The History of Pendennis Part 20

The Curate had gone on his daily errand to Fairoaks, and was upstairs in Pens study pretending to read with his pupil, in the early part of that very afternoon when Mrs. Portman, after transacting business with Mrs.

Pybus, had found the weather so exceedingly fine that she pursued her walk as far as Fairoaks, in order to pay a visit to her dear friend there. In the course of their conversation, the Rector's lady told Mrs. Pendennis and the Major a very great secret about the Curate, Mr.

Smirke, which was no less than that he had an attachment, a very old attachment, which he had long kept quite private.

"And on whom is it that Mr. Smirke has bestowed his heart?" asked Mrs.

Pendennis, with a superb air but rather an inward alarm.

"Why, my dear," the other lady answered, "when he first came and used to dine at the Rectory, people said we wanted him for Myra, and we were forced to give up asking him. Then they used to say he was smitten in another quarter; but I always contradicted it for my part, and said that you----"

"That I," cried Mrs. Pendennis; "people are very impertinent, I am sure.

Mr. Smirke came here as Arthur's tutor, and I am surprised that anybody should dare to speak so----"

"'Pon my soul, it is a little too much," the Major said, laying down the newspaper and the double eye-gla.s.s.

"I've no patience with that Mrs. Pybus," Helen continued indignantly.

"I told her there was no truth in it," Mrs. Portman said. "I always said so, my dear: and now it comes out that my demure gentleman has been engaged to a young lady--Miss Thompson, of Clapham Common, ever so long: and I am delighted for my part, and on Myra's account, too, for an unmarried curate is always objectionable about one's house: and of course it is strictly private, but I thought I would tell you, as it might remove unpleasantnesses. But mind: not one word, if you please, about the story."

Mrs. Pendennis said, with perfect sincerity, that she was exceedingly glad to hear the news: and hoped Mr. Smirke, who was a very kind and amiable man, would have a deserving wife: and when her visitor went away, Helen and her brother talked of the matter with great satisfaction, the kind lady rebuking herself for her haughty behaviour to Mr. Smirke, whom she had avoided of late, instead of being grateful to him for his constant attention to Arthur.

"Grat.i.tude to this kind of people," the Major said, "is very well; but familiarity is out of the question. This gentleman gives his lessons and receives his money like any other master. You are too humble, my good soul. There must be distinctions in ranks, and that sort of thing. I told you before, you were too kind to Mr. Smirke."

But Helen did not think so: and now that Arthur was going away, and she bethought her how very polite Mr. Smirke had been; how he had gone on messages for her; how he had brought books and copied music; how he had taught Laura so many things, and given her so many kind presents, her heart smote her on account of her ingrat.i.tude towards the Curate;--so much so, that when he came down from study with Pen, and was hankering about the hall previous to his departure, she went out and shook hands with him with rather a blus.h.i.+ng face, and begged him to come into her drawing-room, where she said they now never saw him. And as there was to be rather a good dinner that day, she invited Mr. Smirke to partake of it; and we may be sure that he was too happy to accept such a delightful summons.

Eased, by the above report, of all her former doubts and misgivings regarding the Curate, Helen was exceedingly kind and gracious to Mr.

Smirke during dinner, redoubling her attentions, perhaps, because Major Pendennis was very high and reserved with his nephew's tutor. When Pendennis asked Smirke to drink wine, he addressed him as if he was a Sovereign speaking to a petty retainer, in a manner so condescending, that even Pen laughed at it, although quite ready, for his part, to be as conceited as most young men are.

But Smirke did not care for the impertinences of the Major so long as he had his hostess's kind behaviour; and he pa.s.sed a delightful time by her side at table, exerting all his powers of conversation to please her, talking in a manner both clerical and worldly, about the Fancy Bazaar, and the Great Missionary Meeting, about the last new novel, and the Bishop's excellent sermon about the fas.h.i.+onable parties in London, an account of which he read in the newspapers--in fine, he neglected no art, by which a College divine who has both sprightly and serious talents, a taste for the genteel, an irreproachable conduct, and a susceptible heart, will try and make himself agreeable to the person on whom he has fixed his affections.

