A History of Pendennis. Volume 1. His fortunes and misfortunes, his friends and his greatest enemy. Thackeray William Makepeace
"Come along back, old fellow, and eat my dinner – I have had mine: but we will have a bottle of the old wine and drink her health, Smirke."
Poor Smirke turned the pony's head round, and jogged along with Arthur. His mother was charmed to see him in such high spirits, and welcomed Mr. Smirke for his sake, when Arthur said he had forced the curate back to dine. He gave a most ludicrous account of the play of the night before, and of the acting of Bingley the Manager, in his ricketty Hessians, and the enormous Mrs. Bingley as the Countess, in rumpled green satin and a Polish cap: he mimicked them, and delighted his mother and little Laura, who clapped her hands with pleasure.
"And Mrs. Haller?" said Mrs. Pendennis.
"She's a stunner, ma'am," Pen said, laughing, and using the words of his reverend friend, Mr. Foker.
"A what, Arthur?" asked the lady.
"What is a stunner, Arthur?" cried Laura, in the same voice.
So he gave them a queer account of Mr. Foker, and how he used to be called Vats and Grains, and by other contumelious names at school, and how he was now exceedingly rich, and a Fellow Commoner at St. Boniface. But gay and communicative as he was, Mr. Pen did not say one syllable about his ride to Chatteries that day, or about the new friends whom he had made there.
When the two ladies retired, Pen, with flashing eyes, filled up two great bumpers of Madeira, and looking Smirke full in the face said, "Here's to her!"
"Here's to her," said the curate with a sigh, lifting the glass: and emptying it, so that his face was a little pink when he put it down.
Pen had even less sleep that night than on the night before. In the morning, and almost before dawn, he went out and saddled that unfortunate Rebecca himself, and rode her on the Downs like mad. Again Love had roused him – and said, "Awake Pendennis, I am here." That charming fever – that delicious longing – and fire, and uncertainty; he hugged them to him – he would not have lost them for all the world.
CHAPTER VI.
CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND WAR
Cicero and Euripides did not occupy Mr. Pen much for some time after this, and honest Mr. Smirke had a very easy time with his pupil. Rebecca was the animal who suffered most in the present state of Pen's mind for, besides those days when he could publicly announce his intention of going to Chatteries to take a fencing-lesson, and went thither with the knowledge of his mother, whenever he saw three hours clear before him, the young rascal made a rush for the city, and found his way to Prior's Lane. He was as frantic with vexation when Rebecca went lame, as Richard at Bosworth, when his horse was killed under him: and got deeply into the books of the man who kept the hunting stables at Chatteries for the doctoring of his own, and the hire of another animal.
Then, and perhaps once in a week, under pretense of going to read a Greek play with Smirke, this young reprobate set off so as to be in time for the Competitor down coach, staid a couple of hours in Chatteries, and returned on the Rival which left for London at ten at night. Once his secret was nearly lost by Smirke's simplicity, of whom Mrs. Pendennis asked whether they had read a great deal the night before, or a question to that effect. Smirke was about to tell the truth, that he had never seen Mr. Pen at all, when the latter's boot-heel came grinding down on Mr. Smirke's toe under the table, and warned the curate not to betray him.
They had had conversations on the tender subject of course. It is good sport (if you are not yourself engaged in the conversation) to hear two men in love talk. There must be a confidant and depositary somewhere. When informed, under the most solemn vows of secrecy, of Pen's condition of mind, the curate said, with no small tremor, "that he hoped it was no unworthy object – no unlawful attachment, which Pen had formed" – for if so, the poor fellow felt it would be his duty to break his vow and inform Pen's mother, and then there would be a quarrel, he felt, with sickening apprehension, and he would never again have a chance of seeing what he most liked in the world.
"Unlawful, unworthy!" Pen bounced out at the curate's question. "She is as pure as she is beautiful; I would give my heart to no other woman. I keep the matter a secret in my family, because – because – there are reasons of a weighty nature which I am not at liberty to disclose. But any man who breathes a word against her purity insults both her honor and mine, and – and dammy, I won't stand it."
