to be introduced yesterday in the Cathedral Yard, said the Captain with a splendid bow and wave of his hat. I hope to see you well, sir. I marked you at the theatre last night during me daughter's performance, and misty on my return. I did but conduct her home, sir, for Jack Costigan, though poor, is a gentleman, and when I re-entered the house to pay me respects to me joyous young friend Mr. Fokker, you were gone. We had a jolly night of it, sir. Mr. Fokker, the three-gallant young dragoons and your humble servant, got, sir. It put me in mind of one of our old knights when I bore his Majesty's commission in the fighting hundred and third, and he pulled out an old snuff box which he presented with a stately air to his new acquaintance. Arthur was a great deal too much flurry to speak. This shabby looking buck was, was her father. The captain was perfumed with the recollections of the last knight's cigars, and pulled and twisted the tuff on his chin as jauntily as any young dandy. I hope Miss, Miss Costigan is well, sir, Penn said, flushing up. She, she gave me greater pleasure than, than I, I, I ever enjoyed at a play. I think, sir, I think she's the finest actress in the world, he gasped out. Your hand, young man, for ye speak from your heart, cried the captain. Thank ye, sir, an old soldier and a fond father thanks ye. She is the finest actress in the world. I've seen the Sidon, sir, and the O'Neil. They were great, but what were they compared to Miss Fatheringay? I do not wish she should assume her own name while on the stage. My family, sir, are proud people, and the Costigans of Costigan Town think that an honest man who has borne her Majesty's colours in the Hundred and Third would demean himself by permitting his daughter to earn her old father's bread. There cannot be a more honourable duty, surely, Penn said. Honourable, but dad, sir, I'd like to see the man who said Jack Costigan would consent to anything dishonourable. I have a heart, sir, though I am poor. I like a man who has a heart. You have, I read it in your honest face and stating I, and would you believe it, he added, after a pause with a pathetic whisper, that that Bingley, who has made his fortune by me child, gives her but two guineas a week out of which she finds herself in dresses and which, added to me own small means, makes our all. Now the captain's means were so small as to be, it may be said, quite invisible, but nobody knows how the wind is tempered to shorn Irish lambs and in what marvellous places they find pasture. If Captain Costigan, whom I had the honour to know, would but have told his history, it would have been a great moral story, but he neither would have told it if he could nor could if he would, for the captain was not only unaccustomed to tell the truth, he was unable even to think it, and fact and fiction reeled together in his muzzy, whiskified brain. He began life rather brilliantly with a pair of colours, a fine person and legs, and one of the most beautiful voices in the world. To his latest day he sang with admirable pathos and humour, those wonderful Irish ballads, which are so mirthful and so melancholy, and was always the first himself to cry at their pathos. Poor Cost, he was at once brave and maudlin, humorous and an idiot, always good-natured and sometimes almost trustworthy. Up to the last day of his life he would drink with any man and back any man's bill, and his end was in a sponging house where the sheriff's officer, who took him, was fond of him. In his brief morning of life, Cost formed the delight of regimental messes and had the honour of singing his songs back in Aeolian and sentimental at the tables of the most illustrious generals and commanders-in-chief. In the course of which period he drank three times as much claret as was good for him, and spent his doubtful patrimony. What became of him subsequently to his retirement from the army is no affair of ours. I take it no foreigner understands the life of an Irish gentleman without money, the way in which he manages to keep afloat, the win raising conspiracies in which he engages with heroes as unfortunate as himself, the means by which he contrives during most days of the week to get his portion of whiskey and water. All these are mysteries to us inconceivable, but suffice it to say that through all the storms of life Jack had floated somehow, and the lamp of his nose had never gone out. Before he and Penn had had a half-hour's conversation, the captain managed to extract a couple of sovereigns from the young gentleman for tickets for his daughter's benefit, which was to take place speedily, and was not a bona fide transaction such as that of the last year, when poor Miss Fotheringay had lost 15 shillings by her venture, which was an arrangement with the manager, by which the lady was to have the sale of a certain number of tickets, keeping for herself a large portion of the sum for which they were sold. Penn had but two pounds in his purse, and he handed them over to the captain for the tickets. He would have been afraid to offer more, lest he should offend the latter's delicacy. Costigan scrawled him in order for a box, lightly slipped the sovereigns into his waistcoat, and slapped his hand over the place where they lay. They seemed to warm his all sides. Faith, sir, said he, the bullions scarcer with me than it used to be, as is the case with many a good fellow. I won six hundred of them in a single night, sir, when me kind friend, his royal highness the Duke of Kent, was in Gibraltar, and he straightway poured out to Penn a series of stories regarding the claret drunk, the bets made, the races ridden by the garrison there, with which he kept the young gentleman amused until the arrival of their host and his breakfast. Then it was good to see the captain's behavior before the deviled turkey and the mutton chops, his stories poured forth unceasingly, and his spirits rose as he chatted to the young men. When he got a bit of sunshine, the Lord Lazzarone basked in it. He praded about his own affairs in past splendour, and all the lord's generals and lord-left tenants he had ever known. He described the death of his darling Bessie, the lateness of Costigan, and the challenge he had sent to Captain Shanty Clancy of the slashes, for looking rudely at Miss Fotheringay, as she was on her kiara at the phoenix, and then he described how the captain apologized, gave a dinner at the Kildare Street where six of them drank twenty-one bottles of claret, etc. He announced that to sit with two such noble and generous young fellows was the happiness and pride of an old soldier's existence, and having had a second glass of kurosawa was so happy that he began to cry. Altogether we should say that the captain was not a man of much strength of mind, or a very eligible companion for youth, but there are worse men holding much better places in life, and more dishonest who have never committed half so many rogueries as he. They walked out, the captain holding an arm of each of his dear young friends, and in a mortiline state of contentment. He winked at one or two tradesmen's shops where possibly he owed a bill, as much as to say, see the company I'm in? Sure I'll pay you, my boy, and they parted finally with Mr. Fokker at a billiard room, where the latter had a particular engagement with some gentleman of Colonel Swallowtail's regiment. Penn and the shabby captain still walked the street together, the captain in his sly way making inquiries about Mr. Fokker's fortune and station in life. Penn told him how Fokker's father was a celebrated brewer, and his mother was Lady Agnes Milton, Lord Rosheville's daughter. The captain broke out into a strain of exaggerated compliment and panagery about Mr. Fokker, whose native aristocracy, he said, could be seen with the twinkling of an eye and only serve to adorn other qualities which he possessed, a foin intellect and a generous heart, in not one word of which speech did the captain accurately believe. Penn walked on, listening to his companion's prait, wondering, amused, and puzzled. It had not as yet entered into the boy's head to disbelieve any statement that was made to him, and being of a canted nature himself, he took naturally for truth what other people told him. Costigan had never had a better listener, and was highly flattered by the attentiveness and modest bearing of the young man. So much pleased was he with the young gentleman, so artless, honest, and cheerful did Penn seem to be, that the captain finally made him an invitation, which he very seldom accorded to young men, and asked Penn if he would do him the favor to enter his humble abode, which was near at hand, where the captain would have the honor of introducing his young friend to his daughter, Miss Fatheringay. Penn was so delightfully shocked at this invitation, and was so stricken down by the happiness thus suddenly offered to him that he thought he should have dropped from the captain's arm at first, and trembled lest the other should discover his emotion. He coughed out a few incoherent words, indicative of the high gratification he should have in being presented to the lady for whose talent he had conceived such an admiration, such an extreme admiration, and followed the captain, scarcely knowing wither that gentleman led him. He was going to see her. He was going to see her. In her was the center of the universe. She was the kernel of the world for Penn. Yesterday, before he knew her, seemed