"Dear Blanche," Arthur wrote, "you are always reading and dreaming pretty
dramas, and exciting romances in real life: are you now prepared to enact
a part of one? And not the pleasantest part, dear Blanche, that in which
the heroine takes possession of her father's palace and wealth, and
introducing her husband to the loyal retainers and faithful vassals,
greets her happy bridegroom with 'All of this is mine and thine,'--but
the other character, that of the luckless lady, who suddenly discovers
that she is not the Prince's wife, but Claude Melnotte's the beggar's:
that of Alnaschar's wife, who comes in just as her husband has kicked
over the tray of porcelain which was to be the making of his fortune--But
stay; Alnaschar, who kicked down the china, was not a married man; he had
cast his eye on the Vizier's daughter, and his hopes of her went to the
ground with the shattered bowls and tea-cups.
"Will you be the Vizier's daughter, and refuse and laugh to scorn
Alnaschar, or will you be the Lady of Lyons, and love the penniless
Claude Melnotte? I will act that part if you like. I will love you my
best in return. I will do my all to make your humble life happy: for
humble it will be: at least the odds are against any other conclusion; we
shall live and die in a poor prosy humdrum way. There will be no stars
and epaulettes for the hero of our story. I shall write one or two more
stories, which will presently be forgotten. I shall be called to the Bar,
and try to get on in my profession: perhaps some day, if I am very lucky,
and work very hard (which is absurd), I may get a colonial appointment,
and you may be an Indian Judge's lady. Meanwhile. I shall buy back the
Pall Mall Gazette; the publishers are tired of it since the death of poor
Shandon, and will sell it for a small sum. Warrington will be my right
hand, and write it up to a respectable sale. I will introduce you to Mr.
Finucane the sub-editor, and I know who in the end will be Mrs.
Finucane,--a very nice gentle creature, who has lived sweetly through a
sad life and we will jog on, I say, and look out for better times, and
earn our living decently. You shall have the opera-boxes, and superintend
the fashionable intelligence, and break your little heart in the poet's
corner. Shall we live over the offices?--there are four very good rooms,
a kitchen, and a garret for Laura, in Catherine Street in the Strand; or
would you like a house in the Waterloo Road?--it would be very pleasant,
only there is that halfpenny toll at the Bridge. The boys may go to
King's College, mayn't they? Does all this read to you like a joke?
"Ah, dear Blanche, it is no joke, and I am sober and telling the truth.
Our fine day-dreams are gone. Our carriage has whirled out of sight like
Cinderella's: our house in Belgravia has been whisked away into the air
by a malevolent Genius, and I am no more a member of Parliament than I am
a Bishop on his bench in the House of Lords, or a Duke with a garter at
his knee. You know pretty well what my property is, and your own little
fortune: we may have enough with those two to live in decent comfort; to
take a cab sometimes when we go out to see our friends, and not to deny
ourselves an omnibus when we are tired. But that is all: is that enough
for you, my little dainty lady? I doubt sometimes whether you can bear
the life which I offer you--at least, it is fair that you should know
what it will be. If you say, 'Yes, Arthur, I will follow your fate
whatever it may be, and be a loyal and loving wife to aid and cheer you'
--come to me, dear Blanche, and may God help me so that I may do my duty
to you. If not, and you look to a higher station, I must not bar
Blanche's fortune--I will stand in the crowd, and see your ladyship go to
Court when you are presented, and you shall give me a smile from your
chariot window. I saw Lady Mirabel going to the drawing-room last season:
the happy husband at her side glittered with stars and cordons. All the
flowers in the garden bloomed in the coachman's bosom. Will you have
these and the chariot, or walk on foot and mend your husband's stockings?
"I cannot tell you now--afterwards I might, should the day come when we
may have no secrets from one another--what has happened within the last
few hours which has changed all my prospects in life: but so it is, that
I have learned something which forces me to give up the plans which I had
formed, and many vain and ambitious hopes in which I had been indulging.
I have written and despatched a letter to Sir Francis Clavering, saying
that I cannot accept his seat in Parliament until after my marriage; in
like manner I cannot and will not accept any larger fortune with you than
that which has always belonged to you since your grandfather's death, and
the birth of your half-brother. Your good mother is not in the least
aware--I hope she never may be--of the reasons which force me to this
very strange decision. They arise from a painful circumstance, which is
attributable to none of our faults; but, having once befallen, they are
as fatal and irreparable as that shock which overset honest Alnaschar's
porcelain, and shattered all his hopes beyond the power of mending. I
write gaily enough, for there is no use in bewailing such a hopeless
mischance. We have not drawn the great prize in the lottery, dear
Blanche: but I shall be contented enough without it, if you can be so;
and I repeat, with all my heart, that I will do my best to make you
happy.
