temptation!
I may have been encouraged in my suspicions of the dingy clergyman by Philip's
own surmises regarding him, which were expressed with the speaker's usual
candour. "The fellow calls for what he likes at the Firmin Arms," said poor
Phil; "and when my father's bigwigs assemble, I hope the reverend gentleman
dines with them. I should like to see him hobnobbing with old Bumpsher, or
slapping the bishop on the back. He lives in Sligo Street, round the corner, so
as to be close to our house and yet preserve his own elegant independence.
Otherwise, I wonder he has not installed himself in Old Parr Street, where my
poor mother's bedroom is vacant. The doctor does not care to use that room. I
remember now how silent they were when together, and how terrified she always
seemed before him. What has he done? I know of one affair in his early life.
Does this Hunt know of any more. They have been accomplices in some conspiracy,
sir; I daresay with that young Cinqbars, of whom Hunt is for ever bragging: the
worthy son of the worthy Ringwood. I say, does wickedness run in the blood? My
grandfathers, I have heard, were honest men. Perhaps they were only not found
out; and the family taint will show in me some day. There are times when I feel
the devil so strong within me, that I think some day he must have the mastery.
I'm not quite bad yet: but I tremble lest I should go. Suppose I were to drown,
and go down? It's not a jolly thing, Pendennis, to have such a father as mine.
Don't humbug me with your charitable palliations and soothing surmises. You put
me in mind of the world then, by Jove, you do! I laugh, and I drink, and I make
merry, and sing, and smoke endless tobacco; and I tell you I always feel as if a
little sword was dangling over my skull which will fall some day and split it.
Old Parr Street is mined, sir,??mined! And some morning we shall be blown into
blazes??into blazes, sir; mark my words! That's why I'm so careless and so idle,
for which you fellows are always bothering and scolding me. There's no use in
settling down until the explosion is over, don't you see? Incedo per ignes
suppositos, and, by George! sir, I feel my bootsoles already scorching. Poor
thing! poor mother" (he apostrophized his mother's picture which hung in the
room where we were talking,)"were you aware of the secret, and was it the
knowledge of that which made your poor eyes always look so frightened! She was
always fond of you, Pen. Do you remember how pretty and graceful she used to
look as she lay on her sofa upstairs, or smiled out of her carriage as she
kissed her hand to us boys? I say, what if a woman marries, and is coaxed and
wheedled by a soft tongue, and runs off, and afterwards finds her husband has a
cloven foot?"
"Ah, Philip!"
"What is to be the lot of the son of such a man? Is my hoof cloven, too?" It was
on the stove, as he talked, extended in American fashion. "Suppose there's no
escape for me, and I inherit my doom, as another man does gout or consumption?
Knowing this fate, what is the use, then, of doing anything in particular? I
tell you, sir, the whole edifice of our present life will crumble in and smash."
(Here he flings his pipe to the ground with an awful shatter.) "And until the
catastrophe comes, what on earth is the use of setting to work, as you call it?
You might as well have told a fellow, at Pompeii, to select a profession the day
before the eruption."
"If you know that Vesuvius is going to burst over Pompeii," I said, somewhat
alarmed, "why not go to Naples, or farther, if you will?"
"Were there not men in the sentry-boxes at the city gates," asked Philip, "who
might have run, and yet remained to be burned there? Suppose, after all, the
doom isn't hanging over us,??and the fear of it is only a nervous terror of
mine? Suppose it comes, and I survive it? The risk of the game gives a zest to
it, old boy. Besides, there is Honour: and some One Else is in the case, from
whom a man could not part in an hour of danger." And here he blushed a fine red,
heaved a great sigh, and emptied a bumper of claret.
CHAPTER VIII. WILL BE PRONOUNCED TO BE CYNICAL BY THE BENEVOLENT.