a period ever so long ago. A revolution was between him and that time, and a new world about to begin. The captain conducted his young friend to that quiet little street in Chatteris, which is called Pryor's Lane, which lies in the ecclesiastical quarter of the town, close by Dean's Green in the cannon's houses, and is overlooked by the enormous towers of the cathedral. There, the captain dwelt modestly in the first floor of a low gabled house, on the door of which was the brass plate of Creed, Tailor, and Roadmaker. Creed was dead, however. His widow was a pew opener in the cathedral hard by. His eldest son was a little scamp of a choir boy, who played Toss Harpenny, led his little brothers into mischief, and had a voice as sweet as an angel. A couple of the latter were sitting on the doorstep, down which he went into the passage of the house, and they jumped up with greater lackity to meet their lodger, and plunged wildly, and rather to pen surprise, at the swallow-tails of the captain's dresscoat. For the truth is that the good-natured gentleman, when he was in cash, generally brought home an apple or a piece of gingerbread for these children, whereby the witty never pressed me for rint when not convenient, as he remarked afterwards to Pen, winking knowingly and laying a finger on his nose. Pen tumbled down the step, and as he followed his companion up the creaking old stair, his knees trembled under him. He could hardly see when he entered following the captain, and stood in the room, in her room. He saw something black before him, and waving as if making a curtsy, and heard but quite indistinctly costigan making a speech over him, in which the captain, with his usual magniloquence, expressed to me child, his wish to make her known to his dear and admirable young friend, Mr. Arthur Pindiness, a young gentleman of property in the neighborhood, a person of refined mind, an enviable manners, and sincere love of poor three, and a man possessed of a feeling and affectionate heart. It is very fine weather, Miss Fatheringay said, in an Irish accent, and with a deep, rich melancholy voice. Very, said Mr. Pendennis. In this romantic way, their conversation began, and he found himself seated on a chair and having leisure, to look at the young lady. She looked still handsomer off the stage than before the lamps. All her attitudes were naturally grand and majestical. If she went and stood up against the mantelpiece, her robe draped itself classically around her. Her chin supported itself on her hand, the other lines of her form arranged themselves in full harmonious undulations. She looked like a muse in contemplation. If she sat down on a cane bottom chair, her arm rounded itself over the back of the seat. Her hand seemed as if it ought to have a scepter put into it. The folds of her dress fell naturally around her in order, like ladies of honour, around a throne, and she looked like an empress. All her movements were graceful and imperial. In the morning, you could see her hair was blue-black, her complexion of dazzling fairness, with the faintest possible blush flickering as it were in her cheek. Her eyes were grey with prodigious long lashes, and as for her mouth, Mr. Pendennis has given me subsequently to understand that it was of a staring red colour, with which the most brilliant geranium, ceiling wax, or guardsman's coat, could not buy. And very warm continued this empress in Queen of Sheba. Mr. Pendennis entered, and the conversation rolled on in this manner. She asked Costigan whether he had had a pleasant evening at the George, and he recounted the supper in the tumblers of punch. Then the father asked how she had been employing the morning. Both came, said she, at ten, and we studied Ophelia. It's for the twenty-fourth, when I hope, sir, we shall have the honour of seeing ye. Indeed, indeed, you will, Mr. Pendennis cried, wondering that she should say Ophelia, and speak with an Irish inflection of voice naturally, who had not the least hibernian accent on the stage. I've secured him for your benefit, dear, said the captain, tapping his waistcoat pocket wherein lay pen sovereigns, and winking at pen with one eye at which the boy blushed. Mr. the gentleman's very obliging, said Mrs. Hawler. My name is Pendennis, said Pen, blushing. I, I hope you'll, you'll remember it. His heart thumped so as he made this audacious declaration that he almost choked in uttering it. Pendennis, she answered slowly, and looking him full in the eyes, with a glance so straight, so clear, so bright, so killing, with a voice so sweet, so round, so low, that the word and the glance shot pen through and through and perfectly transfixed him with pleasure. I never knew the name was so pretty before, Pen said. Tis a very pretty name, Ophelia said. Pentweasel's not a pretty name. Remember Papa, when we were on the Norwich circuit? Young Pentweasel, who used to play second-old men, and married Miss Rancy, the Columbine? They're both engaged in London now at the Queens, and get five pounds a week. Pentweasel wasn't his real name, to as Judkin gave it him. I don't know why. His name was Harrington. That is, his real name was Pot, Father, a clergyman, very respectable. Harrington was in London and got in debt. You remember, he came out in Falkland to Mrs Buncer's Julia? And a pretty Julia she was, the captain interposed, a woman of 50 and a mother of 10 children. Tis you ought to have been Julia, or my name's not Jack Costigan. I didn't take the leading business then, Miss Folleringay said modestly. I wasn't fit for it, till Beaux taught me. True for you, my dear, said the captain. In bending to Pendennis, he added, reduced in circumstances, sir. I was, for some time, a fencing master in Dublin. There's only three men in the empire could touch me with a foil once. But Jack Costigan's getting old and stiff now, sir. And my daughter had an engagement at the Fierter there, and was there that my friend, Mr. Beaux, who saw her capabilities, and is an uncommon, cute man, gave her lessons in the dramatic art, and made her what you see. What have you done since Beaux went, Emily? Sure, I've made a poi. Emily said, with perfect simplicity, she pronounced it poi. If you're tired at four o'clock, sir, say the word, said Costigan gallantly. That girl, sir, makes the vest, veal, and ham pie in England. And I think I can promise you a glass of punch of the right flavour. Penn had promised to be at home to dinner at six, but there are school for he could accommodate pleasure and duty in this point, and was only too eager to accept this invitation. He looked on with delight and wonder whilst Ophelia busied herself about the room and prepared for the dinner. She arranged the glasses and laid and smoothed the little cloth, all which duties she performed with a quiet grace and good humour, which enchanted her guests more and more. The poi arrived from the bakers in the hands of one of the little choir boys' brothers at the proper hour. And at four o'clock, Penn found himself at dinner actually at dinner with the greatest tragic actress in the world and her father with the handsomest woman in all creation. With his first and only love, whom he had adored ever since when, ever since yesterday, ever since forever, he ate a crust of her making, he poured her out a glass of beer, he saw her drink a glass of punch, just one wine glass full, out of the tumbler which she mixed for her papa. She was perfectly good natured and offered to mix one for Penn Dennis too. It was prodigiously strong. Penn had never in his life drunk so much spirits and water. Was it the punch or the punch maker who intoxicated him? During dinner when the captain whom his daughter treated most respectfully ceased prattling about himself and his adventures, Penn tried to engage the following gaying conversation about poetry and about her profession. He asked her what she thought of Ophelia's madness and whether she was in love with Hamlet or not. In love with such an ogis wretch as that stunted manager of a Bingley, she bristled with indignation at the thought. Penn explained, it was not of her he spoke but of Ophelia of the play. Oh indeed if no offence was meant none was taken. But as for Bingley indeed she did not value him. Not that glass of punch. Penn next tried her on Kotzebue. Kotzebue? Who is he? The author of the play in which she had been performing so admirably. She did not know that. The man's name at the beginning of the book was Thompson. She said. Penn laughed at her adorable simplicity. He told her of the melancholy fate of the author of the play and how sand had killed him. It was for the first time in her life that Ms. Kostigan had ever heard of Mr. Kotzebue's existence. But she looked as if she was very much interested and her sympathy sufficed for an honest Penn. And in the midst of this simple conversation the hour and a quarter which poor Penn could afford to allow himself passed away only too quickly. And he had taken leave. He was gone and away on his rapid road homewards on the back of Rebecca. She was called upon to show her metal in the three journeys which she made that day. What was that he was talking about? The madness of Hamlet and the theory of the great German critic on the subject? Emily asked of her father. Did then I don't know, merely dear? Answered the captain. We'll ask Bo's when he comes. Anyhow, he's a nice, fair-spoken, pretty young man. The lady said. How many tickets did he take of you? Faith