"And now, what news shall I give you? My uncle is very unwell, and takes
my refusal of the seat in Parliament in sad dudgeon: the scheme was his,
poor old gentleman, and he naturally bemoans its failure. But Warrington,
Laura, and I had a council of war: they know this awful secret, and back
me in my decision. You must love George as you love what is generous and
upright and noble; and as for Laura--she must be our Sister, Blanche, our
Saint, our good Angel. With two such friends at home, what need we care
for the world without; or who is member for Clavering, or who is asked or
not asked to the great balls of the season?"
To this frank communication came back the letter from Blanche to Laura,
and one to Pen himself, which perhaps his own letter justified. "You are
spoiled by the world," Blanche wrote; "you do not love your poor Blanche
as she would be loved, or you would not offer thus lightly to take her or
to leave her, no, Arthur, you love me not--a man of the world, you have
given me your plighted troth, and are ready to redeem it; but that entire
affection, that love whole and abiding, where--where is that vision of my
youth? I am but a pastime of your life, and I would be its all;--but a
fleeting thought, and I would be your whole soul. I would have our two
hearts one; but ah, my Arthur, how lonely yours is! how little you give
me of it! You speak of our parting with a smile on your lip; of our
meeting, and you care not to hasten it! Is life but a disillusion, then,
and are the flowers of our garden faded away? I have wept--I have prayed
--I have passed sleepless hours--I have shed bitter, bitter tears over
your letter! To you I bring the gushing poesy of my being--the yearnings
of the soul that longs to be loved--that pines for love, love, love,
beyond all!--that flings itself at your feet, and cries, Love me, Arthur!
Your heart beats no quicker at the kneeling appeal of my love!--your
proud eye is dimmed by no tear of sympathy!--you accept my soul's
treasure as though 'twere dross! not the pearls from the unfathomable
deeps of affection! not the diamonds from the caverns of the heart. You
treat me like a slave, and bid me bow to my master! Is this the guerdon
of a free maiden--is this the price of a life's passion? Ah me! when was
it otherwise? when did love meet with aught but disappointment? Could I
hope (fond fool!) to be the exception to the lot of my race; and lay my
fevered brow on a heart that comprehended my own? Foolish girl that I
was! One by one, all the flowers of my young life have faded away; and
this, the last, the sweetest, the dearest, the fondly, the madly loved,
the wildly cherished--where is it? But no more of this. Heed not my
bleeding heart.--Bless you, bless you always, Arthur!
"I will write more when I am more collected. My racking brain renders
thought almost impossible. I long to see Laura! She will come to us
directly we return from the country, will she not? And you, cold one!
B."
The words of this letter were perfectly clear, and written in Blanche's
neatest hand upon her scented paper; and yet the meaning of the
composition not a little puzzled Pen. Did Blanche mean to accept or to
refuse his polite offer? Her phrases either meant that Pen did not love
her, and she declined him, or that she took him, and sacrificed herself
to him, cold as he was. He laughed sardonically over the letter, and over
the transaction which occasioned it. He laughed to think how Fortune had
jilted him, and how he deserved his slippery fortune. He turned over and
over the musky gilt-edged riddle. It amused his humour: he enjoyed it as
if it had been a funny story.
He was thus seated, twiddling the queer manuscript in his hand, joking
grimly to himself, when his servant came in with a card from a gentleman,
who wished to speak to him very particularly. And if Pen had gone out
into the passage, he would have seen, sucking his stick, rolling his
eyes, and showing great marks of anxiety, his old acquaintance, Mr.
Samuel Huxter.
"Mr. Huxter on particular business! Pray, beg Mr. Huxter to come in,"
said Pen, amused rather; and not the less so when poor Sam appeared
before him.
"Pray take a chair, Mr. Huxter," said Pen, in his most superb manner. "In
what way can I be of service to you?"
"I had rather not speak before the flunk--before the man, Mr. Pendennis:"
on which Mr. Arthur's attendant quitted the room.
"I'm in a fix," said Mr. Huxter, gloomily.
"Indeed."
"She sent me to you," continued the young surgeon.
"What, Fanny? Is she well? I was coming to see her, but I have had a
great deal of business since my return to London."
