 Chapter 23 of the History of Pendentis. 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 Pendentis by William Makepeace Thackeray. Chapter 23. New Faces. The inmates of Fair Oaks were drowsily pursuing this humdrum existence, while the great house upon the hill on the other side of the river Brawl was shaking off the slumber in which it had lain during the lives of two generations of masters and giving extraordinary signs of renewed liveliness. Just about the time of Penn's little mishap and when he was so absorbed in the grief occasion by that calamity as to take no notice of events which befell persons less interesting to himself than Arthur Pendentis, an announcement appeared in the provincial journals which caused no small sensation in the county at least and in all the towns, villages, halls of mansions and personages for many miles round Clevering Park. At Clevering Market at Cackleby Fair at Chatterist Sessions on Gooseberry Green as the squire's carriage met the vicar's one-horse contrivance and the inmates of both vehicles stopped on the road to talk at Tinkleton Church Gate as the bell was tolling in the sunshine and the white smocks and squarlic cloaks came trooping over the green common to Sunday worship. In a hundred societies round about, the word was that Clevering Park was to be inhabited again. Some five years before, the county papers had advertised the marriage at Florence at the British Legation of Francis Clevering Esquire, only son of Sir Francis Clevering. Bart of Clevering Park was Jemima Augusta, daughter of Samuel Snell of Calcutta Esquire and widow of the late J. Amery Esquire. At that time the legend in the county was that Clevering, who'd been ruined for many a year, had married a widow from India with some money. Some of the county folks caught a sight of the newly married pair. The Cuckelberries, traveling in Italy, had seen them. Clevering occupied the Po G Palace at Florence, gave parties and lived comfortably, but could never come to England. Another year, young peregrine of Calcutta B, making a long vacation tour had fallen in with the Cleverings occupying Schloss Schinkenstein on the Mammo Sea. At Rome, at Lucca, at Nice, at the Bazangam, settling places of the Rhine and Belgium, this worthy couple might occasionally be heard of by the curious and rumors of them came, as it were by gusts, to Clevering's ancestral place. Their last place of abode was Paris, where they appeared to have lived in great fashion and splendor after the news of the death of Samuel Snell, Esquire of Calcutta, reached his orphaned daughter in Europe. Of Sir Francis Clevering's antecedents, little can be said that would be advantageous to that respected baronet, the son of an outlaw living in a dismal old chateau near Bruges. This gentleman had made a feeble attempt to start in life with the commission in a dragoon regiment and had broken down almost at the outset. Transactions at the gambling table had speedily affected his ruin. After a couple of years in the army, he had been forced to sell out, had passed some time in Her Majesty's prison of the fleet, and had then shipped over to Aston to join the gaudy exile, his father. And in Belgium, France and Germany for some years, this decayed and abortive prodigal might be seen lurking about billiard rooms and watering places, punting at gambling houses, dancing at boarding house balls, and riding steeple chases on other folk's horses. It was at a boarding house at Lausanne that Francis Clevering made what he called the lucky coup of marrying the widow Amrie, very lately returned from Calcutta. His father died soon after by consequence of whose demise his wife became Lady Clevering. The title so delighted Mr. Snell of Calcutta that he doubled his daughter's allowance and dying himself soon after, left a fortune to her and her children, the amount of which was, if not magnified by rumor, something very splendid indeed. Before this time there had been not rumors unfavorable to Lady Clevering's reputation, but unpleasant impressions regarding her ladyship. The best English people abroad were shy of making her acquaintance, her manners were not the most refined, her origin was lamentably low and doubtful. The retired East Indians who are to be found in considerable force in most of the continental towns frequented by English spoke with much scorn of the disreputable old lawyer and indigo smuggler her father and of Amrie, her first husband who had been mate of the Indian man in which Ms. Snell came out to join her father at Calcutta. Neither father nor daughter were in society at Calcutta or had ever been heard of at government house. Old Sir Jasper Rogers who had been Chief Justice of Calcutta had once said to his wife that he could tell a queer story about Lady Clevering's first husband, but greatly to Lady Rogers' disappointment and that of the young ladies' daughters, the old judge could never be got to reveal that mystery. They were all however glad enough to go to Lady Clevering's parties when her ladyship took the hotel bouillie in the rue Grinnell at Paris and blazed out in the polite world there in the winter of 1830s something. The faux bourgue Saint-Germain took her up, thy count Bagouille, our excellent ambassador, paid her marked attention. The princes of the family frequented her salons. The most rigid and noted of the English ladies' resident in the French capital acknowledged and countenanced her, the virtuous Lady Elderberry, the severe Lady Rockminster, the venerable countess of Southdown, people in a word renowned for austerity and of quite a dazzling moral purity. So great and beneficent and uninfluenced had the possession of 10 some said 20,000 a year exercised upon Lady Clevering's character and reputation. And her munificence and goodwill were unbounded. Anybody in society who had a scheme of charity was sure to find her purse open. The French ladies of Piety got money from her to support their schools and convents. She subscribed indifferently for the Armenian patriarch, for Father Barbarossa, who came to Europe to collect funds for his monastery on Mount Athos, for the Baptist mission to Quachibou and the Orthodox settlement in Fifafou, the largest and most savage of the cannibal islands. And it is on record of her that on the same day on which Madame de Cree got five Napoleon's from her in support of the poor persecuted Jesuits who were at that time in very bad odor in France, Lady Boud Light put her down in her subscription list for the Reverend J. Ram Shorn, who had had a vision which ordered him to convert the Pope of Rome. And more than this, and for the benefit of the worldly, her ladyship gave the best dinners and the grandest balls and suppers, which were known at Paris during that season. And it was during this time that the good nature of Lady must have arranged matters with her husband's creditors in England for Sir Francis reappeared in his native country without fear of arrest, was announced in the morning post in the county paper as having taken up his residence at Mavart's Hotel. And one day the anxious old housekeeper at Clavaring House beheld the carriage and four horses drive up the long avenue and stop before the moss grown steps in front of the vast melancholy portico. Three gentlemen were in the carriage and open one. On the back seat was our older queen, Mr. Tatham of Chatteros, lost in the places of honor, Sadder Hanson and Portley gentlemen, enveloped in mustachios, whiskers, fur collars and braiding, and by him a pale languid man who descended feebly from the carriage when the little lawyer and the gentleman in fur, nimbly jumped out of it. They walked up the great moss grown steps to the hall door and a foreign attendant with earrings and a gold lace cap pulled strenuously at the great bell handle at the cracked and sculptured gate. The bell was heard clanging loudly through the vast gloomy mansion, steps resounded presently upon the marble pavement of the hall within. And the doors opened and finally mizzes, black and soft, the housekeeper, Polly hurried to camp and smart, the keeper appeared bowing humbly. Smart, the keeper pulled the whisk of hay-colored hair which adorned his sunburned forehead, skicked out his left heel as if there were a dog biting at his calves and brought down his head to a bow. Oh, Mrs. Black and soft dropped a curtsy little Polly, her aide to camp made a curtsy and several rapid bows likewise. The Mrs. Black and soft with a great deal of emotion quavered out, welcome to clavoring, Sir Francis said, do my poor eyes, good to see one of the family once more? The speech and the greetings were all addressed to the grand gentleman in thorough and braiding, who wore his hat so magnificently on one side and twirled his mustachio so royally, but he burst out laughing and said, you've saddled the wrong horse, old lady, I'm not, Sir Francis, clavoring, what's come to revisit the halls of my ancestors, friends and vassals, behold, your rightful Lord. And he pointed his hand towards the pale language gentleman who said, don't be an ass, Ned. Yes, Mrs. Black and soft, I'm Sir Francis, clavoring, I recollect you quite well. Forgot me, I suppose, how do you do? And he took the old lady's trembling hand and nodded in her astonished face in a not unkind manner. Mrs. Black and soft declared upon her conscience that she would have known Sir Francis anywhere, that he was the very image of Sir Francis, his father and of Sir John who had gone before. Oh yes, thank you, of course, very much obliged and that sort of thing, Sir Francis said, looking vacantly about the hall, dismal old place, ain't it, Ned? Never saw it, but once, when my governor quarreled with Juan's father in the year 23. Dismal, beautiful, the castle of Otranto, the mysteries of your daughter by Joe, said the individual addressed as Ned, what a fireplace, you might roast an elephant in it. Splendid carved gallery, Inigo Jones by Joe, Adelaide 522, it's Inigo Jones. The upper part by Inigo Jones, the lower was altered by the eminent Dutch architect, van der Putty, in George I's time by Sir Richard Fourth Baronet, said the housekeeper. Oh indeed, said the Baronet, God, Ned, you know everything. I know a few things, Frank, Ned answered, I know that's not a Snyder's over the mantelpiece, that you three to one, it's a copy, we'll restore it, my boy, a lick of varnish and it will come out wonderfully, sir. That old fellow in the red gown, I suppose, is Sir Richard. Sheriff of the county and sat in parliament in the reign of Queen Anne, said the housekeeper wondering at the stranger's knowledge that on the right is the adotia wife of Harbottle, second Baronet by Lely, represented in the character Venus, the goddess of beauty, her son Gregory, the third Baronet by her side is Cupid, God of love, with a bow and arrows, that on the next panel is Sir Rupert, made a knight Baronet by Charles I, in whose property was confiscated by Oliver Cromwell. Thank you, needn't go on, Mrs. Black-N-Sup, said the Baronet, we'll walk about the place ourselves. Frosch, give me a cigar, have a cigar, Mr. Tatham. Little Mr. Tatham tried a cigar, which Sir Francis's courier handed to him, and over which the lawyer spluttered fearfully, needn't come with us, Mrs. Black-N-Sup, what's his name, you smart, feed the horses and wash their mouths, shan't stay long, come along strong, I know the way I was here in 23, at the end of my grandfather's time, and Sir Francis and Captain Strong, for such was the style and title, of Sir Francis's friend, passed out of the hall into the reception rooms, leaving the discomfort of Mrs. Black-N-Sup to disappear by a side door, which led to her apartment, now the only habitable rooms in the long uninhabited