then. He took six and gave me two guineas, merely. The captain said. I suppose them young chaps is not too flush of coin. He's full of book learning. Miss bothering gay continued. Could subude. He he, what an droll name indeed now. And the poor fellow killed by sand too. Did you ever hear of such a thing? I'll ask Bo's about it, Papa dear. A queer death, sure enough, ejaculated the captain and changed the painful theme. Tis an elegant man, the young gentleman rides. Costigan went on to say. And a grand breakfast entirely that young Mr. Foker gave us. He's good for two private boxes and at least 20 tickets I should say, cried the daughter. A prudent lass who always kept her fine eyes on the main chance. I'll go bail of that, answered the Papa. And so their conversation continued a while until the tumbler of punch was finished and their hour of departure soon came too. For at half past six, Miss following gay was to appear at the theatre again. With her her father always accompanied her and stood as we have seen in the side scene watching her and drank spirits and water in the green room with the company there. How beautiful she is, thought pen cantering homewards. How simple and how tender. How charming it is to see a woman of her commanding genius busying herself with the delightful, the humble officers of domestic life, cooking dishes to make her old father comfortable and brewing drink for him with her delicate fingers. How rude it was of me to begin to talk about professional matters and how well she turned the conversation. By the way, she talked about professional matters herself. But then with that fun and humour, she told the story of her common raid, Pint Weasel, as he was called. There is no humour like Irish humour. Her father is rather tedious, but thoroughly amiable and how fine of him giving lessons in fencing after he quitted the army where he was the pet of the Duke of Kent. Fencing. I should like to continue my fencing, or I shall forget what Angela taught me. Uncle Arthur always liked me to fence. He says it is the exercise of a gentleman. Hang it, I'll take some lessons of Captain Costigan. Go along, Rebecca. Up the hill, old lady. Penn Dennis, Penn Dennis. How she spoke the word. Emily, Emily. How good, how noble, how beautiful, how perfect she is. Now, the reader who has had the benefit of overhearing the entire conversation, which Penn had with Miss Fotheringay, can judge for himself about the powers of her mind, and may perhaps be disposed to think that she has not said anything astonishingly humorous or intellectual in the course of the above interview. She has married and taken her position in the world as the most spotless and irreproachable lady since, and I have had the pleasure of making her acquaintance, and must certainly own, against my friend Penn's opinion, that his adored Emily is not a clever woman. The truth is, she had not only never heard of Kotzebue, but she had never heard of Vakwa or Congrive, or any dramatist in whose place she had not a part, and of these dramas, she only knew the part which concerned herself. A wag once told her that Dante was born in Algiers, and asked her which Dr. Johnson wrote first, Irene or every man in his humour. But she had the best of the joke, for she had never heard of Irene or every man in his humour, or Dante, or perhaps Algiers. It was all one to her. She acted what little Bose told her. When he told her to sob, she sobbed, where he told her to laugh, she laughed. She gave the tirade or the repartee without the slightest notion of its meaning. She went to church and goes every Sunday with a reputation finally intact, and was, and is, as guiltless of sense as of any other crime. But what did our Penn know of these things? He saw a pair of bright eyes, and he believed in them, a beautiful image, and he fell down and worshipped it. He supplied the meaning which her words wanted, and created the divinity which he loved. Was Tatiana the first who fell in love with an ass, or Pygmalion the only artist who had gone crazy about a stone? He had found her, he had found what his soul thirsted after. He flung himself into the stream and drank with all his might. Let those say who have been thirsty once, how delicious that first draught is. As he rode down the avenue towards home, Penn shrieked with laughter as he saw the reverent Mr. Smerk, once more coming to mealy away from fair oaks on his pony. Smerk had dawdled and stayed at the cottages on the way, and then dawdled with Laura over her lessons, and then looked at Mrs. Pendennis's gardens and improvements until he had perfectly bored out that lady. And he had taken his leave at the very last minute without that invitation to dinner, which he fondly expected. Penn was full of kindness and triumph. What, pick up and sound? He cried out laughing. Come along back old fellow and eat my dinner. I have had mine. I have had mine, but we will have a bottle of the old wine and drink her health, Smerk. Poor Smerk turned the pony's head around and jogged along with Arthur. His mother was charmed to see him in such high spirits and welcomed Mr. Smerk for his sake. When Arthur said he had forced the curate back to Dine, he gave a most ludicrous account of the play of the night before, and of the acting of Bingley the manager, in his rickety hashings and the enormous Mrs. Bingley as the Countess in rumpled green satin and a Polish cap. He mimicked them and delighted his mother in little Laura, who clapped her hands with pleasure. And Mrs. Holler, said Mrs. Pendennis, she's a stunner, Mum. Penn said, laughing and using the words of his revered friend Mr. Foker. A what, Arthur? asked the lady. What is a stunner, Arthur? Cried Laura in the same voice. So he gave them a queer account of Mr. Foker and how he used to be called Vats and Grains and by other Contamelius names at school and how he was now exceedingly rich and a fellow commoner at St Boniface. But gay and communicative as he was, Mr. Penn did not say one syllable about his ride to Chatteros that day or about the new friends whom he had made there. When the two ladies retired, Penn with flashing eyes filled up two great bumpers of Madeira and looking smirkful in the face said, here's to her. Here's to her, said the curate with a sigh. Lifting the glass and emptying it so that his face was a little pink when he put it down. Penn had even less sleep that night than on the night before. In the morning and almost before dawn he went out and saddled that unfortunate Rebecca himself and wrote her on the downs like mad. Again love had roused him and said, awake, Penn Dennis, I am here. That charming fever, that delicious longing and fire and uncertainty. He hugged them to him. He would not have lost them for all the world. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of the History of Penn Dennis This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The History of Penn Dennis by William Makepeace Thackery Chapter 6 Contains Both Love and War Cicero and Euripides did not occupy Mr. Penn much for some time after this and honest Mr. Smurg had a very easy time with his pupil. Rebecca was the animal who suffered the most in the present state of Penn's mind. For besides those days when he could publicly announce his intention of going to Chatterst to take a fencing lesson and went thither with the knowledge of his mother, whenever he saw three hours clear before him the young rascal made a rush for the city and found his way to Pryor's Lane. He was as frantic with vexation when Rebecca went lame, as Richard at Bosworth when his horse was killed under him and got deeply into the books of the man who kept the hunting stables at Chatterst for the doctoring of his own in the hire of another animal. Then and perhaps once a week under pretense of going to read a great play with Smurg this young reprobate set off so as to be in time for the competitor down coach, stayed a couple of hours in Chatterst and returned on the rival which left for London at ten at night. Once his secret was nearly lost by Smurg's simplicity of whom Mrs. Penn Dennis asked whether they had read a great deal the night before or a question to that effect Smurg was about to tell the truth that he had never seen Mr. Penn at all when the latter's boot heel came grinding down on Mr. Smurg's toe under the table and warned the curate not to betray him. They had had conversations on the tender subject of course it is good sport if you are not yourself engaged in the conversation to hear two men in love talk there must be a confidant and a depositary somewhere. When informed under the most solemn vows of secrecy of Penn's condition of mind the curate said with no small tremor that he hoped it was no unworthy object no unlawful attachment which Penn had formed for if so the poor fellow felt it would be his duty to break his vow and inform Penn's mother and then there would be a quarrel he felt with sickening apprehension and he would never again have a chance of seeing what he most liked in the world. Unlawful unworthy Penn bounced out at the curate's question she is as pure as she is beautiful I would give my heart to no other woman I kept the matter a secret in my family because because there are reasons of a weighty nature which I am not at liberty to disclose but any man who breathes a word against her purity insults both her honor and mind and and dammy I won't stand it. Smurg with a faint laugh only said well well don't call me out Arthur