As for Miss Fotheringay and her behavior, the reader is referred to a former page for an account of that. She went through precisely the same business. She surveyed the house all round with glances of gratitude; and trembled, and almost sank with emotion, over her favorite trap-door. She seized the flowers (Foker discharged a prodigious bouquet at her, and even Smirke made a feeble shy with a rose, and blushed dreadfully when it fell into the pit). She seized the flowers and pressed them to her swelling heart—&c. &c.—in a word—we refer the reader to page 46. Twinkling in her breast poor old Pen saw a locket which he had bought of Mr. Nathan in High-street, with the last shilling he was worth and a sovereign borrowed from Smirke.
"Black-Eyed Susan" followed, at which sweet story our gentle-hearted friends were exceedingly charmed and affected: and in which Susan, with a russet gown and a pink ribbon in her cap, looked to the full as lovely as Ophelia. Bingley was great in William. Goll, as the admiral, looked like the figure-head of a seventy-four; and Garbetts, as Captain Boldweather, a miscreant who forms a plan for carrying off Black-eyed Susan, and, waving an immense cocked hat, says, "Come what may, hewillbe the ruin of her"—all these performed their parts with their accustomed talent; and it was with a sincere regret that all our friends saw the curtain drop down and end that pretty and tender story.
If Pen had been alone with his mother in the carriage as they went home, he would have told her all that night; but he sate on the box in the moonshine smoking a cigar by the side of Smirke, who warmed himself with a comforter. Mr. Foker's tandem and lamps whirled by the sober old Clavering posters, as they were a couple of miles on their road home, and Mr. Spavin saluted Mrs. Pendennis's carriage with some considerable variations of Rule Britannia on the key-bugle.
It happened two days after the above gayeties that Mr. Dean of Chatteries entertained a few select clerical friends at dinner at his Deanery House. That they drank uncommonly good port wine, and abused the bishop over their dessert, are very likely matters; but with such we have nothing at present to do. Our friend Doctor Portman, of Clavering, was one of the dean's guests, and being a gallant man, and seeing from his place at the mahogany, the dean's lady walking up and down the grass, with her children sporting around her, and her pink parasol over her lovely head—the doctor stepped out of the French windows of the dining-room into the lawn, which skirts that apartment, and left the other white neckcloths to gird at my lord bishop. Then the doctor went up and offered Mrs. Dean his arm, and they sauntered over the ancient velvet lawn, which had been mowed and rolled for immemorial deans, in that easy, quiet, comfortable manner, in which people of middle age and good temper walk after a good dinner, in a calm golden summer evening, when the sun has but just sunk behind the enormous cathedral-towers, and the sickle-shaped moon is growing every instant brighter in the heavens.
Now at the end of the dean's garden, there is, as we have stated, Mrs. Creed's house, and the windows of the first-floor room were open to admit the pleasant summer air. A young lady of six-and-twenty, whose eyes were perfectly wide open, and a luckless boy of eighteen, blind with love and infatuation, were in that chamber together; in which persons, as we have before seen them in the same place, the reader will have no difficulty in recognizing Mr. Arthur Pendennis and Miss Costigan.
The poor boy had taken the plunge. Trembling with passionate emotion, his heart beating and throbbing fiercely, tears rushing forth in spite of him, his voice almost choking with feeling, poor Pen had saidthose words which he could withhold no more, and flung himself and his whole store of love, and admiration, and ardor, at the feet of this mature beauty. Is he the first who has done so? Have none before or after him staked all their treasure of life, as a savage does his land and possessions against a draught of the fair-skins' fire-water, or a couple of bauble eyes?
"Does your mother know of this,Arthur?" said Miss Fotheringay, slowly. He seized her hand madly, and kissed it a thousand times. She did not withdraw it. "Doesthe old lady know it?" Miss Costigan thought to herself "well, perhaps she may," and then she remembered what a handsome diamond cross Mrs. Pendennis had on the night of the play, and thought, "sure 'twill go in the family."
"Calm yourself, dear Arthur," she said, in her low rich voice, and smiled sweetly and gravely upon him. Then, with her disengaged hand, she put the hair lightly off his throbbing forehead. He was in such a rapture and whirl of happiness that he could hardly speak. At last he gasped out, "My mother has seen you, and admires you beyond measure. She will learn to love you soon: who can do otherwise? She will love you because I do."
"'Deed then, I think you do," said Miss Costigan, perhaps with a sort of pity for Pen.
Think he did! Of course here Mr. Pen went off into a rhapsody through which, as we have perfect command over our own feelings, we have no reason to follow the lad. Of course, love, truth, and eternity were produced; and words were tried but found impossible to plumb the tremendous depth of his affection. This speech, we say, is no business of ours. It was most likely not very wise, but what right have we to overhear? Let the poor boy fling out his simple heart at the woman's feet, and deal gently with him. It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can't; and are proud of our impotence too.
At the end of his speech Pen again kissed the imperial hand with rapture—and I believe it was at this very moment, and while Mrs. Dean and Doctor Portman were engaged in conversation, that young Master Ridley Roset, her son, pulled his mother by the back of her capacious dress, and said—
"I say, ma! look up there"—and he waggled his innocent head.
That was, indeed, a view from the dean's garden such as seldom is seen by deans—or is written in chapters. There was poor Pen performing a salute upon the rosy fingers of his charmer, who received the embrace with perfect calmness and good humor. Master Ridley looked up and grinned, little Miss Rosa looked at her brother, and opened the mouth of astonishment. Mrs. Dean's countenance defied expression, and as for Dr. Portman, when he beheld the scene, and saw his prime favorite and dear pupil Pen, he stood mute with rage and wonder.
Mrs. Haller spied the party below at the same moment, and gave a start and a laugh. "Sure there's somebody in the dean's garden," she cried out; and withdrew with perfect calmness, while Pen darted awaywith his face glowing like coals. The garden party had re-entered the house when he ventured to look out again. The sickle moon was blazing bright in the heavens then, the stars were glittering, the bell of the cathedral tolling nine, the dean's guests (all save one, who had called for his horse Dumpling, and ridden off early) were partaking of tea and buttered cakes in Mrs. Dean's drawing-room—when Pen took leave of Miss Costigan.
Pen arrived at home in due time afterward; and was going to slip off to bed, for the poor lad was greatly worn and agitated, and his high-strung nerves had been at almost a maddening pitch—when a summons came to him by John, the old footman, whose countenance bore a very ominous look, that his mother must see him below.