Gentle readers will not, I trust, think the worse of their most obedient, humble
servant for the confession that I talked to my wife on my return home regarding
Philip and his affairs. When I choose to be frank, I hope no man can be more
open than myself: when I have a mind to be quiet, no fish can be more mute. I
have kept secrets so ineffably, that I have utterly forgotten them, until my
memory was refreshed by people who also knew them. But what was the use of
hiding this one from the being to whom I open all, or almost all??say all,
excepting just one or two??of the closets of this heart? So I say to her, "My
love; it is as I suspected. Philip and his cousin Agnes are carrying on
together."
"Is Agnes the pale one, or the very pale one?" asks the joy of my existence.
"No, the elder is Blanche. They are both older than Mr. Firmin: but Blanche is
the elder of the two."
"Well, I am not saying anything malicious, or contrary to the fact, am I, sir?"
No. Only I know by her looks, when another lady's name is mentioned, whether my
wife likes her or not. And I am bound to say, though this statement may meet
with a denial, that her countenance does not vouchsafe smiles at the mention of
all ladies' names.
"You don't go to the house? You and Mrs. Twysden have called on each other, and
there the matter has stopped? Oh, I know! It is because poor Talbot brags so
about his wine, and gives such abominable stuff, that you have such an
un-Christian feeling for him!"
"That is the reason, I daresay," says the lady.
"No. It is no such thing. Though you do know sherry from port, I believe upon my
conscience you do not avoid the Twysdens because they give bad wine. Many others
sin in that way, and you forgive them. You like your fellow-creatures better
than wine??some fellow-creatures??and you dislike some fellow-creatures worse
than medicine. You swallow them, madam. You say nothing, but your looks are
dreadful. You make wry faces: and when you have taken them, you want a piece of
sweetmeat to take the taste out of your mouth."
The lady, thus wittily addressed, shrugs her lovely shoulders. My wife
exasperates me in many things; in getting up at insane hours to go to early
church, for instance; in looking at me in a particular way at dinner, when I am
about to eat one of those entr?es which Dr. Goodenough declares disagree with
me; in nothing more than in that obstinate silence, which she persists in
maintaining sometimes when I am abusing people, whom I do not like, whom she
does not like, and who abuse me. This reticence makes me wild. What confidence
can there be between a man and his wife, if he can't say to her, "Confound
So-and-so, I hate him; " or, "What a prig What-d'-you-call-em is!" or, "What a
bloated aristocrat Thingamy has become, since he got his place!" or what you
will?
"No," I continue, "I know why you hate the Twysdens, Mrs. Pendennis.
You hate
them because they move in a world which you can only occasionally visit. You
envy them because they are hand in glove with the great: because they possess an
easy grace, and a frank and noble elegance with which common country people and
apothecaries' sons are not endowed."
"My dear Arthur, I do think you are ashamed of being an apothecary's son. You
talk about it so often," says the lady. Which was all very well: but you see she
was not answering my remarks about the Twysdens.
"You are right, my dear," I say then. "I ought not to be censorious, being
myself no more virtuous than my neighbour."
"I know people abuse you, Arthur; but I think you are a very good sort of man,"
says the lady, over her little tea-tray.
"And so are the Twysdens very good people??very nice, artless, unselfish,
simple, generous, well-bred people. Mr. Twysden is all heart: Twysden's
conversational powers are remarkable and pleasing; and Philip is eminently
fortunate in getting one of those charming girls for a wife."
"I've no patience with them," cries my wife, losing that quality to my great
satisfaction: for then I knew I had found the crack in Madam Pendennis's armour
of steel, and had smitten her in a vulnerable little place.
"No patience with them? Quiet, lady-like young women!" I cry.
"Ah," sighs my wife, "what have they got to give Philip in return for??"
"In return for his thirty thousand? They will have ten thousand pounds a piece
when their mother dies."
"Oh! I wouldn't have our boy marry a woman like one of those, not if she had a
million. I wouldn't, my child and my blessing!" (This is addressed to a little
darling who happens to be eating sweet cakes, in a high chair, off the little
table by his mother's side, and who, though he certainly used to cry a good deal
at the period, shall be a mute personage in this history.)