for you know I can't fight but by this compromise the wretched curate was put more than ever into the power of his pupil and the greek and mathematics suffered correspondingly. If the reverend gentleman had had much discernment and looked into the poet's corner of the county chronicle as it arrived in the Wednesday's bag he might have seen Mrs. Hawler passion and genius lines to missfollowing gay of the theater royal appearing every week and other verses of the most gloomy, thrilling and passionate cast. But as these poems were no longer signed Nepp by their Arthur composer but subscribed Eros neither did Tudor nor Helen the good soul who cut all her son's verses out of the paper knew that Nepp was no other than that flaming Eros who sang so vehemently the character of the new actress. Who is the lady? At last asked Mrs. Penn Dennis whom your rival is always singing in the county chronicle. He writes something like you dear Penn but yours is much the best. Have you seen Miss Fothering Gay? Penn said yes he had. That night he went to see the stranger she acted Mrs. Hawler. By the way she was going to have a benefit in was to appear in Ophelia. Suppose we were to go Shakespeare you know mother we can get horses from the clattering arms. Little Laura sprang up with delight she longed for a play. Penn introduced Shakespeare you know because the deceased Penn Dennis as became a man of his character professed an uncommon respect for the Bard of Avon in whose works he safely said there was more poetry than in all Johnson's poets put together. And though Mr. Penn Dennis did not much read the works in question yet he enjoined Penn to peruse them and often said what pleasure he should have when the boy was of a proper age in taking him and mother to see some good players of the immortal poet. The ready tears welled up in the kind mother's eyes as she remembered these speeches of the man who was gone. She kissed her son fondly and said she would go. Laura jumped for joy. Was Penn happy? Was he ashamed? As he held his mother to him he longed to tell her all but he kept his counsel. He would see how his mother liked her the play should be the thing and he would try his mother like Hamlet. Helen in her good humour asked Mr. Smirk to be of the party that Ecclesiastic had been bred up by a fond parent at Clapham who had an objection to dramatic entertainment and he had never yet seen a play but Shakespeare but to go with Mrs. Penn Dennis in her carriage and sit a whole night by her side. He could not resist the idea of so much pleasure and made a feeble speech in which he spoke of temptation and gratitude and finally accepted Mrs. Penn Dennis most kind offer. As he spoke he gave her a look which made her exceedingly uncomfortable. She had seen that look more than once of late pursuing her. He became more positively odious every day in the widow's eyes. We are not going to say a great deal about Penn's courtship of misfothering gay for the reader has already had a specimen of her conversation much of which we need surely not be reported. Penn sat with her hour after hour and poured forth all his honest boyish soul to her. Everything he knew or hoped or felt or had read or fancied he told to her. He never tired of talking and longing one after another as his thoughts rose in his hot eager brain. He clothed them in words and told them to her. Her part of the tete-tete was not to talk but to appear as if she understood what Penn talked. A difficult matter for the young fellow blurted out no small quantity of nonsense and to look exceedingly handsome and sympathizing. The fact is while she was making one of his tirades and delighted perhaps in wandering at his own eloquence the lad would go on for 20 minutes at a time. The lovely Emily who could not comprehend the tenth part of his talk had leisure to think about her own affairs and would arrange in her own mind how they should dress the cold button or make herself out of her scarf a bonnet like Miss Thackthwaite's new one and so forth. Penn spouted Byron and Moore, Passion and Poetry. Her business was to throw up her eyes or fixing them for a moment on his face to cry, Oh, it is beautiful. Oh, how exquisite. Repeat those lines again. And off the boy went and she returned to her own simple thoughts about the turned gown or the hashed mutton. In fact Penn's passion was not long a secret from the lovely Emily or her father. Upon his second visit his admiration was quite evident to both of them and on his departure the old gentleman said to his daughter as he winked at her over his glass of grog, Faith, Millie darling, I think you've hooked that chap. Poot is only a boy, Papa dear, Millie remarked. Sure, but he's but a child. Penn would have been very much pleased if he had heard that phrase. He was galloping home wild with pleasure and shouting out her name as he rode. You've hooked him anyhow, said the captain, and let me tell ye he's not a bad fish. I asked Tom at the George and Flint the grocer, where his mother dales. Fine fortune, drives in her chariot. Splendid park and grounds. Fair oak park, only sun. Property all his own at twenty-one. You might go further and not fare so well, Miss Fotheringay. Them boys are a mostly talk, said Millie him seriously. You know at Dublin how you went on about young poll duty and I have a whole desk full of verses he wrote me when he was in Trinity College, but he went abroad and his mother married him to an English woman. Lord Poole duty was a young nobleman, and in them it's natural, and you weren't in the position in which you are now, Millie dear. But you mustn't encourage this young chap too much for a bidad Jack Costigan won't have any thrifling with his daughter. No more will his daughter, Papa. You may be sure of that, Millie said. A little sip more of the punch. Short is beautiful. You needn't be afraid about the young chap. I think I'm old enough to take care of myself, Captain Costigan. So Penn used to come day after day, rushing in and galloping away and growing more wild about the girl with every visit. Sometimes the captain was present at their meetings, but having a perfect confidence in his daughter, he was more often inclined to leave the young couple to themselves and copters had over his eye and strutted off on some errand when Penn entered. How delightful those interviews were. The captain's drawing room was a low, wainscoated room with a large window looking into the dean's garden. There Penn sat and talked and talked, Emily looking beautiful as she sat at her work, looking beautiful and calm, and the sunshine came streaming in at the great windows and lighted up her superb face and form. In the midst of the conversation, the great bell would begin to boom and he would pause smiling and be silent until the sound of the vast music died away. All the rooks in the cathedral elms would make a great noise towards sunset, or the sound of the organ and the choristers would come over the quiet air and gently hush Penn's talking. By the way, it must be said that Ms. Fatheringay in a plain shawl and a close bonnet and veil went to church every Sunday of her life, accompanied by her indefatigable father, who gave the responses in a very rich and fine brogue, joined in the psalms and chanting and behaved in the most exemplary manner. Little Bose, the house friend of the family, was exceedingly wroth at the notion of Ms. Fatheringay's marriage, with a stripling seven or eight years her junior. Bose, who was a cripple and owned that he was a little more deformed even than Bingley the manager, so that he could not appear on the stage, was a singular wild man of no small talents and humour. Attracted first by Ms. Fatheringay's beauty, he began to teach her how to act. He shrieked out in his cracked voice the parts and his pupil learned them from his lips by rote and repeated them in her full rich tones. He indicated the attitudes and set and moved those beautiful arms of hers. Those who remembered this grand actress on the stage can recall how she used always precisely the same gestures, looks and tones, how she stood on the same plank of the stage in the same position, rolled her eyes at the same instant and to the same degree, and wept with precisely the same heart-rending pathos and over the same pathetic syllable, and after she had come out trembling with emotion before the audience, and looking so exhausted and tearful that you fancied she would faint with sensibility, she would gather up her hair the instant she was behind the curtain and go home to a mutton chop in a glass of brown stout. And the harrowing labours of the day over, she went to bed and snored as resolutely and as regularly as a porter. Bo's then was indignant at the notion that his pupil should throw her chances away in life by bestowing her hand upon a little country squire. As soon as the London manager saw her, he prophesied that she would get a London engagement in a great success. The misfortune was that the London managers had seen her. She had played in London three years before and failed from utter stupidity. Since then it was that Bo's had taken her in hand and taught her part after part, how he worked and screamed and twisted and repeated lines over and over again, and with what indimitable patience and dullness she followed him. She knew that he made her and let herself be made. She was not grateful or ungrateful or unkind or ill-humoured, she was only stupid, and Penn was madly in love with her. The