On this he tied on his neckcloth again, and went down stairs to the drawing-room. There sate not only his mother, but her friend, the Reverend Doctor Portman. Helen's face looked very pale by the light of the lamp—the doctor's was flushed, on the contrary, and quivering with anger and emotion.
Pen saw at once that there was a crisis, and that there had been a discovery. "Now for it," he thought.
"Where have you been, Arthur?" Helen said, in a trembling voice.
"How can you look that—that dear lady, and a Christian clergyman in the face, sir?" bounced out the doctor, in spite of Helen's pale, appealing looks. "Where has he been? Where his mother's son should have been ashamed to go. For your mother's an angel, sir, an angel. How dare you bring pollution into her house, and make that spotless creature wretched with the thoughts of your crime?"
"Sir!" said Pen.
"Don't deny it, sir," roared the doctor. "Don't add lies, sir, to your other infamy. I saw you myself, sir. I saw you from the dean's garden. I saw you kissing the hand of that infernal painted—"
"Stop," Pen said, clapping his fist on the table, till the lamp flickered up and shook, "I am a very young man, but you will please to remember that I am a gentleman—I will hear no abuse of that lady."
"Lady, sir," cried the doctor, "thata lady—you—you—you stand in your mother's presence and call that—that woman a lady!—"
"In any body's presence," shouted out Pen. "She is worthy of any place. She is as pure as any woman. She is as good as she is beautiful. If any man but you insulted her, I would tell him what I thought; but as you are my oldest friend, I suppose you have the privilege to doubt of my honor."
"No, no, Pen, dearest Pen," cried out Helen in an excess of joy. "I told, I told you, doctor, he was not—not what you thought;" and the tender creature coming trembling forward flung herself on Pen's shoulder.
Pen felt himself a man, and a match for all the doctors in doctordom. He was glad this explanation had come. "You saw how beautiful she was," he said to his mother, with a soothing, protecting air, like Hamletwith Gertrude in the play. "I tell you, dear mother, she is as good. When you know her you will say so. She is of all, except you, the simplest, the kindest, the most affectionate of women. Why should she not be on the stage?—She maintains her father by her labor."
"Drunken old reprobate," growled the doctor, but Pen did not hear or heed.
"If you could see, as I have, how orderly her life is, how pure and pious her whole conduct, you would—as I do—yes, as I do"—(with a savage look at the doctor)—"spurn the slanderer who dared to do her wrong. Her father was an officer, and distinguished himself in Spain. He was a friend of His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, and is intimately known to the Duke of Wellington, and some of the first officers of our army. He has met my uncle Arthur at Lord Hill's, he thinks. His own family is one of the most ancient and respectable in Ireland, and indeed is as good as our own. The—the Costigans, were kings of Ireland."
"Why, God bless my soul," shrieked out the doctor, hardly knowing whether to burst with rage or laughter, "you don't mean to say you want tomarryher?"
Pen put on his most princely air. "What else, Dr. Portman," he said, "do you suppose would be my desire?"
Utterly foiled in his attack, and knocked down by this sudden lunge of Pen's, the doctor could only gasp out, "Mrs. Pendennis, ma'am, send for the major."
"Send for the major? with all my heart," said Arthur, Prince of Pendennis and Grand Duke of Fairoaks, with a most superb wave of the hand. And the colloquy terminated by the writing of those two letters which were laid on Major Pendennis's breakfast-table, in London, at the commencement of Prince Arthur's most veracious history.
Our acquaintance, Major Arthur Pendennis, arrived in due time at Fairoaks, after a dreary night passed in the mail-coach, where a stout fellow-passenger, swelling preternaturally with great-coats, had crowded him into a corner, and kept him awake by snoring indecently; where a widow lady, opposite, had not only shut out the fresh air by closing all the windows of the vehicle, but had filled the interior with fumes of Jamaica rum and water, which she sucked perpetually from a bottle in her reticule; where, whenever he caught a brief moment of sleep, the twanging of the horn at the turnpike-gates, or the scuffling of his huge neighbor wedging him closer and closer, or the play of the widow's feet on his own tender toes, speedily woke up the poor gentleman to the horrors and realities of life—a life which has passed away now and become impossible, and only lives in fond memories. Eight miles an hour, for twenty or five-and-twenty hours, a tight mail-coach, a hard seat, a gouty tendency, a perpetual change of coachmen grumbling because you did not fee them enough, a fellow-passenger partial to spirits-and-water—who has not borne with these evils in the jolly old times? and how could people travel under such difficulties? And yet they did, and were merry too. Next the widow, and by the side of the major's servant on the roof, were a couple of schoolboys going home for the midsummer holidays, and Major Pendennis wondered to see them sup at the inn at Bagshot, where they took in a cargo of ham, eggs, pie, pickles, tea, coffee, and boiled beef, which surprised the poor major, sipping a cup of very feeble tea, and thinking with a tender dejection that Lord Steyne's dinner was coming off at that very moment. The ingenuous ardor of the boys, however, amused the major, who was very good-natured, and he became the more interested when he found that the one who traveled insidewith him, was a lord's son, whose noble father Pendennis, of course, had met in the world of fashion, which he frequented. The little lord slept all night through, in spite of the squeezing, and the horn-blowing, and the widow; and he looked as fresh as paint (and, indeed, pronounced himself to be so) when the major, with a yellow face, a bristly beard, a wig out of curl, and strong rheumatic griefs shooting through various limbs of his uneasy body, descended at the little lodge-gate at Fairoaks where the portress and gardener's wife reverentially greeted him; and, still more respectfully, Mr. Morgan, his man.
Helen was on the lookout for this expected guest, and saw him from her window. But she did not come forward immediately to greet him. She knew the major did not like to be seen at a surprise, and required a little preparation before he cared to be visible. Pen, when a boy, had incurred sad disgrace, by carrying off from the major's dressing-table a little morocco box, which it must be confessed contained the major's back teeth, which he naturally would leave out of his jaws in a jolting mail-coach, and without which he would not choose to appear. Morgan, his man, made a mystery of his wigs: curling them in private places: introducing them mysteriously to his master's room;—nor without his head of hair would the major care to show himself to any member of his family or any acquaintance. He went to his apartment then, and supplied these deficiencies; he groaned and moaned, and wheezed, and cursed Morgan through his toilet, as an old buck will, who has been up all night with a rheumatism, and has a long duty to perform. And finally being belted, curled, and set straight, he descended upon the drawing-room, with a grave, majestic air, such as befitted one who was at once a man of business and a man of fashion.