Major Pendennis came yawning out of the dining-room very soon after his sister and little Laura had left the apartment. "What an unsufferable bore that man is, and how he did talk!" the Major said.

"He has been very good to Arthur, who is very fond of him," Mrs.

Pendennis said,--"I wonder who the Miss Thompson is whom he is going to marry?"

"I always thought the fellow was looking in another direction," said the Major.

"And in what?" asked Mrs. Pendennis quite innocently,--"towards Myra Portman?"

"Towards Helen Pendennis, if you must know," answered her brother-in-law.

"Towards me! impossible!" Helen said, who knew perfectly well that such had been the case. "His marriage will be a very happy thing. I hope Arthur will not take too much wine."

Now Arthur, flushed with a good deal of pride at the privilege of having the keys of the cellar, and remembering that a very few more dinners would probably take place which he and his dear friend Smirke could share, had brought up a liberal supply of claret for the company's drinking, and when the elders with little Laura left him, he and the Curate began to pa.s.s the wine very freely.

One bottle speedily yielded up the ghost, another shed more than half its blood, before the two topers had been much more than half an hour together--Pen, with a hollow laugh and voice, had drunk off one b.u.mper to the falsehood of women, and had said sardonically, that wine at any rate was a mistress who never deceived, and was sure to give a man a welcome.

Smirke gently said that he knew for his part some women who were all truth and tenderness; and casting up his eyes towards the ceiling, and heaving a sigh as if evoking some being dear and unmentionable, he took up his gla.s.s and drained it, and the rosy liquor began to suffuse his face.

Pen trolled over some verses he had been making that morning, in which he informed himself that the woman who had slighted his pa.s.sion could not be worthy to win it: that he was awaking from love's mad fever, and, of course, under these circ.u.mstances, proceeded to leave her, and to quit a heartless deceiver: that a name which had one day been famous in the land, might again be heard in it: and, that though he never should be the happy and careless boy he was but a few months since, or his heart be what it had been ere pa.s.sion had filled it and grief had well-nigh killed it; that though to him personally death was as welcome as life, and that he would not hesitate to part with the latter, but for the love of one kind being whose happiness depended on his own,--yet he hoped to show he was a man worthy of his race, and that one day the false one should be brought to know how great was the treasure and n.o.ble the heart which she had flung away.

Pen, we say, who was a very excitable person, rolled out these verses in his rich sweet voice, which trembled with emotion whilst our young poet spoke. He had a trick of blus.h.i.+ng when in this excited state, and his large and honest grey eyes also exhibited proofs of a sensibility so genuine, hearty, and manly, that Miss Costigan, if she had a heart, must needs have softened towards him; and very likely she was, as he said, altogether unworthy of the affection which he lavished upon her.

The sentimental Smirke was caught by the emotion which agitated his young friend. He grasped Pen's hand over the dessert dishes and wine-gla.s.ses. He said the verses were beautiful: that Pen was a poet, a great poet, and likely by Heaven's permission to run a great career in the world. "Go on and prosper, dear Arthur," he cried; "the wounds under which at present you suffer are only temporary, and the very grief you endure will cleanse and strengthen your heart. I have always prophesied the greatest and brightest things of you, as soon as you have corrected some failings and weaknesses of character, which at present belong to you. But you will get over these, my boy; you will get over these; and when you are famous and celebrated, as I know you will be, will you remember your old tutor and the happy early days of your youth?"

Pen swore he would: with another shake of the hand across the gla.s.ses and apricots. "I shall never forget how kind you have been to me, Smirke," he said. "I don't know what I should have done without you. You are my best friend."

"Am I, really, Arthur?" said Smirke, looking through his spectacles; and his heart began to beat so that he thought Pen must almost hear it throbbing.

"My best friend, my friend for ever," Pen said. "G.o.d bless you, old boy," and he drank up the last gla.s.s of the second bottle of the famous wine which his father had laid in, which his uncle had bought, which Lord Levant had imported, and which now, like a slave indifferent, was ministering pleasure to its present owner, and giving its young master delectation.