post-horses from the Clevering Arms arrived in due time and carried the party to the theatre at Chatteros, where Penn was gratified in perceiving that a tolerably large audience was assembled. The young gentleman from Bayameth had a box, in the front of which sat Mr. Fokker and his friend Mr. Spavin, splendidly attired in the most full-blown evening costume. They saluted Penn in a cordial manner and examined his party, of which they approved, for Little Laura was a pretty little red-cheeked girl with a quantity of shining brown ringlets, and Mrs. Penn Dennis, dressed in black velvet with a diamond cross, which she sported on great occasions, looked uncommonly handsome and majestic. Behind them sat Mr. Arthur and the gentle smirk, with the curl reposing on his fair forehead and his white tie in perfect order. He blushed to find himself in such a place, but how happy he was to be there. He and Mrs. Penn Dennis brought books of Hamlet, with them to follow the tragedy, as is the custom of honest country folks who go to a play in state. Samuel, Coachman, Groom, and Gardener to Mr. Penn Dennis took his place in the pit, where Mr. Fokker's man was also visible. It was dotted with non-commissioned officers of the Dragoons, whose band, by kind permission of Colonel Swallowtail, were, as usual, in the orchestra, and that corpulent and distinguished warrior himself with his Waterloo medal and a number of his young men made a handsome show in the boxes. Who's that odd-looking person bowing to you, Arthur? Mrs. Penn Dennis asked of her son. Penn blushed a great deal. His name is Captain Costigan Mam, he said, a peninsula officer. In fact, it was the captain in the new shoot of clothes, as he called them, and with a large pair of white-clibbed gloves, one of which he waved to Penn Dennis while he laid the other sprawling over his heart and coat buttons. Penn did not say any more, and how is Mrs. Penn Dennis to know that Mr. Costigan was the father of Miss Fotheringay? Mr. Hornball from London was the hamlet of the night. Mr. Pingley modestly contented himself with the part of Horatio, and reserving his chief strength for William in Black Eyed Susan, which was the second piece. They have nothing to do with the play, except to say that Ophelia looked lovely and performed with admirable wild pathos, laughing, weeping, gazing wildly, waving her beautiful arms and flinging about her snatches of flowers and songs with the most charming madness. What an opportunity, her splendid black hair had of tossing over her shoulders. She made the most charming corpse ever seen, and while hamlet and laities were battling in her grave, she was looking out from the back scenes with some curiosity towards Penn's box, and the family party assembled in it. There was but one voice in her praise there. Mrs. Penn Dennis was in ecstasies with her beauty. Little Laura was bewildered by the peace and the ghost and the play within the play. During which, as hamlet lay at Ophelia's knee, Penn felt that he would like to strangle Mr. Hornball, but cried out great praises of that beautiful young creature. Penn was charmed with the effect which she produced on his mother, and the clergyman for his part was exceedingly enthusiastic. When the curtain fell upon the group of slaughtered personages, who were dispatched so suddenly at the end of hamlet, and whose demise astonished poor little Laura, not a little, there was an immense shouting and applause from all quarters of the house. The intrepid smirk, violently excited, clapped his hand and cried out, bravo, bravo, as loud as the dragoon officers themselves. These were greatly moved, ill-sadgeture sur le bonc. To borrow a phrase from our neighbours, they were led cheering into action by a portly swallowtail who waved his cap. The non-commissioned officers in the pit, of course, gallantly followed their chiefs. There was a roar of bravers rang through the house, Penn bellowing the loudest, fathering gay, fathering gay, and messes spavin and foco giving the few hallours from their box. Even Mrs. Penn Dennis began to wave about her pocket handkerchief, and little Laura danced, laughed, clapped and looked up at Penn with wonder. Hornball led the beneficier forward, amidst bursts of enthusiasm, and she looked so handsome and radiant, with her hair still over her shoulders, that Penn cuddly could contain himself for rapture, and he leaned over his mother's chair and shouted in her raid and waved his hat. It was all he could do to keep his secret from Helen, and not say, Look, that's the woman. Isn't she peerless? I tell you I love her. But he disguised these feelings under an enormous bellowing and hurraying. As for Miss Fathering Gay and her behaviour, the reader is referred to a former page for an account of that. She went through precisely the same business. She surveyed the house all round with glances of gratitude, and trembled and almost sank with emotion over her favourite trap door. She seized the flowers. Fokker discharged a prodigious bouquet at her, and even Smirk made a feeble shy with a rose and blushed dreadfully when it fell into the pit. She seized the flowers and pressed them to her swelling heart, etc., etc. In a word, we refer the reader to earlier pages. Twinkling in her breast, poor old pens or locket which he had bought at Mr Nathan in High Street, with the last shelling he was worth and a sovereign borrowed from Smirk. Black-eyed Susan followed, at which sweet story our gentle-hearted friends were exceedingly charmed and affected, and in which Susan, with a russet gown and a pink ribbon in her cap, looked to the full as lovely as Ophelia. Bingley was great in William, Gull as the Admiral, looked like the figurehead of a 74, and Garbots as Captain Baldweather, a miscreant who forms a plan for carrying off Black-eyed Susan and waving in immense cocked hats says, come what may he will be the ruin of her. All these performed their parts with their accustomed talent, and it was with a sincere regret that all our friends saw the curtain drop down and end that pretty and tender story. If Penn had been alone with his mother in the carriage as they went home, he would have told her all that night, but he sat in the box in the moonshine smoking a cigar by the side of Smirk, who warmed himself with a comforter. Mr. Fokker's tandem enlights whirled by the sober old clevering posters, as they were a couple of miles on their road home, and Mr. Spavin saluted Mrs. Pendenis' carriage with some considerable variations of raw Britannia on the key bugle. It happened two days after the above gayities that Mr. Dean of Chatteros entertained a few select clerical friends at dinner at his denary home, that they drunk uncommonly good port wine and abused the bishop over their dessert. Our very lightly matters, but with such we have nothing at present to do. Our friend Dr. Portman of Clavering was one of the Dean's guests, and being a gallant man and seeing from his place at the mahogany the Dean's lady walking up and down the grass with her children sporting around her and her pink parasol over her lovely head, the doctor stepped out of the French windows of the dining room into the lawn, which skirts that apartment and left the other white-neck class to gird at my Lord Bishop. Then the doctor went up and offered Mrs. Dean his arm and they sauntered over the ancient velvet lawn, which had been mowed and rolled for immemorial deans in that easy, quiet, comfortable manner in which people of middle age and good temper walk after a good dinner in a calm, golden summer evening when the sun has but just sunk behind the enormous cathedral towers and the sickle-shaped moon is growing every instant brighter in the heavens. Now at the end of the Dean's garden there is, as we have stated, Mrs. Creed's house and the windows of the first-floor room were open to admit the pleasant summer air. A young lady of six and twenty whose eyes were perfectly wide open and a luckless boy of eighteen blind with love and infatuation were in that chamber together, in which persons as we have before seen them in the place, the reader will have no difficulty in recognizing Mr. Arthur Pendennis and Miss Costigan. The poor boy had taken the plunge, trembling with passionate emotion, his heart beating and throbbing fiercely, tears rushing forth in spite of him, his voice almost choking with feeling. Poor Pen had said those words which he could withhold no more and flung himself and his whole store of love and admiration and ardour at the feet of this mature beauty. Is he the first who has done so? Have none before or after him state all their treasure of life? As a savage does, his land and possessions against a draught of the fair skin's firewater or a couple of bubble eyes? Does your mother know of this, Arthur? said Miss Fotheringay slowly. He seized her hand madly and kissed it a thousand times. She did not withdraw it. Does the old lady know it Miss Costigan thought to herself? Well, perhaps she may. And then she remembered what a handsome diamond cross Mrs. Pendennis had on the night of the play and thought, sure to go in the family. Calm yourself, dear Arthur, she said in her low rich voice and sniffled sweetly and gravely upon him. Then with her disengaged hand she put the hair lightly off his throbbing forehead. He was in such a rapture and whirl of happiness that he could hardly speak. At last he gasped out, my mother has seen you and admires you beyond measure. She will learn