Pen was not there, however, only Helen, and little Laura sewing at her knees; and to whom he never presented more than a fore-finger, as he did on this occasion, after saluting his sister-in-law. Laura took the finger, trembling, and dropped it—and then fled out of the room. Major Pendennis did not want to keep her, or indeed to have her in the house at all, and had his private reason for disapproving of her: which we may mention on some future occasion. Meanwhile Laura disappeared and wandered about the premises seeking for Pen; whom she presently found in the orchard, pacing up and down a walk there, in earnest conversation with Mr. Smirke. He was so occupied that he did not hear Laura's clear voice singing out, until Smirke pulled him by the coat, and pointed toward her as she came running.
She ran up and put her hand into his. "Come in, Pen," she said, "there's somebody come; uncle Arthur's come."
"He is, is he?" said Pen, and she felt him grasp her little hand. He looked round at Smirke with uncommon fierceness, as much as to say, I am ready for him or any man.—Mr. Smirke cast up his eyes as usual and heaved a gentle sigh.
"Lead on, Laura," Pen said, with a half fierce half comic air—"Lead on, and say I wait upon my uncle." But he was laughing inorder to hide a great anxiety: and was screwing his courage inwardly to face the ordeal which he knew was now before him.
Pen had taken Smirke into his confidence in the last two days, and after the outbreak attendant on the discovery of Dr. Portman, and during every one of those forty-eight hours which he had passed in Mr. Smirke's society, had done nothing but talk to his tutor about Miss Fotheringay—Miss Emily Fotheringay—Emily, &c., to all which talk Smirke listened without difficulty, for he was in love himself, most anxious in all things to propitiate Pen, and indeed very much himself enraptured by the personal charms of this goddess, whose like, never having been before at a theatrical representation, he had not beheld until now. Pen's fire and volubility, his hot eloquence and rich poetical tropes and figures, his manly heart, kind, ardent, and hopeful, refusing to see any defects in the person he loved, any difficulties in their position that he might not overcome, half convinced Mr. Smirke that the arrangement proposed by Mr. Pen was a very feasible and prudent one and that it would be a great comfort to have Emily settled at Fairoaks, Captain Costigan in the yellow room, established for life there, and Pen married at eighteen.
And it is a fact that in these two days, the boy had almost talked over his mother too; had parried all her objections one after another with that indignant good sense which is often the perfection of absurdity and had brought her almost to acquiesce in the belief that if the marriage was doomed in heaven, why doomed it was—that if the young woman was a good person, it was all that she, for her part, had to ask; and rather to dread the arrival of the guardian uncle who, she foresaw, would regard Mr. Pen's marriage in a manner very different to that simple, romantic, honest, and utterly absurd way, in which the widow was already disposed to look at questions of this sort.
For as in the old allegory of the gold and silver shield, about which the two knights quarreled, each is right according to the point from which he looks: so about marriage; the question whether it is foolish or good, wise or otherwise, depends upon the point of view from which you regard it. If it means a snug house in Belgravia, and pretty little dinner parties, and a pretty little brougham to drive in the Park, and a decent provision, not only for the young people, but for the little Belgravians to come; and if these are the necessaries of life (and they are with many honest people), to talk of any other arrangement is an absurdity: of love in lodgings—a babyish folly of affection: that can't pay coach-hire or afford a decent milliner—as mere wicked balderdash and childish romance. If, on the other hand your opinion is that people, not with an assured subsistence, but with a fair chance to obtain it, and with the stimulus of hope, health, and strong affection, may take the chance of fortune for better or worse, and share its good or its evil together, the polite theory then becomes an absurdity in its turn: worse than an absurdity, a blasphemy almost, and doubt of Providence; and a man who waits to make his chosen woman happy, until he can drive her to church in a neat little carriage with a pair of horses, is nobetter than a coward or a trifler, who is neither worthy of love nor of fortune.
I don't say that the town folks are not right, but Helen Pendennis was a country bred woman, and the book of life, as she interpreted it, told her a different story to that page which is read in cities. Like most soft and sentimental women, match-making, in general, formed a great part of her thoughts, and I dare say she had begun to speculate about her son's falling in love and marrying long before the subject had ever entered into the brains of the young gentleman. It pleased her (with that dismal pleasure which the idea of sacrificing themselves gives to certain women), to think of the day when she would give up all to Pen, and he should bring his wife home, and she would surrender the keys and the best bed-room, and go and sit at the side of the table, and see him happy. What did she want in life but to see the lad prosper? As an empress certainly was not too good for him, and would be honored by becoming Mrs. Pen; so if he selected humble Esther instead of Queen Vashti, she would be content with his lordship's choice. Never mind how lowly or poor the person might be who was to enjoy that prodigious honor, Mrs. Pendennis was willing to bow before her and welcome her, and yield her up the first place. But an actress—a mature woman, who had long ceased blushing except with rouge, as she stood under the eager glances of thousands of eyes—an illiterate and ill-bred person, very likely, who must have lived with light associates, and have heard doubtful conversation—Oh! it was hard that such a one should be chosen, and that the matron should be deposed to give place to such a Sultana.
All these doubts the widow laid before Pen during the two days which had of necessity to elapse ere the uncle came down; but he met them with that happy frankness and ease which a young gentleman exhibits at his time of life, and routed his mother's objections with infinite satisfaction to himself. Miss Costigan was a paragon of virtue and delicacy; she was as sensitive as the most timid maiden; she was as pure as the unsullied snow; she had the finest manners, the most graceful wit and genius, the most charming refinement and justness of appreciation in all matters of taste; she had the most admirable temper and devotion to her father, a good old gentleman of high family and fallen fortunes, who had lived, however, with the best society in Europe: he was in no hurry, and could afford to wait any time—till he was one-and-twenty. But he felt (and here his face assumed an awful and harrowing solemnity) that he was engaged in the one only passion of his life, and that DEATH alone could close it.
Helen told him, with a sad smile and shake of the head, that people survived these passions, and as for long engagements contracted between very young men and old women—she knew an instance in her own family—Laura's poor father was an instance—how fatal they were.
Mr. Pen, however, was resolved that death must be his doom in case of disappointment, and rather than this—rather than balk him, in fact—this lady would have submitted to any sacrifice or personal pain, andwould have gone down on her knees and have kissed the feet of a Hottentot daughter-in-law.