"You are alluding to Blanche's little affair with??"
"No, I am not, sir!"
"How do you know which one I meant, then??? Or that notorious disappointment of
Agnes, when Lord Farintosh became a widower? If he wouldn't, she couldn't, you
know, my dear. And I am sure she tried her best: at least, everybody said so."
"Ah! I have no patience with the way in which you people of the world treat the
most sacred of subjects?? the most sacred, sir. Do you hear me? Is a woman's
love to be pledged, and withdrawn every day? Is her faith and purity only to be
a matter of barter, and rank, and social consideration? I am sorry, because I
don't wish to see Philip, who is good, and honest, and generous, and true as
yet??however great his faults may be ??because I don't wish to see him given up
to??Oh! it's shocking, shocking!"
Given up to what? to anything dreadful in this world, or the next? Don't imagine
that Philip's relations thought they were doing Phil any harm by condescending
to marry him, or themselves any injury. A doctor's son, indeed! Why, the
Twysdens were far better placed in the world than their kinsmen of Old Parr
Street; and went to better houses. The year's lev?e and drawing-room would have
been incomplete without Mr. and Mrs. Twysden. There might be families with
higher titles, more wealth, higher positions; but the world did not contain more
respectable folks than the Twysdens: of this every one of the family was
convinced, from Talbot himself down to his heir. If somebody or some Body of
savans would write the history of the harm that has been done in the world by
people who believe themselves to be virtuous, what a queer, edifying book it
would be, and how poor oppressed rogues might look up! Who burns the
Protestants???the virtuous Catholics to be sure. Who roasts the Catholics???the
virtuous Reformers. Who thinks I am a dangerous character, and avoids me at the
club???the virtuous Squaretoes. Who scorns? who persecutes? who doesn't
forgive???the virtuous Mrs. Grundy. She remembers her neighbour's peccadilloes
to the third and fourth generation; and, if she finds a certain man fallen in
her path, gathers up her affrighted garments with a shriek, for fear the muddy,
bleeding wretch should contaminate her, and passes on.
I do not seek to create even surprises in this modest history, or condescend to
keep candid readers in suspense about many matters which might possibly interest
them. For instance, the matter of love has interested novel-readers for hundreds
of years past, and doubtless will continue so to interest them. Almost all young
people read love books and histories with eagerness, as oldsters read books of
medicine, and whatever it is??heart complaint, gout, liver, palsy??cry, "Exactly
so, precisely my case!" Phil's first love affair, to which we are now coming,
was a false start. I own it at once. And in this commencement of his career I
believe he was not more or less fortunate than many and many a man and woman in
this world. Suppose the course of true love always did run smooth, and everybody
married his or her first love. Ah! what would marriage be?
A generous young fellow comes to market with a heart ready to leap out of his
waistcoat, for ever thumping and throbbing, and so wild that he can't have any
rest till he has disposed of it. What wonder if he falls upon a wily merchant in
Vanity Fair, and barters his all for a stale bauble not worth sixpence? Phil
chose to fall in love with his cousin; and I warn you that nothing will come of
that passion, except the influence which it had upon the young man's character.
Though my wife did not love the Twysdens, she loves sentiment, she loves love
affairs??all women do. Poor Phil used to bore me after dinner with endless
rodomontades about his passion and his charmer; but my wife was never tired of
listening. "You are a selfish, heartless, blas? man of the world, you are," he
would say. "Your own immense and undeserved good fortune in the matrimonial
lottery has rendered you hard, cold, crass, indifferent. You have been asleep,
sir, twice to-night, whilst I was talking. I will go up and tell madam
everything. She has a heart." And presently engaged with my book or my
after-dinner doze, I would hear Phil striding and creaking overhead, and
plunging energetic pokers in the drawing-room fire.