to love you soon. Who can do otherwise? She will love you because I do. Did then I think you do? Said Miss Costigan, perhaps with a sort of pity for Penn. Think she did? Of course here Mr. Penn went off into a rhapsody through which, as we have perfect command over our own feelings, we have no reason to follow the lad. Of course love, truth and eternity were produced and words were tried but found impossible to plumb the tremendous depths of his affection. This speech we say is no business of ours. It was most likely not very wise, but what right have we to overhear? Let the poor boy fling out his simple heart at the woman's feet and deal gently with him. It is best to love wisely, no doubt, but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can't, and are proud of our impotence too. At the end of his speech Penn again kissed the imperial hand with rapture, and I believe it was at this very moment, and while Mrs. Dean and Dr. Portman were engaged in conversation, that young master Ridley Rosette, her son, pulled his mother by the back of her capacious stress and said, I say Ma, look up there. And he waggled his innocent head. That was indeed a view from the Dean's garden such as seldom is seen by Dean's, or is written in chapters. There was poor Penn performing a salute upon the rosy fingers of his charmer, who received the embrace with perfect calmness and good humour. Master Ridley looked up and grinned. Little Miss Rosa looked at her brother and opened the mouth of astonishment. Mrs. Dean's countenance defied expression, and asked for Dr. Portman, when he beheld the scene, and saw his prime favourite and dear pupil Penn, he stood mute with rage and wonder. Mrs. Hawlow spied the party below at the same moment and gave a start and a laugh. Sure there's somebody in the Dean's garden, she cried out, and withdrew with perfect calmness, whilst Penn darted away with his face glowing like coals. The garden party had re-entered the house when he ventured to look out again. The sickle moon was blazing bright in the heavens then, the stars were glittering, the bell of the cathedral tolling nine. The Dean's guests, all save one, who had called for his horse stumbling and ridden off early, were partaking of tea and buttered cakes in Mrs. Dean's drawing room, when Penn took leave of Ms. Costigan. Penn arrived at home in due time afterwards and was going to slip off to bed, for the poor lad was greatly worn and agitated, and his high strong nerves had been at almost a maddening pitch when a summons came to him by John the Old Footman, whose countenance bore a very ominous look, that his mother must see him below. On this he tied on his neckcloth again and went downstairs to the drawing room. There sate not only his mother, but her friend the Reverend Dr. Portman. Helen's face looked very pale by the light of the lamp. The doctors was flushed, on the contrary, in quivering with anger and emotion. Penn saw at once that there was a crisis and that there had been a discovery. Now for it, he thought. Where have you been, Arthur? Helen said in a trembling voice. How can you look that that dear lady in a Christian clergyman in the face, sir, bounced out the doctor in spite of Helen's pale, appealing looks? Where has he been? Where his mother's son should have been ashamed to go. For your mother's an angel, sir, an angel. How dare you bring pollution into her house and make the spotless creature wretched with the thoughts of your crime? Sir, said Penn. Don't deny it, sir, roared the doctor. Don't add lies, sir, to your other infamy. I saw you myself, sir. I saw you from the Dean's garden. I saw you kissing the hand of that infernal, painted stop, Penn said, clapping his fist on the table till the lamp flickered up and shook. I am a very young man, but you will please to remember that I am a gentleman. I will hear no abuse of that lady. Lady, sir, cried the doctor. That a lady? You stand in your mother's presence and call that that woman a lady? In anybody's presence shouted out Penn. She is worthy of any place. She is as pure as any woman. She is as good as she is beautiful. If any man but you insulted her, I would tell him what I thought. But as you are my oldest friend, I suppose you have the privilege to doubt of my honor. No, no, Penn, dear as Penn, cried out Helen in an excess of joy. I told, I told you, doctor, he was not, not what you thought. And the tender creature coming trembling forward flung herself on Penn's shoulder. Penn felt himself a man in a match for all the doctors of Doctordom. He was glad this explanation had come. You saw how beautiful she was, he said to his mother, with a soothing protecting air like Hamlet with Gertrude in the play. I tell you, dear mother, she is as good. When you know her, you will say so. She is of all except you, the simplest, the kindest, the most affectionate of women. Why should she not be on the stage? She maintains her father by her labor. Drunken or reprobate, cried the doctor, but Penn did not hear or heed. If you could see as I have, how orderly her life is, how pure and pious her whole conduct you would, as I do. Yes, as I do, with a savage look at the doctor. Spurned the slanderer who dared to do her wrong. Her father was an officer and distinguished himself in Spain. He was a friend of his Royal Highness the Duke of Kent and is intimately known to the Duke of Wellington and some of the first officers of our army. He has met my uncle Arthur at Lord's Hill, he thinks. His own family is one of the most ancient respectable in Ireland, and indeed is as good as our own. The Costigans were kings of Ireland. Why, God bless my soul, shrieked out the doctor, hardly knowing whether to burst with rage or laughter. You don't mean to say you want to marry her? Penn put on his most princely air. What else, Dr. Portman, he said, do you suppose would be my desire? Utterly foiled in his attack and knocked down by this sudden lunge of pens, the doctor could only gasp out, Mrs. Pendennis's mom, send for the major. Send for the major, with all my heart, said Arthur, Prince of Pendennis and Grand Duke of Farogues, with the most superb wave of the hand, and the colloquy terminated by the writing of those two letters which were laid on Major Pendennis's breakfast table in London at the commencement of Prince Arthur's most voracious history. End of Chapter 6 The Major Makes His Appearance Our acquaintance, Major Arthur Pendennis, arrived in due time at Farogues after a dreary night passed in the mail-coach, where a stout fellow passenger, swelling preternaturally with great coats, had crowded him into a corner and kept him awake by snoring indecently, where a widow lady opposite had not only shut out the fresh air by closing all the windows of the vehicle, but had filled the interior with fumes of Jamaica rum and water, which she sucked perpetually from a bottle in her reticule, where, whenever he caught a brief moment of sleep, the twanging of the horn at the turnpike gates, or the scuffling of his huge neighbour wedging him closer and closer, or the play of the widow's feet on his own tender toes, speedily woke up the poor gentleman to the horrors and realities of life. A life which has passed away now and become impossible and only lives in fond memories. Eight miles an hour, for twenty, or five and twenty hours, a tight mail-coach, a hard seat, a gouty tendency, a perpetual change of coachmen, grumbling because you did not feed them enough, a fellow passenger partial to spirits and water, who has not borne with these evils in the jolly old times, and how could people travel under such difficulties? And yet they did, and were merry too. Next the widow, and by the side of the major's servant on the roof, were a couple of schoolboys going home for the Midsummer holidays, and Major Penn Dennis wondered to see them supp at the Inn at Bagshot, where they took in a cargo of ham, eggs, pie, pickles, tea, coffee, and boiled beef, which surprised the poor Major, sipping a cup of very feeble tea, and thinking with a tender dejection that Lord Stain's dinner was coming off at that very moment. The ingenuous ardour of the boys, however, amused the Major, who was very good-natured, and he became the more interested when he found that the one who travelled inside with him was a Lord's son, whose noble father Penn Dennis, of course, had met in the world of fashion which he frequented. The little Lord slept all night through, in spite of the squeezing, and the horn-blowing, and the widow, and he looked as fresh as paint, and indeed pronounced himself to be so, when the Major, with a yellow face, a bristly beard, a wig out of curl, and strong rheumatic griefs shooting through various limbs of his uneasy body, descended at the little lodge gate at Fair Oaks, where the porteress and gardener's wife reverentially greeted him, and still more respectfully, Mr. Morgan, his man. Helen was on the lookout for this expected guest, and saw him from her window, but she did not come forward immediately to greet him. She knew the Major did not like to be seen at a surprise, and required a little preparation before he cared to be visible. Penn, when a boy, had incurred sad disgrace by carrying off from the Major's dressing-table a little Morocco box, which it must be confessed, contained the Major's back teeth, which he naturally would leave out of his jaws in a jolting male-coach, and without which he would not choose to appear. Morgan, his man, made a mystery of