"We'll have another bottle, old boy," Pen said, "by Jove we will.

Hurray!--claret goes for nothing. My uncle was telling me that he saw Sheridan drink five bottles at Brookes's, besides a bottle of Maraschino. This is some of the finest wine in England, he says. So it is, by Jove. There's nothing like it. Nunc vino pellite curas--cras ingens iterabimus aeq,--fill your gla.s.s, Old Smirke, a hogshead of it won't do you any harm." And Mr. Pen began to sing the drinking song out of Der Freischuetz. The dining-room windows were open, and his mother was softly pacing on the lawn outside, while little Laura was looking at the sunset. The sweet fresh notes of the boy's voice came to the widow.

It cheered her kind heart to hear him sing.

"You--you are taking too much wine, Arthur," Mr. Smirke said softly--"you are exciting yourself."

"No," said Pen, "women give headaches, but this don't. Fill your gla.s.s, old fellow, and let's drink--I say, Smirke, my boy--let's drink to her--your her, I mean, not mine, for whom I swear I'll care no more--no, not a penny--no, not a fig--no, not a gla.s.s of wine. Tell us about the lady, Smirke; I've often seen you sighing about her."

"Oh!" said Smirke--and his beautiful cambric s.h.i.+rt front and glistening studs heaved with the emotion which agitated his gentle and suffering bosom.

"Oh--what a sigh!" Pen cried, growing very hilarious; "fill, my boy, and drink the toast, you can't refuse a toast, no gentleman refuses a toast. Here's her health, and good luck to you, and may she soon be Mrs.

Smirke."

"Do you say so?" Smirke said, all of a tremble. "Do you really say so, Arthur?"

"Say so; of course, I say so. Down with it. Here's Mrs. Smirke's good health: Hip, hip, hurray!"

Smirke convulsively gulped down his gla.s.s of wine, and Pen waved his over his head, cheering so as to make his mother and Laura wonder on the lawn, and his uncle, who was dozing over the paper in the drawing-room, start, and say to himself, "That boy's drinking too much." Smirke put down the gla.s.s.

"I accept the omen," gasped out the blus.h.i.+ng Curate. "Oh my dear Arthur, you--you know her----"

"What--Myra Portman? I wish you joy; she's got a dev'lish large waist; but I wish you joy, old fellow."

"Oh, Arthur!" groaned the Curate again, and nodded his head, speechless.

"Beg your pardon--sorry I offended you--but she has got a large waist, you know--devilish large waist," Pen continued--the third bottle evidently beginning to act upon the young gentleman.

"It's not Miss Portman," the other said, in a voice of agony.

"Is it anybody at Chatteris or at Clapham? Somebody here? No--it ain't old Pybus? it can't be Miss Rolt at the Factory--she's only fourteen."

"It's somebody rather older than I am, Pen," the Curate cried, looking up at his friend, and then guiltily casting his eyes down into his plate.

Pen burst out laughing. "It's Madame Fribsby; by Jove, it's Madame Fribsby. Madame Frib. by the immortal G.o.ds!"

The Curate could contain no more. "O Pen," he cried, "how can you suppose that any of those--of those more than ordinary beings you have named could have an influence upon this heart, when I have been daily in the habit of contemplating perfection! I may be insane, I may be madly ambitious, I may be presumptuous--but for two years my heart has been filled by one image, and has known no other idol. Haven't I loved you as a son, Arthur?--say, hasn't Charles Smirke loved you as a son?"

"Yes, old boy, you've been very good to me," Pen said, whose liking, however, for his tutor was not by any means of the filial kind.

"My means," rushed on Smirke, "are at present limited, I own, and my mother is not so liberal as might be desired; but what she has will be mine at her death. Were she to hear of my marrying a lady of rank and good fortune, my mother would be liberal, I am sure she would be liberal. Whatever I have or subsequently inherit--and it's five hundred a year at the very least--would be settled upon her and--and--and you at my death--that is."