Arthur knew his power over the widow, and the young tyrant was touched while he exercised it. In those two days he brought her almost into submission, and patronized her very kindly; and he passed one evening with the lovely pie-maker at Chatteries, in which he bragged of his influence over his mother; and he spent the other night in composing a most flaming and conceited copy of verses to his divinity, in which he vowed, like Montrose, that he would make her famous with his sword and glorious by his pen, and that he would love her as no mortal woman had been adored since the creation of womankind.
It was on that night, long after midnight, that wakeful Helen, passing stealthily by her son's door, saw a light streaming through the chink of the door into the dark passage, and heard Pen tossing and tumbling, and mumbling verses in his bed. She waited outside for a while, anxiously listening to him. In infantile fevers and early boyish illnesses, many a night before, the kind soul had so kept watch. She turned the lock very softly now, and went in so gently, that Pen for a moment did not see her. His face was turned from her. His papers on his desk were scattered about, and more were lying on the bed round him. He was biting a pencil and thinking of rhymes and all sorts of follies and passions. He was Hamlet jumping into Ophelia's grave; he was the Stranger taking Mrs. Haller to his arms, beautiful Mrs. Haller with the raven ringlets falling over her shoulders. Despair and Byron, Thomas Moore and all the Loves of the Angels, Waller and Herrick, Beranger and all the love-songs he had ever read, were working and seething in this young gentleman's mind, and he was at the very height and paroxysm of the imaginative frenzy, when his mother found him.
"Arthur," said the mother's soft silver voice: and he started up and turned round. He clutched some of the papers and pushed them under the pillow.
"Why don't you go to sleep, my dear?" she said, with a sweet tender smile, and sate down on the bed and took one of his hot hands.
Pen looked at her wildly for an instant—"I couldn't sleep," he said—"I—I was—I was writing."—And hereupon he flung his arms round her neck and said, "O mother! I love her, I love her!"—How could such a kind soul as that help soothing and pitying him? The gentle creature did her best: and thought with a strange wonderment and tenderness, that it was only yesterday that he was a child in that bed: and how she used to come and say her prayers over it before he woke upon holiday mornings.
They were very grand verses, no doubt, although Miss Fotheringay did not understand them; but old Cos, with a wink and a knowing finger on his nose, said, "Put them up with th' other letthers, Milly darling. Poldoody's pomes was nothing to this." So Milly locked up the manuscripts.
When, then, the major being dressed and presentable, presented himselfto Mrs. Pendennis, he found in the course of ten minutes' colloquy that the poor widow was not merely distressed at the idea of the marriage contemplated by Pen, but actually more distressed at thinking that the boy himself was unhappy about it, and that his uncle and he should have any violent altercation on the subject. She besought Major Pendennis to be very gentle with Arthur: "He has a very high spirit, and will not brook unkind words," she hinted. "Dr. Portman spoke to him very roughly—and I must own unjustly, the other night—for my dearest boy's honor is as high as any mother can desire—but Pen's answer quite frightened me, it was so indignant. Recollect he is a man now; and be very—very cautious," said the widow, laying a fair long hand on the major's sleeve.
He took it up, kissed it gallantly, and looked in her alarmed face with wonder, and a scorn which he was too polite to show. "Bon dieu!" thought the old negotiator, "the boy has actually talked the woman round, and she'd get him a wife as she would a toy, if master cried for it. Why are there no such things aslettres-de-cachet—and a Bastile for young fellows of family?" The major lived in such good company that he might be excused for feeling like an earl.—He kissed the widow's timid hand, pressed it in both his, and laid it down on the table with one of his own over it, as he smiled and looked her in the face.
"Confess," said he, "now that you are thinking how you possibly can make it up to your conscience to let the boy have his own way."
She blushed, and was moved, in the usual manner of females. "I am thinking that he is very unhappy; and I am too—"
"To contradict him or to let him have his own wish?" asked the other; and added, with great comfort to his inward self, "I'm d—d if he shall."
"To think that he should have formed so foolish and cruel and fatal an attachment," the widow said, "which can but end in pain whatever be the issue."
"The issue shan't be marriage, my dear sister," the major said, resolutely. "We're not going to have a Pendennis, the head of the house, marry a strolling mountebank from a booth. No, no, we won't marry into Greenwich Fair, ma'am."
"If the match is broken suddenly off," the widow interposed, "I don't know what may be the consequence. I know Arthur's ardent temper, the intensity of his affections, the agony of his pleasures and disappointments, and I tremble at this one, if it must be. Indeed, indeed, it must not come on him too suddenly."
"My dear madam," the major said, with an air of the deepest commiseration, "I've no doubt Arthur will have to suffer confoundedly before he gets over the little disappointment. But is he, think you, the only person who has been so rendered miserable?"
"No, indeed," said Helen, holding down her eyes. She was thinking of her own case, and was at that moment seventeen again, and most miserable.
"I, myself," whispered her brother-in-law, "have undergone a disappointmentin early life. A young woman with fifteen thousand pounds, niece to an earl—most accomplished creature—a third of her money would have run up my promotion in no time, and I should have been a lieutenant-colonel at thirty: but it might not be. I was but a penniless lieutenant: her parents interfered, and I embarked for India—where I had the honor of being secretary to Lord Buckley, when commander-in-chief—without her. What happened? We returned our letters, sent back our locks of hair (the major here passed his fingers through his wig), we suffered, but we recovered. She is now a baronet's wife with thirteen grown-up children: altered, it is true, in person; but her daughters remind me of what she was, and the third is to be presented early next week."
Helen did not answer. She was still thinking of old times. I suppose if one lives to be a hundred, there are certain passages of one's early life whereof the recollection will always carry us back to youth again, and that Helen was thinking of one of these.
"Look at my own brother, my dear creature," the major continued gallantly: "he himself, you know, had a little disappointment when he started in the—the medical profession—an eligible opportunity presented itself. Miss Balls, I remember the name, was daughter of an apoth—a practitioner in very large practice; my brother had very nearly succeeded in his suit.—But difficulties arose: disappointments supervened, and—and I am sure he had no reason to regret the disappointment, which gave him this hand," said the major, and he once more politely pressed Helen's fingers.
"Those marriages between people of such different rank and age," said Helen, "are sad things. I have known them produce a great deal of unhappiness.—Laura's father, my cousin, who—who was brought up with me"—she added in a low voice, "was an instance of that."