mystery of his wigs, curling them in private places, introducing them mysteriously to his master's room, nor without his head of hair would the Major care to show himself to any member of his family, or any acquaintance. He went to his apartment then, and supplied these deficiencies. He groaned, and moaned, and wheezed, and cursed Morgan through his toilet, as an old buck will, who has been up all night with a rheumatism, and has a long duty to perform. And finally, being belted, curled, and set straight, he descended upon the drawing-room, with a grave majestic air, such as befitted one who was at once a man of business, and a man of fashion. Penn was not there, however, only Helen, and little Laura, sewing at her knees, and to whom he never presented more than a forefinger, as he did on this occasion, after saluting his sister-in-law. Laura took the finger, trembling, and dropped it, and then fled out of the room. Major Penn Dennis did not want to keep her, or indeed to have her in the house at all, and had his private reason for disapproving of her, which we may mention on some future occasion. Meanwhile, Laura disappeared, and wandered about the premises, seeking for Penn, whom she presently found in the orchard, pacing up and down a walk there, in earnest conversation with Mr. Smirk. He was so occupied, that he did not hear Laura's clear voice singing out, until Smirk pulled him by the coat, and pointed towards her, as she came running. She ran up, and put her hand into his. Come in, Penn, she said, for somebody come. Uncle Arthur's come. Here's is he, said Penn, and she felt him grasp her little hand. He looked round at Smirk with uncommon fierceness, as much as to say, I'm ready for him or any man. Mr. Smirk cast up his eyes as usual, and heaved a gentle sigh. Lead on, Laura, Penn said, with a half fierce, half comic air. Lead on, and say, I wait upon my uncle. But he was laughing in order to hide a great anxiety, and was screwing his courage inwardly, to face the ordeal which he knew was now before him. Penn had taken Smirk into his confidence in the last two days. And after the outbreak, attendant on the discovery of Dr. Portman, and during every one of those forty-eight hours, which he had passed in Mr. Smirk's society, had done nothing but talk to his tutor about Miss Fotheringay, Miss Emily Fotheringay, Emily, etc., to all which talk Smirk listened without difficulty, for he was in love himself, most anxious in all things to propitiate Penn, and indeed very much himself enraptured by the personal charms of this goddess, whose like, never having been before to theatrical representation, he had not beheld until now. Penn's fire and volubility, his hot eloquence, and rich poetical tropes and figures, his manly heart, kind, ardent, and hopeful, refusing to see any defects in the person he loved, any difficulties in their position that he might not overcome, had half convinced Mr. Smirk that the arrangement proposed by Mr. Penn was a very feasible and prudent one, and that it would be a great comfort to have Emily settled at Fair Oaks, Captain Costigan in the Yellow Room, established for life there, and Penn married at eighteen. And it is a fact that in these two days the boy had almost talked over his mother too, had parried all her objections one after another, with that indignant good sense, which is often the perfection of absurdity, and had brought her almost to acquiesce in the belief that if the marriage was doomed in heaven, why doomed it was, that if the young woman was a good person, it was all that she for her part had to ask, and rather to dread the arrival of the guardian uncle, who she foresaw would regard Mr. Penn's marriage in a manner very different to that simple, romantic, honest, and utterly absurd way, in which the widow was already disposed to look at questions of this sort. For, as in the old allegory of the gold and silver shield, about which the two nights quarrelled, each is right according to the point from which he looks. So about marriage, the question whether it is foolish or good, wise or otherwise, depends upon the point of view from which you regard it. If it means a snug house in Belgravia, and pretty little dinner parties, and a pretty little broom to drive in the park, and a decent provision not only for the young people, but for the little Belgravians to come, and if these are the necessaries of life, and they are with many honest people, to talk of any other arrangement is an absurdity, of love in lodgings, a babyish folly of affection, that can't pay a coach hire, or afford a decent milliner, as mere wicked balderdash and childish romance. If on the other hand your opinion is that people, not with an assured subsistence, but with a fair chance to obtain it, and with the stimulus of hope, health, and strong affection, may take the chance of fortune for better or worse, and share its good or its evil together, the polite theory then becomes an absurdity in its turn, worse than an absurdity, a blasphemy almost, and doubt of providence, and a man who waits to make his chosen woman happy, until he can drive her to church in a neat little carriage with a pair of horses, is no better than a coward or a trifler, who is neither worthy of love, nor a fortune. I don't say that the townsfolk are not right, but Helen Pendennis was a country-bred woman, and the book of life, as she interpreted it, told her a different story, to that page which is read in cities. Like most soft and sentimental women, matchmaking, in general, formed a great part of her thoughts, and I dare say she had begun to speculate about her sons falling in love, and marrying, long before the subject had ever entered into the brains of the young gentleman. It pleased her, with that dismal pleasure which the idea of sacrificing themselves gives to certain women, to think of the day when she would give up all to pen, and he should bring his wife home, and she would surrender the keys, and the best bedroom, and go and sit at the side of the table, and see him happy. What did she want in life, but to see the lad prosper? As an empress certainly was not too good for him, and would be honoured by becoming Mrs. Penn, so if he selected Humble Esther instead of Queen Vashti, she would be content with his Lordship's choice. Never mind how lowly or poor the person might be, who was to enjoy that prodigious honour, Mrs. Pendennis was willing to bow before her, and welcome her, and yield her up the first place. But an actress, a mature woman, who had long ceased blushing except with rouge, as she stood under the eager glances of thousands of eyes, and a literate and ill-bred person very likely, who must have lived with light associates, and have heard doubtful conversation. Oh, it was hard that such a one should be chosen, and that the matron should be deposed to give place to such a sultana. All these doubts the widow laid before Penn during the two days, which had of necessity to elapse ere the uncle came down. But he met them with that happy frankness and ease, which a young gentleman exhibits at his time of life, and routed his mother's objections with infinite satisfaction to himself. Ms. Costigan was a paragon of virtue and delicacy. She was as sensitive as the most timid maiden. She was as pure as the unsullied snow. She had the finest manners, the most graceful wit and genius, the most charming refinement and justice of appreciation in all matters of taste. She had the most admirable temper and devotion to her father, a good old gentleman of high family and fallen fortunes, who had lived, however, with the best society in Europe. He was in no hurry and could afford to wait any time till he was one and twenty. But he felt, and here his face assumed an awful and harrowing solemnity, that he was engaged in the one only passion of his life, and that death alone could close it. Helen told him, with a sad smile and shake of the head, that people survived these passions, and as for long engagements contracted between very young men and old women, she knew an instance in her own family. Laura's poor father was an instance. How fatal they were! Mr Penn, however, was resolved that death must be his doom in case of disappointment, and rather than this, rather than balk him in fact, this lady would have submitted to any sacrifice or personal pain, and would have gone down on her knees and have kissed the feet of a hot-and-tot daughter-in-law. Arthur knew his power over the widow, and the young tyrant was touched whilst he exercised it. In those two days he brought her almost into submission, and patronised her very kindly, and he passed one evening with the lovely pie-maker at Chatteris, in which he bragged of his influence over his mother, and he spent the other night in composing a most flaming and conceited copy-averse to his divinity, in which he vowed, like Montrose, that he would make her famous with his sword, and glorious by his pen, and that he would love her as no mortal woman had been adored since the creation of womankind. It was on that night, long after midnight, that wakeful Helen, passing stealthily by her son's door, saw a light streaming through the chink of the door into the dark passage, and heard pen tossing and tumbling and mumbling verses in his bed. She waited outside for a while, anxiously listening to him. In infantile fevers and early boyish illnesses, many a night before, the kind soul had so kept watch. She turned the lock very softly now, and