mansion. It was a place so big that no tenant could afford to live in it, and Sir Francis and his friend, walked through room after room, admiring their vastness and dreary and deserted grandeur. On the right of the hall door were the saloons and drawing rooms, and on the other side the oak room, the parlor, the grand dining room, the library, where Penn had found books in old days. Round three sides of the hall ran a gallery, by which and corresponding passages the chief bedrooms were approached, and of which many were of stately proportions and exhibited marks of splendor. On the second story was a labyrinth of little discomfortable garrets, destined for the attendance of the great folks who inhabited the mansion in the days when it was first built. And I do not know any more cheering mark of the increased philanthropy of our own times, than to contrast our domestic architecture with that of our ancestors, and to see how much better servants and poor are cared for now, than in times when my lord and my lady slept under gold canopies, and their servants lay above them in quarters not so airy or so clean as stables are now. Up and down the house the two gentlemen wandered, the owner of the mansion being very silent and resigned about the pleasure of possessing it, whereas the captain his friend examined the premises with so much interest and eagerness that you would have thought he was the master and the other the indifferent spectator of the place. I see capabilities in it, capabilities in it, sir, cried the captain, Gadd, sir, leave it to me and I'll make it the pride of the country. At a small expense, what a theater we can have in the library here, the curtains between the columns, which divide the room, what a famous room for a gallop. It will hold the whole shire. We'll hang the morning parlor with the tapestry in your second salon in the rue de Grennel and furnish the oak room with a more young age cabinets and the armor. Armor looks splendid against black oak and there's a Venice glass in the key Voltaire which will suit that high mantelpiece to an inch, sir, the long saloon, white and crimson, of course, drawing room yellow, satin and the little drawing room light blue with lace over hay. I recollect my old governor caning me in that little room, sir Francis said, sententiously, he always hated me, my old governor. Gents is the dodge, I suppose, for my lady's rooms, the suite of that landing to the south, the bedroom, the sitting room and the dressing room will throw a conservatory out over the balcony where will you have your rooms? Put mine in the north wing, said the baronet with a yarn and out of the reach of Miss Amory's confounded piano. I can't bear it. She's queaching from morning till night. The captain burst out laughing. He settled the whole further rearrangements of the house in the course of their walk through it and the promenade ended. They went into the steward's room now inhabited by Mrs. Black and South and where Mr. Tatham was sitting pouring over a plan of the estate and the old housekeeper had prepared a collation in honor of her lord and master. Then they inspected the kitchen and stables about both of which Sir Francis was rather interested and Captain Strong was for examining the gardens. But the baronet said darn the gardens and that sort of thing. And finally he drove away from the house as unconcernedly as he had entered it. And that night the people of Clevering learned that Sir Francis Clevering had paid a visit to the park and was coming to live in the county. When this fact came to be known at Chatterist all the folks in the place were set in commotion. High church and low church, half-paid captains and old maids and dowagers sporting squireens of the vicinity, farmers, tradesmen and factory people all the population in and around about the little place. The news was brought to Fair Oaks and received by the ladies there and by Mr. Penn with some excitement. Mrs. Pibus says there is a very pretty girl in the family, Arthur. Laura said who was as kind and thoughtful upon this point as women generally are. Hey, Miss Emery, lady Clevering's daughter by her first marriage. Of course you will fall in love with her as soon as she arrives. Helen cried out, don't talk nonsense, Laura. Penn laughed and said, well, there is the young Sir Francis for you. He is but four years old, Miss Laura replied, but I shall console myself with that handsome officer, Sir Francis's friend. He was at church last Sunday in the Clevering pew and his moustaches were beautiful. Indeed the number of Sir Francis's family where of the members have all been mentioned in the above paragraphs was pretty soon known in his town and everything else as nearly as human industry and ingenuity could calculate regarding his household. The Park Avenue and grounds were dotted now with town folks of the summer evenings who made their way up to the great house, peered about the premises and criticized the improvements which were taking place there. Loads upon loads of furniture arrived in numberless vans from Chatteris in London and numerous as the vans are, there was not one but Captain Glanders knew what it contained and escorted the baggage up to the Park House. Ian, Captain Edward Strong, had formed an intimate acquaintance by this time. The younger captain occupied those very lodgings at Clevering, which the peaceful smirk had previously tendanted and was deep in the good graces of Madame Ribsby, his landlady and of the whole town indeed. The captain was splendid in person and Raymond, fresh colored, blue eyed, black whiskered, broad-chested, athletic, a slight tendency to fullness did not take away from the comeliness of his jolly figure. A braver soldier never presented a broader chest to the enemy. As he strode down Clevering High Street, his hat on one side, his cane clanking on the pavement or waving round him in the execution of military cuts and sold the task maneuvers, his jolly laughter ringing through the otherwise silent street. He was as welcome as sunshine to the place and their comfort to every inhabitant in it. On the first market day, he knew every pretty girl in the market. He joked with all the women, had a word with the farmers about their stock and dying at the agricultural ordinary at the Clevering Arms, where he set them all dying with laughter by his spun-end jokes. To be sure he be a vine-beller, to be sure that he be was the universal opinion of the gentlemen in top boots, he shook hands with a score of them as they rode out of the innyard on their old mags, waving his hat to them splendidly as he smoked his cigar in the inn gate. In the course of the evening, he was free of the landlady's bar, knew what rent the landlord paid, how many acres he farmed, how much malt he put in his strong beer and whether he ever ran in a little brandy unexized by kings from Baymouth or the fishing villages along the coast. He had tried to live at the great house first, but it was so dull he couldn't stand it. I'm a creature born for society, he told Captain Glanders. I'm down here to see Clevering's house set in order for between ourselves. Frank has no energy, sir, no energy. He's not the chest for it, sir, and he threw out his own trunk as he spoke, but I must have social intercourse. Old Mrs. Bleckensop goes to bed at seven and takes Polly with her. There was nobody but me and the ghost for the first two nights at the great house and I own it, sir. I like company, most old soldiers do. Glanders asks strong where he had served. Captain Strong curled his mustache and said with a laugh that the other might almost ask where he had not served. I began, sir, as cadet of Hungarian U-Lands and when the War of Greek Independence broke out, quitted that service in consequence of a quarrel with my governor and was one of seven who escaped from Miss Olongi and was blown up in one of Batsahari's fire ships at the age of 17. I'll show you my cross of the Redeemer if you'll come over to my lodgings and take a glass of grog with me, Captain, this evening. I have a few of those bobbles in my desk. I have the white eagle of Poland. Squiznecki gave it me. He pronounced Squiznecki's name with wonderful accuracy and gusto upon the field of Osterlenka. I was the Lieutenant of the Fourth Regiment, sir, and we marched through the bitch's lines, banged through him into Prussia, sir, without firing a shot. Ah, Captain, that was a mismanaged business. I received this wound by the side of the king before Old Porto, where he would have pounded the stock-jobbing Pedroites, had Beaumont followed my advice and I served in Spain with the king's troops until the death of my dear friend, Zuma La Cara Guy, when I saw the game was over and hung up my toasting iron, Captain. Alava offered me a regiment, the queen's mullet taros, but I couldn't, damn, I couldn't. And now, sir, you know, Ned Strong, the Chevalieré Strong, they call me abroad, as well as he knows himself. In this way, almost everybody in Clevering came to know Ned Strong. He told Madame Fribsby, he told the landlord of the George, he told Baker at the reading rooms, he told Mrs. Glanders and the young ones at dinner and finally, he told Mr. Arthur Pendenis, who yawning into Clevering one day found the Chevalieré Strong in company with Captain Glanders and he was delighted with his new acquaintance. Before many days were over, Captain Strong was as much at home in Helen's drawing room as he was in Madame Fribsby's first floor. He made the lonely house very gay with his good humor and ceaseless flow of talk. The two women had never before seen such a man. He had a thousand stories about battles and dangers to interest them, about Greek captives, Polish beauties and Spanish nuns. He could sing scores of songs in half a dozen languages and would sit down to the piano and troll them off in a rich manly voice. Both the ladies pronounced him to be delightful and so he was. Though indeed they had not had much choice of man societies yet, having seen in the course of their lives but few persons except old Portman and the major, Mr. Penn, who was a genius to be sure but then your geniuses are somewhat flat and moody at home. And Captain Strong acquainted his new friends at Bear Oaks not only with his own biography but with the whole history of the family now coming to Clevering. It was he who had made the marriage between his friend Frank and the widow Emery. She wanted rank and he wanted money. What match could be more suitable? He organized it. He made those two people happy. There was no particular romantic attachment between them. The widow was not of an age or a person for romance and so Francis, if he had his game at Billiards and his dinner cared for a little besides. But they were as happy as people could be. Clevering would return to his native place in country. His wife's fortune would pay his encumbrances off and his son and heir would be one of the first men in the county. And Ms. Emery, Laura asked, Laura was uncommonly curious about Ms. Emery. Strong laughed, oh, Ms. Emery is amused. Ms. Emery is a mystery. Ms. Emery is a fem and combed priest. What is that? As simple, Mrs. Pendennis. But the Chevalier gave her no answer. Perhaps could not give her one. Ms. Emery paints. Ms. Emery writes poems. Ms. Emery composes music. Ms. Emery writes like Diana Vernon. Ms. Emery is a paragon in a word. I hate clever women, said Pend. Thank you, said Laura, for her part. She was sure she should be charmed with Ms. Emery and quite long to have such a friend. And with this, she looked pendent full in the face as if every word the little hypocrite said was gospel truth. Thus, an intimacy was arranged and prepared beforehand between the Fair Oaks family and their wealthy