"Most injudicious," cut in the major. "I don't know any thing more painful than for a man to marry his superior in age or his inferior in station. Fancy marrying a woman of a low rank of life, and having your house filled with her confounded tag-rag-and-bobtail of relations! Fancy your wife attached to a mother who dropped her h's, or called Maria Marire! How are you to introduce her into society? My dear Mrs. Pendennis, I will name no names, but in the very best circles of London society I have seen men suffering the most excruciating agony, I have known them to be cut, to be lost entirely, from the vulgarity of their wives' connections. What did Lady Snapperton do last year at herdéjeuné dansantafter the Bohemian Ball? She told Lord Brouncker that he might bring his daughters or send them with a proper chaperon, but that she would not receive Lady Brouncker: who was a druggist's daughter, or some such thing, and as Tom Wagg remarked of her, never wanted medicine certainly, for she never had anhin her life. Good Ged, what would have been the trifling pang of a separation in the first instance to the enduring infliction of a constant misalliance and intercourse with low people?"
"What, indeed!" said Helen, dimly disposed toward laughter, but yetchecking the inclination, because she remembered in what prodigious respect her deceased husband held Major Pendennis and his stories of the great world.
"Then this fatal woman is ten years older than that silly young scapegrace of an Arthur. What happens in such cases, my dear creature? I don't mind tellingyou, now we are alone: that in the highest state of society, misery, undeviating misery, is the result. Look at Lord Clodworthy come into a room with his wife—why, good Ged, she looks like Clodworthy's mother. What's the case between Lord and Lady Willowbank, whose love match was notorious? He has already cut her down twice when she has hanged herself out of jealousy for Mademoiselle de Sainte Cunegonde, the dancer; and mark my words, good Ged, one day he'llnotcut the old woman down. No, my dear madam, you are not in the world, but I am: you are a little romantic and sentimental (you know you are—women with those large beautiful eyes always are); you must leave this matter to my experience. Marry this woman! Marry at eighteen an actress of thirty—bah, bah!—I would as soon he sent into the kitchen and married the cook."
"I know the evils of premature engagements," sighed out Helen: and as she made this allusion no less than thrice in the course of the above conversation, and seems to be so oppressed with the notion of long engagements and unequal marriages, and as the circumstance we have to relate will explain what perhaps some persons are anxious to know, namely, who little Laura is, who has appeared more than once before us, it will be as well to clear up these points in another chapter.
IN WHICH PEN IS KEPT WAITING AT THE DOOR, WHILE THE READER IS INFORMED WHO LITTLE LAURA WAS.
Once upon a time, then, there was a young gentleman of Cambridge University who came to pass the long vacation at the village where young Helen Thistlewood was living with her mother, the widow of the lieutenant slain at Copenhagen.—This gentleman—whose name was the Reverend Francis Bell—was nephew to Mrs. Thistlewood, and by consequence, own cousin to Miss Helen, so that it was very right that he should take lodgings in his aunt's house, who lived in a very small way; and there he passed the long vacation, reading with three or four pupils who accompanied him to the village. Mr. Bell was fellow of a college, and famous in the University for his learning and skill as a tutor.
His two kinswomen understood pretty early that the reverend gentleman was engaged to be married, and was only waiting for a college living to enable him to fulfill his engagement. His intended bride was the daughter of another parson, who had acted as Mr. Bell's own private tutor in Bell's early life, and it was while under Mr. Coacher's roof, indeed, and when only a boy of seventeen or eighteen years of age, that the impetuous young Bell had flung himself at the feet of Miss MarthaCoacher, whom he was helping to pick peas in the garden. On his knees, before those peas and her, he pledged himself to an endless affection.
Miss Coacher was by many years the young fellow's senior; and her own heart had been lacerated by many previous disappointments in the matrimonial line. No less than three pupils of her father had trifled with those young affections. The apothecary of the village had despicably jilted her. The dragoon officer, with whom she had danced so many times during that happy season which she passed at Bath with her gouty grandmamma, one day gayly shook his bridle-rein, and galloped away, never to return. Wounded by the shafts of repeated ingratitude, can it be wondered at that the heart of Martha Coacher should pant to find rest somewhere? She listened to the proposals of the gawky, gallant, honest boy, with great kindness and good-humor; at the end of his speech she said, "Law, Bell, I'm sure you are too young to think of such things;" but intimated that she too would revolve them in her own virgin bosom. She could not refer Mr. Bell to her mamma, for Mr. Coacher was a widower, and being immersed in his books, was of course unable to take the direction of so frail and wondrous an article as a lady's heart, which Miss Martha had to manage for herself.
A lock of her hair, tied up in a piece of blue ribbon, conveyed to the happy Bell the result of the Vestal's conference with herself. Thrice before had she snipt off one of her auburn ringlets, and given them away. The possessors were faithless, but the hair had grown again; and Martha had indeed occasion to say that men were deceivers, when she handed over this token of love to the simple boy.
Number 6, however, was an exception to former passions—Francis Bell was the most faithful of lovers. When his time arrived to go to college, and it became necessary to acquaint Mr. Coacher of the arrangements that had been made, the latter cried, "God bless my soul, I hadn't the least idea what was going on!" as was indeed very likely, for he had been taken in three times before in precisely a similar manner; and Francis went to the University resolved to conquer honors, so as to be able to lay them at the feet of his beloved Martha.
This prize in view made him labor prodigiously. News came, term after term, of the honors he won. He sent the prize-books for his college essays to old Coacher, and his silver declamation cup to Miss Martha. In due season he was high among the Wranglers, and a fellow of his college; and during all the time of these transactions a constant tender correspondence was kept up with Miss Coacher, to whose influence, and perhaps with justice, he attributed the successes which he had won.
By the time, however, when the Rev. Francis Bell, M.A., and fellow and tutor of his college, was twenty-six years of age, it happened that Miss Coacher was thirty-four, nor had her charms, her manners, or her temper improved since that sunny day in the spring-time of life when he found her picking peas in the garden. Having achieved his honors, he relaxed in the ardor of his studies, and his judgment and taste also perhapsbecame cooler. The sunshine of the pea-garden faded away from Miss Martha, and poor Bell found himself engaged—and his hand pledged to that bond in a thousand letters—to a coarse, ill-tempered, ill-favored, ill-mannered, middle-aged woman.