went in so gently that pen for a moment did not see her. His face was turned from her. His papers on his desk were scattered about, and more were lying on the bed round him. He was biting a pencil, and thinking of rhymes, and all sorts of follies and passions. He was hamlet jumping into Ophelia's grave. He was the stranger taking Mrs. Haller to his arms, beautiful Mrs. Haller, with the raven ringlets falling over her shoulders. Despair and Byron, Thomas More, and all the loves of the angels, Waller and Herrick, Barringer, and all the love songs he had ever read, were working and seething in this young gentleman's mind, and he was at the very height and paroxysm of the imaginative frenzy when his mother found him. Arthur, said the mother's soft silver voice, and he started up and turned round. He clutched some of the papers and pushed them under the pillow. Why don't you go to sleep, my dear? She said, with a sweet, tender smile, and sat down on the bed, and took one of his hot hands. Pen looked at her wildly for an instant. I couldn't sleep! He said, I—I was—I was writing! And hereupon he flung his arms round her neck, and said, Oh, mother! I love her! I love her! How could such a kind soul as that help soothing and pitying him? The gentle creature did her best, and thought with a strange wonderment and tenderness, that it was only yesterday that he was a child in that bed, and how she used to come and say her prayers over it, before he woke upon holiday mornings. They were very grand verses, no doubt, although Ms. Fotheringay did not understand them. But Old Coz, with a wink and a knowing finger on his nose, said, Put them up with other letters, Millie-Darling. Paul Doody's poems was nothing to this. So Millie locked up the manuscripts. When then, the major being dressed and presentable, presented himself to Mrs. Pen-Dennis, he found in the course of ten minutes colloquy that the poor widow was not merely distressed at the idea of the marriage contemplated by Pen, but actually more distressed at thinking that the boy himself was unhappy about it, and that his uncle and he should have any violent altercation on the subject. She besought Major Pen-Dennis to be very gentle with Arthur. He has a very high spirit, and will not brook unkind words, she hinted. Dr. Portman spoke to him rather roughly, and I must own, unjustly, the other night, for my dearest boy's honour is as high as any mother can desire. But Pen's answer quite frightened me. It was so indignant. Recollect, he is a man now, and be very, very cautious, said the widow, laying a fair long hand on the major sleeve. He took it up, kissed it gallantly, and looked in her alarmed face with wonder, and a scorn which he was too polite to show. Bon Dieu! thought the old negotiator. The boy has actually talked the woman round, and she'd get him a wife as she would a toy, if master cried for it. Why, there no such things as lethrede cachet, and a Bastille for such young fellows of family. The major lived in such good company, that he might be excused for feeling like an earl. He kissed the widow's timid hand, pressed it in both of his, and laid it down on the table with one of his own over it, as he smiled and looked her in the face. Confess, said he, now, that you are thinking how you possibly can make it up to your own conscience to let the boy have his own way. She blushed, and was moved in the usual manner of females. I am thinking that he is very unhappy, and I am too, to contradict him or to let him have his own wish, asked the other, and added, with great comfort to his inward self, I'm damned if he shall, to think that he should have formed so foolish and cruel and fatal an attachment, the widow said, which can but end in pain whatever be the issue. The issue shan't be marriage, my dear sister, the major said resolutely. We are not going to have a pendentis, the head of the house, marry a strolling mountain bank from a booth. No, no, we won't marry into Greenwich Fair, ma'am. If the match is broken suddenly off, the widow interposed, I don't know what may be the consequence. I know Arthur's ardent temper, the intensity of his affections, the agony of his pleasures and disappointments, and I tremble at this one if it must be. Indeed, indeed, must not come on him too suddenly. My dear madam, the major said, with an air of the deepest commiseration. I have no doubt Arthur will have to suffer confoundedly before he gets over the little disappointment. But is he, think you, the only person who has been so rendered miserable? No, indeed, said Helen, holding down her eyes. She was thinking of her own case, and was at that moment, seventeen again, and most miserable. I myself, whispered her brother-in-law, have undergone a disappointment in early life. A young woman with fifteen thousand pounds, knees to an earl, most accomplished creature, a third of her money would have run up my promotion in no time, and I should have been a lieutenant, Colonel at thirty. But it might not be. I was but a penniless lieutenant. Her parents interfered, and I embarked for India, where I had the honour of being secretary to Lord Buckley, when Commander-in-Chief, without her. What happened? We returned our letters, sent back our locks of hair. The Major here passed his fingers through his wig. We suffered, but we recovered. She is now a baronet's wife, with thirteen grown-up children. Altered it is true in person. But her daughters remind me of what she was. And the third is to be presented early next week. Helen did not answer. She was still thinking of her old times. I suppose, if one lives to be a hundred, there are certain passages of one's early life, whereof the recollection will always carry us back to youth again, and that Helen was thinking of one of these. Look at my own brother, my dear creature. The Major continued gallantly. He himself, you know, had a little disappointment when he started in the medical profession, an eligible opportunity presented itself. Miss Balls, I remember the name, was daughter of a practitioner in very large practice. My brother had very nearly succeeded in his suit. But difficulties arose, disappointment supervened, and I'm sure he had no reason to regret the disappointment, which gave him this hand, said the Major, and he once more politely pressed Helen's fingers. Those marriages between people of such different rank and age, said Helen, are sad things. I have known them produce a great deal of unhappiness. Laura's father, my cousin, who was brought up with me, she added in a low voice, was an instance of that. Most injudicious, cut in the Major. I don't know anything more painful than for a man to marry his superior in age, or his inferior in station. Fancy marrying a woman of low rank of life, and having your house filled with her confounded, tag, rag, and bobtail of relations. Fancy your wife attached to a mother who dropped her H's, or called Maria, Mariaire. How are you to introduce her into society? My dear Mrs. Pendennis, I will name no names, but in the very best circles of London society, I have seen men suffering the most excruciating agony. I have known them to be cut, to be lost utterly, from the vulgarity of their wives' connections. What did Lady Snapperton do last year at her Déjeune dansant after the Bohemian Ball? She told Lord Brownker that he might bring his daughters, or send them with a proper chaperon, but that she would not receive Lady Brunker, who was a druggist's daughter, or some such thing, and as Tom Wagner marked of her, never wanted medicine certainly, for she never had an H in her life. Good God! what would have been the trifling pang of a separation in the first instance, to the enduring infliction of a constant misalliance, and intercourse with low people? What indeed! said Helen, dimly disposed towards laughter, but yet checking the inclination, because she remembered in what prodigious respect her deceased husband held Major Pendennis, and his stories of the great world. Then this fatal woman is ten years older than that silly young scape-grace of an Arthur? What happens in such cases, my dear creature? I don't mind telling you, now we are alone, that in the highest state of society, misery, undeviating misery is the result. Look at Lord Claudeworthy come into a room with his wife. Why, good goat, she looks like Claudeworthy's mother! What's the case between Lord and Lady Willa Bank, whose love match was notorious? He has already cut her down twice, when she has hanged herself out of jealousy, for mademoiselle de Sainte Cunigonde, the dancer, and mark my words, good goat, one day he'll not cut the old woman down. No, my dear madame, you are not in the world, but I am. You are a little romantic and sentimental. You know you are. Women with those large, beautiful eyes always are. You must leave this matter to my experience. Marry this woman? Marry at eighteen, an actress of thirty? Bah! Bah! I would as soon he sent into the kitchen and married the cook. I know the evils of premature engagements, sighed out Helen, and as she had made this illusion no less than thrice in the course of the above conversation, and seems to be so oppressed with the notion of long engagements and unequal marriages, and as the circumstance we have to relate will explain what perhaps some persons are anxious to know, namely, who little Laura is, who has appeared more than once before us, it will be as well to clear up these points in another chapter. End of chapter seven