“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 tomorrow, 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, an............