It was in consequence of one of many altercations (in which Martha's eloquence shone, and in which therefore she was frequently pleased to indulge) that Francis refused to take his pupils to Bearleader's Green, where Mr. Coacher's living was, and where Bell was in the habit of spending the summer; and he bethought him that he would pass the vacation at his aunt's village, which he had not seen for many years—not since little Helen was a girl and used to sit on his knee. Down then he came and lived with them. Helen was grown a beautiful young woman now. The cousins were nearly four months together, from June to October. They walked in the summer evenings; they met in the early morn. They read out of the same book when the old lady dozed at night over the candles. What little Helen knew, Frank taught her. She sang to him: she gave her artless heart to him. She was aware of all his story. Had he made any secret?—had he not shown the picture of the woman to whom he was engaged, and with a blush—her letters, hard, eager, and cruel?—The days went on and on, happier and closer, with more kindness, more confidence, and more pity. At last one morning in October came when Francis went back to college, and the poor girl felt that her tender heart was gone with him.
Frank too wakened up from the delightful midsummer-dream to the horrible reality of his own pain. He gnashed and tore at the chain which bound him. He was frantic to break it and be free. Should he confess?—give his savings to the woman to whom he was bound, and beg his release?—there was time yet—he temporized. No living might fall in for years to come. The cousins went on corresponding sadly and fondly: the betrothed woman, hard, jealous, and dissatisfied, complaining bitterly, and with reason, of her Francis's altered tone.
At last things came to a crisis, and the new attachment was discovered. Francis owned it, cared not to disguise it, rebuked Martha with her violent temper and angry imperiousness, and, worst of all, with her inferiority and her age.
Her reply was, that if he did not keep his promise she would carry his letters into every court in the kingdom—letters in which his love was pledged to her ten thousand times; and, after exposing him to the world as the perjurer and traitor he was, she would kill herself.
Frank had one more interview with Helen, whose mother was dead then, and who was living companion with old Lady Pontypool—one more interview, where it was resolved that he was to do his duty; that is, to redeem his vow; that is, to pay a debt cozened from him by a sharper; that is, to make two honest people miserable. So the two judged their duty to be, and they parted.
The living fell in only too soon; but yet Frank Bell was quite a gray and worn-out man when he was inducted into it, Helen wrote him a letter on his marriage, beginning "My dear cousin," and ending "alwaystruly yours." She sent him back the other letters, and the lock of his hair—all but a small piece. She had it in her desk when she was talking to the major.
Bell lived for three or four years in his living, at the end of which time, the Chaplainship of Coventry Island falling vacant, Frank applied for it privately, and having procured it, announced the appointment to his wife. She objected, as she did to every thing. He told her bitterly that he did not wantherto come: so she went. Bell went out in Governor Crawley's time, and was very intimate with that gentleman in his later years. And it was in Coventry Island, years after his own marriage, and five years after he had heard of the birth of Helen's boy, that his own daughter was born.
She was not the daughter of the first Mrs. Bell, who died of island fever very soon after Helen Pendennis and her husband, to whom Helen had told every thing, wrote to inform Bell of the birth of their child. "I was old, was I?" said Mrs. Bell the first; "I was old, and her inferior, was I? but I married you, Mr. Bell, and kept you from marrying her?" and hereupon she died. Bell married a colonial lady, whom he loved fondly. But he was not doomed to prosper in love; and, this lady dying in child-birth, Bell gave up too: sending his little girl home to Helen Pendennis and her husband, with a parting prayer that they would befriend her.
The little thing came to Fairoaks from Bristol, which is not very far off, dressed in black, and in company of a soldier's wife, her nurse, at parting from whom she wept bitterly. But she soon dried up her grief under Helen's motherly care.
Round her neck she had a locket with hair, which Helen had given, ah, how many years ago! to poor Francis, dead and buried. This child was all that was left of him, and she cherished, as so tender a creature would, the legacy which he had bequeathed to her. The girl's name, as his dying letter stated, was Helen Laura. But John Pendennis, though he accepted the trust, was always rather jealous of the orphan; and gloomily ordered that she should be called by her own mother's name; and not by that first one which her father had given her. She was afraid of Mr. Pendennis, to the last moment of his life. And it was only when her husband was gone that Helen dared openly to indulge in the tenderness which she felt for the little girl.
Thus it was that Laura Bell became Mrs. Pendennis's daughter. Neither her husband nor that gentleman's brother, the major, viewed her with very favorable eyes. She reminded the first of circumstances in his wife's life which he was forced to accept, but would have forgotten much more willingly: and as for the second, how could he regard her? She was neither related to his own family of Pendennis, nor to any nobleman in this empire, and she had but a couple of thousand pounds for her fortune.
And now let Mr. Pen come in, who has been waiting all this while.
Having strung up his nerves, and prepared himself, without at the door, for the meeting, he came to it, determined to face the awful uncle.He had settled in his mind that the encounter was to be a fierce one, and was resolved on bearing it through with all the courage and dignity of the famous family which he represented. And he flung open the door and entered with the most severe and warlike expression, armedcap-à-piéas it were, with lance couched and plumes displayed, and glancing at his adversary, as if to say, "Come on, I'm ready."
The old man of the world, as he surveyed the boy's demeanor, could hardly help a grin at his admirable, pompous simplicity. Major Pendennis too, had examined his ground; and finding that the widow was already half won over to the enemy, and having a shrewd notion that threats and tragic exhortations would have no effect upon the boy, who was inclined to be perfectly stubborn and awfully serious, the major laid aside the authoritative manner at once, and with the most good-humored natural smile in the world, held out his hands to Pen, shook the lad's passive fingers gayly, and said, "Well Pen, my boy, tell us all about it."
Helen was delighted with the generosity of the major's good humor. On the contrary, it quite took aback and disappointed poor Pen, whose nerves were strung up for a tragedy, and who felt that his grandentréewas altogether balked and ludicrous. He blushed and winced with mortified vanity and bewilderment. He felt immensely inclined to begin to cry—"I—I—I didn't know that you were come till just now," he said: "is—is—town very full, I suppose?"
If Pen could hardly gulp his tears down, it was all the major could do to keep from laughter. He turned round and shot a comical glance at Mrs. Pendennis, who too felt that the scene was at once ridiculous and sentimental. And so, having nothing to say, she went up and kissed Mr. Pen: as he thought of her tenderness and soft obedience to his wishes, it is very possible too the boy was melted.
"What a couple of fools they are," thought the old guardian. "If I hadn't come down, she would have driven over in state to pay a visit and give her blessing to the young lady's family."
"Come, come," said he still grinning at the couple, "let us have as little sentiment as possible, and Pen, my good fellow, tell us the whole story."
Pen got back at once to his tragic and heroical air. "The story is, sir," said he, "as I have written it to you before. I have made the acquaintance of a most beautiful and most virtuous lady; of a high family, although in reduced circumstances: I have found the woman in whom I know that the happiness of my life is centered; I feel that I never, never can think about any woman but her. I am aware of the difference of our ages and other difficulties in my way. But my affection was so great that I felt I could surmount all these;—that we both could: and she has consented to unite her lot with mine, and to accept my heart and my fortune."