Thirty thousand pounds to begin with; a third part of that sum coming to the
lady from her mother; all the doctor's savings and property;??here certainly was
enough in possession and expectation to satisfy many young couples; and as Phil
is twenty-two, and Agnes (must I own it?) twenty-five, and as she has consented
to listen to the warm outpourings of the eloquent and passionate youth, and
exchange for his fresh, new-minted, golden sovereign heart, that used little
three-penny-piece, her own??why should they not marry at once, and so let us
have an end of them and this history? They have plenty of money to pay the
parson and the postchaise; they may drive off to the country, and live on their
means, and lead an existence so humdrum and tolerably happy that Phil may grow
quite too fat, lazy, and unfit for his present post of hero of a novel. But
stay??there are obstacles;
coy, reluctant, amorous delays. After all, Philip is
a dear, brave, handsome, wild, reckless, blundering boy, treading upon
everybody's dress skirts, smashing the little Dresden ornaments and the pretty
little decorous gimcracks of society, life, conversation;??but there is time
yet. Are you so very sure about that money of his mother's? and how is it that
his father the doctor has not settled accounts with him yet! C'est louche. A
family of high position and principle must look to have the money matters in
perfect order, before they consign a darling accustomed to every luxury to the
guardianship of a confessedly wild and eccentric, though generous and amiable,
young man. Besides??ah! besides?? besides!
... "It's horrible, Arthur! It's cruel, Arthur! It's a shame to judge a woman,
or Christian people so! Oh! my loves! my blessings! would I sell you?" says this
young mother, clutching a little belaced, befurbelowed being to her heart,
infantine, squalling, with blue shoulder-ribbons, a mottled little arm that has
just been vaccinated, and the sweetest red shoes. "Would I sell you?" says
mamma. Little Arty, I say, squalls; and little Nelly looks up from her bricks
with a wondering, whimpering expression.
Well, I am ashamed to say what the "besides" is; but the fact is, that young
Woolcomb of the Life Guards Green, who has inherited immense West India
property, and, we will say, just a teaspoonful of that dark blood which makes a
man naturally partial to blonde beauties, has cast his opal eyes very warmly
upon the golden-haired Agnes of late; has danced with her not a little; and when
Mrs. Twysden's barouche appears by the Serpentine, you may not unfrequently see
a pair of the neatest little yellow kid gloves just playing with the reins, a
pair of the prettiest little boots just touching the stirrup, a magnificent
horse dancing, and tittupping, and tossing, and performing the most graceful
caracoles and gambadoes, and on the magnificent horse a neat little man with a
blazing red flower in his bosom, and glancing opal eyes, and a dark complexion,
and hair so very black and curly, that I really almost think in some of the
Southern States of America he would be likely to meet with rudeness in a railway
car.
But in England we know better. In England Grenville Woolcomb is a man and a
brother. Half of Arrowroot Island, they say, belongs to him; besides Mangrove
Hall, in Hertfordshire; ever so much property in other counties, and that fine
house in Berkeley Square. He is called the Black Prince behind the scenes of
many theatres: ladies nod at him from those broughams which, you understand,
need not be particularized. The idea of his immense riches is confirmed by the
known fact that he is a stingy black Prince, and most averse to parting with his
money except for his own adornment or amusement. When he receives at his country
house, his entertainments are, however, splendid. He has been flattered,
followed, caressed all his life, and allowed by a fond mother to have his own
way; and as this has never led him to learning, it must be owned that his
literary acquirements are small, and his writing defective. But in the
management of his pecuniary affairs he is very keen and clever. His horses cost
him less than any young man's in England who is so well mounted. No dealer has
ever been known to get the better of him; and, though he is certainly close
about money, when his wishes have very keenly prompted him, no sum has been
known to stand in his way.
Witness the purchase of the??. But never mind scandal. Let bygones be bygones. A
young doctor's son, with a thousand a year for a fortune, may be considered a
catch in some circles, but not, vous concevez, in the upper regions of society.
And dear woman??dear, angelic, highly accomplished, respectable woman??does she
not know how to pardon many failings in our sex? Age? psha! She will crown my