neighbors at the park. And Pend and Laura were to the full as eager for their arrival as even the most curious of the clevering folks. A Londoner who sees fresh faces and yawns at them every day may smile at the eagerness with which country people expect a visitor. A cockney comes amongst them and is remembered by his rural entertainers for years after he has left them and forgotten them very likely, floated far away from them on the vast London Sea. But the Islanders remember long after the mariner has sailed away and can tell you what he said and what he wore and how he looked and how he laughed and find a new arrival is an event in the country not to be understood by us who don't and had rather not know who lives next door. When the painters and upholsters had done their work in the house and so beautified it under Captain Strong's superintendents that he might well be proud of his taste, that gentleman announced that he should go to London where the whole family had arrived by this time and should speedily return to establish them in their renovated mansion. Detachments of domestics preceded them, carriages came down by sea and were brought over from Baymouth by horses which had previously arrived under the care of grooms and coachmen. One day the alacrity coach brought down on its roof two large and melancholy men who were dropped at the park lodge with their trunks and who were Messieurs Frederick and James, metropolitan footmen who had no objection to the country and brought with them state and other suits of a clustering uniform. On another day the male deposited at the gate a foreign gentleman adorned with many ringlets and chains. He made a great riot at the lodge gate to the keeper's wife who being a West country woman did not understand his English or his Gascon French because there was no carriage and waiting to drive into the house a mile off and because he could not walk entire leagues in his fatigued state and varnished boots. This was Messieurs Alcide Amiro Boulin, formerly chef of his highness, the Duke de Borodino of his eminence cardinal, Becca Fico and at present chef of the bouche of Sir Clavering Baronet. Messieurs Amiro Boulin's library pictures and piano had arrived previously in charge of the intelligent young Englishman, his aide-de-camp. He was moreover aided by a professed female cook, likewise from London, who had inferior females under her orders. He did not dine in the stewards room but took his nutriment and solitude in his own apartments where a female servant was affected to his private use. It was a grand sight to behold him in his dressing gown composing a menu. He always sat down and played the piano for some time before that. If interrupted, he remanded straight and pathetically with his little maid. Every great artist he said had need of solitude to perfectionate his works. But we are advancing matters in the fullness of our love and respect for Messieurs Amiro Boulin and bringing him prematurely on the stage. The Chevalier strong had a hand in the engagement of all the London domestics and indeed seemed to be the master of the house. There were those among them who said he was the house steward, only he dined with the family. Albeit he knew how to make himself respected and to, of by no means the least comfortable rooms of the house were assigned to his particular use. He was walking upon the terrace finally upon the eventful day when amidst an immense jangling of bells from Claverin Church where the flag was flying an open carriage and one of those traveling chariots or family arcs which only English phylo progenitiveness could invent drove rapidly with foaming horses through the park gates and up to the steps of the hall. The two batons of the sculpture door flew open. The superior officers in black, the larger melancholy gentlemen now in livery with their hair and powder, the country menials engaged to aid them were in waiting in the hall and bowed like elms when autumn winds wail in the park. Through this avenue past Sir Francis Claverin with a most unmoved face, Lady Claverin with a pair of bright black eyes and a good-humored countenance which waggled and nodded very graciously Master Francis Claverin who was holding his mama's skirt and who stopped the procession to look at the largest footman whose appearance seemed to strike the young gentleman. And Miss Blandy, governor to Master Francis and Miss Emery, her ladyship's daughter giving her arm to Captain Strom. It was summer but fires of welcome were crackling in the great hall of chimney and in the rooms which the family were to occupy. Monsieur Miro Bland had looked at the procession from one of the lime trees in the avenue. L.A. La, he said laying his jeweled hand on his richly embroidered velvet glass buttons. Je t'ai vu, je te benis au ma silphie au monge. And he dived into the thicket and made his way back to his furnaces and saucepans. The next Sunday the same party which had just made its appearance at Claverin Park came and publicly took possession of the ancient pew in the church where so many of the Baronette's ancestors had prayed and were now kneeling in effigy. There was such a run to see the new folks that the L.A. Church was deserted to the disgust of its pastor and as the state Barouche with the grays and coachmen and silver wagon solemn footmen drew up at the old church yard gate there was such a crowd assemble there as had not been seen for many a long day. Captain Strong knew everybody and saluted for all of the company. The country people vowed my lady was not handsome to be sure but pronounced her to be uncommon fine dressed as indeed she was with the finest of shawls, the finest of polices, the brilliantist of bonnets and wreaths and a power of rings, cameos, brooches, chains, bangles and other nameless gym cracks and ribbons of every breath and color of the rainbow flaming honor person. The same reappeared meek and dub color like a vestal virgin while Master Francis was in the costume then prevalent of Rob Roy, McGregor a celebrated Highland outlaw. The baronet was not more animated than ordinarily there was a happy vacuity about him which enabled him to face the dinner, a death, a church or marriage with the same indifferent ease. A pew for the clavoring servants was filled by these domestics and the enraptured congregation saw the gentlemen from London with flour on their heaths and the miraculous coachmen with his silver wig to take their places in that pew so soon as his horses were put up at the clavoring arms. In the course of the service, Master Francis began to make such a yelling in the pew that Frederick the tallest of the footmen was beckoned by his master and rose and went and carried out Master Francis who roared and beat him on the head so that the powder flew round about like clouds of incense. Now was he pacified until placed on the box of the carriage where he played at horses with John's whip. You see the little beggars never been to church before Miss Bell. The baronette rolled out to a young lady who was visiting him. No wonder he should make a row. I don't go in town neither, but I think it's right in their country to give a good example and that sort of thing. Miss Bell laughed and said, the little boy had not given a particularly good example. Yeah, I don't know. And that sort of thing said the baronette. It ain't so bad neither. Whenever he wants a thing, Frank always cries. And whenever he cries, he gets it. Here the child in question began to howl for a dish of sweet meats on the luncheon table and making a lunge across the tablecloth upset a glass of wine over the best waistcoat of one of the guests present, Mr. Arthur Pendennis, who was greatly annoyed at being made to look foolish and at having his spotless cambrick shirt front blotched with wine. We do spoil him so, said Lady Claverine to Mrs. Pendennis finally gazing at the cherub whose hands and face were now frothed over with the species of lather which is inserted in the confection called Morang's a la crème. It is very wrong, said Mrs. Pendennis, as if she had never done such a thing herself as spoil a child. Amma says she spoils my brother. Do you think anything could, Miss Bell? Look at him. Isn't he like a little angel? Yet I was quite white, said the baronette. He has quiet and he has got it. You see? Go it. For wine, oh boy. Sir Francis is a very judicious parent. Miss Emery whispered, don't you think so, Miss Bell? I shall not call you Miss Bell. I shall call you Laura. I admired you so at church. Your robe was not well made, nor your bonnet very fresh, but you have such beautiful gray eyes and such a lovely tint. Thank you, said Miss Bell, laughing. Your cousin is handsome and thinks so. He is uneasy to saw pal some. He has not seen the world yet. Has he genius? Has he suffered? A lady, a little woman in a rumpled satin and velvet shoes. A Miss Pibus came here and said he has suffered. I too have suffered. And you, Laura, has your heart ever been touched? Laura said, no. But perhaps blushed a little at the idea or the question so that the other said, ah, Laura, I see it all. It is the bold cousin. Tell me everything. I already love you as a sister. You are very kind, said Miss Bell, smiling. And it must be owned that it is a very sudden attachment. All attachments are so. It is electricity, spontaneity. It is instantaneous. I knew I should love you from the moment I saw you. Do you not feel it yourself? Not yet, said Laura, but I dare say I shall, if I try. Call me by my name, then. But I don't know it, Laura cried out. My name is Blanche. Isn't it a pretty name? Call me by it. Blanche, it is very pretty indeed. And while Mama talks with that kind-looking lady, what relation is she to you? She must have been pretty once, but is rather posse. She is not well gante, but she has a pretty hand. And while Mama talks to her, come with me to my own room, my own own room. It's a darling room, though that horrid creature, Captain Strong, did arrange it. Are you a priest of him? He says you are, but I know better. It is the beau-cousin. Yes, il y a de beaux-zeurs. Je n'aime pas les blancs ordinairement. Car je suis blanc en moi. Je suis blanc chez blanc. And she looked at her face and made a mouet in the glass and never stopped for Laura's answer to the questions which she had put. Blanche was fair and like a silk. She had fair hair with green reflections in it. But she had dark eyebrows. She had long black eyelashes with pale beautiful brown eyes. She had such a slim waist that it was a wonder to behold and such a slim little feet that you would have thought the grass would hardly bend under them. Her lips were of the color of faint rose buds and her voice warbled limpidly over a set of the sweetest little pearly teeth ever seen. She showed them very often for they were very pretty. She was very good-natured and a smile that only showed her teeth wonderfully, but likewise exhibited two lovely little pink dimples that nestled in either cheek. She showed Laura her drawings, which the other thought charming. She played her some of her waltzes with a rapid and brilliant finger and Laura was still more charmed. And she then read her some poems in French and English, likewise of her own composition, in which she kept locked in her own book, her own dear little book. It was bound in blue velvet with a gilt lock and on it was printed in gold, the title of May Larm. May Larm, isn't it a pretty name? The young lady continued, who was pleased with everything that she did and did everything very well. Laura owned that it was. She had never seen anything like it before. Anything so lovely, so accomplished, so fragile and pretty. Warbling so prettily and tripping about such a pretty room was