"How much is that, my boy?" said the major. "Has any body left you some money? I don't know that you are worth a shilling in the world."
"You know what I have is his," cried out Mrs. Pendennis.
"Good heavens, madam, hold your tongue!" was what the guardian was disposed to say; but he kept his temper, not without a struggle. "No doubt, no doubt," he said. "You would sacrifice any thing for him. Every body knows that. But it is, after all, then, your fortune which Pen is offering to the young lady; and of which he wishes to take possession at eighteen."
"I know my mother will give me any thing," Pen said, looking rather disturbed.
"Yes, my good fellow, but there is reason in all things. If your mother keeps the house, it is but fair that she should select her company. When you give her house over her head, and transfer her banker's account to yourself for the benefit of Miss What-d'-you-call-'em—Miss Costigan—don't you think you should at least have consulted my sister as one of the principal parties in the transaction? I am speaking to you, you see, without the least anger or assumption of authority, such as the law and your father's will give me over you for three years to come—but as one man of the world to another,—and I ask you, if you think that, because you can do what you like with your mother, therefore you have a right to do so! As you are her dependent, would it not have been more generous to wait before you took this step, and at least to have paid her the courtesy to ask her leave?"
Pen held down his head, and began dimly to perceive that the action on which he had prided himself as a most romantic, generous instance of disinterested affection, was perhaps a very selfish and headstrong piece of folly.
"I did it in a moment of passion," said Pen, floundering; "I was not aware what I was going to say or to do" (and in this he spoke with perfect sincerity). "But now it is said, and I stand to it. No; I neither can nor will recall it. I'll die rather than do so. And I—I don't want to burthen my mother," he continued. "I'll work for myself. I'll go on the stage and act with her. She—she says I should do well there."
"But will she take you on those terms?" the major interposed. "Mind, I do not say that Miss Costigan is not the most disinterested of women: but, don't you suppose, now, fairly, that your position as a young gentleman of ancient birth and decent expectations, forms a part of the cause why she finds your addresses welcome?"
"I'll die, I say, rather than forfeit my pledge to her," said Pen, doubling his fists and turning red.
"Who asks you, my dear friend?" answered the imperturbable guardian. "No gentleman breaks his word, of course, when it has been given freely. But after all, you can wait. You owe something to your mother, something to your family—something to me as your father's representative."
"Oh, of course," Pen said, feeling rather relieved.
"Well, as you have pledged your word to her, give us another, will you, Arthur?"
"What is it?" Arthur asked.
"That you will make no private marriage—that you won't be taking a trip to Scotland, you understand."
"That would be a falsehood. Pen never told his mother a falsehood," Helen said.
Pen hung down his head again, and his eyes filled with tears of shame. Had not this whole intrigue been a falsehood to that tender and confiding creature who was ready to give up all for his sake? He gave his uncle his hand.
"No, sir—on my word of honor, as a gentleman," he said, "I will never marry without my mother's consent!" and giving Helen a bright parting look of confidence and affection unchangeable, the boy went out of the drawing-room into his own study.
"He's an angel—he's an angel," the mother cried out, in one of her usual raptures.
"He comes of a good stock, ma'am," said her brother-in-law—"of a good stock on both sides." The major was greatly pleased with the result of his diplomacy—so much so, that he once more saluted the tips of Mrs. Pendennis's glove, and dropping the curt, manly, and straightforward tone in which he had conducted the conversation with the lad, assumed a certain drawl which he always adopted when he was most conceited and fine.
"My dear creature," said he, in that his politest tone, "I think it certainly as well that I came down, and I flatter myself that lastbottewas a successful one. I tell you how I came to think of it. Three years ago my kind friend Lady Ferrybridge sent for me in the greatest state of alarm about her son Gretna, whose affair you remember, and implored me to use my influence with the young gentleman, who was engaged in anaffaire de c[oe]urwith a Scotch clergyman's daughter, Miss MacToddy. I implored, I entreated gentle measures. But Lord Ferrybridge was furious, and tried the high hand. Gretna was sulky and silent, and his parents thought they had conquered. But what was the fact, my dear creature? The young people had been married for three months before Lord Ferrybridge knew any thing about it. And that was why I extracted the promise from Master Pen."
"Arthur would never have done so," Mrs. Pendennis said.
"He hasn't—that is one comfort," answered the brother-in-law.
Like a wary and patient man of the world, Major Pendennis did not press poor Pen any farther for the moment, but hoped the best from time, and that the young fellow's eyes would be opened before long to see the absurdity of which he was guilty. And having found out how keen the boy's point of honor was, he worked kindly upon that kindly feeling with great skill, discoursing him over their wine after dinner, and pointing out to Pen the necessity of a perfect uprightness and openness in all his dealings, and entreating that his communications with his interesting young friend (as the major politely called Miss Fotheringay) should be carried on with the knowledge, if not approbation, of Mrs. Pendennis. "After all, Pen," the major said, with a convenient franknessthat did not displease the boy, while it advanced the interests of the negotiator, "you must bear in mind that you are throwing yourself away. Your mother might submit to your marriage, as she would to any thing else you desired, if you did but cry long enough for it: but be sure of this, that it can never please her. You take a young woman off the boards of a country theater and prefer her, for such is the case, to one of the finest ladies in England. And your mother will submit to your choice, but you can't suppose that she will be happy under it. I have often fancied,entre nous, that my sister had it in her eye to make a marriage between you and that little ward of hers—Flora, Laura—what's her name? And I always determined to do my small endeavor to prevent any such match. The child has but two thousand pounds, I am given to understand. It is only with the utmost economy and care that my sister can provide for the decent maintenance of her house, and for your appearance and education as a gentleman; and I don't care to own to you that I had other and much higher views for you. With your name and birth, sir—with your talents, which I suppose are respectable, with the friends whom I have the honor to possess, I could have placed you in an excellent position—a remarkable position for a young man of such exceeding small means, and had hoped to see you, at least, try to restore the honors of our name. Your mother's softness stopped one prospect, or you might have been a general, like our gallant ancestor who fought at Ramillies and Malplaquet. I had another plan in view: my excellent and kind friend, Lord Bagwig, who is very well disposed toward me, would, I have little doubt, have attached you to his mission at Pumpernickel, and you might have advanced in the diplomatic service. But, pardon me for recurring to the subject; how is a man to serve a young gentleman of eighteen, who proposes to marry a lady of thirty, whom he has selected from a booth in a fair?—well, not a fair—a barn. That profession at once is closed to you. The public service is closed to you. Society is closed to you. You see, my good friend, to what you bring yourself. You may get on at the bar, to be sure, where I am given to understand that gentlemen of merit occasionally marry out of their kitchens; but in no other profession. Or you may come and live down here—down here,mon Dieu!forever" (said the major, with a dreary shrug, as he thought with inexpressible fondness of Pall Mall), "where your mother will receive the Mrs. Arthur that is to be, with perfect kindness; where the good people of the county won't visit you; and where, by Gad, sir, I shall be shy of visiting you myself, for I'm a plain-spoken man, and I own to you that I like to live with gentlemen for my companions; where you will have to live, with rum-and-water-drinking gentlemen-farmers, and drag through your life the young husband of an old woman, who, if she doesn't quarrel with your mother, will at least cost that lady her position in society, and drag her down into that dubious caste into which you must inevitably fall. It is no affair of mine, my good sir. I am not angry. Your downfall will not hurt me farther than that it will extinguish the hopes I had of seeing my family once more taking its place in the world. It isonly your mother and yourself that will be ruined. And I pity you both from my soul. Pass the claret: it is some I sent to your poor father; I remember I bought it at poor Lord Levant's sale. But of course," added the major, smacking the wine, "having engaged yourself, you will do what becomes you as a man of honor, however fatal your promise may be. However, promise us on our side, my boy, what I set out by entreating you to grant—that there shall be nothing clandestine, that you will pursue your studies, that you will only visit your interesting friend at proper intervals. Do you write to her much?"