"I heard of you through my governor and Jack Hobnell," broke in Huxter.
"I wish you joy, Mr. Pendennis, both of the borough and the lady, sir.
Fanny wishes you joy, too," he added, with something of a blush.
"There's many a slip between the cup and the lip! Who knows what may
happen, Mr. Huxter, or who will sit in Parliament for Clavering next
session?"
"You can do anything with my governor," continued Mr. Huxter. "You got
him Clavering Park. The old boy was very much pleased, sir, at your
calling him in. Hobnell wrote me so. Do you think you could speak to the
governor for me, Mr. Pendennis?"
"And tell him what?"
"I've gone and done it, sir," said Huxter, with a particular look.
"You--you don't mean to say you have--you have done any wrong to that
dear little creature, sir?" said Pen, starting up in a great fury.
"I hope not," said Huxter, with a hangdog look: "but I've married her.
And I know there will be an awful shindy at home. It was agreed that I
should be taken into partnership when I had passed the College, and it
was to have been Huxter and Son. But I would have it, confound it. It's
all over now, and the old boy's wrote me that he's coming up to town for
drugs: he will be here to-morrow, and then it must all come out."
"And when did this event happen?" asked Pen, not over well pleased, most
likely, that a person who had once attracted some portion of his royal
good graces should have transferred her allegiance, and consoled herself
for his loss.
"Last Thursday was five weeks--it was two days after Miss Amory came to
Shepherd's Inn," Huxter answered.
Pen remembered that Blanche had written and mentioned her visit. "I was
called in," Huxter said. "I was in the Inn looking after old Cos's leg;
and about something else too, very likely: and I met Strong, who told me
there was a woman taken ill in Chambers, and went up to give her my
professional services. It was the old lady who attends Miss Amory--her
housekeeper, or some such thing. She was taken with strong hysterics: I
found her kicking and screaming like a good one--in Strong's chamber,
along with him and Colonel Altamont, and Miss Amory crying and as pale as
a sheet; and Altamont fuming about--a regular kick-up. They were two
hours in the Chambers; and the old woman went whooping off in a cab. She
was much worse than the young one. I called in Grosvenor Place next day
to see if I could be of any service, but they were gone without so much
as thanking me: and the day after I had business of my own to attend to--
a bad business too," said Mr. Huxter, gloomily. "But it's done, and can't
be undone; and we must make the best of it"
She has known the story for a month, thought Pen, with a sharp pang of
grief, and a gloomy sympathy--this accounts for her letter of to-day. She
will not implicate her father, or divulge his secret; she wishes to let
me off from the marriage--and finds a pretext--the generous girl!
"Do you know who Altamont is, sir?" asked Huxter, after the pause during
which Pen had been thinking of his own affairs. "Fanny and I have talked
him over, and we can't help fancying that it's Mrs. Lightfoot's first
husband come to life again, and she who has just married a second.
Perhaps Lightfoot won't be very sorry for it," sighed Huxter, looking
savagely at Arthur, for the demon of jealousy was still in possession of
his soul; and now, and more than ever since his marriage, the poor fellow
fancied that Fanny's heart belonged to his rival.
"Let us talk about your affairs," said Pen. "Show me how I can be of any
service to you, Huxter. Let me congratulate you on your marriage. I am
thankful that Fanny, who is so good, so fascinating, so kind a creature,
has found an honest man, and a gentleman who will make her happy. Show me
what I can do to help you."
"She thinks you can, sir," said Huxter, accepting Pen's proffered hand,
"and I'm very much obliged to you, I'm sure; and that you might talk over
my father, and break the business to him, and my mother, who always has
her back up about being a clergyman's daughter. Fanny ain't of a good
family, I know, and not up to us in breeding and that--but she's a Huxter
now."
"The wife takes the husband's rank, of course," said Pen.
"And with a little practice in society," continued Huxter, imbibing his
stick, "she'll be as good as any girl in Clavering. You should hear her
sing and play on the piano. Did you ever? Old Bows taught her. And she'll
do on the stage, if the governor was to throw me over; but I'd rather not
have her there. She can't help being a coquette, Mr. Pendennis, she can't
help it. Dammy, sir! I'll be bound to say, that two or three of the
Bartholomew chaps, that I've brought into my place, are sitting with her
now: even Jack Linton, that I took down as my best man, is as bad as the
rest, and she will go on singing and making eyes at him. It's what Bows
says, if there were twenty men in a room, and one not taking notice of
her, she wouldn't be satisfied until the twentieth was at her elbow."