such a number of pretty books, pictures, flowers, roundabout her. The honest and generous country girl forgot even jealousy in her admiration. Indeed, Blanche, she said, everything in the room is pretty and you are the prettiest of all. The other smiled, looked in the glass, went up and took both of Laura's hands and kissed them and sat down to the piano and shook out a little song as if she had been a nightingale. This was the first visit paid by Fair Oaks to Clevering Park in return for Clevering Park's visit to Fair Oaks and replied to Fair Oaks's cards, left a few days after the arrival of Sir Francis's family. The intimacy between the young ladies sprang up like Jack Bean stalked to the skies in a single night. The large footmen were perpetually walking with little rose-colored pink notes to Fair Oaks where there was a pretty housemaid in the kitchen who might possibly tempt those gentlemen to so humble a place. Miss Emery sent music or Miss Emery sent a new novel or a picture from their journaud des mud. To Laura or my ladies' compliments arrived with flowers and fruit or Miss Emery begged and prayed Miss Bell to come to dinner and dare Mrs. Pendennis if she was strong enough. And Mr. Arthur, if a humdrum party were not too stupid for him and would send a pony carriage for Mrs. Pendennis then would take no denial. Neither Arthur nor Laura wished to refuse and Helen who was indeed somewhat ailing was glad that the two should have their pleasure and would look at them finally as they set forth asking her heart that she might not be called away until those two beings whom she loved best in the world should be joined together. As they went out and crossed over the bridge she remembered summer evenings five and 20 years ago when she too had bloomed in her brief prime of love and happiness. It was all over now. The moon was looking from the purple sky and the stars glittering there just as they used in the early well-remembered evenings. He was lying dead far away with the billows rolling between them. Good God, how well she remembered the last look of his face as they parted. It looked out at her through the vista of long years as sad and as clear as then. So Mr. Pendennis, Laura found the society at Clevering Park an uncommonly agreeable resort of summer evenings. Blanche vowed that she ruffled of Laura and very likely Mr. Pend was pleased with Blanche. His spirits came back. He laughed and rattled till Laura wondered to hear him. It was not the same pen yawning in a shooting jacket in the Fair Oaks parlor who appeared alert and brisk and smiling and well-dressed in Lady Clevering's drawing room. Sometimes they had music. Laura had a sweet, contralto voice and sang with Blanche who had had the best continental instruction and was charmed to be her friend's mistress. Sometimes Mr. Pend joined in these concerts. Or often it looked sweet upon Ms. Blanche as she sang. Sometimes they had glies when Captain Strong's chest was of best service and he boomed out in a prodigious base of which he was not a little proud. Good fellow, strong, ain't he, Ms. Bell? Sir Francis would say to her. Plays at a cart with Lady Clevering. Plays anything, pitch and toss, beyond no forte. Quibbage, if you like. How long do you think he's been staying with me? He came for a week with a carpet bag and gad. He's been staying here three years. Good fellow, ain't he? Don't know how he gets a shillin' though. Begad I don't, Ms. Laura Waugh. And yet the Chevalier, if he lost his money to Lady Clevering, always paid it. And if he lived with his friend for three years, paid for that too, in good humor, in kindness and joviality, in a thousand little services by which he made himself agreeable. What gentleman could want a better friend than a man who was always in spirits, never in the way or out of it, and was ready to execute any commission for his patron, whether it was to sing a song or meet a lawyer, to fight a duel or to carve a capon? Although Laura and Penn commonly went to Clevering Park together, yet sometimes Mr. Penn took walks there unattended by her, and about which he did not tell her. He took to fishing the brawl, which runs through the park and passes not very far from the garden wall. And by the artist's coincidence, Ms. Amery would walk out, having been to look at her flowers and would be quite surprised to see Mr. Penn Dennis fishing. I wonder what trout pen caught while the young lady was looking on, or whether Ms. Blanche was the pretty little fish which played round his fly, and which Mr. Penn was endeavoring to hook. It must be owned. He became very fond of that helpful and invigorating pursuit of angling, and was whipping the brawl continually with his fly. As for Ms. Blanche, she had a kind heart, and having as she owned herself suffered a good deal in the course of her brief life, and experienced why she could compassionate other susceptible beings like Penn, who had suffered too. Her love for Laura and that dear Mrs. Penn Dennis redoubled, if they were not at the park, she was not easy unless she herself was at fair oaks. She played with Laura, she read French and German with Laura, and Mr. Penn read French and German along with them. He turned sentimental ballads of Schiller and Goethe into English verse for the ladies, and Blanche unlocked male arm for him, and imparted to him some of the plaintive outpourings of her own tender muse. It appeared from these poems that this young creature had indeed suffered prodigiously. She was familiar with the idea of suicide, death she repeatedly longed for, a faded rose inspired her with such grief that you would have thought she must die in pain of it. It was a wonder how a young creature who had had a snug home or been at a comfortable boarding school and had no outward grief or hardship to complain of should have suffered so much, should have found the means of getting at such an ocean of despair and passion as a runaway boy who will get to see and having embarked on it should survive it, what a talent she must have had for weeping to be able to pour out so many of male arm. They were not particularly briny, Miss Blanche's tears, that is the truth, but Penn, who better verses thought them very well for a lady and wrote some verses himself for her. His were very violent and passionate, very hot, sweet and strong, and he not only wrote verses but oh the villain, oh the deceiver, he altered and adapted former poems in his possession in which have been composed for a certain Emily Fathering gate for the use and to the Christian name of Miss Blanche, Emily. End of chapter 23. Chapter 24 of the history of Penn Dennis. This is the 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, but we make peace. Back to chapter 24, a little innocent. Every house has its skeleton in it somewhere and it may be a comfort to some unhappy folks to think that the luckier and most wealthy of their neighbors have their miseries and causes of disquiet. Our little innocent muse of Blanche who sang so nicely and talked so sweetly, you would have thought she must have made sunshine wherever she went. Was the skeleton or the misery or the bore or the nemesis of clattering house and of most of the inhabitants thereof. As one little stone in your own shoe or your horses, suffices to put either to torture and to make your journey miserable. So in life, a little obstacle is sufficient to obstruct your entire progress and subject you to endless annoyance and disquiet. Who would have guessed that such a smiling little fairy as Blanche Amory could be the cause of discord in any family? I say strong, one day the Baronette said as the pair were conversing after dinner over the billiard table and that great unbuzzamer of secrets, a cigar. I say strong, I wish to deduce your wife was dead. So do I, that's a cannon by Jove, but she won't, she'll live forever. You see if she don't. Why do you wish her off the hooks frank, my boy? Asked Captain Strong, because then you might marry Missy. She ain't bad looking, she'll have 10,000 and that's a good bit of money for such a poor old devil as you drawed out the other gentlemen. And Gad, strong, I hate her worse and worse every day. I can't stand her strong by Gad, I can't. I wouldn't take her at twice the figure. Captain Strong said laughing, I never saw such a little devil in my life. I should like to poison her, said the sententious Baronette by Jove, I should. Why, what has she been at now? Asked his friend, nothing particular, answered Sir Francis, only her old tricks. That girl has such a knack of making everybody miserable, that hang me, it's quite surprising. Last night she sent the governess crying away from the dinner table. Afterwards as I was passing Frank's room, I heard the poor little beggar howling in the dark and found his sister had been frightening his soul out of his body by telling him stories about the ghost that's in the house. At lunch, she gave my lady a turn and though my wife's a fool, she's a good soul, I'm hanged if she ain't. What did Missy do to her, Strong asked, why hang me if she didn't begin talking about the late Amory, my predecessor, the Baronette said with a grin, she got some picture out of the keepsake and said she was sure it was like her dear father, she wanted to know where her father's grave was, hang her father, whenever Miss Amory talks about him, Lady Cleverine always bursts out crying and the little devil will talk about him in order to spite her mother. The day when she began, I got in a confounded rage, said I was her father and that sort of thing and then sir, she took her shy at me. And what did she say about you, Frank? Mr. Strong still laughing, inquired of his friend and patron. Gad, she said I wasn't her father, that I wasn't fit to comprehend her, that her father must have been a man of genius and fine feelings and that sort of thing whereas I had married her mother for money. Well, didn't you, that's strong, it don't make it any the pleasanter to hear because it's true, don't you know? Sir Francis Cleverine answered, I ain't a literary man and that, but I ain't such a fool as she makes me out, I don't know how it is, but she always manages to put me in the hole, don't you understand? She turns all the house around her in a quiet way and with her confounded sentimental heirs. I wish she was dead, Ned. It was my wife whom you want to dead just now, Strong said, always in perfect good humor, upon which the Baron with his accustomed candor said, well, when people bore my life out, I do wish they were dead and I wish Missy were down a well with all my heart. Thus it will be seen from the above report of this candid conversation that our accomplished little friend had some peculiarities or defects of character which rendered her not very popular. She was a young lady of some genius, exquisite sympathies and considerable literary attainments living like many another genius with relatives who could not comprehend her. Neither her mother nor her stepfather were persons of a literary term. Bell's life and the racing calendar were the extent of the Baronette's reading and Lady Clevering still wrote like a schoolgirl of 13 and with an extraordinary disregard to grammar and spelling. And as Miss Emery felt very keenly that she was not appreciated and that she lived with persons who were not her equals in intellect or conversational power, she lost no opportunity to acquaint her family circle with their inferiority to herself and not only was a martyr but took care to let everybody know that she was so. If she suffered as she said and thought she did severely, are we to wonder that a young creature of such delicate sensibilities should shriek and cry out a good deal? Without sympathy, life is nothing and