Smirke, with a faint laugh, only said, "Well, well, don't call me out, Arthur, for you know I can't fight;" but by this compromise the wretched curate was put more than ever into the power of his pupil, and the Greek and mathematics suffered correspondingly.
If the reverend gentleman had had much discernment, and looked into the poet's corner of the County Chronicle, as it arrived in the Wednesday's bag, he might have seen "Mrs. Haller," "Passion and Genius," "Lines to Miss Fotheringay, of the Theater Royal," appearing every week; and other verses of the most gloomy, thrilling, and passionate cast. But as these poems were no longer signed NEP. by their artful composer, but subscribed EROS; neither the tutor nor Helen, the good soul, who cut all her son's verses out of the paper, knew that Nep. was no other than that flaming Eros, who sang so vehemently the character of the new actress.
"Who is the lady," at last asked Mrs. Pendennis, "whom your rival is always singing in the County Chronicle. He writes something like you, dear Pen, but yours is much the best. Have you seen Miss Fotheringay?"
Pen said yes, he had; that night he went to see the "Stranger," she acted Mrs. Haller. By the way she was going to have a benefit, and was to appear in Ophelia – suppose we were to go – Shakspeare you know, mother – we can get horses from the Clavering Arms. Little Laura sprang up with delight, she longed for a play.
Pen introduced "Shakspeare you know," because the deceased Pendennis, as became a man of his character, professed an uncommon respect for the bard of Avon, in whose works he safely said there was more poetry than in all "Johnson's Poets" put together. And though Mr. Pendennis did not much read the works in question, yet he enjoined Pen to peruse them, and often said what pleasure he should have, when the boy was of a proper age, in taking him and his mother to see some good plays of the immortal poet.
The ready tears welled up in the kind mother's eyes as she remembered these speeches of the man who was gone. She kissed her son fondly, and said she would go. Laura jumped for joy. Was Pen happy? – was he ashamed? As he held his mother to him, he longed to tell her all, but he kept his counsel. He would see how his mother liked her; the play should be the thing, and he would try his mother like Hamlet's.
Helen, in her good humor, asked Mr. Smirke to be of the party. That ecclesiastic had been bred up by a fond parent at Clapham, who had an objection to dramatic entertainments, and he had never yet seen a play. But, Shakspeare! – but to go with Mrs. Pendennis in her carriage, and sit a whole night by her side! – he could not resist the idea of so much pleasure, and made a feeble speech, in which he spoke of temptation and gratitude, and finally accepted Mrs. Pendennis's most kind offer. As he spoke he gave her a look, which made her exceedingly uncomfortable. She had seen that look more than once, of late, pursuing her. He became more positively odious every day in the widow's eyes.
We are not going to say a great deal about Pen's courtship of Miss Fotheringay, for the reader has already had a specimen of her conversation, much of which need surely not be reported. Pen sate with her hour after hour, and poured forth all his honest boyish soul to her. Every thing he knew, or hoped, or felt, or had read, or fancied, he told to her. He never tired of talking and longing. One after another, as his thoughts rose in his hot eager brain, he clothed them in words, and told them to her. Her part of the tête-à-tête was not to talk, but to appear as if she understood what Pen talked (a difficult matter, for the young fellow blurted out no small quantity of nonsense), and to look exceedingly handsome and sympathizing. The fact is, while he was making one of his tirades – and delighted, perhaps, and wondering at his own eloquence, the lad would go on for twenty minutes at a time – the lovely Emily, who could not comprehend a tenth part of his talk, had leisure to think about her own affairs, and would arrange, in her own mind how they should dress the cold mutton, or how she would turn the black satin, or make herself out of her scarf a bonnet like Miss Thackthwaite's new one, and so forth. Pen spouted Byron and Moore; passion and poetry: her business was to throw up her eyes, or fixing them for