"You should have her mother with her," said Pen, laughing.
"She must keep the lodge. She can't see so much of her family as she
used. I can't, you know, sir, go on with that lot. Consider my rank in
life," said Huxter, putting a very dirty hand up to his chin.
"Au fait," said Mr. Pen, who was infinitely amused, and concerning whom
mutato nomine (and of course concerning nobody else in the world) the
fable might have been narrated.
As the two gentlemen were in the midst of this colloquy, another knock
came to Pen's door, and his servant presently announced Mr. Bows. The old
man followed slowly, his pale face blushing, and his hand trembling
somewhat as he took Pen's. He coughed, and wiped his face in his checked
cotton pocket-handkerchief, and sate down with his hands on his knees,
the sunshining on his bald head. Pen looked at the homely figure with no
small sympathy and kindness. This man, too, has had his griefs and his
wounds, Arthur thought. This man, too, has brought his genius and his
heart, and laid them at a woman's feet; where she spurned them. The
chance of life has gone against him, and the prize is with that creature
yonder. Fanny's bridegroom, thus mutely apostrophised, had winked
meanwhile with one eye at old Bows, and was driving holes in the floor
with the cane which he loved.
"So we have lost, Mr. Bows, and here is the lucky winner," Pen said,
looking hard at the old man.
"Here is the lucky winner, sir, as you say."
"I suppose you have come from my place?" asked Huxter, who, having winked
at Bows with one eye, now favoured Pen with a wink of the other--a wink
which seemed to say, "Infatuated old boy--you understand--over head and
ears in love with her poor old fool."
"Yes, I have been there ever since you went away. It was Mrs. Sam who
sent me after you: who said that she thought you might be doing something
stupid--something like yourself, Huxter."
"There's as big fools as I am," growled the young surgeon.
"A few, p'raps," said the old man; "not many, let us trust. Yes, she sent
me after you for fear you should offend Mr. Pendennis; and I daresay
because she thought you wouldn't give her message to him, and beg him to
go and see her; and she knew I would take her errand. Did he tell you
that, sir?"
Huxter blushed scarlet, and covered his confusion with an imprecation.
Pen laughed; the scene suited his bitter humour more and more.
"I have no doubt Mr. Huxter was going to tell me," Arthur said, "and very
much flattered I am sure I shall be to pay my respects to his wife."
"It's in Charterhouse Lane, over the baker's, on the right hand side as
you go from St. John's Street," continued Bows, without any pity. "You
know Smithfield, Mr. Pendennis? St. John's Street leads into Smithfield.
Doctor Johnson has been down the street many a time with ragged shoes,
and a bundle of penny-a-lining for the Gent's Magazine. You literary
gents are better off now--eh? You ride in your cabs, and wear yellow kid
gloves now."
"I have known so many brave and good men fail, and so many quacks and
impostors succeed, that you mistake me if you think I am puffed up by my
own personal good luck, old friend," Arthur said, sadly. "Do you think
the prizes of life are carried by the most deserving? and set up that
mean test of prosperity for merit? You must feel that you are as good as
I. I have never questioned it. It is you that are peevish against the
freaks of fortune, and grudge the good luck that befalls others. It's not
the first time you have unjustly accused me, Bows."
"Perhaps you are not far wrong, sir," said the old fellow, wiping his
bald forehead. "I am thinking about myself and grumbling; most men do
when they get on that subject. Here's the fellow that's got the prize in
the lottery; here's the fortunate youth."
"I don't know what you are driving at," Huxter said, who had been much
puzzled as the above remarks passed between his two companions.
"Perhaps not," said Bows, drily. "Mrs. H. sent me here to look after you,
and to see that you brought that little message to Mr. Pendennis, which
you didn't, you see, and so she was right. Women always are; they have
always a reason for everything. Why, sir," he said, turning round to Pen
with a sneer, "she had a reason even for giving me that message. I was
sitting with her after you left us, very quiet and comfortable; I was
talking away, and she was mending your shirts, when your two young
friends, Jack Linton and Bob Blades, looked in from Bartholomew's; and
then it was she found out that she had this message to send. You needn't
hurry yourself, she don't want you back again; they'll stay these two
hours, I daresay."
Huxter arose with great perturbation at this news, and plunged his stick
into the pocket of his paletot, and seized his hat.
"You'll come and see us, sir, won't you?" he said to Pen. "You'll talk
over the governor, won't you, sir, if I can get out of this place and
down to Clavering?"