would it not have been a want of candor on her part to affect the cheerfulness which she did not feel or pretend to respect for those towards whom it was quite impossible, she should entertain any reverence. If a poetess may not bemoan her lot of what earthly use is her liar, Blanche struck hers only to the saddest of tunes and sang elegy's over her dead hopes, dirges over her early frost nipped buds of affection and became such a melancholy fate and muse. Her actual distresses as we have said had not been up to the present time very considerable but her griefs lay like those of most of us in her own soul, that being sad and habitually dissatisfied, what wonder that she should weep? So may Lawn dribbled out of her eyes any day at command. She could furnish an unlimited supply of tears and her faculty of shedding them increased by practice for sentiment is like another complaint mentioned by Horace as increasing by self-indulgence. I'm sorry to say ladies that the complaint in question is called the dropsy and the more you cry, the more you will be able and desirous to do so. Missy had begun to gush at a very early age. La-Martine was her favorite bard from the period when she first could feel and she had subsequently improved her mind by a sedulous study of novels of the great modern authors of the French language. There was not a romance of Balzac and Georges-Sa which the indefatigable little creature had not devoured by the time she was 16. And however little she sympathized with her relatives at home, she had friends as she said in the spirit world, meaning the tender Indiana, the passionate and poetic Lillia, the amiable Trenmore, that high soul convict, that angel of the galleys, the fiery Stenier and the other numberless heroes of the French romances. She had been in love with Prince Rodolph and Prince Dujjalma while she was yet at school and had settled the divorce question and the rights of women with Indiana before she had left off Pinafores. The impetuous little lady played at love with these imaginary worthies as a little while before she had played at maternity with her doll. Pretty little poetical spirits, it is curious to watch them with those play things. Today the blue eyed one is the favorite and the black eyed one is pushed behind the drawers. Tomorrow blue eyes may take its turn of neglect and it may be an odious little wretch with a burnt nose or torn bead of hair and no eyes at all that takes the first place and misses affection and is dandled and caressed in her arms. As novelists are supposed to know everything, even the secrets of female hearts which the owners themselves do not perhaps know, we may state that at 11 years of age, Mademoiselle Betsy, as Miss Emery was then called, had felt tender emotions toward a young Saviard organ grinder at Paris whom she persisted in believing to be a prince carried off from his parents, that at 12, an old and hideous drawing master, but ah, what age of personal defects or proof against woman's love had agitated her young heart and that at 13, being at Madame de Caramel's boarding school in the Champs-Élysées, which as everybody knows is next door to Monsieur Raugrand's, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, pension for young gentlemen, a correspondence by letter took place between the Sud-Douisant, Miss Betsy, and two young gentlemen of the College of Charlemagne who were pensioners of the Chevalier Raugrand. Raugrand. In the above paragraph, our young friend has been called by a Christian name different to that under which we were lately presented to her, the fact is that Miss Emery, called Missy at home, had really at the first been Christian Betsy, but assumed the name of Blanche of her own will and fantasy and crowned herself with it and the weapon which the Baronette, her stepfather, held in terror over her was the threat to call her publicly by her name of Betsy, by which menace he sometimes managed to keep the young rebel in order. We have spoken just now of children's dolls and of the manner in which those little people take up and neglect their darling toys, and very likely this history will show that Miss Blanche assumed and put away her live dolls with a similar girlish inconstancy. She had had hosts of dear, dear darling friends there now and had quite a little museum of locks of hair in her treasure chest, which she had gathered in the course of her sentimental progress. Some dear friends had married, some had gone to other schools. One beloved sister she had lost from the pension and found again, oh horror, her darling, her leo-cadie keeping the books in her father's shop a grocer in the rue Dubocque. In fact, she had met with a number of disappointments as strongment, dis-si-lou-zi-en-ment, as she called them in her pretty French jargon and had seen and suffered a great deal for so young a woman. But it is the lot of sensibility to suffer and of confiding tenderness to be deceived and she felt that she was only undergoing the penalties of genius in these pangs and disappointments of her young career. Meanwhile, she managed to make the honest lady, her mother, as uncomfortable as circumstances would permit and caused her worthy stepfather to wish she was dead. With the exception of Captain Strong, whose invincible good humor was proof against her sarcasms, the little lady ruled the whole house with her tongue. If Lady Claverin talked about spare grass instead of asparagus or called an object a object, as this unfortunate lady would sometimes do, Missy calmly corrected her and frightened the good soul, her mother, into errors, only the more frequent as she grew more nervous under her daughter's eye. It is not to be supposed considering the vast interest which the arrival of the family at Claverin Park inspired in the inhabitants of that little town that Madame Fribs be alone, of all the folks in Claverin should have remained unmoved and incurious. At the first appearance of the Park Family and Church, Madame noted every article of toilette which the ladies wore from their bonnets to their brode coin and took a survey of the attire of the ladies maids in the pew allotted to them. We fear that Dr. Portman's sermon, though it was one of his oldest and most valued compositions, had little effect upon Madame Fribs be on that day. In a very few days afterwards, she had managed for herself an interview with Lady Claverin's confidential attendant in the housekeeper's room at the Park and her cards in French and English, stating that she received the newest fashions from Paris from her correspondent, Madame Victorine, and that she was in the custom of making court and ball dresses for the nobility and gentry of the chire were in the possession of Lady Claverin and the same ring and favorably received as she was happy to hear by those ladies. Mrs. Bonner, Lady Claverin's lady became soon a great frequenter of Madame Fribs's drawing room and part took of many entertainments at the milliner's expense. A meal of green tea, scandal, hot salad, lung cakes and a little novel reading were always at the service of Mrs. Bonner whenever she was free to pass an evening in the town. And she found much more time for these pleasures than her junior officer, Ms. Amory's maid who seldom could be spared for a holiday and was worked as hard as any factory girl by that inexorable little muse, her mistress. The muse loved to be dressed becomingly and having a lively, fancy and a poetic desire for change was for altering her attire every day. Her maid having a taste in dressmaking to which art she had been an apprentice at Paris before she entered into Miss Blanche's service there was kept from morning till night altering and remodeling Miss Amory's habiliments and rose very early and went to bed very late in obedience to the untiring caprices of her little task mistress. The girl was of respectable English parents. There are many of our people, colonists of Paris who have seen better days who are not quite ruined who do not quite live upon charity and yet cannot go on without it. Does her father was a cripple incapable of work and her return home would only increase the burden and add to the misery of the family? Poor Pincotte was feigned to stay where she could maintain herself and spare a little relief to her parents. Our muse with the candor which distinguished her never failed to remind her attendant of the real state of matters. I should send you away Pincotte for you are a great deal too weak and your eyes are failing you and you are always crying and sniveling and wanting the doctor. But I wish that your parents at home should be supported and I go on enduring you for their safe mind. The dear Blanche would say to her timid little attendant or Pincotte your wretched appearance and slavish manner and red eyes positively give me the migraine and I think I shall make you wear rouge so that you may look a little cheerful or Pincotte I can't bear even for the sake of your starving parents that you should tear my hair out of my head in that manner. And I will thank you to write to them and say that I dispense with your services after which sort of speeches and after keeping her for an hour trembling over her hair which the young lady loved to have combed as she perused one of her favorite French novels she would go to bed at one o'clock and say Pincotte you may kiss me good night I should like you to have the pink dress ready for the morning and so with blessing upon her attendant she would turn round and go to sleep. The muse might lie in bed as long as she chose of a morning and availed herself of that privilege but Pincotte had to rise very early indeed to get her mistress's task done and had to appear next day with the same red eyes and the same one face which displeased Miss Amory by their want of gaiety and caused the mistress to be so angry because the servant persisted in being and looking unwell and unhappy. Not that Blanche ever thought she was a hard mistress indeed she made quite a friend of Pincotte at times and wrote some very pretty verses about the lonely little tiring maid whose heart was far away. Our beloved Blanche was a superior being and expected to be waited upon as such and I do not know whether there are any other ladies in this world who treat their servants or dependents so but it may be that there are such and that the tyranny which they exercise over their subordinates and the pangs which they can manage to inflict with a soft voice and a well-bred simper are as cruel as those which a slave driver administers with an oath and a whip. The Blanche was a muse, a delicate little creature quite tremulous with excitability whose eyes filled with tears at the smallest emotion and who knows but that it was the very fineness of her feelings which caused them to be frost so easily. You crush a butterfly by merely touching it vulgar people have no idea of the sensibility of a muse. So little Pincotte being occupied all day and night and stitching, hemming, ripping, combing, ironing, crimping for a mistress reading to her when in bed for the girl was mistress of the two languages and had a sweet voice and manner could take no share and Madame Fribsby's soirees nor indeed was she much missed or considered of sufficient consequence to appear at their entertainments but there was another person connected with the clavaring establishment who became a constant guest of our friend the milliner. This was the chief of the kitchen, Monsieur Miro Boulin with whom Madame Fribsby soon formed an intimacy not having been accustomed to the appearance or society of persons of the French nation the rustic inhabitants of clavaring were not so favorably impressed by Monsieur Al Cede's manners and appearance as that gentleman