Pen blushed and said, "Why, yes, he had written."
"I suppose verses, eh! as well as prose? I was a dab at verses myself. I recollect when I first joined, I used to write verses for the fellows in the regiment; and did some pretty things in that way. I was talking to my old friend General Hobbler about some lines I dashed off for him in the year 1806, when we were at the Cape, and, Gad, he remembered every line of them still; for he'd used 'em so often, the old rogue, and had actually tried 'em on Mrs. Hobbler, sir—who brought him sixty thousand pounds. I suppose you've tried verses, eh, Pen?"
Pen blushed again, and said, "Why, yes, he had written verses."
"And does the fair one respond in poetry or prose?" asked the major, eying his nephew with the queerest expression, as much as to say, "O Moses and green spectacles! what a fool the boy is."
Pen blushed again. She had written, but not in verse, the young lover owned, and he gave his breast-pocket the benefit of a squeeze with his left arm, which the major remarked, according to his wont.
"You have got the letters there, I see," said the old campaigner, nodding at Pen, and pointing to his own chest (which was manfully wadded with cotton by Mr. Stultz). "You know you have. I would give twopence to see 'em."
"Why," said Pen, twiddling the stalks of the strawberries, "I—I," but this sentence never finished; for Pen's face was so comical and embarrassed, as the major watched it, that the elder could contain his gravity no longer, and burst into a fit of laughter, in which chorus Pen himself was obliged to join after a minute: when he broke out fairly into a guffaw.
It sent them with great good humor into Mrs. Pendennis's drawing-room. She was pleased to hear them laughing in the hall as they crossed it.
"You sly rascal!" said the major, putting his arm gayly on Pen's shoulder, and giving a playful push at the boy's breast-pocket. He felt the papers crackling there, sure enough. The young fellow was delighted—conceited—triumphant—and, in one word, a spoony.
The pair came to the tea-table in the highest spirits. The major's politeness was beyond expression. He had never tasted such good tea, and such bread was only to be had in the country. He asked Mrs. Pendennis for one of her charming songs. He then made Pen sing, and was delighted and astonished at the beauty of the boy's voice: he made his nephew fetch his map and drawings, and praised them asreally remarkable works of talent in a young fellow: he complimented him on his French pronunciation: he flattered the simple boy as adroitly as ever lover flattered a mistress: and when bed time came, mother and son went to their several rooms perfectly enchanted with the kind major.
When they had reached those apartments, I suppose Helen took to her knees as usual: and Pen read over his letters before going to bed just as if he didn't know every word of them by heart already. In truth, there were but three of those documents: and to learn their contents required no great effort of memory.
In No. 1, Miss Fotheringay presents grateful compliments to Mr. Pendennis, and in her papa's name and her own begs to thank him for hismost beautiful presents. They will always bekept carefully; and Miss F. and Captain C. will never forget thedelightful eveningwhich they passed onTuesday last.
No. 2, said—Dear sir, we shall have a small quiet party ofsocial friendsat ourhumble board, next Tuesday evening, at anearly tea, when I shall wear thebeautiful scarfwhich, with itsaccompanying delightful verses, I shallever, ever cherish; and papa bids me say how happy he will be if you will join "the feast of reason and the flow of soul" in ourfestive little party, as I am sure will be yourtruly gratefulEmily Fotheringay.
No. 3 was somewhat more confidential, and showed that matters had proceeded rather far. You wereodiousyesterday night, the letter said, Why did you not come to the stage-door? Papa could not escort me on account of his eye; he had an accident, and fell down over a loose carpet on the stair on Sunday night. I saw you looking at Miss Diggle all night; and you were soenchantedwith Lydia Languish you scarcely once looked at Julia. I could havecrushedBingley, I was soangry. I playElla Rosenbergon Friday: will you come then?Miss Diggle performs—ever your E. F.
These three letters Mr. Pen used to read at intervals, during the day and night, and embrace with that delight and fervor which such beautiful compositions surely warranted. A thousand times at least he had kissed fondly the musky satin paper, made sacred to him by the hand of Emily Fotheringay. This was all he had in return for his passion and flames, his vows and protests, his rhymes and similes, his wakeful nights and endless thoughts, his fondness, fears, and folly. The young wiseacre had pledged away his all for this: signed his name to endless promissory notes, conferring his heart upon the bearer; bound himself for life, and got back twopence as an equivalent. For Miss Costigan was a young lady of such perfect good conduct and self-command, that she never would have thought of giving more, and reserved the treasures of her affection until she could transfer them lawfully at church.
Howbeit, Mr. Pen was content with what tokens of regard he had got, and mumbled over his three letters in a rapture of high spirits, and went to sleep delighted with his kind old uncle from London, who must evidently yield to his wishes in time; and, in a word, in a preposterous state of contentment with himself and all the world.