"You will promise to attend me gratis if ever I fall ill at Fairoaks,
will you, Huxter?" Pen said, good-naturedly. "I will do anything I can
for you. I will come and see Mrs. Huxter immediately, and we will
conspire together about what is to be done."
"I thought that would send him out, sir," Bows said, dropping into his
chair again as soon as the young surgeon had quitted the room. "And it's
all true, sir--every word of it. She wants you back again, and sends her
husband after you. She cajoles everybody, the little devil. She tries it
on you, on me, on poor Costigan, on the young chaps from Bartholomew's.
She's got a little court of 'em already. And if there's nobody there, she
practises on the old German baker in the shop, or coaxes the black
sweeper at the crossing."
"Is she fond of that fellow?" asked Pen.
"There is no accounting for likes and dislikes," Bows answered.
"Yes, she is fond of him; and having taken the thing into her head, she
would not rest until she married him. They had their banns published at
St. Clement's, and nobody heard it or knew any just cause or impediment.
And one day she slips out of the porter's lodge and has the business
done, and goes off to Gravesend with Lothario; and leaves a note for me
to go and explain all things to her Ma. Bless you! the old woman knew it
as well as I did, though she pretended ignorance. And so she goes, and
I'm alone again. I miss her, sir, tripping along that court, and coming
for her singing lesson; and I've no heart to look into the porter's lodge
now, which looks very empty without her, the little flirting thing. And I
go and sit and dangle about her lodgings, like an old fool. She makes 'em
very trim and nice, though; gets up all Huxter's shirts and clothes:
cooks his little dinner, and sings at her business like a little lark.
What's the use of being angry? I lent 'em three pound to go on with: for
they haven't got a shilling till the reconciliation, and Pa comes down."
When Bows had taken his leave, Pen carried his letter from Blanche, and
the news which he had just received, to his usual adviser, Laura. It was
wonderful upon how many points Mr. Arthur, who generally followed his own
opinion, now wanted another person's counsel. He could hardly so much as
choose a waistcoat without referring to Miss Bell: if he wanted to buy a
horse he must have Miss Bell's opinion; all which marks of deference
tended greatly to the amusement of the shrewd old lady with whom Miss
Bell lived, and whose plans regarding her protegee we have indicated.
Arthur produced Blanche's letter then to Laura, and asked her to
interpret it. Laura was very much agitated and puzzled by the contents
of the note.
"It seems to me," she said, "as if Blanche is acting very artfully."
"And wishes so to place matters that she may take me or leave me? Is it
not so?"
"It is, I am afraid, a kind of duplicity which does not augur well for
your future happiness; and is a bad reply to your own candour and
honesty, Arthur. Do you know, I think, I think--I scarcely like to say
what I think," said Laura with a deep blush; but of course the blushing
young lady yielded to her cousin's persuasion, and expressed what her
thoughts were. "It looks to me, Arthur, as if there might be--there might
be somebody else," said, Laura, with a repetition of the blush.
"And if there is," broke in Arthur, "and if I am free once again, will
the best and dearest of all women----"
"You are not free, dear brother," Laura said calmly. "You belong to
another; of whom I own it grieves me to think ill. But I can't do
otherwise. It is very odd that in this letter she does not urge you to
tell her the reason why you have broken arrangements which would have
been so advantageous to you; and avoids speaking on the subject. She
somehow seems to write as if she knows her father's secret."
Pen said, "Yes, she must know it;" and told the story, which he had just
heard from Huxter, of the interview at Shepherd's Inn.
"It was not so that she described the meeting," said Laura; and, going to
her desk, produced from it that letter of Blanche's which mentioned her
visit to Shepherd's Inn. 'Another disappointment--only the Chevalier
Strong and a friend of his in the room.' This was all that Blanche had
said. "But she was bound to keep her father's secret, Pen," Laura added.
"And yet, and yet--it is very puzzling."
The puzzle was this, that for three weeks after this eventful discovery
Blanche had been only too eager about her dearest Arthur; was urging, as
strongly as so much modesty could urge, the completion of the happy
arrangements which were to make her Arthur's for ever; and now it seemed
as if something had interfered to mar these happy arrangements--as if
Arthur poor was not quite so agreeable to Blanche as Arthur rich and a
member of Parliament--as if there was some mystery. At last she said:
"Tunbridge Wells is not very far off, is it, Arthur? Hadn't you better go
and see her?"
They had been in town a week, and neither had thought of that simple plan
before!