might have desired that they should be. He walked among them quite unsuspiciously upon the afternoon of our summer day when his service is not required at the house in his usual favorite costume namely his light green frock or a palateau his crimson velvet waistcoat with blue glass buttons his pantalon a co-sé of a very large and decided check pattern his orange satin neck cloth and his jean boots with tips of shiny leather these with a golden broider cap and a richly gilt cane or other varieties of ornament of a similar tendency formed his usual holiday costume in which he flattered himself there was nothing remarkable unless indeed the beauty of his person should attract observation and in which he considered that he exhibited the appearance of a gentleman of good Parisian tongue. He walked then down the street grinning and ogling every woman he met with glances which he meant should kill them outright and peered over the railings and in at the windows where females were in the tranquil summer evening but Betsy, Mrs. Pivus's maid shrank back with a laurel blesses as else he'd ogled her over the laurel bush. The misspakers and their mama stared with wonder and presently a crowd began to follow the interesting foreigner of ragged urchins and children who left their dirt pies in the street to pursue him. For some time he thought that admiration was the cause which led these persons in his wake and walked on pleased himself that he could so easily confer on others so much harmless pleasure but the little children and dirt pie manufacturers were presently succeeded by followers of larger growth and a number of lads and girls from the factory being let loose at this hour joined the mob and began laughing, jeering, hooting and calling appropriate names at the Frenchman. Some cried out Frenchy, Frenchy, some exclaimed frogs one asked for a lock of his hair which was long and in richly flowing ringlets that it linked the poor artist began to perceive that he was an object of derision rather than of respect to the rude green mob. It was at this juncture that Madame Frisbee spied the unlucky gentleman with the train at his heels and heard the scornful shouts with which they assailed him. She ran out of her room and across the street to the persecuted foreigner. She held out her hand and addressing him in his own language, invited him into her abode. And when she had housed him barely within her door she stood bravely at the threshold before the jibing factory girls and boys and said they were a pack of cowards to insult a poor man who could not speak their language and was alone and without protection. The little crowd with some ironical cheers and hootings, nevertheless, felt the force of Madame Frisbee's vigorous allocusion and retreated before her for the old lady was rather respected in the place and her out of the inner kindness had made her many friends there. Poor Maraud Belan was grateful indeed to hear the language of his country ever so ill spoken. Frenchmen pardon our faults in their language much more readily than we excused their bad English and we'll face our blunders throughout a long conversation without the least propensity to grin. The rescued artist vowed that Madame Frisbee was his guardian angel and that he had not as yet met with such suavity and politeness among lay's anglaise. He was as courteous and complimentary to her as if it was the fairest and noblest of ladies whom he was addressing for Alcide Meurvala played homage after his fashion to all women kind and never dreamed of a distinction of ranks in the realms of beauty as his phrase was. A cream flavored with pineapple, a mayonnaise of lobster which he flattered himself was not unworthy of his hand or of her. He had the honor to offer it as an homage and a box of preserved fruits of Provence were bought by one of the chefs aged to camp in a basket the next day through the milleners and were accompanied with a gallant note to the amiable Madame Frisbee. Her kindness, Alcide said, have made a green place in the desert of his existence. Her suavity would ever contrast in memory with the gross serrat of the rusty population who were not worthy to possess such a jewel. An intimacy of the most confidential nature thus sprang up between the milleners and the chief of the kitchen. But I do not know whether it was with pleasure or mortification that Madame received the declarations of friendship which the young Alcide proper to her for he persisted in calling her la respectabla frisbee, la virturiz frisbee, and in stating that he should consider her as his mother while he hoped she would regard him as her son. It was not very long ago, Frisbee thought that words had been addressed to her in that dear French language indicating a different sort of attachment. And she sighed as she looked up at the picture of her carabinier for it is surprising how young some people's hearts remain when their heads have kneeed about front or a little hair dye. And at this moment, Madame Frisbee, as she told young Alcide, felt as romantic as a grill of 18. When the conversation took this turn and at their first intimacy, Madame Frisbee was rather inclined so to lead it. Alcide always politely diverged to another subject. It was as his mother that he persisted in considering the good milliner, he would recognize her in no other capacity. And with that relationship, the gentle lady was forced to content herself when she found how deeply the artist's heart was engaged elsewhere. He was not long before he described to her the subject and origin of his passion. I declared myself to her, said Alcide laying his hand on his heart in a manner which was as novel as I am charmed to think it was agreeable where cannot love penetrate respectable Madame Frisbee. Cupid is the father of invention and I inquired of the domestics, what were the plots of which Madame Waselle partook with most pleasure and built up my little battery accordingly. On a day when her parents had gone to dine in the world and I am grieved to say that a grocery dinner at a restaurant tour in the Boulevard or in that Palais Royale seemed to form the delights of these unrefined persons, the charming miss entertained some comrades of the pension and I advised myself to send up a little repass suitable to so delicate young palates. Her lovely name is Blanche, the name of the maiden is White. The wreath of roses, which she wears is White. I determined that my dinner should be as spotless as the snow at her accustomed hour and instead of the rude Yizhe Allot, which was ordinarily served at her two simple table. I sent her up a little portage à la rame, à la rame blanche, I called it, as White as her own tint and confection with the most fragrant cream and almonds. I then offered up at her shrine a filet de melange, l'agne, and a delicate plat, which I designated as apparelant à la sainte-roise and of which my journey miss partook with pleasure. I followed this by two little entrees of sweet bread and chicken and the only brown thing which I permitted myself in the entertainment was a little roast of lamb, which I lay in a meadow of spinnatures surrounded with crues dillons representing sheep and ornamented with daisies and other savage flowers. After this came my second service of pudding à la rame, Elizabeth, who Madame Frisbee knows was a maiden princess, a dish of opal-colored plover's eggs, which I called nid de tout terreux à la roue-coule, placing in the midst of them two of those tender volatiles billing each other and confection with butter, a basket containing little gâteau of apricots, which I know all young ladies adore and a jelly of ma raskin bland insinuating intoxicating as the glance of beauty. This I designated emboisie de calypso à la souverain de mon coeur, and when the ice was brought in, an ice of l'ambiance and cherries, how do you think I had shaped them, Madame Frisbee, in the form of two hearts united with an arrow on which I had laid before it entered, a bridal veil in cut paper surmounted by a wreath of virginal orange flowers. I stood at the door to watch the effect of this entry. It was but one cry of admiration. The three young ladies filled their glasses with the sparkling eye and carried me in a toast. I heard it, I heard Miss Speak of me. I heard her say to Monsieur Mirobala that we thank him, we admire him, we love him. My feet almost failed me as she spoke. Since that, can I have any reason to doubt that the young artist has made some progress in the heart of the English Miss? I'm modest, but my glass informs me that I am not ill-looking. Other victories have convinced me of the fact. Dangerous man cried the milliner. The blonde Misses of Albion see nothing in the dull inhabitants of their brumas isle, which can compare with the ardor and the vacity of the children of the South. We bring our sunshine with us. We are Frenchmen and accustomed to conquer. Were it not for this affair of the heart and my determination to marry an anglaise, do you think I would stop in this island, which is not altogether ungrateful since I have found here a tender mother in the respect of what Madame Fribsby. In this island, in this family, my genius would use itself in the company of these rustics. The poise of my art cannot be understood by these carnivorous insularies. No, the men are odious, but the women, the women, I own dear Fribsby are seducing. I have vowed to marry one and as I cannot go into your markets and purchase according to the custom of the country, I'm resolved to adopt another custom and fly with one to Gretna Grinn. The blonde miss will go, she is fascinated, her eyes have told me so, the white dove once, but the signal to fly. Have you any correspondence with her, ask Fribsby in amazement and not knowing whether the young lady or the lover might be laboring under a romantic delusion. I correspond with her by means of my art, she partakes of dishes, which I make expressly for her. I insinuate to her thus a thousand hints, which as she is perfectly spiritual, she receives, but I want other intelligences near her. There is pincott her maid, said Madame Fribsby, who by aptitude or education seem to have some knowledge of affairs of the heart, but the great artist Brown darkened at this suggestion. Madame, he said there are points upon which a gallant man ought to silence himself, though if he break the secret, he may do so with the least impropriety to his best friend, his adopted mother. Know then that there is a cause why Miss Pincott should be hostile to me, a cause not uncommon with your sex jealousy. Perfidious monster, said the compadante. I know, said the artist with a deep bass voice and a tragic accent worthy of the poor Saint-Martin and his favorite melodrams, not perfidious but fatal. Yes, I'm a fatal man, Madame Fribsby, to inspire hopeless passion is my destiny. I cannot help it that women love me. Is it my fault that that young woman deparishes and languishes to the view of the eye, consumed by a flame which I cannot return? Listen, there are others in this family who are similarly unhappy. The governess of the young Mylor has encountered me in my walks and looked at me in a way which can bear but one interpretation. Emma Lady herself is of mature age but who has oriental blood has once or twice addressed compliments to the lonely artist which can admit of no mistake. I avoid the household, I seek solitude. I undergo my destiny, I can marry but one and I'm resolved it shall be to a lady of your nation. And if her fortune is sufficient, I think Miss would be the person who would be most suitable. I wish to ascertain what her means are before I lead her to Gretna Grimm. Whether Alcide was as irresistible or conqueror as his namesake or whether he was simply crazy is a point which must be left to the reader's judgment but the latter if he had had the benefit of much French acquaintance has perhaps met with men amongst them who fancied themselves almost as invincible and who if you credit them have made equal havoc in the hearts of Léon Glèves. End of chapter 24. Chapter 25 of the history of Pendenis. This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The history of Pendenis by William Makepeace Thackeray chapter 25 contains both love and jealousy. Our readers have already heard Sir Francis Clevering's candid opinion of the lady who had given him her fortune and restored him to his native country and home. And it must be owned that the baronet was not far wrong in his estimate of his wife and that Lady Clevering was not the wisest or the best educated of women. She had had a couple of years education in Europe in a suburb of London which she persisted in calling acne to her dying day whence she had been summoned to join her father at Calcutta at the age of 15. And it was on her voyage there on board the Ramchunder East India man Captain Bragg in which ship she had two years previously made her journey to Europe that she formed the acquaintance of her first husband, Mr. Emery who was third mate of the vessel in question. We're not going to enter into the early part of Lady Clevering's history but Captain Bragg under whose charge Ms. Snell went out to her father who was one of the captain's consignees and part owner of the Ramchunder and many other vessels found reason to put the rebellious rascal of a mate in irons until they reached the Cape where the captain left his office or behind and finally delivered his ward to her father at Calcutta after a stormy and perilous voyage in which the Ramchunder and the cargo and passengers incurred no small danger and damage. Some months afterwards Emery made his appearance at Calcutta having worked his way out before the mast from the Cape, married the rich attorney's daughter in spite of that old speculator, set up as indigo planter and failed, set up as agent and failed again, set up as editor of the Sunderbund pilot and failed again, quarreling ceaselessly with his father-in-law and his wife during the progress of all these mercantile transactions and disasters and ending his career finally with a crash which compelled him to leave Calcutta and go to New South Wales. It was in the course of these luckless proceedings that Mr. Emery probably made the acquaintance of Sir Jasper Rogers, the respected judge of the Supreme Court of Calcutta who has been mentioned before. And as the truth must out it was by making and improper use of his father-in-law's name who could write perfectly well and had no need of an immanuensis that fortune-founding forces of Mr. Emery and caused him to abandon all further struggles with her. Not being in the habit of reading the Calcutta law reports very assiduously, the European public did not know of these facts as well as people did in Bengal and Mrs. Emery and her father finding her residence in India not a comfortable one. It was agreed that the lady should return to Europe whether she came with her little daughter, Betsy, or Blanche, then four years old. They were accompanied by Betsy's nurse who has been presented to the reader in the last chapter as the confidential maid of Lady Clevering, Mrs. Bonner. And Captain Bragg took a house for them in the near neighborhood of his residence in Poughlington Street. It was a very hard, bitter summer and the rain, it rained every day for some time after Mrs. Emery's arrival. Bragg was very pompous and disagreeable, perhaps ashamed, perhaps anxious to get rid of the Indian lady. She believed that all the world in London was talking about her husband's disaster and that the king and queen and the court of directors were aware of her unlucky history. She had a good allowance from her father. She had no call to live in England and she determined to go abroad. The way she went then, glad to escape the gloomy surveillance of the odious bully, Captain Bragg. People had no objection to receive her at the continental towns where she stopped and at the various boarding houses where she royally paid her way. She called Hackney, Acne, to be sure, though otherwise she spoke English without little foreign twang, very curious and not unpleasant. She dressed amazingly. She was conspicuous for her love of eating and drinking and prepared curries and palas at every boarding house which she frequented. But her singularities of language and behavior only gave a zest to her society and Mrs. Emery was deservedly popular. She was the most good natured, jovial and generous of women. She was up to any party of pleasure by whom so ever proposed. She brought three times more champagne and foul and ham to the picnics than anyone else. She took endless boxes for the play and tickets for the masked balls and gave them away to everybody. She paid the boarding house people months beforehand. She helped poor Shabby, mustachioed bucks and dowagers whose remittances had not arrived with constant supplies from her purse. And in this way she tramped through Europe and appeared at Brussels, at Paris, at Milan and Naples at Rome, as her fancy led her. News of Emery's death reached her at the latter place where Captain Clavering was then stained, unable to pay his hotel bill, as indeed was his friend, the Chevalier, strong. And the good natured widow married the descendant of the ancient house of Clavering, professing indeed no particular grief for the escaped grace of a husband whom she had lost. We have brought her thus up to the present time when she was mistress of Clavering Park, in the midst of which Mr. Pinckney, the celebrated painter, portrayed her with her little boy by her side. Missy followed her mama in most of her peregrinations and so learned a deal of life. She had a governess for some time and after her mother's second marriage, the benefit of Madame de Caramel's select pension in the Champs-Elyse. When the Claverings came to England, she of course came with them. It was only within a few years after the death of her grandfather and the birth of her little brother that she began to understand that her position in life was altered and that Miss Emery, nobody's daughter, was a very small personage in a house compared with Master Francis Clavering, erred to an ancient baronetcy and a noble estate. But for little Frank, she would have been an heiress in spite of her father and though she knew and cared not much about money of which she never had any stint and though she was a romantic little muse, as we have seen, yet she could not reasonably be grateful to the persons who had so contributed to change her condition. Nor indeed did she understand what the latter really was until she had made some further progress and acquired more accurate knowledge in the world. But this was clear that her stepfather was dull and weak, that Mama dropped her ages and was not refined in manners or appearance and that little Frank was a spoiled, quarrelsome urchin, always having his way, always treading upon her feet, always upsetting his dinner on her dresses and keeping her out of her inheritance. None of these, as she felt could comprehend her and her solitary heart naturally pine for other attachments and she sought around her where to bestow the precious boon of her unoccupied affection. This dear girl then, from want of sympathy or other cause, made herself so disagreeable at home and frightened her mother and bore her stepfather so much that they were quite as anxious as she could be that she should settle for herself in life and hence Sir Francis Clevering's desire expressed to his friend in the last chapter that Mrs. Strong should die and that he would take plans to himself as a second Mrs. Strong. But as this could not be, any other person was welcome to win her and a smart young fellow, well-looking and well-educated like our friend Arthur Penn Dennis was quite free to propose for her if he had a mind and would have been received with open arms by Lady Clevering as a son-in-law had he had the courage to come forward as a competitor for Miss Amery's hand. Mr. Penn, however, besides other drawbacks chose to entertain an extreme diffidence about himself. He was ashamed of his late failures, of his idle and nameless condition of the poverty which he had brought on his mother by his folly and there was as much a vanity as remorse in his present state of doubt and distrust. How could he ever hope for such a prize as this brilliant blanche Amery who lived in a fine park and mansion and was weighted on by a score of grand domestics whilst a maid servant brought in their meager meal at Fair Oaks and his mother was obliged to pinch and managed to make both ends meet. Obstacles seemed for him insurmountable which would have vanished had he marked manfully upon them and he preferred despairing or dallying with his wishes or perhaps he had not positively shaped them as yet to attempting to win gallantly the object of his desire. Many a young man fails by that species of vanity called shyness who might for the asking have his will. But we do not pretend to say that Penn had as yet ascertained his or that he was doing much more than thinking about falling in love. Miss Amery was charming and lively. She fascinated and cajoled him by a thousand arts or natural graces or flatteries but there were lurking reasons and doubts besides shyness and vanity with holding him. In spite of her cleverness and her protestations and her fascinations Penn's mother had divine the girl and did not trust her. Mrs. Penn then saw blanche light minded and frivolous detected many wants in her which offended the pure empires minded lady a want of reverence for her parents and for things more sacred Helen thought. Worldliness and selfishness couched under pretty words and tender expressions. Laura and Penn battled these points strongly at first with the widow Laura being as yet enthusiastic about her new friend and Penn not far gone enough in love to attempt any concealment of his feelings. He would laugh at these objections of Helen's and say Pasha mother you are jealous about Laura all women are jealous. But when in the course of a month or two and by watching the pair with that anxiety with which brooding women watch over their son's affections and in acknowledging which I have no doubt there is a sexual jealousy on the mother's part and a secret pang when Helen saw that the intimacy appeared to make progress that the two young people were perpetually finding pretext to meet and that Ms. Blanche was at Fair Oaks or Mr. Penn at the park every day the poor widow's heart began to fail her. Her darling project seemed to vanish before her and giving way to her weakness. She fairly told Penn one day what her views and longings were that she felt herself breaking and not long for this world and that she hoped and prayed before she went that she might see her two children one. The late events Penn's life and career and former passion for the actress had broken the spirit of this tender lady. She felt that he had escaped her and was in the maternal nest no more and she clung with a sickening fondness to Laura Laura who had been left to her by Francis in heaven. Penn kissed and soothed her in his grand patronizing way. He had seen something of this. He had long thought his mother wanted to make this marriage. Did Laura know anything of it? Not she, Mrs. Penn Dennis said, not for worlds where she had breathed a word of it to Laura. Well, well, there was time enough. His mother wouldn't die. Penn said, laughingly, he wouldn't hear of any such thing. And as for the muse, she is too grand a lady to think about poor little me. And as for Laura, who knows that she would have me. She would do anything you told her to be sure but am I worthy of her? Oh, Penn, you might be, was the widow's reply. Not that Mr. Penn ever doubted that he was and a feeling of indefinable pleasure and self complacency came over him as he thought over this proposal and imaged Laura to himself as his memory remembered her four years past, always fair and open, kindly and pious, cheerful, tender and true. He looked at her with brightening eyes as she came in from the garden at the end of this talk. Her cheeks rather flushed her looks, frank and smiling, a basket of roses in her hand. She took the finest of them and brought it to Mrs. Pendennis, who was refreshed by the odor and color of these flowers and hung over her fondly and gave it to her. And I might have this prize for the asking Penn thought without thrill of triumph as he looked at the kindly girl, why she is as beautiful and as generous as her roses. The image of the two women remained forever after in his mind and he never recalled it, but the tears came into his eyes. Before many weeks intimacy with her new acquaintance, however, Ms. Laura was obliged to give in to Helen's opinion and owned at the muse was selfish, unkind and inconstant. Of course, Blanche confided to her bosom friend all the little griefs and domestic annoyances, how the family could not comprehend her and she moved among them an isolated being, how her poor mama's education had been neglected and she was forced to blush for her blunders, how Sir Francis was a weak person, deplorably unintellectual and only happy when smoking his earliest cigars, how since the birth of her little brother, she had seen her mother's precious affection, which she valued more than anything in life as strange from her once darling daughter, how she was alone, alone, alone in the world. But these griefs, real and heart-rending, though they might be to a young lady of exquisite sensibility did not convince Laura of the propriety of Blanche's conduct in many small incidents of life. Little Frank, for instance, might be very provoking and might have deprived Blanche of her mama's affection, but this was no reason why Blanche should box the child's ears because he upset a glass of water over her drawing and why she should call him any appropriate names in the English and French language and the preference accorded to Little Frank was certainly no reason why Blanche should give herself imperial heirs of command towards the boy's governess and send that young lady upon messages through the house to bring her book or to fetch her pocket handkerchief. When a domestic performed an errand, for honest Laura, she was always thankful and pleased whereas she could not but perceive that the little muse had not the slightest gruel in giving her commands to all the world round about her and in disturbing anybody's ease or comfort in order to administer it to her own. It was Laura's first experience in friendship and it pained the kind creature's heart to be obliged to give up as delusions one by one those charms and brilliant qualities in which her fancy had dressed her new friend and to find that the fascinating little fairy was but a mortal and not a very amiable mortal after all. What generous person is there that has not been so deceived in his time? What person perhaps that has not so disappointed others in his turn? After this scene with Little Frank in which that refractory son and heir of the house of clevering had received the compliments in French and English and the accompanying box on the ear from his sister, Miss Laura who had plenty of humor could not help calling to mind some very touching and tender verses which the muse had read to her out of May alarm and which began, my pretty baby brother, may angels guard thy rest in which the muse after complimenting the baby upon the station in life which it was about to occupy and contrasting it with her own lonely condition vowed nevertheless that the angel boy would never enjoy such affection as hers was or find in the false world before him anything so constant and tender as a sister's heart. It may be, the falorn one said, it may be you will slight it, my pretty baby sweet, you will spurn me from your bosom, I'll cling around your feet. Oh, let me, let me love you. The world will prove to you as false as tis to others, but I am ever true. And behold, the muse was boxing the darling brother's ears instead of kneeling at his feet and giving Miss Laura her first lesson in the cynical philosophy, not quite her first, however, something like this selfishness and waywardness, something like this contrast between practice and poetry between grand, versified aspirations and everyday life she had witnessed at home in the person of our young friend, Mr. Penn. But then Penn was different, Penn was a man, it seemed natural somehow that he should be self-willed and should have his own way and under his waywardness and selfishness, indeed there was a kind and generous heart. Oh, it was hard that such a diamond should be changed away against such a false stone as this and a word Laura began to be tired of her admired blanche. She had assayed her and found her not true and her former admiration and delight which she had expressed with her accustomed generous artlessness gave way to a feeling which we shall not call contempt, but which was very nearer and which caused Laura to adopt towards Miss Amory a grade and tranquil tone of superiority, which was at first by no means to the muse's liking. Nobody likes to be found out or having held a high place to submit to step down. The consciousness that this event was impending did not serve to increase Miss Blanche's good humor and as it made her pivish and dissatisfied with herself it probably rendered her even less agreeable to the persons round about her. So there arose one fatal day, a battle royale between Dearest Blanche and Dearest Laura in which the friendship between them was all but slain outright. Dearest Blanche had been unusually capricious and wicked on this day. She had been insolent to her mother, savage with little Frank, odiously impertinent in her behavior to the boys' governors and intolerably cruel to pincott her attendant. Not venturing to attack her friend where the little tyrant was of a timid feline nature and only used her claws upon those who were weaker than herself. She maltreated all these and especially poor pincott who was menial confidant, companion, slave always, according to the caprice of her young mistress. This girl who'd been sitting in the room with the young ladies being driven dense in tears, occasioned by the cruelty of her mistress and raked with a parting sarcasm as she went sobbing from the door, Laura barely broke out into a loud and indignant invective, wondered how one so young could forget the deference owing to her elders as well as to her inferiors in station and professing so much sensibility of her own could torture the feelings of others so wantonly. Laura told her friend that her conduct was absolutely wicked and that she ought to ask pardon of heaven on her knees for it and having delivered herself of a hot and valuable speech whereof the delivery astonished the speaker as much almost as her auditor. She ran to her bonnet in Shaw and went home across the park in a great flurry and perturbation and through the surprise of Mrs. Pendenis we had not expected her until night. Alone with Helen, Laura gave an account of the scene and gave up her friend henceforth. Oh, mama, she said, you were right, but she seemed so soft and so kind is, as you have said, selfish and cruel. She was always speaking of her affections can have no heart. No honest girl would afflict the mother so or torture a dependent and I give her up from this day and I will have no other friend but you. On this the two ladies went through the osculatory ceremony which they were in the habit of performing and Mrs. Pendenis got a great secret comfort from the little quarrel where Laura's confession seemed to say that girl can never be a wife or pen for she is like-minded and heartless and quite unworthy of our noble hero. He will be sure to find out her unworthiness for his own part and then he will be saved from this flighty creature and awake out of his delusion. But Mrs. Laura did not tell Mrs. Pendenis perhaps did not acknowledge to herself what had been the real cause of the day's quarrel. Being in a very wicked mood and bent upon mischief everywhere, the little wicked muse of a blanche had very soon begun her tricks. Her darling Laura had come to pass a long day and as they were sitting in her own room together had chosen to bring the conversation around to the subject of Mr. Penn. I'm afraid he is sadly fickle, Mrs. Blanche observed, Mrs. Pibus and many more clevering people have told us all about the actress. I was quite a child when it happened and I don't know anything about it, Laura answered blushing very much. He used her very ill, Blanche said wagging her little head, he was false to her. I'm sure he was not, Laura cried out. He acted most generously by her. He wanted to give up everything to marry her. It was she that was false to him. He nearly broke his heart about it. He, I thought you didn't know anything about the story, dearest, interpose, Mrs. Blanche. Mama has said so, said Laura. Well, he is very clever, continued the other little dear, what a sweet poet he is. Have you ever read his poems? Only the fisherman and the diver, which he translated for us and his prize poem, which didn't get the prize. And indeed I thought it very pompous and prosy, Laura said, laughing. Has he never written you any poems in love? Ask, Miss Amor. No, my dear, said Mrs. Bell. Blanche ran up to her friend, kissed her fondly, called her, my dearest Laura, at least three times, looked her archly in the face, nodded her head and said promise to tell, nobody, and I will show you something. And tripping across the room daintily to a little mother of pearl inlaid desk, she opened it with a silver key and took out two or three papers, crumpled and rather stained with green, which she submitted to her friend. Laura took them and read them. They were love verses, sure enough. Something about Moon Dean, about Anayet, about a river, she looked at them for a long time, but in truth the lines were not very distinct before her eyes. And you have answered them, Blanche. She asked, putting gun back. Oh no, not for world's dearest. The other said, and when her dearest Laura had quite done with the verses, she tripped back and popped them again into the pretty desk. Then she went to her piano and sang two or three songs of Rossini, whose flourishes of music, her flexible little voice could execute to perfection. And Laura sat by vaguely listening as she performed these pieces. What was Miss Bell thinking about the while? She hardly knew, but sat there silent as the songs roll by. After this concert, the young ladies were summoned to the room where luncheon was served and whether they of course went with their arms round each other's waist. And it could not have been jealousy or anger on Laura's part, which had made her silent for after they had tripped along the corridor and descended the steps and were about to open the door which leads into the hall. Laura paused and looking her friend kindly and frankly in the face, kissed her with a cisterly warmth. Something occurred after this. Master Frank's manner of eating probably or Mama's blunders or Sir Francis smelling of cigars which vexed Miss Blanche. And she gave way to that series of naughtinesses wherever we have spoken and which ended in the above little quarrel. End of chapter 25.